The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also called for fuller investigations of the deaths of journalists killed by U.S. forces.
The group's chairman, Paul Steiger, told a news conference that U.S. support for journalists' right to do their work without being shot at or imprisoned had slipped in recent years under the administration of former President George W. Bush.
"America has always stood as a beacon for freedom of the press, and I think it would be a great time for a new administration coming in to reaffirm those principles," he said.
The Obama administration, which took office last month, should pledge to "take care to investigate the deaths of journalists from fire by American troops and to make sure that this is indeed accidental and to end the practice of long-term incarceration of journalists without charge, such as has regrettably gone on in Iraq in recent years," Steiger added.
The committee made public a letter Steiger sent to Obama on January 12 saying the U.S. military had detained 14 journalists for long periods without due process in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Of these, all were eventually released without charge except for Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, an Iraqi freelance photographer working for Reuters, who was detained in Iraq last September.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090210/media_nm/us_usa_journalists;_ylt=Al203Ou3ZXdf36HLQG5H_vtxFb8C
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