CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – What do the director of the National Zoo; the city administrator of McMinnville, Tenn.; and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft have in common?

Along with seven others, they have just been inducted into a select group of those receiving “Jefferson Muzzles” for suppressing free speech or press during the past year.

The Muzzles began a dozen years ago, when the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression decided to recognize, by conferring this dubious honor, people and groups that had gone out of their way to stifle free speech.

Sometimes, although rarely, a Muzzle winner concedes that the award is deserved. This year, for example, Berkeley, Calif., Mayor Tom Bates was cited for having stolen – on election day last November – more than a thousand copies of a campus newspaper that editorially endorsed his opponent.

This year’s Muzzles are, like those that preceded them, a varied lot. Ashcroft was cited on four separate grounds: banning all public and media access to deportation hearings in federal courts; forbidding two U.S. citizens detained on suspicion of aiding terrorism from even speaking with their own lawyers; sharply cutting back on Justice Department responses to Freedom of Information inquiries; and – on a bit lighter note – for spending $8,000 of public funds on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues that often appeared behind the attorney general during news conferences in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice.

The other winners for 2003 run the gamut. National Zoo Director Lucy Spelman was cited for refusing a reporter’s request for reports of the death of an adult giraffe under her care. She claimed such a disclosure would violate the late animal’s right to privacy, would invade the confidential relationship between animal and veterinarian, and would present the reading public with data too technical to understand.

Three public school administrators appear on this year’s list – one for placing all of the popular Harry Potter books on restricted shelves – a policy that was overturned by a federal judge after the Muzzle release.

Another administrator won for censoring a high school newspaper’s expose of toxic effects on neighbors of fumes from the school system’s garage. A third received the Muzzle for pulling the diploma of a salutatorian who had added on the end of her prepared speech a few affectionate names for favorite teachers – one cited as “lost in the ’80s,” and a math teacher recalled as a “pain in the asymptote.”

In the last of these cases, the teachers who were so named took the speech in good humor, but the principal did not. The diploma was eventually conferred, but only after much anguish and bitterness.

Local government also comes in for its share of criticism. In addition to the Berkeley mayor, the city administrator of McMinnville, Tenn., was cited for telling city employees not to communicate with any news media unless they got his approval in advance.

Tennessee made the list twice this year; the state Arts Commission got a Muzzle for banning the display of any works containing nudity at its gallery, which faces the state’s capitol.

In the lower house of North Carolina’s legislature earned a Muzzle for trying to use state funding to dictate reading assignments at the University of North Carolina’s main campus in Chapel Hill – venting their anger over a requirement that incoming freshmen read a book with a sympathetic view of Islam.

The one remaining 2003 Muzzle was also one of national import. The 107th Congress was cited for passing the USA Patriot Act – specifically section 215, which enables federal law enforcement officers to obtain, without proof of probable cause, search warrants for “business records” that may relate to an anti-terrorism or intelligence investigation.

Such records include who checked what books out of a library, or who bought what materials at a bookstore. Most ominous is the law’s total ban or gag on any disclosure of such demands, which prevents us from knowing where or when this far-reaching authority has been used.

Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire and other historic champions of free expression surely would be saddened that the abuses highlighted by this year’s Muzzle Awards are still with us in the 21st century.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Robert M. O’Neil is a former president of the University of Virginia and the current director of The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression (www.tjcenter.org). Readers may write him at TJC, 400 Peter Jefferson Place, Charlottesville, Va. 22911-8691. Complete information on all of the 2003 Jefferson Muzzles can be found at www.tjcenter.org/muzzles.html.

This essay is available to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service subscribers. Knight Ridder/Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Knight Ridder/Tribune or its editors.

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(c) 2003, Robert M. O’Neil

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

AP-NY-04-30-03 0634EDT

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