Upper Saranac seasonal blasts Bush military "propaganda"

Tom Curley, who spends a lot of the year living on Upper Saranac Lake, also heads the Associated Press.

On Friday, he blasted the Bush administration for turning “the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

That according to the AP’s own treatment of Curley’s appearanace at an event in Kansas.

Curley told journalists that they are “the only force out there to keep the government in check and to hold it accountable.”

But Curley also described astonishing statements, which he says were made by military leaders against the AP:

“Top commanders have told me that if I stood and the AP stood by its journalistic principles, the AP and I would be ruined.”

Curley said in a brief interview that he didn’t take the commanders’ words as a threat but as “an expression of anger.”

Late in 2007, Curley wrote an editorial about the detention of AP photographer Bilal Hussein, held by the military for more than two years.

Eleven of AP’s journalists have been detained in Iraq for more than 24 hours since 2003. Last year, according to cases AP is tracking, news organizations had eight employees detained for more than 48 hours.