Five takeaways: Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of AP

Here are five takeaways from the presentation of Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of the Associated Press, during a session titled “National security, liberty, regulation and the role of a free press in the digital age” on the first day of WAN-IFRA’s World Newspaper Congress / World Editors Forum in Torino, Italy.

by WAN-IFRA Staff executivenews@wan-ifra.org | June 9, 2014

“Beware a government that loves secrecy too much.”
“When you only hear from official sources, you only hear what the government wants you to hear.”
“We must remain vigilant – a free press is the best check on power.”
When a country known for its press freedom violates it, it gives comfort to tyrannies around the world, because when they do something similar they can say, “Look, the US does it, too.”
One of the things we need to do now is think about how press freedom and the First Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press) apply today, when technology allows governments and corporations to have the possibility to monitor almost everything we do and say and that power is growing daily.

WAN-IFRA Staff

executivenews@wan-ifra.org