Press Freedom
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Palestinian National Authority August 17, 2006
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinian National Authority
c/o Ambassador Hasan Abdel Rahman
Embassy of the Palestinian National Authority
1730 K Street, NW
Washington , DC 20006
Your Excellency:
We welcome the public support your government has given the family and colleagues of the Fox News journalists who were abducted two days ago by unknown kidnappers.
Since their disappearance outside the headquarters of the Palestinian security services on August 15, there has been no word of the whereabouts of reporter, Steve Centanni, or cameraman, Olaf Wiig. There is little doubt their abductors knew that the pair were legitimate journalists. From what we’ve been told, at the moment they were kidnapped Centanni was seated at the wheel of a car belonging to Fox and plainly marked “TV”.
We know Centanni and Wiig are not the first foreigners to be kidnapped in Gaza by extortionists of one stripe or another. Only last March, armed men from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine abducted Caroline Laurent, a reporter for ELLE; Alfred Yaghobzadeh, a photographer from the photo agency, SIPA; and Yong Tae-young, a correspondent for South Korea’s public broadcaster, KBS. Thankfully, they were released after several days. We hope that will be the case with our Fox colleagues, and we welcome the special mention of journalists by your Interior Ministry spokesman, Khaled Abu Hilal, yesterday in his plea to all Palestinians to cooperate in their investigation of the our colleagues’ disappearance.
What can unite us all, Your Excellency, is a shared commitment to protection of a free press and free expression as a necessary condition of modern democracy.
Respectfully yours,
Kevin McDermott
Norman A. Schorr
Co-chairmen – OPC Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
Hon. Khaled Abu Hilal
Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior
Ramallah
Palestinian National Authority
Fax: (011.972.7) 286-2500/ 8809 or 282-1661
Hasan Abdel Rahman
Ambassador of the Palestinian National Authority
to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Palestinian National Authority
1730 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Mr. John Moody
Senior V.P. – News Editorial
FOX News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York , NY 10036
Fax: (212) 301-8588
john.moody@foxnews.com
Mr. Roger Ailes
Chairman & CEO
FOX News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York , NY 10036
Fax: (212) 301-8588 or 556-8219
roger.ailes@foxnews.com