In some aggressive questioning of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Democratic Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota accused the secretary and the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Myers, of suppressing speech by calling CBS and asking them to postpone releasing th pictures at the Abu Ghraib prison.They wanted to air the disturbing photos they had obtained. General Myers said American troops were engaged in particularly vicious fighting and he was concerned that releasing the photos at that time could be particularly troublesome for U.S. troops. CBS agreed to wait and ultimately aired the photos two weeks later.
There's nothing wrong with that. There's no suggestion that CBS was threatened or coerced. Government officials call leaders of media operations all the time and the most well known example, when President Kennedy called “The New York Times” asking it to refrain from revealing that the U.S was about to invade Cuba. “The Times” agreed.
General Myers seemed to recognize that the release of the pictures was inevitable considering how many hundreds of the pictures apparently exist, remember taken by soldiers, not members of the media. He just wanted extra time.
As long as the media operation is making the final call, that's not suppression. In fact, we encourage them to offer input. And remember, we often don‘t report information that officials say could or would put U.S. troops in harm‘s way. Troop movements, for example. It is not in the words of Senator Dayton, “antithetical to democracy." There's nothing undemocratic about a general making a phone call.