LOS ANGELES — President Barack Obama on Monday signed a law designed to encourage the expansion of press freedoms — abroad.
Named after slain journalist Daniel Pearl, the law is designed to cast a spotlight on how foreign governments treat the media. The act requires the State Department in its annual human-rights report to identify countries where there were violations of freedom of the press and what role the government may have had in the violations.
The measure “sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press,” Obama said at the White House signing ceremony.
Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was beheaded by militants in Pakistan in 2002.
Obama’s own relationship with the press has drawn criticism. According to the pool report on Monday’s signing, one reporter attempted to ask the president a question about the gulf oil spill.
“Speaking of press freedoms,” CBS News correspondent Chip Reid began.
“You are free to ask them,” the president said of the right to question. But he avoided the oil issue with, “I’m not doing a press conference today.”
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