Two journalists rescued after disappearing in attack on aid convoy in Oaxaca, Mexico/U.S. subpoenas NYT reporter over CIA book, critics call the act B

Journalist Érika Ramírez and photographer David Cilia, both of Contralínea magazine, were rescued late Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports. Cilia suffered two gunshot wounds to the leg.

The journalists were reported missing Tuesday, after a humanitarian aid convoy in which they were traveling was ambushed in the southern state, the Associated Press and AFP report. The caravan was carrying food and medicine to the remote mountain town of San Juan Copala, which is inhabited mostly by Triqui Indians, AP explains.

The ambush killed two members of the six-vehicle convoy: a Finnish human rights activist and a Mexican political activist. Eight other people were reported missing. The Oaxaca state government lamented the incident but denied any responsibility.

International organizations such as Amnesty International and the UN High Commission for Human Rights have condemned the ambush and urged Mexican authorities to investigate the attack in a thorough, impartial way, La Jornada adds. Lawmakers, academics, and nongovernmental organizations have echoed that request,
La Jornada says in a separate story.

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ames Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, received a subpoena this week, obliging him to testify about his sources for the 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration,” MediaBistro, The New York Times, and others report. That decision “has convinced some press advocates that President Obama's team is pursuing leaks with the same fervor as the Bush administration,” the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz says.

Risen and a NYT colleague won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2005 article that exposed the existence of the National Security Agency’s “warrantless surveillance program,” Charlie Savage notes for The Times. “While many critics — including Barack Obama, then a senator — called that program illegal, the Bush administration denounced the article as a damaging leak of classified information and opened an investigation into its sources. No one has been indicted in that matter.”

The Times’ Nicholas Kristof says, “if the Obama administration is going to start going after journalists, there couldn’t be a worse time to create a chilling effect.
News organizations face a crisis in their business model, and the prospect of huge legal bills, hefty daily fines, and losing a reporter to jail becomes a real disincentive to the kind of edgy, aggressive reporting that we need more of. So come on, President Obama. How about a bit more change we can believe in?”

(Source:News in America)