Morgan W. Brown, a visitor to this blog from the beautiful state of Vermont, kindly pointed me to a column in Seven Days, the state's alternative web weekly, about the firing of long-time AP Vermont bureau chief Christopher Graff on Monday.

And so here's some excerpts from Peter Freyne's Inside Track column of March 22:

All of a sudden here's a chill in the air, the smell of fear, people worried about their jobs. The reporters at the Montpelier bureau we've contacted have not responded to inquiries.

However, an "Inside Track" investigation of Graff's firing has uncovered the following:

First, since former USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley took over the reins at AP in 2003, things have taken a turn for the worse. Graff isn't the first veteran AP bureau chief to get axed recently. Curley's new Gannett-style policies and guidelines are being imposed with an iron fist by his new team of managers. There are complaints the news is being dumbed down by corporate, and the AP gold standard is being turned into cow flop.  ...

The column says its sources in the Vermont media confirm Graff got whacked for putting a column by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vermont) on the wire. The column -- written for Sunshine Week, named to draw attention to the need for open government -- attacked Dubya for running a secretive government. Personally, I would say the part about Dubya being secretive is something of an open secret, to say the least, but that's just me.

Sources say the objection was over moving an item written by a "partisan politician" without including a rebuttal from a partisan politician of a different stripe.

Can you believe it?

The gods at AP fired Chris Graff because of something St. Patrick wrote about open government! Leahy isn't even a candidate for office this year. Why is open government suddenly such a touchy topic at AP?

The remarkable thing is that one year ago, Mr. Graff moved a different Leahy column on the FOIA as part of ASNE's first annual Sunshine Week. Surely, if the higher-ups at the "new" AP had a problem, they would have mentioned it back then?

And even if they did, do you fire someone with 27 years experience, who is apparently well-regarded by his peers, for that? Apparently the doctrine of progressive discipline doesn't apply at AP.

Freyne also mentioned this:

With both Graff and AP management declining comment beyond confirming the firing, we cannot confirm that the Leahy open-government column was the only reason Graff was sacked. Indeed, many in the news biz wonder if his courageous defense of truth and accuracy during January's Fox News vs. Vermont firestorm involving Judge Edward Cashman was also a factor.

You'll recall that in his trademark "nothing but the facts" style, Graff courageously doubted the original WCAX-TV report that Cashman had told the court he "does not believe in punishment."

A startling statement, if true. But the AP veteran requested the court transcript and ran an eye-opening article several days later based only on the facts, and the facts were that the judge never said what Ch. 3, and some other media outlets, had reported.

While that article may not have won him much praise at WCAX, it demonstrated an admirable commitment to getting the facts right. It also made him a nightly target for the #1 right-wing trash talker on Fox "News" -- Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly went on a three-week crusade, crucifying Judge Cashman and anyone who defended him. Certainly, getting slimed night after night by name on the national airwaves by so prominent a right-wing mob leader must have made Graff's AP bosses take note?

Brown also points to a blog posting by the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch:

Here's the thing: the Associated Press and the other media groups knew they were going out on a bit of an advocacy limb when they announced "Sunshine Week." Not so coincidentally, the effort was launched in December 2004, the month after George W. Bush was elected to another four years in office. Here's the AP's reasoning (from its own coverage, Dec. 14, 2004):

Tom Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press, said that the national effort is needed because government secrecy seems to be growing at an "epidemic rate."

"From city hall to Congress, from police chiefs' offices to the attorney general's office, the trend towards secrecy is unmistakable," said Curley, a member of the Sunshine Week steering committee.

But elsewhere in the same article, it becomes patently clear that the reason for that epidemic was the ascendency of George W. Bush:

Members of the committee also cited an Oct. 12, 2001, letter from Attorney General John Ashcroft that was widely interpreted as reversing course on the release of information to the public, putting the onus on citizens to prove why they needed the information.

A Department of Justice official, who declined to be named, said that Ashcroft's memo did not put any new burden on citizens, but that it represented a change in the "emphasis and tone" of freedom of information policy. He would not elaborate further.

The bottom line is this: "Sunshine Week" never would have happened in the first place had there not been a Bush presidency. But then the AP seeks to retroactively censor, in a sense, a piece that dares to call out the main culprit. Maybe they should, you know, raise the blinds a little bit at the "Sunshine Week" headquarters.