AP: Graff fired for Leahy op-ed column, Howard Dean book

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted May 3, 2006

Editor's Note: This story was first published online at 1 p.m. It was updated at 5 p.m. to include reaction from U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy and the Associated Press.

MONTPELIER — In a rare move, the Associated Press agreed today to release the termination letter it handed to Vermont bureau chief Chris Graff in late March.

In the March 20 letter, AP said it was firing Graff for running an op-ed on March 8 by an elected official, and for allowing an AP reporter to write a chapter in a 2003 book about Howard Dean, then an aspiring presidential candidate.

“I hope the release of the letter puts to rest any speculation that other factors may have been involved,” Graff told the Guardian.

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Leahy said the termination letter made AP's decision more difficult to understand.

“The ironies of censoring discussion of the public’s right to know -- during Sunshine Week, to boot -- have already been noted by others," he said in a written statement. “But it must also be noted that AP itself takes an advocacy position each year during Sunshine Week.  AP bureaus across the country distribute and also produce materials in which these issues are examined. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that we recently held, a prominent AP witness testified – and forcefully -- in support of the public’s right to know and of the bipartisan FOIA reform bills that I have authored and introduced in the Senate with one of the Senate’s most conservative Republican members."

Leahy then noted that it was the American Society of Newspaper Editors who asked him to pen a column for Sunshine Week, which they were going to distribute to newspapers around the country.  

"Making the incidental effort to ensure that Vermont’s editors were aware of this was, apparently, Chris Graff’s ‘mistake,’ in the view of his supervisor," Leahy said. "The letter’s explanation is all the more amazing because the piece that I wrote and that Mr. Graff simply called to Vermont’s editors’ attention is all about the public’s right to know, calling on the government to be more open with the press and the public.  Since Sunshine Week, and to this day, I still have not seen anyone venture forth with any column arguing otherwise, that the government these days is sharing too much information with the press and the public.”