I wish I had to time to respond in detail to Dan, Ben, and Reber, above. It seems to me that this question of the expulsion of Larry Rohter from Brazil hits certain cracks in the question of "What Is Freedom of the Press?" and could be the jumping off point for quite the debate at the Narco News J-School in July-August.

Renato Rovai, one of our returning professors, editor and publisher of the national Forum magazine in Brazil, weighs in:

Não existe liberdade de imprensa nas redações dos grandes jornais (com raríssimas exceções) nem daqui e nem em outras partes do planeta. Não existe democracia para a manifestação ampla na comunicação. A qualidade da informação atual é miserável. E os veículos midiáticos têm cansado de dar demonstrações (em todos os cantos) de que são armas de longo alcance para golpes político-econômicos...

Which means...

Freedom of the Press doesn't exist in the newsrooms of the large dailies (with very rare exceptions), not here or in any other part of the planet. Democracy doesn't exist in the wide practice of communication. And the media companies tire us with examples (in all aspects) of how they are long distance weapons for political and economic coups...

When I get back to the newsroom this week I'll translate the whole thing (or perhaps another copublisher would like to do it here in the meantime).

I repeat: I don't think anyone should be expelled from any country, journalist or not, unless caught stealing the natural resources of that land.

But I think those of us who learned about "freedom of the press" North of the Border are conditioned not to see the gray area in a story like this. And so I ask, as a professor, some provocative questions:

1. Does a NY Times reporter have "freedom of the press"?
2. If not, what justification does he or his company have to claim a right to it, when they defecate on it every day themselves?
3. Who are we, the gringos (who, as Reber pointed out, come from a land that has expelled many a journalist with much less fanfare and attention, and zero complaint from the corporate "press freedom" organizations) to complain about what Brazil does to "our journalists" (both "our" and "journalists" obviously in quotation marks when referring to a lowlife professional simulator like Larry Rohter) if we have not raised our pens and hammers first to fight the repressive policies of U.S. immigration authorities against Brazilian and other journalists from throughout the world?
4. Is "paid speech" (media with advertising) the same as "free speech" and, if not, does it deserve the same protections as those who speak not for mercenary compensation but, rather, because they and we have a grievance to redress?

Some general observations:

I think it is helpful to separate two issues here, because my colleagues above seem to be mixing them and not distinguishing them.

The first is whether the Lula government in Brazil committed a "public relations" gaffe in not adhering to the Columbia School of Journalism concepts of "press freedom" in the Rohter case. I tend to lean on the side of "yes, probably," but I am also fascinated and waiting to see how it pans out because I think every land's public relations is strictly its own matter and very often, I have found, reporting on Latin America, that moves I thought "P.R. foolish" ended up being "P.R. brilliant." My gringo oversocialization has tricked me before at moments like this and I've learned the hard way to question my own assumptions at moments like this. That self-questioning makes moments like this more interesting, too.

The second issue, public relations aside, is whether Mr. Rohter and his organization, The New York Times, has behaved as a free press, and whether that question is relevant to the matter of whether it deserves special privileges over other members of society (as in automatic visas for its correspondents, as it has enjoyed in Latin America for decades).

Finally, I leave you with a story...

Earlier this year a Brazilian alumnus of the 2003 Narco News School of Authentic Journalism got on an airplane in the United States to return home to Brazil. U.S. immigration officials boarded the airplane and demanded to search her carry-on bags. There, they found what they wanted: her diary (a form of "reporter's notes," for sure).

They scanned it - the diary included her observations of her attendance of the Narco News J-School event in November in Rowe, Massachusetts - and told her: "You will be banned from ever entering the United States again."

That is how U.S. authorities deal with Brazilian journalists. Who are we, the gringos, to complain and get indignant when Washington's policies toward foreign journalists are countered by equal and opposite policies in Brazil and other lands toward gringo journalists?

Again, I don't favor expelling anyone from anywhere, but I think, as our colleage Renato Rovai does, that it deserves a more thoughtful examination of the core questions, especially: Is Larry Rohter a journalist? Does the NY Times practice press freedom? And, if not, what is all the noise really about?