Last Monday, the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photographic and video evidence taken during the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The organization’s FOIA request included a reminder of the president’s campaign pledge and a plea to be more transparent than his predecessor. “The Obama White House ‘pledged to be the most transparent government in U.S. history,” wrote the AP, “and to comply much more closely with the Freedom of Information Act than the Bush administration did.'”…

“To put his head on a digital spike and display his mangled head is, indeed, not the Western way,” wrote Andrew Sullivan on Wednesday.

But a journalist’s prerogative is to ask questions and find answers, said Oreskes. “It’s our job as journalists to seek this material.”

“We’re not deciding in advance to publish this material,” he pledged. “We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we’ll decide what’s publishable and what’s not publishable based on the possibliy that it’s inflammatory.”