The International Press Institute (IPI) today expressed disappointment at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s claim that police surveillance of Muslim student groups at campuses throughout the Northeast was necessary to protect press freedom.

Responding to criticism by Yale President Richard Levin, Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference yesterday: “You are not going to survive. You will not be able to be a journalist and write what you want to say if the people who want to take away your freedoms are allowed to succeed.”

The Associated Press reported last weekend that the New York Police Department in recent years monitored the websites and blogs of students at 16 universities, including some outside of New York City. Police also reportedly kept tabs on who spoke to the groups and sent an undercover officer on a white-water rafting trip with City College of New York students.

IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie rejected Bloomberg’s argument.

“Absent a specific threat against journalists, it is extremely insulting for him to hide behind ‘press freedom’ to justify potential violations of civil liberties, particularly when so many journalists around the world are actually killed or attacked each year striving to uphold the public’s right to know,” she said. “The mayor’s comments are also deeply ironic given the NYPD’s arrest of at least 26 journalists last fall as they tried to do their job covering protests.”

Ryan Blethen, associate publisher of The Seattle Times and chair of IPI’s North American Committee, added: “The NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim students and Mayor Bloomberg’s support of this tactic are extremely disappointing and disturbing. What makes the situation worse is Bloomberg’s insistence that this is a press freedom issue. To claim that spying on people because of their religion is needed to ensure press freedoms is insulting and goes against everything on which our American liberties were built.”

Defending the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim students yesterday, Bloomberg said he saw no problem with police monitoring online content that was available to the general public.

He also told reporters: “Remind yourself when you turn off the light tonight, you have your job because there are young men and women who have been giving their lives overseas for the last 200 plus years so that we would have freedom of the press. And we go after the terrorists. We are going to continue to do that and the same thing is true for the people that work on the streets of our cities.”