Posted on 10/11/2013 11:14:05 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A brutal report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) blasted the Obama administration, calling the White House’s efforts to control information the harshest since the Nixon administration.
The report is something of a first for CPJ, which typically focuses on oppressed journalists in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Written by Leonard Downie Jr., the former editor of The Washington Post, the report contradicts the Obama administration’s insistence that it is “the most transparent administration in history.”
“The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” he wrote. “The 30 experienced Washington journalists . . . whom I interviewed for this report could not remember any precedent.”
Downie explains that the Obama administration’s obsession with controlling the narrative combines with reporter surveillance and its unprecedented prosecution of leakers to produce anxiety and inaction within the press corp.
The report notes that from the moment he took office, Obama has tried to present his own version of events by “using the Internet to dispense to the public large amounts of favorable information and images generated by his administration, while limiting its exposure to probing by the press.”
Meanwhile, reporters are increasingly shut out. “There is no access to the daily business in the Oval Office, who the president meets with, who he gets advice from,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton. “Open dialogue with the public without filters is good,” said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief, “but if it is used for propaganda and to avoid contact with journalists, it’s a slippery slope.”
The administration’s tight-fisted grip on information is made tighter through Obama’s relentless prosecution of leakers. While the White House offers whistleblower protections for leakers who expose waste, fraud or abuse, they mercilessly pursue those that reveal “questionable government policies and actions, even if they could be illegal or unconstitutional.”
By reviving the 1917 Espionage Act and creating the still-developing Insider Threat Program, the Obama administration has prosecuted six government employees and two contractors for leaking to the press. Only three such prosecutions have occurred in all previous presidential administrations.
“Prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act is almost their only tool,” said Lucy Dalglish, former director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. “They’re sending a message. It’s a strategy.” Former CIA director Michael Hayden agreed, calling the Insider Threat Program “designed to chill any conversation whatsoever.”
Tons of “OFF THE RECORD MEETINGS” not good ,press should never be off the record
You would think the press would turn on 0bama and tear him to shreds for this, as they did Nixon.
Unless, of course, they are just the propaganda organ of the democrat-communist party.
The mainstream media are registered democrats
there is no news
the mainstream media control all the bully pulpits
there is no free press
The democrat party controls the presidency and all the bully pulpits
Most of the press voted for a totalitarian socialist. It was good in their estimation until he turned on them.
Assault on the free press??????
Don’t you have to have a press acting as a free press before you can make this claim?
LMAO, the MSM reporters are following him around like baby geese.
The article premise is crap. Nixon lamented the power of the press, but didn’t try to muzzle them. If you want to go back to some SOB who really did, then it would be FDR.
there is no news
the mainstream media control all the bully pulpits
there is no free press
The democrat party controls the presidency and all the bully pulpits
democrats take jobs as media reporters to brainwash the low info voters and Americans.
If there was Republican president that ordered the IRS to shut down liberal groups there would be 24/7 coverage of the IRS scandal on all tv networks( as in watergate hearings). instead they make trayvone the top news of the month
If reporters are comparing it to the Nixon WH, the Obama’s admin must be a lot worse than anything seen before. Reporters hated Richard Nixon while they fawn over Obama. To get their full attention and raise their anger, the abridgement of freedom of the press must truly be egregious now.
0bama and his cronies have made Nixon look like a piker. Fast & Furious, IRS, Benghazi among others have affected millions including the stolen election in 2012. 0bama should be impeached, then after convicted of fraud, and other crimes, tossed in Guantanamo.
Only those "reporters" who don't kowtow to the Zero King and kiss his backside. Most of the lamestream "news" people go along with obammy "'cuz they love him!!"
“You would think the press would turn on 0bama and tear him to shreds for this, as they did Nixon.”
They’re too busy kissing his ass.
When are these skid marks on Journalism's shorts going to look at who really compares to Obama?
FDR.
Once again I say (the scroll bar is right over there -->) the left is moving rapidly to initiate a Great Sedition Trial of 2014 that matches what FDR tried to do to opponents with the Great Sedition Trial of 1944.
FDR failed. Obama might succeed the Establishment today is arguably aging 1960s New Left Marxist-Alinsky radical, campus spoiled brats and their ideological issue. The Establishment in FDR's days did not go along and eventually stopped:
". . . one of the blackest marks on the record of American jurisprudence. In the legal world, none can recall a case where so many Americans were brought to trial for political persecution and were so arrogantly denied the rights [guaranteed] an American citizen under the Constitution.”
The radical, campus spoiled brats will praise Obama one of their own. The most enthusiastic among them will be the employees of the MSM.
The bulk of today's "journalists" are seriously beneath contempt.
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