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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration. The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad. Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press."...

Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post, is the Weil family professor of journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. This article is based on his report “The Obama Administration and the Press,” forthcoming Thursday from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the Watergate era, the Nixon administration’s telephone wiretaps were the biggest concern for journalists and sources worried about government surveillance. That was one of the reasons why Bob Woodward met with FBI official Mark Felt (a.k.a. “Deep Throat”) in an underground parking garage in Arlington, and why he and Carl...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been working on a bill to shield reporters from heavy-handed federal officials who seek to use their power to uncover information about whistle-blowers and leakers. Given the Obama Department of Justice's recent adventures in surveilling reporters' phone logs, you might think that for her trouble, Feinstein would be the object of much praise and many hosannas from the ink-stained-wretch community. But no, you can file this one under: No good deed goes unpunished. DiFi, you see, made the mistake of insisting that a proposed reporters' privilege law, the Free Flow of Information Act, apply only...

Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

It has now been an entire year since Al-Hurra correspondent Bashar Fahmi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, and freelancer Austin Tice, of the United States, went missing in Syria. But the recent liberation of two freelance journalists held for months gives us some reason to hope. Fahmi disappeared during a firefight in Aleppo on August 20, 2012, along with Turkish cameraman Cüneyt Ünal. The same day, Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto was killed in Aleppo. Ünal was released by the Syrian government in November 2012, but there has still been no word on Fahmi's fate.... snip... But two abductees have recently...

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. and President Obama will attempt to channel MLK but will ultimately fail. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who believed in uniting people, not dividing them and for peaceful, non-violent protest. Obama serves as a stark contrast through his actions.Where Martin Luther King sought to unite, Obama seeks to divide. Where King desired to raise all people up, Obama desires to keep them down. MLK saw the inherent dignity of man, while Obama only sees a serf who needs the State to...

AOL Inc. is laying off up to half the workforce at its Patch local news sites and shuttering or consolidating roughly 150 of the 900 sites while looking for partners for others. Up to 500 of Patch's 1,000 employees will go in the layoffs, which started on Friday with 350 people getting pink slips. In all, the layoffs amount to about 9 percent of AOL's total workforce of 5,500....

Edward Snowden accused the National Security Agency of targeting reporters who wrote critically about the government after the 9/11 attacks and warned it was “unforgivably reckless” for journalists to use unencrypted email messages when discussing sensitive matters. Snowden said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine published Tuesday that he came to trust Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who, along with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, helped report his disclosure of secret surveillance programs, because she herself had been targeted by the NSA. “Laura and [Guardian reporter] Glenn [Greenwald] are among the few who reported fearlessly on controversial topics...

Maybe it was the upbeat mood of a man about to go on vacation, but President Obama seemed feistier than usual in making the case today for his policies on surveillance, health care and immigration reform. During his second term, Obama has sometimes seemed back on his heels in defending his policies against Republican attack, but that wasn’t the case in his White House news conference Friday. He argued for what he called, at one point, “common sense” solutions, with seeming confidence that he has the upper hand politically against the GOP. Obama’s attempts to hold the middle ground, and...

Journalists responded with shock, awe and a predictable amount of snark to the news that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos had bought The Washington Post. The news was announced Monday afternoon. Bezos himself, rather than his company, bought the Washington newspaper for roughly $250 million.

When I first saw the KTVU video in which anchorwoman Tori Campbell gave the fictional names of the Asiana Airlines pilots -- Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow -- I laughed. I laughed out loud, and then I watched it again. After days of watching the painful news about the July 6 crash that killed three and left many wounded, it felt good to laugh. I didn't think that the gaffe had racist intent. I figured it was just a puerile newsroom prank that somehow made it on the air. I never...

The Michael Hastings Car Crash: No Skids Marks, A Flying Engine And “Boston Brakes” In cases such as the highly suspicious and tragic car crash/explosion that killed celebrated investigative journalist Michael Hastings, I try to reserve commentary for a little bit to let facts emerge following the initial speculative flurry. Particularly when it involves a journalist with whom I am only slightly familiar. I think we can all agree at this point that based on what has come forward in the past several weeks it is more than likely Mr. Hastings was murdered.

Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst told HotAir's Ed Morrissey that his office received reports that reporters were actively encouraging and rallying pro-abortion protesters during State Sen. Wendy Davis' fillibuster last week. "We have reports and I have my staff taking a look at the video, the internet video that we keep, we store, on the proceedings that evening and if I find as I've been told examples of the media waving and trying to inflame the crowd, incite them in the direction of a riot, I'm going to take action against them. That is wrong. That's inciting a riot. That...

A 33-year-old man died this week in a fiery car crash in the early morning hours in Los Angeles. A tragedy, as it is when anyone dies before their time. But this man's name was Michael Hastings, and his death set off a week of media praise and adulation about his all-too-short life that is telling in more ways than anything the subject of it ever exposed. Hastings didn't cure cancer, he didn't invent anything that makes life better, he wrote words. Michael Hastings was a journalist. And if there is one thing journalists love more than anything else it's...

This is a distasteful subject to write about. But Los Angeles talk radio is obsessed with the death of Michael Hastings and the insinuations that somehow he was killed by unknown forces attempting to silence him. Yesterday afternoon, I drove to the scene of the car crash. Several bouquets of flowers ringed a tree. I saw candles and notes. It's very sad. Trutherism (the catch-all term for instant conspiracies based on extreme mistrust and/or unfounded supposition) makes me angry. I would much rather have Hastings' life work be the subject of discussion and criticism than to hear L.A. radio jocks...

When I pointed out that Lippmann is widely considered the Father of Modern Journalism, I did of course overlook one thing. A rather large thing. As I pointed out then, Harvard has a monument to Walter Lippmann on it's campus, (Lippmann House, 1 Francis Ave, Cambridge, Middlesex, MA 02138) but what about what goes on inside this and other locations? One of the items that I have had an extremely hard time locating is a book titled "A Test of the News", which Lippmann co-wrote with Charles Merz. The thought never really occurred to me until recently to go digging...

Fox Business’s Don Imus had a delicious trifecta Thursday trashing three perilously liberal journalists in less than 90 seconds. After telling Jonathan Alter to “shove” his request to come on the program and hawk his new book, Imus called Howard Fineman a “sniveling little weasel” and Jon Meacham a “phony b*st*rd” (video follows with transcript and commentary): DON IMUS: "I’m in a horrible mood because of a couple of reasons. And I don’t like it when people tell me what a great friend they are of mine, because I know it’s nonsense. And here’s, you don’t need to tell me...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC News on Wednesday that he has no plans to resign for the time being and insisted that he has "great respect" for the news media despite signing off on requests by his Justice Department to examine the phone and email records of journalists. "There's some things that I want to do, some things that I want to get done that I’ve discussed with the president, and once I have finished that I'll sit down with him and we’ll determine when it’s time to make a transition to a new attorney general," Holder told...

The national media have evinced some outrage over the Obama Justice Department's aggressive persecution of investigative journalists. But not enough. It is more important to help President Hope and Change overcome the legacy-strangling notion of an "atmosphere of scandal" than to investigate a scandal that is strangling their very profession. On Sunday's "Face the Nation," New York Times editor Jill Abramson claimed to be very concerned about the leak probe, but proclaimed of all these scandals that, "I'm just not sure, you know, they come together and create, you know -- quote, unquote -- 'an atmosphere of scandal.'" Even worse...

A video has emerged which seems to show Palestinian terrorists throwing stones and fire bombs at Israeli soldiers while hiding behind journalists