President Donald Trump’s “war” on journalist is a farce. All
Trump is doing is calling out those in the mainstream media who are part of the
alt-left fake news network; he has nothing against those media outlets that do
honest work.
Donald Trump hasn’t had any journalists thrown out of his press conferences. Trump hasn’t had any reporters jailed. Trump hasn’t had the Federal Bureau of Investigation spy on any journalists. And Trump hasn’t banned any news organizations from his press conferences like President Barack Obama did with Fox News. But if Trump did decide to do this, then he has Obama to thank for setting the precedent.
Barack Obama has set the precedent for the way presidents
treat journalists and reporters and Trump is just following his lead. Obama as
president has thrown “alleged” whistle-blowers in jail and has harassed
government officials who speak to the media for just answering simple
questions.
I haven’t heard any member of the MSM bring this fact up
when criticizing Trump’s relationship with the media. Surely the media can’t be
that forgiving of the Obama administration and its Department of Justice for
sending journalists to jail and subpoenaing their phone and email records just
for doing their job.
Government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the
press for fear of being not only being accused of leaking information, but
being falsely prosecuted as a leaker. The Obama administration has created a
culture within itself which if someone is “suspected” of talking to reporters,
they will be subjected to investigation, including lie-detector tests and
scrutiny of their telephone and e-mails.
But what does the Obama administration consider to be
“whistle-blowing”? And “leaking”? Exposing “waste, fraud and abuse” is considered
to be whistle-blowing. Exposing questionable government policies and actions, whether
illegal or unconstitutional, is leaking.
According to veteran national security journalist R. Jeffrey
Smith of the Center for Public Integrity, many government officials are “reluctant
to discuss even unclassified information” with journalists anymore.
Associated Press
President Gary Pruitt said in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” “I
don’t know what their [the DOJ] motive is,” but, Pruitt added, “I know what the
message being sent is: If you talk to the press, we’re going after you.”
David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times hit the nail on the
head when he said, “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve
ever covered.”
In an interview with Rutgers The Daily Targum, Obama said rather begrudgingly when confronted
with his record of being “more severe” when “prosecuting government employees
who leaked information to journalists” that, “I am a strong believer in the
First Amendment and the need for journalists to pursue every lead and every
angle.”
It would have been nice if the aspiring journalist and Editor-in-Chief
Dan Corey would’ve asked a follow up question. Corey just let Obama off the
hook and didn’t press him for the answer Americans deserve. This is just the
kind of journalism which damages reporters who try to do legitimate work.
Obama has had the FBI spy on journalists and his Attorney
General [Eric Holder] has used intrusive measures such as subpoenaing phone
records in order to gain information illegally such as in the case of the AP. Thanks to the Espionage Act, a relic
of World War I-era red-baiting, the Obama administration has been able to
prosecute nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only
three by all previous administrations combined.
The Obama administration wanted payback for the AP’s investigation into a May 7, 2012,
story revealing the CIA’s covert operation in Yemen. The DOJ, a year later had
secretly subpoenaed and seized all records for 20 AP telephone lines and switchboards for April and May of 2012 even
though only five AP reporters and an
editor were involved in the Yemen story. They also seized the records of more
than 100 AP journalists’ phones used
in the newsrooms including their home and mobile phones and secretly served the
subpoena for the records directly to telephone companies without notifying the AP.
What happened in the year between the release of the AP story and the DOJ’s aggressive
investigations a year later? According
to a post on the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) website titled “Leak
investigations and Surveillance in Post-9/11 America” by Leonard Downie Jr. and
Sara Rafsky, Republicans in Congress and conservative pundits loudly accused
the administration of purposely leaking classified information used in the AP story to embellish Obama’s
counterterrorism credentials in an election year. The Committee to Protect Journalists
is an American independent non-profit, non-governmental organization which
promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.
The AP example is
just one of many examples of how the Obama administration has tried to stop the
press from doing its job.
The Justice Department seized phone records and emails sent
to a private account of Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen,
in an investigation into a 2009 story about United Nation sanctions and North
Korea’s nuclear program.
The DOJ claims that Mr. Rosen may have “aided and abetted”
in trying to force his source to give him [Rosen] classified information. The
FBI also had “probable cause” to believe that Mr. Rosen has violated a
provision in U.S. law prohibiting unauthorized disclosure of defense
information.”
There are some good journalists out there doing their job,
but between the government prosecuting journalists and those who speak to them
and the alt-left fake news network giving journalists a bad name, our freedom
of the press (protected by the First Amendment) is deteriorating.
In America, a country which is known as a defender of
freedom of speech and freedom of press, we are doing a bad job of holding
ourselves to that standard. In the 2016 Reporters without Borders World Press
Freedom Index, America ranks 41, just below Slovenia and just above western
Africa’s Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta); number one being Finland.