“When you have a president that thinks he can do anything he wants then nothing like this is surprising. We are in trouble folks.” Admin
Veteran Journalists Reveal that – Contrary to It’s Claims of “Openness” and “Transparency” – The White House is Trying to Crush the Free Press
Veteran New York Times reporter James Risen said last Friday:
[The Obama administration is] the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.
[The administration wants to] narrow the field of national security reporting to create a path for accepted reporting.
[Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters] will be punished.
[The administration’s aggressive prosecutions have created] a de facto Official Secrets Act. ”
New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson agrees:
This is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.
I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.
[Q: And do you think this comes directly from the president?]
I would think that it would have to. I don’t know that, but certainly enough attention has been focused on this issue that, if he departed from the policies of his government, I think we’d know that at this point.
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