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Bob Franken says Obama White House is the "most hostile" in history to free press

BobStackFan4Life

BobStackFan4Life

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Bob Franken says Obama White House is the "most hostile" in history to free press

 
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James C. Goodale, who represented The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, is a First Amendment lawyer and author of “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles" says only Nixon did more damage to our free press.
Only Nixon Harmed a Free Press More
The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker. It is a further example of how President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.

The government's subpoena of The Associated Press's phone records was bad enough. But the disclosure of the search warrant in the Rosen case shows President Obama has delved into territory never before reached by previous presidents.
The Justice Department obtained Rosen’s e-mail by using a search warrant in which it alleged that Rosen was a co-conspirator with a government adviser named Stephen Kim.

This conspiracy, as imagined by the Justice Department, commenced as soon as Rosen started e-mailing or talking with Kim. But reporters have the right to talk to anyone, under the First Amendment. Obama’s theory of conspiracy therefore strikes at the heart of that amendment.

Until President Obama came into office, no one thought talking or emailing was not protected by the First Amendment. President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information. This will stop reporters from asking for information that might be classified. Leaks will stop and so will the free flow of information to the public.
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The A.P. case is more evidence of President Obama's dismissal of the First Amendment in national security cases. There was no need to subpoena The A.P. without telling The A.P. And there was no need to subpoena scores of telephone records of A.P. reporters. The subpoena was over-broad.

The First Amendment protects The A.P.’s right to gather news, as it protects Rosen’s too. Obama’s view is that national security interests nearly always trump the First Amendment. No president has had this view before, except Richard Nixon.
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http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/21/obama-the-media-and-national-security/only-nixon-harmed-a-free-press-more
 
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The information age is complicated. Not condoning some of the administration's actions, but it's a much different world than previous administrations had to deal with.
 
BSF is a jilted Obama lover. He found him sleeping with his sister and won't forgive him. He is now as stridently anti-Obama as any of the RWers here.
 
RJKarl said:
BSF is a jilted Obama lover. He found him sleeping with his sister and won't forgive him. He is now as stridently anti-Obama as any of the RWers here.
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Says the guy who sleeps at Obama's feet.
 
RJKarl said:
BSF is a jilted Obama lover. He found him sleeping with his sister and won't forgive him. He is now as stridently anti-Obama as any of the RWers here.
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Because he has a reason to. Unlike yourself, who will continue to gargle his cum until you have choked yourself to death on it.
 
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RJKarl said:
BSF is a jilted Obama lover. He found him sleeping with his sister and won't forgive him. He is now as stridently anti-Obama as any of the RWers here.
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Drone strikes for everyone!
 
RJKarl said:
BSF is a jilted Obama lover. He found him sleeping with his sister and won't forgive him. He is now as stridently anti-Obama as any of the RWers here.
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This post made me spit water through my nose.
 
If Obama slept with his sister and he hates Obama, wouldn't this be reported in the news by now?
 
What I said was, "Hope and Change down the drain." You guys seem to forget that last part.
 
bigdoublezero said:
The information age is complicated. Not condoning some of the administration's actions, but it's a much different world than previous administrations had to deal with.
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Agreed, and I don't really see this point addressed at all in these articles.

Also, some of you neocons surprise me that this wouldn't be your favorite thing about Obama, security over liberty, that is.
 
TownieDeac said:
Agreed, and I don't really see this point addressed at all in these articles.

Also, some of you neocons surprise me that this wouldn't be your favorite thing about Obama, security over liberty, that is.
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Technology always advances. I'm not seeing how that justifies a war on whistleblowers or the erosion of privacy. Please explain.
 
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WFFaithful said:
There can be no favorite thing abou Obama. Everything he does will destroy America.
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Does this sort of thing not bother you? Or it bothers you a little but not that much? If Bush was doing this you wouldn't be outraged?
But it is the administration of Barack Obama that has prosecuted more accused leakers under "espionage" statutes than all prior administrations combined -- in fact, double the number of all prior such prosecutions.
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In The A.P. case, the Obama Justice Department flagrantly violated long-standing procedures, and its own internal guidelines, by obtaining weeks of office and home telephone records of multiple A.P. journalists without notifying the media organization in advance, thus depriving them of the opportunity to obtain a court ruling on the propriety of the government's actions. And now, in the most disturbing episode yet, it has formally accused another journalist, Fox's Rosen, of being a "conspirator" in a serious felony for doing nothing more than what investigative journalists do every day: work with their government sources to receive classified information that they can then publish for their readers.
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This now-lengthy pattern has two primary effects. First, it creates a serious climate of fear in which investigative journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their job -- informing citizens about the secret actions of political leaders -- because everyone involved in that process is petrified of government persecution. As The New Yorker's Jane Mayer put it in a New Republic article detailing the harm done to journalism: "It's a huge impediment to reporting, and so chilling isn't quite strong enough, it's more like freezing the whole process into a standstill."

Second, it establishes a standard where the only information the public can learn is what the U.S. government wants it to know, which is another way of saying that a classic propaganda model has been created.

The 2008 version of Candidate Obama was absolutely right when he decreed that government whistleblowers are engaged in "acts of courage and patriotism" that "should be encouraged rather than stifled." The presidential version of Obama is wrong -- dangerously so -- in his still escalating assault on the sources and journalists who make that possible.
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http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/21/obama-the-media-and-national-security/government-will-decide-what-we-can-know
 
This sort of knee jerk "rally around Obama", for doing the kind of shit that made people furious with Bush, I just don't get it. It reeks of hypocrisy.
 
This hostility to journalism/transparency + the NSA + the drone war + the failure to resolve Gitmo = incredible from a president who campaigned so convincingly on Hope and Change that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize. Unreal.
 
The way information spreads in 2013 is way different than the way it spread a decade ago, let alone 20, 30, 40 years ago. The Obama administration is trying to control the message (like every administration before it), and in the modern era that means more extreme measures. This isn't an Obama thing, per se. It's a modern world thing. Again, not condoning the particular complaints against him, just trying to put it in context.
 
I think the above is overblown. The 24 hour news cycle has been around since Reagan was in office. The internet has been around since Bush I was in office. So while things have accelerated with the advent of social media and broadband, none of that changes the fact that Obama is still pursuing a range of actions that attack traditional media. He went after AP, CBSNews and FoxNews reporters. He holds "press conferences" where one question is allowed. He doesn't let the press take his picture. When you campaign on being transparent and accountable, these actions undercut your message in a huge way.
 
The news cycle is not even remotely similar to the way it was in the Reagan era. It's night and day. The Internet has changed everything, and if you don't start with a basic understanding of the way information works in 2013, it's not worth a discussion.

You're right that Obama doesn't look good when he campaigns on openness and runs the White House a different way in many respects.
 
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