ITB - How Hope and Change Gave Way to Spying on the Press -- The Daily Beast

[bsteadman]

How Hope and Change Gave Way to Spying on the Press

The Daily Beast
Kirsten Powers
5/21/2013

Excerpt:

First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay, we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?

Turns out it’s a fairly swift sojourn from a president pushing to “delegitimize” a news organization to threatening criminal prosecution for journalistic activity by a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, to spying on Associated Press reporters. In between, the Obama administration found time to relentlessly persecute government whistleblowers and publicly harass and condemn a private American citizen for expressing his constitutionally protected speech in the form of an anti-Islam YouTube video.

Where were the media when all this began happening? With a few exceptions, they were acting as quiet enablers.

It’s instructive to go back to the dawn of Hope and Change. It was 2009, and the new administration decided it was appropriate to use the prestige of the White House to viciously attack a news organization—Fox News—and the journalists who work there. Remember, President Obama had barely been in office and had enjoyed the most laudatory press of any new president in modern history. Yet even one outlet that allowed dissent or criticism of the president was one too many. This should have been a red flag to everyone, regardless of what they thought of Fox News. The math was simple: if the administration would abuse its power to try and intimidate one media outlet, what made anyone think they weren’t next?

"What I think is fair to say about Fox … is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “[L]et's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." On ABC’s “This Week” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Fox is "not really a news station." It wasn’t just that Fox News was “not a news organization,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel told CNN’s John King, but, “more [important], is [to] not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …”

These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.

Yet only one mainstream media reporter—Jake Tapper, then of ABC News—ever raised a serious objection to the White House’s egregious and chilling behavior. Tapper asked future MSNBC commentator and then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “[W]hy is [it] appropriate for the White House to say” that “thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a ‘news organization’?” The spokesman for the president of the United States was unrepentant, saying: “That's our opinion.”

Trashing reporters comes easy in Obama-land. Behind the scenes, Obama-centric Democratic operatives brand any reporter who questions the administration as a closet conservative, because what other explanation could there be for a reporter critically reporting on the government?

Now, the Democratic advocacy group Media Matters—which is always mysteriously in sync with the administration despite ostensibly operating independently—has launched a smear campaign against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for his reporting on Benghazi. It’s the kind of character assassination that would make Joseph McCarthy blush. The main page of the Media Matters website has six stories attacking Karl for a single mistake in an otherwise correct report about the State Department's myriad changes to talking points they previously claimed to have barely touched. See, the problem isn’t the repeated obfuscating from the administration about the Benghazi attack; the problem is Jonathan Karl. Hence, the now-familiar campaign of de-legitimization. This gross media intimidation is courtesy of tax-deductable donations from the Democratic Party’s liberal donor base, which provides a whopping $20 million a year for Media Matters to harass reporters who won’t fall in line.
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View the complete article, including videos, at:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...the-press.html

[bsteadman]

Your Move, Media: The Obama Administration Dares The Press To Respond To Intimidation Tactics

Mediaite
Noah Rothman
5/21/2013

Excerpt: | 12:11 pm, May 21st, 2013 » 60 comments

These are historic and troubling times. The unprecedented and brazen efforts by high-ranking elements within the Obama administration to silence whistleblowers and intimidate any reporters that would speak with them have starkly framed the choice the political press now faces. The administration has thrown the gauntlet down before the media with their display of abject disregard for the watchdog Fourth Estate. To the White House’s chagrin, the media will respond.

In a two-fold assault on the freedom of the press, President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice has been implicated in efforts designed to intimidate both the press and their sources.

The DOJ’s acquisition of the two months of phone records from the Associated Press represents an audacious attempt to scare government officials, burdened with pangs of conscience, to stifle their desire to blow the whistle on malfeasance within their own departments.

The DOJ subpoenaed the records for 21 phone lines in five separate AP offices, including a line that had been inactive for six years. Those lines have been used by at least 100 reporters and reveal tradecraft and methods that AP reporters use to gather facts and build cases in their reporting.

Those that withheld judgment about the AP scandal in its earliest days were right to do so. Attorney General Eric Holder assured the media that the leaker who spoke to the AP, whom the Justice Department was attempting to ferret out, “put the American people at risk.” Such a grave charge demands caution. The benefit of the doubt should be extended to the government before it is accused of overreach. But, in the days that followed, it was discovered that the AP had cooperated with the DOJ to hold off on publishing the details of the story — a successful strike in Yemen which resulted in the death of a terror suspect — and only ran with the story after they were assured by federal officials that publishing the information would not jeopardize American national security.

“Officials that would normally talk to us and people we talk to in the normal course of news gathering are already saying to us that they’re a little reluctant to talk to us,” said AP chief Gary Pruitt on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday. “They fear that they will be monitored by the government.”

In what has been described as a “fishing expedition” in its scope, the AP scandal was “chilling” for the media as an institution. The news that broke yesterday, however, has focused the minds of every individual reporter as they learned that they could be personally targeted by this administration.

It was revealed on Monday that Fox News reporter James Rosen’s movements within the State Department were tracked, his phone calls logged, and his personal emails seized and scrutinized by federal investigators. Why? Because Rosen had committed the offense – not the crime – of developing a source within the nation’s diplomatic establishment. The Justice Department labeled Rosen a “co-conspirator” in their leak investigation — another effort to criminalize reporting practices which is without parallel in the history of the republic.

These offenses cannot stand. The hubristic impulses of Obama administration appointees that undoubtedly approved of these efforts must be checked. These offenses amount to calculated efforts to intimidate. An administration that was wary of how the press would react to these excessive tactics would have exercised more caution. But this White House and its appointees do not fear reporters.
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/your-...ation-tactics/

[bsteadman]

On Leno, Kids Grill Obama On Benghazi, IRS, AP Scandals: ‘Are Eric Holder’s Days Numbered?’

Mediaite
Matt Wilstein
5/21/2013

Excerpt:

While Jon Stewart may have eased up on his harsh criticism of President Obama last night, spreading some of the culpability to the GOP and the press, Jay Leno continues to hammer the president on a nightly basis. Monday night, Leno showed some video from a recent visit Obama made to a Baltimore elementary school, in which the kids were a bit tougher than the White House Press Corps.

Using some playful audio editing, Leno showed the schoolchildren peppering Obama with questions about the various scandals that continue to plague his administration this week. “In regards to Benghazi,” one child asks, “what did you know and when did you know it?”

Others ask, “Mitch McConnell says you govern my intimidation. Is that true?” and “Isn’t it unconstitutional to secretly obtain phone records of AP reporters?”

Finally, two more wrap things up with, “Are Eric Holder’s days numbered?” and “Who inside hatched the plan to target conservatives?”

Clearly more impressed with these questions than the ones Obama and Press Secretary Jay Carney have been receiving by the real press, Leno remarked, “These kids are so sharp!”
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View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/on-leno-k...days-numbered/

[bsteadman]

Obama scandals killing his minion media

MSNBC, Fox News head in opposite directions for ratings

WND
Joe Kovacs
5/21/2013

Excerpt:

Barack Obama is not the only one feeling the heat from a series of recent scandals.

Apparently, news media generally sympathetic to the president’s agenda are plunging as well.

According to Deadline.com, “after double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned [MSNBC] hit new lows as the IRS scandal erupted and revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained AP records became public.”

MSNBC recorded its least-watched and lowest-rated total-day results of the year last week, with 350,000 viewers on average and 94,000 in the adults 25-54 demographic.

According to ratings data from Nielsen, that was also the lowest total-day demographic result the network experienced since the week of June 26-July 2, 2006, when MSNBC attracted only 83,000 viewers among adults 25-54.

MSNBC’s total day results last week plummeted 17 percent in viewers and 22 percent among the demographic from the comparable May 14 to May 18 week of last year.

And during primetime viewing in the evening, the picture was even worse, as MSNBC’s steady decline from the start of 2013 continued.

“The network had 570,000 total viewers and 159,000 in the demo from 8-11 PM from May 13 to May 17, 2013. That’s the lowest-rated week of the year so far for MSNBC in terms of viewers and the third-lowest of 2013 in the demo,” reported Deadline.

“The week of May 6-12 was worst in the demo with 148,000 viewers when the network had 604,000 viewers on average. These latest results come as the news network’s recently launched and struggling ‘All In With Chris Hayes’ hit a new viewership low of 396,000 and its second-lowest demo audience of just 88,000 on May 14. It also comes on the heels of MSNBC falling in April ratings from its second place ranking of the year before.”

Meanwhile, the news is much brighter for the top-rated Fox News Channel, which brought in 1.491 million total day viewers and 283,000 in the demo last week.

“That’s Fox News’ second-most-watched week of the year after the week of the Boston Marathon bombings,” said Dominic Patten of Deadline.

“FNC had 2.396 million total viewers and 356,000 among adults 25-54 in primetime from May 13-17. That’s a 1 percent demo drop in total day and a 10 percent drop in primetime compared to the same frame last year. However it is a 31 percent total day viewership rise and a 17 percent primetime audience lift over the comparable week of May 14-18, 2012.”

Phil Griffin, president at MSNBC, said earlier this year his goal was to beat Fox News in the ratings by 2014, after having surpassed CNN in 2012, as well as in February of this year.

But last week, MSNBC finished in fourth place after Fox News Channel, CNN and Headline News in viewers and among adults 25-54 last week.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obama-sca...-minion-media/

[bsteadman]

Veteran reporter: Nobody's data safe from feds

'Telecom routinely supply hundreds of thousands of records annually'

WND
Bob Unruh
5/21/2013

Excerpt:

A veteran reporter is warning that members of the news media aren’t the only Americans who should be concerned about the privacy of their telephone conversations.

Gregory J. Millman of the Wall Street Journal, who says his telephone records were targeted by the IRS many years ago, writes that the communications of citizens could come to the attention of the government in a number of ways, including by getting a call from someone in whom the government has interest.

The issue has arisen because of the admission by the Department of Justice that it obtained records of Associated Press telephone lines in the House Gallery at the U.S. Capitol over a period of months.

WND reported the Obama administration said it pursued AP’s records because a double agent in the war on terror was compromised by a story. However, the news wire’s reporting on the issue didn’t mention the agent.

It was CIA Director John Brennan, who then was President Obama’s terror adviser, who told members of Congress that the U.S. had “inside control” of the situation. Media then reported on the use of a double agent, according to a profile of the government’s justification for pursuing the reporters’ telephone records published in the Los Angeles Times.

Millman writes that his records were targeted in 1991 when he wrote a story citing an Internal Revenue Service memo.

However, he pointed out that when his records were taken by the IRS, he wasn’t the only one

“That’s how they happened to scoop up the phone records of a home builder, a trade association of corporate finance officers, an old friend who happened to live in Washington, D.C., and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which supports investigative journalism and which I had called to discuss a fellowship.”

Millman says none of those people or organizations “had anything to do with the story at issue, and none learned until long afterward that IRS investigators had been secretly riffling through records of all their phone calls.”

Millman explains he learned only by accident that the records had been given to the government.

“In what may be another good example of government waste and duplication, several months after the IRS had started going through the phone records, the Department of Justice launched its own investigation,:” he writes. “In keeping with the DOJ’s policy, in mid-January of 1992 I got a notice that it wanted my records. … In the course of our fight, my attorney learned from my phone company that it had already turned the records over to the IRS months before.”

Millman reported Michael Altschul, a lawyer for the CTYIA-The Wireless Association, estimated industry-wide, companies respond to up to 2 million requests for phone records per year.

The DOJ net for records also is widening.

The Washington Post noted the latest scandal for the White House is the Justice Department’s use of security badge access records and other information to monitor three Fox News journalists.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/veteran-r...afe-from-feds/