Editor’s
notes: Maybe we the people have forgotten about the huge push, by Obama, to illegally read private emails and communications of
hundreds of Associated Press reporters,
but this story, below, printed today, is about the after effects of that Obama
decision. It is a shame that we all
-- libs and “neo-cons” can’t work
together to get this bum out of office.
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." The report notes
President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent
government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he
has fallen short of his promise."
"In the Obama
administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to
talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona
State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to
control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon
administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's
investigation of Watergate."
Downie interviewed numerous
reporters and editors, including a top editor at The Associated Press,
following revelations this year that the government secretly seized records for
telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 AP journalists. Downie
also interviewed journalists whose sources have been prosecuted on felony
charges . . . . read the full story at the link given above.
