Crying wolf about freedom of the press
The left-leaning media have been hyperventilating about a constitutional crisis brought about by President Trump’s media bashing. Where were they when Obama was wreaking havoc on freedom of the press?
Trump’s verbal assaults are visible, or at least the anti-Trump media choose to make them visible. Yet President Obama’s more serious actions were largely swept under the rug despite the fact that he used the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency to stifle the media. His assaults raised far more constitutional questions than anything reported so far about Trump.
Surprised? Read on.
Like all presidents before him, Obama repeatedly complained about biased media coverage. As Trump does today, Obama openly singled out several of his most outspoken critics in an attempt to shame them and to rally the public to his side. He excluded certain media companies from accompanying him as he traveled.
Angered by administration leaks, Obama directed the FBI to monitor the telephone and Internet communications of reporters who published leaked information. He sought contempt of court rulings against these reporters, threatening to jail several of them unless they revealed their sources. He instituted widespread secret NSA monitoring of all domestic communications to catch leakers.
If this is news to you, it’s because the liberal media chose to play down Obama’s repressive side.
Obama came into office promising history’s most open and transparent administration. He clung to claims of openness, pointing to administration websites containing information he was willing to release. Meanwhile, he admonished administration officials to be circumspect with the media.
Reporters covering the White House responded that these websites contained only what the administration wanted the public to see, and closed-mouthed officials said next to nothing. Reporters were stymied trying to find the story behind the story, even with an administration that generally had their enthusiastic support.
This is in stark contrast to the many career government officials in the “swamp” today who are only too happy to dish dirt on the Trump administration.
A number of mainstream media reporters and journalists stated their extreme frustration with the veil of secrecy Obama attempted to place around his administration. A few examples from reliably liberal newspapers will convey their message:
—“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” remarked David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.
—Obama’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information was “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,” said Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post who now teaches at Arizona State University.
—“Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory,” noted Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post.
Shaken by the massive Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning classified information breaches, Obama’s media paranoia reached unprecedented heights. He initiated nine separate criminal prosecutions against both government employees and reporters using the 1917 Espionage Act.
That is three times as many as all prior presidents combined.
Since liberal reporters agreed with many of Obama’s far-left policies, most are now willing to repress their memories of his war on reporters and leaks during a time when their First Amendment rights really were under attack.
With Trump in office, liberal media attack dogs have been out in force. A number of high-profile journalists announced media’s rebirth as supposed guardians of our freedom.
The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove declared, “Journalism as an institution has reasserted itself. Big time.” He’s silent on what they were doing during Obama’s eight years.
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof vowed that the media will be “watchdogs, not lap dogs.” In so saying, he unwittingly admitted that mainstream media “lap dogs” failed the public during the Obama years. His words acknowledge that most mainstream media coverage of Obama’s presidency consisted of incessant fawning over its liberal darling.
Trevor Timm, executive director of the nonprofit The Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, “Obama laid all the groundwork Trump needed for an unprecedented crackdown on the press.”
Democrats who failed to object strenuously during the Obama years would have only themselves to blame if Trump were to use these same tools and then some. Yet no Obama-like abuses have been reported in the last two years.
Crying wolf today about imagined loss of First Amendment freedoms after being haunted by Obama’s FBI and NSA is yet another manifestation of liberal media hypocrisy.
The real wolf left office in January 2017.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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HOWIE! Glad to see you back in black. SG News has lost its soul. The DAHL has succumbed to fear and loathing and certain posters killed it. But hey Make the Independent great again! Who knows maybe Dallas will come back? All I can say is Killroy was here and the 5th estate is down for the count in Washington County.