How the White House's war on media backfired

[kickstand]

How the White House's war on media backfired

The DoJ's journalist-snooping controversy is the one scandal that will cause the media to report aggressively on all the others

Remember when the Obama administration had a relaxed and fruitful relationship with the media?

It shouldn't be too difficult to recall. The White House Correspondents Association held its annual dinner with President Obama in late April, when all sides gathered to break bread, tell stories, and laugh together… mostly at Republicans, of course. At the time, journalists warned that the relationship between the media and the government it supposedly held accountable had grown much too chummy, and the reporters were more concerned with their celebrity than their reporting. Tom Brokaw slammed the event, pointedly refusing to attend and asking, "Are we doing [the country's] business, or are we just a group of narcissists who are mostly interested in elevating our own profiles?"

Less than a month later, the party is over. It's been raided by the Department of Justice, and the media suddenly seems a lot less interested in making the president the celebrity-in-chief, and a lot more focused on demanding accountability — now that they have a personal stake in doing so.

That news dropped like a bombshell on the media, even among those normally inclined to support President Obama and his administration. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson ripped into the Justice probe of Rosen, writing that it was part of "a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior." Until Obama took office, the DoJ had used the 1917 Espionage Act just three times in the previous 40 years to prosecute a leak, including the notorious Pentagon Papers case. The Obama administration has brought six prosecutions in five years, yet the Rosen case marks the first time ever that the government had even argued that reporting qualified as a crime under the act. "Rosen has not been charged," Robinson noted, but "[e]very investigative reporter, however, has been put on notice."

 

[Chris0nllyn]

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." - Voltaire

 

[jrt_ms1995]

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." - Voltaire

In my case, that would be my wife!

 

[Sweet 16]

.....the media suddenly seems a lot less interested in making the president the celebrity-in-chief, and a lot more focused on demanding accountability — now that they have a personal stake in doing so.

You mean like the rest of us have had a personal stake all these years? About damn time the media woke up.