I want a compliant press. Or else.

Obama Hammers Press into Compliance

It's not quite eight in the morning and Barack Obama is on the phone screaming at me. He liked the story I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, but not this garbage. Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an [NAUGHTY WORD!] at a political fund-raiser.

If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama...

  Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined...

  Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

-New York Times news analysis Go To Site

"The message has already been received. If you cross this administration with perfectly accurate reporting they don't like, you will be attacked and punished. You and your sources may be subjected to the kind of surveillance devised for enemies of the state." -Sharyl Attkisson Go To Site

"Obama admin. slow-walks Freedom of Information requests, limits press access/plays favorites, prosecutes reporters, then he lectures journalists." -Marc Caputo of Politico Go To Site

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Press, Bigbrother

The Justice Department spied extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two days of Rosen’s personal emails, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

  In a chilling move sure to rile defenders of civil liberties, an FBI agent also accused Rosen of breaking anti-espionage law with behavior that—as described in the agent's own affidavit—falls well inside the bounds of traditional news reporting.

Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Obama, Press, Bigbrother

The Department of Justice's top communications official plotted to squash a reporter who aggressively covered the agency's ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious gun scandal in 2011, previously secret emails show. The emails, between the DOJ's then-communications chief Tracy Schmaler and White House press flack Eric Schultz, are a rare look inside the Obama administration's press control machine.

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Press, Bigbrother

White House journalists are creating an alternative system for distributing their media “pool” reports in response to the Obama administration’s involvement in approving and disapproving certain content in official reports. A small group of reporters initiated an online forum this month in which they shared “pool” information among themselves, without White House involvement.

"Before I walked out the door on September 10, I was a strong voice for complaining that this particular administration has been more opaque than any I have covered."

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Press, Bigbrother

In unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president's team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall “politically-driven suppression of the news.” In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration...

Obama Secretly Collected Journalists Phone Records...


In May 2013, the Associated Press revealed that the Justice Department had secretly collected two months' worth of personal and work-related phone calls made by AP reporters and editors.

Federal officials secretly obtained records on incoming and outgoing calls made by specific AP journalists, as well as general news staff, the news group reported, potentially compromising many sources totally unrelated to the investigation. Federal investigators even collected data on calls made by AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery.

"If you look at the last eight years, there has been a very concerted war on not just sources and whistleblowers, but also journalists, implemented by not Donald Trump but by the Obama administration."

According to retired ABC News journalist Ann Compton, Barack Obama launches into "profanity-laced" tirades against the press in off-the-record meetings with reporters. Go To Site

Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Threats, Oops, Press, Fascism, Censorship

New York Times reporter James Risen called the Obama administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation” on Friday, explaining that the White House seeks to control the flow of information and those who refuse to play along “will be punished.”

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May19
2021

Obama White House Targets Sharyl Attkisson

"I’m also calling Sharryl’s [sic] editor and reaching out to Scheiffer. She’s out of control." Schultz responded, "Good. Her piece was really bad for the AG."

Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Press, Bigbrother

According to a new report from Reporters Without Borders, there was a profound erosion of press freedom in the United States in 2013. After a year of attacks on whistleblowers and digital journalists and revelations about mass surveillance, the United States plunged 13 spots in the group's global press freedom rankings to number 46. Reporters Without Borders writes that the U.S. faced "one of the most significant declines" in the world last year.

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Press, Bigbrother

“I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now,” said Abramson, the NYT’s first female executive editor. The secrecy among staffers is unprecedented. Communication with outside sources — as previous White House administrations have successfully balanced doing — is unacceptable and considered a criminal offense under the current administration.

Editorial, Liberal, Government, Press, Bigbrother

“We have to think more about when we use cellphones, when we use e-mail and when we need to meet sources in person,” said Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of the Associated Press. “We need to be more and more aware that government can track our work without talking to our reporters, without letting us know.” -We're so proud of how you in the press have suffered through all this with hardly a complaint. We're all in this together after all. -RB

Barack Obama's White House has been accused of producing Soviet-style propaganda by press photographers who are furious at being denied access to the US president... During a tense meeting at the White House, the practice was described by Doug Mills, a veteran photographer for The New York Times, as “just like TASS,” the Soviet Union state news agency. Go To Site

Democrat, Liberal, Government, Obama, Character

6:05 – Laura: So they were literally screaming at you? Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

Democrat, Liberal, Government, Obama, Threats, Fascism, Bigbrother, Censorship

BLITZER: What was said? WOODWARD: It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this. BLITZER: Who sent that e-mail to you? WOODWARD: Well, I'm not going to say. BLITZER: Was it a senior person at the White House? WOODWARD: A very senior person.

The Obama Administration Spied on Sharyl Attkisson...


In addition to other forensic evidence and sworn testimony, forensic expert Dave Scantling has provided information confirming the government sourcing of the computer intrusions into Sharyl Attkisson’s computers.

A former federal agent has confessed to being part of the surveillance team that spied on Attkisson and other innocent U.S. citizens.

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Press

A small weekly paper in California claims that a White House official asked it to remove a sentence from a “benign” feature about Marine One because it reflected poorly on first lady Michelle Obama. In an email to The Daily Caller, Gina Channell-Allen, president of the Pleasanton Weekly in Pleasanton, California, said that her paper “received a call from the White House asking us to take out part of the story because it reflected poorly on the First Lady.”

Democrat, Liberal, Election, Obama, Press

Just two weeks before Election Day, the discussion, I believe, would have been valuable to all voters, but especially those in Iowa and around the country who have yet to decide between the incumbent Democrat and his Republican opponent. Unfortunately, what we discussed was off-the-record. It was a condition, we were told, set by the White House.

"I mean President Obama's people can be quite nasty. They don't like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they're not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job." -CNN Anchor Carol Costello Go To Site

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Character, Threats, Oops, Press

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward is embroiled in an extraordinary public clash with the White House over his reporting on the sequester, reports ABC’s Devin Dwyer. Woodward has been making the rounds accusing a “very senior person” in the administration of threatening him last week ahead of an op-ed he later published in the Washington Post attributing the idea for the automatic spending cuts to President Obama.

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Character, Threats, Press, Fascism

Lanny Davis, who served under President Bill Clinton as special counsel to the White House, told Washington, D.C.'s WMAL this morning that the Obama White House had threatened the Washington Times over his column, warning that the Times would suffer limited access to White House officials and might have its White House credentials revoked. Davis, a centrist Democrat, is sometimes critical of the Obama administration's policies.

Democrat, Editorial, Liberal, Obama, Character, Threats, Press

Remember when Fox News was excluded from interviews with Treasury’s “Executive Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg? At the time, the Obama administration denied there was any such effort to exclude Fox. Now the truth comes out through emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act: Dag Vega at the White House tells the Treasury Press flunkie Jenni LeCompte: “…we’d prefer if you skip Fox please.” Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest emails the same flunkie: “We’ve demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews…”

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Threats, Press, Fascism

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

James Goodale, the lawyer for The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case against the Nixon administration, declared in the Times on Tuesday that Obama is going to be worse than Nixon. “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,” he wrote. Go To Site

In a week in which Silicon Valley is the focus of intense news coverage, the White House that promised the “most open administration in history” has made an unusual move — barring local reporters from covering a pair of high priced presidential fundraisers in the tech region Sunday.

Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Character, Press, Fascism

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

It’s also a fact that no president in modern times has been so anti-press, or so intent on attacking press freedom, as Barack Obama, one of Streep’s heroes.

  Under his administration, the US government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests. Obama’s also used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations combined. -Piers Morgan Go To Site

In unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president's team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall “politically-driven suppression of the news.”

  In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama's 2008 campaign promise to provide transparency.

-Paul Bedard Go To Site