Obama War on Freedom of the Press

The NY Times reporter James Risen may be in jail weeks from now for refusing to reveal his sources in a case first involving George W Bush and then aggressively pursued by President Obama and Eric Holder. There is a petition in support of Risen, I invite all to sign it.  In an article in The Guardian, Rises says about Obama "He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”.  Those are pretty strong words, but a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists tells the tale, with nearly every journalist interviewed calling this administration the most hostile to the press in history.

Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations.  

 “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.  

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”  

“President Obama had said that default should be  disclosure,” Times reporter Shane told me. “The culture they’ve created is not one that favors disclosure.”  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. The 30 experienced Washington journalists at a variety of news organizations whom I interviewed for this report could not remember any precedent.

Reporter may go to jail for publishing story

James Risen is a NY Times reporter and he is is a new class of criminal, a journalist.  He had obtained information for a book from a knowledgeable source for a book, and now Central Intelligence Agency official Jeffrey Sterling has been indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 – for leaking classified information to Risen for publication in his book.  The government says Risen has to name his source or go to jail.

The current DOJ seems to know no limits on declaring everybody to be enemies of the state, recently adding reporters to the list.  According to the Guardian,

In effect, the court has ruled that the journalist must reveal his source. That sets a dangerous precedent now applicable in Maryland and Virginia, home to the NSA and CIA – the very states in which national security journalism matters most. If a reporter cannot guarantee confidentiality to an important source willing to provide information that may be of vital public interest, the job of journalism itself has been criminalised. If a reporter like Risen refuses to co-operate and name names, he himself may face time behind bars.
Indeed, like a dedicated few before him, Risen has vowed to go to prison rather than break his vow of confidentiality in the courtroom. Although there will almost certainly be an appeal, the court's ruling is a potentially devastating blow to investigative journalism. Given its significance, it is shocking how little publicity the Risen/Sterling case has yet received from major media outlets with a direct interest in its outcome.
The Obama administration's war on whistleblowers coupled with the court's ruling against watchdog reporters highlight the federal government's efforts to curb the flow of information from both ends. No one disputes that at times journalists have a duty of care when entrusted with secret information with possible national security implications, but Risen is critical of how government officials will use this argument cynically to delay or suppress a story. He said recently:

I've been an investigative reporter for a long time, and almost always, the government says that ['you can't publish that because of the national security risk'] when you write a story. And then they can never back it up. They say that about everything. And it's like the boy who cried wolf. It's getting old.

There is virtually no mainstream press coverage on this story.