Thursday, May 15, 2014

The Incestuous Obama-Media Nexus

Team Obama has being accused of tapping and intimidating the media. Veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has recently resigned from CBS and is lifting the veil



 Any dictator who wants to wrest power from any current government, first seeks to control the media.


UPDATE:




May 1, 2014

The Media Are Part of the Power Construct

April 30, 2014

Are the Media Revolting Against Obama Intimidation?


The media have been the propaganda arm of the Obama administration from the get go. Veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has recently resigned from CBS and is lifting the veil (Source)

Feb. 21, 2014

White House Abandons 'Obama News' Plans

It has just announced that plans for the FCC to monitor newsrooms have been abandoned. And IF implemented in the future, participation will be 'voluntary'. 

Obama's 'Pravda' is Coming




 Feb. 20, 2014

Petition Against Obama’s Plan to 'Study Newsrooms'

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to study how news organizations select stories has prompted about 10,000 people to sign a petition demanding: “no government monitors in newsrooms.” That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which announced the petition Wednesday and said it reached that number within the first two hours. Obama Administrations Plan to Study Newsrooms Is Drawing Plenty of Public Opposition AP The FCC announced a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs last year, saying that it wanted to understand the process of which stories are selected, station priorities, content production, populations served, perceived station bias and perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the “critical information needs” in a community, Fox News reported. But Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ, a conservative legal group, said he worries it could be used to intimidate certain news organizations into covering issues that government officials feel are important. (Source)


American journalism's worshipful prostration before Barack Obama has always been emotionally embarrassing and politically dangerous, but recently it has begun to seem psychologically deranged as well. (....) But when the media continue to dance the We're-Not-Worthy Dance around an administration that seeks to neuter them as an institution, one begins to feel one was too quick to discard some of the weirder theories of Sigmund Freud. Last week, the Federal Communication Commission's Ajit Pai wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling out the regulatory agency for a plan clearly designed to intimidate America's newsrooms into an even more rigidly left-friendly sensibility. The "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," scheduled to begin this spring, would, according to Pai, "send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run." The FCC wants to make sure journalists disseminate "critical information" about such things as "the environment," and "economic opportunities." And it plans to seek out disgruntled (likely minority) employees who feel poorly represented.


 Oct. 27, 2013

Obama Turns Against the Free Press


Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action


Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service. Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland's Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6. (Source)



May 26, 2013

Has the Obama finally turned the media against him?

Janet Daley at The Telegraph is giving an excellent recap of the Rosen outrage so far! "Even for liberals, Obama has crossed a line"

(...) The world was well and truly turned upside down when it was revealed that James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News – the Right-of-centre cable news channel that causes the President and his allies to rail and rend their garments in fury – was investigated, under the Espionage Act no less, for soliciting information that was labelled classified. (Note: it is not illegal – or even particularly out of the ordinary – for a journalist to make such a request.) This investigation involved commandeering not only Mr Rosen’s phone records and those of his parents, but his private emails, as well as his movements into and out of government buildings as recorded on his press security pass. And that – it turned out – was a bridge too far.

The liberal media were suddenly outdoing each other in their Constitutional outrage. The New York Times (which has been the quasi-official Obama fanzine) went into overdrive. In an editorial board statement, it said, with that traditional Times air of ponderous self-importance: “With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible 'co-conspirator’… the administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.” What is startling about this is not just the paper’s declamatory judgment on the White House that it once unreservedly adored, but its remarkable willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Fox News, which it generally loathes.

And that brings us to Mr Obama’s throwaway line in the “War on Terror” speech. Seemingly a propos of nothing, the President said: “Journalists should not be at risk for doing their jobs.” He had, therefore, asked the Attorney General, Eric Holder, to investigate and review the existing guidelines “governing investigations that involve reporters”. As it was Mr Holder who signed off on the search warrant for James Rosen’s private emails, this presumably means that the Attorney General will be investigating himself. But how much of this can actually be nailed to the White House door?

Is there a “smoking gun” Obama email that says: go and get those guys who are giving me a hard time? Almost certainly not. But there was no need for one: he and his official spokesman had been banging on openly about the threat from Tea Party fanatics and the obstacle that Fox News presented to their virtuous reforms, for as long as they had been in power. When you cast your opponents as the personification of evil – when you cease to see them as simply fellow countrymen who have different values and contrary views to your own, then this is where it ends. Who, they implicitly demanded, would rid them of these turbulent enemies? Clearly, there were plenty of eager officials ready to try. Read all..


 Update

 May 16, 2013

 Has the WH been haggling with AP who'd break the news?
Did the White House try to prevent the AP from publishing its big scoop so that it could break the news itself? Remember, CIA Director John Brennan went on television the next morning to hail the administration’s glorious anti-terror victory. Also, who was the “White House official”? Obviously, the WaPo report raises more questions than it answers and it may take awhile before we actually get to the bottom of this story.

The Blaze: SHOCKING REPORT RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT POSSIBLE POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS BEHIND AP PHONE SCANDAL


May 16, 2013

Rep. Nune’s director of communications, Jack Langer, clarified the congressman’s comments Thursday morning:

What Rep. Nunes meant by “tapped” was that the DOJ seized the phone records, as has been widely reported. There was a little confusion between him and the host during the conversation: He did not mean to refer to phone records of the cloakroom itself, but of the Capitol. This refers to the phone records for the AP from the House press gallery, which the DOJ admitted to looking at.

He was explaining that if those phone records were seized, they would reveal a lot of conversations between the press and members of Congress, since reporters often speak to Members from the press gallery phones. The notion of the DOJ looking at phone records from the Capitol of conversations between Members of Congress and reporters is something that concerns Rep. Nunes, bringing up issues related to the separation of powers.
– Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Wednesday during an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show that the Justice Department’s investigation of the Associated Press involved seizing phone records from the United States Capitol.
Here’s how the conversation went down [h/t Hot Air] ...

Associated Press to Obama: "No justification for spying on the Press!"

It reportedly spied on Associated Press reporters just months before the 2012 presidential election. The AP said the Justice Department secretly seized two months of reporters’ and editors’ telephone records in April and May 2012.

President and CEO Gary Pruitt wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the records and all copies be returned. More than 100 journalists who report on government and other matters work in offices the administration targeted. Pruitt called the Justice Department’s move “a massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” Pruitt told Holder.
“These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”
Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that his deputy "ultimately authorized the subpoena" to secretly obtain phone records from The Associated Press, and said he had recused himself early on in the related investigation into leaks of sensitive information that "put the American people at risk."

Holder said the leak in question, which the AP has suggested involved a foiled terror attack originating in Yemen, was "very, very serious," but he declined to elaborate.

Republicans, meanwhile, are calling on Holder to resign following news of the probe. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement:
Freedom of the press is an essential right in a free society," "The First Amendment doesn’t request the federal government to respect it; it demands it. Attorney General Eric Holder, in permitting the Justice Department to issue secret subpoenas to spy on Associated Press reporters, has trampled on the First Amendment and failed in his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.
The Obama administration has been aggressive in going after leaks of classified information, prosecuting six officials - more than under all previous administrations combined.
The White House said it had no knowledge of the investigation and referred all inquiries to the Justice Department. "The president is a strong defender of the First Amendment," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during a press conference.

This investigation has been conducted by the FBI under the direction of the U.S. Attorney and the supervision of the Deputy Attorney General, who has served as the Acting Attorney General overseeing this investigation. The decision to seek media toll records in this investigation was made by the Deputy Attorney General consistent with Department regulations and policies."

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