What's Happening To Freedom Of the Press?...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Many have long believed the federal government has slowing but steadily been working to limit the freedom of the press. While the Obama administration has arguably been one of our nation's least transparent, it is no more quilty of attempts to limit press freedom than any other. Things are relative when viewed in the proper context. Obama's administration is continuing a trend and as people and the press have become less watchful and the current administration has simply accelerating the efforts of prior administrations.

Andrew Beaujon, writing for Poynter, discusses this concern HERE. If what Mr. Beajon presents becomes reality it will have chilling consequences for present and future generations of Americans. Government limitations on the press and reporting is contrary to everything our founders believed. A free press is essential to maintaining oversight on federal power and instrumental in insuring the citizenry remains informed. As well as safe guarding our freedoms.

The teaser...

“It won’t take me long to alienate everyone in the room,” Jeffrey Toobin told an audience in New York Friday. “For better or worse, it has been clear there is no journalistic privilege under the First Amendment.”

The New Yorker staff writer and CNN commentator was appearing on a panel as part of a George Polk Awards conference called Sources and Secrets at the Times Center. A lot has already been written about the conference (links below), so I’m going to pull out a theme that appears again and again in my notes: How much protection do reporters really have with regard to sources, and how much, if any, protection would a federal shield law give them?

New York Times reporter James Risen, who is fighting an order that he testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer accused of leaking information to him, opened the conference earlier by saying the Obama administration is “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.” The administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting,” Risen said, to “create a path for accepted reporting.” Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters, Risen said, “will be punished.”

The administration’s aggressive prosecutions have created “a de facto Official Secrets Act,” Risen said, and the media has been “too timid” in responding.

Read the full article BELOW THE FOLD

Via: Memorandum