In contrast to the bitterness that has come to characterize President Donald Trump’s relationship with the press, most are well aware of the mutual goodwill — or at least perceived goodwill — between reporters and former President Barack Obama. But, what is often forgotten are the extremes to which Trump’s predecessor went to control, manipulate, and even thwart these fawning news agencies.
A new report published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) reveals that Obama’s spying on the press was even more extensive than previously thought.
Obama exposed
“In 2013,” the report’s authors write, “the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom, issuing sweeping subpoenas for the phone records of The Associated Press and several of its reporters and editors as part of a leak investigation.”
“At the time, the subpoenas were widely seen as a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations. Last month, we learned that they told only part of the story,” the report states.
It was previously believed that the Obama Administration obtained telephone records for a total of 21 different Associated Press (AP) lines.
New evidence
But now, as the result of documents gathered by the Knight First Amendment Institute, it has been discovered that the Department of Justice (DOJ) actually obtained the records for 30 different press lines.
The evidence “strongly suggests,” says the CJR, “that the [DOJ] attorneys went so far as to obtain ‘telephone numbers and other contact information’ for reporters and editors at those organizations who had worked on articles about the Yemen bomb plot.”
However, the CJR continues, “the report does not come close to explaining why the subpoenas targeted the trunk lines of major AP offices — lines which could potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the AP’s news gathering activities.”
Media enemy #1
This, of course, is just one of the many ways that Obama tried to chip away at the freedoms enjoyed by the press. And, compared to some of the others, it is relatively mild.
In addition to the aforementioned spying, Obama tried to control the press by using the courts to go after leakers of information, by harassing reporters for their sources, and by barring others — such as James Rosen and scores of press photographers — from events. His administration also set a record for denying or limiting the release of documents pursuant to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Whenever a reporter did manage to slip through the infinitesimal cracks in the administration’s control over the press, they were often silenced by media colleagues with whom Obama had successfully established a sense of common cause and mutual loyalty.
Under this alarming regime, America plummeted to 46th place in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index.
Say what you will about President Donald Trump, but at least he is utterly candid and straightforward in his handling of “fake news” and those who disseminate it.
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