@Boomboom521
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...but-didnt-mind-obamas-years-of-stomping-press
Truth is, it was the actions of the Obama administration that should have been viewed as a threat to the First Amendment.
Of course, President Obama was friendly, affable and lined up ideologically with most reporters, so they found it difficult to get too emotional when he stomped on press freedom. There were several egregious examples.
- The Obama administration's Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen. The DOJ, led by Eric Holder, somehow labeled Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case, even went so far as to call him a flight risk. He thereby avoided the pesky need to inform him he was under surveillance. Of course, he was guilty of absolutely nothing. Holder would much later acknowledge regret over the Rosen subpoena. Thanks for playing.
- The same DOJ seized two months of phone records from the Associated Press. Close your eyes for a moment and picture the reaction if Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been found to order the same action against the New York Times. If anything but the apocalypse comes to mind, you're in a small minority.
- The Obama administration rejected more Freedom of Information Act requests than any administration in history. That was after Obama promised the "most transparent" administration in history.
New York Times reporter James Risen summed it up well when he called the Obama administration "the most anti-press administration since the Nixon administration.”
"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," Risen wrote for
The Times in a Dec. 30, 2016 column. "It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists."
But for the previous eight years of outright giddiness at the White House Correspondents Dinner, no First Amendment pins were handed out. No speeches were given about threats to press freedom.
Actions always speak louder than words.
Trump's words about the press are highly critical and demeaning. No argument there.
Many in the press take it personally and even conflate rhetoric — Trump's free speech — as somehow endangering the First Amendment. Ah, the irony.
But Obama's actions? They were downright scary.
Too bad almost nobody stood up to say anything about it, even though they had eight chances at eight dinners from 2009-16.
_O