Discussion for article #226546
So he didn’t win in court and wants to use the press to win his case?
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Those who saw Bush let Jeff Gannon into the press room to lob Fox talking points at the president as if they were questions would claim otherwise.
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Yeh …riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, Risen.
Does press freedom include entities in Mother Russia? Or [insert oligarchy name here]?
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But he’s right: I haven’t been able to read the NY Times in years since Obama shut them down and everyone else that he didn’t like.
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I agree that Obama’s actions concerning whistle-blowers have sucked, but Risen’s hyperbole is completely asinine.
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Risen is not exactly an independent observer.
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Obama’s actions against leakers has been unprecedented but the leaks themselves have also been unprecedented.
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Risen whines to Mo Dowd of all people, to plead his case. A crime was committed by a CIA offical. Of that there is no doubt. So is Risen above the law, because he is a journalist? He is a witness to a crime, and is being asked to testify to that crime.
Perhaps he has forgotten Richard Nixon?
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This is the kind of self-aggrandizing hyperbole we have come to expect from the press these days. They make themselves the news. The greatest threat to press freedom is their failure to resist the influence of money/corporate pressure. The second threat is incompetence.
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Another journalist making himself the story, adding to another unprecedented number.
Also, it strikes me it must be more difficult for reporters confronted by government where one administration was in place at the time of the relevant events - the subject of the reporting, the meeting(s) with the informant or whistleblower, the reporting itself, the investigations into the leaking, the initiation of the legal process pursuing the source of the leak - and then the case carries into the next administration, which, given public expectations and pressure, responds by leaving the original prosecution team in place and on its own. So, where someone in Risen’s position might reasonably expect support in his confrontation with the DoJ from the opposition party, it’s now UNreasonable to expect support from the party formerly in power that’s now in opposition and equally UNreasonable to expect support from the party formerly in power that’s now in opposition.
And that feeling of having nowhere to turn in the face of no relief from about as authoritarian a SCOTUS as we’ve had since WWII at least is bound to instigate this sort of statement. I think it’s at least possible that Risen, hardly an objective independent commenter in this situation, is lashing out at the effective uniformity of the establishment governmental power base across party lines than he means precisely what he said.
And tho their situations and perspectives are quite different, there’s some parallel here, I think, with what happened in the Scooter Libby case: once the Bush administration found itself, for reasons of short term reactive politics, agreeing to having a specially-assigned prosecutor deal with the outing of a CIA operative, the chances became less and less likely that the administration could feel safe in putting an end to the process even as it gained on not just Libby but also Rove and on the veep. Holder’s sure as hell not about to “stick his head in the meat grinder” (as Cheney put it about his protege LIbby), and Obama’s been hands off on things that didn’t touch on either his administration’s policy programs or his re-election.
Pulitzer-prize winning journalists should shut the hell up, and never make any utterance that might, in turn, become news. Because news about suppression of reporting is about reporters, and is way too recursive, and meta-something. Totally improper. If only he knew his place and restricted his harsh criticisms to the Bush administration.
He seems to be incapable of understanding that whatever Our President does, it’s so every one can be freer.
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Another guy who thinks it is all about HIM shilling for his book.
Funny how his BOOK doesn’t even say anything about OBAMA, but if you only want to talk about BUSH you won’t get any talk-show bookings to shill your book on.
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Obama is the worst because Risen lost. Don’t you little people understand anything?
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Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?
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He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."
bullcrap
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Who? Oh yeah…wasn’t he one of the Beatles?
Seriously, to a majority of living Americans Nixon is ancient history. The collective memory of most folks is maybe 20 minutes ago.
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How precious. EGBeej is trying to get in as many posts as possible before his newest sock unravels
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