For the last year and a half, and perhaps even a bit longer in some cases, it’s from the left that we’ve heard nothing but whining as well as accusations of every sort about how it is that President Trump has maligned those poor folks in our state-controlled media. We have continually been told how it is that this president specifically is nothing short of a “threat to the freedom of the press.” Yet oddly enough all of those now accusing President Trump of attacking the media seem to be suffering from a case of selective amnesia when it comes to another recent president who actually did pose a very real threat to freedom of the press.
And of course it is of Barry ‘O’ of whom I speak. A guy who, during a recent speech at the University
of Illinois, said, “It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we
don’t threaten the freedom of the press because — they say things or publish
stories we don’t like.” And it was then
that he went on to say, “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never
heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.’”
Barry certainly had his issues with Fox News. Newsweek actually described the
conflict between them as “a war.” But to
be honest, Barry’s war with the media wasn’t limited only to Fox News.
In fact, Barry’s treatment of the media was so bad
that even New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticized him in 2013
for what she called “unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free
press.” And it was David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The Times,
who said of Barry’s administration, “This is the most closed, control-freak
administration I’ve ever covered.” According to a report on press freedoms by
the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists, “In the Obama
administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to
talk to the press.”
And it’s hard to imagine, given how it was that so
many of our so-called ‘journalists’ perceived Barry as being the greatest thing
since sliced bread, that his administration would have been so antagonistic
toward those in the press. But the
evidence that he was a true enemy of our ‘free press’ is nothing short of astounding,
all one has to do is to look. Those in
left-leaning media of today who insist upon calling President Trump’s attacks
on the media unprecedented, conveniently ignore all that took place during Barry’s
eight year reign in the White House. So
as a refresher here are five examples of Barry’s attacks committed against our ‘free’
press:
5.
Manipulating media coverage: While media was generally very positive
toward Barry ‘O’, he wasn’t willing to risk losing control in an interview
while he was running for reelection should a ‘journalist’ actually try to ask a
tough question. To solve this problem, Barry only went to local media outlets
to do interviews.
Why does this matter? Well, the reason is control.
National media outlets would not be so open to ground rules for interviews. But
local media outlets were another story. Local news stations don’t often get the
opportunity to interview the president of the United States and are far more
willing to agree to ground rules, such as establishing what topics can be
discussed or what questions can’t be asked.
Barry was clearly more comfortable when he could
dictate the terms of an interview. By August 2012, Barry had done fifty-eight
local media interviews, but only eight national media interviews.
4.
Proposed government monitors in newsrooms: The
Constitution protects freedom of the press because a free press is a check on
the power of our elected leaders. Barry
didn’t want this check, not on his watch, and made many efforts to rein it in.
Early in his second term, Barry’s FCC proposed a new program that would have
put FCC agents in media newsrooms “to determine how stories were selected,
whether there was bias in reporting," and whether "critical
information needs" were being met. These monitors would be placed not only
in broadcast newsrooms, but also print media outlets that the FCC had no
regulatory authority over. Because the FCC controls licensing of broadcast
media, these monitors would have been effective intimidation tools… a constant
reminder to the media that if the government didn’t like what you were saying,
your license to broadcast could be revoked.
Who knows what would have happened had it not been
for FCC commissioner Ajit Pai (now chairman under President Trump), who exposed
the existence of the proposed program in 2014, causing outrage and the eventual
scrapping of the program.
3.
Threatening journalists for negative coverage: After trying to blame Republicans for
so-called sequestration budget “cuts,” Barry was less than thrilled when ‘journalist’
Bob Woodward wrote both in his book, ‘The Price of Politics’, and in an early
2013 opinion piece in The Washington Post that automatic spending cuts had been
proposed by the White House and personally approved and signed into law by
Barry ‘O’. Less than a week after the
piece ran, Woodward revealed that a senior White House official warned him he
would “regret” calling Barry out for his role in the sequester. After Woodward revealed his experience, other ‘journalists’
came forward with similar stories.
Ron Fournier, the former editor-in-chief of National
Journal, said of Barry’s administration: “I received several emails and
telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language,
and virtually the same phrase that Woodward called a veiled threat.” Lanny Davis,
‘Slick Willy’ Clinton’s longtime advisor and now lawyer to Michael Cohen, also
came forward with claims he had received similar threats for unflattering
pieces he wrote about Barry in the Washington Times. Liberal ‘journalist’
Jonathan Alter said he’d been subjected to abusive treatment from Barry’s administration
for writing something they didn’t like. “There is a kind of threatening tone
that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” he said.
A young female reporter was called crude names in an email for merely asking
important questions of a Barry ‘O’ cabinet secretary.
2.
Spying on the media: If threatening ‘journalists’ for asking
tough questions and writing unflattering articles isn’t bad enough, all I can
say is that it gets worse. Barry & Co. actually spied on the media. Less
than six months into Barry’s second term we learned that his Justice Department
secretly obtained two months of phone records of AP reporters and editors. What
was Barry & Co. after? They wouldn’t say, but Gary Pruitt, the president
and CEO of the Associated Press, had an idea:
He said, “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.”
Similarly, the Justice Department secretly obtained
then-Fox News reporter James Rosen’s phone records, tracked his movements, and
read his emails while investigating possible leaks of classified information to
Rosen for an article on North Korea’s nuclear program. One consequence of Barry
&Co.’s spying was that longtime sources stopped talking to the Associated
Press and other news organizations.
1.
Trying to jail journalists and whistleblowers: For all of President Trump’s mean words and
use of the term “fake news,” I think we can all agree that such things aren’t
nearly as bad as threatening and spying on journalists, right? Do you still think Barry ‘O’ was an advocate
of the free press? What if I told you he
actually tried to put journalists in jail, for simply doing their jobs! The
aforementioned James Rosen, who was subjected to spying Barry & Co., was
also threatened with jail time when Barry’s Justice Department labeled him a
“co-conspirator” with one of his sources who was charged with violating the
Espionage Act of 1917 for leaking the information to Rosen. Another ‘journalist,’
James Risen of the New York Times, was similarly treated as a co-conspirator
with a government source indicted by Barry & Co. under the Espionage Act.
Risen was subpoenaed, and originally compelled to testify against one of his
sources.
Barry & Co. used the Espionage Act six times in
eight years to go after government sources, more than double the number of all
previous administrations combined. Risen would later describe Barry & Co.
as “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”
Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive director of
the Washington Post, said “the administration’s war on leaks and other efforts
to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon
administration.”
I’m of the opinion that a good analogy for the press
would be to say it’s like that woman who keeps going back to the significant
other even though he continues to mistreat her. Barry hated the press, and yet they did provide
service. They repeatedly lied for him.
They were absolutely giddy in his ‘God-like’ presence. And in the end, the public actually realized
that the press doesn't report ‘news.’ They
now take anything that happens and spin it against Trump. He gets 92% negative
coverage, yet somehow still manages to get 44 to 48% favorability ratings. The
majority of this country hates the media and so now pays little or no attention
to them.
Barry tended to strike out only at those in the
press who dared to tell the truth about his deception. Hence his war against Fox News. President Trump strikes out at our ‘fake news’
media for lying about him, for spreading misinformation and disinformation for
no other reason than because they don't like him. Today those in our so-called
‘free press’ tend to operate more like members of a state-run propaganda machine
not unlike Pravda. I would strongly
recommend to my fellow citizens that they do their homework like a lot of folks
are now doing. It's not hard to put the
pieces together if you don't prejudge the content.
The press hates President Trump because he happens
to be ONLY one of few Republicans who possesses the requisite gonads to call the
‘fake news’ media exactly what it is. The
fact is those who comprise our ‘fake news’ media spend 90 percent of their time
trying to take down our duly elected president after spending 90 percent of their
time kissing Barry’s ass. Why should it
be seen as acceptable for the media to tell non-stop lies about him? And why is it that just because past
Republican presidents have cowered before the media and tried to earn their love,
does it mean that President Trump should continue that incredibly insane
practice?
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