Speaking to the National Press Club today, Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt said that the Justice Department’s seizure of phone records had an enormously chilling effect on the AP’s ability to research stories.
Most specifically, Pruitt said that the Justice Department policies had scared away a large number of the AP’s usual government sources are too scared to even speak to them anymore, and whistleblowers are being intimidated away from even attempting to speak up.
Pruitt warned that the Justice Department’s behavior had not only had a deleterious effect on the AP’s reporting but also on other media outlets. He said reporters from non-AP organizations had confiding in him that their own sources were also being scared off.
The Justice Department had secretly obtained records of all incoming and outgoing phone calls made by AP reporters at home and at work, and also every phone line at the AP offices in New York, Hartford and Washington DC.
Attorney General Eric Holder defended the policies, insisting that leaks to the AP “put the American people at risk” and required “very aggressive action.”
We Said it then and we say it nos.., the idea was and US to scare people even the journalists.., tis not called Neo fascism for nothing.
Well, what did the AP expect? They didn't speak up for Bradley Manning or Julian Assange when they were targeted. Now the government has its sights set on major news outlets like them:
"First they came for the Socialists,
And I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Socialist…
Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak for me."
The major news organizations decided they'd rather have "access" to government personalities, so they kept quiet when our civil liberties were being violated. Now this government they bowed down to has set its sights on them. Again, what did they expect? Did they think they'd be spared if they acted like good, little, complacent members of the Fourth Estate? They can screw up their courage and redeem themselves, or they can be useless appendages of the Obama Super Secret Administration.