Judicial Watch Uncovers WH and DOJ Targeting

[Kathianne]

Considering the non-coverage by MSM on Obama's unilateral attempt for amnesty for illegals, crowdsourcing may be the best way to go. Judicial Watch has become the Woodward and Berstein mixed with ACLU for getting the information the media wants to hide:

http://humanevents.com/2014/11/20/fast-and-furious-white-house-doj-targeted-sharyl-attkisson/


FAST AND FURIOUS: WHITE HOUSE, DOJ TARGETED SHARYL ATTKISSON

Judicial Watch (http://www.judicialwatch.org/fast-furious-documents-released/) is looking to crowdsource the huge pile of documents finally delivered by the Obama Administration in response to their Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on Operation Fast and Furious. (In the unlikely event the mainstream media decides not to embargo this story, I don’t want to catch any of you claiming that it was a FOIA request. The request got ignored by the Most Transparent Administration In History, so they had to file a lawsuit. The document production is occurring under the stern gaze of a federal judge.)

Here’s a little taste of what has already been discovered, offered by Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton as a bit of catnip for aspiring crowd-source helpers interested in searching through the 42,000 pages of documentation President Obama risibly concealed by asserting executive privilege:

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[Kathianne]

Some good analysis here:

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/21/e-mails-show-white-house-tried-to-muzzle-sharyl-attkisson/


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This brings us to a more subtle point. We know (or should by now) that all sides in Washington play hardball when it comes to media courtship and spin control. Documents get leaked for a reason by Democrats and Republicans alike. Reporters get nuggets when they appear to be friendly or when it suits a politician, and get frozen out just as easily. That’s just life in the Beltway, and one doesn’t have to be marinated in the culture to know how business as usual operates.


This, however, goes beyond that — in a couple of ways. First, it goes way beyond the normal carrot-stick relationship with reporters on getting favored stories, and moves into a place where reporters are pressured to keep quiet about government abuse and incompetence — or lose their jobs. That’s flat-out intimidation of the kind one would normally associate with, say, the Nixon White House and its notorious Enemies List. It’s the kind of gangster-government environment more associated with banana republics. If it succeeds, it guarantees the complete removal of accountability and transparency, and turns the media into stenographers.


There’s another troubling aspect to this, too. The DoJ and White House seemed to be surprised that no one other than Attkisson ran with the documents that got leaked (other than Fox, of course). Why wouldn’t they report on leaked documents from Fast & Furious? It’s certainly not because DC reporters suddenly got ethical reservations about using leaks. John’s point is well worth considering, not just because of the media bias it demonstrates, but also because that media bias allowed the Obama administration to focus its sights on just one journalist. It’s not just that the White House went after a reporter, but also that the failure by most of Attkisson’s colleagues in the industry to “speak truth to power,” “afflict the comfortable,” or whatever tiresome cliché they routinely use to describe their work in heroic terms, when it counted. They left Attkisson isolated, an easy target for the power they claim to challenge.


Maybe some of them like being stenographers. Or maybe some of them didn’t want to end up without a job.

Attkisson herself describes what happened to her work after her initial reports on Operation Fast and Furious, and especially the next year when she began reporting on Benghazi. If a DoJ flack felt perfectly at home calling a CBS editor and then a news anchor to tell Attkisson to back off — and have the White House deputy press secretary offer an approving response to the idea — it’s not outside the realm of possibility that another White House official could have called a relative to make the same demand. Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s national-security team, has a brother at CBS News (http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/11/top-obama-officials-brother-is-president-of-cbs-news-may-drop-reporter-over-benghazi-coverage/), who just got promoted to its top position (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/11/jeff-fager-steps-down-as-cbs-news-chairman-199073.html). Coincidence? Unrelated? Perhaps, but if the White House was having Schmaler call CBS News editors on the carpet, it’s a little difficult to imagine that they left this path to the top untrodden.


Ed Driscoll drily quips (http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/11/20/david-rhodes-to-head-cbs-news/), “I’m sure CBS will want to blow the lid off this story.” Right after checking in with Schmaler and Shultz, of course.