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Trump's targeting of a New York Times journalist, explained by experts
The Trump administration took its war with the media to the next level this week when federal authorities seized years of phone records from New York Times reporter Ali Watkins as part of a federal investigation into leaks of classified information.
Watkins, who previously worked for BuzzFeed News and Politico, had a three-year relationship with James Wolfe, a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide who was arrested on Thursday and charged with lying to federal agents investigating the classified leaks.
The seizure set off alarm bells about the relationship between the administration and the media. The Department of Justice under Obama took phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors, named a Fox News reporter an unindicted "co-conspirator" in a leak case, and prosecuted multiple cases involving whistleblowers and leakers. So is what Trump doing more of the same? Or is a president who routinely bashes the media and threatens to jail leakers finally turning his rhetoric into reality?
"It's deeply alarming that the Trump administration has decided to build off of the worst of the Obama legacy on leak investigations and reporter-source protection," said Alexandra Ellerbeck, the North America program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Also at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Emptywheel, and Fox News.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:13AM
You don't understand the concept of whistleblowing do you? Almost never, in the organization in question, would it be considered anything but disloyalty to disseminate information to outsiders. The Authoritarians in the room always get their panties in a bunch because trust was technically violated, and they dared to go against Dear Leader. The kind of people where the morality of the act comes second, to the 1st directive; Always obey the people in charge. I guess that comes from the "it's biblical to follow the law dipshits".
Take a psychologist for instance. You've been seeing him for a few years, and have told him all the embarrassing deeply personal details of your life. I think it is usually considered sacrosanct the confidentiality of the patient. Yet, if you walk in tomorrow and say that you're planning to kill somebody, your doc becomes a whistleblower. In the interests of public safety, he takes that information which was effectively "top-secret" and then delivers it to an officer representing the interests of said public safety.
Laws are followed when they are just. Leaders are followed when they are honorable and have integrity. When neither the law is just, or your leaders honorable, it is in fact your civil duty to report it to the public, resist, and/or revolt. In those cases, the officers best representing the public, happen to be journalists. Whistleblowers are to be rewarded, and honored, for they shine the light on the cockroaches that dishonor us all. That goes eleventy billion percent more, when it is a soldier letting us know of tragic and disgusting events like the military blowing away some journalists, or the My Lai Massacre.
Trump can bitch about the leakers all he fucking wants. It's called transparency bitch, and if we cannot get through the correct and moral actions of our leaders, then by golly, there is going to continue to be Americans that will become whistleblowers. You know, because we all aren't traitorous pieces of shit to the true principles of Freedom and America.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.