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posted by takyon on Friday June 15 2018, @06:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the same-game,-different-team dept.

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.

See also: The Justice Department Deleted Language About Press Freedom And Racial Gerrymandering From Its Internal Manual

Also at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Emptywheel, and Fox News.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:54AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:54AM (#693871)

    So, the right to keep and bear free speech shall not be abridged ?

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 16 2018, @08:21AM (2 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 16 2018, @08:21AM (#693887) Journal

    Now, you see, this is exactly the problem. If we cannot actually understand what is being said, is it speech at all? When speech is construed as a weapon, then it really is not speech, it is a projectile, a semantic bomb, a tangle of incoherence designed to confuse and discombobulate the enemy. Which means, since no actual communication has taken place, that it is not, in the strictest sense, speech. So we can just shut up jmorris, since reducing noise is not restricting free speech. Of course, we all hope and pray that some day he recovers. But no evidence yet.

    So the right to talk to bears, to bare arms, the right to arm bears to speak, all these are still on the table. jmorris, however, is under the table, engaged in nefarious activities.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 16 2018, @10:17AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @10:17AM (#693905) Journal

      Which means, since no actual communication has taken place, that it is not, in the strictest sense, speech.

      Tell this to... ummm... let me see, who should I pick... Ok, suprematists [wikipedia.org] (not supremacists).
      Or abstract expressionists (Pollock and the gang).

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 16 2018, @11:03AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 16 2018, @11:03AM (#693914) Journal

        Oh, my dear c0lo, you should have picked it up out of the ether! Hawking radiation, the only possible communication out of a black hole. He was interred today, and a message sent. Almost the same as abstract expressionism. Or cubism. Or Piss-christ. Deschamps urinal was destined to end up there, no?

          And, not surprising that white supremacists should be coming out of, or more likely into, a black hole. An infinite sink of the negation of light and knowledge! But we were having a nice discussion of the ins and outs of treason as defined by the war crimes committed by Americans, because they were just following orders, or were jmorris. Poor jmorris, so sad to be so stupid.