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 aristarchus on Saturday June 16 2018, @07:59AM
True, that. A history of posting shit results in a shit history of posting. It was so nice when frojack pretended to be the "voice of reason", but those days are long gone, buried under tons of right wing propaganda. And frojack was one of the smoothest climate change deniers! But now all that is gone. And over such a trivial thing like "freedom of the press". Frojack, you shame us all!