What all of the breathless articles are missing is that the Obama administration did more damage to press freedoms than any other administration in history. The press seems to have forgotten that under Obama, the FBI and Justice Department monitored reporters' phone records, labeled James Rosen of Fox News an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal leak case, and prosecuted nine cases involving whistleblowers and leaks to the press – compared with only three previous criminal cases involving leaks to journalists in all of American history. One New York Times reporter, James Risen, was the target of a DOJ campaign to compel him to reveal his sources in a criminal leak investigation, including a seven-year court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Your tax dollars at work.
In 2013, the former Washington Post executive editor who edited the paper's Watergate coverage, Leonard Downie, authored a very pointed report for the Committee to Protect Journalists; he said at the time that the Obama administration's wide-reaching efforts to control the flow of information was "the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration." Bob Schieffer, CBS News anchor and chief Washington correspondent, spoke of the Obama administration's press relations to the Washington Post four years ago: "Whenever I'm asked what is the most manipulative and secretive administration I've covered, I always say it's the one in office now." With so many criminal prosecutions of reporters, who could disagree?
So yes, Trump's "war" with the press is a concern, but it's not the threat to our democracy that the press is making it out to be. What's more dangerous was the precedent set – and the damage done to press freedoms – by his predecessor.
