{"id":134940,"date":"2014-08-04T22:24:26","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T22:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134940"},"modified":"2014-08-04T22:24:26","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T22:24:26","slug":"obamas-war-journalism-coming-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/media-news\/obamas-war-journalism-coming-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s War on Journalism Coming to a Head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ten months after the Committee to Protect Journalists issued its scathing report \u201cThe Obama Administration and the Press,\u201d journalists and potential whistleblowers continue to face unprecedented surveillance and legal jeopardy. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The report, authored by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, remains grimly up to date as it describes \u201cthe fearful atmosphere surrounding contacts between American journalists and government sources.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The US Department of Justice seems determined to intensify that fearful atmosphere\u2013in part by threatening to jail New York Times reporter James Risen, who refuses to name any source for the disclosure in his 2006 book State of War that the CIA bungled a dumb and dangerous operation with nuclear weapons blueprints in Iran. The government is now prosecuting a former CIA employee, Jeffrey Sterling, for allegedly leaking that information to Risen. Attorney General Eric Holder may soon decide whether he wants to imprison Risen for not capitulating. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Freedom of the Press Foundation calls it \u201cone of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.\u201d Almost a year ago, under the letterhead of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 46 news organizations sent a letter to Holder urging the Justice Department to withdraw the subpoena issued to Risen. Two months ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists put out a new statement again calling on the Justice Department to cancel the subpoena. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This summer, both RCFP and CPJ have gotten behind a petition, \u201cWe Support James Risen Because We Support a Free Press,\u201d set for delivery to the Justice Department in mid-August with nearly 100,000 signers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjr.org\/the_kicker\/risen_petition.php\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten months after the Committee to Protect Journalists issued its scathing report \u201cThe Obama Administration and the Press,\u201d journalists and potential whistleblowers continue to face unprecedented surveillance and legal jeopardy. The report, authored by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, remains grimly up to date as it describes \u201cthe fearful atmosphere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-media-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}