◼ Buzzfeed and Current TV contributor Michael Hastings joins Current TV to talk about Bob Woodward’s claims that the White House threatened him and his ongoing criticisms of the Obama administration. - Real Clear Politics
“[Woodward's] such a great microcosm of the media in Washington. He went from challenging the government to being like a spokesperson for the establishment, and that right there in a nutshell is exactly what happened to the Washington media between the 1970s and now.” Hastings says, “He does hold all of these [politicians'] secrets. The reason Woodward doesn’t feel totally threatened is because he knows all the dirt about all these people too… He’s like a J. Edgar Hoover type. There are people waiting for Woodward to die so they can dish stuff on him that they’re too afraid to say now.
◼ Obama Takes Aim at Defiant Reporters - David Limbaugh/Newsmax
It's most gratifying that people are beginning to wake up to the bullying tactics of the White House toward those in the press who occasionally stray from the government-owned media model, but this has been going on for a while.
Veteran reporter Bob Woodward has said in interviews with Politico and CNN that a White House official warned him he would "regret" publishing a story reporting that the sequestration was President Obama's idea.
"(The White House aide) yelled at me for about a half hour," said Woodward. The aide later apologized to Woodward in an email and claimed he was not making a threat but merely observing that Woodward would regret "staking out that claim."
Does the aide's story sound credible in light of the context? He was yelling at Woodward, not making a casual observation about Woodward's journalistic accuracy. Why? Because Woodward's account undermines Obama's credibility on the story dominating the political landscape now: the sequestration....
Similarly, former Bill Clinton aide Lanny Davis, an Obama supporter, said that a White House official once threatened to revoke The Washington Times' White House credentials over columns Davis had written for the paper. "I couldn't imagine why this call was made," said Davis.
These accounts of White House press intimidation are nothing new. In my books "Crimes Against Liberty" and "The Great Destroyer," I chronicle many other examples of this practice, which is especially bizarre given the unprecedented support the media have lavished upon Obama. Could fear of reprisals be part of the reason?
...The White House blacklisted San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci for posting to the Internet a cell phone video of protesters at an Obama fundraiser in the Bay Area. Characteristically, the White House denied it had threatened the banishment, but the Chronicle's editor, Ward Bushee, stood by the story.
Phil Bronstein, another Chronicle reporter, corroborated Bushee's story. Also, numerous other journalists confirmed that the White House had issued implied threats of additional punishment if the story of its banishment of Marinucci became public.
◼ New Yorker Slimes Woodward's Work as 'Downright Misleading' - Warner Todd Huston/Breitbart
Now that it is OK for the Old Media to slam Bob Woodward, hit pieces on his work are coming out of the woodwork. One of the latest is from The New Yorker, where Woodward's body of work was termed, "revelatory, informative, incomplete, infuriating, and downright misleading."
Only a few short years ago, attacks by fellow journalists on Woodward, the man that took down President Richard Nixon, would have been unthinkable. But after Woodward revealed that a highly placed White House operative warned him that he would "regret" writing negative stories on President Obama, that has all changed.
◼ "Why the 'threat' on Bob Woodward matters." - Althouse
◼ Why the ‘threat’ on Bob Woodward matters - Kathleen Parker/Washington Post
Killing the messenger is a time-honored method of controlling the message, but we have already spilled that blood. And the First Amendment’s protection of a free press, the purpose of which is to check power and constrain government’s ability to dictate the lives of private citizens, was no accident.
