“The Increasingly Toxic Relationship Between Media and Government” WH threatens journalists, page

When CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson split from the sycophantic MSM to frankly report the Fast & Furious scandal in unflinching honesty, Obama’s White House and DoJ began harassing her for refusing to ‘do what other reporters are doing,’ by putting Obama in a bad light.
MSM Cover-Up Confirmed by "Bordergate" Reporter! Whitehouse Furious for Not Complying!

Now, reporters once considered “friends” or “safe” are being singled out, threatened with loss of access and credentials, and verbally abused for refusing to toe the Obama line.
Breaking: Over 200 news articles now: Lanny Davis joins Woodward in claiming White House threat

Last week, Bob Woodward took the sequester spin head-on and revealed how Obama led the way with it during budget negotiations.

Contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester. Who is responsible? What really happened? … .
Obama personally approved of the plan to propose the sequester to Harry Reid, according to senior WH aides directly involved. Nabors checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. “It really was the only thing we had. "

www.washingtonpost.com...

He immediately drew the wrath of not just the White House, but of those in the MSM seeking to re-affirm their allegiance and commitment to all things Obama.

Bob Woodward said a “very senior person” at the White House warned him that he would “regret doing this,” referring to his outspoken criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the impending forced cuts known as the sequester.
“I think they’re confused,” Woodward told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. Woodward apparently went on to criticize Obama further over the sequester the same day he received the warning from the White House.
“It makes me very uncomfortable for the White House to be telling reporters, you are going to ‘regret’ doing something that you believe in,” he added.

cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com...

The MSM pro-Obama clique immediately attacked Woodward, instead of probing the underlying story!

Progressives are throwing a series of virtual flowerpots at Bob Woodward, following his stepped-up criticism of President Barack Obama’s attempt to raise taxes by hyping the sequester budget trims. …
The pile-on by the president’s allies follows Woodward’s recent statements that Obama is walking away from the 2011 budget-deal by calling for more tax increases, that he is hyping the impact of the sequester cuts, and that he was allegedly threatened by Obama’s top economic adviser. Sperling tried to get Woodward to back down from his conclusion that Obama is “moving the goalposts” from the 2011 budget deal.

dailycaller.com...

Even so,Woodward stood steadfast, going so far as to describe the Obama administration’s behavior as “madness.”

"Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country,'" Woodward said. "That’s a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time," he said.

www.businessinsider.com...

Now, we learn that the Obama White House was not limited in its anger and vitriol to just one reporter; it has spread to include others who’ve considered themselves “friends” and supporters of the Obama administration.

Former Clinton aide Lanny Davis has gone ‘on the record’ to recount a scenario of vicious attacks and not-so-veiled threats to their livelihoods and those of their employers.

Lanny Davis told WMAL he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times. Davis told WMAL that his editor "received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn't like some of my columns, even though I'm a supporter of Obama. I couldn't imagine why this call was made." Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, "that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials."

www.wmal.com... 8924&is_corp=0

Longtime Dem Lanny Davis Also Reports White House Threat

As if these were not enough, former Obama ally Ron Fournier reports that he too has been subjected to such viciousness.

Woodward-gate is a distraction that briefly enveloped my reporting last weekend, when I essentially broke ties with a senior White House official. Yes, I iced a source– and my only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. It might shed light on the increasingly toxic relationship between media and government, which is why the Woodward flap matters outside the Beltway.
…
I had angered the White House, particularly a senior White House official who sent me an indignant e-mail. “What’s next, a Nazi analogy?” the official wrote, chastising me for spreading “bull**** like that” It was the last straw in a relationship that had deteriorated.
I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Politico characterized as a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. “Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron.”

www.nationaljournal.com...

The MSM has not only abandoned its obligations to “speak truth to power,” but is fighting over who can remain closest to the White House; which has created its own media apparatus, “Organizing For Action” (OFA). To curry favor and ensure acceptance, they are ever more resolute in their determination to join the team of presidential advisers, spin-meisters and spokespeople.
pjmedia.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> The Press Officially Abdicates Its Role
Now, those who’ve abandoned the chase, and returned to their journalistic roots are paying the price in loss of opportunity, access and the support of their colleagues.

So, who says “there’s no such thing as media bias,” now; when even the White House believes it can safely threaten those who no longer toe the line?


jw

reply to post by SaneThinking

---

It has , indeed begun to spread beyond the original targets.

Finally, this week, reporters are pushing back. Even Jonathan Alter — who frequently appears on the Obama-friendly MSNBC — came forward to say he, too, had been treated horribly by the administration for writing something they didn’t like.

“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” Alter said this week. During the 2008 campaign swing through Berlin, Alter said that future White House press secretary Robert Gibbs disinvited him from a dinner between Obama and the press corps over it.

“I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail,” he said. “[It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”

“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c--t, a--hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”

[url=http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/beat_the_press_96lFrUNync5zuBZTiZ6aUL]Reporters reveal how the Obama administration threatens and controls the media[url]
There's no doubt that those who've found themselves cut off from their proior open=access will start to describe their own individual tales of White House "sequestration" of access and information, if not outright threats.

jw
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