CONTEMPT FOR FREE PRESS

During his May 23 speech on national security, President Barack Obama promised to chat with Attorney General Eric Holder about reviewing his policies for investigating the news media.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” the president said.

It is hard to imagine an assessment more divorced from reality.

The still-developing story of the Obama administration’s willingness to steamroll First Amendment rights of a free press has blown well past the stage at which even the most thorough, chin-pulling “review” of policies is likely to change anything. This debacle requires a change of Justice Department personnel. At the top.

This administration has demonstrated, emphatically, that it has no problem whatsoever with putting a chill on investigative journalism.

With 31⁄ years to go, Obama’s Justice Department already has prosecuted twice as many government employees for leaking information as all previous presidencies combined.

It seized telephone and e-mail records of Fox News reporter James Rosen and in search warrants deemed him a “co-conspirator” in espionage, all for the “crime” of doing what reporters are expected to do, which is extract news from government sources.

The Justice Department’s secret seizure of two months of telephone records from 20 phone lines at four Associated Press offices, however, appears to have set a new standard for contempt for a free press.

Justice guidelines require subpoenas of media records to be as narrowly drawn as possible, according to Arizona State University journalism professor Leonard Downie Jr., writing in the which he formerly edited. The AP warrants captured thousands of calls.

The media company being investigated should be given reasonable notice of the intrusion. The AP had none. And the investigation — again, according to policy — must strike a balance between the public’s right to know and national security. The Justice investigations of AP and Rosen struck no such balance.

How does a “review” of departmental policies temper that level of high-handed behavior? An NBC News report on May 24 revealed that Holder himself signed off on the Rosen search warrant. Does the AG really need to review a policy to figure out how sti- fling that is to a free press?

The disturbing Internal Revenue Service scandal is also part and parcel to the administration’s control-freak behavior. And every bit as much a threat to free speech.

Whether dictated from the top or created by spontaneous combustion, the IRS harassment of conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections stifled speech. The administration may not have issued directives to IRS apparatchiks, but it certainly set the tone for what would occur.

In 2008, President-elect Obama promised the most transparent administration in history. would be a policy worth reviewing.