Gary L. Bauer: Media Discover Freedom Of The Press

We have often referred to the bullying tactics of this White House and its Chicago-style politics. There have been a number of conservative leaders, including Sarah Palin, who have used similar language, and inevitably they have been attacked for allegedly crossing the line and for using overheated rhetoric in criticizing the president.

Today, in a major article in Politico, members of the sympathetic media are making the same charges. The report states that despite their liberal leanings, the media’s relationship with the “thin skinned, “controlling” and “stingy” White House has turned “surprisingly hostile.”

More and more reporters are becoming disillusioned with Obama’s broken promises of transparency. When Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recently asserted, “This is the most transparent administration in history,” reporters in the briefing room broke out in laughter. Consider the following excerpt:

“Day-to-day interaction with Obama is almost non-existent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. … The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic emails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call – or worse. Some reporters feel like they’ve been frozen out after crossing the White House.”

Print a negative story and you’re screamed at with expletives? Imagine if the press wrote a negative story about George W. Bush (which happened virtually every day) and Karl Rove had picked up the phone and yelled profanities at the reporter. Do you think it would take a year and a half to hear about it? It would have been on the news that night. The offended reporter would have become an instant celebrity for defending freedom of the press against “the authoritarian Bush regime.”

I suppose we should be thankful that some journalists are slowly discovering that freedom of the press is more important than spouting spoon-fed talking points like loyal lap dogs. At the same time, the Obama Administration’s treatment of the media is yet another disturbing example of the Left’s intolerance for dissent.

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