Attorney General Merrick Garland has scheduled a meeting with top executives from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN for next Monday after it was discovered that the Department of Justice sought emails and phone records for journalists who work at those news outlets.
It’s a practice that started under the Trump administration but has continued under the Biden administration. President Joe Biden’s DOJ says it will no longer seize reporters’ records for leak investigations. Just last week, in an opinion piece for his paper, Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan requested a meeting with Garland.
On Wednesday, CNN’s lead attorney revealed the Trump administration fought with CNN for half a year to obtain email records of a reporter and insisted it be done under a gag order of the network’s lawyers and president Jeff Zucker. Something similar happened involving The New York Times.
In a stunning piece for CNN.com, CNN’s lawyer, David Vigilante, detailed the gag order and the case, writing, “I was told in no uncertain terms (multiple times) that I was forbidden from communicating about any aspect of the order or these proceedings to the journalist whose interests I am duty-bound to protect, Barbara Starr. And I was further informed that if I violated the order, I was subject to charges of contempt and even criminal prosecution for obstruction of justice.”
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez reported Wednesday, “The pursuit — which started in July 2020 under then-Attorney General William Barr with a demand for two months’ of CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr’s 2017 email logs — continued even after a federal judge told the Justice Department its argument for access to Starr’s internal emails was ‘speculative’ and ‘unanchored in any facts.’”
Polantz and Perez also wrote, “It’s not uncommon for a media organization to receive a subpoena from the Justice Department for reporter records and to negotiate protections for its journalists. What stands apart is the total secrecy that surrounded the order, the months-long court proceedings and the Trump administration’s unwillingness to negotiate.”
Jameel Jaffer — executive director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University — said in a statement, “Government efforts to access journalists’ records always raise serious press freedom concerns, but the gag order makes this case unusual and particularly disturbing. The courts have made clear in other contexts that these kinds of gag orders are rarely consistent with the First Amendment. Gag orders impede public scrutiny that’s important to ensuring that government agents aren’t abusing their powers.”
Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House was unaware of a gag order involving the records of a New York Times reporter. She added, “the issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the president’s policy direction to the department.”
Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote, “Well, great. But it’s still not nearly enough.”
Sullivan wrote, “Given this history, it’s hard to be satisfied with Biden’s own words that such intrusions are ‘simply, simply wrong.’ And it’s hard to take seriously any Justice Department promises of better behavior in the future. Those promises have already proved empty.”
Sullivan added that there is hope that Garland will be more in tune with press rights than some of his predecessors, especially Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
“But,” Sullivan wrote, “as we’ve found out in recent weeks, hope isn’t nearly enough.”
Journalists and online harassment
Last month, The Associated Press came under scrutiny for firing a young reporter over what it said was a violation of their social media policy. AP claims Emily Wilder was fired after just a couple of weeks on the job because Wilder’s social media commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict violated the company’s policy against offering opinions on contentious or controversial issues.
Associated Press media writer David Bauder now looks at another aspect of this story in his latest piece, “Journalists demanding more action against online harassment.”
Bauder writes, “During internal meetings after the Arizona-based reporter, Emily Wilder, was let go, several journalists expressed concern over whether the AP would have the backs of employees under attack from the outside.”
For example, AP auto racing writer Jenna Fryer said she received online abuse for her coverage about a noose found in the garage stall used by NASCAR’s only full-time Black driver. Fryer told Bauder that the only time she heard from AP about the harassment she was getting was when a manager said Fryer had gotten a lot of harassment.
“Sometimes you feel like you’re on a total island,” Fryer told Bauder.
Bauder also relayed the story of veteran AP sportswriter Anne M. Peterson, who said she has been sent lewd photos and received a threat from someone who attached a Google image of her house.
These are just two examples of a problem that exists in most newsrooms. Journalists are under constant attacks and most are left to deal with it on their own. Check out Bauder’s excellent story for more.
Watermelons on what?
Time to give credit where credit is due. In Wednesday’s newsletter, I mentioned how The New York Times briefly ran then deleted a story about watermelons being on Mars. It actually wasn’t a real story. The Times, apparently, was testing its system and accidentally published a clearly fake story to its website. But only for a few moments.
It was long enough, however, that it was discovered by Futurism’s Jon Christian. He should get the credit for spotting this fun, albeit made-up story. Here’s Christian’s story.
One more follow up from Wednesday
Also in Wednesday’s newsletter, I wrote about MSNBC and Brian Williams running an ad from the liberal political action group MeidasTouch that blamed GOP lawmakers for not doing enough to get answers as to what exactly happened at the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Back in April, Rolling Stone’s Seth Hettena profiled MeidasTouch in a piece called, “The Trouble With MeidasTouch.” The subhead read, “The brothers behind the breakout anti-Trump PAC are the golden boys of the #Resistance, but when ‘Rolling Stone’ took a look beneath the surface, their response turned Trumpian.”
It’s worth a look.
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