June 4, 2011

Obama's Mounting Media Manipulation

By Edward Olshaker
Continuing a pattern of punishing unsupportive media that began during the 2008 campaign, the Obama Administration recently banned a Boston Herald reporter from the media pool covering a presidential visit as apparent retaliation for running an op-ed by Mitt Romney.  The explanation by the White House Press Office's Matt Lehrich only served to make the administration sound more petty and dictatorial. He wrote to the Herald, "My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page..."   This follows a string of similar incidents in recent days -- the banning of a San Francisco Chronicle reporter after the paper published a video of an anti-Obama protest; the successful pressuring of a Pleasanton, California newspaper to remove part of what it wrote about the First Lady; and Vice President Biden's staff once again denying a reporter access by forcing him to sit in a closet. This policy of suppressing speech and cutting off media access began during...(Read Full Article)