Tuesday, October 28, 2014

USA Today's Susan Page: Obama White House "more dangerous" to the media than any other in history

(WP) At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

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Exercising as much control as possible over his environment is a symptom of Obama's personality disorder. The most "transparent" administration ever was obviously an inversion of the truth, similar to "smidgens".

Months ago, when Sheryl Atkisson claimed that someone in the government hacked into her laptop, every left-leaning hack accused her of either being a wacko or an attention whore. Given what we've seen of Obama, it certainly now looks plausible.

From day one, this administration has been all about huckstering. It's been Greek columns and snake oil while selling their version of socialist utopia and a necessarily weaker America. To do this you need to weaken as well as co-opt the media so the masses will swallow the shit sandwich with a smile.

George Orwell even wrote a few books about it.