Free Republic

FULL TITLE: Obama, whose administration prosecuted and spied on reporters, claims Trump is very bad for criticizing newsrooms Former President Barack Obama is right when he says his administration’s attacks on the press can't be compared to President Trump's current crusade against the news media. The Obama White House was far worse for press freedoms. The former president spoke Friday afternoon at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, urging students to get involved in the November midterm elections. He dedicated a good deal of his address to drawing contrasts between his administration and the administration of President Trump. It was...

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — The White House Correspondents' Association says a volunteer member of President Donald Trump's advance team who blocked a photojournalist's camera as he tried to take a photo of a protester during a campaign rally in Indiana has been taken off the road. Olivier Knox, the association's president, says Trump's campaign told him the actions were those of an "inexperienced volunteer, who understands that he acted in error." Knox says the campaign "promises that this will not happen again."(continued)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is both pushing back against and apologizing over last Thursday’s Chronicle article detailing her campaign’s banning of the press from community town halls in Corona and the Bronx. In a series of tweets both last Friday and Sunday, the Democratic nominee for the 14th Congressional District claimed that the open-to-the-public meetings were specifically for certain groups of people. “With this town hall non-story, it was designed to protect and invite vulnerable populations to public discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse and so on,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote last Friday. “We indicated previously that the event would be closed to the...

MS-13 gang member, in US illegally, pleads guilty in brutal quadruple killing An illegal immigrant and member of the MS-13 gang faces a life sentence after pleading guilty Monday to taking part in the vicious massacre of four young men on New York's Long Island, in a case that was highlighted by President Trump. Josue Portillo, 17, but charged as an adult, pleaded guilty in federal court to racketeering charges and for his participation in the April 2017 murders of Justin Llivicura, Michael Lopez Banegas, Jefferson Villalobos and Jorge Tigre in the woods behind a Central Islip, N.Y., soccer field,...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a rising star in the Democratic Party, but also its far left flank. Some have called her the future. You can take that as a bad thing, given that her agenda will cost us tens of trillions of dollars over the next decade; the three-decade projection soar into hundreds of trillions ($218 trillion to be exact), or view that as a sign of GOP wins for the next decade due to voters suffering from the sticker shock. Her inability to grasp basic economics also doesn’t work in her favor. Still, she gained prominence to clipping incumbent Democratic...

Appearing on The Ed Show Wednesday night, outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson slammed both Fox News and the GOP, saying that “Fox News and their Republican collaborators are the enemy of America.”

I’m surprised.Historically, when have socialists ever been enemies of press freedom?Get excited for “Reliable Sources” this weekend on CNN, when stalwart media defender Brian Stelter will respond to this troubling precedent from a left-wing Democrat by ignoring it. [W]hen Ocasio-Cortez returned to the district for a Bronx community meeting with prominent healthcare activist Ady Barkan last Tuesday, her campaign manager, Vigie Ramos Rios, later told the Chronicle, she was “mobbed” by reporters, “even though we said no Q&A and no one-on-one [interviews].”According to Ramos Rios and campaign spokesman Corbin Trent, that unwanted attention led to a press ban both...

Democratic congressional Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defended banning press from a public town hall this week, saying the move was meant to protect residents of vulnerable communities. Ocasio-Cortez on Friday responded to a tweet from Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim, who wrote that the candidate “is in for a rough time on Capitol Hill -- where reporters roam freely at all hours of the day and night -- if this is her attitude toward the press.” The reporter also tweeted that the campaign should have made the event private, rather than making it public and stopping the press from attending.

Democratic New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided to ban the media from her latest town hall event with constituents. Ocasio-Cortez has been conducting a “listening tour” throughout the 14th district to talk with local residents about immigration, healthcare, and various other issues. However, according to the Queens Chronicle, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign refused to allow any TV or newspaper reporters into her last event in Corona, Queens. Campaign spokesman Corbin Trent said the ban was the campaign’s response to an incident last week where Ocasio-Cortez met with healthcare activist Ady Barkan, and the two of them were “mobbed” by journalists despite...

A coalition of news outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post, want the federal judge presiding over the Paul Manafort trial to unseal the names and addresses of the jurors deliberating on the case. The judge, T.S. Ellis III, agreed to hear arguments about the disclosure during a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday. “A thirsty press is essential to a free county,” Ellis said in court when addressing the media companies’ motion. He also urged the news outlets, which are being represented by the firm Ballard Spahr, to appeal his decision should he rule...

Shortened title. Full title: Judge Ellis Declines Motion by CNN, WaPo to Release Names of Manafort Jurors – Reveals ‘I HAVE BEEN THREATENED’ CNN, Wapo and Buzzfeed are demanding the names and addresses of the Manafort jurors be released to the public. On Friday, Judge Ellis, a Reagan appointee, revealed he has received threats, however; he did not provide details.

NBC: JUST IN: US Senate passes resolution with unanimous consent by voice vote that “affirms that the press is not the enemy of the people” and “reaffirms the vital and indispensable role that the free press serves” and “condemns the attacks on the institution of the free press.”

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights said President Trump is “close” to inciting violence against journalists with his constant anti-press rhetoric. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince and diplomat, told The Guardian on Monday warned that Trump's criticism could lead journalists to censor themselves, or to attacks on them. “We began to see a campaign against the media … that could have potentially, and still can, set in motion a chain of events which could quite easily lead to harm being inflicted on journalists just going about their work and potentially some self-censorship,” Zeid said. “And in that...

BOSTON (AP) — A Boston newspaper is calling for a coordinated editorial response to President Donald Trump's frequent attacks on the news media. The Boston Globe has appealed to newspapers across the U.S. to publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what it calls a "dirty war against the free press.".... Marjorie Pritchard, who oversees the Globe's editorial page, says dozens of newspapers have agreed so far to write their own editorials.

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/2018/08/04/opinion-media-dont-want-understand-trump-voters/880760002/

The Trump administration has started an all-out war with the nation's free press, and journalists aren't taking it lightly. "Yeah, we get it, you don't like us. Fine. But do you have to put our lives in danger?"

It was another week of aggression between Trump supporters and the mainstream media. During a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta was lambasted with chants of “CNN sucks!” while covering the event. This prompted Acosta to go on twitter to blame Trump for the increasing hostility toward the media and to exclaim that “the press is not the enemy.” Two days after the initial showdown between Acosta and the raucous Trump crowd, Acosta confronted Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a press briefing to ask her if she considered the press an enemy of the people. Sanders...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration. The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad. Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press."...

Barack Obama's campaign has booted from its airplane three reporters who work for newspapers that have endorsed John McCain. The campaign says that a limited number of seats forced it to make the tough decision of which journalists would be permitted to follow the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four days of the campaign, but the papers are calling foul, claiming they were targeted for their editorial-page positions and kicked off while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board. Eliminated from the plane's traveling press were the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas...

On Wednesday, things took an intense turn when the White House apparently banned a CNN reporter from a press event. On Thursday, in a segment on Wolf Blitzer's show about the White House's decision to block reporter Kaitlan Collins from the event, April Ryan suggested Melania Trump may have played a part in that decision. Collins, who reports on the White House for the network, was accused of "shouting" questions that were "inappropriate" on Wednesday. In remarks to Blitzer on Wednesday, Collins defended herself saying, "I was blocked from attending an open press event here at the White House because...