The bigger question is: Why would the Obama administration feel a need to monitor, intimidate media outlets that have been lapdogs for him for years?
With my conspiracy-theory hat firmly in-place; here's a reason why:
Because government is getting ready to do something so overboard, so heavy-handed that even the news-casters might feel pangs of conscience.
What if they're getting ready for a false-flag terrorist
-event: "rebels"/gun-clingers, radical islam, it hardly matters. Probably in some decent-sized (but not huge city).
They move in, snap down controls on communications and travel, for security
. They go through, hunting terrorists (which give reason for them to institute a "controlled weapons zone" [one where only government agents have weapons]) and any resistance attrition gives them excuse to increase security &mdsah; they wouldn't have to go house-to-house and confiscate guns, they'd just have to get a few from differing locations every so often. When someone makes a threatening/surprising move and sparks a firefight it's evidence that they're on the terrorists's trail. — they could also cut power, forcing people to go to a security arena if they want food (and that'll be a secure place, where mere civilians won't be allowed weapons).
From the outside, they'll portray it as a necessary response to these deep-seated terrorist cells, probably claiming the restricted travel is to keep deep-cover sleeper-cell agents contained. Once that city has been normalized
, they can move on to another.
They have the NSA's meta-data scooper and analysis-engines going — it would be stupid to think that they have not already built a network-map of people who would be prominent leaders in a domestic uprising. They would want to crush those few people first, employing a rapid-dominance strategy before their enemies realized that they were engaged.
Imagine, also, that thy do this in-conjunction with an amnesty bill passed in secret… some would be pissed off to do something about it, but the majority of Americans would have no idea: they could then use the actions in response to this secret-amnesty to try to push the narrative that it's terrorists. (See, we told you that patriots and returning vets were potential terrorists!
)
[/conspiracy-theory]
The government likes to make the victims of its lawlessness into "the bad-guy" to justify its use of force (see Ruby Ridge and Waco, TX).
Because they still don’t cover “underserved populations” as much as they should.
“We now interrupt this coverage of the Ukraine civil war to bring the latest from the Mosque bake sale.”