Free Republic

Dear Associated Press, I understand that you’re upset because Israel gave you only a ONE HOUR WARNING to vacate the building you shared with Hamas. (And then they wouldn’t give you ten more minutes to go up and get more stuff. The importance of careful packing!) Your headline was “Shocking and horrifying: Israel destroys AP office in Gaza.” I’m a little shocked and horrified myself, but not for the same reason. I see that, in paragraph three of your piece, you did get around to mentioning *why* Israel took down your building - it also housed Hamas military intelligence! (It’s...

President Trump might be openly hostile to the mainstream media, but it was the Obama administration that was engaged in a widespread effort to thwart the media. Which do you think is more harmful to a free press? The full extent of Obama’s actions against the press are only now coming to light. The Columbia Journalism Review reports on a newly released government document showing that the Obama Justice Department engaged in a far more sweeping effort to spy on the Associated Press than previously believed. “In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom,” the CJR...

The president and CEO of The Associated Press called on Monday for changes to international laws that would make it a war crime to kill journalists or take them hostage. Gary Pruitt said a new framework is needed to protect journalists as they cover conflicts in which they are increasingly seen as targets by extremist groups. […] Last year was a particularly deadly year for the AP—four of the news cooperative’s journalists were killed on assignment. Globally, 61 journalists were killed in the line of duty in 2014, bringing to more than 1,000 the number who have died since 1992,...

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) tried to hide an email about its fear of upsetting the White House from Freedom of Information Act requests by the Associated Press, the AP reported Friday. Associated Press president Gary Pruitt reported in an op-ed on government transparency that, during the course of an AP investigation into Michelle Obama’s dresses, NARA used a privacy exemption to redact a line in an email that was actually about the agency’s fear of the White House: As the president said, the United States should not withhold or censor government files merely because they might be...

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department. Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.

The Talk Shows May 19th, 2013 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Pfeiffer, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Rep. David Camp, R-Mich.; Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.; former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Pfeiffer, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas; Sen. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt.THIS WEEK (ABC): Pfeiffer; Sen. Robert Menendez, D- N.J.; Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio; Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Pfeiffer, Sen. Rand...

One measure of how far newspapers in general and McClatchy newspapers in particular have fallen is a mock newspaper front page (image below the fold) created by workers at the Raleigh News & Oberver making fun of their McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt (photo). Pruitt, who went on a disastrous spending spree a few years ago buying up doomed newspapers, including the Miami Herald, is widely credited for bringing McClatchy newspapers to the brink of financial collapse. This issue of the mock News & Observer front page was published in honor of the 31 employees who were released from their jobs...

The McClatchy publishing company is more and more beginning to resemble an isolated bunker in the final stages of Götterdämmerung as ugly reality, such as their 99% stock price plunge, closes in on both fronts. Inside the bunker a leader is screaming madly, conjuring up phantom armies to ward off the unpleasant facts facing his company. However, in this case their ranting leader in the bunker isn't McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt who is probably already quietly contemplating his permanent exile with his surfboard off the coast of Satellite Beach but Howard Weaver (photo), the outgoing VP of News at that...

Employees of McClatchy publishing in Iraq were in an unually good mood recently. The occasion was the aftermath of the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad as you can see in these quotes from Inside Iraq, a blog for McClatchy journalists working in that country: Some of the guys were happy and they were talking about the bravery of the journalist who threw his shoes at the American president. When I tried to explain my opinion, I was trying to tell the guys that I don't agree with the way the...

Remember Baghdad Bob? He was the Iraqi press spokesmen who caused much amusement in the West because of his unrealistically upbeat pronouncements when Iraq was invaded by the United States and its allies in 2003. Among Baghdad Bob's funnier announcements was his declaration that no Americans were in Baghdad at the same moment when American troops were patrolling the streets of that city just a few hundred yards from where he was holding that press conference. Well, the newspaper industry has its own Baghdad Bob in the form of McClatchy CEO, Gary Pruitt, who in early 2007 gave his own...