Journalists reacted with some skepticism to the White
House's announcement on Wednesday that it was seeking to enact a new federal
shield law to boost the legal protections for reporters.
The move came at a time when the Obama administration is
facing unrelenting criticism from the media for the secret Justice Department
probe into the Associated Press. When White House spokesman Jay Carney
mentioned during a press briefing that President Obama had supported a shield
law as a senator, NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out that Obama had helped kill the
very measure he was now pushing to have reintroduced when it was proposed early
in his first term.
Obama has also been facing down comparisons to Richard Nixon
for his policies towards the media and whistleblowers.
All of which is to say that the White House's sudden
reevaluation of its stance on a shield law was met with a raised eyebrow or
two. A headline in the New York Times seemed to sum things up: "Under
Fire, White House Pushes To Revive Media Shield Bill." BuzzFeed's Andrew
Kaczynski flatly called it "damage control."
Furthermore, as HuffPost's Ryan Reilly and Sam Stein pointed
out, the bill the White House is seeking to revive included a broad national
security exemption, raising questions about whether it would even have given
the AP more protections.
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