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Friday, December 23, 2011

The Obama Administrative Official's Screaming Fits At Journalists For Reporting News

By Susan Duclos

When one joins the political world they have to expect to be in the public eye. Cameras flashing, reporters hanging on every word and movement and article after article gets written, some flattering and some not.

It is the world of politics and celebrity.

When you put yourself in the public eye, you are news.

Period.

The Obama administration has a unique way of dealing with reporters that do not bow down and kiss Obama butt.

They scream, yell, and cuss at reporters for doing their job.

Washington Post:

Carl Cannon, a longtime political journalist who is the Washington editor of the Web site Real Clear Politics, says he recently got zinged. After his site posted a headline and video of President Obama promoting a political fundraising raffle at the White House in June — which Republicans said could be a violation of campaign-finance law — Cannon heard about it in no uncertain terms. A deputy press official let loose “a screaming, profane diatribe that lasted two or three phone calls,” Cannon recalled. “It hurt my ear.”


This is not an isolated incident either, as reported back in October, here and other places including Business Insider and Huffington Post.

During the controversial operation "Fast and Furious" illegal guns were trafficked from the United States into Mexico so investigators could track how drug cartels and other criminals used the guns. As CBS' Bob Schieffer put it, described it, the operation became a "disaster" and the trafficked guns have been used to kill Mexican officials.

Attkisson told Ingraham that, when she broke a damning story about the operation, she got extremely aggressive pushback from the Obama administration. She said that a DOJ spokeswoman named Tracy Schmaler had yelled at her on Monday about the story, but that it was nothing compared to the way a White House spokesman named Eric Schultz had acted.

Attkisson said he had "literally screamed at me and cussed at me" about the story, and that the White House also told her that she was the only reporter not being "reasonable" about the issue.



That isn't all they do though, evidently they also send out "nastygrams".

“They shoot first and ask questions later,” said Julie Mason, who has reported on the George W. Bush and Obama White Houses for the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Examiner and Politico. In one of the e-mails that reporters have dubbed “nastygrams,” White House press secretary Jay Carney branded one of Mason’s stories “partisan, inflammatory and tendentious.” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, reacting to comments Mason made in a TV discussion, sent her an e-mail that included an animated picture of a crying mime — a visual suggestion that she was whining.

“They don’t seem to realize or care that [e-mails sent from the White House] will become part of the official archives of the presidency,” says Mason, who last month became host of a national talk show about politics on Sirius XM Radio.

There is more!!

How about the Obama administration officials removing and threatening to ban SFGate reporter, Carla Marinucci, for using multimedia.

Other sources confirmed that Carla was vanquished, including Chronicle editor Ward Bushee, who said he was “informed that Carla was removed as a pool reporter.” Which shouldn’t be a secret in any case because it’s a fact that affects the newsgathering of our largest regional paper (and sfgate)and how local citizens get their information.

What’s worse: more than a few journalists familiar with this story are aware of some implied threats from the White House of additional and wider punishment if Carla’s spanking became public. Really? That’s a heavy hand usually reserved for places other than the land of the free.

That was also reported on widely as a Google search shows.

With high disapproval ratings and over half the country thinking Barack Obama shouldn't be reelected to a second term, it seems the Obama administration is quite touchy when they cannot control the media.

.