[Update] More on the verbal abusiveness of the Obama administration towards journalists below the videos added as an update.
Bob Woodard exposed the Obama administration on Wednesday February 27, 2013, for threatening that he would "regret" his reporting on the sequester and how the idea originated in the White House and was proposed to Congress by the White House.
BuzzFeed identified the White House administration official that made that threat as Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council.
Now another person who writes columns for a different media organization is speaking out about threats made to them by the Obama administration.
Bob Woodward isn't the only person who's received threats for airing the Obama administration's dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days - even former senior members of the Clinton administration.
A day after Woodward's claim that a senior White House official had told him he would "regret" writing a column criticizing President Obama's stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.
Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, "received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn't like some of my columns, even though I'm a supporter of Obama. I couldn't imagine why this call was made." Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, "that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials."
Davis has a little bit of advice for the White House - Threatening Woodward is a bad idea:
"Firstly, you don't threaten anyone. Secondly, you don't threaten Bob Woodward," said Davis. "He's one of the best reporters ever. He's factual. You can disagree with facts that he reports, but he's factual. Don't mess with him about his facts. You can mess with him about the interpretation of his facts, but this is not a reporter you tangle with," he added.
Both video and audio below
Video of Bob Woodward talking about White House threatening him:
Audio of Lanny Davis talking about White House threats:
[Update] More reporters are coming out of the woodwork with their stories.
National Journal's Ron Fournier iced a source after the source became verbally abusive.
I was struck by the fact that Carney’s target has a particular history with White House attacks. I tweeted: “Obama White House: Woodward is ‘willfully wrong.' Huh-what did Nixon White House have to say about Woodward?”
Reporting by Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered Watergate misdeeds and led to the resignation of President Nixon. My tweet was not intended to compare Nixon to Obama (there is no reason to doubt Obama’s integrity -- period) but rather to compare the attack to the press strategies of all the presidents’ men.
I had angered the White House, particularly a senior White House official who I am unable to identify because I promised the person anonymity. Going back to my first political beat, covering Bill Clinton’s administration in Arkansas and later in Washington, I’ve had a practice that is fairly common in journalism: A handful of sources I deal with regularly are granted blanket anonymity. Any time we communicate, they know I am prepared to report the information at will (matters of fact, not spin or opinion) and that I will not attribute it to them.
This is an important way to build a transparent and productive relationship between reporters and the people they cover. Nothing chills a conversation faster than saying, “I’m quoting you on this.”
The official angered by my Woodward tweet sent me an indignant e-mail. “What’s next, a Nazi analogy?” the official wrote, chastising me for spreading “bull**** like that” I was not offended by the note, mild in comparison to past exchanges with this official. But it was the last straw in a relationship that had deteriorated.
As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Woodward called a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim,” The Washington Post reporter was told.
Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified. I wrote Saturday night, asking the official to stop e-mailing me. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. “Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron,” the official wrote.
I wrote back:
“I asked you to stop e-mailing me. All future e-mails from you will be on the record -- publishable at my discretion and directly attributed to you. My cell-phone number is … . If you should decide you have anything constructive to share, you can try to reach me by phone. All of our conversations will also be on the record, publishable at my discretion and directly attributed to you.”
I haven’t heard back from the official.......
Read the rest........
