Left-leaning journalist: ‘This White House seems to want only state media’

“You have, on the one hand, President Obama saying that his administration is going to be the most transparent in history and that they want to be friends with the press,” he said. “And on the other hand, they are monitoring the metadata of journalists, they are seizing phone records, they are trying to compel journalists to testify against their sources, they are trying to figure out who journalists are talking to within government so that they can go and indict those people.”

The reporter, who has written critical book on the Blackwater military contractor and whose new documentary was recently nominated for an Oscar, stressed the importance of the First Amendment and journalism, and argued that the government was seeking to bury both.

“Our profession, our trade is the only one specifically cited in the Constitution for a reason,” he said. “When all three branches of the government are colluding against the interests of the people, it’s the responsibility of journalists to hold them accountable. But this White House, like Bush’s before, they seem to want only state media. They want everything to look like MSNBC, and that’s not real journalism.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/05/l...seems-to-want-only-state-media/#ixzz2mfXdAm6J