Tag Archives: Obama

June 8, 2012 · 4:23 pm

Update on leaks

At his press conference later in the day (June 8), Obama had this comment on the issue:

“The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive,” he said. “It’s wrong. And people, I think, need to have a better sense of how I approach this office.”

Without confirming the accuracy of the information — which was revealed in two articles in The New York Times last week — Mr. Obama said the such leaks deal with the safety of the American people, its military and its allies.

“We don’t play with that,” he said, vowing to investigate the leaks. “We consistently, whenever there is classified information that is put out into the public, we try to find out where that came from.”

 

Of course, what else would he (or any president) say?

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May 24, 2012 · 4:30 pm

Covering Romney

By Chris Daly

Here’s the text of a letter I submitted to the New York Times for publication yesterday. Since they have had 24 hours to act on it and have not contacted me, I am assuming that they are not going to use it. (Everyone makes mistakes.) So, I am posting it here:

TO THE EDITOR: 

Re: “Tall Tales about Private Equity” (Op-ed, May 23): 
Steven Rattner makes a valid point about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s track record of job creation while Mr. Romney was the head of Bain Capital. Mr. Rattner argues that Bain’s primary goal was to make money and that job creation was secondary. He notes that in the case of Bain’s involvement with Staples, Mr. Romney claims credit for all of the 89,000 jobs Staples had by 2010, rather than the 42,000 employees it had when Mr. Romney left Bain in 1998.
From another point of view, even the 42,000 figure may be too high, because it is not a net figure. Staples is a big-box office supply chain whose success led indirectly to the closing of some uncounted number of small stationery shops, all of which once had employees too. When the loss of those jobs is reckoned against the gains at Staples, the net number of jobs gained in that retail field is probably much lower.
–CHRISTOPHER B. DALY
Boston, May 23, 2012

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February 27, 2012 · 3:29 pm

Obama and Secrets

By Chris Daly 

As is becoming obvious, the Obama administration is developing a disappointment on the promises made by candidate Obama to run an open government. Instead of transparency, we are getting business as usual — or, in some areas, worse than usual.

The New York Times’ David Carr has a helpful update today on the government’s use of the Espionage Act under Obama. More often than not, federal prosecutions are brought against leakers who divulge secrets to the press. Rarely do we see prosecutions of real spies, the kind who steal or buy classified information on behalf of some hostile foreign government that then uses that information to defeat us militarily. Now, that kind of thing would justify the existence and the use of the Espionage Act. But no. The law is usually used to punish the people who are journalists’ sources. Rather than go after the reporters directly, the government (usually) settles for punishing the leaker, who is usually a government employee.

 

The Espionage Act, as I detail in my new book (which should in bookstores on Friday), Covering America, was passed in 1917 by a Congress that was unsure whether the American people would support a war that the president himself had said was unnecessary until right before the U.S. plunged into the fighting in Europe. Among those prosecuted under the Espionage Act (or its companion law, the Sedition Act of 1918) was the socialist leader Eugene Debs, who was imprisoned for giving a speech.

Carr’s piece, as I mentioned, is valuable, but it raises one beef I have with the Times’ coverage in general – that is, the paper’s use of links. In today’s piece, there are plenty of links, but they are almost all internal; they link to earlier Times stories or to the Times Topics database. There is nothing wrong with those, but the paper consistently misses chances to link to historical materials. There is no reason  the Times couldn’t link to the text of the Espionage Act, for instance. Actually, there may be a reason: these links are not always easy to find. But they would give the Times‘ reporting a lot more authority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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September 29, 2010 · 8:08 am

Is Obama Reading Journalism History?

by Chris Daly

It looks that way, judging from his new interview in Rolling Stone. He was asked by RS founder/editor Jann Wenner for his opinion about Fox News. Here’s the relevant chunk:

What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it’s a good institution for America and for democracy?
[Laughs] Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.

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