Jeremy Scahill, a national security journalist joining a new independent media venture with Glenn Greenwald, talked about the British parliamentary hearing over the Guardian‘s NSA scoops on Democracy Now! Thursday, and ended up going after the Obama White House’s hostility to adversarial journalism, mixed with their preference for friendly “state media” outlets like MSNBC.
Reacting to the Guardian hearing, Scahill said, “There is a war on journalism right now.” He mockedPresident Obama‘s claims of being the most transparent administration in history, while at the same time cracking down on journalists left and right, “trying to compel journalists to testify against their sources,” and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any other previous administration.
The United States, thankfully, has a First Amendment, but Scahill argued that contrary to what the Constitution says about a free and honest press, the Obama White House, like others before it, acts rather hostile to any critical media outlet.
“It’s the responsibility of journalists and journalism at large to hold them accountable. But this White House, like Bush before, Bushes before, they seem to want only state media. They want everything to look like MSNBC. And that’s not real journalism.”
Whether or not he did it intentionally, Scahill’s comments come on the very day Obama is sitting down for a long, wide-ranging interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. So… yeah.
