Barack Obama has been in public view lately, campaigning for his former wing man and President-elect, Joe Biden, and hawking his presidential memoir. Aside from the obvious question – How many memoirs is a guy permitted? He’s up to three, with at least one more coming – it’s been a nice reminder of a president who conducts himself with intelligence and grace and who can actually put sentences together.
Obama’s current book, A Promised Land, checks in at a hefty 768 pages and covers childhood through
A willingness to sign off on Obama’s versions, or at least give him the benefit of the doubt, likely depends on one’s political leanings. There's much to admire, and plenty to criticize – lack of accountability and prosecution of the Wall Street and finance smart guys who crashed the economy, Affordable Care Act overreach and mis-reads, overseas drone strikes and too many dead civilians, expansion of domestic surveillance under his watch, reticence to publicly call out Russian ratf*cking (to resurrect a Watergate phrase) of the 2016 election to induce chaos and assist our current president.
But as the site’s media grump, allow me to focus on transparency and open government. When Obama took office, he vowed that his administration would be the most transparent in history. He wrote a memo shortly after his first inauguration that read: “the government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosures, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”
His Department of Justice then prosecuted whistleblowers at an unprecedented rate. They did so under the auspices of the 1917 Espionage Act, which was designed to prevent people leaking secrets to foreign governments, not the media. They collected phone records of Associated Press reporters in one case. They threatened a New York Times investigative reporter with jail time about a story. They named a Fox News reporter a co-conspirator in a case involving a leak. In 2015 alone, his administration rejected 596,000 requests, 77 percent, under the Freedom of Information Act, the 1967 statute that allows citizens to request government documents from any agency. The government is supposed to comply, though exemptions are made in cases involving personal privacy, national security and law enforcement, among other areas. Many reporters have stories of beating their heads against government walls over FOIA requests. Agencies bury requests, cite specious privacy or security restrictions, say that requests are too broad and unreasonable, and often, a personal favorite, respond with, “whoops, we can’t find it; sorry.” Oversight and appeals are spotty, at best.
Granted, FOIA requests don’t cross the president’s desk, so an argument can be made that a bloated bureaucracy overwhelmed executive aims. But prosecuting government whistleblowers such as former National Security Agency officer Thomas Drake and former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling certainly crossed his radar. It also spooked many government officials who might have come forward to identify problems and issues, or at least spoken out as anonymous sources. The reluctance also trickled down to agencies that have nothing to do with national security such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration, for fear of retaliation, even though protections are supposed to be in place.
Obama drew heavy criticism from plenty of watchdog groups. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for one, issued a report during his second term in which New York Times national security reporter David Sanger said, “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.” Now-retired ABC News reporter Ann Compton said, “He’s the least transparent of the seven presidents I’ve covered in terms of how he does his daily business.” Committee president at the time, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., said the administration’s efforts to quell leaks and control information were the most aggressive since Nixon.
All of these gripes sound almost quaint, given the past four years under President Enemies of the People. Yet despite Obama’s early rhetoric and present concerns, he was no reliable champion of the press in office, even if he remains a good quote and would be the No. 1 pick in any presidential pickup hoops draft. Given the assault on the media, particularly local news, from forces within and without, and the rise of disinformation and “alternative facts” that will fill that void, journalism is only going to get more difficult. Vigilance is more vital than ever.
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