Freedom of the Press | First Amendment to the Constitution
Why the ‘threat’ on Bob Woodward matters »
This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.
More to the point, the Obama White House is, to put it politely, fudging as it tries to place the onus of the sequester on Congress. And, as has become customary, officials are using the Woodward spat to distract attention. As Woodward put it: “This is the old trick . . . of making the press . . . the issue, rather than what the White House has done here.”
Killing the messenger is a time-honored method of controlling the message, but we have already spilled that blood. And the First Amendment’s protection of a free press, the purpose of which is to check power and constrain government’s ability to dictate the lives of private citizens, was no accident.
The quote above refers to “government’s ability to dictate the lives of private citizens”. President Obama said, “I am not a dictator”. He tries to dictate to the media.
The Washington Post has been on the side of Democrats in many cases in the past. The Washington Post is not on President Obama’s side in this case. They support the constitution.
President Obama is trying to violate the constitution instead of protecting and defending it…which he swore he would do…in an oath.
