press freedom .

The battle for Press Freedom has to be extended to defending  more than just he mainstream press that has finally woken up to  attacks on their freedom to operate. The battle for what is more than just a matter of Freedom for the Press has to include Assange Wikileaks and Manning. 

Glenn Greenwald  in the Guardian. 

Will journalists take any steps to defend against attacks on press freedom?

Media outlets have awakened to the serious threats posed to journalism, but show little sign of doing anything about it

Read the full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/29/holder-media-pushback-leaks-fox-ap#ixzz2UlZFYtQ2

US attorney general Eric Holder faces questions about his department's investigation targeting phone records and data from the Associated Press and accusations of criminality against Fox News' James Rosen. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

(updated below - Update II)

Media outlets and journalists have finally awakened to the serious threat posed by the Obama administration to press freedoms, whistle blowing and transparency. Apparently, what was necessary for them to be prodded out of their slumber was watching people they perceive as "one of them" have their emails secretly seized and be accused of serious felonies. The question now: what, if anything, will they do to defend the press freedoms they claim to value? By design, there are many options the press corps has for thwarting government attacks like these. Doing so requires a real adversary posture, renouncing their subservience to government interests and fear of alienating official sources. It remains to be seen whether any of that will happen.

What is clear is that, after the AP and especially the Fox/Rosen revelations, a real tipping point has been reached in establishment media circles in terms of how all of this is discussed. One now regularly encounters in the most mainstream circles rhetoric that, a short time ago, was the province of a small number of critics.

The New York Times editorial page warned last week that "the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news." The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote that the Obama DOJ is "treat[ing] a reporter as a criminal for doing his job" and is thus "as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush's administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of."

So extreme is the revealed conduct that even the most conventional cable news chatterers, such as MSNBC's Chuck Todd, were able to process its significance: "They want to criminalize journalism", Todd noticed, adding: "if George Bush and Dick Cheney were doing this, imagine what candidate Obama would say. Candidate Obama would be unloading." The former long-time executive editor of the Washington Post, Leonard Downie, wrote that "the Obama administration's steadily escalating war on leaks" is "the most militant I have seen since the Nixon administration", and "has disregarded the First Amendment and intimidated a growing number of government sources of information — most of which would not be classified — that is vital for journalists to hold leaders accountable."

Meanwhile, the few places where one has previously found loud warnings and denunciations became even more strident in the wake of these recent revelations. "What's astonishing", explained the ACLU, is that "never before has the government argued that news gathering — in this case, asking a source to provide sensitive information — is itself illegal." The New York Times published a short essay from its former general counsel, James Goodale, warning that "until President Obama came into office, no one thought talking or emailing was not protected by the First Amendment"; "President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information"; and "it is a further example of how President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom" (my own NYT contribution on this matter was published alongside his).

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So all that prompts the question of what journalists will do to compel the administration to cease these attacks on core press freedoms. If journalists aren't willing to defend these freedoms, who do they think will? The design of the American founding was that abuses of power would be prevented only by various factions fighting for their prerogatives and against encroachment by other power factions. When it comes to attacks on press freedoms, it's the responsibility of journalists, first and foremost, to fight against those attacks.

w.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/29/holder-media-pushback-leaks-fox-ap

The Press’ Outrage Toward Obama Justice Department for Targeting Reporters in Leaks Investigations
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday May 28, 2013 11:27 am he Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records, along with criminalizing Fox News reporter James Rosen to pursue a leak investigation into a former State Department contractor, has led to media organizations making some of the most clear defenses of freedom of the press to date. It has inspired a healthy amount of disdain for the administration of President Barack Obama relationship with the press and how the administration’s zealous pursuit of leaks has had a chilling effect on investigative journalism. ----- ----- Press should not only stick up for their own. Media outlets, especially establishment media, should defend their nearly absolute right to publish leaks and even reflect on the extent of cooperation with government when deciding to publish national security stories. It has not made government more willing to foster a climate conducive to investigative journalism but rather convinced officials in the Executive Branch that they have even more of a right to control what is reported as news. Finally, it is time to recognize that when government targets anyone and all organizations entitled to protections under the First Amendment, they create threats to freedom of the press no matter who the individuals or organizations might be. The press collectively hung back over the past few years as the Obama administration waged a war on WikiLeaks. Though the Post defended editor-in-chief Julian Assange’s right to publish in an editorial in December 2010, Nancy Youssef of McClatchy reported the following month, “The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him “not one of us.” The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange’s behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he’ll be charged with a crime.” While continuing to cite material released by WikiLeaks to supplement news stories, they have not come to WikiLeaks’ defense like they did in 2008 when Swiss bank, Julius Baer, filed a lawsuit against the media organization for publishing “hundreds of private documents on a land deal that suggested money laundering and tax evasion.” But, that is what must be done. Information involving the nature of ongoing leak investigations, the number of times the administration has investigated journalists, details around every decision to subpoena reporters’ communications or records, any grand juries including the secret grand jury empaneled to investigate WikiLeaks, how the government continues to classify an enormous amount of information, secret policies or positions of the administration with regards to the press, etc, should all be pursued by the press in America. From the AP to James Rosen to WikiLeaks, each are victims of abuses of government power that can only be checked and controlled by a press willing to regularly challenge power and assert its rights without compromise. http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/28/the-press-outrage-toward-obama-justice-department-for-targeting-reporters-in-leaks-investigations/