Just a wee bit more on this from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson, who touches on many of the points some of the more thoughtful posters in this thread have tried to point out to certain Fox News obsessives. All ignored of course, but it does goes to illustrate the height and width of the blinders these types enjoy parading in front of the forum.
Eugene Robinson: Obama administration mistakes news for espionage - The Washington Post
The Fox News case is even worse. At issue is a 2009 story about how North Korea was expected to react to a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing the rogue nation’s nuclear tests. The Justice Department is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, then an analyst working for the State Department, for allegedly leaking to Fox News reporter Rosen a report about what North Korea was thought likely to do.
Prosecutors examined Rosen’s phone records, read his e-mails and, using the electronic record left by his security badge, even tracked when he entered and left the State Department building. How did officials justify such snooping? By asserting in an FBI affidavit, according to The Post, that Rosen broke the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
In other words, since there is no law that makes publishing this classified information illegal, the Justice Department claims that obtaining the information was a violation of the Espionage Act.
Rosen has not been charged. Every investigative reporter, however, has been put on notice.
If this had been the view of prior administrations, surely Bob Woodward would be a lifer in some federal prison. The cell next door might be occupied by my Post colleague Dana Priest, who disclosed the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Or by the New York Times’ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who revealed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.
A federal “shield” law protecting reporters from having to divulge their sources means nothing if it includes an exception for cases involving national security, as Obama favors. The president needs to understand that behavior commonly known as “whistleblowing” and “journalism” must not be construed as espionage.
As the Obama administration and the author of this thread illustrate, it is too late to point out that journalism is not espionage. The knee jerking has already begun from the same old sources of same at DP they always come from! I say lets have full disclosure and investigation of this and let the chips fall where they may. As well I'll put a "bet" of a full year Gold donation at DP that we'll never see this investigation produce a single charge of anything.
Given that the vast majority of people kvetching about Rosen (here at DP) are all well known and regular Fox News obsessives, I don't look for a rational or logical thread in their complaints and attempts to make Rosen out to be a criminal guilty of "espionage".
