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DOJ Subpoenas are ‘Unconstitutional,’ Hurt Press, AP President Says

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Photo Credit: APAssociated Press President Gary Pruitt said Sunday the Justice Department sent a strong – and negative — message to future sources that the government would go after them if they spoke to the press. It’s a move Pruitt called not only unconstitutional, but damaging to the ideal of a free press in the country.

“It will hurt,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We’re already seeing some impact. Officials are saying they’re reluctant to talk.”

The Justice Department sought phone records for a two-month period from more than 20 phone lines in four bureaus,including Washington and New York.

Read more from this story HERE.

Justice Department Subpoenas of AP Phone Records Unites Left, Right in Opposition to ‘Big Brother’

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Photo Credit: J. Scott ApplewhiteThe revelation that the U.S. government used secret subpoenas to pry into Associated Press reporters’ phone records triggered two contradictory reactions in the political world.

“What the subpoenas did was remind the left that the right has reasons to fear big government and remind the right and left of the objectives they share politically,” said Joe Miller, the Alaska conservative who was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate last year.

For conservatives, the phone-records story fortified their fear that, despite the best of intentions, government by its nature will tend to erode the freedom of the individual — and almost always in the name of protecting the collective good.

That conservative fear is one that liberals tend to regard as verging on paranoia.

Yet this latest Justice Department action — an action that for many on the right confirms long-held concerns about big government — is also, paradoxically, bringing conservatives and liberals together. Both ideologies, after all, share an interest in defending the freedom of the individual.

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DOJ Siezed Associated Press Phone Records in “Massive and Unprecedented Intrusion”

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Photo Credit: EspartaThe Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

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Politically Correct AP Strikes Again!

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Photo Credit: WND

For the second time in just days, Associated Press has redefined a word for its reporters that adopts a politically correct position, this time pleasing Muslim activists with a decision to ban the use of “Islamist” as a synonym for “fighters” and/or “militants.”

Politico’s Dylan Byers noted the change by AP was made “after much prodding from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.”

“CAIR had complained late last year that the AP’s old definition of ‘Islamist’ – ‘a supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam [and] who views the Quran as a political model’ – had become a pejorative shorthand for extremist Muslims,” Byers wrote.

The [AP] stylebook’s entry for Islamist now reads …. ‘An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.”

The move followed by just days the AP’s decision that it would redefine the American lexicon to discontinue references to “illegal immigrants.” That move widely drew guffaws, with “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno joking that it was being replaced with “undocumented Democrat.”

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Associated Press: Reporters Should Stop Using Phrase ‘Illegal Immigrant’

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Photo Credit: AP

The Associated Press says it is no longer appropriate for reporters to use the term “illegal immigrant.”

The organization announced that its AP Stylebook — the language and grammar guide used by news organizations across the country — will immediately stop approving the phrase.

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person,” senior vice president and executive editor Kathleen Carroll said in a post Tuesday on the AP website. “Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

The move comes as liberal immigration activists have been encouraging news organizations to stop using the term. Most prominently, Jose Antonio Vargas, an illegal immigrant and former Washington Post reporter, testified before Congress on the issue.

“When you inaccurately call me illegal, you not only dehumanize me, you’re offending them,” he said. “No human being is illegal.”

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Media Giants in Conflict: Associated Press Battling Reuters on Benghazi Accounts

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A just-released Associated Press account of the Benghazi attack contradicts a possibly false or misleading Reuters article claiming to quote a protester by his first name who described a supposedly popular demonstration against an anti-Muhammad film outside the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

The Reuters article claiming a popular protest against a Muhammad film is also contradicted by vivid accounts provided by the State Department and intelligence officials describing how no such popular demonstration took place. Instead, video footage from Benghazi reportedly shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound, the officials said…

Reports the AP:

“It began around nightfall on Sept. 11 with around 150 bearded gunmen, some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants, sealing off the streets leading to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. They set up roadblocks with pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, according to witnesses.

“The trucks bore the logo of Ansar al-Shariah, a powerful local group of Islamist militants who worked with the municipal government to manage security in Benghazi, the main city in eastern Libya and birthplace of the uprising last year that ousted Moammar Gadhafi after a 42-year dictatorship.

“There was no sign of a spontaneous protest against an American-made movie denigrating Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. But a lawyer passing by the scene said he saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film. Within an hour or so, the assault began, guns blazing as the militants blasted into the compound.”

That account contrasts sharply with a Reuters report from Sept. 13 – two days after the attack – describing a supposedly popular protest outside the U.S. mission and even claiming to quote a protester.

Read more from this story HERE.