Many Media Outlets Not Attending Eric Holder's Sad "Off the Record" Media Get-Together on Media Spying
None of them should be attending
Eric Holder is in trouble because his Department of Justice has been aggressively targeting media outlets as part of its campaign against government leaks, seeming to focus on the "demand-side" of a free press operation rather than the "supply side" of a leaky government. The Attorney General would like you to know he is a good progressive, so he wants to show remorse for enabling a media fox hunt. He's even invited media outlets to his office to talk about the DOJ's surveillance of reporters. That get-together, like some previous pow-wows between the White House and the (liberal) media, is supposed to be off the record. Four and a half years on some media outlets won't have any of that anymore.
Fox News, one of the DOJ's targets, won't be attending any "off-the-record" meetings, and, Fox News Insider reports, neither will several other outlets, including the AP, the New York Times, CNN, the National Journal, and even the Huffington Post. The Washington Post and Politico have reportedly accepted the invitation to hear an off-the-record explanation of why their colleagues are being spied on by federal law enforcement. Spied on for leaks as mundane as the fact that North Korea might respond poorly to more sanctions, the information for which the government named Fox News reporter James Rosen a "co-conspirastor" for acquiring.
