President Barack Obama continued to champion the rights of a free press and the need for transparency Sunday, despite his own actions against those goals.
The White House released a statement by Obama to commemorate the First-Annual International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
“History shows that a free press remains a critical foundation for prosperous, open, and secure societies, allowing citizens to access information and hold their governments accountable. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reiterates the fundamental principle that every person has the right “to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Each and every day, brave journalists make extraordinary risks to bring us stories we otherwise would not hear – exposing corruption, asking tough questions, or bearing witness to the dignity of innocent men, women and children suffering the horrors of war. In this service to humanity, hundreds of journalists have been killed in the past decade alone, while countless more have been harassed, threatened, imprisoned, and tortured. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists go unpunished,” Obama said in the statement.
“All governments must protect the ability of journalists to write and speak freely. On this first-ever International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, the United States commends the priceless contributions by journalists to the freedom and security of us all, shining light into the darkness and giving voice to the voiceless. We honor the sacrifices so many journalists have made in their quest for the truth, and demand accountability for those who have committed crimes against journalists.”
But Obama, who famously promised to have “the most open and transparent administration in history” when he was inaugurated as president in 2009, has only paid lip service to these ideas. He publicly champions them, while his actions only impede the efforts of the American press.
The Obama administration has conducted a record number of leak investigations of federal employees and contractors accused of leaking classified information to journalists, Bloomberg reported. It has also prosecuted more whistle-blowers under espionage laws than all previous administrations combined.
Obama frequently holds only off-the-records meetings, as does his staff. The Associated Press reported earlier this year that each year of Obama’s presidency access to government data and documents have gotten worse. His administration has “censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act” a record 81,752 times.
Reporters Without Borders dropped the U.S. down to a “satisfactory” rating in its 2014 annual press freedom report, ranking it below Canada and all the Scandinavian countries.
Examples of altered and censored White House pool reports, the method by which reporters rely on for access to the president, have also aggravated these charges.
The only good thing about Obama’s extreme actions is that it is inadvertently brought attention to government transparency issues, John Wonderlich, policy director of the transparency group the Sunlight Foundation, told Bloomberg in September.
“The Obama administration may have raised the profile of transparency, but sometimes by making it worse,” he said. “Instead of taking real action, it has focused efforts on prosecuting whistle-blowers, embracing more money in our political system and permitting political review of requests under the Freedom of Information Act.”
