{"id":29476,"date":"2018-01-06T12:10:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T17:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29476"},"modified":"2018-01-06T12:10:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T17:10:37","slug":"end-of-free-press-nyt-caved-in-to-bush-obama-held-nsa-bombshell-for-1-yr-james-risen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29476","title":{"rendered":"End of \u2018free\u2019 press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr \u2013 James Risen"},"content":{"rendered":"

End of \u2018free\u2019 press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr \u2013 James Risen<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\u00a9 Gary Hershorn \/ Reuters<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The New York Times was \u201cquite willing\u201d to quash stories at the behest of the government, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen. He warns that America\u2019s press has been muzzled by \u201chyped threats\u201d to national security.<\/div>\n
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In an in-depth retelling of his experience as a national security reporter for the New York Times (NYT), published<\/a> in The Intercept, Risen explains how, on more than one occasion, the NYT yielded to government demands to withhold or kill his stories \u2013 including a bombshell report about the NSA\u2019s secret surveillance program under President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

Jaded by previous experiences of US government interference in his work, Risen writes that his NSA story set him on a \u201ccollision course\u201d<\/em> with his editors, \u201cwho were still quite willing to cooperate with the government.\u201d<\/em> His editors at the Times had been convinced by top US officials that revealing the illegal surveillance program would endanger American lives, Risen said.<\/p>\n

Bill Keller, the then executive editor of Times, said the newspaper\u2019s decision to shelve the explosive report, which detailed how the NSA had \u201cmonitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years,\u201d<\/em> was motivated by the lingering \u201ctrauma\u201d<\/em> of the 9\/11 terror attacks, and the sobering reality that the \u201cworld was a dangerous place.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Risen\u2019s NSA scoop<\/a>, which later won him a Pulitzer Prize, was eventually published a year after he submitted it to his seniors \u2013 but only after Bush had been safely re-elected. Risen said that upon hearing the story was finally going to print, Bush telephoned Arthur Sulzberger, the Times\u2019s publisher, requesting a private meeting to convince him against running the story.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

End of \u2018free\u2019 press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr \u2013 James Risen \u00a9 Gary Hershorn \/ Reuters The New York Times was \u201cquite willing\u201d to quash stories at the behest of the government, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen. He warns that America\u2019s press has been muzzled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[336,1567,1921,577,8682,8114,13746],"class_list":["post-29476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-free-press","tag-james-risen","tag-new-york-times","tag-nsa","tag-nyt","tag-rt-news","tag-russia-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29477,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29476\/revisions\/29477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}