SUMMARY:President Trump's move to revoke John Brennan's security clearance rippled across Washington, and the former CIA director cast it as a disturbing power play. And Brennan might not be the only former intelligence or national security official to have his clearance taken away; the President has threatened others as well. Judy Woodruff gets reaction from former CIA official John McLaughlin.
SUMMARY:A free press is central to our democracy and journalists are not the enemy of the state. That was the message shared by more than 300 newspaper editorial boards in an extraordinary step Thursday, sparked by a call-out from the Boston Globe. Judy Woodruff talks with Mike Clark, editorial page editor for the Florida Times-Union, about President Trump’s attacks on the media.
SUMMARY:Patrick Soon-Shiong, a multi-billionaire surgeon, entrepreneur and part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, finalized his ownership of the Los Angeles Times [and San Diego Union-Tribune] this week. Judy Woodruff talks with him about how his upbringing in apartheid South Africa drove his love of newspapers and his vision for the future of the organization despite significant past struggles.
SUMMARY:A viral video compilation of local TV anchors is raising new concerns about the way Sinclair Broadcast Group mixes news with conservative, partisan political opinion. And while it already reaches over a third of homes across the nation, the country's largest owner of local TV stations is hoping to get bigger. William Brangham reports.
aka "Get Ready for State Media (like North Korea)"
Excerpt
SUMMARY:Longstanding rules that prevented an individual or company from owning broadcast stations and newspapers in the same local market have been abandoned by the FCC. The sweeping changes come amid wider transformations in the media and digital landscape, and have raised concerns about their impact. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal.
SUMMARY: The Justice Department promised on Friday a crackdown on leaks of classified government information to the press, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowing to triple the number of probes into leaks. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Jeffrey Smith former general counsel for the CIA, and The New York Times' James Risen, about what constitutes a problematic leak and why they occur.
The only 'fake news' comes from the Trump Administration and his puppet Republican Congress. The 'main stream' media is the people's shield against abuse of power.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss President Trump's first trip abroad and views on NATO, plus dramatic domestic cuts in the White House's budget proposal, a new CBO assessment of the Republican health care bill, and whether an alleged assault by a political candidate suggests growing hostility toward the press.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
All right, let's start this week on the foreign front. The president met potentates, presidents, prime ministers, and a Pope. There were magical orbs.
(LAUGHTER)
HARI SREENIVASAN: There were tweet-sized messages stuck into a Wailing Wall. How did he do?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: B-plus. No.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I'm not going to grade him. I grade him on the curve.
I would say the visual highlight was with the Pope when he said, you know, the Pope is a very humble man, much like me, which he had tweeted earlier, and that's why I like him so much.
But just sort of they're polar opposites, of the two, one a champion of immigrants and refugees and almost disdainful of opulence and excessive wealth, and the other sort of the embodiment of it.
But I thought, quite frankly, the first part of the trip, he laid down the policy, and the policy is that we will stand on the side of Sunni autocrats against terrorism, and no questions asked.
And here, in addition, is a major weapons, a huge weapons sale that — and we're not going to ask how you use it or where you use it, and if people are killed in Yemen, and they're — made in the USA is on the weapon that kills them, and it's done indiscriminately, that's their business and not ours, because the operating and organizing principle of foreign policy is opposition to terrorism under Donald Trump.
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes, I thought Melania had a very good week. I thought a lot of good moments for her. There was a lot of good judgments, actually.
He, by the standards of some of the competence of the previous week, I would say you would have to say the trip was, by competence standards, a success. He did what he wanted to do in Saudi Arabia, at NATO, at various other places.
I do think, as Mark suggested, the chief oddity of the entire trip is that we seem to be mean to our friends and kind to our foes. And so, Saudi Arabia — Fareed Zakaria had a very good column on this — we're supposed to be against terrorism, and Trump loves to talk about Iranians — Iran's influence on terrorism, but the main source of terror funding for both the ideas and sometimes the organizations is Saudi Arabia. It's not Iran.
And so — but, somehow, we're super nice to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, we're super mean to Germany and France and some of our NATO allies. And so there's just been a perversion of American foreign policy, which is sort of based on the idea that character doesn't matter, and you can — whether the leaders from Russia or the Philippines or Saudi Arabia, that people of bad character are people we can ally with.
And, somehow, I think there is a consistency between the government here and some of the governments the Trump administration likes around the world.
HARI SREENIVASAN: There was a bit of that we just saw …
MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I'm sorry?
HARI SREENIVASAN: There was a bit of that we just saw in the conversation that Judy had.
MARK SHIELDS: That's exactly right.
I would just say that the NATO part of the visit, I found particularly disturbing, because there was nothing about the principles and values. There was nothing about values and what we share and what animates us and what we respect and revere, whether it's individual rights or democracy.
That just seemed to be unimportant. And all the criticism that the President had was stored up, as David pointed out, for these folks for somehow being welfare cheats or something.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And that's pure demagoguery.
He spoke as if we — they owe us money because they haven't been paying their dues, which is not true.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: That's not the way that the — the problem is that they sort of pledged to gradually get to 2 percent of GDP in defense spending.
MARK SHIELDS: That's right.
DAVID BROOKS: And some of the countries have, and a lot of the countries have not. And that's a legitimate issue.
But he portrayed it as if we're bailing them out, and they owe us money, and they haven't paid their bills, which is just actually untrue.
COMMENT: This is especially important in the Trump attacks on our news media because they present a view other than his. Remember Generalissimo Trump is never wrong, at least in his Alternate Universe.
SUMMARY: Journalists around the world sometimes risk death or imprisonment to inform the public. In Mexico, dozens have been killed by drug cartels, the Turkish government has been cracking down by closing newspapers and locking up reporters, and U.S. reporters are enduring accusations of “fake news.” Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists joins William Brangham to discuss attacks on freedom.
The Pulitzer Prizes awarded Monday encompassed, among other topics, reporting done on the presidential election; a fatal fire in Oakland, Calif.; and the attempts by the Russian government to assert its power.
• The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Public Service award for a series on the New York Police Department's abuse of a law to force people from their homes over alleged illegal activities.
The series by The Daily News and ProPublica exposed the widespread abuse by the New York Police Department of a decades-old law to bar hundreds of people from their homes and businesses over alleged criminal activity. The investigation, which was led by Sarah Ryley, 36, a journalist for The Daily News, found that the Police Department almost exclusively targeted households and shops in minority neighborhoods. The reporting spurred New York City to pass sweeping reforms.
Finalists: The Chicago Tribune | The Houston Chronicle
__________
Dozens of journalists at The East Bay Times worked on the coverage of the deadly “Ghost Ship” fire in Oakland, Calif., in December, which killed 36 people at a warehouse party. “We had everybody involved, from investigative reporters to artists to breaking news reporters,” said Neil Chase, the paper's executive editor. Mr. Chase said the paper, whose reporting also revealed the city's shortcomings in preventing the tragedy, was donating the cash prize that comes with the award to a local fund for the victims.
Finalists: The staff of The Dallas Morning News | The staff of The Orlando Sentinel
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Mr. Eyre (pronounced AIR), 51, won the award for a series of articles about the opioid abuse epidemic in West Virginia. Mr. Eyre, the paper's statehouse reporter, began his multipart series with these words: “Follow the pills and you'll find the overdose deaths.” It took Mr. Eyre years to acquire the documents most important to his reporting, and he did it “in the face of powerful opposition,” according to the Pulitzer citation. A lawyer defending a drug wholesale company said that it was vital to protect crucial court records “from the intrusive journalistic nose of the Gazette-Mail.”
Finalists: Michael J. Berens and Patricia Callahan of The Chicago Tribune | Steve Reilly of USA Today Network
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A sprawling network of journalists was awarded the prize for their explosive articles on the so-called Panama Papers. The Pulitzer board commended the “collaboration of more than 300 reporters on six continents to expose the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens.” The work was originally submitted for the international reporting award, but the board moved it to the explanatory reporting category.
Finalists: Joan Garrett McClane and Joy Lukachick Smith of The Chattanooga Times Free Press | Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, Lauren Kirchner and Terry Parris Jr. of ProPublica | The Staff of National Geographic
__________
The prize honored reports about “the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University.” The Tribune's first article said that the university, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, investigated students who reported sex crimes — and sometimes disciplined them for breaking rules on curfews and dress codes. The Tribune also found that the school's Title IX office, to which students could report sexual assaults, regularly alerted the honor code office, which looked into the rule violations. In November, Brigham Young took steps to restructure the Title IX office. The school also said that students who reported sexual assaults would no longer risk having their conduct reviewed by the honor code office.
Finalists: Jenna Russell, Maria Cramer, Michael Rezendes, Todd Wallack and Scott Helman, The Boston Globe | Michael Schwirtz, Michael Winerip and Robert Gebeloff, The New York Times
__________
Mr. Fahrenthold was cited for his reporting during the 2016 presidential campaign, which cast doubt on Donald J. Trump's “assertions of generosity toward charities.” A month after Mr. Trump skipped a Republican debate in Iowa to attend a fund-raiser for veterans, Mr. Fahrenthold found that only about half of the money had gone to veterans' charities. Mr. Fahrenthold, 39, later found that Mr. Trump had used his own foundation's money for business-related legal settlements and purchases that included two portraits of himself. In October, Mr. Fahrenthold received a tip about a video that showed Mr. Trump talking about women in vulgar terms. “The voice you'd heard in so many other contexts was talking in a way we'd never heard before,” Mr. Fahrenthold said Monday. “That's what made it so powerful.”
Finalists: Renee Dudley, Steve Stecklow, Alexandra Harney and other members of the Reuters Staff | The staff of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
__________
In “Russia's Dark Arts,” a team of New York Times journalists across two continents chronicled the covert and sometimes deadly actions taken by President Vladimir V. Putin's government to grow Russian influence abroad. The series, which began last spring, explored the rise of online “troll armies,” the strategic spreading of disinformation and Russia's unprecedented — and politically consequential — cyberattack on the 2016 American presidential election.
Finalists: Chris Hamby, BuzzFeed News | The staff of The Wall Street Journal | International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and The Miami Herald
__________
Mr. Chivers, 52, spent months crafting his 18,102-word portrait of a young combat veteran haunted by his experiences in Afghanistan, who was imprisoned after a violent fight with a stranger. Unflinching yet empathetic, the reporting by Mr. Chivers — himself a former Marine — prompted the state of Illinois to vacate the veteran's jail sentence. “The truth literally set a young man free,” Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, where the story appeared, said Monday.
Finalists: Adam Entous and Devlin Barrett, The Wall Street Journal | Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
__________
Ms. Noonan, 66, has been a longtime observer and participant in the political sphere, having worked as a speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. Her winning columns addressed the bruising 2016 campaign season and the rise of Mr. Trump, analyzing his populist appeal and his effect on the Republican Party. Paul Gigot, the editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, wrote in a memo to the newsroom, “Peggy didn't shrink from addressing Trump's many flaws as a candidate, but she always showed great respect for the intelligence of voters and explained the currents of American life and politics that catapulted Trump to the White House.”
Finalists: Dahleen Glanton, The Chicago Tribune | Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Media Network
__________
A staff writer at The New Yorker since 1994, Mr. Als, 56, was praised for reviews that “strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context,” particularly when it comes to themes of gender, sexuality and race. Mr. Als, who was a finalist last year, is known for stylish and trenchant prose, and won the honor for a set of 10 pieces that covered works including “The Color Purple” and “Dear Evan Hansen.” American theater, he said in an interview, is an a transitional state. “We're living in an amazing age,” he said. “All kinds of stories are going to be told now that just didn't get an audience before. That's thrilling to me.”
Finalists: Laura Reiley, The Tampa Bay Times | Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
__________
There is no mistaking the anger in the voice of The Storm Lake Times when it writes about the legacy of big agriculture: “Anyone with eyes and a nose knows in his gut that Iowa has the dirtiest surface water in America.” That voice is personal, too. It belongs to Mr. Cullen, 59, who owns the newspaper with his brother John. The Times comes out twice a week and has a circulation of 3,000. Among its admiring readers were Pulitzer jurors. They cited Mr. Cullen's “tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing.”
Finalists: Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post | Joe Holley, The Houston Chronicle
__________
The looming ogre of “Nationalism,” armed with a malevolent grin and the club of “Racism,” opened the door and cast his menacing shadow last June. “Hello,” he said. “Remember me?” For this and other work portraying a frightening America, Mr. Morin, 64, earned his second Pulitzer Prize. (The first was in 1996.) The Pulitzer jurors said he “delivered sharp perspectives through flawless artistry, biting prose and crisp wit.”
Finalists: Jen Sorensen | Steve Sack, The Star Tribune
__________
Mr. Berehulak, 41, was recognized for work that showed “the callous disregard for human life in the Philippines brought about by a government assault on drug dealers and users.” On Monday, Mr. Berehulak described observing “an assembly line of state-sanctioned murder” over 35 days in Manila. He dedicated his award to the families of those killed, saying he hoped “their pain might somehow be remedied by justice.” He was previously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 2015 for his work documenting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Finalists: The staff of The Associated Press | Jonathan Bachman, Reuters
__________
Mr. Wambsgans, 44, was honored for his portrayal of a 10-year-old boy and his mother after the boy survived a shooting in Chicago. He has mainly photographed violence in the city for the past four years.
“Because he and his mother were so open, it was just a deeper level of intimacy than we're typically able to convey,” Mr. Wambsgans said. “It's kind of a bittersweet thing because there's not a week that goes by that I don't worry about this boy and his future.”
Finalists: Jake May, The Flint Journal | Katie Falkenberg, The Los Angeles Times
__________
When he was working on his hallucinatory and chilling novel, which reimagines American slavery, Mr. Whitehead studied works by masters of magical realism, including Toni Morrison's “Beloved” and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” His aim was to write about “the fantastic with a straight face.”
Mr. Whitehead, 47, said the critical reactions to the book have been enormously gratifying (the novel also won the National Book Award). But one of the most meaningful responses came from a stranger who approached him in a bookstore. “She said, 'Your book made me a more empathetic person,'” he said.
Past coverage:Profile | Review | Sunday Book Review
Finalists: “Imagine Me Gone,” by Adam Haslett (Sunday Book Review) | “The Sport of Kings,” by C. E. Morgan (Review | Sunday Book Review)
__________
Ms. Nottage's play explores working-class alienation in Reading, Pa., a city that has been hurt by deindustrialization. The Pulitzer citation called “Sweat,” which is currently running on Broadway, “a nuanced yet powerful drama that reminds audiences of the stacked deck still facing workers searching for the American dream.”
“I was trying to understand how economic stagnation is reshaping our cultural narrative,” Ms. Nottage said, “and wanting to tell the story of what was happening to people on the ground in a way that was truthful and emotional and unapologetic.”
This is the second Pulitzer Prize for Ms. Nottage, 52, who won in 2009 for “Ruined,” a play about rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Finalists: “The Wolves,” by Sarah DeLappe (Review | Off-Broadway Review | Feature) | “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” by Taylor Mac (Review | Feature )
__________
Ms. Thompson spent 13 years researching this account of the Attica prison uprising, which the Pulitzer board cited as “a narrative history that sets high standards for scholarly judgment and tenacity of inquiry.” In addition to extensive archival research, Ms. Thompson, 53, interviewed dozens of survivors, participants and observers, many of whom spent decades fighting to uncover the truth about the violent retaking that left 39 prisoners and hostages dead.
“This was a story that the people inside of that prison have been trying to tell for 45 years,” she said.
Past coverage:News Feature | Review | Sunday Book Review
Finalists: Larrie D. Ferreiro, “Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It” | Wendy Warren, “New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America” (Sunday Book Review)
__________
Mr. Matar was a 19-year-old student in England when his father, a prominent critic of the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi living in exile, was kidnapped and taken to a secret prison in Libya. This memoir recounts Mr. Matar's return to his homeland 22 years later, after the fall of that government, to find out what happened to him. The Pulitzer citation called it “a first-person elegy for home and father,” executed with “controlled emotion.” In an interview last year with The New York Times, Mr. Matar, 46, was asked to imagine what his father would have made of his journey.
“My failure to cure myself of Libya would have amused and perhaps even comforted him,” Mr. Matar said. “My search for him would have not. He wanted me, above all things, to be free and happy.”
Past coverage:Review | Sunday Book Review | Q&A | Excerpt in Sunday Review
Finalists: Susan Faludi, “In the Darkroom” (Review | Sunday Book Review) | Paul Kalanithi, “When Breath Becomes Air” (Review | Sunday Book Review | Well Review | Q&A With Widow | Essay by Widow)
__________
Mr. Jess's second book of poems is a kaleidoscopic and formally ambitious collection about African-American artists between the Civil War and World War I, and the ways in which they both fought against and tried to make creative use of the cultural pressures of minstrelsy. Scott Joplin plays a prominent role in the book's imagination, as do less well-known figures, most but not all musicians. “American music is critically and fundamentally tied to the African-American experience, the experience of a people who were denied access to literacy for most of our time in this country through slavery,” Mr. Jess, 51, said in an interview in March with The New School. “They were forced to forge another kind of literacy through the music.”
In his meticulously reported book, Mr. Desmond, a sociologist, followed eight impoverished families in Milwaukee as they struggled to make rent. Mr. Desmond, 37, a director of the Justice and Poverty Project at Harvard, said he decided to investigate the causes and the repercussions of evictions as a way to write about the systemic causes of poverty in the United States.
“America's the richest country, with the worst poverty,” he said. “That ugly fact has troubled me for a long time, and I wanted to understand the role that housing plays.”
Past Coverage:Profile | Review | Sunday Book Review | Sunday Review Essay | Op-ed
Finalists: “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism,” by John Donvan and Caren Zucker (Sunday Book Review) | “The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery,” by Micki McElya
__________
Ms. Du, 39, won for her savage chamber opera, a collaboration with the librettist Royce Vavrek, which finds an allegory for human trafficking in the story of two angels who are brutally mistreated after they crash-land in a suburban backyard.
“In the U.S., trafficking seems very far from us, in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe,” she said. “But it's happening right in front of our eyes. And that's how this arose, to be able to create a platform that's not didactic, but a work that allows ideas to blossom.”
Past coverage:Review
Finalists: Ashley Fure, “Bound to the Bow” (Review) | Kate Soper, “Ipsa Dixit”
ANSWER: Of course NOT. He's hasn't kept any of his campaign pommies yet, why would he start now? I would not be surprised that Trumps 'press' will mostly be Tweets and the rest will be handled by his Propaganda Team (aka Department of Lies). Trump believes ANYONE, especially the "extremely dishonest press," are liers (even when there is video evidence).
"There's a lot of different ways that things can be done, and I can assure you, we're looking at that." code for censorship, and no question asked. Whitehouse press briefings will become campaign speeches.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: During the campaign and after, President-elect Donald Trump voiced his distrust of the media and held the press at arms-length. On Thursday, he announced his communications team, including RNC strategist Sean Spicer as press secretary. Brian Stelter of CNN and Jeff Mason of Reuters join Judy Woodruff to discuss what to expect about press relations once the president-elect takes office.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): President-elect Donald Trump continued to round out his White House team today, tapping two of his key campaign advisers to senior West Wing positions.
She's been one of Donald Trump's most visible advisers since taking over as campaign manager last summer. Today, the president-elect named Kellyanne Conway to be White House counselor.
He followed that with word that Sean Spicer will serve as White House Press Secretary. Spicer had been communications director for the Republican National Committee for five years. Last month, he moved over to become chief spokesman for the Trump transition.
Now, Spicer, along with Jason Miller and Hope Hicks, will handle relations with the news media, and that could be a tall order.
DONALD TRUMP (R), President-Elect: The people back there, the extremely dishonest press.
JUDY WOODRUFF: As candidate and president-elect, Mr. Trump has called out reporters in general, and at times, by name, like NBC's Katy Tur.
DONALD TRUMP: They're not reporting it. Katy, you're not reporting it, Katy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Last month, he retweeted attacks on CNN's Jeff Zeleny, after the correspondent reported on Mr. Trump's unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. And during the campaign, the Trump team at times barred The Washington Post, Univision, Politico, and BuzzFeed from its rallies.
Reince Priebus, the incoming chief of staff, is signaling changes could be ahead for the White House press corps.
REINCE PRIEBUS, Incoming White House Chief of Staff: Even looking at things like the daily — you know, the daily White House briefing from the Press Secretary, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that things can be done, and I can assure you, we're looking at that.
SUMMARY: Turkey's main opposition newspaper is the latest target of a Turkish government purge. Some 170 news outlets have been shuttered since July, just one facet of a crackdown on anyone suspected to support an Islamic cleric accused of fomenting a coup attempt. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Amberin Zaman of the Woodrow Wilson Center about the consolidation of power by the Turkish president.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):It's been more than three months since a coup sought to depose the Turkish president. The attempt failed quickly, but the crackdown in its aftermath continues, alarming many of Turkey's allies.
Readers have opened Turkey's main opposition newspaper to find blank columns this week, a protest against jailing its editor in chief and a dozen staffers. Their arrests Monday were part of an ongoing purge against perceived opponents by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since a failed coup last July.
On Tuesday, his prime minister brushed off European criticism.
PRIME MINISTER BINALI YILDIRIM, Turkey (through translator): Today, somebody from the European Parliament says the detention of journalists from that newspaper is a red line. Brother, we don't care about your red line. It's the people who draw the red line. What importance does your line have?
HARI SREENIVASAN:Across Turkey, some 170 outlets have been shuttered since July, leaving 2,500 journalists out of work. The U.S. State Department has raised its concerns repeatedly, as it did again Monday.
JOHN KIRBY, State Department spokesman: Suppressing speech and opinion and the press doesn't support the fight against terrorism and only encroaches on the fundamental freedoms that help ensure democracies remain strong.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But silencing Turkey's media is only one facet of a crackdown on anyone suspected of supporting Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric whom Erdogan accuses of fomenting the coup attempt. Gulen lives in exile in Pennsylvania.
A staggering 100,000 civil servants have been fired, including 10,000 more just last weekend, and 37,000 people have been arrested. President Erdogan has even voiced support for reinstating the death penalty, though it would dash hopes for Turkey's European Union membership bid.
Meanwhile, as he consolidates his internal power, the Turkish leader is waging war along his borders. This week, Turkish tanks massed at Silopi, near the Iraqi frontier, to press the fight against the Kurdish separatist group known as the PKK. Southeastern Turkey is a largely Kurdish region, and the PKK maintains bases in Northern Iraq.
In Ankara, the defense minister said there is — quote — “no obligation to wait for threats to rise.”
FIKRI ISIK, Defense Minister, Turkey (through translator): We have important developments in the region. There is a serious struggle against terrorism inside Turkey and on the other side of the border. Turkey is in the position of making preparations for all kinds of possibilities.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And, in Syria, Turkish forces are looking to retake the city of al-Bab north of Aleppo from the Islamic State. Success would also bar the city to the Kurds, who hope to close a 45-mile gap between their enclaves and create a contiguous Kurdish zone along the Turkish frontier.
Turkey also insists that Syrian Kurdish forces not be part of any campaign to retake the Islamic State's self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa in Syria. All of this has strained relations with Washington. The Obama administration regards the Kurds as among its staunchest allies against ISIS.
We take a closer look at this recent crackdown with Amberin Zaman. She is a Turkish journalist and author and serves as a fellow at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington.
So, 10,000 more civil servants just in the past week that have been fired. Right after the coup, the government said this was to try and root out all the Gulenists at the time. Why now? Why is this happening?
AMBERIN ZAMAN, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Well, as you pointed out, the government has justified these moves on the grounds that it's weeding out the Gulenists, who they say have penetrated the entire government, the judiciary, the army, academia.
But, at this point, when you look at the scale of this purge, you have more than 100,000 people now who have either lost their jobs or who are in jail, I think around 30,000-plus now in jail. And you look at the number of journalists also in jail, the number of media outlets, over 100, well over 100 now shuttered.
It's becoming very clear that this is just not about the Gulenists, but more an effort on the part of the government to stifle all dissenting voices.
SUMMARY: Pressure has been mounting between the U.S. and China on issues ranging from Chinese military activity to reining in North Korea's nuclear efforts. But tensions are also rising within that country, due to economic instability and a crackdown on dissent. Christopher Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Andrew Nathan of Columbia University join Hari Sreenivasan for more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For the Chinese leader, it’s a moment on the world stage, on issues ranging from the growing tensions over China’s military activity in the South China Sea, to Beijing’s ability to rein in North Korea’s nuclear efforts.
PRESIDENT XI JINPING, China (through interpreter): Especially, we want to enhance communication and coordination on the Korea nuclear issue and other regional and global issues, and to consolidate and expand our shared interests.
HARI SREENIVASAN:But Xi’s biggest challenge may be back home, where there are signs of growing discontent. Partly, it’s economic, a stock crash, sliding currency values and the weakest economic growth in a quarter-century.
Outwardly, at least, Xi’s government has remained upbeat.
LI KEQIANG, Premier, China (through interpreter): We are fully confident of China’s long-term economic growth. The economy will not suffer a hard landing.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But Xi has also raised hackles with his crackdown on dissent. Last month, he visited state media organizations, warning that absolute loyalty to the party is their highest priority. That drew criticism from real estate magnate Ren Zhiqiang, among others, and his social media accounts were suspended.
This month, a government-run Web site posted a letter calling for Xi’s resignation. It was signed “Loyal Communist Party Members.”
Soon after, a number of people, including well-known columnist Jia Jia, went missing, apparently as part of an investigation into the letter’s origin. Protesters in Hong Kong demanded to know his whereabouts.
IMO the U.S. Constitution protects the press (print or electronic) from being censored, but does NOT protect reporters from revealing sources. The protection of sources is a fiction the media has been fighting for over the years.
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times facing jail for refusing to identify a confidential source.
The court’s one-line order gave no reasons but effectively sided with the government in a confrontation between what prosecutors said was an imperative to secure evidence in a national security prosecution and what journalists said was an intolerable infringement of press freedom.
The case arose from a subpoena to Mr. Risen seeking information about his source for a chapter of his 2006 book, “State of War.” Prosecutors say they need Mr. Risen’s testimony to prove that the source was Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. official.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ordered Mr. Risen to comply with the subpoena. Mr. Risen has said he will refuse.
“I will continue to fight,” Mr. Risen said Monday.
His lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, urged the Justice Department to hold its fire.
“The ball is now in the government’s court,” Mr. Kurtzberg said in an email. “The government can choose not to pursue Mr. Risen’s testimony if it wants to. We can only hope now that the government will not seek to have him held in contempt for doing nothing more than reporting the news and keeping his promises” to his sources.
The Obama administration has sent mixed signals in the case and on the subject of press freedom in general. In its Supreme Court brief in the case, Risen v. United States, No. 13-1009, it told the justices that “reporters have no privilege to refuse to provide direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing by confidential sources.”
But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted last week that the Justice Department might choose not to ask the trial judge to jail Mr. Risen for contempt should he refuse to testify.
The Obama administration has pursued leaks aggressively, bringing criminal charges in eight cases, compared with three under all previous administrations combined.
At the same time, the administration has supported efforts in Congress to create a federal shield law that would allow judges to quash some subpoenas to journalists. The Justice Department has also issued new internal regulations limiting the circumstances in which prosecutors can subpoena reporters’ testimony and records.
Asked about the Justice Department’s plans on Monday, Brian Fallon, a spokesman, would say only that “we are considering the next steps in this case.”
Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, said the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear Mr. Risen’s case was disappointing.
“Jim Risen is a groundbreaking national security reporter who continues to do powerful work,” Mr. Baquet said. “Journalists like Jim depend on confidential sources to get information the public needs to know. The court’s failure to protect journalists’ right to protect their sources is deeply troubling.”
The Supreme Court has not directly addressed whether journalists have protections from subpoenas since its 1972 ruling in Branzburg v. Hayes. In that 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that the First Amendment provided no such protection against grand jury subpoenas.
Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. joined the majority but also wrote a short, cryptic concurrence calling on judges to strike the “proper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony.”
For decades, press lawyers had considerable success in persuading courts to interpret the concurrence broadly. That run of victories started to wane in 2003, when Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, surveyed the legal landscape.
“A large number of cases conclude, rather surprisingly in light of Branzburg, that there is a reporter’s privilege,” he wrote.
A coalition of news organizations, which included The Times, filed a supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Mr. Risen’s case to bring clarity to what it said was a confusing legal landscape in which the scope of press protections varied in different parts of the country, and in state and federal courthouses in the same city. All concerned, the brief said, “would benefit from this court addressing these fundamental issues about the protections available to a free press in a democracy.”
The case against Mr. Sterling concerns Operation Merlin, a C.I.A. plan to sabotage Iranian nuclear research by having a Russian scientist sell flawed blueprints to Iran. A chapter of Mr. Risen’s book described the operation.
In 2011, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema largely quashed the subpoena to Mr. Risen. “A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s notebook,” she wrote, adding that prosecutors could prove their case against Mr. Sterling without Mr. Risen’s testimony.
A divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit reversed, relying on the Supreme Court’s Branzburg decision.
“Clearly, Risen’s direct, firsthand account of the criminal conduct indicted by the grand jury cannot be obtained by alternative means, as Risen is without dispute the only witness who can offer this critical testimony,” Judge William B. Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority.
In dissent, Judge Roger Gregory said that “the First Amendment was designed to counteract the very result the majority reaches today.”
“The majority exalts the interests of the government,” he wrote, “while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.”
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now to another story that has captured the attention of the news media and of Congress.
After new revelations about extensive investigations involving the Associated Press and FOX News, three former Justice Department officials are defending the leak inquiries.
Writing in The New York Times, they said today: "The criticism of the decision to subpoena telephone toll records of AP journalists in an important leak investigation sends the wrong message to the government officials who are responsible for our national security."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today the key is to strike the right balance.
But what is that balance?
For that, we turn to Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer who routinely represents news organizations, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, now an attorney in private practice in New York City.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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