Post by Daniel on Mar 31, 2016 9:01:43 GMT -5
The Least Transparent Administration in History
Roger Aronoff — March 31, 2016
For all of President Obama’s assurances that his administration would be the most transparent in history, it has been anything but. Yet the mainstream media fail to cover, again and again, evidence of a corrupt administration hiding regulations from Congress and controlling the press.
President Obama continues to lecture the press on how to do its job properly, criticizing the depth of reporting on the election. “I think the electorate would be better served if we spent less time focused on the he said/she said back-and-forth of our politics,” said President Obama on March 28 at the 2016 Toner Prize ceremony. “If I say that the world is round and someone else says it’s flat, that’s worth reporting, but you might also want to report on a bunch of scientific evidence that seems to support the notion that the world is round,” he continued. “And that shouldn’t be buried in paragraph five or six of the article.”
As we have often reported, the media bury information damaging to the Obama administration deep within their articles—if they publish it at all. Yet Obama criticizes the mainstream media for the very techniques that help him emerge unscathed from scandal after scandal.
As Accuracy in Media (AIM) chairman Don Irvine points out, members of the media have found Obama’s posturing insulting. “There’s a man lecturing the media on how to do their business,” Joe Scarborough responded, according to The Washington Examiner. “The man who has not sat down for an extended interview with The Washington Post in seven and a half years, and yet gladly submits himself to being interviewed by YouTube stars who sit in bathtubs with milk and Froot Loops.”
Occasionally reporters acknowledge how far the administration has gone in stifling the free press. “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David Sanger of The New York Times. Similarly, his Times colleague James Risen has called the administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”
It is one thing to block the press and public from accessing national security secrets or other sensitive information, but it is another to deny Congress the opportunity to review the regulations that the federal government is putting into effect.
“The Obama administration imposed over 1,000 new rules, one-third of all proposed in 2015, without first following the law and giving Congress a look and chance to kill them, according to a new report,” writes Paul Bedard for The Washington Examiner. “The Congressional Review Act (CRA) requires that agencies pass new rules by Congress before they are imposed, explaining the impact of each and whether they will have a major or minor economic impact.”
In other words, President Obama is using his executive discretion to hide many of his unilateral actions from Congress, making it all the more easy for him to wield executive powers by fiat with no real accountability.
continue reading
www.aim.org/aim-column/the-least-transparent-administration-in-history/
Roger Aronoff — March 31, 2016
For all of President Obama’s assurances that his administration would be the most transparent in history, it has been anything but. Yet the mainstream media fail to cover, again and again, evidence of a corrupt administration hiding regulations from Congress and controlling the press.
President Obama continues to lecture the press on how to do its job properly, criticizing the depth of reporting on the election. “I think the electorate would be better served if we spent less time focused on the he said/she said back-and-forth of our politics,” said President Obama on March 28 at the 2016 Toner Prize ceremony. “If I say that the world is round and someone else says it’s flat, that’s worth reporting, but you might also want to report on a bunch of scientific evidence that seems to support the notion that the world is round,” he continued. “And that shouldn’t be buried in paragraph five or six of the article.”
As we have often reported, the media bury information damaging to the Obama administration deep within their articles—if they publish it at all. Yet Obama criticizes the mainstream media for the very techniques that help him emerge unscathed from scandal after scandal.
As Accuracy in Media (AIM) chairman Don Irvine points out, members of the media have found Obama’s posturing insulting. “There’s a man lecturing the media on how to do their business,” Joe Scarborough responded, according to The Washington Examiner. “The man who has not sat down for an extended interview with The Washington Post in seven and a half years, and yet gladly submits himself to being interviewed by YouTube stars who sit in bathtubs with milk and Froot Loops.”
Occasionally reporters acknowledge how far the administration has gone in stifling the free press. “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David Sanger of The New York Times. Similarly, his Times colleague James Risen has called the administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”
It is one thing to block the press and public from accessing national security secrets or other sensitive information, but it is another to deny Congress the opportunity to review the regulations that the federal government is putting into effect.
“The Obama administration imposed over 1,000 new rules, one-third of all proposed in 2015, without first following the law and giving Congress a look and chance to kill them, according to a new report,” writes Paul Bedard for The Washington Examiner. “The Congressional Review Act (CRA) requires that agencies pass new rules by Congress before they are imposed, explaining the impact of each and whether they will have a major or minor economic impact.”
In other words, President Obama is using his executive discretion to hide many of his unilateral actions from Congress, making it all the more easy for him to wield executive powers by fiat with no real accountability.
continue reading
www.aim.org/aim-column/the-least-transparent-administration-in-history/
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