Think about this quote by New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson

[ProSense]

<...>

"I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations," she continued. "The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It's on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with."

<...>

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/jill-abramson-this-is-the-most-secretive-white-house-181742.html

From 2006, a piece criticizing the NYT for sitting on the story about Bush spying.

Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

By BYRON CALAME

THE New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency.

For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States.

I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor, on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future.

Despite this stonewalling, my objectives today are to assess the flawed handling of the original explanation of the article's path into print, and to offer a few thoughts on some factors that could have affected the timing of the article. My intention is to do so with special care, because my 40-plus years of newspapering leave me keenly aware that some of the toughest calls an editor can face are involved here - those related to intelligence gathering, election-time investigative articles and protection of sources. On these matters, reasonable disagreements can abound inside the newsroom.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01publiceditor.html

The NYT and others have used the leak investigations, many of them launched under Bush, to criticize Obama on transparency. Yet their claims, including the quote above (citing fucking Reagan), ignore that they let Bush off the hook in terms of their own reporting, and it wasn't just holding the spying story for more than a year.

NY Times's excuse for not calling waterboarding "torture" doesn't hold water
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x361953

Transparency isn't about prosecuting leaks. The process of providing access to records is key to transparency. Past administrations were horrible in terms of this. In fact, the administration put many policies in place to change that culture.

CREW AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SETTLE LAWSUIT OVER MISSING BUSH WHITE HOUSE EMAILS:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/index.php/press/entry/crew-and-obama-settle-lawsuit-over-missing-bush-white-house-emails/

CREW AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATION REACH HISTORIC LEGAL SETTLEMENT – WHITE HOUSE TO POST VISITOR RECORDS ONLINE
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8626066

Transparency, Declassification, and the Obama Presidency

By Lee White

<...>

Steven Aftergood (Director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and the publisher of the blog Secrecy News)

In retrospect, the Administration erred in making its early public statements promising unprecedented transparency. The President raised expectations so high that the ensuing disappointment was inevitable. The smarter move would have been to demonstrate openness in actions, not in words, and to exceed public expectations.

<...>

Thomas Blanton (Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.)

There are obviously some differences of opinion on this subject. My own is that too often we conflate "the Obama administration" with actions of specific agencies or specific bureaucrats, when in fact the policy decision at the top has been pretty good, just stymied by ongoing bureaucratic obfuscation in the middle and the bottom. Or even worse, continuity by federal career employees of Bush policies that the White House has not succeeded in changing.

<...>

Anne Weismann (Chief Counsel for Citizen's for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-CREW)

In my assessment, the administration's record on transparency is mixed. Without question, President Obama put strong, pro-transparency policies in place that really set the benchmark for a more open government. The problem has been in implementing those policies at the agency level. Agencies have been encouraged to make proactive disclosures, but they have shown little regard for the quality of and public interest in the information they are posting. And the administration has not provided them much guidance on this front.

<...>

Patrice McDermott (Executive Director of OpenTheGovernment.Org)

I think it is a very mixed bag. There are strong indications that the initiatives and efforts of the Obama Administration have begun to institutionalize changes in the attitudes of components of the Executive Branch, mostly in the area of domestic right-to-know. While the effectiveness of FOIA as a disclosure and accountability tool for the public continues to lag behind the promises the President and the Attorney General made, much more attention is being directed by agencies to improving the process, and agencies are putting more information out proactively (without requiring or waiting for a FOIA request)—and not just the usual stuff they want you to know. The greatest frustration on the domestic policy front has been the ongoing changes in policy personnel in the White House, creating problems of follow-through and consistency.

<...>

- more -

http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2012/1209/Transparency-Declassification-and-Obama-Presidency.cfm

[frazzled]

1. Well, I've thought about it

And it comports with what I had been thinking about the Times's robust editorial stance regarding clemency for Snowden. Of course they want that, because they need the hackers to be their excuse to print the things they themselves would never report (and have never reported, because of a kind of journalistic "ethics" they've adopted regarding classified material). They can keep their noses clean while releasing documents obtained by others. It's a triple win: they get to end-run around their own rules about revealing classified material, sell lots of papers, and not even have to pay reporters!

[ProSense]

2. It's telling that

"They can keep their noses clean while releasing documents obtained by others. It's a triple win: they get to end-run around their own rules about revealing classified material, sell lots of papers, and not even have to pay reporters!"

...the NYT wants to portray consulting with the WH on what is news as a good thing. That was one of the biggest problems with the Bush administration, and not just the press releases as news, but also the plants like Armstrong Williams.

[TwilightGardener]

3. Wait...I'm sorry, wasn't the NYT totally, insanely involved with helping Cheney

gin up the Iraq war? Why would I care what they think of Obama's drive to suppress leaks?

[Rex]

4. The NYT also sat on a story that could have changed the outcome of the 2004 elections.

Like I would trust that rag.

[ProSense]

6. Yes, that too

"gin up the Iraq war"

Wonder if that was one of the times they "dealt directly with the Bush White House"?

[okaawhatever]

5. Give me a friggin break. I only got to the first of your quotes before I realized how desperate

these "stories" might be. Abramson is a pathetic liar. Of the seven investigations, how many of them started under
Bush? I'll give you a hint: look at how many were indicted shortly after Obama took office.
Abramson is still pissed because she hates Obama for getting her kicked at a public speaking event.

Democrats are typically the party that educates themselves on issues. Clearly, that isn't the case here.

[ProSense]

7. Well,

"Abramson is a pathetic liar."

...it's clear she laments not having the same access to Obama as she did to Bush. News isn't supposed to be filtered through and vetted by the WH.

The NYT and other news organizations forgot that during the Bush years.

[ProSense]

8. Kick! n/t