Last week, the Associated Press revealed that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records from AP reporters and editors after they ran a story last spring about the CIA quashing an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a passenger jet. Today on my America Weekend show, I talked about these revelations with Susan McGregor, assistant professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. I asked her what effect this will have on the right of a free press to report on our government, the impact on the use of anonymous sources, and whether a federal shield law would have helped protect the reporters and editors in this case.
Listen to our conversation here.
In this conversation, I reference an earlier interview with Robert Greenwald about his documentary on the Obama administration’s “War On Whistleblowers.” You can listen to that interview here.