Obama’s Efforts to Control Media Are ‘Most Aggressive’ Since Nixon, Report Says

The President Barack Obama administration has “chilled the flow of information on issues of great public interest,” according to a Thursday report that amounts to an indictment of the president’s campaign pledge of a more open government.

The report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit dedicated to global press freedoms, said Obama has “fallen short” on his promises of a transparent government while at the same time forging ahead with an unprecedented effort — the “most aggressive” since the President Richard M. Nixon administration —  to silence government officials and the media at large.

“Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations,” said the committee’s report, prepared by Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post.