http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2333676/Top-Democratic-spokesman-causes-Twitter-explosion-complaint-news-organizations-boycotting-record-briefing-US-attorney-general.html'Some in the media refuse to meet with' Eric Holder, wrote top DNC flack Brad Woodhouse. 'Kind of forfeits your right [to] gripe.'
The DO staff 'can just find how [reporters] feel via subpoenaed email and phone records,' snarked one Buzzfeed journalist
'Jesus, Brad,' came a reply from Politico's top media reporter
'Notice how people on both sides of the aisle are pointing out how dumb that is?' wrote a Daily Caller blogger.
The U.S. Department of Justice has offered major news organizations a chance to sit down with Eric Holder, the embattled attorney general, for a briefing a Q-and-A session about his agency's intrusive surveillance of reporters, but there is one catch: The entire session must be 'off the record,' meaning reporters couldn't write anything at all about it.
Most of the media outlets invited to the meeting have announced that they're boycotting it, including the Associated Press and Fox News - the two whose phone records and emails were secretly seized as part of DOJ investigations into national security leaks. And Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, is angry.
He tweeted Thursday that President Barack Obama asked Holder 'to review how leak investigations are done but some in the media refuse to meet with him.'
That, Woodhouse said, '[k]ind of forfeits your right [to] gripe.'
Cue the outrage, which came equally from journalists on the political right and left.
Don Surber, an editorial writer at The Daily Mail - not this news organization's print edition in London, but a daily newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia - snarked in a tweeted reply that 'forfeits your right' is 'the motto of this administration.'
'Oh, and Brad Woodhouse,' Surber followed up in a later tweet, 'your rights come from God. You cannot forfeit them.'
Politico media reporter Dylan Byers was more succinct. 'Jesus, Brad,' he tweeted.
Gregg Keller, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, seemed to take joy in seeing the left-leaning Politico cross swords with the Democratic Party. His tweeted response consisted of one long guffaw: 'HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.'
Byers' news organization is among a list of very few that have said they will meet with the attorney general on his terms. Others include ABC News, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, which share a Washington bureau chief in common.
Lots more good stuff at link.
