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Trust in media plummeting to all-time lows isn't exactly a Trump phenomenon, either. All-time lows were hit several times under the previous administration, bottoming out in 2016 under President Obama with just 32 percent of the public overall saying they trusted the Fourth Estate, including 14 percent of Republicans and just 30 percent of independents. Speaking of the 44th president, some may ask where the press was on the coordinated editorial front when Mr. Obama and his Department of Justice (DOJ), led by then-Attorney General Eric Holder, acted as "the greatest enemy to press freedom" since the Nixon years. That's a quote from New York Times reporter James Risen in 2015 — and that's only the beginning from him, as it pertained to the Obama DOJ jailing journalists for trying to do their jobs. “Eric Holder has sent a message to dictators around the world that it is okay to crack down on the press and jail journalists,†Risen tweeted in Feb. 2015. “Eric Holder leaves behind a wrecked First Amendment.â€â€œEric Holder managed to destroy any semblance of a reporter’s privilege in the United States,†he continued. “This is Eric Holder's true legacy on press freedom: ‘There is no First Amendment reporter's privilege.’ From DOJ brief in my case.â€It wasn't just Risen who felt the effects of the Obama administration's treatment of journalists but another reporter with a similar name, James Rosen, then Fox News' State Department correspondent. In Rosen's case, the Obama Justice Department not only spied on him and even his parents but labeled him a "criminal co-conspirator and a flight risk" in order to gain access to his phone records and emails under the 1917 Espionage Act. Just picture Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions doing such a thing to a CNN or NBC reporter. If you're not seeing a media apocolypse in terms of the reaction, please adjust your headset.
Mojo Risen really lit into Holder and Obama there. And it's all forgotten as though it never happened.
