For Extra Credit: A Little Light Reading on Press Rights

With press rights very much in the news this week, here are some of the most noteworthy pieces I’ve come across on the subject.

1. Molly Redden of The New Republic writes that there really is a chilling effect on journalism from the Justice Department’s leak investigations, quoting the investigative journalist Jane Mayer: “It’s a huge impediment to reporting, and so ‘chilling’ isn’t quite strong enough. It’s more like freezing the whole process into a standstill.”

2. David A. Kaplan of Fortune magazine, who teaches First Amendment law at New York University, says the press should stop whining: “From the government’s perspective, lawlessness is a bad thing, and disclosure of secrets can endanger security. When the Justice Department, legally (so far as we know), wants to obtain evidence to prove law-breaking, it seems to me the press is entitled to no special protection.”

3. The former New York Times counsel James Goodale, writing in The Daily Beast, compares President Obama’s record on press rights to that of President Richard Nixon and recalls that Mr. Obama “deep-sixed” the press shield law he is now proposing.

4. Frank Rich of New York Magazine, formerly a Times columnist, calls the seizure of Associated Press phone records “the scandal with legs” for the president.

5. Thomas Stackpole of Mother Jones, with information from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, details the six indictments of government leakers during the Obama administration.

6. The New Yorker’s general counsel, Lynn Oberlander, analyzes the A.P. phone records case from a legal perspective: “Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts.”

7. Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution, writing for National Review Online, summarizes the recent troubles in the Obama administration: “ ‘Hope and change’ is fast becoming the 1973 Nixon White House.”

8. Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian writes about the media’s sudden interest in civil liberties, coming rather late in the troubled game, as he notes. In short, he writes, the issue is catching fire now because media organizations are now in the crosshairs: “It is remarkable how media reactions to civil liberties assaults are shaped almost entirely by who the victims are.”

A note to readers: My Sunday print column in the Review section examines and explains The Times’s policy on photographic integrity. After that, I’ll be off the grid for a few days.