AP CEO: Sources Are Reluctant To Talk After Phone Records Probe

[DonViejo]

By Daniel Politi | Posted Sunday, May 19, 2013, at 2:25 PM

The President and CEO of the Associated Press told CBS News that the Justice Department’s seizure of phone records was “unconstitutional” and has hurt the agency’s ability to report on the news. It’s not that the government doesn’t have the right to seize phone records, Gary Pruitt said, but the methodology was “so sweeping, so secretively, so abusively and harassingly overbroad" that it violated the Constitution.

While investigating the source of a leak that led to a story about a failed terror plot in Yemen, the Justice Department "issued a secret subpoena for the phone toll records for 21 AP phone lines and these were phones lines for reporters, direct lines, cell phones, home phones but also the office numbers," Pruitt said. The Justice Department is required to make its request as narrowly as possible. Plus, it should have informed the AP first, although it claimed an exception to that rule saying it would threaten the investigation. “But they have not explained why it would and we can't understand why it would."

Now AP reporters are having trouble getting sources to talk. "Officials that would normally talk to us, and people we talk to in the normal course of news gathering, are already saying they're a little reluctant to talk to us,” Pruitt said. “They fear that they will be monitored by the government."

###

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/05/19/gary_pruitt_ap_ceo_calls_phone_records_probe_unconstitutional.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[graham4anything]

1. What AP did was indeed treason. And put who knows how many lives in danger.AP CEO should be fired

[jberryhill]

2. I'm sure the GOP will be willing to give them fake email quotes

[Life Long Dem]

3. AP means the Republicans are reluctant to give more lies.

[dballance]

4. I'd care if I thought they, the AP & media in general were effective.

Does this mean those poor babies like John Karl might have to actually go work on a story now? That is, rather than just waiting for a GOP staffer to call them with BS.

[DevonRex]

5. AP is nothing but tabloid junk now.

Who would talk to them except people who've been abducted by aliens? Unless they fire Karl. As long as they stand by him they're gambling their reputation on his. That's not only a bad bet, it's a stupid one since everybody already knows he didn't actually see the original emails even though he said he did. That's what's called a lie.

[CJCRANE]

6. There is plenty of interesting information out there that isn't classified.

It doesn't all have to be scoops, leaks, gossip, rumors and speculation from anonymous sources.