The report–which was written by Leonard Downie, Jr., Arizona State University journalism professor and former Washington Post executive editor, with additional reporting by Sara Rafsky, CPJ’s research associate for the Americas–received widespread coverage in the United States, including on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Huffington Post Live, and NPR’s On the Media.
The report found that the Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks and other efforts to control information has chilled the conversation between journalists and their sources. Any restriction on this conversation inevitably reverberates around the globe. The report, which was mentioned by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian, also received a great deal of global media attention, including in Brazil, where it had recently been announced that the U.S. National Security Agency was monitoring the communications of its president, Dilma Rousseff, and other senior officials.
The administration responded to Politico about the findings of CPJ’s report. Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, defended the administration’s “commitment to reforming Washington,” and said that its “continued efforts seek to promote accountability, provide people with useful information, and harness the dispersed knowledge of the American people.”