User:Dr. Charles Finley/sandbox

In February 2013, ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who covered Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, both Bushes, and Obama, said “The president’s day-to-day policy development... is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.” In October 2013, Compton said that Obama was the “least transparent of the seven presidents I’ve covered in terms of how he does his daily business.”

In May 2013, the New York Times wrote, "With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible 'co-conspirator' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news." In May 2013, the Washington Post wrote "To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based."

In October 2013, New York Times reporter David Sanger said, “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

In August 2013, the Obama administration illegally seized documents from the home of Audrey Hudson, a reporter who lived in Shady Side, Maryland. Michael Oreskes, a senior managing editor at Associated Press, said, “the Obama administration has been extremely controlling and extremely resistant to journalistic intervention.”

In February 2014, the Obama administration announced that it planned to put government employees inside TV stations and newspaper offices to monitor their activities.

In March 2014, New York Times reporter James Risen said Obama was, “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”

During one year of Obama’s presidency, from 2013 to 2014, the U.S. ranking on the World Press Freedom Index fell by 14 places, dropping from #32 to #46.

In November 2013, 38 major news organizations sent a letter to the Obama administration complaining about its lack of transparency. The letter was singed by all the major broadcast and cable networks, wire services, online services and newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the McClatchy Co., which owns 30 daily newspapers across the country. In July 2014, 38 media organizations (not necessarily the same ones) sent a letter to the Obama administration complaining about its lack of transparency. That letter can be read here.

In July 2009, White House reporter Helen Thomas said, "The point is the control from here. We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and have controlled... Nixon didn’t try to do that... They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try. What the hell do they think we are, puppets? They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them."