DOJ Targeting Of Fox News Reporter James Rosen Risks Criminalizing Journalism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/doj-fox-news-james-rosen_n_3307422.html

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has moved beyond investigating and prosecuting leaks at an unprecedented level to claiming in court documents that committing a standard act of journalism may itself be criminal.

In 2010, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described a reporter, recently identified as Fox News' chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, as possibly being an “aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the leaking of classified information. Reyes made that argument in his request for a warrant for Rosen’s personal email account as part of a leak investigation.

The DOJ’s suggestion that Rosen may be guilty of criminal wrongdoing -- unlike the AP reporters and editors targeted over a May 2012 report about a CIA-thwarted terrorist plot -- is a key difference in the two simmering controversies. The DOJ’s broad use of subpoena power against the AP, revealed last week, has been widely condemned and seen by many as a threat to press freedom and a means to silence sources, including whistleblowers. The DOJ didn't contact the AP before secretly obtaining two months of journalists' phone records, nor did it contact Fox News before getting Rosen's records, a break with the way the government traditionally deals with media outlets.