What's Next for Trump's War With the Media?
Un-American? On the contrary, Mr. Trump, welcome to Washington.
Get used to it. You are hardly the first president to discover that our great ship of state leaks like a sieve.
Washington's biggest scandals often begin with leaks. Think of the Pentagon Papers, the Iran-Contra affair, the Panama Papers or the Wikileaks disclosures by soldier Chelsea Manning and former CIA employee Edward Snowden.
Leaks big and small are so common that Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at Brookings Institution and veteran of four presidential administrations beginning with Dwight Eisenhower's, once categorized types of leaks in a book.
They included the "ego leak" to satisfy a sense of self, the "policy leak" to bring attention to a proposed policy change, the "trial balloon leak" to test out a proposed idea, the "whistleblower leak" to bring attention to a problem or idea via the press after getting nowhere internally, and the "animus leak" to settle grudges.
Yet, as much as every president is frustrated and infuriated by leaks, the laws against leaking are almost never enforced. That could change under President Trump, who ironically would have new tools left by President Barack Obama's administration.
A 2013 report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, on whose board I happen to sit, found that Obama had pursued the most aggressive "war on leaks" since President Richard Nixon's leak-fixing "plumbers" led to the Watergate scandal.
Under Obama the Department of Justice pursued not only sources and whistleblowers but also journalists, including James Rosen at Fox News and Jim Risen at The New York Times. As with most earlier cases of this sort, the government backed away from that pursuit.
Is Trump just blowing off steam through his Twitter account, or could his war escalate into full legal combat, putting reporters in jeopardy of jail for doing their jobs? He might find that pursuit to be more trouble than it's worth. The public might prefer to have the information than see journalists go to jail.
Besides putting reporters in jail might make just backfire and make journalists, Trump's favorite foils, actually look sympathetic. He might well prefer to leave us free -- and an easier scapegoat to kick around some more.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
