- “At 6:05 a.m. on Jan. 14, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation converged at the door of Hannah Natanson, a reporter at The Washington Post. They had a search warrant and entered her home, seizing her iPhone and other devices … The event put Ms. Natanson’s name among the targets of the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign against news organizations. There was no precedent for the Justice Department’s searching a reporter’s home in connection with a national security leak investigation, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. But on Monday, Ms. Natanson was recognized for something else: a Pulitzer Prize.” First, the F.B.I. Searched Her Home. Then, She Won a Pulitzer. [Gift Article]
- “Nearly three weeks after The Atlantic reported that some government officials were alarmed by FBI Director Kash Patel’s behavior, including conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences, MS NOW reported this morning that the bureau has ‘launched a criminal leak investigation’ that focuses on the Atlantic journalist who wrote the story, Sarah Fitzpatrick.” The FBI Is Reportedly Investigating a Leak to an Atlantic Writer. [Gift Article]
- The Guardian – World’s most powerful are suing media outlets before stories are even published, says editor. Powerful figures are increasingly threatening to sue media outlets before they have even published a story, the editor of the Wall Street Journal has said. Emma Tucker, whose title is being sued by Donald Trump over its reporting of his relationship with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said the act of reporting itself was now under threat from the use of lawfare. She said the tactic of threatening to sue newspapers before they had published a story had become an established PR strategy of the powerful amid greater distrust of the established media. “One of the biggest challenges to us now isn’t so much what happens afterwards,” Tucker told the Truth Tellers journalism summit. “It’s what happens before you even publish. That is a massive challenge for us…”
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Kash Patel’s war against The Atlantic intensifies (New York Magazine) / The Atlantic follows up bombshell Kash Patel exposé with new exclusive on his fav boozy swag (Mediaite) / ‘Atlantic EIC Jeffrey Goldberg, in a note to the mag’s mailing list titled “Inside the Kash Patel story”: We live in a period in which some media organizations buckle under government pressure. I promise you that we will never give in. If a story is true, we will publish it.’ (Corbin Bolies)