CBS Hits Holder's 'Outrageous Overreach', But Defers to Obama to Act

Matthew Balan | May 24, 2013
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The 24 May 2013 edition of CBS This Morning, unlike NBC's Today, briefly picked up on NBC journalist Michael Isikoff's significant reporting from Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder's "signed off on a controversial search warrant" against Fox News' James Rosen and "authorized seizure of his private emails." However, unlike their strong "Obama's war on journalism" label of the scandal on Thursday, Gayle King and Bob Schieffer gave a more subdued response to this new detail.

King pointed out that "Holder signed off on allowing an investigation into some reporters' e-mails", but merely wondered if President Obama was in an "awkward position" as a result. Schieffer did assert that "there's no question in my mind this was an outrageous overreach", but didn't call for an investigation into the administration's surveillance of Rosen and the AP.

GAYLE KING: The President also said yesterday, Bob, that he wants to protect journalists from the government's overreach. And now comes news this morning that Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on allowing an investigation into some reporters' e-mails. Is that an awkward position?

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I think what's interesting here – the President has said that he wants Attorney General Holder to be the one who does this review about their protecting reporters' rights and all of that, when it is the Justice Department, of course, that has caused all this controversy. I mean, the President's saying he wants to review this and he wants to protect reporters' sources. I think a lot of journalistic organizations and the people who run them are going to view this with skepticism. They'll go back to the old Ronald Reagan 'trust, but verify', because the last time they introduced the shield law, it was the President and this administration that watered it down and it – and it just laid there. Nothing ever happened. They're going to now reintroduce that same legislation. But I think a lot of people are just waiting to see how serious the President is about this, because there's no question, in the minds of many journalistic organizations – and there's no question in my mind – this was an outrageous overreach when they subpoenaed all these records at the Associated Press and some of these other instances as well.

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