CNN's Carol Costello: Obama's People Are 'Nasty'

Increasingly, the largely quiescent mainstream media has been noticing how badly the Obama administration treats them. The latest to make mention of this antagonistic relationship is one of Obama’s biggest boosters, CNN’s Carol Costello.

During a discussion of the fired White House “Twitter mole” on the October 23 broadcast of CNN Newsroom, Costello agreed with panelist Jason Johnson that the Obama administration is incredibly thin skinned. But Costello, normally a shill for the Obama administration, went even farther in her criticism.

“President Obama’s people can be quite nasty. They don’t like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they’re not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job,” she said.

Costello is not the only one to notice this anti-media attitude from the White House lately.

Back in February, veteran journalist Bob Woodward claimed he was threatened by a White House official when he wrote a piece that Obama’s team did not like. Woodward was attacked by a long list of the usual D.C. media suspects for making the revelation.

Not long after that, Lanny Davis also reported that the Washington Times had been threatened by the administration over a column he wrote. Davis was told his credentials might be revoked as punishment.

In June, Glenn Greenwald told Piers Morgan that Obama “has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody.”

In August, left-wing magazine Mother Jones complained that Obama and his supporters had created a corrosive “cult of Obama” that was endangering freedom of speech in the media.

Only weeks ago, the Washington Post published a long piece calling the Obama administration the “most closed, control-freak administration” ever seen. The piece went on to paint Barack Obama’s White House as being presided over by a paranoid, secretive, even vindictive president and said that journalists have become afraid of their own shadows for fear that Obama is spying on them.

The latter is in reference to the May scandal of the secret seizure by the Department of Justice of thousands of private phone records of over 100 reporters at the Associated Press.

All this from the same Obama who came into office in 2008 saying he would have the “strictest ethics rules” and the most transparent administration in history.

But none of this is new. It has been going on since Obama started running for president in 2007.

• In Sept. of 2008, Time Magazine felt that Obama’s aloofness might not make him such a good leader .
• In August of 2008, Obama’s campaign tried to shut down a Chicago WGN radio show.
• In October of 2008, the Los Angeles Times worried that Obama was so aloof from the press during the campaign that journalists never got to know the candidate.
• By December of 2008, Obama had been so distant from the press that CNN began complaining that “we barely know” Obama.
• In Jan. 2009, the Chicago Sun-Times was shut out by President Obama.
• Also in January of 2009, the Associated Press complained that Obama ruled the media with an iron fist.
• In May of 2009, ABCs Jake Tapper reported that Obama shut out the press and used his own “reporters” at one time.
• Obama also slighted members of the press during his 2009 Christmas party.
• In May of 2010, the press became annoyed that Obama was avoiding the press and not having a “real press conference” in months.
• In March of 2011, VP Biden’s staff locked a journalist in a closet to keep him from reporting on the doings at a dinner party.

Yet, despite the shabby treatment they receive at his hands, the media continues to swoon for this president.