• ‘Some in the media refuse to meet with’ Eric  Holder, wrote top DNC flack Brad Woodhouse. ‘Kind of forfeits your right [to]  gripe.’
• The DO staff ‘can just find how [reporters]  feel via subpoenaed email and phone records,’ snarked one Buzzfeed  journalist
• ‘Jesus, Brad,’ came a reply from Politico’s  top media reporter
• ‘Notice how people on both sides of the  aisle are pointing out how dumb that is?’ wrote a Daily Caller  blogger.

By  David Martosko In Washington

PUBLISHED: 21:07 EST, 30 May  2013 |  UPDATED: 08:37  EST, 31 May 2013

The U.S. Department of Justice has offered  major news organizations a chance to sit down with Eric Holder, the embattled  attorney general, for a briefing a Q-and-A session about his agency’s intrusive  surveillance of reporters, but there is one catch: The entire session must be  ‘off the record,’ meaning reporters couldn’t write anything at all about  it.

Most of the media outlets invited to the  meeting have announced that they’re boycotting it, including the Associated  Press and Fox News – the two whose phone records and emails were secretly seized  as part of DOJ investigations into national security leaks. And Brad Woodhouse,  the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, is  angry.

He tweeted Thursday that President Barack  Obama asked Holder ‘to review how leak investigations are done but some in the  media refuse to meet with him.’

That, Woodhouse said, ‘[k]ind of forfeits  your right [to] gripe.’

Cue the outrage, which came equally from  journalists on the political right and left.

 

Woodhouse started the fracas by slamming the Associated  Press, Fox News, the New York Times, the Huffington Post and other news outlets  that refused to attend an ‘off the record’ briefing with Eric Holder, the  embattled attorney general

Don Surber, an editorial writer at The Daily  Mail – not this news organization’s print edition in London, but a daily  newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia – snarked in a tweeted reply that  ‘forfeits your right’ is ‘the motto of this administration.’

‘Oh, and Brad Woodhouse,’ Surber followed up  in a later tweet, ‘your rights come from God. You cannot forfeit  them.’

Politico media reporter Dylan Byers was more  succinct. ‘Jesus, Brad,’ he tweeted.

Gregg Keller, the executive director of the  American Conservative Union, seemed to take joy in seeing the left-leaning  Politico cross swords with the Democratic Party. His tweeted response consisted  of one long guffaw: ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.’

Byers’ news organization is among a list of  very few that have said they will meet with the attorney general on his terms.  Others include ABC News, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the  LA Times and Chicago Tribune, which share a Washington bureau chief in  common.

 

Politico’s Dylan Byers, who reports on the media, is on  a first-name basis with the top Democratic communicator but didn’t like what he  heard

 

Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski slapped back, referring to  the Department of Justice’s now-scandalous seizure of phone records and emails  from AP and Fox News journalists

 

‘TV’s Andy Levy,’ as he’s introduced each night on the  Fox News program ‘Red Eye,’ took a break from his daily yuk-fest to launch a  serious barb in Woodhouse’s direction

CNN, CBS News, Reuters, McClatchy,  The New York Times and The Huffington Pot  have joined Fox News and The Associated Press in refusing to attend.

The Washington Post’s agreement to meet with  Holder has raised eyebrows in the nation’s capital, but Post executive editor  Marty Baron defended his decision on his newspaper’s media blog.

‘I prefer that any meeting be on the record,’  Baron said. But ‘journalists routinely participate in off-the-record sessions,  whether they prefer those conditions or not, and then continue to report on  events.

‘I am going to this meeting in order to  represent our interests as journalists and to raise our concerns. I’ll also  listen to what the Attorney General has to say. I trust that our journalists  will report on this as vigorously as they would any other  subject.

 

Ron Fournier, the editorial director at National Journal  and a respected voice inside the DC beltway, took isdue with how Woodhouse  suggested government should balance the press’s First Amendment protections with  national security issues

 

Is Woodhouse right? Journalists do meet with sources for  ‘off the record’ conversations all the time …

 

There’s the rub: Reporters set the terms. Sources can’t  force journalists to listen — something he thinks an experienced political  spokesman should know

Andrew Kaczynski, a BuzzFeed Politics  journalist who is a widely acknowledged master of reporting on political  archival videos, connected the DOJ’s request for secret meetings with its  equally secretive snooping on the AP and Fox News.

If Holder and his staff want reactions from  journalists, he tweeted, ‘I suppose they can just find how they feel via  subpoenaed email and phone records.’

The Daily Caller’s house blogger, Sean  Medlock – a conservative humorist  who writes under the pseudonym ‘Jim  Treacher,’ was quick to pour salt in Woodhouse’s wounds.

‘Notice how people on both sides of the aisle  are pointing out how dumb that is?’ he wrote. ‘You must be doing all kinds of  things right.’

 

Conservative partisans aplenty complemented journalists  from left-leaning outlets like Politico and Buzzfeed. Surber is an editorial  writer for that ‘other’ Daily Mail, the newspaper in Charleston, West  Virginia

Josh Earnest, the White House’s principal  deputy press secretary, took questions from reporters aboard Air Force One on  Thursday, and the topic quickly turned to Holder’s attempted charm offensive  aimed at journalists.

‘You can understand that a meeting about  concerns journalists have about the First Amendment being off the record is sort  of on its face hypocritical, don’t you?’ asked one reporter, according to the  White House’s transcript.

‘No,’ Earnest replied. ‘I don’t actually see  that. … I don’t think there’s any doubting the seriousness with which the  attorney general is pursuing what he has identified and what the president has  identified as a genuine priority. And we are genuinely interested in the input,  the opinion, the advice, the expertise of leaders of prominent media  organizations.’

‘Is the President at all concerned that  Holder is just under so much scrutiny at this point that it might affect his  ability to get his job done?’ the reporter pressed Earnest?

‘Not in the least,’ came his  reply.

 

New York Post columnist and Commentary magazine editor  John Podhoretz sniped at the Democratic spokesman’s tweet-grammar, among other  thigns

 

The AIDS Policy Project took issue with Woodhouse and  hat-tipped the New York Times for being among the first to show ‘some spine’ in  turning the administration down flat

But reporters themselves – those who tweet,  in any event – saw the White House as hypocritical and Woodhouse as  foolish.

‘Wow,’ Fox News personality Andy Levy, a  co-star of the nightly show Red Eye, tweeted at Woodhouse. ‘It’s hard to believe  Americans are cynical about politics with people like you around.’

National Journal editorial editor director  Ron Fournier, a former Associated Press bureau chief in Washington, checked his  sarcasm at the door and engaged Woodhouse seriously.

‘The balance between security/liberty  deserves better than your spin,’ he wrote.

There’s ‘lot of spin on both sides, Woodhouse  wrote, in the his only tweeted reply to a reporter. ‘Are journos not going  saying they never meet with subjects off the record? Happens  everyday.’

‘On our terms,’ Fournier snapped. ‘Not the  government’s.’

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‘Jim Treacher,’ The Daily Caller’s pseudonymous in-house  humor blogger, noted the bi-artisan tsunami and kicked Woodhouse while he was  down. his Twitter avatar is a nod to President Obama’s autobiographical  confession that he once ate dog meat while growing up

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