The media has whined and exercised severe hyperbole when it comes to their responses to President Trump bashing them. It’s about time. It’s partially why the president is so appealing to his base. He doesn’t take any crap. He dishes it out and if the press doesn’t like it, too bad. He’s still president. He still won the election, and there is nothing they can do about it. What the press has done is thrown an epic tantrum over the 2016 election and the subsequent nothing burger that followed in that was the DOJ probe into Russian collusion led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. With no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to impeach the president, the media went into full forth again. The fact is they suck. They always have; we just have a fighter in the White House who tells it to their faces on a nearly daily basis. In the meantime, the press has undergone a ridiculous campaign noting their self-importance, with some even equating to what they do to firefighting and first responder work. No, Trump won't jail journalists, which has become a favorite liberal media tale, with the pervasive “my six-year-old asked me” stories that these clowns post on social media to preface their lecture about how Trump criticizing them is bad for our society. Nope. It’s good…because these clowns are all really just a softer form of political operative. So, what’s this have to do with the People’s Republic of California? Oh yeah—while the liberal media whines about Trump, California has been engaging in a war on the press, specifically the city of San Francisco, who are now raiding the homes of reporters in order to unveil their sources.
The late San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi passed away in February while at the apartment of a female companion named “Catalina,” who was not his wife. He had heart issues, and the combination of cocaine and alcohol that were in his system at the time of his death probably didn’t help. Adachi did not have a good relationship with the police department. And freelance reporter Bryan Carmody obtained a police report into Adachi’s death just hours later, which he sold to local media. The report was meant to be confidential. There were allegations that this was a premeditated leak with the goal of damaging Adachi’s character, especially due to his less than stellar relationship with the police department. The police came to Carmody’s door twice. The first time the reporter admitted they were very nice, but he refused their request to reveal his source. The next time they came, it was guns drawn (via NYT):
When two San Francisco police officers knocked on Bryan Carmody’s door in April they politely requested that Mr. Carmody, a freelance videographer, reveal who had leaked a police report to him about the mysterious death of the city’s public defender.
“They were nice about it,” Mr. Carmody said. “Of course I said, ‘No, I’m not going to tell you guys.’”
But when a dozen officers returned to his home on Friday, this time their guns were drawn and they came equipped with a search warrant, a sledgehammer and a battering ram.
In an interview Monday, as concern spread among journalists and civil rights activists about his treatment, Mr. Carmody said his wrists were still sore from being handcuffed for six hours while the police raided his house and seized laptops, phones and hard drives — including all the images and documents he had archived from his 29-year career as a reporter and cameraman.
[…]
The raid has raised alarm among free press advocates who question why two trial court judges allowed a search for communication about the leaked document, which was described in the search warrant as “stolen or embezzled” property. Free speech advocates have also questioned why two F.B.I. agents were present during the raid.
The Police Department did not return calls about the investigation. A spokeswoman in the F.B.I.’s San Francisco office confirmed the agents’ presence but declined to say how they were involved.
[…]
Mr. Carmody obtained a police report soon after Mr. Adachi’s death that said the public defender collapsed in an apartment with a woman who was not his wife. Supporters of Mr. Adachi said they suspected that the Police Department had leaked the report to tarnish the reputation of its longtime adversary: Mr. Adachi had campaigned against police abuses, including a scandal involving racist text messages among officers. Confronted with the subsequent outrage, the police started an investigation into the leak.
An autopsy released a month after his death revealed that Mr. Adachi, 59, died from a mixture of cocaine, alcohol and a weakened heart. The female friend had called 911 after Mr. Adachi collapsed in a loaned apartment.
Carmody told The Washington Post that when the police raided his house, they treated him like a drug dealer:
About 10 officers from the San Francisco Police Department were bashing the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond neighborhood with a sledgehammer, he said. It was just after 8 o’clock in the morning.
Carmody called out and said he would let them into the house. The officers showed him a search warrant and proceeded to go through his home — from “top to bottom” he says — with their guns drawn.
“They treated me like I was some kind of drug dealer," he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Carmody was being raided in connection with a criminal investigation.
Two weeks before, police investigators showed up at his home to ask him, politely he says, to identify the source who provided him with a confidential police report about the February death of the city’s public defender, Jeff Adachi. Carmody, who said he worked with three local television news stations on the story, declined.
Oh, and even liberal America is disconcerted that an actual issue of press freedom has occurred…in deep blue California:
Many were surprised that this latest chapter in this saga came in the Bay Area.
“If feels as if this anti-press sentiment has penetrated even liberal San Francisco,” Ed Wasserman, the dean of Berkeley’s journalism school said in a phone interview. “There’s a sense of entitlement and empowerment that law enforcement now feels, thanks to the anti-press contagion that the administration has propagated. I find it very disquieting.”
Oh, the irony is deep. Trump hasn’t jailed any journalists or ordered raids, but in blue cesspool of San Francisco, not revealing your sources as a member of the media could bring police and sledgehammers to your residence. On the issue of press freedom, or what the liberal media thinks is an issue, it seems we have not just a case of friendly fire, but a Democratic state actually taking the mantle of using police powers to compel reporters to spill their sources. Welcome to progressive America.
