Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume sounded a note of concern on Monday following a report that the Department of Justice surveilled one of the cable news network’s reporters, saying the Obama administration has set a potentially “chilling” precedent for the way government interacts with journalists.
“Where this crosses, it seems to me, a clear and bright line is when they subpoenaed the phone records on the pretext — I would call it a pretext, even indeed possibly a pretense — that this activity was criminal,” Hume said during an appearance on the network. “That places this administration in the position of saying that normal news-gathering activities of journalists are possibly criminal or are criminal. That is a little chilling.”
The Washington Post reported Sunday that a 2009 DOJ probe included the tracking of Fox reporter James Rosen’s comings and goings at the State Department, the timing of his calls with a State Department official and the acquisition of a search warrant for his personal emails.
Update: Hume took to Twitter later on Monday to clarify that the DOJ had obtained a search warrant and not a subpoena as he indicated during the interview.
I erred in earlier broadcast comments on @jamesrosenfnc case. Justice got a search warrant, not a subpoena. Result: Rosen wasn’t informed.
— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 20, 2013
