During a press briefing on Tuesday, White House spokesperson Jay Carney mechanically repeated a line when asked about the Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records, suggesting President Barack Obama supports a “balance” between freedom of the press and national security.

“The president feels strongly that we need a—the press to be able to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism, and you saw, when he was a senator, the president co-sponsor legislation that would have provided further protections for journalists in this regard,” Carney said. “And he is also mindful of the need for secret and classified information to remain secret and classified in order to protect our national security interests. So there are — there is a careful balance here that must be attained.”

A letter by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and co-signed by 46 news media organizations and associations was written to the US Defense Department requesting access to records during the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

Journalists covering the proceedings decided to send the letter because during court proceedings, such as the Article 32 hearing, the media has not been granted access to documents, including the court docket. This means journalists have had little to no idea of what was being discussed in regards to motions or orders filed.

The National Press Photographers’ Association (NPPA) wrote a letter to the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) after police interfered with an individual who was trying to record a young man being arrested. The incident occurred even though police had been given a directive not to interfere with citizens recording such events.

Under the LAPD’s guidelines, the OccupyLA media team–which includes photographers, videographers, livestreamers and reporters is not credentialed.

There is no Spanish-language media in the pool in a city where 4.7 million people are Spanish speaking. As Monday morning’s midnight-plus-one deadline drew near, there were news crews from the BBC and a Tokyo station present, as well as KMEX (Spanish language). I saw KTLA which was live streaming and had a helicopter overhead, KNBC, KABC, KCBS/KCAL and stringers in unmarked vans. Reporters I ran into included ones from the LA Times and USC’s Daily Trojan, and dozens of people live streaming and taking pictures for blogs and independent media. Oh and Andrew Breitbart was there talking to some dudes with scarves over their faces.

I’ve heard legal theories that the city of New York has the right to impose restrictions on the time, place and manner of the exercise of free speech. This will obviously play out in a court of law. I don’t know how anyone can reasonably look at the laws and say that the wholesale shutdown of the press, not only from the ground but from the air, is in any way a legal exercise.

Former Secretary of Education and CNN contributor William Bennett joins the ranks of those seeking to deflect attention away from the News Corp phone hacking scandal by comparing the scandal to WikiLeaks. He also joins a cadre of people, who are using the scandal to whip up hysteria about the “unethical” conduct of the press in America when it comes to coverage of national security matters.

If a memo instituting new security reviews, explicitly written in response to WikiLeaks, institutes a policy of reviewing contacts with the media, doesn’t that suggest they consider WikiLeaks to be media?

New York Times editor Bill Keller, explains how his organization checked with the US government before publishing any of the Wikileaks State Department cables, redacted all sensitive names from publication at the recommendation of the government, and basically did everything they could in advance to clear the release with the Administration. Carne Ross, the British Ambassador, “found it extraordinary” that the NYT would clear their releases with the US government.

And now, for their trouble, the Times has put themselves in the crosshairs of Joe Lieberman, the head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

On Thursday, the Pentagon banned four reporters from further on-site reporting of military commission trials at Gauntanamo, because they published the previously known name of a witness that the Pentagon was trying to present as anonymous. The impact of this assault on press freedom can be seen immediately in the corporate news coverage of this event, as only McClatchy continues to name the witness in its coverage of the banning.