Media snubbing U.S. attorney general’s attempt to get on top of leak scandal

WASHINGTON – An attempt by America’s embattled attorney general to tamp down a scandal over the U.S. Justice Department’s aggressive surveillance of news organizations appears to be backfiring.

Some of the top news outlets in the country are refusing to attend a Friday meeting with Eric Holder ostensibly meant to explain his department’s guidelines for journalists involved in leak investigations.

The New York Times, The Associated Press, CNN and Fox News are among the media organizations who have said they have no intention of showing up for the session in the U.S. capital if Holder continues to insist they can’t report on it.

“If it’s not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter,” AP spokeswoman Erin Madigan said in a statement.

The White House, for its part, didn’t appear to be backing down.

“We are hopeful that media organizations will take advantage of the opportunity to constructively contribute to this process,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday.

He denied suggestions that holding an off-the-record meeting was hypocritical for a department pledging to provide more information to the media in the wake of the revelations.

“I don’t actually see that. The attorney general is interested in having a constructive policy discussion with professional journalists about a subject most people think is a complex policy issue,” he said.

Earnest added that Obama continues to have confidence in Holder.

The Holder meeting is planned amid an atmosphere of intense distrust between some of America’s most influential news organizations and the White House under U.S. President Barack Obama, who came to power vowing to create a more transparent and open government.

Journalists, lawmakers and civil liberties experts have decried the strong-arm tactics of the Obama administration, the most zealous in contemporary U.S. political history in pursuing those it suspects of leaking information to the media.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department seized phone records from a handful of reporters at The Associated Press and Fox News and, in court documents, accused Fox reporter James Rosen of being part of a criminal conspiracy for his reporting on North Korea in 2009.

In the wake of the revelations — considered a chilling intrusion upon the freedom of the press by many news outlets — the president pledged that Holder would “consult a diverse and representative group of media organizations” to discuss the Justice Department’s guidelines for reporters involved in leak investigations.

The president has asked Holder to report to him on any recommended policy changes on such investigations by July 12.

Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, said it would be inappropriate for the paper’s D.C. bureau chief to participate in an off-the-record meeting given her paper is “aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time.”

Holder is on the hot seat for his testimony at a congressional hearing earlier this month.

The attorney general told lawmakers he was unaware of any “potential prosecution” reporters; it later emerged he knew about an investigation was targeting Rosen, and personally signed off on search warrant documents aimed at allowing authorities to pore over the journalist’s private emails.

Rosen has not been charged but court documents filed by the Justice Department accused him of violating the federal Espionage Act.

The judiciary committee of the House of Representatives said this week it’s looking into Holder’s May 15 testimony. Republican members of the committee allege his claims have been contradicted by the Fox News developments that emerged a few days following the attorney general’s appearance at the hearing.

Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte and James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House’s investigations subcommittee, sent a letter to Holder earlier this week questioning his testimony.

“The media reports and statements issued by the department regarding the search warrants for Mr. Rosen’s emails appear to be at odds with your sworn testimony before the Committee,” the letter reads.

“We believe — and we hope you will agree — it is imperative that the committee, the Congress, and the American people be provided a full and accurate account of your involvement in and approval of these search warrants.”

Sensenbrenner has called for Holder’s resignation, or for Obama to step in and fire him.