The Obama Justice Department--or at least one of its top prosecutors--is cracking down on investigative reporting without regard for the First Amendment.

The first disturbing development was the indictment of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, whose leaks to the Baltimore Sun helped expose how the NSA's warrantless spying program deliberately failed to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Now the same prosecutor who indicted Drake--William Welch, who stepped down from a prior post as head of the Justice Department's public integrity unit after botching the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska)--has opened a new front against freedom of the press. Welch subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal his sources for the account in his book of a CIA operation that may have given Iran important information about how to create a nuclear bomb in the course of trying to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. The New York Times reports today (4/29/10):

The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

The author, James Risen, who is a reporter for the New York Times, received a subpoena on Monday requiring him to provide documents and to testify May 4 before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., about his sources for a chapter of his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. The chapter largely focuses on problems with a covert CIA effort to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research....

The Bush administration had sought Mr. Risen's cooperation in identifying his sources for the Iran chapter of his book, and it obtained an earlier subpoena against him in January 2008 under Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. But Mr. Risen fought the subpoena, and never had to testify before it expired last summer. That left it up to Mr. Holder to decide whether to press forward with the matter by seeking a new subpoena.

If a judge does not agree to quash the subpoena and Mr. Risen still refuses to comply, he risks being held in contempt of court.

The Times report alludes to the case of Judith Miller, who was subpoenaed by independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to reveal which Bush administration official had revealed that the Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent Bush critic, was an undercover CIA officer. FAIR encouraged Miller to cooperate with the prosecutor in that case, because no genuine public interest was served in protecting the identity of an official who had used classified information to punish a government critic.

In both the cases pursued by Welch, on the other hand, the targets are legitimate whistleblowers who revealed information that was of vital concern to the public. Risen has announced through his lawyer that he will fight the subpoena in court, and if he gets a judge who respects the First Amendment he should succeed. If Barack Obama and Eric Holder respect the First Amendment, meanwhile, they will rein in these disturbing efforts to squelch journalistic scrutiny of the state.

Free Press' Craig Aaron and Joseph Torres (Guardian.co.uk, 3/26/09) promptly knock down the scary development in which Nancy Pelosi recently "asked attorney general Eric Holder to consider loosening antitrust laws to help out struggling newspapers by allowing more media mergers. Holder responded by saying he is open to revisiting the rules":

Pelosi's request sounds innocuous at first--after all, struggling newspapers seem to need all the help they can get. But opening the door to more media consolidation is not the cure for the crisis in journalism. More of this bad medicine will only weaken reporting and worsen the health of our democracy.

As a few big companies swallowed up more local media outlets, they gutted newsrooms. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that the industry lost 5,000 journalists last year and has slashed 16 percent of its news staff since 2001. Is it any surprise that fewer people are buying newspapers when reporters are being taken off their beats and bureaus are being shuttered?

But media consolidation hasn't been a disaster only for dedicated journalists or the public who rely on reporters to keep an eye on their leaders. It's also been bad for business.

Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was over 20 percent--with some bringing in twice as much or more. But that did not satisfy the newspaper executives or Wall Street. Instead of investing in the quality of their products and innovating for the future, the big media companies have been obsessed with short-term gains. Instead of bolstering their news-gathering or adjusting to the new media landscape, companies like McClatchy, Tribune and Lee Enterprises used these astronomical profits to buy up other properties.

And of course, throughout this process, "federal regulators rubber-stamped these mega-mergers," even though "the media giants took on massive amounts of debt."