Veteran NBC anchor Tom Brokaw took the Obama administration to task Thursday on The Cycle, calling them out for going after Fox News correspondent James Rosen in a "ham-handed fashion" over his reporting about North Korea's nuclear program and being "very difficult to deal with" for journalists overall.
Host Krystal Ball tried to lead him with a question asking if the story was more of a media fascination than a pressing scandal, but Brokaw said the issue of journalistic suppression was significant, and he added that Attorney General Eric Holder's meeting with reporters outlining leak investigation guidelines Thursday should be on the record:
BROKAW: Because the public is not terribly interested doesn't make it unimportant, frankly, at this point. I do think that there are very important issues that are involved here on both sides, by the way. The government feels very strongly that it was a violation probably of the Espionage Secrets Act. There was intel that they had developed on a very short term basis that they didn't want the North Koreans to know about at a critical time. It got out. They went at the reporter and the source, in my judgment, in a ham-handed fashion, and then the explanations afterwards took a very circuitous route between what the Attorney General had to say before the hearings, what he said publicly, what the White House is saying. I do believe that this meeting this afternoon absolutely should be on the record. Let the sunshine in.
S.E. CUPP: Of course.
BROKAW: Let's find out what the defense is, what the press institutions have to say. When it does happen to the press in Washington especially, it does take on proportions in news coverage because it's about us. And I've used the phrase before. We have glass jaws. We swing away, and then someone takes a swing at us, and we go down with the first punch. This is a case that's got more components to it. I recommend people read Walter Pincus in the Washington Post this week online, looking at what the circumstances were for the Justice Department to move, and I would hope that we can get this resolved. I do think that this 'administration has held very tightly onto information that really ought to be in the public arena. They're very difficult to deal with for working reporters on a daily basis to get what they want to out of the administration.