The New York Times reports:
Gao Yu, a 71-year-old Chinese journalist who has repeatedly challenged the Communist Party during a decades-long career, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday after a court in Beijing found her guilty of leaking state secrets abroad.
Gao Yu is in fact a true hero of the freedom of the press and freedom in general. The Times goes on to say: “The imprisonment of Ms. Gao, whose husband died in early 2014, is the latest display of the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to stifle dissent and consolidate the power of President Xi Jinping.”
Fortunately, the U.S. isn’t quite in China’s league. But the Obama Administration has brought charges against six journalists and two government officials under the 1917 Espionage Act, a product of the war hysteria fanned by Woodrow Wilson during World War I that prior administrations only thought to use three times in the past 98 years. Is it comforting for President Obama to know that he’s “worse” than the man who segregated Washington?
Afterwords
In 2013 the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a 30-page report on the Obama Administration’s deep and abiding lack of respect for the First Amendment, available here. Even former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, not necessarily averse to running copy past the CIA, thinks the Obama Administration is the worst.
