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Politico's senior editor has pushed back in a big way against President Barack Obama's 

In remarks that were clearly targeted at Donald Trump, Obama urged the assembled journalists at Syracuse University to hold the ideals of a free press in its coverage of the candidate.

https://twitter.com/JohnRussell99/status/714638373068140545

The crowd applauded at the conclusion of his remarks.

"What they should have done is bombard Obama with rotten fruit or ripped him with raspberries for his hypocrisy," 

He blasted the administration for setting a record in rejecting Freedom of Information requests, turning government employees into "information-squelching snitches",  and using the Espionage Act "to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations combined."

"You could break Google by asking it to list all the top journalists who regard the Obama administration as Press Enemy No. 1," he writes.

"The only press award he has any business awarding is a special commendation to Trump, thanking him for making Obama look like a free-speech radical by comparison," Shafer concluded.

"So what the President seems to mean when he asks for a strong press that is willing to dig deeper and ask the hard questions is that he would like the media to do that to his opponents—but not necessarily to him or his administration," 

"If you, like the president, care as much as you say you do about substance," Melinda Henneberger, the editor of Roll Call, 

, "then stop clicking on the schlock and support the good stuff."

"In his last year in office, it’s not too late for him to stop making it harder for us to do ours," she adds.

Bob Collins

Author

Politico's senior editor has pushed back in a big way against President Barack Obama's  lecturing the media the other day on how to their jobs.

Obama chides media for not doing what he’s preventing them from doing

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