The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website August 1, 2018:
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Aug. 1 called insults shouted at CNN reporter Jim Acosta by President Trump’s supporters “freedom of speech.” (Reuters)
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders just accused the media of hindering the American government’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden just a few years before 9/11. But she may want to check her evidence.
While defending Trump supporters’ vulgar treatment of a CNN reporter at a rally Tuesday night in Florida, Sanders argued that the media has a responsibility to report accurately because the stakes are so large. But rather than dwell upon recent examples of supposedly shoddy reporting, like she usually does, she went back 20 years, to 1998.
“The media routinely reports on classified information and government secrets that put lives in danger and risk valuable national security tools,” Sanders said, clearly reading a prepared bit of gaslighting. “One of the worst cases was the reporting on the U.S. ability to listen to Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone in the late ’90s. Because of that reporting, he stopped using that phone, and the country lost valuable intelligence.”