Obama's monitoring of reporters has chilled news sources, it has become much more difficult to monitor government abuses

Obama keeps saying that he doesn't want to chill the media, but he is responsible for the chill that has already produced.  From Politico:

. . . In conversations with POLITICO, national security reporters and watchdogs said they already have seen increased caution from government sources following revelations that the DOJ had subpoenaed Associated Press reporters’ phone records and tracked the comings and goings of Fox News reporter James Rosen at the State Department. . . . 

“I had one former intel officer say, ‘I hope you’re buying ‘burner’ phones for your sources,’ but I think he may have been pulling my leg,” said David Ignatius, the Washington Post’s national security columnist. 

Reporters on the national security beat say it’s not the fear of being prosecuted by the DOJ that worries them - it’s the frightened silence of past trusted sources that could undermine the kind of investigative journalism that Obama was talking about. 

Some formerly forthcoming sources have grown reluctant to return phone calls, even on unclassified matters, and, when they do talk, prefer in-person conversations that leave no phone logs, no emails, and no records of entering and leaving buildings, reporters and watchdogs said. . . .