Brian Stelter’s daily email on Monday blared out, “Journalists are in for the fight of their lives,” at the top, and I found it pretty stunning to read. Ever since Donald Trump wins the election in November, there have been any number of pieces, comments, quips and more from various journalists and talking heads who have discovered the importance of the fourth estate holding the executive branch of government accountable.

Here is what the newsletter says:

“Journalists are in for the fight of their lives.”

That’s what Margaret Sullivan concludes in her Monday WashPost column. “To those who say let’s wait and see, or maybe it won’t be as bad as you think, or stay hopeful, I’m having none of it,” she says. “Journalists are in for the fight of their lives. And they are going to have to be better than ever before, just to do their jobs. They will need to work together, be prepared for legal persecution, toughen up for punishing attacks and figure out new ways to uncover and present the truth. Even so — if the past really is prologue — that may not be enough.”

I share Sullivan’s concern. I’m not assuming the worst — but based on Trump’s track record I’m anticipating many attempts to attack truth-telling journalists, bully critics and curb press freedoms.

Margaret Sullivan makes a one sentence mention of the person who journalists should blame for anybody concerned about Donald Trump and journalism:

Barack Obama. 

As a whole, the media is mostly silent on the disdain President Obama showed for the press during his eight years in office. James Risen writes in the NY Times (shockingly) about Obama’s record:

Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

Hardcore Obama supporters defended the administration arguing the whistleblowers were in fact, “criminals” and deserved prosecution. It’d be interesting to see if this is the reaction they’d have during a Bush presidency. Stop laughing. We know the answer to that.

It was the press, however, who after some initial ‘outrage’ went back to doing what they’ve done best during Obama’s tenure: giving him cover while bashing Republicans as “intransigent” because Obama thought his decrees became law simply because of his very existence.

Donald Trump’s treatment of CNN is no different from how President Obama treats Fox News. Trump just does it a higher volume but “no drama” Obama whined incessantly about Fox News and blamed them right along with Congressional Republicans for not being able to bring his wonderfulness to the masses.

So as we enter a new presidency and the media bloviates about their “responsibility” to call out Trump, they would do well to remember the pass they gave to President Obama whose administration was monitoring journalists phone records and naming them as co-conspirators in federal court records.