Posts by ChristopherDaly:
- I believe in the profession of Journalism.
- I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that all acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.
- I believe that clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.
- I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true.
- I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.
- I believe that no one should write as a journalist what he would not say as a gentleman; that bribery by one’s own pocket book is as much to be avoided as bribery by the pocketbook of another; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another’s instructions or another’s dividends.
- I believe that advertising, news and editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that a single standard of helpful truth and cleanness should prevail for all; that supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service.
- I believe that the journalism which succeeds the best-and best deserves success-fears God and honors man; is stoutly independent; unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power; constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice; is unswayed by the appeal of the privilege or the clamor of the mob; seeks to give every man a chance, and as far as law, an honest wage and recognition of human brotherhood can make it so, an equal chance; is profoundly patriotic while sincerely promoting international good will and cementing world-comradeship, is a journalism of humanity, of and for today’s world.
NY court issues a major ruling for press freedom
December 13th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
Invoking journalism history, New York state’s highest court has ruled that under New York’s state constitution and the state’s version of a “shield law,” a journalist cannot be forced to divulge the identity of a confidential source — even if another U.S. state is trying to extract the information. The ruling, issued Tuesday, was a major victory for press freedom, and not just in New York. But it will have its greatest impact in New York, where so much of the news media operate, because now the highest court in that state has ruled that New York’s own laws grant complete immunity to journalists from any attempts to force them to reveal their sources. Since that court is the ultimate interpreter of the New York state constitution, it is a landmark.
It remains to be seen if a New York journalist can use this new ruling as a shield against federal prosecutors. Federal courts are not obligated to follow the New York state court ruling, of course, but any person who gains more rights under a state constitution or law does not forfeit those rights just because federal law has not caught up. The U.S. Constitution and federal laws establish legal minimums that must be afforded to all Americans, but they do not establish maximums. When it comes to our rights, federal law is a floor, not a ceiling.
Briefly, the case involves Jana Winter, a reporter for FoxNews.com. She went to Colorado in 2012 to report on the horrific mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora. Expecting a media frenzy, the local Colorado court imposed a “gag order” — that is, a pre-trial order that tries to limit disclosures to the news media in advance of a trial. During the investigation into the crime, police got hold of a notebook that belonged to the suspect, James Holmes, which he had shared with his psychiatrist. Someone divulged the existence of the notebook to the reporter, along with a summary or description of its contents. Colorado authorities consider that a breach of the gag order, and they are stamping their feet to see who disobeyed. All the cops in Colorado say “it wasn’t me,” so the authorities are turning to the journalist and demanding that she rat out her source so they can punish that person. For that, they want to make her travel 2,000 miles to violate a promise she made to her source(s). If she stands firm and refuses to name names, she goes to jail. If she gives them up, she is ruined as a reporter, and the whole enterprise of news-gathering is undermined because all sources will doubt all reporters when they promise confidentiality. [Winter has absolutely no information that is exclusive to her and based on confidential sources that has any bearing on the commission of the crime itself. All she knows about is which Colorado cop (or cops) violated the gag order. Please.]
Many, many courts would rule against the journalist in these circumstances. Judges normally sympathize with their fellow judges and see things their way. Judges normally do not like to see anyone violate their rulings and get away with it. Judges like the idea that what they say, goes. All of which makes this ruling even more remarkable. It was a win-win: the court expanded legal protections for reporters, and it relied in part on a famous case involving an 18th-century partisan journalist to do so.
Here are versions by the New York Times (which should have put this on page 1, not inside the business section) The New Yorker, TVNewser, andPoynter. (Even Fox News had to come down on the side of press freedom in this case.)
Here is the text of the decision, written by Judge Victoria Graffeo. Among the stories I saw, only Poynter actually linked to the decision, which is disappointing — hey, people, there’s this thing called the Internet; let’s take advantage of it. Besides, the decision is well worth reading in full. It is a pro-freedom primer on the history of the freedom to gather news. Here are some key excerpts:
New York has a long tradition, with roots dating back to the colonial era, of providing the utmost protection of freedom of the press. Our recognition of the importance of safeguarding those who provide information as part of the newsgathering function can be traced to the case of “John Peter Zenger who . . . was prosecuted for publishing articles critical of the New York colonial Governor after he refused to disclose his source” (Matter of Beach v Shanley, 62 NY2d 241, 255 [1984] [Wachtler concurrence]). A jury comprised of colonial New Yorkers refused to convict Zenger — an action widely viewed as one of the first instances when the connection between the protection of anonymous sources and the maintenance of a free press was recognized in the new world. In acknowledging the critical role that the press would play in our democratic society, New York became a hospitable environment for journalists and other purveyors of the written word, leading the burgeoning publishing industry to establish a home in our state during the early years of our nation’s history.
That is an important point: New York did indeed become the nation’s media capital. I doubt that the New York State Constitution was much of a causal factor (compared to all the economic ones), but the fact that the industry is now centered in New York City means that many, many journalists enjoy the favored status granted by this new ruling. And the ruling holds that a New York-based journalist is protected by New York’s constitution even when he or she roams into another state or online to do reporting. What remains to be seen is what might happen when a New York-based journalist attempts to use the new ruling in the Winter case against a federal prosecutor who comes around with a subpoena seeking to force a journalist to name a confidential source in a federal investigation or trial.
Judge Graffeo wrote that the protections offered to journalists in New York are ancient, robust, and multiply determined.
To begin with, she wrote, there is the matter of common law. Before New York was even a state, the jury in the 1735 seditious libel case against the printer John Peter Zenger established through its not-guilty verdict that Zenger did not have to reveal the identity of the author of the offending article. The Zenger case is usually cited as a precedent for the idea that truth is a valid defense in libel cases, but if Judge Graffeo finds the germ of a “shield law” in there, so be it. (For more on Zenger, see “Covering America,” chap 1)
Later, New York citizens wrote and ratified a state constitution. It says, in part:
“Every citizen may freely speak, write and
publish his or her sentiments on all subjects
. . . and no law shall be passed to restrain
or abridge the liberty of speech or of the
press” (NY Const, art I, § 8).
In her reading, that language from 1831 constitutes a shield for journalists all by itself, saying it is more expansive than even the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and thus affords more protections to New Yorkers than other Americans enjoy under the First Amendment alone.
In addition, Graffeo cites New York state law. In 1970, the New York Legislature adopted a “shield law” that includes an absolute legal privilege for journalists who want to protect the identity of their confidential sources. She said that after considering the views of the likes of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace, the Legislature decided to throw its weight into the balance on the side of reporters. The relevant part of that law says:
no professional journalist or newscaster . . .
shall be adjudged in contempt by any court in
connection with any civil or criminal
proceeding . . . for refusing or failing to
disclose any news obtained or received in
confidence or the identity of the source of
any such news coming into such person’s
possession in the course of gathering or
obtaining news for publication
So, Judge Graffeo concludes, journalists in New York are protected by common law, constitutional law, and statutory law. Now, how hard was that? Why do so many judges fail to understand this reasoning? The ruling holds that all these sources of protection for journalists combine to provide evidence of a clear “public policy” in New York state to encourage the practice of journalism within its borders.
But Judge Graffeo was not finished. She noted that the testimony of the journalists that the New York legislators relied upon arose from another case — that of NYTimes reporter Earl Caldwell. In a footnote, she observed
The affidavits were prepared in connection with a motion
to quash a subpoena in a case that was pending when the Shield
Law was under consideration by the Legislature and which involved
an investigative reporter from the New York Times who was
subpoenaed by a Federal Grand Jury in California to testify
concerning knowledge he obtained about the Black Panther
organization. Two lower courts held that the First Amendment
protected the reporter from being compelled to reveal his sources
or disclose information provided to him in confidence, differing
only on whether the reporter could avoid appearing at the Grand
Jury altogether (Caldwell v United States, 434 F2d 1081 [9th Cir
1970] [reporter could not be compelled to appear at Grand Jury],
vacating 311 F Supp 358 [ND Cal 1970][although required to appear
Caldwell, left, with MLK in Memphis, 1968.
at Grand Jury, reporter was entitled to protective order
precluding questioning concerning confidential sources orinformation]). However, deciding the case with Branzburg v Hayes
(408 US 665 [1972]), the United States Supreme Court disagreed,
holding that the reporter could not rely on the First Amendment
to avoid appearing and giving evidence in response to a Grand
Jury subpoena.
That was a regrettable decision that journalists lost by an eyelash, only because five judges on the U.S. Supreme Court did not understand the U.S. Constitution as well as these New York judges understand the New York constitution. For more on Caldwell, see Covering America, chap 12. For more on the Supreme Court’s ruling, see earlier blog posts here and here.)
The new ruling also sends a message to prosecutors in all the other states: don’t bother going on fishing expeditions. If you send us requests to compel a New York journalist to appear in your state’s courts, those will be denied. The opinion says New York will not tolerate harassment of journalists by subpoenaing them to show up halfway across the country just to assert their immunity under the New York shield law. That would be terribly disruptive to their work. Just leave them alone, the court said. Quoting an earlier case, the ruling states:
“Journalists should be spending their time in newsrooms, not in courtrooms as participants in the litigation process”
It’s thrilling to read a judicial opinion written by a judge who actually understands the meaning of a free press and appreciates its value to society. It’s rare — and therefore, I suppose, all the more thrilling.
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Finally, a hat-tip to the judge, Victoria Graffeo, the former solicitor general for the state of New York who was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Republican Gov. George Pataki to a 14-year term in 2000. No liberal, Graffeo was expected to be a moderate conservative voice on that important bench. Labels aside, she gets credit for getting the point.
The power of narrative: NPR tells the tale of a T-shirt
December 4th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
A hat-tip to the talented team at NPR’s “Planet Money.” They are spinning a yarn this week about how a T-shirt is made, from start to finish. Best of all, they decided to actually make a specific T-shirt of their own, and reporters worldwide are contributing to a narrative that traces the arc of that T-shirt from the cotton fields of the Deep South to a robotic yarn-spinning factory in Indonesia and god-knows-where next.
Great idea, great sound, intelligent reporting. Way to go.
Read. Listen. Enjoy.
Journalism Internships
November 27th, 2013
By Christopher B. Daly
Once again, NYTimes media columnist David Carr has put his finger on an issue that deserves more attention: the unpaid internship.
The practice of granting internships to college students for no pay has become rampant in the news business. Some journalistic organizations offer academic credit — or, more precisely, they insist that the student’s university award academic credit for the internship, so that the internship is not technically un-compensated.
In practice, we all know that many internships are worthwhile, for both parties. The intern gets some valuable experience, a list of professional contacts, and a line on his/her resume. The sponsoring newsroom gets some eager, bright help. That’s why they are so difficult to eliminate.
It’s also far from the whole story.
We also know that many internships are exploitative. The students may be relegated to delivering lattes to the boss, and they are passing up the opportunity to do something else. (In many cases, I think my students would be better off getting a real, paid job doing something out of their realm — being a firespotter in a National Forest (Kerouac),
or working on a tramp steamer (E.B. White),
or washing dishes in a restaurant (Orwell).
What writers need above all is material, the kind you can only get from life itself.
Celebrating advocacy journalism: TNR salutes High Times
November 22nd, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
A hat-tip to TNR for recognizing the impact of High Times, the magazine that has stayed laser-focused on its advocacy of legalizing marijuana use in the United States. (Memo to TNR: in your drive to be resolutely counter-intuitive about everything, you overuse superlatives. High Times is obviously influential to anyone who stops to think about it for a second. You don’t need a headline saying it “may be the most influential.”)
Based in New York, High Times was founded in 1974 by Tom Forcade.
From Wikipedia:
The magazine was founded in 1974 by Tom Forçade of the Underground Press Syndicate.[1] High Times was originally meant to be a joke, a single issue lampoon of Playboy, substituting dope for
First edition
sex. But the magazine found an audience, and in November 2009, celebrated its 35th anniversary.[2] Like Playboy each issue contains a centerfold photo, but instead of a nude woman, High Times typically features a choice grade of cannabis plant.
The magazine soon became a monthly with a growing circulation audited by ABC reaching 500,000 copies an issue; rivaling Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. The staff quickly grew to 40 people. In addition to high-quality photography, High Times featured cutting-edge journalism covering a wide range of topics including politics, activism, drugs, sex, music and film.
High Times has long been influential in the marijuana-using counterculture. Past contributors include Charles Bukowski,William S. Burroughs, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Andy Warhol.
As I have written elsewhere, this approach to journalism puts High Timessquarely in a long, glorious tradition in American journalism: the advocacy tradition.
From Sam Adams to Tom Paine. . .
. . . from William Lloyd Garrison to Frederick Douglass
. . . From Ida B. Wells to Ida Tarbell
. . . from Jacob Riis to Lewis Hine
. . . from Upton Sinclair to Lincoln Steffens
. . . from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Gloria Emerson
. . . from Jann Wenner to Hunter Thompson
. . . from Westbrook Pegler to Sean Hannity
. . . from the Hearstpress to the Lucepress
. . . from Daniel Ellsberg to Edward Snowden
They’re advocates all!
JFK shooting: TV news grows up fast
November 10th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
With the approach of the 50th anniversary of that fateful day in Dallas, I thought it might be worth re-visiting my account of the assassination. Here is an excerpt from Covering America that looks at the media response to the shooting:
During the Kennedy presidency, television news became more powerful than ever. In the years since the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, television executives had been atoning by lavishing resources on their news divisions. Television sets were in the vast majority of homes by 1960, and the audience for the TV networks dwarfed that of any newspaper and even the readership of the entire Time-Life empire. The media president, Jack Kennedy, also introduced live television coverage of presidential news conferences and proceeded to thrive in the new forum. Television carried more news than ever, to more people.
On November 22, 1963, television was the medium by which many Americans first got the news about the shooting. There it was, right on TV. The president and his wife were in a motorcade with Governor John Connally and his wife. Shots rang out, and the president was rushed to the hospital. No word on the shooter’s identity. It may not have been apparent to viewers, but television executives were scrambling to keep up. The networks did not have the equipment and staff needed to “go live” and put news on the air as it was unfolding. Just off camera it was pandemonium, as executives met to decide how to cover a presidential shooting in the new medium. Eventually they reached a consensus: they would stay with the story, without interruptions and without ads, for the duration. So it was that for three or four days the American people did something they had never done before: they stayed home and attended a funeral via television. If they were watching CBS, they saw Walter Cronkite dab at his eye when he announced the bulletin confirming Kennedy’s death. No matter what network they watched, viewers saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald; they saw the flag-draped caisson and the riderless horse; and they saw the salute given by the president’s young son. For the first time (and almost the last, as it happened), nearly the entire country had nearly the same experience at the same time.
CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite struggles to keep his composure on-camera as he announces the news of the death of President
John F. Kennedy live on the air on November 22, 1963.
—Getty Images.In the New York Times, on Monday, November 25, 1963, the front page featured a banner headline across the entire page, stacked three decks deep:
PRESIDENT’S ASSASSIN SHOT TO DEATH
IN JAIL CORRIDOR BY A DALLAS CITIZEN;
GRIEVING THRONGS VIEW KENNEDY BIER
The funeral was planned for later that day. Below the big headline was a photo (from the AP) of Jackie Kennedy and Caroline kneeling next to the president’s flag-draped casket. Underneath was a little single-column story headlined:
JOHNSON AFFIRMS
AIMS IN VIETNAM
Then, this ominous subhead:
Retains Kennedy’s Policy
of Aiding War on Reds
Historic journalism: 1852 edition
October 25th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
Don’t miss: a lovely piece of journalism history in today’s NYTimes, above coverage of an earlier heat wave — in 1852.
Today’s piece captures the novel sense that New Yorkers were feeling that summer heat in the city was somehow worse and harder to bear than summer heat in the country. The build environment was beginning to capture and radiate heat. The unnatural concentration of horses and other animals added to the stink and pestilence. The physical crowding of people in the streets and in the tenements. The air pollution caused by the aerosolization of manure and other waste — all these things were creating a new kind of misery. And, through the mediation of the newspaper, perhaps a new solidarity among city-dwellers as fellow survirors of this new challenge of living.
Thank you, NYT.
First offices of the New York Times, starting in 1851.
113 Nassau St.
Revealed: Justice Scalia’s news diet. (No NYT allowed!)
October 14th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
Here is an excerpt from a recent interview in New York magazine with Justice Antonin Scalia, in which he discusses his news consumption habits with interviewer Jennifer Senior.
What’s your media diet? Where do you get your news?
Well, we get newspapers in the morning.“We” meaning the justices?
No! Maureen and I.
Oh, you and your wife …
I usually skim them. We just get The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. We used to get the Washington Post, but it just … went too far for me. I couldn’t handle it anymore.
What tipped you over the edge?
It was the treatment of almost any conservative issue. It was slanted and often nasty. And, you know, why should I get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly, shrilly liberal.
So no New York Times, either?
No New York Times, no Post.
And do you look at anything online?
I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio.
Not NPR?
Sometimes NPR. But not usually.
Talk guys?
Talk guys, usually.
Do you have a favorite?
You know who my favorite is? My good friend Bill Bennett. He’s off the air by the time I’m driving in, but I listen to him sometimes when I’m shaving. He has a wonderful talk show. It’s very thoughtful. He has good callers. I think they keep off stupid people.
That’s what producers get paid for.
That’s what’s wrong with those talk shows.
Let’s talk about the state of our politics for a moment. . .
I don’t know about you, but I cannot believe that a Supreme Court justice — anySupreme Court justice — can get by without reading the Times. For Scalia not to know what just a single Times reporter, Charlie Savage, is reporting is either not true or it is not professional. If we take him at his word, Scalia confines himself to
(1) a Murdoch paper,
(2) a paper that may be the worst in the country (the Washington Times,owned by a crazy Korean religious cult figure), and
(3) a radio talk show run by his friend Bill Bennett.
Talk about living in a bubble. Sheesh.
Antonin Scalia: An embarrassment
Photo by Platon
Govt Shutdown shuts down history research
October 7th, 2013By Cristopher B. Daly
Among the unfortunate effects of shutting down the U.S. government is the impact on the “non-essential” workers who run the National Archives, the presidential libraries, the Library of Congress, and other repositories of our national memory. That, in turn, means that a lot of historians, history grad students, writers, and others are sidelined until this blows over.
Even the incomparable Library of Congress digital collections are off-limits. So, a nation that is busy doing a dumb thing is going to start getting dumber.
Here is an article from History News Network detailing some of the disruptions.
And for journalists as well as historians, here’s another downside: the normally glacial processing of Freedom of Information requests has now ground to a halt. No more FOIA disclosures until Congress get back to funding the government.
Sheesh.
Hitting “Like” on Facebook gets free-speech protection
October 1st, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
History keeps happening. Now, a U.S. appeals court has ruled that the activity of hitting “Like” on a Facebook is a form of expression that deserves free-speech protections under the First Amendment.
An earlier ruling in a lower federal court went the other way. But on Wednesday (9/18), the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond reversed and said an employee who “liked” a political candidate was engaging in political speech and therefore cannot be punished by his employer.
From the AP story in today’s Boston Globe:
Facebook and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed friend of court briefs in the case, applauded Wednesday’s ruling.
‘‘The Constitution doesn’t distinguish between ‘liking’ a candidate on Facebook and supporting him in a town meeting or public rally,’’ said Ben Wizner of the ACLU .
This ruling seems not only common-sensical, but it also seems to right a terrible wrong: when the Supreme Court said that spending equals speaking, that gave rich Americans a tremendous advantage in the competition to make points in the public sphere. This ruling says that using Facebook is a form of speaking, too, so it deserves protection.
The First Amendment lives. Let’s keep it going.
Should the Internet be regulated?
September 26th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly
And, if so, for whose benefit?
Those were some of the issues swirling in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington as lawyers argued over a case that could have far-reaching impacts on the future of Internet access and the Web.
On one side is the FCC, which is asserting that it has the power to regulate the Internet just as it regulates over forms of electronic communication like radio, TV, and telephone.
On the other side is Verizon, a major internet service provider (ISP), which says the FCC has never been granted that power by Congress and cannot just assert it because it wants to.
A major point of conflict: can ISPs be forced to treat all their customers the same when it comes to upload/download speeds, pricing, and the like? Or, are they free to devise their own pricing structures that penalize heavy users of bandwidth?
If the ISPs have that right, how would they use that power? Would they impose high rates on start-ups like Zipcar and end up thwarting innovation?
Here’s today’s version in the Times.
The takeaway:
Consumers could experience a significant change in the Internet if the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit strikes down the F.C.C.’s requirement, called the Open Internet Order.
Currently, companies that offer goods or services online do not have to pay anything to get their content to consumers. If Internet service providers started charging fees to reach customers more quickly, large, wealthy companies like Google and Facebook would have an edge, the F.C.C. says. The government argued that such a tiered service could cause small, start-up companies with little money to pay for their access — the next Google orFacebook, perhaps — to wither on the vine.
In any case, the added costs would be likely to be passed on to consumers.
The case, which is expected to be decided late this year or early next year, has attracted enormous interest. On Monday, telecommunications lawyers began lining up to get into the courtroom two and a half hours before the session was scheduled to start. The session was standing room only, with many others left to listen in an adjacent overflow room.
To be continued. . .
Glass half full: NYT posts a profit due to online readers
September 3rd, 2013By Christopher B. Daly
The NYTimes Co. reports some good news: the company operated in the black last quarter, and it did so no thanks to advertising. What carried the news operation into profitability was the surge in online readers who are actually paying for content. Here are the key results:
Circulation revenue rose 5.1 percent, to $245.1 million, from $233.3 million. But that gain was largely offset by a 5.8 percent decline in advertising revenue, to $207.5 million.
The number of paid subscribers to the Web site, e-reader and other digital editions of The Times and The International Herald Tribune grew to 699,000, a jump of more than 35 percent from the period a year earlier. Digital subscriptions to The Boston Globe and BostonGlobe.com rose to 39,000, an increase of nearly 70 percent from 23,000 a year earlier.
If you are a paying customer of the Times, pat yourself on the back. If not, PAY UP!
The surveillance state (cont.)
September 1st, 2013by Christopher B. Daly.
Why do we have to find out what our government is doing from newspapers?
(And while we are thinking about that, let’s give thanks to those papers that are big enough and tough enough and devoted enough to pry these secrets out of the government on behalf of all of us. A tip of the hat to the Post and the Times.)
Here’s the Post’s Thursday story. (Which includes a nice graphics package unpacking the “Black Budget,” which we were never supposed to see.)
Here’s today’s Times story.
Turns out, we spend more than $50 billion a year on spying (some of it illegally aimed at law-abiding American citizens).
New owner of Boston Globe: John Henry
August 21st, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
So, now we know: the new owner of the Boston Globe is John W. Henry II, a Boston-based investor who owns the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool soccer club. Henry (not the legendary “steel-drivin’ man” of the contest against a
(Steam engine) is a son of soybean farmers who dropped out of college and made a fortune in commodity trading and other investments.
In recent years, he turned his interests to owning sports franchises and now, he is taking over ownership of the largest news organization in New England. I have no idea what his intentions are (or how he plans to handle the massive conflict of interest that Globe journalists will suffer when reporting on his other ventures). But I wish him well.
The sale completes a chapter in the long history of the New York Times, which bought the Globe 20 years ago for $1.1 billion — a record in U.S. newspaper sales. The Times owners, primarily the Sulzberger family, were forced to sell the Globe for a mere $70 million in cash (which is the kind of money that guys like John Henry spend on a house or two). In other words, the stewards of the most important journalistic institution in America just took a bath of more than $1 billion, which they could scarcely afford to lose. I don’t know how Arthur Sulzberger Jr. remains on speaking terms with his cousins.
What China really needs: press freedom
August 18th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
What ails the Chinese economy? According to a recent story and column in theNYTimes, it’s a lack of confidence among Chinese consumers in the safety of the products — from baby formula to cars to pork — made in their own country. They lack confidence for good reasons, but they lack the means to do much about it other than smuggle in substitutes.
I would submit that one missing ingredient is a free press that could reveal the abuses, shortcuts, and shoddy practices that undermine Chinese products. In his column, Joe Nocera gave this idea a quick nod.
In the United States, of course, it has become religion among conservatives to denounce regulation, saying it stifles business and hinders economic growth. But consider: At the turn of the last century, America was as riddled with scam artists as China is today. Snake oil salesmen — literally — abounded. Food safety was a huge issue. In 1906, however, Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle,” his exposé-novel about the meatpacking industry. That book, pointed out Stanley Lubman, a longtime expert in Chinese law, in a recent blog post in The Wall Street Journal, is what propelled Theodore Roosevelt to propose the Food and Drug Administration. Which, in turn, reformed meat-processing — among many other things — and gave consumers confidence in the food they ate and the products they bought.
That is fine as far as it goes, but it’s a bit reductionist. The fact is, it took a sustained campaign by a lot of muckraking journalists to build public support for reform, and it took a political system that could (with sufficient effort) bring about change, and it took a political movement (Progressivism) that was poised to mobilize that public sentiment into electoral and legislative results.
Ironically, the same issue of the NYTimes has a roundabout confirmation of the virtue of regulation: the red-state folks who raise catfish are worried that Washington will fail to fund the federal office that oversees inspections of catfish. No inspectors, no public confidence, no sales.
Does James Risen need a “shield law”?
July 23rd, 2013
By Christopher Daly.
The New York Times has an editorial worth reading today about one of its reporters, James Risen, who is facing a court order to reveal his confidential source for a book that he wrote in 2006.
At issue is a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late last week that explains the whole case. The upshot: based on the Supreme Court’s erroneous ruling in the 1972 Branzburg case, the Circuit Court said the journalist has no choice: when the government demands to know who your source was, you have to spill the beans, or go to jail (and thenspill the beans, I guess, unless the government plans to jail journalists for life).
As I have argued here and here and here, SCOTUS got Branzburg wrong, so it is hardly surprising that its progeny are similarly wrong. In my view, the First Amendment, when properly understood, would provide journalists all the protection they need to protect their sources. Until that 1972 error is corrected, we will continue to see these kind of rulings, and journalists — regrettably — will have to go to jail.
Here’s the Times editorial:
A Terrible Precedent for Press Freedom
An egregious appeals court ruling on Friday has dealt a major setback to press freedoms by requiring the author of a 2006 book to testify in the criminal trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official charged with leaking classified information. The ruling and the Justice Department’s misplaced zeal in subpoenaingJames Risen, the book’s author and a reporter for The Times, carry costs for robust journalism and government accountability that should alarm all Americans.
A federal district judge, Leonie Brinkema, was mindful of those costs two years ago when she ruled that a qualified reporters’ privilege to protect confidential sources, grounded in the First Amendment, applies in criminal cases and declined to compel Mr. Risen to reveal a confidential source in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. employee. The 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which overturned Judge Brinkema’s sound decision, relied on an overly sweeping reading of a murky 41-year-old Supreme Court decision that has been rejected by other federal appellate courts. The ruling also failed to respect the nearly universal consensus among states that there is a common law privilege for protection of reporters’ confidential sources.
The third member of the panel, Judge Roger Gregory, got it right, calling his colleagues decision a real threat to investigative journalism. “Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial,” Judge Gregory wrote in a forceful dissent. “The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and, in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.” Judge Gregory found that the government has ample evidence to proceed with the prosecution without forcing a reporter to choose between protecting sources or going to jail.
The precedent set here is especially troubling since the Fourth Circuit, where the ruling applies, includes Maryland and Virginia, home to most national security agencies. If left to stand, it could significantly chill investigative reporting, especially about national security issues.
It was dismaying that the Justice Department issued a statement approving of the court’s wrongheaded legal conclusion barely a week after Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced new guidelines that are supposedly designed to better protect the news media from federal investigators in leak cases. But the department also said it was “examining the next steps in the prosecution of this case.” That should include withdrawing its demand that Mr. Risen testify about his sources.
This issue tests the new guidelines and their promise not to threaten journalists with jail for doing their jobs, except in “extraordinary” circumstances. If he has any intention to live up to that pledge, Mr. Holder should reopen the question of Mr. Risen’s subpoena.
New rules for spying on journalists
July 14th, 2013
By Christopher B. Daly.
No surprise. The government has decided that it does not want to completely retreat from the field of spying on, investigating, and prosecuting journalists who seek and report the truth about our government’s operations.
The Justice Dept is willing to make a few concessions, in acknowledgement that it recently got caught over-reaching in a number of cases. But it is nowhere near saying that the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom means what it says.
That’s my understanding of what AG Eric Holder announced yesterday in compliance with a demand from his boss, President Obama.
–Here’s coverage by the Times and the Post. (Complete with lots of comments that should not be missed.)
–Here’s the text of the Justice Dept report. (I am posting this in good faith; I hope the Justice Dept is doing the same and is not hiding some classified, redacted version in which they take it all back.)
Essentially, it amounts to this: Trust us. In the future, the attorney general will continue to make judgment calls and do all the balancing of press freedom and national security. If you don’t like it, tough. There’s no appeal, no remedy, no oversight.
If in the future, we have more secrecy and less transparency, this will be part of the reason.
Media executives pay
July 10th, 2013
By Christopher Daly.
It’s ridiculous to find so many heads of media companies (often with journalistic subsidiaries) on this list of top-paid U.S. executives. If their companies are doing so well, why aren’t they hiring more journalists?
The re-making of the news media
July 6th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
We are living through a period of great flux in the news business. There are new ventures, new hybrids, new devices for gathering and disseminating information, documents, and polemics. It’s a treat to have a front-row seat (Goodbye, Google Reader! Hello, Feedly!), but it can be disorienting at times.
To wit: the decision by the mighty Time Warner media conglomerate to abandon its shiny, still-new namesake building at Columbus Circle in Manhattan and decamp to a still-unfinished tower in a lower-rentdistrict the developers refer to as Hudson Yards. (Does anybody really call it that? It’s really a vast wasteland on the Far West Side between Chelsea and Hells Kitchen, but it is slowly becoming a new media hub within Manhattan.)
But not to be missed is a more powerful trend sweeping through much of Big Media: the break-up of many of the big conglomerates. At Time Warner, at News Corp., and at Tribune Co., the same de-conglomeration process is underway: the division of those big companies into a print division and a (for lack of a better word) video division.
–Time Warner is spinning off its magazine division, which has been the cornerstone of the Time empire since Henry Luce founded Time magazine in 1923.
–News Corp. took out a double-truck ad in the NYTimes on Monday to signal its separation into two divisions. One made up of the Wall Street Journal, theNYPost and many, many other newspapers along with some magazines, almost all of which lose money. The other is a new company (called “21st Century Fox”) made up of the highly profitable television, cable, and movie-making subsidiaries. (The new video division began trading on the stock market on July 1; shares opened at $29 and basically stayed there all day. The new print division has not started trading yet.)
–Tribune Co., which traces its roots to the Chicago newspaper empire founded by Joseph Medill and taken over by his grandson, Col. Robert R. McCormick, announced this week that it is going to spend $2.7 billion to buy 19 local television stations around the country. At the same time, Tribune Co. is trying to sell “some or all of its newspaper properties,” including the cornerstoneChicago Tribune, according to a story in today’s NYT business section.
–The New York Times Co., which traces its roots to the founding of the New-York Daily Times newspaper in 1851, began selling off its broadcast units about six years ago and completed the process a few years later. The Times Co. is apparently pursuing a strategy of shrinking to its core business and trying to defend the castle keep with a paywall.
The big open question: What will any of this mean for the quality of the journalism that is carried out by these companies?
Stay tuned.
http://journalismprofessor.com/2013/07/02/the-re-making-of-the-news-media/
Fox News: Quote of the week
June 1st, 2013
By Christopher B. Daly.
“To be a Fox journalist is a high honor, not a high crime.”
–Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News, in a memo to his staff.
Here’s the full text:
Dear colleagues,
The recent news about the FBI’s seizure of the phone and email records of Fox News employees, including James Rosen, calls into question whether the federal government is meeting its constitutional obligation to preserve and protect a free press in the United States. We reject the government’s efforts to criminalize the pursuit of investigative journalism and falsely characterize a Fox News reporter to a Federal judge as a “co-conspirator” in a crime. I know how concerned you are because so many of you have asked me: why should the government make me afraid to use a work phone or email account to gather news or even call a friend or family member? Well, they shouldn’t have done it. The administration’s attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time. We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.
I am proud of your tireless effort to report the news over the last 17 years. I stand with you, I support you and I thank you for your reporting with courageous optimism. Too many Americans fought and died to protect our unique American right of press freedom. We can’t and we won’t forget that. To be an American journalist is not only a great responsibility, but also a great honor. To be a Fox journalist is a high honor, not a high crime. Even this memo of support will cause some to demonize us and try to find irrelevant things to cause us to waver. We will not waver.As Fox News employees, we sometimes are forced to stand alone, but even then when we know we are reporting what is true and what is right, we stand proud and fearless. Thank you for your hard work and all your efforts.
Sincerely,
Roger Ailes
What is “strategic communications”?
May 9th, 2013By Christopher B. Daly.
While not wanting to sound holier than anybody, I have to ask:
What is a school of Journalism (not to mention the oldest one in the country) doing with a search for a new professor of something called “strategic communications”?
The once-proud University of Missouri School of Journalism, founded in 1908, recently posted this job advertisement:
The Missouri School of Journalism is seeking a colleague who will teach at the graduate and undergraduate levels in strategic communication in the areas of marketing research, data analysis, and consumer insights. We invite applications for a full-time 9-month tenure track assistant professor beginning in August 2013.
Why are they teaching “marketing research, data analysis, and consumer insights”? What do those things have to do with journalism? Journalism is simple to define: try to find out the truth and tell it. I don’t know what those other activities are. They sound suspiciously like figuring out how to sell stuff (and maybe candidates or ideologies) to people who may or may not be better off after being researched and analyzed.
Obviously, the answer is that Mizzou has strayed from its original founding mission. That mission was spelled out by the school’s first dean, Walter Williams. It is worth recalling:
The creed