Facing $80,000 in Fines, Writers End 3-Year Fight
In the end, facing $40,000 fines each in a case that had dragged on since 2000, the reporters turned over their notes.
With virtually no public notice, Linn Washington Jr., veteran Philadelphia-area reporter and editor in the black press as well as at the Inquirer and Daily News, and Mark Bowden, former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of “Black Hawk Down,” gave the judge and the state their unpublished notes from an interview with a murder suspect.
“The case has been disposed of . . . and that’s the end of the story,” Washington’s lawyer, Simone White, told Journal-isms today. It follows a ruling that one media lawyer now predicts will have a chilling effect on newsgathering.
On May 25, Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jane Greenspan gave the reporters 20 days to turn over their notes to the state and to the defense attorneys.
“Apparently these reporters believe they are able to pick and choose what to keep private and what to expose,” she wrote in her opinion. “Certainly the verbatim statements of a defendant who is on trial in a homicide case would be among the last pieces of information that reporters would want to cloak with secrecy.”
While the Inquirer had been paying the expenses of Bowden, now with the Atlantic Monthly, and the Tribune had been providing counsel for its “columnist and occasional reporter,” as Washington describes himself, it had not been determined whether Washington or the Tribune would have to pay the $40,000, if it came to that, White said.
[Added July 31:
[However, Washington later told Journal-isms that, “The Tribune backed me in this legal battle, including putting up the $40,000 for the fine (insurance would pay) if it came to that and it didn’t.”]
Part of the saga is cited by Bowden in an article in the July/August issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, apparently written before the notes were turned over, in explaining why Bowden had become disillusioned with so-called “shield laws” for reporters.
When he went to court, he wrote, “First of all, it became clear that I enjoyed no strong legal protections or traditions.” The presentation of Emily Zimmerman, an assistant district attorney, “made it plain that the only thing standing between a jail cell and me was Judge Jane Greenspan, of the Common Pleas Court, whose order I had defied.
“What was even more troubling was that Zimmerman?s argument made a lot of sense. Why should reporters enjoy any kind of special status before a judge and jury in a murder trial?”
As the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press recounts the events:
“Mark Bowden, then with The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Linn Washington Jr., then with The Philadelphia Tribune, separately interviewed Brian Tyson in 1998 and wrote stories about the incident. Prosecutors sought the reporters’ unpublished notes — including any ‘off the record’ comments — to see what Tyson had told them about the shooting.
[“Tyson claimed the shooting was in self-defense as part of a battle to rid his North Philadelphia neighborhood of drugs and criminals,” as the Philadelphia Daily News reported.]
“Both reporters refused, arguing that the state Shield Law is an absolute privilege. The law says no reporter shall ‘be required to reveal the source of any information procured or obtained by such a person’ for any legal or governmental investigation.
“Bowden and Washington were found in contempt of court by Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan, of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court (1st Dist.), and each fined $40,000. Bowden did testify during the trial, but only concerning information that had been published.
“In December 2000, Tyson was found guilty of third-degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison.
“Three years later, the Supreme Court held that ‘disclosure here would not inhibit the free flow of information to the media’ and therefore ‘the Shield Law does not prevent the compelled disclosure of Tyson’s comments.’
“‘Tyson made no effort to conceal his identity and freely communicated with Bowden and Washington about the shootings and his relationship with the local drug dealers,’ the majority wrote.”
Teri L. Henning, a Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lawyer, told Journal-isms today that the December ruling would have a “chilling effect on news gathering.
“The significance of the ruling goes beyond the facts in this individual case. It changed the [shield] law in Pennsylvania. Under the Bowden ruling, reporters’ notes regarding non-confidential sources are no longer protected,” she said.
“Great Untold” Earl Caldwell Case Gets a Telling
Mark Bowden’s recitation of reporters defying court orders and going to jail — or at least being prepared to — includes the case of Earl Caldwell and the Black Panthers, one that Caldwell considers “one of the great untold cases in journalism.”
Caldwell told Journal-isms that “this case is unique in that it was battled to the Supreme Court of the United States,” that it was a “journalist-led case,” as opposed to one led by corporations, and because “at the center of the case was a black journalist — to me this was the triumph of the black journalist.”
As Bowden writes:
“In the months after Martin Luther King Jr.?s murder in 1968, the country?s racial divisions widened. There was severe rioting in many American cities, and the provocative voices of black militants moved from the fringe to center stage. Caldwell was dispatched to Oakland, California, home base for the Black Panthers.
?At their meetings there was a lot of talk about guns,’ says Caldwell. ‘Huey Newton was on trial for killing a police officer. There was talk of taking violent action if he were convicted. On my first night in Berkeley I went to the house of Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Panther leaders, and I wound up with a group that was moving a large number of weapons to Oakland. I wrote the story. I was worried about how they would react to it, and when there was no response I just figured they mustn?t read The New York Times. It didn?t dawn on me until later that they had wanted me to write about it. They wanted law enforcement to know that they were heavily armed.’
“Back in New York after writing these stories, Caldwell was approached in the newsroom by two FBI agents. They wanted more details about the article on the gun shipment. He knew that any special access he would ever have to the Panthers would be blown if he was known to be cooperating with the authorities. And he was frightened of the Panthers. He refused.”
“. . . The Times retained a law firm in San Francisco to help him fight it, but when Caldwell met with John Bates, the lawyer assigned to his case, he was told: ‘We think you should bring all your material in and let us have a look at it. Some of it should probably be turned over to the FBI.'”
Caldwell ditched the Times lawyer. As Bowden recounts, “Caldwell lost his appeal, but the case established a first tenuous pretext for constitutional journalistic privilege. The immediate effect of the ruling was open season on journalism. Thirty-five reporters went to jail in the next eight months for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors. Responding to the onslaught, many state legislatures acted to strengthen existing journalist shield laws or to enact new ones.”
Caldwell, a founding director of the Maynard Institute and a Scripps Howard endowed professor of journalism at Hampton University, said he hoped to convene at Hampton this spring a retrospective on a meeting of black journalists at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., in 1970 about his case, which also prompted the creation of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The CJR piece mentions that the National Association of Black Journalists took out an ad in black papers around the country assuring readers that, ?We Will Not Be Spies Against the Black Community!? but actually the ad was from a New York black journalists group, Black Perspective, that predated NABJ’s 1975 founding, Caldwell said.
He said former New York Times reporter C. Gerald Fraser found a copy of the ad as it ran in the New York Amsterdam News, sent it to Caldwell, and that the Scripps Howard Foundation had it restored and put on a plaque.
Series Recalls ’64 Riots in Rochester, N.Y.
The Democratic National Convention plans to commemorate the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated at the 1964 Democratic convention, an event that took place during Mississippi Freedom Summer, the voter-registration effort in which three civil rights workers were killed.
But 1964 was also the year of the first wave of urban riots, in Rochester, N.Y., and in Harlem. They preceded those in Watts, Detroit, Newark and tens of other cities in the 1960s.
The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester yesterday began a three-part series, “Race in Rochester: Forty Years After the Riots,” “with an assessment of progress made in criminal justice, education and other crucial areas. On Monday, we visit an interracial apartment complex that was near the riot’s ground zero. On Tuesday, we explore local programs that are helping to level the playing field for African Americans.”
Bylines include Jim Memmott, Sheila Rayam, Patrick Flanigan, Heather Hare and Dolores Orman.
N.Y. Times Public Editor: Paper Really Is Liberal
“Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” was the headline yesterday on Times public editor Daniel Okrent’s column. He answered it in the first paragraph: “OF course it is.”
Meanwhile, Editor & Publisher today announced that it is offering “an unprecedented look at alleged ‘liberal bias’ in the newsroom, based on dozens of interviews with editors, reporters, media critics, academics and other observers.
“The August cover story, ‘The Liberal Newsroom: Myth or Reality?, concludes that, indeed, there are more liberals than conservatives at newspapers — but an overwhelmingly number of editors reject calls for any ‘ideological affirmative action’ program.”
In the Times, Okrent wrote that “Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. . . . prefers to call the paper’s viewpoint ‘urban.’ He says that the tumultuous, polyglot metropolitan environment The Times occupies means ‘We’re less easily shocked,” and that the paper reflects ‘a value system that recognizes the power of flexibility.’
“. . . But it’s one thing to make the paper’s pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls (European papers, aligned with specific political parties, have been doing it for centuries), and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear. I don’t think it’s intentional when The Times does this. But negligence doesn’t have to be intentional.”
N.Y. Anchor in Hit-and-Run While on Assignment
“WABC-TV anchor Sade Baderinwa was injured by a hit-and-run driver while on assignment in Hackensack, N.J., last night, officials said,” Richard Huff and Tom Raftery reported Saturday in the New York Daily News.
“Baderinwa was reporting on local flooding when a car came hurtling through police barriers and struck her about 9:30 p.m., Hackensack cops said.
The vehicle was found abandoned a short time later. The driver was still at large early this morning, officials said.
“‘She is in stable condition and awake,’ said station spokeswoman Julie Summersgill. ‘Everyone at the station is concerned and like everyone, anxious to know how this happened.’
“Baderinwa was interviewing Hudson St. residents, some of whom had 5 feet of water in their basements, when she was hurt.”
Asian Media Want Ads From Both Parties
“As Democrats and Republicans court blacks and Latinos, Asian-American media are accusing both parties of ignoring Asians in their efforts to attract minority voters,” Karl Schoenberger wrote Sunday in the San Jose Mercury News, following a similar report in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“New California Media, a San Francisco-based advocacy organization representing ethnic media nationwide, charges that the Kerry-Edwards campaign, after saying it would spend $1 million on advertising in Latino media and $2 million to reach African-Americans, has said nothing about reaching out to Chinese, Filipino, Indian and other Asian-Americans. Together those groups account for nearly 5 percent of the U.S. population, but fewer than 2 percent of registered voters.
“The issue is more about symbolism than ad revenues, several prominent Asian-American journalists said at a news conference Wednesday in San Francisco. While wealthy Asians are highly valued for their political fundraising potential, they said, ordinary citizens are taken for granted when it comes to counting ballots.
“Litto Gutierrez, editor in chief of the 60,000-circulation Philippine News, said he was upset because the Kerry campaign media strategy ‘sends the negative message that some ethnic communities count more than others. I don’t care so much about selling ads. But I want them to send the message that every one of our votes counts.'”
Bill Targets Deportations of Foreign Journalists
“A bill introduced this week in the U.S. House of Representatives would allow journalists from 27 ‘friendly’ countries to enter the United States without a visa for up to 90 days — just as any other citizen of a ‘friendly’ country may enter,” reports the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the bill, known as HR 4823, cites the recent deportations of foreign journalists as evidence that changes are needed in the law. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has found evidence of nine such deportations, supports such changes.
“At least nine journalists carrying passports from France, the United Kingdom and Australia have been denied entry into the United States by U.S. authorities since May 2003.”
MSNBC Finds Racial Element in “News” of Missing
“Whenever a missing person becomes a continuing news story, she is almost certain to be an attractive white girl or young woman:
“Molly Bish. Carly Brucia. Rachel Cooke. Audrey Herron. Polly Klaas. Chandra Levy,” writes Alex Johnson in a piece on MSNBC titled, “If you?re missing, it helps to be young, white and female.”
“More than 800,000 missing persons cases are on file with the FBI. Most of those are children, many of whom show up within hours of having wandered off.
“Almost 29,000 of them, however, are adults and juveniles who are ‘missing under circumstances indicating that the disappearance was not voluntary; i.e., abduction or kidnapping,’ according to the FBI?s National Crime Information Center. White women are just one of the many demographic subsets you can break out of the data.
“But ‘when was the last time you heard something about a 23-year-old black female who was missing on NBC or “World News Tonight”?’ asked David Hazinski, a former NBC News correspondent who teaches broadcast journalism at the University of Georgia.”
NAACP Calls for New Trial for Abu-Jamal
“Hours after Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry addressed the NAACP?s 2004 annual convention in Philadelphia, the nation?s largest civil rights organization approved a resolution calling for a new trial for internationally known death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal,” writes Linn Washington Jr. on The Black World Today Web site.
“Passage of the emergency resolution reaffirming the NAACP?s previous opposition to the death penalty prompted a statement of praise from Abu-Jamal, who grew up in a Philadelphia public housing project located about a mile from the site of the NAACP?s convention,” writes Washington, who followed the case from the beginning and also said in an affidavit that he “knew Mr. Abu-Jamal as a friend.”
Advertisers Seeking Mass-Reach Latino Magazines
“As the latino population explodes and marketers pour more dollars into Spanish-language media, leading U.S. publishers like Meredith Corp., American Media Inc. and Time Inc. are embracing the market as never before, selling more ad pages, expanding their reach and gearing up new magazine projects, all the while swiping executives from rival companies to direct their Hispanic ventures,” writes Tony Case in Media Week.
But, “The dearth of mass-reach Spanish-language print products makes magazines an also-ran to TV in the eyes of many marketers. As Doug Alligood, senior vp, special markets at BBDO, points out: ‘There are a lot of print options, but the problem is the small circ. Buyers want to see something in the multimillions.’
“Alligood explains that the Spanish-language print market has followed that of the magazine business in general, trending toward niche titles and away from mass-reach, general-interest books.”
Adds Ruth Gaviria, the Meredith Magazine Group’s director of Hispanic ventures, a newly created position:
“Advertisers, while very patient, would like to see more publications reaching higher rate-base numbers.”
“Like the magazine market at large, the heat in Latino pubs at the moment is with celebrity-centered titles. Another U.S. publisher embracing the Spanish-language market is American Media, one of the major purveyors of celebrity news via titles such as the National Enquirer and Star magazine.
“The leader among Spanish-language titles, Time Inc.’s People en Español, continues to dominate the field, raising its guaranteed circulation to 425,000 from 400,000 last February.”
Survey Finds Latino Decline in Literary Reading
“Literary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature,” according to a National Endowment for the Arts survey earlier this month that is prompting commentary.
“Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline – 28 percent – occurring in the youngest age groups.
“Literary reading declined among whites, African Americans and Hispanics. Among ethnic and racial groups surveyed, literary reading decreased most strongly among Hispanic Americans, dropping by 10 percentage points,” a news release says.
The survey said the decline could be the result of a bigger pool of Hispanics as the Latino population has increased, but that more research is needed.
