Iranian Appeals Court to Hear Saberi Case

Freelancer Ends Hunger Strike After 2-Week Prison Fast

"An Iranian appeals court will review the conviction of imprisoned Iranian American journalist Roxana Saberi next week, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday," as Thomas Erdbrink reported Wednesday in the Washington Post. 

"The announcement of the review came after Saberi’s family agreed not to employ a group of prominent lawyers headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

"’Judicial authorities have advised us that it is better to use other lawyers,’ said the journalist’s father, Reza Saberi.

Meanwhile, Reuters’ Fredrik Dahl reported from Tehran, "Saberi has ended her hunger strike in a Tehran prison after refusing food for two weeks, her father said on Wednesday.

"The 32-year-old started eating again on Monday after beginning a hunger strike on April 21 in protest against her eight-year jail sentence on charges of spying for the United States, her father Reza Saberi told Reuters.

"Reza Saberi, who said on Tuesday his daughter was ‘very weak,’ said he and others had urged her to start eating again after she only consumed two dates and some water with a little sugar during her 14-day fast."

Saberi, a freelancer who is a citizen of both the United States and Iran, was arrested in late January for working in Iran after her press credentials had expired.

The case prompted an outcry from journalism and human-rights organizations, and the U.S. government has demanded her release, calling the spying charges baseless.

The Post’s Erdbrink wrote that, "On Tuesday, Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters that Saberi’s case ‘has been referred to an appeals court, where it is being studied.’ He added that a hearing has been scheduled for next week, but that it will be closed to the news media and the general public.

"Although Jamshidi did not announce a specific date, Reza Saberi said he thinks the hearing will be May 12. ‘We hope for a lenient verdict,’ he said."

Separately, Marisa Guthrie of Broadcasting & Cable wrote this week that the cases of Saberi and of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are being held in North Korea, underscore the vulnerability of freelancers,  "who work without the political resources and public clout of large, internationally recognized news organizations.

"The dearth of public comments about Ling and Lee stands in stark contrast to the outcry over Saberi," Guthrie wrote. Saberi has reported for the BBC, National Public Radio, Fox News and other news organizations, while Ling and Lee were working on a piece for the lesser-known Current TV, about North Korean refugees fleeing to China.

"They were picked up by a military patrol when they allegedly crossed the border from China into North Korea. According to the official Korean Central News Agency, the investigation has concluded, and Ling and Lee will be tried, though a trial date is unknown," Guthrie wrote.

Moreover, "More Western news organizations are relying on freelance journalists to cover foreign countries where economic realities have forced the closure of fully staffed bureaus," increasing the likelihood of such incidents. 

• Robert Mackey blog, New York Times: North Korea Duels With Iran for Attention

Senators Facilitate Debate on "Future of Journalism"

Diversity advocates like to say that attention to diversity will be the salvation of newspapers, but the "D" word hardly came up on Wednesday at a Senate committee hearing on the plight of struggling newspapers in the digital era. 

Instead, the session, Webcast on the Commerce subcommittee’s Web site, provided a common space for various players with a role in that plight to present their views.

Speaking up for those who toil in newsrooms were David Simon, the onetime Baltimore Sun reporter who has gone on to produce such television series as "The Wire" and "Homicide: Life on the Street," and to a lesser extent, Steve Coll, former managing editor of the Washington Post, and James Moroney, publisher/CEO of the Dallas Morning News.

Add to that list some of the senators, who surprisingly, praised journalists, particularly as investigators who uncovered wrongdoing at the local level. It was that watchdog role that made journalists’ fate a public policy issue, they said.

Defending their roles as beneficiaries of new media were Ariana Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, and Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience of Google Inc.

Alberto Ibarg?ºen, president and chief executive officer of the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of the Miami Herald, was in the middle. The Knight Foundation funds some of the new media journalism initiatives. Ibarg?ºen said nothing that Congress could do would be more important than providing universal digital access.

Moroney said that Congress could help newspapers partially by giving them a limited antitrust exemption so they could collaborate in experimenting with "innovative content distribution and cost-saving arrangements; and ensure that newspaper publishers have a mechanism to get reasonable compensation from Internet companies that reproduce or repackage their breaking news content for commercial gain," as William Douglas reported for McClatchy Newspapers.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., has introduced a bill to help newspapers restructure as not-for-profit organizations.

But Moroney said it would take $600 million to run his paper as a nonprofit Web site,¬† given how little advertising goes to the Web compared to the print product.¬† He "emphasizes that it it’s important to preserve the newsroom, not the newspaper, but that so far it’s the newspaper carrying the bulk of the newsroom," as Clint Hendler wrote in a live blog of the session for the Columbia Journalism Review.

Mayer, of Google, insisted that the search-engine company helps newspapers by driving traffic to their Web sites. They are not fully taking advantage of the medium, she said, by failing, for example,  to use the ends of stories to lure viewers to other content on the site. (Moroney said dallasnews.com was already doing that.)

Huffington, who said the Huffington Post employs 60 people, including 10 full-time investigative reporters, said that citizen journalists were uncovering stories that newspapers claimed would be lost without them. She mentioned stories about the financial meltdown, and the blogger who captured then-candidate Barack Obama at a San Francisco fund-raiser using the word "bitter" to describe some white voters last year.

"The day I will run into a Huffington Post reporter at a zoning board hearing is the day we’ll reach equilibrium," Simon said. "Does content have value? Does intellectual property have value?" he asked, referring to the free availability of journalists’ work on the Web.

When Huffington said early on that a successful business model for news organizations was simply in a state of transition, others said the question was whether the nation could afford the loss of so many journalist jobs in the meantime.

Coll said policymakers must determine where the public interest is located. He answered where: In reporting at the local and state level. The members of Congress agreed.

"Life changes, business models change," said subcommittee chair John Kerry, D-Mass. "I want to guarantee" that whatever emerges "doesn’t leave behind the possibility for a couple of police reporters to hold the president of the United States accountable for a crime.

"This is a first conversation," Kerry said, "and I hope it leads to more." 

Before the hearing, Charles Robinson told Journal-isms that he and Aprill O. Turner, board members of the National Association of Black Journalists, plan to attend. NABJ "needs to be at the table because of the adverse impact the layoffs are having on our members and journalists of color," he said.

• Russell Adams, Wall Street Journal: Boston Globe Reaches Deal With Union
• Liz Cox Barrett, Columbia Journalism Review: Live Blogging ‘Future of Journalism’ Hearing
• William Douglas, McClatchy Newspapers: Congress explores how to help save newspapers
• Google: We’re good for journalism
• Click on names of witnesses for opening statements

 

 

Caption: Delma Francis: "One thing my situation has instilled in me is humility." (Credit: Raoul Benavides/MinnPost)

Two Years After Buyout, Reporter Says She’s Broke

"Now when I say I’m broke, I mean it – as in $10 to my name until my next unemployment check. You see, I’m the poster child for what the current economy is doing to the middle class," Delma J. Francis¬†wrote in MinnPost, one of the investigative journalism Web sites that has been projected as the future¬†of journalism.

"Until 23 months ago, I’d never been unemployed," she wrote. "When I took a buyout at the Star Tribune on June 15, 2007, I was sure I’d find another job quickly, although my entire career has been in newspapers – which, as you may know, are not doing a lot of hiring these days. Still, writing and editing are valuable assets to many businesses. What I hadn’t counted on was the total tanking of the economy.

"I know there are thousands of Minnesotans coping with unemployment. I write this for them as much as for me. As an occasional freelance writer for MinnPost, I have a voice and a vehicle for letting our fellow citizens know what is happening. Many of them don’t.

". . .My dream (aside from landing a full-time job) is to testify on Capitol Hill – to put a face on the plight of the middle-class unemployed. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to stay afloat – like all too many others."

MinnPost is headed by Joel Kramer, former publisher of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. According to its Web site, its initial funding of $850,000 came from four families, it has major foundation support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (start-up funding, 2007 and 2008) and the Blandin Foundation, and as of June 30, 2008, the site had 904 member-donors contributing amounts ranging from $10 to $10,000.

Telemundo Abruptly Removes Its Chicago Anchor

When Vicente Serrano, the main anchor for Telemundo Chicago, was last in this column, he had asked President-Elect Barack Obama what he thought about the disappointment among some Latinos that Bill Richardson, who is Hispanic, had not been named secretary of state, but commerce secretary. That was in December.

On Monday, after six years on the anchor desk, Telemundo abruptly removed Serrano from his job, Veronica Villafane reported  Wednesday in her Media Moves column. "He was called in to work earlier than usual on Monday. When he arrived at the station, he was immediately directed to the human resources office, where he was told that due to financial constraints, he would no longer be part of the news team. His contract technically ends in June of 2010.

"Vicente tells me he was surprised and disappointed at how things were handled. He was told the decision was made last Friday, however, the station waited until the day after he participated in a company sponsored Cinco de Mayo community event before sending him off.

"Vicente recently completed and debuted a documentary about the deportation of legal immigrants during the Great Depression."

"’I can’t believe it,’ he says. ‘I expected more from the company I dedicated my life to for the past 6 years.’"

Caption: David Steele

The Baltimore Sun Really Fired Me in the Press Box

By David Steele

"Full disclosure: the first two times I was given stunning news about my newspaper job — in 1986 at the about-to-merge St. Petersburg Evening Independent, and in 1991 at the about-to-be-defunct National Sports Daily — I didn’t get it face-to-face either time," David Steele wrote Wednesday for RealClear Sports. "Also full disclosure: the latter time, I learned while in the press box at a Baltimore Orioles game, too.

"Of course, I was, respectively, 21 and 26 years old back then. It’s a little different when you’re 44, when you’ve been in the business more than half your life . . . and when it’s your specific job, not your entire newspaper, which has just become defunct. And when the people responsible for giving you the news were a few dozen blocks away, calling you on your cell phone in the middle of a baseball game you thought you were going to write a column about for the next day’s paper.

"To answer your question: yes, it felt just as bad as you imagine it would. To answer another of your questions: no, I have no real desire to visit the press box at an Orioles game any time soon. Next time, maybe I’ll be told that they’re foreclosing on my house during the seventh-inning stretch.

"It’s sort of funny that even five days later, there were a lot of people in the news industry who thought it was an unconfirmed rumor: that three of the more than 40 Baltimore Sun staffers laid off on Wednesday, April 29, found out when their editors called their cell phones while they were at that fateful Orioles game. Let me confirm that definitively for everybody, because I was one of the ones who got that call, the second of the three, if my timeline is correct. A fourth got a similar call, but with the option of moving out of sports to return to a previous news reporter position. Otherwise, the list of injured bystanders was me, our other general sports columnist Rick Maese, and photographer Elizabeth Malby."

Meanwhile, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild reported Wednesday that "More than 50 Baltimore Sun newsroom staff members, including reporters, photographers and other bylined content producers, launched a byline strike today protesting layoffs and heavy handed tactics by owner Tribune Co."

H1N1 Virus Entangled in Immigration Controversy

"The swine flu virus has infected the immigration debate, with talk show comments like ‘fajita flu’ and ‘illegal aliens are the carriers’ drawing vehement protests from Hispanic advocates," Jesse Washington wrote¬†on Saturday for the Associated Press.

Mark Jurkowitz of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that "from April 27-May 3, the swine flu, or H1N1 as it officially became known, accounted for nearly one-third of the newshole (31%) studied."

"The volatile immigration issue had cooled off on talk shows and in the blogosphere as the presidential election and economic crisis unfolded," Washington’s story continued. "Now, some are using the spread of the virus to renew arguments that immigration from Mexico is a threat to America.

"There have been no reports of swine flu leading to incidents of discrimination or profiling of Hispanics. But some Hispanics say racist anti-immigration rhetoric fueled the recent rise in hate crimes against Latinos, and they want to prevent another surge.

"Since the virus began to spread, talk radio host Michael Savage has said the Mexican border should be closed immediately and that ‘illegal aliens are the carriers.’ Another radio personality, Neal Boortz, has suggested calling the virus the ‘fajita flu,’ and CNN’s Lou Dobbs called it the ‘Mexican flu,’ according to the liberal watchdog group Media Matters."

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists last week "called on the media on Wednesday to be fair and prudent when covering the spread of swine flu in the U.S. and around the world, and resist the portrayal of Mexican immigrants as scapegoats for the possible pandemic."

• Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press:¬†Swine flu could shine glaring light on uninsured
• Derek Donovan, Kansas City Star: Debate over influenza A coverage

Reporter Cites Incorrect Reports in Abu-Jamal Case

"Each of the candidates for Philadelphia district attorney recently told Daily News columnist Michael Smerconish that, if elected, they’d pursue the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal in the event of a new sentencing hearing or new trial," Milton McGriff wrote Wednesday in the Philadelphia Daily News.

"One, Seth Williams, noted that he’d attended hearings and studied court documents and trial notes before making his decision."

Abu-Jamal is the onetime president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists who is on death row for gunning down a Philadelphia police officer 28 years ago. A radio journalist who has become an international rallying point against the death penalty, Abu-Jamal lost his case for a new trial last month when the Supreme Court let stand his conviction.

McGriff is a Philadelphia journalist who reported on the case for the Philadelphia Tribune from 1998 to 2000. He wrote his master’s thesis at Iowa State about the case, and knew Abu-Jamal in 1969, when he was a member of the Black Panther Party, according to the Daily News.

"Three police reports and a page one Daily News story (Jan. 9, 1982) on preliminary-hearing testimony aren’t in the original trial record," McGriff wrote. "Amazingly, in both the reports and the story, police officers, one an inspector, claim to have heard a wounded but talkative Abu-Jamal make two separate admissions of guilt in the early morning hours of Dec. 9, 1981, when authorities say he fatally wounded police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

"But what the police reports say was incorrectly reported by the D.A.’s office in a ‘proposed finding of fact’ prepared by Assistant D.A. Hugh Burns for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

"The ‘error’ covered up information damaging to the state’s case, and no one has ever moved to correct the official record.

"Hiding the official testimony of officers suggests that other information may be hidden, too."

White Ex-Anchor Claims "Hostile Work Environment"

In Philadelphia, "former Fox29 weekend anchor Tom Burlington has alleged in a suit that station management discriminated against him for using a racial epithet during a planning meeting at which colleagues discussed a news story about a mock funeral for the word," Michael Klein reported Wednesday for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Burlington, 41, of Malvern, was suspended after the incident and dismissed eight months later, in February 2008, at the end of his contract.

"In his lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Burlington, who is white, asserts that he was subjected to a hostile work environment because of his race.

"Burlington previously had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which closed the case without issuing a determination.

"In the suit, Burlington says that on June 23, 2007, he and about eight colleagues discussed plans for the evening’s broadcast. Robin Taylor, a white reporter, mentioned her story, in which a youth council of the NAACP symbolically ‘buried’ the racial epithet. In describing her story, Taylor used the phrase ‘n-word’ and not the epithet, says the complaint, filed against Fox and its parent company, News Corp."

The story picks up from there . . .

Short Takes

• Nicole Wong, a business reporter at the Boston Globe who volunteered¬† in March to be laid off so that another journalist could remain at the paper, has been awarded one of nine Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism announced Nine Knight-Bagehot Fellows in economics and business journalism have been named by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the 2009-2010 academic year on Monday. "The mid-career fellowships provide full tuition and a living stipend of $50,000 for experienced journalists to take graduate courses at Columbia’s Schools of Business, Law, and International and Public Affairs."
• News Director Kathy Williams, who abruptly left Fox-owned KRIV-TV in Houston in March, is rejoining KPRC as its assistant news director, the station announced Monday, David Barron reported¬†for the Houston Chronicle. She "is returning to the station where she started her TV career in 1985. She will work with Rick McFarland, the station‚Äôs newly appointed news director and a friend and colleague for more than 20 years. ‘I had opportunities, but there‚Äôs nothing like being at home,’ Williams said. ‚ÄúI spent eight years with the folks (at Channel 2) and know so many of them. They are so welcoming, and my family is thrilled.’‚Äù
• Alice K. Morris, executive producer/video operations for KGO-TV/ABC, Inc. in San Francisco, is leaving the station, Morris confirmed. "In August of this year I would have celebrated 29 years with the company, and over 30 years in television news. Monday of last week I was told that I would be laid off, and that Friday May 1st would be my last day. I was the only African American in management at the station, and I am still trying to digest what took place." She added, "I want to push the envelope and maximize my experience and knowledge. Public Relations, Communications Director ‚Äî even Public Service ‚Äî I have an interest in all three areas." She started as an intern at KPIX in 1976, working with the legendary broadcast journalist Belva Davis.
• The second annual Be’chol Lashon Media Awards, honoring excellence in coverage of Jewish ethnic diversity, were presented Sunday in San Francisco. Winners, who each received $1,000, included Anthony Weiss for ‚ÄúThe Obamas Have a Rabbi in the Family‚Äù in the Forward, discusses Rabbi Capers Funnye, an African American rabbi who is the cousin of first lady Michelle Obama; Jocelyn Frank for ‚ÄúPassover in Uganda‚Äù on National Public Radio; Cole Kravitz, ‚ÄúJen Chau Reflects on Her Work as a Change-Maker for Mixed Race Communities‚Äù in J-Voices. The "Best of Show" went to Yasmeen Malik of Vox Teen newspaper in Atlanta for ‚ÄúMy Path to Judaism: Converting While Keeping My Muslim Roots,‚Äù
• "A street sign will be unveiled tomorrow evening renaming the stretch of Armory Place next to WHAS-TV‚Äôs headquarters, Chuck Olmstead Way," the Louisville Courier-Journal reported on Wednesday. "Olmstead died March 10 after working 34 years as a reporter for Channel 11. The Louisville Metro Council recently passed a resolution directing that the street name be changed to honor Olmstead."
• In Oakland, Calif., the arraignment of Yusuf Bey IV, the 23-year-old head of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery a community-group leader accused of ordering the 2007 murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey, was postponed until May 13 on Wednesday, and the judge sealed the grand jury transcripts of a man who says he was the shooter, Terry Collins reported for the Associated Press.
• "CNN correspondent Jim Acosta returned today from Havana, Cuba, where he has filed reports since late last week for ‘American Morning,’" Steve Krakauer reported¬†Tuesday for the TVNewser Web site. "Acosta, a Cuban American who had never been to the island, was granted a journalists visa last Wednesday and was on a plane the next day. "This was more than just an assignment in a country that’s off-limits for most Americans," Acosta tells TVNewser. ‘It was the trip of a lifetime. My dad left the island when he was 12 years old, two weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis. All I’ve ever known about Cuba were my father’s childhood memories. So, this journey gave me a chance to put some faces with the memories.’"
• Jamaal Abdul-Alim, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 1997 to 2007, has joined Youth Today, a Washington-based newspaper that covers youth work, after having been a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor during the 2007-08 school year. "A month or so into my fellowship, I took a buyout from the Journal Sentinel, which had begun downsizing when I was at my fellowship. I figured the best time to jump ship would be when I had an eight-month paid fellowship," he told Journal-isms. "After Knight-Wallace, I moved to Philadelphia where freelanced, taught chess and pursued a few other literary projects and some educational endeavors. I joined Youth Today in December 2008. I cover ‘College & Careers’ through a position funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."
• Patrice Gaines, a journalist with an interest in incarceration and empowering women, has been awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to write a series of articles "exploring the impact of mass incarceration on African American communities. In some neighborhoods, half of the young male population is in prison or on probation or parole," the Open Society Institute announced last week. Gaines is an author, columnist and former Washington Post reporter who now lives in Lake Wylie, S.C.
• Alissa Krinsky at TVNewser compiled a list of journalists giving commencement addresses. They include: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: University of Michigan Medical School (Mich.), May 8; PBS’ Gwen Ifill: Howard University (D.C.), May 9, Marymount University (Va.), May 10, Simmons College (Mass.), May 15, Georgetown University, May 16; CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux: Gannon University (Pa.), May 9, Montgomery College (Md), May 22; CNN’s Soledad O’Brien: Florida A&M University, May 3; CBS’ Randall Pinkston: Jackson State University (Miss.), May 9; CBS’ Byron Pitts: North Carolina A&T State University, May 9, Delaware State University, May 17.
• "TIME magazine last night turned on the wattage for its sixth annual 100 Most Powerful People ceremony, which drew everyone from First Lady Michelle Obama and talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey to two of the three founders of blogging phenomenon Twitter," Keith J. Kelly wrote¬†Wednesday in the New York Post. "It was high tech meets show biz meets politics."