Now is the time for all good journalism teachers and students to come to the aid of their field
By John McManus
Posted August 27, 2004
It's that time of year when most journalism teachers are hunched over flashing photocopiers making handouts for the fall term. Their students are collecting the last care-free rays of summer or already standing in lines at the bookstore.
Time out! Your brothers and sisters practicing journalism need your help.
Many are demoralized, steamrollered by executives pushing for higher margins and marginalizing the most valuable kinds of reporting – stories that require time and talent to transform the complex or hidden into compelling journalism.
How are ivory tower egg heads and students who haven’t met their first real deadline going to redirect the corporate juggernaut?
By doing what they are uniquely qualified to do. And acting as if their futures depend on it.
Unprecedented pessimism
"News people are not confident about the future of journalism."
-- Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell
Since 1995 the Pew Research Center has been asking a representative sample of American journalists whether profit pressure interferes with news quality. This May, for the first time, a majority said yes. Two-thirds of American journalists working at national media, and 57 percent of those working in local newspapers and stations, agreed that "increased bottom-line pressure is seriously hurting the quality of news coverage."
Half think journalism is headed downhill. They say the news is avoiding complex issues, too timid and increasingly sloppy.
"News people are not confident about the future of journalism," wrote Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell in a commentary included with the Pew survey. Mr. Kovach chairs the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Mr. Rosenstiel and Ms. Mitchell lead the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Pew survey paints a picture of a disillusioned journalism workforce, pessimistic both about corporate and public support for quality reporting.
Journalists need outside help
"What they are left with," the authors conclude, "are issues they cannot contend with alone. And they believe the companies they work for in the last five years have moved in ways that have only made things worse."
Journalism educators and students might seem an unlikely rescue team.
Journalism programs have generally avoided public criticism of news organizations, especially those nearby. You don't bite the hand you hope will donate to your building fund, or hire your graduates, or whose staff might teach skill classes as inexpensive adjunct professors.
A careful critique of today's journalism might also discourage would-be majors. That could lead to loss of resources on campus, such as faculty slots.
Of course, all the journalism teachers and majors in the country won't be able to persuade news executives to put the needs of Main Street before the wants of Wall Street. That's why faculty and students must capture the public's imagination with a critique that activates consumers. That's where the power lies when journalism is market-driven.
Four reasons for faculty-student activism
Here are four reasons why prospective journalists and their teachers should publicly critique the most popular news media in their region:
• American journalism is increasingly driven by short-term economic logic. It seeks nothing less than to redefine news in ways that generate greater profit for owners, but may undermine the ability of citizens to participate in their governance.
That logic depends on selling the eyeballs of readers and viewers with good customer potential to advertisers. Which leaves an opening for consumer education. Were consumers better informed of what they should expect of news, and more demanding, then schlock might become less profitable and substance more.
That's a big "were." But consumers have learned to reduce tobacco and junk food consumption with help from medical researchers who widely publicized their results. Why, with help from news researchers, couldn't people learn to recognize and reduce consumption of junk journalism -- emotional, visual, simple but informationally barren fare.
• All of society will be affected by the prevalence of junk journalism. Those who aren't distracted from voting altogether are likely to cast uninformed or even misinformed votes. While everyone will eventually face the consequences, journalists and journalism educators will be among the first and most severely impacted if current trends continue.
As journalism loses its claims to professionalism and its reputation as a necessary condition for democracy, its justification as an academic discipline or field may be no stronger than that for insurance agents or Realtors.
• Journalism professors and students occupy a better position than most to evaluate news quality and help the citizens of a region do so as well. They understand, or should understand, the requirements of ethical practice as well as how to make information attractive to everyday people.
Many public broadcasting stations are located on campuses, providing a means of reaching the public without passing through the filter of corporate media -- which may resist efforts to increase public demand for more expensive, independent journalism.
• Systematic assessment of news can be an engaging learning experience for students -- whether journalism majors or not. Students seem to both enjoy and learn more when they discover the quality of news for themselves rather than reading some professor's critique.
The academic support system for the news industry can continue to mutter in the dark about the economic rationalization of news into an entertaining but irrelevant commercial product. Or it can heed the cries of its graduates and use its never-claimed authority to help the public recognize that just as junk food makes a body ill, junk journalism sickens a body politic.
SAN JOSE TO PROCEED ON PICKING CABLE PROVIDER
By Sandra Gonzales
Mercury News Tuesday, August 24
In a blow to Comcast, a federal judge dismissed the cable TV provider's
lawsuit against San Jose on Monday -- a move that leaves the city open
to determining whether Comcast is the right company to serve its
residents.
Comcast, which filed the suit last year in U.S. District Court, had
alleged that the city was illegally attempting to make the company pay
for an expensive telecommunications network connecting city buildings
and schools in return for the right to operate in San Jose.
The cable TV provider also opposed the process San Jose had set up to
oversee negotiations. A third-party officer in San Jose was appointed to
hear arguments and make recommendations to the city council. Comcast had
argued that the council should hear the issues directly. The company
maintained that the demands violated its constitutional right of free
speech and ran counter to federal rules that govern procedures for
franchise renewals. Comcast officials could not be reached for comment.
``Their strategy has been to delay,'' said City Attorney Rick Doyle.
``They haven't been coming to the table negotiating in good faith.''
In his decision, U.S. Magistrate Richard Seeborg noted that there were
no legal violations in claims brought by Comcast and said that Comcast
may renew its lawsuit depending on the outcome of the city's ongoing
administrative process to choose its cable provider.
``Clearly the judge thinks we should move forward and make a
decision,'' said San Jose spokesman Tom Manheim. ``And we are going to
continue moving forward in our administrative process and evaluate
Comcast's proposal.''
Comcast bought the cable service from AT&T Broadband in 2002. Both
sides have been wrangling for years over services and who will pay for
them. San Jose maintains that Comcast's terms are inadequate.
Does Big Media Have A Vested Interest In Protecting Bush? You Betcha
by Lawrence Lessig
Published on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 by Wired
The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise. The president, in this sense, is "free." But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show appearances? Who controls his words and images then?
Though Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has grabbed the headlines, another documentary is at the center of this debate. In August, Robert Greenwald will release an updated version of his award-winning film, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War. Greenwald has added a clip of President George W. Bush's February interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, NBC's Sunday morning talk show. In the clip, the president defends his decision to go to war - astonishingly unconvincingly.
Greenwald asked NBC for permission to run the one-minute clip - offering to pay for the right, as he had done for every other clip that appears in the film. NBC said no. The network explained to his agent that the clip is "not very flattering to the president." Greenwald included it anyway.
Copyright law gives NBC the power to deny anyone the use of its content, at least presumptively. If you want to rebroadcast Meet the Press or sell copies on the Internet, you need NBC's permission. There are exceptions, at least in theory. The law, for example, exempts "fair uses" of copyrighted material from the control of its owner. If a clip is short enough, or if its use is sufficiently transformative or critical, then the law allows its use, whether permission is granted or not.
In practice, however, the matter isn't that simple. Because copyright law is so uncertain, and because insurance companies that indemnify films don't much like risk, the practice among auteurs seeking major distribution is to cut any clip for which permission isn't granted - fair use notwithstanding. The costs of defending a fair use right in court - and, more important, the costs if any such defense should fail - make the risk prohibitive for most filmmakers. Defense of fair use could run hundreds of thousands of dollars - several times the budget of a typical documentary. And losing this type of claim could expose the filmmaker to $150,000 in damages for each copyright infringed. In a world in which Fox News sues comedian and author Al Franken for parodying "fair and balanced," a cautious director can't be too careful.
Greenwald's struggle demonstrates a more fundamental point. Many are concerned about the ever-expanding reach of copyright law. More are concerned about the ever-increasing concentration of the media. Greenwald's dilemma highlights how the two trends are linked: As media becomes more concentrated, competition to curry favor with politicians only increases. This intensifies during an election cycle. Networks able to signal that they will be "friendly" - for example, by ensuring that embarrassing moments from interviews won't be made available to others - are more likely to attract candidates for interviews and so on, than networks that don't. Concentration tied to copyright thus gives networks both the motive and the means to protect favored guests.
NBC insists it is remaining "neutral" by denying others use of the interview. But there's nothing neutral about restricting either critics or supporters from repeating the president's words. But the issue here isn't really NBC's motive. It is the president's. Why would any president allow a network to copyright his message? No self-respecting president would speak at a club that excluded women: Whatever rights a private organization may enjoy, a president stands for equality. So why did the current leader of the free world, who rarely holds press conferences, agree to speak on a talk show that refuses to license on a neutral basis the content he contributed? Is vigorous debate over matters as important as going to war less important than protecting his image?
This question is crucial, and thus Greenwald has decided to defend his fair use right, even if it means staring down a bunch of lawyers in court. The argument: It's hard to tell "the whole truth" about the Iraq war when you censor bits of that truth because a network tells you to. But what this incident demonstrates most is what many increasingly fear. Concentrated media and expansive copyright are the perfect storm not just for stifling debate but, increasingly, for weakening democracy as well.
© Copyright© 1993-2004 The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 8/23/2004
Comcast Corp. is one of the local companies that have been swept into the investigation by federal authorities into the financial and political dealings of the Baltimore City Council.
Comcast answered the subpoenas about eight months ago, confirmed MSO spokesman David Nevins. The existence of the subpoenas was reported by the Baltimore Sun.
Nevins stressed that Comcast was just one of several companies that received orders from the office of U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio.
"A subpoena doesn't indicate any wrongdoing. In no way, shape or form are we a target," Nevins said.
Vickie LeDuc, press officer for the U.S. attorney's office, said she could not confirm or deny any information about an ongoing investigation, including details on which - or how many - companies received subpoenas.
DiBiagio's office has been investigating the 19-member city council for several months. According to published reports, every member of the council was subpoenaed late last year. Investigators sought documents dating back five years and detailing interaction between individual council members and "certain businesses."
Testimony before a grand jury by council members is pending.
Comcast provided information to investigators regarding tickets to sporting events that were given to council members, confirmed Nevins.
A council ethics policy prevents gifts from companies that do business in the community. Comcast holds the local cable franchise, which it acquired from AT&T Broadband in 2001. The pact is in the informal renewal process.
But the gift ban does allow elected officials to take meals and beverages with constituent companies, and to accept tickets to cultural and sporting events if the invitation is extended to the entire council.
From Grade the News http://www.gradethenews.org
A grateful letter to the Mercury News:
It wasn't 'peeping Tom' journalism, was it?
Sex, lies and audiotape headlined the Mercury News on Aug. 11, Day 2 of a week-long Amber alert.
Dear Editors:
Thank you sooo much for all the intimate details about Scott and Amber's tryst.
What a night! Champagne? Strawberries? "Going all the way" on the first date. And the sexy details -- Amber's red strapless gown and the skintight leopard print pants and red boots!
Your reporter slipped us right past the bedroom door when she wrote: "He seduced her by candlelight with the tip of a red rose caressing her face, and kisses cascading down her neck."
Ooooh-la-la!
Such a welcome distraction from the New York Times with its gloomy stories about how American troops are entering a pivotal stage in their battle to suppress opposition forces across southern Iraq. That war will be going on for months, maybe years! Amber will only be on the stand for a week or two.
Plus when the Times or NPR reports on the presidential campaign, or how President Bush is rewriting mining or timber regulations for business -- I think it's the "No Nature Left Behind" initiative -- or when the National Academy of Sciences warns about California becoming a desert as global warming continues, I feel agitated. Like I should write my congresswoman or become politically active.
But reading about Scott, Laci and Amber requires nothing from me. It's great summer reading -- a sexy whodunit. How it turns out doesn't really matter.
I'm sure you cover all the stuff that matters too. But you don't push it at me on the front page. So I don't feel like I have to read it to be informed.
Know what? You make me feel like I'm out of the loop if I'm not up to speed on the Petersons. Thanks for helping me avoid feeling like this story is a guilty pleasure.
Still, I have to confess. For a moment when I was reading about Scott and Amber's dalliance, I felt a little ashamed of myself. Almost like a peeping Tom.
the Mercury News wouldn't invade anyone's privacy unless there were a really good reason, right?
But it wouldn't be on the front page of the Mercury News day after day if it weren't something we all should be paying attention to, right?
I guess as long as it's in a courtroom, journalists can expose intimate details of an everyday person's life. In any other context, I suppose they 'd be sued for invasion of privacy or people would say it's unethical.
I think if you were reporting the details of my sex life, particularly my most embarrassing moments, I'd feel humiliated. But the Mercury News wouldn't invade anyone's privacy unless there were a really good reason, right?
I mean, if Scott didn't murder Laci, would he have ordered the champagne? And the strawberries and the use of the rose -- those were pretty telling. And if he tried to make his life seem more exciting than it was to impress a lover, well that ruins his innocent plea for me.
I too wondered whether Amber might be promiscuous. Thanks for anticipating my questions and describing her previous affairs. You guys and gals are real pros!
I feel a little bad about Amber's reputation. Assuming she didn't kill Laci, she merely dated a handsome guy she thought was available. But wherever she goes from now on, people will know she's been a sucker for married men. And strawberries drenched in champagne. I guess that's what editors call "news you can use." Wives will know to watch out for her, and for strawberry stains.
Reading so much about Scott and Amber has really got me interested in the trial. I don't have much time to spend on news, but every day there's the story on the front page saying "come hither." How can I resist?
Other papers have covered the trial, but you've been devoted to it. You've sold me! I've become so interested -- it's like a reality soap opera -- I've discovered how much is available on other media. .
I've found I can hear many of the same experts you quoted both on cable TV and our local stations' newscasts. And rather than seeing just photos of Scott and Amber and that clever lawyer, Mark Geragos, I can see them move and speak on television. It's so much more life-like. And easier than reading.
Your reporters are really good, but seeing Amber and that creepy Gloria Allred live on TV is even better. The emotion really comes through on the tube. Plus I don't have to wait a day to find out the latest juicy details.
Thanks to you I realize I can save a few bucks a week on my subscription to the Mercury News. And I won't have to lug all those papers out to the curb for the recycling truck!
Thank you so much for opening my eyes to all the great journalism I can get for free.
Gratefully,
John Q. Public
Bay Area
How the News Media Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rumsfeld
By Norman Solomon
The nation’s top dog of war is frisky again. Donald Rumsfeld has
returned to high visibility -- after a couple of months in the media
doghouse following revelations about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison --
now openly romancing the journalistic pack with his inimitable style of
tough love as he growls and romps across TV screens.
For three years, the elan of Rumsfeld’s media stardom has been
welded to fear and killing. The civilian boss at the Pentagon made little
impression on the nation until 9/11 -- but soon afterwards, CNN was
hailing him as “a virtual rock star.” While he briefed reporters about
the bombing of Afghanistan in autumn 2001, there was a rush among
reporters and pundits who conflated his ability to oversee air-war
carnage with new status as some kind of hunk.
Three decades after President Richard Nixon pursued a “madman”
strategy in an attempt to intimidate North Vietnam’s leaders, more than a
few liberal pundits joined in the acclaim for Rumsfeld as someone capable
of pinning the violence meter. During a CNBC appearance (Oct. 13, 2001),
Thomas Friedman said: “I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there’s one
thing ... that I do like about Rumsfeld. He’s just a little bit crazy,
OK? He’s just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always
count on being able to out-crazy us, and I’m glad we got some guy on our
bench that our quarterback -- who’s just a little bit crazy, not totally,
but you never know what that guy’s going to do, and I say that’s my guy.”
And Ahmad Chalabi was Rumsfeld’s guy. Relentlessly promoted by the
Pentagon chief and top aides, the slick Iraqi exile was widely understood
to be an accomplished liar. But that didn’t impede New York Times
reporter Judith Miller and a team of colleagues as they put out
front-page prewar stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with
Chalabi serving as the key unnamed source.
The Times wasn’t alone. Many reporters on mainstream payrolls took
the nod from Rumsfeld, eagerly succumbing to the Chalabi scam. And some
avowedly independent journalists did likewise. Christopher Hitchens, for
instance, ended up dedicating his book about the Iraq invasion to Chalabi
and a few others -- calling them “comrades in a just struggle and friends
for life.”
When Rumsfeld comes in for harsh media criticism, he takes a licking
and keeps on ticking ... like a time bomb. Since early 2001, New York
Times columnist Maureen Dowd has referred to him as “Rummy” with
escalating frequency (in more than 40 columns last year), and some other
pundits have also been scathing at times. Yet the prevailing media
narrative has been compatible with the Rumsfeld “new American century”
agenda: Boys will be boys, Rumsfeld will be rummy, war will be bloody,
and the Pentagon media machine will keep spinning while the defense
secretary leads the way.
Rumsfeld was back in media action for a long interview Aug. 17 on
the PBS “NewsHour” with host Jim Lehrer. Mostly, Rumsfeld spun the fine
fabric of public relations. Along the way, he talked about how to get
“the best intelligence” and “good all-source analysis” without “having it
all single-perspective.”
Minutes later, Lehrer got around to asking whether Pentagon analysts
doing “lessons-learned studies” on Iraq had determined “why the
intelligence turned out to be so wrong about weapons of mass
destruction.”
Rumsfeld: “Ooh, no, that wasn’t what we did, no. The Central
Intelligence Agency did that.”
Lehrer: “Right. So you didn’t -- that was not part of your lessons
learned?”
Rumsfeld: “No. We’re not in that business.”
The evasive reply came from the Pentagon honcho who’d flatly
declared before the Iraq invasion that the U.S. government knew where
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were located.
But -- without a word of followup -- Lehrer changed the subject,
moving on to a matter of tactical foresight. “What about the intensity of
the insurgency after major combat,” he asked, “was that an intelligence
failure within the Pentagon -- or not?”
Rumsfeld’s response was predictable and easy (“things are always
different than one anticipates ... a war plan doesn’t ever outlive the
first contact with the enemy...”). In an interview that involved several
thousand words and focused largely on intelligence, Lehrer permanently
dropped the WMD question as soon as Rumsfeld blew it off.
Major U.S. news outlets are hardly inclined to be up in arms about
Rumsfeld’s record of prewar deception when they remain so dainty about
critiquing their own. What passes for soul-searching at the New York
Times and the Washington Post is much more like autoeroticism than
self-flagellation. No wonder Rumsfeld the media star is back.
___________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of “Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn’t Tell You.” His columns and other writings can be found
at
By Sarah Norr, http://www.beyondchron.org
Posted July 29, 2004
Why are progressive staffers disappearing from San Francisco’s leading paper?
In the past month, two staffers at the San Francisco Chronicle have quietly disappeared from their posts. Ruth Rosen, a progressive opinion columnist, was suspended without pay after she wrote a column criticizing the CEO of Curves for Women for supporting anti-abortion groups. Her supervisors accused her of spreading misinformation and of "disloyalty," and Rosen eventually agreed to leave the paper. Two weeks later, William Pates was taken off his job as editor of the letters page after management learned that he had donated $400 to John Kerry.
Taken alone, each of these cases might seem like an ordinary workplace dispute. But they are part of a larger pattern that has emerged at the Chronicle in the last two years: heavy-handed enforcement of an ethics policy that strips workers of nearly all political rights, with particular scrutiny and hostility directed at progressives. There has been no open purge of liberal staffers, and little of the public outcry that such a measure might bring. But since 2002, at least six Chronicle employees have been fired, disciplined, or reassigned because they were suspected of bias toward progressive causes.
The cumulative effect has been to remove some of the most visible progressive voices from the paper’s pages – and, inevitably, to send a chilling message to media workers at the Chron and throughout the area.
Conflict of interest?
Several weeks ago, Grade the News, a media watchdog group, began a study of local media workers’ political contributions. The group found that Chronicle letters page editor William Pates had contributed $400 to John Kerry, and contacted him for comment. When Pates forwarded the voice-mail to his boss, he was immediately taken off his job and sent home on paid leave until a new assignment could be found for him.
The problem – according to Pates’ boss, editorial page editor John Diaz – was that Pates had violated the Chronicle’s ethics policy. The policy prohibits employees from doing anything that would "create the appearance of a conflict of interest." In Diaz’s interpretation, this means that virtually any political act or statement, except voting, is out of bounds. "A bumper sticker would definitely be a concern," said Diaz. "Voting is a private act, but putting a bumper sticker on your car is a public statement."
Diaz emphasizes that the reassignment was "not a disciplinary measure – we’re not suggesting that [Pates] has been anything but professional." Instead, the move was intended to protect the paper from public suspicion of bias. "As letters page editor, Pates was in a gatekeeper role," said Diaz. "It’s the nature of the job that your fairness is always questioned."
Doug Cuthbertson, Executive Officer of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, which represents Chronicle staff, says that Pates "acknowledges management’s right to determine his assignment." But Pates, who has edited the letters page for decades, told the Associated Press that he was surprised to be taken off his job. Since he worked for the editorial page - which publishes opinion articles, not "objective" news - he did not think the ethics policy applied to him.
"Disloyal and embarrassing"
On April 29, editorial columnist Ruth Rosen wrote a column accusing Gary Heavin, CEO of the exercise chain Curves for Women, of donating $5 million to anti-abortion groups. Two weeks later, the Chronicle printed a lengthy correction that denied most of the information in the original column.
The dispute centered around the nature of three organizations that Heavin had supported. Rosen characterized them as "some of the most militant anti-abortion groups in the country." In fact, the groups are religiously affiliated health agencies. While one of them counsels pregnant women to avoid abortion, and another promotes abstinence for teens, none are directly involved in militant actions. The confusion seems to have stemmed from a letter posted on the web site of Operation Save America, a truly militant pro-life outfit. In the letter, the group’s assistant director claimed that Heavin donated to the health agencies at OSA’s request, as part of a conspiracy to destroy Planned Parenthood.
More to the point, Rosen told Salon Magazine that a Curves public relations officer had confirmed all the facts in her column. But the person Rosen spoke with turned out to be a young relative of the CEO, filling in for the regular publicist. When the column was published, Heavin issued a press release denying any support of militant pro-life groups – and, rumor has it, threatened the Chronicle with legal action.
The Chronicle then printed its correction, which disavowed most of the facts in Rosen’s column, but did not mention that they had been confirmed by a company publicist. In private responses to readers’ emails, Rosen explained the incident with the substitute publicist. When one such email reached Rosen’s bosses, they got "very upset," according to Cuthbertson, the union rep. "They thought the message was embarrassing and disloyal, since [Rosen] was publicly appearing to disagree with their position. She thought she was simply telling the truth."
Although Cuthbertson says that the Chronicle has no rule against publicly disagreeing with management, Rosen was suspended for three weeks, one of them without pay. The union filed a grievance, but Rosen eventually settled with the management and agreed to leave the paper.
A pattern emerges
Pates’ and Rosen’s cases are only the latest in a string of similar incidents:
- In August 2002, the Chronicle cancelled a regular column written by progressive feminist Stephanie Salter; the Chronicle’s publisher said that the column "didn’t resonate" with him. In protest, local activists organized two rallies, a letter-writing campaign that generated 1,500 messages, and a "girlcott" of the paper. But the Chronicle was unmoved – Salter was reassigned as a features writer, and her column never appeared again.
- In March 2003, technology reporter Henry Norr was suspended and then fired after he participated in civil disobedience at an anti-war rally. In a statement printed in the paper, managers claimed that Norr had violated the ethics policy, since "any journalist who assumes a prominent public role in any political issue inevitably creates the appearance of that conflict [of interest]." Norr argued that his activism created no conflict of interest, since he wrote about computers, not politics and war. He claimed that the true motive for his firing was retaliation for his opposition to the Iraq war and the occupation of Palestine. Again, an outpouring of public support failed to move the Chronicle. Norr filed a union grievance and a criminal complaint, but the parties eventually settled out of court, and Norr never returned to his job.
- In March 2004, reporter Rachel Gordon and photographer Liz Mangelsdorf were barred from covering San Francisco’s same-sex marriages after they married each other. Some observers compared the Chronicle’s actions to prohibiting black journalists from covering civil rights protests. Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Bevan Dufty organized a support rally for Gordon and Mangelsdorf, and the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Journalists denounced the Chronicle’s move. Once again, managers did not respond. In this case, the Chronicle’s arguments about journalistic objectivity were rendered all the more bizarre by the paper’s enthusiastic support of gay marriage. It was an official sponsor of this year’s marriage-themed Gay Pride Parade, ran pink advertisements proclaiming "We come out every day," and posted an album of same-sex wedding pictures on its web site.
Credibility and ethics
Chronicle managers justified most of these incidents by arguing that the paper must protect its credibility and avoid accusations of bias. But restricting workers’ political rights is not a standard component of respectable journalism. Ted Glasser, director of Stanford’s Graduate Program in Journalism, says that the ethics policy is "inappropriate, although unfortunately it’s not peculiar to the Chronicle."
First of all, reporters are human beings, and their biases won’t disappear simply because they’re not allowed to put bumper stickers on their cars. "The policy doesn’t prevent conflicts of interest, it just encourages employees to hide their interests," said Glasser. This makes it more difficult for readers to critically evaluate what they read.
Furthermore, "conflict of interest" usually refers to a situation where a reporter has a financial or personal stake in the subject she’s covering – like a business reporter who writes about a company she owns stock in. Chronicle managers have never explained how expressing a political opinion constitutes a conflict of interest. "You can have interests and act professionally," said Glasser. "In Pates’ case, the individual didn’t benefit in any way from his contribution, and there’s no evidence that he was biased."
But apart from the policy’s ethical problems, it’s patently illegal. California State Labor Code Section 1101 bars employers from "forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics." Section 1102 reads, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity." The law allows up to year of jail time for bosses who violate these provisions – and it offers no exceptions for journalists or any other class of workers.
Finally, the Chronicle’s stated commitment to neutrality conflicts rather glaringly with the behavior of its top executives. While Pates’ $400 donation was labeled an ethical violation, George Hearst – chairman of the board of the Chronicle’s parent company – has donated $30,000 to Republican candidates and committees over the past three election years. (Information on Hearst’s donations is available at the campaign finance web site www.opensecrets.org).
"This is one of the great hypocrisies of American journalism," said Glasser. "These policies apply to rank-and-file reporters, not to managers. If you want to talk about conflicts of interest, let’s talk about it where it really matters."
John Diaz, the editorial page editor, would not comment on Hearst’s donations or their implications for Pates. "I address ethics in terms of my staff," he said. "It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. You have to be true to yourself."
But Hearst’s contributions certainly create "the appearance of a conflict of interest" – especially since the ethics policy seems to be used mainly to silence employees who sympathize with progressive causes. Cuthbertson, the union rep, dismissed rumors of discrimination against liberals as "highly speculative." But he could not name a single case in which a staffer was transferred, suspended or fired under suspicion of bias toward conservative causes.
Looking forward
The situation at the Chronicle looks grim. The ethics policy is so far-reaching, and applied so aggressively – even to opinion writers – that it stifles critical political dialogue in the Chronicle’s pages. While top executives are free to support conservative causes, writers may be afraid to voice opinions that diverge from their bosses’. And it’s hard to imagine how any serious political analyst could be hired under the policy – people with original political insights tend to have opinions and to express them publicly.
While it can’t be pleasant for staffers to work under a McCarthy-style climate of suspicion toward progressive ideas, it’s the Chronicle’s readers who are hurt most by the policy. Anyone who relies on the Chronicle for daily news will miss important critical perspectives on local and national politics – an extraordinary loss in a mostly liberal community.
As long as the Chronicle continues to dominate local print media, it's crucial for local activists to fight its repressive policies. But it won't be easy. While the ethics code is in clear violation of state law, employees who have been affected by it have so far chosen to settle privately instead of pursuing legal action. And the paper barely acknowledged the public outcry that Salter's and Norr's cases generated. Readers and activists will need to apply serious pressure to the Chronicle – or develop real, accessible alternatives – in order to bring diverse and progressive voices back into the local media.
Full disclosure: the author of this article is the daughter of fired Chronicle reporter Henry Norr.
When it's free speech for journalists vs. free press for owners, law is less than settled;
Newsrooms cautiously defy state law with policies that ban political activities after work
By Michael Stoll, http://www.gradethenews.org
Posted Aug. 11, 2004
After the San Francisco Chronicle unseated its letters editor last month for making campaign contributions to Democrats, critics suggested that the paper's crackdown on potential conflicts of interest was not only too harsh, but also illegal.
California labor laws appear to provide unequivocal free-speech protection to all off-duty employees. Yet prospects for a legal victory for journalists are uncertain, say employment lawyers and media scholars who follow the issue.
Many news organizations say they have the right to restrict the off-hours political activities of their workers -- and even their spouses and partners. The Chronicle, for one, maintains that it is justified in stopping its reporters and editors from putting bumper stickers on the family car, marching in street protests and giving money to candidates. Those activities could create the appearance of a conflict of interest, the paper's editors say. Readers might think a journalist who they know supports Republican candidates, for example, has a Republican bias, even if none exits.
That policy appears to contradict sections 1101 and 1102 of California's labor code, which bar employers from "forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office" and from "controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees."
Indeed, some local newsrooms, such as KGO-TV Channel 7 in San Francisco, specifically cite state law as a reason they do not interfere with journalists' political activities.
The problem is that these state laws have never been tested as they apply to journalism. And even journalists who often invoke the First Amendment say they aren't confident that the provisions would stand the test of constitutionality if a case ever went to trial.
Nelson v. McClatchy
Supreme Court of Washington, Feb. 20, 1997
"In order to preserve [its managerial prerogative to control its editorial integrity,] a news publication must be free to establish without interference, reasonable rules designed to prevent its employees from engaging in activities which may directly compromise their standing as responsible journalists and that of the publication for which they work as a medium of integrity."
"The private employer has been given, by court decisions, quite broad latitude in controlling the speech of its employees," said Paul McMasters, the First Amendment ombudsman at the Freedom Forum, a non-profit institute in Arlington, Va., devoted to freedom of expression. "At this point, the rights of the private employer trump the rights of the employee. That's what the law and the courts have said."
Anti-war reporter
Last March Henry Norr, a technology writer, was suspended from his job at the Chronicle following his arrest for participating in an act of civil disobedience during a protest against the war in Iraq.
It was in that climate that Mr. Norr said he consulted several lawyers in an effort to sue to get his job back. Most agreed with him that in their view, the state law was on his side.
But many lawyers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, were nonetheless hesitant to take the case because they feared getting bogged down in a long and expensive court battle, in which the Chronicle might successfully claim that its First Amendment free-press rights trump the state provision, Mr. Norr said. That's in part because a Washington State Supreme Court case favoring news organizations' right to limit a reporter's political expression, though it does not control California law, nonetheless has a persuasive effect across state lines.
The Newspaper Guild represented Mr. Norr in arbitration. He also developed the California labor law argument independently and the state labor board agreed to look into his complaint. But Mr. Norr never pressed his complaint or went to court; he settled with the Chronicle for an undisclosed sum.
"One of my big regrets about the whole episode is that I didn’t manage to get some kind of affirmation and publicity for those sections of the code," Mr. Norr wrote in an e-mail.
Pro-Kerry editor
It's like getting sent to Siberia and having them say, 'We're sending you for your good performance.'
-- Employment attorney Barbara Lawless, regarding the reassignment of the Chronicle's Letters editor
Again this year, many Chronicle journalists came to the defense of the letters editor, William Pates, who was reassigned to night copyediting duty in the sports department two weeks after Grade the News inquired about several hundred dollars worth of donations he had made to political candidates, including $400 to John Kerry.
Although the Chronicle's editorial page editor, John Diaz, said the job move was "not a disciplinary action," Guild members argued that the involuntary transfer was no way to treat an editor who had loyally labored at the paper for 35 years.
One San Francisco employment lawyer said it would be easy to prove in court that Mr. Pates had been punished.
"It's like getting sent to Siberia and having them say, 'We're sending you for your good performance,'" said Barbara Lawless, a partner in the firm of Lawless & Lawless.
Karl Olson, a partner with Levy, Ram & Olson, the firm that represents the Chronicle, declined to comment on the cases of Mr. Pates or Mr. Norr. He also said he would not answer general questions about the application of First Amendment law to journalists.
But Dick Rogers, the Chronicle's reader representative, wrote in an Aug. 1 column that the paper's ethics policy "was written with one eye on" the state labor code prohibitions against controlling employees' political activities.
He continued: "That's a bitter pill for any paper that, constantly attacked from the left and the right, seeks to say to the world that it calls the news as it sees it, with no allegiances and no alliances."
Clashing constitutional rights
The issue is an important one for journalists across the country because news organizations have adopted very different ethics and conflict-of-interest policies. While it is appealing to argue that the U.S. Constitution protects their personal rights to free speech from an intrusive and overbearing employer, it might be a long and hard struggle to prove.
Being trusted and believed enough to be turned to by the community for the straight story -- above all, the straight story about controversy -- is something that is hard won and too easily lost.
-- First-Amendment lawyer Terry Francke
The piecemeal nature of free-speech protection of employees across the country advantages employers, said Randy A. Fleischer, an employment attorney in Davie, Fla.. He is the former chair of the Broward County Human Rights Board, which has adopted an ordinance similar to California's law, prohibiting discrimination based on political affiliation.
"We see California as the promised land -- just about everywhere else in the country employees don't have rights," Mr. Fleischer said.
Washington State has a law similar to California's that was partially invalidated in 1997 by its supreme court, after a newspaper argued an employee's political activism compromised its credibility. The court sided with the Tacoma News Tribune, which said the newspaper can take the necessary steps to defend its reputation for impartiality.
The paper had reassigned reporter Sandra Nelson to the copy desk when she refused to stop engaging in feminist, abortion-rights and gay-rights political organizing in her free time. The court ruled that the state law protecting her -- prohibiting discrimination against employees based on their political activities -- violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press. The majority of justices in the 7-2 decision saw their main duty as upholding the newspaper's right to publish free of apparent conflicts of interest.
"Editorial integrity and credibility are core objectives of editorial control and thus merit protection under the free press clauses," the court opined.
Lawyers wary
James Lobsenz, Ms. Nelson's attorney, acknowledged that while the Washington case is not binding precedent in California, it does have "persuasive authority."
"There's no reason why the California court couldn't come up with a different ruling," Mr. Lobsenz said.
But when told about Mr. Pates' troubles at the Chronicle, the attorney was pessimistic: "If someone asked me to take this as a paying case, I wouldn't take it. It's a case that would take many years to work its way through the court and you wouldn't have any idea of its outcome based on what courts have done in the past."
Brad Yamauchi, a prominent San Francisco employment and civil rights attorney, and partner in the firm of Minami, Lew & Tamaki, said that although he likes the California provisions, he doesn't think courts these days would ignore a newspaper's invocation of the First Amendment's free-press language, as in the Nelson case in Washington.
"That's how I think it would come out in California as well," Mr. Yamauchi said.
Not all attorneys who work on these issues discount news organizations' free-press arguments.
"The Nelson case stresses, correctly, that the only thing supporting the press' viability as an institution is its credibility," Terry Francke, a leading California free-speech advocate and general counsel of Californians Aware, a non-profit open-government group, wrote in an e-mail. "Now of course anyone can publish to the world for the price of the use of a personal computer and a modem. But being trusted and believed enough to be turned to by the community for the straight story -- above all, the straight story about controversy -- is something that is hard won and too easily lost."
Mr. Francke, however, warned against too zealous a persecution of journalists: "When it comes to relatively low-key conduct like making a modest political contribution, what, finally, are these policies saying: 'We want only political wallflowers in our newsrooms,' or 'Just don't get caught and embarrass us'? The former zeal, since purity, not perception is the issue, would seem to justify monitoring employees' conversations and reading or other media consumption for telltale signs of engagement. The latter would mean, if one must send a politician a contribution, to launder it through a cooperative in-law."
Policies could protect speech
The legal uncertainties leave little room for journalists to argue that they have any established rights to engage in their own political activity. For now, their best defense might be organized labor, which may at least negotiate ethics policies. However, a revised interpretation of the Chronicle's ethics policy was promulgated after the Norr incident without consulting the Newspaper Guild, much to the union's chagrin, said Michael Cabanatuan, president of the Northern California Media Workers' Guild.
The actual wording of the policy matters a great deal. In 2000, actress Sharon Stone, then married to Phil Bronstein, who is now the Chronicle's executive editor, donated $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential bid, according to federal records available through Opensecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics. That donation would have run up against the Chronicle's ethics policy. Only back then, Mr. Bronstein was editor of the San Francisco Examiner, which had no such rule. And back then even the Chronicle's policy was different. The bit about spouses' political activities was added in 2002.
Ethics policies ought to demand impartiality of journalists off the job, said Chronicle editor Diaz.
"I don't stop being a journalist when I leave this office," he said. "This is a special business, in the role that we have. We have a great deal of influence, but the way we get that influence is we have to earn it by showing readers that we truly are independent, even when we have strong opinions, and I don't think you can do that when you're an activist. To do this job well you have to decide: 'Is my first loyalty going to be to journalism or to causes and politicians?' I don't think you can have it both ways."
"We do not tolerate those who exploit the freedom of the media," interim Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshya Zebari said...
From Associated Press, August 7, 2004
By Rawya Rageh
The Iraqi government closed the Iraqi offices of the Arab television station Al-Jazeera for 30 days, accusing it Saturday of inciting violence.
A spokesman for Al-Jazeera called the closure "unwise" and said it restrained freedom of the press.
"It is a regrettable decision, but Al-Jazeera will endeavor to cover the situation in Iraq as best as we can within the constraints," spokesman Jihad Ballout said.
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said the government convened an independent commission a month ago to monitor Al-Jazeera's daily coverage "to see what kind of violence they are advocating, inciting hatred and problems and racial tension."
Based on the commission's finding, the National Security Committee ordered the monthlong closure, Allawi said.
Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said the closure was intended to give the station "a chance to readjust their policy against Iraq."
"They have been showing a lot of crimes and criminals on TV, and they transfer a bad picture about Iraq and about Iraqis and encourage criminals to increase their activities," he said.
"We want to protect our people."
Senior U.S. officials also have criticized Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war, calling the network an outlet for the al-Qaida terror network, broadcasting videotapes and audiotapes purportedly from Osama bin Laden or his aides. Al-Jazeera denied the allegations.
Al-Jazeera's Ballout said the network was not given a reason for the closure. He said the closure inhibits the "right of the Arab people around the world to see a comprehensive picture about what's going on in an important region like Iraq."
During a July 25 interview with Al-Jazeera in Moscow, interim Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari accused the channel of biased reporting and implied its journalists could be barred from the country.
"We do not tolerate those who exploit the freedom of the media," Zebari said then. "These channels have become channels for provocation against the interest, security and safety of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government will not be lenient toward such behavior."
Al-Jazeera occasionally has encountered problems with authorities in other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and the former Iraqi regime. Unlike Arab state-run media, the station often airs views of local opposition figures and their criticisms of their countries' rulers.
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