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Questions Raised over Preparations and Policies Regarding Media
(Continue Reading)10/14/09In the days before the presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008, some media critics suggested the press might be too eager to call the election in favor of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), but others said that coverage reflected reality rather than partisan bias.
On Oct. 15, 2008 a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of a Minnesota law requiring anyone not voting or registering to vote on election day to remain 100 feet away from the building where voting is being conducted.
Later, the Coleman campaign also barred The UpTake from a press conference on November 11 and a campaign event featuring former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Minnesota Independent reported that bloggers from MinnPost.com and Minnesota Democrats Exposed were admitted to those events.
A New Jersey appellate court ruled on Oct. 24, 2008 that a former New York Times reporter who wrote a book about Donald Trump does not have to reveal the identity of his confidential sources. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling on a discovery request by Trump in his ongoing defamation suit against Timothy O’Brien.
The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit threw out a contempt order against former USA Today reporter Toni Locy on November 17, several months after the lawsuit in which she was called to testify was settled out of court.
Illinois Paper Cites Shield Law, Refuses to Expose Anonymous Commenters
(Continue Reading)10/14/09Pennsylvania’s highest court refused to adopt a “crime-fraud exception” to the state’s statutory shield law Sept. 24, 2008, holding that the statute’s “unambiguous” text provides an absolute shield for reporters to protect the identity of confidential sources.
A U.S. District Court judge in Michigan ordered Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter to reveal the identity of confidential sources Aug. 28, 2008, holding there is no constitutional or common law testimonial privilege for journalists in the 6th Circuit. The lawsuit, in which neither the reporter nor the newspaper is a party, alleges that the Department of Justice violated the federal Privacy Act when unnamed officials leaked information to the Free Press concerning a botched 2003 terrorism trial.
A gag order meant to halt a California newspaper from reporting on its own trial lasted 10 days before a state appeals court ordered it vacated, saying the trial court “cannot possibly justify the censorship imposed.”
City officials in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, have refused to release information about federal payments made to homeowners whose dwellings were damaged by floods during the summer of 2008, according to a story in the Aug. 31, 2008 Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned on Sept. 4, 2008 and began a 4-month jail sentence on October 29 after the release of text messages exchanged between himself and a staffer led Kilpatrick to plead guilty to perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
Several state and federal cases in the summer and fall of 2008 underscored the need to define the parameters of public access policies and retention procedures regarding government employee e-mails. (For more on the role of new technology in public records, see “Detroit Newspapers Sue for Release of Text Messages in Mayoral Sex Scandal” on page 20 of this issue of the Silha Bulletin.)
The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Sept. 22, 2008 that the Department of Defense cannot withhold 21 photographs depicting abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan under the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. section 552.
Despite intense opposition based on “as much passion and emotion as reason,” a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) argued that the recent decision to relax the 32-year-old ban on joint ownership of media outlets would improve news coverage through the combination of resources at the Silha Fall Forum Oct. 23, 2008.
Anti-government protests in Thailand in September 2008 resulted in a declaration of a state of emergency by Thailand’s prime minister on Sept. 2, 2008. Although the declaration placed restrictions on media content, the refusal by army commander Anupong Paochinda to enforce the state of emergency made the restrictions on the mainstream media largely theoretical.
The Malaysian government released the editor of a news Web site who was detained under a national security law for criticizing Islam after a court ruled his detention was illegal.
Popular video sharing Web site YouTube adopted a policy banning videos “intended to incite violence or encourage dangerous, illegal activities” on Sept. 11, 2008, several months after Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) pressured the site and its owner, Google, to remove content he said was “designed to incite violence against America and Americans or that show graphic violence against American troops and others.”
A federal judge in Boston ruled Aug. 19, 2008 that three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students can publicly discuss the findings of a research project that explains how to manipulate the state’s electronic payment system for transit fares. The ruling lifted a temporary restraining order, granted ten days earlier, that prevented the students from presenting their project at the DEFCON 16 computer security and hacker conference in Las Vegas on August 10.
Federal police arrested a blogger on Aug. 27, 2008 for streaming nine songs from “Chinese Democracy,” an as-yet unreleased album from the band Guns N’ Roses, on the Internet. He has plead not guilty to the charges.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Aug. 20, 2008 that copyright owners must determine whether online content makes fair use of a copyright before demanding a host Web site remove the content.
In the fallout from a conflict between Quinnipiac University officials and student journalists over posting breaking news stories on the Internet, members of The Quinnipiac Chronicle staff left to form the Quad News, an independent online publication.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled Sept. 2, 2008 that students have a right to protest by wearing black armbands to school, calling a 40-year-old landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the same issue “dispositive.”
Senegalese Court Imprisons Publisher for Libel
A Senegalese court sentenced a newspaper publisher to three years in prison for including “false reports” in an article claiming the president and his son had stolen government funds.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on September 27 that would change federal law to prohibit U.S. enforcement of certain foreign defamation judgments. The legislation moved on to the Senate on September 29. The bill is designed to protect Americans from “libel tourism,” a type of forum shopping in which plaintiffs choose to file libel suits in foreign jurisdictions that are more likely to produce a favorable result for them.
Pennsylvania Superior Court Upholds $3.5 Million Libel Verdict
A mid-level Pennsylvania appeals court upheld a $3.5 million libel verdict against a Pennsylvania newspaper Sept. 18, 2008, ruling that it negligently defamed a businessman and one of his companies.
The Florida Supreme Court declined to recognize the tort of false light invasion of privacy on Oct. 23, 2008 in a unanimous opinion that held the tort’s chilling effect on protected speech outweighed its potential to create a new remedy for a narrow class of wrongs.
A documentary film about radical Islam that was distributed to approximately 28 million homes as a DVD insert in about 70 newspapers and through direct mail sparked controversy over the film’s content as well as the political motives behind its targeted distribution.
On July 30, 2008, the British Office of Communications (Ofcom) announced that a record 400,000 British pounds in fines had been levied against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in connection with phone-in competition violations that occurred on various programs on the network from 2005 to 2007.
A small Texas weekly newspaper shut down in August 2008 after plagiarizing dozens of stories from publications such as online magazine Slate and USA Today.
It began early Sunday morning, Sept. 7, 2008, when somebody searched the archives of the South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) and clicked on an old article from the Chicago Tribune about a company called UAL’s 2002 bankruptcy filing. Within 36 hours, the archived story about United Airlines’ parent company had been aggregated by Google News, picked up by a private financial news company in Florida, and distributed to stock traders on Wall Street by Bloomberg, sending the embattled airline company’s stock into a free fall.
Despite intense opposition based on “as much passion and emotion as reason,” a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) argued that the recent decision to relax the 32-year-old ban on joint ownership of media outlets would improve news coverage through the combination of resources at the Silha Fall Forum Oct. 23, 2008.
Silha Lecturer Siobhain Butterworth was introduced as “a member of an endangered species.” As readers’ editor, or internal ombudsman, for The Guardian newspaper in London, Butterworth is among a shrinking group of editors whose primary responsibility is to address reader complaints, clarifications, and corrections in the daily newspaper and online.
