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In the days following the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, media outlets scrambled to cover the event from every possible angle. One, NBC, found itself part of the story when the network received a package from shooter Seung-Hui Cho, apparently mailed mid-spree.
A state district judge in Blue Earth County, Minn. has ordered a reporter for The (Mankato) Free Press to disclose his notes about a telephone conversation he had with a man during a police standoff that ended in the man’s death and the wounding of two police officers. The Free Press published a story the day after the incident including information received during the telephone conversation, and the county attorney subpoenaed The Press and all the notes of its reporter, Dan Nienaber, who spoke with Skjervold. Judge Norb Smith denied The Press’ motion to quash the subpoena on Feb. 13, 2007, and the paper has decided to appeal the ruling.
In February 2007, The New York Times declined an invitation offering their reporter Alex Berenson an opportunity to explain his role in what Senior District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein described as a “conspiracy” to defy a protective order in a recently-settled class action lawsuit that was, at the time of the alleged conspiracy, pending before United States District Court for Eastern New York.
Joshua Wolf served the lengthiest prison term of any American journalist for refusing to comply with a subpoena
(Continue Reading)10/21/09Egyptian Blogger Sentenced to Four Years in Prison
A former Egyptian law student was sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty of inciting hatred of Islam and insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in articles that the student posted online under an assumed name. The sentence drew criticism and concern from around the world.
In February 2007, the Washington state House of Representatives unanimously (with two lawmakers not voting) passed a shield law granting reporters an absolute privilege for protecting confidential sources, and in March, the state’s Senate followed suit with a 41-7 vote (with one lawmaker not voting) on a similar version of the law. By mid-April, the House agreed to changes in the bill made by the Senate to narrow its definition of “news media” and sent the bill on to Gov. Christine Gregoire (D), who signed the bill into law on April 27.
Efforts by the European Union to facilitate civil litigation between citizens of different member states were frustrated by proposed regulations that would require EU countries to apply the law of other member states when resolving legal claims against the press. In January 2007, the latest proposals considered by the EU’s parliamentary body drew pleas from publishers and journalists to exclude the media from the regulations.
On March 22, 2007, Phillipe Val, editor of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebodo, was acquitted of charges brought against him in a Paris court by Muslim groups for publishing cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in his paper. According to Agence France Press (AFP), the Paris Grand Mosque and the Union of Islamic Organisations sued Val for “publicly offending a group of persons on the basis of their religion.”
Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who was at the center of the 2005 controversy over his newspaper’s publication of a controversial series of political cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, has been honored with an award from the Danish Free Press Society.
In a March 2007 decision, the Iowa Supreme Court allowed a defamation action against a newspaper to proceed despite finding the allegedly libelous statements to be true. Justice Jerry Larson’s opinion for the Court in Stevens v. Iowa Newspapers, Inc., 2007 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 34 (Iowa 2007) explicitly recognized “defamation-by-implication” actions in the state, permitting a suit by former The (Ames) Tribune columnist Todd Stevens to continue to trial.
In a disappointing decision for criminal libel law opponents, the United States Court of Appeals (Tenth Circuit) in Denver declined to rule on the constitutionality of Colorado’s criminal libel law in an opinion handed down in April 2007, Mink v. Suthers, 2007 WL 1113951 (10th Cir. Apr. 16, 2007)(formerly titled Mink v. Salazar, 344 F. Supp. 2d 1231 (D. Colo. 2004)).
The California Supreme Court has permitted one claim in an invasion of privacy suit to proceed against a college professor who allegedly misrepresented herself to the plaintiff’s former foster mother in order to acquire information about the plaintiff. The Court denied the defendants’ motion to strike the suit entirely in February 2007, and remanded it to the lower court for further proceedings to determine whether the defendant’s alleged actions constitute highly offensive conduct that would give rise to tort liability for intrusion.
Charges have been dropped against a journalist arrested for photographing voters in 2004. James S. Henry, a journalist, lawyer and author from Sag Harbor, N.Y., was chased, tackled, arrested and charged with three misdemeanors following the incident: disorderly conduct, resisting arrest without violence and unlawful solicitation of voters, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Charges have been dropped against a journalist arrested for photographing voters in 2004. James S. Henry, a journalist, lawyer and author from Sag Harbor, N.Y., was chased, tackled, arrested and charged with three misdemeanors following the incident: disorderly conduct, resisting arrest without violence and unlawful solicitation of voters, according to the Palm Beach Post.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held in March 2007 that the media and public have no First Amendment right to attend a Massachusetts show-cause hearing in Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co. v. Clerk-Magistrate of the Lawrence Division of the District Court Dept., Mass., No. SJC-09665 (Mass. 2007).
A federal judge has prohibited the mayor of Toledo from barring a radio reporter from city news conferences. U.S. District Judge James Carr ruled in favor of Kevin Milliken and his radio station WSPD-AM, a talk station in Toledo, in their suit alleging Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and his spokesman Brian Schwartz engaged in discriminatory practices and violated Milliken’s constitutional rights by prohibiting him from attending news conferences. Carr originally issued a temporary restraining order against Finkbeiner’s actions on Jan. 16, 2007, and later made the order permanent on January 31 in Citicasters Co. v. Carleton Finkbeiner, 07-CV-00117 (W.D. Ohio 2007).
United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia has vetoed a government prosecution proposal that he said would have effectively walled off the public from the espionage trial of two former lobbyists.
Days before the United States was to conduct “combatant status review tribunals” to determine whether prisoners being held at detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were properly classified as “enemy combatants,” the Pentagon announced that reporters would be barred from the hearings. The announcement was made on March 6, 2007, three days before the hearings were scheduled to begin for 14 detainees who were transferred from secret CIA-operated prisons in September 2006.
A consortium of media organizations in Minnesota has petitioned the state Supreme Court for increased electronic access to trials in its state courts. The petition was filed as part of “Sunshine Week,” an effort led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors since 2002 to raise public awareness about the importance of open government. As the Bulletin went to press, the Supreme Court had not yet responded to the petition.
In March 2007, Presiding Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Breckenridge overturned a district court order that had required two newspapers to remove articles from their Web sites and prevented them from publishing further information about a confidential attorney-client memo they had obtained regarding the Kansas City ( Mo.) Board of Public Utilities (BPU). In her four-paragraph order, Breckenridge said that the lower court’s restraining order “causes irreparable harm to [the newspapers] from which they have no adequate remedy by appeal.” State v. The Honorable Kelly J. Moorhouse, WD 68104 (Mo. Ct. App. 2007).
Shortly after allegations surfaced on the Internet that veteran sportswriter Ron Borges had plagiarized passages of another reporter’s work in his weekly football column, The Boston Globe suspended Borges without pay for two months and barred the reporter from appearing on television and radio broadcasts during his suspension.
A CBS News producer was fired after it was discovered that a segment she had written for the “Katie Couric’s Notebook” video blog was largely copied from a Wall Street Journal column.
Jay Forman, author of an article about fishing for monkeys off Florida’s Lois Key that was published on Slate.com in June 2001, has changed his story for a third time, saying he made it all up.
In April 2007, The Toledo (Oh.) Blade announced that one of its former photographers had altered 79 of the 947 photos he had submitted, 58 of which the paper published before discovering the alterations. The Blade investigated all of the photos Allan Detrich had submitted since Jan. 1, 2007 after being tipped off that a front page photo of a team of baseball players had been changed when photos taken by other photographers all showed a pair of legs behind a sign which were absent from Detrich’s photo.
The two largest newspapers in Minnesota are embroiled in litigation after the former publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press Paul Anthony “Par” Ridder left the Press to take the same job at the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune in March 2007. The Press filed its 13-count complaint in Ramsey County District Court on April 12, 2007, and prevailed on its first motion seeking access to computers used by Ridder and other Tribune employees on April 20.
Rexvelations that former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald gave the subject of one of his articles $2000 has caused controversy within the journalism community. Eichenwald’s award-winning December 2005 piece focused on the trials and tribulations of Justin Berry, a young man who had extensive involvement in the child pornography industry. The original piece garnered significant attention when it was first released because of Eichenwald’s involvement with Berry, as the reporter helped Berry complete drug rehab and to break away from his previous life. However, neither The Times nor Eichenwald disclosed the payment until March 2007, and the disclosure sparked renewed controversy about Eichenwald’s article, a possible defamation suit by Eichenwald, and prompted a note from The Times’ public editor responding to the criticism. It is against the policy of The Times and most other media organizations to pay sources or subjects of stories.
Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Andres Martinez resigned on March 22, 2007, saying the newspaper overreacted to a “perception of a conflict of interest.”
(Continue Reading)10/26/09A week-long scandal that ended in the firing of radio personality Don Imus prompted a wide-ranging debate about whether journalists and reporters who frequented his show condoned outrageous behavior in order to be part of an elite media “in crowd.”
One year after Michael Gallucci was exposed as an anonymous and often-incendiary commentator on a Web site hosted by a New Jersey Internet service provider (“ISP”) with ties to 14 newspapers in the state, the former Teaneck, N.J., councilman filed a lawsuit in a Superior Court of New Jersey. The complaint, dated Feb. 5, 2007, claimed that the ISP’s release of his identifying information was unlawful under New Jersey law and in breach of the user agreement entered into by Gallucci when he first subscribed to the service provided by New Jersey-Online, LLC (“NJ.com”).
On March 26, 2007, a Lancaster County, Penn. coroner faced charges of unlawfully using a computer and conspiring with local reporters to gain access to confidential police information. Following an opportunity to hear testimony from some of the reporters who used County Coroner Dr. G. Gary Kirchner’s password to access a restricted county Web site, Manheim (Penn.) Magisterial District Judge John Winters ordered Kirchner to stand trial on felony charges brought by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office on Feb. 5, 2007.
Linda Walker, the mother of the late Dru Sjodin, a University of North Dakota college student murdered in 2003, joined members of the media and the executive director of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation at the Silha Spring Forum, “When Tragedy Strikes, What is the Media’s Role?” The forum, which was co-sponsored by the Minnesota Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the national SPJ, was held on April 24, 2007 at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center. It was scheduled to coincide with Ethics Week 2007, a week-long event sponsored by the SPJ to raise awareness of the media’s responsibility to minimize harm while reporting the news.
LIn a forum event titled “Without Fear or Favor: Objectivity Revisited,” journalists, scholars and members of the public met at Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) UBS Forum in downtown St. Paul on February 26 to discuss one of journalism’s most challenging topics: objectivity.
