Off the Record

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Shield Law, Part 1 By Jack Shafer

As seen on Slate.com

Beware of anything that unites 60 of the nation's top media organizations and press associations. This ordinarily quarrelsome lot has set aside their differences to support a pending federal shield law—the Free Flow of Information Act (S. 2035)—designed to help journalists protect their confidential sources from federal subpoenas.

Everybody (PDF) from the Washington Post to Reuters to the Newspaper Guild to Bloomberg News to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to NPR to the New York Times Co. is backing the bill, whose House analog, H.R. 2102, cleared that chamber 398 to 21 last October. The Newspaper Association of America and the National Association of Broadcasters produced an ad touting the legislation, and the ad ran in both the Post (a full page) and Times (two full pages!) this week in donated space.

A federal shield law has long been on the to-do list of many news organizations. But what really got the First Amendment lobby's engine running were two events from the summer of 2003. First, a decision by Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7^th Circuit, upset the media-friendly legal consensus that had grown out of the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Branzburg v. Hayes. Without getting too legal on you, Posner's reading of Branzburg essentially convinced his fellow judges that journalists had no right, qualified or absolute, to withhold testimony when subpoenaed. READ MORE...

Read Part 2 of Shafer's screed against the shield law

Source Hygiene - If reporters practiced better "source hygiene," maybe they'd face fewer subpoenas. By Jack Shafer

AS SEEN ON SLATE.COM

Subpoena-defying reporters who dare judges to send them to prison are routinely portrayed in the press as First Amendment martyrs. This should come as no surprise. The guys writing the lionizing stories generally share their subjects' values. What else are they going to write, "Send the bum to jail"?

Although I have great admiration for some journalists who have held themselves above the law and committed acts of civil disobedience that have earned them a ticket to jail, not all subpoenas are created equal. And not every source arrangement outside of "on the record" should require conscionable reporters to go directly to jail if slapped with a subpoena.

Some reporters invite subpoenas by practicing what I call "poor source hygiene," granting confidentiality too liberally to sources who don't deserve it. Norman Pearlstine, former editor-in-chief of Time Inc., addresses this topic in his 2007 book about the Valerie Plame investigation, Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War Over Anonymous Sources. As the top editorial guy at Time Inc., Pearlstine was the one who gave the court notes that revealed Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's confidential sources. READ MORE...

Journalists freed in Cuba, China with CPJ’s support

News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

After years behind bars for their work as journalists, two journalists in Cuba and two journalists in China were released from prison in February.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos announced the release of Cuban journalists José Gabriel Ramón Castillo and Alejandro González Raga on February 15. The two were imprisoned after a massive crackdown against the independent press five years ago. CPJ has lobbied intensively for the release of all jailed Cuban journalists—in March 2007, CPJ met with Trinidad Jimenez, secretary of state for Iberoamerica at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which played an important role in their release.

In China, Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong was released unexpectedly on February 5 after spending nearly three years behind bars for allegedly spying for Taiwan. Just before he was let out, Ching’s wife, Mary Lau, asked CPJ and other organizations to push for his release because of his deteriorating health. Then Yu Huafeng, deputy editor in chief and general manager of Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis News), was set free on February 8. Yu was detained along with a colleague in 2004 after his newspaper published a story about a suspected SARS case in Guangzhou. He was given a 12-year sentence for corruption. READ MORE...

De Niro, Rosenthal chair bigger Tribeca

NEW YORK -- Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal will co-chair a bigger and stronger version of the Tribeca Film Institute, partnering with the Rockefeller Foundation's Renew Media to deliver more than $1 million film, media and arts grants annually.

The two not-for-profit groups are expected to complete their union by April, setting a goal to create a permanent exhibition space, screening venue and artist workspace in downtown Manhattan. READ MORE...

Google News, Yahoo, AOL and the last stand of the traditional Media -- quandrantONE Written by cho

Friday 2-15-08, in Media Firms Create ONline-Ad Network, the Wall Street Journal reported on the latest effort by traditional media to fight back: Gannet, Hearst, the New York Times Co. and the Tribune Co. are setting up a stand-alone online ad-sales network called quandrantONE.

Don't be misled, this "startup" is not just about efficiency in selling web ads. In some ways it is really about how certain folks -- who have what one of ePluribus Media's Columbia School of Journalism Sulzberger program colleagues calls news DNA -- can continue to create and disseminate the news we read. Or more succinctly, it is at least somewhat about who controls the daily news "agenda" -- news folk or search engine folk. READ MORE...

Yahoo! talks with News Corp arouse scepticism

A PARTNERSHIP between Yahoo! and News Corp, which would avoid a Microsoft takeover, would be a "tough one to put together", said Norman Pearlstine, a managing director at Carlyle Group.

"I don't know why a shareholder would prefer the kind of arrangement we have read about instead of cash and stock from Microsoft," said Mr Pearlstine, a former managing editor at The Wall Street Journal who advises on media acquisitions at Carlyle.

The chief executive of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, turned down Microsoft's $US44.6 billion takeover last week, saying it "substantially undervalues" the company. Yahoo! is in talks about a combination with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, according to a source. READ MORE...

Newspapers form network to gain ads on Internet

Gannett Co., Tribune Co., New York Times Co. and Hearst Corp., facing an industrywide decline in newspaper advertising sales, have created an online venture to sell ads for local news Web sites.

The new ad network, quadrantONE, will let advertisers buy space on more than 170 newspaper and broadcast sites without having to negotiate individual deals, the companies said Friday in a statement. The local sites reach a combined 50 million unique visitors a month, they said, citing Nielsen Online data.

Combining sales forces may help newspaper publishers sell more national ads and boost revenue from their Web sites as advertisers shift money away from print publications to the Internet. The venture will be "very complementary" to partnerships some of the publishers formed with Yahoo! Inc., said Dana Hayes, quadrantONE's interim chief executive. READ MORE...

The need for creating a federal press shield law By James Srodes

As Norman Pearlstine argues in "Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources," the dependence of reporters on confidential purveyors of information has now collided with heightened government efforts to limit the public's right to know. Important matters are now being masked as national security issues, which really are uncomfortable political controversies.

Mr. Pearlstine is one of the true stars of American journalism, make no mistake about that. Trained in the law (University of Pennsylvania), he climbed the ladder of local and then national publications, most notably rising to executive editor posts at the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, and ending up with an 11-year stint as editor in chief of Time Inc., the 154 magazine division of Time Warner Inc. Most of the Pulitzer-type awards available to financial journalists already line his mantle. READ MORE...

Former CBS Newsman Defies Court, Won't Reveal Sources In Anrthrax Case by Felix Gillette

This article was published in the January 7, 2008, edition of The New York Observer

When Jim Stewart stepped down from CBS News in November 2006 after some 16 years of reporting on a range of topics for the Tiffany Network, the longtime Washington-based correspondent retired to the warmth of Florida. Now, depending on a judge’s ruling in an ongoing case, Mr. Stewart could be spending a part of his golden years in a much less sunny position—namely in contempt of a federal court.

In legal documents filed on the eve of the holidays, Mr. Stewart, citing promises of confidentiality, continued to defy a judge’s order to reveal the names of his sources for a series of reports he produced in 2003 for CBS News about the F.B.I.’s investigation into the domestic anthrax attacks of 2001. 

If U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton decides in the coming months to hold Mr. Stewart in civil contempt for his defiance, the case, which lately has been unfolding largely under the news radar, could become one of the more tortured—and high-profile—media soap operas of the new year.

And, in the wake of the Valerie Plame affair, in which The New York Times’ Judith Miller served jail time for her own refusal to give up sources, it could offer additional ammunition to advocates of a federal shield law—which would increase journalists’ legal right to protect their sources in court. Norman Pearlstine, the former editor in chief of Time Inc. who earlier this year wrote a book about confidential sources, media law and his pivotal role in the Valerie Plame affair, told NYTV that Mr. Stewart’s case “is a perfect example of why we need a federal shield law.” READ MORE...

We're All Journalists Now By Tom Keane

Anyone who had ever gone through law school - and I count myself among those poor souls - knew instantly that Superior Court Judge Merita Hopkins had gotten it wrong. WHDH-TV (Channel 7) had a scoop: Autopsy results of two Boston firefighters killed in the line of duty showed one was intoxicated, the other had cocaine in his body. Hopkins, the onetime chief of staff to Mayor Tom Menino, blocked the station from airing the story. The legal term for what she did is prior restraint. Ever since the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, it's been (with extreme cases of national security being the only possible exception) a big and obvious no-no. READ MORE...