PRSA local update III: Entry deadline is 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, for the state public relations industry's 2006 Silver Spur/Best of Texas Awards. Enter early. Enter often. Info at tpra.com or from Julie B. Fix, APR, at (281) 494-6097. Greater Fort Worth PRSA is again partnering with the Texas Public Relations Association to sponsor the competition. Chapter members may enter at the member rate and the chapter will receive a share of the contest proceeds. The Silver Spur and Best of Texas Awards will be presented at an awards banquet Saturday, Feb. 25, during TPRA's annual conference in Austin.
SPJ national update: Illinois AG may yet have to go on the record; "The Nexus of Politics and Terror"; and Murrow wouldn't know CBS. The Supreme Court has told the attorneys for an Illinois college administrator being sued for censoring her school newspaper to file a response to the students' petition, a move some say shows that the court may consider the case. This latest twist in Hosty v. Carter could force Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to make clear her position on college press freedom, an issue that prompted debate after she received the Sunshine Award in October from the Society of Professional Journalists. More here. ... MSNBC's Keith Olbermann notes that more than a dozen times in the last three years a political downturn for the administration has been followed by a "terror event" -- a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning. Coincidence? On May 10, after his resignation, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge looked back on the terror alerts issued on his watch. He said: "More often than not, we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' " More here. ... The producer fired for her role in the discredited CBS News report about President Bush's military service believes that CBS was more interested in protecting itself than learning the truth behind her story. In an excerpt from her upcoming book, Mary Mapes writes that "no one was happier" than executives at CBS owner Viacom to receive an independent panel's condemnation of her and three colleagues for their role in the September 2004 story on "60 Minutes II." When she was interviewed by the panel, panel member Louis Boccardi, retired Associated Press chief executive, asked whether she described herself as a liberal and whether most of her co-workers thought she was a liberal. Mapes said this reminded her of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hearings in the 1950s where he probed whether people were Communists. "What in the world would Edward R. Murrow think of his network now?" she asked. More here.
SPJ national update II: In the beginning, no Iraq-al Qaeda link; bloggers win one (but newsrooms are losing); and Times pressured over war coverage. A National Journal report asserts that 10 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks and scant credible evidence that Iraq had any collaborative ties with al Qaeda, according to government records and officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21, 2002, president's daily brief, even on a classified basis. More here. ... The Federal Election Commission on Nov. 24 recognized the partisan blog Fired Up! as a press entity that is allowed, like journalists, to cover and comment on political candidates without any positive statements being counted as campaign expenditures. Fired Up! consists of three state-specific blogs for Maryland, Missouri and Washington, plus one covering national issues. More here. Meanwhile, more than 1,900 newspaper jobs have been lost in 2005. ... A senior Washington bureau staff member of The New York Times says in a New York Observer story that as the administration in 2002 edged closer to invading Iraq, the Times editorial climate shifted from questioning the rationale for military action to putting the paper on a proper war footing. "Everyone could see the war coming. The Times wanted to be out front on the biggest story," the staffer said. More here.
SPJ national update III: The Main Street strategy for selling Knight Ridder; at least Kermit's clean; and they're still mad about Judy. On Nov. 14, KR announced that it will be for sale. The company owns 32 newspapers, including the Star-Telegram. Maybe it should sell those papers to 32 local buyers, who would pay a premium to own the hometown daily. More here and here and here and here. ... Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting say ex-chairman Kenneth Tomlinson repeatedly broke federal law and the organization's own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias. Still at PBS, a new study finds public broadcasting news the most trusted in the land, topping the Fox News Channel, CNN, the broadcast network operations and major newspapers. More here and here and here and here. ... The SPJ Deadline Club chapter in the New York City area sent an open letter Nov. 17 to SPJ's executive committee over its disgruntlement at New York Times reporter (now former reporter) Judith Miller receiving SPJ's First Amendment Award. "Serious questions remain unanswered about Ms. Miller's actions surrounding the Central Intelligence Agency leak case," the letter states, "and as such, the Society acted in haste in honoring her." And the Northern California SPJ chapter, joined by the mid-Florida chapter, issued a pointed statement Oct. 30 outlining their argument for why Miller should not have received the award at the SPJ National Convention in Las Vegas. The Northern California chapter led a motion to rescind the recognition, but it was defeated. More here and here and here.
SPJ national update IV: No oversight, no accountability; no public's right to know; and White House alters transcript. As proposed, a secretive new federal agency designed to manage the government's bioterrorism research would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and from rules designed to counter waste and fraud. Scientists also caution that the agency could draw funds away from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the National Institutes of Health. More here and here. ... A divided federal appeals court for a second time rejected four journalists' appeal of a judge's order directing them to testify about their confidential sources as part of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee's lawsuit against the government. "It's hard to imagine how his (Lee's) interest could outweigh the public's interest in protecting journalists' ability to report without reservation on sensitive issues of national security," Judge David S. Tatel wrote in dissent. More here and here. ... Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan appeared to confirm the premise of a question from NBC News correspondent David Gregory at the Oct. 31 White House press briefing -- it's on the video clip -- but the White House's own transcript has McClellan saying just the opposite. More here.
SPJ national update V: Alito's paper trail; House defeats bill exempting the Internet from FEC regulation; and a heckuva job, Brownie, heckuva job. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has prepared a summary of the First Amendment and media-related cases decided by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. It reveals a strong tendency to side with those arguing free speech cases -- with the possible exception of federal prisoners. More here. ... Online political expression should not be exempt from campaign-finance law, the House decided Nov. 2 as lawmakers warned that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections. The House voted 225-182 for a bill that would have excluded blogs, e-mails and other Internet communications from regulation by the Federal Election Commission. More here. ... Federal Emergency Management Agency director (now former director) Michael Brown discussed his appearance, his dog and his public image as the government's relief effort unraveled after Hurricane Katrina, based on e-mails released Nov. 2. "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit,'' Brown wrote colleagues the morning of Aug. 29, the day the storm hit the Gulf Coast. "I am a fashion god.'' The e-mails were among 1,000 pages of electronic messages the Homeland Security Department turned over to a House panel probing the federal response. More here.
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