SPJ national update: So many angles, so little time. The tawdry tale of how a conservative ringer could pose as a reporter, using a fake name, working for a dubious news organization, and enjoy access to White House briefings, not by going through the normal procedure most journalists face but by getting day passes, which require only an abbreviated background check. Daily passes month after month. For nearly two years. Oh, and he apparently recently worked as a male escort -- $200 an hour, $1,200 a weekend. More here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
SPJ national update II: With a hush and a whisper, the White House drops a meeting with German citizens; can't get answers? call Phil, but don't all Bob; and more spin, captain! more spin! When the German government nixed an event with questions pre-approved, the White House canceled what was meant to be a highlight of President Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe, a town hall meeting with average Germans. More here. ... Locked in a lawsuit with the big paper in the state capital, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen told Tennessee Press Association members that if they have problems getting records from his administration, they should call him personally. In a less accommodating vein, a federal judge ruled Feb. 15 that Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich can freeze out two reporters from The (Baltimore) Sun by barring all state employees from talking to the journalists. Sun editor Tim Franklin said of the ruling: "It's not only unconstitutional, it's undemocratic." More here and here. ... The PR staffs at government agencies grew faster than the federal work force last year. "The role of public affairs officers is not to make information available to the public," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists. "Rather, it is to regulate public access to information, which is something quite different." More here.
SPJ national update III: Republicans' "hunger for dictatorship"; adviser down; web site up; bad behavior in Broward County; and low power to the people. Scott McConnell in The American Conservative writes of "several explicit warnings from the antiwar Right about the coming of an American fascism." More here. ... SPJ national president Irwin Gratz has appointed a task force to investigate Marquette U.'s decision to deny contract renewal to Thomas Mueller, adviser to The Marquette Tribune. More here. ... UC Santa Barbara has told the owner of a web site that criticizes the school that it will not seek legal action against him. The site, run by the father of a former UCSB student, lists among its goals to "substantially mitigate or eliminate the negative impact of the dark side of UCSB." More here. ... Sheriff Ken Jenne asked a subordinate to spread negative information about a Miami Herald reporter who exposed how his department allegedly falsified crime statistics, the subordinate has testified. More here. ... Fans of low-power FM radio say hundreds of new mini-stations are bringing localism and diversity back to America's airwaves. Opponents -- primarily big broadcasters -- say the stations, which can be established for less than $10,000, are amateurish and cause interference. More here.
SPJ national update IV: Sounds like Ohio; really is Ohio; should've been Ohio; running the EPA as if it were Ohio; and not to be confused with Air Ohio. Some polling stations didn't open. Others ran out of ballots. A provincial governor's name was left off the candidates list. And some minorities complained of a plot to silence them. One week after Iraq's historic election, allegations of confusion and mismanagement surfaced. More here and here. ... A federal appeals court has upheld the right of Ohio journalists to refuse to identify confidential sources in noncriminal legal proceedings. More here. ... The Count Every Vote Act of 2005, introduced in the Senate by Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., with a version coming soon in the House of Representatives, provides a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines. Among its provisions, the bill mandates that this ballot be the official ballot in case of a recount and that election day be a federal holiday. More here. ... The EPA ignored scientific evidence and agency protocols in order to set limits on mercury pollution that jive with the administration's approaches to power plant pollution, according to a report released Feb. 2 by the agency's inspector general. EPA staff were told to set modest limits on mercury pollution, then they had to work backward to justify the proposal, the report says. More here. ... Political provocateur Al Franken says George W. Bush's reelection was bad for the country but good for his fledgling liberal radio network, Air America, as it strives to rebound from a rocky start. More here.
SPJ national update V: Will someone just say no?; judge tells CIA no; yes to a shield law. Abstinence-only sex education may have had little impact in Texas. Despite taking courses emphasizing abstinence-only themes, teens in 29 high schools became increasingly sexually active anyway, mirroring overall state trends, according to a recent study by Texas A&M researchers. President Bush's FY06 budget cuts 25,000 kids from Head Start and Early Head Start programs and eliminates Upward Bound while increasing by $38 million funding for programs promoting sexual abstinence. More here and here. ... continued
