SPJ national update: Demise of a hard-fighting squad; blue over Green; and a papal purge? Among the four Marines killed and 10 wounded when an explosive device erupted under their Amtrac in Haban, Iraq, on May 11 were the last combat-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Ubaydi. In that fight, two squad members were killed and five wounded. In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad -- one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment -- had ceased to be. Every member had been killed or wounded. More here. ... The Army missed its April recruiting goal by 42 percent, the third month in a row that the active-duty mission was not accomplished. Worse, Operation Blue to Green -- trading blue service uniforms for Army green -- was expected to turn 3,500 airmen and sailors into soldiers; the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Blue to Green has produced 189 soldiers. More here. ... That the Rev. Thomas J. Reese has been forced to resign after seven years as editor of America magazine sent shock waves through the worlds of Catholic journalism and academia. Reese faced five years of criticism from the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI for publishing articles that questioned the Vatican's writings on issues such as same-sex marriage, stem-cell research and salvation for non-Christians. More here.
SPJ national update II: Fixing the facts; scrutinize the nominees; the fight for FOI; and students sue. Eighty-nine congressional Democrats on May 6 asked President Bush to explain a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002, well before the president brought the issue to Congress. The Times of London published the memo -- minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1. British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity. More here. ... Four in five Americans want the Senate to thoroughly examine the president's nominees to be federal judges -- an attitude shared by a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents questioned in a new AP-Ipsos poll. More here. ... Big backlogs in FOI requests and a lack of enforcement when agencies ignore or delay response are among the problems a House panel heard about May 11 at a hearing on the Freedom of Information Act. As FOI requests increased 71 percent from 2002 to 2004, the number falling into backlog -- carrying over from one year to the next -- increased 14 percent. More here. ... Student journalists sued their Bakersfield High School district May 19 in an effort to keep the principal from censoring student newspaper articles on homosexuality. The suit, filed by the ACLU, requests an emergency order to allow the paper to publish the stories in The Kernal's year-end May 27 issue. More here and here.
SPJ national update III: Koran news had been heard before; American, Arab reporters at risk; and no name, no quote. Newsweek's waffle-source story that a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet reflects allegations, widely reported by U.S. and international media, of desecration of the Muslim holy book for more than two years. James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at the prison, has asserted that guards' mishandling of detainees' Korans led the prisoners to launch a hunger strike in March 2002. Detainee lawyers said the strike ended only when military leaders issued an apology over the camp loudspeaker. But the lawyers said mishandling of the Koran persisted. More here. ... Newspaper Guild president Linda Foley drew criticism from conservatives for comments she made about "the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq." The backlash was so severe that Guild headquarters staff in Washington, D.C., stopped answering the phone because of "people screaming at us." More here. Meanwhile, a Baghdad newspaper photographer says Iraqi police beat him for taking pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper was invited to cover a police graduation ceremony, then received death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she can't remember how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes. The cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation by Iraqi security forces. More here. ... One year after instituting tighter controls, USA Today has reduced the use of anonymous sources by 75 percent, editor Ken Paulson says. "We still probably average about three or four anonymous sources in our copy each week," Paulson told E&P. "But it used to average about a dozen per week." One of the paper's five managing editors or a higher-ranking editor must sign off on the use of each unnamed source. More here.
SPJ national update IV: What, me worry?; unleashing the dogs of civil war; and Senate Republicans working for you. A single-engine plane bearing down on Washington created panic May 11, but President Bush was not told until he finished a bicycle ride at a Maryland wildlife center, nearly 40 minutes after the plane had been forced to turn away. Bush's security detail decided that he need not be informed because there was no danger to him and because procedures for intercepting the plane, evacuating Washington buildings and increasing security at the White House did not require his authorization. More here. ... An unchastened insurgency sowed devastation across Iraq in May as security experts reported that no major road in the country was safe to travel. Some Iraq specialists speculated that Sunni fighters were effectively encircling the capital and trying to cut it off from the north, south and west, where there are entrenched Sunni communities. East of Baghdad is a mostly unpopulated desert bordering on Iran. "It's just political rhetoric to say we are not in a civil war. We've been in a civil war for a long time," said Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon. More here. ... With the notable exception of the wealthy, nine out of 10 Texas households would have to pay more in taxes under a massive school finance overhaul headed for the Senate floor, a study released May 10 shows. The nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board found that the top 10 percent of Texas households, or those making more than $140,000 a year, would get a $212 million tax cut. Households in every other income group would see their tax burdens go up. The legislation would raise almost $700 million more in new taxes than it cuts over two years. More here.
SPJ national update V: Close-to-the-ground journalism; conflict of coinage; and the censor ship of state. The Rocky Mountain News launched one of the nation's largest citizen-journalism initiatives last month when it debuted 40 neighborhood Web sites and 15 zoned print editions, all called YourHub.com. More here. ... Since 1998, Ohio has invested millions of dollars in the unregulated world of rare coins. Controlling the money for the state? Prominent local Republican and coin dealer Tom Noe, whose firm made more than $1 million off the deal last year. And now Ohio is suing Noe since $10 million-$12 million from the Capital Coin Funds are missing. More here and here. ... A study by TV Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group, says that 75 percent of 1,002 people polled "strongly agreed" that they would rather decide what programs to watch instead of having government censors decide. TV Watch, a coalition backed by three of the Big Four broadcast networks, said it wants to be a counterweight to such groups as the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association, which have filed most of the recent indecency complaints with the FCC. More here and here.
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PEOPLE & PLACES
Mike Price at the Fort Worth Business Press just loves Julian Haber's new corporate-power and drug-racketeering novel "Blood Avenger." Says it "moves relentlessly to a confrontational encounter that states a persuasive case for the relevance of an ancient Hebrew law to a ruthless modern-day society." The tone is "hardboiled reciprocity, leavened by compassion and strategically placed sentimentality." To learn what that might possibly mean, write Free Lance Writers, 7001 Candlestick Court, Fort Worth 76133, for an autographed copy. Twenty-five percent of the $22.95 price benefits SPJ scholarships. The book also is available at Amazon.com and most bookstores. ...
Star-Telegram reporters and page designers won seven first-place and six second-place awards and eight honorable mentions in the Texas APME/Headliners Foundation of Texas competition. Jeff Claassen and Scott Streater, along with Seth Borenstein of the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, won the Star Investigative Report of the Year for their coverage of EPA regulation of oil refineries. UTA Shorthorn ex Michael Currie was named the Star Designer of the Year. Bill Teeter and Mitch Mitchell took second place in Star Breaking News Report of the Year. In the traditional APME awards, Jennifer Autrey, Toni Heinzl, David Casstevens, Christopher Kelly, Felicia Smith and Shorthorn ex Tom Pennington took firsts, and Chris Vaughn, Randy Galloway, Sarah Huffstetler, Danny Robbins, Trebor Banstetter and J.R. Labbe each took a second-place award or honorable mention.
