SPJ national update: Congress? The Constitution? Who needs them?; tell the truth, hit the road; ABC suspends producer over Bush-bashing e-mail; and lobbying disclosure "glaringly unenforced." President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush says he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, whistle-blower protections for nuclear regulatory officials and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. More here. ... The CIA fired Mary McCarthy, who worked in its inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, for leaking information pertaining to rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe. The information was allegedly given to Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize last month for her reporting. More here and here. ... The executive producer of the "Good Morning America" weekend edition was suspended April 2 over leaked e-mails in which he slammed President Bush and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In one of the e-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004, John Green wrote a colleague: "Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke." More here. ... The Center for Public Integrity says that under the oversight of the Senate Ethics Committee nearly 14,000 lobbying documents that should have been filed with the Senate Office of Public Records are missing; nearly 300 individuals and entities lobbied without registering; 49 of the top 50 lobbying firms failed to file required forms; almost one in five companies has missing lobbying forms; and almost 20 percent of all forms are filed late. More here.
SPJ national update II: Were women better off under Saddam?; money changes everything for NPR; and newspaper execs liking new ideas. When Joan Kroc, the widow of the man who built the McDonald's chain, bequeathed NPR $230 million, "it was like Christmas and the lottery ... an enormous act of validation" for senior programming VP Jay Kernis. "We knew who we were. But suddenly this outside force was saying, 'Not only are you worth it, but we want you to continue for decades doing this.' " The interest alone has created nearly 70 jobs, many for reporters on new beats like police and prisons, labor, international economics, the environment, technology and the media. More here. ... Executives throughout the newspaper industry, which generated an estimated $65 billion in revenue last year, are opening their minds to a host of ideas, including new publications, TV and radio services, web sites, podcasts and transmissions to cellphones. "I don't think I've ever seen the sense of innovation and willingness to take risks that I'm seeing now," says John Kimball, chief marketing officer of the Newspaper Association of America. More here. ... A recent survey by local rights nongovernmental organizations finds that women were treated better during the Saddam Hussein era than they are now. According to the survey, women's basic rights under the Hussein regime were guaranteed in the constitution and, more importantly, respected, with women often occupying significant government positions. Today, women have lost almost all of their rights. More here.
SPJ national update III: Never let the truth ruin a good story; Pentagon admits spying on gay protests; and student newspaper editors removed after challenging prior review. When two small trailers were seized in Iraq in late May 2003, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory, calling the trailers mobile "biological laboratories" and declaring: "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." Three years later, The Washington Post says the administration made that claim even though U.S. intelligence officials had strong evidence the trailers were not labs for making biological weapons. More here and here. ... The Pentagon confirmed April 11 that the Defense Department surveilled groups opposed to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" law banning openly lesbian, gay and bisexual service members, reports the news blog Raw Story. The confirmation came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in January and seems to substantiate reports that the Defense Department has spied on anti-war groups. More here. ... North Central University removed a husband and wife from their editorial posts at a student newspaper after they refused to allow administrators at the Pentecostal institution in Minneapolis to vet the paper before publication. Hope and Chuck Bahr were dismissed after the seven-member senior editorial staff of The Northern Light voted unanimously to stop working rather than give administrators pre-publication editorial power. More here.
SPJ national update IV: Drug companies put $44 million into state lobbying efforts; Georgia Legislature increases access to campus police records; and TV stations disguising PR as news. The pharmaceutical industry spent more than $44 million in 2003 and 2004 fighting a flurry of initiatives aimed at reducing prices and slicing drug budgets, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of lobbying records has found. The industry also funneled more than $8 million to candidates for various state offices over the same period, according to a CPI analysis. More here. ... The public would gain unprecedented access to campus police records at private universities in Georgia thanks to legislation passed April 6. "With this law in place, police at private colleges will have to release to the public their initial crime incident reports and arrest records just like all other Georgia police departments already do," said Carolyn Carlson, a Georgia State U. professor who lobbied for the language on behalf of SPJ. A similar bill that would subject all campus police departments to open records laws is pending in the Massachusetts Legislature. A similar law was enacted in Virginia in 1994. More here. ... Many TV news stations, including some in the nation's largest markets, continue to broadcast stories as news without disclosing that the segments were produced by companies pitching products, according to a report released by a group that monitors the news media. News directors have said that the segments are almost never broadcast, but the Center for Media and Democracy assembled videotape from 69 stations that it said broadcast fake news segments in the past 10 months. More here.
SPJ national update V: Bush lampooned at his own dinner; unfair, unbalanced channels in Iraq; Schwarzenegger calls for public records training throughout executive branch; and Ohio open-records law trumps federal health-data secrecy. A blistering comedy "tribute" to President Bush by Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert at the White House correspondents dinner April 29 left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close. Colbert, speaking as his faux talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, "and reality has a well-known liberal bias." Colbert attacked those in the press who likened the recent shake-up at the White House to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "This administration is soaring, not sinking," he said. "If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg." More here and here. ... The millions of dollars that the Bush administration has poured into creating Western-style news media in Iraq has launched more than a dozen Iraqi channels, but most are increasingly sectarian and often appear to be inflaming tensions. More here. ... Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on April 3 directed California's executive branch to ensure full compliance for information requests made under the California Public Records Act. The executive order directs state agencies to review guidelines and participate in training sessions within 30 days. ... Ohio's law guaranteeing access to government records outranks a federal law that shields personal health information, the state Supreme Court has ruled. John C. Greiner, who represented the Cincinnati Enquirer in the case, said the decision could have broad impact on the federal law, better known by its acronym, HIPAA. Since its passage in 1996, the law has been a source of confusion for health care providers, government officials and the news media.
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On a Thought-provoking Evening,
the Greatest Acceptance Speech Ever
by Gayle Reaves-King
ARLINGTON -- The way to fix our business, Sreenath Sreenivasan says, is to get more uncomfortable.
Sreenivasan -- call him Sree, he said -- was the keynote speaker at Fort Worth SPJ's 3rd annual First Amendment Awards and Scholarship Dinner. The dean of students of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism was talking about the changes and pressures the news business faces, as more people turn from mainstream media to the Internet for their news.
He talked about the "polarizing effect of ignorance on both sides" in the nation's public discourse and the resulting need for journalists to "blow up their bookmarks" and go outside the "amen corner" of print and online journalism that fits their world view and instead visit sites that show them what others are thinking.
Granted, the 100 diners at the banquet were, physically, pretty comfortable. The dinner at Arlington's Cacharel Restaurant was excellent, the speakers were engaging, the crowd had great fun mingling, and the recipients of scholarships and journalism awards provided a brilliant view of the present and future of the profession. But the speakers and the topics also offered plenty of reason for healthy unease.
cotinued ...
