The National Association of Hispanic Journalists Region 5 conference Feb. 27-28 at the Embassy Suites in Dallas will open with a town hall session Friday night, followed by daylong workshops Saturday featuring four Spanish-language panels. The closing reception will highlight release of the NAHJ stylebook for Spanish-language media as well as a scholarships raffle benefiting the Network of Hispanic Communicators, the local NAHJ affiliate. Info at dfwhispanic.org/nahjregion5. ... Alberto Gomez Font will conduct a seminar for Spanish-language journalists from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18, at The Ballpark in Arlington. Cost: $20 NAHJ members, $30 nonmembers. Register at nahj.org. ...
Diane Weklar, founder of Hire DFW First and a member of the Dallas City/County Jobs Task Force Advisory Committee, and Lyssa Jenkens, VP for information and research, Greater Dallas Chamber, promise a candid discussion about the local economy and where it's headed at Dallas PRSA's February meeting Thursday, Feb. 12. Info at prsadallas.com/calendar.html.
SPJ national update: Democracy inaction. Remember the $87 billion investment in Iraq made after a secret pact in the Senate resulted in a voice vote attended by precisely six senators? Fifteen SPJ volunteers called every member of the Senate and asked for a stand on the appropriation bill. Eleven Republicans and eight Democrats, among them Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; John McCain, who once ran for president; Hillary Clinton, who may run for president someday; and John Edwards, who wants the job right now, refused to state a position, according to poll results posted at spj.org/foia_senvote.asp. Ten Democrats -- Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Ernest Hollings, Edward Kennedy, presidential candidate John Kerry, Mary Landrieu, Frank Lautenberg, Patrick Leahy and Paul Sarbanes -- and Independent Jim Jeffords told SPJ that they opposed the bill, but from this group only Byrd was present for the voice vote. He shouted a loud "No!" The remaining senators went on the record for the package. "The mere act of taking a voice vote on such a crucial matter of public policy diminishes the stature of the U.S. Senate," SPJ president Mac McKerral said. "And then to have senators refuse to state their positions -- after the fact, mind you -- should make their constituents wonder who those senators really serve."
SPJ national update II: A voting process with "experiment" in the title, and when spooks cry foul. The U.S. government should abandon a Pentagon-favored Internet voting system because hackers could easily alter election results, according to four researchers who serve on an advisory panel for the program. Aviel Rubin of Johns Hopkins U., David Wagner at UC Berkeley, David Jefferson of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and consultant Barbara Simons say that hackers could knock tallying computers offline with a flood of data in "denial of service" attacks, set up phony Web pages to intercept votes, gather information about users, or spread a virus to participants' computers to monitor or change their votes. A Defense Department spokesman said that "security is enhanced, procedures are in place" to ensure an accurate count and that six other people who served on the panel did not share these concerns. Rather than voting absentee by mail, military personnel and other U.S. citizens overseas will cast ballots online in some primary and general elections this year under the Defense Department's Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. The system could get its first test Feb. 3 in South Carolina's primary. ... Ten former intelligence officers, among them two former C.I.A. station chiefs overseas, are pressing congressional leaders to open an inquiry into who disclosed the name of undercover C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame. Their request, outlined in a letter to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and others, reflects discontent within the intelligence services, along with concern that a four-month-old Justice Department investigation may never bear fruit. Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame in a column in July, has identified his sources only as Bush administration officials, and the Justice Department inquiry has not produced any public findings. More here.
SPJ national update III: No time for truth, and homeland cooking. The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks wants an extension of its May 27 deadline until at least July. The White House and GOP congressional leaders have said they see no need. Commission officials cite administration delays in turning over evidence as one reason for the extension. "We are telling the Congress and the president what we need to do the best possible job," said the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican who was formerly governor of New Jersey. "Much work remains." The administration initially opposed creation of the 10-member commission over concerns that it will assert that the White House failed to act on intelligence that a catastrophic attack might be imminent. The White House confirmed news reports last year that an Oval Office intelligence summary shortly before the attacks suggested that terrorists might be planning to strike using passenger planes. More here. ... In the wake of the latest revelations from weapons inspector David Kay, many large U.S. papers are belatedly pressing the Bush administration to explain how it got the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so wrong. A growing number are raising the possibility that Bush and his team "cooked" the intelligence to support their case for war. An E&P survey of the top 20 newspapers by circulation found that as of Jan. 28, 13 had run editorials on Kay's resignation as chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq and his statement that no WMDs exist there now, and likely did not exist during the U.S. run-up to war. More here.
