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LawBeat watches the journalists who watch the law. It is meant to start a conversation — here and in the classroom — about the quality of journalism focusing on the justice system, lawyers and the law. All posts are by Mark Obbie unless otherwise noted. Go to this archive to read more about LawBeat's focus. Go here for the 10 Deadliest Sins of Legal Reporting post. And go here for blanket disclosure of Obbie's conflicts of interest.
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| › Blog Archives (559 Archived Posts)
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| Liptak interview on "American Exception" series |
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| National Public Radio |
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| Thu, May 08, 2008 |
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NPR's "Fresh Air" features Adam Liptak in a discussion about his "American Exception" series, which I've raved about here and here. Mostly it's a stroll through the many topics Liptak explored in the series, starting with his latest installment, on imprisonment rates. But in the final two minutes of a 25-minute interview, guest host David Davies of the Philadelphia Daily News talks to Liptak about his transition six years ago from in-house lawyer at the Times to reporter:
Davies: Were there things about reporting that surprised you, misconceptions about how journalism works or new skills you had to develop? What was it like to leap into this business that you knew so well but hadn't practiced?
Liptak: It was terrifying. My first six months were sheer terror. I really didn't have the background to be any kind of newspaper reporter, much less one starting on the national desk of The New York Times. I didn't have any sources, I had not really conducted telephone interviews. There's a skill set involved in journalism that's not the hardest thing in the world to master, but really you want to do it on your college paper, and maybe at some regional paper, and not in the big time.
Liptak goes on to tell a funny story about his panic over not knowing how much work he should do to produce a 700-word story. Oddly, Davies barely mentions the latest big-time move by Liptak, to the Supreme Court beat replacing Linda Greenhouse. And the two don't discuss whether Liptak's national legal affairs beat will be filled, as I urged that it be (and I'm sure the Times hierarchy hangs on my every command). Could the news that the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage is jumping to the Times be related? I'm trying to find out and will post if I do.
Update: A memo from Dean Baquet (which is too long to post here in its entirety) says that Savage's new D.C.-based position is investigative. Perhaps that's why Eric Lichtblau recently was told he is returning to the DOJ beat from an investigative slot, but that's only conjecture with opaque sourcing, so forget I said it!
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Posted at 05:53 PM
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| Thoughts on the Thurman-stalker jury story |
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| The Wall Street Journal |
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| Wed, May 07, 2008 |
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Emily Steel is taking some flak for her tell-all story about serving on the jury that convicted Uma Thurman's stalker. New York's Noelle Hancock says that the A1 play is yet more proof that Rupert Murdoch really owns the Journal. Blame Murdoch if you must, but a newspaper would have to be brain dead not to publish this story, and play it prominently, once it lucked out with a reporter picked for the jury. Steel provides a smart, scene-based story about what went on in the jury room. It's a good read, with substance. But I do have two observations:
A civics downside?
Stories like this -- and it's certainly not the first of its type, though I can't think of other cases with this kind of celebrity victim -- seem likely to discourage lawyers from picking journalists as jurors. That would be very unfortunate, putting more distance between us and the public because we are considered ineligible for jury duty simply on the grounds that we'll splash the inside story on front pages. Does that mean we shouldn't do the stories? Emphatically no. It's our job to write about the world as we see it. And it's a competitive necessity to use what we're handed in the way of access. I'm just lamenting the possible repercussions.
An overly snarky kicker?
Here's how Steel ends her story:
We reached our decision at 11:36 a.m. and walked into the court room a few minutes later to give our verdict.
As I left the building with a few fellow jurors, we rode in an elevator with reporters grilling us for quotes. Their first question: What did it feel like to be a juror in the trial of Ms. Thurman's stalker?
Translated: "Up yours, competitor. I'll tell you what it was like -- in the forum where I'm paid to write." Funny, maybe. But it leaves a slightly sour aftertaste.
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Posted at 04:19 PM
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| A "poisonous tree" grows in Iowa |
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| Cedar Rapids Gazette |
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| Sat, May 03, 2008 |
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Here's another small-market crime-reporting investigation of note: "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree," a two-week series ending today in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Gazette. It was led by reporter Jennifer Hemmingsen. Packaged in multimedia on a slick site, the series had as its starting point our old reporting friend -- curiosity. How, the paper asked, could a prostitution ring trafficking in under-age girls flourish in small Iowa towns? The answers aren't surprising, but the journey illuminates a serious problem. This is brave, tough journalism that shows how a public prosecution and trial are just a starting point for in-depth reporting.
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Posted at 11:01 AM
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| Tracking the "Janklow 36" in South Dakota |
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| Argus Leader |
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| Sat, May 03, 2008 |
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Are early prison release programs safe? That's the question that the Sioux Falls, S.D., Argus Leader assigned 10 reporters to answer by tracing what happened to 36 South Dakota prison inmates released en masse 22 years ago -- the so-called "Janklow 36," named for the governor who commuted the sentences. The paper explains:
The germ for the "Janklow 36" series emerged as a reporter was scanning microfilm copies of the Argus Leader from 1986 while doing research on another topic. A story about Gov. Bill Janklow releasing a group of inmates - telling them never to return to South Dakota - caught his eye. At the time, the early release of inmates was a discussion beginning in other states that were struggling with bloated corrections budgets and prison populations. It might be good to see how that option worked in South Dakota, he thought, and what happened to those prisoners.
Led by reporters Steve Young and Matthew Gruchow, the paper reported last Sunday that the governor's action endangered South Dakotans and others because so many of the inmates committed new crimes, including a rape. How many were recidivists? The paper doesn't make that fact easy to find, though in part that's tied to another key finding of the reporting: the state's threat to the inmates to leave the state and sin no more was a "big bluff," because it then had no system to track the inmates and enforce the rules.
It's a worthy project, providing a database on each of the 36 former inmates (some of whom gone on to be productive citizens, by the way) and multiple sidebars on the inmates, their victims, and the policy implications of early release in South Dakota and elsewhere.
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Posted at 10:21 AM
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| Bell judge: just another unhappy customer |
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| Daily News |
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| Tue, April 29, 2008 |
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The Daily News' Nicole Bode gets Judge Arthur Cooperman on the phone long enough to hear him unload on journalists who tried to talk to him at home over the weekend. "That's not journalism," says the judge whose ruling in the Sean Bell police shooting was a big story in New York City. Big enough to stake out a judge's home? Not in my view. I've knocked on my share of doors, but what is the point when the judge took the unusual step of spelling out his reasons for the verdict in a written decision? The point, I am assuming, was the lack of visuals of the judge -- and the hope that he might utter a few words on camera. We act quite mindless and annoying when we resort to the home-invasion tactic on any big story, regardless of whether the subject is ducking responsibility or denying access (neither of which the judge really did here). Saddest quote in the story? When the 74-year-old judge said this about his previous musings about how he might have enjoyed a career in journalism:
"I am so glad I did not go to Columbia Journalism [School] and I picked the law. I had misgivings about that, but not anymore."
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Posted at 11:26 AM
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| Scalia on "60 Minutes": a brilliant portrait |
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| CBS "60 Minutes" |
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| Sun, April 27, 2008 |
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Lesley Stahl and her producer Ruth Streeter deliver a smart, entertaining portrait of Justice Antonin Scalia. I've been hard on "60 Minutes" for failing its storied history, including recently. But not this time. Scalia displays his feisty charm, and Stahl covers the substantive arguments while giving viewers a full-on view of the dynamism that is Scalia.
One striking realization: Scalia is a closeted journalist! He makes an off-color joke, telling an Oxford audience that legislative compromise is "splitting the baby" -- in a discussion of abortion policy. And this: "The next appointee to the Court is going to be a female, Protestant, Hispanic. If you can find her out there, she's in." And this: He and his wife have nine children from "playing Vatican roulette". He defends colorful, provocative writing, which after all is the ostensible purpose of this PR blitz (good writing, he says, "makes the opinion interesting, which might induce someone to read it"). He's anti-authoritarian ("It may well be that I'm something of a shin-kicker. It may well be that I'm something of a contrarian."). Sounds like pure journo to me.
Based on early reports, I assumed the piece would be a rehash. Not at all. The most dramatic moment: when Stahl hauls out old, private writings, including from Harry Blackmun's papers, where Scalia despaired over his lack of influence over the Court's majority. His facial expressions hide nothing as Stahl reads his words back to him. "I'm happier sometimes than at other times," Scalia allows, adding that his down times tend to come at a term's end, when the Court's output is "usually a disappointment."
What I like most about this story was that it wasn't an ideological rant or rave. It didn't ask that we love or hate Scalia's jurisprudence and ideology. It simply asked that we learn more about -- and see -- the man. It's not nearly a substitute for what the Court should do. But what a gift to the public, to get to know an important public official in this way.
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Posted at 08:02 PM
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| The greening of terror law |
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| Vanity Fair |
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| Sat, April 26, 2008 |
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Vanity Fair's definition of a "green issue" is remarkably expansive. I refer not only to the Madonna S&M pictorial or the Doris Day tell-all. The legal-reporting goods are in this article by British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, wittily called "Green [get it? green issue??] Light." It's taken from Sands' new book The Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, a title that kind of makes plain its focus and point of view. Sands' interviews and document-sleuthing yield new insights into which lawyers played which rhetorical gymnastics to authorize an anything-goes policy on interrogating terror detainees. His nut graf: that the legal architects of torture are war criminals and could -- arguably should -- be captured overseas and prosecuted for this. He writes up to it in a most methodical, cautious way. But there's no mistaking his thesis. And, unlike the typical polemical essay, it's based on original reporting.
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Posted at 08:39 PM
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