 |
|
|
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 and to this page about what motivated its creation, and how it evolved. Go here for the 10 Deadliest Sins of Legal Reporting post. And go here for blanket disclosure of Obbie's conflicts of interest.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 RSS Feed
| › Most Recent Postings
|
|
|
|
|
|
| First Monday love affair |
|
| Mon, October 01, 2007 |
|
The Supreme Court press corps has a crush on a boy named Tom.
The well-known Supreme Court advocate and analyst Thomas Goldstein -- who practices at Akin Gump, but really makes a name for himself on the blog that he founded, SCOTUSblog -- managed to hijack a good number of first-Monday-in-Ocober previews of the new Supreme Court term. Back on Sept. 18, Goldstein posted a provocative essay (which he recycled in shorter form for Slate last Friday) in which he predicted the Supreme Court would end this term next June with headlines about a leftward shift. His point: Whether the Court appears to shift right or left depends heavily on the vagaries of the cases it has accepted for review. And so far, this term's cases look like better bets for the liberals (with Anthony Kennedy, as before, in the swing-vote position).
Goldstein's theme and quotes get top billing from Mark Sherman at AP; Tony Mauro at Legal Times and Law.com; Joan Biskupic at USA Today; and Jennifer Dlouhy at Hearst. Goldstein gets mentioned, but somewhat less emphasis, in Bob Barnes' Washington Post piece, Bill Mears' piece on CNN.com, by Nina Totenberg on NPR, and in Michael Doyle's McClatchy story. And Jim Oliphant focuses on the topic but doesn't quote Goldstein in his Chicago Tribune story today.
There were some notable conscientious objectors in the lockstep adoption of the Goldstein theme. Jess Bravin of the Journal (subscription required) puts the Court's trends in ideological terms, but more about which side of the divide has a more cohesive team. His answer: the libs. And no Goldstein. Linda Greenhouse goes her own way in The New York Times, ignoring Goldstein and seeing instead a strong conservative hand in the cases that have been accepted for review. And the LA Times' David Savage bucks the trend even more, eschewing all talk of left-right trends in a straightforward flyover.
Does anyone voice regret for all the stories at the end of the last term that heralded a new conservative hegemony? Nope. Although Oliphant does note that this year's predictions make last year's labels seem "dangerous."
And does all this talk of Goldstein's influence mean that I think the reporters were duped, or lazy? Not at all. Goldstein has long had a deserved reputation for smart, careful analyses of trends, and it's only logical that the reporters rely on folks like him -- especially when he articulates such a memorable meme. But there have to be a lot of jealous Court scholars out there this morning, experts whose life work is devoted to tracking such trends and who dream of one or two mentions in national newspapers every year or so. Clearly they don't stand a chance when Tom Goldstein is in town.
|
|
Posted at 05:55 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Wrongful conviction roundup |
|
| The New York Times |
|
| Mon, October 01, 2007 |
|
Back in the day, the Times and most other papers would give a story like this feature treatment, probably on a Sunday; possibly in a series. But it's today's lead story in the paper of record. Solomon Moore uses facts and figures from academics and advocacy groups to catalog a wide range of responses nationwide to the hundreds of exonerations of wrongfully convicted defendants. The story can only touch on examples of the hundreds of new laws and rules, and on the raging debate taking place across the country.
Does it deserve lead-story treatment? Absolutely. It's not classic breaking news, and much of it has been documented piecemeal. And its prominent play ensures that more readers will understand what has happened to combat the reality that the system is flawed and DNA has shuffled the deck.
Does it do justice to the topic? Yes, considering its space limitations. But that's where this link serves an especially useful purpose when the story is seen online. Links for more information on a given topic would be that much more useful if the paper devoted real editorial skill (as opposed to a mere search of its story archives) to collect additional resources for readers who want more.
|
|
Posted at 08:37 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| CBS vs. ABC: The Thomas interviews |
|
| Tue, October 02, 2007 |
|
Given that the current Clarence Thomas media blitz is driven by that most basic human need -- to flog a new book -- here's a legal-reporting question worth asking: Who maintained his or her independence more -- who was less used -- Steve Kroft or Jan Crawford Greenburg; CBS or ABC? Put another way, who won -- the HarperCollins PR department or journalism?
"60 Minutes" won the initial rounds. News of its interview with Thomas -- and the interview itself -- occurred well before Greenburg's. Kroft bragged on air and on the CBS Web site that he was given seven days with the justice. Greenburg had seven hours of interviews over four days, and it wasn't until after "60 Minutes" aired its double segment Sunday night that Greenburg hit the Web and, on Monday, the airwaves with her reports.
In pure imagery, both networks excelled. They enjoyed unusual access to get scenes featuring props other than gray suits and bookcases, the usual judicial backdrops. CBS had Thomas behind the wheel of his RV, Kroft at his side, and an interview outside the parked vehicle with Thomas and his wife Virginia. ABC had Thomas at a University of Nebraska football game, hugging and giving inspirational talks and tailgating with people dressed in bright red.
Kroft's report (produced by Michael Radutzky and Denise Cetta) was highly personal and emotional. Thomas came off as a good guy, an embattled hero. The report hewed closely to the point of "My Grandfather's Son," a memoir that all but omits his 16 years on the Supreme Court. When Kroft did lead him into dicey territory -- Anita Hill, affirmative action, abortion -- Thomas stuck to his book's script, saying little that could give critics a handle (and even hinting that he might have more liberal personal views on abortion but interprets the Constitution as he sees it). The most remarkable detail: Thomas is under control at all times, not the unhinged, emotional wreck who sometimes appears on stage and in other rare interviews. It's good TV: pure "60 Minutes" show-biz softball, thoroughly watchable, and stripped of practically all legal context. What kind of job does Thomas do? Kroft and his producers don't go there, except to let Thomas swat away "silly" characterizations of him as disengaged at oral argument and a lightweight on the law. The most revealing bit: Thomas' remark about his Yale Law School degree, which he earned after gaining admission through an affirmative action slot. "It's tainted," Thomas said. "So I just leave it in the basement." The followup put-him-on-the-couch question Kroft didn't ask: "And how does that make you feel when you think about why George Bush the elder nominated you to replace Thurgood Marshall?" Don't go there!
I expected Greenburg to show a much deeper understanding of how Thomas' personal revelations fit into his jurisprudence, considering Greenburg's long tenure on the beat, for the Chicago Tribune and now ABC. What I didn't expect was how many words Greenburg would churn out on ABC's Web site. Her 20,000-word story is one part book summary, one part tease to the multiple-platform treatment that ABC gave Greenburg's interviews with Thomas. I only saw the Nightline segment, billed as the main on-air event.
With all those words, does Greenburg dig deeper and give the personal, confessional nature of the book any greater public purpose?
Deeper detail, no doubt. And in some respects, she explains and interprets rather than simply provides an open mic. For example, Greenburg tackles the issue that Kroft avoided: the role race played in his selection for the High Court. Greenburg writes that the president's claim that Thomas' race played no part in his selection was
an obvious absurdity, and it created a dynamic which put Thomas in the position of forever defending his qualifications.
She goes on to recount his "somewhat defensive" treatment of the subject in his book and in her interviews with him. It doesn't quite crack the nut, but at least it tries. She also returns again and again to Thomas' sense of alienation and resentment over his treatment before and during his confirmation battles. One of the most revealing parts of the written piece comes after details about Thomas' heavy drinking in the distant past, as recounted in his book:
Thomas appears shocked — he is completely taken aback, then becomes angry — when it's suggested that his critics could make the link between his drinking and the time that he worked with Anita Hill.
"That's a stretch. That's really a stretch," he shoots back. "First of all, I was never a drunk, OK?
Then Greenburg quotes Thomas on his motives for getting so personal, and for revealing embarrassing and previously unknown details:
"They can say whatever they say, but there is somebody out there right now who has a problem with alcohol," Thomas says. "And the only way to identify with them is to be honest — that you saw something like that coming down the track."
Thomas says he wrote the book for those people — not for his critics.
"The choice is between honesty and dishonesty? and I didn't think I could write a sham of a book that says, 'I'm this great guy, and I did this and that, and I didn't have this particular problem.' That's not true. You do your best to communicate honestly with people, with people who need help.
"There was a point in my life when I could have used a book like that — when I was a kid. I mean, who would provide the leadership for me to come out of Georgia? My grandfather did all he could. My grandmother did all she could. Who would say to me, 'There's a way out of there to greater heights?' No. Who would put the crumbs down? Who would blaze the trail? Who would reach back and say, 'I traveled this path. It was really hard, but I was just like you?'
"I would have wanted somebody to be honest with me, someone to come back and say, 'I was there with you, just like you — I was there just like you are,' not that 'I'm greater than you are,' not that, 'I'm stooping down to touch you or condescending to you,'" Thomas says. "'I was there, and I can't solve all your problems, but here is a way that might work. I don't have all the answers, but here is something that I humbly submit might work.'"
"And that's not just for blacks. That's not just for kids. That's for everybody who's still trying to be hopeful with their problems," Thomas says. "You can't have it both ways. You can't say, 'I had no problems, but I could help you.' You've got to say, 'I had those problems, and I want to help you and be a part of your solution.'"
So it isn't just about the drinking, it's about hardship and role models -- and a Supreme Court justice who clearly feels an obligation to help people in his own peculiar way. Greenburg relates this, but doesn't make much of it. Nor does she go much beyond the chronology that limits Thomas' book to pre-1991. Yes, there are some quick comments about his private life since then. But little or nothing about his sense of himself on the Court, and in his legal writings. It's as though all we must know is that he's conservative. Her best stuff, like Kroft's, is the personal: Thomas' memories of talking to elderly NAACP activists back home for whom his success was proof that they were right. It's all about, as Greenburg puts it, Thomas' remarkable "raw pain and emotion" in print and in interviews. Essentially the two networks fought this one to a draw. Maybe that's all we were expected to take from this flurry of Thomasonian revelation. Maybe that's all anyone could or should do, given that the book isn't about the law. But somewhere a HarperCollins flack is smiling.
|
|
Posted at 08:31 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Teen drinking and liability: Anecdotes or trend? |
|
| U.S. News & World Report |
|
| Wed, October 03, 2007 |
|
Are laws that punish parents and "social hosts" for teen drinking having their intended effect? And are they fair? Good policy? Emma Schwartz takes a skeptical look and answers, "Maybe not." She waffles because her sources argue both sides of the debate effectively. Even lacking a definitive point of view, her story serves to illuminate the debate over whom to hold responsible (besides the teens themselves) for underage boozing.
She might have illuminated a few of the finer points in her story a bit more clearly. She contrasts civil and criminal liability, but doesn't clarify terms. Is parental liability the same as "social host" liability? And are both typically covered by criminal statutes? Are the civil liability laws in 33 states also aimed at social hosts, and not just parents? It's never quite clear enough. She also fuzzes up one fact, perhaps because it makes a story that fits U.S. News' readership better, when she points out:
most adults arrested under them are siblings or friends in their 20s. Still, it is clear the penalties are falling harder on parents.
How is it clear? Because she says so, based (evidently) on some horror-story anecdotes. I would have changed "harder" to "hard," and presto! The key point is defensible. Carping aside, the story does a good job of looking at an important problems from several angles and with many examples.
|
|
Posted at 02:15 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Thomas story they wanted |
|
| Thu, October 04, 2007 |
|
Richard Prince blogs about criticism from Clarence Thomas critics about the tone and content of the ABC and CBS reports. I've already said that both reports lacked critical substance and hewed too closely to Thomas' book-promotion agenda. But I think the critics Prince quotes are overdoing it, and are motivated by partisanship. These weren't stories about Thomas' controversial record, nor did they need to be. It's perfectly legitimate to frame the story around Thomas' personal revelations, and then the legal and political substance is needed context but a reasonably small portion of the whole. It's not news that Thomas is loathed by the left. Is it news that he opened up about his past and his personal life? Not entirely. He's done it in speeches many times over the years. But the amount of detail, and how he expressed it in the book and the interviews, is new enough to justify stories that focus on that.
|
|
Posted at 10:58 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Durham-in-Wonderland eulogy (with caveats) |
|
| Sat, October 06, 2007 |
|
As Durham-in-Wonderland heads over the horizon, let's take the opportunity to ponder what its existence meant to legal reporting.
When Brooklyn College professor KC Johnson started blogging about the Duke case, he did what few bother to try: original reporting. Along the way, in more than 1,000 posts totaling an almost-absurd 870,000 words, he didn't just tell us what he thought. He told us what he found out. He broke stories, analyzed events from a position of strength -- by knowing more than practically anyone about every detail -- and constantly called B.S. on journalists and activists who had come by their opinions without doing the hard work that Johnson had. Because of his energy (relentlessness, really) and talent, Johnson proves that citizen journalism can in fact be journalism as we dinosaurs would define it. Johnson even proved that this needn't be a volunteer effort. His book Until Proven Innocent won a major publishing contract, gushing reviews, and (according to WSJ Law Blog) an HBO movie contract. He cites traffic statistics for his blog that would make any advertising salesman drool. The blog, in short, was a huge success.
So let me play the skeptic. What would I want to point out to those who would tout this as not just a wonderful addition to the media landscape, but a worthy replacement for the maligned mainstream media?
- Johnson got that book contract and wrote that book with an old-fashioned MSM guy, Stuart Taylor Jr. of National Journal (and formerly of The American Lawyer and The New York Times). Does that take away from Johnson's accomplishments or the notion that a citizen journalist could make a living at this? Not automatically, but it does put a fat asterisk on it.
- It's not storytelling that appeals to the largest possible audience. I got in trouble for saying this after the Scooter Libby trial (go here and here), so let me do it again. I cared about the Duke case, a lot. I tried to read as much as I could get my hands on, from a variety of print and online sources. I found Johnson's take on the case not only credible, but essential to my understanding of what was happening each step of the way. I loved his truth-squad attacks on lazy journalists and politically correct faculty. So, to underline it, I was predisposed to like his writings. But I found the daily flood of detail on Durham-in-Wonderland far too overwhelming in volume and far too atomized to explain developments in the case clearly and plainly. All too often I would bail out of the blog and head straight for the News & Observer to have Joe Neff tell me what I needed to know in the way that I find more coherent: with a lede and a nut graf and background and reminders of who's who. You know, a story. So, if Duke-case junkies like me, with a reason to follow the case, can get turned off by the treatment that such a blog provides, what about the rest of the public? They need what the MSM is supposed to provide: an easier way in to the story. The elite appeal of a blog like this can never, in other words, replace traditional storytelling journalism.
- Johnson's passion about truth and justice sometimes got far too steamy for my tastes. When he went off the deep end, he could sound like a blind partisan rather than an open-minded fact-gatherer. Call me old-fashioned, but I want to know that the reporters digging up facts for me are not so committed to a cause that they can no longer concede that the "other side" is ever right.
None of these factors outweigh the good that the blog accomplished, both in the Duke case and more broadly in the cause of citizen journalism. But they do mean that improving mainstream journalism, and keeping its providers alive, is more important in the long run -- it affects far more people -- than focusing all of our media-business-development energies on the noble citizen journalist.
|
|
Posted at 06:53 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (1)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| My "best" list of law blogs |
|
| Sat, October 06, 2007 |
|
So I got roped into this group hug, and now must (?) disclose my list of 10 favorite law blogs. You'll notice that I go for the Romeneskos of the law world -- the news digests that save me from having to comb a ridiculous number of news sites myself. I'll look at commentary now and then, but nothing regularly, at least nothing classified as a blog (which, in my view, excludes the smart reporting-based legal commentary by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick). Opinions are cheap. Give me some originally reported facts! (Strange to say, coming from an opinion blog, but there you have it.) Now, my list:
Howard Bashman's How Appealing: All the legal news that's fit to print. Thanks to him, the rest of us get one-stop shopping. It's almost a relief when he takes a day off.
SCOTUSblog: I've been accused of having a journalistic crush on Lyle Denniston. Guilty as charged! Original reporting always wins my heart over, and Denniston is still a marvel of energy and smarts after a half a century on the Supreme Court beat.
Jan Crawford Greenburg's Legalities: For those of us enjoying a severe TV deficit in our diets, this blog tells what TV's most committed legal reporter is up to.
Roger Parloff's Legal Pad: The Fortune writer is a monster reporter and entertaining writer (in a wildly brainy sort of way).
Investigative Reporters & Editors Extra! Extra! : Dopey name, and not all about legal reporting, but a good way to spot enterprising work beyond the usual national news outlets.
Crime & Justice News Report: Ted Gest and his Criminal Justice Journalists at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice do a superb, energetic job daily in spotting and summarizing news from newspapers and other news outlets of all sizes.
BLT: Blog of Legal Times: A good way to keep up with the best in legal journalism (that being Legal Times), including Tony Mauro's Supreme Court coverage.
Overlawyered: My first blog experience, and still a good way of keeping up with the torts debate and other litigation issues, though I find myself believing maybe only half the spin that Walter Olson, et al., put on everything.
Carolyn Elefant's Legal Blog Watch: This Law.com feature is a reliable best-of, for those of us with not enough time on our hands to monitor the sites ourselves.
Robert Ambrogi's LawSites: Serves a function similar to Legal Blog Watch (and overlaps it, with Ambrogi posting on both). Bob's knowledge of the law firm world and the Web makes his take on things worth listening to.
Not a terribly original list, but I don't have time (or make the time) to treat blog-harvesting as an end in itself. It's simply a great way to use others as issue-spotters and news digesters.
|
|
Posted at 09:16 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (1)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| A wimpy starter's gun |
|
| The Wall Street Journal |
|
| Tue, October 09, 2007 |
|
It's one of the biggest court cases in the business world in years. Does the Journal own it?
Kara Scannell's front-pager (subscription required) is played as the mother of all argument-preview stories. Few cases get this treatment the day that they're argued. But few cases are as important to business as Stoneridge Investment Partners LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta Inc., which could determine how aggressively unhappy shareholders can pursue third parties -- lawyers, accountants, other advisors to troubled businesses -- to recoup their stock losses.
The story covers the important bases, and is told in the Journal's patented concise form. Unfortunately, it's a snooze. No big surprises. Predictable details (everyone's taking it really seriously! and working hard to win!!). After a cryptic tease near the top, we finally get something new in the 16th graf, as Scannell shifts from basic overview to details of the plaintiffs' political and strategic campaign. Then, after a few grafs of thoroughly ordinary details, the camera shifts to the defense. Same deal. Along the way, Scannell sprinkles in a few interesting tidbits about the campaign to sway the solicitor general. In the end, though, the story is as uninspired as its hed: "Big-Money Battle Pits Business vs. Trial Bar."
|
|
Posted at 04:40 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jousting with Woodward and Armstrong (and Margolick) |
|
| NPR's On the Media |
|
| Tue, October 09, 2007 |
|
Jeffrey Toobin has done so many interviews to promote his book -- evidently a successful strategy, considering its Times best-seller status -- that he can see the next question before it's asked. In this On the Media interview, host Bob Garfield asks how many justices he interviewed. Toobin answers:
I did not have conversations with all of them. I did much better than I expected. I think there is some thawing that has gone on in recent years. But, one underestimated factor is the book The Brethren, which came out in 1979, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's really phenomenal book about the court traumatized the court. The court really was shocked by how much inside detail there was and how the theme of the universal hatred of Chief Justice Warren Burger was evident in the book. And I think it took quite a few years for that trauma to wear off.
So most justices talked -- more than he expected -- and that's evidence of Brethren trauma? His real point becomes clear in the next question and answer, where Garfield asks about access to law clerks. Toobin -- no doubt smarting from this David Margolick review, which I blogged about here -- gets a wee bit defensive about how many clerks he interviewed (which was one of Margolick's points). Toobin says he interviewed 75 but sought interviews from more. Then he goes on to caution against believing law clerks' self-promotional perspective on the Court. So there!
|
|
Posted at 02:21 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jan and Dahlia's "weird, new world" |
|
| Bloggingheads.tv |
|
| Wed, October 10, 2007 |
|
Give a listen to this 49-minute conversation between two of the Supreme Court press corps' most thoughtful journalists, ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick. Jumping off from Justice Clarence Thomas' book and journalists' and reviewers' treatment of it, the two range widely: on the good and bad consequences of the Court's greater openness; on the press' role in fostering views that the Court is a purely political player; and, perhaps most interestingly (given LawBeat's world view), the role of the journalist in what Greenburg calls this "weird, new world" of blog-fueled opinion about everything. Greenburg takes the traditional, mainstream-media perspective: that the reporter's role as neutral fact-finder and guide is compromised by letting that same person deliver partisan commentary concerning her beat. Lithwick, whose form of reporting-based opinion is, she admits, a hybrid model, says that she's conflicted. She finds journalists' professions of neutrality hypocritical while at the same time she laments the impulse to turn everything into a binary: left-right, win-lose, for-us-or-against-us.
It's an honest, intelligent conversation on the role of the journalist in covering legal affairs -- except that it deals only glancingly with a current controversy that puts Greenburg in the cross-hairs: whether Greenburg (and her competitor Steve Kroft of CBs) let Thomas off too easily in their reports last week (a controversy that I blogged about here, and which has only gained momentum since). Lithwick never puts the question directly to Greenburg, nor does the ABC correspondent volunteer to do so. But they do deal with it by implication, where they discuss partisans' inability to concede any value on the other side (in this case, the left's refusal to have a discussion about race on Thomas' terms, but instead insisting that the discussion should be about the Anita Hill controversy) and in the discussion about how and whether journalists should share or suppress their personal views when reporting the news.
One postcript: To the word count on Greenburg's Web report on Thomas -- a whopping 20,000 -- add this equally eye-popping statistic that she shares in the conversation: She read Thomas' book five or six times to prepare for her interviews with him.
|
|
Posted at 08:54 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Shining a light through black water |
|
| The New York Times |
|
| Thu, October 11, 2007 |
|
Finally, clarity. For weeks we've read, seen, and heard countless reports on the controversy over private security contractor Blackwater and its guards' killings of Iraqi civilians. Aside from the disputed facts in the central case, a looming question that has gotten only occasional and partial treatment -- so far as I've seen -- concerns the law: What exactly controls whether Blackwater and its guards can be, and might actually be, held accountable. In this news analysis today, Alissa Rubin and Paul von Zielbauer do a superb job of exploring that complicated question. They focus on criminal liability, explaining both the laws involved (some of which were changed recently in ways that haven't yet been clarified) and the practical obstacles to mounting a prosecution. They shed light on American officials' legal right to suspend Blackwater's immunity from prosecution. And they use experts to full effect. Despite the analysis bug, this is a heavily reported piece that arrives at its apolitical points of view with seemingly solid evidence. Now, if Rubin and von Zielbauer would do the same on Blackwater's potential civil liability, we'd have the full picture.
|
|
Posted at 08:45 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Time out of (its) mind |
|
| Time |
|
| Thu, October 11, 2007 |
|
David Von Drehle pens a provocative cover story that says the Supreme Court is, basically, all hot air. He writes:
There is, it seems, an inverse relationship between the passions expressed in judicial writings and the import of the cases that inspire them. In the midst of these battles, no one seems to have noticed that the stakes have diminished. This trend--a steady shrinking of the judicial role in public policy and a handing over of issues to the states--is consistent with Roberts' conservative philosophy. And it points to an obvious question about the highest court in the land. How much does the Supreme Court matter anymore?
The irony is that the Court's ideology is playing a dwindling role in the lives of Americans. The familiar hot-button controversies--abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, police powers and so on--have been around so long, sifted and resifted so many times, that they now arrive at the court in highly specific cases affecting few, if any, real people. And it's not clear that Roberts wants to alter that trend.
The case that Von Drehle focuses most on is last term's Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. He portrays the Court as a pipsqueak with a popgun:
For example, in 1954 the Supreme Court decided a set of cases challenging racial segregation of schools. Brown v. Board of Education changed the lives of millions, beginning with the students in the affected school districts and radiating throughout the country. Compare that with the race-and-schools cases decided by the Roberts court last term, which affected at most a few hundred students.
He later calls the 2007 schools case one "that broke little new ground and affected few, if any, people." No doubt Brown is hard to top for impact. But isn't it ironic that this Time cover story appears the same day that Joseph Pereira's Wall Street Journal front-pager (subscription required) documents how many school districts are retrenching from aggressive integration policies because of public pressure sparked by the Court's ruling in June?
Other parts of the article mock the justices, clerks, and Supreme Court bar as a cloistered bunch that is drunk on the notion of its own power and importance, while in fact it's slipping into obscurity. It's engaging. But specifics? Hard evidence? Not so much of that. I find it heartening that Time tackles a brainy topic like this, and poses thoughtful, cheeky questions. But the premise of this story seems wildly overstated.
|
|
Posted at 09:55 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (1)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| No justice, no peace, no context |
|
| Sat, October 13, 2007 |
|
Here we go again. In a racially charged case where everyone's an expert because the incident was captured on videotape and played endlessly on TV, a jury acquits. Protests ensue. Reporters covering the trial go heavy on the facts in the case and reactions to the verdict, but are practically silent on what the relevant law actually says. That's the upshot of coverage so far in the not-guilty verdicts yesterday in Florida in the January 2006 death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. Anderson, who was black, was an inmate in a juvenile boot camp. Eight boot camp employees were charged in his death.
So what were they charged with? And how are those offenses defined? What, in other words, was the jury actually deciding? From the heavy coverage of the verdict, it's anyone's guess. Most focus on disputes over what actually caused the boy's death: the manhandling he got from guards, or a medical condition. And everyone zooms in on post-verdict outrage or glee, including student protests in the streets of Tallahassee. Some reports -- Susannah Nesmith's in the Miami Herald, Abby Goodnough's in The New York Times, Stephen Price's in the Tallahassee Democrat, Peter Whoriskey's in the Washington Post, Robert Siegel's conversation on NPR with Trimmel Gomes of Florida Public Radio -- don't even pretend to show readers what law governed the verdict. Others dabbled in law, but in such a lazy, uncreative way that they might as well have skipped it altogether.
AP's Melissa Nelson writes in her lede that "it took a jury just 90 minutes Friday to decide that the death of Martin Lee Anderson was not a crime." Really? I would have thought the jury decided only only whether the state proved the guilt of the defendants of the crimes that were charged. Next, she names those charges (which many reports omit): aggravated manslaughter of a child, or the lesser charges of child neglect and culpable negligence. What does each charge mean in the context of this case's facts? What choices, in other words, did the jury actually make? No telling from this story.
The reputedly best paper in Florida tried a little harder than the others, but still came up lacking. One paragraph near the end of a long verdict story in the St. Petersburg Times by Abby Vansickle and Colleen Jenkins tackles the core questions:
To prove their case, prosecutors needed to show that the defendants "directly and proximately" caused the teen's death by neglecting him through culpable negligence. They also had to prove that the teen's death was "reasonably foreseeable," meaning that death was a possible result of the boot camp employees' actions.
And Court TV's Emanuella Grinberg touched on this, too, writing that the prosecutor, in his final arguments, "urged the jurors to look at the video to determine whether the guards acted in a reckless manner that displayed a 'conscious indifference' to the teen's well-being." Neither report does nearly enough to explain what those terms mean and how the judge instructed the jury to apply the definitions to the facts in this case.
It matters a great deal whether the jury believed the defense or the prosecution on the medical theories of Martin's death. But there's another step in what a responsible jury would be instructed to do with that: apply the law, as defined by the judge in this case, to those facts.
This isn't overly technical, nitpicky stuff. It's what determined the outcome. Now every protester, commentator and news junkie has an opinion about that outcome -- without the benefit of understanding it.
|
|
Posted at 08:46 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| American Lawbreaking series-starter |
|
| Slate |
|
| Sun, October 14, 2007 |
|
Columbia law professor Tim Wu just might have a future as a legal reporter if this law thing doesn't work out for him. Wu, a frequent contributor to Slate's Jurisprudence department already, starts his "American Lawbreaking" series today, promising to explore . . .
black spots in American law: areas in which our laws are routinely and regularly broken and where the law enforcement response is . . . nothing. These are the areas where, for one reason or another, we've decided to tolerate lawbreaking and let a law—duly enacted and still on the books—lay fallow or near dead.
In this intro Wu outlines his point -- how discretion is exercised in that broad middle ground between maximum enforcement of every law or anarchy -- and why we make these choices and what those choices tell us about our society. Part I also is posted today. While it's not exactly original (pharmaceutical substitutes for illicit drugs), its fresh perspective (this is "the other" drug legalization movement) provides enlightenment.
Wu's storytelling isn't classic journalese: lede, nut graf, explanation interspersed with examples and quotes, and end with a kicker. And thank you for giving us a break from that. But his research looks a lot like reporting. And his writing is accessible and provocative. Slate's packaging and presentation of this series leave too much to the imagination -- they don't signal clearly enough that a series has started, and what is to come next -- but kudos to the legal team headed by Emily Bazelon for bringing this to the public.
|
|
Posted at 10:33 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Dissing Liptak? |
|
| McClatchy Newspapers |
|
| Mon, October 15, 2007 |
|
Marisa Taylor and her editors either have poor research skills or no shame. Why else would they have said in the lede of this new story that the law in question is "little-noticed"?
The story by Taylor, the Justice Department reporter in McClatchy's D.C. bureau, is informative and important. It shows how prosecutors' use of a hardball law makes it tough for defense lawyers in child-porn cases to look at and analyze the evidence -- namely, the child porn in question. She finds a number of credible-sounding sources on both sides of the debate, and uses fact to counter hunches (such as: Isn't it enough for defense lawyers to catch a glimpse of this horrid stuff in a government office, under the FBI's watchful eye? Well, no, not if you're going to figure out if the defendant purposefully downloaded the material.)
But here's the thing: Adam Liptak's Sidebar column in The New York Times already reported this controversy in pretty complete detail. More than six months ago.
Don't jump to conclusions, though. Back when Liptak's column was published, Sidebar was one of many columns hidden behind the TimesSelect pay-subscription tollgate. So maybe it was just hard for Taylor to find, and not a clear case of hyping a lede.
|
|
Posted at 12:13 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Von Drehle responds |
|
| Tue, October 16, 2007 |
|
Everyone's a legal-reporting critic. And that's fine with me -- so long as you have something smart to say. And David Von Drehle, the author of the Time cover story that I criticized, does. (Well, I should be careful and note that the response to my post comes from someone claiming to be Von Drehle. But it's savvy enough that I'll take it, even if it's from a savvy impostor.) After reading Von Drehle's comment, I reread the Journal story that we're both talking about. While I embrace his point about the dangers of hyping a promised lawsuit (we must have had the same wise editor), I still think he underplays the splash that the Supreme Court's school-integration decision is making nationwide, as documented by the Journal. In any case, it's a healthy discussion that I wanted to highlight here in case the comment went unnoticed.
|
|
Posted at 07:44 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| David, please step into my office for a moment |
|
| Above the Law |
|
| Thu, October 18, 2007 |
|
When I edited Bar Talk, the so-called gossip section of The American Lawyer, I fielded rumors every day about this lawyer fired, that client mad, or another round of layoffs or raises here or there. We loved getting those rumors, which often came to me or the reporters from anonymous tipsters who claimed to work at said firm and who sounded oh so sure of their "facts." Then we'd start reporting. We'd talk to as many people as possible at the firm, in positions low and high. It would be foolish merely to take a firm's denial at face value. But it would be equally foolish to assume the truth of the rumors, which very often -- more often than not -- simply didn't check out. Associates, or people claiming to be associates, heard second- or third-hand about something, and either embellished or in some other way didn't get close to the truth. Most of these rumors weren't stories. They were dead ends. Maybe some were true, but we couldn't come close to proving them so, of course, we wouldn't publish them. The many reporters who did this work with me, and with other editors at other places before and since, quickly learn what it means to have standards. A real gossip reporter, if that's what you want to call business reporting, must work much harder than the water-cooler gossip.
So here's how the conversation would go this morning between a real editor and David Lat of Above the Law:
This story you turned in -- who are your sources? What did you do to check them out? Hmmm.... you got an e-mail or two and you published them. Interesting approach, David. How could you possibly justify publishing something without caring whether it's true? And what's this you said in your followup memo to the editor who criticized your methods?
It would be irresponsible to write about "NY to 190" rumors while ignoring similarly reliable (or unreliable) layoff rumors. Also, rumors -- even when untrue -- can be revealing. The very existence of a rumor reflects the state of the market and sheds light on the psyches of the participants. The fact that pay raise gossip has been supplanted by layoff gossip is telling.
David, please. Stop. I've heard enough. It's not working out, my friend. I'm sorry you think we're old-fashioned. But reporting is more than a game of telephone. Some of our readers may claim otherwise, but they're obviously children with too much time on their hands. Real readers care whether you're wasting their time with a bizarre mixture of lies and truth, whether you bother to differentiate between unchecked, anonymously sourced sludge and something that's been verified by multiple, real sources as true. I'm sure you'll do well writing fiction and waiting on tables to pay the bills. Goodbye, and good luck.
|
|
Posted at 07:59 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (2)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Bashman fan club |
|
| Fri, October 19, 2007 |
|
Tony Mauro beat me to this, and said everything I would say. So rather than be repetitive, I'll simply add that Bashman's backbone is even more admirable than the average journalist's -- if put in a similar position -- because Bashman's day job depends on the good graces of appellate courts. When the government overreaches to keep the public's business secret, journalists must stand up and be counted. That's easier when the worst they can do is be mad at you. Bashman did more.
PS - Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch (like Bashman's How Appealing, an ALM production) raises interesting questions about Bashman's dual role as officer of the court and journalist. And she links to the CBS News and ABA Journal reports that have fleshed out more details of this incident.
|
|
Posted at 07:40 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| When is hate a crime? |
|
| The Washington Post |
|
| Sat, October 20, 2007 |
|
Darryl Fears' front-pager does a good job of examining the sociology of the noose and the history of lynchings. What it doesn't do particularly well is wrestle with the law: When is the line crossed between protected speech and an illegal threat? In the Jena 6 controversy, part of the outrage stems from an assumption that hanging nooses from a tree is clearly a hate crime. The many other incidents around the country, a pattern that gives Fears his news hook, involve a variety of scenarios where the noose is more or less a clear threat, and more or less directed at identifiable people. Courts have long wrestled with where to draw the line between protected hateful gestures using cross-burning, swastikas or the noose -- a lamentable form of political speech -- and an action that constitutes illegal harassment or a bias-motivated attack on a particular person. It's difficult to stay dispassionate about these things when the ostensible target of protection is a drooling racist fool, or worse. But the law isn't what many in the public think. So that's the perfect time for some good reporting and storytelling that brings abstract concepts to life -- and explains why a crackdown isn't as simple as it seems.
|
|
Posted at 07:47 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| SCOTUS: Catch me if you can |
|
| Tue, October 23, 2007 |
|
When Chief Justice John Roberts gave his First Amendment address at Syracuse University on Sept. 19, there was no doubt that his words were public, and preserved. The speech was shown live on the Web and by closed-circuit video at other locations on campus. It was recorded (C-SPAN telecast that tape last Saturday on its "America and the Courts" program). During Roberts' speech, a monitor at stage left displayed the text of his talk. Many observers, including me, reported on his speech.
If a reporter or researcher wanted a copy of that speech text to study the words more closely, or to make the words easily accessible in the future -- without going to the considerable bother or expense of transcribing it from the tape -- that shouldn't be a big deal, right? Well, not on Planet SCOTUS, where ordinary concepts of public accountability and transparency take on their own eccentric meanings.
Since Sept. 21, I have been seeking a copy of that transcript, first by trying to work through SU's public information office -- which said it wasn't able to learn if and when the transcript would be cleared for release -- and since last Wednesday with my own calls to the Court's public information office. None of those calls was returned. The most I was able to learn was that the transcript is not available to the public. Whether it might be at some point remains unanswered. But one look at the speech transcripts published on the Court's Web site tells me what the odds are.
So this is how the story ends: a chief justice shows his willingness to engage with the public, speaking about matters of substance (but in no way compromising his impartiality), and yet he and his Court cannot actually act like other public officials. The transcript is a little thing. It's the attitude -- come to the oracle for wisdom, but don't touch! -- that we see in many other contexts (cameras at oral arguments, anyone?). It's so undemocratic, so 19th century in its fussy standoffishness and lack of responsiveness. It's not the staff's fault. It's a tone set on high, and long before Roberts got there.
I'd love to proven wrong in this instance, but I figured it was time to draw some conclusions -- after more than a month of acting the supplicant.
|
|
Posted at 07:17 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jena 6 secrecy challenge |
|
| Chicago Tribune |
|
| Tue, October 23, 2007 |
|
Kudos to the Chicago Tribune and several other news organizations for challenging a judge's decision to keep the public in the dark about developments in the Mychal Bell case. The Tribune has this story and identifies the other challengers as the LA and New York Timeses, AP, Hearst, Belo, Gannett, CNN and ABC. Juvenile-court secrecy, of course, has clear justifications. But not in a case like Jena 6, where the public is already keenly aware of the defendants' identities and the facts -- but also is highly susceptible to rumor and false claims about how the justice system is working. The Trib's story, unfortunately, doesn't tell us how easily challenged the ruling is under Louisiana law.
|
|
Posted at 11:59 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Jekyll and Hyde of child porn stories |
|
| The (Newark) Star-Ledger |
|
| Tue, October 23, 2007 |
|
This Sunday story by Robert Schwaneberg and Mary Jo Patterson doesn't know what it wants to say, so it makes multiple points -- none of them particularly well. At the start, and again at the end, it's playing the part of the howling mob, shaking pitchforks and torches at the captured child-porn users. In the middle, it's examining the alternatives to draconian-long prison sentences. But nowhere does the story clearly identify an important and interesting point, such as: Which approach makes more sense, New Jersey's or the feds'?
The story starts with a valid premise: to put into context a recently announced crackdown on child-porn users. The state police have a track record for making a lot of noise but then not getting long sentences for such defendants, the paper says. Case in point: a similar set of cases in 2005. Federal enforcement is much tougher, the paper quotes two experts as saying (with precious little support, even though it's probably true). It's the tone, though, that stands out -- practically goading state and federal officials to DO MORE to these guys, after documenting the relatively lenient treatment meted out to the defendants in the 2005 cases. Then the story explains that leniency is a relative term; that the earlier defendants actually suffered, and were dealt with firmly but differently. Then we finish with more pitchforks, calling for tougher state laws and illustrating the point, incongruously, with a federal defendant dealt with leniently who supposedly illustrates a different point (how ordinary guys ruin their lives by getting caught possessing child porn).
The story, in other words, is a mess, despite some impressive original research on an undeniably important controversy. And my guess is that the editors are to blame (too many hands on the old tiller perhaps?).
|
|
Posted at 01:25 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jena 6 myth-busting |
|
| Christian Science Monitor |
|
| Wed, October 24, 2007 |
|
A Jena, La., journalist, Craig Franklin, uses this article to debunk a dozen myths that he says have been adopted by Jena 6 supporters and lazy journalists who got their "facts" only from one side's advocates, or from blogs. Franklin writes:
Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.
Because I haven't dug deeply into the facts in Jena, I'm resisting the urge to be seduced by Franklin's claims -- tempting though that may be, since it wouldn't exactly be the first time that journalists covering a volatile legal story got led around by activists and failed to examine the record. He says he's covered the events from the start, and lays out a brief account of each "myth" (example: the "whites-only tree") and what he says really happened.
It's a valuable contribution to the debate, and a reminder that we may not know what we think we know -- in any story. If any equally knowledgeable reporters can debunk Franklin's counter-myths, bring it on.
|
|
Posted at 02:06 PM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Untangling the web |
|
| The New York Times |
|
| Thu, October 25, 2007 |
|
I love how Barry Meier tells this story of a whistleblower whose fraud accusations against his employer have now been turned against him. The story has just the right mix of narrative, explanation of the law's provisions and purpose, and perspective on how rare it is for the hunter to become the hunted. Meier is clear about what he doesn't know, too, writing at one point: "It is difficult to tell from filings precisely when Mr. Marchese and prosecutors turned from allies to adversaries." He's referring to James Marchese, who informed on his former employer, Cell Therapeutics, in an alleged Medicare scheme. And he put those filings to good use, striking a neutral balance despite the Justice Department's refusal to comment. The front-pager (national edition) stands as a lesson in how to wade into a thicket of complicated claims and chronology without losing the reader.
|
|
Posted at 06:05 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| An author's ultimate reward |
|
| Sat, October 27, 2007 |
|
Widespread coverage of the Army's decision to exonerate soldiers convicted in a World War II court martial provides long-awaited satisfaction for the men -- only two of the 28 convicted are still alive -- and their families. But it also is a rich reward for the journalist whose investigation revived interest in the case and cast new doubt on its validity. Seattle writer Jack Hamann (pictured here) won the IRE book award last year for "On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II." That 2005 book documented flaws in the convictions of the black soldiers for a race riot that ended in the lynching of an Italian prisoner of war at Seattle's Fort Lawton. After reading the book, a congressman requested that the Army review the convictions. A one-year review led to yesterday's declaration that the trial was unfair. The Army voided the convictions and granted honorable discharges to the four soldiers who formally challenged their convictions. More official exonerations, along with back pay, are likely, according to reports by William Yardley in The New York Times, Jonathan Martin in the Seattle Times, and the AP's Rory Marshall. Hamann, a former CNN and PBS documentary producer whose work also appears in Seattle's newspapers, told Marshall: "I'm absolutely overwhelmed with joy. You don't often get a chance to pursue justice on behalf of something that happened (63) years ago." NPR interviewed Hamann, who has a law degree, shortly after his book was published. That interview and a reprint of its first chapter appear here.
|
|
Posted at 07:03 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| TRUth or consequences |
|
| Broadcasting & Cable |
|
| Mon, October 29, 2007 |
|
Anne Becker explains the rebranding and business implications of Court TV's new name and mission, as truTV, which rolls out Jan. 1. The ad blitz starts Thursday. I've already bemoaned the shift away from court coverage here and here, so I won't belabor that. Today's story fleshes out the reasons for keeping six hours of trial coverage per weekday (namely, that Court TV's owner, Turner Broadcasting, sold it that way to cable systems -- and, oh yeah, some viewers actually care, too). What it doesn't examine, however, is a topic ripe for discussion: the effect that diminishing trial coverage, on the only national network committed to it, has on camera access to the courts. The Radio and Television News Directors Association tracks camera access in the states -- ranking states not by the simple equation of whether any cameras are allowed in any proceedings, but by the reality that most camera-access rules prevent real legal reporting on cases of public interest. Access has been backsliding since the O.J. Simpson trial 12 years ago. Court TV didn't just cover the O.J.-like trials, at least at first. It covered ordinary cases, civil included, that would show citizens how their courts work. Fighting court by court, state by state, for ad hoc access and for better rules, Court TV hastened a process that had been slow in coming since the Supreme Court ruled that cameras did not automatically deprive criminal defendants of a fair trial. That public-interest and journalism-heavy strategy was a ratings dog. Now, Becker reports, we'll get our just deserts: new shows on truTV "with subjects including daredevil pilots (Sky Racers), high-stakes con artists (The Real Hustle) and racing oil prospectors (Black Gold)." The real hustle, indeed.
|
|
Posted at 08:40 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Happy birthday to LawBeat |
|
| Tue, October 30, 2007 |
|
Today marks the first anniversary of this blog's launch. True to the mission -- but hopelessly compromised by self-interest -- I'll attempt to critique my performance so far:
Pluses
Volume: Before I started, I worried that I wouldn't be able to to maintain a steady-enough flow of posts -- either because I didn't have time, or because inspiration didn't strike. As I stressed in my opening-day post, I'm not here to catalog the day's top legal news. I set out, instead, to find praiseworthy or flawed examples of legal reporting. Some days when I read the news, nothing jumps out at me as remarkable either way. But most days, something does. I'll let readers decide if I've chosen the right stories to spotlight or critique, and whether I've done enough to critique them. But at least by now I've decided that I fed the beast often enough, and probably can keep doing so at this pace (an average of more than one post per day, seven days per week, throughout the first year). More important, there really is such an extraordinary amount of legal reporting, and so much to examine for both good and bad traits, that a blog on this admittedly narrow topic will never lack for material. The writer's time is another matter....
Feedback: The infrequent comments give the place a forlorn look. I appreciate the occasional public comments -- both from readers and subjects of my barbs -- and I do receive a fairly steady flow of e-mailed comment from subjects, readers, and tipsters. Keep them coming -- public or private, whatever suits you. But would it really kill you to post publicly? Come on, live life on the edge.
Attention: One selfish goal in starting the blog was to draw attention to what we're doing here at Newhouse in legal-reporting education and at Syracuse University in examining law, politics and the media. It's worked. Posting real, ever-changing content (surprise, surprise) is a far better publicity magnet than a static brochure online.
Networking: Leaving New York and the newsroom was a big change for me. I didn't want to abandon my working-journalist friends and colleagues as I pursued a new line of work. The blog has kept me on their radar.
Minuses
Focus: Too oriented toward print and Web reports. I do post occasionally about NPR (I hear a lot of it on a long commute) but only rarely about TV journalism (because I almost never have time, or make time, to watch any TV, news or otherwise). It's also too SCOTUS-focused. I want to spotlight legal reporting around the country. IRE and Criminal Justice Journalists do a good job of keeping me aware of journalism that I haven't seen on my daily rounds. But I often feel the gravitational pull of Supreme Court reporting. It's undeniably important, but I need to work harder to broaden my focus. I also give short shrift to USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the nation's solid second tier of quality regional newspapers, and magazines of all types (although I've posted numerous times about all of the above). I resolve to get better at that, and not be so dependent on Mr. Bashman, et al., for scouting out notable stories.
Teaching tool: I want the blog to bring current news and issues to the classroom, as fodder for discussion and starting points for their research on critiques of legal reporting. But it hasn't gained traction. I need to find a way to integrate it with what I'm teaching, rather than just making random mentions of it at the start of class.
Reporting: I don't do enough of it. Which is, you know, ironic. Gotta get off my lazy-blogger duff and ask questions of reporters and news organizations about why they do what they do, or don't do other things. And to profile the folks who are doing great work. Call me on it when I don't live up to the same standards I demand of others. And help me out by sending me tips or posting comments with your own take on the news behind the news.
Thanks for reading.
|
|
Posted at 06:59 AM
|
|
|
|
|
> View Comments (4)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RSS Feed
| › Most Recent Postings
|
|
|
|
|
