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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 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.
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| Taylor headline misfires |
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| The Washington Post |
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| Sun, December 02, 2007 |
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At the risk of descending into minutiae, I'm going to go all William Safire on the headline writers at washingtonpost.com. On the front page of the print edition of the Post, a headline reads "Family Ties Offer Link in Taylor Killing." The story, by Peter Whoriskey and Amy Shipley, starts by recounting the kindness Sean Taylor of the Redskins showed to his family, including half-sister Sasha Johnson. Taylor and Johnson were very close, the story says, in part because Taylor bought Johnson a car and let her live in the expensive house he bought for their mother. Then the story takes the turn that explains the headline:
But over the past few days it has become increasingly clear that investigators working on Taylor's killing believe Sasha Johnson, apparently unwittingly, provided a direct link between Taylor and the four Fort Myers men charged with killing him in a bungled burglary attempt of that same home.
Through Johnson's boyfriend, investigators believe, one or more of the accused killers was earlier invited into the home. That visit may have given the men the idea to rob the place. Makes sense, and it certainly doesn't make Johnson out to be an accomplice in her half-brother's murder. But here's the headline slapped on the story on the Post's home page, at least when I saw it this morning:
Taylor's Family Linked to Killing
Thanks to us journalists, when people are "linked to" someone or something involved in a murder investigation, that ain't good. It's shorthand -- often a lazy shortcut, falling far shy of actual proof -- for suspected guilt. That isn't what the story says or implies. And the original headline steered clear of such innuendo. But now it's what gets picked up in countless Google News searches. And there's the point: Web producers routinely change newspaper or magazine headlines that were carefully constructed by editors aware of the details and nuances of a story. Those quickie changes often turn a subtle, intriguing headline into a flat, explicit one -- a move meant to encourage Web readers to click because they can tell, from the headline alone, what the story is about. I understand that motive. But this business needs far better quality control, and print-online cooperation, if it's going to avoid "linking" victims to crimes through careless rewriting of multiple headlines for the same story.
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Posted at 07:17 AM
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| A plea for more exceptions |
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| The New York Times |
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| Tue, December 04, 2007 |
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Dear New York Times national desk editors,
Please excuse Adam Liptak from onerous daily and weekly deadlines for the foreseeable future. When he is given time to report and write for the "American Exception" series on "commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are actually unique in the world," he produces exceptional (pun!) work -- work that is so good, and so important, that it demands more installments than once every seven weeks. So far this is only a two-part series: this one on teenagers sentenced to life in prison (Oct. 17) and today's on uniquely harsh treatment of accomplices to murder. At this pace, we have to wait until late January for the next one, for pete's sake!
Sincerely,
His fans
P.S. -- Try a little harder to add some sizzle to that series blurb, mkay?
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Posted at 09:56 AM
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| Thinking Gitmo thoughts |
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| Thu, December 06, 2007 |
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End-of-semester craziness has dashed my hopes to compare beat reporters' takes on yesterday's arguments in the latest Gitmo-detainee-rights case, Boumediene v. Bush. To avoid letting the moment pass altogether, I'll simply link to SCOTUSblog's helpful index of stories on the arguments, and note also that Linda Greenhouse's interpretation seemed much bolder than others I saw. Departing from the standard interpretation -- a divided Court -- Greenhouse writes that "it seemed most likely that the court would draw a road map for the appeals court to follow in expanding the procedural protections available to the detainees." Is bolder better? We'll only know for sure when the decision comes down.
One other quickie thought: What a delight it is (for us law wonks) to hear the voices of justices and advocates in reports aired only hours after the fact. They were snippets, to be sure, but expertly snipped (at least in the version I heard, on NPR).
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Posted at 10:52 AM
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| A powerful anecdote in search of a solution |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| Sat, December 08, 2007 |
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Lee Romney and Scott Gold told a tragic story in yesterday's LA Times about Reny Cabral, portrayed convincingly as a victim of a California mental health system that failed him. Hospitalized after a psychotic episode, Cabral was released prematurely, attacked his girlfriend, was arrested and jailed, and proceeded to rage out of control until he rammed his own head into a wall. Then he lay helpless on a jail cell floor for many hours before receiving care. He'll spend the rest of his life a quadriplegic -- but in the meantime must fight serious felony charges for the attack that wouldn't have happened if Cabral had been held the full three days that his initial confinement required. Cabral's family is suing authorities, but the story instead is pegged to broader policy questions: the pressure to move psychiatric patients out of scarce beds, and the criminal justice system's failures to deal effectively with mentally ill inmates. The trouble is that the story -- which we learn at the very end is "one in a series of occasional articles on California's troubled mental health system" -- relies on one psychiatric expert for the diagnosis of what ails the system. His conclusions aren't backed up by other reporting, and the policies at the heart of the story aren't really explained. The end result: a moving, human story that leaves readers unable to see a way to fix the system.
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Posted at 10:53 AM
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| What reported, fair-minded commentary looks like |
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| The New Republic |
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| Sun, December 09, 2007 |
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Benjamin Wittes' latest column in The New Republic contributes valuably to the Guantanamo-detainee-rights debate by showing a number of admirable things:
It is possible for a writer in a journal of political opinion to play the skeptical reporter, doing the hard work of checking primary source materials rather than blindly accepting the word of partisans about what those documents show (as Wittes says he has been doing for the past six months by plowing through declassified transcripts and records from Pentagon review panels of detainees' cases).
It is possible to develop a point of view, based on that research, that recognizes merits and flaws in both sides' arguments (as Wittes does by first challenging the "romantic fantasy" that the detainees are largely innocent, and then by chiding the government for self-defeating strategies that hide evidence and deny complete, fair review of the cases).
A good reporter admits what he doesn't know and avoids broad-brush statements when faced with patterns that defy easy generalizations (as Wittes does when he describes what his review has and hasn't revealed so far, and when he breaks down his findings into several categories that define the detainees and the degrees of their evident guilt as enemy combatants).
Wittes' bottom line -- when he urges a new system of reviewing the detainees' cases -- may be hard for either polarized side in the debate to accept. He writes:
I don't believe that the result of such a process would be freedom for a lot of innocent people. The more likely outcome would be continued detention with the judiciary's stamp of approval for the majority of detainees, and freedom for two groups: A small group of true innocents and a larger group consisting of dangerous folks against whom the government has only weak evidence.
The scary question we need to address as a society is how large we are willing to let that second group grow in order to make sure the first group becomes as small as possible.
I've asked Wittes what he plans to do with his findings as he continues to mine the documents. I'll report back here if he is willing to share more.
Update: Wittes had, predictably, an interesting and ambitious response to my question about what his research ultimately will lead to. Here's his response:
"I am writing a book about the legal architecture of the war on terrorism, of which this study constitutes a chapter. The book, which expands upon a lengthy meditation I wrote sometime back in Policy Review about the nature of judicial review in the war on terrorism, is an argument against both the executive power model and the judicial power model of designing regimes for the war--and in favor of a pervasively legislative approach to the architecture of the conflict. See, for example. The Guantanamo study is an attempt to fill what I think is a significant gap in the public discussion of the detention question, a discussion which proceeds with a somewhat arid disregard for who these detainees really are (the answer is that they vary a great deal). It is an attempt to give the discussion--at least, the part of the discussion that involves detention and trial--a stronger empirical foundation.
"In addition, my research assistant Zaahira Wyne and I have been planning to write a monograph of some sort more narrowly on the Guantanamo data--which is rich and very interesting and disruptive to all sides in the argument. We have not begun this yet and will not until the book is done in January. But the idea is to correct a bit for the ongoing dialogue of the deaf on this subject."
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Posted at 08:28 AM
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| High on Toobin, but in too few words |
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| The New York Times Book Review |
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| Sun, December 09, 2007 |
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Congratulations to Jeffrey Toobin. His excellent Supreme Court book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, is among The New York Times Book Review's "Ten Best Books of 2007." I wouldn't pretend to know its strengths relative to all of literature (we here at LawBeat have a pretty severe case of tunnel vision). But Toobin's heavily reported, thoughtful book certainly is a heavyweight in the literature of the Court -- overcoming the cheesiness of its subtitle.
Phooey on the Times, though, for the lazy way it handles this best-of list. It's the cover image in print, and the subject of the editors' note. But the print version is simply a one-page list, with not even a blurbed description of each book. Online, the list gets the tiniest of links on the book review's main page, and then it's simply made up of links to the original reviews (in Toobin's case, the somewhat crabby review by David Margolick, published Sept. 23).
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Posted at 12:40 PM
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| Ode to a muckraker |
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| Mon, December 10, 2007 |
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David Carr starts his lament today about the decline of investigative journalism with veteran Chicago Reader reporter John Conroy, laid off by new owners last week -- one day before seeing the city of Chicago pay millions to settle claims that its cops tortured suspects: a scandal that Conroy exposed and then covered zealously for years. Here's an archive of Conroy's work on police torture and Romenesko's links to various comments on Friday about Conroy's firing.
Carr frets that investigative reporting is a dying art because of miserly owners. We all see that, and have fretted about it for years. But I worry more about whether students -- tomorrow's journalists -- care enough about it to make those owners think twice about axing the staff. I teach at a respected, and respectable, school of journalism. The standards are high, so the students are bright and serious. But it's only a rare pleasure to meet a student who's intent on investigating wrongdoing. Far more gravitate to women's service, celebrities, soft features, sports, and various forms of infotainment. PR majors outnumber journalism majors, by a wide margin. The Woodward-and-Bernstein mentality that drew me and my generation to j-school can't compete with a paparazzi ethic that obsesses over the meaningless comings and goings and foibles of entertainers and the idle rich. These are hardly revelations. But I'm reminded of my responsibility to replace the Conroys of the world with fresh investigative talent -- and how that responsibility is a tough sale these days.
Perhaps it's always been a tough sale because of the age. Journalism as public service comes with experience -- once you've been lied to a few times, or a hundred times, and once you've seen the bite that taxes take from a paycheck and wonder how much of it is wasted or stolen. Maybe they'll grow into it, once they've covered cops and courts and city council, and once they've talked to the customers. Maybe their editors will have the time to push for more original reporting, more facts. We legal reporters especially have to hope young journalists find greater meaning in playing watchdog than lapdog. Law -- criminal justice in particular -- has long anchored much of investigative reporting, whether by mainstream news organizations or alt-weeklies. The reasons are obvious: access to public records, classic conflicts between the powerful and the weak, and the red meat of investigative journalism -- acting as a check on systems and policies that don't always perform as advertised. Big problems tend to yield criminal charges, civil suits, or both. We legal reporters either feed off the legal process, or prompt it to take action. We ought to care more than most whether investigative reporting is a dying art.
So as we wish John Conroy a productive future -- if not in the service of established brands, then maybe for a new generation of news organizations like the promising ProPublica -- let's also invite him to teach what he knows. The next generation needs more inspiration to serve the public.
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Posted at 10:28 AM
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| Finally, FISA court transparency (ahem) |
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| Wed, December 12, 2007 |
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I'm debating whether this James Risen story reveals a plot that's more Lewis Carroll or George Orwell: The FISA court issues its third public opinion in its entire history of nearly three decades. The opinion denies a request to make public its decisions on National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping. The previous decisions' outcomes already are known, but the court won't reveal its reasoning for those decisions. Presumably the court -- having explained that it cannot explain a decision -- will now revert to its practice of not explaining its secrecy. Or something like that.
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Posted at 06:16 AM
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| Kids: DO try this one at home! |
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| Seattle Post-Intelligencer |
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| Thu, December 13, 2007 |
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The P-I's Paul Shukovsky digs up two kinds of documented facts -- just-revealed e-mails in the investigation of political manipulation at the Justice Department, plus the U.S. Sentencing Commission's local comparisons of crack-cocaine sentencing -- to put a juicy localized angle on this week's relaxation of crack sentences. Seattle's prosecutors had been bucking the system up till now. Even though that's backward looking, it's still a story, and Shukovsky tells it well. Seattle's circumstances are especially noteworthy, but it wouldn't be hard -- and probably would be productive -- for federal-beat reporters nationwide to look at what he did and ask similar questions about their districts' U.S. attorneys. How closely, or not, did they hew to the now-abandoned crack-sentencing line? Besides Sentencing Commission and Judiciary Committee data, there's always our own TRAC database to consult for district-specific comparative data.
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Posted at 07:50 AM
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| Is Andrew Cohen losing it? |
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| Washington Post Bench Conference |
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| Thu, December 13, 2007 |
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I like Andrew Cohen's Bench Conference blog all right. He knows legal news, and he's passionate about things. Sometimes too much so. Like when he hammered on the Justice Department scandal so relentlessly and repetitively that even diehard critics of Alberto Gonzales and the mess he made would tire of Cohen's harangues. He's at it again, but has chosen a weird target for his spleen-venting: the ABA Journal's decision to name Gonzales as "Lawyer of the Year." Cohen acknowledges that the Journal meant this not as an honor but as recognition of Gonzales' notoriety and effect on legal news -- very much in the vein of Time naming various criminals and thugs as "Man of the Year." Still, Cohen slams the Journal for ... I can't quite tell what. For wasting its breath on Gonzales instead of honoring a lawyer deserving of accolades? For putting the ABA's stamp of approval, somehow, on the former A.G., even though the Journal's Siobhan Morrissey states upfront in his cover story that the magazine's decision to single Gonzales out has everything to do with his "slow-motion destruction." The Journal's brief piece on its "lawyer of the year" is not exactly lionizing him, but Cohen insists on willfully missing the point, calling it "an affront to every honest, competent, hard-working lawyer in America, in and out of goverment, who did not act like an idiot before Congress, or display an appalling lack of courage and integrity in dealing with both subordinates and superiors, or leave to his successor and the nation a bloody mess that may take years to clean up."
Whatever. I would have attacked the Journal on other grounds: for a lazy clip-job ranking that tells us nothing new while pandering for coverage of its list. But that's just me.
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Posted at 10:26 AM
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| Investigating the wrong questions |
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| Fri, December 14, 2007 |
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Tony Mauro notes the release of a ream of documents from a U.S. Marshals Service investigation of the incident in Hattiesburg, Miss., in 2004 when two local reporters were forced by a deputy marshal to erase recordings of a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia. The documents -- depositions, memos, and other summaries of the dustup -- were posted recently by governmentattic.org. There's a lot of he-said, she-said concerning the ground rules for covering a pair of speeches by the justice. The points that the government seems to miss, as it clears its deputy of law violations, are these:
What business is it of federal law enforcement officers to enforce a justice's personal PR policy? This has nothing to do with the justice's physical safety.
What business does any governmental agent (Scalia or marshals or whomever) have in telling the press what it may do with a recording it makes of a public official's public appearance? (Scalia's position is that print reporters may record him to ensure the accuracy of their report, but broadcasters may not play a tape on air.)
What is it with these justices, to think that they can speak in public and then tightly control afterward who hears their words or has access to a recording or transcript? (This is related to the same goofy policy we ran into after the chief justice's appearance at the Newhouse School.)
Scalia showed some class by apologizing to the reporters and promising to clarify his policies with the Marshals Service. The real clarity will come when justices realize that public accountability and transparency require that all public appearances by the justices, whether in court or out, are fair game for video and audio recording, with prompt public release of prepared remarks.
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Posted at 06:16 AM
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| PR vs. journalism: the Journal opts for the former |
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| ABA Journal |
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| Fri, December 14, 2007 |
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What a shame. Mindless criticism of the ABA Journal's decision to name Alberto Gonzales as lawyer of the year has caused the Journal to cave. Today the Journal's editors posted this at the start of the story:
Editor’s Note:
When this article was posted online on December 12, 2007, it was titled “Lawyers of the Year 2007 and 2008.” The article defined that term as the year’s biggest legal newsmaker, identifying former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as the major newsmaker of 2007. The Journal regrets that we did not make this theme clear.
We appreciate the feedback we’ve received, and we’re acting on it. So that there can be no confusion, the term “Lawyers of the Year” has been changed in the headline and story to “Newsmakers of the Year.” The story is otherwise unchanged from its original version.
This article, like all in the Journal, is the work of the magazine’s editorial staff. As is the magazine’s practice, it was not reviewed by the Journal’s volunteer Board of Editors, the ABA’s Board of Governors, or its officers, prior to publication. The Journal will continue to strive to provide high quality news to its readership.
By mindless critics, I'm not just referring to Andrew Cohen. In fact, because he's anything but mindless, his comments surprised me more. Others (read: knee-jerk lefties) simply ranted about the Journal's praise of Gonzales, without stopping for a moment to read the piece and discover that it wasn't praising Gonzo at all. If the Journal weren't a house organ worried about the pressure on the ABA's august (read: stifling) leadership, would it have capitulated needlessly like this? I doubt it. That's the beauty of an independent magazine -- and the tragedy of one that is not. Just as the Journal tries to get a little zesty, it gets pulled back into the mire of Trying to Please Everyone and Not Make Waves.
Update: Evidently the whole world has gone mad. How on earth could so many people turn the magazine's designation of Gonzo on its head and deem it an "honor"? Former National Law Journal writer Karen Donovan documents the loonies' comments for Portfolio. Now I feel bad for attacking the Journal from the opposite direction. Actually, I don't feel bad, but I probably should.
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Posted at 04:56 PM
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| Asking questions about child-porn crackdown |
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| The Washington Post |
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| Sat, December 15, 2007 |
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The Post's Jerry Markon does a good job considering the relative brevity of this front-pager of asking questions rarely confronted in stories about child-porn busts: How many years are too many for looking at pictures? What proof exists that harsh penalties for viewing the images discourages production of the images (in other words, prevents child rapes)? Is the Internet spreading the disease or merely revealing its true extent? The story doesn't even try to provide answers, but then how could it? Just asking the questions is enough, and a refreshing change from the usual sort of coverage -- matter-of-fact accounts of this man going to prison for 20 years, or or that one for 10, without pondering for a moment whether what we're doing makes sense. Should child porn be the FBI's third-highest priority, behind counterterrorism and counterintelligence? Are state and local officials grandstanding on the issue, exaggerating the problem and ruining lives for political gain? Are our children at greater risk than any of us might have imagined? These are the issues underlying the daily headlines touting the latest get-tough sentences. At least someone, in a prominent place, is asking what it all means.
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Posted at 06:23 AM
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| Joe Francis: martyr or spinmeister? |
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| The New York Times |
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| Sun, December 16, 2007 |
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The Times' silly Sunday Styles section is the last place I'd expect to read a decent legal story. And the convoluted Joe "Girls Gone Wild" Francis saga is an unlikely candidate for a coherent narrative. But Mireya Navarro succeeds at producing an informative, clear overview of Francis' many legal challenges in this news feature that fronts today's Styles section. Navarro also succeeds at not buying Francis' heavily financed spin -- the subject of many TV and print reports of late -- by remaining neutral and skeptical throughout. The story leaves me wanting to know more about a number of angles, touching on a number of intriguing questions. This story is a taste, not the full meal, but it does a good job of catching us up on why Francis has been so controversial lately.
Update: Thanks to Gawker, we can see the sort of bottom-feeding that attends a story like Joe Francis'. Can't these dopes see that this "placement" made their client look like a sleazeball? The now-transparent media manipulation game they're playing makes Navarro's story all the more admirable for its neutrality.
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Posted at 01:23 PM
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| A dog of an investigative pursuit |
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| Newsweek |
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| Wed, December 19, 2007 |
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If this is the best front-of-the-book piece in recent magazines, as Slate's Chris Wilson claims, then I'm glad that I've been too bogged down with grading and snow-shoveling to be at the top of my blogging game the past several days. It takes all the firepower of a Newsweek heavy hitter, Michael Isikoff, plus his colleague Holly Bailey to root around in a decade-old case involving Mike Huckabee's then-teenaged son and a dead dog. Nothing against the dog, or animal cruelty advocates, but come on. We can do better than this.
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Posted at 08:26 AM
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| Snitches and sentencing hearings |
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| The Recorder |
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| Wed, December 19, 2007 |
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The Recorder's Dan Levine spots a 9th Circuit decision that makes it harder for trial judges to close courtrooms during criminal sentencing hearings. Here's the decision. The concurring opinion by Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, complaining about the breadth of the court's holding, is the most helpful in understanding what this ruling might mean to the right of press and public access to such hearings. The big issue at stake is what protection a trial judge can offer a cooperating witness -- aka a "snitch" -- and how formal the snitch's lawyers must be in requesting a closed hearing where the witness' cooperation is discussed. Evidently judges, at least in that circuit, have routinely closed such sentencings based only on an informal, oral motion. The appeals court held that such motions now must be written, which of course establishes a paper trail that identifies who's been flipped by the government. It's easy to rail against secret justice, but I hope all legal reporters pause and contemplate whether the public interest is served in a given case when we put the spotlight on someone whose safety may be at risk from co-defendants or fellow inmates.
Update: The Reporters Committee's Gregg Leslie makes an impassioned case for openness, arguing that the only issue in this case is that defense lawyers have grown accustomed to illegal court closings.
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Posted at 09:17 AM
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| How I struck out in search for labor law primer |
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| Fri, December 21, 2007 |
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One of the most successful strategies for an editor is to play dumb (and for some of us, it isn't hard to feign). This strategy lets us step into the role of the outsider, the reader who's not hip to How This Thing Works -- whatever thing we're writing about -- and make sure we explain everything clearly, in full context. So let me play dumb with the recent news coverage of the Hollywood writers strike, because all of the coverage I'm seeing assumes that everyone knows how entertainment contracts and labor law work.
With whom does the Writers Guild of America negotiate? The major studios acting together? Individually? Are there separate agreements with every little production shop? Who, in short, is (or was, until talks broke off) sitting at the negotiating table?
Now that the late-night shows' hosts and staffs are crossing the picket line, what rules, contracts, or laws govern how a Jay Leno or David Letterman comes up with the words to say on the air? What defines writing? Does it matter if the host is a WGA member? What leverage other than shame does the WGA have to punish the productions that resume?
We generally know what the WGA is seeking in new digital rights or DVD residuals. But how exactly are writers paid now? And are they employees or contractors? Does the work for hire doctrine every come into play? Why not?
Even those of us kinda sorta aware of how labor contracts work -- and even if we're lucky enough to have a vague grasp of the weirdness of byzantine employment-law customs -- the daily coverage of the strike comes up short, at least in the places where I've been looking. In The New York Times, Edward Wyatt yesterday hinted at one intriguing contract dispute in the making -- a star is obligated to promote a film, but doesn't want to cross the picket line to appear on the returning shows -- and yet he didn't ever get around to explaining how these things work. His colleague Brian Stelter today is even less detail-oriented in recounting the decisions by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to return to the air without writers. The AP, LA Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post all might be easily mistaken for each other, today and in recent weeks (although the LAT's Matea Gold, Maria Elena Fernandez and Richard Verrier on the 18th did a good job of sussing out some of the questions surrounding the return of late-night talk shows. The last major story in the Journal was back on Dec. 10, when this front-pager by Merissa Marr, Peter Sanders and Sam Schechner clearly explained the changes in the entertainment business that might come about from a long strike. But the story had little in it to explain the rules that govern how production companies and their writers interact.
The trade publications aren't doing any better. Variety's Cynthia Littleton and Michael Schneider dabble in the terms of the labor contracts, but never spell out exactly what the issues might be (consistent with what I saw of Variety's recent strike coverage, which is thorough but predictably insider-y). Same goes for Broadcasting & Cable, where Ben Grossman barely skims the surface of today's news, and where extensive strike coverage appears to adopt the same tack as others: assume we all know how the business works, and how the law affects those business decisions.
I'm sure various business and trade publications, not to mention well-informed blogs, are all over this, but I spent some time today looking and didn't really come up with much. So I guess I'll just have to keep "playing" dumb.
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Posted at 11:53 AM
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| Judicial hellholes ranking? Never mind! |
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| The New York Times |
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| Mon, December 24, 2007 |
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I've long been suspicious of the American Tort Reform Association's "Judicial Hellholes" report (pdf) -- its presentation, and now-routinue coverage of it by the press, suggests a PR game more than anything -- but I never took the time to get under the hood and poke around. Turns out I didn't really have to. Adam Liptak's take on it is based merely on a close reading of it, with smart questions about how the report distinguishes higher-ranked from lower-ranked "hellholes" and what its study's methodology actually is. The answers that Liptak gets to those questions: Nothing! And there is none! Which leads to the most revealing tidbit in the story:
“We have never claimed to be an empirical study,” said Darren McKinney, a spokesman for the association. “It’s not a batting average or a slugging percentage. It’s no more or less subjective than what appears in The New York Times.”
Oooh, cute quip! And guess what, Darren? The New York Times just showed a good deal more intellectual integrity in this story than your group evidently cares to in its report. "Never claimed to be an empirical study" is the equivalent of the old media standby, the "unscientific survey." Translated: "We made this up. The rankings, comparisons, numerical trappings -- all meaningless." Good to know!
Liptak preserves his journalistic cred (even though this appears in his opinionated Sidebar column) by conceding that there are, of course, real judicial hellholes: places where justice has been perverted by money, trickery and bias. Plaintiffs' lawyers and corporate lawyers alike have them and hold them dear (even if the honest ones must hold their noses while exploiting the hellhole-court advantage). But if shredding ATRA's celebrated report is this easy, then the gauntlet is thrown: What journalistic or academic studies methodically take down the worst hellholes, and why aren't we giving more attention to those real studies?
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Posted at 07:56 AM
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| Milking the Peterson case once again |
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| The Modesto Bee |
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| Mon, December 24, 2007 |
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To mark the fifth anniversary of Laci Peterson's disappearance -- which set off a media frenzy that continued through her husband Scott's prosecution, trial, and death sentence -- the Modesto Bee is publishing a retrospective and update. Yesterday and today it included first-person accounts of covering the case by Garth Stapley, one of Bee's lead reporters on the case (along with John Coté). Among Stapley's revelations:
- He's never told anyone, including his own wife, whether he believes Peterson guilty. (It's an admirable stance to take, in an age when any fool qualifies as an instant expert to blab away on cable news. But let's hope he'd be reporting up a storm if he believed an innocent man faces a death sentence!)
- He and Cote fielded hundreds of requests to appear on TV during the case, all of which they turned down -- thanks to a Bee policy, since relaxed -- except for one on French TV. Stapley reports he "stunk" as a TV talking head.
- Stapley staked out jurors in a parking garage so that their license plate numbers would yield their identities and addresses, a helpful advantage after the verdict in getting juror interviews.
- He fooled courtroom security with an artist's press pass, because of the advantages to his stories that a physical presence in the courtroom made over hearing the testimony over an audio feed to an overflow room.
- Stapley took notes in French to foil snooping competitors trying to read his notes on his laptop.
Beyond (or maybe including) tidbits like these, though, the two columns are more self-aggrandizing than educational. If I were an ordinary reader, I'd have the same low opinion of opportunistic, exploitative reporters after reading these. Why not take the opportunity to explore the differences between responsible, reporting-based journalism and hyped commentary based on guesses, rumors, and second-hand reports? Or explain the natural tension that exists when reporting for a reputable newspaper on a tabloid trial?
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Posted at 01:45 PM
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| The Ruth and Nino party is on |
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| USA Today |
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| Wed, December 26, 2007 |
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Profiles of both Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsburg inevitably mention the odd-couple friendship the two have long shared -- including their traditional New Year's Eve celebration, when the Ginsburgs have the Scalias over for a toast and dinner. Joan Biskupic puts her reporting on a Scalia biography to good use by exploring the relationship in greater than usual detail. No great revelations beyond confirmation that this year's fete is on. But it's a useful contribution to the library of personal insights into the two, and provides further confirmation that Biskupic is not readying a hatchet job on Scalia. (Via How Appealing)
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Posted at 07:32 AM
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| Giuliani's got the OxyContin blues |
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| The New York Times |
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| Fri, December 28, 2007 |
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Who better than a skilled legal writer, and author of a book on the controversial drug OxyContin, to explore presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's work for the drug's maker, Purdue Pharma? The Times' Barry Meier, sharing a byline with product safety and homeland security reporter Eric Lipton, delivers a devastating portrait of Giuliani as hired gun in this contribution to the Times' series The Long Run, profiling presidential candidates.
On first reading, I was ready to knock the story for being held hostage by a key source, John Brownlee, the Virginia federal prosecutor who took on Purdue for its marketing and handling of the drug that made its way to the streets as "hillbilly heroin." And I was ready to jump to the conclusion that this was a rehash of an oft-told tale. But a more careful reading shows the story -- while still highly complimentary of Brownlee -- to be much deeper and more nuanced than a mere one-sourcer. Meier, author of the book Pain Killer on the OxyContin saga, and Lipton show in great detail, from a number of angles, what work Giuliani Partners did for Purdue in the many phases of the OxyContin case. Purdue, they write, needed "a highly credible and well-connected political figure to serve as its point man," and found that in Giuliani, whom they portray as an opportunist trading on his fame to rake in big fees without regard to his client's morality -- and walking away when his client needed him most.
Just one nitpicky point I'd make about the crucial nut graf, where it bills the story this way: Giuliani's . . .
work for Purdue, the company’s first and longest-running client, provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune.
A story that "provides a window" (a nut-graf cliche) is one that serves as an example of a broader theme. Here, the story is only about the work for Purdue, and thus it is a story of how (not a window into how) Giuliani used his standing, etc. Putting the "window" dressing in the nut inflates it beyond the story's scope.
But we musn't obsess. The story stands up as a clean kill, and one of the most legal-intensive backstories of the presidential campaign to date.
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Posted at 08:28 AM
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| Med-mal verdict on thin ice |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| Sat, December 29, 2007 |
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The LA Times' Daniel Costello tackles a complex topic in a sophisticated way in this business-section story about the effects of California's 32-year-old cap on pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice cases. Costello's story is packed with numbers and cited studies, and it gives voice to the arguments on both sides over whether the $250,000 cap -- which wasn't indexed for inflation -- is unfair to plaintiffs. The story would be a fine contribution to a policy debate if it didn't then jump the tracks and state a point of view for which it lacks convincing proof. From the headline ("Lacking Lawyers, Justice Is Denied: Attorneys often avoid medical malpractice suits because California limits 'pain and suffering' awards to $250,000") to the nut graf, the story makes clear what it thinks of one side's arguments versus the other's. Here's the nut:
[A] Times analysis of state court records, physician payment data and insurer financial records suggests that the cap is increasingly preventing families such as the Stewarts from getting their day in court.
The analysis suggests this to Costello and his editors, but not necessarily to everyone. The story clearly takes sides against the tort reformers and insurance companies by saying, in essence: There are signs that malpractice filings and awards are disproportionately down. We have anecdotal evidence that deserving victims can't find lawyers. So we're connecting the dots, and deciding that the clues add up to proof that the cap is unfair. I wouldn't have pretended to know the answer. The question is interesting, and it's all we really know. (Via How Appealing.)
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Posted at 06:56 AM
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| Smoke 'em if you got 'em |
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| Miller-McCune |
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| Mon, December 31, 2007 |
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Here's a sure sign that the latest entrant in the nonprofit/public-interest/investigative journalism world -- the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy -- is going to be a feisty, creative force for good: this piece by Matt Smith, and a companion piece summoning citizen journalists to root around for scoops in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at the University of California at San Francisco. Smith's article explores ties to tobacco by Mexico's Carlos Slim, the world's richest man. Here's Smith's description of the documents archive:
The constantly expanding archive holds 40 million pages of secret corporate memos, privileged legal communications and other documents obtained through discovery processes from a decade of successful lawsuits alleging that the industry had lied about tobacco's health effects. The documents demonstrate how the industry pioneered modern techniques for manipulating politics, scientific research and public opinion. As a result, the library is something of a Rosetta Stone that reaches beyond the tobacco industry to assist anyone seeking to decipher how business, politics and media function.
So Miller-McCune, which just launched its site and soon will follow it with a magazine, is holding a contest that encourages readers to find more stories in the archives. I've not been a big fan of so-called citizen journalism, but this is a well-focused way to channel those energies toward some real revelations. Disclosure: this Miller-McCune journalistic experiment is headed by an old friend and colleague, John Mecklin, who's asked me to write for him -- as a citizen or journalist or both, we didn't decide! As Big Media close out another dismal year, I'm encouraged that public interest journalism has a future so long as outfits like this and Pro Publica are popping up.
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Posted at 05:37 PM
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