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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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| WaPo oversells (or under-proves) corporate crime story |
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| Washington Post |
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| Fri, January 02, 2009 |
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The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson reports today on an end-of-year rush on settlements between the Justice Department and corporations charged with wrongdoing. It's a timely scoop, with ample examples to justify its claim that this is happening. A shakier aspect of the story is why the settlements are occurring. Johnson asserts in her lede that "lawyers and interest groups" see politics -- a clearance sale before a new, tougher-on-corporate-crime administration takes office. But only one named source, a former IRS lawyer, is quoted to support that claim. Johnson cites "three lawyers who routinely represent companies before the Justice Department" and a named white-collar-crime academic blogger has having noticed the increased activity, but none of them -- named or not -- is quoted as attributing it to the transition. Johnson's anonymous chorus of "corporate lawyers and public interest groups" returns in the story to suggest other reasons for the spike in activity -- mainly a PR scheme to fly under the public radar during the holidays -- while the DOJ gets a chance to deny anything nefarious is going on. Another element of the lede that goes unproven: that there are more cases in the pipeline to be settled before Jan. 20.
Johnson is a well-sourced pro on the beat. I have little doubt that she did a ton of reporting to arrive at these conclusions. The trouble is that her story lacks transparency, and thus loses credibility if a careful reader gets hooked by the lede but finds little to justify it in the story.
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Posted at 08:34 AM
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| Shane makes another run at Ivins case |
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| The New York Times |
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| Sun, January 04, 2009 |
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It did not take long for The New York Times' Scott Shane to turn a skeptical eye on last summer's early onslaught of coverage of anthrax-attack suspect Bruce Ivins. To his credit, and his paper's credit, he explored those early warning signs in depth, yielding this front-pager five months later that stakes out a bold premise in the nut graf:
With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins’s colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages, interviewing former bureau investigators and anthrax experts, reviewing court records, and obtaining, for the first time, police reports on his suicide in July, including a lengthy recorded interview with his wife.
That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.
Put aside the ambiguous boast of the "deepest look" line -- deeper than competitors'? than the FBI's? than the Times' own previous efforts? -- does the rest of this long story deliver? Yes, but not quite in the way that I expected. The story has no shockingly new revelations. It's an engaging narrative, focused on details about Ivins and the investigation that have been reported before, but not (to my knowledge) in such intimate, lush detail. It is, in short, a great read, leaving me where it intended -- wondering if Ivins was yet another wrongly accused scientist, "hounded to death" by the FBI, as Shane himself wonders but does not definitively conclude. That puts Shane and this report no closer to an answer, after five months of digging. But that's the point: that nothing evidently exists to firm up the government's suspicions. That makes this story both important and fair.
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Posted at 08:19 AM
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| "Creature Comforts" puts human (and animal) faces on policy debate |
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| The New York Times Magazine |
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| Tue, January 06, 2009 |
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Joe Nocera's cover story in the Times Magazine, on "what led to the financial meltdown," was so compelling that I almost overlooked this remarkably good legal story by Rebecca Skloot. Her deeply reported and engaging story examines a topic prone to snap judgments. Skloot writes that people with a variety of disabilities who use service animals far beyond the familiar Seeing Eye dog -- monkeys, miniature horses, birds, and many more -- have clashed often with
businesses obligated by law to accommodate them and of everyday civilians who — because of health and safety concerns or just general discomfort — don’t want monkeys or ducks walking the aisles of their grocery stores.
For many, this is a surprising and unfamiliar topic. So we're likely charmed by the smart animals -- there are several remarkable scenes in the piece showing animals seemingly helping their humans -- and then dismissive of claims that the disabled deserve to use whatever help they need, however intrusive (horses on airplanes?). Skloot expertly and compassionately injects facts to debunk or add nuance to our prejudices and hunches. And she explains clearly to a lay audience what the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws require, and where they are vague. The story ends on a note that in some stories can feel like an under-reported cop-out, but in this case seems like the unavoidable truth: There are no easy answers. At least now we appreciate the questions.
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Posted at 06:35 AM
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| Twittering trials: More access than we need? |
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| Tue, January 06, 2009 |
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Bob Ambrogi (crediting Social Media Law Student) posted a newsy, link-filled report on a Wichita Eagle courts reporter, Ron Sylvester, who's admirably pushing the envelope of public access to the courts. With links to stories from the Boulder Daily Camera and Colorado Independent, Ambrogi tipped me off that Sylvester had won the right to "tweet" from a locally newsworthy trial scheduled to start Monday. Translation for the tragically unhip: one tweets on Twitter, with brief bursts of words that can tell a micro-audience of friends what you're doing at the moment, or (in Sylvester's case) can theoretically tell Wichita readers what just happened in court. This isn't Sylvester's first foray into trial-tweeting, according to other useful links in Ambrogi's post.
Sylvester's blog, What the Judge Ate for Breakfast, is pretty standard stuff. I get it, and applaud him for making the extra effort to inform his audience. But the tweets? Meh. Herewith a representative sample (I swear) from a hearing he covered today involving something important having to do with Kansas abortion doctors -- though I couldn't quite tell what from the tweetflow:
Monnat is using transcripts from the federal trial to question Kline. about 8 hours ago from txt
Monnat is asking Kline why he only sought abortion patient records, looking for child abuse and not records of reported STDs in the state. about 8 hours ago from txt
The law said those records were attainable via court order. about 8 hours ago from txt
Kline said he thought those records were unattainable by subpoena. Monnat asked him to read the law. about 8 hours ago from txt
Monatt: Did you ever seek AIDS or HIV records of teens? Kline: "No, we did not." about 8 hours ago from txt
Kline: We sought records of information we had on doctors who weren't reporting. about 8 hours ago from txt
Except it's harder to read than that, because it's in reverse chronological order. Is it just because I'm old, or is that crap? I vote for crap. You'd have to read a real story to get up to speed on who's who and what's what, so that you maybe get and care about what he's saying. Sylvester has passion and backbone to do what he's doing. Good on him. Possibly this makes sense to those who drink their data in a spray rather than a linear stream. Me? I'm hoping the Wichita Eagle sticks around to publish stories with ledes and context.
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Posted at 07:55 PM
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| We're Number 14! |
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| ABA Journal |
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| Wed, January 07, 2009 |
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The ABA Journal's "Blawg 100" readers' choice votes are in, and LawBeat placed second to last in the News category. Which isn't bad, considering this site isn't a source of legal news, nor does it fit the Journal's chief criteria: by lawyers (nope), for lawyers (nope again). I'm honored to be on the list again -- the more readers the merrier -- and a bit surprised that 38 (well, 37 excluding moi) voted it the best news site, or something.
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Posted at 08:09 PM
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| Prognostications on Wall Street prosecutions |
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| Fortune |
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| Thu, January 08, 2009 |
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Roger Parloff's cover story in the Jan. 19 issue of Fortune is the perfect antidote to the conventional wisdom that "someone" should go to jail for the financial messes we're in. Perhaps many someones should, and will. But, as Parloff documents in his meticulous but readable way, the complicated realities make payback a fairly elusive prospect. After an engaging explanation of the central legal hooks that prosecutors might sink into wrongdoers, Parloff briefly surveys each of the central corporate players. He ends on an intriguing note that could serve as a jumping-off point to another interesting story: about the syndrome that places the greatest pressure on the first suspects (or victims) to surface, improving the odds for those who follow in their trail. As Parloff puts it, "Criminality is about deviance, so the more widespread undesirable conduct turns out to have been, the more difficult it becomes to treat it as criminal." Despite the story's length and complex subject matter, it's written for the smart layman -- and should be recommended reading for any such layman who soon starts ranting about why the architects of the meltdown aren't already in chains.
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Posted at 08:35 AM
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| Liptak has to wonder: WWLD? |
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| The New York Times |
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| Sat, January 10, 2009 |
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Tell me Adam Liptak didn't feel Linda Greenhouse staring down at his fingers as he typed this one. The day after Greenhouse published an op-ed calling a pending Voting Rights Act appeal a big honkin' deal (the case, she wrote, "promises to tell us more than almost any other about John G. Roberts Jr. and his evolution from spear carrier in the Reagan revolution to chief justice of the United States — and in the process set the direction of the debate over race and politics for years to come"), Liptak had to sit down at his computer and report that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case. Liptak, in reporter mode, was less sweeping in his rhetoric, drily remarking that the case "will help define the Roberts court."
I'm not suggesting anything untoward here. Times readers benefit from having the recently departed Greenhouse's insights alongside the reporter/analyst who replaced her. And I'll leave the substantive critique of either or both pieces to experts and partisans. I'm merely making an office-politics observation. I imagine, having replaced a number of legends (in their own minds) on various newsroom beats, that poor Liptak -- after replacing an actual legend -- must have felt a pang of insecurity as he typed the first words.
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Posted at 07:44 AM
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| An overinflated cover story |
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| Newsweek |
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| Mon, January 12, 2009 |
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Newsweek got my attention with a law-of-war cover story by two heavyweights -- Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas -- not to mention an unusual (for Newsweek) editorial illustration on the cover, by the talented Victor Juhasz. But the story is kind of a nothing-burger. First, Taylor and Thomas set up a straw-man premise: that President-elect Obama's promise to reverse the Dick Cheney executive-power campaign "may not be so simple." Well, duh. Who said it would be simple? Then, this is what passes for original reporting in the piece:
It is unlikely he will wildly overcorrect for the Bush administration's abuses. A very senior incoming official, who refused to be quoted discussing internal policy debates, indicated that the new administration will try to find a middle road that will protect civil liberties without leaving the nation defenseless.
Hard to argue with that. Also hard to get excited about it. What else could we expect them to say? It's the sort of inarguable but meaningless summary that a management consultant might trot out in public, so as to avoid accountability for specifics.
The reporter duo does provide a smart, brief flyover of the key issues confronting the new administration -- detainees, torture, and surveillance among them -- and they write with the authority (if not an excess of opinion) on these topics. But the way the magazine played the story smacks of a hijacking: An over-enthusiastic editor saw a coverline and an illustration before he actually saw the story. Let the air out of it, and it's a reasonably interesting but short op-ed.
Update: Compare the Newsweek story to this one, appearing a few days later in the Times, by William Glaberson and Helene Cooper. Night and day. The Times reporters cite numerous policy choices that their sources deem likely or decided already.
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Posted at 09:07 AM
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| Bush-Cheney legal legacy, in broad strokes |
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| Christian Science Monitor |
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| Wed, January 14, 2009 |
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Warren Richey provides the second of three parts of a Christian Science Monitor series on "The Bush Legacy," this time focusing on the president's war-on-terror legal policies, particularly his -- or, rather, Vice President Cheney's -- efforts to enhance presidential power (the series' first part, yesterday, was a more general look at history's likely judgment, while tomorrow's looks at foreign policy).
Richey plays it straight down the middle, using scholars from various camps to bat the arguments back and forth. He puts the past eight years in some historical context. And he gives the issues an interesting forward spin, pondering through his sources what kind of lasting precedents the Bush administration might have set. Experts will find the story oversimplified and basic, but for the general public it's an excellent big-picture, broad-brush summary providing perspective on the many flareups in courts and Congress over the president's legal powers. (Via How Appealing)
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Posted at 10:09 AM
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| Closing Gitmo ain't easy? Who knew! |
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| Thu, January 15, 2009 |
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Now NPR has made a substantial contribution to a rapidly growing body of work that we might call "The Gitmo Puzzle: Harder Than We Thought!" It joins Newsweek, the Times, and practically everyone else, it seems, in reporting on the messy details of what it means to shut down the Guantanamo detention operation. This is all good, of course. It's what reporters ought to do when the news is timely -- a new administration waits in the wings, after promising to pursue a new policy and lately cautioning that it won't happen overnight.
But where were these reporters when Gitmo's future was hotly debated in the 2007-08 presidential campaign? Sure, some analysts such as Ben Wittes were digging into the complexities at the time. But my impression -- admittedly that's all this is -- is that mainstream reporters covering politics and law did not examine these questions in enough detail, or with enough prominence, when the debate was a factor in choosing a president. Some will ascribe that omission to a pro-Obama slant. I see a more depressing explanation: laziness or lack of time to drop out of the breathless pursuit of daily sound bites.
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Posted at 11:36 AM
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| Boston federal court hearing to be webcast |
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| Thu, January 15, 2009 |
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Last summer, I blogged about a camera-friendly Boston federal judge, Nancy Gertner, who was considering a courtroom-camera experiment in her trial court -- dodging the federal camera ban, based on creative arguments made by Courtroom View Network and its Washington lawyer, cameras-in-the-courts veteran Jonathan Sherman. Gertner ultimately rejected the motion on procedural grounds. But it was clear that Gertner was open to the idea. And now it's even clearer.
As reported today by the Boston Globe's Jonathan Saltzman, Gertner agreed to allow a webcast of a key hearing set for Jan. 22 in a prominent fight over music downloads. The record industry has abandoned its litigious pursuit of students who illegally download music, but in Gertner's court a student is fighting one of the legacy cases -- with help from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which requested video recording of the hearing and will display the video on its site. That's a departure from Courtroom View Network's model of charging subscribers for video coverage of the courts -- and it presumably helped win the order, which is the first of its kind outside of New York's Southern and Eastern districts, where Sherman's efforts to pry open the courts were noted last October by AmLaw Daily (fifth item). Gertner noted that the subject matter of the hearing in her court appeals to "the so-called Internet Generation," just as the video will. (Of course, it's a rare college student who will appreciate gavel-to-gavel coverage of legal arguments in a copyright dispute. But we can all dream.) She also deflates the common objections to cameras and shows a public-interest spirit that's inspiring. Here's her order.
As I've said before, it's disheartening that the winning arguments in cases such as these hinge on content-based compromises that are none of a court's business: how the video will or won't be edited, and whether it's a commercial product, for example. But, until the Judicial Conference reverses its 19th century thinking on cameras, guerrilla efforts by Sherman et al. will have to suffice.
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Posted at 01:24 PM
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| Retailers panic while consumer reporters snooze |
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| Sun, January 18, 2009 |
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Major newspapers have largely dropped the ball -- at least twice -- on an important piece of consumer and health news. Barely three weeks before a new law takes effect imposing strict safety and testing standards on products for children, handicraft makers and second-hand retailers are panicking over the law's broad -- and possibly unintended -- swipes at their businesses. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, passed by Congress last summer after health scares centered on Chinese imports, will set new limits on lead and other harmful substances and require expensive tests on all retail products aimed at children. With groups like the National Association of Retail & Thrift Shops sounding the alarm, the Consumer Product Safety Commission earlier this month scrambled to soften and clarify its enforcement rules. But confusion reigns, in part because the new proposed rules were reported by some as an exemption for thrift shops when in fact they are still liable for selling tainted products (but they'd be exempt from the expensive tests that would show if their products are legal).
So where are reporters in all of this? Mainly missing in action, from what I can tell. Coverage of last summer's debate seems to have failed to inform retailers of the potential fallout (I base that on an admittedly quickie news search, but think back: This wasn't exactly front-page news last summer). And, as the deadline approaches, the only major-paper report I've been able to find is this one two days ago by the LA Times' Alana Semuels, who also covered the rules-change debate a week ago. Local stories are starting to pop up -- here's one today in the Arizona Republic and even one in my little local daily (which is what tipped me off to this under-the-radar firestorm). The most complete summary I've found is this one by Overlawyered's Walter Olson two days ago on Forbes.com, where he wrote of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act:
CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children's items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers. . . .
In recent weeks, as thousands of crafters and retailers began to compare notes and realize that they would soon be left with stocks of unsalable merchandise, forced out of business or both, the protests have begun to mount: alarm-raising at hundreds of blogs and forums, a torrent of Twitter discussion, YouTube videos, endangered-products lists, Facebook groups and so forth. . . .
This was not some enactment slipped through in the dead of night: It was one of the most highly publicized pieces of legislation to pass Congress last year.
And yet now it appears precious few lawmakers took the time to check what was in the bill, while precious few in the press (which ran countless let's-pass-a-law articles) cared to raise even the most basic questions about what the law was going to require.
Yes, something's being exposed as systematically defective here. But it's not the contents of our kids' toy chests. It's the way we make public policy.
That's a debate worth having -- about policymaking, and the news coverage of it -- but I wish that we readers could count on more neutral, reported journalism rather than advocacy pieces to inform us of what really happened and where the fight is headed next.
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Posted at 07:59 AM
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| Glaberson pens another Gitmo pattern piece |
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| The New York Times |
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| Mon, January 19, 2009 |
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William Glaberson continues his impressive beat coverage of Guantanamo detainees, this time in a front-pager that's a synthesis of the many snapshots that he and other members of the press have taken in recent weeks. The bigger picture that emerges from Glaberson's notebooks shows how extensively the remaining ranks of detainees are riddled with cases that don't hold up to scrutiny, now that courts and military commissions are reviewing the cases. Glaberson points out that this is so even though previous releases of hundreds of detainees had supposedly whittled the imprisoned contingent down to "the worst of the worst."
It's yet another example of the Times' admirable commitment to a systematic monitoring of U.S. detention policies, based on reported facts. That commitment is epitomized by this database tracking all known detainees past and present, which I commented on here. The Times hasn't been alone in its efforts to document the detainees' cases. McClatchy Newspapers, for example, worked hard at reporting comprehensively on the detainees who were released (though I was critical of its particulars here). But no news organization comes close to matching the Times for its consistent and thorough approach to the topic -- a commitment made despite layers of official secrecy, and serving as the antidote to all the punditry and posturing that substitutes for analysis elsewhere.
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Posted at 06:48 AM
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| Localize this: crack sentence reduction stats |
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| The Birmingham (Ala.) News |
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| Mon, January 19, 2009 |
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Why isn't every local federal courts reporter doing what The Birmingham News' Robert Gordon did in this Sunday story? Using stats provided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Gordon compared Alabama to the other states in the 11th Circuit to show how common it is for its inmates to see their sentences reduced when they challenge their crack-cocaine prison terms. This useful stats-driven hook then opens the door to an update on where things stand in the crack-vs-powder debate amid a flood of similar resentencings. (Via Sentencing Law and Policy blog)
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Posted at 07:46 AM
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| Did Plain Dealer betray its reporter? |
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| Columbia Journalism Review |
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| Mon, January 19, 2009 |
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An unhappy ending to a series I praised last fall: As reported by Columbia Journalism Review in its January/February issue (no link yet available), the Cleveland Plain Dealer earned a CJR dart for "failure to aggressively back its reporter," Bob Paynter. After Paynter's powerful series on racial disparities in drug sentencings, Prosecutor Bill Mason fought back hard enough to prompt the skittish paper to run stories and an op-ed attacking Paynter's work -- without giving Paynter an opportunity to reply. The Pulitzer-winning writer took a buyout. I don't know anything about this other than what CJR reports. But, having been wowed by the meticulously documented project, I am inclined to believe CJR -- and condemn the Plain Dealer. The paper, of course, has every right to reply to that -- and to CJR. (Thanks to Criminal Justice Journalists for prompting me to crack open my copy of CJR.)
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Posted at 04:41 PM
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| A civil rights history reading list for 1/20/09 |
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| Tue, January 20, 2009 |
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To mark today's historic inauguration, LawBeat recommends the books that taught him the civil rights history of America -- and the central importance of both the rule of law and public knowledge of its government's behavior. Today, we give thanks to the journalists and historians whose inquiries and writings make today's milestone that much more powerful:
Taylor Branch's three-part history of "America In the King Years": Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, At Canaan's Edge
Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
Maryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South
Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass
Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes: The dramatic story of the Southern judges of the Fifth Circuit who translated the Supreme Court's Brown decision into a revolution for equality
An admittedly incomplete list, and it omits many wonderful Civil War historical narratives. But not a bad starting point if you haven't taken a hard look at this history. Now, at least, these may be read without such hopelessness.
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Posted at 07:54 AM
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| Prescription for medical-legal story: more sources |
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| The New York Times |
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| Wed, January 21, 2009 |
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Dirk Johnson has this interesting and informative story today in the Times about a criminal case in Wisconsin that examines where the line is between religious freedom and criminal mistreatment of ill children. He clearly explains the issues and provides useful context about controversies over parents' religiously motivated refusals to get the necessary care for their children. But the story's sourcing is too thin to stamp itself as authoritative. Besides the ruling of the judge in the case, who cleared the case for trial by interpreting the balancing test required by state law, Johnson quotes only two other sources: one seemingly neutral local expert, and one advocate whose strong beliefs come with some personal baggage. That advocate provides a crucial statistic in the story -- the number of deaths attributed to religiously motivated denial of care -- and that makes me nervous, in part because the advocate came to this cause after her son died. That doesn't rob her of credibility, but it would make me want to hunt for confirmation and additional points of view in the story.
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Posted at 09:21 AM
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| Detroit dustup: where's the folo? |
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| Thu, January 22, 2009 |
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It's been nearly a week since Detroit's top municipal lawyer was forced out of her job in a dispute with a judge. The city's corporation counsel, Kathleen Leavey, denies she was making a racist comment when she called one of the city's courts a "ghetto court." Leavey says she was accusing the court, which serves a mostly African-American population, of being poorly managed and providing substandard service -- of treating the public like ghetto residents. The court's chief judge reacted strongly, decrying the comment as racist and passionately defending her court's record. Both Detroit dailies covered the controversy last Friday and Saturday with he-said/she-said details of the immediate storm. But neither paper has followed up with a reported assessment of who's right -- whether the court is, in fact, well run. The closest either paper has come is this first-day story by the Detroit News' Christine MacDonald and Doug Guthrie, which explained in a couple of grafs why "the court is not without its warts." The examined warts did not include Leavey's allegations of long lines and dysfunction, nor has the paper or its competitor, the Free Press, provided context for its readers on a $400,000 judgment against the court that was the cause of Leavey's clash with the court in the first place. Perhaps this has all been reported in great detail in the past (though I found nothing in my searches of the papers' sites), but a reader who just started paying attention because of the racially charged controversy would be left completely clueless about what is really going on.
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Posted at 01:37 PM
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| Updates on live-blogging of trials |
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| Fri, January 23, 2009 |
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I wanted to make note of a flurry of reports and comments on live-blogging of trials:
The ABA Journal's Debra Cassens Weiss wrote this informative, link-filled story focusing on an Iowa fraud prosecution that Trish Mehaffey of the Cedar Rapids Gazette covered from the courtroom on this blog. Mehaffey's coverage has the distinction of occurring in a federal courtroom, which is rare.
Lexblog's Lisa Kennelly reports and comments on the same case, with informative quotes from Mehaffey about the mechanics of the experiment.
Litigation PR expert Bob Bork tipped me off to these developments with this post, where he speculates on how the growing use of live-blogging of trials will affect litigants' PR strategies.
I remain a skeptic, as I said back during the Libby trial and recently on the question of Twitter coverage of trials. While I'm all for increasing courts' public access by journalists and citizens, and applaud the bloggers and judges who are experimenting, I have a fundamental problem with these forms: they're not mass media storytelling, because they don't clearly provide the full context of a case to the casual reader. It's great if you're already obsessively following a case; not so great if you're among the vast majority of readers who aren't, and who are excluded from the insider nature of this conversation. But I would love to see talented writers figure out ways around these problems, perhaps by linking to background that provides the necessary explanations of what preceded the action that we're now covering play by play.
I look forward to discussing such issues with two upcoming speakers in our law, politics, and media series here at Syracuse University: the aforementioned Bork, and the Houston Chronicle's Mary Flood.
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Posted at 09:09 AM
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| WaPo hypes Gitmo story to give it news peg |
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| Washington Post |
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| Sun, January 25, 2009 |
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This story in today's Washington Post by Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn has a superficial, he-said/she-said balance that at first makes the story seem like real news. Officials from the Obama administration say that they are just now realizing what a mess the government's records on Guantanamo detainees are. Some Bush administration officials acknowledge that's true; others deny it; and still others say that the new guys are just making excuses for their inevitable failure to resolve the situation quickly. They're Beltway sources, so of course most speak not-for-attribution. But the tit-for-tat heart of the story seems clear enough: a fresh controversy, opposing views of reality, and a new administration confronting another big problem.
The Post doesn't hide which view it finds most compelling. The heds (at least for the Web) read:
Guantanamo Case Files in Disarray
Situation Complicates Prison's Closure
And here's the lede:
President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.
Give the story a closer read, especially near the end, however, and you may come away wondering what the hook for the story really is. To counter a Pentagon spokesman's claim that the information is accessible, the writers offer this:
There have been indications from within and outside the government for some time, however, that evidence and other materials on the Guantanamo prisoners were in disarray, even though most of the detainees have been held for years.
Justice Department lawyers responding in federal courts to defense challenges over the past six months have said repeatedly that the government was overwhelmed by the sudden need to assemble material after Supreme Court rulings giving detainees habeas corpus and other rights. . . .
In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."
He said he once accidentally found "crucial physical evidence" that "had been tossed in a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten."
Interesting! But why, then, is the story pegged to discoveries made this week? I think I know the answer: The chosen angle was sexier than one that would say, in effect: Now that the Obama team is in power, it must confront a record-keeping problem that has frustrated others for months (or years?). That's still important and newsworthy. It has the added benefit of being true.
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Posted at 08:45 AM
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| Joy Behar and the decline of civilization |
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| ABC's The View |
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| Tue, January 27, 2009 |
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When the Rod Blagojevich publicity circus pitched its tent on ABC's The View yesterday, only a fool would have expected real journalism to occur. Still, by the account of the Chicago Tribune's Rick Pearson and Frank James, the venerable interviewer Barbara Walters -- appearing remotely from the West Coast -- did her best to lend some facts and professionalism to the affair. But, after Walters unsuccessfully but valiantly pressed Blagojevich to explain why he was captured on tape proclaiming his Senate-vacancy opportunity "f***ing golden," the brainless Joy Behar took center stage. I have had the good fortune to live a full life so far without watching The View or seeing or hearing Behar. To be honest, I've never even heard of her. After viewing this clip, I now resolve to revert to my View/Behar blackout -- haunted though I am by the sight of her giggling, kicking her legs out, begging for Blago's Richard Nixon impression, and tousling his helmet hair. What a clown. She even managed to make Blago, amid his shameless jury-tampering PR stunt, appear dignified by comparison. The unfortunate thing isn't that ABC would let entertainers pretend to do journalism. That's a longstanding TV tradition. The real shame is that the public has another reason to confuse fluff with what reporters do, or are supposed to do.
P.S. -- On reflection, calling Behar brainless and a clown based on a brief clip was harsh and speculative. I should have said that she appeared to be brainless and clownish. There, I feel better.
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Posted at 06:43 AM
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| Barnes in the live-chat hot seat |
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| Washingtonpost.com |
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| Wed, January 28, 2009 |
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The Washington Post's Robert Barnes took questions yesterday at the paper's Web site, juggling a mix of politics and Supreme Court questions -- much as he does in his work for the paper (Barnes took leave from the Court beat last year to cover the campaign). Quick on his feet, and gracious in the face of the usual tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists, Barnes had this to say when asked about his dual focus:
New York: Robert, what's it like covering both politics and the Supreme Court? Isn't it like using two distinctly separate parts of the brain? Thanks for the chat.
Robert Barnes: And it's extremely hard when your brain's not that big to begin with. But the last year was the best of both worlds for me, thanks for asking. There was really nothing like this campaign, and it was a a privilege to be involved, even for a short time.
Covering the court is unlike any other kind of reporting. But it is a fascinating beat, because you are learning on a two-track system: one about the justices and the way they develop the law, and the other about the wide array of issues that come to the court.
(Via How Appealing)
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Posted at 10:21 AM
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| Wrongful-conviction anecdotes add up to trend |
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| USA Today |
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| Thu, January 29, 2009 |
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Kevin Johnson put a fresh twist on coverage of wrongful convictions in this enterprising story yesterday in USA Today. Citing Innocence Project stats on inmates exonerated by DNA evidence -- showing that 90 percent were convicted of sex crimes -- Johnson explores how the sex-crime stigma follows these men long afterward. Johnson doesn't document with objective proof what he calls a "silent struggle for a rising number of exonerees." But he makes a convincing anecdotal case, with several examples and comments by experts. (Via Criminal Justice Journalists)
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Posted at 08:37 AM
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| Schwartz sets smart benchmark for new beat |
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| The New York Times |
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| Fri, January 30, 2009 |
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Now this is encouraging: One of John Schwartz's first significant pieces as the new legal-affairs national reporter at the Times -- and his first in that role with a "news analysis" bug -- tackles an unlikely topic in a clear, engaging way. Is there a new federalism blooming, he asks? Through examples and experts, Schwartz explores a story that's more regulatory than courts-driven; more evolutionary than events-driven; and more about ideas and government theory than about conflict and crisis. True, he might have fleshed out the historical context a bit more -- this certainly isn't the first time we've been told that activist state attorneys general may grab more influence, and there's a lot of interesting and recent Supreme Court jurisprudence to cite -- but overall it's a fresh look at a story as old as the Constitution. Best of all, he doesn't tell us that he has all the answers, or what we ought to think, and he doesn't write it for con-law experts.
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Posted at 07:42 AM
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| Taylor: Ledbetter law news coverage stank |
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| National Journal |
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| Fri, January 30, 2009 |
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Journalists covering Congress' passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act have "thoroughly distorted the facts" in that policy debate, continuing a pattern that began with "an explosion of ill-informed media outrage" after Ledbetter's Supreme Court loss in 2007. So writes National Journal's Stuart Taylor, who backs his opinions with his usual array of convincing facts and tightly constructed arguments. The core of his argument is that the law is an overreaction to the (arguable) deficiency in the old law that the Ledbetter case revealed. Rather than simply fix the restrictive time limits on Title VII suits, he argues, the new law goes so far that it invites a litigation frenzy that will hurt employers and only help plaintiffs' lawyers.
Because of Taylor's reputation for reason and reported fact, because he's not an ideologue, and because he concedes an argument to Ledbetter's supporters (about the reasonableness of time limits), he makes me suspect that we've just witnessed a massive journalistic failure in one of the first big policy shifts of the new president's administration. On the other hand, he undercuts some of his credibility with me when he blithely includes the media in his indictment of the parties that twisted their interpretations of the new law "to advance their agenda of opening the door wide to all manner of job-discrimination lawsuits." Taylor provides no evidence that reporters covering this debate (as opposed to pundits and bloviators) shared this agenda with lobbyists and other advocates. It's conceivable, but equally conceivable is that reporters were simply snowed by partisans and/or too lazy to pin down the facts. Despite that weakness, Taylor's argument is important and worth considering. Hurry, because National Journal eventually puts his articles behind the subscriber wall. (Via National Review's Bench Memos)
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Posted at 05:14 PM
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| Epic tale of Eli Lilly's Zyprexa battles |
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| Rolling Stone |
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| Fri, January 30, 2009 |
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Ben Wallace-Wells' masterful feature in the current Rolling Stone -- "Bitter Pill," a lengthy narrative on the history of the controversial antipsychotic drug Zyprexa -- puts into perspective the spot-news and investigative stories I've read over the years about litigation concerning the drug. Billions in fines and settlements paid by the drug's maker Eli Lilly, and fights with The New York Times over leaked discovery documents, now come into clear focus because of Wallace-Wells' ability to tell the story from beginning to end, though the eyes of on-the-ground participants. The story illustrates the ineffectiveness of the government's regulation of drugs that may have horrific side effects. And, in an author-Q&A sidebar, Wallace-Wells points toward a particularly intriguing angle at the intersection of law, journalism, and PR:
There's a 10-year patent protection companies get when they introduce a drug. Usually, around year two or three, there'll be a lot of reports of problems with a particular drug. Obviously, this doesn't happen with every drug, but it's a consistent pattern with those drugs where something's gone wrong. For four or five years the company will fight tooth-and-nail with any scientists who say that they've cooked the books. They'll be very antagonistic to reporters who ask questions and then, around year 10 you start seeing a lot more accommodations. They start going to researchers and saying, "Well, maybe you guys were right all along." They'll start settling suits, and they'll start saying to reporters, "Yeah, maybe we did something wrong." So, right now, Eli Lilly is right on the cusp of that and they're beginning to settle suits. The difference in part is that if you're on year three of a patent, you're still hoping to goose most of your profits out of it. By year eight, there's not that much left, so you're much more open to acknowledging difficulties with the drug. There's this arc that repeats itself again and again.
Rolling Stone and the writer deserve high praise for this piece of legal-medical journalism.
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Posted at 10:08 PM
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| More special treatment for judge-defendant? |
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| Houston Chronicle |
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| Sat, January 31, 2009 |
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There he goes again. Nearly five months after he imposed a strict gag order in the criminal prosecution of U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent -- a gag order that neither party asked for, and in the absence of any sort of media circus -- the visiting judge from Florida hearing the case in Houston has ordered that certain routine filings in the case be filed under seal. The Houston Chronicle's Mary Flood explains on her blog that the sealed filings concern Kent's behavior in the past; allegations that the government wants to introduce at trial. Judge Roger Vinson's sealing of those filings came in response to a motion by Kent's lawyer, who expressed concern about tainting the jury that will hear the case against Kent next month.
It's not every day that a federal judge is charged with sexually abusing women on his staff. But that's exactly why this case calls for openness, not secrecy. Everything about this case concerns the public: the behavior of a sitting judge, and the fairness of the government's case against him. Vinson's zealous efforts to inhibit public scrutiny of the case -- ostensibly to protect Kent's rights to a fair trial -- instead smack of favoritism.
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Posted at 08:54 AM
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