Anchors away

I'm quoted in the Detroit Free Press today in a story by staff writer Julie Hinds about Bob Woodruff, the new co-anchor of ABC's "World News Night" and, as it happens, a Detroit-area native.

Blogging the Murphy case

Despite my determination not to get sucked into blogland this week, things keep coming up. This morning I listened to a voice-mail left last week (sorry) by someone who didn't identify himself, but who sounded as though he is a lawyer. He seemed to be quite familiar with Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy's libel case against the Boston Herald, and was contemptuous of my commentary about it.

I didn't save his message, so no direct quotes. But I do want to consider his two main arguments:

1. Anyone who has done his homework would know that the reason Murphy asked Herald publisher Pat Purcell for $3.26 million rather than the $2.1 million a jury awarded him was because Murphy was figuring in interest.

There is a simple answer to this: No. Not true.

To review, on Feb. 19, immediately after the verdict, the Boston Globe quoted David Rich, one of Murphy's lawyers, as saying that the award amounted to $2.7 million with the interest that had accumulated since the suit's filing three years earlier. One day later, Murphy sent a letter to Purcell seeking $3.26 million as the price for ending the case.

Nor has Murphy's lead counsel, Howard Cooper, explained the mark-up in a convincing manner. Last week, Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Phoenix covered a news conference at which Cooper said the $2.7 million has grown to $2.95 million, as the 12 percent interest clock keeps ticking away. That makes sense. So what's up with the $3.26 million? Jurkowitz wrote: "He [Cooper] claimed the judge's dollar figure 'could be seen to represent a hypothetical discount from the Herald's worst case scenario,' in which the paper could end up owing more."

Huh? If Purcell had paid Murphy $2.7 million right after the trial ended, wouldn't that have been the end of it? The "worst case scenario," after all, involves several years of presumably fruitless appeals, mounting interest costs and huge legal fees, above and beyond what Purcell had already paid. None of those factors would have been in play last February. So we still don't know what the answer is. Note: I'm not saying there isn't a good answer -- that would be going beyond the facts (see point #2, below). I'm just saying the $3.26 million hasn't been adequately explained.

By the way, I've seen commentators -- including at least one newspaper columnist -- who haven't even grasped the elementary point that interest costs have long since rendered the $2.1 million figure irrelevant. So this is hardly a shortcoming of blogs per se. (And in the case of Media Nation, not a shortcoming at all.) Which brings me to my caller's next point.

2. It's irresponsible for a blogger to write without doing any reporting. The lesson of the Herald case is that you have an obligation to report before you start typing.

Ah, the central dilemma of every blogger, or at least every one who takes his journalistic obligations seriously. Quite frankly, this is something with which I wrestle all the time. Most items on Media Nation, as well as across blogland, are unreported in the traditional sense -- that is, I'm not picking up the phone and interviewing sources.

But that's not what most blogs are. Rather, they consist of commentary on what other media are reporting. Is that a lower order of journalism than what you read in a good newspaper every day? Yes, of course. But it has value to the extent that a blogger can make sense out of the news in ways that you might not have thought about before.

A key to responsible blogging, I think, is disciplining yourself not to go beyond what you find in your excursions across the mediascape. Thus, I see absolutely nothing wrong with noting that Murphy asked Purcell for some $500,000 more than the $2.7 million judgment-plus-interest; that the tone of his letters to Purcell was bullying; and that well-known media observer Alex Jones had said the letters called Murphy's own judgment into question. None of this goes beyond what's on the public record. On the other hand, ascribing motives to Murphy's behavior would be out of bounds unless I had some special insight I had gleaned -- insight I could only gain by interviewing people.

I'm also free to express my opinion. And it remains my opinion that the Herald's journalism with regard to Murphy, though sloppy and sensationalistic, did not rise to the level of reckless disregard for the truth, which is the threshold a public official such as Murphy must meet in a libel case. It is also my opinion that Murphy should have taken the Herald on in the court of public opinion -- Holmes' "marketplace of ideas" -- rather than trying to intimidate the news media into soft-pedaling its reporting on public officials lest they be hit with a multimillion-dollar libel judgment.

Murphy has every right to hold his reputation in high regard. I wish he had the same regard for the central purpose of the First Amendment, which is to encourage vigorous, contentious and even irresponsible discussion of public affairs.

My previous Murphy posts are online here, here, here and here.

Tonight on WBZ Radio

I'm scheduled to be a guest this evening from 8 to 9 p.m. on "The Paul Sullivan Show" on WBZ Radio (AM 1030). Paul's on vacation, and I'm told that former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran will be filling in.

The wrong stuff

I've got a look ahead at the year in politics in the new Boston Phoenix. The subhead gives it away: "These should be the best of times for Democrats. So how will they blow it in 2006? Let us count the ways." Click here.

Do Oreos fly?

Perhaps not. A key point in Jeff Jacoby's column on "liberal hate speech" is his assertion -- based on a Washington Times account -- that Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a conservative Republican who's African-American, was once pelted with Oreo cookies. (You know, black on the outside, white on the inside.)

But did it happen? Here's what the Baltimore Sun reported on Nov. 15:

Various versions have been given over the past three years, but some Democrats question whether cookies were actually tossed....

News reports from the night of the Sept. 26 debate make no mention of cookies. The first reference came five days later in an article in The Sun in which [Paul] Schurick, then a spokesman for the Ehrlich campaign, said cookies were distributed in the audience....

Several audience members who attended the debate have told The Sun that they saw no cookies.

"It didn't happen here," said Vander Harris, operations manager of the Morgan fine arts center. "I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal."

Thanks to Lis Riba, who picked this up from -- yes -- Steve Gilliard.

Trivial pursuit

Maybe I don't get out enough -- actually, maybe I get out too much -- but I was struck this morning by the fact that Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby led his annual roundup of liberal "hate speech" with an example from a blog I'd never heard of.

The offending blog is something called the News Blog, although its URL -- stevegilliard.blogspot.com -- suggests something less grandiose than that. The editors are listed simply as "Steve and Jen," an indication that the News Blog doesn't quite have the muscle to be part of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. And though Jacoby describes it as a "popular website," it has not managed to crack Technorati's Top 100.

If this is the best Jacoby can do, then liberal hate speech can't be all that pervasive.

By the way, Gilliard has responded to Jacoby.

More on the Armenian catastrophe

Media Nation is on semi-hiatus for the next week or two. But I did want to call your attention to this Yvonne Abraham article, in today's Boston Globe, on the Armenian genocide dispute.

Little red faces

Jonathan Saltzman reports in today's Boston Globe that the story about the kid who ended up on a government watch list for going to the library and asking for a copy of "The Communist Manifesto" -- er, make that Mao's "Little Red Book" -- was a hoax.

Earlier this week, the story made its way into a Globe op-ed submitted by Sen. Ted Kennedy's office. (I'm not letting the senator himself off the hook -- after all, he let it go out with his name on it. I'm simply acknowledging the fact that he had only slightly more to do with that piece than you or I did.) Saltzman writes:

Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited "public reports" in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy's broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance.

Accurate but not true, in other words -- a fine standard for the Globe op-ed page.

Needless to say, when a newspaper chooses to publish an op-ed piece by an outside contributor, its editors have an obligation to edit and fact-check that piece just as rigorously as they would if it were written by a staff writer -- maybe more so.

I don't think the Globe did anything particularly wrong in publishing Kennedy's op-ed as it was written. After all, the "Little Red Book" story had been broken the previous Saturday by a well-regarded newspaper, the New Bedford Standard-Times.

But by Thursday, when Kennedy's piece appeared in the Globe, the story was already the subject of widespread speculation that it was a hoax, an urban legend or both. Ideally, someone at the Globe should have flagged it before publication.

Going down with the ship

If the Bush administration won't even embrace the legal defense offered by its most ardent supporters, then you can be reasonably sure those supporters are wrong.

An example: On Wednesday, the Weekly Standard published a commentary by Edward Morrissey, of the conservative blog Captain's Quarters, arguing that the no-warrant wiretaps by the National Security Agency are fully legal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Morrissey quotes extensively from FISA in an attempt to make the case that "FISA authorizes warrantless surveillance in its opening chapter." Much of this has to do with the question of whether or not the wiretaps were used to spy on "U.S. persons" as defined under the law. Morrissey argues that they were not. He also writes:

Moreover, the NSA's efforts did not take place in darkness. The FISA court did get informed of the issue, and the leaders of the oversight committees in both houses of Congress from both parties took part in the decision. It does not appear that the Bush administration sought to hide this from the other two branches of government, but sought to include them in the oversight of the new process as much as possible within the secrecy needed to conduct the program during wartime.

If one reads further into the Times's long and detailed article, the Bush administration received precedential decisions from courts that acknowledged the executive authority to wage war included a broader authority to set the parameters of espionage in order to guarantee security. Clearly, the administration has sought to comply with the letter of the law while getting the best possible information as quickly as it could to prevent another devastating terrorist attack.

This all sounds fairly reasonable -- until you realize that the Bush administration itself isn't buying it. Barton Gellman reports in today's Washington Post that the White House is continuing to advance the argument that the no-warrant searches were authorized by Congress' near-declaration of war, passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Gellman adds that the latest iteration of this justification -- in the form of a letter to Congress written by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella -- acknowledges that President Bush's October 2001 wiretapping order did not comply with the "procedures" of FISA, a law passed in 1978.

Sorry, Captain Morrissey, but it looks like you don't know what you're talking about. Moschella's argument is that the White House is violating FISA, but that it's all right because FISA was overridden by the war resolution. That is pretty much the opposite of what Morrissey wants us to believe.

As for the administration's attempts to hang its legal hat on the war-resolution coat rack, former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle has an op-ed piece in today's Post revealing that, at the time, the Bush administration actually did seek broad authority that would probably have legalized warrantless wiretaps -- and that it was shot down. Daschle writes:

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

It's becoming almost impossible to reach any conclusion other than this: Bush didn't get what he wanted, so he broke the law.

Aye, aye, Captain?

The politics of Holocaust-denial

The Boston Globe's op-ed page today runs a piece by Karim Sadjadpour and Ray Takeyh that argues, among other things, that the vicious anti-Semitism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anomaly. They write:

Iran's belligerent foreign policy toward Israel is among the more puzzling issues in international relations. At a time when most Arab governments, including the elected Palestinian leadership, have come to accept Israel's existence as an unalterable fact, non-Arab Iran continues to call for eradication of the Jewish state. Over the course of the last several weeks President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran attacked Israel as a "tumor" that should be "wiped off the map of the world" and asserted that the holocaust was a "myth."

So I guess Israel no longer has to worry about Arab countries -- just non-Arab Iran. That's a relief. But wait. Elsewhere today, the Globe publishes an Associated Press article that begins thusly:

CAIRO -- The leader of Egypt's main Islamic opposition group said yesterday the Holocaust was a "myth," and he slammed Western governments for criticizing disclaimers of the Jewish genocide.

The comments by Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Mahdi Akef -- made on the heels of his group's strong showing in Egyptian parliamentary elections -- echoed remarks made recently by Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which sparked international outrage.

"Western democracies have slammed all those who don't see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust," Akef wrote in a weekly article meant as a directive to the group's followers on its official website.

Isn't Egypt, you know, Arab? Isn't the Muslim Brotherhood the single biggest threat to the Mubarak regime? Isn't Osama bin Laden's number-two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, connected with the Muslim Brotherhood? (The answer to that would be yes.)

So much for Holocaust-denial having fallen out of fashion in the Arab world.

Murphy's lawyer speaks

Mark Jurkowitz covered a news conference called earlier today by Howard Cooper, the lawyer for Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy. Among other things, Cooper called the Boston Herald's decision to release letters that Murphy sent to Herald publisher Pat Purcell "a publicity stunt in an apparent attempt to continue the paper's campaign of libel against Judge Murphy." Think about that.

Did Ted Kennedy fall for a hoax?

Ted Kennedy -- or, to be more accurate, Ted Kennedy's office -- has an op-ed piece in the Globe today about the Bush administration's war on civil liberties. It includes this:

Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung's Communist Manifesto. Following his professor's instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government's watch list.

Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home -- after you request a book from the library.

Leaving aside my apparent misapprehension that "The Communist Manifesto" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (or maybe I'm right), there is a slight problem: the story about the college student appears to be an urban legend. Gary McGath has details here, noting that a variant of the story recently popped up in California. (Via Universal Hub.)

Murphy's woes mount

Alex Jones' expertise is in media ethics, not judicial conduct. Still, since I know Jones to be both thoughtful and cautious, I was struck by the vehemence of his reaction to the letters that Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy sent to Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell last February and March. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School, tells the Herald's Greg Gatlin:

I think an apology is pretty meaningless. The fact that he did it, whether he did it on his stationery or on plain white paper, seems secondary to the fact that he did it at all.

I think there is every reason to believe that Judge Murphy is a man of uncommon bad judgment as demonstrated by the fact that he wrote these letters....

It seems so blatantly inappropriate that I would be surprised if there is not some action from the judiciary. This is a man who embodies the law. It’s incredible that this would happen without any repercussions.

Uncommon bad judgment. Blatantly inappropriate. Interesting -- that's essentially what the Herald reported about Murphy's bail and sentencing practices in the winter of 2002. That put the Herald on the losing end of a $2.1 million libel judgment earlier this year. Yet now Murphy, through his own words, is lending credence to the notion that the Herald's reporting -- flawed and sensationalistic though it was -- also happened to be substantially true. And under the law, not even a private citizen -- never mind a public official such as Murphy -- is supposed prevail in a libel case unless he can show he was harmed by reporting that was clearly false.

Murphy tried to place a letter in today's Boston Globe apologizing for using his official court stationery to write handwritten letters to Purcell aimed at settling the libel case. The Globe wouldn't bite -- editorial-page editor Renée Loth tells Gatlin that she wouldn't publish an "I hereby apologize kind of thing." But the Globe did cover it as a news story.

There's no longer any doubt as to whether the letters are authentic, is there? Still, I find it frustrating that no one has yet figured out why Murphy wanted Purcell to fork over $3.26 million when a reported estimate at the time of the verdict was that the judgment would cost the Herald about $2.7 million, interest included.

Elsewhere in the Herald, legal reporter Maggie Mulvihill quotes retired judge Robert Barton as saying that Murphy will likely be punished for violating the judicial code of ethics. And columnist Margery Eagan, at one point a defendant in Murphy's libel suit, indulges (sub. req.) in some well-earned schadenfreude, beginning today with this:

Clearly, Judge Ernest Murphy has a message for Boston Herald owner Pat Purcell:

"Get over it."

There is a school of thought that Murphy won his libel suit fair and square, and that his letters to Purcell were nothing but a typical attempt by two parties in a legal dispute to work out their differences and end their court battle. Certainly Murphy's lawyer, Howard Cooper, is promoting that notion. And I don't want to dismiss it out of hand. Cases such as this can get pretty ugly, and I understand that Murphy shouldn't necessarily be judged, so to speak, by what he wrote as part of a settlement process. Purcell couldn't have been all that offended, or he wouldn't have waited until now to release the letters.

But the bullying tone Murphy adopted, the sneering superiority, go a long way toward puncturing his image as someone who was grievously wronged by the media. Indeed, he comes off as someone more than capable of fighting back. As a judge -- a public servant -- he abused the First Amendment by suing the Herald rather than taking on the newspaper in public, as he easily could have done.

As for his letters to Purcell, an old sports analogy seems to hold here: When they say it's not about the money, it's about the money.

Murphy apologizes

The Boston Herald reports that Judge Ernest Murphy has sent a letter to the Boston Globe apologizing for using court stationery in his handwritten missives to Herald publisher Pat Purcell. Murphy reportedly says in the letter that he didn't realize it was illegal to use his official letterhead for personal business. (Via Romenesko.)

Parsing the Murphy letters

It's hard to know what to make of handwritten letters purportedly sent last winter by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy to Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell after the paper lost a libel case to Murphy.

Herald lawyer Bruce Sanford calls the letters "a stark and sad attempt to bully the Herald" into abandoning its appeal of the $2.1 million judgment. Murphy's lawyer, Howard Cooper, tells the Boston Globe that the letters were merely part of an ongoing attempt by Murphy to reach a settlement with Purcell.

This much is certain: If Murphy's letters are typical of what takes place between parties in a lawsuit, then the legal sausage-making process is a lot uglier than many of us realize.

I've been sympathetic to Murphy, although I never thought the Herald libeled him. By conducting a campaign of vilification against Murphy in 2002, portraying him as a "heartless" and "wrist-slapping" judge who "demeaned" victims of crime, the Herald irresponsibly harmed Murphy. Among other things, the judge's family was subjected to threats of violence.

But Murphy is a public official. And under the U.S. Supreme Court's Times v. Sullivan standard, a public official must prove that a news organization acted with "actual malice" in order to win a libel case -- that is, that the news organization published information it knew was false, or that it acted with "reckless disregard" as to whether it was true or false. There is no evidence of that.

The Murphy trial turned largely on the question of whether Murphy had said of a teenage rape victim, "Tell her to get over it." Herald reporter Dave Wedge's only eyewitness source, former prosecutor David Crowley, testified that Wedge didn't get the quote quite right -- his recollection was that Murphy had said, "She's got to get over it" -- but that Wedge had captured the "gist" of it. And Bristol County District Attorney Paul Walsh testified that Crowley considered Murphy's remarks to be insensitive.

Even though there were several inaccuracies in Wedge's reporting, it's hard to see how, given those circumstances, that Wedge could be credibly accused of acting with reckless disregard for the truth, which, legally, requires him and/or his editors to have harbored serious doubts about what they were reporting. In fact, Wedge clearly believes to this day that his reporting was substantially true, Murphy's denials notwithstanding. And it's possible that Wedge is right.

But enough of the back story. The Herald today publishes the text of Murphy's letters and graphic images of them. Assuming they are real -- Purcell and his lawyers obviously believe they are genuine, but there's no indication of what steps they took to verify them -- they portray a very different Murphy from the devastated man who sued to get his good name back last winter. Here's a fascinatingly repellent excerpt about a meeting Murphy wanted to have with Purcell. The letter is dated Feb. 20 -- two days after the verdict:

Here's what will be the price of that meeting. You will have one person with you at the meeting. I suggest, but do not insist, that such a person be a highly honorable and sophisticated lawyer from your insurer.

Under NO circumstances should you involve Brown, Rudnick in this meeting. Or notify that firm that such a meeting is to take place. [Brown, Rudnick represented the Herald at trial.]

I will have my attorney (either Owen Todd or Howard Cooper) at the meeting. The meeting will be AB-SO-LUTE-LY confidential and "off the record" between four honorable men.

You will bring to that meeting a cashier’s check, payable to me, in the sum of $3,260,000. No check, no meeting.

You will give me that check and I shall put it in my pocket.

Wow.

Now, granted, the release of these letters raises more questions than answers. Here are just a few:

1. What steps, if any, did Purcell take to authenticate the letters? In today's Globe story, Howard Cooper seems to accept their authenticity, and on the surface there's no reason to doubt them. But all of us in journalism have become more sensitive to possible problems with documents during the past year. Remember, Scott McClellan didn't doubt the authenticity of the National Guard letters, either.

2. If Murphy's letters are the blockbusters that Purcell wants us to believe they are, why did he not release them until yesterday as part of an effort to have the verdict against the Herald thrown out? The verdict, after all, has been hanging over the Herald since last spring. At the very least, it creates the impression that Purcell didn't think the letters were particularly out of line at the time.

3. Why did Murphy, in his letter, demand $3.26 million? According to this Feb. 19 story in the Globe, the full cost of paying off the verdict was estimated to be in the neighborhood of $2.7 million, which would be the $2.1 million verdict plus interest. How could the cost rise by another $500,000 almost overnight?

Last night, at Boston Mayor Tom Menino's annual Christmas party, word rippled through the Parkman House about the Murphy letters, which were unveiled at a news conference that evening. Since none of us were actually at the news conference, we traded rumors about what they might contain. Now we know.

I'm not going to speculate on their significance. But I remain troubled by this case. At root, the Herald's reporting on Murphy -- as irresponsible and over the top as it was -- amounted to criticism of a public official for the manner in which he performed his government duties. Such speech demands the highest possible level of First Amendment protection.

Unlike an ordinary citizen, Murphy had numerous avenues by which he could fight back, as he showed by giving a no-holds-barred interview to the Globe in response to the Herald's incessant attacks. Just as Wedge appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor," so, too, could Murphy have invited himself on. This is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s "marketplace of ideas," which is vital to public discourse in a democratic society. (Well, O.K., not "The Factor" per se.)

Instead Murphy, a judge, went to court in an attempt to silence his tormenters. And now he's even trying to freeze the financially ailing Herald's assets in order to preserve the judgment he won.

I don't believe Judge Murphy "heartlessly demeaned" victims of crime. I'm appalled that he would come under such heavy attack for believing that, in some cases, justice should be tempered with mercy. But though I don't think he should have been accused of conduct unbecoming a judge in 2002, I certainly think the label fits today.

More: NECN has an in-depth report that includes a good chunk from last night's news conference and a long interview with Howard Cooper. Click here and choose "'Herald' levies serious charges against judge."

A clue

Media Nation is reliably informed that New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who broke the NSA spying story last week, are both alumni of the Los Angeles Times. Indeed, Google searches instantly reveal L.A. Times bylines for both. Could that be a factor in James Rainey's L.A. Times story today?

L.A. Times probes N.Y. Times

On a day that the New York Times has broken yet another important story on the Bush administration's war against civil liberties, the big question remains: Why did the Times wait more than a year before reporting that the White House was using the National Security Agency to conduct no-warrant wiretapping operations inside the United States, in possible violation of the law?

The Los Angeles Times takes a crack at answering that question today, and the findings are not pretty. James Rainey reports that anonymous sources inside the newsroom have told him that top editors considered running the NSA story before the 2004 presidential election but decided against it. Moreover, Rainey continues, one of the main reasons the New York Times finally decided to go with the story last week was so that it wouldn't be scooped by a soon-to-be-released book, "State of War," written by its own reporter, James Risen. (Risen's was the lead byline on last Friday's story.)

Rainey's anonymous sources are directly contradicted by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who is quoted as saying:

The publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim's forthcoming book or any other event. We published the story when we did because after much hard work it was fully reported, checked and ready, and because, after listening respectfully to the administration's objections, we were convinced there was no good reason not to publish it.

Still, Rainey's article is certain to enrage partisans on both sides of the ideological divide. For Democrats, Rainey has raised the possibility that the nation's leading newspaper (if that's what it still is) killed a story that might have put John Kerry over the top last November. For Republicans, it looks as though Keller's willingness to abide by the Bush administration's national-security concerns was operative only so long as he wasn't going to be made to look foolish by Risen's book.

Based on what we know so far, it seems transparently true that the conservative critique is weak and contradictory. President Bush has been entirely unable to articulate a legal rationale for his actions, brazenly attacking those who leaked the existence of the spying program as unpatriotic, even though he may very well have broken the law by engaging in it in the first place.

As numerous observers have pointed out, and as Charlie Savage reports in today's Boston Globe, all Bush had to do was seek warrants from a secret court under the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- and such warrants are rarely turned down. He even could have sought warrants after the fact in emergencies. Yet here's an example of the disingenuousness Bush offered at his news conference yesterday:

My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.

You've got to understand -- and I hope the American people understand -- there is still an enemy that would like to strike the United States of America, and they're very dangerous. And the discussion about how we try to find them will enable them to adjust. Now, I can understand you asking these questions and if I were you, I'd be asking me these questions, too. But it is a shameful act by somebody who has got secrets of the United States government and feels like they need to disclose them publicly.

This all sounds reasonable unless you keep in mind the fact that Bush easily could have carried out the spying program in a way that would be indisputably legal. That's why the normally deferential Tim Russert became so exasperated with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday, as she continually brushed aside Russert's questions about why the White House didn't simply follow the law.

"This is a case where if people commit the crime, then thousands die," Rice responded. And: "[I]t is the president's obligation within the law and within his constitutional authority to get the information that he needs to detect an attack and to act against it before thousands of people die." And: "We're in a war where if we allow people to commit the crime, then thousands die." Well, yes, Madame Secretary. But why did the president risk violating the law rather than simply seek secret warrants? Rice: "I am not a lawyer."

Today's New York Times story about the FBI's spying on domestic activists -- written by Eric Lichtblau, who shared the byline with Risen on last week's NSA article -- reveals, among other things, that the FBI is very, very concerned about the Catholic Workers' "semi-communistic ideology." It's a story of crucial importance, yet the Times hardly covers itself with glory. As Lichtblau notes, his reporting is based on documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, "provided to The New York Times over the past week." A handoff, in other words.

As I wrote earlier this year, the FOIA -- once a staple of investigative reporting -- is now more effectively used by the ACLU, Common Cause and other public interest groups, which have the armies of lawyers that the media lack in order to keep pressing the courts to force the secrecy-obsessed White House to turn over public documents.

Of course, the White House isn't the only institution that's obsessed with secrecy. So, it would appear, is the New York Times, which has been as transparent as a pit full of muck on why it waited so long to publish the NSA story. It seems we can't go more than a couple of months without a Times scandal. But we need to get to the bottom of this. Public editor Byron Calame is not scheduled to write again until Jan. 1. Can we wait that long?

Good news for talk radio

WBZ Radio (AM 1030) talk-show host Paul Sullivan, who succeeded the late David Brudnoy last year, is staying put. Sullivan -- who hosts one of the few civil, locally oriented shows still on the air -- will continue with his 8 p.m.-to-midnight shift now that Jay Severin is sticking with WTKK Radio (96.9 FM). Herald coverage here; Globe coverage here.

To recap: the reptilian (thanks, John) Severin had been a ratings hit on 'TKK's afternoon-drive-time slot for the past several years, but disappeared from the airwaves this fall after he signed a national-syndication deal with Infinity, part of the CBS network. 'TKK is owned by Greater Media; WBZ is owned by CBS. That prompted speculation that CBS would saddle 'BZ with Severin. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

Meanwhile, WTKK has been left with the worst of all possible worlds. The station has replaced Severin with the unlistenable Michael Graham during drive time, and will be broadcasting Severin during a time slot (7 to 10 p.m.) when the potential audience is much smaller -- and when his competition will not be Howie Carr but, rather, the Tom Ashbrook rebroadcast, Christopher Lydon and Sullivan, as well as Todd Feinburg's new local program.

Severin may pull some numbers, but it's not going to be like before.

Bloggers in blue II

The Globe today goes with the Boston Police Department's denial, and the Herald sticks by its story -- although it does so in an odd enough way that Adam Gaffin headlines his item "Herald admits possible goof in Dorchester story."

Big Red, red-faced

Jay Fitzgerald writes on Hub Blog: "Not for a second do I believe Bill Weld knowingly approved of any wrongdoing at the now defunct Decker College." Of course not. That's never been Big Red's M.O. Rather, when he's failed, it's been because he's disconnected, uninterested, not paying attention to the job at hand. And that's why Jay is correct when he adds, "I have a feeling Weld's candidacy for governor of New York has all but ended as of today."

In case you missed it, here is the story Jay is talking about.

Bloggers in blue

Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub takes notice of a fascinating development. The Boston Herald today reports that two men have been picked up for questioning in last week's murder of four young men in Dorchester. And Boston police spokesman Thomas Sexton used the department blog to insist that the Herald is wrong. Sexton writes:

We urge our partners in the media not to be distracted by the "sources" who could potentially jeopardize such an important investigation with grossly inaccurate information. Such reporting is hurtful and irresponsible. It is particularly unfair to victims' loved ones who are already devastated by this tragedy.

I don't suppose we'll know until tomorrow whether the Herald actually blew it, or if something else is going on. What's interesting is that the police are discovering they can use technology just as effectively as the media can to get their message out.

What did Congress know?

When President Bush said yesterday that "[l]eaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times" on the NSA no-warrant spying operation, it sounded -- as one Media Nation correspondent pointed out -- a bit like his claims that Congress saw the same pre-war intelligence as the administration.

It turns out, though, that it's true -- sort of. How much Congress knew may determine whether Bush can extricate himself from this disaster.

Consider, for instance, this page-one piece in today's Washington Post. Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer report:

A high-ranking intelligence official with firsthand knowledge said in an interview yesterday that Vice President Cheney, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet and Michael V. Hayden, then a lieutenant general and director of the National Security Agency, briefed four key members of Congress about the NSA's new domestic surveillance on Oct. 25, 2001, and Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after Bush signed a highly classified directive that eliminated some restrictions on eavesdropping against U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

In describing the briefings, administration officials made clear that Cheney was announcing a decision, not asking permission from Congress. How much the legislators learned is in dispute.

Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate intelligence committee and is the only participant thus far to describe the meetings extensively and on the record, said in interviews Friday night and yesterday that he remembers "no discussion about expanding [NSA eavesdropping] to include conversations of U.S. citizens or conversations that originated or ended in the United States" -- and no mention of the president's intent to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Hmmm. That sounds like disclosure of a sort, but hardly full disclosure. But an anonymous White House source tells the Post that Graham is "misremembering the briefings." And that contention is given some credence by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who was also briefed, and who says that she "expressed my strong concerns" about what she was hearing.

David Sanger provides more on Pelosi in today's New York Times:

In a statement, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said she was advised of the president's decision shortly after he made it and had "been provided with updates on several occasions."

"The Bush administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval," Ms. Pelosi said. "As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings."

This matters -- a lot. If Bush was keeping Congress informed about NSA spying, then it will be much easier for him to make the case that he was using the powers granted to him by Congress in its almost-declaration of war following the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

That doesn't make this any less an affront to civil liberties. And it still doesn't explain why the White House didn't simply take the fully legal route of having the FBI request warrants from a secret court under the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But it does make it a lot less likely that Bush will find himself in any substantial legal or constitutional trouble.

Even if the Democrats controlled one or both branches of Congress -- well, what would Speaker Pelosi say?

Spying and the law

President Bush talked about the NSA no-warrant domestic wiretaps in his radio address this morning. Here's a chunk:

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaida and related terrorist organizations.

Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks. This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies.

Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

This is pretty scary, folks. Let's start with his statement that his actions were "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." The most generous possible interpretation of this is that it might be true -- but only if you accept his argument that the almost-declaration of war approved by Congress right after 9/11 allows him to do just about anything he pleases.

Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a Republican, has already called Bush's NSA actions "inappropriate." Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, normally no friend of civil liberties and not especially partisan, said the obvious in pointing out that Bush may have broken the law.

Thus the president has taken the position that for the New York Times to have revealed the existence of a possibly illegal spying operation run out of the White House was in and of itself illegal.

We are on new territory today.

Questions about the spying story

Paul Fahri of the Washington Post today sheds a bit of light on the New York Times' decision to wait a year before publishing yesterday's blockbuster article that the Bush administration has been using the National Security Agency ("No Such Agency") to conduct no-warrant wiretapping inside the United States.

Fahri notes that Times executive editor Bill Keller, in a statement, made no reference to the fact that the information will be included in a forthcoming book by James Risen, the lead reporter on yesterday's story. Drudge was much taken with this, suggesting that the Times was helping to promote Risen's book, "State of War," at the expense of national security.

It's hard to take Drudge seriously. At the same time, I'm sure that Keller didn't want to be scooped by his own reporter's book. So it's not inconceivable that the book had something to do with Keller's decision to break his paper's year-long silence.

Here is a key passage in Fahri's Post article:

The decision to withhold the article caused some friction within the Times' Washington bureau, according to people close to the paper. Some reporters and editors in New York and in the bureau, including Risen and co-writer Eric Lichtblau, had pushed for earlier publication, according to these people. One described the story's path to publication as difficult, with much discussion about whether it could have been published earlier.

In a statement yesterday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller did not mention the book. He wrote that when the Times became aware that the NSA was conducting domestic wiretaps without warrants, "the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security."

"Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions," Keller continued. "As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time."

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, two things changed the paper's thinking. The paper developed a fuller picture of misgivings about the program by some in the government. And the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

Here are some questions that Keller should answer -- like today, on Byron Calame's rarely updated blog, or tomorrow on NBC's "Meet the Press." To wit:

1. You've said that you delayed publication out of national-security considerations and to conduct more reporting. Which was more important? If you knew then what you know now, would you have gone to press a year ago?

2. One of the Times' more shameful historical moments took place in 1961, when it held back on the details of the forthcoming Bay of Pigs invasion. (The Times actually published a lot more at the time than the myth-makers would have it, but never mind.) If the lesson of that episode was that journalists should not hop into bed with the White House, why is this different?

3. Conversely, if you really did have serious national-security concerns about publishing this story a year ago, have things really changed that much? Or were you influenced by the looming publication date of Risen's book?

Of course, President Bush has a lot more to explain than Keller does. Bush didn't even begin to do that in his interview with Jim Lehrer last night. Here is one question for Bush that has been bugging me since I read Risen's story yesterday: As Risen describes it, the administration could have done all the domestic spying it wanted to if it had simply directed the FBI to obtain warrants from a secret court under the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Such warrants are rarely turned down.

Therefore, the White House's decision to conduct such searches through the NSA rather than the FBI, without a warrant, suggests one of two possibilities: (1) the reasoning behind the spying requests was so dubious that administration officials didn't dare approach even a normally compliant FISA judge; or (2) as Scott Shane writes in today's Times, administration officials -- and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney -- are so obsessed with extending the power of the presidency that they'd rather stretch the law to (or past) the breaking point than follow the rules.

Another fiasco. And judging from the initial reaction, this one isn't going to get swallowed up in the media miasma.

But who stole the strawberries?

Admiral Richard Gurnon explains when he realized he was in trouble with Arthur Desrocher, chairman of the board of trustees at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Sarah Schweitzer reports in today's Globe:

Gurnon said he knew he was a "dead man walking" after he returned from a business trip to Texas last month. He said no one returned his calls and more ominously, Desrocher had stopped leaving a doughnut on his desk, as he had done routinely every Tuesday. "After Nov. 15," Gurnon said. "I saw no more doughnuts."

The state Board of Education yesterday reinstated Gurnon as president of the academy. Let the doughnut-eating resume.

Herald coverage here.

Healey's new friend

Ben extends his reach, adding a second blog, Healey Is a Fraud, to his longstanding contribution to the civic dialogue known as Romney Is a Fraud. (Via Universal Hub. And yes, Adam, I do know where the name "Ben" comes from. What's my prize?)

I don't know about this. Romney's transparently self-serving approach to governing is hard to take, but I've got nothing against Healey. I certainly don't hold it against her that she occasionally puts her foot in her mouth. I like that in a politician. Don't you?

Tweaking Mitt

Jon Keller, the political reporter for WBZ-TV (Channel 4), broke the story yesterday that Gov. Mitt Romney would not seek re-election in 2006. [D'oh! I originally wrote "2004."] For a good time, click here, hit "play" and watch Keller ask Romney about Democratic accusations that he's presided over "the third straight hit-and-run governorship." Not that the unflappable Romney reacts, but at least it's the right question.

Media Nation on citizen journalism

Globe West reporter Lisa Kocian takes a look at citizen journalism in Greater Boston, focusing on HopNews.com, which covers the town of Hopkinton. Among other things, she quotes me on this burgeoning movement.

Jeff Jarvis responds

Mr. Buzz Machine's post is here. To which I say, "Jeff! No one is proposing to kill Dan Froomkin's blog!" This isn't about the future of journalism -- it's a truth-in-labeling dispute. Sheesh.

Of dogs and moose

Last night I finally had a chance to read Ken Auletta's nearly-10,000-word New Yorker piece on New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The subhead asks, "Can Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., save the Times — and himself?" Unfortunately, Auletta is able only to muster a "maybe." Still, Auletta does his usual dogged, thorough job of reporting every angle, and his graceful writing makes this a surprisingly quick read.

One complaint: Other than a detailed rehash of Jayson Blair/ Howell Raines/ Judith Miller (including the reappearance of the moose), I didn't come away from the article with any clearer sense than I had before of what kind of business executive or publisher Sulzberger is. Auletta reports that Sulzberger has a reputation for being disengaged from the business side of his job, and well-intentioned but naive when it comes to journalism. But there's little here in the way of examples that we don't already know.

I did find myself feeling -- well, not exactly sorry for Judith Miller, but nevertheless appalled by Sulzberger's treatment of her. By Auletta's account, Sulzberger morphed from her biggest champion into someone who wanted nothing to do with her without ever having the grace to tell her why.

There are also several telling anecdotes, and this is perhaps the most brutal:

On September 12th, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was invited to a publisher's luncheon at which various Times editors and reporters were present. Such events are common in the life of the Times and other major newspapers, but this one had an odd start. A security dog that had earlier been sniffing for bombs got sick on the carpet of the room where the lunch was to be held. The mess was cleaned up, but the stench was still noticeable when Rice and her party arrived. The air-conditioning was turned up high to diminish the smell, but it was difficult to hear above the noise. Sulzberger greeted Rice and, according to the transcript posted on the State Department's Web site, began by asking how she thought the United States was "viewed right now by the United Nations," and whether it mattered. "And before you answer that question, just so everybody knows," he said, "it's pretty loud in this room, so my apologies. The bomb-sniffing dog threw up here." Everyone laughed, but Sulzberger continued to apologize, and, as some of the reporters present cringed, Rice finally said, "Thank you for sharing that."

More than anything, Auletta's story is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a family dynasty is determined to keep things in the family. Obviously there is no way someone with Sulzberger's flaws could have risen to the top of the Times Co. -- and the Times -- had he not been the son of Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger. The son's inadequacies are now being exposed for everyone to see.

Yet surely it's a good thing that the Times Co. hasn't passed into the hands of a huge, publicly traded corporation. Sulzberger does seem to know that a relentless focus on the bottom line would ultimately be bad for business, since the excellence of the Times' journalism is the only real product that he's got to sell. If only there were more newspaper executives who believed that.

Startling and disturbing

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that the United States is ranked sixth -- tied with the military dictatorship of Burma -- in the number of journalists it has imprisoned. Coming in ahead of them are China, Cuba, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan.

According to the CPJ, the U.S. is holding a total of five journalists -- four in Iraq and one at Guantánamo Bay.

Is it possible that these five are terrorists who were posing as journalists? Of course. But in reading the CPJ's descriptions of their cases, it becomes immediately clear that American officials have made no good-faith effort to explain themselves or to allow international scrutiny.

All buzz, no substance

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote a column over the weekend in which, among other things, she reported that the print folks are upset about a blog written for washingtonpost.com by Dan Froomkin.

The Post's national politics editor, John Harris, is among those concerned about having a blogger who is perceived as a liberal Bush-basher writing an online column labeled "White House Briefing," as though he were a Post political reporter. It strikes me as a legitimate concern, and Howell was right to propose that the column get a new name.

I'm not going to link to everything. Jay Rosen's got it all, as well as thoughtful Q&As with Harris, washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady and Froomkin himself. It's well worth reading. Keep in mind that no one, including Harris, is proposing to get rid of Froomkin's blog.

But I do want to say something about the ubiquitous blogging champion Jeff Jarvis, whose hyperkinetic presence is much sought-after by cable news programmers, and who is thought to be something of an expert on the emerging world of online journalism. If you do your homework and read the material Rosen assembled first, I guarantee you will be startled by this from Jarvis' blog, Buzz Machine:

Deborah Howell ... writes an ombudsman column for the Washington Post that illustrates, in its quotes from editors at the paper, the kind of clueless, destructive, and snobbish territoriality between print and online that is killing newspapers....

What a terrible insult and slap at a colleague who writes a very good, respected, and journalistic column for online. What a slap from a newsroom snot. [That would be the aforementioned John Harris.] But that is what newsrooms are like....

[T]he audience has clearly shown its support for the online Post over the printed one; the only reason online is not as successful is because advertisers are even more behind than newspaper editors. And the audience has clearly shown Froomkin their support. Perhaps the paper should be doing more of what he does. Did you ever think of that, o, vaunted newspaper editors?

This is just self-serving bloviation over what's really a minor matter: trying to make sure that a highly opinionated blogger who writes for washingtonpost.com isn't confused with Post reporters who are trying to cover the White House in a fair and neutral manner.

Rosen advances the conversation and adds to our understanding of what's going on inside the Post newsroom. Jarvis subtracts from it. Then again, Jarvis' only goal seems to be calling attention to himself.

Arthurian mythology

End-of-semester deadlines prevent me from immediately reading Ken Auletta's big piece on New York Times Co. chairman (and Times publisher) Arthur Sulzberger Jr. But Mark Jurkowitz has some highlights. Mark's take on Auletta's take: "[E]ven in his mid-50's, Sulzberger is too unseasoned and undisciplined for the role."

Following the Judith Miller meltdown, speculation was rampant (if unfounded) that Sulzberger might be pressured into giving up one of his jobs -- most likely the publisher's position. The buzz died down. But I wouldn't be surprised if Auletta's piece starts it up all over again.

Kaus thinks that despite the missteps of the past several years, the family isn't quite ready to give up on not-so-young Arthur: "A cool-headed outsider perspective suggests that at least one more anti-Pinch tidbit or scandal will be required for the Class B shareholders to end their family nightmare. Or at least start a new chapter."

Mother knows best

Brian Ballou has a terrific story in today's Boston Herald on Snoop Dogg's mother, Beverly Broadus Green, who is flying here to speak out against violence at a Dorchester middle school tomorrow.

Green tells Ballou: "Don't look at me for what he's done, look at me as Beverly. When you raise your children, they go out and do things. I don't like it and he knows I don't like it, but that's what pays the bills."

Not pacific about the Atlantic

Today's Globe has a great column by former Atlantic Monthly editor Robert Manning on the death of the Atlantic -- or at least the death of the Atlantic as We Know It, as the venerable monthly prepares to move to Washington.

Manning makes a valuable point, arguing that the Atlantic's outside-the-Beltway location was one of the things that made it a vital source of unconventional wisdom, as it was during the Vietnam War. He writes:

I realized that Boston was a far better site from which to take the measure of the sectors to which The Atlantic Monthly was devoted -- literature, science, art, and politics -- than was Washington. That is why I am disturbed that the magazine is leaving the city on the hill for the city on the Potomac.

Now fiction-free and increasingly neocon in outlook, the Atlantic is severing its last ties to the past: Cullen Murphy, the gifted managing editor, will not make the move. The Atlantic may survive and even thrive. But now it's just another Washington magazine. Don't be fooled by the nameplate.

Jeff Jacoby and the bishops

The year would not be complete without Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby's telling us that, yes, he's still in favor of the death penalty. What makes today's column special is that he presumes to teach religion to the Catholic bishops. It comes right after the sentence in which he writes, "I wouldn't presume to teach religion to a bishop."

Part one of Jacoby's two-parter is here.

Mary Mapes' Globe problem

When Jonathan Alter of Newsweek reviewed Mary Mapes' book for the New York Times Book Review on Nov. 20, he opened with a devastating reminder: that the Boston Globe had exploded the credibility of her chief source, Bill Burkett, months before she relied on him in producing the "60 Minutes" story on George W. Bush's National Guard service. That story, of course, ended her career.

Today Walter V. Robinson, editor of the Globe's Spotlight Team and the lead reporter on several stories about Bush's military service (or lack thereof) dating back to 2000, weighs in with his own review of Mapes' book, which is titled "Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power." Robinson recalls that Globe reporter Michael Rezendes, in February 2004, cast serious doubt on "Burkett's bizarre eyewitness account of how embarrassing documents in Bush's military records were destroyed in 1997."

The Rezendes account is still online. In it, he reports that George O. Conn, "a key witness to some of the events described by Burkett has told the Globe that the central elements of his story are false." As Robinson suggests, it is unimaginable that Mapes didn't take this more seriously before she rushed her unproven, unprovable allegations onto the air.

As we all know, the avalanche that would eventually destroy Mapes' career was begun with a few pebbles tossed by conservative bloggers, who charged that the memos on which CBS relied -- purportedly typed up in the early 1970s -- were almost certainly produced on a computer and printer of recent vintage, using Microsoft Word's default settings. Mapes has some choice words for the bloggers -- and Robinson has some choice words for her. Robinson writes:

Mapes's opinion of the bloggers is venomous: "A digital lynch mob at work," she calls them. "With political blogging," she explains, "there is very little gate-keeping, very little vetting of information before it goes out into the ether. For many of the more amateurish sites, the operators don't seem to want any fact-checking." And on and on.

How, one has to wonder, can Mapes be so deaf to the irony in her attack? It was her own amateurish, unvetted reporting that gave the bloggers all the ammunition they needed.

By contrast, Robinson is respectful of anchor Dan Rather -- too much so, in my view. If Rather had not been so overworked, Robinson writes, he probably would have asked for the clips -- and would have seen Rezendes' report, which would have "likely halted the broadcast."

Perhaps. But what of Rather's over-the-top defense of Mapes, and his statement to the outside commission that investigated the story that he regretted having issued an apology? What about the fact that the National Guard story tracks so closely with another phony-documents story in which Rather was involved in the 1970s?

Mapes may deserve most of the blame. But as Christiane Amanpour said when Peter Arnett tried to duck responsibility for CNN's Tailwind fiasco, even though he had anchored the flawed report and had allowed his byline to be published atop the Time magazine version of the story, "I object to this new image of correspondent as nincompoop."

Herald-ing the news

Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald has posted an alternate take on his paper's prospects. In a letter to Romenesko, he writes:

I work at a newspaper that underwent severe staffing cuts six months ago. The situation forced managers to make difficult and painful choices, and some talented people went out the door. It was predicted to be the death of our news operation and beginning of the end of the Boston Herald. We've heard that many times before, so it was hardly worth paying attention to.

In fact, our news operation experienced a rebirth.

Read the whole thing here.

More on the Herald sale

Dan Primack's latest:

First, it has been reconfirmed that the sale is for the entire company, which includes The Boston Herald, over 100 community papers in Eastern Massachusetts and a sweet piece of Boston real estate. Second, Wachovia [the firm that's managing the sale] received over 10 first-round bids last Thursday from both strategic and private equity players, of which a handful will be invited back into Round 2. Third, Heritage Partners [which owns Quincy's Patriot Ledger and Brockton's Enterprise] is looking more like a seller than a buyer. If it is ultimately involved in this deal, expect it to package its Enterprise NewsMedia LLC platform along with Herald Media for a buyer looking for significant regional expansion. Finally, the whole thing should be wrapped up by the end of Q1 2006.

Very interesting. If this all plays out -- and, granted, it sounds more complicated than the Red Sox' attempt to move Edgar Renteria -- it sounds like a big media company could move in and take charge not only of the Herald and its associated 100-plus community papers, but also of the Ledger and the Enterprise.

Two aspects of this are particularly worth watching:

1. Primack's reporting would seem to suggest that Herald Media's principal owner, Pat Purcell, is not looking just to replace the venture capitalists who want out, but to sell his entire company. Anything's possible, of course, but it looks like the end of the Purcell era looms. Unless --

2. Whoever buys Herald Media is so smitten with Purcell's newspaper-management skills that the new owners decide to keep Purcell on. But I wonder. By aggressively taking the Herald downscale over the past few years, it strikes me that Purcell blew the best opportunity he had to reinvent his flagship and turn it into something that would be more attractive to advertisers -- not to mention readers.

Wikipedia's mounting woes

There are reasons that the Encyclopedia Britannica has been around for 237 years. One of them, obviously, is that its editors do not allow anyone to post anything and claim it's authoritative. An example of that would be the Wikipedia.

It's easy to see why the Wikipedia had become a darling among Internet users. It's well-designed, free and comprehensive. It also taps into the notion -- a dubious one, in my estimation -- that the "wisdom of the crowd" is superior to that of professional editors. (When did the "madness of the mob" become the "wisdom of the crowd," anyway? When they got computers?)

Right now the Wikipedia is under siege as the result of two scandals. The better-known involves former Robert Kennedy aide John Siegenthaler, who wrote an op-ed piece for USA Today last week about how he'd been falsely cast as a conspirator in both Kennedy assassinations -- and that this horrifying error was not removed for months.

But there's more. It seems that Adam Curry, the former MTV veejay who helped launch podcasting, has been caught messing around with the Wikipedia entry on that subject, possibly to aggrandize his own role. Curry tells CNET's News.com that his motives were pure, and whines that he's now been cast as "the asshole of the week."

Back to Siegenthaler. According to this News.com piece, the Wikipedia may have some responsibility for the slime job, but it's probably not liable. The reason is that a provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 exempts Internet service providers from legal liability for anything posted on their sites.

As News.com notes, publishers -- even exclusively online publishers such as Salon -- may be successfully sued for libel by those who are able to demonstrate that they were defamed with false information, and that the publisher acted with some degree of fault. But ISPs were given a get-out-of-court card in the 1996 law on the theory that it would be impossible to monitor the thousands, even millions, of posts from their users.

News.com quotes Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as saying that the guiding case in this area is Zeran v. America Online, 1997 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (not the Third Circuit, as News.com claims). Kenneth Zeran was the victim of a malicious AOL subscriber who posted messages in which, claiming to be Zeran, he offered T-shirts for sale that mocked victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. The court ruled that the 1996 law clearly exempted AOL from any liability.

Now, I don't want to go toe to toe with a lawyer. Logically, though, the Wikipedia strikes me as being more of a publishing venture like Salon than an ISP like America Online or EarthLink. The Wikipedia's model of allowing anyone to contribute content doesn't strike me as somehow magically transforming it into an ISP.

But those are questions for lawyers and judges to decide. Either way, the Wikipedia's honeymoon is over.

Journalism that tells a story

My Northeastern colleague Bill Kirtz attended the Nieman Narrative Journalism conference this past weekend. Among the speakers: new-journalism giant Tom Wolfe and former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll.

The predominant theme was that old-fashioned story-telling may be an effective way to keep readers -- yet the resources it takes may be more than today's corporate owners are willing to spend.

Here is Kirtz's report.

No comments

Adam Gaffin checks out Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón's new blog and finds evidence in this post (about why he's not allowing real-time comments) that Chacón's technical knowledge is wanting.

Still, I'm not sure I want Chacón to turn his blog into an open forum. Steve wrote the other day that Chacón would be likely to receive 10 times as many comments as Media Nation. Try 100 times. I want someone to wade through the comments Chacón receives and post only those that are the most on-point.

More on the Armenians

Michael Jonas' column in the current Boston Globe City Weekly is on state Sen. Steve Tolman, D-Watertown, who was the co-author of the 1998 law that requires Massachusetts schoolchildren to be taught about fate of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Jonas writes:

Tolman, who urged the state to remove from the curriculum guide any references to Turkish websites that contest the genocide label, says he's all for freewheeling debate about matters on which reasonable people may disagree. He says this simply is not such a case.

"You cannot change historical fact by saying it did not happen," he says. "They tried to wipe out everything to make it look like Armenians never existed," he says of the Turkish rampage. Tolman points to a well-known 1915 telegram to the US secretary of state from the American envoy to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, in which he warns of a "campaign of race extermination" underway against the Armenians.

Because the question of whether or not the deaths of up to one million Armenians was genocide has become controversial, I thought I'd check and see what the Turkish government has to say about the matter. I found an essay titled "Armenian Allegations of Genocide: The Issue and the Facts." Here is a sample:

A century of ever-increasing conflict, beginning roughly in 1820 and culminating with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, characterized the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire participated in no fewer than a dozen named wars, nearly all to the detriment of the empire and its citizens. The empire contracted against an onslaught of external invaders and internal nationalist independence movements. In this context -- an imperiled empire waging and losing battles on remote and disparate fronts, grasping to continue a reign of over 700 years -- must the tragic experience of the Ottoman Armenians of Eastern Anatolia be understood. For during these waning days of the Ottoman Empire did millions die, Muslim, Jew, and Christian alike.

Yet Armenian Americans have attempted to extricate and isolate their history from the complex circumstances in which their ancestors were embroiled. In so doing, they describe a world populated only by white-hatted heroes and black-hatted villains. The heroes are always Christian and the villains are always Muslim. Infusing history with myth, Armenian Americans vilify the Republic of Turkey, Turkish Americans, and ethnic Turks worldwide. Armenian Americans bent on this prosecution choose their evidence carefully, omitting all evidence that tends to exonerate those whom they presume guilty, ignoring important events and verifiable accounts, and sometimes relying on dubious or prejudiced sources and even falsified documents. Though this portrayal is necessarily one-sided and steeped in bias, the Armenian American community presents it as a complete history and unassailable fact.

A lot of observers, including Michael Jonas and Media Nation, have tried to draw an analogy between the Armenian catastrophe and the Holocaust -- that is, we have asked, without knowing the answer, whether this is a story with two legitimate sides, or whether the no-it-wasn't-genocide faction is no more credible than those who deny that the Holocaust took place.

In that light, I think the Turkish statement is important, not because I accept it at face value (I don't), but because of what it represents. There is no credible person, government or organization that denies the reality of what happened to the Jews during World War II. But the Turkish government -- a semi-democratic, friendly, pro-Western regime -- does deny that what happened to the Armenians during World War I was genocide.

Regardless of who's right and who's wrong, I think Turkey's position needs to be taken into account.

Sunday-morning notes

A few quick observations:

1. Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón writes today that he's started a blog. You can find it here. Cruise on over, and you'll run into his assertion that "this particular blog does not yet have the technical capability to allow people to post their comments directly." Really? Blogger.com does, and it's free. Then again, as much as I'm for transparency, if Chacón opens things up to all comers, there will be so many idiotic comments to wade through that it will be nearly impossible to find the worthwhile stuff. A dilemma.

2. Genocide historians Peter Balakian and George H. Stanton follow up in a Globe op-ed piece on the dispute over the Armenian catastrophe of World War I. Massachusetts education officials have eliminated materials that suggest the deaths of one million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire may not have constituted genocide. The question: Did those Massachusetts officials somehow abridge the First Amendment, as my friend Harvey Silverglate, the noted civil-liberties lawyer, contends? The answer, according to Balakian and Stanton: No. They write:

The Turkish government and its supporters are free to express their thoughts, but it does not follow that their genocide denial websites are entitled to endorsement in Massachusetts classrooms.

The First Amendment permits us to express anything, but is does not enable a foreign government's falsification of history to be taught in our public schools.

To which I add: They're right if they're right. That is, if there is absolutely no legitimate scholarship showing that what happened may not have been genocide, then I agree with Balakian and Stanton. But I don't know the answer to that contentious question.

3. Katharine Seelye has more in today's New York Times on what's good -- and bad -- about the Wikipedia, adding some details to John Siegenthaler's harrowing tale of anonymous libel. I'm not going to give up linking to Wikipedia entries, but I'm going to look at them more closely than ever.

4. Finally, a production note: Yesterday I made the switch to Ecto (or, as the programmer would have it, ecto), a sort-of word-processing program that makes it easy to write and post blog entries without having to go to the Blogger.com Web site.

Among other things, Ecto makes it simple to have links open in windows of their own. Now, if you click on a link, Media Nation will remain open rather than disappearing into the ether.

Not so fast

Media Nation reader Harvey Silverglate points out that I was too quick to endorse Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole's approach in urging merchants to stop selling T-shirts that say "Stop Snitchin."

In fact, in a letter (PDF file) to O'Toole and Mayor Tom Menino, ACLU officials Carol Rose and John Reinstein note that the not-so-gentle art of police persuasion can be considered just as much an abridgment of the First Amendment as yanking the shirts off the store shelf and slapping handcuffs on the proprietor. Rose and Reinstein write:

Over forty years ago, in Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963), the United States Supreme Court held that this type of official pressure to eliminate objectionable material violates the First Amendment. In that case, a state created commission had circulated to bookstores a list of publications which it considered objectionable. The notice sent by the commission solicited or thanked the booksellers in advance for their "cooperation" and reminded them that obscenity could be prosecuted. The result was that the objectionable books were no longer offered for sale. In the Supreme Court, the commission argued that it did not regulate or suppress the books, but simply exhorted booksellers not to offer them for sale. The Court disagreed. Although the commission had no formal power, it "deliberately set out to achieve the suppression of publications deemed 'objectionable' and succeeded in its aim."

The T-shirts' message, needless to say, is completely irresponsible, and could help contribute to an atmosphere of intimidation that makes it harder to solve murders and other violent crimes. No store owner should carry them. But that's a different issue.

T-shirt politics

There's no question that Boston Mayor Tom Menino's threat to confiscate "Stop Snitchin" T-shirts from stores that sell them would be a violation of the First Amendment's freedom-of-speech guarantee (Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here).

But everyone ought to chill out -- it's not going to happen.

Menino's no fool, and a little bit of over-the-top anti-crime rhetoric is hardly surprising given the rise in the city's murder rate. This morning, though, Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole told WBZ Radio (AM 1030) that city officials would restrict themselves to asking merchants to do the right thing by getting rid of the shirts. There's nothing wrong with that.

Here (PDF file) is the ACLU of Massachusetts press release on the subject. Perhaps its quick response was the reason for O'Toole's measured reaction.

And by the way, can't our two dailies at least get it right in reporting on the T-shirt's message? The Globe has it as "Stop Snitching." The Herald says it's "Stop Snitchin'." But the Herald also runs a photo of one of the shirts, and it clearly says, "Stop Snitchin" -- no "g," no grammatically correct apostrophe.

Two cheers for the Wikipedia

Like many bloggers, Media Nation is fond of linking to the Wikipedia, the free, user-created and -maintained online encyclopedia. But I do wonder where some of this stuff comes from, and I try to give the items to which I link a critical scan to make sure they're rooted in reality.

I've noticed that, increasingly, students are citing it the way those of an earlier generation would have cited the Encyclopedia Britannica. Generally, the information seems reasonable. But you never know.

So here is a cautionary tale: a column in USA Today by former Robert Kennedy aide John Siegenthaler, who says that, for 132 days, the Wikipedia's entry on him included false information that he had once been a suspect in both Kennedy assassinations. Siegenthaler, understandably, calls the Wikipedia "a flawed and irresponsible research tool."

Last July, NPR's "On the Media" took a look at the Wikipedia. When co-host Bob Garfield asked New York University professor and wiki fan Clay Shirky about what happens to bogus material uploaded to the Wikipedia, Shirky responded with this:

There was actually a very interesting study done up at IBM in Cambridge around a project called History Flow that looked at the history of vandalism for highly contentious subjects on the Wikipedia, whether it was abortion or Islam or Microsoft, or any topic that got some group exercised. And what they found was that vandalism tended to last less than two minutes. People get e-mailed when a page is changed, so it's not passive monitoring. There's highly active monitoring around page changes, particularly for contentious pages, so that the vandalism is found and undone very quickly.

To which it now seems reasonable to add: Not always.

Herald sale update

Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey today confirms that the owners of Quincy's Patriot Ledger and Brockton's Enterprise are interested in buying the Boston Herald and its suburban affiliate, Community Newspaper Co. Bailey writes:

[A] private equity firm, keen on synergy and cost savings, could merge many of the operations while preserving the papers' identities. Could there, for instance, be a single headquarters, and printing plant, for all the papers? And it need not be in Boston. The Boston Herald property, owned separately by the Purcell family, could be a valuable development site.

Bailey couldn't reach Herald/CNC principal owner Pat Purcell. But Purcell tells his own paper: "We're very encouraged by the level of interest in investing with us. We would hope it could be concluded in the next several weeks."

Still unknown is the meaning of "it." A sale of the entire operation? New investors, with Purcell remaining as the chief executive? Stay tuned.

No newspapers ≠ no news

I'm perplexed by Sydney Schanberg's latest in the Village Voice, lamenting a future in which the Internet has supplanted newspapers. "[T]he puzzlement," he asks, "is where will the new digital providers of information get their fresh news?" And though Schanberg swears his intent is not to slam the bloggers, be aware that you will find the obligatory reference to pajamas.

I assume -- I hope -- that the "new digital providers of information" will be newspapers, transformed and perhaps revitalized by their move to an all-digital or almost-all-digital incarnation. Of course, the biggest ongoing story in journalism right now is who's going to pay the bills. But that's what we're all trying to figure out.

Schanberg concludes with a laundry list of important stories broken in recent weeks by the Old Media, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Journal, the Washington Post, The Nation and Rolling Stone.

Uh, Mr. Schanberg -- did you have the print versions of every one of those publications? Or did you read some of them on, you know, the Internet?