If you want to see how I spent part of my Friday morning instead of what I was supposed to be doing, read here.
My Facebook Friends have already seen the visuals, but if you haven’t, click here if you dare.
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Category: media
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A new verb has entered our language: To “Delauter,” as in, according to the Fredericksburg (Va.) News–Post:
Frederick County Councilman Kirby Delauter wrote on social media that he plans to sue The Frederick News-Post if his name or any reference to him appears in print without his permission.
In a Facebook status posted Saturday, Delauter said he was upset with reporter Bethany Rodgers for “an unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article” published Jan. 3 about his and Councilman Billy Shreve’s concerns over County Council parking spaces.
“So let me be clear…………do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future,” Delauter, R-District 5, said in a Facebook status update.
The post had garnered more than 45 “likes” and roughly 50 comments by Monday night. Rodgers responded to Delauter’s post Sunday afternoon, stating she will continue to contact the councilman for comment as well as print his name and reference in the newspaper.
“First of all, there is no requirement to get a person’s authorization in order to mention them in the paper, particularly if that person is an elected official,” Rodgers wrote in a comment below the original post. “It is not just our right but our responsibility to report on people like you, who occupy positions of trust in our government, and I make no apologies for doing that.”
Delauter said he would pursue legal action if his name or reference were published again.
“Use my name again unauthorized and you’ll be paying for an Attorney,” Delauter wrote. “Your rights stop where mine start.”
Delauter did not respond to multiple calls for comment Monday.
Terry Headlee, The News-Post‘s managing editor, said the newspaper typically does not seek permission or authorization to publish a person’s name or reference, except in the case of children.
“Kirby Delauter can certainly decline to comment on any story,” Headlee said. “But to threaten to sue a reporter for publishing his name is so ridiculously stupid that I’m speechless. It’s just a pointless, misguided attempt to intimidate and bully the press and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of the role of a public servant.”
Shreve, R-at large, told The News-Post in a phone interview he supported Delauter taking legal actions.
“I did not see his post, but I think The News-Post is extremely biased and someone should sue them,” Shreve said.
When asked if news media outlets should obtain permission to publish an elected official’s name or reference, Shreve said, “I think media outlets are cowards and they hide behind the label of journalists and that’s a bully pulpit to expand their liberal (agenda).”
At the risk of getting “sued” because I’m not asking his permission either: Here is Delauter’s message to the reporter, passed on by Eugene Volokh, who didn’t ask for permission either:
Volokh adds:
Uh, Council Member: In our country, newspapers are actually allowed to write about elected officials (and others) without their permission. It’s an avantgarde experiment, to be sure, but we’ve had some success with it.
Red Maryland adds:
Needless to say, Kirby Delauter doesn’t seem to understand that this is not how any of this works. We have a right to freedom of speech in this country, a right that was created expressly to allow for criticism of elected officials and those who are in the political world. I’m not entirely sure how Delauter made it this far in political life without recognizing that basic and fundamental aspect of American society, nor am I particularly aware as to how he ever won elected office as a Republican without the most basic understanding of the Bill of Rights. Delauter has every right in the world to not talk to Bethany Rodgers (or anybody else, for that matter), but to say that he has legal protection from having his name mentioned in the newspaper is bizarre and chilling.
Kirby Delauter needs to do the right thing and apologize…..
Actually, Delauter probably needs to resign. He is violating his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution with this theory of the First Amendment that even politicians who hate the media wouldn’t advocate.
Maybe Shreve should too. At least he should refrain from providing legal advice, since bias isn’t grounds on which to successfully sue the news media, or, without some sort of action, anyone else. -
Columbia Journalism Review printed this opinion, which probably should be prefaced with music:
The Interview is a dangerous movie. The first victim was Sony, which had electronic files hacked in an intrusion that revealed shocking details: like the fact that one of its executives wanted to cast a black actor as James Bond, and that many people at Sony can’t spell. But another more serious group of victims haven’t yet been mentioned: journalists who work in dangerous parts of the world.
The film, which was released over the Christmas holiday, depicts two goofy journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and who are recruited by the CIA to kill him. Rogen’s character, the producer of a television interview program, was supposedly educated at my alma mater, Columbia School of Journalism, but seemed to have no qualms about crossing what I recall was one of the most indelibly-inked lines of journalism ethics: don’t do the bidding of the CIA.
Why make a big deal of a movie that’s clearly fiction? Because it plays right into the farcical notions of the world’s tyrannical leaders – that journalists are secretly working for the CIA, an assumption which carries tragic consequences.
Reporter James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS earlier this year, was accused of working for MI-6. Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari was arrested in Iran on suspicion of being a spy. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is still in an Iranian prison, accused of espionage. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was accused of working for the CIA before his execution. The history of kidnapped journalists—from Terry Anderson in Beirut, to Bob Simon in Baghdad, to David Rohde in Serbia—is filled with tragic tales of reporters being mistaken for spies.
It doesn’t help when pop culture reinforces the false image of reporters-turned-special agents. Or agents posing as reporters. The critically acclaimed TV show Homeland this past season had the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Carrie Mathison, pretending to be a reporter in order to convince a young man to reveal information about his terrorist uncle. Mathison is a rogue agent, and the mission is not authorized by Langley, but the perception of spies posing as reporters is there for viewers all over the world to see.
There is good reason for the confusion, since CIA agents did, indeed, use the journalism cover for many years, posing as agents using fake media credentials. And throughout several decades of the Cold War, the agency recruited hundreds of journalists to do their bidding as well. The cleverly-named Operation Mockingbird was run by top agency officials, including Richard Helms, the future CIA director who started his career as a reporter and famously interviewed Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. There’s no doubt that Helms and others at the CIA realized how the work of journalists is similar to that of spies—getting close to important sources and gathering information from them. In the hyper-patriotic post-war era, it was apparently easy to recruit some of of the top news organizations in the US to participate.
The Church Commission hearings in 1976 put an end to these practices, and that year then-CIA director George H.W. Bush announced: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”
That would mean that Rogen and Franco’s characters, with their plot to poison the North Korean leader, would have been subverting the law.
The FBI hasn’t helped matters. In 2007, an agent posed as a reporter with the Associated Press and emailed the teenaged suspect in several bomb threats at a Seattle high school. Appealing to the bomber’s narcissism, the fake reporter asked him to review an article, and by clicking on the link, the high school student revealed his location, leading to his arrest.
In The New York Times, FBI director James Comey wrote a letter to the editor arguing that the tactic was legal and appropriate, since it did not result in any actual work of journalism. But Comey missed the point. By blurring the line, the FBI added fuel to future suspicions that any journalist could be an undercover agent.
It is a sad fact that there will surely be more detentions, kidnappings and executions of journalists in the future, and some will likely be accused of being spies. The blame for those attacks will be squarely on the terrorists, but there is no reason for Hollywood to give them any more reason to be confused about what reporters do abroad—report, not spy.
The list of journalists accused of being spies, including the deceased Foley and Pearl, seems unbelievable. There’s not a single spy skill other than observation that a reporter would seem to possess. A government can use an accusation excuse for whatever ends it feels like, including, in Pearl’s case, executing a Jewish American.
To suggest that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will cause problems for journalists because of a movie portrayal of journalists as assassins (pause while I collect myself after amusement over those last three words) requires belief in Kim’s rationality.
There is, however, the case of Wisconsin’s own Austin Goodrich, as one commenter points out:
Austin Goodrich, an American spy who used credentials as a journalist, including from CBS News, to establish his cover during cold war postings abroad, died on June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.
The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Kristina Goodrich said.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent. Several who did so, along with some top news executives, later said that during the cold war the separation between the news media and the government was considerably more negotiable than it subsequently became. However, it was not until the 1970s, after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the Central Intelligence Agency, that reports by Rolling Stone magazine and The New York Times revealed that journalists from myriad news organizations had served the agency in various capacities, sometimes with the full knowledge of their employers. Mr. Goodrich became one of the first examples of a journalist-spy to be publicly disclosed.
The Times reported that at least 22 American news organizations, including CBS News and Time, Life and Newsweek magazines, as well as The Times itself, “had employed, though sometimes only on a casual basis, American journalists who were also working for the C.I.A.,” and that “in a few instances the organizations were aware of the C.I.A. connection, but most of them appear not to have been.”
That comment was preceded by a comment that half-engaged in paranoia but made one good point:
If journalists don’t want to be identified as stooges for the state, maybe they should stop acting like it. Be more hostile to authority — government, collaborators, bourgeois sensibilities, and last but not least editors — instead of cozying up to them and glorifying them.
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That Was the Year That Was, which is based on the old British TV show …
… is a tradition of, well, anywhere I’ve worked dating back to years beginning with the number 19.
Thanks to poor Internet connections (this means you, Centurylink) and my overloaded schedule, this will be more brief than previous years, which is too bad because 2014 was a really strange year.
The biggest Wisconsin political news of 2014 was obviously the reelection of Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s political Energizer bunny …
… or perhaps Wisconsin’s own Obi Wan Kenobi …
and Republicans controlling both houses of the Legislature again, in fact expanding their majorities in both houses.
Democrats tried to pick off Walker in Recallarama in 2012, and failed. Democrats then came up with the focus-group-tested Mary Burke — rich businessperson with suitable liberal credentials, or so it seemed — and failed again.
Burke represents a grotesque failure on the part of Wisconsin’s news media to investigate the background of a candidate for public office. It took the non-mainstream media to point out the giant holes in Burke’s resume at Trek Bicycle — for instance, why she left — and ask such inconvenient questions as why no non-Burke could attest to her work at Trek, or whether she was qualified to be governor. The voters decided she wasn’t.
The economy seems better this year only because of the steep drop in gas prices, something opposed by Barack Obama. There is really no other reason to think the economy is better other than more money in people’s pockets due to said gas price drop.
Obama proved himself as one of the most effective presidents ever by delivering the Senate to Republican control and expanding the GOP’s control of the House of Representatives. It makes one wonder why Democrats continue to slavishly, blindly, stupidly support him.
As it happens, I got to witness the two strangest Wisconsin political stories this year, both of which involved Sen. Dale Schultz (R–Richland Center). At the start of the year, Schultz announced he wasn’t running for reelection, and said he wouldn’t endorse Rep. Howard Marklein (R–Spring Green), who announced in April 2013 he was running for Schultz’s seat.
Democrat Ernie Wittwer of Hillpoint, a retired state employee, announced he was running for Schultz’s seat. Unimpressed, state Democratic Party officials convinced Pat Bomhack of Spring Green, former aide for the phony maverick Sen. Russ Feingold, to, instead of running for Marklein’s seat (for the second time, after Bomhack lost the 2012 Democratic primary), run against Marklein. Democratic Party chair (if there is such a thing) Chris Larson even endorsed Bomhack, choosing one Democrat over another.
The early morning after the Aug. 12 primary, Wittwer was announced defeating Bomhack by two votes. That margin grew to seven after the county canvasses. Then Bomhack requested a recount, and more than 100 ballots from Monroe disappeared. That and irregularities in other counties switched Wittwer’s nine-vote win to a 33-vote Bomhack win. Wittwer’s wife and campaign manager sent a letter to 17th Senate District newspapers that burned holes in the newsprint on which it was printed over how state Democrats treated her husband and favored a pretty obvious carpetbagger.
Then, two weeks before the general election, the state Democratic Party sent out a flyer with a picture of Schultz and Bomhack together, with a quote from a Schultz story in The Capital Times:
“Pat Bomhack is a good fit for the district because his values and positions on the issues that people care about, from my perspective, are similar to mine.”
Was that an endorsement? Both Schultz and his campaign manager weaseled out of using the E word, with Schultz saying, “I think people are smart enough to read between the lines, and I encourage them to do their research and come to their own conclusion.”
Well, here’s the conclusion: Marklein beat Bomhack, and Marklein is being succeeded by another Republican, Dodgeville Mayor Todd Novak. (Who won his race by 65 votes.) So Schultz went out the door 0 for 2 in trying to influence the 2015–16 Legislature.
That, I thought, had to be the strangest thing I would witness in 2014. (Other than, perhaps, having a tornado pass within one-half mile of me and another apparently pass over closer than that, three days after a murder.) Then, two weeks after the election, I went to a speech by Madison Catholic Diocese Bishop Robert Morlino. Or so I thought. A journalist is supposed to report on stories, not be the story, but I ended up doing both, continuing my professional tradition of making people really angry at me.
It was cold this year — hideously (though sadly not abnormally) cold in the winter, cold in the spring, and below-normal in temperatures in the summer. The fall was OK, November was cold and snowy, but December was warmer than normal, giving us a brown Christmas after the snow melted away. Of course, the wind chill is below zero outside today. Wisconsin weather sucks.
The Packers had a brief 2013 playoff trip (which took place in January), then won the NFC North for the fourth year in a row, thanks to a legendary last-game performance by quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who channeled his inner Favre by returning to the field after an injury. The Badgers made the basketball Final Four, which was cool. The Badgers had a reasonably good football season with another strange coda, the departure of coach Gary Andersen after two seasons. But that worked out much better than it could have. The Brewers, meanwhile, looked inconceivably good for much of the season, then deflated like the Hindenburg. One suspects, given the upgrades to the south, that there will be no potential postseason excitement for the Brewers in 2015.
As always, may your 2015 be better than your 2014. I would say “less interesting” too, but that would be against my professional interests.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
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One thing Matt Kittle reported …
Agents for the embattled state Government Accountability Board continued a zealous campaign finance investigation into dozens of conservative groups even after judges who preside over the board voted to shut it down, according to a previously sealed brief made public Friday.
The documents, from an updated complaint filed by conservative plaintiffs in a case against the GAB, appear to support claims that the campaign finance, ethics and election law regulator is a rogue agency. They also show that the GAB considered using the state’s John Doe law to investigate key state conservatives and even national figures, including Fox News’ Sean Hannity and WTMJ Milwaukee host Charlie Sykes.
… makes the aforementioned Charlie Sykes observe:
Back in October 2013, according to court documents, Milwaukee’s Democrat DA John Chisholm and other John Doe investigators launched pre-dawn raids against conservative activists …
On Friday afternoon, I found out … that could have been my house. That could have been me. My computers. My phones. My Ipad. They could have seized all of my notes, including my show prep. They could also seized my wife’s computer and phones, and trust me, she wouldn’t have been happy about that.
Given the way the John Doe law works, prosecutors would also have slapped me with a gag order to prevent me from talking about any of it. In theory, I would not have been able to talk about the attack of the Speech Police on conservatives here. And maybe that was the point, because legally, the idea of targeting the media makes no sense at all. (Spoiler alert: there is a “media exemption” from campaign finance laws.)
Honestly, part of me wishes they had gone ahead and tried – we have some awfully good lawyers who would have made short work of their hackery.
But here is the more chilling reality: reading the notes released Friday, one gets the impression that the probe was hatched deep in the fever swamps of the left. The Doe, it turns out, was the deepest expression of the progressive Id: all of the malice, all of the disdain for conservatives, and an obsessive desire to rewrite the First Amendment. The prosecution theory was based on what the left wanted the law to be, not what the Supreme Court has repeatedly said the constitution demanded. But they went ahead anyway. Whatever the original pretext may have been, the Doe had morphed into an all-out assault on political speech that included the media itself – an assault remarkable for its apparent cluelessness on First Amendment law.
We also now know that the GAB was deliberately flouting the law in multiple ways and deliberately keeping their activities secret from those who were legally intended to give oversight. They were using the power of the government to persecute — not prosecute — their political enemies. This goes beyond malfeasance.
For the record: no prosecutor ever contacted me and I have no idea why they might have wanted to subpoena me other than the obvious fact that they really, really don’t like conservatives … and absolutely loathe talk radio. Confession here: I do keep in touch with conservative politicians; I am in frequent touch with conservative activists, as well as writers, commentators, and pundits. That’s because I am a conservative talk show host and to my knowledge that has not yet been declared to be a criminal activity. But apparently that was not for lack of trying.
The fact that the Doe prosecutors thought that it might be illegal tells me that their theory of illegal coordination was so sweeping that it overflowed the banks of the First Amendment. No wonder two judges shut it down.
Perhaps because calmer voices prevailed (or perhaps because they realized they were about to run into a legal buzz saw), the prosecutors never followed through on the idea to slap me with a subpoena or a search warrant. But, apparently, they continued their pursuit by other means. Before Judge Peterson quashed the subpoenas and ordered the return of property seized in the October 3 raids, according to sources close to the Doe probe, the Milwaukee DA’s office tried to get “Charlie Sykes’ emails” through other groups targeted in the probes, by negotiating the terms of the subpoenas served on other organizations.
So it was worse than we thought. And we thought it was pretty bad.
To quote an ’80s infomercial: Wait! There’s more!
But a savvy reader also noted the other key items included in the documents that were unsealed by Waukesha County Judge Lee Dreyfus Jr.:
1. GAB used the Gardner case (from Doe 1) to investigate Friends of Scott Walker, but not Democratic groups who received money from Gardner. Paragraph 43.
2. GAB Director Kennedy and Jonathan Becker got themselves and the GAB “admitted” to John Doe II right after it was convened in early September 2012. They did this without the knowledge or approval of the GAB Board, didn’t tell the Board about it in the October 2012 meeting, and then told the Board in its December 2012 meeting that they had learned of Doe II after the October meeting. This was false. It’s important because it shows that GAB staff were taking steps to avoid triggering board votes and disclosures as required by law. Paragraph 51.
3. The GAB and DA’s decided to set up and use a shadow email system of Gmail accounts solely for purposes of the Doe,keeping their emails off of the official Wisconsin system. This was to avoid discovery of what they had done. Paragraph 52. ,,,
5. The GAB and Doe prosecutors misled the Attorney General about the role GAB had already had since the outset of Doe II. Paragraph 56. …
8. The GAB came up with the idea of paying for the special prosecutor out of GAB funds so that the state special prosecutor fund would not have to be used. Paragraph 58. …
11. Schmitz was hired by GAB on August 7, 2013, to serve as a special “investigator” for GAB at $130 per hour. Schmitz worked with GAB and the Milwaukee County DA to get himself appointed by John Doe Judge Kluka “on her own motion.” They did this by drafting a letter to Kluka that would be signed by each of the county prosecutors involved in the Doe. Schmitz personally obtained the signatures of at least some of the prosecutors. Paragraphs 65-68. This is significant because it shows the prosecutors, Schmitz, and GAB were trying to circumvent a statute that otherwise didn’t permit a special prosecutor to be hired. Second, the argued that a special prosecutor was needed because GAB had no statewide authority. But the letter did not disclose to Kluka that GAB was already involved, had already hired Schmitz, and had already agreed to pay him $130 per hour. Judge Kluka signed an order requiring the Wisconsin Department of Administration to pay Schmitz $130 per hour, when in fact, GAB was going to be paying Schmitz. No one ever informed Kluka that they were not following her order, and had never intended to follow it. …
21. The GAB broke the law by participating in Doe II for 10 months without opening an investigation. This enabled them to avoid notice requirements. Paragraph 99-104.
22. The GAB effectively referred the matter to the district attorneys of 5 counties in early July 2013, and at that point, it could not continue its own investigation. Paragraph 105. The GAB believed it had “probable cause,” which forces it to either refer the matter to prosecutors or start its own civil proceeding, but it did neither so that it could continue to secretly and illegally gather documents and evidence. Paragraphs 107-108.
These are the kind of “investigations” taking place in Wisconsin in lieu of investigating actual crimes against people and property. Particularly in the most crime-ridden part of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
As a friend of mine put it: No wonder Barack Obama wants to normalize relations with Cuba. We are becoming Cuba.
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Jeff Jacoby thinks the job of a journalist is not what some journalists think it is:
Journalists, says Jorge Ramos, shouldn’t make a fetish of accuracy and impartiality.
Speaking last month at the International Press Freedom Awards, Univision’s influential news anchor told his audience that while he has “nothing against objectivity,” journalism is meant to be wielded as “a weapon for a higher purpose: justice.” Of course, he continued, it is important to get the facts right — five deaths should be reported as five, not six or seven. But “the best of journalism happens when we, purposely, stop pretending that we are neutral and recognize that we have a moral obligation to tell truth to power.”
As it happens, Ramos delivered those remarks soon after the publication of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s 9,000-word story in Rolling Stone vividly describing the alleged gang rape of a freshman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity party. Erdely had reportedly spent months researching the story, and its explosive impact was — at first — everything a tell-truth-to-power journalist could have wished: national attention, public outrage, campus protests, suspension of UVA’s fraternities, and a new “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual assault.
But Rolling Stone’s blockbuster has imploded, undone by independent reporting at The Washington Post that found glaring contradictions and irregularities with the story, and egregious failures in the way it was written and edited. Erdely, it turns out, had taken Jackie’s horrific accusations on faith, never contacting the alleged rapists for a comment or response. In a rueful “Note to Our Readers,” managing editor Will Dana writes: “[W]e have come to the conclusion . . . that the truth would have been better served by getting the other side of the story.”
To a layman, that “conclusion” might seem so excruciatingly self-evident that Rolling Stone’s debacle can only be explained as gross negligence, or a reckless disregard for the truth. But much of the journalistic priesthood holds to a different standard, one that elevates the higher truth of an overarching “narrative” — in this case, that a brutal and callous “rape culture” pervades American college campuses — above the mundane details of fact. Erdely had set out in search of a grim sexual-assault story, and settled on Jackie’s account of being savaged by five men (or was it seven?) at a fraternity bash was just the vehicle she’d been looking for. Why get tangled in conflicting particulars?
“Maybe [Erdely] was too credulous,” suggests longtime media critic Howard Kurtz in a piece on Rolling Stone’sjournalistic train wreck. “Along with her editors.”
Or maybe this is what happens when newsrooms and journalism schools decide, like Jorge Ramos, that although they have “nothing against objectivity,” their real aspiration is to use journalism “as a weapon for a higher purpose.” Somehow it didn’t come as a shock to learn that when Dana was invited to lecture at Middlebury College in 2006, his speech was titled: “A Defense of Biased Reporting.”
Even after the UVA story began to collapse, voices were raised in defense of the narrative over mere fact.
“This is not to say that it does not matter whether or not Jackie’s story is accurate,” Julia Horowitz, an assistant managing editor at the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, wrote in Politico. But “to let fact-checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”
Well, if the “narrative” is what matters most, checking the facts too closely can indeed be a huge mistake. Because facts, those stubborn things, have a tendency to undermine cherished narratives — particularly narratives grounded in emotionalism, memory, or ideology.
It’s a temptation to which journalists have always been susceptible. In the 1930s, to mention one notorious example, Walter Duranty recycled Soviet propaganda, assuring his New York Times readers that no mass murders were occurring under Stalin’s humane and enlightened rule. Duranty is reviled today. But the willingness to subordinate a passion for accuracy to a supposedly higher passion for “justice” (or “equality” or “fairness” or “diversity” or “peace” or “the environment”) persists.
Has the time come to give up on the ideal of objective, unbiased journalism? Would media bias openly acknowledged be an improvement over news media that only pretend not to take sides?
This much is clear: The public isn’t deceived. Trust in the media has been drifting downward for years. According to Gallup, Americans’ confidence that news is being reported “fully, accurately, and fairly” reached an all-time low this year.
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A certain newspaper editor went to cover the speech of a certain Roman Catholic bishop.
This happened at the speech. And the editor wrote this about what happened.
Before the editor could write that, though, a daily newspaper wrote a story, including interviewing the editor. And said daily newspaper also commented thereupon.
So did others, favoring and opposing the editor’s actions.
Religion in the Media saw both sides:
The two engaged in a civil back-and-forth, where the bishop argued that no unauthorized photos should be taken and told him to delete the ones he already had, and Prestegard argued that they were in a public venue and the bishop was a public figure. This ultimately led Bishop Morlino to stop the talk and walk the crowd to St. Augustine, the parish serving the university community, which is diocesan property.
Diocesan spokesman Brent King said this was not normal for the bishop, but that he did this because of the protestors who were there to disrupt the talk. King is certainly right – there are a number of angry parishioners in the diocese who are mad at the bishop for being true to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Just nine days earlier, letter that had been sent to the pope via certified mail detailing complaints about the diocese was leaked to the newspaper. King went on to summarily address and debunk all of the claims.
Last year, the State Journal ran a story addressing all of the controversies Bishop Morlino has found himself in. Most of these involved the bishop upholding Church teaching by stripping unfaithful individuals and organizations from positions of leadership. A few were about administrative issues not related to Catholicism in particular, and none had to do with any kind of illegal activity.
A thorough content analysis of coverage of Bishop Morlino may reveal an unjustified bias against him in the newspaper, but his reaction to the controversies is what’s hurt his image. In Wednesday night’s incident, Prestegard was quoted as saying: “I told him it was a public place, built by taxpayer money, and that I was there because he’s a public figure and I was interested in what he had to say. I was pretty sure he had no authority to make me leave.”
It must be tough dealing with protestors, especially since nothing you do will ever be acceptable. And it’s also tough when the press shows up because they were contacted by protestors. But responding in a way that appears to limit First Amendment rights is going to reflect poorly. And if the public thinks you have a problem, you have a problem.
As a devout Catholic, I’m inclined to say the pastoral decisions he made that upset so many people were the appropriate ones. But the way he made them, seemingly without input from parishioners, and taking the “ignore it so I don’t have to address it” approach when something comes up, will only hurt his image. King responded to inquiries from the press, but there’s only so much a communications official can do when the bishop hasn’t been coached in how to deal with crisis communications situations.
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… that you don’t work here. Unless you do.
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For some reason, this post on PBS MediaShift seems pertinent these days:
If I were to lead a journalism school today, I’d want its mission to be: We make the media we need for the world we want.
Not: We are an assembly line for journalism wannabes. …
Journalism is changing all around us. It’s no longer the one-size-fits-all conventions and rules I grew up with. Not what I was taught at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Not what I practiced for 20 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Yet, as someone who consumes a lot of media, I find I like journalism that has some transparent civic impulses, some sensibilities about possible solutions, and some acknowledged aspirations toward the public good. Even though I realize that might make some traditional journalists squirm.
And I’d assert that — if the journalism industry really wants to engage its audiences and woo new ones, and if the academy wants its journalism schools to flourish — it’s time for journalism schools to embrace a larger mission and to construct a different narrative about the merits of a journalism education. …
It’s time to think about trumpeting a journalism degree as the ultimate Gateway Degree, one that can get you a job just about anywhere, except perhaps the International Space Station.
Sure, you might land at your local news outlet. But, armed with a journalism degree, infused with liberal arts courses and overlaid with digital media skills, you are also attractive to information startups, non-profits, the diplomatic corps, commercial enterprises, the political arena and tech giants seeking to build out journalism portfolios, among others.
We already know that a journalism education — leavened with liberal arts courses and sharpened with interviewing, research, writing, digital production and social media competencies — is an excellent gateway to law school or an MBA. And we already know that journalism education has moved away from primarily teaching students how to be journalists. Indeed, seven out of 10 journalism and mass communication students are studying advertising and public relations, according to the UGA study.
In particular, schools that offer students hands-on experience running real newsrooms, a piece of the “teaching hospital” model of journalism education, pave the road to richer, more varied futures.
Refining the Gateway Degree, however, means embracing different types of journalism and showcasing different definitions of success achieved by alums, not just highlighting those who work in news organizations.
Journalism education as a Gateway Degree is a good business proposition — both for the journalism schools and for the industry. We need journalism schools to teach more than inverted-pyramid stories and video and digital production, in part because the industry is awash in entrepreneurial startups that are practicing excellent journalism but are increasingly mission-driven. They are driving strong coverage of public schools, public health, diverse communities and sustainable cities. …
For many of today’s startup founders, it’s not enough to afflict the comfortable or speak truth to power. They want their journalism to solve problems, improve lives and help make things better. These startups want measureable impact beyond winning a journalism prize or changing legislation — while still adhering to core journalism values. This is a mindset, however, not a skill set, and one not often addressed in a standard journalism curriculum.
Instead, journalism schools in recent years have been hyper-focused on skill sets – convergence in the last decade, and coding and data skills in this one.
Media entrepreneurship courses especially can help pave the way for embracing a broader mission and cultivating different mindsets. Courses in entrepreneurial journalism train students to spot what disruptive innovation guru Clay Christensen calls “jobs [that need] to be done” and rethink how to engage audiences in those challenges. Students do competitive scans (a good exercise for solutions reporting); they construct business plans (a useful reality exercise); and they build wireframes, proof-of-concept sites or apps (an introduction to the maker culture).
These activities also help channel those students who come to journalism school thinking they are going to produce works of art — the “I like to write” students — into more grounded work.
Equally important, though, is the role that journalism education can play in the aspirations and social mindsets of Millennials, who are now wearing two hats: as news consumers and news creators. “One of the characteristics of Millennials, besides the fact that they are masters of digital communication, is that they are primed to do well by doing good. Almost 70 percent say that giving back and being civically engaged are their highest priorities,” Leigh Buchanon writes in Meet the Millennials.
There is more work to be done in rendering how responsible journalism meshes with responsible aspirations to advance the public good. But the ripple effect of engaging audiences in issues people care about can be enormous if news organizations master the onramps.
As someone who straddles the line between being one of those “traditional journalists” and, well, this blog, I don’t agree with all of this. Our society that divides itself along, at a minimum, political and religious lines has a hard time defining “public good” by consensus, largely because improving “public good” means taking something away from someone. Political discourse hasn’t been improved by the media’s bifurcating itself into left (MSNBC) and right (Fox News) either.
However, if that’s where the media is headed, one needs to be prepared for it.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 