COMM 317: National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley

In class Tuesday, we'll take up National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, a 1998 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the NEA can take "decency" into account when awarding grants for artistic projects. The plaintiffs, fronted by performance artist Karen Finley, had argued it would be an unlawful prior restraint of free speech.

The language of the case is dense. (Or maybe it's me that's dense, but I couldn't follow it.) But luckily there's an interdisciplinary online education project called Freedom of Expression at the National Endowment for the Arts, partially funded by the American Bar Association's Commission on College and University Legal Studies, that has links to newspaper stories explaining the decision. The Christian Science Monitor's and The Washington Post's are especially good. It also has links to the high court's decision, *"briefs" or legal arguments filed on both sides of the case, an unoffical transcript of the oral arguments in the case and newspaper reports on the arguments.

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* An appellate court brief is not the same thing as the abstract prepared by a law student, although the same kind of legal reasoning is used in both (or should be)! They are like argumentive essays that take an issue before the court and argue why the judges should hold on their side of that issue. They are anything but brief.

Your assignment

Read the newspaper coverage, and see if you can outline a student brief on the case.

Include the following:

Style of the case. NEA v. Finley.
The facts.
The law. There are two or three floating around -- free speech, prior restraint and several others raised on both sides of the case.
The issue. The yes-or-no question the court had to decide.
The court's holding. What did it decide on that issue?
The rationale. The court's legal reasoning on the facts and the law.

COMM 150, 209: Levees, news value, gatekeeping

In COMM 150 (intro to mass comm.), we've been studying the "gatekeeping" theory that identifies people and institutions that restrict the flow of information. In COMM 209 (basic newswriting), we've been studing the benchmarks of "news value" that determine whether a story is newsworthy. Here's a USA Today story on dangerous levees that illustrates both points. The lede:

WASHINGTON — Bowing to demands from news organizations, the Army Corps of Engineers revealed the locations Thursday of 122 levees nationwide that are so poorly maintained they could fail in a major flood.

Some of the substandard levees protect densely populated areas, such as Springfield, Mass., Albuquerque and Sacramento. Many others are in rural areas, where they shield valuable farmland but relatively few people.

Maj. Gen. Don Riley, director of civil works for the corps, said he does not know how many people live near the levees or what the required repairs might cost. He said communities have one year to fix the problems.

If a levee's deficiencies are not corrected, people living nearby might have to buy flood insurance.

If you're taking COMM 209, you'll notice the story has impact. If the levees aren't fixed, a lot of people will buy insurance, at best, and get flooded out, at worst. So the impact may be long-term, but it's there.

We'll get back to news values in a minute. But first, let's look at the gatekeeping angle. USA Today reports:

Some local officials first learned of the problems this week, after USA TODAY reported Monday that the corps had found 146 levees with problems so severe that floods could overwhelm them. The corps, which inspects about 2,000 levees nationally, refused at that time to list the specific levees.

USA TODAY and the Associated Press then requested the list under the Freedom of Information Act.

The full list of levees can be seen at news.usatoday.com.

[Maj. Gen. Don] Riley said the corps wanted to wait to release the list until it finished notifying all communities responsible for maintaining those levees. He noted that 24 levees were dropped from the earlier count because some communities have corrected the problems. He said that the corps "will likely find more (levees) that are deficient" when additional inspections and reviews are done in the coming months.

It's a perfect example of gatekeeping in action. The corps was taking its time about getting the information out. The papers wanted it now. That gives the story an element of conflict, too, because the papers went to court to get the list.

And the other news values?

The story is timely, mostly because of this week's court action. Otherwise, it's a long-term problem. So I'd give it a B-plus for timeliness.

Proximity? I don't think the Sangamon River even has levees. But if I worked for The Quincy Herald-Whig, I'd take a look at that list. They have a levee several miles south of town that has a habit of breaking. I think it's called the Sny. If it's on the list, I've got a local story.

Prominence? Nope. Maybe to General Riley's family and friends, but not to me. I've never heard of him.

Weirdness? Not a bit. Floods are always with us. So are government officials who sit on information the public needs to know.

And finally, there's a category called currency. That's one of those things that's hard to define, but you know it when you see it. It means it's a story that everybody's talking about already.

There are several stories like that in today's news. There's a new report out on global warming. The issue has currency. So does the Super Bowl. And J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, plans to have the last novel in the series on the street -- or in the bookstores -- this summer. That's worth 892 hits on the Google news page, partly because of shrewd marketing but partly because the Harry Potter novels have currency.

COM 209: Anonymous sources and ethics

Of all that's been written so far about the "Scooter" Libby trial, media critic Howard Kurtz' column in today's Washington Post tells perhaps the most about how political reporters and their sources feed off of each other. It came in his account of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller's testimony about relationship with Libby as a journalist who granted anonymity to a news source.

"Throughout the afternoon," said Kurtz, "an unspoken question hung in the air: What do journalists give up when they agree to protect high officials in exchange for juicy information?"

I'll answer it. If they're not careful, their reputation for integrity is what they give up.

Here's how Miller's testimony went:

In a steady but slightly nervous voice, Miller described how her relationship with Libby began: with a bit of flattery. In their first meeting in the Old Executive Office Building, Miller recalled Libby saying that "he liked my reporting on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism." Libby's only quibble was that he had never received an inscribed copy of "Germs," a book on bioterrorism that she coauthored. Miller said she apologized for the oversight.

Gazing through rimless glasses at prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Miller, 59, described one of the most common transactions in journalism: how the contours of the reporter-source relationship are defined.

When she "expressed a desire" for regular conversations, Libby said "he would prefer not to see his name in print," Miller said. "We could continue meeting as long as I would identify him as an administration official or senior administration official." She readily agreed.

That kind of arrangement is common. It's known as speaking "on background," which means the source speaks with the reporter to give her (or him) background but not "on the record," or for for direct quotation. So reporters negotiate what they'll call the source in print -- the idea is to give enough information to let readers decide on the source's credibility but not to identify the source by name. (There's a fine and sometimes-not-very-subtle art involved in guessing who somebody else's anonymous source is, by the way. You ask yourself who would know that information, and then who would have the most to gain by leaking it. It's fun, and any number can play.) Anyway, Miller and Libby talked with each other on background.

Kurtz continues:

At a meeting in Libby's office in June 2003, Libby seemed "agitated and frustrated and angry," not to mention "annoyed," Miller said. He was concerned that the CIA, through a "perverted war of leaks," was distancing itself from its prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons.

So Libby would combat these leaks by leaking to Miller, she explained in a tone that indicated this was the most natural thing in the world. Miller said he told her that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador who was challenging the administration's account that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium in Africa, worked for "the bureau" -- prompting Miller to put a question mark in her notes until she realized that Libby meant the CIA.

During a two-hour meal at the St. Regis hotel the following month, Miller said, Libby changed the ground rules and went "on deeper background," asking to be identified only as a "former Hill staffer."

That phrase "deeper background" refers to another fine and not-so-subtle art: There's "background," and then there's "deep background," which is like "background" but with the identification more general so it's harder to play the Washington (or Statehouse) guessing game. When I took information on "deep" background in my reporting days, I'd run it with no identifying information at all. Or I would use something cheesy like "speculation at the Statehouse is ..." But I tried to not to it at all, or to use the background information to get somebody else to talk about it on the record.

But look what Libby and Miller did with it -- it's true Libby is a "former Hill staffer," which means in English he once worked for Congress, i.e. on Capitol Hill. But when he spoke with Miller, he was speaking about things we knew from working with the White House, not Congress. It's true to identify him that way, because he did have a Congressional staff job a number of years ago, but it's misleading. It may be a small point, but it's important. When she let Libby get away with pointing her readers in the wrong direction, in my mind, is when Miller stepped over a bright ethical red line.

COM 209: How do news values make news news(worthy)?

Here's a handout from journalism prof Ken Blake of Middle Tennessee State University that's worth the price of your tuition this semester. It explains "news values," in other words the qualities that make a story newsworthy.

As journalism students you want to develop what the oldtimers called a "nose for news," the ability to sniff out a good story as soon as you get a whiff of it. It's more of an instinct than a skill, but it starts with memorizing a list of words.

Here are the words, with a

Impact. How does it affect people? How much? Think of an impacted wisdom tooth. How many? If you can imagine a headline that starts with "Thousands flee ...," you've got a high-impact story. But a story about fluctuating gasoline prices at the pump also has widespread impact.

Timeliness Is it fresh? If it is, it's news. Is it getting stale? If so, it's history.

Prominence. Celebs. High officials. Names make news. So do their hired publicity agents.

Proximity. Is is a local story? Does it have a local angle? Think of Sen. Barak Obama's presidential announcement in Springfield? That one has prominence and proximity. Mayor Davlin's re-election campaign has proximity. When The Anchorage Daily News sends a reporter to Baghdad to cover soldiers from Fort Richardson, that's giving proximity to news of the civil war in Iraq.

Weirdness. Is it bizzare?

Currency. Are people already talking about it? Hard to define, but here's an example. Seems like all of a sudden, celebrities like Lindsay Lohan are all over the news every time they go to an AA meeting. So Newsweek does a snarky little feature on celebrities in rehab. The celebrities are always there (sadly), but the buzz about rehab is an example of currency.

COMM 317: Read it and weep!

Here's a CNN report on CNN of another court case concerning Arizona's English-only law. Notice how many words CNN used to report on the case, compared to the U.S. Supreme Court in our case. See why it's a good idea to major in journalism?

COM 209, 150: Blogging Iraq to Alaska

Here's something else I want you to keep up with. The Anchorage Daily News has assigned veteran reporter Rich Mauer to Baghdad, where he will focus on the troops from Fort Richardson, just outside Anchorage, who are deployed in Iraq. Mauer started blogging about a week ago, before he left the United States. So far it's been one of the best things I've seen about what it's like to be a reporter in Iraq. To be a reporter anywhere, in fact. He kind of takes us behind the scenes, tagging along to interviews, talking with news sources. Much of the routine is familiar to anyone who's ever covered a city council meeting, which makes his description of the violence all the more graphic. Anyway, the blog has the kind of personal touch that gets filtered out of hard news.

Mauer is good writer, too. Here's the lede to his first post:

ON AN AMTRAK TRAIN TO NEW YORK, Jan. 19 — One of the senior editors in the McClatchy Washington bureau waved me into his office from across the big newsroom yesterday afternoon. Thus summoned, I sat down in a comfortable chair. He was the last editor I needed to speak to before I left for Baghdad.

“What are you expectations for me in Iraq?” I asked.

“Do you know how to shoot?” he asked. “Paul or Kevin will want to know that.”

Those were the names of our British security detail, but I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking that I had just heard the most unexpected question I’d ever been asked by an editor.

“I don’t know pistols, but I’m a decent shot with a rifle,” I answered. It was an automatic answer. I was still rolling around his question in my mind.

“They’ll be happy to hear that. Though with an A-K, being a good shot may not make much of a difference.”

“This is in case the hotel comes under attack, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Now that got my attention.

It's as good example of a Newsweek-style soft lede (sometimes known as a "Jell-O lede") as you'll ever find.

To keep reading the blog, you'll probably have to register for the ADN website. When you get to Mauer's pages, surf around and catch up with his reporting. Like most blogs, the earliest entries are farther down on the page. Also look under the heading MORE BLOGS for the link to "Inside Iraq." It's a blog written mainly by Iraqi correspondents who work for the McClatchy newspaper group's bureau in Bagdhad. Their English isn't the best, but their posts give you a feel for what it's like to report -- and live -- in a society that is literally tearing itself apart that again gets filtered out of the news that reaches us in the United States.

COMM 317: Stories on AOE v. Arizona

Here are a couple of handy stories on the U.S. Supreme Court case we're going to look at Tuesday night, by bilingual education advocate James Crawford. He's opinionated, but his reports are accurate. And they help cut through the chaff in a case that got more and more complicated as interested parties (including some appellate court judges) kept reviving it long after it should have been thrown out of court.

Crawford has two reports, one when the case was argued before "the Supremes" (not, in this case, a singing group but a common nickname for the Supreme Court). In 1996 he said:

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, its most significant language rights case in at least 20 years. But the justices showed no interest in the constitutional issues raised by Arizona's English Only measure, which has been overruled by lower courts as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. Instead, the hour-long session focused on procedural questions of standing, mootness, jurisdiction, and other arcana.

Let's define a couple of words. "Arcana" means stuff that is arcane, or really, really specialized. Don't ever use it if you're writing for the public! But "moot" is a word we need to know. It's a legal term that means the case no longer presents an issue that has to be decided by a court. When a defendant dies, for example, charges against him (or her) are dropped. In this case, when the Arizona attorney general said he would not enforce the law, plaintiff María-Kelly Yñiguez no longer could claim the English-only law restricted her rights. A while later, she left her state job. So the case was moot for two reasons. Crawford reported:

Barnaby Zall, the attorney for AOE, had barely begun his argument in favor of Article 28 when he was interrupted by Justice Ginsburg. She wanted to know why the case was not considered moot back in 1989, when Arizona's attorney general issued his opinion. "Why didn't that end the controversy, when [plaintiff ] Yñiguez was in no danger of firing?" she asked. In other words, why wasn't the case dismissed by the district court at that point?

Crawford summed up the oral argument like this: "By their questions and comments, the justices left little doubt that they plan to throw the case out of court."

Sure enough, in March 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the case. Said Crawford:

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to decide the constitutionality of Arizona's English Only amendment – in effect, dismissing the case after eight years of litigation without ruling on its merits. Article 28 of Arizona's constitution – also known as Proposition 106, adopted by voters in 1988 – requires all levels of state and local government to "act in English and no other language." Two lower federal courts have overruled the measure as a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech for state employees and elected officials. But yesterday the Supreme Court threw out those decisions on procedural grounds.

That's typical. Courts don't like to rule on the substance of a case if the procedural issues are muddy.

Gatekeeping theory link

Here's a Dutch webpage on gatekeeping theory that explains this stuff. I'll finish this later ... but here's the link.

COM 150 -- in-class Monday

A concept that's mentioned in both chapters 1 and 2 of our textbook is "gatekeeping." Who (or what) are gatekeepers? How do the media serve as gatekeepers? How do they set the agenda for society? (Or do they?) Cite page numbers.

And if you're looking it up on the web, cite the websites you get the information from.

Then post your answers to the questions below. (Don't be afraid to write well, to say something fresh and interesting. Everybody likes pizza, and the next best thing to pizza in class is reading about it in class.) To do this, you'll have to read some of the stuff I've posted on the Scooter Libby trial.

1. How did the major national media (New York Times, Washington Post, the TV networks, etc.) function as gatekeepers in reporting about the buildup to the Iraq war, Joe Wilson's role in it and his opinion about President Bush's use of intelligence?

2. How did the White House control public access to information during the buildup to the Iraq war? Did they succeed in setting the agenda? Were they functioning as gatekeepers as well? When Joe Wilson wrote his article for The New York Times, what did that do to them as gatekeepers?

3. When a government official "leaks" information to the media (i.e. gives it to them anonymously), how does that fit into the gatekeeping function? For the government? For the media? Who wins? Who loses? Or does everybody win?

White House 'spin' testimony -- COM 150, 209, 317

COM 209 (intro to newswriting) students especially take note! A story in today's Washington Post analyzes what Libby trial testimony tells us about the way the White House handles the news media. Personal disclosure: I've worked both sides of that street (although certainly not in the White House!), and there's nothing terribly unusual about what came out yesterday in court. But it shows us the way of the world.

Here's the spin that Dana Milbank, who covers the White House for the Post, put on testimony by Cathie Martin, former communications director for Vice President Cheney. "Spin" is like putting English on a pool ball, it's a way of slanting things so the news media tell your side of the story:

It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.

With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."

Milbank, with an apparent assist from courthouse reporter Carol D. Leonnig, also mentioned what happens to a political press operation that gets too, well, political.

Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. She testified that, as the controversy swelled in 2004, reporters ignored her denials and continued to report that it was Cheney's office that sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraq's nuclear acquisitions. "They're not taking my word for it," Martin recalled telling a colleague.

Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. "Often, reporters would stop calling us," she testified.

This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: "When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a 'no comment'?"

Journalism student take note: This is why we get cynical about communications staffers. Public relations students take note: Here's what happens when we try too hard to fool the journalists.

COM 150 -- today's in-class journal

Some questions to focus your reading and get you started on class discussion ... start by reviewing the summary and questions at the end of Chapter 1 in our textbook. Then answer the questions. Post your answers (see below) as comments on this entry on the class blog.

1. What do a shaman, a webmaster and an advertising copywriter have in common?

2. What does it mean to digitize information? How, briefly, does it work? If your significant other were to give you the "silent treatment" on the phone, how would that information be conveyed digitally? What would it look like? Why, briefly, does it matter?

3. How many career changes can you expect in your lifetime? Where are the jobs going to be in the information industry in the 21st century? How might you fit that information into your career planning as a college student?

As you quote from the book, it would be a good idea to put page numbers in parentheses after the quote or the information you cite. We have an open-book midterm and final, and this will help get you in practice.

How to post your answers
Go to the bottom of this entry (right below this 'graf). On the left side of the last line, there will be a link that says "___ posts" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in (make a note of the username and password you choose because we'll keep on posting to the blog), review your comment if you wish and publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." Logical, isn't it? And, just think, you're digitizing your thoughts. Doing your bit for the digital revolution, right?

____________

* "Graf" is a word that journalists, who really ought to try harder to be good communicators, use to refer to a paragraph.

How would you explain Libby to a kid?

This week's edition of the New Yorker has an opinion piece by Nicholas Lemann, Washington correspondent turned dean of the Columbia University school of journalism, on the "Scooter" Libby trial. It's opinionated. (Well, duh. That's why they call 'em opinion pieces.) But it gives as good a brief explanation as I've seen anywhere of how Libby wound up in the dock.

Lemann begins by asking:

It’s a good thing that you’re unlikely to be approached by a small, inquisitive child who wants an explanation of the trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice-President Cheney’s former chief of staff, because what would you say? The trial has the air of a proxy prosecution of the Bush Administration, but its outcome won’t have any effect on the White House. Libby’s legal tormentor, Patrick Fitzgerald, a special prosecutor from Chicago, has a reputation as a tormentor of the Washington press corps. (He put one prominent reporter in jail and threatened to lock up another.) Yet, given that we think of the press and the White House as opposing forces, it’s difficult to wrap our minds around the notion of them being in the dock together.

Well, that's Lemann's opinion. Or, more likely, his summary of the conventional wisdom. Me, as long as we're talking about opinion, I don't have any problem getting my mind around the conventional wisdom. I think the press and the politicians have a thoroughly incestuous relationship. Especially in Washington, D.C.

But I love his question. How would you explain this mess to a kid?

I like Lemann's answer even better. He makes it clear he doesn't have a very high opinion of the Bush administration. But he also makes it clear how all this politicking led to perjury and obstruction of justice charges agains Libby:

What’s ultimately behind Libby’s trial is the Administration’s obsession with finding hard evidence for what it already believes. President Bush is often said to have misled the country into war in Iraq. But it’s equally true—and more illuminating of how the White House thinks and works—that the Administration misled itself into war. Since it was convinced that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, the absence of proof showed only that the wrong people (the C.I.A. and the United Nations) had been looking in the wrong places. So, during the run-up to the war, the search had to be conducted with a little more creativity.

In that spirit, the White House dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, in February of 2002, to find proof that the country had shipped yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Wilson not only came up empty-handed; he said so publicly, in a Times Op-Ed piece that he published five months later. The Administration then went on another search for evidence—the kind that could be used to discredit Wilson—and began disseminating it, off the record, to a few trusted reporters. That led to the unlawful exposure of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a C.I.A. agent. And that, in turn, brought the appointment of a special prosecutor, and another over-the-top search for evidence, this time against the Administration. Libby’s trial is the result.

To read the rest of it (which you'll enjoy if you don't like Bush and can safely ignore if you do), click on this link to the current New Yorker. Do it in the next few days, though, because they update the website every weekend and don't archive the last week's stories.

Libby trial / COM 317, 209, 150 assignment

Testimony began this week in a trial that has major implications for the news media in U.S. District Court at Washington, D.C. Here's a good backgrounder that ran when the trial opened last week with jury selection. It's an Associated Press story, and it ran in Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for the newspaper industry.

Your assignment, in all three classes, is to follow this trial.

Defendant is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a senior aide to Vice President Cheney who is accused of lying to authorities during the investigation of a White House news leak that "outed" or made public the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame in 2003. Complicated? I'll try to explain some of the legal issues below. For now let's just say it's very political, and it shows how news is gathered at the highest levels of government. It also shows, and I'm trying to be neutral here in the way I word this, how the Iraq war was sold to the American people in 2003.

But the immediate issues are narrow, and kind of complicated. Here's how the AP summarized the case:

Libby is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding outed CIA officer Valerie Plame. Plame's identity was leaked to reporters in 2003 after her husband criticized the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The leak touched off a political firestorm and an FBI investigation that Libby is accused of obstructing. Several well-known journalists -- including Bob Wooward [of The Washington Post], Tim Russert [of NBC News] and Judith Miller [formerly of The New York Times] -- are expected to testify.

Trial is expected to last four to six weeks.

Summary of case

In our mass media law course (Communications 317), we are learning to analyze court cases by following a simplified version of the outline used by law students when they "brief," or summarize, a Supreme Court case. The Libby trial isn't an appellate case, but I'm going to use the law school outline we're learning in COMM 317 because I think it'll help you cut through some of the confusion in the trial:

The facts. For the most part, a trial is about the facts of a case. What happened? Who did what? Who saw what? Who heard what? Lawyers for both sides put witnesses on the stand to testify to the facts they know. In this case, the prosecutor will put on witnesses who say Libby lied to FBI investigators about his role in leaking Valerie Plame's name to the media. It's against the law to lie to the cops (it's called obstruction of justice and, sometimes, perjury). As I understand it, Libby's defense is he had so much on his mind, he made an honest mistake when he was talking to the investigators.

There will be a lot of other testimony, too, much of it about the political situation at the time. Plame's husband, named Joe Wilson, had just written an op ed piece for The New York Times citing evidence that President Bush used information that was known to be false in speeches just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There is apparently some evidence the White House blew Plame's cover as a CIA agent to punish her husband for criticizing Bush. I don't know how strong it is. But I think we'll hear more about it as the trial goes on. I think we'll also hear people deny the White House had any such intention. Look for it, in fact, in today's coverage quoted below.

One last thing I need to say about the facts. Typically the prosecutor in a case like this tries to stick very narrowly to what happened: Who did it? Was it against the law? Period. The defense typically tries to confuse the issue, to bring in everything but the kitchen sink. So far, this trial is following that pattern.

The law. At the trial court level, you don't hear as much about the law as you do about the facts. Libby is accused of lying to the FBI, which is illegal. There's another law involved here, too, one that makes it illegal to publicize the name of a CIA agent. Libby is not accused of that, as I understand it. He's accused of lying to the FBI and later to a grand jury when they were trying to find out who leaked her name to the news media.

Again, look for the defense lawyers to lay down a smokescreen and cite all kinds of laws in the course of a trial to confuse the issue. It doesn't mean their clients are necessarily guilty when they do that. It's just what defense lawyers do.

The issue. To lawyers, an "issue" is a question that's to be decided. In this case, it's simple: Did Libby lie to the investigators, or did he just forget? There's another sense of the word "issue," too, and we need to distinguish between the two kinds of issues. Usually when we say "issue," we mean a subject of public debate. Health care is an issue. So is environmental policy. Global warming. Drilling for oil on Alaska's North Slope. The war in Iraq. We'll probably hear about those kinds of political issues, too. But the only legal issue before the court in the Libby trial is whether he unlawfully lied to the FBI and the grand jury. See the difference?

Legal reasoning. We don't hear very much about this at all at the trial level, except when the lawyers argue motions. These are requests for the judge to do something, to allow someone to testify or say they can't, to "strike something from the record" if it's something the jury shouldn't hear, whatever. It becomes very important on appeal, because it's the judge's decisions usually that get appealed.

Some good links

I think your best one-stop shopping place is the Microsoft Corp. ezine Slate.com at -- where else? --- www.slate.com. They have daily coverage of the trial, linked to a directory that collects their Scooter Libby stories going back to 2005, when they published a profile of Libby that is probably the best starting place to read up on the guy, what he's charged with (allegedly) doing and the issues in the trial.

Also in Slate every day is a digest of the top national stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. This feature is called "Today's Papers," and it runs every day toward the right of the page. Get in the habit of reading it, too. Even after the trial's over. Especially if you're in COM 209 or a communications major. Here's today's summary (minus links) of the Libby trial:

The LAT, NYT, and WP all front the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and they all focus on how the defense tried to portray him as a "scapegoat." Libby's lawyers contend the White House wanted to blame Libby in order to save Karl Rove, who was viewed as essential for the Republicans. Although everyone agrees this will likely be an important point in the trial, the NYT notes up high that the defense did not make clear what kind of connection exists between these allegations and the charges Libby faces of making false statements to the FBI and perjuring himself before a grand jury. Slate's John Dickerson notes that the trial "has opened a window into an administration that in 2003 was deeply at war with itself."

This is something you should read daily, anyway, especially if you're taking COM 209 (introduction to newswriting).

Today's Washington Post

Today's story in The Washington Post, which was also picked up by the Trib in Chicago, shows how some of what I was saying above worked in today's papers.

Here are the charges, and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's statement about them. See how he's trying to stick to the straight and narrow?

Libby, 56, is accused of five felony charges stemming from a federal investigation into the leak of Plame's identity to the media. Libby is not charged with the leak itself, nor is anyone else. He faces two counts of making false statements to FBI agents, two counts of perjuring himself before a grand jury and one count of obstructing the investigation, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

"How could we reach a point where the chief of staff for the vice president was repeatedly lying to federal investigators?" Fitzgerald asked jurors rhetorically. "That's what this case is all about."

Fitzgerald, by the way, is from Chicago.

And here's the gist of the case argued by defense attorney Theodore Wells. See how much else he brought in?

Wells asserted that the vice president's former right-hand man gave investigators his "good-faith recollection" and that any mistakes in his memory were innocent. He also contended that the journalists and administration officials who are to testify during the trial also have imperfect memories. He said that Libby did not aggressively push the Wilson story, did not know that Plame worked in a covert role and had no motive to lie to investigators.

According to Wells, when the federal investigation of the leak began in the fall of 2003, Libby was not worried about his job, but was "concerned about . . . being scapegoated." Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary at the time, said publicly that Rove was not responsible for any leaks, Wells said, but did not say the same about Libby.

Libby, Wells said, told Cheney he feared "people in the White House are trying to set me up." Wells then showed the jury the text of a note Cheney had jotted that said: "Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

Wells said: "That one person was Karl Rove. He was viewed as a political genius. . . . He had to be protected. The person who was to be sacrificed was Scooter Libby." According to Wells, the vice president tried to persuade White House colleagues to publicly clear Libby's name as the source of the leak.

I think the point here is to show the jury how many other things were on Libby's mind, to bolster his "oops-I-forgot" defense. It will also, no doubt, provide the most interesting parts of the news converage.

COMM317 -- Zenger case

In class we will read up on a famous trial in the 1735 that helped establish the principle of freedom of the press in America. Plaintiff was the colonial government of New York. Defendant was John Peter Zenger, a printer who published commentary that the royal governor didn't like. Read the piece called "The Zenger Trial: An Account" by Douglas Linder (it jumps to another page, so you'll need to click on the "CONTINUED" link.

Take notes on it. Use the same headings:

Style. (Crown v. Zenger)
Facts.
Law.
Issues.
Holding. In this case, what the jury did.
Reasoning. Several sentences.

Post your briefs to the blog. Here's how.

How to post your response
Scroll down to the bottom of this post. On the right side of the last line, there will be a link that says "___ posts" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in (make a note of the username and password you choose because we'll keep on posting to the blog), review your comment if you wish and publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." Logical, isn't it?

COM317: Blackie the Talking Cat

Here's how I might write up a brief on the case:

Citation. Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Ga.

Facts. Here I'd put the stuff about how Carl and Elaine Miles did their thing in downtown Augusta, getting the cat to talk and hitting people up for contributions. Maybe 3-4 sentences. Not much more than that.

Law. Here I'd say they were charged with violating the city's occupation tax ordinance, specifically by making money off of Blackie when they didn't have a business license. I'd also say they tried to raise a freedom of speech issue.

Issue. Did the First Amendment apply? Did the Miles' need a business license?

Holding? No. Yes. Decision for plaintiff.

Reasoning Summarize the judge's reasons for holding that way. Does a cat have First Amendment rights? I'd quote where he says the rights of free speech and association weren't involved. And I'd quote what he says about how: (1) they made money off of the cat; and (2) the ordinance taxes people who earn money from a list of occupations plus anything "not specifically mentioned."

This just in -- blogs and AP style

Here's something I found while checking up on blogs for Intro to Mass Comm. Turns out the Associated Press Stylebook is apparently wrong about where the came from. This from the kottke.org blog by Jason Kottke:

Dear New Yorker, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and others**,

Please stop using the term "web log" to refer to a chronologically-ordered frequently-updated website. The correct term is "weblog". Furthermore, "blog" is not short for "web log", it is short for "weblog".

When dealing with words generated by the Internet, where people stick bits of different words together with reckless abandon, I can understand the need for high-quality newspapers and magazines to use the proper grammatical approach in dealing with compound words, hyphens, etc. At first blush, "weblog" appears to be a shortened version of "web log" which is in turn a shortened version of "World Wide Web log", in which case the usage the media has adopted would be more or less correct ("Web log" would probably be more correct).

And "Web log," of course, is what the AP Stylebook says.

Kotke says that's wrong. He cites three pieces of evidence:

1. The original spelling of the term is "WebLog" as seen on Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom WebLog page from December 1997. It was never "web log". In subsequent correspondence (like this Usenet post from June 1998), Barger himself referred to his site as a "weblog" and sites like his as "weblogs".

2. After Barger's coining of "weblog", a few early bloggers preferred to use "web log" as an alternative (see Raphael Carter's Honeyguide Web Log from June 1998) but the majority use was and is "weblog" and the use of "web log" has waned (except for its misuse by the media, of course). A search for "weblog" on Google yields 4,620,000 results. A Google search for "web log" yields 383,000 results. The use of "weblog" is in the majority by an order of magnitude. The impact in the search results for "web log" due to its incorrect usage in the media is unknown.

3. Most of the citations for "weblog" and "blog" in the Oxford English Dictionary Online use "weblog", not "web log." ...

So what we supposed to do in mass communications courses?

Easy. We follow AP.

When AP's right, we're right. When AP's wrong, we're wrong.

But at least we're in good company.

COM150: Blog about blogs

Today you're reading a blog about blogs. Got that? I asked you to read up on blogs, sometimes also known as weblogs (or "Web logs" if you follow Associated Press style), and come in ready to discuss them in class. We'll do that, but first do some more reading.

Starting with this blog. That's right. This thing you're reading is a blog. I maintain two or three for my classes.

If you haven't seen it already, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia probably has the best introduction to blogging. Read it over. Follow some of the links at the bottom, too.

There's another discussion I like. It's by a media consultant named Jeremy Goldkorn in Beijing (that's right, in China) who says all it takes is a "kid with a modem" to take on CNN or any of the other mega- content providers. I'm not sure I agree with him 100 percent, but it's worth thinking about.

Another place to look at is the Microsoft Corp. ezine Slate.com. Every morning they update a feature called "Today's Blogs." It's at the top of their start page, right under the standing feature "Today's Papers." You probably ought to read both, just to keep up with the world. Every morning "Today's Blogs" updates with what the political bloggers are saying, and "Today's Papers" tracks the top stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

COM209 -- taking notes

Here's something I really ought to copy and paste into the syllabus --

Linked to my faculty webpage is a directory of "Reporting Resources" put up on a website for newspaper journalists called No Train, No Gain It's a project of working journalists at The Omaha World-Herald and The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, and it is very, very practical. It's also very, very good. Bookmark it.

Now scroll down the directory to the 23rd or 24th link. It will say:

Taking Great Notes for Great Stories A handout by Don Fry, writing coach, on taking notes. (MS Word document).

Except it will have a working link. (I'm not computer-literate enough to link here to a Microsoft Word document.) This will tell you what you need to know about how to leave out words, and which words to leave out, as you take notes. And it'll show you how to ethically reconstruct the quote, i.e. put it back together, when you go to write the story. It will pay off bigtime if you study it till you're clear on what Fry is -- and isn't -- doing here.

Chief Illiniwek

The executive committee of the Oglala Sioux (or Lakota) tribe has asked the University of Illinois to return regalia used by "Chief Illiniwek" at athletic events, according to a story in today's Chicago Tribune. This action brings to a head -- or should bring to a head -- a controversy that has been simmering along more than 10 years now.

Here's the gist of the story, beginning with some background and leading up to what journalists call it the nut graf (by which they mean the paragraph, or "graf," that contains the kernel, or "nut," of the story). Taking it from the top:

In a 1982 halftime ceremony at Memorial Stadium, a 93-year-old Oglala Sioux chief and medicine man presented the University of Illinois with tribal regalia for use by the university's mascot, Chief Illiniwek.

The university paid $3,500 for the moccasins, blanket, peace pipe pouch, breastplate and war bonnet with 90 eagle feathers, all owned by Sioux Chief Frank Fools Crow, according to the university's archives.

On Thursday, Oglala Sioux tribal members, including Fools Crow's grandson, asked for it all back.

The tribe's demands are the latest in a growing campaign by students, faculty, Native American groups and the National Collegiate Athletic Association—which has already penalized the U. of I.—to dump the mascot.

A resolution passed Thursday by the Oglala Sioux asks the university to stop using the mascot and return the attire, including the original feathers.

Further down in the story, we learn the action was taken by the executive committee of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the tribe's federally recognized governing body, and it came out at a meeting of the U of I board of trustees.

Here's the Sioux (or Lakota, to use the name preferred by members of the tribe) officials' reasoning:

The resolution, passed by three of the tribe's five-member executive committee, points out that Chief Illiniwek, intended to honor Illinois-based tribes, does not belong in Oglala clothing in the first place, because that tribe is not from Illinois.

"The antics of persons playing 'Chief Illiniwek' perpetuate a degrading racial stereotype that reflects negatively on all American Indian people," according to the resolution.

Debate over the mascot, a barefoot student who performs at football and basketball games in the buckskin costume and feather headdress, has raged for years. This episode comes as a U. of I. student faces possible expulsion over a comment on a pro-Chief Web site threatening to hurt a student who opposed the mascot.

Some university students and Native Americans have asked university trustees to end the Chief tradition, saying it is humiliating and creates a hostile environment on campus.

Supporters say the Chief respects Native American culture and is a revered tradition that dates to 1926.

COM 209 -- keys to the kingdom (link)

Here's a webpage that tells you what you need to know to get started as a student reporter. It's by Lawrence Surtees, primary telecommunications research analyst for IDC Canada, an international communications firm.

You'll still need the textbook and the workbook, however. Especially the workbook. We'll be using it in class.

A lot.

Surtees' webpage has a great title -- "How to Write a Great News Story." And he delivers what he promises.

So if you want to know how to write a great story, read Surtees. What more can I say?

Surtees' webpage is part of the Reporter's Toolbox in a website called SSN Newsroom put up by SchoolNet News Network and its French counterpart, Rédaction de Rescol, for K-12 students in Canada. SSN describes itself as "a cyber-school for writers and aspiring journalists as well as a resource centre for teachers." Some of the spellings (like "centre") are Canadian, but Surtees knows what he's talking about. Before joining IDC Canada, he was a business writer for The Globe and Mail in Toronto. I can't recommend reading him highly enough.

In fact, I think I'd better give a quiz on his page Friday.