"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
Amy Goodman, one of four journalists arrested at an anti-RNC protest, tells her story
Amy Goodman, the host of the popular radio and television program "Democracy Now!" was at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul on Monday, interviewing members of the Alaska delegation, when her phone rang with alarming news.
“I got a call that two of our producers had been bloodied by the police,” Goodman said. “I did not stop running until I got to where they were.”
The producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, had been reporting on the protest targeting the Republican convention that was unfolding several blocks away. Most of the estimated 10,000 people in the march were peaceful. But, according to police, a group of about 200 had fractured off and were breaking windows, slashing tires and harassing delegates.
Police arrested 286 people, according to the Associated Press. Kouddous and Salazar were among them. Matt Rourke, a photographer with the Associated Press, was also arrested.
News gathering is a constitutionally protected activity in the United States. But although Kouddous, Salazar and Rourke were wearing credentials that identified them as members of the press, they were held on riot charges. Salazar suffered a bloody nose after being dragged, face-down on the ground, according a statement released by "Democracy Now!"
When Goodman arrived at the scene 20 minutes later, she asked the riot police if she could see her producers, who were being held in police vehicles. “I just said, 'I want to talk to a commander,' ” said Goodman, who had her own press badge slung around her neck. “They didn’t skip a beat; they just started arresting me.”
The scene was captured on video -- a clip that was one the most-viewed videos on YouTube.com on Tuesday. In it, Goodman is seen pleading with the police while her arms are twisted behind her back and into plastic handcuffs.
All four journalists were released hours after being arrested. Goodman was officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer.
"Democracy Now!" plans to continue its coverage of the protests and the police presence, which Goodman described as "overly aggressive."
"I was very angry. This was a violation of my rights," Goodman said. "But
it’s so much bigger than us. When the press is shut down, it's closing the eyes and ears of a critical watchdog in a democratic society."
-- Kate Linthicum
AP photog arrested while covering anti-war protest
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An Associated Press photographer and a Democracy Now! TV and radio show host were among those arrested at an anti-war march on the first day of the Republican National Convention. Both were released hours later.
Police said Tuesday they arrested 286 people during Monday's event. Most of the estimated 10,000 people in the march were peaceful, but small groups that police said numbered about 200 broke windows, slashed tires and harassed delegates.
A different group, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Committee, was going ahead with a planned march on Tuesday. This committee obtained a permit for its march, though spokeswoman Cheri Honkala said the group would deviate from its permitted path to go by the county jail where some of those arrested Monday were still held.
The committee is separate from the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group of self-described anarchists who vowed to keep up their street protests all week.
AP photographer Matt Rourke was covering the protest when he was swept up by police moving in on a group of protesters in downtown St. Paul. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was arrested as she asked police in riot gear about the status of two producers who had been arrested, one of whom she had heard was bleeding. The producers also were released later.
David Ake, an AP assistant chief of bureau in Washington, said he was concerned by the arrest of Rourke, a Philadelphia-based photographer.
"Covering news is a constitutionally protected activity, and covering a riot is part of that coverage," Ake said. "Photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news."
Phil Carruthers, director of the prosecution division of the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, said Monday night that no charges against Rourke were anticipated. Rourke, held on a gross misdemeanor riot charge, was released early Tuesday. Goodman also was released without charges being filed against her.
Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties, Democracy Now! said in a statement. Democracy Now! said Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on a felony riot charge while Goodman was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer.
All three appeared on Goodman's show on Tuesday and recounted their experience. A video of Goodman's arrest, aired on her program and also posted on YouTube, shows her begging police not to arrest her before being taken away in handcuffs.
Court proceedings moved slowly Tuesday morning as at least 22 people facing misdemeanor charges had refused to give their real names, said Dave Gill, a Ramsey County public defender. Only two people had gone through initial hearings by midday.
When protesters hit the streets of St. Paul on Monday to disrupt the convention, nearly every move they made was immediately relayed through webs of text messages and instantaneous Internet posts, in contrast to previous times when word more likely was spread via bullhorns and walkie-talkies. St. Paul police kept pace with a network of 103 video cameras mounted at strategic spots near the Xcel Energy Center and throughout downtown that fed live footage into a command center.
It all added up to something like a massive game of virtual chess, as demonstrators used electronic flashes to keep their allies one step ahead of police — who responded with countermoves aimed at quelling chaos before it had the chance to flare.
"kellogg and ireland need reinforcement, 10 cops on horses," read a message filed Monday afternoon on a protester feed at Twitter.com, a so-called "microblog" where users can post brief messages that immediately bounce to the cell phones of subscribers. Hundreds of similar messages ping-ponged through cyberspace during Monday's demonstration, alerting demonstrators to areas of downtown they should avoid and other spots where reinforcements were needed.
"All of a sudden you have hundreds of eyes and ears telling you what's happening on the ground," said David Taylor, a veteran San Francisco activist.
Every Twitter feed is available to anyone with Internet access, and Taylor said in his experience police have learned to monitor the site as well. St. Paul Police Sgt. Jack Serier wouldn't say whether police were monitoring Twitter, but he said the extensive network of video cameras were a tremendous boost in tracking the movement of demonstrators.
McCain Gets Millions in Free Air Time for Ads
JM (John McCain) is at a distinct advantage when it comes to advertising in the election cycle. Although he is unable to raise anywhere near the kind of money BO (Barak Obama) can for his campaign he has the luxury of having major cable news outlets play his negative ads repeatedly all day each day for free. No similar attention has been paid to ads from the Obama campaign. How many times have you seen McCain's "celebrity ad"? How many of those times were via a paid commercial rather than news? Even now while the Democratic National Convention is dominating the news cycle that coverage is punctuated at every turn with a free anti-Obama ad. How many times did you see the "Hillary supporter" ad yesterday, the "3am reminiscent" ad today? But don't expect the reverse to be true when the RNC arrives. We haven't seen balance so far in free coverage of advertisements up to now, why should we then? Perhaps an independent organization like Media Matters will step forward to determine the relative amount of air time given by news broadcasts to campaign ads for each campaign. I expect that would shine a light on the huge slant towards favoring the McCain campaign.
The degree of bending over backwards to ingratiate the McCain campaign showed itself last night on MSNBC during Michelle Obama's speech. Somewhere around two thirds of the way through it a text feed appeared along the bottom of the screen to announce to the world at large that Cindy McCain is headed for Georgia to "assess civilian casualties" followed by an update on Sen. McCain's VP selection progress. Heaven forbid I should have the luxury of giving my full attention to Michelle's speech from beginning to end without having to think about the McCain's current grab for attention. Perhaps during Cindy's speech next week we will get a breathless text feed alerting us to the fact that Michelle is putting her girls to bed. Those of us on the democratic side of the aisle should be demanding equal air time when it comes to repeated free airings of campaign commercials.
John McCain's US presidential campaign has angrily condemned the media for questioning the way his running mate Sarah Palin's candidacy was vetted.
Mrs Palin is preparing a key address to the Republican National Convention - days after she revealed that her unmarried daughter, 17, was pregnant.
Mr McCain's team denied claims it had not checked her background thoroughly.
Mr McCain is due to be nominated on Wednesday as the party's presidential candidate for the 4 November election.
'Nonsense'
Mrs Palin will make her key speech at the convention in St Paul, Minnesota, on Wednesday.
Ahead of the address, a written statement from senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt said the "nonsense" over the vetting process for Mrs Palin should end.
| | |
"This vetting controversy is a faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee for vice president of the United States who has never been a part of the old boys' network that has come to dominate the news establishment of this country," the statement said.
Mr Schmidt said there would be "no further comment about our long and thorough process" in checking Mrs Palin.
The Alaska governor announced on Monday her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, and would have the baby and marry her boyfriend.
It has also been revealed that an attorney has been hired to represent Mrs Palin in an Alaska state ethics investigation.
The case involves alleged abuse of power.
Mrs Palin is being investigated by state lawmakers over the dismissal of a state public safety commissioner, whom she allegedly sacked because he did not dismiss her brother-in-law, a state trooper, involved in a contentious divorce and child custody battle with her younger sister.
| | [John McCain] sees a partner in Sarah who will help him reform Washington - not just talk about it McCain adviser Carly Fiorina on Sarah Palin |
Sarah Palin told US network CNBC she had "nothing to hide". Her deposition is expected to be scheduled soon.
Mrs Palin was elected governor of Alaska in 2006 and before that was mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska.
She is due to be formally nominated by delegates as the party's vice-presidential choice later this week.
Her selection as vice-presidential nominee has caused great excitement among social conservatives and evangelical Christians gathered at the convention, says the BBC's Adam Brookes in St Paul.
But across the broader Republican Party, there seems to be some unease at the choice of someone who is an unknown quantity, he says.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who made a failed attempt to win the Republican nomination for president, defended her in a television interview for the CBS Early Show.
He said she had more experience than Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
"I would say Barack Obama has never governed a city, never governed a state, never governed an agency, never run a military unit, never run anything," he said.
'Dangerous world'
The party's four-day convention opened on Monday, although it was initially curtailed because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav to states on the southern US coast.
On Tuesday, President George W Bush told delegates that Mr McCain was "a great American and the next president".
Mr Bush described Mr McCain as a president ready to make the tough decisions needed "in a dangerous world".
"John McCain's life has prepared him to make those choices. He is ready to lead this nation," Mr Bush said.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; 1:19 PM
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 3 -- I've talked to many political professionals over the years who were mad at the media, or me in particular.
But I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.
He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.
Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt -- a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist -- really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.
That doesn't make his accusations right. But it does suggest to me that a brewing conflict between McCain and his media chroniclers -- one that makes the ol' Straight Talk Express days a distant memory -- has reached the boiling point. And that there are gender and cultural issues swirling around Palin's nomination that would have created conflict even without the added complication of her daughter's pregnancy.
Let's get straight to the news:
Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life.
In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage.
Arguing that the media queries are being fueled by "every rumor and smear" posted on left-wing Web sites, Schmidt said mainstream journalists are giving "closer scrutiny" to McCain's little-known running mate than to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The McCain camp has been unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to hope to persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin. Obama campaign officials have complained to news organizations that their man has been subjected to considerably more investigative reporting than McCain has, but they have done so in more low-key fashion.
By contrast, Schmidt spoke on the record in denouncing as "an absolute work of fiction" a New York Times account of the process by which the McCain campaign vetted Palin. He also charged that Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman was predicting that the governor might have to step down as McCain's vice presidential choice.
Fineman said that he has "never, ever said that," and that he has pointed out positive aspects of Palin's candidacy. "They decided a long time ago that they were going to work the refs," he said.
The lead author of the Times report, Elisabeth Bumiller, said she is "completely confident about the story." As for the campaign's criticism, she said: "This is what they do. It's part of their operation."
McCain also canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Tuesday in retaliation for an interview a day earlier in which prime-time host Campbell Brown repeatedly pressed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds to provide one example of a decision that Palin had made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.
"The interview was totally fair," Brown said. "I was trying to get an answer. I was persistent, but I was respectful. That's my job. Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin."
Schmidt, a former spokesman for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talked openly about his frustrations in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the McCain camp is in the middle of the worst media "feeding frenzy" he has ever seen.
The fact that unsubstantiated allegations appear on the Internet "is not a license for smearing" Palin, he said. "The campaign has been inundated by hundreds and hundreds of calls from some of the most respected reporters and news organizations. Many reporters have called the campaign and have apologized for asking the questions and said, 'Our editors are making us do this, and I am ashamed.' "
The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain's running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.
The site's founder, Markos Moulitsas, said he did not know the contributor's identity but thought that the admittedly "weird" pregnancy questions were a legitimate line of inquiry that he should not suppress.
Some journalists, Schmidt said, have demanded to see Trig's birth certificate, or have asked when Palin went into labor and whether her contractions increased or decreased as she traveled from Texas to an Alaskan hospital in her home town, Wasilla. Others, he said, have asked whether Palin's eldest son, Track, who serves in the Army and is deploying to Iraq, is a drug addict. "Categorically false," Schmidt said, adding: "This is crazy."
News organizations routinely ask questions about allegations in an attempt to determine their veracity, and Schmidt did not contend that they were publishing or broadcasting false information about Palin and her family. But he said the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter than about Obama's real estate deal with fundraiser Tony Rezko, who recently was convicted on corruption charges. Obama has called that transaction a "boneheaded mistake."
Bloggers on the left and right increasingly drive media coverage by turning up the volume on questions until they are difficult to ignore. Sometimes they are right, as when they questioned what CBS's Dan Rather said were National Guard documents in a 2004 report on President Bush's military service that led to Rather's ouster as the network's anchor. And sometimes they are wrong. Last year, the New Republic retracted a soldier's dispatch on petty wartime cruelty in Iraq, and National Review Online acknowledged that two blog postings by a former Marine about military movements in Lebanon were misleading.
Major newspapers, magazines and networks no longer play their traditional gatekeeper role in the digital age, as was evident during the eight-month period when the National Enquirer was charging former senator John Edwards with fathering an out-of-wedlock baby. Most national news outlets did not report the allegations until last month, when Edwards acknowledged an affair with a former campaign aide but denied being her child's father.
Still, traditional media outlets can amplify and legitimize such reports, which might be why the McCain campaign is fighting so hard to keep the Palin allegations confined to the Internet. Denouncing the news media as biased also plays well with many Republican voters.
Palin has been unavailable to the media since she became McCain's surprise choice Friday, adding to the difficulties for news organizations pursuing stories about her life and career. Campaign manager Rick Davis said it would be unrealistic for her to grant interviews as she prepares for "the most important speech of her life," her acceptance address at the convention here. Schmidt said she will be made available for interviews after the convention, a similar timetable followed by Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.).
Perhaps the greatest concern to the McCain campaign is that the constant inquiries, amplified by cable television debates over whether a mother with a pregnant daughter and four other children can effectively function as vice president, will create a perception that her nomination is in trouble. "We are being bombarded by e-mails and phone calls from journalists asking when she will be dropping out of the race," Schmidt said.
One final thought: There is more of a distinction than Schmidt is willing to grant between asking and publishing. I remember Marcia Kramer of New York's WCBS-TV telling me how sheepish she felt calling Eliot Spitzer's office and asking about a tip that the governor had patronized prostitutes. Days later, he was gone. Sometimes you have to ask the question. But we in the media have to be careful that we don't overplay our hand on the Palin situation.
If your media diet hasn't reached the saturation point, check out my piece on a secret meeting of Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and Barack Obama.
The Republican convention is only halfway over, and complaints about the press are rising, as the L.A. Times reports:
"Delegates to the Republican National Convention whirled in their seats en masse and called out from the floor: 'Tell the truth! Tell the truth!' The chants and finger-wagging were directed toward the sky boxes. Their target: the television networks and the rest of the 'liberal mainstream media.'
"It happened 20 years ago, as the GOP gathered in New Orleans, Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak recalled this week. But the scene could have come from the convention floor Tuesday in St. Paul, where the Republican faithful began working out once again on a favorite punching bag. Their goal: to lessen the burden on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, five election cycles after the media were lambasted because it dared to question the credentials of another would-be vice president, Dan Quayle. The GOP deployed its principal spokespeople, elected officials, delegates and cable television surrogates with one essential message: Mess with our gal, Sarah, or her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and we will mess with you."
"The culture wars are making a sudden and unexpected encore in American politics, turning more ferocious virtually by the hour as activists on both sides of the ideological divide react to the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket . . .
"The selection of Palin -- a new heroine of social conservatives -- has helped reignite not only abortion but also other flash-point issues in a way few of McCain's other vice presidential options would have done. Conservatives see her as a kindred spirit who lives her anti-abortion words in the most profound way: by giving birth to a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Gun owners see her as authentically one of them: a hunter with a passion for the outdoors and gun freedom.
"Social liberals agree -- and are proving just as ready for combat on issues that many operatives and analysts believed would have less relevance in an Obama-McCain campaign."
Here's more on how teed off the McCain team is, from the Huffington Post:
"In a recent email to the press, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers wrote: 'All: I know that the Obama campaign is pushing around many false attacks on Governor Palin, and wanted to make sure you had the facts. The allegations that Gov. Palin was a member of Alaska Independence Party are false. She's never been a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Gov. Palin has been a registered Republican ever since 1982, as the records attached show. It would be nice if the media outlets covering this garbage actually did their due diligence in reporting, and didn't just push Obama campaign/Daily Kos smears.' "
Uh-oh: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live."
The depth of the culture war should be apparent from this New Republic essay by Alan Wolfe:
"Sarah Palin's nomination is a public service. No longer will we hear lectures from the likes of Newt Gingrich telling poor women on welfare how to conduct their sex lives. Focus on the Family will have to focus on a different kind of family. William Bennett has no virtues left to write about. At long last our national nightmare over sexual hypocrisy has come to an end, and we can all thank John McCain for that.
"And that is not all. In rushing to Sarah Palin's defense, the leaders of the Christian right have made it abundantly clear how they define a Christian. We don't care if you sin. We are not bothered if you put your ambition ahead of the needs of your children. If you have lied or broken the law, we will look the other way. It all comes down to your stand on guns and fetuses. Vote the right way, and you have our blessing. If any proof were needed that James Dobson is a political operative rather than a spiritual leader, his jumping on the Palin bandwagon offers it."
While praising Obama and Biden for declaring Palin's kids off-limits, National Review is disgusted with the MSM:
"The New York Times's webpage on Tuesday led with no fewer than three stories about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. CNN has tried to exploit Miss Palin as a laboratory specimen for a high-profile examination of sex-education. MSNBC and the Huffington Post are titillating viewers with exposes on Miss Palin's boyfriend. Slate, owned by the Washington Post, is running a 'Name Bristol Palin's Baby' contest. US Weekly has 'Babies, Lies, and Scandal' on its cover.
"But unsavory as all this is, it can't hold a candle to Andrew Sullivan. Once a respectable journalist, The Atlantic's self-declared champion of respect for privacy and of civil discourse now obsesses over Miss Palin, airing baseless and abhorrent questions about the motherhood of Trig, Gov. Palin's infant son, born this year with Down syndrome. One wonders if David Bradley bought The Atlantic -- a venerable institution that once published Mark Twain and Martin Luther King -- so that he could associate it with the most despicable ravings of the left-wing blogosphere. What price in reputation is Bradley willing to pay for increased unique-visitor numbers from among the fever swamps?
"This shameful but predictable media performance stands in marked contrast to the rigorous 'hands-off' privacy policy dutifully honored by the press throughout the Clinton years for the president's then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. Indeed earlier this year, though Miss Clinton was now well into her twenties and an impressively poised surrogate for her mother's campaign, NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for asserting that Sen. Clinton's campaign was 'pimping' her daughter -- a classless formulation, to be sure. But where's the hyper-sensitivity about a candidate's child now?
"When Al Gore's son was arrested on narcotics and speeding charges in 2007, moreover, the national press was a model of sympathetic restraint. The muted coverage was devoid of calls for a national "teaching moment" on drug abuse or responsible driving. The message was plain and correct: No news here, move along. The Republican base and other people of good will are angry over this grotesque display. It is obvious what the media and Democrats are up to here. They want to define Sarah Palin as a failure before she even has a chance to succeed."
By the way, the McCain camp denies ABC's report that Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, although she did speak at its 2000 convention.
Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."
No comments:
Post a Comment