Interesting piece by Lucy Dalglish in the spring edition of “The News Media & the Law,” published quarterly by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Dalglish lays out the case for a “function test” courts have long used to define a journalist, and suggests the test could be adapted to delineate journalist bloggers from non-journalists.
Some people outside the news business are surprised when “traditional journalists” readily accept that some bloggers qualify as journalists. That seems obvious to me. Regardless of how someone distributes information, if they’re collecting and accurately reporting facts to the public, they’re serving a news-gathering function. Today, thanks to the Web, they no longer need a printing press to do so.
The definition of a journalist is increasingly important in an era when some members of the criminal justice system are intent on using subpoenas to coerce journalists into doing their jobs for them. Many bloggers lack the resources to fight subpoenas for notes and sources. Actually, many traditional media outlets lack those resources anymore. Extending First Amendment protections is an important battlefront on the horizon to stop the continuing spread of a dangerous practice that threatens to undermine the independence of news media – whether that’s a fully staffed newspaper or a single blogger working from her home.
4 Comments
We all can be journalists but, like journalists, suffer the same persecution.
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia website that anyone can write. However, Wikipedia has a dark side to it. Some volunteers have IP searching ability and routinely abuse it to ban people whose comments they don’t like.
Wikipedia also is routinely manipulated by supporters of our next President, President Obama. The man is worthy of support, particularly after November but not his wikipedia supporters. They ban people that write in the Obama article that they don’t agree with. Even neutral comments are met with ban. So, like journalists, write something and they censor it. Wikipedia is responsible because they allow manipulators to take over.
Wicked Wikipedia, it has been called.
A journalist would be one that investigates and provides factual information on stories of interest.
There are far too many editorial writers who skew stories with their own ideologies rather than reporting the facts. This skewing occurs in the paper press, TV, radio and the Internet.
SHERRY:
WHAT A TIMELY BLOG TOPIC. I JUST POSTED THE FOLLOWING COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE ABOUT THE RECENT TERMINATION OF KAREN HAGER & MICHELLE GORS. I HOPE YOU DO NOT CENSOR IT.
I HAVE BEEN DOING EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO EMBARRASS YOU, LOU & PAM INCLUDING ENCOURAGING THE FIRST LINE REPORTERS TO WRITE A JOINT LETTER TO THE CEO OF MCLATCHY TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE EAGLE REFUSING TO COVER CORRUPTION STORIES. HOWEVER I WANT TO SINCERELY THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE SPEECH TO PERMIT MY POSTS TO REMAIN ON THE EAGLE BLOG FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS. MOST AMERICANS DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH ECONOMIC & POLITICAL CONTROL HAS BEEN CONCENTRATED IN THE HANDS OF A SMALL CLIQUE OF NEPOTISITC ELITIST JUDGES, ATTORNEYS, POLTICIANS, GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS & MEDIA EXECUTIVES.
I HOPE THAT WE WILL ALL HUMBLY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SYSTEMIC HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES THAT HAVE OCCURRED FOR MANY YEARS IN WICHITA THAT WERE COVERED UP IN TOPEKA BY THE LEGISLATURE, THE SUPREME COURT, KBI, AG’S OFFICE AND THE OFFICE OF JUDICIAL ADMINSITRATION, THE COMMISSION OF JUDICIAL QUALFICATIONS, THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE BOARD AND THE BOARD OF HEALING ARTS.
YOU & PAM HAVE THE POWER TO START A TSUNAMI OF GOVERNMENT & JUDICIAL REFORMS TO DEMAND TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY THAT WILL ORIGINATE IN WICHITA, FLOOD TOPEKA AND SPILL OVER INTO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. IN POLITICS PERCEPTIONS IS REALITY. TOO MANY CHRISITAN PRO LIFE GOP POLITICIANS HAVE USED GEORGE TILLER TO BUILD THEIR POLTICIAL KINGDOMS AND TO DIVERT ATTENTION AWAY FROM THEIR OWN CRIMES. TO NON-BELIEVERS, THESE SO CALLED CHRISTIANS APPEAR TO BE DISHONEST LIARS & HYPOCRITES.
I ADMIT THAT I’M A WANNABEE REPORTER WHO WANTS TO PUT MY OWN SPIN ON THE MANY EXCITING EVENTS THAT HAVE OCCURRED OVER THE PAST 24 MONTHS. I WANT THE POWERFUL FASCISTS THAT CONTROL OUR STATE TO PERCEIVE THAT GOD IS IN COMPELTE CONTROL AND WILL NOT ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO HYPOCRISY AND HUMAN RIGTS ABUSES COMMITTED AGAINST CHRISITAN FAMILIES AND THEIR CHILDREN.
GOD BLESS YOU.
BILL MCKEAN kiakahahaha@yahoo.com 293-6079
Carrie!!! GM Joan Barrett & Schurtz VP Marci Burdicks are the real incompetents that should be fired. They are making Karen Hager & Michelle Gors are scapegoat for refusing to follow up on my numerous telephone & e-mail requests to Barrett & Burdick that Channel 12 interview disabled air force vet Joe Liddle about the systemic criminal corruption and human rights abuses in the Sedgwick County District Courts & SRS involving criminal acts by Genine Ware, Christine Ladner, Judge Pilshaw, former SRS attorney Tim Givan and unethical behavior by Tripp Shawver, Marks Kahrs. Judge Tim Henderson, Judge Dan Brooks, Asst. Prosecutor Chatamongo. However Channel 12 laziness pales in comparison to the evil unethical actions of Dave Grant at KAKE news and Dion Leffler at the Eagle to cover up the subornation of criminal perjury & forgery by Dave Grant’s wife Rachel Pirner & Judges Roth, Vining, Steve Manke, John Rapp, Tammy Baker and Van Fleet and co-conspiracy by Judges Corrigan & Friedel. It’s about time for all 3 TV stations to interview Todd Wait, Joe Liddle & Jim Morrison. As usual I will copy this comment on Sherry’s blog & e-mail this article to every judge, Wichita & Kansas Bar Association officials and & media executives in Wichita & Rory Peter Clark & Kelly McBride at the Poynter Institute with the telephone numbers of Todd Wait, Joe Liddle & Jim Morrison and challenge any one to sue me for slander or to ask Nola Fouston to arrest me for criminal defamation. I can be sent to jail for 1 year for writing comment if my allegations are not true. I predict that former KAKE Investigative reporter Jeff Golimowski is going to get this 15 minutes of fame.
Posted on Wed, Jul. 02, 2008
KWCH news director, assignment editor resign
BY CARRIE RENGERS
The Wichita Eagle
KWCH, Channel 12, news director Michele Gors resigned Tuesday, and assignment editor Karen Hager resigned today.
“We’re a very strong station and continue to be,” station president and general manager Joan Barrett said.
Barrett said it’s common for media outlets to see staff come and go.
“Sometimes people make decisions and changes are made.”
She wouldn’t comment further.
Posted on Tue, Jul. 01, 2008
KAKE general manager resigns
BY CARRIE RENGERS
The Wichita Eagle
KAKE, Channel 10, president and general manager Terry Cole announced his resignation to his staff this morning.
“Today’s a bittersweet day,” said marketing director Bryan Frye.
He said Cole is excited about his new opportunity but is sad to leave KAKE.
“It’s a great year, and he likes it here,” Frye said.
Cole joined KAKE in April 2003. He previously worked for Gray Television Inc., which owns KAKE, at stations in Reno, Nev., and Panama City, Fla.
Cole has a new job but hasn’t said where it is. It isn’t with Gray, Frye said.
Cole’s last day is July 11. Gray hasn’t chosen his replacement.
Posted on Thu, Jul. 03, 2008
Foulston meets angry mothers
District Attorney Nola Foulston tries to help families whose children are removed by SRS to navigate the court system.
BY ROY WENZL
The Wichita Eagle
The three mothers who showed up at Nola Foulston’s office on Wednesday came to complain that their kids had been abused, falsely accused and neglected while in state custody.
Foulston, the Sedgwick County district attorney, had invited them so she could answer their questions, and because she’s still angry about Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Services director Don Jordan saying recently that her office “bullied” SRS workers into putting information into court documents that they don’t believe.
Jordan has since said he had no basis in fact to say what he did. But Foulston said he still did a lot of damage.
The meeting started with hard feelings on both sides, but ended with Foulston advising the women on how to navigate the legal system.
After a few tense minutes, Foulston told the mothers — Vaniece Crawford, Carlene Eye and Annette Jones — that she wanted to help them and other families better understand the system.
Before getting to that, she reminded them that she’d met at least two of them a few days ago, when they and their group, Sunflower Community Action, protested at her election campaign lunch at Larkspur restaurant, and a month ago, after Jordan’s comments appeared and about 60 people protested at her home.
Those two meetings were badly handled by both sides, Jones said.
Outside Foulston’s home, Jones said, at least two protesters, “people obviously never potty trained,” yelled at and heckled Foulston on her doorstep, “enough so that I turned on them myself, and told them to shut up.”
But Jones said that when the group showed up at Larkspur a week ago, Foulston greeted their leader with curses.
Foulston was still angry about those previous visits; in a letter to set up Wednesday’s meeting she’d asked for the names and addresses of the attendees. “Don’t worry,” she wrote. “I don’t plan to picket any of you at your homes.”
She also told them on Wednesday, when they told her that many parents think the District Attorney’s Office is too eager to remove children from homes, that, “It is not my purpose to fly over Sedgwick County on a broom, removing children from their families.”
The best way families can navigate through the courts is to insist that the lawyers representing the children help them do that, Foulston told the mothers.
For one thing, she said, it’s the lawyers’ job; for another, the District Attorney’s Office is barred by law from talking to families represented by counsel.
But she also told the mothers that her office needed to do a better job of “being transparent,” and helping families learn to navigate the system.
She asked them to help her write an information booklet. They liked this idea and said they would.
Some of the mothers asked why there were errors in documents prepared by Foulston’s office for cases involving their children.
Foulston told them she is barred by law from talking specifics about their children’s cases. But she and Ron Paschal, a deputy district attorney, told them that court cases have to be filed soon after a child is removed, and often end up with “boilerplate” paragraphs when filed. Lawyers for the families can advocate to have those documents changed, he pointed out.
“But I’ve asked my court appointed attorney to do that, and he didn’t,” one mother said.
“But that’s a problem with your attorney,” Foulston said.
She told them that if they are not getting proper representation, they have the right to ask their lawyer to tell the judge that they object to the job the lawyer is doing.
Foulston said she hoped the result of Wednesday’s meeting would be that families might be better helped in dealing with the system.
Jones said she hopes for the same thing. But she also said that the mothers had tried for a long time to ask Foulston’s help, “and she didn’t give us the time of day until after we showed up outside her house and then later at Larkspur.”
Reach Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com.
© 2007 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansas.com
Posted on Thu, Jul. 03, 2008
Grand jury doesn’t charge Tiller
BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle
The grand jury investigating Wichita abortion provider George Tiller adjourned Wednesday afternoon without a criminal indictment.
Retired Sedgwick County District Judge Paul Buchanan, assigned to preside over the grand jury, said the panel returned a finding of “no true bill,” meaning criminal charges would not be filed.
The grand jury was convened in January through a petition drive by anti-abortion groups seeking an investigation into whether Tiller violated state abortion laws.
In a statement released by the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, the grand jury said:
“After six months of conducting an investigation that included hearing extensive witness testimony, reviewing volumes of documents and medical records of patients of Women’s Health Care Services (Tiller’s clinic), this Grand Jury has not found sufficient evidence to bring an indictment on any crime related to the abortion laws.”
Lee Thompson, a lawyer for Tiller, said the Wichita grand jury had received 160 records from the clinic — the result of a lengthy legal battle that found its way to the Kansas Supreme Court.
The state’s highest court limited the number of records the grand jury could subpoena and still protect the privacy of women who had abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy.
The grand jury indicated in its statement that it struggled with a complex Kansas law regulating late-term abortions.
The law says that after 22 weeks of pregnancy, doctors must first determine if a fetus can survive outside the womb. If a fetus is determined viable, then an abortion can be performed only if two independent doctors determine that carrying the pregnancy to term would cause “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
The Kansas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have interpreted that to include the mental health of the woman.
The grand jury said it found “questionable late-term abortions” but said Kansas law needs to be clearer before any investigation is likely to yield criminal charges against Tiller’s clinic.
“As the current law is written and interpreted by the Kansas Supreme Court, late-term abortions will continue for many circumstances that would seem, as a matter of common interpretation, not to meet the definition of ’substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function,’ ” the grand jury said in its statement.
Tiller is one of only a handful of doctors in the country who perform late-term abortions.
The law allows doctors to make medical decisions, Tiller’s lawyers said.
“To a lay person, it could be indigestion,” Tiller’s lawyer, Laura Shaneyfelt, said, “but to a trained medical professional it could be a heart attack.”
Thompson commended the grand jury for not “substituting a common interpretation or personal feelings” for the law.
A spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney General Stephen Six said the grand jury’s statement validated his office’s decision to pursue only 19 misdemeanor charges against Tiller.
In a case filed last year, Tiller stands accused of not getting a second opinion from an independent physician, but rather one tied to him financially. Tiller has denied any wrongdoing in those cases.
Those charges await a ruling by Sedgwick County District Judge Clark Owens before continuing to trial.
Following Wednesday’s decision, an anti-abortion group said the government isn’t aggressive enough in limiting Tiller’s practice.
Kansans for Life, which led the petition drive for the grand jury, blamed Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston for not giving the grand jury proper legal guidance.
Mary Kay Culp, Kansans for Life’s executive director, said her organization would work to help re-elect Phill Kline, an anti-abortion advocate, as district attorney in Johnson County and to defeat Foulston, who is up for re-election here.
“The law doesn’t need to be changed. The enforcers of the law need to be changed,” Culp said.
A Johnson County grand jury under Kline’s guidance returned a similar finding in March. Kline blamed the judge presiding over the grand jury for its finding that no criminal charges were appropriate against an abortion clinic run by Planned Parenthood.
Dan Monnat, a lawyer on Tiller’s legal team, said the repeated attempts against Tiller ultimately cost the public.
“It’s unfortunate for the taxpayers of the state of Kansas who again and again have to endure the expense of these investigations over someone else’s political agenda,” he said.
Reach Ron Sylvester at 316-268-6514 or rsylvester@wichitaeagle.com.
SHERRY
THANKS AGAIN RESPECTING THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE SPEECH & NOT CENSORING MY COMMENTS ON YOUR BLOG. I JUST POSTED THIS COMMENT ON MARK MCCORMICK’S COLUMN TITLED “WHO GETS TO PICK WHAT THE PUBLIC GETS TO KNOW?” I WOULD BE GLAD TO FORWARD YOU A COPY OF THE E-MAIL BUT MY E-AILS ARE BEING BLOCKED BY THE EAGLE FIRE WALL
BILL MCKEAN KIAKAHAHA@YAHOO.COM 316 293-6079
Let’s Do An Experiment! Who Gets To Pick What The Public Gets To Know? Easy Answer – Mark McCormick & the editors at the Eagle who routinely practice censorship and refuse to disclose the documented human rights atrocities against Joe Liddle & his son, David committed by pro choice Democrat Nola Foulston office, Rebecca Pilshaw & pro life GOP County Chairman Mark Kahrs and against Todd Wait by pro life GOP judges Mark Vining, Doug Roth, Mike Corrigan and Karl Friedel and Democrat pro choice attorney Rachel Pirner.
As a journalist, Mark McCormick is a worthless dishonest hypocrite just like Dion Leffler who knew Todd Wait’s story before he was jailed for 28 days by Roth for criminal contempt of court. Before becoming a columnist, McCormick was the team leader for Eagle’s crime-court house. Like the station manager at 10 who was probably fired for covering up the Todd Wait scandal involving the criminal activity of Dave Grant’s wife, and Michele Gors, the news director at 12 who was probably unfairly fired for failing to act last summer on the tips on the Joe Liddle story last summer, McCormick should also be fired for dereliction of duty. Because this comment will be censored, I will attached to a recent e-mails from Joe Liddle to investigative reporter, Dion Leffler, and forward it to all of the judges & their assistants in the court house to remind them that the news media cannot maintain the code of silence much longer.