SPJ Legal Defense Fund Blog

Improve your skills at the 2008 Convention & National Journalism Conference

JoeSkeel — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:56:00 GMT

Support fellow journalists and protect the freedom of speech and press at the 2008 SPJ Conference & National Journalism Convention, Sept. 4-7 in Atlanta, Ga. Listed below is a mere sampling of the special events and professional development programs designed to fit your needs!

Legal Defense Fund Auction

This year, the Legal Defense Fund's live and silent auctions will be held during the Opening Night Reception on Thursday, Sept. 4. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to see the fabulous items available for bid and to network with hundreds of journalists — all for a great cause! Check out more details here: http://spj.org/c-highlights.asp

Hi, I'll Be Suing You Today

Description: If you libel or slander someone on a major story, L. Lin Wood could be the man who’ll sue you. Once called “the lawyer for the damned,” he has represented Richard Jewell, the family of JonBenet Ramsey, Gary Condit, and Beth Holloway (mother of Natalee). In 2007, he signed on to represent Howard K. Stern, executor of Anna Nicole Smith's estate. He'll discuss defamation concerns and what NOT to do during a “media frenzy.”

Speakers: L. Lin Wood, partner, Powell Goldstein LLP

FOI Warriors: Learn All About the New FOIA Amendments

Description: Experts on the amendments Congress recently passed to the Freedom of Information Act will tell you all about the drama leading up to the new law, what the new law says, and what it means for journalists engaged in using FOIA. Learn which provisions are likely to end up in litigation, as well as which parts of the law will help journalists get better and quicker access to federal government information.

Speakers: Daniel J. Metcalfe, executive director, Collaboration on Government Secrecy; Lucy Dalglish, executive director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Laurie Babinski, associate, Baker Hostetler

For a full list of programs offered at this year’s Convention & National Journalism Conference, visit http://www.spj.org/c-programs.asp.

Editorial Cartoons and Cartoonists Honored in Chicago

MollyMcDonough — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:05:00 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of attending a great little event, sponsored by Columbia College Chicago's j-department, featuring editorial cartoon writers. I've been on the j-department's advisory board for a bit, but hadn't had the chance to attend the school's signature Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition until this year.

It was a treat to see today that Michael Ramirez won a Pulitzer for his work. He was the big winner of the Fischetti contest this year too. [Who knew Investor's Business Daily had such a fantastic editorial cartoon section?] Check out the photo of Ramirez at the Fischetti event with Columbia's J-Department Chair Nancy Day (photo by Jody Warner).

I'm still hoping to get a copy of Ramirez' remarks from the Fischetti event. He had some important things to say about the dwindling crowd of accomplished editorial cartoonists. So did Andy Marlette, who spoke in tribute of his uncle and mentor, Pulitzer-Prize winner Doug Marlette. The elder Marlette, as you may recall, was killed in a car crash a year ago.

Below is a draft of the comments Andy delivered at the Fischetti event. I'm told he ad-libbed a bit. Also, here's a couple images Andy passed along, cartoons in honor of Doug Marlette: Uncle Doug and Marlette & Falwell.

Andy Marlette at Fischetti:

Hello, and thank you so much for having me. Doug Marlette was my father’s little brother and my favorite uncle. He was always the cool uncle, the young uncle with the pretty wife who rivaled even him in coolness. Throughout childhood, despite his 6’2” frame, he always seemed more like a natural member of our squirrelly fraternity of Marlette children than one of the grownups. He was the master scary-story teller. He was a dominating force in the low post in our childhood basketball games. And for me, always being known as “the kid in class who can draw,” my uncle the cartoonist stood as the hereditary source of that talent.

He was the uncle that everyone said I took after. Sometimes it was for the personality and drawing talent. Sometimes it was my annoyed parents claim that “you’re just like you’re Uncle Doug when he was your age: too damn smart for your own good!” I always wondered if that was supposed to make me feel bad.

And my life has mimicked his to some extent. We both graduated from the same high school and community college in Sanford, Florida. We both attended services at the First Baptist Church in Sanford where we were both accused of being too contentious with the old ladies who taught Sunday school classes there.

Some of our first cartoons ran in the same publications back home. When it comes to higher education, our storylines diverge somewhat, due to the fact that he became a Florida State Seminole and drew cartoons for his college paper, The Flambeau, whereas I became a Florida Gator and drew for mine, The Independent Florida Alligator. This in no way affected my admiration for my uncle, but I do take great pride in the fact that I was able to correct his error in collegiate judgment. Go Gators.

And now to further the Marlette mimicry, I’ll be damned if I didn’t grow up to be an editorial cartoonist. I ponder this: his life and mine, the connectedness of it all and this art form that I’ve been summoned to. Would I draw cartoons had he not? Is it coincidence? Is it fate? Is it genetics?

Yes, my path is inevitably tied to his; I have accepted this. But every time I get a paycheck, I think of my Uncle Doug and curse that son of a bitch for not having been a corporate executive instead.

On the day he died, I had just returned from lunch and sat back at my desk in the newsroom. Our office secretary suddenly appeared and said that our editor needed to see me in his office. She followed me in and closed the door and after I sat down, my editor said, “Andy, your uncle was in an accident; this just came across the desk. We are so sorry…” He passed me a printout of the initial AP wire release that said Doug had been killed.

For the remainder of that day I drank heavily and made all the wrenching phone calls. Immediately, I felt the first tremors of how his death shook the world. My inbox flooded with condolences from everyone you could imagine, people I had never met in my life: reporters, columnists, cartoonists, politicians, his former public school teachers. My cell phone even rang from a Tallahassee area code and on the other end was the audibly horrified voice of Governor Charlie Crist, who called to offer sincere condolences and supportive words.

Sometime late into the night, I sat down to draw Uncle Doug’s obituary cartoon.
In the days that followed, the family all made our solemn pilgrimages to the small and beautiful town of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Upon arriving, we would discover that hundreds and hundreds of others who had loved Doug over the years had decided to do the same. His extraordinary sendoff was at once celebratory and heartbreaking, filled with bluegrass music, BBQ, soggy eyes, fried food, sweet tea and the loving, poetic words of his friends. It was a soaring testament to the character, love and work of my uncle. It was a soaring testament to what a cartoonist can come to mean to the world.

But of all the beautiful eulogies that were delivered that day, of all the wonderful sentiments and stories told, I do not know that anyone articulated precisely what this man was as an editorial cartoonist and just how he stood in the eyes of his fellow cartoonists. I would like to try to today.

Doug’s best friend and author, Pat Conroy, saw Doug’s literary mind spiritually linked to that of fellow North Carolinian, Thomas Wolfe. Well when it comes to my uncle’s cartooning, I too see that Carolina soul-bond in the fact that his work was identical in spirit, style and power to another of North Carolina’s most brilliant sons, Michael Jordan.
I say this not simply as his adoring nephew, but as a developing cartoonist and a student of the art form: Doug Marlette was the Michael Jordan of editorial cartooning.

To look back on his decades of cartoons is like watching the endless highlight reels of Jordan; each slam-dunk every bit as thrilling today as they were then:
Marlette versus Falwell: a drawing of Eden, Falwell is the serpent speaking into a PTL television camera saying, “Jim and Tammy-Faye were expelled and left me in charge.”
Marlette versus the Pope: His holiness bearing the proclamation of “No Women Priests,” Marlette’s inscription: “Upon this rock I will build my church” with an arrow pointing to the Pope’s large, domed skull.

Time and time again, Doug slammed it home Air-Jordan style. Always thrilling; never off; never boring. Ask any cartoonist in this room, that ain’t easy! You don’t finish your cartoon every single day and always look down on it with great pride and complete satisfaction; sometimes you wince and cringe. Uncle Doug, however, seemed always in the zone.

Most human beings will never know what it is to fly like Jordan flew, or to nail the incredible in-your-face shots that he nailed, to be so consistently great every time you step on the court. But I think Uncle Doug had a pretty good idea.

He combined natural talent with a tremendous capacity for hard work (I know for a fact that he based his work disciplines on Jordan’s legendary practice habits). His cartoons, like Jordan’s jump shot were the result of concentrating raw aggression and masterful skill and letting it fly from your fingertips. They conjure a portrait of Doug at his daily work, not hunched over his desk but rather: tongue wagging, spread eagle, soaring through the air as cameras flash, pen and brush outstretched heading en route for a slam dunk into the public consciousness.

After I finished community college, Doug asked me to come live with him for a year as I flirted with the idea of going on to Carolina. He knew my interest in cartooning had blossomed and brought me up for a sort of apprenticeship.

Later on, my uncle was very proud of the work I did in college for The Independent Florida Alligator, and on several occasions, he stepped in to defend us when cartoons I drew got the UF melting pot of peace, unity and tolerance all stirred up.

You know, young men often need a role model in facing the challenges of adolescence; be it your first strike out in little league, your first schoolyard fight, the first girl that breaks up with you. It’s invaluable to have a guy there for you who already fought those battles.
Well, I can honestly say that Uncle Doug was there for me when I got my first death threat over a cartoon.

At my grandfather’s funeral the week before Doug passed, I told him all about my new newsroom life at The Pensacola News Journal and he hung on every detail, thrilled to hear that there were still editors out there who valued cartoonists. I showed him some of the cartoons I had done and he gushed over them. I cannot express how magnificent it feels to have your work complimented by your hero.

In recent years when we spoke of the biz, he lamented the overall state of cartooning and the current condition of free speech and told me straight up, that were he getting started in this day and age, he might not have gone into cartooning.

While I understood his feelings, he was a born cartoonist and I do not believe that he ever had such a choice in the matter.

In a 2004 piece published in Neiman Reports, Doug wrote that cartoonists were the canaries to the newspaper industry’s coalmine. I cannot disagree. But the metaphor of the canary does properly illustrate his magnitude or the whole significance of the American editorial cartoonist.

As I was re-reading Doug’s canary article a few weeks ago, thinking about what to tell you all about my uncle, another piece of bird imagery fluttered forth from the year that I lived with him before I started college. I had been toting around a paperback volume of William Butler Yeats’ poetry and he saw it and said, “Let me show you one.”

He flipped into the book and found his way to the poem, “The Second Coming,” Yeats’ apocalyptic vision for the collapse of society, the loss of hope and the dark and tragic loss of humanity… perfect material for a cartoonist.

He read the first lines:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

He said, “Man, you know when I was your age, I was convinced that this poem was written about the times we were living through. It was as powerful as Dylan songs, we just felt like it was written precisely about us. But now thirty years later, I imagine that your generation can probably read this and feel pretty much the same about it. ”
I have re-read that poem hundreds of times since he guided me to it.

He called me excitedly a few years back when Camille Paglia, another one of Doug’s favorites, included it in her volume “Break, Blow, Burn.” In her reading, she says:
“Symbolically, the falcon represents events escaping human control. The falconer’s distant, fading voice stands for moral reasoning, the spiritual and intellectual faculties on which civilization depend.”

In that context, I would say that the falconer’s voice is also symbolic of fading free speech. Under this premise, if the falcon cannot hear its master, we must question the skill and potency of the falconer.

In our discussions about cartooning, Doug often spoke of his disappointment in a trend towards “safe” or just flat out boring cartoons. He was also cautious of new media obsessions with animation and flashy web formats interfering with the fundamentals of good, strong cartooning.

I cannot tell you how much of the syndicated material sent to our paper each week are simply poor cartoons. Time after time, cookie-cut images of a middle aged couple sitting in front of a T.V., one of them making a snarky comment to the other. Or the constant flow of highly photo-shopped cartoons with so many words in them that, as Doug used to say, “you’re falling asleep by the time you’re done reading it.” If the falcon is drifting from our command, work like this is a reason for it.

This is why we need more than ever, our great cartoonists and why it is so tremendous to be here, where our art form is so valued. Uncle Doug, Michael Ramirez, Tony Auth, Steve Greenberg: these men are our skilled falconers. Their voices boom loud and clear. They cartoon the way it was meant to be done, and the way that our society desperately needs it to be done.

There is good reason that Islamic fundamentalists fear cartoons but do not fear death. Bullets and missiles are inherently hit or miss. However, in a war against fascist beliefs and oppressive inhumanity, a good cartoon can be an atomic bomb.

So thank you, thank you, thank you, to all you Fischetti folks here at Columbia College, for all you do to honor and uphold the art form and for honoring these cartoonists, our great falconers. They are the true bearers of Doug’s eternal flame. On behalf of all us Marlettes, and as Uncle Doug himself would say, “Bless your hearts!”

Trips, Tix, Documentaries Top LDF Auction Wish List

MollyMcDonough — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:26:00 GMT

I'm starting to dream up a wish list of items to auction off at this year's LDF fundraiser...the silent and live auctions during the National Convention in Atlanta this coming September.

Trips, tickets, travel destinations, hotel stays, original news photography and original editorial cartoons always do very well.

But way at the top of my list is a DVD, when it's released, of the new documentary Citizen McCaw. The premier in March sold out all 2,000 seats! Wow. Clearly there's still quite a bit of interest in the Santa Barbara newspaper scandal.

The producers have added more screenings and I'm waiting patiently to get a chance to either see the documentary in a theater or buy my own copy. Either way, I'd like to snag a copy and any accompanying swag...signatures...for an LDF auction package. So let me know if you can get your hands on a copy to donate.

The LA Times has this story on Citizen McCaw.

In 2006, SPJ honored several former Santa Barbara News Press reporters and editors with an Ethics in Journalism Award. The honorees were recognized with a standing ovation at the National Convention in Chicago that year.

SPJ Joins Reporters Committee in Supporting Locy

MollyMcDonough — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:46:00 GMT

The LDF Committee voted unanimously Sunday and Monday morning to sign on to an amicus brief in support of Toni Locy, the former USA Today reporter who is being held in contempt of court for rufusing to name her sources in a Privacy Act suit brought by former Army scientist Steven Hatfill.

Here's the press release from SPJ. The Society considers this case yet another example of the need for a federal shield law.

Thanks to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for staying on top of this case and inviting SPJ to participate.

The RCFP and SPJ are looking for ways to assist Locy financially without violating the court's order. Many journalists and student groups have expressed an interest in financially supporting Locy.

The RCFP has compiled several bullet points for background (with links to documents) on the case and I'll note a few here:

No judge has ever officially ordered that a reporter held in contempt may not accept reimbursement from an employer (or anyone else.)
Locy has cooperated, but she can't remember who her specific sources were, so the judge has ordered her to reveal the names of up to a dozen confidential sources she routinely relied upon in the Justice Department (many of them who were sources for stories more sensitive than this one.)
The fine (up to $5,000 a day) is punitive. If the judge wants to punish Locy, he should try her for criminal contempt and let a jury find that she willfully, intentionally and criminally forgot who her sources were for these stories

J-Groups, News Orgs Rally to Protest Shuttering of Wikileaks

MollyMcDonough — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:16:00 GMT

The Wikileaks case is heating up as folks prep for Friday's hearing in federal court. The LDF Committee is supporting an effort by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the LA Times and Hearst to protest the shutting down of the whistle-blowing site last week.

As you probably know by now, Wikileaks is a site devoted to disclosing confidential information. Here's how it works: the site invites Web users to post leaked material to discourage unethical behavior by corporations and governments. This is done under the veil of Internet anonymity.

Laurie Babinski, of Baker Hostetler, gives us this summary:

The case at issue was brought in federal court in San Francisco by Julius Baier Bank and Trust, a Cayman Islands-based bank. The bank alleges that an ex-employee provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. Last week, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot, the website's domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name.

However, the judge's order was ineffective in many ways -- shutting down the domain name allowed the material to remain on the Internet accessible to all who have the IP address where the material is located. The site is also mirrored on other websites around the world.

The judge also issued a temporary restraining order ordering Wikileaks to take down the documents at issue.

SPJ and the other organizations signing on to this protest are concerned about what amounts to a prior restraint against a website that disseminates information.

"Obviously, the idea that someone outraged by speech on a web site can get an order telling a registrar to disable a domain name is troubling, and the judge's order to take down the bank documents is even more disturbing," Babinski notes.

Stay tuned to SPJ.org. There may be more from the Society today or tomorrow.

More background in this previous LDF Shield post.

Will Whistle-Blower Site Stay Shuttered?

MollyMcDonough — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:50:00 GMT

It goes without saying that folks at SPJ, including the Society's faithful Baker & Hostetler lawyer Laurie Babinski, are closely watching developments in the shuttering of Wikileaks, a site devoted to the publication of confidential records.

The First Amendment implications of such a sweeping injunction could be enormous.

NYTs reporters Adam Liptak and Brad Stone wrote about last week's permanent injunction on Tuesday.

My colleague Martha Neil at the ABA Journal has a summary of the issue here and a previous summary, from when Wikileaks published a Guantanamo Bay prison manual.

Most media reports note that the Wikileaks injunction has accomplished little. Indeed, Internet savvy sympathizers quickly worked to post the information Wikileaks was slapped for publishing.

The federal judge who issued the injunction, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White of San Francisco, has scheduled a Feb. 29 hearing in the case.

Any thoughts on whether Judge White will have a change of heart by then?

Other coverage:

Bulletproof host keeps Wikileaks up (Web Host Industry News)
Wikileaks site has friend in Sweden (New York Times)
Close of Wikileaks website raises free speech concerns (Christian Science Monitor)

Misguided judge pulls plug on Wikileaks (San Jose Mercury News)

LDF Activity Report...A Busy Few Months

MollyMcDonough — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:24:00 GMT

I've admittedly been slack...until recently...with the LDF Shield blog. But the LDF Committee and Subcommittee members, with the tireless support of our lawyers at Baker Hostetler, have been busy.

During the past few months the LDF Committee has granted two LDF requests for a total of $3,000.

SPJ also, through the LDF Committee or with the LDF Committee’s assistance, has signed on to three amicus briefs, lent its names to comments/letters on three occasions and advised SPJ’s leadership. One LDF grant request was rejected.

As Chair, I fielded several calls and e-mails, invited applications and chatted with journalists and non-journalists about the LDF. As you can see from the summaries, October was particularly busy.

On the development side, Julie Kay and I have begun collecting Silent Auction items. We’ll be ramping up our activity as planning for the convention in Atlanta shifts into high gear.

If you have auction items or leads for auction items or want more information on the summaries of the LDF Committee’s action items, please contact me: mmcdonough@spj.org.

ACTIVITY REPORT:

In October, a $1,000 grant was awarded to the Salt Lake Tribune and the Utah Media Coalition to help fund a lawsuit seeking access to federal Mine Safety and Health Administration Hearings. There was unanimous support from the LDF Committee.

In October, SPJ agreed to sign on to comments drafted by the Society of Environmental Journalists. The comments objected to overbroad regulatory language the Department of the Interior proposed. SPJ along with the SEJ believed the language threatened to limit photo journalism and audio recording in national parks. Five members of the LDF Committee voted, one did not participate.

In October, SPJ agreed to continue to sign on to an amicus brief objecting to overbroad language in the Child Online Protection Act that could have a negative impact on journalism. Five members of the LDF Committee voted, one did not participate.

In October, SPJ agreed to sign on to comments to the federal Judicial Conference regarding open Internet access to plea agreements. A policy proposed by the DOJ would limit public Internet access via PACER to plea agreements in criminal cases to protect cooperating witnesses. The LDF Committee voiced unanimous support for signing on to the comments, which were initiated by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

In October, SPJ agreed to lend its name to a letter drafted by the Newspaper Association of America to House of Representatives leadership advocating for more balanced space allocation for print and other media in the new Capitol Visitors Center. After much discussion and participation from the Committee and Subcommittee, the vote was 5-1 to join the letter. UPDATE: In mid-January, we learned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given the print media additional space in the new Capitol Visitors Center.

In November, the full SPJ board voted to extend a $2,000 grant Miami freelance photographer Carlos Miller. This required full board approval because Miller had already received a $1,000 grant after his arrest on charges of disobeying police. UPDATE: Miller’s case continues to drag on and he’s now without counsel. For whatever reason, his counsel decided not to take the case all the way to trial and has withdrawn from the case. The LDF Subcommittee and South Florida Pro Chapter are working with Miller to help him secure counsel. Miller files regular updates about his case on his blog: Photography is Not a Crime.

In December, the LDF Committee voted to reject an LDF request to extend a grant to a Michigan man who believed his site was being shut down via personal protective order in retaliation for critical comments he published on his website.

In January, SPJ agreed to sign on to an amicus brief supporting a recent decision from a lower D.C. federal court holding that Secret Service visitor logs are "agency records" subject to FOIA. The amicus is to focus on the importance of Secret Service logs being subject to FOIA and will also emphasize the broader harm to accountability and openness if the appellate court sides with the government.

In January, SPJ agreed to a request from the American Association of Publishers that it sign on to an amicus brief in Wilson v. McConnell, challenging the CIA’s redaction of Valerie Plame-Wilson’s memoir Fair Game. SPJ’s participation is limited to a brief that argues, on broad First Amendment grounds, that the rationale for censoring Wilson was undermined when the information became available publicly.

In February, President Clint Brewer asked the LDF and FOI Committees to weigh in with advice on whether SPJ should opposed a Los Angeles City Council motion that proposed the creation of a “personal safety zone" to regulate paparazzi. The Los Angeles Pro Chapter has opposed the motion, which has since been dubbed the “Britney Bill.” The consensus of the LDF Subcommittee was that, while there is a concern that journalism could be impacted by such legislation, it is too soon for SPJ to weigh in.

Contempt Ruling Against Reporter "Most Disturbing"

NeilRalston — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:46:00 GMT

A former reporter for USA Today was ruled in contempt by a federal judge Tuesday because she is refusing to reveal her anonymous sources for stories she wrote about the much-publicized anthrax attacks of 2001.

The reporter, Toni Locy, is now a journalism teacher at West Virgina University. She could be fined as much as $5,000 a day as a result of the contempt ruling handed down by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton.

In an article published today in The New York Times, Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the contempt ruling was particularly troubling.

“Of all the federal court sanctions on reporters for refusing to reveal confidential sources over the past several years, this is perhaps the most disturbing,” she was quoted as saying.

In the article, Dalglish said Locy "is being punished for doing what reporters are supposed to do: making sure important information gets to the public about whether the government had the investigation into a major public health threat under control."

The ruling stems from a civil suit filed by Dr. Steven Hatfill who claims the federal government ruined his reputation by leaking his name to the news media as "a person of interest" in the anthrax attacks.

You can check out The NY Times story here.

Blogger Spurs Debate Over Shield Law

MollyMcDonough — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:50:00 GMT

I'm catching up on the controversy surrounding blogger Thaddeus Matthews in Memphis. His blog, Thaddeus Matthews Dot Com, is under investigation by local authorities and he may face subpoena.

Looks like the Commercial Appeal, along with the ACLU, is coming out on the side of Matthews' right to protect the "leaker" who is supposedly supplying the blog with details from a police investigation into the killing of a local police officer. Their argument is that Matthews, like any other reporter, should be protected by Tennessee's Shield Law.

Indeed, the statute states: "A person engaged in gathering information for publication or broadcast connected with or employed by the news media or press, or who is independently engaged in gathering information for publication or broadcast, shall not be required...to disclose...any information or the source of any information procured for publication or broadcast."

A CA editorial notes: "Like him or not, Matthews is among a growing cadre of Internet savvy communicators who are using the Internet to democratize journalism. When he obtained and gave his readers a draft statement from the suspect in the murder of police officer Edward Vidulich, he was using a common journalistic tool. Snatching that tool from the hands of journalists of any stripe ultimately damages the public's ability to hold the government accountable."

The Memphis Flyer, however, hasn't been so quick to side with the blogger.

"Flawed, lazy, beaten, battered, scooped, and insular it may sometimes be, but the established media still has some merits," opines senior editor John Branston. "Rules, principles, editing, attribution, corrections, and professionalism — not to mention regular salaries — still mean something."

The Middle Tennessee Pro Chapter is following the issue on its blog too.

SPJ Board Grants $2,000 to Freelance Photographer

MollyMcDonough — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:04:00 GMT

The full SPJ board met this afternoon via conference call and voted to award freelance photographer Carlos Miller a second grant, this one for $2,000, to assist his legal defense.

Miller was arrested by Miami police while on assignment for a Web start up. He continues to get support from the South Florida Pro Chapter.

SPJ initially granted Miller $1,000, bringing the total contribution to his case to $3,000. Miller’s trial date originally was scheduled for Nov. 5, but has since been postponed to give his lawyer time to depose more witnesses to the incident.

Miller details his case, with updates and past media coverage at his site: Photography is Not a Crime It's a First Amendment Right.

Shield Law Could Be in Name Only

MollyMcDonough — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:25:00 GMT

SPJ's voice on the Hill, Baker & Hostetler, has asked us to beat the drum before H.R. 2102 - the reporter's shield law - hits the floor Tuesday.

There are two amendments unresolved, one, by Rep. Lama Smith, we're told essentially strips the bill of any meaningful shield protection.

Smith's amendment, among other key changes, would delete the public interest balancing test that is at the heart of the bill.

So we're being asked to spread the word...yes to the bill...no to the Smith amendment.

Thanks Dave...and...Looking Forward

MollyMcDonough — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:12:00 GMT

First, a big thanks to Dave Aeikens for his service as LDF chair and best wishes as he continues to climb the SPJ ladder in an effort to improve and protect journalism.

Second, I’m thrilled about this opportunity to work on the LDF. It has long been a favorite SPJ committee. Having faced down subpoenas for my work – once without the means of representation – I know how important even a $1,000 LDF grant can be.

I hope to continue the work of the LDF and, with much help, build our reserves so we can continue to fight to open records in the public interest and shield journalists who are threatened with becoming arms of law enforcement when they are forced to give up notes and work product.

Moving forward

DaveAeikens — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:48:00 GMT

This is my last post on the LDF Shield. Thank you for allowing me to serve as the chairman of this great committee for the past two years. As many in SPJ know, I was elected president-elect Saturday in Washington D.C. I am grateful for the opportunity and looking forward to working with and serving the membership for the next three years.

Thank you for your support of LDF and I urge you to continue to support the efforts under the direction of Molly McDonough of Chicago, who is the new chairwoman. She is passionate about LDF and will be a great chair.

LDF issued seven grants worth more than $18,000 since August of 2006. Heading into the new year, LDF has more than $100,000 in the account to help journalists with legal battles.

We raised about $19,000 at the auction Thursday night and sold a chair Saturday at the banquet for $1,500 that had the autograph's of Woodward, Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and the rest of that great panel from Saturday. A Bob Shieffer autographed auction-paddle sold for $200.

We had a great year. Good luck, Molly and thank you for your support of LDF.

Dave Aeikens

LDF Auction a success

DaveAeikens — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:35:00 GMT

I'm bloggging live from the SPJ Convention in Washington DC. Last night's annual LDF auction raised about $18,000. That money will go to good use to help journalists in legal need. The auction featured Bob Schieffer of CBS News and Jim Bohannon of Westwood One Radio as guest auctioneers. Thank you to all those who donated auction items and to those who bought items at the silent and live auctions at the National Music Center.

Ross ordered to turn over info

DaveAeikens — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:56:00 GMT

ABC News top investigative reporter Brian Ross has been ordered to turn name his sources he used in a story about the anthrax cases in 2001. This is the latest and one of the most high-profile case of a journalist being ordered to reveal sources.

The New York Sun has the story.