D.C. dinner of journos, pols and celebs was black tie and a black eye

BARACK OBAMA AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ ASSOCIATION DINNER IN 2013.

The news media that cover the White House have a really great plan for combating the common public perception that they are elitist and out of touch with the rest of the world.

They hosted a black-tie dinner in Washington to schmooze and hobnob with government leaders and politicians. Really.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner returned Saturday night after a two-year absence because of the pandemic. The gala event featuring Beltway journalists, leading political figures and celebrities presents such a terrible picture.

The message to media consumers (and haters) says this: The D.C. press and politicians are quite cozy, actually, and what we see 364 days a year is just a game they play to fulfill prescribed roles and maintain access. It makes one wonder if the independent and sometimes adversarial relationship that’s needed to produce accountability journalism truly exists in untempered form.

The event, which began in 1921, does good in raising money for journalism scholarships and calling attention to various threats to journalists and the First Amendment. But they don’t need to invite the people they cover to make that happen.

Issues with the White House press corps may run deeper than this event. Politico published an article on Friday quoting anonymous White House reporters saying they’re bored with the Biden Administration and long for the newsmaking chaos and leaks of the Trump Administration. And that their beat is no longer the big career boost it once was. 

Not exactly the frame of mind we need from the watchdogs of the executive branch.

White House journalists seem obsessed with their status. The dinner shows that, as do their frequent complaints when presidents don’t hold enough formal press conferences. I think that gripe stems less from an inability to get answers – because press secretaries can give answers – and more from wanting a president to validate the press’ importance. (And for some, to be seen on TV asking a tough question of the president of the United States.)

Certainly presidents ought to have to answer questions, but who cares if it’s at a press conference or while walking somewhere. There’s a lot of journalistic talent in the briefing room. I’ve always thought that instead of the horde, a couple of pool reporters could adequately handle a presidential press conference while all the other journalists should go talk to sources, dig into records, or visit communities affected by government actions. Because that’s how better journalism happens. 

State sports writing legends: We all kinda look alike, don't we?

If you happened to visit the recently announced list of The 50 Legends of the Alabama Sports Writers Association*, you saw a scroll of outstanding journalists who witnessed and captured many of the greatest sports moments of our lives.

But also: A bunch of white guys.

The list of 50 includes one Black journalist (Rubin Grant) and one female journalist (Kathy Jo Lumpkin). Whose fault is that?

Considering the ridiculously non-diverse pool it had to choose from, not the selection committee’s. (But I am dumbfounded by its omission of my 28-year colleague Solomon Crenshaw Jr., a constant ASWA award winner.)

OK, then whose?

That would be mine.  And every other hiring editor in every other state newspaper sports department for the past 50 years.

It’s true we didn’t get a lot of applications from Black or female sports writers, but that’s no excuse. Recruitment of under-represented groups should have been standard practice.

Why does it matter?  Well, it’s about impossible for any news organization to fulfill its commitment to the community it covers, or to even understand the community it covers, if it has no internal voices from that community.  I know, for instance, of several cases in which a female sports journalist might have said, “Hey, let’s not run that sympathetic profile of this athlete accused of rape.” 

This state has had – and still does have – a number of good Black and female sports reporters. But in the past, these reporters usually were freelance writers rather than staff writers, or didn’t stay long in the state, or, amazingly, got laid off. Today, representation is proportionally better in TV sports departments than at print/digital outlets. 

In a report released in September 2021, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport surveyed more than 100 newspapers and websites around the country and found that 77 percent of sports reporters were white and 85 percent were male. The numbers were similar for sports editors.

This is dismal, but actually represents slow progress. Nationally, female beat reporters are no longer an oddity (despite what Cam Newton might think), and the two best sports commentators in the business are Christine Brennan of USA Today and Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post.

Here and elsewhere, it’s possible to do better. Mentoring and scholarship programs offered to college students can work (the majority of my sports writing students are female and my classes always have some degree of Black representation). Early identification and recruitment of prospective hires also works, whether it’s a college journalist or someone working at a smaller outlet.

I’m optimistic that the next group of 50 Legends in 2072 is going to look a whole lot different.

 * Disclosure for those of you who don’t click the list: I am on it.

Thanks, but I don’t need Alabama politicians to tell me how to do my job

not my classroom. and that’s not critical race theory on the screens. though some people probably think it is.

I mentioned CRT in a class the other day. But I am not worried about getting fired. My students promised that if they ever bump into a state legislator, they’ll say I was talking about Customer Relations Training. Tee-hee.

The Alabama Senate is about to consider a bill, a version of which passed the House two weeks ago, that in essence prohibits or restrains the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other “divisive concepts” related to race and gender at all levels of education. This is a solution that has no problem.

The potential for unjustifiable interference with academic freedom looms larger for secondary education, but I wish to focus here on higher education, where professors across the state have protested this bill and its earlier versions.

The bill itemizes “divisive concepts,” and states that a public university may discipline or fire violators. 

As evidence that the sponsoring white Republican legislators know they are in dangerous constitutional and political territory, the proposed law as it relates to higher education is heavily caveated. The University of Alabama and other state universities have pushed for and achieved language changes, but of course they have to let the Legislature pass some kind of law like this because institutions of higher education are loathe to push back too hard against the people who decide their funding.

Among the caveats for colleges:

• The bill allows discussion of the listed divisive concepts as long as: students aren’t “compelled” to agree with them; the instruction occurs “in an objective manner”; and “the institution expressly makes clear that it does not endorse these divisive concepts.”

• The bill allows the teaching of topics and historical events “in a historically accurate context.”

Among the listed divisive concepts is this one: “That this state or the United States is inherently racist or sexist.” Not sure what “inherently” means. Nobody’s telling students that Alabama’s air and water make them racist. But the idea that the institutions and laws of Alabama have systemically perpetuated racism over time – Critical Race Theory, in essence – stands upon a mountain of evidence. I mean, there’s no way to spin the state constitution of 1901 as anything else. This seems like a good and necessary topic for the classroom.

Another divisive concept: “That an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, sex, or religion, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, sex, or religion.” I dunno. I think the issue of reparations would be worthy of a spot on a syllabus.

If this bill becomes law, I could broach such subjects with students, but I’d feel truly perplexed about how to portray, for instance, white supremacy “in an objective manner.” And the requirement to say I don’t endorse a divisive concept? I feel a case of convenient forgetfulness coming on.

It’s fair to ask whether the majority of the Alabama Legislature has a clue as to what goes on in a college classroom. I won’t argue that CRT and similar topics aren’t being taught, because I know they are – in scattered, appropriate courses at UA and other places. But professors are not indoctrinating their students. We can’t even get them to learn the syllabus. Nor are we compelling assent, which to me means threatening disagreeing students with a lowered grade. Exposing students to new ideas and challenging existing ones falls many steps short of forced agreement.

One of my department colleagues, Dr. A.J. Bauer, teaches media law and his courses include some topics that might fall within the bill’s targeted concepts. He’s not trying to indoctrinate anyone, and doesn’t think he could anyway.

“Students, and especially conservative students, have no issue playing devil’s advocate or pushing back on lessons that don’t fit their preconceived notions about the world. Assent isn’t even the goal — critical thinking and active engagement with the course material and themes is.”

Bauer believes the bill is “extremely vague” and likely the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually rule such a law unconstitutional. In the meantime, though, “it will result in a chilling effect, where teachers and professors will self-censor when discussing matters of race, gender, and sexuality – if they choose to discuss them at all – for fear that a frivolous and unwarranted student complaint will result in their termination. This is likely the desired outcome of the bill’s sponsors.”

They say it isn’t, of course. But the other political factor to consider here is that Alabama’s jackass of an attorney general would probably love to yank a lib professor into court to further his political ambitions. In the same vein, multiple conservative groups around the U.S. have encouraged students to secretly record their professors. 

If we ever get to the point that teachers are scared of their students, that would be as destructive to good education as anything I can think of. It would be quittin’ time for a lot of educators.

In the smaller picture, I view this bill as political pandering. In the bigger picture, it’s an attempt to prevent educators from merely offering ideas that threaten the demographic groups that traditionally dominate politics and economics. Societies can’t progress when younger generations aren’t allowed to think about failures of the older ones, so they can do better. The state must let higher education play its role in this process.

The state should understand, too, that college students can handle divisive concepts, and they have the brains and free will to reject what they hear. For all the rightful alarm over infringement on the academic freedom of faculty, I’m even more troubled by the way this legislation insults my students.

Photos we don't want to see, but maybe should

in this 2019 photo, kaylee tyner, then a student at columbine high school and the founder of the “my last shot” campaign, shows the sticker on the back of her id card: “In the event that I die from gun violence please publicize the photo of my death.”

We spent part of Monday’s media ethics class talking about dead bodies.

The topic was prompted by some gut-wrenching social media photos of fatalities from Russia’s special operation to liberate Ukraine. (That’s how I’m referring to Vladimir Putin’s immoral invasion of a sovereign nation just in case Putin reads the Arenblog and decides to poison my Diet Coke.)

My very smart students nicely framed this longstanding dilemma of whether and when to publish such photos. Respect for the victims, compassion for victims’ families, and the danger of exposing audience to upsetting images all dictate not to publish. But showing the truth of war – so that citizens of the world might insist their nations never engage in it – demands no withholding.

The New York Times picked its side of one such debate on Monday. It published the most awful of these recent photos – the bodies of a Ukrainian mother and her two children killed by Russian mortar fire as they fled from fighting – at the top of Page 1A of its print edition and on its website homepage. (I learned this after class and decided to write about it. I don’t pick class discussion topics based on blog subjects.)

The Times’ director of photography cited “our duty as journalists to show our readers an unvarnished and accurate account of the world’s events, which are sometimes very difficult to see but necessary to understand.” (Warning: If you click the link above or some of the links below, you’re agreeing to view disturbing images.) The Times photographer called her photo “disrespectful” to the Ukrainian family, but she considered it more important to impactfully document a war crime. That’s especially persuasive considering Russia’s denials of such crimes. Other journalists mostly praised The Times on social media.

There’s actually a long media history of photos of dead people that drew vast public attention. That’s not to say they all changed public opinion or brought about new public policy. Among them: 

• Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, killed by racists in Mississippi in 1955

• Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, shot by the Ohio National Guard at a war protest in 1970

• Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned during his family’s attempt to escape fighting in Syria by sailing to Greece in 2015

• Oscar and Valeria Ramirez, a Salvadoran father and 2-year-old daughter who were seeking asylum in the US but drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande River into Texas in 2019

Also in 2019, The Times published a death scene photo from a terrorist attack at a luxury hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The Times mostly caught flak from critics who claimed the newspaper never would have done the same for a similar tragedy in the US. Indeed, the many American mass killings perpetrated with guns have seemed off limits for that kind of coverage by the press. Reason No. 36 why gun control legislation goes nowhere.

I think younger generations are more OK with explicit visuals than older ones. Most of the students in our conversation this week saw justification. Virtually every student of mine who has chosen this issue for an ethics paper in the past few years concluded the same.

In 2019, a student at Columbine High School started a campaign called “My Last Shot.” Participants placed a sticker on their identification cards: “In the event that I die from gun violence please publicize the photo of my death. #MyLastShot.”

One of my department colleagues, Dr. Kaitlin C. Miller, has published research related to graphic images. She said the decision of whether to publish is never clear cut.

In theory, she said, this “taking” of intimate moments from people’s lives, including their deaths, is justified “for a greater good. To show truth about the world. To possibly evoke emotion and even positive change.” But the evidence shows that doesn’t happen. 

“Sharing graphic images like that of killed Ukrainians does little to evoke change but does much to capitalize on the pain and suffering of others. This taking, thusly, seems unjustified,” Miller said.

SCREENSHOT OF TWITTER REACTION FROM A MEDIAITE.COM STORY. to see the photo, click the link in the fourth paragraph of this post..

Usually, a photo of death must meet certain criteria for an editor to deem it shareable: Not a closeup; no visible faces (The Times’ Ukraine photo Monday was an exception); and minimal blood and gore. Think about that last standard. Not unreasonable, and it keeps the complaints down, but it backpedals from complete truth.

The Ukraine government has held nothing back in its anti-Putin persuasion campaign of posting photos of dead, recognizable Russian soldiers on the internet and social media. The American press has mostly refrained from repeating these.

For the press, the particular communication platform matters. The Times’ decision Monday was debate worthy not just because of the decision to publish, but also because placement in such a prominent spot in the print edition and on the website homepage inevitably meant exposure to readers who didn’t intentionally seek out the photo and might not have wanted to see it. With digital platforms, at least, publishers have the option of a warning label and requiring visitors to consciously click a link. That seems responsible. Yet it also allows much of the public to avoid confronting a reality that we’d like to pretend does not exist.

The sanitized but still powerful visual journalism that emerges from war and other tragedy effectively creates necessary outrage. But perhaps because of the tenacious social and political obstacles to change, or because of the scope of the devastation, we feel helpless in turning outrage into corrective action. I don’t know that unmitigated photos and videos would change that.

I’d like to think that we don’t really need to see it in its most brutal form to understand the human atrocity that is war and violence. I may be wrong.

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“In the past when technology made it difficult for people around the world to see images of war, a single photo may have had more power then. Now, with the flooding of images and information, to take such intimate moments of death and share them with the public is often gratuitous.”

— UA Professor Dr. Kaitlin C. Miller

Public figures race to court with bogus grievances (and they know it)

Sarah Palin: I think I’ll file a libel lawsuit against a news organization that’s so legally flimsy that both the judge and jury will decide against me.

Kyle Rittenhouse: Hold my beer.

It’s becoming fashionable for individuals on the far right of the political spectrum who believe they are the unfair targets of the news media to engage in defamation litigation that’s purely grandstanding and harassment.

the march 29, 1960 advertisement in the new york times that sparked a landmark libel lawsuit by a montgomery, alabama, government official.

Palin, a former Republican vice presidential nominee, unsuccessfully sued The New York Times over an editorial that wrongly stated that a campaign advertisement by her political action committee had prompted a man to kill multiple people at a political rally in Arizona six years earlier.

Then Rittenhouse, the acquitted killer of two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, announced this week on various media forums that he plans to sue selected celebrities and news organizations for their negative coverage of him, including labeling him as a “murderer.” He’s launching “The Media Accountability Project” to raise money for his efforts. This is so heroic that I have tears in my eyes.

Donald Trump and former Republican congressman Devin Nunes are others on this list. Lawyers, as officers of the court, are supposed to prevent misuse of the court system, but the politically motivated ones won’t. This is despite knowing how remarkably difficult it is for a public official or public figure (such as a celebrity) to win a libel suit. 

To do so, a public official or figure must prove that the accused publication acted with “actual malice.” That’s a really terrible name, because it implies personal animosity. A good plaintiff’s lawyer would certainly love to show personal animosity in court, but that’s not the definition. The standard of actual malice means the defendant published a false and damaging statement either knowing that it was false or showing “reckless disregard” for whether the statement was true or false. Making a mistake due to simple negligence is not actual malice.

This standard of proof arose from a court case that started in Alabama in 1960. A group of civil rights activists placed a full-page advocacy ad in The New York Times that contained minor factual errors. Southern politicians at the time liked to use litigation to try to impede the Northern press that was reporting on the civil rights movement, and Montgomery police commissioner L.B. Sullivan took exception to an inaccurate description of his officers’ actions toward protesting students at Alabama State University. He sued The Times. 

Under existing law, Sullivan needed to prove only that the ad contained errors and that they damaged his reputation. A Montgomery County jury awarded Sullivan $500,000, a huge amount for that era, and the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the verdict. The U.S. Supreme heard the case on appeal, and in 1964 it created the actual malice standard for libel against public officials and reversed the verdict. So New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, one of the landmark cases of press protection, didn’t even involve a reporter writing a news story.

The reversal was unanimous. Two justices even argued that the actual malice standard offered too little protection.

More recent SCOTUS cases that came from Alabama – Shelby County v. Holder, McCutcheon v. FEC – have damaged the quality of democracy in this country. NYT vs. Sullivan enhanced it. 

News outlets that fear legal liability arising from unintentional errors might shy away from tough reporting on powerful people who owe accountability to the public.

“Without it, there would be a chilling effect on speech from the media – a self-censorship that in the end would be far more harmful to the public at large than anything the media might say about a public figure or official,” said my department colleague, Dr. Dianne Bragg, who teaches media law.

At the same time, the ethical press doesn’t treat the actual malice standard as a license for sloppy journalism. And Bragg believes “any serious malfeasance on the part of the media can result in a successful case.”

Despite all the press freedom it has brought – probably because of it, actually – the Sullivan precedent may be in danger. Some conservative judges, including two on the U.S. Supreme Court, have publicly expressed interest in revisiting (translation: trashing) the 1964 ruling. Educated speculation is that Palin brought her lawsuit with the intent of giving a friendly high court a chance to lower the bar for media culpability.

If that happens, Bragg does not expect a neutral re-examination of legal foundations. She thinks some justices will be guided by their animosity toward the news media.

This is likely. It would be a natural move for conservatives in power who see the good work of the (usually) liberal press as a threat or, at least, a nuisance. It has to chafe them that an establishment institution like the U.S. Supreme Court gave the press such a formidable shield that allows it to thrive.

“Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open...”

— Justice William Brennan, writing the Supreme Court's opinion in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)

Beijing Olympics: Media can't ignore the elephant in the room

Demonstration of Tibetans and Uyghurs in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin against the Olympic Games in Beijing 2022. (PHOTO CREDIT: C.Suthorn / cc-by-sa-4.0 / commons.wikimedia.org)

The pageantry and inspiring athletic accomplishments of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, will captivate many of us for the next two weeks.

It will be easy to forget that outside the TV cameras’ frame, the host country is abusing and killing some of its people.

Human rights groups around the world have called on countries, companies and media to boycott the Beijing Games in protest of an array of documented oppression by the Chinese government, primarily the forced detention and labor of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. These groups and the United States, which announced a boycott by diplomats, say China is committing genocide.

But a little genocide isn’t enough to keep corporate sponsors and NBC away when China is such a huge potential economic market and the Olympics are a TV ratings magnet. NBC has paid $7.75 billion to broadcast Olympics through 2032, so it’s going to carry forth. (Many of its announcers and crew will work from the U.S. but that’s because of COVID, not because of crimes against humanity.)

The issue is whether broadcasting endless hours of sports competitions serves to whitewash – or “sportwash” – the image of a country that’s committing atrocities. My department colleague, Dr. Andrew Billings, who has done extensive research on media coverage of Olympics, says such coverage traditionally avoids hard-news issues like this one, and lack of discussion could be considered “tacit condoning” of a host nation’s policies.

The head of NBC Olympics Production said the network will include the “geopolitical context” of the Beijing Games in its coverage, but that the focus will remain on the athletes. Billings said he anticipates NBC will report on China’s human rights violations during pre-competition coverage and as part of its normal news programs. “This might sound like a cop-out, but NBC likely knows that the people who tune in each night do so to watch the Olympic competitions as a form of escapism.”

He thinks it was unrealistic of protesters to expect a boycott by the network. “I completely understand why NBC would opt to show the Games and seek ways to highlight China’s problematic policies in a way that educates on air instead of via a highly costly media boycott.”

Journalists from NBC or any other news organization who want to report on the realities face a related question of how much they can actually do so. China promised press freedom at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but it didn’t happen. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China reported at least 30 cases of Chinese officials interfering with journalists during the Games, including assaults by police.

In 2022, China has again promised no restrictions but early indicators aren’t good. According to CPJ, international press have been barred from news conferences and competition venues in favor of more friendly domestic press. Further, the government, citing COVID, will confine journalists to the Olympic Village. No travel around the country for the chance to talk to the Chinese people.

The government also tightly controls the internet in its country. It has pledged an unrestricted internet during the Olympics but CPJ nonetheless advises journalists to “assume your devices and online activity will be monitored.”

None of this is surprising from the country that annually jails more journalists than any other country in the world.

The larger question is why Olympic Games take place in repressive countries in the first place. China isn’t the only example (see Sochi, Russia, 2014). One reason is the International Olympic Committee, to its discredit, has always separated sports and politics.

Second, abusive countries see the Olympics as a chance to cleanse themselves in the eyes of the world. Meanwhile, many democratic countries and large cities get spooked by public opposition to the enormous cost of hosting, which is rarely offset by revenue or economic development. Beijing, for instance, beat out only one other bidder, Almaty in Kazakhstan, another problematic nation.

Billings points out that we get to go through these issues of complicity again later this year. The FIFA World Cup begins in November in Qatar.

Not falling for phony news takes a lot of darn work

UMM, this didn’t happen. it went viral on social media, but it’s fake, like many other photos and news reports. some of those news reports, of course, carry far more dire consequences than this did.

This week is National News Literacy Week. In light of the rampant spread of false information these days, this seems humorously futile. What’s next? Courteous Driving Week? Brussels Sprouts Appreciation Week?

News literacy, sometimes called media literacy, means that audiences, not just news organizations and platforms, carry responsibility for stopping distribution of misinformation and disinformation that arise from social media and substandard professional news outlets. (Misinformation means unintentional wrong information; disinformation means wrong information created or shared intentionally to cause mischief, advance a political agenda or make money.) This audience obligation entails evaluating the credibility of statements before choosing to believe them and share them.

Considering the avalanche of information that news consumers receive these days, along with some people’s desire to believe anything that reinforces preconceived notions while rejecting everything else, this expectation of literacy among readers and viewers seems unrealistic. A 2019 Stanford University study found young people especially unprepared to evaluate online content.

Lack of literacy can lead to people looking foolish. No, a raccoon did not go for a ride on the back of an alligator. More consequentially, though, it can reinforce political division. No, Democrats aren’t fronting a pedophile ring. And sometimes it leads to people endangering themselves and others. No, COVID vaccines don’t have microchips in them. 

Even the non-gullible among us – and sometimes we’re all gullible – need to keep constant vigilance. Here’s some advice on how to make yourself more news literate.

a typical website rating by mediabiasfactcheck.com, this one of the site renewedright.com, which was rated “questionable.”

• Use multiple, credible news sources. Credibility, or believability, develops over time as a news source establishes a track record of accuracy. But a familiar brand is not necessarily a credible brand. Bias affects many well-known outlets. Fox News’ prime time talk shows, which are opinion shows masquerading as news shows, are especially bad. But there are others.

• When getting news from social media, try to identify the originating source of the information. Remember that social popularity does not equate to truth. It’s often the opposite, in fact.

• If you’re on an unfamiliar website, or an unfamiliar website is the origin of a social media post, look for clues to the reliability of the site. Click the “About” tab. A political or business affiliation or funding source could mean the site has an agenda and can’t be trusted. Be suspicious of sites that don’t list staff names or contact information. Same goes if you see misspellings and poor grammar. Remember also that on some sites, everything is spoof or satire, presented to look as if it isn’t.

• You don’t have to be a detective if you don’t wish. Several online services created to combat disinformation rate news sites on degree of adherence to principles of good journalism. Check out newsguardtech.com, or mediabiasfactcheck.com, or verificationhandbook.com.

• If you want to check the truth of a particular report on a website or social media platform, do an online search with keywords and see what other news outlets, if any, are reporting the same thing. You also can use sites whose sole purpose is to confirm or debunk particular stories. Check what you’re reading with factcheck.org, or politifact.com, or snopes.com, among others.

• Run an online search on the bylined reporter if the name is unfamiliar. What’s their bio? What else have they written?

• Many news stories rely on polls, surveys and other research. Identify who compiled the data and run an online background search.

• Technology allows for hard-to-detect manipulation of photos and videos, and often images are presented as representing something they don’t. Check video and photo authenticity by doing a “reverse search” online. Use Google’s Reverse Image Search or tineye.com.

• Stop giving automatic credence to the reported statements of authority figures such as politicians. These days, many of them will say anything if they think it will win them votes. 

Looking at all this great advice, I think it’s obvious: This is more than any of us wants or has time to do. And that’s a big part of the problem. The purveyors of disinformation count on us not to do it.

The famous case of the free press and the atomic bomb

A New York state judge’s order last month prohibiting The New York Times from publishing memos written by a lawyer for the political spying organization Project Veritas blatantly violates the First Amendment. But not every court case seeking to dictate press publishing decisions is as laughably wrong as this one.

Take, for instance, the case in which publication might have meant the end of mankind. True story.

In 1979, The Progressive, a politically liberal magazine based in Wisconsin that still exists today, planned to publish an article detailing how a hydrogen bomb works. The U.S. government went to court to try to prevent publication. It’s a notable case in the legal history of prior restraint.

Prior restraint refers to government action – a law or a court order, for examples – that blocks publication or broadcast before it happens. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1931 that prior restraint infringes on the First Amendment right of freedom of the press when it struck down a Minnesota law that prohibited publication of “malicious, scandalous or defamatory” information. However, the court left open the possibility that prior restraint could be warranted in cases of obscenity, incitement to riot, or sensitive military details such as number and location of troops.

In the most famous prior restraint case, in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not stop The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing the so-called Pentagon Papers, a classified government report on U.S. decision making about the Vietnam War prior to 1968. The report, leaked by a former Pentagon contractor and war opponent named Daniel Ellsberg, showed that the government had made deceptive public pronouncements about the war’s progress.

The government argued unsuccessfully that disclosure of the report threatened national security, jeopardized lives of military and intelligence personnel, and could be prevented under the exception identified in the 1931 case. The Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint is unconstitutional unless it’s needed to prevent an immediate, inevitable and grave threat to national security. Disclosure of the Pentagon Papers did not pose such a threat, the court ruled.

The Progressive case eight years later was potentially more explosive. (Oh. Sorry. Wince!)

The government argued that the mechanics of the hydrogen bomb was classified information and that disclosure would aid foreign countries that wanted their own H-bombs. It also argued that a court could block the magazine article under the narrow national security exception carved out in previous Supreme Court decisions.

The magazine, with a track record of alarm over nuclear proliferation, countered that such details were essential to public debate about the issue. It also claimed it had obtained all its information from interviews with scientists and publicly available information. And it disputed that a foreign enemy with the resources to build a bomb would learn anything new from a magazine article.

The national media were divided over The Progressive’s intended action. According to an article by Belinda J. Scrimenti in the Ohio State Law Review, the Saturday Review wrote that publication would be “a crime against humanity.”

Because of the established presumption that prior restraint is unconstitutional, the case’s burden of proof fell on the government. Nonetheless, the judge sided with the government and blocked the article. "I want to think a long, hard time before I'd give a hydrogen bomb to (Uganda’s terrorist dictator) Idi Amin,” Judge Robert Warren said.

He also made some mistakes, such as concluding that the story did include classified information unavailable elsewhere and that the story presented “the recipe for a do-it-yourself hydrogen bomb.” Alarmingly, he stated that he saw "no plausible reason why the public needs to know the technical details about hydrogen bomb construction to carry on an informed debate.” (This is similar to another judge who thinks he’s an editor: The judge in the current Project Veritas case stated that communications between a client and a lawyer “simply cannot be a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public.”)

 The Progressive appealed. During the appeal, the Madison (Wisconsin) Press Connection published a story containing essentially the same information (and showing that it was obtainable in the public domain). According to a 2019 retrospective article in The Progressive, the Press Connection worked overnight to produce a special edition off its normal publication schedule so that the government didn’t have time to try to stop the story.

In the wake of this, the Justice Department dropped its legal fight. The case over whether to mute had become moot. (Oh. Sorry. Grimace!)

After six months of prior restraint, in October 1979, The Progressive published “The H-bomb secret: How we got it and why we’re telling it.” Idi Amin never did drop a hydrogen bomb.

Prior restraint, thankfully, remains extremely difficult for the U.S. government to achieve. But not impossible. Narrow permissible circumstances remain in Supreme Court precedents. And the ruling in The Progressive case, although not very influential because it was merely a state district court judge, remains unreversed.

As judicial appointments and elections in the U.S. become more politicized, and the media increasingly get disrespected by politicians and segments of the public, the danger of prior restraint remains. Even if the fate of the human race doesn’t hang in the balance.

One news media bias that isn't debatable

screenshot from website ourblackgirls.com

The innocent, young, attractive, white woman was missing, and presumably dead, the victim of homicide. Local and national media pounded the story with daily coverage.

This is, of course, the case of Gabby Petito.

And Mollie Tibbetts. And Natalee Holloway. And Chandra Levy. And others.

The equivalent case of a missing Black woman? Couldn’t find one.

HBO is currently showing a documentary series called “Black and Missing.” It features the founders of the Black and Missing Foundation, and makes the basic point that news media and law enforcement pay more attention to missing white people, especially females, than to missing Black people. Sociologists and media often call this Missing White Woman Syndrome.

Research supports this claim. In a 2016 study, a researcher at Northwestern University examined the racial and gender breakdowns within FBI data on missing persons and compared them to representation in news coverage by several media websites. The researcher found significant disproportionality not only in which cases got any coverage at all, but also in “intensity” of coverage. “Missing White Woman Syndrome is a real, empirical phenomenon,” he concluded.

This produces harmful effects. Primarily, it diminishes the value of Black lives and dismisses the anguish of Black families with loved ones who have disappeared. At the same time, it makes young, white women think they are in more potential danger than they actually are based on numbers. There are practical effects, too. No or less media attention means fewer case-related tips from the public and less pressure on law enforcement to devote resources to a case.

Guilty media can claim they’re merely reflecting degree of interest among the public. “Any story that captivates the nation and our readers like this one is front-page worthy,” a spokeswoman for The New York Post said about its prominent and relentless coverage of the Petito case. Of course, like a lot of traditional media and their traditional audience, this is actually a measurement of interest among the white public.

Multiple factors create Missing White Woman Syndrome. Certainly, one of them is a conscious prejudice within some people who attach more social worth to a white life than to a Black life, to a female than to a male, to youth than to age, to the affluent than to the poor, and to physical attractiveness than to plainness. 

SCREENSHOT OF A TWEET DURING Gabby Petito SEARCH. CHO’S BODY HAS SINCE BEEN FOUND.

I’d like to think (but don’t) that this prejudice plays no role in any newsroom’s judgments about missing persons. I believe the main reason the news media go astray is their harmful stereotyping of Black communities – specifically, that crime, runaways and other forms of social dysfunction are so common in these communities that, well, a missing Black person is par for the course and not newsworthy. But when white privilege and other social advantages fail to protect a young, beautiful, white woman, the media see that as a really big deal.

An additional reason the media perpetuate disparities is that they take a lot of cues from social media. And social media – users and companies – love a certain type of female. (My department colleague, Dr. Jess Maddox, pointed this out when UA’s sorority rush exploded on TikTok this year.)

As the Petito case went nationwide, news media published a rash of self-criticism about Missing White Woman Syndrome. Commendable but insufficient for absolution. The real question is whether and how coverage changes.

Because of its glaring distorted prominence, the Petito frenzy did guilt newsrooms and social media posters into spreading word about missing people of other demographics. And some national news media are trying to help beyond the short term. NBC News has a webpage called “Missing in America,” and NexStar’s NewsNation recently started a webpage by the same name. Both show diversity.

But the challenge remains for local news organizations to ensure that in a time of diminished resources and weakened community connections, they are paying attention to all demographics within their locality (a point that, come to think of it, applies to more than just missing person cases). And the challenge remains for national news outlets to make news judgments that are smarter and more ethical than simply parroting the metrics of social media.

After mass shootings, public safety and good journalism collide

In the aftermath of the fatal shootings at Oxford (Michigan) High School last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper continued his practice of recent years of not reporting the name of the shooter. This is becoming an increasingly popular editorial decision among news media.

The main reason for this is that, according to research and anecdotal evidence, most mass shooters commit their acts in large part to gain notoriety. Further, there’s evidence that fame for one mass shooter can motivate future ones.

partial screenshot from the homepage of nonotoriety.com

One of the frequent voices on this point is Dr. Adam Lankford, a professor and researcher in the University of Alabama’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. “A lot of these shooters want to be treated like celebrities,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “They want to be famous. So the key is to not give them that treatment.”

Increasingly, law enforcement officers at press conferences, such as the prosecutor in Oakland County, Michigan, are limiting their mentions of suspect names to once or not at all. Online organizations, such as No Notoriety and Don’t Name Them, have joined the effort to persuade media to voluntarily eliminate or rein in the attention given to perpetrators in favor of more attention to victims. No Notoriety was started by the parents of a victim of the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

I’ve also noticed that this issue is chosen as an assignment topic by at least one of my Ethics students every semester. I believe every single one of them concluded that the media should stop identifying mass killers. The only exception would be if police need help from the public in locating a suspect who isn’t in custody.

No one wants to play even a tiny, indirect role in causing a mass shooting, obviously. The hitch is, not identifying the person responsible for a major crime runs counter to the fundamental principle that journalists should tell a complete story. Some readers and viewers might understand, but most would feel deprived and frustrated.

There is a presumption that telling a complete story should serve a public benefit that outweighs the potential for harm. In the case of mass shootings, I see a clear benefit not only to identification but also to factual, non-sensationalized, non-glorifying profiles.

logo from dontnamethem.org

When the public, especially the local community where the crime took place, has a name, it’s easier for law enforcement and news media to piece together preceding events and for information about the killer’s past and possible motive to emerge. This sheds light on the crucial question of whether warning signs were missed by family, friends, teachers, whomever. Perhaps with the next dangerous person, the warning signs will be spotted early enough.

Disclosure also helps to answer the equally crucial question of whether the system could have but didn’t prevent the crime. By “system,” I mean any number of possible failures: Courts or law enforcement officers or parole boards or social workers or school administrators who had interactions and could have made some different decision that would have altered circumstances. I very much include gun control laws, or lack thereof, as part of the system.

Despite the benefits of complete reporting, the news media still can and should avoid certain practices that offer much less public service but great potential to contribute to future tragedy.

• The news media should not publish or broadcast the name excessively, preferably doing so beyond the first news cycle only if there’s a notable news development in the investigation or adjudication of the case. 

• The news media should not publish shallow, rapidly done, “normalizing” profiles based on interviews with acquaintances who are, of course, always shocked. It is better to dig deep into potential motive and life events that brought the killer to this point. Focus on the lessons that society needs to hear.

• They should not publish photos that glorify or redeem the shooter. No poses with weapons. No angel shots. (Have you seen the offensive choir boy photo of the Oxford killer? Geez.) Restrain frequency and prominence of photos.

• No verbatim publication of social media rants or manifestos. If they are insightful into a warped mind, summarize.

• No detailed methodology that could give a potential copycat a new idea.

• No more rankings of deadliest shootings. Again, geez. It’s not a contest, but a potential copycat might think it is.

• And don’t give more attention over time to the bad guy than to the victims. We always need to know what we’ve lost. Because maybe we’ll care enough to do something about it.

This is all good advice, in my view (and I am certainly not the first person to offer guidelines in this vein).

But don’t deprive us of a name.

“A lot of these shooters want to be treated like celebrities. They want to be famous.”

— UA Professor Dr. Adam Lankford, to The Associated Press