Media Sphere

On Thursday, David Hazinski posted a column on the Web site of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggesting that "unfettered 'citizen journalism' (is) too risky." He points out that the online medium creates an opportunity for anyone to provide informational content, but that this new venue is prone to inaccuracies and hearsay. He argues that so-called citizen journalism "isn't journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse."

In his article, Hazinski suggests that unless the news industry acts now to regulate amateur-professional journalism, it will be "just a matter of time before something like a faked Rodney King beating video appears on the air somewhere." In his defense, a similar scenario did play out over three years ago when Benjamin Vanderford, a San Francisco resident, produced a fake video depicting his own beheading at the hands of Islamist extremists; then again, it was a publisher from the establishment press, William Randolph Hearst, who is credited with helping catalyze the Spanish American War through manufactured news. Hearst told a reporter, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war," and history indicates that he may have done just that.

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We've all heard the story of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who was recently convicted of two counts of rape and is facing life in prison, but there is another legal saga that originated in that same case which hasn't garnered much national attention.

Katie Baker was covering Jeffs case for the Salt Lake City television station KUTV. She interviewed a number of individuals involved in the case, including Mo Webb, a potential juror. Unfortunately for Baker, her interview with Webb violated a decorum order issued by Judge James Shumate that Baker was only vaguely familiar with.

Upon realizing that she violated the order, Baker apologized to the Court's public information officer and explained that she was unaware of the details of the order. In an October 23 written ruling, (PDF), Shumate found Baker in contempt, arguing that her ignorance of the prohibition is no excuse: "The Court's order would be meaningless if the 'I forgot to read it all' excuse was accepted."

In what Shumate would likely consider a moment of kindness, he did not send Baker directly to jail, nor did he assess an astronomical fine for her mistake. Instead the judge stayed his sentence for 90 days stating that, "Ms. Baker may purge her contempt if, within the said ninety (90) day period she produces a newscast addressing a public need." The ruling goes on to explain that Baker's assignment from the judge does not need to be broadcast at the station, but that she must submit a DVD copy of the newscast to the court.

Baker's attorney David Reymann plans to appeal Shumate's ruling and has asked the judge to grant a stay pending the appeal.

As highlighted in the judge's own ruling, "the elements of contempt of the Court's order are "a party must have (1) known of the duty imposed by the Court's order, (2) had the ability to comply with the order, and (3) willfully and knowingly refused to comply." It seems quite likely that the court of appeals will vacate the contempt order. After all, even Shumate acknowledges that Baker was unaware that her interview with Webb was prohibited.

Whether Baker's actions can be considered contemptuous is obviously central to her appeal, but it is actually Shumate's remedy: that Baker can submit a story addressing a public need of the community, which has ignited the anger of first amendment advocates.

On October 31, the Society of Professional Journalists sent an open letter to Judge Shumate urging him to vacate the contempt ruling against Baker. In the letter, SPJ president Clint Brewer and FOI Chair David Collier argue that it is their belief that "it is unconstitutional to punish Ms. Baker by ordering her to create a public service story."

Gene Policinski, the executive director of the First Amendment Center agrees. In the Tucson Citizen Policinski writes, "when government speaks, we ought to know it's the government talking - not a press under duress, and certainly not the government pretending to be the press."

I'd certainly agree that the order is a scary proposition, and the notion that judges can order reporters to cover certain stories is a blow against democracy on so many levels, but in this case, I'm uncertain that Shumate's alternative to contempt rises to the First Amendment assault that others allege.

If the judge had given Baker an opportunity to erase her contempt by feeding the homeless or volunteering at a local non-profit would that have created the same sort of an uproar? Probably not. She might have still chosen to refuse the settlement and fight the contempt through the appellate process, but I don't think the alternative provision would have drawn any red flags.

By the same token, KUTV is not required to broadcast Baker's report, and it also appears that KUTV is not mandated to use their resources to help Baker either. So, it is not the news media who are being commanded by the judge's strange request, so much as it is Baker herself.

Shumate should certainly reverse his order; everyone acknowledges Katie Baker did not mean to violate the judge's decorum order. I also think that Shumate's offer to purge Baker's contempt was rather short-sighted, but I'm still not convinced that it rises to the level of offense that others have suggested. Either way, I'm glad to see that Baker is seeking to fight the judges ruling and I hope her legal battles are successful.

33 States plus the District of Columbia have some form of shield law to protect the forced disclosure of information obtained by journalists, but there are no such protections when it comes to federal court. That may be change soon, but will the law be strong enough to actually protect journalists or will its broad exceptions do more to hurt press freedoms than help them?

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I've been tracking the progress of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 for months. Having spent time in a federal prison for protecting my source material, it's natural that I would be interested in a law that would prevent others from enduring this same fate.

The last time I wrote about the bill's status was in August, after it cleared the House Judiciary Committee. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee followed suit, and both houses of Congress are now ready to vote on the law.

While this is very exciting news for many journalists, I'm less than ecstatic, given that neither the version of the bill is ideal, and there is no telling how the two bills will be combined, should it pass both houses.

While the amended version of the House bill seeks to tie journalism to an economic exchange, the Senate's definition is broader in scope and would not only protect professionals but would likely apply to students and many bloggers as well. ... Read more

Do you remember school fund raise drives? Perhaps you recall being a child having to sell boxes of chocolate, or maybe you recently ran into a young fund raiser outside the supermarket with candy for his band or choir. Then again you might even have the halfway-depleted box your son or daughter couldn't sell last week. I remember being saved from fund raiser hell on more than one occasion, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. In a twist on this common theme, a high school journalism class at Naples High School has been tasked to sell advertising in their school's yearbook and their grade depends on it.

According to NBC2, the students must sell $600 in ads to receive an A, $500 for a B, $400 for a C, $300 for a D, and students who are unable to sell at least $300 in advertising for the school yearbook will receive an F. While it's certainly true that advertising is an essential component for almost any news organization, it is typically not the role of journalists to solicit these dollars. In fact, there is usually a wall between the advertising staff and the news staff to prevent conflicts of interest when an advertiser ends up in the news.

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Asking if your hairdresser is a journalist may seem a bit absurd, but the reality is that for many people a trip to the salon is also an opportunity to pick up the latest dirt on who's dating who and other town gossip. We don't usually think of gossip as being journalistic; however, many newspapers have a reporter on staff whose primary duty is to share gossip. Most everyone would consider him or her to be a journalist so why is the idea of your stylist being a journalist considered such a radical idea?

With a Federal Shield law having recently made it out of committee in the House, a debate has flared over who should be protected under the law. A recent amendment to the Shield Law states that only those who benefit financially from their journalism are covered; those who provide the news as a labor of love are excluded. While many of the journalist organizations have applauded this compromise, I think it's important to look at who is excluded and how journalism is an activity that should be protected by a far larger contingent than those qualified under the proposed law.

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First it was Friendster, then it was MySpace; now Facebook seems to be the center of every other conversation on the Internet. Several of the writers at Poynter Online (a resource that puports to be "Everything you need to be a better journalist") have recently been focusing on the possibilities for Facebook in terms of the news business.

In one article Pat Walters reports on how he created the Facebook group, Journalists and Facebook as a sort of experiment.

What better way to report on Facebook, than to use Facebook? We invited about 25 journalists to join the group, posted a few questions to the discussion board and waited.

Seemed to make perfect sense.

By the time we posted this story on Poynter Online, the group had mushroomed to more than 800 members, journalists and non-journalists from all over the world.

At this moment there are almost 1,800 members, but only 57 wall posts, and 22 discussion threads. In his article, Walters points out that this limited participation in the group isn't unusual and he references an article by Jakob Nielsen to illustrate this phenomena. In his article, Nielsen predicts that only one percent of any given group will create most of the content, and after a cursory glance at the Journalists and Facebook group that estimate appears to be roughly on target.

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NowPublic emerged onto the Web proclaiming, "The news is Now Public." Two years later they've embraced the tagline "Crowd powered media" and managed to secure significant funding in the process. According to VentureBeat NowPublic has raised $10.6 million in capital from Rho Ventures and Rho Canada with additional capital from Brightspark and Working Opportunity Fund. VentureBeat reports:

Chief executive Leonard Brody said it was the largest first round funding for any citizen journalist site. OhmyNews, a site based in Korea but which is now international, raised $11 million in a second round of financing. OhmyNews is somewhat different, however, in that it hires journalists and pays them based on advertising revenue it gets to its site.

VentureBeat explains that NowPublic's business model involves licensing submitted content to news organizations such as Associated Press in a fashion similar to that of existing news agencies. Unlike OhmyNews, it appears that NowPublic's model does not provide any form of payment for its contributors.

If this is true, then NowPublic is essentially a news agency without any employees to pay. While such an arrangement obviously creates enviable profit margins, it is not liable to be sustainable and brings up significant ethical questions about their enterprise. While it was obviously impossible for NowPublic to pay its journalists during its infancy, they now have a revenue stream and they owe something to the people who made the site possible. If NowPublic sells a license for AP to use a contributor's material, then NowPublic should in turn provide that journalist with either a percentage of the money or at least a flat-fee for its commercial use.

As a student, I struggled to keep my notes organized and I have only faired better as a journalist through my abandonment of pen and paper. Over the years I've encountered many other people who have also struggled to keep their notes organized and for many of us a notebook computer has been the only solution. Or is it?

Livescribe, an Oakland based company, has recently introduced a suite of high-tech products which will likely put a whole new spin on the low-tech world of pen and paper. According to Livescribe, the smartpen will be available for less than $200 and the specialized electronic paper products will supposedly be comparable to paper of the old-school variety. They have three video demonstrations of the product in action, and given what I've seen I'm quite excited to actually get my hands on a Smartpen soon and see for myself. According to Livescribe the pen will be available in the fourth quarter of this year.

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