Month: August 2017

Once again, the Times bends over backwards for Trump while the Post lets him have it

It seems that every day The New York Times finds a way to say something hopeful about President Trump while The Washington Post sticks with reality as we can all see it. There are many examples I could dredge up, but let’s start with today’s papers. First the Times’ Glenn Thrush:

Harvey Gives Trump a Chance to Reclaim Power to Unify

Hurricane Harvey was the rarest of disasters to strike during the Trump presidency — a maelstrom not of Mr. Trump’s making, and one that offers him an opportunity to recapture some of the unifying power of his office he has squandered in recent weeks.

Now a tropical storm as it continues to inundate the Texas and Louisiana coasts, Harvey is foremost a human disaster, a stop-motion catastrophe that has already claimed at least 10 lives and destroyed thousands of structures. But hurricanes in the post-Katrina era are also political events, benchmarks by which a president’s abilities are measured.

Mr. Trump is behaving like a man whose future depends on getting this right.

Now the Post’s Jenna Johnson:

Even in visiting hurricane-ravaged Texas, Trump keeps the focus on himself

As rescuers continued their exhausting and heartbreaking work in southeastern Texas on Tuesday afternoon, as the rain continued to fall and a reservoir near Houston spilled over, President Trump grabbed a microphone to address hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside a firehouse near Corpus Christi and were chanting: “USA! USA! USA!”

‘Thank you, everybody,” the president said, sporting one of the white “USA” caps that are being sold on his campaign website for $40. “I just want to say: We love you. You are special…. What a crowd. What a turnout.”

Yet again, Trump managed to turn attention on himself. His responses to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey have been more focused on the power of the storm and his administration’s response than on the millions of Texans whose lives have been dramatically altered by the floodwaters.

As I said, these contrasts are a regular occurrence. I don’t know what to attribute them to, but I wonder if the Times’ bend-over-backwards approach to Trump is the flip side of its decades-long obsession with Clinton non-scandals, from Whitewater to emails. Yes, the Times has done plenty of great investigative reporting on Trump, and it seems to be locked in a steel-cage death match with the Post to see which paper can dig up the most dirt on him. But then there are these weird tonal lapses.

The Times and the Post are great papers. The Times features better writing and has a much broader mandate. But the Post’s fierce coverage of national politics and its unapologetic attitude toward Trump have long since made the Post my first read, along with The Boston Globe.

Update. From my Northeastern colleague Alan Schroeder:

I’m sure that has something to do with it. Yet Trump has been known to pick up the phone and call Post reporters, too. There’s no question that the Times is the paper Trump, a New Yorker, most cares about. I don’t know how much of a factor that is.

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Public media predicted Harvey. Here’s how to soften the blow next time.

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

No, the still-unfolding catastrophe in Texas could not have been prevented. But vital investigative reporting over the past year and a half shows how it might have been more manageable if government officials had taken heed. More important, the journalists’ findings lay out a path forward that should be carefully studied once the waters begin to subside.

The reporting is contained in a series called “Hell and High Water,” which was produced by three nonprofit news organizations: ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and “Reveal,” a public radio program from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The journalism is impressively deep and features a number of interactive graphics that allow users to test various storm scenarios. In summary, though, the story is a simple one:

  • Officials have done almost nothing in the nine years since the last big Texas hurricane, Ike, to protect the state’s fragile eastern shore.
  • Massive development has been allowed to proceed unimpeded, as vast tracts of land have been paved over, increasing runoff in areas that once could have absorbed much of the rain.
  • Climate change is making all of it that much worse, with warming waters in the Gulf of Mexico producing more rain and higher sea levels increasing the vulnerability of coastal areas.

“The Texas coast powers the nation,” state land commissioner George P. Bush (son of Jeb and Columba) told the journalists. “Its vulnerability should be considered a national-security issue.”

The challenge, not surprisingly, is a broken political culture that values money over lives and that includes more than a few political figures who regard climate change — not to mention basic science and engineering — as “fake news.” Take, for instance, Mike Talbot, who until recently was head of the Harris County Flood Control District, which includes Houston. Talbot derided scientists and conservationists, calling them “anti-development” and adding: “They have an agenda … their agenda to protect the environment overrides common sense.” The article adds ominously: “His successor shares his views.”

There are two major pieces in the series. The first, published in March 2016, examines what would have happened if Hurricane Ike had directly hit Houston in 2008 rather than veering off course at the last minute, causing less damage than had been projected. (Not that Ike wasn’t devastating. Seventy-four people were killed, and damage was estimated at $30 billion.)

For the past nine years, scientists and officials have talked about plans to protect the region from such a disaster. But talk is cheap, and action still appears to be years away. The most ambitious of those plans is the “Ike Dike,” based on a project in the Netherlands aimed at protecting inland areas from a 10,000-year storm. But it’s clear that there is little political will in Texas for such an undertaking, which could cost $8 billion or more — a pittance compared to Hurricane Harvey’s eventual price tag.

The other major article, published last December, takes a look at the increase in flooding in recent years, a direct consequence of climate change and the loss of land to absorb increasing amounts of rainfall. Incredibly, Harris County’s freshwater wetlands diminished by 30 percent between 1992 and 2010. The result is that concepts like 100-year storms and 500-year storms have been rendered meaningless.

Unfortunately, the remedies suggested — tougher regulations on development, preservation of green spaces, and removing some 140,000 homes that are in the 100-year floodplain — seem marginal in the face of the challenges facing the region. Yet they probably go further than the political establishment is willing to embrace, although it’s possible that the devastation of Harvey has created a new reality.

“Hell and High Water” represents public-interest journalism at its best, but it also tells us much about the limits of journalism. Investigative reporting does not normally end with the crooked president flying off in a helicopter or the pedophile-priest-coddling cardinal fleeing to Rome. After all, such denouements are unusual enough that they make movies out of them. Most great journalism shines a light and explains. It is up to members of the public whether they will choose to be outraged enough to demand action.

Right now, the focus in Texas is on saving people’s lives, as it should be. But in a few weeks, or a few months, the public’s attention will turn to softening the effects of such catastrophes in the future. “Hell and High Water” will still be there, supplemented, no doubt, by additional reporting on Harvey and its aftermath. In it readers will learn how their leaders let them down — and how they can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

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The real target of the Boston counter-protest was Trump

Bonita Yarboro traveled with three friends from Hamden, Connecticut, to protest against “racism, anti-Semitism, every -ism out there.” Photo (cc) by Dan Kennedy.

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

There’s been so much written and said about free speech and the lack thereof at Saturday’s rally on the Boston Common that the big picture is in danger of being lost. So let me try to bring it back into focus. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people turned out not to protest what a few right-wingers had to say or to rumble with the police. Rather, they came to express their anger and disgust with President Trump.

Lest we forget, back in May a similar event drew just a few hundred people, with the two sides being kept apart by police officers. We might have seen a similar response this past weekend. But then a motley band of white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. A fellow-traveler was accused of driving into a crowd of people who had come to protest against such hate, killing one of them, Heather Heyer. And Trump, on his third attempt to address what had happened, threw a temper tantrum of a news conference in which he placed racists and those who oppose racism on the same moral plane.

It was that reality that was on the minds of those who showed up at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury on Saturday morning. I was among them, carrying a notebook and a smartphone with handmade press credentials around my neck so no one would think I was one of the protesters. The crowd reminded me of the folks who’d turned out in Copley Square last January to protest Trump’s first, botched Muslim ban: earnest liberals from the suburbs, Black Lives Matter activists, young people, LGBTQ people, lots of racial diversity, lots of ink (not visible last winter), and a large number of clergy. Mayor Marty Walsh, Police Commissioner Bill Evans, and Attorney General Maura Healey all put in appearances on Saturday.

There were, of course, a few political radicals on hand. Two older women who would only give me their first names held up a large banner that said “No Free Speech for Fascists” — and, in smaller type, “Progressive Labor Party,” a far-left group. I asked them if they thought their views contradicted the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. “There is no free speech,” Ruth instructed me. “Speech costs a lot of money.” Added Heidi: “We need to stop this hate speech.”

More typical was a young African-American woman named Bonita Yarboro of Hamden, Connecticut, who was holding a green sign that read “I am Black and I MATTER. Any questions?” I asked her what had brought her to Boston and what her hopes were for the counter-protest, dubbed “Fight Supremacy” by its organizers. “Four of us came up together in a Volkswagen Beetle,” she said. “I just want to stand up against racism, anti-Semitism, every -ism out there.”

We got under way a little before 11. The march down Tremont Street toward the Boston Common was a rolling celebration. The police officers who lined the route were professional and friendly. Charlie Pierce wrote in Esquire that Police Superintendent Willie Gross was posing for selfies with marchers.

By 1, with our destination still ahead of us, word started to ripple through the crowd that the rally was over and that the right-wing speakers had left. With the Common just ahead of me, I spotted state Rep. Byron Rushing, a South End Democrat, who told me he’d been prohibited from entering the 75-yard zone around the Parkman Bandstand that police had set up to protect the speakers. “I came down to hear them, and they wouldn’t let me in,” he said. “Freedom of speech should be reciprocal. If they can talk, I should be able to listen.”

In fact, there remain some legitimate concerns about how the authorities handled access to the bandstand. The police department had a genuine public-safety challenge on its hands, and the buffer zone was probably a necessity — but it wouldn’t have been as onerous if, say, a few pool reporters had been allowed in to hear what the speakers had to say. It didn’t help that Commissioner Evans issued a statement in which he said it was “a good thing” that the right-wingers couldn’t get their message out. The ACLU and others have expressed concern.

But the triumph of the counter-protest was not that it had silenced a few extremists (and it’s not even clear how extreme they were, given that some who had been scheduled didn’t show up). The triumph was that the crowd had expressed its opposition to the racism and hatred that these days is indulged, even amplified, by the president of the United States. I couldn’t help but feel a surge of patriotism in the face of such idealism.

Trump’s outrages come at us every day. But his sociopathic reaction to the events in Charlottesville seems like a watershed moment of the sort that greeted the “Access Hollywood” tape, on which he was heard profanely bragging about groping and sexually assaulting women. From business leaders to Republican officials, a new wave of people has begun moving away from him. Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, and investigative reporting legend Carl Bernstein are among the serious, careful folks who recently have questioned Trump’s mental stability. (Brinkley and Bernstein made their remarks on CNN.)

This can’t go on, but how will it end? Regardless of what comes next, I’m proud of my city for the stand it took this past weekend.

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Antifa is the right’s new bogeyman

Well put by The Boston Globe editorial page:

Saturday put the lie to a common whine of the so-called alt right — the loose movement of anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and freelance bigots emboldened by President Trump’s election — that they are somehow deprived of their free speech rights. Nonsense. If being mocked, booed, and heckled is the alt-right’s idea of censorship, it may be time to rethink who gets labeled a “snowflake” in today’s political environment.

The fears of “antifa” violence directed at conservatives also turned out to be overblown. A few counterprotesters in black outfits showed up, made some noise, and then went home. Sorry, but left-wing cosplay isn’t a security threat comparable to neo-Nazi violence.

I’m starting to see efforts by the right to transform antifa (for “anti-fascist”) activists into a massive, violent force determined to stamp out free speech and supported by everyone to the left of, say, Hillary Clinton. The reality is that they’re the new New Black Panther Party, a bogeyman trotted out to frighten viewers of Fox News but not especially visible anywhere else. Don’t be fooled.

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Free speech took a back seat to public safety at Saturday’s demonstrations

It’s now clear why no one could hear the right-wing speakers on the Boston Common on Saturday. The police kept demonstrators 75 yards away, and the speakers didn’t have any amplification. I’m not sure whether that was a police decision or a result of their own poor planning. (And I doubt it would have made a difference.)

The police had a huge dilemma on their hands. Even though the vast majority of the 40,000 counter-protesters were peaceful, there could have been some real trouble from a few hotheads if they had been allowed any closer. There were only a few dozen right-wingers.

I’m not sure how this could have been handled differently. Someone suggested that a pool reporter should have been allowed in, and that certainly would have been better than nothing. It didn’t help that BPD Commissioner Bill Evans issued a statement in which he sounded glad that the speakers were not able to get their message out:

We had a job to do; we did a great job. I’m not going to listen to people who come in here and want to talk about hate. And you know what, if they didn’t get in, that’s a good thing ’cause their message isn’t what we want to hear.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There was real potential for violence far beyond the skirmishes that actually took place. The Boston Police did a good job of protecting public safety. But free speech took a back seat on Saturday, and I imagine we’re going to be hearing more about that in the days to come.

Update: First Amendment Rob Bertsche has similar thoughts.

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My reporter’s toolkit for today’s demonstrations

I’m heading to Boston later this morning to report on the protests for my column at WGBH News. Here is my reporter’s toolkit: unofficial press pass, business cards, notebook and $40 cash for bail — the last recommended by First Amendment lawyer Rob Bertsche, whose firm, Prince Lobel, will be on call this weekend for any journalists who find themselves in legal trouble.

My plan is to accompany the “Fight Supremacy!” counterprotesters from the Reggie Lewis Center to the Boston Common, where the white-supremacist rally is supposed to take place. I’ll try to do some live posting on Twitter right here, though it’s likely the cellular networks will be overloaded.

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The end of something. But of what?

It feels like events are accelerating and spinning out of control, and that whatever we’ve been going through with Trump is about to come to an end. I’m specifically not wording this as meaning the end of the Trump presidency, though I’m not ruling it out. My prediction that he’d somehow be gone by Labor Day may yet be on target. These are very strange, ugly, scary days.

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Trump’s morally repugnant response to the violence in Charlottesville

I’ve been trying to find the right context for President Trump’s repugnant response to the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville. To say that he failed the moral test of being president doesn’t quite get at it, because he’s failed every moral test ever put in front of him. But this was by far his most important test, so it’s much worse than his previous failures, even if his actual words were no different from what he’s said and hasn’t said before.

His performance Saturday was deliberate and perverse. The most plausible explanation is that he was consciously, specifically trying not to alienate the ignorant racists and white supremacists who comprise a large part of his base. I’m glad that other Republicans, including Ted Cruz, gave evil its proper name. But will they take action against Trump? Not likely.

Many sides. Many sides.

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Frederick Clay’s ordeal underscores the hazards of excessive police secrecy

By Jeffrey J. Pyle

For the past several years, police departments in Massachusetts have been routinely denying the public access to “incident reports,” the written narratives of police responses to alleged crimes. Law enforcement agencies used to disclose these reports as a matter of course, sometimes redacting sensitive information. But now, every week, I and other media lawyers at my firm hear from reporters who are being denied basic information about such things as car accidents and drug arrests. The police withhold this information despite the strong presumption in our new, strengthened Public Records Act that all government documents must be made open for public inspection unless a specific exemption makes them confidential.

The damage this excessive secrecy poses to local journalism is well reported, but it’s not only the public’s right to know that can suffer. In some cases, the refusal to release incident reports can threaten the criminal justice system itself, potentially keeping innocent people behind bars and allowing dangerous criminals to remain free in the community. This problem is illustrated by the case of Frederick Clay, who was freed from prison this week after serving 38 years for a crime he did not commit.

Around 4 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 16, 1979, a taxicab pulled up to the Archdale Housing Project in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston. Three young men exited the cab and then pulled the cab driver, Jeffrey Boyajian, out of the car and onto the ground. Witnesses claimed that two of the assailants were around 6 feet tall, and the other was shorter, about 5 feet 8 inches. All three were wearing dark clothing, possibly including black leather jackets. The men searched through Boyajian’s pockets and beat him as he cried, “Take what you want, but let me live.” After stepping away from Boyajian, the shorter man took out a handgun with his left hand and shot Boyajian five times. The attackers fled on foot.

The police subjected two of the witnesses of the morning’s events to hypnosis to try to help them identify a suspect — a practice that would soon (thankfully) be ruled unlawful. One of these witnesses didn’t see the attack at all — he just thought he’d seen the trio get into Boyajian’s cab earlier that night. The second, a young man with an intellectual disability, saw the attack from a second-story window. Neither witness was sure he could identify anyone before hypnosis, but after it — and after other procedures that would today be deemed too suggestive — both picked out Frederick Clay, age 16.

Clay insisted he was asleep in his room at a foster home on the night of the crime, and his foster mother corroborated his alibi at trial. Clay was also right-handed, not left-handed like the shooter. But the police figured they had their suspect. That’s why they failed to follow up on indications that two other Archdale residents — a left-handed 16-year-old who was 5 feet 8 inches and his much taller brother — may have been the real culprits. On Aug. 19, 1981, a jury convicted Clay of first degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

After years of fruitless appeals and post-conviction motions, Clay’s case came to the attention of attorneys Lisa Kavanaugh and Jeffrey Harris. Kavanaugh learned of the other  suspect and his possible links to the crime, so she sent public records requests to the Boston Police for incident reports of his arrests around the time of the shooting. She was hoping to get mugshots of the suspect, details of his physical appearance, and other evidence showing that he matched the descriptions of the shooter, as well as information about his propensity to engage in robberies like the one that claimed Boyajian’s life.

The initial response of the Boston Police was a flat “no.” In a May 2015 letter, they told Kavanaugh that her request for the report of a 1985 arrest for assault and battery would be denied because she knew the names of the “parties involved” (she’d mentioned them in the requests to help the police identify the reports). and therefore their “privacy” could not be protected through redaction. Also, the police said, the report contained “investigatory material” (even though the investigation was long over) and “arrest information” that is “protected from disclosure” under the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law.

These are the same justifications police departments are now using to deny access to police reports to the media, and they are wrong. As I’ve explained elsewhere, neither the “investigatory” exemption to the public records law nor the CORI statute permit the withholding of entire incident reports. Nonetheless, the Massachusetts State Police recently argued to the supervisor of records for the secretary of state’s office that it does not have an obligation even to try to redact police reports — it can instead withhold them in their entirety whenever they want.  (There’s a reason the State Police won the Investigative Reporters & Editors 2015 “Golden Padlock Award,” a national recognition given to the most secretive government agency in the country.)

Kavanaugh didn’t take no for an answer. She asked me to intercede on her behalf with counsel for the Boston Police, and after much back and forth, including a threat of a lawsuit, the police agreed to produce reports for a number of incidents involving the other suspect from the 1980s — while still insisting on redacting his name (as if Kavanaugh didn’t already know it). Those reports led to other reports, and ultimately to a section of Kavanaugh’s and Harris’ masterful 75-page motion for a new trial that addressed the similarity of the other suspect’s appearance to descriptions of the Boyajian attacker and showed his propensity to commit similar crimes.

The Suffolk County DA’s office did its own investigation in response to Clay’s motion, and this past Tuesday — just one week before Clay was to be released on parole — the office assented to his motion and decided not to re-prosecute the case. The DA’s office did so in part because it agreed that the lead on the other suspect should have been pursued. In an emotional hearing in courtroom 906, Judge Christine Roach granted Clay’s motion, ordered his shackles removed, and declared him a free man — after serving 38 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

The incident reports in Clay’s case played only a small part in his release, but they corroborated an important alternative theory of who may have committed a heinous murder. The Boston Police should be commended for reversing their initial determination and releasing the records. But the problem remains: Absent judicial or legislative intervention, police departments will continue to deny access to incident reports for no good reason, regardless of whether they may shed light on an unsolved case, reveal important trends in law enforcement, or possibly free an innocent person. For the sake of the criminal justice system and the public’s right to know, that practice must end — and soon.

Jeffrey J. Pyle is a partner in the Media and First Amendment Law group at Prince Lobel Tye, LLP, in Boston.