Author: Dan Kennedy

First Amendment Center at Northeastern

The Associated Press reports on the launch of the New England First Amendment Center, founded by the New England First Amendment Coalition, Northeastern’s School of Journalism and the Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

Northeastern’s coordinator, Walter Robinson, explains that the center will focus on ensuring access to public records, telling the AP: “Most of the people that reporters and citizens deal with who have the information — they are not up on the law — and if people understood the law better, if we had better public education on this, then we would have better compliance.”

Adds Steve Burgard, director of the J-school: “We hope a center like this for many people will be place where they can go to learn what the law is and how they can use it.”

The center’s Web site includes a blog, to which I’ll contribute occasionally.

Here is the official announcement.

Your own lying eyes

I’m going to break one of my rules for blogging by engaging in a little mind-reading. That’s because it seems fairly obvious that the folks at the Washington Post have decided they don’t want to engage in a battle with the McCain-Palin campaign over Sarah Palin’s crystal-clear, public statement linking the war in Iraq to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

How else can we possibly explain Post ombudsman Deborah Howell’s column accepting the line that Palin was actually referring to a terrorist group known as Al Qaeda in Iraq? How else can we understand reporter Anne Kornblut’s contention that there was more than one interpretation that could be given to Palin’s remarks? Why else would the Post run a “clarification” to Kornblut’s article that might as well have been headed “obfuscation”?

By all means, watch the video above, but here’s the key sentence from Palin’s talk to Iraq-bound Alaskan soldiers, including her son Track: “You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans. You’ll be there because America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before Sept. 11, 2001.”

Is this difficult? There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001. Al Qaeda in Iraq did not plan and carry out the attacks. Every one of the terrorists was either Saudi or Egyptian. I mean, come on. Palin’s words were plainly spoken. There is no alternative interpretation.

The U.S. military, after extensive study, found there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The military also believes that Al Qaeda in Iraq is merely a homegrown, Iraqi insurgent movement.

Why is the Washington Post acting as enablers for the McCain-Palin campaign’s transparent attempt to explain away Palin’s ludicrous statement?

Sarah Palin and the Special Olympics

Several news organizations, including the New York Times and NPR, have reported that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cut the state’s Special Olympics budget by $275,000 earlier this year. That’s accurate, but it’s not the whole story, and I’ve posted an update to reflect that.

According to Newsbusters.org, and verified by state documents, the Special Olympics sought $550,000 for the coming fiscal year. Palin used her line-item veto to cut that in half, but it still represented an increase of $25,000.

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard gets carried away, describing the $550,000 as merely a number that was “proposed.” In fact, it was approved by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature, so Palin really went out of her way to make this cut. The question: Why? Alaska’s KTUU-TV tried to get someone from the Special Olympics to comment, but was unsuccessful.

What services would the extra money have paid for? Was it for new programs? Was it to make up for a loss of funding from other sources? What will be the effect of Palin’s veto?

I’d say someone ought to find out. How about it, Anchorage Daily News?

Picking apart Jeff Jacoby’s indictment

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby today takes on what he calls the “frenzy of rage and contempt set off by the nomination of Sarah Palin.”

Because Jacoby’s an important voice and deserves to be taken seriously, I’m going to take a little more space than I normally might to pick his column apart. As you will see, there is almost nothing in Jacoby’s piece that holds up to scrutiny.

1. “There has been legitimate criticism, of course. But there has also been a gusher of slander, much of it — like the slur that she isn’t the real mother of her infant son, Trig — despicable.”

Agreed. It doesn’t get much more despicable than that. But why bring it up? As we know, this rumor was nothing but the product of a pseudonymous hate-monger on Daily Kos. Until the McCain campaign itself cited it as a reason for going public with 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the only mainstream journalist who mentioned it was Andrew Sullivan, blogging for the Atlantic. I unloaded on him for that.

This complaint makes as much sense as blaming the media and mainstream Republicans for anonymous e-mails that claim Barack Obama is a Muslim.

2. “Voters have been told that she slashed funding in Alaska for special-needs children.”

Perhaps that’s because, this summer, she cut the budget for the Special Olympics by $275,000. [True, but see note below.]

3. “That she tried to ban books from Wasilla’s public library.”

Unproven, though Bill Adair, editor of the nonpartisan Web site PolitiFact, now says there may be more to this allegation than first appeared. The investigation continues.

4. “That she was a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party.”

That was a case of media overreach based on some pretty tantalizing information. We know, for instance, that Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, was a member for seven years; that she denies the testimony of several eyewitnesses who say she attended a state convention in the mid-1990s; and that, as governor, she recorded a cheery video message to be played at the party state convention.

Lest we forget, the words of party founder Joe Vogler remain emblazoned on the party’s Web site: “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

5. “That she links Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9/11.”

She does, most recently last Thursday.

6. “That she backed Pat Buchanan for president.”

The source of this error was an MSNBC analyst named, uh, Pat Buchanan. In Buchanan’s defense, it’s possible that the “Buchanan for President” button Palin was wearing fooled him.

7. “That she doesn’t want students taught about contraception.”

During her 2006 campaign for governor, Palin answered a questionnaire that dealt with sex education and a number of other issues.

Here is one of the questions: “Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?”

And here is Palin’s answer: “Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.”

Does not abstinence-only education by definition exclude teaching kids about contraception? That’s not a rhetorical question — I don’t know. But I think it does. (Or not. See “Update,” below.)

8. “That she called the war in Iraq ‘a task from God.'”

I think Jacoby is right in calling this a stretch, though reasonable people — including a Pentacostal scholar — believe otherwise. But she did ask people to pray that a natural-gas pipeline would be built in Alaska. Is it somehow better to refer to a pipeline as a gift from God than it is to call the war in Iraq a task from God?

9. “For months they [the media] refused to mention the infidelity of John Edwards, yet they leaped with relish onto Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.”

What the media refused to do was pass along — or at least investigate and verify — stories in the National Enquirer about Edwards’ infidelity. Now the media are ignoring stories in the Enquirer that Palin had an affair with an ex-business partner of her husband’s, and that her two oldest kids have a thing for OxyContin and weed. Sounds pretty even-handed to me.

10. “Yet the more she has been attacked, the more her support has solidified. In the latest Fox News poll, Palin’s favorable/unfavorable ratio is a strong 54-27.”

Polls prove nothing. But for what it’s worth, her favorability/unfavorability ratings are down 10 points in the past few days, according to Newsweek.

Jacoby also passes along some pretty nasty comments from the likes of Randi Rhodes and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. I’m not sure what that proves. We’ve also heard Obama referred to as “uppity,” and recently a waffle mix featuring Obama as Uncle Jemimah was spotted at some sort of “values” conference.

The point is that Jacoby has gathered together essentially the entire indictment of the so-called liberal media with respect to Palin. And every bit of it is either wrong or distorted.

More: Sean Roche has similar thoughts at Blue Mass Group.

Update: Media Nation reader J.S. passes along this link, which shows that Palin does indeed believe contraception should be part of sex education. So yes, Jacoby is right about that. Not sure what Palin believed she was responding to when she also said she supported abstinence-only programs.

Thursday update: The NPR story on which I relied was imprecise. Palin did indeed slash the Special Olympics budget request by $275,000, but the program will still receive slightly more money than it did the year before. Thanks to Media Nation reader P.S.

Patrick’s star is rising

When a member of the Governor’s Council wants your endorsement enough to fake it, then your reputation is definitely on the upswing.

Jeremy Jacobs reports at PolitickerMA that Kelly Timilty has sent out campaign literature featuring a fictitious endorsement by Gov. Deval Patrick, complete with his forged signature.

Congratulations, Governor. You’ve truly arrived.

Ditching the Straight Talk Express

Longtime John McCain admirer Richard Cohen has written a stunning column in the Washington Post about his disillusionment with the erstwhile conductor of the Straight Talk Express. (Via Talking Points Memo.) After excoriating McCain for his profligate lying, Cohen says:

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician’s lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story — that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir — the person in whose hands he would leave the country — is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

This is remarkable stuff. I’m not sure we’ll see a tougher indictment of McCain for the rest of the campaign.