By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Scratch Globe metro editor Carolyn Ryan from the list of possible replacements for columnist Eileen McNamara. The New York Observer reports that she’s accepted a job as deputy metro editor for government and politics at the New York Times.
I’ve known Ryan since the early 1990s, when she was covering Beacon Hill for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. As a media reporter, I always found her to be accessible and a straight shooter, and I wish her well in New York. (Via Romenesko.)
I don’t want to rehash today’s New York Times article about attempts to encourage civility in blogland through a voluntary code of conduct. Rather, let me briefly consider one aspect of this that I’ve wrestled with from time to time: the matter of anonymous comments.
The code, online here, includes this:
We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
I can almost guarantee that Media Nation will adopt this system later in the spring. I like how I’ve seen this implemented on other blogs. Blogger, unfortunately, does not appear to offer any middle ground between full registration and total anonymity (although some commenters here work around that by including their names or pseudonyms). But change is coming.
Much comment out there about the Globe’s poll regarding Gov. Deval Patrick’s first 100 days in office, as well as a similar State House News Service poll. The Outraged Liberal: It could be worse. Hub Politics: Actually, it couldn’t be much worse. Blue Mass Group: It’s pretty good! David Bernstein: It’s pretty bad, but don’t write Deval off.
What’s missing from all this is context. How is Patrick doing compared to Mitt Romney at a similar point in his term? Media Nation comes to the rescue. It turns out that the Globe conducted an almost-identical poll in April 2003 (online here; scroll down), around the time Romney had been governor for 100 days. What follows are some numbers from both Globe surveys.
Personal popularity
Job performance
State of the state
Budget leadership
Much as I’d like to make more comparisons, the tabular data from 2003 are not online.
So what can we learn from the Romney-Patrick smackdown? At roughly the same point in their governorships, they were in a similar position with respect to public perceptions. Patrick is better liked. Although a higher percentage of respondents approved of Romney’s job performance, a higher percentage disapproved, too. Apparently more people are watching and waiting with Patrick.
Each governor dug himself into something of a hole rather quickly. As we know, Romney never dug himself out — and, after a while, he stopped trying, as he decided to run for president by making fun of Massachusetts rather than govern.
Despite Patrick’s stumbles coming out of the gate (some real, some media hooey), he seems genuinely dedicated to trying to do a good job. The relatively high marks he receives for managing the budget put him in a decent position from which to mount a comeback. And he has a reservoir of goodwill on which to draw.
A Media Nation reader has challenged me to back up my assertion that no one has complained to WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) about Imus’ racist language because, well, no one listens.
It’s a fair point, though proving it is not as easy as it might seem. But there is certainly some evidence that the I-Man is not as big in Boston as he used to be.
Ideally, I would look at Arbitron’s ratings for weekday mornings among listeners in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic. Unfortunately, companies pay a lot of money for those ratings, and no one’s going to give them to me.
On the Arbitron Web site, I can get data on overall ratings for Boston radio stations among listeners 12 and older. Since these numbers are not broken down by time slot, they’re not much good. For what it’s worth, though, the station came in ninth last fall, the most recent quarter for which numbers are available. News and/or talk stations that finished ahead of WTKK were WBZ (AM 1030), WRKO (AM 680) and WEEI (AM 850). And you can be sure that public station WBUR (90.9 FM), with a news and talk line-up, finished well ahead of ‘TKK, since its morning drive-time ratings are invariably strong — something not reflected in the Arbitron rankings, which only include commercial stations.
I also searched the archives of the Globe and the Herald for the past two years. Although I could not come up with anything definitive, I did find the following from the Herald’s “Inside Track,” published in September 2005:
Ratings-wise, “Imus in the Morning” isn’t exactly a powerhouse for ‘TKK in that all-important male 25-54 age group.
In the last five ratings books — Spring 2004 to Spring 2005 — the perennially PO’d morning man weighed in after WEEI’s sports yakkers Dennis & Callahan; Howard Stern’s strippers-on-parade on WBCN; and all-news WBZ-AM. Classic rock WZLX even beat him a few books back.
Again, WBUR probably beat Imus, too.
The bottom line is that Imus is no ratings monster in Boston. Stern’s gone, of course, but it seems eminently reasonable to assume that three news and/or talk stations — WBZ, WEEI and WBUR — all do better than “Imus in the Morning.”
If anyone has more definitive numbers than this, please pass them along, and I’ll be glad to post them.
I’m not surprised that Boston’s WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) says it’s received no complaints about Don Imus’ racist prattle on Wednesday. Who knew he was still on the air?
The Herald’s Jessica Heslam has the details. Imus’ apology has been posted on MSNBC.com. Here’s some background on Imus’ previous racist, misogynistic and homophobic outbursts.
I think it’s time — past time — for Imus to retire to the ranch. And he can take his little pal Bernard McGuirk with him.
Susan M. of Beyond 495, Bob of Blue Mass Group and I have been going at it for a good part of the day. Enjoy. And, yes, I had to look up “prat.”
The New England News Forum is holding its coming-out party tomorrow at UMass Lowell. I’ll be on a panel from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on “The Blogger as Journalist: Making New Law and Definitions,” along with Christine Stuart of CTNewsJunkie.com and Robert Cox, founder of the Media Bloggers Association.
It looks like a great program. If you can make it, I hope you’ll look me up.
In a decision that ought to trouble anyone who believes in a free press, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court yesterday ruled that judges can keep the names of jurors a secret if there is some reason to think that revealing their identities could put them in danger.
Jonathan Saltzman reports in the Globe today that the unanimous decision, written by Justice Judith Cowin, came in response to an order by Bristol Superior Court Judge Gary Nickerson, who sought to protect jurors sitting on a gang-related murder trial. The defendant, Manuel Silva, was acquitted, and The Standard-Times of New Bedford was turned down when it sought the names of jurors who had sat on the trial.
Obviously the problem Nickerson sought to address is real. But are we to allow secret juries to decide whether to send someone to prison? How would we ever know what had gone on during jury deliberations without the media’s being able to contact jurors once a trial has concluded? What about when something goes wrong? Who’s going to tell us?
What’s especially troublesome about this ruling is that it sounds as though Nickerson didn’t make much of an attempt to determine whether his order was even necessary, deciding on his own that two shootings that took place before and after the trial were related to the murder case. Saltzman writes:
Anthony C. Savastano, who represented the Standard-Times Publishing Co. in the appeal, criticized the decision and said the court accepted at face value unconfirmed police accounts that both shootings were linked to the trial of Silva, a reputed gang member from the Monte Park area of New Bedford.
Savastano said Nickerson should have held a hearing to determine whether the shootings were related to the case and sealed records only if he saw a “compelling government interest,” which Savastano characterized as a higher standard than good cause.
He questioned Nickerson’s concern for jurors’ safety, saying the judge took no action until a Standard-Times reporter requested the names in hope of interviewing jurors after the verdict. The judge then sealed them, Savastano said.
“This was not a case where the judge was overly concerned with jurors’ safety so he, on his own, impounded the jury list,” he said.
In today’s Standard-Times, Rob Margetta reports that the paper’s editors had no intention of publishing the names, but that they balked at a demand from Judge Nickerson that they sign a pledge to that effect in advance:
Managing Editor Dan Rosenfeld said the newspaper told Judge Nickerson about that policy when it made its initial request. But, he said, the judge wanted The Standard-Times to sign an agreement binding it from printing the names before he would give them out.
“I could not agree to a prior restraint,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “We could only tell him that it is not our policy to print the names. That was not good enough for him.”
Later, Margetta continues, the paper did agree to that request — but, by then, it was too late.
Robert Ambrogi posts the text of the SJC decision here.
I doubt many people are going to be sympathetic to The Standard-Times. Former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran was chortling about it on his WRKO Radio (AM 680) show this morning.
But there needs to be some way for the press to perform its watchdog role without endangering the lives of jurors. I’m not sure how that balance ought to be struck. But it certainly seems to me that Judge Nickerson and the SJC got it wrong.
This is pretty amusing. It turns out that Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who blew the whistle on the privacy-violating aspects of Gov. Deval Patrick’s Web site, DevalPatrick.com, is engaging in some dubious practices of his own.
According to a story by Ken Maguire of the Associated Press, the Corporations Division of Galvin’s office contains all sorts of personal information about people, including, in some cases, Social Security numbers, purchase records and even images of personal checks. The purpose, Galvin says, is to make it easier for lenders to vet would-be borrowers. But anyone can log on.
Galvin offers Maguire two responses:
1. Everyone’s doing it. “We’re not taking down the site. This is standard practice in the business world. It’s necessary for commerce. There are people who are reliant upon this system.”
2. This is an official government function, unlike Patrick’s campaign site. “The governor’s site is a political committee. Our site is a governmental function. This is an essential part of commerce.”
Naturally, David Kravitz, co-editor of the pro-Patrick site Blue Mass Group, calls Galvin’s excuses “lame” and “crap.”
Well, no. In fact, there are all kinds of government functions that invade our privacy. I do think the fact that it was Patrick’s political committee (complete with a “Contribute” button) that was violating our privacy made it uniquely offensive. There may be no practical difference, but there’s a huge difference symbolically and philosophically. (On the other hand, the Patrick folks fixed their mistake almost immediately; Galvin says he ain’t doin’ nuthin’, at least not right away.)
Besides, virtually every resident in the state is in Patrick’s database. By contrast, when I tried searching the Galvintron this morning, entering the names of random people I know, I couldn’t come up with much of anyone. (Kravitz is right about this: You will find information about the governor and his wife.)
Privacy and the government is an enormous issue, and Galvin should commit himself to taking a lot of this stuff offline. There are many records that ought to be public for anyone who needs them, but not simply thrown up onto the Internet for everyone to see.
Galvin is right that what he’s doing isn’t as egregious as what the Patrick campaign did. But he’s wrong in taking such a dismissive attitude toward the whole thing.
Judith Miller testified. So did Tim Russert. But Josh Wolf, a blogger and freelance videographer, won a partial victory yesterday by walking out of jail without having to appear before a grand jury. The San Francisco Chronicle has the details.
Wolf spent seven and a half months behind bars rather than turn over unused footage of an anarchists’ protest he had covered in July 2005 and answer prosecutors’ questions about violent incidents he had witnessed. In the end, he agreed to give up the footage in return for not having to testify. He also posted it on his Web site.
In a statement given in front of San Francisco City Hall and reposted on his blog, Wolf, 24, said in part that he considered not having to testify more important than turning over the video:
Contrary to popular opinion, this legal entanglement which has held me in Federal Prision for the past eight months, has never been about a videotape nor is the investigation about the alleged attempted arson of a San Francisco police vehicle as the government claims. While it is true that I was held in custody for refusing to surrender the tape and that the justification for making a federal case out of this was the police car, things are not always as they appear. The reality is that this investigation is far more pervasive and perverse than a superficial examination will reveal.
When I was subpoenaed in February of last year, I was not only ordered to provide my unedited footage, but to also submit to testimony and examination before the secretive grand jury. Although I feel that my unpublished material should be shielded from government demands, it was the testimony which I found to be the more egregious assault on my right and ethics as both a journalist and a citizen.
Wolf’s case is about the right of journalists — never fully recognized, and under increasing assault in recent years — to protect their confidential sources and unused notes, video footage and other materials from the prying eyes of prosecutors.
Wolf’s case was especially egregious, as this Online Journalism Review story explains, because the investigation was shifted from state court, where Wolf might have enjoyed the protection of California’s shield law, to federal court, where there is no shield law. The argument — that a San Francisco police cruiser damaged by protesters was paid for in part with federal anti-terrorism funds — is so weak as to be laughable.
With his partial victory yesterday, Wolf did not succeed in changing the law. But he showed that a journalist — even an independent blogger whose journalistic credentials are not clearly established — can generate enough publicity that the authorities will eventually back down.
The Committee to Protect Journalists hails Wolf’s release; so does the Society of Professional Journalists.
In February, Amy Goodman interviewed Wolf for “Democracy Now!”