The takeaway from the Herald libel verdict

PyleBy Jeffrey J. Pyle

What should we take away from Wednesday’s $563,000 jury verdict against the Boston Herald? As a lawyer who represents newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, I have a few thoughts.

Much of the attention on the case has focused on the provocative words “sexual acts.” That’s how the Herald described what happened between Marinova and her then-boyfriend, inmate Darrell Jones, in the visitor’s room of the Old Colony Prison in Bridgewater in November 2008. The Herald relied on a prison disciplinary report, but failed to mention that the report alleged only that Jones had kissed Marinova and touched her knee. Marinova’s lawyers argued that “sexual acts” means sexual intercourse, and thus the “gist” of the article was false and defamatory. The jury apparently agreed.

But if the only problem with this story had been the explosive description of the conduct as “sexual acts,” this case probably would never have made it to a jury. That is because the prison disciplinary report did, in fact, charge Jones with engaging in “sexual acts” with Marinova. The Herald put quotes around those words and cited the disciplinary report. So why wasn’t the Herald protected under the fair report privilege?

The fair report privilege, of course, is the age-old legal protection that allows the media to report on official proceedings without being held liable for fairly and accurately describing them. It’s an exception to the rule that a “republisher” of a libel (the press) is just as guilty as the original publisher (the false accuser). However, the privilege only applies to official government proceedings or statements, and any description of a proceeding must be fair and accurate.

The Supreme Judicial Court applied this rule in Howell v. Enterprise Publishing Co., where a public employee was fired for having inappropriately explicit images on his work computer. He sued the Enterprise for describing the images as “pornography” and “porn” — words he said were so exaggerated as to be inaccurate. However, a formal charging document against Howell described the images as “photographs and cartoon-style pictures of a pornographic nature.”

The court held that “[w]hether the images were pornographic or not,” the fair report privilege applied because “it was not substantially inaccurate or unfair” of the Enterprise “to report that the official accusation leveled against Howell was that the images were ‘pornographic.’” In other words, even if a reasonable person wouldn’t have considered the images “pornography,” the fair report privilege allowed the Enterprise to report that the town had charged him with possessing “pornography,” and thus the report wasn’t unfair or inaccurate.

By contrast, in Marinova, the jury heard a litany of ways in which the Herald failed to fairly and accurately describe the prison disciplinary report beyond the mere use of the words “sexual acts.” The article said that Jones was “cited” for “sexual acts” with Marinova, but failed to mention that a hearing officer had dismissed the charge, finding that the conduct did not, in fact, constitute “sexual acts.” A report is not fair, the SJC has ruled, if it is “edited and deleted as to misrepresent the proceeding and thus be misleading.” Second, the article suggested that Marinova herself had been “bagged” and “written up” for the acts. She was never charged with anything. In that sense, Marinova had a good argument that the report was inaccurate — that it did not convey a “substantially correct account of the proceedings,” in the SJC’s words. Third, the article said that Rep. Gloria Fox was under scrutiny for “sneaking” Marinova into the prison, even though Marinova, according to her lawyers, had been cleared to visit the prison just two days earlier. The jury found all these statements to be false and defamatory, and rejected the Herald’s argument that its article fairly and accurately described the disciplinary report.

The takeaway for journalists is pretty clear: when you’re reporting on official documents or proceedings, feel free to quote even their most salacious allegations. But, don’t ignore important elements of those proceedings, like a dismissal, or the fact that only one and not two people were charged. When you do, and the article hurts someone’s reputation, it’s easy for even a public figure to win a libel suit. The jury here found not only that the Herald’s reporter was negligent, but that she published the statements with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.

Jeffrey J. Pyle is a partner at the Boston law firm of Prince Lobel Tye and a trial lawyer specializing in First Amendment and media law.

Another perspective on the Herald libel suit

Here’s an interesting perspective on the Boston Herald libel suit. In July 2009, the Jamaica Plain Gazette reported that inmates were claiming that prison officials were cracking down on their efforts to reach out to young people as part of an anti-crime initiative. The article includes this:

Recent articles in the Boston Herald that claimed state Rep. Gloria Fox sneaked a woman into prison for illicit visits were incorrect, several sources told the Gazette, confirming a press statement issued by Fox. In fact, Fox also was responding to complaints about retaliation against prisoners, and the false tips that led to the Herald’s articles were part of that payback, according to Hudson and other sources.

“Hudson” is a reference to a prisoner named Mac Hudson. The Gazette story also quoted Steven Kenneway, head of the guards union, as denying that any retaliation had taken place.

The libel suit was brought by Joanna Marinova, an activist who, according to the Herald, was caught engaging in “sexual acts” with an inmate during a visit to the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater. On Wednesday, a Superior Court jury ruled that the Herald’s story, written by Jessica Van Sack, was false and awarded Marinova about $563,000.

The Herald maintains that its reporting was correct and, in this story, says “it will continue to defend its article and reporter Jessica Van Sack going forward.”

Boston Herald loses libel suit over false prison-sex story

David Frank of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reports that the Boston Herald has lost a libel suit brought by a woman who charged the paper had falsely claimed she engaged in “sexual acts” while visiting an inmate at Bridgewater State Prison in 2009. Lawyers Weekly has posted the jury’s verdict form as well.

The plaintiff, Joanna Marinova, was awarded about $563,000 in damages. According to Frank, Marinova’s lawyer, David Rich, “argued that the story was intended to sensationalize a trip that his client and Rep. Gloria Fox made to the prison to investigate alleged incidents of inmate abuse.”

Herald lawyer Peter Biagetti provided a statement to Lawyers Weekly that reads in part: “The article was meticulously researched, carefully written and extremely well-documented. We are proud of it, and of the journalist who wrote it.”

Rich was part of the legal team that represented former Superior Court judge Ernest Murphy, who won a $2.1 million libel verdict against the Herald in 2005.

Disclosure: In 2011 I moderated a panel organized by Marinova on the media and violence.

Click here for a post I wrote about the case in 2011, which included some tough words for the Herald from Superior Court Judge Raymond Brassard.

Click here for a 2009 analysis by Adam Reilly, then of The Boston Phoenix, now of WGBH-TV (Channel 2).

5:10 p.m. update: Stories have now been posted by the Herald, The Boston Globe, CommonWealth magazine and the Boston Business Journal.

Northeastern unveils media innovation program

Screen Shot 2014-03-18 at 5.40.57 PMThis article was published earlier at the Knight Blog.

By Jeff Howe

Like a stock market crash, disruption creates its own brand of delusion. I remember spending an afternoon sipping iced tea in the Beverly Hills backyard of a seasoned music executive. It was 2003. Revenues from CDs had cratered, and the labels couldn’t figure out a way to compete with free. Panic was in the air, but not here. “The music business is booming,” he said. “It’s the recording industry that’s [in trouble].” Propelled by new distribution channels and cheap-but-powerful audio editing software, more musicians were reaching more audiences than any previous time in history. The delusion, of course, was conflating business with creation.

So it is with storytelling. Making money off journalism has become more difficult, but finding passionate audiences for true stories well told has never been easier, or more exciting. Journalists have access to more information, more tools, more mediums and more venues than our predecessors could have ever imagined.

At Northeastern University, we’re changing journalism education to reflect this new reality. The plain truth is that the skills journalists need lie outside the traditional curriculum of journalism. An interdisciplinary grad program isn’t just an option; it’s a necessity. In September, thanks to the support of Knight Foundation, we will launch the Media Innovation Program. We have one goal: to retrain storytellers for the 21st century, whether that means teaching them Web design, social media, data visualization or game theory. We can do this because Northeastern hosts some of the finest instructors in all these fields.

Here’s how the media innovation track program will work for the master’s in journalism: Students attend for three semesters. Before classes begin they will work closely with advisers within the journalism school to propose the project that they will develop throughout their tenure in the Media Innovation Program. Students will identify one domain — the concentration — of study outside journalism, be that business or programming or videography. The majority of his or her classes will take place inside this department. Once a week they will come together in the seminar, an intensive course led by one of our top-notch digital practitioners that helps individual students apply their new skills to their project. In the last semester we will work closely with each student and our publishing partners to place their projects with outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, ProPublica or The Boston Globe.

The early response to the program has been tremendous. When I presented a rough sketch of our ideas at the Future of News conference in December 2012, representatives from several major media outlets said they would be interested in hiring the program’s graduates. However, the Media Innovation Program isn’t just an opportunity for journalists to develop skills that will enhance their work and increase their value to traditional news organizations and new media venues; it’s also a way for the School of Journalism to expand its networks and create deep, meaningful connections with other academic departments and news outlets in Boston and worldwide. We’ve already started offering courses in collaboration with the Art + Design program at Northeastern, as well as Laura and Chris Amico of Homicide Watch. We’re also looking forward to partnerships with organizations such as the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University School of Law.

Our goal with the Media Innovation Program is to empower journalists to think creatively about the future of the news, and provide the tools they need to realize their goals. At the same time, we hope to create a laboratory space that existing organizations can use to explore new ideas and new approaches to journalism. We’re at the beginning of our journey, but we’re excited about the road ahead.

More: The Boston Globe’s BetaBoston site covers the Media Innovation Program here.

Jeff Howe is an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University and director of the Media Innovation Program.

When the news comes from agenda-driven sources

Palestinian refugees in Syria wait for food assistance.
Palestinian refugees in Syria wait for food assistance.

Yesterday morning I was talking with my students about the importance of independence in journalistic ethics. Today The New York Times reports that a photo of Palestinian refugees in Syria has come under scrutiny, with some suspecting the picture is a digitally altered fake.

Perhaps questions would have been raised in any case, but it doesn’t help that the photo was distributed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). According to the Times, the photo appears to be genuine, and depicts the brutal reality of everyday life in Syria. But when the news comes from organizations with an agenda, it’s only natural that observers will ask questions.

The UNRWA photo is important and well worth calling to the world’s attention. But with more and more news coming from non-journalistic organizations, the value that journalism can bring is to scrutinize and determine what’s real and what isn’t.

Joe McGinniss, author of ‘Fatal Vision,’ has died

I just learned that Joe McGinniss has died. McGinniss was the author of a very good book about Richard Nixon and an atrociously bad one about Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret physician who’s been in prison for decades after being convicted of killing his family — a case that I believe was deeply flawed.

Here is what I wrote for Book Forum in 2012 about Errol Morris’ “A Wilderness of Error,” which attempts to set the record straight.

News versus journalism: Is there a difference?

I’ve been thinking lately about the value of what we consider news versus the value of journalism, which are not always the same thing. And then today’s New York Times comes along to provide more fodder.

Ask yourself this: Who is going to come away from today’s Times with a deeper, richer understanding of the human condition? Those who only read Dan Barry’s story on mentally disabled former poultry workers and Ron Suskind’s article on his autistic son? Or those who read all the news but who skipped those two articles?

The Barry article represents the perfect marriage between a great reporter with a wonderful eye for detail and a rich story about human beings at their best and their worst. It’s accompanied by a half-hour documentary video, which I intend to watch tonight. I haven’t read the Suskind piece yet, but Mrs. Media Nation recommends it highly, and I know Suskind’s work.* Yet neither Barry’s nor Suskind’s stories could be considered news.

What’s happening between Russia and Ukraine is important, of course, but if you skip today’s coverage you can always catch up tomorrow — or the next day. The apparent plane crash in Asia is horrifying, but it’s not particularly relevant to most people’s lives.

In fact, much of what we consider news is tied to the industrial processes that gave rise to the modern newspaper, which demand that the product of news be delivered on a daily basis — and in the post-print age, more frequently than that. Those processes demand quantity as much as quality; or quantity over quality at lesser news organizations.

Sometimes it makes more sense to get off the news treadmill and experience something more substantial.

*Monday update: I’ve now read Suskind’s article and watched the videos accompanying both his story and the Dan Barry story. They were as good as I imagined they would be.

Goldsmiths honor journalism in the public interest

b_kirtzBy Bill Kirtz

It started with one miner’s medical and legal nightmare and developed like a John Grisham novel. And finally it led to extensive reform of black lung diagnosis.

The Center for Public Integrity’s and ABC News’ yearlong work won it the $25,000 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting this week.

It took a medical database and exhaustive scrutiny of previously classified legal findings to produce the series. But Chris Hamby, the Center’s lead reporter, told a Harvard audience on Thursday that his research began with a plight “you just couldn’t ignore”: miner Gary Fox’s “outrageous” treatment by doctors and lawyers.

While Hamby circumvented privacy laws by getting miners’ consent to view their records, ABC News producer Matthew Mosk discovered a law firm that operated “like a John Grisham novel.”

As in past years, finalists for the Goldsmith awards, administered by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, included much such collaboration between media and public service organizations. Goldsmith winners and finalists are traditionally seen as front-runners for Pulitzer Prizes, which will be announced next month.

• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which bills itself as “the world’s best cross-border investigative team,” used Australian, Chinese and British reporters to reveal a universe of offshore money manipulation that has sparked international tax investigations.

ICIJ director Gerald Ryle said he was leaked 2.5 million files via hard drive and is proud that none of his operation’s anonymous informants has been caught. The 50-article series provides important context into powerful figures’ financial machinations. “We didn’t want to be Wikileaks and just dump documents,” he said.

While Ryle said his reporting was attacked in the Australian Senate and drew four libel suits, he noted that a Chinese colleague has faced even more danger. Kevin Lau, the former chief editor of the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, was fired and then critically wounded in an attack last month. Ming Pao was one of ICIJ’s partners in the Offshore Leaks investigation.

• Another wide-ranging project was a bilingual multimedia revelation of widespread sexual assault against immigrant women by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Frontline,” Univision and KQED.

Reporter Andres Cediel said it took 18 months after an anonymous tip to produce the series, which has sparked criminal charges and pending legislation. The problem: he was committed to telling their story in a human way, but the victims were afraid to talk on camera. His colleague Bernice Young said it took countless trips going door to door to gain their trust. “It was a long, slow process to build a relationship,” she said.

“Frontline” producer-correspondent Lowell Bergman, lead reporter on the project, noted that this was Univision’s first foray into investigative reporting and predicted more such efforts in foreign language media.

• Shorenstein director Alex Jones said the free weekly Miami New Times was “punching above its weight” when it tackled the steroid industry.

New Times managing editor Tim Elfrink, who noted his paper had previously done investigative reporting on a very local scale, said the series started when a whistleblower came to him irate over a $4,000 dispute. The informant gave him a bunch of confusing documents about a Biogenesis operation running out of a Coral Gables strip mall. Elfrink called thousands of clients’ phone numbers — getting rejected 90 percent of the time — but eventually scanned court records to uncover the shady records of some clinic operators.

The stories, which have won a prestigious Polk Award, led to the suspension of 13 baseball players and changed how baseball owners and players approach drug use.

• Seeking national impact and backed by supportive news executives, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel scoured medical records throughout the country to expose potentially fatal flaws in newborn screening. Lead reporter Ellen Garber led a five-person team through a maze of withheld data and official denials.

When her data requests were denied, she had to negotiate state by state for records — finally penetrating the system by discovering that Arizona had kept detailed records of newborns babies from a small Native American tribe. She then confronted the head of that state’s health department, who finally released complete records.

Garber said the series, which has won the Taylor Award for fairness in journalism and the prestigious Selden Ring award for the year’s top investigative work, has had an “incredible impact,” revamping the system so blood samples arrive promptly.

• The Wall Street Journal’s Michael M. Phillips doesn’t consider himself an investigative reporter, but after covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he followed up his novelist brother’s discussions with a psychiatric researcher. This led to the discovery of secret lobotomies of servicemen after World War II.

His problem was to find out how widespread this pattern was. Freedom of Information requests denied, he turned to the National Archives, which he recommends as a fertile source of vintage information. He unearthed 18 boxes of surgical records filed under “L” — lobotomy. He picked the cases with unusual names, thinking their families would be easier to trace after more than 60 years. The multimedia presentation revealed that more than 2,000 servicemen were lobotomized, and he was able to portray some surviving victims.

• Putting a human face on a “numbers” story is a perennial challenge for investigative reporters.

Reuters staffers Scot Paltrow and Kelly Carr found egregious and widespread Defense Department accounting mistakes. Their editors shared the view of the subject’s importance but wrestled with how to make it interesting.

“Vast amounts of dollars resonates little,” said Paltrow. So they settled on a human-interest beginning to show how massive programs affect individuals:

EL PASO, Texas — As Christmas 2011 approached, U.S. Army medic Shawn Aiken was once again locked in desperate battle with a formidable foe…. This time, he was up against the U.S. Defense Department. Aiken, then 30 years old, was in his second month of physical and psychological reconstruction at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, after two tours of combat duty had left him shattered…. But the problem that loomed largest that holiday season was different. Aiken had no money. The Defense Department was withholding big chunks of his pay.

Bill Kirtz is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University.

Local buyers exit Worcester Telegram bidding

Harry Whitin
Harry Whitin

This article was published previously at WGBH News.

This week’s Boston Globe-related media news continues, as the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester reports that the only potential local buyers for the paper have withdrawn.

Retired T&G editor Harry Whitin and Polar Beverages chief executive Ralph Crowley had been mentioned as possible buyers since 2009, when the New York Times Co. first put the Globe and its related properties (including the T&G) up for sale. John Henry, who bought the Globe late last year, told the T&G staff in November that he hoped to sell the paper to someone local, and that he might hang onto it if he couldn’t find the right buyer. (Henry also said he would keep the T&G’s Millbury printing plant — a facility that is likely to be used to print the Globe and handle its contract work, including the Boston Herald, after Henry sells the Globe’s current headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. He recently confirmed that move in an interview with Boston magazine.)

Now, though, Whitin and Crowley are out, with Whitin telling the T&G’s Shaun Sutner: “For all intents and purposes, we have withdrawn from the process.”

Today’s T&G story also quotes Tim Murray, CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and the former lieutenant governor, as saying that Henry should sell the paper at a discount if that means transferring it to local owners, just as the Times Co. sold the Globe to Henry out of a sense that he would prove to be a good steward. Here’s Murray:

The fact of the matter is The New York Times gave a discount to a local buyer for The Boston Globe because they had a buyer who professed to be committed to the region, Greater Boston and the journalistic mission that newspapers play. And therefore it is not unreasonable for Mr. Henry to extend that same courtesy to the residents of Worcester in contemplating a sale.

Sutner quotes me regarding two national chains — GateHouse Media, which owns about 100 papers in Eastern Massachusetts, and Digital First Media, which owns several papers not far from Worcester, including The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.

Of the two, I think Digital First would be the more interesting choice. Headed by the bombastic John Paton (profiled in 2011 by David Carr of The New York Times), his company — which includes papers such as The Denver Post and the New Haven Register — has been trying to innovate its way out of the financial morass in which the newspaper business finds itself.

Digital First employs some of the most respected thinkers in digital journalism, including editor-in-chief Jim Brady and digital transformation editor Steve Buttry. Here is a press release on Digital First’s most recent initiative, Project Unbolt, which seeks to remove the “bolts” that still keep local journalism attached to the industrial processes that defined pre-Internet newspapers. Digital First also has a content partnership with GlobalPost, the pioneering online international news service founded five years ago by Boston media entrepreneur Phil Balboni. (I wrote about some of Paton’s early moves in New Haven in my book “The Wired City.”)

The Telegram & Gazette is a major media presence in Central Massachusetts. I still hope it ends up in local hands — or that Henry decides to keep it. But if it’s going to be sold to a national chain, the staff and the community could do worse than to be served by a company that is trying to revive the business of local news.