Category: Media

Did David Portnoy commit a crime?

Jonathan Albano (right) at a forum at Boston University last year on "Legal Liability in the Age of WikiLeaks." At left is First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche. I was the moderator, and I'm sitting in the middle.

Could David Portnoy face criminal prosecution for posting nude photos of Tom Brady’s 2-year-old son? I’m guessing no. But he’s taking a huge risk that some ambitious prosecutor might at least want to make a name for him- or herself by going after Portnoy and his sleazy website, Bar Stool Sports.

We begin with lawyer and former prosecutor Wendy Murphy, who is quoted as telling WCVB-TV (Channel 5): “The whole purpose was to get people to look at [the child’s] genitalia, so absolutely — 20 years maximum and a $50,000 fine on top of that.” That’s certainly an opinion that should make Portnoy sit up and take notice. But it also seems to be a distinctly minority view.

The Boston Herald’s Dave Wedge reports today that neither the FBI nor Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s office would confirm or deny whether there’s an investigation under way. That’s standard procedure for the FBI. But it may be significant that the DA’s office said nothing. Unless everyone was just heading down to the Cape on a Friday afternoon.

David Frank of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly adds Attorney General Martha Coakley to the list of officials who would neither confirm nor deny an investigation. But though Frank calls the pictures and Portnoy’s description of the young boy’s genitals “creepy” and “tasteless,” he casts serious doubt on whether a crime was committed:

I’ve talked to several lawyers today, from both the prosecution and defense side, who say there’s no chance Portnoy will ever be hit with a possession of child pornography charge. Portnoy’s post, as out of bounds as it is, simply doesn’t support the elements of the crime.

On the other hand, Frank quotes noted First Amendment lawyer Jonathan Albano as saying Brady and his wife, Gisele Bündchen, might be able to file an invasion-of-privacy suit on their son’s behalf and have some hope of succeeding.

“You’re talking about the publication of a 2-year-old’s private body,” Albano tells Frank. “Unlike Gisele, you can’t say that the child is a public figure, and why should he have less privacy rights than anyone else?”

I hope Brady and Bündchen go for it.

We talked about this on “Beat the Press” on Friday. Please have a look.

Photo by Emily Sweeney.

 

 

Mitt Romney’s noncontroversial nongaffe

I’m sure Mitt Romney wishes he’d made the point he wanted to make yesterday without saying “corporations are people.” We’ve all had some fun with it, including me. That said, can we stop playing stupid?

Romney was making a fundamental, noncontroversial point: corporations are groups of people, and if you raise taxes on them, they’re going to pass those costs on to the public. Or should I say he was trying to make that point — he said, “You can raise taxes,” then got pulled in another direction.

But, really, this isn’t hard.

Here is the full video.

Bringing the public into the conversation

New Haven's mayoral debate was held at the Metropolitan Business Academy.

Debates are easy. Civic engagement is hard.

That might be the lesson of last night’s multimedia mayoral debate in New Haven, sponsored by the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit news site, and La Voz Hispana, a Spanish-language newspaper.

As with several previous events organized by the Independent (most notably an education forum starring school-reform critic Diane Ravitch last November), the debate featured several different ways people could watch and participate. You could just show up, of course. But you could also watch one of two different livestreams, one provided by NBC Connecticut, the other by the New Haven Register, the local daily; post comments in real time; or add your thoughts after the debate. As of this writing, 15 comments have been posted at the Independent and 20 at the Register’s website.

Four candidates are running against Mayor John DeStefano, who’s been the city’s top elected official since 1993, and who may be vulnerable this time around because of budget problems, a rising crime rate and a sense that the electorate may be experiencing what might be called DeStefano fatigue.

But with five candidates on the stage, five journalists asking questions and another four journalists live-blogging the proceedings and interacting with those posting comments, keeping track of what was going on proved to be a bit of a challenge. (Fun fact: One of my colleagues at Northeastern, journalism professor Laurel Leff, has been working at the Independent this summer and was one of the live-bloggers.)

And though the hall itself was reportedly packed, it’s unclear how many people were watching at home. About 20 members of the public posted comments to the “Cover It Live” section during the debate, not counting me.

Of course, it would be easy enough to put together a more streamlined debate, but that would involve nixing the civic-engagement part of it. And getting people interested in local affairs is a key goal at the Independent — as it should be at all news organizations, since people are not going to pay attention to the news if they fundamentally don’t care about what is happening in their communities.

In fact, the Independent recently won a national award for the Ravitch event and for several issues-oriented webcasts it’s hosted in collaboration with the NBC affiliate. Yesterday, Independent publisher and editor Paul Bass spoke with John Dankosky of WNPR Radio (who also participated in last night’s debate as a live-blogger) about the New Haven mayoral race and his vision of how media technology can be used to involve the public in the conversation.

It’s something that the preening panelists at last night’s Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, might think about.

New Haven Independent photo by Thomas MacMillan. Republished by permission.

Boehner puts words in Obama’s mouth

It looks like House Speaker John Boehner put out a fake quote attributed to President Obama, and that no one is going to call him on it.

Here it is in the New York Times: “President Obama likes to talk about being ‘the adult in the room’ — but there’s nothing ‘adult’ about political grandstanding.” Politico’s got it, and so does the Hill. What’s missing from these accounts is the fact that, as best as I can tell, Obama never said it, even though Boehner’s statement helpfully places the phrase in quotation marks.

If you hop on the Google, you’ll find numerous references to Obama’s being “the adult in the room.” It’s a line being promoted by his aides and denigrated by his critics. Fine. But there’s a huge difference between having someone say it on your behalf and saying it yourself. The former is a tactic; the latter is kind of icky.

As journalistic sins go, this one is kind of minor. But when the Speaker quotes the president in a derogatory way, using words the president never actually spoke, the media ought to call him out on it, no?

Creative Commons and the U.S. Senate campaign

Brown headshot was taken from this picture

The Bob Massie campaign is using a photo I took of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown on its Half-Term Senator website. I just want to be clear that all content on Media Nation is published under a Creative Commons license, which means that anyone is free to use it for non-commercial purposes, with certain restrictions. I receive no compensation. The complete terms of the license are online here.

The Massie campaign neither sought nor needed my permission. A campaign official asked me if my Creative Commons license covers photos as well as text. I told her it did, and that was the end of it. Anyone else is free to use it as well — including, of course, the Brown campaign.

The photo, by the way, is from a debate involving Brown, Attorney General Martha Coakley and independent candidate Joseph Kennedy held at WBZ-TV (Channel 4) in December 2009.

To learn more about Creative Commons, click here.

Forbes tries to justify four-year error

The Boston Globe checks in with Forbes to find out how the magazine’s annual rankings could penalize Northeastern University for having a low four-year graduation rate given that it is a five-year school. And a magazine editor actually defends the methodology, saying, well, gee, we’ve got to base our rankings on something.

We also learn that 27.5 percent of the rankings are based on student satisfaction, “determined primarily by feedback on RateMyProfessors.com.” Wow. Without getting into the pros and cons of RateMyProfessors, let me just observe that the sample size for most instructors is so low that the data are entirely anecdotal.

Someone at Forbes should have gone to Northeastern

I really should be working, but I can’t let this pass. Forbes has posted its rankings of colleges and universities, and Northeastern comes in at a very low 534th.

Dig a little deeper, as one of my former students, @rachelsarahsays, did, and you’ll see that one of the reasons for the poor ranking is Northeastern’s four-year graduation rate — zero percent.

Uh, Northeastern is a five-year school. Good work, Forbes! Or, as @rachelsarahsays puts it, “such horrific journalism.” Indeed.

Norfolk DA, OpenCourt battle over video archives

John Davidow

A suspect’s lawyer blurts out the name of a 15-year-old girl whom prosecutors say was forced into prostitution. Several newspaper reporters hear the name. Even though they have the right to use it under the First Amendment, it’s understood that they won’t — it would be unethical journalistically, it would compromise the criminal case and it would traumatize the alleged victim.

Despite all that, the district attorney’s office goes to court to prevent a news organization’s video from being posted online, even though the folks who run that organization say they have no intention of uploading it until the identifying information has been removed.

In essence, that’s how OpenCourt characterizes a lawsuit brought by Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, which will be heard before Supreme Judicial Court Justice Margaret Botsford later today. The Boston Globe reports on the suit here; WBUR Radio (90.9 FM), with which OpenCourt is affiliated, reports on it here; and Open Court has its own take, with lots of background material, here.

Headed by WBUR’s executive editor for new media, John Davidow, OpenCourt received a $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant to livestream court proceedings and to make it easier for journalists, both professional and citizen, to provide coverage via Twitter and live-blogging. OpenCourt began livestreaming from Quincy District Court in May.

The issue of archiving those videos has proved to be contentious, with Morrissey’s office arguing that the archives — including the one involving the 15-year-old — could compromise “the privacy and safety of victims and witnesses.” Davidow responds that OpenCourt would be guided by the same ethical guidelines as any news organization, and that a legally imposed ban would be an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech. Davidow tells the Globe’s John Ellement:

This is really taking reporting that is done every day and then trying to take the editorial aspects away from journalists and put them in the hands of the state to decide what is published and what is not…. [O]nce we lawfully covered a story that was published, then it is up to the news organization to decide what to do with that material.

What Morrissey’s office is trying to do is to take long-established customs recognized by journalists and law-enforcement authorities alike and codify those customs into law, even though there is no reason to believe OpenCourt would act less responsibly than, say, the Quincy Patriot Ledger. It would set a dangerous precedent, and I hope the SJC does what is clearly the right thing.

Who needs the T-word when you’ve got the H-word?

Mitch McConnell

Thanks to intemperate remarks by pundits such as Tom Friedman and Joe Nocera, and to an anonymously sourced item in Politico about Vice President Joe Biden, liberals have been on the defensive about civility following the debt-ceiling debate. It seems that folks like Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby think it’s wrong to call Tea Partiers and right-wing Republicans “terrorists.”

If you want to be offended, be my guest. I agree that it’s uncivil, and frankly I’d much rather call Tea Partiers economic illiterates, which is more descriptive and more accurate. Economists explain.

But now comes Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who, according to the Washington Post, wants us to know that it’s perfectly all right if we want to refer to Republicans as hostage-takers and to crack wise about them shooting their victims. After all, he does. This is amazing:

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”

Ah, yes. You see, McConnell is a moderate Republican, which in 2011 means you hold the hostage for ransom, like civilized folks do. Although he concedes that those who wanted to shoot the hostage have a point, too. After all, he has to keep the caucus together.

You. Can’t. Make. This. Up.