By Dan Kennedy • Tracking the future of local news and other passions since 2005
You may have already heard this, but Sarah Palin has made public the fact that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Bristol Palin will marry the father, according to CNN.
The report also says that John McCain knew about the pregnancy before choosing Palin as his running mate, and that the decision was made to announce it now because of Internet rumors that Bristol, not Sarah, is the mother of four-month-old Trig.
And that, I hope, is the end of that.
Just flipped around the cable channels, and it’s hard to get a clear picture of what’s going on in New Orleans. On the one hand, it sounds as though Gustav had weakened considerably by the time it hit land. On the other, there are reports of levees and canals overflowing.
Looks like NOLA.com is the place to be, just as it was three years ago.
I’m off to Canobie Lake Park with the official Media Nation daughter and her friend. So I won’t be responding until later.
Good luck and best wishes to the people of New Orleans.
New-media thinker Steve Outing disagrees with my post on Andrew Sullivan, arguing that the days are long gone when the news media could pretend that rumors millions of people are talking about don’t exist. It’s smart and thoughtful, and I suggest you read the whole thing. Outing writes:
Sorry, Dan, I totally disagree. Long gone are the days when “the press” had the power to keep stuff like this under wraps, taking a Father Knows Best approach and not sharing the “sordid” details with the public. This thing is already spreading like wildfire, without being mentioned by mainstream news organizations. It’s going to play out with or without the mainstream press taking part.
This is a strong rumor that’s already got legs. News organizations need to investigate, and if they can confirm that it’s false, they should report it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal or take up a 24-hour news cycle. A simple short story — Palin baby rumor has been debunked — would suffice.
I think he’s wrong, and I’ll explain why in a moment. First, though, as Media Nation reader Kang notes, this so-called story is already falling apart. A Daily Kos diarist — not the one who got all this started — has posted a photo he found at the Free Republic, a conservative Web site, showing Gov. Palin very pregnant with Trig.
With that out of the way, I want to explain why I think it’s not a big deal that nutty stuff like the Palin pregnancy rumor gets hashed out by pseudonymous bloggers at sites like Daily Kos, but that it’s a very big deal when a well-known blogger with journalistic credentials like Sullivan writes about this for a prestigious media outlet like the Atlantic. (Even now, Sullivan, while reluctantly conceding the photographic evidence, smugly tell us that criticism of his ethics is mere “hyper-ventilation.”)
Outing says that “millions of people” were finding out about the rumor anyway. Yes. But the key is that they were finding out about it at a site of haphazard reliability. I am not criticizing Daily Kos (although the diarist who got this rolling clearly has the ethics of a snake). At its best, it’s a place where rumors like these can be hashed out very quickly, and that seems to be what happened here. This is what is meant by the self-correcting nature of the Web.
Who was hurt by Daily Kos? No one, really, because there’s all sorts of misinformation percolating in the tubes (I thought an Alaska reference would be appropriate). What you hope is that the solid stuff will rise to the top, and that it will be proven or debunked. And if it’s debunked, it ought to be done somewhere other than in the mainstream media.
As for what “millions of people” who know about the rumor would think if the media stayed silent, well, I don’t hear any complaints over the lack of an investigative series on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Most people are smart enough to understand that the media would not shy away from a story like Palin’s fake pregnancy if it were true and could be verified.
Note, too, that Sullivan didn’t investigate the rumor. Instead, he slapped it onto the Web site of one of our most prestigious magazines and said, hey, MSM, check this out, OK? “I have claimed nothing,” he self-righteously wrote when people began to call him on it.
Outing cites the traditional media’s failure in the John Edwards story. I’ve written about that myself. On reflection, though, I’m not sure the media could have verified the National Enquirer’s initial report without devoting far more resources to it than it deserved. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer has written with insight about the media’s role in the Edwards affair, and I recommend it.
Crass political aside: Can you imagine what the effect would have been if the New York Times or the Washington Post had taken on the Palin rumor and it turned out not to be true? Palin would be off-limits for the rest of the campaign.
Finally, I would observe that if the media were to adopt the ethos that nasty rumors like this should be hashed out in public, then they have handed a lethal weapon to rumor-mongers. It’s not difficult to concoct semi-believable garbage. When I saw the first Kos post on the pregnancy rumor, it struck me as credible enough that journalists ought to make a few discreet inquiries.
But if the media were to take up such things routinely and publicly, then there would be much more of it, and we’d never talk about anything else. That’s not what I want, and I don’t think it’s what Outing wants, either. Sullivan? In his case, I’m not so sure.
Yesterday the Anchorage Daily News used Sarah Palin’s own words to show that she had been a full-throated supporter of the “Bridge to Nowhere” in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, even mocking opponents as elitists who didn’t care about the lives of “Valley trash”:
In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity.
She said she could feel the town’s pain at being derided as a “nowhere” by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.
“OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere,” Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. “I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project.”
So why does the New York Times today weigh in with a weak story, headlined “Account of a Bridge’s Death Slightly Exaggerated,” that leaves you thinking that maybe she did, maybe she didn’t?
It was only a matter of time before a wild rumor about the Palin family broke into the mainstream. Now the line has been crossed by Andrew Sullivan, who blogs about it at the Atlantic.com. The rumor: Sarah Palin is not the mother of young Trig Palin. The mother is actually her 16-year-old daughter, Bristol.
I strongly believe Sullivan should have laid off this. I could have linked to it yesterday, but didn’t, since at that point it was only fodder for a pseudonymous diarist at the Daily Kos. This is the sort of hurtful story that reputable news organizations should check out thoroughly before injecting into the debate. I mean, come on. Does anyone think Josh Marshall hasn’t been following this? Or dozens of other liberal political blogs and Web sites, including Media Nation? None of us went there, and Sullivan shouldn’t have, either.
Interestingly, the Huffington Post beat Sullivan with a double-reverse flip, raising it only to tut-tut about ethical standards at the Kos.
But now, thanks to Sullivan’s reputation as one of the early blogfathers and the prestige of the Atlantic, this story is, for all intents and purposes, Out There. Which news organization will be the first to debunk it? Or, uh, not?
Instant update: Sullivan is already defending himself:
The job of a press is to ask questions which have a basis in fact. Read for yourself the full chronology here. See whether you are certain there are no legitimate questions worth asking. I have claimed nothing.
Sorry, but it doesn’t wash. The job of the press is to ask questions and then to present its findings to the public — or, in this case, if it found nothing, to do its best to make sure the story never saw the light of day.
If Sullivan was that worked up about about the Palin rumor, he should have e-mailed some reporters he knows and asked if they were on the case. This is the definition of a story that shouldn’t be hashed out publicly.
Let’s not kid ourselves — the possibility that the Republican National Convention will be scaled back, and that John McCain will accept the nomination from the Gulf Coast, is political gold for the McCain-Palin ticket.
I’m not saying it’s the wrong thing to do. I’m just saying.
A Cape Cod blogger who criticized a group of Barnstable residents for filing a lawsuit aimed at stopping a dredging project in Barnstable Harbor has himself been sued — for libel.
Peter Robbins, who describes himself on his blog as a retired homicide investigator, wrote a post this past March 11 in which he referred to the anti-dredging suit as “this, NIMBY, frivolous, malicious action is doing nothing but stalling the inevitable and costing us the taxpayers unnecessary time and money.” (“NIMBY” stands for “not in my backyard.”) And he identified by name the people who brought the suit, saying that “these are the people who are costing you.”
I’m not going to wade in too deeply until more information becomes available. So far, the only account of the suit is this one, on the Web site Cape Cod Today, which hosts Robbins’ blog. It’s impossible to know precisely what constitutes the alleged libel, because Cape Cod Today publisher Walter Brooks reportedly removed “certain phrases and sentences” at the request of Paul Revere III, the lawyer for plaintiff Joseph Dugas, one of the people identified by Robbins as suing to stop the dredging project.
Presumably all parties agree that what’s there now is not libelous, so there’s no sense in analyzing it. What would be telling is to see what got deleted.
There are several interesting aspects to this suit, and they will be worth following as we learn more:
1. The legal liability of the lone blogger. Under federal law, a Web site such as Cape Cod Today can be considered an Internet service provider exempt from liability if it merely acts as a host for bloggers such as Robbins, and is not involved in actively soliciting, editing and publishing their work. As long as a publisher such as Brooks responds to a request to remove allegedly libelous material, he is free and clear.* That leaves the blogger in an incredibly vulnerable position.
That doesn’t mean Cape Cod Today has thrown Robbins over the side of the boat. The site continues to host Robbins’ blog, and Brooks himself has been calling people’s attention to the suit. But the situation is very different from a reporter for a news organization getting sued, a situation that invariably leads to the organization’s being named as a defendant as well.
2. The privacy of anonymous commenters. According to the Cape Cod Today report, Dugas is suing not just Robbins but also an anonymous commenter who posted under the name “noggin.” The comment has been removed. Cape Cod Today requires registration before anyone can comment, which means that Brooks and company may know who “noggin” is. That, in turn, could lead to a legal battle over whether to reveal his or her identity. (Presumably “noggin” could have registered under a phony name, too, which would make tracking him or her down much more difficult, but not necessarily impossible.)
3. The role of the anti-SLAPP statute. Robbins’ lawyer, Peter Morin, is quoted as saying, “This matter is a textbook example of the justification for an anti-SLAPP statute that protects the right of individuals to comment on matters of significant public concern.” The term “SLAPP” stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” Morin is claiming that the intent of Dugas’ suit is to silence Robbins and prevent him from participating in a matter of public interest. (Judith Miller — yes, that Judith Miller — has written a good piece on anti-SLAPP laws.)
This is of particularly interest to me, as I recently wrote an affidavit on behalf of a defendant in a libel case who was claiming protection under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP law. In Massachusetts, unlike, say, California, it is not firmly established that anti-SLAPP protection extends to the media — it’s aimed more at community activists.
But with small, independently owned newspapers (yes, there are some) and bloggers, the dividing line between community activism and journalism doesn’t always exist. Advocacy journalism, after all, is both advocacy and journalism.
To be continued — I’m sure.
*Correction: Not exactly. See the comments of David Ardia in this update.
Photo of Sandy Neck Light in Barnstable Harbor (cc) by Mark Crosby, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
As you may have heard, Alaska’s two largest daily newspapers have published editorials questioning the Sarah Palin choice. The more negative is the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, which says in part:
Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation’s when he created the possibility that she might fill it.
The Anchorage Daily News isn’t quite so harsh, although this editorial does say “it’s stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.”
The Daily News also confirms that stories of Palin’s opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere” are largely fictitious — and that when Palin herself said on Friday, “I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” she was, at the very least, leaving the most relevant facts unspoken.
“Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it,” the Daily News reports, telling us, among other things, that her support for the project was a key issue in her successful 2006 gubernatorial campaign. After federal funding was withdrawn, she changed her mind, leading to accusations that did it in a way to attract national attention.
Let’s get real: If federal funding had been withdrawn for the Big Dig, Michael Dukakis and Bill Weld would have been against it.
The Daily News also reports that Walt Monegan, the state commissioner of public safety, whom Palin fired, says both Palin and her husband, Todd Palin, contacted him about her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper involved in a nasty divorce with Gov. Palin’s sister. Monegan claims he was fired in large measure because of his refusal to get rid of the inconvenient trooper.
This would appear to contradict statements made by both Palins. And there may be e-mails.
Check out the “Meet the Press” front page right now and you will see this: “Exclusive! Tim Pawlenty.”
More-direct evidence of how silly The Hill’s item was concerning people with press passes cheering for Obama: Charley Blandy of Blue Mass Group saw my post and followed up, noting that BMG bloggers were among those wearing green press passes and cheering.
Blandy writes: “In other words, the reporter at the Hill may well have seen partisan bloggers like us, who had green press credentials, whooping and cheering for Obama. That’s a problem because … ?”