Booze, pills and the economics of casinos

Caesar
Caesar

The chaos that has broken out over the split between Suffolk Downs and Caesars Entertainment is good news for casino opponents. At the very least, it increases the likelihood that East Boston residents will vote no on Nov. 5. At most, we may be able to look forward to delays and lawsuits for years to come.

I was particularly struck by the accusation — reported by Mark Arsenault in The Boston Globe — that Caesars separated one wealthy gambler from his money by keeping him liquored up and plying him with painkillers. I know nothing about the details of that accusation. But it actually fits well with the business model for casinos.

I’ve flagged this before, and it’s worth flagging again: according to Michael Jonas of CommonWealth Magazine, casinos could not survive if it weren’t for the problem gamblers who provide a disproportionate share of the revenues. Jonas explains it this way:

Just how much of the revenue casinos bring in is from the losses of those with gambling problems? One of the most thorough studies of this issue was done in 2004 in Ontario, where researchers had a sample of residents maintain diaries logging their gambling expenditures. The study, prepared for the government-supported Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, estimated that 35 percent of Ontario casino revenues were derived from moderate to severe problem gamblers. Such gamblers accounted for 30 percent of revenue from casino table games and a whopping 62 percent of revenue from slot machines.

I remain appalled that Gov. Deval Patrick and the Legislature legalized casinos and slots, which are associated with higher rates of crime, divorce and suicide. But I’m optimistic that these social parasites can be stopped one at a time.

Below is a statement from No Eastie Casino:

EAST BOSTON, Mass. — Oct. 19, 2013 — For more than a year, No Eastie Casino has pushed the City of Boston and Suffolk Downs to share more information about Suffolk Downs’ proposed Caesars Entertainment Resort. After ignoring repeated calls for greater transparency and concerns about Caesars’ solvency raised by East Boston residents, on Friday Suffolk Downs dropped the operations partner it chose in 2011 to run a casino in East Boston, Caesars Entertainment, only after state investigators informed them that Suffolk Downs likely would not pass the background check if Caesars stayed on. The Boston Globe reported that a number of concerns were brought to Suffolk Downs’ attention, including Caesars’ alleged business ties to organized crime.

But East Boston casino opponents say the stunning news late Friday demonstrates that residents cannot trust Suffolk Downs when it comes to whom they choose to bring into the neighborhood, said No Eastie Casino co-chair Celeste Myers.

“As recently as two months ago, Suffolk Downs owner Joe O’Donnell stated that Caesars was ‘as professional as they come,'” Myers said, pointing out Suffolk Downs’ frequent assertion that it shares Caesars’ values. “Clearly, they did not do due diligence in vetting Caesars — a company with which they have had a relationship since 2011 — and only ended the relationship when forced to do so.”

She added that Suffolk Downs has now picked two corporations, Caesars and Vornado Realty Trust, that have been unable or unwilling to pass background checks. In March, Vornado put its 19 percent stake in the casino plan into a blind trust after the majority of its executive team refused the state’s mandatory background checks. To our knowledge, Vornado has not divested completely from the casino partnership and voters remain in the dark about who will pick up its nearly one-fifth share in the project.

Caesars’ sudden departure also raises serious questions about the value of the City’s and Suffolk Downs’ host community agreement and shows that the promises in the mitigation agreement were made to be broken. Many key elements of the mitigation agreement-including key components of the jobs and small business plans-were tied to Caesars’ employee practices and Total Rewards programs. (Download our 16-page mitigation analysis here.)

No Eastie Casino leaders on Saturday formally called on Suffolk Downs to withdraw its casino application, in light of the information that emerged late Friday, and to share full details about their casino plans — including what they knew about Caesars and when they knew it — with the community at large.

“Now, more than ever, our neighbors and voters are seeing the glaring problems in the Suffolk Downs casino plans and the flaws in transparency that have plagued this fight from the start,” Myers said. “We hope Suffolk Downs and the City of Boston do the right thing and withdraw their support of this project. Until they do, our campaign will continue to reach out to and educate voters until we are victorious on Nov. 5.”

We are alive

Click for the GIF.
Click on image for an animated GIF

It was 5-0. I was giving serious consideration to throwing in the towel. I started dozing on the couch. If the cat hadn’t been sitting next to me, I’m sure I would have gone horizontal and achieved complete unconsciousness — and thus I would have missed one of the great comebacks in Red Sox history.

There were many heroes (none bigger than David Ortiz, of course) and goats in this one. But how amazing is it that the Sox might not have won if Jose Iglesias hadn’t made that error in the ninth? Yes, Prince Fielder should have snagged it, but Iglesias shouldn’t have thrown it in the first place.

Before the series I had picked Detroit in six, mainly on the strength of their overwhelming starting pitching. By the seventh inning I was starting to wonder about a sweep. Now? Go Sox!

Why I won’t miss the Hilltop Steak House

2754777213_de99e027a7_nHere is what I’m going to miss about the Hilltop Steak House, which announced this week that it will soon be closing its doors: driving past it during the holidays and looking at the fiberglass cattle wearing Santa hats. And — well, that’s it.

The demise of an icon is always sad. Once the country’s appetite for huge cuts of steak started to diminish, the Hilltop’s enormous size no doubt worked against it. Maybe it could have continued indefinitely if it had occupied a much smaller, cheaper space.

But unlike another Boston icon, Legal Sea Foods, the Hilltop never made any concessions to the 21st century. Legal has long since moved past broiled schrod and fried shrimp. Its menu is thoroughly modern and up to date. But at the Hilltop it is still the same old thing — salad, baked potato and a large, fresh but rather flavorless slab-o-meat.

The last time I went to the Hilltop was maybe 10 years ago. I brought my son because I thought he’d enjoy the experience; I hadn’t been in ages myself. Neither of us was impressed. My tastes had moved on, and his had never developed in that direction.

My wife and I enjoyed an occasional trip to the Hilltop in the 1980s, when you’d stand in line for a half-hour to an hour before being herded into one of its gigantic, Western-theme dining rooms.

But that was a long time ago.

Photo (cc) by splityard and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Floyd Abrams throws a curveball

Legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams delivered the Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press on Thursday evening at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. And it was something of a surprise.

Rather than railing against the evils of government censorship, Abrams instead chose to focus on situations in which he believes the media have abused their freedoms. He was especially criticial of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks — not a new stance for him, but nevertheless counterintuitive given Abrams’ fierce defense of the First Amendment.

I put together a Storify about Abrams’ talk, which you can view by clicking here.

At the Times, quoting the voices in their heads

What is the point of this pointless speculation in an otherwise straightforward piece on U.S. raids in Libya and Somalia, New York Times?

With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign policy victory.

No sourcing. But if anyone in the Republican Party were to go there, it might be House Speaker John Boehner. Well, here’s Boehner on ABC’s “This Week”:

I’m very confident that both of these efforts were successful. I’m going to congratulate all of those in the U.S. intelligence operations, our troops, FBI, all those who were involved.

Listen, the threat of al Qaeda and their affiliates remains. And America has continued to be vigilant. And this is a great example of our dedicated forces on the security side, intelligence side, and our military and their capability to track these people down.

What was the Times thinking? Or to put it another way: Why weren’t they thinking?

Hitting the road for “The Wired City”

I’ll be doing three events for “The Wired City” during the next week.

All three are free and open to the public.

Using news site comments to build community

[slideshare id=26714120&doc=buildingthenewscommunity-130930180149-phpapp02]

News site comments can be toxic. Yet, properly managed, they can be a tool for building media literacy, civic engagement and, ultimately, a news organization’s audience.

The following presentation incorporates some lessons I’ve learned over the years, many of them from researching my book about online community journalism, “The Wired City.”

I delivered a lecture based on this presentation earlier today in Professor Steve Burgard’s Journalism Ethics and Issues class at Northeastern.

Celebrating 25 years of Cambridge Community TV

kennedy & young

Old friend Robin Young of WBUR and NPR’s “Here & Now” and I were named honorary board members of Cambridge Community Television on Wednesday evening. The occasion was CCTV’s annual barbecue, held in the back lot at the Central Square facility. There’s more here (pdf).

The highlight of the evening came when Susan Fleischmann was honored for her 25 years at the helm of CCTV, which itself was celebrating its 25th anniversary. Local access cable operations are a key part of the independent media ecosystem.

I don’t live in Cambridge, so I don’t get to see CCTV. But it strikes me as an unusually rich and sophisticated operation, with three channels, lots of local programming and training sessions for youth and adults.

Many thanks to the folks at CCTV for their hospitality and their good work.

Photo by Wilder Bunke.

Legislative committee debates shield law

180By Robert A. Bertsche

I attended Wednesday afternoon’s spirited hearing at the Statehouse on the proposed Massachusetts shield bill, before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary. The bill is titled the “Free Flow of Information Act,” H.1553, described as “An Act providing against compelled disclosure of certain information by the news media.” Here’s a quick account of the proceedings.

Bottom line: Passage is far from assured, but the bill got its most thorough airing in years. Longtime Boston news anchor and reporter Susan Wornick spoke passionately in favor of the bill, backed up by three media lawyers (including my partner, media lawyer Jeffrey J. Pyle) and Rep. Josh S. Cutler, D-Duxbury, one of the bill’s sponsors. The committee’s House vice chair, Rep. Christopher M. Markey, D-Dartmouth, was most outspoken in opposition.

Wornick, of WCVB-TV (Channel 5), recounted her ordeal of being almost jailed in the mid-1980s for refusing to reveal her confidential source to police and a grand jury investigating alleged corruption by Revere police. “I made this promise because this man had important information. Without his information, I could not have told the story, and law enforcement could not have done their jobs.”

“I was terrified,” Wornick recalled, but she said she received widespread public support for her courage in protecting her source. “People were infuriated that I was being harassed and demonized by law enforcement because I wouldn’t break my promise.” Ultimately the source identified himself in order to save Wornick from jail time. It was big news at the time; she received a standing ovation from a packed Boston Garden when she was introduced to the crowd at a Celtics game.

Susan Wornick
Susan Wornick

“We need a shield law in Massachusetts to that journalists can do their jobs,” she said. “Anonymous sources are crucial” to journalists — we all know that.”

Media lawyer Jonathan M. Albano followed. When he started working in this legal area in 1982, the most recent case on the subject was In re Roche, two years earlier, in which the Supreme Judicial Court noted that it might be beneficial if Massachusetts law provided reporters “more clearly defined protection against intrusive discovery” than existed under the common law balancing test then (and now) in force. With clearer standards in place, “news reporters and sources might be able to base their behavior on better defined expectations, thus encouraging informed expression,” the court wrote then.

“It has been 32 years since that case and there are still no definite rules in place to guide reporters,” said Albano, managing partner of Bingham McCutchen’s Boston office. “Today, whether a source will be protected, and whether a reporter will be required to testify about that source, depends on which judge you draw,” and that judge’s exercise of her or his discretion, he said.

Pyle, appearing on behalf of the New England Newspaper and Press Association (with 230 Massachusetts daily and weekly newspaper members), then described the provisions of the proposed shield law. “The bill provides much-needed clarity that would protect the future Susan Wornicks of the world,” he told the filled hearing room.

As Jeff explained, the proposed law would apply to “covered persons,” those working for “news media” and who prepared the information at issue in that capacity. “News media,” in turn, is defined to include not only mainstream and student media but also “any entity that is in the regular business of gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means….”

The bill offers a near-absolute privilege as to disclosure of information identifying any news source (whether confidential or not), subject only to an exception where necessary “to prevent imminent and actual harm to public security from acts of terrorism,” in which case disclosure may be compelled if disclosure of the source’s identify “would prevent such harm” and if “the harm sought to be redressed by requiring disclosure clearly outweighs the public interest in protecting the free flow of information.”

The bill offers a qualified privilege as to unpublished information, the disclosure of which may be compelled only if a court finds, after notice and hearing, that there is “clear and convincing evidence” establishing that (1) the information is “critical and necessary to the resolution of a significant legal issue” before a governmental entity, (2) the information “could not be obtained by any alternative means” and (3) “there is an overriding public interest in the disclosure.”

Jim Taricani
Jim Taricani

Jeff reminded the committee of Providence television reporter Jim Taricani’s four months of home confinement in Rhode Island for defying a court order to reveal a source; James Risen’s ongoing battle to protect his source for national security secrets published in his 2006 book about the CIA; and Fox News reporter Jana Winter’s battle to protect a confidential source for her story about the notebook that James Holmes sent to his psychiatrist, previewing the shooting spree that resulted in the death of 12 moviegoers in Aurora, Colo. “In the absence of a shield law,” he said, “Massachusetts reporters face a real and imminent threat of going to jail” simply for doing their jobs.

Speaking for the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, attorney Peter J. Caruso Sr. told legislators that the bill offered them “the opportunity to provide courts, prosecutors, and litigants with “direction and clarity” as to the information that can be obtained from reporters.

Rep. Cutler, himself a former third-generation newspaper editor, assured his fellow legislators about what the proposed law is not: “It is not about protecting journalists — it’s about protecting journalism,” he said. It’s not the creation of a new evidentiary privilege, but rather the codification of an existing common law privilege. It’s not a “roadblock” to district attorneys, but rather “a road map setting forth the rules.” It’s “not a new, unproven legal theory,” but rather a piece of legislation already in place, to a greater or lesser extent, in 40 states. And it’s “not about helping media conglomerates,” but rather about “protecting the little guy,” including the small-town newspapers for whom even the “mere threat of a subpoena can have a chilling effect.”

When the floor was opened to questions, Rep. Markey, who worked for 15 years as a prosecutor in the Bristol County district attorney’s office, vigorously challenged the shield law advocates. He objected that the proposed law would deprive prosecutors of an important investigative and prosecutorial tool. He also lamented that as to identification of sources, the law would provide an undifferentiated privilege for reporters, the applicability of which would not vary based on the level of public importance of the issue about which information is sought. Markey said he believed the law would shift control of criminal investigations from prosecutors to journalists: “You’re putting the burden on government to show there are no alternatives” before seeking testimony from a reporter, such that a “journalist who hasn’t taken an oath is now the only person who has that knowledge” about certain criminal activity.

Albano disagreed, reminding Markey, “The journalist does not decide, the judge decides.” Markey retorted that the “clear and convincing evidence standard” to be met by those seeking a reporter’s testimony would prove a difficult hurdle to surmount. He ended with an emotional appeal, saying he is concerned about the law’s impact on “a 39-year-old mother who has a 19-year-old son who has been shot, and who is going to a wake that night,“ and who wants the police to do all they can to find her son’s killer. “You’re telling the police, ‘Go to everyone else, but don’t go to [the reporter]. “

Few of the other committee members spoke. State Rep. Sheila C. Harrington, R-Groton,  asked a few clarifying questions, but the committee co-chairs, Sen. Katherine M. Clark, D-Melrose,  and Rep. Eugene L. O’Flaherty, D-Chelsea, did not offer their views on the bill. As the hearing wound down, Sen. Richard J. Ross, R-Wrentham,  spoke directly to news anchor Wornick and saluted her for her battle to fight for her source 30 years ago.

“You went through hell,” he told her.

Robert A. Bertsche is an attorney and chair of media law practice at Prince Lobel Tye LLP. Copyright © 2013 by Robert A. Bertsche, Prince Lobel Tye LLP. This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.