Reporting sexual assaults on campus

My former Boston Phoenix colleague Kristen Lombardi is the lead reporter in a series on how college and university administrators respond to allegations of sexual assault. Published by the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative-reporting project, the series is the product of months of work and scores of interviews.

Lombardi reports that when law enforcement declines to step in because of insufficient evidence, conflicting stories and the like, colleges are mandated under federal law to investigate. Yet victims and alleged victims encounter a frustrating atmosphere of secrecy and of administrators who don’t always take them seriously. Lombardi writes:

College administrators bristle at the idea they’re shielding rapes. But they admit they’ve wrestled with confidentiality in campus assault proceedings because of FERPA and the Clery Act [federal laws that mandate privacy]. Confusion over the laws has reinforced what critics see as a culture of silence that casts doubt on the credibility of the process. “People will think we’re running star chambers,” says Don Gehring, founder of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, referring to secret, arbitrary courts in old England. “And that’s what’s happening now.”

The series, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice,” is a vivid example of investigative journalism’s migration to online, non-profit organizations. And, as is more and more often the case with such projects, it comes complete with multimedia, additional resources and an extensive “Reporter’s Toolkit” to help news organizations follow up on the work produced by Lombardi and her fellow journalists.

Last week, Lombardi discussed her report on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.”

Supreme Court to take up “honest services” law

The New York Times reports that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the constitutionality of the “honest services” law, a vague federal statute that creates all kinds of opportunities for prosecutorial mischief.

Among other things, it is the root of one of the principal accusations against former Massachusetts House speaker Sal DiMasi, who faces federal charges stemming from favors he received from well-connected friends.

Abuse of the honest-services law is a major theme of friend of Media Nation Harvey Silverglate‘s book “Three Felonies a Day,” in which Silverglate argues that such laws are used to transform less-than-admirable conduct into federal crimes.

Or, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia puts it in the Times article, the law “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate CEOs who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct.”

Herald series leads to indictment

Federal prosecutors have indicted a Dorchester mortgage-broker on charges stemming from a series of award-winning articles by Boston Herald reporter Laura Crimaldi. She writes:

Dwight Jenkins, 39, of Dorchester was charged in U.S. District Court with using straw buyers and fraudulent mortgage applications to grab $1 million in profits while dumping numerous blighted properties on poor parts of the city.

The series is online here.

Why Climategate doesn’t matter (III)

_46196541_gracenasa226The series explained.

For some time now, global-warming skeptics have found Antarctica to be a source of comfort and joy.

“Report: Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking” was the headline on a FoxNews.com story back in April. And when syndicated columnist George Will was writing a series of whoppers about global warming last winter and spring, he grounded his faulty data in part on the notion that ice loss in the Arctic was being offset by gains in the Antarctic — something he did not explain, and which experts say is bad science.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. According to a study published late last month in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, the East Antarctic ice sheet has been shrinking since 2006. The finding is based on new data gathered by a NASA satellite that measured changes in the Antarctic gravity.

Dr. Joe Romm of Climate Progress calls it a “satellite data stunner.”

According to news reports by the BBC and in Time magazine, scientists are treating the new data with caution, and are uncertain about what it means. For one thing, Antarctica is so cold that, under some models, warming could actually result in more snow and ice. For another, it’s not clear whether the shrinkage in East Antarctica can be attributed to global warming.

Nevertheless, if the data are borne out, the implications are clear enough: current projections that sea levels worldwide will rise three feet by 2100 are based on the belief that the East Antarctica ice sheet would not experience any melting. Looks like that number will have to be revised upwards.

And if the data are not necessarily evidence of global warming, they nevertheless show that Antarctica can no longer be cited as evidence of its lack, either.

First snow of the season

Click on photo for a Flickr slideshow
Click on photo for a Flickr slideshow

I’ve been banned from running — temporarily, I hope — and so this afternoon I headed over to Willowdale State Forest in Ipswich with my trusty Canon point-and-shoot to take some pictures of the season’s first snowfall.

As has been the case lately, the trails were incredibly muddy. A trail that leads in to the eastern end of the reservation now appears to be permanently flooded out. So I think I’ll plan my next visit for a deep freeze, which should make for better footing.

Other than the mud, it was a beautiful afternoon, and I ran into several mountain bikers, runners and fellow walkers. It was a great way to spend part of a Sunday.

Liberals and Afghanistan

Not quite sure what to make of this. But at our extremely liberal suburban Unitarian Universalist church this morning, I heard more support (albeit reluctant) for President Obama’s build-up in Afghanistan than I hear from congressional Democrats. Or, for that matter, from the four Democrats running for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

One possible meaning: Mainstream liberals are not as reflexively antiwar as the interest groups that lobby Democrats on our supposed behalf think we are. Indeed, according to a CNN poll taken after Obama’s speech last week, the build-up of troops is supported by a margin of 62 percent to 36 percent.

Media Nation’s new mobile edition

This afternoon I added a WordPress plug-in that automatically displays a mobile edition of Media Nation when you visit the site with a smartphone. I’ve tried it on my BlackBerry and can report that it looks OK with the default browser (though the font is too big) and quite nice using Opera Mini.

I also figured out a way to tweak the comments template. You’ll now find a much wider and deeper comments box as well as some helpful introductory text.

Unattractive trade bait

Maybe Theo Epstein* is just blowing smoke. But how could he possibly be thinking about trading Jed Lowrie during the off-season? Lowrie’s trade value has got to be close to zero right now.

If Lowrie and new shortstop Marco Scutaro both have a good first half, maybe one of them could be traded to fill a hole somewhere else. But if Theo trades Lowrie now, then it will be obvious he’s given up on him. Is there evidence to suggest he should?

*@scruff notes, as I should have, that this could just be Nick Cafardo having fun — there’s nothing in his column to suggest the Red Sox are seriously thinking of trading Lowrie.

Sean Murphy responds to Totten

Boston Globe reporter Sean Murphy, who was the prosecutor in the Boston Newspaper Guild’s ouster of president — now former president — Dan Totten, spoke with me a little while ago. Murphy is highly critical of remarks Totten made in an e-mail reported yesterday by the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam. Says Murphy:

All I want to say is that this was a prosecution, not a persecution. Mr. Totten was not the victim of a political vendetta. He was a victim of his own bad conduct. I was asked to be the prosecutor and agreed to do so. It was done by the book. There was no personal animosity. Any suggestion otherwise is false. Any suggestion that I was biased is false. I was well known to be a “no” vote on both contract proposals, which was in line with the position of Mr. Totten. I did not participate in any recall efforts. I was known to eschew recall.

Murphy adds that, though he did attend a meeting to discuss Totten’s possible removal, Totten “knows full well I expressed great skepticism.”

I asked Murphy whether there has been any talk about whether the accusations made against Totten by the union could result in the involvement of law enforcement. Murphy’s response: “I have not broached that subject nor has anybody in my presence.”

Earlier coverage.