Antonin Scalia – Media Nation

What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL

Kevin Dale, executive editor of Colorado Public Radio. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

I haven’t seen any explanation for why three public radio outlets in Colorado joined NPR in suing the Trump administration over its threat to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I’m glad they did, but it seems to me that all 246 member stations ought to sign on, including GBH and WBUR in Boston.

The Colorado entities, according to Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio, are CPR (which reaches 80% of the state through a network of transmitters and translators), Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio of Ignacio, a Native American station that serves the Southern Ute Tribe.

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When I was in Colorado several years ago to interview people for the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” CPR was perhaps the largest news organization in the state, with a staff of 65 journalists. (I say “perhaps” because executive editor Kevin Dale thought one or two television stations might be bigger.) Some cuts were made last year as business challenges hit a number of public broadcasting outlets as well as NPR itself.

The basis of the lawsuit, writes NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, is that CPB is an independent, private nonprofit that is funded by Congress. The suit claims that the president has no right to rescind any money through an executive order; only Congress can do that. Moreover, the suit contends that this is pure viewpoint discrimination, as demonstrated by Trump’s own words — that NPR and PBS, which also relies on CPB funding, present “biased and partisan news coverage.”

Continue reading “What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL”

DiMasi’s conviction and the Boston Globe

It’s an observation that has become cliché, but it needs to be made: Without robust local journalism, it is nearly impossible to hold government accountable. Yesterday’s conviction of former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi on federal corruption charges would likely not have happened without the Boston Globe.

As best as I can tell, the first article was this one, published on May 23, 2008, and written by staff reporter Andrea Estes — with an assist by Steve Kurkjian, a legendary investigative reporter who is still working despite being allegedly retired. Headlined “IBM, Cognos to refund state $13m,” it contained the seeds from which grew a mighty oak:

House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi had taken a strong interest in the contract last year. The former head of the Information Technology Division told state officials that the middleman in the deal, former Cognos executive Joseph Lally, had bragged about his relationship with DiMasi and suggested that DiMasi wanted the contract to go to Cognos. Cognos also contributed generously over several years to a charitable golf tournament hosted by DiMasi at his home course, the Ipswich Country Club.

The impetus for that first story came from Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, who found that the Cognos contract violated state bidding rules. But the matter may have gone no further if the Globe had not kept pushing.

Two months later, Estes and Kurkjian reported, “Software company Cognos ULC hired House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi’s law associate, and a key Cognos sales agent hired DiMasi’s personal accountant during a period when the firm was winning millions of dollars in state contracts.” The rest is history.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical of the DiMasi prosecution. I didn’t like it that his downfall began shortly after he saved the state from Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to build three casinos — not that I’m suggesting a relationship between those two actions.

I also didn’t like the feds’ reliance on the “honest services” statute, which US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has observed is so broad it could outlaw “a mayor’s attempt to use the prestige of his office to obtain a restaurant table without a reservation.” (Although I should note that the court narrowed the law considerably in 2010.)

As it turned out, though, the evidence against DiMasi was strong; nor did he offer much of a defense.

This is journalism in the public interest, and no one can do it except a large, well-funded news organization with lots of resources. It doesn’t have to be a newspaper. But in 2011, very few news organizations other than newspapers are capable of such vitally important work.

Update: After doing some additional research, I now think this Estes article from March 10, 2008, was the first to link DiMasi and Cognos.

Photo (cc) by Luciof and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

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.”