New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey. Official photo via the New Jersey Globe.
It’s not a good day for the First Amendment, as four New York Times journalists have been subpoenaed in connection with their report (sub. req.) that Donald Trump’s new Air Force One plane — a gift that he corruptly accepted from the Qatari government — lacks important security features.
The journalists have been called to testify before a federal grand jury on Wednesday. Although the exact nature of the inquiry hasn’t been revealed, it’s probably an attempt by the Trump regime to determine who leaked the information to the Times.
This morning, though, I want to call your attention to a more blatant violation of the First Amendment: a judge’s demand that a New Jersey newspaper remove school security footage from its YouTube channel and refrain even from writing about it. On Thursday, the judge softened his order slightly but then extended it to all news outlets.
With the meltdown of Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate candidacy still playing out, I want to take a look at how The New York Times let it slip away.
The pieces are clearly visible, so you may already know where I’m going with this. But it’s worth tying them together and asking how the Times could come so close to breaking it wide open only to be relegated to the sidelines while Politico delivered the final blow.
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Early Monday afternoon, rumors began spreading on social media that a big story was about to break. Platner, a Maine Democrat, was reportedly canceling campaign events. Then it dropped: Politico published an interview with Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine woman, who claimed that in 2021 Platner entered her home and drunkenly, violently raped her.
I’m not one to break out the smelling salts when news outlets rely on anonymous sources. Important investigative stories are often based on unnamed insiders, as was the case with The Atlantic’s recent exposé of FBI Director Kash Patel’s drinking and erratic behavior. Reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick interviewed more than two dozen sources and sought comment from both the FBI and the White House.
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But I thought some of the sourcing around Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s announcement that she would resign was just plain shoddy. Let’s start with Jonathan Landay and Erin Banco of Reuters, who wrote on Friday: “A source familiar with the matter said that Gabbard had been forced out by the White House.”
Thus on the basis of one anonymous source did Reuters assert that Gabbard was lying when she claimed she was leaving in order to take care of her husband, who, she said, has been diagnosed with bone cancer.
Interestingly, The New York Times account, by Dustin Volz and Julian E. Barnes, directly contradicts Reuters, saying: “Mr. Trump did not force Ms. Gabbard to resign on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, but her standing and influence within the White House had continued to erode in recent months.”
Now, I don’t know how many sources are covered by “people,” but it’s more than one.
Finally, there’s this Associated Press report, by Meg Kinnard, Will Weissert and David Klepper: “There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president’s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration.”
Rumblings? OK. Actually, maybe we can let that go, since we’ve all seen reports in recent months that Gabbard wasn’t on board with the Iran war. Still, the passive-tense construction doesn’t give any indication of where these “rumblings” have been coming from. The White House? The Pentagon? Who knows?
Decisions over when it’s acceptable to rely entirely on anonymous sources are always fuzzy, but the real reason that Gabbard is leaving isn’t important enough to try to report it on the basis of light sourcing in real time. A story based on multiple sources reporting on what really happened would be welcome — and there was no need to try to break that story in the immediate aftermath of her resignation.
On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we examine the fallout over an explosive New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof alleging that Israeli prison guards sexually assaulted Palestinian prisoners. Was his sourcing shaky, as critics claim? Although the Times issued a statement supporting Kristof, why hasn’t the news side followed up?
We also take a look at former reality star Spencer Pratt’s gadfly campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles — fueled by an over-the-top AI-generated ad and by a distinct lack of interest by the news media about who Pratt is and whether he’s qualified.
Plus: Two Florida police officers sue the production company behind “The Rip,” a movie starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck based on a true story. In the film, the officers help themselves to part of a $21 million jackpot they discovered inside a suspected drug dealer’s home — something they were not accused of doing in real life.
And stick around for our panel’s Rants and Raves. With Emilyl our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Jon Keller of WBZ-TV, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.
Despite the Trump regime’s ongoing attempts to dismantle the First Amendment, there are important checks that remain in place. Libel protections against frivolous lawsuits remain strong — as long as news organizations use them rather than caving in to Donald Trump’s threats. Prior restraint is almost unheard of.
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One aspect of press freedom that has been left outside the walls of the First Amendment, though, is a recognition that journalists need to protect their anonymous sources and confidential documents. Forty-nine states, including Massachusetts, provide some protection. But the federal government does not. And one of former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first actions after Trump returned to the White House was to weaken Justice Department guidelines put in place by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, to make it easier for the government to demand access to that information.
Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.
By honoring The Washington Post with its most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize Board appeared intent on sending a message to two people: Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos.
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On Monday, the Post received the Public Service Award for its reporting on the chaos unleashed by Elon Musk and his DOGE assault on the federal government. One of the lead reporters in that effort was Hannah Natanson, the target of an extraordinary raid by the FBI last January.
Bob Dylan and his band. Photo (cc) 2012 by Adrian Lasso.
Well, of course Bob Dylan deserves to be among The New York Times’ “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters.” He could stand all by himself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few bones to pick.
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First, Dylan’s “five essential songs” includes “Isis,” which is a good but not great song. More to the point, he had a co-writer on that one — Jacques Levy, whom Dylan employed as a lyricist on his 1976 “Desire” album. Of the hundreds of truly essential songs that Dylan has written over the past 60 years, why would the Times choose one on which he had substantial help with the lyrics?
Second, Jody Rosen, who wrote the Dylan essay, points to the so-so “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight,” from the B-plus “Infidels” album (1983), as an example of his sense of humor:
It’s like I’m stuck inside a painting that’s hanging in the Louvre My throat starts to tickle and my nose itches, but I know that I can’t move
You want museums and humor? How about this, from “Visions of Johanna”?
Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeez, I can’t find my knees”
That’s from 1966’s “Blonde and Blonde,” a top-five Dylan album (or top three; or best ever), which isn’t even represented in the Times’ list of essentials. Nor is his acoustic period, which many admirers still regard as his greatest. Now, I’m mainly a fan of Dylan the rocker, but it’s hard to imagine how “Chimes of Freedom” didn’t make it in here. He could have won the Nobel Prize for that alone. Consider:
Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Finally a nitpick. I’m glad to see that Dylan’s astonishing late-career comeback is represented in the essential-songs list. “Nettie Moore,” from “Modern Times” (2006), is deeply moving, both weird and elegiac. But the Times could have chosen “Not Dark Yet,” from “Time Out of Mind,” the 1997 album that began Dylan’s revival, which continues 29 years later. “Not Dark Yet” is even more elegiac than “Nettie Moore,” if less weird, and Daniel Lanois’ production makes it one of Dylan’s greatest recordings.
At least they got Patti Smith to contribute her thoughts about “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” She recalls hearing Dylan perform it live, before he recorded it. She says in part:
What I remember most was the line “I got nothing, Ma, to live up to,” which made me very sad. But the line that made me feel understood, and that I have held onto my whole life, was “If my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” A person like me, who had many conflicting thoughts about everything, a lot that I kept to myself: I felt like he understood.
My caveat is that absolutely no one is going to be satisfied with anyone’s list of Dylan’s most esential songs. Mine changes all the time — and no doubt yours does, too.
A shaken Wolf Blitzer of CNN describes what it was like to be in close proximity to the gunman at the WHCA dinner. Click on the image to watch.
On the brand-new “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we examine the aftermath of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Click here or on the image to watch.
What pressures did the press experience in covering the story under frightening, confusing conditions? Why did conspiracy theories about the shooting spread so quickly? And does The New York Times’ print deadline have to be quite so early given that other papers — including The Washington Post and The Boston Globe — managed to get the story on page one?
We also take a look at the hypocrisy at the heart of a rumored affair involving Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and Athletic reporter (make that former reporter) Dianne Russini as well as an attempt by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey to restrict teenagers’ access to social media. Plus our Rants & Raves.
Emily is joined by Contrarian Boston editor Scott Van Voorhis, Lylah Alphone of The Boston Globe and me, with expert production by Tonia Magras.
I hear from so many people that they can’t live without their print newspaper and morning coffee that I’m often tempted to remind them it’s technically possible to drink coffee while reading the news on your iPad.
The declining relevance of print is top of mind this morning as The New York Times failed to get the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting into its dead-tree edition. Lest you think this is a Boston delivery problem, it’s also not in the replica edition. Needless to say, it’s all over the Times homepage, and it probably found its way into the late city editions as well.
The (deservedly) much-maligned Washington Post managed to go big with the shooting in its print edition. You might say that’s a function of being the hometown paper, but it’s really not. It’s a function of press times.
The Boston Globe leads its print edition with the shooting, alongside the firing of Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
No excuses for the Los Angeles Times, which is three hours behind the East Coast, meaning that the incident took place around 5 p.m. Pacific time.
Of course, even those papers whose editors managed to yell “Stop the presses!” and get the story into print have much more up-to-date news about the shooting in their digital editions today.
We get the print edition of the Sunday Times because, whenever we try to cancel in order to save money, we’re offered a special deal. Digital advertising isn’t worth much, but print ads are still fairly lucrative, especially in the Times and especially on Sunday. But when there’s a big, late-breaking story, digital is the place to be.
FBI Director Kash Patel’s $250 million libel suit against The Atlantic may prove to be nothing more than bluster. Nevertheless, it’s already raised some interesting issues about ethics and defamation law, and I thought it would be useful to walk through some of them here.
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Patel sued after Sarah Fitzpatrick reported Friday that Patel’s tenure at the FBI has been marred by excessive drinking, lapses in judgment and a shocking lack of discipline. The story, she writes, was based on “more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel’s conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers.” There are no named sources who say they’ve had first-hand knowledge of Patel’s alleged misbehavior. Still, that’s a lot of sources.
