Media Rants: Fondy High First Amendment Fight

Fondy High First Amendment Fight

Media Rants By Tony Palmeri

From the May 2014 edition of The SCENE

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression annually awards “Jefferson Muzzles” as a way “to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press.” The recently released 2014 Muzzles “honor” nine free speech abusers, including the Obama Justice Department for its unprecedented seizure of Associated Press phone records. Two Muzzles went to high school principals in Florida and New Jersey, one for censoring a student graduation speech and the other a student newspaper. 

I’d like to nominate Fond du Lac High School Principal Jon Wiltzius and District Superintendent James Sebert for a 2015 Jefferson Muzzle. In March, Wiltzius and Sebert announced their intent to enforce “School Guidelines Determined by the Principal regarding Student Publications.” The guidelines establish a system of prior review, empowering Wiltzius and Sebert to make revisions to or fully censor writing in the Fond du Lac High School student publication CardinalColumns.

The announcement to enforce the guidelines was a response to two items in the February issue of Cardinal Columns. The first item, Fondy senior Tanvi Kumar’s cover story “The Rape Joke,” suggests the existence of a “rape culture” in its telling of the stories of sexual assault survivors in their own voice. The second item, an editorial called “I Pledge My Allegiance,” alerts students to their right not to the stand for the Pledge.

In applying the Wiltzius/Sebert prior review guidelines to the two items, it’s difficult to understand the administrators’ position. The items do not “substantially interfere with the educational process, educational environment, or rights of other students.” Indeed, the two items taken together are highly educational and empowering for students. Nor can the items be “reasonably perceived to associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy.”  The item on the Pledge is clearly labeled as the view of “Editorial Staff” on a page that welcomes letters from students and faculty. Finally, the items are not “poorly written, inadequately researched, false, defamatory or libelous, vulgar or profane, unsuitable for immature audiences, or biased or prejudiced.” The English Department faculty at Fondy High (these are the folks who evaluate student writing for a living) said this:

“If anything . . . The attention this controversy has stirred up has confirmed one thing: our students, allowed some freedom to work together to think critically and make informed choices on their own along with the guidance of a highly qualified instructor, are capable of truly amazing things. Such work should be celebrated, not censored.” (emphasis added).

Unfortunately, Fondy High journalists are not alone in having to deal with Big Brotherism trying to pass itself off as a benign attempt to “protect the rights of all students.” A terrible 1988 Supreme Court decision, Hazelwood School District v.Kuhlmeier, welcomed Big Brother into the school newsroom by holding that ”educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities, so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.” That unfortunate decision had the practical effect of watering down1969’s Tinker v.Des Moines, in which Justice Abe Fortas famously argued “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

One can understand and even sympathize with how a principal and superintendent, especially in a “conservative” region like Fond du Lac, would be uncomfortable with student writings that force recognition of a rape culture and urge defiance of the principal’s command to stand for the Pledge. But trying to relieve personal discomfort is not the kind of “legitimate pedagogical concern” needed to justify the enforcement of prior review guidelines. Justice William Brennan’s dissent in Hazelwood ably articulated the problem with trying to defend censorship policies in the name of such pedagogy. Brennan wrote that such policies in no way “furthers the curricular purposes of a student newspaper unless one believes that the purpose of the school newspaper is to teach students that the press ought never report bad news, express unpopular views, or print a thought that might upset its sponsors.”

Tanvi Kumar will be attending George Washington University in the fall. GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley had this to say about the controversy in which this courageous young woman and all Cardinal Columns staff find themselves embroiled: “At a time when many children are game-obsessed and disconnected, you have high school students here with the courage to look at a taboo subject and make it accessible for other students. The response of the school teaches an entirely different lesson about conformity and authority. Indeed, the board and administrators appear to want the students to write to the lowest common denominator on the least controversial subjects. That will certainly make their lives easier, but it does little to advance the true education and development of these students.”

Mr. Wiltzius and Superintendent Sebert would be wise to listen to the Fondy English faculty, whose 22 page statement on the matter shows conclusively that the prior review guidelines are based on unsound pedagogy, will chill student journalism, and could place the District at legal risk. Listening to reason might even help the administrators avoid the honor of a Jefferson Muzzle. 

Update: The column above was written in mid-April. Since then it appears as if Wiltzius and Sebert made good on their threat to act as censors; on May 1 students held a sit-in to protest. Looks like a TJ Muzzle is now all but guaranteed for the Fondy Administrators. Good coverage of the sit-in can be found here.

Media Rants: Health Beat v. Wealth Beat

Media Rants 

By Tony Palmeri

From the April 2014 edition of The SCENE

Obamacare: Health Beat vs. Wealth Beat

Last month in what some in the punditocracy view as a dire warning for pro-Affordable Care Act (i.e. ACA or Obamacare) Democrats heading into November’s midterm elections, Republican David Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a special election for Florida’s 13^th Congressional District. David Weigel’s Slate.com piece released two days before the election (“Obamacare’s Ground Zero”) lent support to the view that Jolly’s “repeal the law” rhetoric mobilized his base voters more than Sink’s “fix the law” message mobilized hers.

No one disputes that the roll out of healthcare.gov was a disaster, and it’s also true that President Obama and Congressional Democrats employed misleading sound bites (e.g. “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.”) in the run up to the vote on the bill and afterwards. Unfortunately, the rigor with which the press attacked the website woes and presidential gaffes seems absent when it comes to Obamacare “horror stories.” The stories involve citizens like Michigan cancer patient Julie Boonstra (featured in a Koch Brothers’ Americans For Prosperity ad) who, allegedly because of Obamacare, will be made to suffer medically and/or financially in a way not possible before the legislation. 

Few if any of the horror stories hold up to scrutiny, yet continue to be featured in GOP campaign advertising, fundraising appeals, and stump speeches.

In 2012, when called out on their inaccuracies about President Obama’s record on welfare reform, Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse famously said “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” The “Newhouse Strategy” now represents the GOP approach to communicating about Obamacare.

Some working journalists have taken up the task of debunking Obamacare horror stories. The most accessible are PaulWaldman in the American Prospect, Erik Wemple in the Washington Post, Eric Stern in Salon, and MichaelHiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. Some on the Right accuse such journalists of trying to “silence Obamacare critics.” Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize recipient, correctly notes that when it comes to Obamacare horror stories news organizations aren’t doing their jobs: “What a lot of these stories have in common are, first of all, a subject largely unaware of his or her options under the ACA or unwilling to determine them; and, second, shockingly uninformed and incurious news reporters, including some big names in the business, who don't bother to look into the facts of the cases they're offering for public consumption.” (emphasis added)

Probably the most diligent media watchdog of Obamacare stories is Maggie Mahar, author of  Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper Collins 2006). On her blog (healthbeatblog.com) she approaches Obamacare the way all journalists should: probing beneath the partisan fantasies to find out what the law is actually doing. In our hyper-politicized media environment, Mahar’s Journalism 101 approach is in some quarters  labeled “pro-Obamacare.” She told WNYC’s “Onthe Media” program: “I'm not an advocate for Obamacare. I'm an advocate for the truth. I've read the entire law three times. I know what's in it. And so, when I read accounts of the legislation that are not true, I write about it.”

Following what should be standard journalistic practice, Mahar laboriously interviews producers, reporters, and subjects of stories she finds misleading or inaccurate. Her two-part blog entry “How a CBS Video About an Obamacare Victim Misled Millions” is instructive in showing the extent to which shoddy reporting turned a major network into part of the anti-Obamacare disinformation campaign. The blog entry analyzes errors in a CBS report headlined “Woman Battling Kidney Cancer Losing Company Health Plan Due To Obamacare.” In the report, citizen Debra Fishericks of Virginia Beach believes, inaccurately as it turns out, that under Obamacare her insurance premiums would go up “higher and higher” because of her pre-existing cancer condition. She’s worried that Obamacare might break her budget to the point where she can no longer visit her grandson in Indiana. Fishericks’ story ran on 58 CBS stations, thousands of blogs, and other sources.

Mahar’s interviews with the CBS team involved in producing the Fishericks story reveal a staff that seemed to have internalized conservative anti-Obamacare talking points. The CBS report fit the pattern Mahar finds in many stories about Obamacare:  “Reporters were printing and parroting the fictions and half-truths that conservatives fed to the media. And in an era of cut-and-paste journalism, the myths became memes, iterated over and over again. Little wonder that many people—including journalists—didn’t know what to believe. This, I think, is one reason why no one at CBS caught the glaring error in Fishericks’ story.”

Mahar has sympathy for reporters who might not have time to wade through a 2000 page law. “But ideally, reporters would have dug into the in-depth briefs published by groups such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,” she says. That’s good advice for all of us.

Even if reporters better grasped the ACA, we’d probably still see exploitative, sensationalistic stories as the mainstream media norm. Why? Because while sensationalism is a terrible way to cover the health beat, it does feed the media wealth beat. News producers do not believe that nuanced, well researched stories can attract and sustain high audience levels.Sad.

Media Rants: The Not So Invisible Mann

February 8, 2024 update: It took eleven years (!), but Dr. Michael Mann today won a $1million verdict in a defamation trial against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. According to Diane Bernard and Adam Lowenstein, "The trial has proven to be about much more than defamation — the entire field and validity of climate science has been on trial."

From the March 2013 edition of The SCENE

Media Rants by Tony Palmeri

The Not So Invisible Mann

Dr. Michael E. Mann, Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, is best known for the iconic “hockey stick” temperature graph. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and environmentalists worldwide use the graph to create a sense of urgency around warming. For their efforts, Mann and other climate scientists in 2007 jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Mann neither denies nor minimizes the impact natural forces have on climate change, but his research provides compelling evidence for the claim that human activities (e.g. increased use of fossil fuels and deforestation) play a major role in raising global temperature. That simple yet consequential thesis (it forces us to reconsider and challenge deeply embedded industrial and energy policies and entrenched interests profiting from them) has made Mann into one of the most vilified scientists in global history. A coalition of right wing think tanks and media outlets, pundits, and politicians, many funded by fossil fuel interests, attempt to discredit IPCC endorsed science and scientists by any means necessary.

In 2009 hackers obtained more than a thousand emails from scientists associated with the Climate Research Unit of the UK’s University of East Anglia. For global warming deniers, the emails were a “smoking gun” proving that warming theories were a “hoax.” Responding to this “Climategate,” 25 leading US scientists sent an open letter to Congress: “We would like to set the record straight. The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming.”

Climate change “skeptics” aiming for the jugular vein thrive on the fact that most scientists are not equipped for the hardball battle that is contemporary political debate. The vicious and personal nature of the attacks led Dr. Mann to write The HockeyStick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (2012). Chapter 15 is titled “Fighting Back.” Mann writes: “. . . climate change contrarians continue to launch hand grenades, the denial machine persists in churning out disinformation, and the attacks against climate scientists-myself included-continue. Yet something is different now. The forces of climate change denial have, I believe, awakened a ‘sleeping bear.’ My fellow scientists will be fighting back, and I look forward to joining them in this battle.” 

As if trying to test Mann’s resolve, Rand Simberg of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) along with Mark Steyn and Rich Lowry of National Review provoked a defamation suit. The right wing blogosphere defends these comments as intellectually rigorous contributions to the climate debate:

Simberg: “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” Further, he accuses Mann of “scientific misconduct” and calls him the “posterboy of the corrupt and disgraced climate science echo chamber.”

Steyn:  Mann “was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.”

Lowry: Called Mann’s work “intellectually bogus.”

Dr. Mann is considered to be a public figure, even though most outside the pundit universe, if they even recognize the name, might know “Michael Mann” as the director of “The Insider” and “Public Enemies.”  Given his public figure status, to prevail in a defamation lawsuit Dr. Mann has to show “actual malice” on the part of the defendants. The New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) standard defines actual malice as making a false statement about another “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

The actual malice bar is high, which is why public figure defamation suits are rare. Yet two DC Superior Court judges found that Mann’s suit should go to trial.  Last July Judge Natalia CombsGreene wrote: “There is sufficient evidence presented that is indicative of ‘actual malice.’ The CEI Defendants have consistently accused Plaintiff of fraud and inaccurate theories, despite Plaintiff’s work having been investigated several times and found to be proper. The CEI Defendants’ persistence despite the EPA and other investigative bodies’ conclusion that Plaintiff’s work is accurate (or that there is no evidence of data manipulation) is equal to a blatant disregard for the falsity of their statements. Thus, given the evidence presented the Court finds that Plaintiff could prove ‘actual malice.’”

The case could conceivably be settled out of court, but a trial would accomplish what mainstream media have been unwilling or unable to: demonstrate for all to see that Dr. Mann’s research follows accepted scientific methods, makes reasoned claims supported by evidence, and is endorsed by overwhelming majorities of independent climate scientists.

National Review (NR) was founded by the late William F. Buckley. In his prime Buckley would have invited someone like Mann to participate in a public debate. His NR heirs unfortunately prefer cheap shots, “gotcha’” reporting, and general denigration of those who disagree. Sadly, those tactics sometimes succeed in making targets disappear from the public sphere. Who needs the grief?

Finally a target is fighting back. Instead of being run into hiding, Dr. Michael has become the Not So Invisible Mann.

Censored in 2013

Censored in 2013

Media Rants 

by Tony Palmeri 

I frequently ask students to reflect on how their thinking or behavior has changed as a result of exposure to corporate media. It’s always a difficult discussion because none of us like to admit publicly that media exert power over our lives. When they do open up, students will typically talk about how things like their language and fashion choices mimic something they saw or heard in film or on television.

Sometimes the responses are quite humorous. Last year for example a young man said, “My behavior changed when I just happened to catch the Dr. Oz show while channel surfing. He talked about how to poop and pee perfectly.” That response was actually a great segue into a discussion of the Project Censored organization.

Since 1976 Sonoma State University’s Project Censored has produced an effective treatment for the mental constipation caused by corporate “junk news” media. Annually the Project compiles a volume of news stories "underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored in the United States.” Walter Cronkite said that “Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.” Ralph Nader agrees: “Project Censored should be affixed to the bulletin boards in every newsroom in America.”

Project Censored defines censorship as “anything that interferes with the free flow of information in a society that purports to have a free press.” They argue further that censorship may include stories that were never published, but also “those that get such restricted distribution that few in the public are likely to know about them.”

Censored2014 (Seven Stories Press) identifies “Bradley Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media” as the top censored story of 2013. Other parts of the book address the Obama Administration’s hardball war on whistleblowers; ugly statist bullying that would have the so called “left” up in arms were it being carried out by any Republican. For me, the war on whistleblowers is far and away the most important, most inaccurately reported, and most underreported story of our time. 

The good news is that there are some independent journalists out there working hard to reveal the true nature, extent, and consequences of the war on whistleblowers for citizens, journalists, and democracy in general. In this rant I only have space for three examples.

First, Glenn Greenwald of the London Guardian writes about civil liberties transgressions with a depth and sense of urgency that calls to mind the best muckraking journalism of the early 20^th century. Greenwald wrote extensively about the government’s persecution of Bradley Manning, but in 2013 his coverage of whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed in dramatic detail the extent of the National Security Administration’s global surveillance program. 

Greenwald’s also detailed the troubling case of Barrett Brown, an alternative journalist and creator of  Project PM, which is "dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance." Brown’s case will be the subject of a future Media Rants column, but for now suffice it to say that he is looking at up to 10 years in jail for essentially sharing a hyperlink. 

Second, writer and activist Alexa O’Brien courageously covered the trial of Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning from start to finish, providing an inspiring contrast to the mainstream media’s self-censorship and cowering in the presence of the government and military. O’Brien writes of the mainstream media and the Manning trial: “. . . the traditional press was effectively absent. When they did attend, their coverage was superficial and deficient of the kind of detail that a historic case such as hers required. Hundreds of journalists and talking heads did, however, show up to hear the verdict 20 months into the trial. On that day, Fort Meade was teaming with sightseeing content junkies and rumor militants. When the presiding military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, read her verdict into the record, no one had correctly or completely recorded or understood the entire verdict.” 

Third, the independent website Firedoglake.com in 2013 began publishing John Kiriakou’s letters from prison. Kiriakou is the former CIA agent who revealed the existence of a CIA torture program and that torture was official government policy. For his whistleblowing he was charged with espionage, making false statements, and violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The irony is that no one who ordered or participated in torture has ever been tried or sent to jail; rather, the person who exposed the illegal policy is in prison. Kiriakou is currently serving 30 months in jail even though numerous CIA agents have asked that his sentence be commuted. 

Kiriakou’s letters from prison are important in showing the ugly consequences for someone choosing to blow the whistle on illegal or unethical government policies. He reports on harassment from prison officials, racking up nearly $1 million in legal bills, permanent loss of travel privileges after his release, having insurance and bank accounts cancelled, and other punishments. Reading Kiriakou’s letters make it clear that Edward Snowden made the right decision to seek exile rather than by subject to the prosecutorial zeal of federal prosecutors whose war on dissenters recalls the worst days of J. Edgar Hoover.

For more on Barrett Brown and John Kiriakou, go to freebarrettbrown.org and defendjohnk.com.