ANOTHER CLICK IN THE WALL: The fact that "Photography Is Not A Crime" when taking pictures of police in the performance of their duties- with certain caveats- has been a subject that has piqued our interest many times in this space, most recently when it hit home with the case of blogger Damon Tucker who was arrested and apparently beaten- allegedly by Big Island police.
The charges of obstructing a government operation against Tucker were dropped- without prejudice, meaning they can be brought again- and Tucker has said he is planning on a lawsuit although he hasn't done so... yet.
But his case may be bolstered due to an appellate ruling by a federal, three-judge panel in the First Circuit which has denied limited immunity to cops who arrested one Simon Glik based, the court ruled, on his First and Fourth Amendment rights.
In refusing to grant immunity to the officers the panel ruled that:
Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause...
(A) citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.
The story goes that:
As he was walking past the Boston Common on the evening of October 1, 2007, Simon Glik caught sight of three police officers — the individual defendants here — arresting a young man. Glik heard another bystander say something to the effect of, “You are hurting him, stop.” Concerned that the officers were employing excessive force to effect the arrest, Glik stopped roughly ten feet away and began recording video footage of the arrest on his cell phone.
After placing the suspect in handcuffs, one of the officers turned to Glik and said, “I think you have taken enough pictures.” Glik replied, “I am recording this. I saw you punch him.” An officer then approached Glik and asked if Glik’s cell phone recorded audio. When Glik affirmed that he was recording audio, the officer placed him in handcuffs, arresting him for, inter alia, unlawful audio recording in violation of Massachusetts's (sic) wiretap statute. Glik was taken to the South Boston police station. In the course of booking, the police confiscated Glik’s cell phone and a computer flash drive and held them as evidence.
But, importantly, due to other rulings the judges ruled that, because Glik was openly recording the events he was not in violation of the "wiretapping" laws that many police across the nation have tried to use as "probable cause" and therefore a defense and a reason to arrest those taking picture of police.
As to the actual First Amendment rights, the court was unequivocal- a significant ruling in that it is apparently the highest appellate ruling in this kind of case. They wrote:
The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.
It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. As the Supreme Court has observed, “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.” First Nat’l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1978); see also Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969) (“It is . . . well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.”). An important corollary to this interest in protecting the stock of public information is that “[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news ‘from any source by means within the law.’” Houchinsv. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11 (1978) (quoting Branzburg v.Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681-82 (1972)).
The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting “the free discussion of governmental affairs.”
Similarly the court threw out Fourth Amendment claims because of the open nature of the recording and therefore the lack of probable cause. Massachusetts law- as is true in most states- says that, to be considered wiretapping, the recording must be made secretly.
Also significant was the fact that the court said it doesn't matter if the person taking the pictures is a reporter or journalist, as was an issue in "blogger" Tucker's case as well as many on the mainland.
They said that:
It is of no significance that the present case... involves a private individual, and not a reporter, gathering information about public officials. The First Amendment right to gather news is, as the Court has often noted, not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public’s right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press...
(C)hanges in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.
This. of course, is not the end of it, just a small victory in only one circuit and just by a three-judge panel, not an "en banc" (the full appellate court) ruling.
But it is significant for the sweeping nature of the words that can and no doubt will be used by other circuits when dealing with the issue of whether private citizens are entitled to photograph- which of course includes taking video- police in a public place as long as they are not impeding the actions of the police.
Showing posts with label Damon Tucker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Damon Tucker. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
MAYBE THE ZOMBIES ATE THEM
MAYBE THE ZOMBIES ATE THEM: We've devoted a slew of bits to the case of Big Island blogger Damon Tucker's beating and arrest- allegedly at the hands of the Hawai`i County Police Department (HiPD)- for, as Tucker claims, photographing a melee outside a Pahoa bar last August after being told to stop doing so.
But even though it appears that Tucker was well within his rights to take photos in a public place, the charges of obstructing police operations is going forward, despite the fact that it appears from the video that he was across the street from all the "action."
The statement from the HiPD that "(t)he Hawaii Police Department recognizes that the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance" indicates that they do know that Photography Is Not a Crime, as the national clearinghouse website of the same name states.
But apparently that is not the case in Los Angeles where the LA Sheriff’s Department is being sued by the ACLU of Southern California "alleging they harassed, detained and improperly searched photographers taking pictures legally in public places," according to the LA Times.
The article states that:
The federal lawsuit alleges the Sheriff's Department and deputies "have repeatedly" subjected photographers "to detention, search and interrogation simply because they took pictures" from public streets of places such as Metro turnstiles, oil refineries or near a Long Beach courthouse.
"Photography is not a crime. It's protected 1st Amendment expression," said Peter Bibring, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "It violates the Constitution's core protections for sheriff’s deputies to detain and search people who are doing nothing wrong. To single them out for such treatment while they’re pursuing a constitutionally protected activity is doubly wrong."
Bibring said the policy and practices of the Sheriff's Department reflect a widespread misuse of "suspicious activity reporting" under the auspices of Homeland Security and counterterrorism. Similar suits have been filed in several other states.
Note that it's alleged that it's not isolated incidents but a policy of the department that is the subject of the suit.
The problem is that it's apparent in our reading of the lawsuit itself that either the cops are complete imbeciles who can't tell real terrorism threats from things like photographing innocuous locations or else they are using the law to harass people who won't kow-tow to abuse of their authority.
We suspect the latter.
Don't believe it? Here's more from the same lawsuit:
In another incident, deputies detained and searched Shane Quentin, a photographer with a master's in fine arts from UC Irvine while he was taking pictures of brilliantly lighted refineries in South Los Angeles on Jan. 21. Deputies frisked Quentin and placed him in the back of a police cruiser for about 45 minutes before releasing him. Two years before, Quentin had been ordered twice by deputies to stop taking photos of the refineries, according to the suit.
With the exception of a few bad actors, we on the neighbor island get accustomed to encountering officers who are genurinely trying to protect and serve and take seriously their responsibility to refrain from trampling on citizens' rights in trying to put away the bad guys.
But as our population grows, we're forced more and more to recruit new officers from the same mainland climes where these kinds of attitudes lead to having a populace that is alienated from the paramilitary operation which is supposed to keep them safe without making for an "us" vs. them" paradigm.
We're not sure what's going on inside the HiPD as far as Tucker's obstruction case goes. We sure hope that they are considering abandoning Tucker's prosecution and even repremanding the officers and instituting training on how to handle such situations without escalating them into news-worthy events.
But as Tucker waits for the resolution of the criminal charges and readies his civil suit, this federal lawsuit is going to be one to watch, not just for us but for HiPD as they wrestle with their own in a department that has had more than its share of bad actors over the years.
But even though it appears that Tucker was well within his rights to take photos in a public place, the charges of obstructing police operations is going forward, despite the fact that it appears from the video that he was across the street from all the "action."
The statement from the HiPD that "(t)he Hawaii Police Department recognizes that the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance" indicates that they do know that Photography Is Not a Crime, as the national clearinghouse website of the same name states.
But apparently that is not the case in Los Angeles where the LA Sheriff’s Department is being sued by the ACLU of Southern California "alleging they harassed, detained and improperly searched photographers taking pictures legally in public places," according to the LA Times.
The article states that:
The federal lawsuit alleges the Sheriff's Department and deputies "have repeatedly" subjected photographers "to detention, search and interrogation simply because they took pictures" from public streets of places such as Metro turnstiles, oil refineries or near a Long Beach courthouse.
"Photography is not a crime. It's protected 1st Amendment expression," said Peter Bibring, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "It violates the Constitution's core protections for sheriff’s deputies to detain and search people who are doing nothing wrong. To single them out for such treatment while they’re pursuing a constitutionally protected activity is doubly wrong."
Bibring said the policy and practices of the Sheriff's Department reflect a widespread misuse of "suspicious activity reporting" under the auspices of Homeland Security and counterterrorism. Similar suits have been filed in several other states.
Note that it's alleged that it's not isolated incidents but a policy of the department that is the subject of the suit.
The problem is that it's apparent in our reading of the lawsuit itself that either the cops are complete imbeciles who can't tell real terrorism threats from things like photographing innocuous locations or else they are using the law to harass people who won't kow-tow to abuse of their authority.
We suspect the latter.
Don't believe it? Here's more from the same lawsuit:
In another incident, deputies detained and searched Shane Quentin, a photographer with a master's in fine arts from UC Irvine while he was taking pictures of brilliantly lighted refineries in South Los Angeles on Jan. 21. Deputies frisked Quentin and placed him in the back of a police cruiser for about 45 minutes before releasing him. Two years before, Quentin had been ordered twice by deputies to stop taking photos of the refineries, according to the suit.
With the exception of a few bad actors, we on the neighbor island get accustomed to encountering officers who are genurinely trying to protect and serve and take seriously their responsibility to refrain from trampling on citizens' rights in trying to put away the bad guys.
But as our population grows, we're forced more and more to recruit new officers from the same mainland climes where these kinds of attitudes lead to having a populace that is alienated from the paramilitary operation which is supposed to keep them safe without making for an "us" vs. them" paradigm.
We're not sure what's going on inside the HiPD as far as Tucker's obstruction case goes. We sure hope that they are considering abandoning Tucker's prosecution and even repremanding the officers and instituting training on how to handle such situations without escalating them into news-worthy events.
But as Tucker waits for the resolution of the criminal charges and readies his civil suit, this federal lawsuit is going to be one to watch, not just for us but for HiPD as they wrestle with their own in a department that has had more than its share of bad actors over the years.
Monday, October 3, 2011
A LITTLE TRAVELING MUSIC SAMMY
A LITTLE TRAVELING MUSIC SAMMY: The first time it occurred to us that it had been way too long since we'd been off-island was when Hawaiian Air unexpectedly assigned us a seat.
But then, flying to the Big Island this weekend to participate in Saturday's UH- Hilo Media Symposium was all about change... in the media at least.
The "Old Media versus New Media" panel contained the mucky-mucks of Hawai`i journalism... and Andy Parx- who almost didn't get to go because one of the sponsors said with an upturned nose "he's just a blogger."
We told the story of how, after 30 years in journalism, much of it as a "columnist," we "became" a blogger as a function of choosing the "blogger" software, giving us a McLuhan-esque thesis for the weekend: there is no "new media," just one new medium after another.
The really observant in attendance saw that we were all a bunch of old media dinosaurs trying to figure out exactly what this "new media" was.
Our main observation was that Hawai`i Island has what Kaua`i lacks - a vibrant journalism community with dozens of "journalist-bloggers"- or whatever you call people like Andy Parx and Ian Lind, who shared two panels- many "aggregator" sites and seemingly dozens of local reporters that have eked out a living and in fact a career practicing their craft.
Not to mention a packed room full of J-school students expecting to make a living at it.
There's no such thing on Kaua`i. We feel all alone in a forest- along with Kaua`i Eclectic's Joan Conrow- in "news-blogging" (if you will) because there are simply no opportunities for local journalists here. The local newspaper pays starvation wages and usually hires reporters from those who are "on the circuit" on the mainland. They stay for anywhere from two months to two years and then move on to the next stop.
The few professionals who live here have long since left the trade and ended up selling anything from real estate to "activities" or waiting tables.
The Big Island on the other hand has an actual press club that has existed for decades. And, although there was quite a bit of damage in keeping it that way, the Hawai`i Tribune Herald remains the only union shop in the islands.
The result for Kaua`i is a distinct lack of available information, almost all of which is "courtesy" of the local paper where incompetence is a tradition that began with the departure of (full disclosure) our mentor, legendary editor Jean Holmes, in the early 80's.
But back to the weekend. We did manage to meet people who heretofore had been only names on a web site, including Damon Tucker who, as we wrote last month, was beaten allegedly by the cops and arrested, apparently for taking taking pictures of a melee in front of a Pahoa nightclub.
Tucker was arrested for "obstructing a government operation" and the police, according to reports, allege that he was physically getting between them and those involved in the fracas. But Tucker sat us down and shared the cell-phone video taken that night and our observation was that he would have had to have been a magician to have managed to get between the cops and their subjects.
Though the two clips are very short, the timing between the two is what caught our attention.
In the first, which is only nine seconds long, an officer can be seen telling Tucker to "stop" and that’s where it ends. Tucker says that the rest of the sentence was "taking pictures" or something to that effect.
The second clip was taken one minute and thirty-one seconds later according to the time stamp and in it you can hear the sound of handcuffs being put on Tucker and in that intervening time is when Tucker says he was thrown to the ground and beaten.
The thing is that according to Tucker, the view is of the officer standing almost directly across the street from the nightclub where the fight occurred with Tucker taking the video right in front of him. That means that in the minute and a half, if the police's story were true, Tucker would have had to have crossed the street, gotten between the police and the fighters gone back to the other side of the street and been taken down, beaten and handcuffed.
In addition Tucker had a regular camera which the police confiscated and claimed that that was what he used to take the pictures of the fight. So add "getting out the regular camera" to the list of chores he miraculously performed in a minute and a half.
Oh- and according to Tucker, the police have told his attorney that there were no pictures on the memory card of the camera.
Today according to Associated Press,
Journalist Amy Goodman, host of the syndicated program "Democracy Now!" and two of her producers will receive $100,000 in a settlement over their arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
Many will remember how Goodman was arrested simply doing her job in reporting on the convention.
"When journalists are arrested, it is not only a violation of the freedom the press, but of the public's right to know," Goodman said in a statement. "When journalists are handcuffed and abused, so is democracy. We should not have to get a record when we put things on the record."
Getting back to the symposium, it seemed that every time we mentioned Tucker's name in close proximity to the word "reporter" it elicited an audible groan and a rolling of the eyes from the professionals there.
But the fact is that when someone is acting in the capacity of a reporter and has the means to distribute the story and has done so in the past, that person becomes a reporter by performing the act of reporting.
And that may be the crux of why many in the old guard of the old media insisted on there being reporting standards of professionalism for bloggers, especially those who do reporting and opinion in the same piece.
We maintained that there's no need because critical readers will be able to sort out who is reliably reporting events even if it is intermixed with opinion. And of course those without those skills will not.
It's really no different than it's ever been. When we were growing up you could either read the New York Times or The New York Post. Some people can't tell the difference and for them their lack of critical reading and thinking skills will never allow them to distinguish between the two. Even with time showing the reliability of the Times and their reputation for veracity that comes with it, those who lack those skills will see the Post's material as factual no matter how often they are proven to be purveying false information.
The lesson we took from the symposium is that the "new media" is simply a function of the new technology- nothing more and nothing less. There's no need for new rules of journalism on the part of the writers because the readers and their skills will be what determines the viability of each publication in the future.
As it was half a century ago, the medium is still the message and no new gizmo is going to change that.
But then, flying to the Big Island this weekend to participate in Saturday's UH- Hilo Media Symposium was all about change... in the media at least.
The "Old Media versus New Media" panel contained the mucky-mucks of Hawai`i journalism... and Andy Parx- who almost didn't get to go because one of the sponsors said with an upturned nose "he's just a blogger."
We told the story of how, after 30 years in journalism, much of it as a "columnist," we "became" a blogger as a function of choosing the "blogger" software, giving us a McLuhan-esque thesis for the weekend: there is no "new media," just one new medium after another.
The really observant in attendance saw that we were all a bunch of old media dinosaurs trying to figure out exactly what this "new media" was.
Our main observation was that Hawai`i Island has what Kaua`i lacks - a vibrant journalism community with dozens of "journalist-bloggers"- or whatever you call people like Andy Parx and Ian Lind, who shared two panels- many "aggregator" sites and seemingly dozens of local reporters that have eked out a living and in fact a career practicing their craft.
Not to mention a packed room full of J-school students expecting to make a living at it.
There's no such thing on Kaua`i. We feel all alone in a forest- along with Kaua`i Eclectic's Joan Conrow- in "news-blogging" (if you will) because there are simply no opportunities for local journalists here. The local newspaper pays starvation wages and usually hires reporters from those who are "on the circuit" on the mainland. They stay for anywhere from two months to two years and then move on to the next stop.
The few professionals who live here have long since left the trade and ended up selling anything from real estate to "activities" or waiting tables.
The Big Island on the other hand has an actual press club that has existed for decades. And, although there was quite a bit of damage in keeping it that way, the Hawai`i Tribune Herald remains the only union shop in the islands.
The result for Kaua`i is a distinct lack of available information, almost all of which is "courtesy" of the local paper where incompetence is a tradition that began with the departure of (full disclosure) our mentor, legendary editor Jean Holmes, in the early 80's.
But back to the weekend. We did manage to meet people who heretofore had been only names on a web site, including Damon Tucker who, as we wrote last month, was beaten allegedly by the cops and arrested, apparently for taking taking pictures of a melee in front of a Pahoa nightclub.
Tucker was arrested for "obstructing a government operation" and the police, according to reports, allege that he was physically getting between them and those involved in the fracas. But Tucker sat us down and shared the cell-phone video taken that night and our observation was that he would have had to have been a magician to have managed to get between the cops and their subjects.
Though the two clips are very short, the timing between the two is what caught our attention.
In the first, which is only nine seconds long, an officer can be seen telling Tucker to "stop" and that’s where it ends. Tucker says that the rest of the sentence was "taking pictures" or something to that effect.
The second clip was taken one minute and thirty-one seconds later according to the time stamp and in it you can hear the sound of handcuffs being put on Tucker and in that intervening time is when Tucker says he was thrown to the ground and beaten.
The thing is that according to Tucker, the view is of the officer standing almost directly across the street from the nightclub where the fight occurred with Tucker taking the video right in front of him. That means that in the minute and a half, if the police's story were true, Tucker would have had to have crossed the street, gotten between the police and the fighters gone back to the other side of the street and been taken down, beaten and handcuffed.
In addition Tucker had a regular camera which the police confiscated and claimed that that was what he used to take the pictures of the fight. So add "getting out the regular camera" to the list of chores he miraculously performed in a minute and a half.
Oh- and according to Tucker, the police have told his attorney that there were no pictures on the memory card of the camera.
Today according to Associated Press,
Journalist Amy Goodman, host of the syndicated program "Democracy Now!" and two of her producers will receive $100,000 in a settlement over their arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
Many will remember how Goodman was arrested simply doing her job in reporting on the convention.
"When journalists are arrested, it is not only a violation of the freedom the press, but of the public's right to know," Goodman said in a statement. "When journalists are handcuffed and abused, so is democracy. We should not have to get a record when we put things on the record."
Getting back to the symposium, it seemed that every time we mentioned Tucker's name in close proximity to the word "reporter" it elicited an audible groan and a rolling of the eyes from the professionals there.
But the fact is that when someone is acting in the capacity of a reporter and has the means to distribute the story and has done so in the past, that person becomes a reporter by performing the act of reporting.
And that may be the crux of why many in the old guard of the old media insisted on there being reporting standards of professionalism for bloggers, especially those who do reporting and opinion in the same piece.
We maintained that there's no need because critical readers will be able to sort out who is reliably reporting events even if it is intermixed with opinion. And of course those without those skills will not.
It's really no different than it's ever been. When we were growing up you could either read the New York Times or The New York Post. Some people can't tell the difference and for them their lack of critical reading and thinking skills will never allow them to distinguish between the two. Even with time showing the reliability of the Times and their reputation for veracity that comes with it, those who lack those skills will see the Post's material as factual no matter how often they are proven to be purveying false information.
The lesson we took from the symposium is that the "new media" is simply a function of the new technology- nothing more and nothing less. There's no need for new rules of journalism on the part of the writers because the readers and their skills will be what determines the viability of each publication in the future.
As it was half a century ago, the medium is still the message and no new gizmo is going to change that.
Friday, September 9, 2011
PRESSING MATTERS
PRESSING MATTERS: Big Island blogger Damon Tucker's first court appearance after apparently being beaten by a Hawai`i Island Police Department (HiPD) officer for photographing a fight in progress outside a Pahoa bar didn't yield a plea after his attorney asked for a jury trial and the case was remanded to circuit court, according to coverage by Big Island Chronicle (BIC) reporter Tiffany Hunt Edwards.
Tucker was arrested for "obstructing police operations" even though he claims he was across the street from the police activity he was recording on his iPhone
The big news is, however, that Tucker now has possession of the confiscated phone and the video he took and apparently it shows he was 10-15 feet away, across the street from the altercation, as he had claimed.
But the police report may hold the key to the disposition of the case.
Edwards quotes the report as saying:
“This after officers upon responding to an affray of approx. 10 to 20 adults fighting at the Pahoa Vllg Club, deft [defendant] repeatedly refused to stop physically pushing himself between officers while they were engaged in interviewing witnesses and suspects, and appeared to be very intoxicated. Deft then shoved his camera into the faces of victims at the scene while they were interviewed, and propelled them to become irate. Furthermore, Deft then proceeded onto the roadway placing officers and himself in danger of being hit by passing vehicle. Deft cited he was representative with the Media, however deft was unable to produce proper Media Credentials, (emphasis added) thereby deft became combative and was subsequently arrested.”
Edwards writes that:
Tucker, in responding to the police report’s assertion that he was intoxicated in the incident involving police, shared a statement from a bar bouncer that Tucker was “buzzed” but not drunk. The recovered footage seen by this reporter is pointed toward three police officers and at least one bystander standing at the entrance to the Luquin’s Mexican Restaurant parking lot, across the street from Pahoa Village Club. One of the officers emphatically tells Tucker he is being warned to stop videotaping.
But the statement that stands out to us is that "Deft cited he was representative with the Media, however deft was unable to produce proper Media Credentials" because, according to a recent ruling by the First Court of Appeals in Boston in allowing a civil case to go forward, the public has the same right as a reporter to photograph police in a public place.
According to an article in New American "Simon Glik, a Boston attorney... was arrested on the evening of October 1, 2007 for using his cellphone to record police officers making an arrest on the Boston Common."
But in rejecting the officers' claim of immunity the three-judge panel not only unanimously addressed the reporter vs. public issue but realities in an age of cell phone cameras, "new media" and bloggers.
The ruling says, in part:
The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow... Is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative...
(C)hanges in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the newsgathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.
The video evidence apparently shows that the claim that Tucker was interfering with a police operation is shibai and certainly under any circumstances beating someone to stop them from taking photographs is not the proper response of police.
As we noted previously, although we haven't been able to ascertain the current procedures on the Big Island, most other jurisdictions stopped issuing official police press passes- which usually solely enabled reporters to go behind police lines at crime scenes- many years ago. That is the case on Kaua`i and in Honolulu and has been done across the mainland specifically because the proliferation of news sources in the age of the internet made distinctions much too vague and arbitrary for a legal differentiation to hold up in court.
If, as is apparently the case, the HiPD is going to try to claim that any part of the case hinges on whether Tucker is indeed a "member of the press"- whatever the heck that is these days- they’re going to be digging themselves a hole in which they will eventually be buried.
Tucker was arrested for "obstructing police operations" even though he claims he was across the street from the police activity he was recording on his iPhone
The big news is, however, that Tucker now has possession of the confiscated phone and the video he took and apparently it shows he was 10-15 feet away, across the street from the altercation, as he had claimed.
But the police report may hold the key to the disposition of the case.
Edwards quotes the report as saying:
“This after officers upon responding to an affray of approx. 10 to 20 adults fighting at the Pahoa Vllg Club, deft [defendant] repeatedly refused to stop physically pushing himself between officers while they were engaged in interviewing witnesses and suspects, and appeared to be very intoxicated. Deft then shoved his camera into the faces of victims at the scene while they were interviewed, and propelled them to become irate. Furthermore, Deft then proceeded onto the roadway placing officers and himself in danger of being hit by passing vehicle. Deft cited he was representative with the Media, however deft was unable to produce proper Media Credentials, (emphasis added) thereby deft became combative and was subsequently arrested.”
Edwards writes that:
Tucker, in responding to the police report’s assertion that he was intoxicated in the incident involving police, shared a statement from a bar bouncer that Tucker was “buzzed” but not drunk. The recovered footage seen by this reporter is pointed toward three police officers and at least one bystander standing at the entrance to the Luquin’s Mexican Restaurant parking lot, across the street from Pahoa Village Club. One of the officers emphatically tells Tucker he is being warned to stop videotaping.
But the statement that stands out to us is that "Deft cited he was representative with the Media, however deft was unable to produce proper Media Credentials" because, according to a recent ruling by the First Court of Appeals in Boston in allowing a civil case to go forward, the public has the same right as a reporter to photograph police in a public place.
According to an article in New American "Simon Glik, a Boston attorney... was arrested on the evening of October 1, 2007 for using his cellphone to record police officers making an arrest on the Boston Common."
But in rejecting the officers' claim of immunity the three-judge panel not only unanimously addressed the reporter vs. public issue but realities in an age of cell phone cameras, "new media" and bloggers.
The ruling says, in part:
The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow... Is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative...
(C)hanges in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the newsgathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.
The video evidence apparently shows that the claim that Tucker was interfering with a police operation is shibai and certainly under any circumstances beating someone to stop them from taking photographs is not the proper response of police.
As we noted previously, although we haven't been able to ascertain the current procedures on the Big Island, most other jurisdictions stopped issuing official police press passes- which usually solely enabled reporters to go behind police lines at crime scenes- many years ago. That is the case on Kaua`i and in Honolulu and has been done across the mainland specifically because the proliferation of news sources in the age of the internet made distinctions much too vague and arbitrary for a legal differentiation to hold up in court.
If, as is apparently the case, the HiPD is going to try to claim that any part of the case hinges on whether Tucker is indeed a "member of the press"- whatever the heck that is these days- they’re going to be digging themselves a hole in which they will eventually be buried.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
A HOLE IS TO DIG
A HOLE IS TO DIG: If we ever have cause to need a really good pick and shovel- aw heck, make that a backhoe- we know just where to turn.
We'd just call the worst reporter at the worst newspaper in the state- arguably in the country although we haven’t read them all- because it would take heavy equipment to bury the lede the way our little buddy does it in our local Kaua`i newspaper.
Today, while sifting through the recent thin gruel of council activity, he decided to preview tomorrow's "special" council meeting to name yet another "sister city" in Japan- a program designed to increase tourism, presumably both ways.
The first clue that Kaua`i denizens might think twice about taking a trip to Iwaki was the location- the Fukushima Prefecture. But it takes until the sixth paragraph, over 200 words into the story before we find out for certain that Iwaki "is less than 30 miles away from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, badly damaged in the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11."
That "clue" assumes you're going to make the connection between Iwaki and the massive radiation still permeating Fukushima Prefecture. The final words of the article come closer, saying
Because of the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Iwaki’s government closed the city’s swimming beaches for the entire year.
Iwaki government has also said that it doesn’t expect many visitors to the city’s beaches due to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Nowhere in the article does the word "radiation" appear.
But, as the saying goes, "you knew darn well I was a snake before you let me in."
You'd expect better from the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News and current editor of the on-line Civil Beat news outlet.
John Temple's opinion piece today echoed some of our concerns about the spate of police harassment of local reporters for taking photographs of police in action, saying that the rest of the public should also be protected when taking photos of police.
Good point. But in setting up the piece he writes of "two recent incidents, one involving the publisher of a Maui weekly newspaper and the other involving a Big Island blogger."
And this is how he describes them.
The first incident came on Maui this spring, when an officer hit Maui Times publisher Tommy Russo's camera when he was filming from a public place. The officer is heard telling Russo: "I don't want to be filmed, and if I don't want to be filmed, I don't have to be filmed....
"The other Hawaii incident came on the Big Island, where earlier this month blogger Damon Tucker was arrested while he was taking photos and videos of police arresting people from a public sidewalk. He says police confiscated his iPhone and camera and he now faces misdemeanor charges of obstructing government operations."
And, although he links to Tucker's posts he fails to let readers know that Tucker alleges he was severely beaten by police in making the arrest.
And that makes exactly zero coverage of that fact in the mainstream, statewide Hawai`i "print" media, although Channel 9 did have one feature on the event the next day.
The "lede" of a story is generally what the the reporter determines is most important and "newsworthy" thing in the story. In the "inverted triangle" of newswriting it is contained in the opening words of the story.
Good reporters take a breath when sitting down at the keyboard and try to come up with the core information that makes the news news.
They don't "save it" for later in the story or even "forget" to mention it.
It's understandable when, for the umpteenth time our local paper bungles it. But when the pros do it it's gotta make you wonder what they're thinking.
We'd just call the worst reporter at the worst newspaper in the state- arguably in the country although we haven’t read them all- because it would take heavy equipment to bury the lede the way our little buddy does it in our local Kaua`i newspaper.
Today, while sifting through the recent thin gruel of council activity, he decided to preview tomorrow's "special" council meeting to name yet another "sister city" in Japan- a program designed to increase tourism, presumably both ways.
The first clue that Kaua`i denizens might think twice about taking a trip to Iwaki was the location- the Fukushima Prefecture. But it takes until the sixth paragraph, over 200 words into the story before we find out for certain that Iwaki "is less than 30 miles away from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, badly damaged in the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11."
That "clue" assumes you're going to make the connection between Iwaki and the massive radiation still permeating Fukushima Prefecture. The final words of the article come closer, saying
Because of the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Iwaki’s government closed the city’s swimming beaches for the entire year.
Iwaki government has also said that it doesn’t expect many visitors to the city’s beaches due to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Nowhere in the article does the word "radiation" appear.
But, as the saying goes, "you knew darn well I was a snake before you let me in."
You'd expect better from the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News and current editor of the on-line Civil Beat news outlet.
John Temple's opinion piece today echoed some of our concerns about the spate of police harassment of local reporters for taking photographs of police in action, saying that the rest of the public should also be protected when taking photos of police.
Good point. But in setting up the piece he writes of "two recent incidents, one involving the publisher of a Maui weekly newspaper and the other involving a Big Island blogger."
And this is how he describes them.
The first incident came on Maui this spring, when an officer hit Maui Times publisher Tommy Russo's camera when he was filming from a public place. The officer is heard telling Russo: "I don't want to be filmed, and if I don't want to be filmed, I don't have to be filmed....
"The other Hawaii incident came on the Big Island, where earlier this month blogger Damon Tucker was arrested while he was taking photos and videos of police arresting people from a public sidewalk. He says police confiscated his iPhone and camera and he now faces misdemeanor charges of obstructing government operations."
And, although he links to Tucker's posts he fails to let readers know that Tucker alleges he was severely beaten by police in making the arrest.
And that makes exactly zero coverage of that fact in the mainstream, statewide Hawai`i "print" media, although Channel 9 did have one feature on the event the next day.
The "lede" of a story is generally what the the reporter determines is most important and "newsworthy" thing in the story. In the "inverted triangle" of newswriting it is contained in the opening words of the story.
Good reporters take a breath when sitting down at the keyboard and try to come up with the core information that makes the news news.
They don't "save it" for later in the story or even "forget" to mention it.
It's understandable when, for the umpteenth time our local paper bungles it. But when the pros do it it's gotta make you wonder what they're thinking.
Monday, August 22, 2011
NEGATIVE CONTAGION
NEGATIVE CONTAGION: All's quiet on the southwestern front where Damon Tucker- the Big Island blogger-reporter who was apparently beaten by cops for taking video of a police action, breaking up a fight in Pahoa- has hired an attorney to sue the Hawai`i (Island) Police Department (HIPD) saying that "all future media inquires should be sent to him."
But on the mainland the fight to simply take photos in public places continues, this time in Long Beach California where a reporter for the Long Beach Post has taken up the cause after a couple of incidents of harassment of photographers by local police.
Seems that according to reporter Greggory Moore on June 2 he had stepped out of his house across the street from the courthouse and was trying to take photos of people "texting while driving" for a piece on Distracted Driving Month when no less than eight police officers descended on him.
But of course in the background was the courthouse and so, according to Moore, after fifteen minutes of questioning and threats:
To leave the scene, I was required to provide my name, address, phone number, driver's license number, the name of the publication for which I was writing and the publisher's name and contact information. To get my camera back, I was required to show one of the officers its contents.
Then, even though Moore had complained and was trying to get an explanation from the Long Beach Police, the department hadn't gotten the message that photography in public places is not a crime.
In July he wrote that:
June 30 was a beautiful summer Thursday. Just the kind of day that might tempt a photographer out to a refinery to capture some snaps of well illuminated rust and metal corrosion, colors that don't quite exist in the natural world.
But in Long Beach lately, it seems this is just the kind of action that will result in police detention.
For at least the second time in a month, police in Long Beach have detained a resident for the mere fact of taking pictures that are perfectly legal to take.
At a little before 10 a.m. on June 30, Sander Roscoe Wolff says he was on the south side of Artesia Boulevard taking photographs of the Edgington Oil Company when Officer Asif Kahn rolled up in a Long Beach Police Department patrol unit.
Wolff said that Kahn stated he had received a call that Wolff was taking pictures of the refinery. Wolff explained to Kahn that he was photographing the refinery for artistic reasons.
"I guess he had [been] observing me for at least a few minutes," recounts Wolff, "because he said, 'I saw you take a picture of [some nearby flora.] I saw you take a picture across the street.'"
Because he found Kahn's demeanor to be low-key and even friendly, Wolff was surprised when Kahn asked for Wolff's driver's license. "I asked him if I had to show him my driver's license," says Wolff. "He said 'yes.' And at that point I did feel detained. Because if he was demanding that I identify myself, then I couldn't just walk away."
Wolff says Kahn apparently ran a check on Wolff's driver's license, then came back and said that everything was okay. "He said because of Homeland Security and new laws, [the police] have the authority to ask for my driver's license and run it when they feel that there's cause."
While there was no police brutality in the Long Beach incident Moore, after talked to the National Press Photographer's Association, they wrote to Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell expressing concern "about the misplaced beliefs that photography is in and of itself a suspicious activity."
But McDonnell tried to defend his officers and seemed to offer little sympathy or remorse. Not only that but they had some kind of cockamamie policy of what one can and can't take photos of, based on the content.
In a followup piece Moore wrote:
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.
McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach Refinery.
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters...
This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."
While some may have an "all's well that ends well" take on the incidents it is apparently only a matter of time before someone who knows, and is intent on defending, his or her rights refuses to stop taking pictures or show them to police when they make an illegal request based on "security," especially when the claim- and in the first case here the overreaction- is patently absurd.
Like Tucker's run-in with ill-informed cops on the Big Island these kinds of incidents show how they come about when police aren't trained in the rights of people with cameras.
And although the Long Beach and Hawai`i Island incidents have led to the increased awareness of their respective police chiefs until there is national pressure put on local police to acknowledge those rights, incidents Tucker's and those Moore described will remain all too common.
But on the mainland the fight to simply take photos in public places continues, this time in Long Beach California where a reporter for the Long Beach Post has taken up the cause after a couple of incidents of harassment of photographers by local police.
Seems that according to reporter Greggory Moore on June 2 he had stepped out of his house across the street from the courthouse and was trying to take photos of people "texting while driving" for a piece on Distracted Driving Month when no less than eight police officers descended on him.
But of course in the background was the courthouse and so, according to Moore, after fifteen minutes of questioning and threats:
To leave the scene, I was required to provide my name, address, phone number, driver's license number, the name of the publication for which I was writing and the publisher's name and contact information. To get my camera back, I was required to show one of the officers its contents.
Then, even though Moore had complained and was trying to get an explanation from the Long Beach Police, the department hadn't gotten the message that photography in public places is not a crime.
In July he wrote that:
June 30 was a beautiful summer Thursday. Just the kind of day that might tempt a photographer out to a refinery to capture some snaps of well illuminated rust and metal corrosion, colors that don't quite exist in the natural world.
But in Long Beach lately, it seems this is just the kind of action that will result in police detention.
For at least the second time in a month, police in Long Beach have detained a resident for the mere fact of taking pictures that are perfectly legal to take.
At a little before 10 a.m. on June 30, Sander Roscoe Wolff says he was on the south side of Artesia Boulevard taking photographs of the Edgington Oil Company when Officer Asif Kahn rolled up in a Long Beach Police Department patrol unit.
Wolff said that Kahn stated he had received a call that Wolff was taking pictures of the refinery. Wolff explained to Kahn that he was photographing the refinery for artistic reasons.
"I guess he had [been] observing me for at least a few minutes," recounts Wolff, "because he said, 'I saw you take a picture of [some nearby flora.] I saw you take a picture across the street.'"
Because he found Kahn's demeanor to be low-key and even friendly, Wolff was surprised when Kahn asked for Wolff's driver's license. "I asked him if I had to show him my driver's license," says Wolff. "He said 'yes.' And at that point I did feel detained. Because if he was demanding that I identify myself, then I couldn't just walk away."
Wolff says Kahn apparently ran a check on Wolff's driver's license, then came back and said that everything was okay. "He said because of Homeland Security and new laws, [the police] have the authority to ask for my driver's license and run it when they feel that there's cause."
While there was no police brutality in the Long Beach incident Moore, after talked to the National Press Photographer's Association, they wrote to Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell expressing concern "about the misplaced beliefs that photography is in and of itself a suspicious activity."
But McDonnell tried to defend his officers and seemed to offer little sympathy or remorse. Not only that but they had some kind of cockamamie policy of what one can and can't take photos of, based on the content.
In a followup piece Moore wrote:
Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.
McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach Refinery.
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters...
This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."
While some may have an "all's well that ends well" take on the incidents it is apparently only a matter of time before someone who knows, and is intent on defending, his or her rights refuses to stop taking pictures or show them to police when they make an illegal request based on "security," especially when the claim- and in the first case here the overreaction- is patently absurd.
Like Tucker's run-in with ill-informed cops on the Big Island these kinds of incidents show how they come about when police aren't trained in the rights of people with cameras.
And although the Long Beach and Hawai`i Island incidents have led to the increased awareness of their respective police chiefs until there is national pressure put on local police to acknowledge those rights, incidents Tucker's and those Moore described will remain all too common.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
COULD YOU REPEAT THAT FOR THE WEST COAST?
COULD YOU REPEAT THAT FOR THE WEST COAST?: We'd sure would have liked to be a fly on the wall at Hawai`i Island Police Department (HIPD) headquarters when officer James Waiamau got his chewing out, most likely not for what appears to be the actual beating and arrest of Damon Tucker- yeah, we're making a week of it and you'll see why- but for being so stupid as to pick a guy who has a fair-sized megaphone... a guy you'd think Waiamau would or should have known (although many think he and they knew exactly whom they were harassing).
Presumably, with the state-wide publicity and the official HIPD release saying it "recognizes the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance," you'd pretty much think that the cost of defending, much less settling, Tucker's probable lawsuit would have everyone on their best behavior, especially if a "photographing in public" incident comes up again.
Moreover you'd think that when they found out that they had a problem with the report number on Tucker's "Obstructing a Government Operation" summons that he received upon leaving the cell block, the officer they sent to give him the corrected paperwork would have some semblance of an idea of what to do and not to do if someone was there with a video camera.
But there it is- a video, shot by Big Island Video News' (BIVN) David Corrigan in which Officer K. Veincent orders Tucker to tell Corrigan to stop video taping.
Tucker was there for an interview with BIVN and apparently had agreed to meet up with Veincent there too... at the "scene of the crime." About five minutes into the piece a red late model Dodge Charger with a blue roof light pulls up and Tucker leans into the passenger window.
He then turns around, looks into the camera and says "He doesn't want you video taping- he doesn't see the reason why."
The first part is insane enough- police are presumed to have the "persuasive power" so an illegal request comes under harassment and misconduct. But the fact that Veincent presumes that the videographer has to have a reason to continue makes you wonder who the heck is in charge down at HIPD headquarters.
As to the rest of the interview- which was attended by Barbara Lively the legislative assistant to Hawai`i County Councilman Fred Blas- Tucker, visibly shaken during and after the meeting with Veincent, shows clearly where the beating and arrest took place as he goes through a "walking tour" of the chronology of the incident.
Then at the end of the piece, he can be seen fighting back tears and saying "as you can see I'm clearly across the street... The fight happened right over here (pointing) so I'm way far away from where the fighting was."
Judging by the official statement, somebody at HIPD clearly recognizes, if not what the right thing to do when an officer comes across someone taping their activities from a "safe distance" is, then at least what it's going to cost the county.
But Veincent quote possibly just put another "zero" at the right of the figure that Tucker will ultimately receive by continuing the harassment and intimidation.
We've been pretty critical of our own Kaua`i Police Department and some of the clearly knuckle-headed, bad policy and bad publicity actions over the years. But they've got a ways to go in the goon department to catch up with their brethren at the other end of the state.
Presumably, with the state-wide publicity and the official HIPD release saying it "recognizes the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance," you'd pretty much think that the cost of defending, much less settling, Tucker's probable lawsuit would have everyone on their best behavior, especially if a "photographing in public" incident comes up again.
Moreover you'd think that when they found out that they had a problem with the report number on Tucker's "Obstructing a Government Operation" summons that he received upon leaving the cell block, the officer they sent to give him the corrected paperwork would have some semblance of an idea of what to do and not to do if someone was there with a video camera.
But there it is- a video, shot by Big Island Video News' (BIVN) David Corrigan in which Officer K. Veincent orders Tucker to tell Corrigan to stop video taping.
Tucker was there for an interview with BIVN and apparently had agreed to meet up with Veincent there too... at the "scene of the crime." About five minutes into the piece a red late model Dodge Charger with a blue roof light pulls up and Tucker leans into the passenger window.
He then turns around, looks into the camera and says "He doesn't want you video taping- he doesn't see the reason why."
The first part is insane enough- police are presumed to have the "persuasive power" so an illegal request comes under harassment and misconduct. But the fact that Veincent presumes that the videographer has to have a reason to continue makes you wonder who the heck is in charge down at HIPD headquarters.
As to the rest of the interview- which was attended by Barbara Lively the legislative assistant to Hawai`i County Councilman Fred Blas- Tucker, visibly shaken during and after the meeting with Veincent, shows clearly where the beating and arrest took place as he goes through a "walking tour" of the chronology of the incident.
Then at the end of the piece, he can be seen fighting back tears and saying "as you can see I'm clearly across the street... The fight happened right over here (pointing) so I'm way far away from where the fighting was."
Judging by the official statement, somebody at HIPD clearly recognizes, if not what the right thing to do when an officer comes across someone taping their activities from a "safe distance" is, then at least what it's going to cost the county.
But Veincent quote possibly just put another "zero" at the right of the figure that Tucker will ultimately receive by continuing the harassment and intimidation.
We've been pretty critical of our own Kaua`i Police Department and some of the clearly knuckle-headed, bad policy and bad publicity actions over the years. But they've got a ways to go in the goon department to catch up with their brethren at the other end of the state.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
THE BEAT AND THE BEATEN
THE BEAT AND THE BEATEN: The "alleged" beating of Damon Tucker "allegedly" by a Hawai`i Island Police (HIPD) officer- the quotation marks because neither of those two "facts" seem to be in much dispute now- began to seep into the mainstream corporate media yesterday and today with the two articles taking two decidedly different views of the incident.>
The headlines alone presaged the coverage with Hawai`i News Now (HNN)- the name for the combined TV news programs on KGMB, KHNL and KFVE- reporting "Big Island blogger claims police brutality" and the Big Island's much reviled Hawai`i Tribune-Herald merely noting that "Man alleges police assault."
While the HNN coverage stresses that Tucker's blog "inform(s) Big Island residents and promotes Hawaii" and that he was taking photographs while covering an event, the HTH piece gets 634 words into the piece to merely note that Tucker "operates an Internet blog about the Big Island" and makes no connection between his presence at the scene and his work.
The HTH piece does identify the arresting officer- whom Tucker identified as the officer who allegedly beat him- as James Waiamau.
Both stories include a statement from Hawaii County Assistant Police Chief Henry Tavares refusing to make any "additional statement" other than to note that Tucker was arrested for obstructing government operations and, more importantly, that "(t)he Hawaii Police Department recognizes that the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance."
Tucker, by the way, claims he was across the street from the police action at the time he was taking the pictures.
While it should be noted that anyone can take photos of police from a safe distance in a public place, the issue that seems to have captivated the blogs is the twofold question of whether Tucker, in covering an event is, in fact a "reporter" and does it matter if he is when it comes to his right to photograph the police from a "safe distance"?
And, are bloggers who report on things as reporters... and, assuming the answer is yes, does than make the blogger who reports a journalist?
While there are professional journalist organizations no serious journalists suggest that there should be any official credentialing restriction of who is and isn't a journalist. Not only is it a question of what the requirements would be and who would set them but the first amendment pretty much guarantees the freedom from government interference in reporting.
The fact is that the act of reporting makes a reporter- something that more and more reporters' "shield laws" recognize, including ours in Hawai`i. And while some may quibble over whether someone who simply sits in their underwear and pontificates is reporting anything, Tucker, by going to an event, taking photos and writing it up for public consumption is certainly a reporter, even though he himself had at times seemed torn as to whether to call himself one.
Professional journalist Tiffany Edwards Hunt at her Big Island Chronicle site says it isn't as much whether Tucker was reporting as it was whether he was acting as a reporter should in a situation like that. She wrote that:
Damon’s greatest mistake in this story is not identifying himself as soon as the police officer told him to stop taking pictures.
At that point he should have said, “my name is Damon Tucker and I maintain a blog. Where can I stand to continue taking photographs?” (He didn’t identify himself until after he was hand-cuffed.)
Damon will likely monetarily gain from this, and hopefully us media professionals can asset some kind of protocol for journalists and residents who act like journalists. But it is definitely time for police and prosecutors to get more sophisticated about dealing with the public.
Slamming people to the ground when you don’t want them taking photographs?! Come on. The County of Hawaii will have to pay dearly for that sort of heavy handedness.
And Damon are you ready to refer to yourself as a media professional yet?
Hunt's queries may get to the crux of the matter- that one can be a reporter without being a journalist, especially in an age of the "new media" where "citizen journalists" abound.
The fact is that while many professional journalists point to the "responsibilities" that go with the "rights" conferred on journalists it's a matter of debate what those responsibilities are and whether in fact there are any at all.
Surely Julian Assange of Wikileaks would argue there are few if any responsibilities. That's why many professionals argue he is not a journalist.
But in the case of Tucker and others who engage in the act of reporting the question is what kind of responsibilities do they have if they are denied the special privileges that journalists are afforded by government officials, especially police.
Hunt argues that Tucker should have identified himself. But would that have made a difference? She also noted that:
I too agree that we the public have a right to take photographs. But we also need to speak up and assert that right when an officer tries to fell us to stop taking photos. We are to ask where police want us to stand in order to not hinder their operations.
If police were sophisticated they would have their officers trained on dealing with the media or media posers who post footage on their blogs, Facebook or YouTube. Next time the police officer will detect the photographer / picture taker to the “staging area” and call in the PIO… That’s how it is done elsewhere.
Well, maybe, in a perfect world but the problem is that there is a history of disrespect for "bloggers" and even reporters and journalists who aren't employed by the "right" media on the Big Island. Apparently, as on Kaua`i, the HIPD does not even issue "press passes" any more which, as we noted yesterday, are- or were- used to allow reporters behind police lines.
And if they did they probably wouldn't issue one to Tucker.
In addition, if "news" happens to "break out" unexpectedly and a reporter engaged in covering another event is standing there with a camera- as apparently happened Friday- should they have to stop and chance missing "the shot" to ask where to go to take a picture of it, especially if they are a safe distance from the disturbance?
The fact is that we would not capitulate to the protocol that Hunt described due to the potential for abuse on the part of the police. Because it is the police who are requesting a privilege in asking that someone voluntarily suspend their right to take photographs of police (in a public place from a safe distance). With the history of abuse of that privilege, both here and across the mainland, it makes that request one that can't be ethically granted by a journalist, reporter or anyone else.
It appears this story has legs. And, as Larry Geller at Disappeared News wrote Sunday, related stories are being repeated across the county with increasing frequency lately.
One more note- among the comments on Hunt's stories is a discussion of the fact that there are video cameras all over the town of Pahoa- where the incident took place- due to the police's "weed and seed" program there.
Unless and until the rights of not just reporters but all citizens are respected by authorities, credentialing journalists and burdening them with rules of engagement will have to wait for a mutual respect that, we predict, will be a long time coming.
The headlines alone presaged the coverage with Hawai`i News Now (HNN)- the name for the combined TV news programs on KGMB, KHNL and KFVE- reporting "Big Island blogger claims police brutality" and the Big Island's much reviled Hawai`i Tribune-Herald merely noting that "Man alleges police assault."
While the HNN coverage stresses that Tucker's blog "inform(s) Big Island residents and promotes Hawaii" and that he was taking photographs while covering an event, the HTH piece gets 634 words into the piece to merely note that Tucker "operates an Internet blog about the Big Island" and makes no connection between his presence at the scene and his work.
The HTH piece does identify the arresting officer- whom Tucker identified as the officer who allegedly beat him- as James Waiamau.
Both stories include a statement from Hawaii County Assistant Police Chief Henry Tavares refusing to make any "additional statement" other than to note that Tucker was arrested for obstructing government operations and, more importantly, that "(t)he Hawaii Police Department recognizes that the media and the public have every right to photograph police activity in a public place from a safe distance."
Tucker, by the way, claims he was across the street from the police action at the time he was taking the pictures.
While it should be noted that anyone can take photos of police from a safe distance in a public place, the issue that seems to have captivated the blogs is the twofold question of whether Tucker, in covering an event is, in fact a "reporter" and does it matter if he is when it comes to his right to photograph the police from a "safe distance"?
And, are bloggers who report on things as reporters... and, assuming the answer is yes, does than make the blogger who reports a journalist?
While there are professional journalist organizations no serious journalists suggest that there should be any official credentialing restriction of who is and isn't a journalist. Not only is it a question of what the requirements would be and who would set them but the first amendment pretty much guarantees the freedom from government interference in reporting.
The fact is that the act of reporting makes a reporter- something that more and more reporters' "shield laws" recognize, including ours in Hawai`i. And while some may quibble over whether someone who simply sits in their underwear and pontificates is reporting anything, Tucker, by going to an event, taking photos and writing it up for public consumption is certainly a reporter, even though he himself had at times seemed torn as to whether to call himself one.
Professional journalist Tiffany Edwards Hunt at her Big Island Chronicle site says it isn't as much whether Tucker was reporting as it was whether he was acting as a reporter should in a situation like that. She wrote that:
Damon’s greatest mistake in this story is not identifying himself as soon as the police officer told him to stop taking pictures.
At that point he should have said, “my name is Damon Tucker and I maintain a blog. Where can I stand to continue taking photographs?” (He didn’t identify himself until after he was hand-cuffed.)
Damon will likely monetarily gain from this, and hopefully us media professionals can asset some kind of protocol for journalists and residents who act like journalists. But it is definitely time for police and prosecutors to get more sophisticated about dealing with the public.
Slamming people to the ground when you don’t want them taking photographs?! Come on. The County of Hawaii will have to pay dearly for that sort of heavy handedness.
And Damon are you ready to refer to yourself as a media professional yet?
Hunt's queries may get to the crux of the matter- that one can be a reporter without being a journalist, especially in an age of the "new media" where "citizen journalists" abound.
The fact is that while many professional journalists point to the "responsibilities" that go with the "rights" conferred on journalists it's a matter of debate what those responsibilities are and whether in fact there are any at all.
Surely Julian Assange of Wikileaks would argue there are few if any responsibilities. That's why many professionals argue he is not a journalist.
But in the case of Tucker and others who engage in the act of reporting the question is what kind of responsibilities do they have if they are denied the special privileges that journalists are afforded by government officials, especially police.
Hunt argues that Tucker should have identified himself. But would that have made a difference? She also noted that:
I too agree that we the public have a right to take photographs. But we also need to speak up and assert that right when an officer tries to fell us to stop taking photos. We are to ask where police want us to stand in order to not hinder their operations.
If police were sophisticated they would have their officers trained on dealing with the media or media posers who post footage on their blogs, Facebook or YouTube. Next time the police officer will detect the photographer / picture taker to the “staging area” and call in the PIO… That’s how it is done elsewhere.
Well, maybe, in a perfect world but the problem is that there is a history of disrespect for "bloggers" and even reporters and journalists who aren't employed by the "right" media on the Big Island. Apparently, as on Kaua`i, the HIPD does not even issue "press passes" any more which, as we noted yesterday, are- or were- used to allow reporters behind police lines.
And if they did they probably wouldn't issue one to Tucker.
In addition, if "news" happens to "break out" unexpectedly and a reporter engaged in covering another event is standing there with a camera- as apparently happened Friday- should they have to stop and chance missing "the shot" to ask where to go to take a picture of it, especially if they are a safe distance from the disturbance?
The fact is that we would not capitulate to the protocol that Hunt described due to the potential for abuse on the part of the police. Because it is the police who are requesting a privilege in asking that someone voluntarily suspend their right to take photographs of police (in a public place from a safe distance). With the history of abuse of that privilege, both here and across the mainland, it makes that request one that can't be ethically granted by a journalist, reporter or anyone else.
It appears this story has legs. And, as Larry Geller at Disappeared News wrote Sunday, related stories are being repeated across the county with increasing frequency lately.
One more note- among the comments on Hunt's stories is a discussion of the fact that there are video cameras all over the town of Pahoa- where the incident took place- due to the police's "weed and seed" program there.
Unless and until the rights of not just reporters but all citizens are respected by authorities, credentialing journalists and burdening them with rules of engagement will have to wait for a mutual respect that, we predict, will be a long time coming.
Monday, August 8, 2011
(PNN) TUCKER SAY HE WAS FILMING A FIGHT FROM ACROSS THE STREET WHEN BEATEN, ARRESTED BY COPS
(PNN) -- Aug 8 -- Damon Tucker, the reporter/blogger who says he was severely beaten by Hawai`i Island police Friday night. says he was across the street taking picture of an altercation between two women when he was "blindsided and taken down" and then arrested by a Hawai`i Police Department (HPD) officer.
In an email response to PNN inquiries Tucker said that "I was taking pictures of folks leaving a concert a fight broke out (sic)... people were breaking things up... cops moved in and I was across the street taking pictures of it all.
Tucker says that he had left the venue where he was covering a "Red Eye Blind" concert in Pahoa when "(o)ne cop came over to tell me to put the camera down... so I complied... he left... 15-20 seconds later I started filming again and I got blindsided and taken down."
He said it was a younger officer who originally asked him to stop filming and a much bigger and veteran one who "roughed me up"- the latter being the same officer who arrested, booked and processed him at the police station,
Tucker, who is well known in Pahoa, says he was wearing a shirt with his name on it in the form of his twitter address and tried to identify himself to the officer whom he says accosted and arrested him.
"I tried to tell the officer who I was... he would have none of it" Tucker said in the email. "(W)hen we were at the station he asked if I had an official 'Reporters Badge' or something to that effect and I said no... I run local blogs and I'm a well known blogger throughout all of Hawaii."
There is no state or national "certification" for who is or isn't a reporter or journalist although some local police departments do issue "press passes," usually solely in order to allow reporters inside police lines, but not to confer any first amendment "freedom of the press" rights, which are federally protected and not "conferred" by police.
Tucker says he started filming because a fight had broken out outside the club.
"Two girls were fighting," he wrote, and "from what I have now heard... one girl got hit with a bottle. I was leaving the club and heard the commotion and turned around and started to film from my iPhone, at least one of the girls I saw at the station."
Apparently Tucker was not in close proximity to the police action and was within his constitutional rights to film from a public sidewalk whether he was a "reporter" or not.
He described what happened after he was beaten.
"I was in cuffs outside the club for about 30 minutes while the cops continued to diffuse the more dangerous situation. After that situation was diffused they brought me down to the police station... where the younger officer had to look in a book to find something to charge me with. At about 45 minutes into the booking... I asked if I could use the bathroom... officer said sure... empty your pockets... and then through(sic) me into a jail cell with no cot or anything for nearly 45 minutes. I was then released on my own PR (sic) given the summons I posted on my blog and left with the assistance of an officer on duty who dropped me off close enough to my house so that I could have a cigarette on the way home and not startle everyone in the neighborhood or shame folks by me being brought home by a police officer at 2:00 in the morning."
In addition to the gruesome picture that Tucker posted on his blog, Reporter Tiffany Edward Hunt also took pictures of Tucker and posted them at her "Big Island Chronicle." site.
She also posted an "Open letter to Police Chief Harry Kubojiri" on Saturday asking for "a statement regarding Damon Tucker’s account of police brutality for taking photos in Pahoa last night," which she says was emailed to the chief, a spokeswoman for the police department and the mayor’s office.
On Sunday Tucker posted pictures of what he said were the bloody, dirt-caked clothing he was wearing during the incident.
The email to PNN was also sent to a national clearinghouse web site called "Photography Isn't A Crime," which documents incidents of harassment by police and others of both reporters and citizens for legally taking picture in public places. The web site says its purpose is to "educate everyone about the rights and responsibilities of photographers."
This is not Tucker's first run-in with police while covering news and taking photos. On Christmas Eve, 2008 Tucker was investigating complaints of violations of the American with Disabilities Act at Pahoa Post Office when a HPD officer threatened him and forced him to delete pictures Tucker had taken of the parking lot and the officer.
Tucker has said he will be seeking legal counsel today and filing a lawsuit.
In an email response to PNN inquiries Tucker said that "I was taking pictures of folks leaving a concert a fight broke out (sic)... people were breaking things up... cops moved in and I was across the street taking pictures of it all.
Tucker says that he had left the venue where he was covering a "Red Eye Blind" concert in Pahoa when "(o)ne cop came over to tell me to put the camera down... so I complied... he left... 15-20 seconds later I started filming again and I got blindsided and taken down."
He said it was a younger officer who originally asked him to stop filming and a much bigger and veteran one who "roughed me up"- the latter being the same officer who arrested, booked and processed him at the police station,
Tucker, who is well known in Pahoa, says he was wearing a shirt with his name on it in the form of his twitter address and tried to identify himself to the officer whom he says accosted and arrested him.
"I tried to tell the officer who I was... he would have none of it" Tucker said in the email. "(W)hen we were at the station he asked if I had an official 'Reporters Badge' or something to that effect and I said no... I run local blogs and I'm a well known blogger throughout all of Hawaii."
There is no state or national "certification" for who is or isn't a reporter or journalist although some local police departments do issue "press passes," usually solely in order to allow reporters inside police lines, but not to confer any first amendment "freedom of the press" rights, which are federally protected and not "conferred" by police.
Tucker says he started filming because a fight had broken out outside the club.
"Two girls were fighting," he wrote, and "from what I have now heard... one girl got hit with a bottle. I was leaving the club and heard the commotion and turned around and started to film from my iPhone, at least one of the girls I saw at the station."
Apparently Tucker was not in close proximity to the police action and was within his constitutional rights to film from a public sidewalk whether he was a "reporter" or not.
He described what happened after he was beaten.
"I was in cuffs outside the club for about 30 minutes while the cops continued to diffuse the more dangerous situation. After that situation was diffused they brought me down to the police station... where the younger officer had to look in a book to find something to charge me with. At about 45 minutes into the booking... I asked if I could use the bathroom... officer said sure... empty your pockets... and then through(sic) me into a jail cell with no cot or anything for nearly 45 minutes. I was then released on my own PR (sic) given the summons I posted on my blog and left with the assistance of an officer on duty who dropped me off close enough to my house so that I could have a cigarette on the way home and not startle everyone in the neighborhood or shame folks by me being brought home by a police officer at 2:00 in the morning."
In addition to the gruesome picture that Tucker posted on his blog, Reporter Tiffany Edward Hunt also took pictures of Tucker and posted them at her "Big Island Chronicle." site.
She also posted an "Open letter to Police Chief Harry Kubojiri" on Saturday asking for "a statement regarding Damon Tucker’s account of police brutality for taking photos in Pahoa last night," which she says was emailed to the chief, a spokeswoman for the police department and the mayor’s office.
On Sunday Tucker posted pictures of what he said were the bloody, dirt-caked clothing he was wearing during the incident.
The email to PNN was also sent to a national clearinghouse web site called "Photography Isn't A Crime," which documents incidents of harassment by police and others of both reporters and citizens for legally taking picture in public places. The web site says its purpose is to "educate everyone about the rights and responsibilities of photographers."
This is not Tucker's first run-in with police while covering news and taking photos. On Christmas Eve, 2008 Tucker was investigating complaints of violations of the American with Disabilities Act at Pahoa Post Office when a HPD officer threatened him and forced him to delete pictures Tucker had taken of the parking lot and the officer.
Tucker has said he will be seeking legal counsel today and filing a lawsuit.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
(PNN) COPS BEAT, ARREST REPORTER FOR TAKING PHOTOS OUTSIDE CONCERT IN PAHOA
(PNN) COPS BEAT, ARREST REPORTER FOR TAKING PHOTOS OUTSIDE CONCERT IN PAHOA
(PNN) -- Aug 7 -- Big Island reporter and blogger Damon Tucker was severely beaten by police and arrested for "hindering a government operation" Friday night while taking pictures from a public sidewalk outside a concert he was covering in Pahoa.
According to a post on his popular Damon Tucker's Blog "the police have now confiscated my camera and cell phone as well as roughing me up and locking me up in a police detention holding cell for taking video and pictures of them in action from the sidewalk in front of Pahoa Village Cafe."
Seven pictures posted yesterday, taken by Tucker's wife upon his return from the emergency room, show apparent multiple deep abrasions scraps and bruises on all of his extremities and torso.Tucker says his right shoulder is damaged, he is limping on his left leg and is in severe pain.
He says that he took the pictures on his cell phone which was confiscated by police as "evidence," as was his camera which he was not using.
Tucker wrote that he will "be filing a lawsuit against the Hawaii County Police department soon for a few things."
In his Friday night post Tucker wrote that:
People are allowed to take pictures and videos of police officers w/out getting roughed up. I’m battered, bruised and bloody from an officer slamming on the sidewalk… Thankfully I have eyewitnesses that will come forward to say what happened.
My wife took pictures shortly after I was released from jail tonight…
I just want my cell phone back and camera back…. I was rolling video when the officer took me down and they took my cell phone and camera from me for “Evidence”.
This is not Tucker's first run-in with police while covering news and taking photos. On Christmas Eve, 2008 Tucker was investigating complaints of violations of the American with Disabilities Act at Pahoa Post Office when a HPD officer threatened him and forced him to delete pictures Tucker had taken of the parking lot and the officer.
Tucker declined further comment for now saying he is weighing his options and will post again about the incident on his blog. He is due to appear in court on September 8.
(PNN) -- Aug 7 -- Big Island reporter and blogger Damon Tucker was severely beaten by police and arrested for "hindering a government operation" Friday night while taking pictures from a public sidewalk outside a concert he was covering in Pahoa.
According to a post on his popular Damon Tucker's Blog "the police have now confiscated my camera and cell phone as well as roughing me up and locking me up in a police detention holding cell for taking video and pictures of them in action from the sidewalk in front of Pahoa Village Cafe."
Seven pictures posted yesterday, taken by Tucker's wife upon his return from the emergency room, show apparent multiple deep abrasions scraps and bruises on all of his extremities and torso.Tucker says his right shoulder is damaged, he is limping on his left leg and is in severe pain.
He says that he took the pictures on his cell phone which was confiscated by police as "evidence," as was his camera which he was not using.
Tucker wrote that he will "be filing a lawsuit against the Hawaii County Police department soon for a few things."
In his Friday night post Tucker wrote that:
People are allowed to take pictures and videos of police officers w/out getting roughed up. I’m battered, bruised and bloody from an officer slamming on the sidewalk… Thankfully I have eyewitnesses that will come forward to say what happened.
My wife took pictures shortly after I was released from jail tonight…
I just want my cell phone back and camera back…. I was rolling video when the officer took me down and they took my cell phone and camera from me for “Evidence”.
This is not Tucker's first run-in with police while covering news and taking photos. On Christmas Eve, 2008 Tucker was investigating complaints of violations of the American with Disabilities Act at Pahoa Post Office when a HPD officer threatened him and forced him to delete pictures Tucker had taken of the parking lot and the officer.
Tucker declined further comment for now saying he is weighing his options and will post again about the incident on his blog. He is due to appear in court on September 8.
Monday, December 27, 2010
MY OH MY WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY
MY OH MY WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY: The oldest trick in the shyster book is the standard “cease and desist” letter.
So when Big Island blogger Damon Tucker emailed us over the weekend that he’d gotten one from Midland, Texas attorney Robert K. Whitt after he posted a story on December 8 quoting two co-owners of a “zip-line” company- replete with pictures of rusty cables- there saying that,
the (other) owner of The Umauma Experience (Cleo Carlile) installed substandard cable on the course and it started to fail…It has worn down from round to flat and then the tension broke the cable as it became too thin. I immediately closed down lines 1, 2, and 4. The owner will replace the cable that guests ride on, but has refused to replace the guy wires which hold the whole thing up, platforms etc.
We suggested that he
tell him to go f**k himself and take it up with the people who said it. All you did was quote them. These kinds of letters are bluffs. They don't want a lawsuit- all that would do is put the guy's quote in the mainstream media.
suggesting he send a reply to the effect that he would
"welcome a lawsuit where we can air the issue of the safety of your ziplines before the community and in the mainstream press."
The letter demanded that Damon essentially put the toothpaste back in the tube with retractions and deletions.
But while the mainstream press hasn’t picked up the story yet this morning journalist and blogger Ian Lind went to town on the story saying
Attorney Whitt also provided an official-looking “Certificate of Inspection” issued by “Zipline Canopy Creations” and signed by “Julianne Lester”, apparently certifying that the ziplines have recently passed a “safety inspection”.
According to state business registration records, Lester is the registered agent for Kauai-based Zipline Canopy Creations, which was registered to do business in August 2010, and the president of Just Live, Inc., a recreation company also based on Kauai.
Apparently safety of the unregulated zip line business is sort of like getting a “deal” at a car dealership with rotating salespersons playing the part “manager” for the others to give the illusion of a discount- in this case zipline companies signing “Certificates of Inspection" for each other.
Ian also noted that
(a) quick search yesterday left me with the impression that zipline engineering and safety are largely unregulated by the state or counties, beyond the need to get routine building permits, so the status of this “certificate of inspection” is seems questionable.
And it didn’t end there.
After Ian’s post Disappeared News’ Larry Geller picked up the ball and ran with it regarding how these ziplines
cry out for regulatory control. Anything with allegedly rusty cables that could be described by Wikipedia as a “death slide” ought to catch the interest of state or local government you’d think.
Larry also noted that
Damon and Ian have provided a public service by posting information on their findings. At least those who Google for information on ziplines in Hawaii will possibly hit one of the articles.
But more important than those who google “ziplines in Hawai`i” might be those who google “The Umauma Experience” or “Midland, Texas attorney Robert K. Whitt.”
Now they’ll get at least four “hits.”
With the advent of “bloggers” the question is whether, when they engage in the act of reporting, they are de facto journalists. While many of the more stogy practitioners may argue for all sorts of self-serving and exclusionary rules for what a journalist is or isn’t, there’s still “no license required. ”
In fact, after much debate our own Hawai`i state reporters’ “shield law” essentially defines a reporter by the act of reporting- something bloggers do every day whether, like Ian they consider themselves journalists or, like Damon and Larry, not.
In this case Damon simply reported on the situation, citing and naming his source. Whether or not “The Umauma Experience” is actually safe or not his report is true in that the story is that two co-owners are alleging they are not safe.
And in libel cases, truth is the ultimate defense.
But to compound the report, rather than try to show that his operation is safe, Carlile chose to try to put the Genie back into the bottle and squelch the information, leading people to believe that, despite the industry’s claims, safety may not be their primary concern.
Not only that but, should they proceed with the lawsuit it will the become open season for the corporate press whose lawyers normally have their hair on fire over reporting anything of this nature unless and until a suit is filed.
The two-fold lesson here is that 1) the best way to make sure that information you wish would just “go away” gets out to a wider audience than the original report could is to try to squelch it and 2) if you file a lawsuit, even more people will know of the claim and even of you win, all people will remember is the allegation.
The other lesson may be that, even if you’re from Texas, don’t mess with Hawai`i bloggers.
So when Big Island blogger Damon Tucker emailed us over the weekend that he’d gotten one from Midland, Texas attorney Robert K. Whitt after he posted a story on December 8 quoting two co-owners of a “zip-line” company- replete with pictures of rusty cables- there saying that,
the (other) owner of The Umauma Experience (Cleo Carlile) installed substandard cable on the course and it started to fail…It has worn down from round to flat and then the tension broke the cable as it became too thin. I immediately closed down lines 1, 2, and 4. The owner will replace the cable that guests ride on, but has refused to replace the guy wires which hold the whole thing up, platforms etc.
We suggested that he
tell him to go f**k himself and take it up with the people who said it. All you did was quote them. These kinds of letters are bluffs. They don't want a lawsuit- all that would do is put the guy's quote in the mainstream media.
suggesting he send a reply to the effect that he would
"welcome a lawsuit where we can air the issue of the safety of your ziplines before the community and in the mainstream press."
The letter demanded that Damon essentially put the toothpaste back in the tube with retractions and deletions.
But while the mainstream press hasn’t picked up the story yet this morning journalist and blogger Ian Lind went to town on the story saying
Attorney Whitt also provided an official-looking “Certificate of Inspection” issued by “Zipline Canopy Creations” and signed by “Julianne Lester”, apparently certifying that the ziplines have recently passed a “safety inspection”.
According to state business registration records, Lester is the registered agent for Kauai-based Zipline Canopy Creations, which was registered to do business in August 2010, and the president of Just Live, Inc., a recreation company also based on Kauai.
Apparently safety of the unregulated zip line business is sort of like getting a “deal” at a car dealership with rotating salespersons playing the part “manager” for the others to give the illusion of a discount- in this case zipline companies signing “Certificates of Inspection" for each other.
Ian also noted that
(a) quick search yesterday left me with the impression that zipline engineering and safety are largely unregulated by the state or counties, beyond the need to get routine building permits, so the status of this “certificate of inspection” is seems questionable.
And it didn’t end there.
After Ian’s post Disappeared News’ Larry Geller picked up the ball and ran with it regarding how these ziplines
cry out for regulatory control. Anything with allegedly rusty cables that could be described by Wikipedia as a “death slide” ought to catch the interest of state or local government you’d think.
Larry also noted that
Damon and Ian have provided a public service by posting information on their findings. At least those who Google for information on ziplines in Hawaii will possibly hit one of the articles.
But more important than those who google “ziplines in Hawai`i” might be those who google “The Umauma Experience” or “Midland, Texas attorney Robert K. Whitt.”
Now they’ll get at least four “hits.”
With the advent of “bloggers” the question is whether, when they engage in the act of reporting, they are de facto journalists. While many of the more stogy practitioners may argue for all sorts of self-serving and exclusionary rules for what a journalist is or isn’t, there’s still “no license required. ”
In fact, after much debate our own Hawai`i state reporters’ “shield law” essentially defines a reporter by the act of reporting- something bloggers do every day whether, like Ian they consider themselves journalists or, like Damon and Larry, not.
In this case Damon simply reported on the situation, citing and naming his source. Whether or not “The Umauma Experience” is actually safe or not his report is true in that the story is that two co-owners are alleging they are not safe.
And in libel cases, truth is the ultimate defense.
But to compound the report, rather than try to show that his operation is safe, Carlile chose to try to put the Genie back into the bottle and squelch the information, leading people to believe that, despite the industry’s claims, safety may not be their primary concern.
Not only that but, should they proceed with the lawsuit it will the become open season for the corporate press whose lawyers normally have their hair on fire over reporting anything of this nature unless and until a suit is filed.
The two-fold lesson here is that 1) the best way to make sure that information you wish would just “go away” gets out to a wider audience than the original report could is to try to squelch it and 2) if you file a lawsuit, even more people will know of the claim and even of you win, all people will remember is the allegation.
The other lesson may be that, even if you’re from Texas, don’t mess with Hawai`i bloggers.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
THEFT, SCHMEFT
THEFT, SCHMEFT: The plagiarism- as we depicted it yesterday- of blogger Charley Foster’s summarization of a lawsuit over the Hapa Trail in Koloa by local newspaper reporter Paul Curtis, elicited a mysterious comment by prolific Big Island blogger Damon Tucker (who also uses the “P” word in a post today) which read “Tim Ryan?” and included this link.
It leads to a little know discussion page of the “go to” information repository Wikipedia and a January 2006 article entitled “Wikipedia editors expose journalist's plagiarism.”
Michael Snow writes:
Sleuthing Wikipedia editors have found several cases of apparent plagiarism over the past two years by Tim Ryan, a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. It began with the discovery of an article last month containing language that closely matched a Wikipedia article, and more investigation found earlier articles that seemed to borrow from additional sources without attribution.
In response to these reports, the Star-Bulletin acknowledged the situation by adding corrections or editor's notes to some of the articles. Star-Bulletin Editor Frank Bridgewater took these actions after investigating the incident and also met with the newspaper's publisher, Dennis Francis, about the situation. However, Bridgewater said last week that he considered the issue of whether any action would be taken against Ryan "a confidential personnel matter."
Apparently Ryan was a serial plagiarist who not only lifted Wikipedia sections unattributed- that essentially being the difference between a “fair use” reference and plagiarism- but also passages from the Sacramento Bee newspaper and the NPR radio program All Things Considered, according to Snow.
But you’d think they’d have learned, especially Bridgewater who continued on at the new Star-Advertiser when the Star-Bulletin “bought out” the bigger and stronger Advertiser.
While we’ve reserved a special place in journalism purgatory for much of what’s presented by the current crop of people at our local newspaper they do one thing that Bridgewater’s Star(ved for real news) Advertiser apparently refuses to do- attribute their press release rewrites.
One of the staples of a daily “newspaper of record” is the rewritten press release, especially those emanating from local and state government public information offices.
Editors, usually those on the “night shift” of larger papers, avoid plopping the copy directly in their news hole- the place left for news when the predetermined advertising is laid out.
In order to avoid charges of plagiarism they re-write the releases shifting the sentence constructions and using other wordsmithing techniques.
But while you’ll always find the words “according to a county release” or another appropriate credit in our local Kaua`i newspaper, when the identical release is rewritten in the Honolulu paper that attribution is never to be found.
Plagiarism has become a serious problem at many publications of late. The NY Times Jason Blair case and other have spurred policies that are designed to eliminate not just the lack of attribution but much more serious lapses.
Are we really that far removed from the mainland that the Honolulu daily thinks it doesn’t have to join the 21st century when it comes to accuracy and full disclosure?
Apparently the answer is yes, as long as the notoriously thin-skinned throwback Bridgewater is in charge.
It leads to a little know discussion page of the “go to” information repository Wikipedia and a January 2006 article entitled “Wikipedia editors expose journalist's plagiarism.”
Michael Snow writes:
Sleuthing Wikipedia editors have found several cases of apparent plagiarism over the past two years by Tim Ryan, a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. It began with the discovery of an article last month containing language that closely matched a Wikipedia article, and more investigation found earlier articles that seemed to borrow from additional sources without attribution.
In response to these reports, the Star-Bulletin acknowledged the situation by adding corrections or editor's notes to some of the articles. Star-Bulletin Editor Frank Bridgewater took these actions after investigating the incident and also met with the newspaper's publisher, Dennis Francis, about the situation. However, Bridgewater said last week that he considered the issue of whether any action would be taken against Ryan "a confidential personnel matter."
Apparently Ryan was a serial plagiarist who not only lifted Wikipedia sections unattributed- that essentially being the difference between a “fair use” reference and plagiarism- but also passages from the Sacramento Bee newspaper and the NPR radio program All Things Considered, according to Snow.
But you’d think they’d have learned, especially Bridgewater who continued on at the new Star-Advertiser when the Star-Bulletin “bought out” the bigger and stronger Advertiser.
While we’ve reserved a special place in journalism purgatory for much of what’s presented by the current crop of people at our local newspaper they do one thing that Bridgewater’s Star(ved for real news) Advertiser apparently refuses to do- attribute their press release rewrites.
One of the staples of a daily “newspaper of record” is the rewritten press release, especially those emanating from local and state government public information offices.
Editors, usually those on the “night shift” of larger papers, avoid plopping the copy directly in their news hole- the place left for news when the predetermined advertising is laid out.
In order to avoid charges of plagiarism they re-write the releases shifting the sentence constructions and using other wordsmithing techniques.
But while you’ll always find the words “according to a county release” or another appropriate credit in our local Kaua`i newspaper, when the identical release is rewritten in the Honolulu paper that attribution is never to be found.
Plagiarism has become a serious problem at many publications of late. The NY Times Jason Blair case and other have spurred policies that are designed to eliminate not just the lack of attribution but much more serious lapses.
Are we really that far removed from the mainland that the Honolulu daily thinks it doesn’t have to join the 21st century when it comes to accuracy and full disclosure?
Apparently the answer is yes, as long as the notoriously thin-skinned throwback Bridgewater is in charge.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
PARADISE LOST
PARADISE LOST: We don’t do this often but it’s a slow news time as far as county government is concerned so we were thumbing through some off island blogs today and came across a series of posts from prolific Big Island blogger Damon Tucker containing family pictures and narratives of Yap in Micronesia from 1965-7.
As Tucker’s intro says,
In 1961, my mother, Su Rowe Tucker, moved to Pahala, on the Big Island where her father and mother (My Grandparents) Dr. P.E. (Ted) Rowe and Elizabeth (Betty) Rowe were the Physician/Surgeon for the private Pahala Hospital run by C. Brewer Corp.
In 1965, Dr. Rowe (my grandfather) was hired for two years by the US Federal Government to run the Yap Hospital from 1965 to 1967. In 1966, my mom and my two uncles, Bob and Mike Rowe, went to visit them in Yap.
The posts evoke mixed feelings showing an indigenous culture and a Michener-like juxtaposition with the fish-out-of-water westerners.
It’s a simple lifestyle that a short 40-plus years ago was apparently reminiscent of Hawai`i in the late 18th and early 19th century and it’s hard not to feel both wistful and angry that neither exists anymore today.
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Who
Part III: Moms Tale of Arrival
Part IV: A Yapese Party
Part V: The Homes and Structures of Yap
Part VI: Quotes from the Diary (Part A) – “I managed to get away from Antonio…“
Part VII: Quotest from the Diary (Part B) - “… Now our soda is out of the refrigerator and the baby is in it.”
As Tucker’s intro says,
In 1961, my mother, Su Rowe Tucker, moved to Pahala, on the Big Island where her father and mother (My Grandparents) Dr. P.E. (Ted) Rowe and Elizabeth (Betty) Rowe were the Physician/Surgeon for the private Pahala Hospital run by C. Brewer Corp.
In 1965, Dr. Rowe (my grandfather) was hired for two years by the US Federal Government to run the Yap Hospital from 1965 to 1967. In 1966, my mom and my two uncles, Bob and Mike Rowe, went to visit them in Yap.
The posts evoke mixed feelings showing an indigenous culture and a Michener-like juxtaposition with the fish-out-of-water westerners.
It’s a simple lifestyle that a short 40-plus years ago was apparently reminiscent of Hawai`i in the late 18th and early 19th century and it’s hard not to feel both wistful and angry that neither exists anymore today.
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Who
Part III: Moms Tale of Arrival
Part IV: A Yapese Party
Part V: The Homes and Structures of Yap
Part VI: Quotes from the Diary (Part A) – “I managed to get away from Antonio…“
Part VII: Quotest from the Diary (Part B) - “… Now our soda is out of the refrigerator and the baby is in it.”
Thursday, March 12, 2009
ONE SICK PUPPY
ONE SICK PUPPY: A couple of week’s back we twice reported on an incident on the Big Island (BI) where blogger Damon Tucker and other bloggers were “blackballed” by BI Department of Public Works spokesperson Noelani Whittington who, according to the Hawai`i Tribune Herald.(HTH) had written a detailed memo to department personnel telling them not to talk to “citizen journalists” and to stop bloggers from filming road crews.
But the HTH article apparently didn’t do the memo justice.
Blogger Aaron Stene, another of the blackballed bloggers named in the memo, made a request for and received a copy of the actual memo and it’s pretty astounding
The memo reveals a type of paranoia and need for control that is the product of a sick mind and one would think that just the fact that she wrote it down and distributed it would make her position with the county in jeopardy..
Not that she needs to worry about employment- a mind like that would be a valuable asset working in the nuclear power or GMO industry, perhaps defending “clean coal” or something.
Whittington, who continued to BS the reporter after being caught, apparently couldn’t even keep straight which BI bloggers she wanted to ban, even including poor Doug White at Poinography who lives in Honolulu.
The BI bloggers as a group are nothing if not for the most part generally timid and submissive and one who identifies himself only as “bknykanaka”.talked to her and reports
Ok, so the story according to Noelani is that this directive was more of a proposal- that was written in haste and she apologized for it. Although she kind of avoided the question as to WHY it was written. Apparently, it was written in November but died and was never enforced. Which would make sense because it wasn’t approved by anyone higher than Noelani. The media policy was shuffled through department heads- but was never formally adopted.
But what “makes sense” is that Whittington is good at snow jobs because she still holds her job and no one on the BI seems inclined to push too hard to change that.
You can read Damon’s two responses as well as Aaron’s along with Whittington’s rant which is posted below.
Tucker’s rants are quite amusing albeit probably unintentionally- poor beleaguered Damon just wants everyone to love him but keeps finding out how unfettered distribution of information is the bane of bureaucrats like Whittington.
Whittington’s rant is priceless and seemingly everyone on the Big Island knows that the policy is still in effect despite the fact that, as we mentioned in our report, former journalist blogger Hunter Bishop who is now the new Mayor Billy Kanoi’s Pubic Information officer claims it isn’t. He promised an investigation as we recall which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.
Here’s the policy.
Policy for procedures for Citizen Journalists
Avoid a citizen journalist?
Citizen journalists are a new breed of bloggers who use the internet to express their opinions about DPW projects. They are not journalists. They write what they think
Blogging reaches 120 million viewers daily.
These individuals are Aaron Stene and Damon Tucker. Their e-mail addresses are aaronstene@hawaiiantel.net or damontucker@yahoo.com
Their blogs are: Kona blog, Poinography, Puna Web, and Hawaii Blog
How do we identify them?
They contact us by e-mail using their e-mail addresses. Rarely do they call us.
They never identify or consider themselves as a “citizen journalist.”
Procedure to handle a Citizen Journalist
1. Stop. Do not give out information.
2. Refer their e-mail inquiries to the Public Information office.
3. Insert this message, “please contact our public information office at 557-6437 or by e-mail at nwhittington@co.hawaii.i.us.”
They will ask for information about:
Palani Road-why the delays? Mamalahoa by-pass-the Coupe case, opening the entire by-pass, Grace Church moving the utility poles and why the delay?
Traffic in Puna, anything about Puna and DPW
Issued: November 16, 2008
————————–
Policy and Procedure for Photographers or Videographers on County property
Procedure for filming at base yards and at road projects
1) Stop them.
2) Ask them to follow you to your office, or to your car
3) Call 557-6437. Public Information will take over from here.
Who should know about this procedure? Supervisors and front desk staff,
Policy
1) Photographers or Videographers must be accompanied by someone from the Public Information office.
2) Public Information will check their credentials and verify their assignment with their respective boss.
3) Public Information limits their access to a specific area and respects the privacy of the staff not to be filmed
4) The photographers are: Baron Sekiya for West Hawaii Today; Will from the Tribune Herald-, Daryl Lee, free-lancer for KITV, KGMB, KHNL, KHON, and The Honolulu Advertiser. Daryl also films for DPW on assignment.
5) NOT PERMITTED is Dave Corrigan for Big Island Video news.com
Internal procedure:
Public Information will:
1) ask the photographer to stop because of privacy issues with staff
2) that prior arrangements are made
3) Inform the division chief of the situation then the DPW director
Issued November 16, 2008
Videographers have a new blog, big island video news.com. Dave Corrigan is the principal behind this operation.
————————-
Remember that media lives for a crisis. They will want to keep it going. Try to make it a one-day story. A crisis throws Public Works into an arena of public opinion, where bloggers, citizen journalists, (referred as social media) and traditional media are the judge and the jury, influencing the readers to form opinions.
Procedure to maintain the crisis:
1. If you or a staff receives the call.
a. Take the information; name affiliation, (who are you with?) best number to call you.
b. What is your deadline?
c. Citizen journalists will not identify themselves. In this case, take their name and e-mail address.
2. Staff refers the message immediately to their division chief.
3. Division chief calls the Director and Public Information Officer (PIO) and provides details of the situation.
4. Division chiefs, (if more than one division is involved) the DPW director, or other department directors, PIO and individuals involved meet to get the facts, discuss situation and agree on the best course of action.
a. Anyone implicated in the situation are not to speak to the media.
5. PIO prepares a statement for the media.
6. A memo may be generated to the staff to inform them of the situation
What’s at stake? Jobs and the reputations of good people are at stake and at the very worst if the situation continues to fester, public opinion could ask for them to step down from their positions. It is humiliating for anyone to read in the paper, that punishment should include firing the individuals. We can at least try to minimize some of the damage by acting swiftly.
Negative behaviors that won’t help Public Works — Arrogance, no concern. ●Blame shifting ●Inconsistency ●Little or no preparation ● minimize the impact. ●No admission of responsibility
Establish trust
Provide advance information.
Ask for input from staff and those involved
Listen carefully.
Demonstrate that you’ve heard, i.e., change your plans.
Stay in touch.
Speak in plain language.
Bring involuntary participants into the decision-making process.
Make public acknowledgement and take responsibility.
Illustrate your credibility:
1. Prepare to talk openly.
2. Reveal what the public should know, even if they don’t ask.
3. Explain problems and changes quickly.
4. Answer all questions, even those that victims wouldn’t think to ask.
5. Cooperate with the traditional and social media, recognizing that employees and the general public have a higher priority.
6. Respect and seek to work with employees and opponents.
The Bottom Line: Act Fast
It is often better to act quickly and make mistakes than to fail to act until it’s too late or the action becomes a meaningless gesture. In fact, solving problems and “winning” in crisis situations is a function of speed, of decision making, of action, of reaction, of collaboration, of swiftly applied common sense. Timidity and hesitation are the parents of defeat.
Far more is lost by refusing to speak to the media than is risked by doing so.
A vacuum of information breeds media hostility and public loss of confidence.
The public trust is affected; and something must be done to remediate the situation.
Communicate in ways that meet community standards
Don’t discuss cause or fault.
But the HTH article apparently didn’t do the memo justice.
Blogger Aaron Stene, another of the blackballed bloggers named in the memo, made a request for and received a copy of the actual memo and it’s pretty astounding
The memo reveals a type of paranoia and need for control that is the product of a sick mind and one would think that just the fact that she wrote it down and distributed it would make her position with the county in jeopardy..
Not that she needs to worry about employment- a mind like that would be a valuable asset working in the nuclear power or GMO industry, perhaps defending “clean coal” or something.
Whittington, who continued to BS the reporter after being caught, apparently couldn’t even keep straight which BI bloggers she wanted to ban, even including poor Doug White at Poinography who lives in Honolulu.
The BI bloggers as a group are nothing if not for the most part generally timid and submissive and one who identifies himself only as “bknykanaka”.talked to her and reports
Ok, so the story according to Noelani is that this directive was more of a proposal- that was written in haste and she apologized for it. Although she kind of avoided the question as to WHY it was written. Apparently, it was written in November but died and was never enforced. Which would make sense because it wasn’t approved by anyone higher than Noelani. The media policy was shuffled through department heads- but was never formally adopted.
But what “makes sense” is that Whittington is good at snow jobs because she still holds her job and no one on the BI seems inclined to push too hard to change that.
You can read Damon’s two responses as well as Aaron’s along with Whittington’s rant which is posted below.
Tucker’s rants are quite amusing albeit probably unintentionally- poor beleaguered Damon just wants everyone to love him but keeps finding out how unfettered distribution of information is the bane of bureaucrats like Whittington.
Whittington’s rant is priceless and seemingly everyone on the Big Island knows that the policy is still in effect despite the fact that, as we mentioned in our report, former journalist blogger Hunter Bishop who is now the new Mayor Billy Kanoi’s Pubic Information officer claims it isn’t. He promised an investigation as we recall which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.
Here’s the policy.
Policy for procedures for Citizen Journalists
Avoid a citizen journalist?
Citizen journalists are a new breed of bloggers who use the internet to express their opinions about DPW projects. They are not journalists. They write what they think
Blogging reaches 120 million viewers daily.
These individuals are Aaron Stene and Damon Tucker. Their e-mail addresses are aaronstene@hawaiiantel.net or damontucker@yahoo.com
Their blogs are: Kona blog, Poinography, Puna Web, and Hawaii Blog
How do we identify them?
They contact us by e-mail using their e-mail addresses. Rarely do they call us.
They never identify or consider themselves as a “citizen journalist.”
Procedure to handle a Citizen Journalist
1. Stop. Do not give out information.
2. Refer their e-mail inquiries to the Public Information office.
3. Insert this message, “please contact our public information office at 557-6437 or by e-mail at nwhittington@co.hawaii.i.us.”
They will ask for information about:
Palani Road-why the delays? Mamalahoa by-pass-the Coupe case, opening the entire by-pass, Grace Church moving the utility poles and why the delay?
Traffic in Puna, anything about Puna and DPW
Issued: November 16, 2008
————————–
Policy and Procedure for Photographers or Videographers on County property
Procedure for filming at base yards and at road projects
1) Stop them.
2) Ask them to follow you to your office, or to your car
3) Call 557-6437. Public Information will take over from here.
Who should know about this procedure? Supervisors and front desk staff,
Policy
1) Photographers or Videographers must be accompanied by someone from the Public Information office.
2) Public Information will check their credentials and verify their assignment with their respective boss.
3) Public Information limits their access to a specific area and respects the privacy of the staff not to be filmed
4) The photographers are: Baron Sekiya for West Hawaii Today; Will from the Tribune Herald-, Daryl Lee, free-lancer for KITV, KGMB, KHNL, KHON, and The Honolulu Advertiser. Daryl also films for DPW on assignment.
5) NOT PERMITTED is Dave Corrigan for Big Island Video news.com
Internal procedure:
Public Information will:
1) ask the photographer to stop because of privacy issues with staff
2) that prior arrangements are made
3) Inform the division chief of the situation then the DPW director
Issued November 16, 2008
Videographers have a new blog, big island video news.com. Dave Corrigan is the principal behind this operation.
————————-
Remember that media lives for a crisis. They will want to keep it going. Try to make it a one-day story. A crisis throws Public Works into an arena of public opinion, where bloggers, citizen journalists, (referred as social media) and traditional media are the judge and the jury, influencing the readers to form opinions.
Procedure to maintain the crisis:
1. If you or a staff receives the call.
a. Take the information; name affiliation, (who are you with?) best number to call you.
b. What is your deadline?
c. Citizen journalists will not identify themselves. In this case, take their name and e-mail address.
2. Staff refers the message immediately to their division chief.
3. Division chief calls the Director and Public Information Officer (PIO) and provides details of the situation.
4. Division chiefs, (if more than one division is involved) the DPW director, or other department directors, PIO and individuals involved meet to get the facts, discuss situation and agree on the best course of action.
a. Anyone implicated in the situation are not to speak to the media.
5. PIO prepares a statement for the media.
6. A memo may be generated to the staff to inform them of the situation
What’s at stake? Jobs and the reputations of good people are at stake and at the very worst if the situation continues to fester, public opinion could ask for them to step down from their positions. It is humiliating for anyone to read in the paper, that punishment should include firing the individuals. We can at least try to minimize some of the damage by acting swiftly.
Negative behaviors that won’t help Public Works — Arrogance, no concern. ●Blame shifting ●Inconsistency ●Little or no preparation ● minimize the impact. ●No admission of responsibility
Establish trust
Provide advance information.
Ask for input from staff and those involved
Listen carefully.
Demonstrate that you’ve heard, i.e., change your plans.
Stay in touch.
Speak in plain language.
Bring involuntary participants into the decision-making process.
Make public acknowledgement and take responsibility.
Illustrate your credibility:
1. Prepare to talk openly.
2. Reveal what the public should know, even if they don’t ask.
3. Explain problems and changes quickly.
4. Answer all questions, even those that victims wouldn’t think to ask.
5. Cooperate with the traditional and social media, recognizing that employees and the general public have a higher priority.
6. Respect and seek to work with employees and opponents.
The Bottom Line: Act Fast
It is often better to act quickly and make mistakes than to fail to act until it’s too late or the action becomes a meaningless gesture. In fact, solving problems and “winning” in crisis situations is a function of speed, of decision making, of action, of reaction, of collaboration, of swiftly applied common sense. Timidity and hesitation are the parents of defeat.
Far more is lost by refusing to speak to the media than is risked by doing so.
A vacuum of information breeds media hostility and public loss of confidence.
The public trust is affected; and something must be done to remediate the situation.
Communicate in ways that meet community standards
Don’t discuss cause or fault.
Friday, February 27, 2009
MESSIN’ WITH THE MUZZLE
MESSIN’ WITH THE MUZZLE: Although Hawai`i County officials claim the blackballing of journalist/bloggers on the Big Island was over before it began one of, if not the main target of the policy says that’s just more shibai.
“I was the one directly targeted by this directive” says Aaron Stene of the Kona Blog in a comment left on yesterday’s column on the subject.
"The troubling aspect of this debacle” he wrote “is the fact the directive seems to be still in effect. I have had a hard time talking to DPW and the county council ever since this directive was released.”
But according to a Big Island source the derivation of the ban may go back to a rather innocuous video posted by Dave Corrigan of the Big Island Video News last August and is apparently related to the controversy over the expansion of the new Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.and Stene’s campaign in support of it in the face of local and kanaka maoli oppostion.
The video shows the repaving of the “Saddle Road” across the Big Island and is also controversial because opponents of the telescope say it is being done not for the pubic but to enable not just the expansion. of the observatory on what Hawaiians consider sacred land but extensive miliary operations in the area.
That video was followed by a post by Stene in Septembers and many more since arguing with opponents but giving them a platform at his popular blog to oppose the project and claim “a military connection to the science going on on Mauna Kea” and that. “the road is mostly used by contractors and not the general public” among other objections.
According to our source, author of the policy DPW spokeswoman Noelani Whittington was still concerned enough about the original video and apparently the discussion on Stene’s blog to still be bringing it up in conversations in December
Though the connection to the ban may or may not be true, Stene thinks it’s far from over.
In a post yesterday he wrote
“(I)t makes me wonder if Noelani and the DPW had a hidden agenda here.... (I)t seemed this directive was targeted mostly at me. I had by far interfaced with the DPW more often than Damon (Tucker) and David (Corrigan)”.
Those are the other two whose blogs were singled out by Whittington when she banned department personnel from interacting with blogger/journalists on the island.
He continued saying:
On a related note, she tried calling me yesterday and tried to kiss my ass by acting all apologetic for doing this. I tried to remain civil even though it was very hard to do so on my part. However I refused to accept her apology for her actions....
There is one more troubling aspect of this debacle. I've had a hard talking to DPW, county council ever since this directive was released. Thus it seems in my case I highly doubt this directive has been withdrawn.
But the saddle road may not be the only controversial project Whittington apparently didn’t want publicly debated. Stene concludes by saying
Lastly, it seems there is a lack of communication between the HDOT and DHHL to minimize the impact of the Waimea bypass, according to this WHT article. If there was better communication the concerns of the DHHL homesteaders would’ve been addressed years ago. Thus this much needed highway wouldn’t be delayed once again
As to Tucker his response to the article was a lot more defensive after Whittington’s slight of his and other reporter/bloggers’ professionalism, as was reported in the Hawai`i Tribune Herald article yesterday that broke the story by obtaining Whittington’s six page policy written policy.
.
In his Open Letter to Department of Public Works Spokeswoman Noelani Whittington, Tucker wrote
Ms. Whittington, thank you for insulting Aaron, Dave and Myself with your little knowledge of our backgrounds in today’s article written by Jason Armstrong in the Tribune Herald....
I guess you just assume some of us lack experience because we blog in a blogging format and not in the traditional news sense?
Here is just a little of my Experience… Sorry I got out of the field more then a decade ago and switched to Education:
1 Year Advertising Manager on Mainland1 Year Lay-Out Editor (Hilo)2 Years Reporting (Mainland/Hilo)1 Year Writing Press Releases for the State Legislature...
I myself have never asked DPW for any information. Any information that I have found on them… was already published. I don’t have some “Deep Throat” working for me at your office lady… get a grip!
I know you don’t know who I am… but had it not been for my father-in-law telling me that you are an OK person (and yes you do know him)… You would have ended up on my Smuck list.
Unlike Kaua`i the Big Island is awash with on-line reporting and general information blogs with no less than a dozen people with varying degrees of reporting experience from Kona to Hilo posting tons of information and opinion on everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Kaua`i on the other hand is, with a few notable exceptions, practically devoid of blogs with original news and political commentary and reporting which, when combined with a sycophantic local newspaper that rarely if ever rocks the boat, may explain why the county can get away with their unwritten rules of non-engagement and their tight-fisted hold on what is, by law, public information.
“I was the one directly targeted by this directive” says Aaron Stene of the Kona Blog in a comment left on yesterday’s column on the subject.
"The troubling aspect of this debacle” he wrote “is the fact the directive seems to be still in effect. I have had a hard time talking to DPW and the county council ever since this directive was released.”
But according to a Big Island source the derivation of the ban may go back to a rather innocuous video posted by Dave Corrigan of the Big Island Video News last August and is apparently related to the controversy over the expansion of the new Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.and Stene’s campaign in support of it in the face of local and kanaka maoli oppostion.
The video shows the repaving of the “Saddle Road” across the Big Island and is also controversial because opponents of the telescope say it is being done not for the pubic but to enable not just the expansion. of the observatory on what Hawaiians consider sacred land but extensive miliary operations in the area.
That video was followed by a post by Stene in Septembers and many more since arguing with opponents but giving them a platform at his popular blog to oppose the project and claim “a military connection to the science going on on Mauna Kea” and that. “the road is mostly used by contractors and not the general public” among other objections.
According to our source, author of the policy DPW spokeswoman Noelani Whittington was still concerned enough about the original video and apparently the discussion on Stene’s blog to still be bringing it up in conversations in December
Though the connection to the ban may or may not be true, Stene thinks it’s far from over.
In a post yesterday he wrote
“(I)t makes me wonder if Noelani and the DPW had a hidden agenda here.... (I)t seemed this directive was targeted mostly at me. I had by far interfaced with the DPW more often than Damon (Tucker) and David (Corrigan)”.
Those are the other two whose blogs were singled out by Whittington when she banned department personnel from interacting with blogger/journalists on the island.
He continued saying:
On a related note, she tried calling me yesterday and tried to kiss my ass by acting all apologetic for doing this. I tried to remain civil even though it was very hard to do so on my part. However I refused to accept her apology for her actions....
There is one more troubling aspect of this debacle. I've had a hard talking to DPW, county council ever since this directive was released. Thus it seems in my case I highly doubt this directive has been withdrawn.
But the saddle road may not be the only controversial project Whittington apparently didn’t want publicly debated. Stene concludes by saying
Lastly, it seems there is a lack of communication between the HDOT and DHHL to minimize the impact of the Waimea bypass, according to this WHT article. If there was better communication the concerns of the DHHL homesteaders would’ve been addressed years ago. Thus this much needed highway wouldn’t be delayed once again
As to Tucker his response to the article was a lot more defensive after Whittington’s slight of his and other reporter/bloggers’ professionalism, as was reported in the Hawai`i Tribune Herald article yesterday that broke the story by obtaining Whittington’s six page policy written policy.
.
In his Open Letter to Department of Public Works Spokeswoman Noelani Whittington, Tucker wrote
Ms. Whittington, thank you for insulting Aaron, Dave and Myself with your little knowledge of our backgrounds in today’s article written by Jason Armstrong in the Tribune Herald....
I guess you just assume some of us lack experience because we blog in a blogging format and not in the traditional news sense?
Here is just a little of my Experience… Sorry I got out of the field more then a decade ago and switched to Education:
1 Year Advertising Manager on Mainland1 Year Lay-Out Editor (Hilo)2 Years Reporting (Mainland/Hilo)1 Year Writing Press Releases for the State Legislature...
I myself have never asked DPW for any information. Any information that I have found on them… was already published. I don’t have some “Deep Throat” working for me at your office lady… get a grip!
I know you don’t know who I am… but had it not been for my father-in-law telling me that you are an OK person (and yes you do know him)… You would have ended up on my Smuck list.
Unlike Kaua`i the Big Island is awash with on-line reporting and general information blogs with no less than a dozen people with varying degrees of reporting experience from Kona to Hilo posting tons of information and opinion on everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Kaua`i on the other hand is, with a few notable exceptions, practically devoid of blogs with original news and political commentary and reporting which, when combined with a sycophantic local newspaper that rarely if ever rocks the boat, may explain why the county can get away with their unwritten rules of non-engagement and their tight-fisted hold on what is, by law, public information.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
TAKE IT FROM THE PROS
TAKE IT FROM THE PROS: One thing all of the journalists who are routinely air lifted into Kaua`i quickly find out is that getting information directly from county officials or personnel can’t even be compared to pulling teeth because eventually with enough effort you can get the gums to relinquish a tooth.
Getting a phone call returned or an email answered by any departmental employees here is an exercise in futility and even a query made to Mary Daubert, the unusually cooperative county Public Information Office, will many times elicit the equivalent of a “no comment” at the administration’s behest.
That goes double for “council services” where the elusive County Clerk Peter Nakamura routinely blocks his staff from releasing public yet sensitive information and whom you literally have to grab in the hall to talk to.
And if you’re a private citizen- phew, forget it. At the end of each phone line is someone to refer you to someone who will refer you to someone else who will eventually refer you back to the one who originally answered the phone who will put you on hold until you just give up.
Because the lip-buttoning is so pervasive and has gone on for so long, no one has to tell anyone else not to talk to anyone about anything... much less put the policy in writing.
But someone on the Big Island forgot to consult the Kaua`i stonewalling pros recently when a six page document landed on the desk of the Hawai`i Tribune Herald “direct(ing) DPW employees to stop filming attempts, not to talk about cause or fault, and to withhold information from so-called ‘citizen journalists’” the paper reported today.
The paper reports that:
The county Department of Public Works has rescinded a recently implemented media policy that sheltered employees from public scrutiny, denied reporters access to road projects and blackballed Internet bloggers...
The policy specifically instructed DPW employees not to give out information to bloggers Aaron Stene (The Kona Blog) and Damon Tucker (Damon Tucker's Weblog) and Dave Corrigan of Big Island Videonews.com.The report says that policy was written up by DPW spokeswoman Noelani Whittington who at first denied its existence before being read some of the smoking-gun document.
When contacted yesterday apparently in anticipation of being revealed as a liar, in a classic response to being caught red handed told the reporter,
"I wasn't denying anything on it. I just didn't know what you were referring to," Whittington said in a follow-up interview Wednesday.
Whittington said she might have been very busy when first interviewed occurred Feb. 19.
"Sometimes it takes me a minute to focus," she said.
But one of the stranger aspects of the whole debacle is that the new Hawai`i County public relations specialist under new Mayor Billy Kenoi is Hunter Bishop a former reporter who was dumped from the Tribune-Herald staff- essentially for union organizing activity- and then started popular local news and politics blog.
Bishop, who has removed the blog where he served as a thinly disguised political hit man for Kenoi by going after progressive candidate Angel Pilago, was shocked-shocked when he was contacted by the paper saying "(t)here is no question this is not an acceptable media policy."
"It is not in effect. We do not support this policy," he’s quoted as saying. "As far as I know, there are no other media policies in the county, but I can't say that for sure,"
But the report says he added "We are working on a new general media policy for all departments mainly as a result of seeing this,....It will treat bloggers like any other media or member of the public,"The article says that:
There was no incident that prompted the policy, but rather a desire to differentiate "new media" from traditional reporters and concern by some employees that they had been filmed for a TV newscast, Whittington said.
The incident we reported on twice last December and January where blogger Tucker was harassed by a Big Island police officer for taking a picture of her in public was not cited in the article. Tucker was photographing and reporting on handicapped parking facilities at the Pahoa post office at the time of the incident.
PNN would request that Kaua`i County provide any documents regarding media policy but we’re laughing too hard at the concept of getting an answer much less the information.
----------
Correction: The measure we mentioned yesterday to lift the ban on mainland contributions in the 2010 governor’s race is not part of bill HB 539 but rather is in a separate bill set for hearing in the house finance committee today
Getting a phone call returned or an email answered by any departmental employees here is an exercise in futility and even a query made to Mary Daubert, the unusually cooperative county Public Information Office, will many times elicit the equivalent of a “no comment” at the administration’s behest.
That goes double for “council services” where the elusive County Clerk Peter Nakamura routinely blocks his staff from releasing public yet sensitive information and whom you literally have to grab in the hall to talk to.
And if you’re a private citizen- phew, forget it. At the end of each phone line is someone to refer you to someone who will refer you to someone else who will eventually refer you back to the one who originally answered the phone who will put you on hold until you just give up.
Because the lip-buttoning is so pervasive and has gone on for so long, no one has to tell anyone else not to talk to anyone about anything... much less put the policy in writing.
But someone on the Big Island forgot to consult the Kaua`i stonewalling pros recently when a six page document landed on the desk of the Hawai`i Tribune Herald “direct(ing) DPW employees to stop filming attempts, not to talk about cause or fault, and to withhold information from so-called ‘citizen journalists’” the paper reported today.
The paper reports that:
The county Department of Public Works has rescinded a recently implemented media policy that sheltered employees from public scrutiny, denied reporters access to road projects and blackballed Internet bloggers...
The policy specifically instructed DPW employees not to give out information to bloggers Aaron Stene (The Kona Blog) and Damon Tucker (Damon Tucker's Weblog) and Dave Corrigan of Big Island Videonews.com.The report says that policy was written up by DPW spokeswoman Noelani Whittington who at first denied its existence before being read some of the smoking-gun document.
When contacted yesterday apparently in anticipation of being revealed as a liar, in a classic response to being caught red handed told the reporter,
"I wasn't denying anything on it. I just didn't know what you were referring to," Whittington said in a follow-up interview Wednesday.
Whittington said she might have been very busy when first interviewed occurred Feb. 19.
"Sometimes it takes me a minute to focus," she said.
But one of the stranger aspects of the whole debacle is that the new Hawai`i County public relations specialist under new Mayor Billy Kenoi is Hunter Bishop a former reporter who was dumped from the Tribune-Herald staff- essentially for union organizing activity- and then started popular local news and politics blog.
Bishop, who has removed the blog where he served as a thinly disguised political hit man for Kenoi by going after progressive candidate Angel Pilago, was shocked-shocked when he was contacted by the paper saying "(t)here is no question this is not an acceptable media policy."
"It is not in effect. We do not support this policy," he’s quoted as saying. "As far as I know, there are no other media policies in the county, but I can't say that for sure,"
But the report says he added "We are working on a new general media policy for all departments mainly as a result of seeing this,....It will treat bloggers like any other media or member of the public,"The article says that:
There was no incident that prompted the policy, but rather a desire to differentiate "new media" from traditional reporters and concern by some employees that they had been filmed for a TV newscast, Whittington said.
The incident we reported on twice last December and January where blogger Tucker was harassed by a Big Island police officer for taking a picture of her in public was not cited in the article. Tucker was photographing and reporting on handicapped parking facilities at the Pahoa post office at the time of the incident.
PNN would request that Kaua`i County provide any documents regarding media policy but we’re laughing too hard at the concept of getting an answer much less the information.
----------
Correction: The measure we mentioned yesterday to lift the ban on mainland contributions in the 2010 governor’s race is not part of bill HB 539 but rather is in a separate bill set for hearing in the house finance committee today
Monday, January 5, 2009
HOUNDING THE NEWSHOUNDS
HOUNDING THE NEWSHOUNDS: A week and a half ago we highlighted an abuse of power incident at the Pahoa Post Office on the Big Island and this somewhat defensive fellow Damon Tucker who is one of the multitude of bloggers on Hawai`i Island.
We mentioned that “there are reporters who blog or bloggers who report”. But the discussion on blogs over there has morphed and twisted with the coverage of what we suppose is a reporter who blogs,
At the on-line Big Island Chronicle reporter-blogger Tiffany Edwards Hunt lists her past employment “as a reporter for the Laramie Daily Boomerang, the Casper Star Tribune, and the West Hawaii Today.... the late Hawaii Island Journal and the Big Island Weekly”
And so she too jumped all over Tucker’s report of the incident and follow-up describing an incident when the postmaster there apparently called the cops because Damon was taking pictures in the parking lot to show handicapped parking violations. Tucker said that the responding officer gave him grief and laughably claimed he couldn’t take picture in a public place and forced him to delete a picture he took of her upon arrival.
So Tiffany’s training took over and she dutifully got a long statement from the chief of police. But she made one “mistake” in her essay on blogging and reporting.
Despite the fact that Tuck the apparent Duck acts like a reporter, walks like a reporter and quacks like a reporter he somehow has convinced himself that he is not a reporter, even though he regularly refers to his posts as reports and indeed reports on everything in Puna including store break-ins, politics and other assorted “news”.
Hunt was confused as were the more than thirty people who commented on her report. But her confusion was addled further by her apparent quest for “responsible reporting” not just on her own blog but those of others like poor befuddled Damon.
The reality is that both of them typify the prejudices of their respective sides of the reporter-blogger blogger reporter debate coin.
Hunt’s post on the matter says Tucker claims to be not a reporter but that he
describes himself as a “communication specialist” with a weblog. His self-description... ha(s) made me realize he is truly not one of my contemporaries in the press. Still, yet, I ran into this blogger twice this week, both times acting like he was a reporter. I saw him on Monday at the Pohoiki Bypass blessing, where he walked around everybody snapping pictures like he was a reporter like the other folks with cameras. I saw him on Tuesday headed toward Luquin’s in Pahoa, carrying what appeared to be a reporter’s notebook. He was out and about to inquire about the burglaries that occurred in Pahoa Town during the holidays, he said.
In reporter fashion Hunt elaborates and quotes the blogging “experts” such as Jay Rosen, the New York University Journalism faculty chairman and Scott Rosenberg, a reporter at the on-line blogger-friendly Salon magazine, to sort it out.
But there lies Hunt’s self-deception in that, although she discusses the “new vs. old media” argument and the purported reliability/trust deficiencies of what many characterize as the “amateur journalists”, her final plea is for “responsibility” from people like Tucker.
But that very call comes from a member in good standing of the mainstream press who is experimenting with blogging, an endeavor in which most working journalists don’t survive long as the demise of KITV’s Darryl Huff’s “In a Huff” blog and others will attest.
Tucker typifies what we like to call the “reporter when it’s convenient” who gathers information and does actual reporting and then publishes his endeavors but who neither acknowledges his reporter status nor more importantly sees a need to develop the skills that lead to good reporting.
We can’t count how many people have started news and information sites- no matter whether they call them “blogs” or anything else- who seem to rebel at the notion that the act of reporting makes them a reporter resulting in the bestowal of the title..
Hunt intimates that the title is something to be earned with a defense of “responsibility” as a pre-requisite.
In the world of “professional” reporters like Hunt the notion of “reporting with neither fear nor favor” and “following the story wherever it goes” are tempered with some kind of need to protect entities outside the bounds of the reasonable expectations of privacy which is the only thing the law requires... even if the property rights crowd has a hard time with the concept.
This leads to the characteristic paternalism of the press and enables the suppression of news typified by papers like the Garden Island on Kaua`i and Hunt’s former employers West Hawai`i Today- a “Stevens Media” outlet that is infamous, especially on the Big Island for it’s advertiser-protection programs and censorship of news and views.
The term “blog” is problematic not just in it’s relationship to reporting – and whether in fact it has one in many cases- but its very definition.
The blogger who tells of the exploits of his family is a blogger just like those with journalistic skills who deliver news, analysis and opinion and, like this hydrophobic newshound, use a “blogging” piece of software are bloggers.
But surely, although we exercise the usual source scrutiny, verification and investigative skills many would call us irresponsible for our penchant for naming names, not seeking out irrelevant spin and our inclusion of well-defined-as-such speculation in the midst of that reporting.
In the final analysis for all three of us it comes down to a matter of readers’ trust of the reporting, something Hunt stresses. But apparently she see that trust of a news source as emanating from the timidity created by being “responsible” to many competing spinners.
In the mainstream media- a nicety to describe the corporate press- what comes out in print has been reshaped from the original facts. It yields a story format where that newsworthy information goes through some “he said, she said” generator of competing quotes from self-interested “experts”, and is then compressed into blocks of advertiser approved, inoffensive-to-anyone (including the offender being reported upon) material until the news is lost in a final result that is about as uninformative as the rich and powerful could want it.
It is the act of reporting that makes the reporter and the skill of the reporter leads to that “trust” or “reliability”, not some sense that because he or she has some kind of hoity toity title of journalist which is often a sign that the reporter has become lost in the world of self-censorship enough to “move up” the corporate ladder to editor or even publisher.
But neither Tucker- who won’t recognize that carrying a camera and a notebook and putting the content of both before the public makes him a reporter even if he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the job- nor Hunt- whose trepidatious learning experience carries the baggage of corporate reporting- seems to get at the ultimate democracy of new blogging.
If news outlets report the news as factually as possible without that “fear or favor” the trust that they aren’t reporting made- up fantasies will be established in time. But if you are stuck with the self-censorship of being “responsible” you may as well go back to your corporate cubbyhole because readers can get that anywhere.
Everyone wants to know how the MSM can survive as the corporate takeover tightens it’s vice grip on the modern newsroom and squeezes out the very content people want in their news.
The demise started decades ago- well before the on-line age- with the switch from steak to pabulum Now the reactionary, short-sighted, commercially-oriented decimation of the reporting staffs and the resulting cessation of investigative reporting has driven print reporting into the pit of free-content without a business model to pay for it.
As news blogging expands people are coming to expect more from their news than they get from their daily fish wrapper.
Whether you call them bloggers, new journalists, citizen reporters, or loudmouth activists doesn’t matter.
When those who report on-line- whether like Tucker in denial of their function or like Hunt in denial of the title for Tucker- provide the core content people crave the blog-o-sphere can and will fill the news-o-sphere niche with truth and facts being the only advertised commodities.
Then the only question will be the same one the corporate press faces- how to pay for it. We’ll try to delve into that in the near future
We mentioned that “there are reporters who blog or bloggers who report”. But the discussion on blogs over there has morphed and twisted with the coverage of what we suppose is a reporter who blogs,
At the on-line Big Island Chronicle reporter-blogger Tiffany Edwards Hunt lists her past employment “as a reporter for the Laramie Daily Boomerang, the Casper Star Tribune, and the West Hawaii Today.... the late Hawaii Island Journal and the Big Island Weekly”
And so she too jumped all over Tucker’s report of the incident and follow-up describing an incident when the postmaster there apparently called the cops because Damon was taking pictures in the parking lot to show handicapped parking violations. Tucker said that the responding officer gave him grief and laughably claimed he couldn’t take picture in a public place and forced him to delete a picture he took of her upon arrival.
So Tiffany’s training took over and she dutifully got a long statement from the chief of police. But she made one “mistake” in her essay on blogging and reporting.
Despite the fact that Tuck the apparent Duck acts like a reporter, walks like a reporter and quacks like a reporter he somehow has convinced himself that he is not a reporter, even though he regularly refers to his posts as reports and indeed reports on everything in Puna including store break-ins, politics and other assorted “news”.
Hunt was confused as were the more than thirty people who commented on her report. But her confusion was addled further by her apparent quest for “responsible reporting” not just on her own blog but those of others like poor befuddled Damon.
The reality is that both of them typify the prejudices of their respective sides of the reporter-blogger blogger reporter debate coin.
Hunt’s post on the matter says Tucker claims to be not a reporter but that he
describes himself as a “communication specialist” with a weblog. His self-description... ha(s) made me realize he is truly not one of my contemporaries in the press. Still, yet, I ran into this blogger twice this week, both times acting like he was a reporter. I saw him on Monday at the Pohoiki Bypass blessing, where he walked around everybody snapping pictures like he was a reporter like the other folks with cameras. I saw him on Tuesday headed toward Luquin’s in Pahoa, carrying what appeared to be a reporter’s notebook. He was out and about to inquire about the burglaries that occurred in Pahoa Town during the holidays, he said.
In reporter fashion Hunt elaborates and quotes the blogging “experts” such as Jay Rosen, the New York University Journalism faculty chairman and Scott Rosenberg, a reporter at the on-line blogger-friendly Salon magazine, to sort it out.
But there lies Hunt’s self-deception in that, although she discusses the “new vs. old media” argument and the purported reliability/trust deficiencies of what many characterize as the “amateur journalists”, her final plea is for “responsibility” from people like Tucker.
But that very call comes from a member in good standing of the mainstream press who is experimenting with blogging, an endeavor in which most working journalists don’t survive long as the demise of KITV’s Darryl Huff’s “In a Huff” blog and others will attest.
Tucker typifies what we like to call the “reporter when it’s convenient” who gathers information and does actual reporting and then publishes his endeavors but who neither acknowledges his reporter status nor more importantly sees a need to develop the skills that lead to good reporting.
We can’t count how many people have started news and information sites- no matter whether they call them “blogs” or anything else- who seem to rebel at the notion that the act of reporting makes them a reporter resulting in the bestowal of the title..
Hunt intimates that the title is something to be earned with a defense of “responsibility” as a pre-requisite.
In the world of “professional” reporters like Hunt the notion of “reporting with neither fear nor favor” and “following the story wherever it goes” are tempered with some kind of need to protect entities outside the bounds of the reasonable expectations of privacy which is the only thing the law requires... even if the property rights crowd has a hard time with the concept.
This leads to the characteristic paternalism of the press and enables the suppression of news typified by papers like the Garden Island on Kaua`i and Hunt’s former employers West Hawai`i Today- a “Stevens Media” outlet that is infamous, especially on the Big Island for it’s advertiser-protection programs and censorship of news and views.
The term “blog” is problematic not just in it’s relationship to reporting – and whether in fact it has one in many cases- but its very definition.
The blogger who tells of the exploits of his family is a blogger just like those with journalistic skills who deliver news, analysis and opinion and, like this hydrophobic newshound, use a “blogging” piece of software are bloggers.
But surely, although we exercise the usual source scrutiny, verification and investigative skills many would call us irresponsible for our penchant for naming names, not seeking out irrelevant spin and our inclusion of well-defined-as-such speculation in the midst of that reporting.
In the final analysis for all three of us it comes down to a matter of readers’ trust of the reporting, something Hunt stresses. But apparently she see that trust of a news source as emanating from the timidity created by being “responsible” to many competing spinners.
In the mainstream media- a nicety to describe the corporate press- what comes out in print has been reshaped from the original facts. It yields a story format where that newsworthy information goes through some “he said, she said” generator of competing quotes from self-interested “experts”, and is then compressed into blocks of advertiser approved, inoffensive-to-anyone (including the offender being reported upon) material until the news is lost in a final result that is about as uninformative as the rich and powerful could want it.
It is the act of reporting that makes the reporter and the skill of the reporter leads to that “trust” or “reliability”, not some sense that because he or she has some kind of hoity toity title of journalist which is often a sign that the reporter has become lost in the world of self-censorship enough to “move up” the corporate ladder to editor or even publisher.
But neither Tucker- who won’t recognize that carrying a camera and a notebook and putting the content of both before the public makes him a reporter even if he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the job- nor Hunt- whose trepidatious learning experience carries the baggage of corporate reporting- seems to get at the ultimate democracy of new blogging.
If news outlets report the news as factually as possible without that “fear or favor” the trust that they aren’t reporting made- up fantasies will be established in time. But if you are stuck with the self-censorship of being “responsible” you may as well go back to your corporate cubbyhole because readers can get that anywhere.
Everyone wants to know how the MSM can survive as the corporate takeover tightens it’s vice grip on the modern newsroom and squeezes out the very content people want in their news.
The demise started decades ago- well before the on-line age- with the switch from steak to pabulum Now the reactionary, short-sighted, commercially-oriented decimation of the reporting staffs and the resulting cessation of investigative reporting has driven print reporting into the pit of free-content without a business model to pay for it.
As news blogging expands people are coming to expect more from their news than they get from their daily fish wrapper.
Whether you call them bloggers, new journalists, citizen reporters, or loudmouth activists doesn’t matter.
When those who report on-line- whether like Tucker in denial of their function or like Hunt in denial of the title for Tucker- provide the core content people crave the blog-o-sphere can and will fill the news-o-sphere niche with truth and facts being the only advertised commodities.
Then the only question will be the same one the corporate press faces- how to pay for it. We’ll try to delve into that in the near future
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
