It’s been the week of journalism awards. Last Tuesday, the Courage in Journalism event. Then, last night it was PEN USA’s turn to give awards to some brave people in our profession

PEN also gave out a bunch of well-deserved literary awards, and some other special honors. But the heart of the evening has always been the Freedom to Write Award and the First Amendment Award

It’s the wee hours and I’m a bit champagne-addled, so I’ll make this short. But I don’t want to shut down the computer without introducing you to the two people who received those central awards:

This year, the First Amendment prize went to Jerry Roberts, the guy who resigned as executive editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press after the paper was bought by billionaire Wendy P. McCaw, a woman who seemed to believe that, purchasing a newspaper was sort of like purchasing a summer home in the Hamptons. You got to invite all your friends over, then you and they could do whatever you wanted. In McCaw’s case this meant dictating the papers content, as if it was her own private country club newsletter.

The News-Press wasn’t exactly the New York Times but, for years, it had been a fine and feisty paper, and editor Jerry Roberts felt honor-bound to do whatever he could to temper McCaw’s actions.

As Roberts put it: “Newspapers have a duty to honor the extraordinary powers granted them by the First Amendment through the process of exercising those powers in the public interest…” Finding himself in a situation where McCaw continued to demand that the staff violate the most basic of journalistic ethics, Roberts resigned. Then—as she seems to do whenever anyone crosses her—McCaw retaliated by smearing Roberts, linking him to child pornography, and suing him for big bucks.

And then things really started to get ugly.

Yet whatever difficulties might plague American journalists, they pale in the light of the threats and terrors that Freedom to Write winner, Sahal Abdulle, had to face every day to report the news in Mogadishu, Somalia for Reuters.

Here’s Abdulle’s poetic and heartbreaking description of one of the worst of those dark days.

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As I was sitting at my desk, trying to make sense of the story I’ve been working on this week, my thoughts drifted back to Tuesday night’s dinner, and the words of the women who wrestle with all the pesky, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day elements of journalism that the rest of us face: tracking down good sources, organizing the facts you’ve gathered so that they have some kind of meaning, and laying it all down in prose that you hope will will engage reader’s attention for at least a nanosecond.

Yet in addition to those routine tasks, these women who were honored–and journalists like them in countries around the world—- have to worry about whether they’ll make it through the day alive, or will ever see their kids again.

“If we go to jail, or are tortured, or eventually killed for being good journalists,” said Mexico’s Lydia Cacho at the end of her acceptance speech, “because of this award, we have witnesses. And, after tonight, you share the responsibility of knowing.”

I hereby pass that shared responsibility to you, dear WLA readers. Sometimes the fact of increased public scrutiny can protect a journalist who is at risk.

Sometimes, of course, it does not.

For me, the ever-present ghost of Monday’s dinner was the woman who was given the Courage in Journalism award in 2002, Anna Politkovskaya . I met Anna that same year when PEN USA gave her our International Freedom to Write Award for her risky reporting on the war in Chechnya, specifically the effect of the war on ordinary people. I’m on PEN’s board of directors so got to spend a little time with her. I remember thinking that she was one of the bravest people I’d ever met. She had been receiving death threats for a while back then. She didn’t disregard them, but nor did they slow her down. It was impossible not to worry about her.

One day—it was a year ago this October 6—the worst of the worries came to pass; Anna did not make it home. She was shot to death, execution style, in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. It is taken for granted that she was murdered specifically because of her work. In fact, the day of her death she had planned to file a major story on the torture practices of Chechen security forces.

Yet, while those who killed her could take away Anna’s life, her future work, and her abitlity to be a mother to her now-grown children, they could not take away her power as a witness, a power that, because of her writing, she passed along to the rest of us.

On the first anniversary of her death, 2000 Russians braved a cold Moscow day to make it clear that they heard, they knew, and they weren’t going away.

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As you go into the weekend, this is a wild ride of a story that is definitely worth reading. Most of the events have occurred in the last 48-hours. Here are the high points:

On Thursday, night the two chief execs of Phoenix New Times, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin—guys whose company, New Times Media, also happens to own the LA Weekly, OC Weekly, and the Village Voice—were arrested in Phoenix by the Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information.

But, before we get to the grand jury info and the arrest, a little back story:

In 2004 and 2005, New Times did several articles investigating the famously colorful Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio.

And Joe really, really, REALLY didn’t like that.

For those of you unfamiliar, Joe Arpaio has long been a media darling for his quirky “tough-on-crime” methods, which include making jail prisoners wear pink underwear, putting them on stripe-suited “chain gangs,” having them sleep in tents in inclement weather, making them eat outdated and green-tinged bologna, and so on. If Joe Arpaio didn’t exist, someone would make him up.

Yet, although Arpaio presents himself as an amusing and eccentric tough dude able to give the bad guys what they deserve, there have been far darker stories of abuses, injuries and deaths at the hands of deputies in his jails, political dirty tricks, plus a string of curious financial dealings—all of which the alternative newspaper dutifully and rightly dug into. Here’s how former Phoenix New Times reporter (now Village Voice editor) Tony Ortega explains it:

Taking advantage of post-9/11 privacy statutes, for example, Arpaio had convinced the county to remove from public view records of the million-dollar commercial real-estate transactions he was making. How,[New Times reporter] Dougherty wondered, was a modestly paid county sheriff making those kinds of deals?

The issue that triggered the grand jury and the appointment of, in all seriousness, a special prosecutor (a person named Dennis Wilenchik who was supposedly hand chosen by Sheriff Joe, and is incidentally under investigation by the Arizona Bar) is the fact that the Phoenix New Times published Joe’s home address in one of their articles.

Nevermind that the thing is easily available online. (I found it here in less than three minutes. The property is listed under his wife Ava’s name. And a quick cross-check turned this up to verify it.)

Reality be damned, Jumping Joe persuaded the Maricopa County Attorney to charge New Times and reporter Dougherty with a felony for listing the address. And then came the Grand Jury and the subpoena delivered to New Times.

And what a subpoena it was!

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Today, the House of Representatives will vote on the bill called The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007—or what most of us know as the Journalists’ Shield law.

It’s about time.

In 1972, in Supreme Court case of Branzburg v. Hayes, SCOTUS opined that “news gathering is not without First Amendment protections.” The Supremes, however, could not agree about the form or breadth of those protections. As a consequence, journalists, editors and others have pushed for a national shield law for years, without success—although 33 states plus DC have passed their own journalistic shield laws.

That isn’t enough. In the last year alone, around two dozens journalists have subpoenaed or questioned about their confidential sources in Federal court.

Today, the LA Times has an editorial that lays out many of the issues surrounding this possible shield law.

Contrary to what critics claim, this proposed “shield law” isn’t a concession to special pleading by the news media. Its ultimate beneficiary is the public. Without confidential sources, the American people wouldn’t have known about misconduct in the Nixon administration, the secret history of the war in Vietnam or excesses in the war on terror such as the wiretapping of Americans by the National Security Agency. Locally, the historic abuses of the LAPD — from spying on its enemies to its destructive use of force against minorities — came to public light because sources shared facts with reporters who kept their identities secret.

By the way, the law doesn’t include bloggers.

And it does have exceptions, which have mollified some critics: For instanced, in certain cases where prosecutors consider the information crucial to their case, a court will decide if the shield applies or not. Also, in cases of national security the shield would not reply,

Several newspapers around the country have pushed for the bill’s passage. Here’s how the Buffalo News Opinion puts it:

As we have frequently been reminded in recent months, if we, the people of the United States, want to know what our government is doing, in our name and with our money, we cannot always count on our government to tell us. We are often going to have to read it in the newspaper.

Or find it on a blog.

(Graphic from the Society of Professional Journalists)

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For four straight years, the well-regarded Justice and Peace Studies program at Saint Thomas University in Minnesota has sponsored high-profile events featuring four different Nobel laureates such as Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Shirin Ebadi.

In keeping with the trend, the program’s heads decided to invite Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu to speak at the university in the Spring of ‘08. They were overjoyed when he accepted.

But when the justice and peace folks shared their good news with St. Thom’s administration, instead of expressing delight at the coup, the administration spiked the idea altogether saying that Desmond Tutu had been critical of Israel’s policy with the Palestinians and so was not welcome as campus-sponsored speaker.

The controversy hit the Minnesota papers last week then, on Friday, was picked up internationally when St. Thom’s admin received nearly 2000 emails asking it to reconsider.

Here’s a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at St. Thomas, said the Rev. Dennis Dease, St. Thomas’ president, made the final decision not to invite Tutu after consulting with his staff.

“He [Tutu] has been critical of Israel and Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, so we talked with people in the Jewish community and they said they believed it would be hurtful to the Jewish community, because of things he’s said,” Hennes said.

To further complicate matters, when the head of the Justice and Peace Studies program, a woman named, Cris Toffolo, sent a letter to Archbishop Tutu, informing him of the decision (and also expressing her dismay and disagreement), the administration honchos removed her from her position as head of the program. ( Professor Toffolo is still teaching at the university. I’m betting that she’s tenured.)

The whole snatched-away-invite issue has to do with a speech that Tutu gave at a 2002 conference in Boston. A version of the speech may be found here.

Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor within the Justice and Peace Studies program, was one of those appalled by the U’s decision.

“I am Jewish, and stifling debate and dissent [and] criticism of Israel is a disservice to all Jews, the state of Israel and the American people,” he said.

Precisely.

So here’s the big question: Is criticism of Israel’s government, or our own government (or any other government, for that matter) now a disqualifying factor for speaking to America’s university students? Is that really what we’ve come to?

Like his speech or hate it, Desmond Tutu is a world-renowned and beloved figure who expressed an impassioned and reasoned opinion—with which reasonable people might disagree (or even, God forbid, agree, if that sort of thing’s still permissible). But, now St. Thomas students and faculty won’t have the opportunity to agree OR disagree, or anything in between—BECAUSE TUTU’S NOT COMING TO THE SCHOOL!!!

Oh, and has anyone mentioned the teensy-weensy fact that retired Archbishop Tutu has not said anything about Israeli policy that former President Jimmy Carter has not said too, and at far greater length.

So will the 39th President of the United States be the next dis-invitee at college commencement time?

Just curious.

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Earlier this month it came to light that, since June of this year, US Federal prison authorities had been quietly directing chaplains nationwide to get rid of thousands of the religious books that prisoners had been reading. Everything that wasn’t on a brand new list of “approved” religious books was ordered tossed out by the Bureau of Prisons.

Here’s how the Bureau’s report explained it: “The presence of extremist chaplains, contractors or volunteers in the BOP’s correctional facilities can pose a threat to institutional security and could implicate national security if inmates are encouraged to commit terrorist acts against the United States.”

(Extremist chaplains???)

According to today’s New New York Times it appears that, after civil libertarians, religious groups and members of congress collectively flipped out, the BOP relented a little.

But, first, to give you a fuller picture of the idiocy of this book purging plan, here’s a bit of backstory from an earlier NY Times article about the banning:

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.

The BOP’s stated purpose was to get rid of books that might incite to violence. Yet, instead of simply removing the few objectionable volumes, Federal prison officials, in their infinite wisdom, began making lists of “acceptable” books, which arbitrarily left thousands of important and classic volumes out of the new catalog of those approved.

“It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. “There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”

Jewish inmates in some prisons said that even the Torah was removed.

(Prison chaplains were particularly irritated because they say they already routinely got rid of any books that were too extreme.)

This week, although prison officials agreed to put the books back for the time being, they have said they aren’t abandoning the strategy. (sigh.)

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UPDATE

Two New York prisoners filed a lawsuit last month against the what the BOP has (absurdly) named “The Chapel Library Project.”

Among the books banned at their prison were “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, and “The Purpose-Driven Life” by the Rev. Rick Warren, the lawsuit said.

But even more sadly predictable is this (reported by the AP):

The Muslim portion of the chapel library has been reduced to the Quran and two other titles after the removal of prayer books, prayer guides and the Hadith, the most important source for Muslim practice and faith after the Quran, the lawsuit says.

Well, in fairness, although that might have been true for one New York prison, the nationwide list for Islam is a little longer that that. (You can take a look for yourself here.)

But, the problem with the Islamic list can be easily illustrated by its treatment of the 13th century Sufi poet, Jalal Al-Din Rumi. There is, indeed, one Rumi volume on the list, the Colman Barks translated, “Essential Rumi.” And there is also a book and film about Rumi. But that’s it. For instance, in a truly bizarre omission, there is no allowed Rumi book published in the original Persian.

Even on my own home book shelves, I have four books of Rumi’s poetry. According to the Bureau of Prisons, three of those ultra dangerous volumes would be banned—a good thing, of course, since they include obviously anarchic sentiments like these:

Find the real world, give it endlessly away.
Grow rich, fling gold to all who ask.
Live at the empty heart of Paradox.
I’ll dance there with you, cheek to cheek.
- Rumi

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Okay, where did we last leave off? Oh, right. Earlier this week, David McDade, the Georgia district attorney who has persecuted prosecuted Genarlow Wilson well past what most anyone else sees as reasonable, moral or sensible, was sending out two of his staffers to harass one of the prosecution’s witnesses. Evidently, the woman had the temerity to speak to the press and, in doing so, said something McDade didn’t like, so he tasked the staffers with persuading her to call the reporter and take her statements back.

(Please don’t make me do all the multiple links again. If you don’t know the Wilson back story, click here, and then retrace the path of electronic bread crumbs.)

Now, a day or two later, we have the issue of….THE VIDEO TAPE.

It seems that last month the vile and loathsome weanie prosecutor (”weanie” is used in this context as a technical term), released the video tape that started the whole legal mess to begin with. It shows then-17-year-old Wilson having sex on New Year’s Eve (at a no-adults-present party held in a hotel room) with another 17-year-old. (Wilson was tried and acquitted of raping the 17-year-old.) Then later, it shows him engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. It was the oral sex incident that sent Wilson to prison for ten years. (Another idiot kid at the party made the video.)

McDade’s excuse for releasing the teen porn tape was that the Associated Press asked for it under the state’s open records law. (What’s a poor prosecutor to do?) So, while he was at it, McDade passed out 35 more copies of the tape. According to his office, he gave it to multiple media outlets, a passel of lawmakers, various “members of the public,” and several people he randomly passed in the men’s room.

(Okay, I made that last part up. But it’s not all that far off.)

On Tuesday, a string of people-–including Georgia state senator Emanuel Jones—suggested that McDade was a morally reprehensible weasel (or words to that effect), who only released the tape because he thought it made his position on the case look less, you know, offensive. In other words, it was a self-serving act.

McDade’s critics pointed out that, in doing so, he victimized two young women who were not, by the way, accused of any crime, but who, because of a private instance of youthful bad judgment will now have an amateur porn tape of themselves distributed in perpetuity on the Internet. Thank you David McDade.

(Do you have kids, David? If so, are any of them daughters? Or do you have nieces maybe? How would you feel if somebody jerk DA got hold of a tape of one of them having sex with a classmate in a foolish and vulnerable moment, and handed it out to any and all comers? Just curious.)

The truth is, McDade had a number of choices when faced with the AP’s request.

He could have:

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I

Snubbing Devin’s memory: Legislators fail to learn the lessons of a 13-year-old’s fatal shooting by police.

Today we award Badges of Cowardice to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bill Bratton, and six key state lawmakers, for failing to stand up to California’s powerful police unions and take the first baby steps toward reopening police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been public since at least the 1970s.

Our L.A. leaders, along with the six-member Assembly Public Safety Committee, cowered in the face of cop bully-tactics and the secrecy lobby that brought down a modest bill to reopen public access to what had been an historically open process.

We give extra large, doublesided badges to the mayor and police chief because they are trying to have it both ways. They professed to be in favor of State Sen. Gloria Romero’s SB 1019, dubbed here the Anti-Secret Police bill, but they failed to show up at Tuesday’s committee meeting and fight for its survival.

Come on, guys, don’t you remember how adamant you seemed on the issue when an enraged community demanded answers after a secret police Board of Rights hearing exonerated the police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown? Look what Antonio and Bill told the L.A. Times’ Patrick McGreevy in January, when the issue was hot and the public demanded action.

“I am in support of change. I am very frustrated by [the current process],” Bratton said… “The public has no access to it. The media has no access to it. That’s crazy, absolutely crazy. We have nothing to hide in the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Hours later, Villaraigosa issued a concurring statement .
“The mayor would enthusiastically support legislation or other measures to open the board of rights process to the public,” the statement said. “Transparency … would benefit both the public and the officers facing disciplinary action.”

But that was six months ago. Will there be a similar outcry when the results of secret investigations into the MacArthur Park melee are released? Let’s hope the chief doesn’t black out the names of officers disciplined and withhold key details. And, if voters grow restless and the chief and mayor renew their calls for reform, will we take them seriously?

By the time the Anti-Secret Police bill made it to the committee, the unions watered down the bill to mollify cops and win the so-called support of Bill and Antonio. The bill even gave the police chief the power to withhold records if he deemed an officer’s safety would be put at risk.

The bill would merely allow local governments to vote on whether to restore public access to the same narrow category of police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been open in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area for decades until the California Supreme Court closed the records in its intellectually dishonest and unintelligible decision last year, Copley Press v. Superior Court of San Diego. In that decision, the Supreme Court held that California’s statutes aimed at controlling the discovery of police personnel records in civil lawsuits prohibits the disclosure of records that arise from the officer’s administrative appeal to an oversight body such as a civil service commission. Police agencies, taking the decision one more step, said if the records were off-limits to the public, so must be the proceedings.

The bill failed to win a solitary vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee after passing out of the Senate a few weeks ago. The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPD’s cop labor union), a representative of Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, and Assemblyman Jose Solorio, a Santa Ana Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, all made the same bogus claim that the bill would have opened up personal information about police officers and their families to criminals and “endangered” the lives of officers and their families.

Antonio and Bill were nowhere to be seen in Sacramento Tuesday to counter this false alarm. If they had truly “supported” the bill, they would have flown to Sacramento and explained that this process has been open to the public for decades in Los Angeles without any reported endangerment of officer safety. If our leaders actually backed the bill, they would have explained that no information about an officer’s family is released in disciplinary records.

Rather, the Anti-Secret Police measure would have allowed local agencies to vote on whether to create a policy of public access to police officer disciplinary files – but only if the local agency had previously had open records and only in instances where an officer had filed an administrative appeal of their discipline with a local civil service commission or police board of rights. If the local agency adopted the access policy, then the only records available to the public would be the records filed with the civil service commission or police board of rights relating to the specific incident and discipline. Like why should that be such a big deal?

The unions built their propaganda campaign on lies and threats. Under the Anti-Secret Police bill, a police agency would not have been allowed to release a police officer’s entire personnel file, home address, or medical records. Nor would the bill allow a police agency to release all citizen complaints or internal affairs investigations. Rather, public access would have been allowed only after a police officer filed an administrative appeal of a particular disciplinary sanction with an oversight body.

One union leader, John Stites, sent an e-mail to intimidate Senate members before their vote on the measure, saying that police unions “adamantly oppose this legislation to the point that if it is passed we will move quickly to oppose any term-limit reform legislation publicly. There is no compromise on this. Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning.” Romero denounced this “bully tactic” and the Senate approved the bill, 22-10 earlier this month.

Also receiving Badges of Cowardice are the members of the Public Safety Committee. These scared legislators wouldn’t even let the measure come up for a vote. They are:

Two Republicans: Joel Anderson of El Cajon and Greg Aghazarian, Stockton

Four Democrats: Chairman Jose Solorio of Santa Ana, Anthony J. Portantino of La Canada, Hector De La Torre of South Gate, Fiona Ma of San Francisco

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Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason,” will be released next Tuesday. But Time Magazine printed an excerpt earlier this week.

I can’t speak to the book as a whole, but the excerpt doesn’t frame the issue as an artifact of the right or left. It does, however, put into words something that many of us have been feeling with greater urgency—and sometimes despair, frankly—and that is the realization that logic, facts and rational thinking have drifted farther and farther away from the public discourse—even more so from the realms of public policy.

Yet, as I said, instead of shooting at one political party or another, Gore goes to a deeper level and talks about, among other things, the way we take in and process information. Marshall McLuhan Redux.

Here are a few excerpts:

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UPDATE: In keeping with the theme of this original post, Commenter Woody asked me to name my favorite books. in the comments section, I babbled out a string of the first that came to mind. Now what about the rest of you? What books have changed you? What books have you loved? Which have brought you knowledge? Comfort? Delight?

My very smart, soulful friend, David Ulin, Editor of the LA Times Book Review,
and all-’round cool and excellent Man of Letters, has written a lovely “appreciation” for Vonnegut in Friday’s LA Times. Here’s how it opens:

“FOR readers of a certain age and philosophical bent — and I count myself among them — Kurt Vonnegut was the writer who opened up the world. There was your life before Vonnegut, and then there was Vonnegut. Once you read him, it changed everything.”

As I read David’s description of how much Vonnegut’s work mattered to him, I thought (as probably many of you will reading this) of the various books that have changed my life, made me see the world differently, steadied me during strange times, made me laugh (and sob) like crazy, given me solace—-or sometimes just company—at moments when I needed that sort of psychic ballast terribly.

THEN after that first nice thought…..I had another far less happy thought about books.

I remembered that the Los Angeles Times—or more properly the Tribune Co.—has recently elected to slash the paper’s Sunday Book Review section and then to graft it (upside down, no less) on to the Sunday opinion section (”Current,” as it is called these days) as if the book review was some sort of grotesque extra leg.

The first Frankensteinian Book-Op will appear this coming Sunday.

The move is being made to cut costs, of course. (The book review and the opinion sections have few and no ads, respectively, thus aren’t big profit centers.) It doesn’t seem to matter that the Los Angeles Times as a whole is running at a 20 percent profit—which is considered a cheer-inducing yearly bottom line in many industries.

But as Charles Bobrinskoy, the VP of Ariel Capital Management (one of Tribune Co’s largest stock holders), said in an interview with Frontline earlier this year: “It’s not the profit margin that counts; it’s the direction of profits.” And the Times’ profit is merely holding steady, not gaining at a rapid clip.

The horror.

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