mediagiraffe

AUDIO: First Amendment discussion increases in America's classrooms, Knight study finds

LISTEN to an audio interview with study coordinator Warren Watson of Ball State University:
Download knight-study-watson-09-18-06.mp3

OR LAUNCH STREAMING PODCAST

A Knight Foundation survey of 15,000 U.S. high-school students and 800 of their teachers has recorded increased teaching of First Amendment issues over the last two years. The high-school students know more about the free speech/free press issues than they reported in an initial, larger, $1-million study in 2004 entitled: "The Future of the First Anendment." But the Knight Foundation said the latest results also show students increasingly polarized about how they feel on First Amendment issues. A website with details of the findings by University of Connecticut researchers Dr. David Yalof and Dr. Kenneth Dautrich, is public today at: http://www.firstamendmentfuture.org. "We see progress," said Eric Newton, Knight's director of Journalism Initiatives, "but there are still serious problems." The researchers reported in a conference call today that high-school students are far more likely to take classes that teach about the First Amendment than two years ago. And more students now support protections for the news media. They also are more in favor of their right to report in their own newspapers without school officials' approval. But more students today think the First Amendment, as a whole, goes too far in the rights it guarantees. A gap is widening between those who support this fundamental law and those who don't. And teachers, while themselves increasing their appreciation of the First Amendment, don't think schools are doing a great job of teaching it.

EARLIER POST ABOUT Constitution Day (Sept. 18):
announcement:http://newshare.typepad.com/mediagiraffe/2006/09/knight_foundati.html

EARLIER WRAPUP ON JANUARY 2005 INITIAL FINDINGS:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/artman/publish/article_193.shtml

The Knight Foundation's contact for the study is Larry Meyer, vice president of communications
Knight Foundation(305) 908-2610, meyer@knightfdn.org

San Francisco free-lancer free on bail pending full appeals-court hearing on whether blogger has journalists' rights

The Society of Professional Journalists voted at its annual meeting in Chicago in August to provide $30,000 in support for the legal defense of Josh Wolf -- the largest such grant the organization has ever given. At the time, Josh was being held in the federal prison in Dublin, Calif., east of San Francisco for contempt of court for refusing to respond to a subpoena to provide his videotape of a street protest in San Francisco in which a police car was burned and two police officers injured. Wolf is a blogger and free-lance journalist and SPJ's defense is based on the notion that bloggers should have the same right to resist government subpoenas of source material as any journalist. On Sept. 1, two judges of a three-judge the U.S. Nine Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed to release Wolf about a month in prison, ruling that he should not have been denied bail. However, a second three-judge panel, ruling  Sept. 7 on the merits of his case, found against him on the merits. He has now appealed to the full Nine Circuit, allowing him to remain free on bail. Wolf, 23,  is maintaining a personal blog about his plight. Journalist J.D. Lasica provided in April a good summary of the case and its implications at his blog. On Friday, Sept. 15, host Amy Goodman of the weekday news program Democracy Now interviewed Josh as well as San Francisco Chronicle sports reporter Lance Williams -- also facing imprisonment for refusing to reveal the source of his stories and book about professional baseball drug use. To listen to the 14-minute intereview as a streaming download, click on the link below and go to 46 minutes into the podcast:  http://www.archive.org/download/dn2006-0915/dn2006-0915_64kb.m3u

Broadcast news veteran Bill Kurtis, in Chicago speech, compares news with junk food and charges journalists to "do your job"

In a speech invoking Thomas Jefferson, the images of Agent Orange . . . news as junk food . . . and Tom Cruise's baby, veteran CBS News broadcast journalist Bill Kurtis urges professional journalists meeting in Chicago to "do your job" of "communicating problems to intelligent people who can solve those problems." Kurtis delivered a keynote address to the annual convention of the Society of Professional Journalists at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago on Friday, Aug. 25, 2006. In a post-speech Q&A, Kurtis says the 15-second-attention rule for broadcast news stories as been misinterpreted.   Broadcast news industry research studies about the attention span of viewers advise keeping story elements to 15 seconds. Kurtis says news directors have interpreted this to mean each story should be about 15 seconds. But the actual research, says Kurtis, doesn't say that, he told a questioner in a post-speech Q&A.  A longer-form story can hold viewers' attention if it is tightly scripted and has a fresh transition or point every 15 seconds.  "Somehow, we have gone off on this path thinking the American public is stupid," Kurtis said.   In Chicago, where he used to be a news anchor, Kurtis says local stations report crime and shooting stories in the 15-second format. "There's no [time for] followup, except the followup that the police tell you."  As a result, he suggested, documentaries are shifting to movie theaters from television. He cited as an example what was originally "a PowerPoint by Al Gore" which has become, Kurtis said, "wildly popular" as the documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." (MGP profile) "Kids are hungry for that," Kurtis said. (LINK TO SPEECH)

California Court Set To Decide First Ammendment Blogger Rights

A California Court of Appeals is set to determine next week if a blogger is entitled to the same first ammendment rights as a journalist. 

Silicon Insider columnist Michael S. Malone details the case brought by Apple Computer against ZDNet reporter and blogger Jason O'Grady and 19 others whom Apple claims revealed "trade secrets" on their blogs: 

What were the vital "trade secrets" that O'Grady put in his column? They dealt with an arcane Firewire breakout box, code named Asteroid, for Apple's GarageBand podcasting software product. Big freaking deal.

The judge in the original case, however, ruled in Apple's favor against O'Grady:

"Unlike the whistle-blower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials [the enthusiast sites] are doing nothing more than feeding the public's insatiable desire for information."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped up to support O'Grady's appeal:

The EFF's petition has also been supported by amicus briefs from a host of important legal commentators specializing in the Web — including Eugene Volokh, blogger and law professor at UCLA; Jay Rosen, press critic and NYU professor; Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and creator of Instapundit; and Scott Rosenberg, senior technology writer at Salon.com.

O'Grady is also getting support from The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News and the Society of Professional Journalists — showing that, despite their protestations that bloggers aren't really journalists, when it comes down to freedom of the press, they are all on the same side.

Read more at "Silicon Insider: Apple's Lawsuit Could Define Cyber 'Journalists'

North Central University Removes Student Editors

Inside Higher Ed reports that Hope and Chuck Bahr, editors of North Central University student newspaper The Light, were removed from their posts after they refused to allow administrators "pre-publication editorial power."

Susan Detlefsen, a North Central spokeswoman, said that the decision to require pre-publication review was the result of “an accumulation of events.”

Gordon Anderson, president of the university, cited two main problems with The Light’s coverage. The first, he said, arose when Chuck Bahr chose to write a news article about the Soulforce Equality Ride, a 30-member tour of 19 Christian and military campuses that have anti-gay policies.

North Central University, a Pentecostal college located in Minnesota, takes a dim view of the Soulfource Equality Ride, calling it a "publicity stunt".  Chuck Bahr, the college paper's news editor, chose to cover the ride because it has attracted controversy not just at North Central, but at many institutions it visits. 

Hope Bahr was editor-in-chief of The Light

President Anderson determined, because of the husband-wife relationship of  the news editor and editor-in-chief, that "there was little chance there would be editorial oversight of the article."

Does the decision of Anderson violate Bahr's First Amendment rights:

Anderson pointed out that, because the university owns the newspaper and both are private entitites is privately owned, there is no First Amendment question in this case. The Bahrs admit that the university is on firm legal ground, but Hope Bahr said that, “we believe under Biblical principles we are allowed to question their decisions.” Student reaction, she added, has largely been apathetic. Most students “believe that the administration are our spiritual leaders and we should listen to them.”

Rather than a legal issue, the question, to Anderson and the Bahrs is what role the student newspaper should play. North Central policy says that “the opinion section is a venue where students should be free to express their opinions on matters that concern them. This includes columns or commentaries that advocate change in university policy or practice.”

Microsoft chooses China business over free speech in blog censorship?

A-First Amendment / Free Speech / Press
Microsoft chooses China business over free speech in blog censorship?
Microsoft Corp. appears to have made a deliberate choice to favor a continued business relationship with China over free speech after it shut down a Chinese blog runing on MSNSpaces. Rebecca MacKinnon of the Berkman Center at Harvard University first noticed the move last week, and since it has been covered by the New York Times and others.  READ MORE.