Beat the Press

OK, that headline was admittedly a bit of naked, attention-baiting hyperbole, but a couple of recent legal cases in Paris and Milan have got advocates of universal web access muttering under their breath.

First there was the conviction of Google in an Italian criminal court for hosting a user-generated video of some teenage boys harassing an autistic child. The New York Times reports that Google took down the video within two hours of receiving a request from Italian police, but by then the clip had already been publicly accessible for two months.

An judge in Milan, Oscar Magi, sentenced three Google executives in abstentia to six months in jail for invasion of privacy, a ruling the company called "astonishing." Italian prosecutors were apparently able to convince Magi (who hasn't released the arguments underlying his ruling yet) that Google was acting as a direct content provider, not simply as a conduit, because service providers are supposedly protected from liability by European Union trade rules.

Web freedom proponents have called the ruling alarming, but have consoled themselves with the fact that Italy is a special case. Web use in the country is low compared to the rest of Western Europe, and President Silvio Berlusconi has a serious dog in the Internet-regulation fight. Berlusconi is a mogul who is not only the dominant player in privately-owned media in Italy, but who also indirectly influences publicly-owned media by virtue of his office.

Imagine Roger Ailes in the White House or Rupert Murdoch in 10 Downing Street and you start to get the picture. Web providers who host video are the competition, so chilling them just makes good business sense.

Yet now from our Friends at the Citizen Media Law Center at Harvard comes news of a criminal case in France that can only be described as bizarre.

A New York University Law School professor, J.H.H. Weiler, is facing a criminal charges in Paris for refusing to take down a negative review of a book about the International Criminal Court written by an Israeli law professor, Karin Calvo-Goller. Weiler, published the online review in his capacity as editor of the site Global Law Books, but it was written by law professor from Germany.

Calvo-Goller asked Weiler to take down the review, saying it contained factual misstatements and went beyond mere opinion. Weiler reexamined the article and refused, saying it met generally-accepted standards for book reviewing and criticism. So Calvo-Goller brought a criminal libel complaint in France against Weiler, who is now faced with the prospect of having to fly to Paris to defend himself at trial.

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NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard has an interesting column on cultural issues raised by the radio network's reporting of a 23-year-old Marine, Alejandro Yazzie, in Afghanistan.

Yazzie, a Navajo from Rock Creek, Ariz., was shot and killed during the recent battle between US-led coalition forces and the Taliban near Marjah. An NPR reporter, Soraya Sharhaddi Nelson, was embedded with Yazzie's unit, captured the moment with graphic and disturbing audio, including the voice of a woman - presumably a comrade - yelling "He's dead."

Shepard writes about several issues raised about the piece, including that some people considered it too graphic and that Yazzie's family was not notified in advance when it would air. But the most interesting one is a request by Yazzie's family that NPR stop mentioning his name out of respect for Navajo traditions regarding death.

Some of the corporal's family members contacted me right after this interview aired, begging NPR to stop talking about his death.

"In our Navajo tradition, once we lay him to rest we cannot talk about his passing anymore," said his sister-in-law on March 4. "Culturally his spirit will not be at ease if we keep hearing about his death...It is hard for all of us to grieve the loss of [name withheld] with all this media attention it is getting and we know that this is not what he would have wanted. He was not the type of person to have wanted all this attention."

Remarkably, Shepard acquiesces to the family's request, telling readers in a parenthetical note at the beginning of piece that she is withholding the name out of respect for their wishes. But she never directly addresses the issue of whether NPR should or shouldn't keep using his name (which is still in Nelson's story on the NPR web site). Nor does she examine more closely why - beyond a simple courtesy - she doesn't use his name, yet the editor of the Navajo Times newspaper is.

As I said, it's an interesting issue. I just wish Shepard had resolved it a little bit more thoroughly.

Missing School: The New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University created a terrific piece of muckraking reporting which showed New England colleges and universities failing to punish sexual assaults on campus. The problem: statistics from BU weren't in the story.

Human Nature: It should hardly be a surprise that an animal called a killer whale would kill one of its trainers - something that happened at Sea World last week. But it the media's rush to explain why it happened, the anthropomorphizing got a bit out of hand. Anyone know where I can find a psychiatrist's couch big enough for a 6-ton predator?

Today's Beat the Press topics:

Missing School: The New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University created a terrific piece of muckraking reporting which showed New England colleges and universities failing to punish sexual assaults on campus. The problem: statistics from BU weren't in the story, even though they were available.

Civil War: Washington Post columnist David Broder slammed colleague Dana Millbank for a column that characterized President Obama as a dope for not following Rahm Emmanuel's advice. Millbank insists that the column wasn't an Emmanuel plant, but the dustup has the Post airing it's dirty linen in public. Again.

Human Nature: It should hardly be a surprise that an animal called a killer whale would kill one of its trainers - something that happened at Sea World last week. But it the media's rush to explain why it happened, the anthropomorphizing got a bit out of hand. Anyone know where I can find a psychiatrist's couch big enough for a 6-ton predator?

Plus Panel Peeves ...

The panel: Emily, hosting, Callie, Joe, Dan, and Adam Reilly in his final appearance in the guest panelist chair before he officially joins the staff of "Greater Boston" next Thursday.

The Boston Herald's media critic Jessica Heslam has an interesting item on the recent story about sexual assaults at local colleges produced by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University and ran on the front page of the Boston Globe.

Heslam points out that not only did the story fail to include Boston University in its investigation of how sexual assaults reported on campus rarely result in disciplinary action, but NECIR-BU ended up getting scooped by the BU student paper, the Daily Free Press.

The two longtime investigative journalists who run the investigative center, former WBZ reporter Joe Bergantino and former Boston Herald reporter Maggie Mulvihill, say they based their report on federal statistics reported by colleges that receive Justice Department grants in return. Those schools included Salem State College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern, Tufts, and UMass Amherst, but not Boston University, Boston College, or Harvard.

Yet the Daily Free Press was apparently able to report a similar story outlining a similar problem at BU, using information that was voluntarily disclosed by the university. What's more, Heslam quoted a BU spokesman saying the same infomation was given to NECIR-BU.

In a brief telephone conversation earlier today, an unhappy Bergantino said that criticism of the story was premature, and that NECIR-BU had always intended to address the issue at BU in a follow-up article. According to a statement he released to Heslam, that article will be reported by the Free Press and published jointly in the student paper and on the NECIR-BU web site.

The statement also contained a litany of reasons why the BU information was not included in the piece that ran in the Globe, including the fact that the Justice Department data was more recent, the fact that it had never been published before, and a need to "focus" the story.

What's missing from both the article and the statement, however, is any attempt to address the glaring appearance of a conflict of interest involved when a university-based journalism organization decides not to include its own host university in a controversial story. And that's particularly true given the fact that NECIR-BU has acknowledged being given at least some relevant data by Boston University - even if it was of a different vintage and represented less of a "scoop" than the Justice Department information.

NECIR-BU is a worthy endevour that has done some good work, but this is a regrettable and puzzling error. Investigative reporters should know better than anyone that the media is in the perception business, and that appearances count.

The legend of little Jimmy O'Keefe, undercover journalist and conservative provocateur wonder-boy, just continues to unravel.

First there was his ill-conceived stunt trying to get into the Louisiana offices of US Senator Mary Landrieu, supposedly to document how Landrieu wasn't being responsive to constituents angered by her stance on universal health care. That got O'Keefe arrested.

Now prosecutors in Brooklyn have cleared ACORN workers of supposedly advising O'Keefe and a cohort posing as a prostitute, Hannah Giles, how to hide the proceeds of her illegal business. The New York Daily News, quoting a law enforcement source, said the decision was based on unedited versions of O'Keefe's ACORN tapes, and that the footage widely seen in the media was edited "to meet their agenda."

It's also become clear in recent days that O'Keefe was not - as many media outlets including the New York Times and, yes, we here at Beat the Press, reported - dressed as a pimp when he went into ACORN's offices. Instead, footage of him garbed in a cartoonish pimp costume was taken outside, and then edited into the final product.

Of course the video of O'Keefe dressed as a pimp does serve at least one useful purpose: It will forever remind us of the distiction between actual investigative journalists and clowns pretending to be ...