April 16, 2024

ALMOST ALWAYS A VERY HARD DECISION: Reflections of a Newsman.

I saw this article where country singer Ashley Judd talked about being on the “other side” of coverage of tragedies. It made me take pause and reflect.

As a former photojournalist turned newsroom lawyer, I’ve had to wrestle with this from time to time. My watch-words (especially in the Media Law and Ethics classes I teach) has always been “good taste and common sense win the day.”

But it’s always a tough call. My dear friend, the late Hal Buell was the long-time Photo Chief for the Associated Press. A truly decent guy in every way. When the legendary Nick Ut made the iconic news picture below, Hal told me years later that they debated for several hours about whether they should move the file on the wire.

(Credit: Nick Ut/AP under Creative Commons license)

They decided that despite its somewhat gruesome and certainly invasive nature, it depicted a moment too important to keep from the public. IIRC, some newspaper members simply chose not to run it.

Flash forward a few years to the wild and wooly ’80’s. The standard became “if it bleeds, it leads.” Little thought was given to the sensitivities of the victim’s families, let alone the readers. Photographs like this were common:

(Credit: Paul DeMaria/NYDN via Wikimedia Commons)

As a shooter myself, I was guilty of making pictures that today might be “insensitive.” I made the photo below after hearing a police call of a shooting outside an elementary school:

(Credit: Charles Glasser/Miami Beach Sun)

Apparently this fellow was a Marielito who owed about $50 to another drug dealer. Without warning, the murderer (never caught) simply walked up behind this guy and pumped a few .38 rounds into the back of his head. (FYI: Years later, Facebook blocked this photo from view for violating “community standards.”)

Did I consider anyone’s “privacy”? Hell, it was on a public sidewalk (in front of a school, no less) and the guy wasn’t a “somebody.” No relatives to complain, no objections from readers, I even won a Florida Press Club in Spot News award for it.

Let’s flash forward to my being a newsroom lawyer a decade or so later. I’m the Global Media Counsel for Bloomberg News. In the early days of the Enron collapse, one of the top executives — a real Boy Scout — committed suicide. An outstanding reporter named Loren Steffy, got a hold of his suicide note from the Sugarland PD. What to do?

The family’s lawyer begged us not to publish it. The note itself revealed nothing personal, and didn’t name names about Enron. I had a long, deep discussion with the Editor-in-Chief. If we didn’t publish, I argued, the family would be subjected to endless conspiracy theories. By publishing, we could put the matter of his suicide to rest. He knew bad things were done, as an honest guy he couldn’t deal with it, and it was going to get worse: He wanted to apologize to his family.

We ran the note. Thoughts?

 

 

 

Posted at 5:00 pm by Charles Glasser

SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Top Astronomers Gather to Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About the Universe.

“We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date,” he added. “More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers.”

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe’s growth in significant ways.

Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is “lopsided” after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

“It would mean that two-thirds of the universe has just disappeared,” Sarkar told The Guardian.

Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe’s expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

“We have great data” is a great thing to have to start with.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

ANOTHER REASON NOT TO GET COCKY: ‘Bidenbucks’ Make ‘Zuckbucks’ Look Like Chump Change.

On Aug. 9, 2021, just five months after Biden signed the executive order that would command the federal government to serve as a get-out-the-vote arm of the Democrat Party, Adam Lioz emailed “Team USDA.” Lioz, who at the time served as senior counsel for left-wing policy activist group Demos, wanted to circle back with Department of Agriculture staff and thank them for “a productive conversation,” according to records obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

“As we noted, we’ll have our ‘best practices’ slides ready in the next 1-2 weeks and in the meantime, y’all had asked for data on voter registration at the state level, which I’ve pasted below,” Lioz, who these days serves as senior policy counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote in the email with the subject line, “Demos Meeting on Voting Rights EO.”

“We’re eager to schedule follow up conversations to dig into specific programs and help with integration in any way we can. Just let us know when you are available for that,” he added.

Not surprisingly, Biden’s USDA did just that. New York-based Demos reportedly helped draft Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which directs each federal agency head to develop a plan to “promote voter registration and voter participation.” As the Foundation for Government Accountability notes, Biden’s fiat “follows the same strategy” contained in a Demos policy paper.

If you’re filling your leftist bingo card, Demos is closely tied to the far-left Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wing of the Democrat Party, according to activist tracker InfluenceWatch.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

KUDOS TO CBS: ‘If a Bully Takes 350 Odd Swings at You and You Duck, How Is That a Win?’

CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil eschewed both approaches and did his job of asking tough, adversarial questions. …

When [Biden flack John] Kirby meandered and argued it all worked out for the best, Kirby both pushed back and took aim at those (including in the White House) arguing Israel should just take drones and missiles ad nauseam without being allowed to hit back:

Nobody wants a war in that region, not at all, but let’s take up this question of what a win is. You’ve described the Middle East there, Israel’s neighborhood, as a tough one. Deterrence matters, hitting back does. If a bully takes 350 odd swings at you and you duck, how is that a win?

Kirby replied he wouldn’t “get into what the future portends here and — and what the Israelis might or might not do”, but doubled down on not wanting “a wider war” while also this laughable and vague claim of “continu[ing] to hold Iran accountable”.

A wise community organizer famously advised his constituents to “get in their faces and punch back twice as hard.” Offer not valid in Israel, apparently.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

CLOGGED ARTERIES: The unseen cost of road-blocking protests.

Recent events in Israel and Gaza have sparked a wave of protests, with some activists in major cities using a familiar tactic: obstructing traffic.

While this seems to have been an effective strategy by protesters across the political spectrum to draw attention to a variety of issues in recent years — including racial injustice, climate change, and pandemic restrictions — these protests raise an important question: At what cost do these disruptions come?

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about a demonstration disrupting traffic at the Los Angeles airport recently, Michael Beer, the director of Nonviolence International, said that it can be hard for protesters to cut through the media environment without disruptive action like blocking traffic. He then added, “But you have to think: Are you stopping the ambulance from getting to a hospital and somebody’s going to die?”

Research on road closures suggests the answer is probably yes.

* * * * * * * *

The issue at hand, of course, is not the right to protest; non-violent protest is a cornerstone of our democracy and our American identity. But a commonsense extrapolation of the marathon study, and other studies that illustrate how mere minutes matter in medical emergencies, tells us that even when the protest itself is peaceful and protesters clear the way for ambulances or other emergency vehicles, transit times will still be longer, particularly when accounting for the ripple effects that a blockage in one area can cause for motorists miles away.

If activists are indeed committed to peaceful protest, they must be cognizant of the real harms of road-blocking protests that are more problematic than a simple nuisance to commuters, nearby businesses, and others. It is unlikely that protesters would ever find out if an ambulance was delayed and a patient was physically harmed or died as a result of that delay. If protesters were aware of the extent to which those with life-threatening medical emergencies could be dying as a result of their blockade, would they choose differently?

Given that they share the same “Progressives Against Progress” anti-modernity worldview as the climate change apocalyptic narcissists who similarly block roads and destroy artwork, then the answer is “No.” Next question?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: John Cougar Mellencamp, 72, angry that fans don’t want a lecture on the wonders of Joe Biden, age 81:

Posted at 1:34 pm by Ed Driscoll