Seeing the World From Ted Stevens' View

The first amendment to the US Constitition, part of what's known as the Bill of Rights reads as follows:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Alaska's senior US Senator, and the senior Republican in the US Senate, Ted Stevens is currently under investigation by the FBI. Last week he met with the editorial staff of the Anchorage Daily News. They taped the session. Here is the last part where he gives his opinion of the ADN.

Stevens_4 imported by AKRaven



[for the other interview segments go here you'll see in the center column the choice of audio links in the picture.]




Perhaps the Senator and the editors agree on the role of the media, perhaps not, but they certainly have different views of whether the ADN is playing its role correctly.

We can hear in the tape the Senator clearly feels put upon and betrayed by the media.

You've been hanging me weekly.
Your guys, they taunt me.
They taunt me with questions no respectable reporter would ask a Senator if it's already said I'm not going to answer questions.

Based on what the ADN has written lately, they believe it is their job to report on the conduct of Senator Stevens, and that they have a responsibility to probe to find out why the FBI searched Stevens' home in Girdwood recently.

So does Stevens know he's got something to hide and he's just being belligerent to the editors when they ask him questions he doesn't want to talk about? Or does he believe that he's being hounded by the ADN and the FBI for no good reason other than being a good Senator who has done what he was elected to do?


The New York Times had an interesting story today about the Norfolk Four. It's about people who confess to crimes they haven't committed. The article argues that what the prosecutor told the jury in one of these cases

"People just do not confess,” Hansen told jurors in Tice’s second trial, “to something of this magnitude, this heinous, this vicious, without having participated in it. It’s just not natural; it’s just not reasonable.”

That is certainly the conventional wisdom.

In fact, the article says there are at least 49 cases where DNA or a later confession by someone else has freed people who confessed.

Deskovic, like many false confessors, said he believed his life was in danger and that his interrogation wouldn’t stop unless he told the police what they wanted to hear.

Nevertheless, studies of proved false confessions suggest a number of recurring markers including actual violence, threats of violence, threats of harsh sentences like execution and extreme duress brought about by isolation, sleeplessness and lengthy, high-pressure interrogation. Police interrogation is designed to be stressful and disorienting and to keep the suspect off-balance. Guilt is frequently presumed. Police may legally pressure suspects using fabricated evidence, phony witnesses and lies about DNA or polygraph results.

In some cases, people are so worn down physically and psychologically that they actually come to believe they might have committed the crime.

But he said in an interview (and in an affidavit) that Ford treated him like a criminal from the outset, poking him in the chest, yelling in his face, calling him a liar and telling him, falsely, that he’d failed a polygraph test and that a witness saw him go into the apartment. The police got him to “second-guess” his memory, Williams said. “They wear you down to the point that you’re exhausted. I just wanted the questioning to end.”

If people can believe, even for a short time, that they are guilty of crimes they haven't committed, surely it's easy to believe someone can believe he's innocent of crimes he has committed. Stevens has been threatened with harsh punishment, treated like a criminal from the outset by some, yelled at in his face. And I'm sure the 83 year old Senator often feels worn down to the point that he's exhausted. That he just wants the questioning to end.


Clearly, a US Senator who has fought for years to raise funds for campaigns, to steer money into his young state that was sorely lacking in infratstructure, and to generally fight for his constituents, will understandably lose patience with reporters who don't understand that sometimes you have to make compromises to get things done. You can't make an omelette without breaking an egg.

And reporters taking their first amendment right to a free press seriously, see their role as asking the hard questions about the Senator's behavior and the alleged favors he might have passed on to financial supporters, friends, and relatives.

In fact, as I listen to the tape, the editor sounds almost timid as he addresses the Senator who is anything but timid.

This conflict isn't new.

"Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States" an essay on a US State Department website, by Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, includes the following early history of press freedom in North America.

In 1734, John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was charged with seditious libel for having printed anonymous criticism of the colonial governor general in his newspaper, the Weekly Journal. After spending nearly one year in jail awaiting trial, he was acquitted by a jury who refused to follow the judge's instructions and convict him. Zenger's lawyer, a retired attorney from Philadelphia named Andrew Hamilton, convinced the jury that no man should be subject to criminal penalties simply for criticizing the government, especially when the facts he reported were true -- resulting in one of the earliest examples of "jury nullification" in what was to become the United States.