Pete Kott Trial - Underlying Stories - The Press

Ropinator asked in a comment a few posts ago, "are you a court journalist or something like that?" Ropi is a Hungarian high school student with a thoughtful blog that I read. His question gives me a chance to talk about some of the media stories underlying this case, including mine.

Well, am I a trial journalist? Something like that. At least for the last two weeks I've been. While I haven't hidden my identity from people, I haven't given much detail in my blog profile. I'd rather people evaluate the blog based on what I post than they jump to conclusions from labels in the profile. But the Anchorage Daily News has 'outed' me in their Alaska News Reader link this week.

Many of the outlets focused on the prosecution’s cross examination of former House speaker Pete Kott. Retired UAA professor Steve Aufrecht, in his What Do I Know? blog, says prosecutors scored base hits but no home runs, with their most significant gain questioning Kott’s honesty.

So this is a good time to talk about being a 'journalist' at the courtroom.

I went to the Tom Anderson trial because he was a former student of mine and I wanted to hear what happened first hand. Since I was there I started taking notes to help keep focused. Since I had the notes, I decided to start putting them on my blog. I started talking to Michael Carey (from the Anchorage Daily News) one day and we ended up going to lunch. He introduced me to others such as Lisa Demer. I knew Steve Heimel already from the old days when I did stuff with KSKA. Then one day my blog starting getting lots of hits. It turned out that the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) had linked to my site. The most daily hits my blog had gotten before that was about 22. Now I got 40, then 53, then 101, then 150. And after the trial they tapered off just as fast, though I'd picked up a few more regular viewers and was averaging 15-20 a day.

So when the Kott trial was coming up, it seemed like blogging was the right thing to do. Not just to get my hits up, but because I had taught public administration at the university and have published articles and book chapters on accountability and ethics and corruption. This was the second trial to come out of an FBI investigation that has several other Alaskan politicians implicated, including the US Senator, Ted Stevens, who is the senior Republican senator in the United States Senate.

First, I'd like to say that the other journalists - Lisa Demer and Michael Carey from the ADN - have been very supportive of my blogging. John McKay, the ADN and KTUU attorney who has opened media access to the courtroom, has also been very supportive as have Steve Heimel and David Shurtleff from APRN.

As that previous paragraph might suggest, the media people know each other and help each other out. When the ADN and KTUU got permission to bring their cell phones past the security (but they must be turned off in the courtroom) and to bring their laptops into the courtroom, that was extended to all media. My status as an independent blogger was untested, but they told me to make up a press pass, and by the time I was ready to bring my computer into the courtroom, the security guards knew me as a regular and I had no problems. The other media folks are the camera people - both video and still - who wait outside the courtroom security for attorneys, the defendant and his party, witnesses - to get pictures.
And there are also a couple of artists.
When I talk about media stories, I realize now that there are stories about the media and how they cover things and there are the different kinds of ways they cover stories. I think I have that all mixed together here.

1. The sound bites and surprises are irresistible, especially if they break open something important. Everyone's waiting for the good quotable lines or the juicy event such as when Bill Allen said he paid for the workmen who remodeled Senator Ted Stevens' Girdwood house. Some recent examples:

• The box of red CBC (Corrupt Bastard Club) baseball caps embroidered by Pete Kott's girlfriend.
  
• Kott's Chief of Staff: "I had two different bosses. When Pete was drunk he started talking hillbilly..." In fact,Steve Heimel opened his country music show on KNBA this afternoon, with "Today is National Talk Hillbilly Day" and that Kott trial jurors shouldn't listen to the show because he might slip in some trial comments. (I didn't hear any after that.)
  
• Kott: "If I have a choice between compromising my principles or lying to my friends, then lying to my friends will take a back seat."
  

2. The tension between getting the story in quickly and getting it accurate and meaningful. It's not that easy to objectively summarize 6 hours of testimony - covering all the key points and letting the reader know what it all means without skewing things. Lisa Demer, as I've written before, has done a great job. Going into enough depth without losing the overall sense of what happened is hard. The newspaper people have limited space and an editor to get past so that something is up early on the website and then in the morning paper. The radio and tv people have even less air time to get a sense of the day to their listeners. The sound bite is especially helpful for them. And they are dependent on the court clerk's office to get them the audio cd of the court each day in time to get their stories taped by air time. And sometimes they don't get the tape. I have the easiest task. I can blog as much or as little as I want. I can focus on a small point without worrying about getting the big picture across, leaving the ADN with the responsibility of giving the whole picture.

3. Competition among media. This is something I haven't particularly noticed. Everyone is sharing. If I get to the court late, another journalist will let me know what's happened. As soon as the ADN got all the audio and video tapes from the Prosecutors they emailed the media who are covering the trial, including me, to give us a link to download everything. And it was all very easy to download.
The only competition I've sensed was between local media and Outside media. Rich Mauer from the ADN was not happy that it was an NPR reporter who followed the governor out of court Thursday and broke the story that she felt Sen. Stevens needed to tell Alaskans what is happening with his investigation. And some of the other reporters were irked at Outside media asking them to get on the Stevens case for them, feeling they're too focused on that instead other important stories. And they make remarks about the Parachute Journalists who write stories from Alaska but don't understand the context because they are only here a short time. There's a skepticism about whether the FBI will actually get the quid pro quo smoking gun on Stevens. On the other hand, another reporter said he was sure Stevens won't run in 2008.


4. Adjusting to the new technological realities. The ADN website is evolving quickly and well. Sean slips out of the courtroom regularly and down to the cafeteria wi-fi to send in his reports. And the Alaska Report is an electronic news digest with links and comment area. In addition there are various blogs. It's much, much more than the print published on line. The stories in the print version have little boxes referring readers to the web.

5. I'm still figuring out my role in all this. Unlike the regular media, I'm shy about asking the attorneys questions or calling people up to get more information. I don't want to stick my camera in people's faces. Though I have less guilt doing that to journalists - figuring that if they can dish it out, they should be able to take it. Regulars in the court room go from nodding to saying hi to introducing themselves and talking. Thus I've been talking a little the last few days with Sen. Fred Dyson whose been there regularly and has been discussed in the trial in different ways - mainly as the person who drove Allen to meet the FBI investigators for the first time. The regular reporters have to talk to these people, but it also means their objectivity gets changed as those relationships get better. The extreme version seems to be the White House press who get used by the administration for strategic leaks. And if they don't treat the administration well, they lose their sources. Like with the lobbyists, I guess people have to realize that reporters like them for their stories, not for who they are. But obviously the professional and personal relationships get mixed up.

6. As I'm creating my journalistic identity, I think my role model is Tom Wolfe . Given his bigger than life image, I should clarify how. Certainly not sartorially and not in flamboyance. But in trying to bring meaning to the story by looking at the context beyond the story in the spotlight. I find myself looking at all the actors, not just those on the stage in the spotlight. I've done this with pictures that give a sense of the background of the trial - the clerk's office where I can use the computer to download documents; the cafeteria where the Kott party eats in one section and various journalists in other sections. Filling in the less obvious facts. And I also enjoy a freedom to speculate about possible interpretations of what we're seeing. Since the press is such a critical part of all this, they really should be subjects for the media as well.

Of course, if I were a better journalists, I'd have more information about my photos. In this post, at the top are camera folks waiting for photo subjects to walk out of court. Another one of the artists with her sketch book as she was walking into the Federal Building. Finally, three journalists during a break, with Rich Mauer in the center.