Violence Against Women In Alaska - CNN Special Report - UAF's Campus Newspaper

[I'm not sure how to write this post.  It's about outrageous postings about women and rape, how the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)'s student newspaper handled them, and how the University itself handled it all.  And the underlying lack of concern about violence against women in Alaska. I decided, last night, after looking around for more information, that I had too many questions to post this story yet.  

But then this morning a friend emailed me a link to a CNN report on Alaska's off-the-chart rates of violence toward women.   It seemed I had to post something.  I have too many unpublished posts sitting, waiting to be 'good enough' to post.  This is too important to be ignored.  I don't have any answers, but I have some of the questions.   So, I'm basically just giving you an overview and throwing it out for others to think about.  This is stuff happening in our state, in our cities and towns, every day while most of us look away.  I have to post this, rather than look away.]

[UPDATE 2/7/14:  A comment from Robyne [see below] who identifies herself as the student newspaper advisor says that the student wanted her name in the newspaper.  If that's the case, it changes my key issue here, but not all the contextual issues.  She also says that the article helped to raise the issues for discussion on campus.]

A Facebook post last night sent me to a blog by Fairbanks faculty member Sine Anahita lamenting the university's tolerance of 'slut-shaming' in the student newspaper.  She cites a report that exonerates the newspaper and finds no sexual harassment [is protected]:

"University of Alaska Fairbanks has determined that sexual harassment of women in the student newspaper and online is constitutionally protected. The university’s general counsel’s office, the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity (D&EO), and an outside attorney hired by the university to review my Title IX complaint all agreed that the Sun-Star exercised its right to free speech when it published two articles that sexually harass women. Read details about this issue here: http://wp.me/p3HWTd-1w"

In another post she focused on a story in the UAF Sun Star that used screenshots from a FB confession page that named a specific student.  Here's an excerpt from an article from the following week's edition of the Sun Star about the original story.  I've blocked out the student's name which was in the original Sun Star piece.  

"On Tuesday Apr. 16, the UAF Confessions page administrator posted a “confession” that crossed the line for some of its audience. The post read, “Like if you’ve fucked xxxx xxxxx. Comment if it was a 3 some!” The post immediately received criticism from users surprised that the page administrator would allow the sexually explicit content targeted at UAF communications student and graduate teaching assistant XXXX XXXX."

All the comments cited on the confessions page express disgust at the posting and shock that it's being left up with the name.  Partly that's the purpose of the First Amendment - to get things out and get them debated.  But leaving in the name seems to go too far.  I can't articulate it more than that yet, which is why I wanted to wait on this.  But imagine your sister or daughter or son, for that matter,  being named that way in a newspaper which is still online almost a year later.  Anyone who googles her name would find it on the student newspaper website.  Something is just wrong there.

I must also add that the article in the paper quotes the student named in the piece.

“I hold no ill will to anyone that has created this page or message, but it did make me stop think [sic]: Here I am, a graduate student at UAF with so much to feel good about in my life, and an anonymous person calls me out on a UAF public forum for my sexuality,” XXXXX said in reflection. “Mostly, I think it is interesting that calling out a woman for her sexual activities is still the way that men (and women) put other women down.”  [Again, I xxx'd out the name]

Maybe she's a lot more sexually liberated than most of us.  Or maybe she's putting up a good front.  I have no way to evaluate at this point. 

As I say, I wasn't going to post on this yet.  But this morning someone sent me a link to a CNN special report.   CNN sent John D. Sutter to Alaska to report on our off-the-charts rates of  violence against women.  

The extent of Alaska's problem with violence against women is both horrifying and clear: Alaska's per capita rate of reported rape is the highest in the country, according to 2012 FBI crime data. An estimated 80 rapes are reported in Alaska for every 100,000 people. That's nearly three times the national average of 27; and almost seven times the rate in New Jersey, the state where reported rape is least common. Those comparisons are imperfect, of course. But localized surveys in Alaska paint an even bleaker picture. A majority of women – 59% -- have experienced sexual or intimate partner violence, which includes physical violence and threats; and 37%, nearly four in 10, have been raped or sexually assaulted, according to a survey of 871 adult women in Alaska, published in 2010.

I couldn't find the actual University report  that finds the postings constitutionally protected, so I emailed blogger and professor Anahita about its availability.  She wrote back:

"The report is not online, but it was sent to several news organizations. I can't share it with you because I think it would be unethical. There are many documents in the report that are clearly marked CONFIDENTIAL. But I'm happy to summarize the contents."

It's a little ironic that the newspaper can, without permission, publish a student's name connected to her sexual behavior written anonymously, but the report investigating it is confidential. [Note comment by Robyne below who says the student insisted that her name be put into the piece.  That would change my biggest objection here.  The person who does the insulting isn't able to reveal his name, but his intended victim has no problem standing up and identifying herself.  That changes the dynamics.]

I am a strong supporter of First Amendment rights, but there are exceptions to them, like shouting fire in crowded theater.  The rationale there is that people might get trampled and hurt in the ensuing panic.  I can't see how people, particularly women, aren't emotionally trampled by such posts, especially given the situation here in Alaska.  But the "Fire" example isn't as clear cut as it seems. There are libel and slander laws that also limit free speech. 

The University of Alaska Free Speech policy is pretty clear:

P01.02.010. Freedom of Speech.

A.

An environment of free and honest inquiry is essential to the functioning and the mission of the university. The board and the university therefore acknowledge, affirm, and espouse the right of freedom of speech as guaranteed in the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Alaska. The essential purpose of the university is to engage in the pursuit of truth, the advancement of learning and the dissemination of knowledge. To achieve this purpose, all members of the university must be assured of the constitutionally protected right to question, speculate, and comment, as well as the right to criticize the university and society at large.

B.

The university will not limit or abridge any individual's constitutional right to free speech.

What happens when it conflicts with the  University policies on Sexual Harassment?

University of Alaska Policy Regarding Sexual Harassment

P04.02.022. Sexual Harassment.
A. The university will not tolerate inappropriate sexual or sexually harassing behavior and seeks to prevent such conduct toward its students, employees and applicants for employment. Violation of this policy may lead to discipline of the offending party.
B. Since some members of the university community hold positions of authority that may involve the legitimate exercise of power over others, it is their responsibility to be sensitive to that power. Faculty and supervisors in particular, in their relationships with students and subordinates, need to be aware of potential conflicts of interest and the possible compromise of their evaluative capacity. Because there is an inherent power difference in these relationships, the potential exists for the less powerful person to perceive a coercive element in suggestions regarding activities outside those inherent in the professional relationship.
C. It is the responsibility of faculty and staff to behave in such a manner that their words or actions cannot reasonably be perceived as sexually coercive, abusive, or exploitative. Sexual harassment also can occur in relationships among equals as when repeated unwelcome advances, demeaning verbal behavior, or offensive physical contact interfere with an individual's ability to work or study productively. Consensual sexual conduct that unreasonably interferes with other employees’ work or creates a hostile, intimidating or offensive working or learning environment constitutes sexual harassment for purposes of this policy.
D. The university is committed to providing an environment of study and work free from sexual harassment and to ensuring the accessibility of appropriate procedures for addressing all complaints regarding sexual harassment. Nothing contained in this sexual harassment policy will be construed or applied to limit or abridge any person’s constitutional right to freedom of expression or to infringe upon the legitimate academic freedom or right of due process of any member of the university community.

Apparently free speech trumps harassment.   I wonder what would happen if students started testing the limits of free speech in class.  "Professor, did you fuck your wife last night?  Is that why you haven't graded our papers yet?"  I wonder whether the student's free speech rights would be upheld. 

In another post, Anahita shares some of the hate mail aimed at her.  I was confused about whether this came to her website or not and asked her that by email.  She responded:

"The comments that I posted in "Misogynist Hate" on my blog were from blogs on other sites. I have not been able to trace the origins of most of them. I found them by searching for my name and Title IX. Some of them have been deleted or I get a "page not found" error. There was a period in November when there were dozens of them, but now there are fewer hits." 

 I don't claim to know what motivates someone to write and post this sort of stuff.  But unless we try to understand it, things aren't going to change.  These are troubled people.  I post some of the comments for same reason Anahita does "As an antidote to the online hate, and as a way to contribute to the data about online misogyny."

“She’s so ugly I wouldn’t rape her with a dead man’s penis.”
“She would never, even if she was the only woman on an island with thousands of men, have to worry about being raped.”
“if THAT is a picture of her, i think she “doth protest to much” as a reaction to her inner desire to partake in the sex she doesn’t stand a chance of ever getting.”
“What that femiNazi needs to do is go in search of a sense of humor. That is not sexual harassment; true sexual harassment is something she need never worry about, judging from her mouth and her photo.”
“Dear Feminists, Please get a Life . Perhaps get laid, get over yourselves we are tired of hearing from your twisted little selves”

Sutter, in the CNN piece, writes:  

I asked [UAA Justice Center director] Rosay  what researchers had done to try to make sense of [the high violence rates against women.] Had there been efforts to interview rapists? To understand what life experiences may have led them to rape? Or to try to figure out what might stop perpetrators from raping again?

No, he said. Not to his knowledge.

But, he offered: Maybe that would help.

That conversation and others like it led me to the small community where I met Sheldon – and to the decision to focus on offenders rather than victims. A common refrain from women's rights activists is that "rape won't stop until men stop raping."

I couldn't agree more. Victims aren't to blame; rapists are. [emphasis added]

I've sometimes thought of interviewing prisoners about how they got there.  Without understanding what sort of life history leads to the mean, hateful comments and to actual violence, we can't take action to meaningfully reduce the incidence of violence against women.  

I'm leery of abridging Free Speech.  It's how people express their ideas and feelings. It's how we keep a free society.   And letting people express their vile feelings and thoughts is a way to find out what lurks in our communities.  Isn't it better to know these thoughts are there?  But once we know these things, our institutions - like the legislature and the university - have responsibilities to act to alleviate the conditions that give rise to the kinds of hatefulness that is expressed.  And to give protection and comfort to those targeted.  I understand some of this may simply be adolescent bravado said thoughtlessly, and with no real intent at harm.  But when things are posted on the internet, they take on a life far beyond anything in the past.  And some is serious and does intend harm.   I still don't think the student's name should have been published.  Part of being a responsible journalist is knowing that just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Does such speech fuel violence against women or is it merely a symptom of the things that cause violence against women?  How does such speech affect women?  Not just the named student, but other women who could be named by other people?  How does such speech affect other men who hear it?  Does it make it more acceptable?  What possible benefit comes from publishing the student's name in the student paper?  How can we as individuals, as residents of Alaska, and as parents, as elected officials, and as professionals in schools and hospitals and the media change what's happening? 

In a democracy, we're all responsible for what we let happen.  If we don't vote, if we don't support good candidates, if we don't voice our opinions regularly, we're part of the problem.   The legislators we elect do or don't pass good laws, do or don't appropriate funds to help eliminate the conditions that lead such hatred.  I understand that some of this is simply human behavior and eliminating it altogether is not going to happen.  But it happens much more in Alaska, if the numbers are to be believed, and so we are responsible for getting those numbers down.  "Numbers down."  How cold and abstract.  We're responsible for protecting women from abusive men, from their abusive words, from their unwanted touch, from their violations.

[Feb 7:  Follow up post here:  We don't call vets with PTSD who freak out at the sound of a loud noise 'thin-skinned']

[UPDATE June 18, 2014:  The University of Alaska system was added to a list of colleges and universities being investigated for Title IX violations, including sexual assault.]

Bottom Feeders

I got this spam email, I've xxx'd out most of the name and gotten rid of the links. 

Exxxxxxxx   xxx

Smoking Is Sexy Again.

Looks and Feels like a Real Cigarette

• No Tar
• No Bad Breath
• No Odar [no spell check either]

Try It NOW!

Do I even have to explain why this is so disgusting?  I understand smokers using e-cigs as a less toxic alternative to real cigarettes, but this is marketing smoking as sexy.  That's my big objection.


Here are some excerpts from what Clarence Page, the generally right-on-target Chicago Tribune columnist wrote (today) on this topic:

As a recovering nicotine addict, the rising tide of local bans against puffing in public on electronic cigarettes makes me wonder what lawmakers have been smoking.
By an overwhelming 45-4 vote last week, Chicago's City Council followed New York, Los Angeles and other cities that have passed or are considering limits on e-cigarettes that banish their use in restaurants, bars and most other indoor public places.
Retailers also are required to sell e-cigarettes from behind the counter so that it's harder for minors to get their hands on them.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered fake cigarettes. They contain no tobacco, require no combustion and, after exhaustive health studies, appear to cause no physical harm — compared to real cigarettes, at least.

You can't even call their use "smoking." Some users call it "vaping" for the vapor the devices create by heating up a liquified nicotine mix. When puffed and exhaled, the white, misty vapor resembles smoke — like your breath on a cold day.
By duplicating the rituals of smoking, the devices are designed to help wean users off the nasty habit. . .

You can finish it here.  (He does see marketing this to kids as a problem.)


Here's what WebMD said about e-cigs in 2009.

The FDA, on a page updated 1/10/2014, says:

Electronic Cigarettes (e-Cigarettes)

What are electronic cigarettes? 
Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, are battery-operated products designed to deliver nicotine, flavor and other chemicals.  They turn chemicals, including highly addictive nicotine, into an aerosol that is inhaled by the user.


Most e-cigarettes are manufactured to look like conventional cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Some resemble everyday items such as pens and USB memory sticks.

E-cigarettes have not been fully studied so consumers currently don’t know:

• the potential risks of  e-cigarettes when used as intended,
• how much nicotine or other potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use, or
• if there are any benefits associated with using these products.

Additionally, it is not known if e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other tobacco products, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death.

FDA Regulation of e-Cigarettes

Only e-cigarettes that are marketed for therapeutic purposes are currently regulated by the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).  The FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) currently regulates

• cigarettes,
• cigarette tobacco,
•  roll-your-own tobacco, and
• smokeless tobacco.

FDA intends to issue a proposed rule extending FDA’s tobacco product authorities beyond the above products to include other products like e-cigarettes. For further details, please see the Unified Agenda entry describing this rulemaking.

eCigarettes and Adverse Events

What is an Adverse Event?
An adverse event is an undesirable side effect or unexpected health or product quality problem that an individual believes was caused by the use of a tobacco product.
Reporting an Adverse Event
Anyone can report an adverse event to the FDA. In fact, these reports help us identify safety concerns with tobacco products that could cause health or safety problems beyond those normally associated with tobacco product use.

Please report adverse events with e-cigarettes via: 

• The HHS Safety Reporting Portal or
• By calling 1-800-FDA-1088

AIFF 2013: Bambi or Invective - Thinking About Film Criticism

Seeing lots of movies last week has me thinking about movie reviews, their purpose, their effects, and one's qualifications to write them in the first place.  I do want to write about some of the films I saw and also about the festival's awards.

So, when I found Maureen Dowd's column in the Anchorage Daily News today, (in the NY Times a couple days ago) on the "Bambi Rule,"  I read it with care.

Should reviewers be nice or critical?  Here's the argument for being nice:

"Eggers chided Harvard students: 'Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic, and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them.'”

And here Dowd quotes Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic:

“'Rebecca West established what she called ‘the duty of harsh criticism,’ and she was right. An intellectual has a solemn obligation to speak out negatively against ideas or books that he or she believes will have a pernicious or misleading effect upon people’s understanding of important things. To do otherwise would be cowardly and irresponsible. “If one feels that a value or a belief or a form that one cherishes has been traduced, one should rise to its defense. In intellectual and literary life, where the stakes may be quite high, manners must never be the primary consideration. People who advance controversial notions should be prepared for controversy. Questions of truth, meaning, goodness, justice and beauty are bigger than Bambi."

It's much harder to critique a film when you've met the film maker.  And this is good.  It forces me to distinguish between the film and the film maker.  I need to write about the film, I need to write about it from my perspective (rather than an omniscient reviewer perspective), and I need to be constructive.  When I wrote during the festival, it was to give potential viewers an idea of quality and topic so they could decide among the many choices, but I didn't want to do spoilers.  After the festival, now that I've had time to think, I can write more meaningfully about the films.

Basically, I want to write so that the film maker is not mad at me after reading a review.  (Well, not mad for long anyway.)  It's hard enough to make a film without having people who haven't made a film tear it apart.  I try to write using the same frame of mind I used to critique my graduate students' papers.  The point is to help the student write a better paper next time.  That requires me to avoid evaluative terms as much as possible and use concrete examples of what I liked and disliked.  I'm usually right about what I like and dislike, but the odds go down when I talk about what's 'good' and 'bad.'

That said, standing up for important values when someone trashes them is also important.  I've only been harsh in my AIFF  movie criticisms over the years when I thought the film makers had acted very badly (The Dalai Lama's Cat) or when there was a particularly ethnocentric movie (Exporting Raymond.)  But even in those reviews, I tried to stay objective and gave detailed examples of why I was bothered. 

The Dowd piece, I'm guessing, looks to the extremes - the smarmy reviews that almost seem part of a public relations campaign (and NPR and ADN participate in this along with all the other media) and the nasty insults that are often more reflective of the reviewers' problems than the work reviewed. 

All that said, I'm hoping to post my thoughts on the features - narrative and documentaries - and on the animation program.  And I'll slip in a few of the shorts, but I didn't see enough of them.  Coming soon. 

AIFF 2013: Sarah Knight Talks About Her Film Vino Veritas

It's 1:30 am Saturday.  I saw Vino Veritas last night and I really want to be in bed now, but I have some video to share with folks who are thinking they might want to see this film.

Knight (r) talking to audience member after showing

It's a good film.  It's in the Virginia Woolf genre - two couples together in a house and they start talking more candidly than normal.  It's gentler than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and last year's festival example of this genre, Between Us.


It's much too soon for me to write about this film.  I need to think about it more.  For example, Benz (who directed The Words I Love) asked me if I thought it made a difference that it was on Halloween.  Yes, if it weren't Halloween we wouldn't learn that Claire had no identity of her own, except when she won the Halloween costume award each year.  But as I thought about his question more, I realized that the three characters who took the truth serum wine, were all dressed in costumes that were not who they really were.  The one who did NOT take the truth serum was dressed in his real life doctor gown.

I need more time to tease out insights like that.

Vino Veritas plays today (Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013) at 4pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.  Bring your spouse.  

In the meantime, you can watch the video of Sarah.

AIFF 2013: Lion Ark - Film Makers In Anchorage for Sat and Sun Showings

I've been holding up this video til Lion Ark was about to play here in Anchorage.  I got to see the film and talk to the directors when we were in LA.  They are due in Anchorage for the showings Saturday (3:30pm Loussac) and Sunday (3 pm AK Exp large theater)

This is somewhat like a reality show where you watch the animal rescuers plan their attacks on the illegal circuses that have lions.  You hear them discuss how they helped get the Bolivian government to pass the strongest legislation around to prevent little circuses from using animals.  While some (most?) have given up their lions, there are a few outlaw circuses left.

None of this is really spoiler material because it's the telling of the story that matters.  Most, if not all, of the questions at the Q&A in LA were about the content of the movie, so afterward I focused my questions more on the movie making. 




There's a little bit of disturbing video of beating of animals in the film, so the younger kids probably shouldn't see this.  (It's PG 13)

There are a lot of Bolivians involved in the rescue and an important part of the film for me was that a number of them were brought with the lions to Colorado at the end, to see the lions' new home.  

The program says the film makers will be there Saturday, and probably they'll be at the Sunday showing but I'm not sure.

With Tim Phillips and Jan Creamer in town for Lion Ark, Will Francome for One.For.Ten, and Laurance Relton here for Reel Life, you'd think Captain Cook had made Alaska an English colony.  All their films are well worth watching.  Will's interviews with people who have been released from death row after their convictions were overturned can be seen at the one.for.ten website.  

Laurence's wonderful short film, Reel Life, plays as part of the Reel/Real Life Short Docs program at 3pm Saturday at the AK Exp Theater. 

"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations" - Anchorage Police Chief

Last Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News had an article about a police officer who used the APD's computer system to look up information about people for non-work related reasons.

Reporter Casey Grove writes,

Police Chief Mark Mew said Tuesday that he had warned the recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior while on duty.
"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations," Mew said.

I've seen Chief Mew in action over the years and I think he's grown a lot and is dedicated  to making Anchorage as safe a place as possible.

But as a teacher, I'd point out that people often don't hear what they are told, especially on the first day.  I know that my students, on the first day, basically wanted to know how much work they would have to do, how many papers, how much reading, so they could figure out if they could do ok in class.

Even if they did hear anything else, there was no guarantee that what they understood was what I had intended.  And if the class wasn't interactive, where the students were forced to think and respond, the odds of them getting other stuff, especially information that was not part of what they already knew, was low.  Even when I told students exactly what they needed to do to prepare for the next week's class, they didn't believe me.  Until they had a quiz the next week and they realized that if they had done what I said, they would have passed the quiz.

So warning recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior isn't going to impact performance unless they actually listen and understand the details. And while some may get it, the others won't unless they are engaged in the discussion and given opportunities to role play, respond to case studies,  or otherwise actively participate in ways that force them to put their understanding into action. Which allows the instructor and the student to see if the student understood.  Just because you say it, doesn't mean they learned it. 

I imagine though, that the recruits got the information more than that one time from the Chief on the first day.  But understanding how humans learn new ideas (not easily) and new behaviors (by practicing them rather than hearing about them)  will make changing recruits' understanding and behavior more likely.

And there are some whom the academy simply won't reach.  And the academy has to have ways to detect who those people are and help them find more appropriate employment.

AIFF 2013: Tales From The Organ Trade - How Is Selling Sex Like Selling A Kidney?

In both cases, selling your body (parts)  is illegal in most places, but giving it away is not.

People  sell their bodies (generally) or body parts,(nearly always) because they can't see other viable ways to break out of poverty.

But there are differences.

• A prostitute can deal directly with the client, but there has to be a sophisticated infrastructure available to remove and transplant a kidney.
• Even if you give away your kidney, the recipient still pays a lot.   
• You can only sell a kidney once. 

How much would you sell your kidney for?  What about a finger?

There is a black market in kidneys.  Kidneys from people so poor that they will sell one to a stranger for as little as $1000.  And doctors who transplant those kidneys to people paying $100,000 or more. The doctors argue it's their moral obligation to save a person's life.

I'd note that I don't think the comparison to prostitution came up in the movie, but it
seemed a logical one after I saw the movie.

Surgeon - image source

Tales From The Organ Trade, a documentary film that will show at the Anchorage International Film Festival, brings these abstract questions into stark reality.  There are interviews with people needing kidneys, with a man in Toronto who got a new kidney in Kosovo, with people who have sold their kidneys (from the Philippines and the Moldovan woman whose kidney went to the Toronto man), with a prosecutor chasing down doctors who perform illegal operations and the managers who arrange everything, and with the Turkish surgeon who put the Kosovo kidney into the Toronto man.

Recipient- image source

This is not a preachy or academic film, it's more like a good investigative reporting movie that deals with a hard subject in a straightforward way.  It challenges us to think beyond black and and white and to deal with ethical ambiguities.

At the end, the movie doesn't exactly endorse it, but it does mention there is legislation pending that would regulate selling organs.

That may be a short term solution, but the real issue, it seems to me, is a world of some rich and lots of poor, poor people who are willing to risk long term health problems for the chance to get their families into what, for them, is decent housing.

Another question I had was what percent of people, say in the US,  are registered donors - people who sign up when they renew their driver's license or register online?  How would increasing the number of donors shorten the waiting lists for kidneys?

Sellers - image source

The answer is, thanks to a little googling, about 43% of adult Americans are registered organ donors.  So perhaps doubling that number would help, and adding kids to the list would also increase the number.

Tales From The Organ Trade is one of the documentaries in competition and will show:

5:00 PM       Sat, Dec 07  AK Exp small
11:00 AM     Sat, Dec 14  AK Exp large

[Note:  I saw this film because their publicist offered me a private link online to see it before the festival.  It was an unsolicited email.]

[This is a repost because there was errant text in the middle of the original which I could not find in the code.]

Murkowski Shows Some Backbone On Obamacaricide, At Least On Energy Bill

I need to give credit to one of my US Senators, Republican Lisa Murkowski, for calling out her colleagues for blocking legislation with amendments intended to kill or maim Obamacare. 

In this case Murkowski seems to be upset about amendments to kill the Affordable Care Act added onto an energy bill to require the government to be more energy efficient and require more energy efficient building codes.  I suspect some of this the Obama administration could and would do without legislation.

I don't want to make too big a deal about this because her voting record on the government funding bills appears to be less daring.  Looking at her voting record for the last week, it appears she voted the Republican Party line on the government shut down.  The key vote that was not split on party lines was the 79-19 vote to end Sen. Cruz's filibuster.    Murkowski voted with the 79 to end the filibuster.  That vote allowed the Democrats to pass an amendment to cut out the House attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act and then to pass the Senate  bill to keep the government running. (Which the House then rejected.)  Those last two votes were split on party lines too. (Does that mean that all but 19 Republicans really wanted the government funding to pass so they helped end the filibuster to give the Democrats the room to pass it, but they didn't want their constituents see a yes vote on the actual bill?)


From The Hill:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Wednesday called out Republicans who tried to pile ObamaCare amendments onto bipartisan energy efficiency legislation that recently stalled on the Senate floor.

“What we need to reckon with is the fact that you have got a process that is being used for political advantage and gain rather than to advance policy,” she said.

Of course, if they are willing to shut down the whole government to kill Obama's health reform, a little energy bill is no big deal to them.  

“Maybe we need to embarrass those in the leadership that it is high time that you focus on the policy side of this,” Murkowski said at an energy forum hosted by the group Center Forward.

She expressed hope that, if the bill returns to the floor, an agreement could be struck that only allowed energy-related amendments. .  .

While Murkowski criticized efforts to link the bill to ObamaCare, she predicted that if it hadn’t been for those amendments, there would have been others that Reid found “equally onerous” and given him “cause to pause.”

The underlying energy bill contains measures to encourage better building codes, train workers in energy efficient building technologies, help manufacturers become more efficient and bolster efficiency in federal buildings."

Here's a link to the whole piece, "Sen Murkowski Calls Out Her Party For Energy Riders."

What's Fair Game When Public Officials Get Careless?

OK, that's a loaded question.  Careless isn't even quite the right word. Here's the context.  The Redistricting Board has had working meetings.  There are Board members in and out almost all day each day as the techs work on maps.  Sometimes the Board members are working on maps in their offices in the back, sometimes they're out in the meeting room.  It's an open meeting, though it's a work session.  It's not really formal.  People are trying out ideas.  They're talking casually.  Even joking.  Except I'm there.  So, careless only in the context of being 'on' long enough that they might forget there's a blogger in the room.

Talking is intermittent.   So I'm not sitting their typing everything they're saying the way I often do at meetings.  And sound recording is iffy because of the ventilation noise due to the unusual heat outside and the broken air conditioning in the building. Mostly they aren't saying anything. There's not much happening to video tape.  People working on their computers with little changes happening on the screens that wouldn't mean much to someone watching.    

So, when the chair stopped to talk to Ray about the map he was working on, I got out my pocket cam and turned on the video to see what I could get.

What rules should I use to decide what to post in this situation?  Here are some of my thoughts on this.

1.  It's a public meeting.  Everything is fair game.  They know I'm a blogger and that I'm listening.  They need to be professional about how they handle themselves and in what they say. 

2.  It's good for people doing serious work to joke at times.  But joking often reveals what they are thinking.  Joking is a way, in some settings, to say what you're really thinking, but then be able to back off and say, "Just kidding" if it doesn't go down well.

• Some jokes are neutral - joking about the weather and heat in the room.  
• Some jokes are self-effacing - talking about one's own faults.  This works ok if you you're generally pretty good at what you do.  It shows modesty, though it could come across as false modesty.  It might not work so well if you joke about a fault that is driving everyone crazy.  
• Some jokes are directed at others - your perceived opponents (in court or the media for example) or people over whom you have power.  Or the public. These are not jokes you should make publicly.  These are for relieving stress with your inner circle.  Such as something like, "Not even Wallerie would sue over this." [Wallerie is the attorney for the Riley plaintiffs in Fairbanks.]  OK, this seems innocuous enough and Wallerie would probably laugh if he heard it.  And I'm guessing if Wallerie were in the room, they still might have said it.  It's natural given the growing sense of them versus us when you're being challenged in court.  Yet there's a difference between being personally sued and when you're being sued as a public official doing your job.  You should be more like athletes - competitive in the game, but able to go out together for a drink afterward.  But the Board does seem to be a tad touchy about the Plaintiffs and members of the Supreme Court.   It's understandable, but the Board should recognize that people have differences of opinion and  that's part of the process.  If they take it personally and get bristly with some people they become less effective in the quest to find a fair and equitable plan for all Alaskans.  

3.  What if people are saying things that help reveal the process?  What's going on?  That's really what I'm here to learn about and to share with the world.  After all, the point of making this all as transparent as possible is to make sure the Board does its job as competently and as fairly as possible.

4.  What if they don't know I'm recording what's going on?  Again, it's a public meeting and they know there's a blogger in the room.  They're public officials.  They're grown ups.  No, they can't let their guards down too far.

5.  What if it prevents them from talking frankly about their doubts and questions?  I'm not doing "Gotcha" journalism.   I'm not trying to get headlines by trapping people into saying something stupid or by writing things out of context to make them look bad.  But anything going on at a public meeting is on the record.  Even these work sessions that aren't (to my knowledge) being recorded or transcribed.  In fact, that's even more reason for me to be vigilant and to record what's happening.  Last year, I thought long and hard before posting a video of the Board's attorney talking pretty candidly about what he thought about an Alaska Supreme Court's decision.  It was during a break.  But I had my camera out and he was looking at me.  And I'd recorded him like that a number of times before.  Even so, I sought guidance from journalism ethics sites and  people with actual journalism degrees before I posted it.  The clincher for me was that he said pretty similar things in an written appeal to the Supreme Court.   I'm glad I did all that, because he wasn't pleased when he saw me next and complained that he didn't know I was recording.  And he wouldn't talk to me again if I was recording.

All this is preface to a video that's pretty bad technical quality - both video and audio.   I took it because it was the first time I actually heard the Chair talking more than a sentence here or there during the work sessions and he was close enough to me there was a chance the audio would get past the noise of the cooling equipment.  It was more to just give readers a sense of how this process works, how decisions are made, the kind of conversations that go on.

Ray, one of the new techs on loan from the Department of Natural Resources, was working on Anchorage and the chair came over to see what he was doing.  It seemed like a good thing to record.  To let readers get a sense of how this works.  As it went along - it's pretty brief  - it touched on a topic I've been trying to understand.  Exactly how much are they starting from scratch and how much is borrowed from old maps?  Both Torgerson and Eric had already told me they started with blank maps.  Torgerson even showed me on the computer how to create a new blank map.  But how, I keep asking myself, did these maps often seem to look so similar to old ones and how did they get such similar numbers for the districts?  This seems to add to my questions here.

The audio's not great, so I've written up a transcript that, I think, catches the meaning if not all the exact words.

Torgerson:  So these deviations came from?
Ray:  Already in the plan????
Torgerson:  See how tight those are?  That one is zero
So there are already constitutional in their nature?  So you’r saying you didn’t change these from one plan to the next.  The court said we might have painted ourselves into a corner because we didn’t do something different from what we did.   But in reality, there’s not a hell of a lot we can we can do with a lot of those districts.  Particularly the ones that are kind of isolated.  The ones like you’re working on, the south Anchorage and maybe the north Anchorage,  east and west, yeah, those are in play. The ones like 28 are pretty hard to do anything with that.  But if you change one, you might change all, you might have to because of deviation.

Bloggers, Media Ethics/Standards, And The Kulluk

Bloggers are still writing their own rules about how to go about reporting the news.  Traditional journalists used to have strict rules about confirming what they write. There seems to be a spiraling down of such standards these days though. 

This all comes up because a fellow Alaska blogger posted Monday that Shell's oil rig Kulluk is significantly damaged and may be sent to Asia for repairs.  This would be a pretty big story if it turns out to be true.  There's been no hint of something like this from the Unified Command, which has been silent for over a week now.  I don't have enough knowledge about oil rigs and shipping to read between the lines of their reports that say "the Kulluk is stable and no oil was released."  Nor do I know how significant seawater leakage is.  But the Unified Command's minimalist updates have raised the question: 

What are they hiding?  

So, what should bloggers do when people on the scene give them information that isn't available through the formal channels but hard to verify further?  And what should other bloggers do when they see such stories?

Those aren't rhetorical questions.  I ask questions like that of myself a lot.  Blogs and Twitter and Facebook have tempted traditional media sources into reporting some events without traditional fact checking.  The race to be first to report has a pull, similar to taunts that get teenage boys to do things they oughtn't.

But I've also seen a positive side to alternative media reporting events that haven't been 100% confirmed. 

Individual bloggers don't have the clout or resources that a traditional newsroom has.  (A lot of current traditional newsrooms don't either any more.)  I see a phenomenon happening.  Bloggers each add a little information to the public debate.  Individually, they don't have enough information, but collectively they get important information out into the open.  As long as they give information on how they got the information so others can assess it and they qualify it appropriately, it's ok if it isn't always 100% accurate.  My personal preference is that bloggers consider the impacts of tentative information on the people it's about so they don't unnecessarily do damage.   It's like the traditional newsroom conversations about what to post, except it is publicly available. 

I'm torn about what my proper role is here.  Do I point out Phil's story to others - since it is out there and surely Shell knows about it and - according to Phil's post - wouldn't comment?  Will this needlessly spread rumor that may ultimately prove to be false?  Will it lead others to find other contacts who can help verify what Phil reports?

If it is true, does it matter if it's posted today or waits until Shell is ready to tell the world? I'm guessing that the sooner we know things the more questions there will be and that seeking answers before the corpse is removed will reveal more of what happened.  

A further wrinkle in this for me is that Phil cites this blog's concerns about how sparing Shell and the Unified Command have been with information.  Will pointing out the post be seen as blowing my own horn?  People will see what they want to see, so I can't worry about that.  Phil and I are not working together on this stuff and I didn't know about his post until I saw it posted.

The real questions seem to  me to be:
How newsworthy is this if it's true? 
How well did Phil document the story?

The answer to the first is: very.  To answer the second I asked myself how a traditional newsroom would handle this?  That isn't necessarily the standard that unpaid individual bloggers should have to follow, but it is at least a standard to think about it. 

So I looked up journalistic sourcing online and found that Reuters has an online journalism guide which clearly states that everything must be sourced. 

You must source every statement in every story unless it is an established fact or is information clearly in the public domain, such as court documents or in instances when the reporter, photographer or camera operator was on the scene. Good sources and well-defined sourcing help to protect the integrity of the file from overt outside pressures and manipulation and such hazards as hoaxes.

If an event is not contentious it may be legitimate to begin a story with a paragraph that does not contain a source, as long as the sourcing is clearly given high in the story.

 I take most of this as a given for this blog and Phil does source his allegations.

Reuters goes on to talk about where to place the source.

Newsbreaks should be sourced within the first two paragraphs. You should generally lead your story on the news, not the source, except in the following cases:

• If a story is inflammatory or is an allegation, give the source first. Write, for example: “Gallic leader Vercingetorix accused Emperor Julius Caesar of genocide”. Do not write: “Roman Emperor Julius Caesar has committed genocide, Gallic leader Vercingetorix said."
• If the source of a story is a major figure you would also usually put the source at the start. The same is true if the source is a weak one. For example, the secretary of a CEO who confirms that the executive was on his private jet when it crashed. If responsibility for a statement is clear, do not repeat sourcing unnecessarily.
• If there is an element of doubt in a pick-up, you would normally put the source first e.g. “A leading Manchuk newspaper reported on Friday that the President Mabee Iznogud was on the verge of resigning.”

Phil's post leads with the sources:

"I have now received word from two anonymous sources on Kodiak Island that it appears damage assessment of the Shell Oil drill rig Kulluk is far worse than has been thus far disclosed by the Unified Command."

But when can we use with anonymous sources?   Reuters addresses that:

The weakest sources are those whose names we cannot publish. Reuters uses anonymous sources when we believe they are providing accurate, reliable and newsworthy information that we could not obtain any other way. We should not use anonymous sources when sources we can name are readily available for the same information.

When I first saw Phil's story, I emailed him asking pretty much those questions:  how reliable are these sources?  Phil seems to think they know what they are talking about, but others interested in this aren't ready to go public with it.  He also lists the official sources that he has contacted and who have not responded to his queries. 

I myself contacted the Unified Command a week ago and got a form reply saying that they won't add information to the public updates.  (Someone did manage to let AP know that Shell was helping the Food Bank get food to remote Kodiak villages, so it appears that news that helps Shell's image is shared.  So perhaps news that isn't shared will do them harm.)

Unnamed sources must have direct knowledge of the information they are giving us, or must represent an authority with direct knowledge. Remember that reliability declines the further away the source is from the event, and tougher questions must be asked by reporters and supervisors on the validity of such information.

I don't know if the sources had direct knowledge or not.  But I understood that two separate sources gave him the same information.

Responsibility for reporting what an anonymous source says resides solely with Reuters and the reporter. There is no liability or potential reputational damage to the source, making this the least watertight form of sourcing. We should convey to readers as clearly as possible why we believe the source is reliable, and what steps we have taken to ensure we are not being manipulated. This is done most effectively by the way we describe the source. The more removed the source is from a subject, the less reliable the source is likely to be. Reporters and editors should question the validity of information from a source remote from the action. 

Any media's reputation is based on its credibility.  So to maintain that credibility you want to be sure you report only what you can confirm.  But do you ever take risks because a story is really important to publish?

Be as specific as possible. Negotiate hard with your source to agree a description that is sufficiently precise to enable readers to trust the reliability of our anonymous sourcing.
“A source” or “sources”, “observers” or “quarters” with no further description is vague and unacceptable. So is the use of “informed sources” or “reliable sources”. Would we quote an uninformed or unreliable source?
When reporting a corporate deal, describe the source as specifically as possible. Use “a company executive/banker/lawyer close to the transaction” to convey the fact that your source is directly involved in the deal, but “a source close to the transaction” is also acceptable if the source is unwilling to be identified more specifically. “Banking sources”, “industry sources” and “financial sources” can imply that the source may not have first-hand information and is therefore less authoritative. Always be as specific as possible.
Stories based on anonymous sources require particularly rigorous cross-checking. We should normally have two or three sources for such information.

My sense is that Phil's sources believe they risk retaliation if they are identified which is why they are not named.  He has two different sources.

Stories based on a single, anonymous source should be the exception and require approval by an immediate supervisor – a bureau chief, head of reporting unit in a large centre, or editor in charge.

This is a luxury that bloggers don't have.  And in this case there are two sources.

Bloggers aren't bound by Reuters' rules.  But I do think that Phil has clarified where he's gotten the information.  He used terms like "appears to be"  and "supposedly" to qualify the allegations.  He reports his unsuccessful efforts to get information from Shell and from the Coast Guard. 

I think this story is important enough for other bloggers and for mainstream media to start checking on it and if they find other sources to support Phil's story they should be sharing what they know with the world. 

Shell has assured the US government and the world that they are well experienced in Arctic drilling and that there will be no serious problems that they are unprepared for.  Yet there's been a series of embarrassments with their oil rigs in the last year.  In this case, the rig broke loose from the tug which lost power very close to the last Coast Guard base on the way north.  If they had hit a storm in the Bering Sea and lost the rig there, the story would have been much worse than this will turn out to be.  Shell has been doing its best to minimize the information that gets out to the world.  Journalists have an obligation to get independent information so that Shell isn't in charge of packaging the story of what happened.

Why Is Jim Minnery Smearing YoYo Ma's Cousin?

Jim Minnery, head of the Alaska Family Council, wrote in a Sunday ADN piece that called for Alaskans to vote against retaining Superior Court Judge Sen Tan.  His crime?  Ruling according to the Alaska Constitution.  Well, Minnery says he's an activist judge (but identifies Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, as NOT activist judges) who substituted his values for the Constitution. However, retired Judge Elaine Andrews points out in a another ADN piece, that the Alaska Supreme Court upheld his decisions.

What Minnery really means is that Tan's decision was at odds with Minnery's values.  Minnery, you will recall, is the guy from the conservative Alaska Family Council who blasted out emails last spring telling people to register to vote before the deadline, three weeks before the election, passed.  Then, after it passed, he emailed them again saying  they could just show up and register on election day to vote.   He had to know, given his earlier email, that you couldn't register and vote on the day of the election.  And he had to know it would cause turmoil at the polls if enough unregistered voters showed up.  And it did, along with the shortage of ballots.

The rule of law doesn't seem to matter to Minnery.  His guide appears to be his interpretation of the Bible.  

It's important to know that Alaska has some of the best judges in the country because of how we pick them.  The Judicial Council surveys all sorts of professionals and jurors - people who see the judge in action from different perspectives - and uses this information to rate judges.  Here's the list of links for Judge Tan's ratings:

• Voter Pamphlet Page (Council summary of the judge’s performance)
• Attorney Survey Ratings (All surveys use a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest rating)
• Peace and Probation Officer Survey Ratings
• Social Worker and Guardian ad Litem Survey Ratings
• Juror Survey Ratings - (No juror surveys were returned for the jury trials that Judge Tan conducted in this two-year period)
• Court Employee Survey Ratings
• Survey Ratings from Previous Evaluations
• Alaska Judicial Observers Ratings (Community-based volunteer court observers)
• Peremptory Challenge Rate (How often a party requested assignment of a new judge)
• Recusal Rate (How often a judge disqualified himself or herself due to a conflict of interest)
• Appellate Affirmance Rate (How often a trial judge was affirmed or reversed on appeal)
• Salary Warrant Withholdings (How often a judge’s pay was withheld for unfinished work)
• Judge Questionnaire (Judge’s response to a Judicial Council questionnaire)
• Survey Ratings for all Judges on the 2012 Ballot

Alaska's legal system is particularly fair because judges are accountable to all these people who see them on a regular basis.  Biased or incompetent people tend not to get nominated in the first place and those that don't do well are identified pretty quickly.  Our judges are good because their eye is on the State Constitution and Law and NOT on politics.  

Judge Tan is, by all accounts, a first rate judge. He doesn't get to the top scores of all judges, but he's up there.   He's particularly respected for how he handles cases involving abused children and gets almost perfect scores from Social Workers and Guardians Ad Litem.  He also gets high ratings from Court employees and the Alaska Bar Association members. His lowest average scores come from Law Enforcement members where he averaged 4.1 out of 5, which is a very strong score.

His average annual rate for peremptory challenges was 11.  The average for all Superior Court judges was 33.  He was the fifth lowest out of 14. 



Minnery targets Tan because of two abortion decisions made over ten year ago.  Decisions that, as I've said, were upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court.  Judge Tan wasn't wrong.  He didn't substitute his personal values for the law.  If he had, his decisions would have been overturned by the Supreme Court.  It's Minnery who is substituting his values for the law.

Minnery has the right to his opinion and to publish his opinion.  The rest of us have the same right and responsibility to correct his errors and urge voters to support Judge Tan's retention.

I would note that Judge Tan has a pretty unique background.  A 2004 article in the Malaysian newspaper, The Star tells us he was born in Malaysia and got his BA (with honors) from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his law degree (JD) at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.

We also learn from The Star that his cousin - his father's brother's son - is the world renowned  cellist Yoyo Ma.  

And he likes to ride his motorcycle.

The article also talks about his early interest in the law:

“My interest in law came from the legacy of books my father left behind. Some of the books discussed the principles of the Rule of Law. I was very interested in law as an organising principle for a fair, just and compassionate society. Thus, I settled on reading law in Britain,” said Tan, whose father passed away when he was 10 years old."

 So, if you haven't voted yet, remember to send Jim Minnery a message and approve the retention of Judge Sen Tan. 

[UPDATE Nov. 7, 1:00am:  Judge Tan is winning retention 53% yes to 46% with 93% of precincts reporting.  Minnery's campaign clearly had an impact - Tan had the lowest percentage for retention of all the judges by a lot - but he didn't defeat Tan.  However, I'm sure he thinks he's sent all judges a message that if they make unpopular decisions, they'll be targets.]

[Video Fixed, Sorry] Baseball And Other Value Sources Of State House Candidate Andy Josephson

My goal was to interview pairs of candidates running against each other with a focus on what their personal values are and how those values might affect the decisions they would make if elected to the legislature.  It seems to me their basic values are more revealing than asking questions about current issues.

I thought I'd start with the two candidates running for the House in my district - the new district 15.

Basically this is Northern Lights on the north, Pine and Boniface on the east, Tudor to Elmore to Dimond on the south, and New Seward, MacInnes, LaTouche on the west. 

I thought it would be fairly easy because I knew both candidates.  I've known Democrat Andy Josephson's father, not well, for a long time.   Dick Traini, the Republican, graduated from the Masters of Public Administration program 25 years ago and had been my student.  He's told me that his education has given him a much broader view of local politics and an understanding of the balance of public and private interests than he would have had.  He's also been my local Assembly member for a long time.  (Assembly is a non-partisan office and Dick has been a registered Independent until fairly recently.)  I've voted for him, though in this race I did contribute to Josephson's campaign.  Dick knew that but he agreed right away to participate. I was able to get Andy's done fairly quickly.  But Dick's Assembly obligations got in the way and we weren't able to schedule a time to do the video.  Before I left for LA I let Dick know I was going to proceed without his video, since there wouldn't be enough time before the election when I got back. 

Andy Josephson

Basically, my idea was to probe the candidates to find out what their basic human values were, where they came from, and how they would affect their legislative decisions.

I wasn't going to edit - I would just let it run as they spoke.  That way there'd be no issues about my trying to make one candidate look better than another.  (It also would be a little slower than the video people normally see on television where there are lots of cuts, where the pauses are edited out, etc.)  I did start the interview and then stopped it and started over as the candidate - who is not used to doing video interviews - got a better sense of things.  He was also tapping the table and causing the camera to jiggle.  I've left out the original beginning.  Other than that, this is just what he said.

I've marked different parts of the video so you can jump to topics you want to hear. Click on the dots on the video bar at the bottom of the video screen.





Basically, Andy Josephson's values are influenced strongly by American culture;  by family, including playing baseball (starting about 2:40); and from friends.  His response to how he would decide on legislation starts at about 5:40 and is worth watching. This includes advice from trusted mentors who have more experience in the legislature than he has, the reality of time and needing to prioritize bills by importance, how it affects his district and what his constituents care about.    I asked how he'd handle demands from his party that conflicted with his values. I also asked if there were any dealbreakers - issues that he felt too strongly about to compromise.

So this will be my experiment on this.  I don't have a problem with something being entertainment as long as it's also substantive.  But when doing political videos, editing raises questions of whether I'm tyring to bias the video, so I've left the video pretty much what he said without editing.

I left out, as I said above, his first attempt at this.  The point was for him to feel comfortable and to express himself as well as he could without spending a lot of time.

I'd also say that he hasn't seen the finished product and thus has not approved or disapproved of it. 

"Come bang me baby. . ."

I found this on a Xanga forum:

What kind of father would do this?  I think it's totally sick.  It doesn't even seem like a good test.  If they've agreed to wait until marriage, the tone and language wouldn't sound like his girl friend.  He'd be totally shocked, and respond as he did. 

At first I thought that its appropriateness might be affected by the age of the daughter.  But the idea of testing the boyfriend of an older girl is perverse and sending an explicit text to the boyfriend of a younger girl is even more perverse.  Is any age appropriate for this?

And what is the daughter's role here?  Is she glad for the $100 and proving to her dad that her boyfriend isn't 'that kind of boy'?  Or does she feel her dad doesn't trust her? Or that he's a dirty old man?  Or maybe she's exploiting his fear and collects $100 with each new boyfriend.  And what kind of power trip is the dad on?  He's going to 'protect' his daughter from all the males on earth trying to deflower her?  Is a burka next? 

Or is this just a hoax?  In addition to the inconsistent tone and language, the father is talking about giving permission to date his daughter, but the boy wrote, "Since we started dating. . ." which suggests they've already been dating.  OK, they could date without the father's permission, but . . .

But now that I've seen it, hoax or not, something about it bothers at me.  

Maybe it's just distraction from meatier topics I should be writing about but that haven't gestated enough to make coherent posts,

Editor Feedback - ADN Press-Release Post Follow Up

Nut Shell:  Printing verbatim press releases with minimum citation is NOT Anchorage Daily News policy.

My July 4 post on a Department of Transportation press release that was printed in the Anchorage Daily News almost verbatim picked up a few comments including one that linked to a blog post about a columnist fired by the Kansas City Star.

"[A]fter editors discovered he had submitted more than a dozen columns that were nearly verbatim copies of press releases. Now, Penn is suing McClatchy Newspapers Inc., the Star's owner, for defamation. He's seeking $25,000 and punitive damages."

Since McClatchy also owns the Anchorage Daily News, this was becoming a bigger story.  Actually, I had started to write with questions about how the new airport development in the press release related to the proposed landswap between the airport and the Municipality that would give the airport part of the Coastal Trail.  Before posting I saw the press release published as a news item in the ADN, I refocused the post to the issue of handling press releases as news. 

But when I learned, through the comment, about the other McClatchy paper firing a columnist over this, it seemed I should contact the ADN and ask them about their policy on this and any comments they might have about the Kansas City Star columnist.  I emailed editor Pat Dougherty mentioning the post and the comment with the link to the Kansas City Star firing.

Even though I'd emailed him after 5pm, Dougherty responded in detail within a couple of hours.  He pointed out, legitimately, that it would have been nice if I had contacted him before posting.

He wrote that he agreed that

"the attribution in that story should have been higher and more precise. . .

 I also agree that all the composition should have been our own, except
for something used in direct quotes.

If we had done that, I don't think the generic bylining would have
been an issue. After all, in choosing to publish it, we are taking
responsibility for it. That's why we would include a byline. "

He also wrote:

"Prompted by your column, we discussed this issue among editors here
today and agreed that we would have a specific discussion about
appropriate and inappropriate practices with the reporter involved in
this case, followed by a general written reminder to the staff about
our standards and expectations."

He wrote that there are cost factors in using staff time to rewrite and fact check press releases so that they are really ADN created news articles.  One option they considered was an online space for press releases:

". . .we created a spot on our website called "Bulletin Board." The idea was to
post raw press releases that we thought were of interest to at least
some of our readers but that did not meet the threshold for use of
staff time. The fact is there are a lot of lesser tidbits of news we
get that don't justify journalistic handling. Here's an example: press
release says the road to Wonder Lake is open to private cars. It's
unfortunate that the general public may not get that information from
the newspaper if we can't have a reporter spend the time to say
essentially the same thing, to the same level of depth, in different
words. Now if we did make that effort in that example, you are smart
enough to understand what it really represents. The newspaper story
isn't saying the road to Wonder Lake is open -- we don't know that
because we haven't gone to Denali to check the road. What the
newspaper is saying is that someone who works for the park service
says the road is open. Whether the park service says that in a press
release, a phone call or an email is pretty much a distinction without
a difference.

Primarily because of tight staffing with summer vacations etc., the
Bulletin Board effort has languished. If I conclude that the benefit
to our readers is worth the effort, I may revive it. It's just one
more small way in which we newspaper people are having to solve
problems today that we could have solved more easily in the past with
more staff or money."

[I couldn't find anything about the Denali road being open to Wonder Lake, but the Park Service did post last week its "Final Vehicle Management Plan for Denali National Park & Preserve."  Comment period until July 30.]

I like the Bulletin Board idea.  It seems best to just identify items as press releases and print them verbatim.  The idea of rewriting them seems a waste of time, since it's the same unevaluated content the organization submitted, just in different words.  The key is to let the reader know the source and what you did with it.

As Dougherty went on to discuss the Kansas City Star situation,  he elaborated on the problems of working with press releases:

I am skeptical of the claims of the former KC Star person. You
describe him here as a reporter. I thought he was a columnist. [I used the wrong word, Dougherty was right.]  The difference between those two jobs matters hugely. The issue of rewriting press releases, or rewriting anything, should never come up with a columnist, whose job it is to write his own opinions or
observations. If he was a columnist and he was re-writing anything, he
ought to be fired. Period. If he was a reporter, the situation could
have been somewhat less black and white. Lots of low-level news
stories start from press releases. Reporters are constantly under
pressure to determine just how much time a given story is worth, and
to spend just that much time and no more. That can put a reporter
close to the line. Every newspaper editor is well aware of that
pressure and the proximity of that line -- but editors expect a
reporter to know better than to cross it.The pressures at the Star,
I'm sure, are not materially different from those at the ADN or, for
that matter, Channel 2, the Anchorage Press or the Alaska Dispatch.
There may have been some corner-cutting by KC reporters, but I don't
believe that was a condoned practice at the newspaper. I guess we'll
have to wait and see how that case turns out.

As a blogger without a journalism background, I'm continuing to learn.  I've generally not been good about calling people about stories beforehand.   I can see how someone  could call the original post  'gotcha' blogging, which isn't my intent.  Adding Dougherty's response - that this isn't how the ADN wants their reporters doing things - to the original would have made a better post.   Watching ADN reporters - particularly Lisa Demer during the Alaska corruption trials and in Juneau - I know that she's on the phone a lot calling and checking.  That's something I need to do more often.  While interviews are often used in academic research - my background - in the actual writing, one tends to cite written sources mostly.  That's an explanation, not an excuse. 

I also appreciate Dougherty's quick and thorough responses to my emails.  Dougherty also sent a Kansas City Star article on the firing of their columnist which adds more information than the original link that Anonymous left in the comment section.

Penn alleged that using press releases without attribution was a common practice at The Star and even was part of his training.

That sentence was in both links to the KC Star firing, but the next ones, which raised red flags for me, were new.

“The widespread practice in journalism is to treat such press releases as having been voluntarily released by their authors into the flow of news with the intention that the release will be reprinted or published, and preferably with no or minimal editing,” the suit alleged. “As such, attribution as to the authorship of such news releases is typically not expected by the author, nor offered by journalists who receive them.”

If this were true, the widespread practice would be to deceive the public into thinking press releases from various organizations are actually news stories written by the paper's reporters and columnists.  A friend reminded me of the controversy six years ago when television stations played, as news stories, corporate and government made video news releases (VNRs) without attribution.  The FCC ruled TV stations playing VNRs "must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material."

Dougherty's discussion on how much time it takes reporters to rewrite press releases also brought to mind last weekend's This American Life episode on Journatic,  a company that creates local news stories for newspapers, using outsourced reporters as far away as the Philippines.  Readers have no idea that the stories aren't written by local reporters.  The piece discusses the economic reasons smaller papers are tempted to buy cheap, outsourced, local stories.  Journatic claimed papers got more local coverage that way.  But a Journatic reporter said he found he wasn't as careful about fact checking because of the low pay he gets per article and because he's so far away from the towns he's writing about.

I also asked Dougherty if the ADN had its editorial policy publicly available.  His response was:

We don't have a written ethics policy. We expect good ethics and good
judgment. What we have said in writing is that any issue that raises
ethical questions, in which the right course of action is not clear,
should be brought up with editors. In cases where precedent is not
instructive, the editors will sort out what course of action is
appropriate.

I would note that the Daily News has gone decades without an ethical
scandal. To some degree, that's probably a matter of good luck, but to
a far greater degree it's the result of good judgment by the staff,
from top to bottom.

Presumably, that's why the ADN hires people with degrees in journalism - they learned the skills and the standards in school.  They come with the code of ethics already embedded as  Henry Mintzberg writes about employees who come to organizations already trained:

"Standardization of skills (as well as knowledge), in which different work is coordinated by virtue of the related training the workers have received (as in medical specialists - say a surgeon and an anesthetist in an operating room –responding almost automatically to each other’s standardized procedures)"

Journalists should already know ethics codes such as The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics with its four main headings:

• Seek Truth and Report It
• Minimize Harm
• Act Independently
• Be Accountable

Presumably a newspaper like the ADN can rely on a code like that.  But the New York Times has its own, very detailed Policy on Ethics in Journalism.   Some would argue that the NYT rules are so detailed that they restrict flexibility. 

I remember reading in my first graduate class, that some organizations want to give employees as much flexibility as possible by not having rules.  The effect, the author wrote (I think it was Amatai Etzioni in Modern Organizations), is that the organizations still have unwritten rules in the heads of the managers, and the employees are more constrained in these organizations.  They have to guess what's allowed. They don't know when they will get in trouble for violating the unwritten rules.  That's not the intent of managers who don't have rules, but it's often the effect.   

Blogging is different from mainstream journalism and bloggers are creating their own standards for how to do things.  Some blogs are meant to be more entertainment or personal reflection or even ranting than news.  Here at What Do I Know? I want readers to clearly know what is my original work and what comes from other places, with links to the sources.  I also want my newsy pieces to be fair to the subjects, accurate, and to offer various perspectives that would help the viewer understand what happened.  I also want to use the story to illustrate larger issues and principles, like a case study.  I want this not to be an isolated incident, but to show it as part of a larger pattern of how things work.

Contacting the subject of a story is something I should do more frequently.  That may slow some stories down, but as I think about it, when I've done it in the past, the stories have always been better for it.  I hope though, that even when I don't get in contact with the subject, my work offers reasonable possibilities of what they might have said on their own behalf when that's appropriate. I don't think I did that in this case.