The Daily Report’s Katheryn Hayes Tucker recently talked to Steve Korn about his experience running Radio Free Europe in Prague.  

 

Korn Still Speaking Truth To Power By Katheryn Hayes Tucker for the Daily Report

After a career of building the business and legal framework for journalism, the man who was Ted Turner’s top lawyer during the creation of Cable News Network has returned from a stint at the helm of Radio Free Europe with a new appreciation for speaking truth to power.

“The people who work there, the journalists in particular, are absolutely courageous, brave heroes,” Steven Korn said of the staff of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty Inc., where he served as president and chief executive officer from July 2011 until the end of January 2013. “Time after time, they’ve endured prison, solitary confinement and harassment in their home countries and they are completely dedicated to providing a free press.”

One reporter from Iran was beaten, tortured and held prisoner by the government for 33 days simply for considering a job offer with the U.S. government-funded broadcasting company, whose mission is to provide news in countries that don’t allow freedom of speech. When that reporter was released, he sneaked across the border and took a job with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.

Another reporter, a woman from a Muslim country, was blackmailed with a sex video taken by a hidden camera in her own apartment. She decided to keep doing her job anyway, knowing that such a video in her country could place her life in danger.

“It was an honor to work with these kinds of people,” said Korn, former publisher of the Daily Report. “I’ve spent my entire professional life with and around journalists. This was a great opportunity to do something I really believed in.”

Korn also felt the pain of speaking truth to power during the time in Prague. He took a business-like look at a 60-year-old non-profit organization—which began as an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency—and quickly saw it was in need of change. He upgraded facilities, added new equipment and cut unnecessary spending, including layoffs in overstaffed bureaus. For that, he suffered a barrage of criticism in the press and the blogosphere.

“Little did I anticipate the fierceness with which the old guard would oppose any change whatsoever,” said Korn. “I ran into quite a buzz saw.”

Although the service operates in 21 countries, much of the heat centered on Russia, where radio ratings had dropped drastically. Korn’s strategic plan included investing heavily in new equipment to move to a digital platform, but it called for cutting 89 jobs that “could not be justified,” Korn said, releasing a storm of criticism for cutting back on the commitment to Russia.

Here’s what Washington Post editorial writer Jackson Diehl said in a Feb. 3 opinion piece under the headline, Static at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: “Steven Korn, then president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, presided over the firings or resignations of more than 40 of Radio Liberty’s 100 staffers, including a number of veteran journalists, who were unceremoniously ejected from the Moscow office. As former supporters such as Mikhail Gorbachev and human rights icons Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Sergei Kovalyov loudly protested, a new strategy of focusing on the Internet and softer content bombed, leading to a big drop in audience.” Korn said 43 were fired, reducing the staff from 89 to 46.

Korn said criticism of his tenure was “almost comically inaccurate,” since the organization was actually increasing its investment there. But, like other news organizations, the service was confronted with the need to change based on market pressures and technological advances. He’s proud of hiring a Russian service director who’s based in Moscow rather than Prague, as past directors had been, and of creating a new bureau with “state-of-the-art video and audio” facilities.

Several Atlanta area media organizations signed on to a May 14 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder expressing their concern over the Department of Justice’s subpoena of phone records of the Associated Press. The letter was sent under the auspices of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and additional signers included ALM Media (parent company of The Daily Report), Cox Media Group (owner of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and WSB radio and TV) and CNN.

View the letter

 

By Tom Watkins, APC Treasurer for CNN: Article

The White House asked Wednesday that a federal shield law be reintroduced in the Senate, a move that could affect the way the Justice Department conducts investigations into leaks of secret government information.

Administration officials told CNN that the request was made to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York. It comes two days after the Associated Press announced that the Justice Department had seized some of its phone records as part of a national security leak investigation.

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information,” Schumer said in a statement. “At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

The records covered a two-month period beginning in May 2012 and included more than 20 AP lines, including personal phones and AP phone numbers in New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington.

“A shield law would keep lazy prosecutors from going after reporters’ notes and phone records and compel them to actually conduct investigations that do not step all over the First Amendment,” Teri Hayt, the First Amendment chairwoman of the Associated Press Media Editors, said in a statement issued before the White House announcement.

Federal shield legislation — which would protect journalists from revealing their sources and beef up protections for reporters and their sources caught up in such probes — passed the Judiciary Committee in 2009 but never advanced.

The AP phone records controversy pits First Amendment advocates against an administration that has made unprecedented moves to end the leaking of government secrets in the name of national security.

“If there were a shield law and it said that the government has to let you know when it’s subpoenaing your phone records, your hotel records or any other records that you don’t have in your hands, that would have been a big help,” said Chuck Tobin, chairman of the media law department at the law firm of Holland & Knight in Washington, who has represented the AP and CNN in the past. His comments too were made before the White House announcement.

Related: Justice Department defends itself in AP snooping scandal

“They kept that information from journalists and went to the phone company to prevent giving journalists the chance to fight in court,” Tobin said in a telephone interview. “That kind of end-run could be prevented if there were a federal shield law that required notice when the government goes after records from third parties.”

He added, “It’s colossally troubling to everybody, and should be, that the government can come between journalists and their sources in this kind of an unfocused and unbridled fashion.”

Typically, he said, the government negotiates with the news media to ensure that any subpoena is tailored as narrowly as possible. But in this instance, “the government issued what appears to be an overbroad subpoena,” skipping the step of notifying the journalists ahead of time, which would have given them the opportunity to challenge it.

“And they did it on purpose,” he said. “They did not want to give the journalists an opportunity to try to get this narrowed or quashed.”

Justice Department regulations allow the government to seize records only in the case of “a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation,” Tobin said, adding that that did not appear to have been the case with the AP probe.

“It’s hard to imagine that there was a substantial threat to an investigation of past events that would warrant not giving AP a chance to go to court on this issue,” he said. “That’s deeply troubling.”

The wire service said the investigation into its records appears related to an AP story about a thwarted terrorist plot in Yemen to bomb an airplane bound for the United States.

“These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” said Gary Pruitt, AP’s president and CEO, in a letter of protest sent Monday to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Pruitt said Tuesday in a statement that the news organization had taken extraordinary measures to placate federal authorities, delaying publication of the story, at their request, “until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed.”

At the time of publication, the administration itself was preparing to announce that the bomb plot had been foiled, he said. “The White House had said there was no credible threat to the American people in May of 2012. The AP story suggested otherwise, and we felt that was important information and the public deserved to know it.”

But Holder told reporters on Tuesday that the article that prompted the investigation was one of “the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen.”

He testified Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee that he could not comment on the matter because he had recused himself from the case to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest and that the matter was being handled by a deputy.

Forty states have passed shield laws and nine others have de facto shield laws created by court decisions (Wyoming is the outlier), according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which offers legal advice and other resources to journalists. But the state laws confer no protection from federal actions like the one reported by the wire service.

In the past decade, Congress has come close to passing a federal shield law. But support for the measure shrank during the WikiLeaks scandal in which thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables were released.

Such a law could keep federal authorities from employing what some media lawyers decry as overly aggressive tactics.

The issue has been muddied as the Internet has blurred the line between journalist and private citizen.

Under a federal shield law introduced in 2011, the federal government would have had to prove to a judge that the information it was seeking outweighed the journalist’s need to keep confidential information, according to the Society of Professional Journalists. Two years later, it remains in a subcommittee.

The Justice Department’s seizure of AP’s phone records appears to have been legal, said CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “A lot of people think the First Amendment protects journalists from having to disclose this sort of information,” he said Monday. “Not true. Especially under federal law. There is no privilege to protect this kind of information.”

But administrations since the Nixon White House have exercised restraint, he said. “They have said, ‘Look, we will do whatever we can to avoid having to subpoena journalists.’”

President Obama had indicated he would follow suit. A day after he entered office, on January 21, 2009, Obama said that he would embrace openness.

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” he vowed.

That promise has not been kept, legal analysts contend. The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917, to target suspected leakers in six cases, twice the number undertaken by all previous administrations combined.

Toobin said the AP’s subpoena was particularly egregious. “I have never heard of a subpoena this broad,” he said. “The administration is not violating the First Amendment, but they are certainly doing more than has ever been done before in pursuing the private information of journalists, and we will see if there is any political check on them, because there doesn’t appear to be any legal check on what they’re doing.”

Such seizures risk turning the news media’s news-gathering process into an investigative tool of the government, said Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center. “Reporters become effectively recorders of contacts and information for the prosecution, not at all what journalism is supposed to be.”

But a former spokesman for the Department of Justice who worked as an aide to Holder defended the government’s actions. “What they’re trying to find out through this investigation is what government official broke the oath that they signed to protect classified information,” said Matthew Miller, who left the Justice Department in 2011 and is now a public affairs consultant in private practice. “There is no reporters’ privilege in law protecting their records.”

The Justice Department could have been even more aggressive, forcing the reporters to testify and throwing them in jail had they refused, he said.

Besides, federal authorities have an incentive to find out who leaked the story that goes beyond the case, he said. “The government has to send a signal to its employees that these laws mean something, and they will investigate and prosecute you for violating them.”

Whether a federal shield law would keep the Justice Department from carrying out such actions “would totally depend on what the federal shield law looks like,” Miller said, noting that several versions have been proposed. Some would prevent reporters from ever being subpoenaed, others would allow judges to carve out exceptions in cases of national security.

White House press secretary Jay Carney reiterated on Tuesday that the administration had no involvement in any criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley predicted that the move will have little long-term impact. “It seems to be a kind of a strange, isolated case,” he said in a telephone interview. He predicted the Obama administration would back off rather than court further outrage.

By Crissinda Ponder, 2011 Atlanta Press Club Scholarship Recipient, for Women’s Media Center

Caught in the crosshairs of social media comment, two TV journalists received very different treatment from their respective employers.

Women in media should not have to choose between defending their appearance and keeping their job.

This is the message aspiring women media professionals ought to be receiving, instead of feeling like their news outlets will not protect them from insensitive critics who complain via social media that they don’t fit the preferred standard of beauty.

In late November, the nation received an intimate look into the aforementioned dilemma when a Shreveport, Louisiana, meteorologist lost her job after defending her personal appearance on a social media platform. Rhonda Lee, who worked at KTBS, an ABC affiliate station, was harshly criticized by a viewer on the station’s Facebook page. He did not approve of Lee, whom he referred to as “the black lady,” or her short, tightly coiled hairstyle. She “needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair,” the viewer wrote.

Lee responded to his comments by defending her African American ancestry and natural hairstyle. “Women come in all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and levels of beauty,” she asserted in her comment response. “Showing little girls that being comfortable in the skin and HAIR God gave me is my contribution to society.”  She ended her response by thanking the viewer for watching the station’s broadcasts. Station leaders later fired Lee for violating the station’s social media policy.

Around the same time last year, a white, plus-size anchor in La Crosse, Wisconsin, received a critical email from a viewer about her weight. Jennifer Livingston of the CBS affiliate WKBT was told she shouldn’t “consider [herself] a suitable example for [the] community’s young people, girls in particular.” After her husband, a fellow WKBT anchor, posted the email to his Facebook page, she received an outpouring of support. Livingston was allowed to respond to her critic on air during an editorial segment. “You know nothing about me but what you see on the outside; and I am much more than a number on a scale,” she asserted. Her station fully supported her decision. Her job was never in jeopardy.

The way both situations were handled has been heavily debated in journalism circles and in the court of public opinion. Both women faced criticism from viewers attacking their professional appearance. Some have questioned whether race played a role in the varying outcomes.

“I really think [KTBS management] could have just let me send that post to the guy and let it go, and let that be everyone’s teachable moment,” Rhonda Lee told me in a phone interview. She went on to say that right after she responded to the viewer, she sent her supervisors a screenshot of her post. Instead of receiving encouragement and reassurance that she took the best course of action, she was told, “Don’t do that anymore.”

According to a copy of an KTBS email to employees posted on The Huffington Post, Lee’s former station’s social media policy only allows for “one proper response” to viewer complaints, which must include the contact information of a staffer that can address their concerns. The policy allowed her no leeway to respond to criticism about her personal appearance let alone support from her employer.

Media organizations should ramp up their sensitivity to social media issues and go to greater lengths to shield their employees from personal attacks, especially on-air talent. If management does not want employees defending themselves after being attacked on these platforms – where they are often encouraged to engage their audience – measures should be taken to curb frivolous and hurtful criticisms.

While social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are still evolving as reporting and audience-engaging tools, policies should be in place that outline procedures for dealing with issues before they arise.

News outlets can become more responsive to social media issues by establishing commenting guidelines and actively practicing comment moderation. Just as comment policies are found on many broadcast and print journalism organizations’ websites – including NBC News and The New York Times – guidelines and standards should be prominently displayed on their Facebook pages. PBS’ Facebook page serves as an ideal example.

I agree with the perspective taken by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the largest professional organization for journalists of color in the country. The group issued a statement in support of Lee shortly after her termination. NABJ encouraged media companies to “protect employees on official social media platforms that are used to engage news consumers” and “allow greater latitude when it comes to employees defending themselves in these forums.”

All on-air talent face some level of scrutiny, but it seems women anchors and reporters face even more severe attacks about their appearance than that of their male counterparts. Those who do not sport long, straight hair and a slender figure seem to be the most vulnerable to harsh criticism and crude remarks.

Lee and Livingston were both chastised for not reinforcing a stereotype, which is why it’s important now more than ever before for media outlets to promote diversity and highlight the reality that not just one standard of beauty exists. Women in the industry should be reassured that they don’t have to fit the cookie-cutter image often embraced in mainstream media. KTBS missed an opportunity to express this message when they chose to dismiss Lee.

Lee, who is still “feverishly” looking for employment, said she has been asked before by former employers to make her hair “more pleasing.”

“What they’re asking me to do is change my complete biology and I don’t think that that’s fair and I tell them this upfront,” she said.

Yes, women journalists – just as their male counterparts – are in the public eye. And as such they assume the role of community watchdogs who present information that help the public make informed decisions. They should not, however, be required to absorb verbal assaults by viewers who feel the need to share hurtful comments about body weight, attire, hair texture or other issues unrelated to the quality of their work. Women journalists have earned the right to assume whatever standard of appearance they choose and deserve to be backed by their employer when that standard is attacked.

 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Statement by Secretary Kerry – May 3, 2013

 

Commemorating World Press Freedom Day

 

Today we mark World Press Freedom Day, an annual occasion to recognize, honor, and underscore the essential role of independent media in fostering and protecting freedom of expression and democratic principles.

We take this opportunity to express our solidarity with independent media in all corners of the world, recall journalists who have lost their lives and sacrificed their freedom or personal well-being, and recognize and honor those who fight against repressive regimes that target the press. 

In the United States, we hold press freedom as a fundamental component of our democratic fabric, enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. 

However, in many countries, those who try to exercise their freedom of expression face repression and harassment, from financially crippling lawsuits to imprisonment and death. 

Journalists are increasingly confronted by the failure of governments to protect this freedom, and even as technology increases the possibilities for innovative expression online, the space for free media is shrinking.  

The United States remains firmly committed to promoting and protecting press freedom, and to supporting United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) dedication to freedom of expression across the globe.

We call upon all governments to take the necessary steps to foster an environment where journalists can operate freely, independently, and without fear, and to release all imprisoned journalists wherever they are held.

Guns are much in the news these days and Ed Bean has organized a program at the Georgia Press Association to give journalists the information they need to write informed, accurate stories, free of bias, as they report on the current public policy debate, as well as crime and other news that involves firearms. This is not a forum for debate on gun control; the intent is to provide reporters with a foundation of knowledge that will help them ask the right questions when firearms are in the news. “Guns 101: What journalists need to know to shoot straight and get it right when firearms are in the news,” will be held on May 16 at the Georgia Press Association building, near the Mercer University-Atlanta campus, starting at 9:30 a.m.

To sign up, contact Ashley Sears, asears@gapress.org, 770. 454.6776. Or you can contact Ed for more information at ebean@alm.com.

Here’s the agenda for the program:

Gun Metrics: What the data and research reveal about gun ownership in the U.S. Approximately 300 million guns are in private hands in the U.S. Who owns them and why? Speaker: Ed Bean, editor and associate publisher of the Daily Report.

Crime and Guns: What reporters need to know to ask the right questions of police and investigative agencies when a firearm has been used in a crime. Speaker: Jerry L. Scott, Agent in Charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Statewide Crime Scene Program and Coordinator of the GBI’s Body Recovery Team.

Guns and the Constitution: Explaining District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) and what they mean in the current discussion over firearms regulation. Speaker: L. Lynn Hogue, Professor Emeritus, Georgia State University College of Law.

Guns and the Law: What Georgia and U.S. laws say about gun use and ownership and balancing public safety versus individual rights. Speaker: John Monroe, a Roswell attorney who practices primarily in the area of Second Amendment issues.

Firearms Up Close: A hands-on look at guns. Participants in this session will gain a heightened, functional knowledge of firearms with a special focus on guns and situations that are likely to be in the news. Speaker: Scott Babbitt, certified firearms instructor.

Trip to the Range: Instructor Scott Babbitt will accompany participants to the Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range where they’ll have the opportunity to shoot some of the firearms that are being discussed in the news.

By Courtney Overcash

Prominent Georgia democrats went head-to-head Tuesday night at an Atlanta Press Club event on the future of the Democratic Party and how to get more democrats elected.

Democratic Party Chairman Mike Berlon told the Press Club the way to win races is to avoid messy primaries.

“We no longer can afford to have these party primaries where we take six or seven Democrats and run them against each other and there’s nothing left but smoke and ruin,” said Berlon. “This time around we will work hard to ensure when a decision is made that these two camps are going to talk to each other and clear the field so we can move forward.”

“My 2006 race, except for the votes being counted, was one of the best experiences of my life.” joked Rep. Scott Holcomb. Holcomb went on to agree with Berlon that any democrats considering running in 2014 should stand united behind the best Democratic candidate and let the Republicans have the bloody primary.

Former executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia and current professor at Georgia State University, Stephen Anthony, disagreed with Berlon’s strategy, however. Anthony said that the party shouldn’t discuss clearing out the primary field in front of the press. According to Anthony, the new role of political parties is merely to recruit the candidates.

Bryan Long also spoke out against Berlon’s methods. Long, who is the executive director of Better Georgia, pointed out Berlon’s failure to find a Democrat to run against state Rep. Doug McKillip, who switched to the Republican Party and lost to a fellow GOP candidate, in last year’s primary election.

In a brief response to the disapproval, Berlon said “I appreciate the criticism from here and here, but I don’t think either of these organizations understand what we’re doing.”

Playing peacekeeper, House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams said “There are some issues that we believe in as a party that aren’t necessarily things that we need to talk about …that distract from the actual operation of government.”

By Courtney Overcash, Atlanta Press Club Assistant Director

The Atlanta Press Club is accepting nominations, now, for the newly revamped Awards of Excellence. We’ve re-evaluated the criteria to use in judging and reworked the process to ensure we recognize the best local journalists in the industry today. We encourage you to participate by nominating yourself or your favorite local journalist by the deadline, January 31.

These new awards supplant the program the Club sponsored for years. Some of the changes we made include streamlining the nomination and submission process and expanding the categories to be judged. One new category is the Atlanta Press Club Impact Award. The Impact Award recognizes a Georgian, not necessarily a journalist, who made a significant impact on the journalism profession in 2012 and has furthered the mission of the Atlanta Press Club, which is focused on fostering journalistic excellence and expanding the public’s interest in and understanding of a free press.

The Atlanta Press Club will also partner with the National Press Club to judge the awards. The NPC will offer a fresh, unbiased view of the nominees. Local journalists will also get exposure to members of an influential, sister organization. 

Whether you self-nominate or nominate a colleague, we want to recognize the journalists who are making an impact on the local community. You are doing great work, and you deserve to be recognized. Send in your nominations now by completing the application here: http://atlantapressclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Application-2012.pdf

By The Associated Press

 

ATLANTA — Dick Pettys, a longtime political reporter for The Associated Press who was a fixture at the Georgia state capitol for more than three decades, died Monday. He was 66.

Statement from Lauri Strauss, Executive Director of the Atlanta Press Club:

-Oct. 5, 2012

We are disappointed that both Lee Anderson and Stan Wise have declined our invitation to participate in the upcoming Atlanta Press Club Loudermilk-Young Debate Series airing on Georgia Public Broadcasting on October 21.

We believe the best public is an informed one. The Press Club’s forum, moderated by trusted journalists from outlets around the state, affords candidates the opportunity to talk directly to Georgia’s voters. In doing so, candidates can elaborate on their positions related to policy matters that affect each and every Georgian.

We urge Mr. Anderson and Mr. Wise to reconsider their decision. We hope they will participate in this opportunity for meaningful dialogue. To that end, we will keep a podium open for both Mr. Anderson and Mr. Wise should they decide to participate.