Entries associated with the tag "60 Minutes":

I hope I sounded properly enthusiastic last October writing about Pro Publica, a newsroom of investigative reporters sponsored by a California philanthropy. But I had qualms. "Pro Publica believes it will be the 'largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States,'" I wrote. "Even so, a bureau of 24 reporters and editors can't begin to meet the national need. Furthermore, a team of journalists all based in Manhattan . . . won't have its ear to the streets of Topeka." Pro Publica had announced that it intended to work on stories of national scope, "truly important stories . . . with moral force." This grandiosity suggested that Pro Publica wouldn't be looking where the need was greatest, to the middle markets whose papers were pulling in their investigative horns, thereby giving a pass, I said, to "corruption in the local city hall and assessor's office."

Now Pro Publica's up to a staff of 28 (two Pulitzer winners from the LA Times have just agreed to sign on), and on Monday, Edward Wasserman of the Miami Herald judged it on its first big story. He was properly enthusiastic -- he called Pro Publica a "dazzling new investigative reporting outfit" that had just collaborated with 60 Minutes on a "scathing examination" of al-Hurra" -- the badly managed and little-watched news network the Bush administration set up in Virginia at a cost of $100 million a year to broadcast in Arabic to the Middle East. But Wasserman had qualms. "Why was Pro Publica using its philanthropic funding to, essentially, subsidize the cost of a segment for 60 Minutes, the most financially successful news show in the history of U.S. television? And how could Pro Publica claim to be filling a void when the Washington Post broke its own story on al-Hurra the same day (June 22)? 

Finally, Wasserman suggested the way Pro Publica was spending its $10 million a year from the Sadler Foundation is beside the point. "What's vanishing," he wrote, "is that vast mid-range of solid, investigative sleuthing that used to be integral to the work of the country's better local and regional newspapers -- the stories of judicial corruption, cronyism, crooked zoning, crummy schools, contracting scams. . ."

"Increasingly, nobody's doing those stories," Wasserman went on, "and the next wave of nonprofit funding should go to creating positions in regional newsrooms for reporters who will."

When I called general manager Richard Tofel Monday morning for his reaction to Wasserman's piece, it turned out that he'd already talked to him and responded with a letter to Jim Romenesko's Media News Web site. "Our aim is to provide stories of force and value to readers," Tofel wrote. "For that reason, and to the extent we have a choice of publishing partners for our major stories, we select them with an eye toward maximizing the stories' impact. With this in mind, we were delighted to work with 60 Minutes."

To me Tofel said, "The fact that one of these great and still economically powerful news organizations could do any investigative story, which they could, does not seem to me to prove that they would or will do all possible investigative stories worth doing."  In other words, 60 Minutes might have the wherewithal to do a report on al-Hurra, but  the report happened because Pro Publica advocated for it and did the reporting. If Pro Publica believes in the stories it's breaking, it has no reason to apologize for finding partners who will bring them to the widest possible audiences.

As for the Washington Post, "For us, the fact the Washington Post was on the same story the same week is really a good thing. One reason is that we're not looking to sell advertising or circulation. We're looking to make a difference about al-Hurra. If by the end of the day we're the only ones covering it we're in trouble. If you're going to have impact, other people are going to notice."

In his critique Wasserman said he fears that "structural problems in Pro Publica's organizational model [might] keep it from sparking the transformation U.S. journalism needs." That's a lot to ask of anybody and more than Pro Publica ever promised, but when it was new it did claim to be responding to a moment in history "when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy." No wonder Wasserman didn't cut Pro Publica any slack. In his letter to Romenesko, Tofel asked for reasonable expectations. "Shoring up the economics of . . . metro papers, or any other news business, is beyond our ability," he said.

On Sunday night 60 Minutes reporter Bob Simon talked to Alton Logan, who's been in prison since he was convicted of murdering a McDonald's security guard in 1982, and to lawyers Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry, who have known the whole time that he was innocent but kept it to themselves. Simon respected the dilemma Kunz and Coventry found themselves in -- the actual killer was their client and had admitted to them that he did it, but their code of ethics forbade them to do anything that would increase his legal jeopardy. But Logan couldn't understand why that code of ethics mattered more to Coventry and Kunz than ending the injustice that had sent him to prison for life, and Simon seemed content to leave his audience unable to understand it either.

Probably 13 minutes wasn't long enough to tell a story this complicated. Here's what Simon boiled down and left out: There weren't two lawyers who knew Logan was innocent and signed an affidavit saying so -- there were four. One of them had no ethical obligation to Wilson -- he represented Wilson's accomplice in the murder. Furthermore, the police and prosecutorial work that convicted Logan was disgraceful. Evidence as compelling as the murder weapon -- which police confiscated during a manhunt for Wilson after he shot and killed two police officers (an unrelated crime) -- wasn't pursued.

It's hard to know what to make of that affidavit Coventry kept in a lock box under his bed for 26 years. At first glance the writing of it looks conscientious and farsighted -- but was it also a way to do nothing and call it something? I couldn't support Kunz and Coventry's long silence but I sympathized with them for the agony it caused them. But on TV Kunz said something bizarre. He said there are probably other attorneys keeping the same sorts of secrets, and "I don't want to be defensive about this, but what makes this case so different is that Dale and I came forward. And that Dale had the good sense to talk to Wilson before his death and get his permission [to speak up after he died]. Without that, we wouldn't be here today."

Perhaps Kunz and Coventry mean to impress us with how little wiggle room the canons of the law allowed them. But if the canons are that absolute and they obey them that absolutely, then they're turning ethics into ideology. I wish Simon had stopped them right there and asked if he'd heard right: Without the permission of Wilson, a street thug, the killer of three men, you would have let him rule you from the grave, while an innocent man continued to rot in prison? I suppose they would have, but I'd much rather believe they had no intention of allowing such a travesty and realized that if they asked Wilson’s permission he might refuse it—and might even put his refusal in writing. No, I'd much rather they were telling us a white lie now than believe that they'd actually have let those canons keep Logan in prison forever. 

After my reporting on this case Kunz made a fascinating reply -- which he frames as a letter to Wilson (scroll down to "Of All the Lawyers in the World . . ."). And here's a link to John Conroy's report on the Alton Logan case Monday morning on WBEZ. Conroy began covering covering Andrew Wilson for the Reader in 1990 in the context of his pivotal role, as a victim who sued the city, in the uncovering of police torture in Chicago. His last Reader piece examines the status of the scandal now that Wilson has died.

Logan's attorney, Harold Winston, was in court Monday trying to get Logan a new trial. The lawyers' affidavit is one piece of new evidence and Winston has more -- witnesses who never testified at the first trial in 1982. On Monday circuit judge James Schreier listened to the account of Marc Miller, an attorney now living in Florida who back then represented Logan's codefendant, Edgar Hope. Miller's story is that Hope told him Logan was innocent and ordered him to pass that information on to Logan's lawyer. Miller says Hope told him he had only one partner in crime and that was Andrew Wilson, which Miller could find out for himself just by asking around on the street; Hope didn't even know Logan. Miller and Kunz and Coventry were all members of the homicide task force of the Cook County public defender's office; Miller passed on to them almost immediately what Hope had said. They asked Wilson -- was that you in the McDonald's? -- and Wilson said it was. (Miller was much more circumspect with Logan's trial lawyer, whom he didn't know.)

The third signature on the affidavit was that of Andrea Lyon, the public defender who notarized it. The fourth signature was that of Miller. He testified Monday over the objections of assistant attorney general Richard Schwind and Edgar Hope's current lawyer, Richard Kling. Hope's trying to overturn his life sentence on the grounds that he's innocent too. The affidavit and Miller's testimony both implicate him in the crime he says he didn't commit. 

Winston's been hoping that Schreier will order a new trial or, even better, that the attorney general's office will free Logan. But Schreier merely scheduled another hearing for April 18. "They are quick to convict but they are slow to correct their mistakes," Alton Logan told Simon on 60 Minutes.

There will be more here and elsewhere. ABC World News is working up a story of its own.