Entries associated with the tag "Associated Press":

Just below, I've linked to a story from the Globe and Mail arguing that Canada would know what to do with a Barack Obama -- cut him down to size.

Here's an AP story out of France reporting that there's no Obama in sight anywhere in Europe.

Do we want a president who makes the rest of the world feel bad about itself? 

The Sun-Times, the Tribune, and the Associated Press filed an emergency motion Monday asking the Illlinois Supreme Court for access to "sealed filings, transcripts and hearings" in the R. Kelly case. The R & B singer's trial on child pornography charges is scheduled to begin on May 9. "Records and proceedings in the Kelly Case have not only been sealed but also sealed without any judicial findings with respect to the reasons for secrecy."

Presiding judge Vincent Gaughan would hardly disagree. Gaughan's made information about the case almost impossible for reporters to come by, and when the media plaintiffs made an emergency motion to him on April 24, the judge replied, "I can understand your position. . . . If these things were held without any type of record, then you'd lose all chance of access [to] what has been taking place. [But] if I articulated and made a factual basis out of why the hearings were sealed, then I would be telling you everything." Gaughan then took all the emergency out of the motion by scheduling a hearing on it for May 8, the day before jury selection starts.

Here's the emergency motion, and here's a document submitted at the same time expanding on the plaintiffs' argument. 

An AP story out of Halifax reports that DNA testing has identified the infant known as the Titanic's Unknown Child--"Buried in a small plot in a Halifax cemetery, the baby was a poignant symbol of the children who perished on the vessel when it sank in 1912."  Previously believed, on the basis of dental records to be a 13-month-old Finnish boy, he turned out to be 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin of England. The boy's father was an electrician who'd taken a job in New York. The family was sailing third-class.

AOL readers got to post comments about the story, and I read the most recent 50 or so out of some 1,400 before losing interest. The conversation had deteriorated into an exchange of rants about Bush, Iraq, foreigners, immigrants, and whatever disease you think research money should be spent on instead of on 95-year-old mysteries. What puzzled me was the huge hole in the AP story and the fact nobody seemed to notice it. What was the Unknown Child doing in a Nova Scotian grave in the first place, instead of at the bottom of the Atlantic? 

An older story I found online said the body was spotted floating in the water by a Canadian recovery ship, and that, in all, some 300 bodies were recovered. I didn't know that, and it didn't occur to the AP to tell me. But maybe only a journalist is bothered by what a news story doesn't say. Everyone else is so eager to spackle the holes with their assumptions.

It's how you ask the question. With the announcement that Michigan's "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian, will be released from prison on June 1 after eight years behind bars for second-degree murder, the AP asked the public what it thinks today about a right to die. With the proposition that "Sometimes there are circumstances where a patient should be allowed to die," 68 percent of the thousand adults polled agreed. But asked, "Do you think it should be legal or illegal for doctors to help terminally ill patients end their own life by giving them a prescription for fatal drugs?" a narrow plurality, 48 percent said legal, while 44 percent said illegal.

What about Kevorkian specifically? The AP asked, "Do you think [he] should have been jailed for assisting terminally ill people end their own life, or not?" Yes, 40 percent. No, 53 percent.

I promptly heard from Not Dead Yet, an organization of disability-rights advocates who believe euthanasia is a fancy way of saying "Let the freaks die." Spokesman Steve Drake, who was born hydrocephalic and says he's grateful to his parents for ignoring the doctor's warning that he'd live life as a vegetable, says Kevorkian wasn't assisting--he was in charge. Drake said, "Even assisted-suicide proponents take pains to insist on a difference between the two."

Secondly, the people Kevorkian was "assisting" weren't necessarily "terminally ill." Not Dead Yet dusted off a 1997 Detroit Free Press series, "The Suicide Machine." The paper said its investigation "debunks perceptions that Kevorkian only helps people who are terminally ill--likely to die within six months--or are in agonizing pain. In fact, at least 60 percent of Kevorkian's [47] suicide patients were not terminal. At least 17 could have lived indefinitely and, in 13 cases, the people had no complaints of pain." 

The paper reported that Kevorkian had "consistently violated most of the rules and standards he publicly claims to follow." 

Drake told me Not Dead Yet protested to the AP, and after getting nowhere there decided to issue a public statement. It was being written as we talked. Not Dead Yet intended to declare that bad questions lead to bad answers and, if anyone's paying attention, to bad public policy. 

Newspaper readers might be diminishing in number, but they’re not getting any less inquisitive or ornery. In September I heard from Chicagoan Frank Palmer, a frequent correspondent. "The nation’s press," he wrote, "was up in arms when the Sudanese arrested a Yank reporter for the Trib." This was Paul Salopek, who spent over a month as a prisoner in Sudan, where he was accused of spying. "Freedom of the press is a universal principle," Palmer continued. "Every government should be held to it. Well, almost every government. It turns out that the U.S. military has been holding an AP photographer for FIVE MONTHS. No charges have been filed. Want to bet that the printer’s ink spilled over this case won’t be a fraction of that spilled over the earlier one?" I didn’t take the bet.

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi Sunni, was arrested April 12 by U.S. marines in Ramadi, and he’s been a prisoner since – at this point over 11 months. The U.S. military in Iraq has told journalists that Hussein's been linked to al Qaeda members and to Iraqi insurgents. The Associated Press lobbied quietly on his behalf until September, when the exasperated wire service went public. "Bilal Hussein has been held in volation of Iraqi law and in disregard to the Geneva Conventions," AP CEO Tom Curley said in a statement. "He must be charged under the Iraqi system or released immediately."

The December-January issue of the American Journalism Review carries a ten-page story on Hussein. In it, Curley’s quoted as saying the AP has tried to investigate every specific claim the military has made against its photographer and found them to be "false or total exaggerations." Says Curley, "I have no problem saying the Pentagon lied to us more than once."

AJR is a trade magazine. There was a flurry of coverage in the popular press after the AP brought Hussein to the public’s attention, but he hasn’t gotten much attention since -- though as long as the AP is working on his behalf it can hardly be said the media have forgotten him. (To keep up with the coverage, visit the Web site the AP has established for Hussein.) AP spokesperson Linda Wagner says, "Some blogs, such as Daily Kos, have referenced the situation recently, and a number of year-end stories about the dangers of being a journalist have mentioned Bilal's detention."

What about the Tribune, which was rightly preoccupied with Salopek last summer? It published a toughly worded editorial on September 21. "America is in Iraq to help foster a democratic system and the rule of law," it concluded. "That means Hussein deserves to see the evidence against him and respond to the charges. If he was using a press pass as a cover to help terrorists, bring that out in a fair trial. Otherwise, free him." According to the Tribune’s archives, the paper hasn’t mentioned Hussein since.

But newspapers can’t write about everything -- that's why it's so easy to accuse them of sins of omission. Tribune reader Robert Pruter of Elmhurst is grumpy because he caught columnist John Kass writing something that in his eyes was not only nasty but dead wrong. On December 22 Kass’s subject was Barack Obama, and he said this: "He’s a decent fellow and I like him. He might make a fine liberal president someday. And though I disagree with him on policy, I’d bet my White Sox tickets that his wife, Michelle, won’t keep 800 secret FBI files of their political enemies hidden in some White House bedroom."

Pruter recognized this as a shot at Obama's competition, Hillary Clinton. Hundreds of FBI files of Republicans turned up in the White House early in the Clinton presidency, and word was that the president’s wife had ordered them brought in. But in the end the office of the independent counsel concluded that a low-level White House aide had requested the files on his own authority because he mistakenly thought they were on people who still worked at the White House and had to be cleared for access.

"Filegate," as it was called, obsessed President Clinton’s critics, including independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward would write, "[Starr] also would proceed with the FBI files probe. Again, Clinton was absolved. His staff had written a 400-page memo showing that they had no evidence tying Clinton to the files. Why continue? ‘My order says I have to focus on Anthony Marceca and others!’ Starr said in protest, referring to the Army detailee who had worked updating FBI files collected by the White House.... He had a duty." Robert Ray, who was Starr’s successor, shut the investigation down.

Pruter e-mailed Kass to tell him he was "appalled" by the column and to walk him through the facts. Pruter wrote editor Ann Marie Lipinski, whom he mistakenly referred to as the publisher, about Kass, advising her "to terminate his employment." Leaving no stone unturned, he also e-mailed the Tribune's public editor.

He says no one at the Tribune got back to him. The column was left to speak for itself in the Tribune archives, mainly about Kass's dislike of the Clintons.