Still Senator Hothead

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

Still Senator Hothead
10/16/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

After watching the Obama-McCain debate last night (Wednesday, October 15. 2008), I went to bed with a very different impression of the last of these skirmishes than the take I got the next morning from reading the front-page report in today’s New York Times.

What planet was I on, anyway?

I mean, John Broder and Elisabeth Bumiller are pros, old hands at evaluating presidential debates.

Who am I to carry off ideas that differ from these veteran Times reporters?

Still, I never would have described the exchange between Barack Obama and John McCain as “heated” at any time.

Not generally heated, anyway.

McCain unleashed himself like a back alley bully. He lived up to his billing by some as the mean guy who kicks people off his lawn.

McCain was “heated,” yes. Hot under the collar, but smirking after every lower-gut sally.

Obama seemed poised and cool.

Okay, I know, I’m biased. I planned long ago to vote for Obama. He impressed me early because he opposed the Iraq war, and he’s really, really smart.

McCain is a hawk’s hawk, and as to smarts, well…

And yes, I’ve donated money — my hard-earned money — to Obama.

But still, I watched the debate with a critical eye. I sure didn’t want Obama to screw up. If he’d mis-stepped, I’d have winced. And I’d be writing about it.

Obama would have screwed up big time if he’d risen to the bait McCain kept dangling every time he snarled and hissed and tried to piss Obama off.

But Obama didn’t get pissed off.

And that’s where the Times article falls way short.

The theme of the Times was that Obama was on the “defensive.”

Here is the lede of the story:

Senator John McCain repeatedly tried to put Senator Barack Obama on the defensive on Wednesday in the final debate of the marathon presidential race, accusing him of seeking to raise taxes, associating with a former terrorist and engaging in an unmatched barrage of negative campaigning.

In the next paragraph, the Times writers depict Obama on the defensive, “pivoting away from McCain’s critiques.” Later, the Times uses the same lingo to describe Obama “repeatedly trying to pivot away from Mr. McCain’s critiques.”

“For most of the first half of the 90-minute debate, Mr. Obama was on the defensive,” the Times opined.

Yep, I use the word “opined,” as in the Times printed an alleged news story laced with the personal spin of the two reporters. You could almost hear somebody yelling across the newsroom, “OBAMA’S DEFENSIVE!!! — PIVOT, PIVOT PIVOT!”

Did they think I wasn’t watching the debate along with millions of others?

Do they think they can remap my brain — and the minds of thousands of Times readers who also watched the debate?

Before writing, they should have watched the Times’ own conservative, pro-Republican columnist, David Brooks, on public TV. Brooks lauded Obama for staying cool under attack from McCain.

Obama was not on the defensive. Just because he didn’t turn heat up when McCain attacked doesn’t mean he was “pivoting away”.

By staying cool, answering McCain’s charges rationally and without rancor, Obama let McCain sizzle in his own juices.

McCain came across to me as a nasty guy who avoided answering direct questions put to him, yet kept up his negative comments while his opponent stayed positive.

I wanted to link the Times story to my column so readers could read what Broder-Bumiller wrote, but I couldn’t find their piece in the online Times the paper emailed to me.

Instead, I found an article by another Times writer, Jim Rutenberg. It was far more judicious, I thought.

It actually contradicted commentary from Broder-Bumiller.

Here is what Broder-Bumiller wrote in my paper edition of the Times about debate moderator Robert Schieffer of CBS News asking the candidates what programs they would cut to balance the budget:

Neither candidate offered a convincing answer…

Mr. Obama ducked the question entirely, while Mr. McCain answered that he would impose an across-the-board spending freeze.

Huh. I was sure I’d heard Obama answer the question. So, it turns out, did Times writer Rutenberg, who reported in an online story:

Neither man went very far, though Mr. McCain perhaps offered a more detailed list. Repeating his pledge of an across-the-board spending cut, he said, “Well, one of them would be the marketing assistance program. Another one would be a number of subsidies for ethanol.”

Mr. Obama, for his part, specifically cited the “$15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies,” a component of the Medicare program. But, he said more generally, “we need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don’t work, and I want to go through the federal budget line by line, page by page. Programs that don’t work, we should cut.”

Did Obama “duck the question entirely”? No. That statement is just not true.

I suggest Broder and Bumiller borrow a trick from their colleagues in the Sports Department: Watch a replay of the debate and see if they don’t agree that Obama was tolerant, calm and rational despite continual verbal stabbing from McCain

McCain only reinforced my hothead image of him.

Senator Hothead, who named a running mate with a loud mouth, a penchant for using government office to pursue personal vendettas and a disdain for those who actually know something of substance about domestic and foreign policy.

Having watched McCain goad and bully Obama, with Obama coolly letting his barbs slide away harmlessly and then coming back with reasoned arguments, I ask: Who’d you rather have dickering with Vladimir Putin, McCain or Obama?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

a personal opinion

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Monopoly, Detroit style

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

Monopoly, Detroit style
10/16/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

They don’t get to pass go.

They won’t collect two hundred smackers.

Nobody issues them a “get out of jail free” card, either.

The prison for most of the staff of the formerly independent Observer & Eccentric newspapers will be in downtown Detroit.

They’ll be tossing the dice as they move from Schoolcraft Road in Livonia to, well, not exactly the RenCen.

West Lafayette ain’t Boardwalk, but that will be the new digs come late this year for much of the Observer & Eccentric suburban chain of newspapers’ editorial and administrative folks.

According to Gannett mogul Kristi Bowden, they’ll join the staffs of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, two other formerly independent newspapers that now belong, like the O & E, to Virginia-based media colossus Gannett.

‘Course, it wasn’t s’posed to be like this. There are anti-trust laws that supposedly protect the public from monopolists. But Gannett wangled with the now defunct Knight-Ridder chain in 1989 to get government approval of a Joint Operating Agreement between the Free Press and News. Supposedly, they were to be two editorially independent voices, joined for advertising and delivery.

Anybody believe that one?

In 2005, K-R sold the Freep to Gannett, but Gannett held onto the News.

A guy named Dean Singleton operates the News, providing an invisible fig leaf for Gannett, the true owner.

You’d think the Justice Department would smell the skunk.

When you have a bigger skunk in the White House, it’s hard to detect lesser stinkers.

Now the News, the Free Press and the O & E will be putting their little houses on the same square.

How long till they print one paper?

If they merge editorial duties, they’ll need a new name.

How about “Detroit Newpee”?

Think I’m kidding?

A few months ago, I reported that to cut costs, Gannett early this year closed seven restrooms in the main News and Free Press building.

Kristi Bowden didn’t say how many O & E people will be moving their workplaces into that building.

In this way, some form of newspaper rivalry will be preserved.

The competition for infrastructure will be strong with the influx of Eccentrics.

One solution: a row of alternately red and blue porta-johns on West Lafayette.

They could double as advertising kiosks.

About THAT I am kidding.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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How many goons…

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

How many goons
10/15/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

How many goons does it take to padlock a public boat launch?

That was my question after visiting Detroit’s public Riverside Park on Tuesday, October 14, 2008.

I’d heard that some vigilantes liberated the boat launch last week. They took bolt-cutters to the chains that were placed on the park’s boat launch by minions of billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun.

The city of Detroit is now contesting Matty’s seizure of the boat ramp and another part of the park, i hear.

The boat ramp was open for less than a day.

New locks appeared, and the launch again is closed to the public, by edict, it would appear, of Matty.

Matty’s boys didn’t stop with one lock per gate.

They put two padlocks on the entrance gate and three — count ’em, three! — padlocks on the exit gate.

Can’t be too secure when it comes to terrorists, right Matty?

‘Course, it’s just possible that someone from the city locked those gates.

But I’m guessing the cash-strapped city would not have wasted three superfluous padlocks on two gates.

Matty’s a billionaire. he can afford lots of padlocks.

I picture five of Matty’s henchmen bickering over the right to be first to deny the public its right to the boat ramp.

Compromise: All five got to padlock the gates.

So that’s the answer to my riddle: It takes five goons to padlock a public boat ramp.

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Newspaper red squads hit again

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

Newspaper red squads hit again
10/10/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

A top Detroit News editor recently ordered employees not to take part in political activity. The Newspaper Guild wrote a strongly-worded letter warning the paper that its effort at stifling free expression is a violation of the union contract.

At the Detroit Free Press, the other Gannett paper in town, despite an arbitrator’s order earlier this year that the newspaper stop banning staffers from taking part in the American democratic process, self-appointed newsroom ethics cops still browbeat colleagues who want to express their political views.

The Free Press is particularly two-faced, publicly high-fiving itself for protecting citizens’ rights to know what government is doing, sending reporters to do freedom-of-information battle in court, yet denying that those same employees have First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.

You’d think Gannett — which owns both the News and Free Press — also owns the Constitution.

A large part of the problem is a mindset among many journalists that says they gave up their right to freedom of expression when they became journalists. It’s a credo instilled in journalism students by journalism school professors and reinforced in newsrooms across the country where non-partisanship is de rigeur for entrance into the club of journalists.

A curious club it is, since unlike doctors, lawyers, plumbers and hairdressers, journalists are never examined for their qualifications and carry no certificates or licenses attesting to their competency. Yet some of them have the temerity to beat colleagues with the “ethics” cudgel.

Entering information about an employee’s non-work politics into company files is, practically speaking, identical to the police “red squads” that used to collect and file political information about citizens. By court order, those police red squads have been shut down.

It is possible that by another court action, similar repressive behavior by private companies such as newspapers might be stopped.

In Michigan, there is a little-known bulwark against both employer harassment of politicking employees and by extension, it’s a prohibition against baiting of staffers by peers.

It’s called the Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right To Know Act.

Bullard-Plawecki actually makes it illegal for employers to keep tabs on employees’ non-work-related political activities. And it could be interpreted to mean that fellow employees who hassle their peers for their political views — if the politicking employee is reported to bosses or otherwise has his or her views or activities placed in company files — might be acting unlawfully.

In other words, wonder of wonders, it may actually be illegal to be a stool pigeon.

To my knowledge, the law has not been used to protect journalists from prying, manipulating editors or their lackeys. But I believe it could be.

Here’s what Section 8 of the Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act says:

”(1) an employer shall not gather or keep a record of an employee’s association, political activities, publications, or communications of non-employment activities, except if the information is submitted in writing by or authorized to be kept or gathered, in writing, by the employee to the employer. This prohibition on records shall not apply to the activities that occur on the employer’s premises or during the employee’s working hours with that employer that interfere with the performance of the employee’s duties or duties of other employees.”

In Michigan, according to this statute, no employer may monitor or keep records of workers’ extracurricular activities of virtually any kind, including political activities.

There is a remedy:

According to Section 11 of Bullard-Plawecki, “If an employer violates this act, an employee may commence an action in the circuit court to compel compliance with this act. The circuit court for the county in which the complainant resides, the circuit court for the county in which the complainant is employed, or the circuit court for the county in which the personnel record is maintained shall have jurisdiction to issue the order. Failure to comply with an order of the court may be punished as contempt. In addition, the court shall award an employee prevailing in an action pursuant to this act, the following damages:

(1) For a violation of this act, actual damages plus costs.

(2) For a willful and knowing violation of this act, $200.00 plus costs, reasonable attorney’s fees, and actual damages.”

An arbitrator ruled that Free Press editos were wrong to forbid me to donate money to a political party. I believe Free Press editors violated Bullard-Plawecki in my case. Free Press Editor Paul Anger placed in my personnel file a copy of email correspondence about my $500 donation to Michigan Democrats in 2004. In addition, Free Press Executive Editor Caesar Andrews informed me that if I made further political contributions, I would be subject to company discipline up to and including dismissal.

What is that if not “gather(ing) or keep(ing) a record of an employee’s association, political activities, publications, or communications of non-employment activities.”

That is illegal, according to Bullard-Plawecki.

The newspaper as Enforcer of Journalistic Orthodoxy.

The newspaper as red squad. An odd shoe, yet it fits.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Unchaining the journalists

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

Unchaining the journalists
10/09/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

Pretend you’re living in the United States before the Civil War.

My Obama bumper sticker. Joel Thurtell photo.
My Obama bumper sticker. Joel Thurtell photo.

You are opposed to the practice of buying, selling and owning human beings, a practice known as “chattel slavery.”

A legitimate economic practice condoned and promoted by the laws of the states and the United States.

But you are not just opposed to slavery.

You are dedicated to erasing slavery as a legal institution in this country.

You are moved to act. You want to do something that will help end this horrible practice.

But wait! You can’t do anything, despite your strong belief that slavery is immoral.

You are banned from taking any part in the abolition of slavery.

Your job precludes any kine of anti-slavery activity by you.

What kind of job would prohibit you from expressing your abhorrence for an inhuman, indeed barbaric practice?

Only one that I can think of.

You are a journalist.

And journalists must be fair and balanced.

They must not show favoritism towards any one side of a debate.

They must not take up a cause, no matter how much they believe in it.

Sound ridiculous?

Well, it is the position many American journalists take. They may be against a war, or for a political cause, but they must not take a side — that would compromise their journalistic integrity.

Sound absurd? Read the words of Professor Jane Briggs-Bunting, head of the journalism program at Michigan State University. Professor Briggs-Bunting speaks for most every if not every journalism instructor in the United States when she warns, “Reporters, we’re on duty 24-7. I can have an opinion, and my opinion will be heard in the privacy of a voting booth. You can’t publicize your political views on a T-shirt you wear, a button you wear, or a campaign sign in your front lawn. You represent your news organization 24-7.”

My Obama t-shirt. Staff photo.
My Obama t-shirt. Staff photo.

I don’t believe this. Take a look at my car — there are Obama and ACLU bumper stickers on my little blue Civic. That Civic with its political proclamations is the chief way I get to my journalistic assignments. Why, when it’s relatively clean, I even wear an Obama t-shirt myself!

Four years ago, I donated $500 to the Michigan Democratic Party and I plan to give money to Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama, in this election. And by the way, when Free Press editors threatened to fire me if I gave to politicians again, an arbitrator told them to butt out. He literally banned the Free Press ban on contributions and told media moguls to police their CONTENT, not the journalists. But that hasn’t stopped media bosses from persecuting journalists for expressing political beliefs.

I think it’s time we got rid of the Bush White House and its warmongers. I believe that if I stand by and take no part in ousting a party that is pushing our country toward dictatorship, then I might as well be a part of the ruling elite. I might as well be one of the oppressors.

Give this some thought, journalists. If you were a reporter in Hitler’s Germany, could you justify doing nothing to stop a tyrant? What would you tell judges at Nuremberg: I did nothing because I had to hold onto my objectivity? What would you tell a higher judge?

If your answer is that you would have stood on the sidelines to preserve your neutrality, your precious J school-loving impartiality, then I will say this to you: Impartiality is a minor goal when we’re talking about tyranny. It is of no value when we’re talking about such horrendously awful institutions as slavery, genocide, judicial murder or even corruption in our local institutions.

To defend “objectivity” in the face of monstrous injustices is benighted and morally poverty-stricken.

Would you have remained neutral about slavery, stood to the side while humans were being sold like pots and pans?

If you believe it’s time to act, time to take a position, then by God, let’s get moving, get organized.

Here are some things we can do:

My ACLU bumper sticker. Joel Thurtell photo.
My ACLU bumper sticker. Joel Thurtell photo.

I have already contacted the Michigan ACLU and Amnesty International about this. You can do it, too.

Kary Moss is executive director of the Michigan ACLU. She’s at kmoss@aclumich.org.

You could also send an email to Amnesty International at http://www.amnesty.org/en/contact.

Journalists love to talk about freedom of expression and the First Amendment without thinking how shackled they are by their companies’ so-called “ethics” codes and a peer group culture of mental imprisonment promoted by journalism schools.

Let’s unchain the journalists!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Riverside boat launch liberated

Posted on November 30, 2008 by admin

Liberated – Riverside Park boat launch
10/09/08

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

The padlocks have been cut.

The boat launch at Riverside Park is open.

That’s what Southwest Detroit activist Deb Sumner tells me.

The bolt-cutters were hers.

Five volunteers cut the padlocks Wednesday and declared the boat launch open to boaters.

Meanwhile, according to Sumner and media reports, the city of Detroit is moving to take back its park, seized by Detroit International Bridge Company owner Matty Moroun, who claimed he needed parts of Riverside park to secure the Ambassador Bridge against terrorists.

Moroun owns the Ambassador Bridge

Sumner forwarded an email from one of the bolt-cutter operators:

The five brothers have removed the illegally placed chains and locks from the gates to the public Riverside Park boat launch.

Thank you Deb for loaning the bolt cutters. If we could hold on to them through the weekend in case new chains are illegally placed again, that would be helpful.

The boat launch area of the park is now free and you can launch your boats. We launched little paper boats that may have reached Canada by now. Not sure if they cleared customs, though.

Please let me know if the gates are illegally locked again. If necessary, we have larger tools that will be able to take on any size chain.

Sumner’s response:

Bon voyage to all of our City’s boat launchers!!!! Though, I am sure it’s getting late in the season for boaters to head out into the open waters of our nationally acclaimed Detroit Heritage River but we need to let the public know that they have their public access boat launch once again and they have every right to launch their boat from the public’s Riverside Park Boat Launch!!!!

Detroit founder, Antoine Laumet, Sieur de Cadillac, sieur de Cadillac, explorer who came up to the shore of our Detroit’s River in 1877 would be proud for the people of Detroit who can once again come to and from our City’s Public Riverside Park Boat Launch!!!

Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than simply opening the gates. The city had posted hours of operation, which means city workers looked after the boat launch and locked it overnight. This is not exactly boating season, so the city may wind up installing new padlocks for the winter.

But at least the city would have the keys!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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The Conyers entitlement: Public servants = private lackeys

Posted on October 9, 2008 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Now the taxpayers of Detroit have to pay $90,000 to say adios to a city worker fired by Monica Conyers because the staffer was about to blab that the Mon was making her do personal chores on the public dime.

Former staffer Yakima Washington said she was getting ready to report Monica Conyers for making her run personal errands as a city employee. That’s when Monica fired her. Washington sued.

It’s an old story with the Conyers duo, turning public servants into private lackeys. At least Yakima Washington got some money out of the deal.

Mostly, those who work for U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Detroit and his wife, Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, got stuck with working phone banks or changing a diaper.

Demeaning on-the-government-paid-job personal assignments? Par for the course with this duo.

In the case of Congressman Conyers, he assigned federal employees to do everything on government-paid time from babysitting for his two sons as full-time residents of his home or at their own homes, tutoring the Conyers kids in the congressman’s Detroit federal building office, tutoring Monica for her law school classes, chauffeuring the congressman or his kids, and the list goes on and on.

In fall 2003, I even caught a Conyers staffer on the congressman’s payroll while doing campaign work in the Chicago office of presidential aspirant Carol Mosely Braun.

As we wrote in the Detroit Free Press on November 21, 2003, Conyers had federal employees — some of them from the House Judiciary Committee — doing political campaign work on office time, at Conyers’ behest. This didn’t happen once or twice — I made a chart showing how it went on for years, peaking whenever there was an election of interest to Conyers.

None of the staffers dragooned into private service got paid a nickel, let alone ninety grand, to go away.

Instead, on the job with Conyers, they learned to keep their credit cards at home, because when they dined or traveled with Conyers, he had a habit of sticking his workers with the restaurant tab or travel expenses, according to Deanna Maher, his former Downriver office chief of staff.

Maher, now retired, lived for several weeks in the Conyers home on 7 Mile in Detroit, taking care of the two Conyers boys while Monica was away studying law. She cashed her government pay checks all he while.

Sydney Rooks was Conyers’ legal counsel. She also tutored the Conyers kids, too, and helped Monica with her law school studies. That was a waste — Monica has failed the Michigan bar exam four times.

Recalls Maher, “Elise Cathey was hired as congressional staff to take them into her home for the entire summer of 2003 without being reimbursed one dime for their food or clothing.”

Maher wrote to me earlier this week after she read a Detroit Free Press op-ed piece about Monica Conyers’ call for the death penalty for people who murder kids. Monica Conyers said she was “mad as hell” about the murder of a 4-year-old.

It was an amazing statement, Maher told me in an email October 6, 2008: “Today’s DFP editorial re Monica’s latest absolutely blew my mind. Here she is asking for the death penalty of anyone who shoots and kills a child while she herself was brandishing a gun towards her own child, albeit, John III was not an infant and had a butcher knife in his hand and ran out the door to hail down the local police.

Maher said she knew about the police gun and bucher knife incident because she was assigned to keep the story out of the Free Press.

“How dare she even attempt to come across as a decent mother who cares about children when she let her two young boys be placed with anyone her husband could order from his congressional office staff to take care of them. It did not matter to her what their backgrounds were or if her children were safe and nurtured as long as their care did not interfere with her agenda. Her notorious abuse of Congressman Conyers’ staff (not just me) was bad enough. The abuse of her children when dumping them with anyone is by far more egregious.

“While on staff, I stepped in many times to attend to her children’s needs, because simply I felt sorry for them and could not stand by and watch. I remember attending to a severe diaper rash of the youngest child because others could not or did not want to change his diaper. More than once, I personally gave them a place to sleep when neither parent was available.”

Maher called me today (October 8, 2008) to ask if I’d received any feedback from my column, “Pistol packin’ Monica,” about the 2001 cop shop report.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had plenty of comments on stories I wrote about billionaire Matty Moroun’s takeover of a public park in Detroit. I’ve had comments about my financial column, “How to stop a bank run.”

But there were no responses to “Pistol packin’ Monica.”

Not one.

“Aren’t people outraged?” Maher asked.

“That,” said Maher, “Is outrageous.”

Outraged? Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Pistol-packin’ Monica

Posted on October 8, 2008 by admin

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

I’m against the death penalty, so I don’t agree with Monica Conyers that child-killers ought to be executed.

Dealt with strictly?

Absolutely.

But the Detroit City Council President is correct when she says we ought to be “mad as hell” about a 4-month-old baby who was shot and killed in Detroit last week.

We ought to be mad as hell at anyone who shoots at kids.

Or brandishes guns around kids.

Guns and kids, don’t mix, do they Mon?

Monica Conyers ought to know. She’s threatened to shoot people, and she was described in a 2001 Detroit police report as a mom who pulled a gun on her own kid.

Wonder if she’s “mad as hell” at herself.

Monica is the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Here’s how I wrote about that cop write-up in an April 12, 2008 column:

A 7-year-old Detroit police report suggests that the councilwoman, wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., may indeed have the iron.

According to the police report, titled “Family Trouble,” a city police cruiser was flagged down by a 10-year-old boy at 1:20 p.m. on May 5, 2001. The boy told the officer his “mother pulled a gun out and threatened to shoot him,” according to the report.

The boy was John Conyers, son of the same Monica Ann Conyers who’s been threatening people with guns lately. His father is Congressman Conyers. The officer reported that the boy had run out of the Conyers’ home at 2727 Seven Mile Rd. in Detroit.

Ten minutes later, the cop found Monica. Mom told cops her son had pulled a butcher knife on her after she spanked him for not doing his homework. He didn’t threaten her, she said, but instead “jumped out of a bedroom window.”

The report doesn’t record Monica’s response to her son’s claim that she brandished a gun at him.

Mom “has been having problems with her son in the past,” the officer wrote.

The cop duly noted that the boy is Congressman Conyers’ child. Conyers pere wasn’t home when this incident happened.

The boy was turned over to Monica’s sister.

Nobody was injured, the report said.

Nobody was injured.

Well, that’s nice. At least no one was hurt, physically. But what’s a kid to think if his mom pulls a gun on him? What’s going on in a house where a kid pulls a knife and his mom draws a pistol?

Know what’s really bizarre?

Around the same time this happened, according to a Conyers staffer of the time, the congressman held a town hall meeting.

The topic?

Domestic violence.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Equal rights for journalists

Posted on October 7, 2008 by admin

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

Now some people will say I’m nuts for defending a reporter fired for wearing a political t-shirt to a political rally she was covering.

I’m talking about the case of Karen Dinkins, fired September 21, 2008 by Detroit radio station WWJ-AM for wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt while covering an Obama-for-President rally.

It is true that it would be hard to defend Dinkins in court.

Unless she had a contract with WWJ which might give her some wiggle room, it’s likely that under current law she would not have much of a case.

I mean, after all, she was on company time, wasn’t she? Doesn’t the station have a right to dictate what its employees wear at work?

Hmmm.

I wonder if WWJ did have a dress code. Would a t-shirt have been okay as long as it didn’t have Obama’s face on it?

Put differently, did WWJ before the Dinkins firing prohibit its reporters from wearing any kind of t-shirt?

Or were they discriminating against Obama t-shirts?

What if she’d worn a McCain t-shirt?

My guess is that they would have fired her for wearing McCain’s face, too.

So t-shirts are okay, except some are not.

Who will decide which t-shirts are political?

This is where things start getting gray fast.

No doubt about it, candidates like Obama are political. So are the major and minor political parties.

But what about organizations that are not political in function, yet take political stands?

What about, let’s say, churches? Certainly the Roman Catholic church and many Protestant churches, plus Jewish religious organizations as well as most others get behind their favorite issues.

They take stands for or against abortion, same-sex marriage, the state of Israel, and there are those that even go so far as endorsing or dissing political candidates.

The list grows: What about the Detroit Institute of Arts or the Detroit Symphony Orchestra? When it comes to arts funding, most cultural organizations turn political. They may say it’s a matter of survival, but it’s nonetheless politics. They call it lobbying.

How about, hmm, let’s say the Detroit Regional Chamber Political Action Committee?

Check their website if you don’t think they’re political. They endorse candidates for public office and hold fundraisers, like their annual Mackinac Island shindig for Michigan politicos. They skim the money left after paying chump change for the rubber chicken, and roll it into campaigns. The chamber supports — mostly conservative — candidates and causes.

Oh, I know, donating to the chamber’s PAC must be okay because top editors of the Detroit Free Press gave to it. The editors’ behavior is emblematic of the hypocrisy media moguls practice by banning employees’ political activity while going full speed ahead with their own. The Free Press has stated that its employees do not enjoy First Amendment rights. Paul Glendon, the arbitrator in my political donation case, urged media execs to police the CONTENT of their papers or signals, rather than gagging journalists.

By the way, the Free Press lost that attempt by some of those editors to stifle my right to expression when arbitrator Glendon earlier this year ordered the editors to rescind their ban on political contributions by employees.

Now, unless WWJ banned all t-shirts, I think Karen Dinkins has a prayer of challenging her dismissal on grounds that the t-shirt policy was discriminatory: What if she’d worn a Detroit Chamber PC t-shirt (if there is such a thing) or a Catholic church t-shirt? Would they have fired her? No? But those groups are political, too! So is the Salvation Army or the Boy Scouts.

But discrimination should not be Dinkins’ chief defense.

It need not be her defense at all.

The law may not uphold her wearing a political t-shirt NOW. But there was a time when the law in this country did not offer women and black people the right to vote. Yet there were those in the U.S. who believed — the law notwithstanding — that black people and women have equal rights.

Why shouldn’t journalists have a right to express themselves fully, on or off the job?

Really, what other occupation — medicine, law, accounting, plumbing, hairdressing, auto repair — polices the political expression of its practitioners?

The absurdity of this situation, once exposed, is boundless. Why, we license lawyers, doctors, plumbers, hairdressers, barbers, and yet the people who convey our news to us are unexamined, uncertified and fully unlicensed.

Given that journalists are self-appointed practitioners, having passed no journalism board exam, what authority does any one of them have to pass judgment on his or her colleagues?

Now I’m talking about the rank and file journalists, most of whom will echo the sentiments of Jane Briggs-Bunting, chairwoman of Michigan State University’s J school, in arguing that journalists are on duty all the time and must NEVER express a political opinion except when they vote with the secret ballot.

I’d be willing to bet there’s not a J school in the land with a faculty member who would disagree with Professor Briggs-Bunting. Hail to orthodoxy!

That means our newsrooms are packed with J school grads who have never thought about this issue independently. They graduate and go to work regurgitating edicts their profs either picked up in J school or in brain-numb newsrooms, passed on to them without reflection.

It works great for the corporations, who benefit from gagging journalists while they editorialize on politics and donate to their favorite candidates and causes in seeming violation of their own kangaroo court ruling.

It’s time for journalists to wake up, grab some bolt-cutters and slice off those chains.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Tainted by my t-shirt?

Posted on October 5, 2008 by admin

 By Joel Thurtell

I’m sitting here in my t-shirt wondering if this shred of cotton is somehow polluting everything I

Me and my Obama T

Me and my Obama T

write because it has a photo of Barack Obama.

Is it possible that unseen biases are creeping into my head from the fabric I’m wearing?

Absurd.

But mainstream media owners don’t think it’s absurd. Somehow they’ve managed to drum into the brains of most working journalists that it is a cardinal sin for them to show a political preference. They are aided and abetted in this subversion of individual rights by the finest journalism schools in the nation.

Don’t believe me? Check out this statement by Jane Briggs-Bunting, head of Michigan State University’s journalism program, as quoted in the October 2, 2008 Detroit Free Press:

“Reporters, we’re on duty 24-7.  I can have an opinion, and my opinion will be heard in the privacy of a voting booth. You can’t publicize your political views on a T-shirt you wear, a button you wear, or a campaign sign in your front lawn. You represent your news organization 24-7.”

Wrong, Jane. Journalists have lives, they have a right to their opinions. It is a basic HUMAN right. Nothing in the Constitution says we give up those rights when we become journalists. Furthermore, employers — not just news organizations, but ALL employers — in Michigan are prohibited by law from keeping track of employees’ non-work activities, including politics.

But the bosses at many newspapers, radio and TV outlets agree with Professor Briggs-Bunting. Do they really believe that reporters’ thinking is somehow contaminated if they wear clothes with a political message?

They must. That would explain why the honchos at WWJ-AM canned veteran reporter Karen Dinkins for wearing an Obama t-shirt while she covered an Obama rally. Briggs-Bunting made her statement in response to a reporter’s question about the Dinkins firing.

Oh, I know, there’s the usual crap about the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Where’s the conflict?

Dinkins likes Obama, she wears an Obama t-shirt to cover a rally.

Wonder if Karen Dinkins' Obama t-shirt looks like mine?

Wonder if Karen Dinkins’ Obama t-shirt looks like mine?

What if she HAD NOT worn the Obama t-shirt?

Would that erase her predisposition towards Obama?

Not a bit.

Oh, I know, she’s representing WWJ. Expressing her opinion compromises the station.

Hmmm. I guess it’s okay when WWJ endorses a partisan political candidate.

Somehow that doesn’t compromise the station, but Dinkins’ t-shirt does?

Chances are WWJ’s bosses are donating money to political causes.

That certainly turned out to be the case with Gannett, owner of the Detroit Free Press.

And it turns out to be the case with top editors at the Free Press, who maintained that employees other than themselves have no First Amendment rights while they were giving money to a political action committee.

(Note: Earlier this year, The Newspaper Guild went to bat for me when muckamucks at the Free Press threatened to fire me in June 2007 if I ever again did what I did in 2004 — donated $500 to Michigan Democrats. An arbitrator agreed with the Guild and me that the Free Press was wrong and banned the Free Press ban on non-work political activity. Guess the arbitrator didn’t check with the head of MSU’s J school. By the way, I retired from the Free Press late last year, so nobody can fire me for my Obama t-shirt, yard sign and bumper stickers.)

Why is it okay for the station or the newspaper to take an editorial stand, but not okay for a reporter to show support for a political cause?

Now, if I had TAKEN money from the Dems, I can see where they might be a problem. But I didn’t. I GAVE money — MY OWN money — to the Democrats. Why? Because I wanted to help them defeat the worst president in U.S. history. I think that’s more important than a bunch of half-assed, addle-pated, so-called journalistic principles.)

Maybe some McCain supporter complained that Dinkins showed bias in favor of Obama.

But again I ask, would NOT wearing the t-shirt remove the bias?

No. It would only hide it.

So let’s turn this equation around: Unlike the vast majority of American journalists, Karen Dinkins was honest. She disclosed her political leaning, while most of her colleagues hide theirs.

Would NOT wearing her Obama t-shirt have changed her reporting?

Not likely.

Let me make clear what I’m saying: By refusing to disclose political preferences, reporters and especially POLITICAL reporters are withholding from their listeners, viewers and readers information that might help those people interpret the writings or musings of the journalists. If a political reporter favors Obama or McCain, why not just say so? Let the reader or viewer or listener decide if the reporter is fair.

Who is dishonest, the journalists who disclose their leanings?  Or the sanctimonious. self-appointed ethics cops who cast aspersions while hiding opinions that, by their own argument, might influence their reportage?

It’s hard to call a reporter who wears an Obama t-shirt a hypocrite.

What I’d like to see is a movement in journalism towards the policy of slate.com, where journalists are encouraged to reveal their voting preferences.

But it won’t happen as long as the heads of J schools pretend they have badges that entitle them to police the ranks of reporters.

I wonder. How long do you think a professor of journalism who expressed my point of view would last when department heads lay down an iron ban on journalists taking part in perfectly legal political activities?

What the J schools are dishing out to students who pay with their hard-earned tuition is nothing short of political indoctrination, a dogma that brainwashes them into thinking they can’t exercise their citizen’s right to be political.

Everyone has opinions, biases, beliefs. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.

Nothing wrong with that.

So why not have all journalists put their political cards on the table?

Or on their lawns, cars or t-shirts.

Corporations that own news outlets and contribute heavily to J schools are not likely to agree, though, because for them hypocrisy has no shame.

For them, it’s all about control.

Oh, my God! I typed this ENTIRE column wearing my Obama t-shirt!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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