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National Stories
A Connecticut judge ruled on Tuesday that the police must release recordings of the 911 calls made from Sandy Hook Elementary School during the shooting last year that left 20 children and six adults dead. Rejecting the state’s attempt to keep the content of the tapes confidential, the judge, Eliot D. Prescott of the Superior Court in New Britain, ruled that there was no legal basis to keep the tapes secret and found that their release would help the public assess the response by law enforcement.
New York Times
A Michigan judge reaffirmed yesterday that former Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter can claim Fifth Amendment protections in not revealing his source in a 2004 story. Ashenfelter wrote in 2004 that former assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino was the subject of an internal investigation for his actions during a discredited terrorism trial. Ashenfelter claimed the protection of the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination, in 2009. Although his editors said he had done nothing wrong, he used the Fifth Amendment because Convertino argued the leak of information by the Department of Justice was illegal. Although a judge had earlier upheld Ashenfelter's position, Convertino claimed the Fifth Amendment argument was no longer valid after Attorney General Eric Holder said, in an unrelated matter, that journalists would not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. The court rejected that argument.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
A federal appellate court in the District of Columbia on Tuesday found that the author of a “birther” book could not claim defamation against Esquire magazine for what the court said was “fully protected political satire.” The Esquire article, written in jest, claimed author Jerome Corsi and publisher Joseph Farah were pulling the book from the shelves after President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. “[I]t is the nature of satire that not everyone ‘gets it’ immediately . . . ,” the court wrote. “Indeed, satire is effective as social commentary precisely because it is often grounded in truth.” The court found that a reasonable reader would not take the article as fact, given that readers of the “Politics Blog” were politically informed and understood the controversy, that the strong language used is not typically found in news stories, and that the substance of the article itself was inconceivable.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
USA Today on Monday joined a growing list of news agencies boycotting the use of official White House photography over what it says is an unprecedented lack of access to the president. USA Today Deputy Director of Multimedia Andrew Scott said in a memo to staff the publication will not use "handout photos originating from the White House Press Office, except in very extraordinary circumstances." USA Today is now one of more than 35 news agencies refusing to use White House photography.
Fox News
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