By Joel Thurtell
I’m happy to see that finally the Detroit Free Press in its February 12, 2009 version of the David Ashenfelter and Richard Convertino saga has started referring to lawyers on the paper’s side as “Free Press attorneys” and not “Ashenfelter’s lawyers.”
I pointed this bit of pulp fiction out in a previous column, noting that if the Free Press pays the lawyers’ bills, they’re representing the interests of the newspaper and not necessarily those of Ashenfelter, an employee of the newspaper.
Okay, so the Free Press got up to speed on one fairly minor issue.
But I’m puzzled by a huge hole in what I believe the Free Press’ managers from Gannett call a “moving part” — the beige-colored sidebar by reporter Mike Elrick entitled “Events in the case” on Page One of the Local News section of the February 12, 2008 paper.
The most crucial event in this chronology is missing from the Free Press list: that a federal jury acquitted Convertino, a former assistant U.S. attorney, of misconduct in a terrorism trial.
It was his acquittal by a jury that empowered Convertino to sue his former bosses at the Department of Justice, claiming they maligned him by illegally leaking inflammatory material about him to the Free Press reporter, Ashenfelter, before Convertino was even charged.
It was Convertino’s acquittal and subsequent campaign to bring his Justice Department tormenters to some semblance of justice that embroiled the Free Press in a lawsuit that has caused me to question the paper’s honesty in reporting about itself.
The government leak to a reporter is not an uncommon practice. Prosecutors love to leak inside goods to compliant reporters. It’s part of the good ol’ quid pro quo that keeps sources and reporters happy with each other.
The February 12 story itself fleetingly mentions in the jump inside the newspaper that Convertino was acquitted. But on the first section page, where most readers will stop perusing the story, no mention of the acquittal.
Big hole there, guys. Too late to fix.
Maybe the staff was too busy massaging their Pulitzer entries to pay attention to that “minor” detail.
What I find really weird about this story, though, is that it presents a very different report than the article the paper tossed up onto the Internet less than a day earlier, right after the February 11, 2009 hearing in U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland’s court.
In the early version, the Free Press reported Convertino was asking the judge to impose an escalating fine up to $5,000-a-day on Ashenfelter personally, meaning the newspaper could not step in and pay the fine. Now, on February 24, 2009 as I call up that earlier February 11 story, there is no mention of the $5,000 fine. More massaging? Guess we can’t trust the Freep to keep from re-writing its posts. So much for preserving historical record. But I know what I read on the eleventh, and it doesn’t gibe with what’s there today. By now, the fine is gone entirely.
In the February 12 story, a day after the first Web post, there is no mention of the fine, either. Instead, a subhead states: “He faces jail for protecting his sources.”
A caption under a photo of Ashenfelter and two attorneys also states: “Ashenfelter faces jail time for refusing to reveal his sources on a story.”
But the story itself is silent on sanctions. Where’s the fine? Where’s the jail time?
Whoever wrote the subhead and the caption didn’t coordinate with the flock of reporters, editors and (I bet) lawyers who honed the article.
What’s going on?
This story is more than four years old. For most of that time, the Free Press was content to play it as a First Amendment case where a valiant reporter supposedly was willing to spend time in jail to protect his sources. It’s a song that plays well in academia and places where orthodox American journalism blames prosecutors for hemming reporters’ ability to use anonymous sources.
You won’t read in the Free Press that the first story by Ashenfelter in January 2004 explained the use of anonymous federal sources by saying they feared “repercussions” if their identities were revealed.
But that line has vanished, at least outside the Free Press. Exasperated by the Free Press unwillingness to publish a coherent, accurate account, I posted my first column about the situation on Convertino December 8, 2008.
I felt it was important for readers to understand that Convertino made a very different version of these events clear through his lawsuit claiming that Ashenfelter and the Free Press are not protecting whistle-blowers in fear of retaliation from bosses seeking revenge for leaks. That is how Ashenfelter characterized the situation in his first 2004 story.
Rather, it appears that maybe the federal bosses were the leakers. And that the information about Convertino may have been illegally provided to the newspaper.
Suddenly, it’s not the First Amendment versus the All Powerful Government, but the newspaper as appendage of the government. It is one person, Richard Convertino, who was persecuted by government detractors, aided and abetted by the newspaper.
Newspaper as Persecutor: That doesn’t play well in the halls of J schools.
Nor does it look great in a Pulitzer hype letter.
For years, the Free Press kept this under wraps. The cat slipped out of the bag with Convertino’s lawsuit and last August with Judge Cleland’s ruling that the Free Press and Ashenfelter have no free speech rights because the First Amendment doesn’t protect people from having to give evidence in a criminal case, which this might turn out to be.
But you wouldn’t read those things in the Free Press.
Even now, the paper seems to be back-pedaling towards its former cards-to-the-chest mode.
One day, the reporter is to be fined.
Next day, he could go to jail.
Meanwhile, the fine is erased from the earlier post.
From free speech to harboring criminals to censorship.
Knee-jerk First Amendment buffs no doubt would like to see Dave go to jail, where he’d be a (false) martyr for free press rights.
Convertino understands that jail may not get him the names he needs to pursue his case.
Wonder why the Free Press is so sensitive about that fine?
That five grand a day would come out of Dave’s own pocket.
Now that might be enough to make a Pulitzer-winning Journalism Hall of Fame reporter sing.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
