By Joel Thurtell
Odd bit of irony in the Sunday, April 12, 2009 Detroit Free Press article.
The latest sport is skewering Detroit 36th District Judge Ruth Carter for caustic comments she made in text messages she sent on a city-provided service when she worked for the now defunct regime of deposed Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Judge Carter made those remarks in the belief that federal law protects such unsagacious utterances.
It does, but, well, it doesn’t.
A lawyer subpoenaed the messages, it seems, and somehow they fell into the reporters’ hands.
The rest is history.
Except the last chapter has not been written.
That’s where the irony comes in. It’s the Free Press pretending to be working in the public interest by revealing all kinds of inconsequential dirt from the text messages, yet refusing to tell how the newspaper came to possess those supposedly protected text messages.
Could the newspaper be concealing something other than the identity of their leaker?
Such as, maybe, the details of how they got the text messages?
By their very nature, those details would be interesting — even if they’re not.
Hey, Freepsters — since your newspaper is dedicated — supposedly — to full disclosure, how about letting us in on how you got those text messages?
Now, some might say it makes no difference. The story got out, the messages incriminated Detroit’s mayor, costing him his job, some time in jail and his near-term political future.
But the means by which journalists get their information is important. Witness the case of another Freepster, David Ashenfelter, who’s been forced to take the Fifth Amendment, claiming that if he reveals his sources for a story he wrote about a federal criminal case, his testimony might bring on criminal chages against him.
In other words, something about the way he got that story smells bad, even to the paper’s lawyers.
How that reporter got his information is the linchpin of a civil lawsuit against officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who, it seems, illegally leaked supposedly forbidden information to the Free Press. It’s just possible that the Free Press’s withering story about former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino laid the media PR foundation government prosecutors felt they needed before they charged Convertino with crimes.
The old one-two — let the media bash him first, then file charges.
Softening up the target.
Except that Convertino eventually was tried and acquitted.
His civil case has put a spotlight on how one newspaper gathers its news.
How reporters get their tips matters greatly.
Which brings me back to Ruth Carter and the latest Free Press revelations about Kwamegate.
So how about it, guys — how’d you get those federally-protected Kwamegate text messages?
Will your methods pass the smell test?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
