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Cook County prosecutors have subpoenaed all notes, interviews, grades, e-mails and other communications from the Medill School of Journalism's Innocence Project in connection with a 31-year-old case set to be reheard after the class dug up new evidence exonerating the convicted. Prosecutors say students may have been penalized with bad grades if they didn't turn up evidence that would help the convicted man's case. The school says prosecutors are fishing unnecessarily.
Cook County prosecutors want Medill's Innocence Project to hand over notes, grades
chicagotribune.com - 5 weeks ago - 650 views
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Powerful observations, HydeParkAdmiral!
But will words alone convince journalism students that there are life experiences which will be found outside the classroom which will make them better journalists?
Northwestern University alumni Reed Pence should be invited to weigh-in on this question. More than one generation ago, he found himself working for a community newspaper & leading FM radio station in a city of 35,000 in a community so far downstate that Clark Street's creature comforts would be but a memory for more than three years.
http://northsidetoastmaster.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!42EF8FECB1701582!1018.entry
Up until recently, Northwestern University graduation has assured internships & eventual employment working for one of the leading Chicago newspapers, radio or television stations. As the narrowcast Internet replaces once popular broadcast & print media, some Medill School graduates will find their calling in this new media. For the rest, journalism "finishing school" will be found in the smaller cities, past the corn & soybean fields & above the abandoned coal mines (as was the case for my freshman class).
"Report Urges Action to Preserve Journalism"
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BEEBMG0&show_article=1
Wow! Your share hit a Windy Citizen nerve, HydeParkAdmiral!
It's an interesting story that appears to be still developing.
Anita Alvarez spoke up on the topic:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-alvarez-first-yearoct20,0,3936959...
"If you're going to put yourself into the role of an investigator, then you need to turn over whatever your notes are," Alvarez said at the City Club of Chicago before giving a speech on an unrelated topic."
This is exactly it! If you're going to do all this legwork of trying to free an innocent person, then why are you trying to act as a barrier in the ACTUAL investigation? If it were me, I'd be BEGGING them to take my notes if it meant a person on death row could be exonerated. After all, that's what you're supposed to be working toward, right?
They should definitely hand over their notes, their interviews, basically anything they have that would be material to the case.
While I understand the professors not wanting to set a precedent by handing over the grades and internal e-mails for the class, they have to be delighted that the prosecutors are taking them this seriously despite being pesky students. This is great press for the school.
Not sure they really needed help being taken seriously. The article says they've helped exonerate a number of people. That's pretty darn impressive.
They're not journalists. They should hand everything over. If they don't like it, they can get lawyers involved to fight the thing. Seems pretty cut and dried. What possible case do they have for not handing everything over other than the school not wanting to look like a chump?
Agreed. This is the grad school I attend and I think they should hand everything over, too, no questions asked. I also don't think they'll fight it - after all, this is a good thing and I am really happy someone who might be innocent will not have to serve any more time!
HPA-
At what point does a person who goes to an accredited journalism school become a "journalist" in your book? Only if they pass a class? Once they graduate? Once they get a job? Once they have a story with their byline on it?
I can show you literally hundreds of examples of published articles and aired television pieces written by Medill students, while they were students, past and present. I'd argue that you're a journalist as soon as you can do original, accurate and unbiased reporting, and turn that into a finished product -- student or not.
MCH-
Are you saying that anyone who gets a subpoena should automatically roll over and respond to it? Subpoenas are a useful legal tool, but too often they're used by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike to badger the other side.
Were the convicted man to get a new trial, all of the information the Innocence Project gathered would invariably come out during the normal discovery process anyway, making a subpoena at this point completely unnecessary, other than to harass and undermine Medill, rather than addressing whatever tangible issues with the CASE that might exist.
This isn't part of the discovery process? That was my understanding. During discovery, both sides need to get their hands on every piece of evidence so they can do their jobs. If the work of this class prompted the case to be reheard, why should the prosecutors ask for every possible document or piece of information relevant to the class?
They're not journalists in so far as they don't work for a company that publishes news and that employs a bunch of lawyers who will defend them as journalists.
Their defense should be "we're students and some of this stuff is off limits."
I have no doubt that tons of Medill people have written great things that have been published in great places. But at the end of the day, they're in a grey area. It's arguable that they're journalists. But it's inarguable that they're students and that this work was created as part of a class, in an educational environment, rather than for publication in a news room environment.
The state's attorney seems to be casting too wide a net. The real issue is the what is the evidence and how convincing is it. By making the request for probably irrelevant academic data, they seem to be saying that they are not accustomed to operating on an impartial, objective basis, so how could these students possibly be doing so. Or even worse, they could be seen to be making an immature tit-for-tat retaliation: if you dare suggest we may be cutting corners for personal gain, we will accuse you of the same thing.
Becoming a journalist is generally a work in progress, Peter Sachs. I've worked for the now defunct St. Louis Globe Democrat, Associated Press, UPI, WILL-TV, WSIU-FM, WCIA-TV, WICD-TV & WITY Radio. Great editors or news directors contribute greatly to mastery of the art.
Towards that end, allow me to encourage membership in www.ire.org.
They most certainly are journalists. They may not be the high profile ones that New York Times is employing, but they are reporters and people trying to uncover and tell the truth.
Are students at a college running and publishing the school paper not journalists? Because they spend much of their free time outside of class reporting, chasing down leads, writing, editing and doing it all again.
There are also those considered journalists that run a blog or work for a paper that never graduated college, took any courses in journalism and make a living doing it.
I can think of a writer in Chicago right now that got his/hers name on a story in the Trib for the first time when he/she was a student and an intern. It was a major story and the Trib tried to keep him/her off of it because he/she wasn't a "journalist".
Sorry, can't share the name though, was told off the record.
C'mon, people. Don't be sheep. These students are working to free innocent men from prison. Their work is important and noncommercial. What that means is that newspapers can't afford to study cases this way. If we can't have our schools working on these problems, who can? Who will?
I think the prosecutor's just looking to embarass NU and put the heat on them. I doubt they'll give in. Universities have great legal teams.
This is outrageous. Yes, the Admiral is correct that both sides need all of the evidence, but the State's Attorney has overstepped his bounds. May the students should find out about about personal conversations and emails between members of the SA staff? Who did they have an after hours drink with? All of these are as relevant to the basic issue as the demand for student communications. Are they journalists? Your damn right they are. Just because they are going to school while they are being legitimate reporters, does not exclude them from their 1st amendment protections. Medill and NU should fight this to the end.
Upvoted for truth. I look forward to hearing about the legal fight over this.
Thanks for speaking sense.
I don't see how this point of view is any more "sensible" than any other in this thread. joefrommedill says the SA has overstepped its bounds. Ok. Fine. But that's a statement of opinion. Doesn't the SA have an obligation to do due diligence toward this case? I don't see how pointing out how silly it would be for the students to ask for the SA's e-mails contributes to the discussion.
Outrageous? Really?
You know what's outrageous? When one group of people think they're entitled to more protections and rights than everyone else.
It's not about whether they're journalists or not, it's about complying with an ongoing investigation, which EVERYONE has to do in this country.
This. +1
Off the record material and confidential sources are that for a reason. The piece talks about credibility numerous times. The school and students when protecting confidential material become the source. From their record they are certainly a credible source.
Being able to promise anonymity to a source is really a key part of investigative reporting. Shield laws exist in Illinois, and 35 other states, to protect sources and reporters. Yes, there is a need for all information. But as a reporter you are trained to find off the record information somewhere else that will be on the record. The point of keeping things off the record is to keep your sources telling the truth.
Removing the promise of secrecy immediately makes all sources not credible in my opinion. It will force stories to change because they were stories that would have never been told in the first place.
As for the grading system and all of that, that is just over the top and going too far. The students are there to learn and work and make a difference. Any good teacher knows that putting forth a serious effort, doing the work correctly and showing a level of professional skill is what the grades are about. The pride and joy is what comes from freeing a man, or even putting to bed any myths of a man's innocence.
Seasoned journalists are humbled by how little they knew during their formative years. It's hard to recognize how much one has yet to learn when reminded of being enrolled in one of the leading journalism schools in the nation.
The best journalists understand human nature & question that which others take for granted. Understanding human nature may take some a lifetime, while others learn it early in their careers.
I know everyone here is hyperventilating about "ethics" and "journalistic integrity" or whatever, but it seems to me this is just another case of a bunch of students protesting something for no real good reason.
There are bigger things in life than college journalism, like hearings that might free someone who was wrongly convicted. It's not about you!
Do I count as a journalist? I blog regularly and most of it is quick commentary. But I do tackle things that require research and sourcing and effective reporting as well. Most of it will end up with an opinionated slant, but it doesn't make any of the research I do any less real. I investigate and source my work, and in fact do so more transparently than do most "real" journalists, as I embed links to my research, and in the case of any deliberative analysis, for instance with the stimulus bill, I uploaded and linked to my spreadsheets for all to see.
I didn't go to school to write, or to cover the news. I'm interested in the news and I love to write, so I write.
What makes a journalist? The research, the effort, and the writing? Or going to J-school?
I think the free market and the emergence of new media as old media dies at an ever increasing pace are proving that what makes a journalist is the former, rather than the latter. The whole idea that there is some imaginary line that a person crosses before becoming a "real" journalist is one of the main ideas that is killing the newspaper industry as it falls behind the pace of the spread of information as it moves presently.
Amen. It's messy. Everyone can commit acts of journalism now. A journalist is someone who commits acts of journalism. People who we'd traditionally call journalists are people who commit a lot of acts of journalism.
I find it hard to stomach though that since it's become so easy to commit acts of journalism, that people who do so should be afforded special rights and protections. The existing shield law thinking always seemed to me to be based less on some belief in a journalist's right to protect his/her sources than the implicit threat that their employer would counter sue in the event of legal trouble.
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