What's Emailed in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

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In Reno Newspapers, Inc. v. Gov. Jim Gibbons (Event No. 53360), the Reno Gazette-Journal has asked the Nevada Supreme Court to issue an order granting public access to Emails sent by incumbent Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and other state officials when the Emails pertain to govenment-related matters.

According to a story in The Las Vegas Review Journal, The Gazette-Journal has requested approximately 100 Emails from Gov. Gibbons,which purportedly include messages exchanged with Leslie Durant and Kathy Karrasch, two women alleged to have been romantically involved with the governor.  Counsel for the daily appealed to Nevada's highest court after Carson City District Court Judge James Todd Russell ruled against imposing a policy that would settle whether emails by government officials constituted public records under Nevada's Public Records Law (NRS 239.010).

A decision from the Nevada Supreme Court is not expected for several months.

NBC Gives 'Infotainment' A Worse Name

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Lost amid the splashy Post-Olympics debut of  Jerry Seinfeld's comedy-reality-quiz show-train wreck "The Marriage Ref," Sunday night featuring celebrity panelists Alec Baldwin and Kelly Ripa was the presence of NBC "Today Show" anchor and correspondent Natalie Morales, who will appear regularly on the series as the "Just the Facts Ma'am" (the rest of the show is just as side-splittingly funny as her title).

Morales' involvement in the Seinfeld series has been vetted and approved by NBC News Standards, which should be comforting to viewers worried about the blurring of news and entertainment, but somehow isn't.  During the "Ref" program, Morales is perched behind a laptop computer, like a real journalist, where she reports information about the underlying issue about which the couples are arguing.

Perhaps "TUOL" shouldn't be all in a dither about this, given that CNN Newsie Anderson Cooper once hosted "The Mole" on ABC and CBS's "The Early Show" anchor Julie Chen does double duty as host of  the network's "Big Brother" reality show.  "TUOL" is grateful that Chet Huntley & David Brinkley left the network before they could be given recurring roles on "Law & Order" and that John Chancellor died well-before he might have been asked to host "The Biggest Loser."

NBC stands for "News Broadcast by Clowns."

Scholarly Libel Battle Waged in French Court

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Authors are lovingly protective of their works and have been known to refer to books they pen as their children, but Dr. Karin Calvo-Goller is taking the protective mother cliche to new heights concerning her work, The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court: ICTY and ICTR Precedents (Brill, 2006), according to a story in The Times Higher Education.

NYU law professor Dr. Joseph Weiler,  editor of the European Journal of International Law, is bearing the brunt of that defensiveness, after he published a negative book review of Dr. Calvo-Goller's work by Prof. Thomas Weigund, dean of the law faculty at the Univ. of Cologne, on Global Law Books, an associated Web site.  Dr. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Centre of Law and Business in Israel, demanded that Dr. Weiler remove the uncomplimentary review, which she claimed was defamatory and harmful to her professional reputation and academic promotion, and even provided Dr. Weiler with a positive review of her book.  Dr. Weiler refused to remove Prof. Weigund's unflattering review, but offered the disgruntled author an opportunity to publish a response to Prof. Weigund's review.

Dr. Calvo-Goller has filed a criminal libel complaint against Dr. Weiler in a French court. Dr. Weiler, faced with the substantial cost of defending the action, has asked for "moral and material assistance" from the academic community. He also has invited readers to send him examples of negative book reviews that would make Dr. Weigund's effort look like a lovefest.

The tireless staff at "TUOL" recognizes that when two legal academics go to war in a courtroom, the general public's initial reaction is similar to that of watching a  televised debate of vice-presidential candidates: "Can't they both lose?" Nevertheless, the case at issue, beyond raising issues of academic freedom and Internet free speech, gives "TUOL" the opportunity to offer in contrast, a favorite decision involving battling academics by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Dilworth v. Dudley, (75 F.3d 307 (7th Cir. 1995)).

Prof. Underwood Dudley, who taught mathematics at DePauw University, wrote a book published by the Mathematical Association of America. In the text, Prof. Dudley referred to an article entitled "A Correction in Set Theory," written by engineer William Dilworth. Prof. Dudley was critical of Dilworth's work, calling him a "crank."

Dilworth sued Dudley for defamation.  The appellate court ruled that the term "crank" was not susceptible to a defamatory meaning, and was merely an example of hyperbole.  In other words, Dudley prevailed under the libel defense of fair comment & criticism, which protects the critic provided the negative review doesn't imply the exsitence of undisclosed damaging information that formed the basis for the negative opinion.  As libel involves an action to protect one's reputation against false statements, opinions by their very nature are neither true nor false.

But that's not the reason the devoted crew at "TUOL" loves the Dilworth case.  In its opinion, the 7th Circuit offered examples of statements that could not legally be deemed libelous, including the following statement that "TUOL" has been aching for years to use in a letter, article or legal brief.  Rest assured, dear readers, that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals will protect you against a defamation claim if you call someone a "lazy, stupid, crap-shooting, chicken-stealing idiot."

Time will tell whether the French court concludes that Dr. Calvo-Goller did herself more harm than did the tandem of Drs. Weigund and Weiler.

Pew Study: Online News Trumps Newspapers; Trails TV

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BBC News cites a  recent study by the Pew Research Center that finds more people getting their news from online news aggregators and news Web sites than from newspapers.

Regular readers of newspapers, according to the Pew study, have dropped to 50 percent.  Meanwhile, online news, whether from aggregators such as Google News and AOL, or Web sites such as BBC.com and CNN, is the third most popular source of news, but still lagging behind local and national tv stations. Seventy-eight percent of those queried say they get their daily news from local tv, compared to 71 percent from national networks and cable channels, such as CNN and Fox, while 61 percent look online for news reports. Radio news is a resource tapped by 54 percent of those polled.

The Pew survey also noted that 90 percent of respondents get their news from more than one medium and 57 percent claimed they consult two to five Web sites daily for their news.

Playboy Sheds Jobs, Clothes

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The Chicago Tribune reports that Playboy Enterprises, Inc.'s restructuring and outsourcing of operations, such as production of Playboy magazine, could reduce the media conglomerate's 573 employees by half.

Prospective Playboy suitors have not panned out, and its stock is trading at $3.27 a share. The company is expanding its entertainment venues to include a casino in Mexico and a nightclub in Miami, according to the Tribune, amid concerns it may be spreading itself too thin.  It's ironic to ponder that Hugh Hefner's brainchild could go "bust," as it were.

No Love Lost in Tennis Pro Libel Suit

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English tennis pro Robert Dee, 23, has taken to a law court, instead of a tennis court,  to slam London's Daily Telegraph in a libel suit for calling him the "World's worst tennis pro."

According to an account in The Guardian, Dee's attorney said  articles in the Telegraph on April 23, 2008, featured stories under the headlines "World's worst tennis pro wins at last" and "A British sensation--the world's worst," that describe his client's "dismal run" of three years on the professional circuit during which Dee did not win any matches before  he defeated an unranked 17-year-old player in Spain in April 2008, and equate Dee's 54 consecutive match losses to losing performances by a swimmer and a ski jumper.

Dee concedes losing 54 international matches in a row, but claims he had "modest success" in national tournaments in Spain during that losing streak. Dee's attorney said the Telegraph articles exposed his client to ridicule and contempt and could deter others from hiring Dee as a professional coach.  Moreover, Dee asserts that he was not world-ranked in 2008, and therefore, could not be the "World's worst" player.

For its part, the Telegraph is sticking to its guns, and calling in big guns, including tennis greats Boris Becker and John Lloyd, as witnesses. Thus far, Dee's legal spin has been more successful than the spin in his serve, as he has extracted apologies and/or damages from various English media outlets that disparaged his tennis skills, but wanted to avoid litigation, including the Guardian, the Sun, the BBC and the Daily Mail. 

Although arguably calling Dee the world's worst tennis pro could be an objectively verifiable statement of fact, "TUOL" suspects were the lawsuit brought in the U.S. against American media outlets, Dee might be jumping over the net to congratulate the winner, because the burden would be on him to prove  the media outlets published the falsestatement with actual malice. The media would offer up a defense of fair comment--that is, calling Dee the world's worst is a statement of  opinion, which is neither true nor false, and therefore, not susceptible to a defamatory meaning. If the events had occurred in the less libel plaintiff-friendly U.S., there wouldn't have been match point in bringing suit.

City Pays Tacoma News Tribune for Open Public Meetings Act Violation

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The City of Tacoma, Washington, agreed to pay the McClatchy Co.-owned Tacoma News Tribune ("TNT") $7,500 to resolve a lawsuit brought by the daily newspaper that accused the city of  violating the state's open meeting law by selecting two city councilors in executive session.

The TNT reports that the city agreed to pay the paper's legal fees for the lawsuit TNT filed that accused the City Council of violating the Open Public Meetings Act (RCW 42.30) at its January 6 meeting by going into executive session to address filling two vacancies on the council and then reconvening in public session to announce, without discussion,  its unanimous approval of eight finalists from a pool of 40 applicants.

During a hearing at which TNT unsuccessfully sought to enjoin the Council from going into executive session at its Jan. 14 meeting to make its final choice to fill the vacant seats, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff said a "reasonable inference" could be drawn that the council had violated the open meeting law, according to the TNT article.  RCW 42.30.110 sets forth exceptions to the public meeting law that allow elected officials to go into executive session, including to review negotiations on the performance of publicly bid contracts, to discuss matters of national security, and to receive and evaluate complaints and charges brought against a public officer or employee.

The lawsuit was dismissed by agreement of the parties on Feb. 12.

Will 'Amendment 1' Trump 911?

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The Associated Press reports that a handful of states, including Alabama, Wisconsin and Ohio, are considering whether to join the ranks of states that have outlawed the public release of  emergency 911 recordings.

Wyoming, Rhode Island, Missouri and Pennsylvania already have laws in place that prevent  the often frantic emergency call recordings from being aired by the news media. Proponents of the ban claim releasing transcripts or audiotapes of the 911 calls infringe on individuals' privacy and deter people from calling authorities for help. Advocates for airing the emergency messages cite the watchdog function of the news media that might expose incompetence by officials responding to the pleas for assistance.

The First Amendment argument is a legitimate one, but news media outlets probably would elicit more support for their position if they could overcome their obsession with repeatedly airing the 911 calls of Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen and other notorious dialers.

Media Outlets Seek Access to 'Terrorist' Plea Agreement

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Prosecutors and counsel for Najibullah Zazi have until Friday to respond to a request by media outlets to U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York Chief Judge Raymond J. Dearie  for access to a sealed plea agreement.

According to The Los Angeles Times,  Bloomberg News is expected to join the action by Newsday and the Associated Press concerning the sealed agreement involving Zazi, a 25-year-old Afghani native and former airport shuttle driver in Colorado, who faces a sentence of life imprisonment without parole after pleading guilty to planning to construct and detonate homemade explosives created from beauty supplies in  New York City subways around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The news media wants the plea agreement unsealed in part because of thus far unsubstantiated allegations that Zazi's confession may have been coerced through threatened prosecutions of his relatives.

NC Appeals Court Upholds Sanctions for Bad Faith Libel Claim

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The North Carolina Court of Appeals  in  Mark Ward v. Jett Properties, LLC (Case No. 08-1508) has affirmed the imposition of sanctions against a plaintiff whose "bad faith" defamation claim against his landlord was dismissed.

The appellate court remanded the matter to the trial court for further findings of fact regarding the actual $2,000 penalty levied against the plaintiff.  The case concerns a letter written by the defendant responding to plaintiff's complaints against actions taken by neighboring tenants. The landlord's letter, a copy of which purportedly was sent to the homeowners association, allegedly threatened to evict the plaintiff, revoke his parking space, and report him to authorities for not obtaining state tags for his vehicle.

In his complaint, the plaintiff alleged the letter defamed him by accusing him of being a "nuisance," engaging in "continued harassment" and "pestering behavior," and "stalking" others in the neighborhood, among other claims. The plaintiff contended the statements in the letter constituted libel per se and harmed his reputation by exposing him to ridicule and contempt, but the appeals court disagreed.

The appellate court said the accusations of dishonesty and harassing behavior were rhetorical hyperbole that did not rise to the level of libel per se. The appellate court cited the plaintiff's history of filing four previously dismissed complaints against the defendant, as well as numerous lawsuits against others as a basis for supporting sanctions under Rule 11 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure for bringing the latest complaint in bad faith. 

Google to Appeal Italian Court Criminal Conviction

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California-based Internet search giant Google, Inc., will appeal the criminal convictions for invasion of privacy of three of its top executives in an Italian Court this week, according to American Lawyer.

Google CFO George Reyes, Senior Vice President David Drummond and Chief Privacy Officer Peter Fleischer were sentenced to six months in prison for violating Italy's privacy laws concerning a 2006 video posted on now-defunct Google Video depicting students taunting and throwing an object at a Down Syndrome youth, which resulted in four students being expelled from their Turin school. The Google executives, who were acquitted of defamation charges, are not facing jail time because short prison sentences for first-time offenders are commuted under Italian court rules.

The Google officers could not be prosecuted under U.S. law for the charges against them in Italy principally because of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. sec. 230(c)(1)), which states: "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

The Incredibly Shrinking ABC News

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Faced with declining ratings and shriveling ad revenues, ABC News plans a major shake-up that could reduce its news division by 20 percent.

The Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC is hopeful that somewhere between 300 to 400 of the roughly 1,400  news division staffers will accept voluntary buyouts, but in any case, layoffs will help the network of Roone Arledge and Peter Jennings attain that goal.  As part of the changeover, the weekday and weekend staffs of World News and Good Morning America will be combined.  GMA, ABC's principal revenue provider, has experienced a 10 percent dropoff in viewers among advertiser demographic-desirable 25- to 54-year-old viewers, so George Stephanopolous better accelerate his kitchen baking and insipid banter skills.

Once the dust has settled, journalists who remain standing at ABC will be expected to go "digital," by recording, editing and producing their own stories. The anticipated staff reduction is the largest since Disney acquired ABC in 2001 when 125 news division jobs were lost. Misery loves company as earlier this month, CBS News turned off the lights at its Moscow, London and Los Angeles bureaus and slashed nearly 100 jobs (see "TUOL" post 2/1/10).

ABC News has gone from being "Rooned" to being ruined.

Miami Herald: Still Accepting News Tips But No Longer Cash Tips

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The Reflections of a Newsosaur blog (http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/) reports that The Miami Herald has abandoned its novel experiment begun last December of asking online readers for donations.

A cursory article in last Saturday's Herald acknowledged the end of the "tip jar" program, but offered no statistics on how much money the  program raised or any explanation about why the experiment was discontinued.  Herald Editor Anders Gyllenhaal reportedly sent an Email to Newsosaur saying the paper believed its request for donations from readers interfered with Haiti earthquake relief efforts. Apparently, the Herald fears its readers can't keep disasters separate in their minds.

For the past couple of months, at the bottom of each Herald Web page was a request for a voluntary donation, which stated in part: "If you value The Miami Herald's local news reporting and investigations, but prefer the convenience of the Internet, please consider a voluntary payment for the Web news that matters to you."

Not that the tireless staff of  "TUOL" is  cynical or anything, but The Miami Herald probably wouldn't have jettisoned the tip jar idea if the cash spigot were flowing, instead of dripping.

On the Sunny Side of the Tweet

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Further evidence that the social media tidal wave is not just a passing fad comes from our friends at the San Francisco-based Twitter.com. 

The social networking and microblogging service reports that it is hosting 50 million tweets daily. The staggering figure--which amounts to 600 tweets per second--represents a seismic jump from last year's 2.5 million figure, and an unfathomable rise from the 5,000 daily tweets generated in 2007 by the masters of 140-character text messages.

Twitter boasts that it is attracting 73.5 million unique users monthly.

FCC Asks $64,000 Question: Did Burnett Quiz Show Cheat?

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Mark Burnett Productions, which is responsible for innovative tv fare such as The Apprentice, Survivor, and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, has evoked nostalgia among Federal Communications Commissioners--giving them a chance to revive the quiz show scandals of the 1950s.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The New York Times, the FCC has produced a letter written to the agency last December by the parent of a participant in  Our Little Genius, a Burnett-created quiz show that was derailed days before it was to debut on Fox Television after Burnett disclosed that some contestants may have received information before their scheduled appearance. An FCC probe may follow based on the letter from the unidentified parent that goes considerably further than that,  explicitly stating that a member of the show's production staff days before taping briefed the child contestant and his parents concerning potential topics and provided answers to at least four questions.

Eight episodes were already in the can when Our Little Genius was pulled from Fox's schedule.  Hosted by actor/comic Kevin Pollak, the show featured academic achieving kids ages 6 to 12 vying for hundreds of thousands of dollars by answering difficult questions. When the show was shelved, Mark Burnett Productions said it would pay the winnings to contestants who triumphed in the eight unaired episodes.

Pursuant to 47 U.S.C. sec. 508 of The Communications Act of 1934, titled Prohibited Practices in Case of Contests of Intellectual Knowledge, Intellectual Skill or Chance, it is unlawful intentionally to deceive the listening or viewing public by "supply[ing] to any contestant in a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge or intellectual skill any special and secret assistance whereby the outcome of such contest will be in whole or in part prearranged or predetermined." The provision was enacted in response to contestants being fed answers on notorious quiz shows in the '50s, such as 21 and $64,000 Question, that shook viewers and the television industry alike and ended America's reign as a superpower. The last part isn't true, notwithstanding Robert Redford's Quiz Show (2000).

Is NYT Biz Section Afraid to Go Out on a 'Slim'?

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When Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim pumped $250 million into The New York Times in 2009, a year after becoming a major shareholder in "The Gray Lady," the Times' business section did a front-page profile of its benefactor.

Now that Slim is embroiled in a controversy involving a chief rival and an investment banker, however, Big Money's James Ledbetter believes it's no accident that nary a word about the scandal, which has been duly covered by The Wall St. Journal and Reuters, has appeared in the Times.

According to a Reuters account, JP Morgan tried to sell a loan made to its long-term client Grupa Televisa to Slim. Provisions of the loan transaction purportedly would require Grupa Televisa to disclose any information about itself to the holder of the loan; in this case, its principal competitor.

Such intrigue involving two telecommunications giants and a major financial institution makes for a juicy story for the business press, as coverage by Reuters, The Wall St. Journal and Big Money attests, but the chances of the story seeing the light of day in the venerable New York Times appear to be none to Slim.

Shield Law Bill Gets Airing in Mass. Legislature Next Week

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The Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on the Judiciary next week will conduct a public hearing Feb. 23 on House Bill 1650, which, if passed, would scratch the Commonwealth from the list of states yet to enact a shield law to prevent journalists from being compelled to disclose confidential sources to courts and government agencies.

HB 1650 would bring print and broadcast journalists under its umbrella, along with some bloggers. "bona fide news gathering," rather than specific employment, is the gauge that determines coverage under the bill. A blogger who routinely gathers and disseminates news would be shielded, for example.

A similar bill died in the last legislative session without emerging from the Judiciary Committee.

National Enquirer Eligible for Pulitzer Prize After All

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The Pulitzer Prize Board has accepted submissions from supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer.

The Enquirer is in the running for the coveted journalism prize in two categories: Investigative Reporting and National News Reporting for breaking  the lurid scandal involving former U.S. Senator and Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards and his campaign videographer Rielle Hunter (see "TUOL" post 1/22/10). The Enquirer was first to report about the adulterous relationship, the out-of-wedlock child, and the ongoing federal grand jury probe of possible campaign fund misuse. Most recently, the paper alleged that Edwards and Hunter are engaged and living together in a $3.5 million beach house.  Edwards is separated from his wife, Elizabeth.

The Enquirer in recent years has bested the traditional mainstream media on political scandal stories, including the Sen.Gary Hart/Donna Rice affair and the Rev. Jesse Jackson's "love child."  A combination of persistent reporting and checkbook journalism--the Enquirer unapologetically pays sources--has brought the tabloid to the pantheon of journalistic excellence.

If the Enquirer wins, presumably executive editor Barry Levine will accept the award, rather than the spawn of Martian and Earthling canoodling about which the Enquirer has written in the past.

No Rush to Judgment on Proposed Settlement of Google Suit

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U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin heard arguments this week on the proposed settlement of the class-action suit involving Google's book-scanning initiative, but did not indicate when he would decide whether to accept the proffered resolution reached by the parties in October 2008.

As reported on the Jurist legal news and research Web site (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu), the U.S. Dept. of Justice recently filed a statement of interest requesting that Judge Chin jettison the settlement because of antitrust and copyright concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union also has weighed in against the proposed settlement, contending that it fails to protect the privacy of readers by allowing Google to create "digital dossiers" tracking data such as which books readers search, which pages they read, and how much time they spend on each page.

Google initially was sued separately by the Authors Guild, which sought to preserve the copyright rights of its members, and by a group of publishers, including McGraw-Hill and Simon & Schuster. Under the terms of the proposed settlement agreement, in return for payment of $125 million to authors and publishers of copyrighted works, Google could display online a maximum 20 percent of a copyrighted book's total pages and invite readers to purchase the remainder of any book viewed.

In December, a French court found Google and its book-scanning initiative liable for copyright infringement (see "TUOL" post 12/23/09).

Ink-Stained Wretches Take to Social Media

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Whether curiosity or necessity is the motivating force, traditional journalists are being drawn to social media tools like, well, everyone else.

According to a survey of  341 journalists by a nonprofit think tank, the Society for New Communications Research ("SNCR"), nearly 70 percent of journalists questioned said they routinely use social networking sites, a 28 percent increase over the results of SNCR's initial poll in 2008.  Forty-eight percent of the journalists queried said they use Twitter or other microblogging sites, a 25 percent jump over 2008 poll findings, and 25 percent confessed to listening to podcasts.

Nearly 80 percent of the journalists participating in the survey believe bloggers have become important shapers of public opinion.  Thanks for noticing.

SNCR will present a web briefing of their findings on Feb. 25, and will publish their research in SNCR's Journal of New Communications Research later this month.

Rowling Added as Defendant in Harry Potter Copyright Suit

Cover of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The estate of the late Australian author Adrian Jacobs has added author JK Rowling as a defendant in its copyright infringement suit against Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, publisher of Rowling's hugely successful Harry Potter series.

The suit (see "TUOL" post 6/17/09) alleges that Rowling's fourth book in the Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), lifted liberally from Jacobs' book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard No. 1: Livid Land.

Rowling denies ever hearing of Jacobs, and dismisses the accusations as unfounded and "absurd." The agent for the Jacobs estate described the dispute as a billion-dollar case, which is Voldemort reason why the matter wound up in litigation.

Sorry.

Newspaper Ad Absolving Mayor Part of Libel Claim Settlement

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Since the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S. Ct. 710 (1964), it's been a tough row to hoe for public officials involved in libel suits.  To prevail on a defamation claim, the public official has the burden of proving that the allegedly defamatory statements concerning him or her not only are false and harmed his or her reputation, but also that the statements were made with actual malice, that is, with knowledge that the statements were false or with reckless disregard of whether the statements were false.

But, according to a report in The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, that didn't stop former Keller (Tex.) Mayor Julie Tandy from hammering out a favorable, if unusal, settlement of her defamation claim against Keller resident Jack Brock. Besides forking over $50,000 to make Tandy "whole" from the damage she purportedly sustained from the allegedly libelous statements, Brock also has to dole out $900 for an ad in The Keller Citizen retracting the allegedly defamatory statements that appeared in an ad he ran in the Citizen May 4, 2007, eight days before the election in which incumbent Mayor Tandy was defeated.

Brock, who was embroiled in a condemnation proceeding dispute with the city concerning the acquisition of a drainage easement on property he owned, paid for an ad in The Keller Citizen in May 2007, that accused Tandy of engaging in fraudulent conduct by allegedly backdating her signature on certain documents and of voting to "steal" his property.  Consequently, the ad running in the Citizen pursuant to the parties' resolution of the suit specifically retracts the signature backdating charge, acknowledges that Tandy didn't even cast a vote in the matter at issue, and says that Tandy, in his view, did not engage in criminal conduct as Mayor.

The outcome is a favorable one for the ex-Mayor and also for The Keller Citizen, which winds up with revenues from two paid ads in the controversy, no small feat in these ad-hungry times for newspapers.

UPDATE: Wall St. Journal 'Copy' Boy Kouwe Quits NY Times

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Confronted by his editors with accusations of multiple instances of plagiarizing passages from articles in The Wall St. Journal and Reuters (see "TUOL" post 2/16/10), business reporter Zachery Kouwe has resigned from The New York Times.

Kouwe, a former reporter for The New York Post and Dow Jones Newswires who joined the Times in 2008, contended that he never has fabricated or knowingly plagiarized a story and was in "complete shock" when editors revealed the findings of their probe that was triggered by a letter from Wall St. Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson complaining that Kouwe had wholesale copied from Journal business writer Amir Efrati's work. 

"Inadvertently" claiming others' creative efforts as one's own on at least six separate occasions is like "accidentally" backing one's car over an annoying neighbor four times.  What the heck Kouwe?

NYT Editors' Note Concedes Reporter Stole from Wall St. Journal

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Prompted by a letter from Wall St. Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times citing a purported half-dozen  instances of Times reporter Zachery Kouwe plagiarizing text from Journal writer Amir Efrati's Feb. 5 story concerning an agreement that froze the assets of relatives of Bernard Madoff, the Times published an Editor's Note acknowledging several articles over the past year in which Kouwe allegedly reused language from Journal and Reuters stories without attribution.

The Times said an internal investigation is ongoing and has yet to comment on the fate of Kouwe.  Appropriating the work of another reporter and taking credit for it is a serious ethical breach. Oddly, the Times Editor's Note states that nothing allegedly filched by Kouwe in his articles appears to be inaccurate. Is the Times lauding Kouwe for allegedly being a careful thief or damning him with faint praise by suggesting that at least he didn't make stories up out of whole cloth like former Times scribe Jayson Blair?

UPDATE: O'Brien Dodges Contempt Order As Source Comes Forward

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An anonymous news source identified himself and freed Dodge City (Kan.) Daily Globe reporter Claire O'Brien from her pledge of confidentiality, allowing her to testify at an inquisition, thereby prompting Ford County District Court Judge Daniel Love to rescind a contempt citation against her that carried a $1,000 daily fine [see "TUOL" post 2/5/10].

O'Brien had conducted a jailhouse interview with  murder suspect Sam Bonilla that appeared in the Globe last Oct. 13 and quoted an unnamed source who alleged one of the two shooting victims had the backing of supporters who harbored anti-Hispanic sentiments and a cache of automatic weapons.  Prosecutors sought the reporter's notes and testimony concerning the source's identity, but O'Brien initially did not appear at the inquisition.

O'Brien gave testimony at the inquisition after her confidential source revealed himself late last week. The reporter remains under a subpoena should her testimony be sought at Bonilla's trial.  Kansas does not have a shield law protecting journalists from having to disclose to authorities information obtained under a pledge of confidentiality.