Term Paper on "Labels a Method of Silencing or Intimidating"

Term Paper 6 pages (1907 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

labels a method of silencing or intimidating journalists: "bankrupting reporters who refuse to comply with subpoenas and court orders." (Martin, A16). This is her thesis, which she introduces in the second paragraph of her article. She uses the next several paragraphs to describe the specific scenario that has prompted her to write about her concerns:

District Court Judge Reggie Walton -- the same Judge Walton who presided over the Scooter Libby trial - found Toni Locy, a professor of journalism at West Virginia University and a former USA Today reporter, in contempt of court. She'd refused to divulge her sources for two articles she wrote about Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army scientist once at the heart of the government inquiry into the anthrax letter attacks of Oct. 2001, which killed five people.

Dr. Hatfill, long under suspicion but never charged with any crime, has sued the government for allegedly violating his privacy by leaking information about him and the investigation to the press. Ms. Locy is one of five reporters he subpoenaed to identify those anonymous government sources who he say ruined his reputation and his career. (the anthrax case itself is unsolved)." (Martin, A16).

When Locy failed to cooperate with the subpoenas and identify the government sources, the judge threatened her with financial sanctions: "Judge Walton said he might fine Ms. Locy $500 a day for seven days, $1,000 a day for the following seven days, and $5,000 a day for the seven days after that if she continues to refuse to cooperate. In all, she could accumulate more than $45,500 in fines." (Martin, A16). In addition, the judge threatened to prevent others, like Ms. Locy's former employer, from paying those fines, to ensure that she would be personally responsible for them.

The first problem with Martin's argument is that she is clearly biased. Martin only mentions her thesis and discusses the supporting facts after her introduction, which talks about the fact that journalists have previously been subject to incarceration for failing to divulge sources. She also discusses her personal experience; she spent time in jail for refusing to divulge a source's identity, until the source permitted her to do so. Given her personal experience, it is very clear that Martin is biased, and that she does not believe that there should be any way for the government to compel a journalist to reveal sources or informants. While it is unusual for one making an argument to be perfectly neutral about an issue, the degree of personal bias should make one examine an argument more critically. Martin's high degree of personal bias leads her to make several crucial errors in her argument, including: logical fallacies, emotional appeals, failure to identify sources, the use of biased sources, and the failure to present the opposing side's point-of-view.

In fact, Martin's bias helps her commit her first logical fallacy, which she actually does before even presenting her thesis. Martin makes the assumption that the government's efforts to compel journalists to divulge sources are part of a plan to silence or intimidate journalists, without providing any proof of governmental motives to silence the press, or even providing proof that allowing the government to use criminal or civil sanctions to compel a journalist to divulge sources has the practical impact of silencing the press. It may be that a government that has the power to compel journalists to reveal sources in a case like Dr. Hatfill's, where a person may have been slandered and only the journalists who wrote the possibly slanderous material have the ability to name sources, actually protects real freedoms more than a system where there is no way to hold journalists accountable for the type of material that they print. One alternative may be to hold journalists personally liable for any damages that coverage like that given to Hatfill causes; however, that alternative seems as if it would be more stifling to the freedom of the press than simply requiring journalists to reveal their sources. Martin could put these concerns to rest by giving examples of how divulging sources has hampered the press' freedom. For example, she could show how the press is hindered in other countries, or highlight significant cases in American history where a free press' use of confidential sources helped guarantee political freedoms, like the coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Instead, Martin uses an example designed to appeal to emotion: the Scooter Libby case. This is the second flaw in her argument. She uses the example of Scooter Libby and how the press was impacted by his trial to try to support her theory that the government compelling the press to reveal sources hampers liberty. However, many people disagree with her conclusion. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that a lack of cooperation from the press allows collusion in government corruption and can prevent actual justice from happening. The use of such a controversial and emotional trial undermined the success of Martin's argument, because it not only failed to bolster the point that she was trying to make, but, to many members of the audience, actually undermined that point.

Next, Martin demonstrates subjectivity by failing to identify sources for powerful statements. She does identify the court papers as the source for her information about Locy's cooperation, and one assumes that the court record is also where she obtained information about the judge's plan to compel Locy's cooperation. However, she makes the following statement, as well:

Judge Walton has suggested that her memory lapse may be all too "convenient" and a ruse to get her "off the hook." But journalists who investigate high-profile, high-pressure stories and talk to scores of officials and experts in search of information, see his conclusion as at best ill-informed about how journalists work, or at worst a fishing expedition into a reporter's sources. (Martin, A16).

This statement leaves one with the question: what reporters? Is Martin speaking strictly of her own-experience as a high-profile journalist? If so, then she needs to make it clear that she is speaking from her personal experience, and that her opinion is that the judge is either ill-informed or engaging in a fishing expedition. On the contrary, if she has discussed this with other journalists, she needs to identify those journalists, or at least identify how she came to the conclusion that journalists who are engaged in that type of work share the same opinion. She did not modify the word "journalists," so that, placed within the context of the sentence, it leads one to believe that her statement means that all journalists who do that type of work share the same opinion about the judge. It would be impossible for Martin to have that information; the number of journalists engaged in high-profile investigations is too high for such verification. However, by failing to include a modifier, such as saying, "some reporters," Martin does leave the impression that there is a consensus, which she has verified. Instead, if Martin had discussed the issue with a handful of prominent journalists and identified those journalists, the reader could judge the merits of that opinion based on their own opinions of the individual ethics of those reporters, rather than being asked to use the integrity of the press as a whole to judge a statement that may be attributable to only a small portion of the press. After all, Barbara Walters or Anderson Coopers' opinion on the judge may be more credible than the opinion of the paparazzi stalking Britney Spears', but they are all journalists covering high-profile and high-pressure news stories.

Next, when Martin does credit her sources, she makes it clear that she is using biased sources. She quotes Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, but does not quote anyone with an opposing point-of-view. Moreover, she presents Dalglish's opinion as if it were fact, without questioning her statement. Dalglish predicts that Judge Walton's fines will make it risky for future journalists to write about suspects in the future, but Martin fails to evaluate that statement. Why would it be risky for future journalists to write about suspects? Furthermore, how would this impact the freedom of the press?

Finally, Martin's largest logical error is that she fails to consider the opposing point-of-view. The history of the freedom of the press clearly establishes that a free press is meant to ensure the freedom of the people. By using the concept of the free press without referring to the larger concept, Martin subverts the very ideals of freedom of the press. Furthermore, she appears to hope that her audience, a broad-spectrum group of Americans, does not understand that a free press is only important in that it has the power to keep the government in check, not as an independent ideal. In the Hatfill case, it appears that the press had a very real and negative impact on the actual personal liberties experienced by an American citizen. If this impact was the… READ MORE

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