By: E&P Staff In today's edition, Karl Rove's involvement in the CIA leak investigation has become the focus of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, California lawmakers slam the McClatchy/MediaNews deal, and C-Span wants web video sites to remove its broadcast of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
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Subpoenas of 'SF Chron' Reporters the Latest Scuffle in Administrations' War on Journalists"It's a further escalation really of the war that the Bush administration has been waging on the press and public's right to know," a journalism professor at George Washington University, Mark Feldstein, said in an interview yesterday. While federal prosecutors have recently become increasingly aggressive in pursuing leaks and last year caused the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to identify her sources in a CIA-related leak case, the subpoenaing of the Chronicle reporters suggests that the Justice Department is willing to use tough tactics even in leak cases that have nothing to do with national security.
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Rove on the Hot SeatSpecial Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is reviewing testimony from Karl Rove's five appearances before the grand jury. Bush's top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it to Fitzgerald in his earlier testimony.
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Will Snow Have the Answers?Tony Snow?s appointment was described at the time as a shift in strategy to a more powerful press secretary who has the ear of the president, ?walk-in privileges,? a seat at the table when policy is being decided, and a broker?s role between journalists and the White House. We don?t know if any of that is true. But if it is true, Tony Snow will walk in to the Oval Office Monday morning and walk out with answers.
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New York Mag Names Bill Keller, Rupert Murdoch Among City's Most InfluentialWhile the Daily News' Mort Zuckerman was snubbed, but the Gray Lady's upper echelon of Executive Editor Bill Keller, Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and top editor Jonathan Landman are all on the list, despite the recent business problems at the New York Times Co. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., which owns The Post, makes the cut, as Page Six Editor Richard Johnson.
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Calif. Congress Members Blast Sale of Bay Area PapersSix members of Congress from the Bay Area asked the Justice Department on Friday to "give careful consideration" to the antitrust implications of the planned sale of three California newspapers to MediaNews Group Inc. In a letter, the representatives said McClatchy Co.'s sale of the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the Monterey County Herald could "significantly heighten the concentration of media ownership and deprive readers in our districts of the quality and depth of news coverage that more varied ownership offers."
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C-Span Letter Asks Sites to Remove Colbert VideoStephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner nine days ago has already created a debate over politics, the press and humor. Now, a commercial rivalry has broken out over its rebroadcast. On Wednesday, C-Span, the nonprofit network that first showed Mr. Colbert's speech, wrote letters to the video sites YouTube.com and ifilm.com, demanding that the clips of the speech be taken off their Web sites. The action was a first for C-Span, whose prime-time schedule tends to feature events like Congressional hearings on auto fuel-economy standards.
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Video Vows in 'NYT' Not So HotI just love wedding announcements, and nothing satisfies my passion like the New York Times. This gloriously ridiculous section of the paper of record is a vestige of an earlier, more nakedly hierarchical, time," writes Troy Patterson. But the video versions now posted on NYTimes.com leave a lot to be desired.
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Seattle Newspaper Union Votes to Sever Ties With 'Two-Newspaper' GroupThe 70-38 vote by members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild is a significant financial blow to the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town and raises questions about its future. The committee says it speaks for readers and employees in the 3-year-old legal dispute between The Seattle Times and The Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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Enterprise Stories Start With Reporters"Over all, The Times seems to have a fairly robust, ground-level-up idea-generation process that can, and does, yield added value for readers," writes Public Editor Byron Calame.
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