Matt J. Duffy is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in Atlanta where he's writing a dissertation on the use of unnamed sources. He also teaches journalism and communication law. Duffy worked as a journalist for many years including stints at the Boston Herald, the Nashua (NH) Telegraph, the (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger and the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal. He's served as a reporter, copy editor and news editor. Click to read Matt J. Duffy's curriculum vitae.
Well, I’m in Maine (pictured above). It’s a land where the Internet isn’t widely available. A blessing, not a curse.
Just a few updates:
My personal letter to the public editor of the NY Times regarding his column on anonymous sources appeared in the Sunday paper. Here it is in its entirety:
The use of anonymous sources will be the subject of my doctoral dissertation at Georgia State University. As a former newspaper editor, I believe that the increased use of anonymous sources is one of the factors that have led to the decline of news media credibility.
I plan to conduct a content analysis of The New York Times and perhaps some other news outlets to look at the use of anonymous sources over the past 40 years. I think it will be interesting to see if The Times is using anonymous sourcing more or less than in 1968.
The argument seems to be that the greater good is often served with the use of anonymous sources. I argue that the greater good would be helped most by creating news reports that consumers trust; the benefits of using anonymous sources don’t outweigh the subsequent erosion of credibility.
MATT J. DUFFY Roswell, Ga., June 9, 2008
So, that’s pretty cool — you know, being in the NY Times and all.
In other news, I’ve been shooting grammar videos. Here’s the latest:
Not much of boat update, really — but here’s a picture of the boat. If you look closely, you can see that this fairing is complete. I used a belt sander to remove all the sharp edges and took a piece of plywood to make sure it would lie flat on the frame. Quite a laborious process.
It usually went like this: Sand a little, check with the plywood, sand a little more, check with the plywood, sand a little more, check with the plywood, sand a little more, check with the plywood, and then say “Ah, that’s close enough.”
I’m leaving for Maine on Monday, so I won’t be working on the boat until my return in early August. I plan on getting all the plywood attached to the bottom and sides before my semester begins in late August. After that, I’ll coat the bottom with fiberglass and I’ll be ready flip her. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. It’s about the journey, not the destination.
I plan on doing more Maine-blogging this year. Let’s see what happens.
A couple of my readers cringed at John Yoo’s editorial on the Boudemiene case. They aren’t alone. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, responded with incredulity as well.
3. Yoo: “Under Boumediene’s claim of judicial supremacy, it is only a hop, skip and a jump from judges second-guessing whether someone is an enemy to second-guessing whether a soldier should have aimed and fired at him.”
Here Yoo wants readers to imagine a judge in robes running between foxholes to review the battle plan. He desperately wants readers of the Wall Street Journal to ask: What in the world can our Supreme Court be thinking? Not to worry. Yoo is simply trying to caricature a position with which he disagrees. I would make two points here. First, I quite agree that judges have no place on the battlefield. However, we need to watch our terms and definitions here. I do reject the Bush administration’s claim that all of the world, including all of the USA is a “battlefield.”
Second, once the dust has settled after a patrol or firefight, is it not appropriate to review the actions of our soldiers? Unless one is prepared to argue that U.S. military personnel are simply incapable of using their weapons unlawfully, war crime allegations have to be adjudicated somewhere, right? In a previously published article, Yoo has called the Abu Ghraib abuses “sadistic.” Given that statement, it seems fair to ask whether the prosecutions and convictions arising from that case were improper because a court “second-guessed” the soldiers’ detention and interrogation methods? And should not U.S. military personnel who believe they have been unfairly prosecuted be able to pursue their legal appeals (in the event of a conviction) beyond the military system to the Supreme Court? If not, why not?
Cato and my readers raise good points about this issue which I will consider. The issue isn’t simple — there must be a balance in war-time between capturing and killing people who are trying to kill Americans and protecting the rights of the innocent. If we err on one side too strongly then many people will suffer.
For the record, I’m not in favor of making caricatures of positions with which I disagree — a tendency common with both sides of the political fence.
Oxford Editing is branching out into the French-to-English translation business. Since I don’t speak French, I’m looking for a translator on Craigslist. If you know anyone, please send them my way.
The Drudge Report is linking to this Reuters article with a headline that reads “Poll Underdog”:
Democrat Barack Obama has a narrow 5-point lead on Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race, but holds a big early edge with the crucial swing voting blocs of independents and women, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.
Two weeks after clinching the Democratic nomination and kicking off the general election campaign, Obama leads McCain by 47 percent to 42 percent. That is down slightly from Obama’s 8-point advantage on McCain in May, before Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York left the Democratic race.
On the last line of the three-page story sits an incredibly important bit of information:
The national survey of 1,113 likely voters, taken Thursday through Saturday, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
That means Obama could be as low as 44 and McCain as high as 45. Translation: A statistical dead heat. McCain’s only a “poll underdog” if you pretend that the statistical laws surrounding margins of error are meaningless.
But hey, let’s not let math get in the way of a sensational headline or a compelling story.
So, I’ve been watching “Heroes” and “Battlestar Gallactica” on my new laptop for the last couple of weeks. That Hulu.com site is rather impressive — the picture quality is incredible and they’ve got a ton of shows. I may even start watching “Lost” from beginning to end. It occurred to me this morning that I haven’t turned on my television in more than a week. Since I can hook my TV up to my PC and watch shows that way, perhaps I should cancel my new U-Verse television.
Take the time to read John Woo’s editorial on the Supreme Court’s terror detainee decision:
First out the window went precedent. Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge. Until Boumediene, the Supreme Court had never allowed an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention.
In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court’s word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.
The Boumediene five also ignored the Constitution’s structure, which grants all war decisions to the president and Congress. In 2004 and 2006, the Court tried to extend its reach to al Qaeda terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. It was overruled twice by Congress, which has the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Congress established its own procedures for the appeal of detentions.
Incredibly, these five Justices have now defied the considered judgment of the president and Congress for a third time, all to grant captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court.
Judicial modesty, respect for the executive and legislative branches, and pure common sense weren’t concerns here either. The Court refused to wait and see how Congress’s 2006 procedures for the review of enemy combatant cases work. Congress gave Guantanamo Bay prisoners more rights than any prisoners of war, in any war, ever. The justices violated the classic rule of self-restraint by decidin€€€€g an issue not yet before them.
Not sure I why I read this entire interview with William Hurt about his role in the film “Hulk.” But I agree with his response when asked about the presidential race:
What a thrill it was to be an American when it was you know, an American hero, a soldier, who sacrificed a lot for his country, and a white woman and a black man. After that, things got a little bit more difficult, but that moment, I savored very deeply.
Yes. Those three candidates say a lot about the country we live in.
Up-to-date information on the use of anonymous sources in journalism. The blog features a robust debate on the merits and drawbacks of the use of unnamed sources in journalism.
