Maryland first lady: Newspapers lie and need to be punished

[AP] First lady Kendel Ehrlich, in a fiery speech to Republican supporters on the lower Eastern Shore, joined her husband's public fight against newspapers, saying they "lie" and "need to be punished."

As the guest speaker at the Lower Shore's Lincoln Day Dinner in Ocean City on Sunday, Kendel Ehrlich also lashed out at elected Democratic officials, saying their behavior during the legislative session was "rude" and "despicable," the Worcester County Times reported.

As broadcast news stations picked up on the comments yesterday, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. moved quickly to support his wife and to clarify her remarks. Speaking alone to reporters, he said her complaint is specifically with The Sun and The Washington Post - papers that the Ehrlichs say are biased against them and don't provide fair coverage.

The governor said he and the first lady were the target of personal attacks after news broke this year that a longtime administration aide had spread rumors about Democratic rival Martin O'Malley on the Internet. E-mail released from aide Joseph F. Steffen Jr.'s private account included one from Kendel Ehrlich in which she said, "We need you."

"Kendel appears to have been a target, and she takes that personally, too," the governor said, referring to Democratic calls for investigations and the news media's coverage of it.

The first lady's remarks also were sparked by her outrage over the legislature's dismantling of the Governor's Office for Children, Youth and Families. "She is quite upset about it, and as you know, she is direct," the governor said.

Kendel Ehrlich, speaking to the Republican central committees of Worcester, Wicomico and Somerset counties, called on supporters for help in re-electing the governor.

"We need your help, and I mean now. Get your bumper stickers out," she said, adding, "It is going to be ugly. Most major newspapers are going to be after him. It's not fun."

She railed against legislative Democrats, saying their behavior "was despicable."

"If our 5-year-old acted like that, he'd be punished," she said during a speech that was met with loud cheers and applause, according to some who attended.

"They lie," the first lady said of newspapers, not naming any. "I would punish my son if I caught him in a lie, and they need to be punished."

Yesterday, her spokeswoman, Meghann Siwinski, said: "I think she's urging people to not buy the papers, to not read the papers, to not trust what they read about her husband's administration in the papers."

The remarks were made as the first lady pointed out the party's accomplishments, said John Bartkovich, chairman of the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee.

"Most of the speech was, 'This is what we've accomplished, and realize you're not going to read much about it in the paper but we have done a lot,'" he said. "A small part of the speech was, she wanted to deal with the issue of the press. I think we all knew what she was talking about, this issue of press fairness."

In the governor's battle with The Sun, the administration logs daily its complaints on coverage, pointing out what he feels are errors and omissions in articles, editorials and cartoons.

The newspaper sued Ehrlich last year after the governor prohibited executive branch employees from talking to a Sun reporter and columnist. The newspaper contended that the ban violated the writers' First Amendment rights by denying them the same opportunities to seek information as anyone else. The suit was dismissed, and the paper has appealed.

"I don't think we would have been in business for 168 years by telling lies in the newspaper," Sun editor Timothy A. Franklin said.

The executive editor of the Post declined to comment.

Josh White, executive director of the Maryland Democratic Party, said the Ehrlichs' comments are misguided. "We think the ... administration should address the Steffen issue before they start handing out blame for personal attacks," White said.

2 Reporters Suffer Another Court Setback

ADAM LIPTAK The New York Times

Two reporters facing up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify about their sources lost another round in the courts yesterday. The reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, now have only one appeal left, to the United States Supreme Court.

The decision, by the full federal appeals court in Washington, declined to reconsider a unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the court.

The earlier decision, in February, required the reporters to testify about conversations they may have had with government officials concerning Valerie Plame, an undercover C.I.A. agent whose identity was first disclosed by Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist.

Seven judges participated in yesterday's decision, which noted only that a majority of the court's active judges had not voted in favor of a rehearing. Two active judges did not participate, for unexplained reasons. One judge, David S. Tatel, published an explanatory concurrence. None of the judges noted a dissent.

Speaking to the Newspaper Association of America in San Francisco yesterday, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times, emphasized the importance of allowing reporters to keep their promises to confidential sources.

"This is not a New York Times or a Time magazine issue," Mr. Sulzberger said. "What's at stake here is journalism at the grass-roots level."

The two reporters have remained free while they pursue their cases in the appeals court. Under the usual procedural rules, they could face jail as soon as a week from now, when the appeals court will issue its mandate and return jurisdiction in the case to the trial court.

But legal experts say the reporters may try to make a deal with the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, or ask one of the courts involved to issue a stay. In exchange for their continued freedom, the reporters may agree to move quickly enough for the Supreme Court to be able to decide whether to hear the case before its summer recess.

Mr. Fitzgerald has consistently urged the courts to take quick action, adding in a recent filing that his investigation into the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity is all but complete. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald declined to comment yesterday.

Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, ordered the reporters jailed in October unless they agreed to testify. Judge Hogan said a 1972 decision of the Supreme Court, Branzburg v. Hayes, provided reporters with no First Amendment protection when grand juries sought their sources.

In a speech in Montana, Judge Hogan suggested last week that he expected the Supreme Court to hear the case, according to reports in the local newspapers there.

In his concurrence, Judge Tatel, who also participated in the February decision, suggested yesterday that the reporters' arguments were best addressed to the Supreme Court.

"Only the Supreme Court can limit or distinguish Branzburg," Judge Tatel wrote.

But Judge Tatel conceded that decisions of his own court's interpreting Branzburg were "somewhat conflicted." Other federal appeals courts, too, have read Branzburg in various ways, and the Supreme Court often accepts cases to resolve conflicts among federal appeals courts.

"The courts are all over the lot," said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a Los Angeles lawyer who filed a brief supporting the reporters on behalf of 25 news organizations. "This case has nationwide implications, and given what's at stake here for the public - not just the journalists - it seems like an ideal case for the court to take."

Judge Tatel also defended much of the secrecy attached to the case, including his decision to redact eight pages that were part of his concurrence in February, which presumably set out grand jury evidence supporting the need for the reporters' testimony. Lawyers involved in the case have speculated that the pages described Mr. Novak's mysterious role in the matter, and they have argued that the secrecy that has permeated the case violated the reporters' due process rights.

Judge Tatel disagreed. "Telling one grand jury witness what another has said," he wrote, "not only risks tainting the later testimony (not to mention enabling perjury or collusion), but may also embarrass or even endanger witnesses, as well as tarnish the reputations of suspects whom the grand jury ultimately declines to indict."

Rove's Reading: Not So Liberal as Leery

Dana Milbank The Washington Post

CHESTERTOWN, Md. - Karl Rove was out of his element. He left the security of his West Wing office and the Republican fundraising circuit to face an audience of smart-alecky students on a college campus -- a liberal arts college, no less -- here in this reliably blue state. A show of hands found two-thirds of the audience opposed President Bush's plans for Social Security.

What lured Bush's most trusted adviser to this locale was an irresistible invitation: a chance to play media critic. For more than an hour, he lectured about everything that is wrong with journalism, and his conclusion may surprise conservatives such as Tom DeLay, who has been complaining in recent days about a "liberal media" smear campaign.

"I'm not sure I've talked about the liberal media," Rove said when a student inquired -- a decision he said he made "consciously." The press is generally liberal, he argued, but "I think it's less liberal than it is oppositional."

The argument -- similar to the one that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his recent book -- is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target. "Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat," Rove said.

His indictment of the media -- delivered as part of Washington College's Harwood Lecture Series, named for the late Washington Post editor and writer Richard Harwood -- had four parts: that there's been an explosion in the number of media outlets; that these outlets have an insatiable demand for content; that these changes create enormous competitive pressure; and that journalists have increasingly adopted an antagonistic attitude toward public officials. Beyond that, Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and "horse-race" politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

"If more people in government knew about the press and more people in the press knew about governing, the world would be a better place to live," Rove said. "Journalists would perform their craft better if they were more understanding of the realities and complexities of running for and serving in public life."

Offering his critique as a friend of the "indispensable" free press, he argued: "The work journalists do at this time is paradoxically more important than ever, so the need to get it right far more often than they get it wrong is absolutely critical to the function of a free society."

Rove left himself and the administration blameless for the tense relations between the Bush White House and the press and for the merger between politics and policy. He started out by quibbling with the title of his lecture "Polarized Press: Media and Politics in the Age of Bush." "It suggests the press is polarized because this is the Age of Bush," he said. "I disagree. The Age of Bush 43 did not cause the polarization."

Rove said that "we'd be better off with greater mutual understanding on the parts of both press and government." But despite Rove's increased visibility of late, the Bush administration prides itself on keeping journalists in the dark about goings-on inside the White House. Quoting the journalist Joe Klein, Rove said reporters should understand "how easy it is to make mistakes" in government. But the president has been famously unwilling to acknowledge mistakes.

Similarly, Rove attested that "most people I know on both sides of the aisle actually believe in the positions they take," and he proposed a rule: "Unless you have clear evidence to the contrary, commentators should answer arguments instead of impugning the motives of those with whom they disagree." But he did not square that with a White House that routinely challenges the motives of those who question Bush, calling them "partisan" and "petty."

Rove discussed the media's well-known tendency toward the negative. "The challenge for the press is to keep a proper degree of skepticism from turning into unremitting hostility and cynicism, and from ignoring good news and progress simply because it might reflect well on those in public office," he said.

But the case-study he cited -- the press's treatment of Bush's education plan in 2001 -- made the press sound far more cynical than it really was. He blasted the Houston Chronicle and The Post for falsely stating that Bush's education plan in 2001 was "stalled" and "bogged down" in the Senate -- but he didn't mention that both reports made clear the delay was only a week. He condemned the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for headlining its article after House passage of the bill, "Bush plan to face more challenges." But the report's main headline said, "House keeps tests in education bill," and it began by saying "President Bush's education reform plan easily weathered a challenge."

The students were warned in advance by the school's president to be polite, and the questions on topics ranging from Social Security to the Terri Schiavo case were mild.

At the end of the talk, Rove directed that a cherry pie be given to a reporter for enduring a speech that produced no news. On that, though, he was certainly wrong. There is more to news than polls and horse races.

Army restricts trial reporters

Permission to cover Akbar case means playing by rules.

JEFF SCHOGOL The Express-Times

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - When soldiers go on the rifle range, they are told not to fire too far to the left or right, for safety reasons, says Fort Bragg spokesman Maj. Richard T. Patterson.

And when journalists come to Fort Bragg, they also must agree to a series of ground rules that spell out the limits of media access, for safety reasons, Patterson says.

"We don't have things to hide," Patterson explains.

He says the Army wants the American public to see the military's fair and impartial justice system, in which those on trial enjoy more rights at an Article 32 hearing than at the civilian equivalent of a grand jury.

But the Army cannot talk about some topics, like security, and hence the ground rules.

For the court martial of Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, accused of killing Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert and an Air Force officer, I had to agree to 14 such ground rules, including:

I can't talk to any soldiers or civilians on the base without permission.

I can be searched at any time.

I can't ask the legal adviser provided to the media to speculate on how evidence or testimony might affect the trial's outcome.

I have to be escorted everywhere I go on Fort Bragg. When I go to the men's room, my military escort waits patiently outside.

Breaking the rules means I will no longer cover the court martial.

Patterson says the restrictions are designed to provide an impartial trial for Akbar while keeping people informed about the court martial.

"This is not, in my mind, about allowing the media to cover a trial. This is about educating the American public about military trials, and in this particular case about the United States vs. Sgt. Akbar," he says.

Since I have not encountered such restrictions in the civilian world, I decided to ask around to see if these ground rules are the norm in the military justice system.

Lt. Col. Pamela L. Hart of Army Public Affairs says they are, except for the being escorted to the men's room thing.

"I would trust you enough to do what you have to do," she says.

Eugene Fidell, a lawyer who specializes in military law, said he has never heard of restrictions against talking to soldiers.

"That strikes me as crazy," he said.

Fidell represented The Denver Post in its lawsuit after the government threw the newspaper out of the trial for several soldiers accused of killing an Iraqi general. He said he brought the investigation to a halt and got the reporters back in the courtroom.

He said Fort Bragg is a "garden variety" base, not Guantanamo Bay, and thus the rule against talking to soldiers and civilians without permission "seems like overkill and security concerns run amok."

Fidell recommended filing a complaint.

Trista Tallton, a military affairs reporter in Wilmington, N.C., says she ran into similar restrictions when she covered the court martial of a Marine accused of accidentally killing several people when his plane clipped the wires of a cable car in Italy.

"I think some of it is they want to keep the media under control," she says.

Tallton says she believes the military -- under the guise of homeland security -- has given reporters less and less access since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For an upcoming court martial of a Marine accused of killing two Iraqis, the military wants to put the media in a satellite viewing room instead of the courtroom, she says.

"Homeland security for me has opened this black hole about what we're getting access to in the future because it's so easy to say it's a matter of national security, homeland security, and you're not going to get access to it," she says.

Unlike the civilian court system, the Uniform Code of Military Justice has no case law that says reporters have an absolute First Amendment right to attend military proceedings, says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit group that provides legal advice to journalists.

Dalglish says military courts are supposed to be open and tend to look to precedents in the civilian court system on questions of constitutional rights.

But even some civilian courts are using homeland security as a way to close proceedings, she said. In one case, a man arrested for an immigration violation was tried in secret all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, she says.

The New Jersey Press Association says it does not know of any cases in the state in which homeland security was used as a reason to exclude media from courtrooms.

Closing a courtroom in the state requires holding a public hearing in which all sides must be heard on the pros and cons of keeping people out of the proceedings, the press association says.

Teri Henning, of the Pennsylvania Press Association, says she also has not heard of courts in the state being closed to the public for reasons of homeland security.

Patterson says it is important to release information that the media can publish to inform people who want to know what is going on but cannot attend the proceedings.

He says he teaches his soldiers to engage reporters instead of running away from them.

Patterson says most soldiers he's talked with have felt the media leaves the Army's side of the story out of their reports, yet few soldiers are willing to talk to reporters.

Patterson says he advises the soldiers that if they don't tell reporters their side of the story, who will?

"As long as the press, or the media, tells both sides of the story, then what I have done as a PAO (public affairs officer) is a success," he says.