The UA Society of Professional Journalists will be hosting a panel Monday night at 6pm in the SUMC Kiva Room to talk about the Josh Wolf issue and blog journalism issues in general.
Panelists will include:
Dr. Kevin Kemper, UA journalism law professor
Allison Winters, UA student researching journalism and blogging
Robert Leger, Assistant editorial page editor for the Arizona Republic, Co-vice chair of the national SPJ Freedom of Information committee
Yours truly.
I suppose the panel may mark an end to the political side of my life, as my choice of career has other things in mind for me. All politics on the Growler (unless something really unusual occurs) will cease April 11th. Either on or after this date, I will be announcing my career plans and transitioning the blog to a close.
(I was going to try to put out a podcast relaying this as a “phased withdrawal from politics,” but I figured that would go too far.)
Sonoran Alliance wants more bloggers. I, of course, am immediately disqualified by virtue of refusing to register Republican. Nonetheless, I’ve been looking for new bloggers for a while now, so let me know if you’re interested.
You must be a pro-life, born-again evangelical Christian. I’m not being judgmental here, but this is the one area where I insist upon a unified voice.
Being somewhere around my political point of view (”conservolibertarian“?) is preferred, but not entirely necessary. I even asked a McCain supporter once, so don’t be too paranoid about this one.
Unless cleared by me, all posts must be cited with publicly-accessible sources (either for the UA community or the public at large).
You must be a current or former student of the University of Arizona. All applicants from that other school will be publicly ridiculed and told to start their own ASU blog to which I can link, as I haven’t found any good ones ever since Eric Spratling left.
I have the final call.
This is in no way intended to steal potential bloggers from Sonoran Alliance. Because most of the people reading this on Cactus Alliance aren’t UA-affiliated anyhow, I foresee most of them heading to Sonoran Alliance anyway. If you’re looking to cover UA stuff though, this is the place to be.
Fellow UA blogger Kieran Healy has written a book about organ donations and has earned a post on Instapundit. Glenn ought to link to his blog, though. We here at the UofA could use an Instalanche or two every now and then.
Arizona 8th just picked up former District 8 Republican candidate Randy Graf as a guest blogger, who writes about the conviction of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were convicted for shooting a drug dealer who was escorting 800 pounds of marijuana.
It may be possible that Mr. Graf’s blogospheric audio debut, at least as an interviewee, was from the interview I did with him back in early October. Either way, welcome to the blogosphere. I’m looking forward to reading more.
Former school superintendent Gary Knox in this morning’s Yuma Sun manages 815 words of moot rant concerning the possibility of using computer generation (CG) to produce a “make-believe production of a terrorist or anarchical group” with the ability to influence Americans.
Knox’s strongest argument is how far society has advanced in creating realistic CG, and how far it is inevitably destined, but it completely ignores what we’ve observed recently in the wake of the Reuters “fauxtography” and Rathergate scandals. Along with advances in CG and the Internet have come advances in the ability of individuals to personally investigate truth versus fiction. The Internet is already full of conspiracy theories ranging from various 9/11 conspiracies to the faking of the Apollo Moon Landings. Such falsehoods are not solely the result of the information age; they are the result of freedom of speech. Likewise, so is the general public’s outright rejection of such ideas.
What we learned (or perhaps more properly, that of which we were reminded) from the Reuters “fauxtography” scandal is that fake news doesn’t require CG, but rather only takes a biased reporter. The infamous Photoshopped smoke spirals photograph of Adnan Hajj wasn’t the only development of note from Israel’s bombing of Lebanon; it also resulted in serious investigation of photographs that were clearly “set-up” not through software, but by the photographers’ very own physical and/or verbal manipulation of the scene. Ultimately, it was the development of cyberspace that allowed individuals to start disputing the coverage that led to the conclusion of many careers.
The Killian documents scandal is an easy case to cite to show that bad news is not beyond television nowadays, but I hate to think that this is the only example involving video. The “visual tricks” that Knox cites are not some golden limit, but are rather a small step ahead from where we already are with respect to the bias of the news media. At least within conservative / libertarian circles, the media are biased towards the left. The far left says the media is far right. Basically, we all agree that somebody is wrong.
Knox’s second to last sentence calls for us to “increase our vigilance and maintain a very healthy skepticism for what we hear and see.” Regardless for the increased apparency that such vigilance is necessary, it is only that – an increased apparency, not an increased need. I fail to see the particular grave danger that Knox sees; rather, I see an inevitable increase in skepticism in the wake of need that has already persisted for some time.
I’ve been sent a copy of the proposed ASUA elections code for next semester’s elections. I haven’t compared it too closely, but the biggest thing that I did notice is more freedom for candidates to update their websites. The previous code prohibited any update to a web site, including posts on MySpace and Facebook or public comments on blogs, without approval of the elections commissioner, a clear case of federally-unconstitutional prior restraint. Kudos who whoever got this one in.
7-2. WEB RESOURCES
7-2.01 Any and all web resources utilized for the purpose of campaigning by a candidate and/or a member of their campaign staff are subject to the scrutiny of the Elections Commissioner and bound by the rules and regulations of this Code.
7-2.02 Any and all websites, web pages, and/or profiles on online networking sites including, but not limited to Facebook and MySpace, utilized for the purpose of campaigning by a candidate and/or a member of their campaign staff shall be approved by the Elections Commissioner. Any changes made to the aforementioned after initial approval are subject to the rules and regulations of this Code.
The code also includes a provision allowing the elections commissioner not to conduct a primary election in the event of low candidate turnout. This would have been relevant in last year’s election, as all 20 senatorial candidates made it to the general election precisely because there were 20 spots on the ballot (for ten seats). It basically ended up being a formal poll.
2-1.02 In the event that there is a low candidate turnout, a Primary Election may not occur. Notification on the status of the Primary Election will occur within twenty-four (24) hours of the Candidate Packet deadline.
Readers and officials should feel free to point out any more major changes to the code. The vote may take place at this afternoon’s senate meeting. I have a prior commitment involving free food, so I won’t be able to show up.
Tuesday’s article about me in the Arizona Daily Wildcat wasn’t the only thing in there concerning bloggers and journalism. Their website also included a poll question: "What is the role of a blogger in journalism?" Results were as follows.
13%: They are journalists.
15%: They are watchdogs.
16%: They provide entertainment.
56%: They are not real journalists.
Despite all the talk about me, I’m inclined to agree; not all bloggers are journalists. And as I mentioned earlier, I don’t consider myself to be a traditional journalist. The poll misses an important point, however. Some bloggers are traditional journalists. Others are watchdogs. Others provide entertainment. Others simply provide unique insight from a different perspective.
It would be a mistake to attempt to categorize every political blogger into singularly distinct categories. Rather, bloggers can be one or more of these. Just because there happen to be three satirical podcasts on the Growler doesn’t mean that I don’t watchdog, nor does my watchdogging keep me from producing satire. I even made a movie poster featuring Rep. Grijalva a while back after I had interviewed him for the first time back in the fall of 2003 as a freshman.
Some questions over the role of bloggers in elections still exist. What is answered is that not all bloggers covering the elections are doing the same job. Not all go out on the streets and interview candidates. Not all simply provide witty commentary or satire. And only a very small minority would go as far to say that they are trying to pose as "objective journalists."
Ultimately, we’re all citizens, whether we be citizen satirists, commentators, or journalists. And it’s important to remember that the former two of that list don’t give up rights for not being the third. Long live the blogosphere.
I spoke with "Jake" from the Arizona Daily Wildcat over the phone this afternoon, so expect a story to come up very soon. We ended up talking more about bloggers’ role in politics than the incident itself, following up from Daniel Scarpinato’s comments in the Daily Star, which was nice as the issue is largely undiscussed within the mainstream media. Certainly, the concept in the context of the Internet is relatively new, but I’m certainly not the first person to become involved in an incident like this one within the context of Internet journalism or commentary, nor is this the first time I’ve been snubbed. I also highly doubt that a college paper like Wildcat hasn’t had its fair share of events such as these in its long history.
I’ll repost those easy-to-find links once I see the Wildcat article come up tomorrow. Ben Franklin had it right when he advocated early bedtimes and risings.
Update: Just to show this isn’t my first snubbing, here’s the other two notables from last semester.
So basically, this incident is not a first time deal.
Update II: I really need to learn to think before I click ’save.’ The incident is a first time deal if you’re talking about a real government official rather than ASUA, or if you’re talking about physical force.
Update (October 9th): Expect a podcast report with my interviews of other candidates either tonight or tomorrow. You will find that the responses of the other candidates, even when we disagreed on many fundamental things, were very respectful and always ended with a genuine handshake. I unfortunately cannot say the same of Congressman Grijalva. Members of the press who seek direct comment may contact me at my email address: gpohara-at-gmail.com.
Update II (October 9th): I had never figured out why Grijalva and his staffer were so sensitive to having the conversation recorded, but perhaps it’s because they’re in a dispute over which debates they actually agreed upon. With this recent incident, Rep. Grijalva might be more likely than ever to avoid the University of Arizona as a debate site.
I’m not going to delve into legal details here; I’m just going to say what happened and give myself some time to decide a course of action. Interviews of other candidates as well as further personal analysis of what happened will be posted at a later time when I can muster a more professional voice.
In short, I became involved in what I will term an "incident" with Representative Raul Grijalva (AZ-7) and one of his staffers during the October 6, 2006 Voter Block Party held at Main Gate Square by the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. The recording explains the rest.
While I wait upon my senses to allow me to choose a course of action, I urge my fellow District 7 voters to take this into account when marking the ballot on November 7th.
Garrett P. O’Hara University of Arizona political science senior
P.S.: If you subscribe to the podcast, you might notice that the server I used for the other files is down. I’ll let you know when it’s back up.
Addition: This audio work falls under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Content on the rest of this blog falls under the license seen at the bottom of the right hand column of the page unless otherwise noted in a post. Added October 9th: As stated in the license, this in no way affects your fair use rights.
Emily Mitchell, a field representative for Leadership Institute, reports via email that two Arizona State University professors assaulted, injured, and harassed her yesterday over her support of Caucasian-American Men of ASU, an officially-recognized campus group. Unfortunately for the assailants, she has video.
Mitchell’s hate crime report to the campus LBGTQ group, which is completely on her side on grounds of free speech, is as follows:
At ASU on Friday, September 29, I was verbally and physically assaulted by two professors who refused to reveal their names or departments. Both told me my club, Caucasian American Men of ASU, “is a racist agenda.” In truth, the club is about ENDING all forms of racial exclusion on campus by asking for equality. When I prompted them to read my flyer to learn that we are trying to end racism and sexism, they both refused. I was called “racist” by one professor “definitely racist,” by the other. At this point, I pulled out the camera to get them saying this on tape, because I was sure no one would believe me without evidence. Since my video camera is just a feature of a snapshot-style camera, they may not have realized they were being video taped.
I asked if I could record their viewpoint for educational purposes, and that our group encouraged open debate. They said “OK,” but as soon as I began, one professor said I didn’t have her permission to take her picture. She argued with me and then tried to steal my camera, wrangling me for it. At this point, she managed to hit the big button that stops recording, but of course there is video of her snatching for it. When she couldn’t pry it out of my hands, she deliberately took her thumb and tried to push the auto-extending lens back into the body of the camera, crunching the device that extends the lens.
I refuse to let go of my personal property, holding on tightly. She continues to crunch her thumb into my camera, and I’m now sure this is deliberate. In the physical struggle to keep or damage my camera, she digs her hands in so hard her short fingernails scratch my hand until I bleed between my index and middle fingers. I somehow manage to physically pry her fingers out of my skin and off my camera.
Shaking now, I was determined to get her and the other professor saying what they said to me on video. I held the camera up while the assailant said, “You can’t take my picture because it’s illegal. I work with indigenous peoples all the time, and they would never do that.” After several other tidbits, two I remember verbatim as, “You have a racist agenda,” and “You have problems to work out.” I realized the camera wasn’t running and I pressed the button harder this time. Because she damaged the button, when I pressed it, it didn’t immediately begin recording (I now have to press it harder). At this point, I try to get them to repeat their hate crime speech, and they don’t deny it. They also refuse to reveal their identities. The only information they would give me is that they are in “College of Fine Arts.” I have the videos.
Epilogue: I spent the rest of the afternoon with CAMASU students trying to make CAMASU a university-recognized group. At almost 5:00, I went to the College of Fine Arts hoping a secretary could identify the faculty members for me. A secretary was still there, Sherri Thompson (phone number removed –GPO), and, shaking like a leaf, I explained my situation. I showed her the videos, and she was so appalled, she called cell phones to get the cell phone numbers of the people needed to immediately file an incident report. I was advised to go to student health to clean up the wound and put some ice on it. I have not heard back about the incident report, nor do I know what the consequences or procedures are for that, nor do I know if it’s different from reporting a hate crime. But I figured I can use all the help I can get finding these women who hurt me so badly, physically and psychologically.
As Sherri was busily orchestrating the report, the Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Dean Kim, walked past us and into his office. The secretary rushed after him to his office to explain the incident. I followed. Sheepishly entering his office, I showed him my injury and the videos. He was apologetic and appalled, saying he was embarrassed and that it should be taken care of. However, he didn’t recognize the faculty either. He also explained that there are many, many faculty members in the College of Fine Arts.
So now I want to press charges, but I have no idea how. And since I didn’t immediately call the police, and because by the time I would have, they had already vanished, I feel like now I have to get identification myself of these women. But in order to do that, I will have to visit every department in the College of Fine Arts and ask the secretaries if they recognize the professors.
Should I just go department to department looking for their identification? How do I find these people who hurt my feelings? The whole point of our group is to END racism and sexism on campus. Being called a racist is one of the most damaging insults I could have received, because racism is the very cause I’m trying to obliterate.
I REALLY NEED HELP! Please help me find the women who accused me of a label without first even listening to me or reading my flyer.
12 News in Phoenix picked up on it and has this video about CAMASU, but not the violent incident. Google News as of posting only makes mention of CAMASU, but not the incident, despite LI having put out a press release.
Emily has also been working very hard to promote change on the University of Arizona campus; I consider her a close associate. At minimum, the professor who injured her ought to be fired on the spot. The second surely doesn’t know anything about First Amendment freedom of the press: you have no right to privacy in your own conduct in a public area. At least they weren’t political science professors.
Oddly enough, FIRE’s speech code rating of ASU is better than UA: a yellow as opposed to red. Let’s see if they prove themselves worthy of yellow.
Update: Another press release. CAMASU students are now posting “Wanted” flyers for the two professors, but they are meeting resistance from the police, who contend that the flyers may “interfere in the investigation.” I’m not sure why the police have a problem; vandals are tearing down the flyers anyway.
TEMPE, AZ — Students at Arizona State University (ASU) posted “Wanted” flyers on campus yesterday in an attempt to identify two female professors who harassed and injured a female student recruiter at the Tempe campus.
But other members of the university community were not as willing to help find the two women.
“Within three hours someone had started taking down the flyers,” said Emily Mitchell, the Leadership Institute recruiter who was assaulted.
Members of the new, independent, student group, the Caucasian American Men of ASU (CAMASU), posted and handed out the flyers on Tuesday afternoon. The flyers pictured the two unknown professors who confronted Emily.
This morning ASU Police told Emily that they received “some complaints” about the flyers and requested that additional ones not be posted. And according to Laura Gill, an ASU police officer, the posters could “interfere with the investigation.”
Emily, a field representative for the Leadership Institute’s Campus Leadership Program, has filed a police report but is unable to press charges until she can identify her assailants.”
Emily also went to the College of Fine Arts, where the professors claimed to teach, and spoke with Dean Kwang-Wu Kim. Dean Kim said he did not recognize the pictures of the two faculty members, but was appalled at their behavior.
The initial confrontation occurred on Friday, September 29 while Emily recruited for the CAMASU group. The professors claimed Emily had “a racist agenda” and called her “a sexist.” One professor became aggressive, attempted to steal Emily’s camera, and scratched her, drawing blood.
Emily plans to press charges as soon as the assailant is identified.
Those of you who were regular readers of The O’Hara Factor back in February know I had quite the debacle with the ASUA Supreme Court last year. This I know well; I was getting sixty hits daily on a consistent basis. Only Deborah Frisch could ever put me over that mark, bringing one of my days to 400.
It started with Justice Shar Bahmani, who wrote a letter to the Wildcat encouraging calm amidst the Cade Bernsen sexual harassment scandal despite that he as a justice could have ended up hearing Bernsen’s impeachment. I didn’t get much feedback from the court itself, but I did get referrer links in my site statistics indicating that individuals from the court (their names were in the URL’s!) had emailed each other about my criticism.
That didn’t bode well for me once the Rhonda Tubbs elections code violation scandal came out. Chief Justice Jennifer Baker in reply to my request didn’t let me in. I was merely a blogger, not a real journalist. I physically entered the room to see if I could still attend. No go. In fact, I later determined that the trial may have violated state Open Meetings Law. Later on, I received similar signs of internal bickering over my existence via the referrer statistics. Tubbs won that case, but there was another case nobody informed me of the following Saturday that ended up disqualifying her candidacy.
So now we have two new justices and one promotion to chief justice. Jennifer Baker is among the departures (which is good). So far, the website hasn’t been updated and the term expirations dates seem inconsistent with having two new justices, so it looks like somebody quit. We’ll have to wait and see who’s on there. Let’s hope that the court and ASUA in general don’t exhibit this kind of corruption this year.
I once met Len Munsil. It was Sanctity of Life Sunday at First Southern Baptist Church, and Len Munsil was the president of the Center of Arizona Policy. He joked about his attendance of ASU rather than UofA and on the reputation of lawyers he had to inherit.
His issue list looks strong on eminent domain abuse and illegal immigration. In fact, he looks to be doing his best to distinguish himself as being stronger on the latter issue than Don Goldwater.
Internet-wise, Munsil had been the candidate using it best so far, at least for me. The primary feature of his website is not a platform or fancy graphics; it’s a blog. But recently, I noticed that my Firefox live bookmark for his site wasn’t working. I didn’t take much note of it at first, but I took a look at his main site today, performed some investigation, and concluded that his RSS feed was completely gone, probably intentionally. With that alone, Munsil isn’t going to get his propaganda to me very well, so my chances of voting for him in November just went down significantly. Neither Goldwater nor Napolitano ever had RSS feeds to my knowledge, so we’re basically in a situation where Napolitano has the best-designed website (VERY professional-looking), Munsil has a blog with a mediocre design (lose the horizontal solidity please) and no feed, and Goldwater’s site looks like a 13-year-old designed it. I started making money in amateurish freelance web design at age 14 or 15, but by golly not for a gubernatorial candidate.
Goldwater looks to be more pro-gun at this point. Without eminent domain or campaign finance / clean elections to argue, the Second Amendment is the primary issue. Both of these guys had better shape up their campaigns.
A portion of the news feed on my Facebook account (friends’ names removed for privacy reasons, as if most of my readers can’t find out anyway)
The new (out)rage in the online college world is Facebook’s new "news feed". Compiling information from "friends" on Facebook, the feed gives the user on-the-double information about people’s latest activities on Facebook, including posting on people’s "walls", friendships, "group" memberships, etc.
Let’s see:
eight of my friends posted on [name]’s wall. It was his birthday yesterday.
[name] and [name] are now friends.
[name] hates the news feed.
[name] and [name] are dating.
[name] is weirded out by Facebook.
and more…
A friend once joked to me in a private message on Facebook that it was "a stalker’s dream come true." Perhaps this is becoming more true. Not only is there a news feed for your overall circle of friends, you can zero it down to individual friends’ "feeds".
The protest group mentioned in the image to the right currently has 26,853 members worldwide (mostly in the U.S., of course), but I think the protest is quite shortsighted. First, the feed doesn’t show any information to which I didn’t have access in the first place other than times of instance. For the most part, it only the information easier to find. These friends’ profiles, as well as profiles of just about everybody at the University of Arizona who happens to use Facebook, are available for my viewing. Even before "news feed", I could basically sit in a coffee shop, search for the coffee shop’s name on Facebook, find who admits to frequenting it, find pictures of people I recognize, and find out that the girl 20 feet from my port beam has a boyfriend named Mark Burton.
Fellow students, if you don’t want your entire circle of friends (let alone your entire school or the entire Internet) finding out, DON’T POST IT ON THE INTERNET!!!!
I support the news feed. Overall it might encourage people to use a little more caution, which some of Facebook’s users really need to consider trying.
Oh, and that number I mentioned earlier? Now it’s 29,080. And I had just refreshed it ten minutes ago. Actually, I’ve been refreshing it as I’ve been writing this, and the number was steadily increasing. Let’s just say it’s going to be at least 80,000 by the time I wake up.
I offer free voiceovers for interested ministries and charities, especially those in the Tucson area. Email Garrett to request a voiceover or to advertise in this space.
PORN ACCOUNTABILITY
Fighting porn alone is like voting for moderate RINOs after they promise to shrink the government and subsequently fail to do so. Take it from me; get some accountability. Download and install the software, and email Garrett if you need an accountability partner.
All opinions herein are those of their respective authors. The Arizona Growler is not affiliated with any governmental entity on any level of government including but not limited to The University of Arizona.
Those of you who were regular readers of The O’Hara Factor back in February know I had quite the debacle with the ASUA Supreme Court last year. This I know well; I was getting sixty hits daily on a consistent basis. Only Deborah Frisch could ever put me over that mark, bringing one of my days to 400. 
