CNN.com - Student journalists sue school district - May 20, 2005
CNN.com - Student journalists sue school district - May 20, 2005Student journalists sue school district
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Student journalists sued their Bakersfield high school district Thursday in an effort to keep the school's principal from censoring student newspaper articles on homosexuality.
The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, requests an emergency order to allow the paper to publish the stories in The Kernal's year-end May 27 issue.
"The Kernal staff, along with the gay students we interviewed, we have lost our voices," said the paper's editor in chief, Joel Paramo, a plaintiff in the case filed in Kern County court.
East Bakersfield High School Principal John Gibson said he blocked publication because he is worried about violence on campus.
"It's not about gay and lesbians. It's about student safety," he said.
Paramo, however, said the principal's decision "regrettably sends the unmistakable message that school officials would rather students keep closeted about their sexual orientation."
California's education code allows schools to censor student publications if articles are obscene, libelous or slanderous, or incite students "as to create a clear and present danger."
The articles include photos and interviews with gay students discussing their sexual orientation. The reporters obtained written permission from those they interviewed and from the parents of those who were minors.
"No incident in the past led us to believe that those students, who are already open about their sexual orientation, had anything to worry about," Paramo, 18, told reporters Thursday at the ACLU's Los Angeles office.
The plaintiffs include 18-year-old senior Janet Rangle, who was interviewed along with her mother for the paper. She said when she came out as a lesbian, students were either supportive or didn't care.
Gibson's decision "made me feel like I was back where I was -- in the closet again, hiding," Rangle said.
Bakersfield, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is known as a conservative community, but Paramo said students at East Bakersfield High are tolerant for the most part.
School district spokesman John Teves expressed concerns about possible violence.
"It's our concern that with the publication of those articles, those students might be in danger or that our campus might be subject to some kind of violence," Teves said.
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Sumatran quake shook Earth's entire surface before unleashing tsunami: report - Yahoo! News
Sumatran quake shook Earth's entire surface before unleashing tsunami: report - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AP) - The great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that generated the devastating tsunami in December was so powerful that the ground shook everywhere on the Earth's surface and weeks later the planet still trembled.
'No point on Earth remained undisturbed,' said Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.
Ground movement of at least one centimetre occurred everywhere as a result of the strongest quake in more than 40 years, though the sensation was not noticed in many areas"
Paper Prints More Photos of Saddam in Jail - Yahoo! News
Paper Prints More Photos of Saddam in Jail - Yahoo! News: "The photos have not provoked much of an outcry in the Middle East but raised concerns about offending Arab sensibilities and doing further damage to the American image already tarnished by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison and a now retracted Newsweek report about the desecration of the Quran at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Saddam's chief lawyer, Ziad al-Khasawneh, said the photos 'add to acts that are practiced against the Iraqi people.' He said he would sue the newspaper 'and everyone who helped in showing these pictures.'"
More Allegations of Mishandled Qu'ran
CNN.com - Karzai�'shocked' by�abuse report - May 21, 2005: "That report by Newsweek was later retracted, but the International Committee of the Red Cross subsequently said it had told the Pentagon of allegations U.S. personnel had mishandled the Koran."
Amazon tribe faces 'annihilation'
BBC NEWS | Americas | Amazon tribe faces 'annihilation': "Amazon tribe faces 'annihilation'
A living area abandoned by Indians in Brazil's rainforest (Pic: Survival International)
Brazilian officials in Rio Pardo found Indian villages, but no Indians
A remote tribe living amid the depths of the Amazon rainforest is facing extinction at the hands of loggers, campaigners warn.
Armed loggers working in Brazil's vast forests have driven the tribe from several villages, according to Indian rights group Survival International."
Tales from the coffee shop
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Tales from the coffee shop: "Sleaze
The intellectual strength of this scene also contributed to its reputation for political dissent, and King Charles II tried and failed in 1675 to thwart their power by closing or levying fees on the houses.
But the decline of the coffee house was well under way by the 19th Century, when many shed their open door policy and turned into gentlemen's clubs serving tea, coffee and alcohol. And their role as a communication centre was eclipsed by an improved press, transport and postal system.
In the sanitised, lactified form of the branded chain, the coffee house is no longer oppositional, rebellious and dissident
Markman Ellis
Author
The coffee houses that remained took on a slightly sleazy nature, associated with gambling and prostitution and characterised in the novels of Dickens and Trollope, says Professor Chapman. Mass production, driven by the East India Company, also meant swigs of coffee could be bought at street stalls and tea could be drank at home."
More on the Newsweek Fiasco
Newsweek published a short, 200 word story in its May 9th issue where it alleged that "
that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur'an down a toilet."
An anonymous source inside the US military gave Newsweek this information. Newsweek brought it to the attention of two defense Department officials. One declined to comment, the other corrected another error. So what did Newsweek do wrong? And what did they do right?
Right now, we still do not know if the Newsweek story is actually true. What we do know is that it can not be properly verified. Newsweek ran into the same problem that CBS did a while back. It may very well be true. After all, other news organizations ran similar stories. So Newsweek only used one source -- which is not uncommon for such a magazine -- and ran it by two government officials and then decided to publish it.
What they did not realize is how inflammatory the story actually was. Bob Zelnick, former ABC News Correspondent claims that "
even if the Koran incident was true, he would have had 'reservations' about running it because 'the potential to inflame is greater than the value of the piece itself.'" But Newsweek officials insist they went by the book but "
will review its standards for dealing with unnamed sources."Almost a week later, cricket legend turned politician Imran Khan and others start drumming up opposition to the US government's handling of the Qur'an at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The intense reaction in Afghanistan and Pakistan is highlighted by a cultural gap. "
In Pakistan and Afghanistan destruction of the Qur'an is seen as blasphemous and punishable by death. In the US, destruction of any religious text is a constitutional right."
Now at least 17 people have died and hundred have been injured. Newsweek, right or wrong, has retracted its story. The US government feels that its reputation has been damaged. What Connie Rice et al. fail to realize is that their reputation was horribly damaged long before.
It's appalling that this story got out there," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she traveled home from Iraq.
"People lost their lives. People are dead," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
Such problems in the US media circus are nothing new.
The episode is the latest in a series of scandals that have dogged the US media, beginning with an uproar caused by former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who fabricated quotes and other elements for his articles, and continuing with a similar controversy at USA Today involving reporter Jack Kelley. These two episodes were soon followed by the case of former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather, who used documents of dubious authenticity to question President George Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard Service.
Journalists need to be careful. Cultural sensitivity is necessary when reporting. Should Newsweek have published the story as it did? If it were true and verified, then yes. The problem is the magazine only had one confidential source. US officials were not aware of how inflammatory such a story could become in the hands of someone like cricketer Khan.
So how should Holy Books be handled? USA Today's article presents more information on how to handle the big three.
Newsweek, Journalism and the Qur'an
The Editor's Desk
Newsweek
May 23 issue - Did a report in NEWSWEEK set off a wave of deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan? That's what numerous news accounts suggested last week as angry Afghans took to the streets to protest reports, linked to us, that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Qur'an while interrogating Muslim terror suspects. We were as alarmed as anyone to hear of the violence, which left at least 15 Afghans dead and scores injured. But I think it's important for the public to know exactly what we reported, why, and how subsequent events unfolded.
Two weeks ago, in our issue dated May 9, Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported in a brief item in our Periscope section that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur'an down a toilet. Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur'an charge.
Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.
Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.
—Mark Whitaker
Editor's Note: On Monday afternoon, May 16, Whitaker issued the following statement: Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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