Ruthless, lethal destruction: freedom’s advocates censor reporters for life

(Photo: Wikipedia)

NOTE:  I have added extensively to this post, written two years ago, before I was aware of Harvey Silverglate’s involvement in a Kansas First Amendment legal case that destroyed my life.

Please pardon the poor formatting. WordPress has me flummoxed, and I can only ask readers for their patience and thank them for  their perseverance.

THE VIEW FROM UP THERE:

When a very famous journalist uses a murder trial to illuminate the systemic racism that is its context, does he have a right to omit his knowledge of a hotly contested issue because a famous lawyer has asked  him to do so – and because ” it’s not the story” he’s writing?  The career and reputation of a hopelessly outgunned, multiple award-winning  small-time reporter  have been destroyed: and both she and Calvin Trillin are well aware of his singular power to restore her good name with one sentence.  (Click on Trillin’s article below)

 What kind of perspective did this journalist from the very top of the heap think he could legitimately claim by allowing  a  traumatized , obscure reporter to plead her case with increasing panic over several days – without once telling her that he had already been made aware of her truthfulness, and is nevertheless not going to mention it in his article?

Giving readers the false impression that the accusations made against someone remain unresolved  is a form of lying. Journalists may not do it. Calvin Trillin may be an artist, but he is also an old news man, and ultimately he was writing a news story. There’s no possibility that he had the impression that he could pick and choose the facts: one may, if one is as talented and able as Trillin, write the news with artistry. But the news is not art. Yet, he persisted in maintaining precisely such a rarefied prerogative by responding to my pleas with an increasingly insistent claim: “That’s not the story I want to write.”

(“And it’s not the story I promised Harvey Silverglate I’d avoid.”)

Dodge City, Kansas (Photo credit: Dougtone)

Well, what the hell. To what extent did Mr. Trillin create that nervous character himself ? I’d say he created her almost wholly: in fact, his appropriation of my singular role in a Kansas State Supreme Court First Amendment case, and  my subsequent inability to access a voice with which to assert it, is practically a textbook definition of  an abuse of power in journalism. How differently might I have possibly  appeared had Trillin assured me before his arrival in Dodge City that he was aware of  the very public fabrications made about me to the national media by the most influential free press organization in the nation?

You’ll never know. A few people decided that you don’t need to.

Family Man by Calvin Trillin (Photo credit: DavePeckens)

If only Trillin’s reasons were more complex, if not more principled.  But  without  doing any further investigative work, Mr. Trillin just went along with a request made by an old pal, famous Harvard Law School free speech attorney Harvey Silverglate.

That’s news. Period.

And it’s pretty big news. Certainly it transcends the context of my individual career. Certainly it has much broader implications. And certainly it is the public’s business.

Silverglate is the founder of FIRE, which  fiercely and very publically  defends free speech on college campuses, as well as a former long-term member of the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU’s board of directors. He prevailed upon Trillin on behalf of  the organization’s Kansas/Missouri chapter, which had very egregiously interfered in a court case (mine) in which it had filed an amicus brief : simply put, this is extremely illegal.

Silverglate  represented me when I was a child of fifteen, and in the process he achieved access to medical records he referenced many decades later, although he had had absolutely no contact with me throughout that extremely lengthy interval. To use privileged information about a minor client is in itself reprehensible, but Harvey didn’t stop there.

He started there.

Silverglate  also acted to protect another famous attorney, former Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press director Lucy Dalglish,  She had both lied to me, and lied about me, while acting in her capacity as an attorney, and had made extremely damaging public  fabrications for no purpose more noble than that of hiding her despicable betrayal of a truthful reporter who had earnestly, and, in retrospect, idiotically, stood up for the First Amendment.

Trillin went along with his powerful peers for the same reasons networks of the elite always go along with one another. Ordinary American liberals resist this obvious concept because they refuse to regard this particular elite in those terms. But Trillin, Silverglate, and Daglish et al are supposed to be the best defense we have!  I am no political fool, but my journalism experience, while fairly extensive, did not intersect with that elite sphere; thus,  I was not prepared for its ruthless disregard of the most fundamental of my civil rights.   It had never occurred to me that this sphere actually represents an interest that is as invested in its own significant power as are the corporate and state interests it purports to defy.

More shocking is the blind cooperation it commands from virtually every viable media platform.

Here is the point:  during a global and domestic crisis of arguably unprecedented  historic proportions, when the public’s right to information has never  been more acute, dozens of media leaders and civil liberties nonprofits  across the nation have handed an elite network the power to decide what and whom to censor.

In 2010, I broke a record by winning four state press awards at once, including first place for the story that got me fired. I’d received an internal nomination for the national Ethics in Journalism Award, been invited to speak at a convention of the Society of Professional Journalists, and gotten a great response to initial feelers re a national job search.

I never worked again.

On-site interviews for which I’d been selected from pools of 300 – 400 applicants were suddenly cancelled with no explanation via emails from secretaries. I was evicted from my home without cause. Reporters who knew for a fact of my veracity re. the case began avoiding me, my friends and family were told lies about me, and outright fabrications were spread

No non-profit replied to my documented pleas for advocacy, no lawyer responded to my

Never mind me. It  truly doesn’t  matter what you think of me. Every alert high school reporter knows that the First Amendment protects the people, not the press, and that destroying an individual via insinuation, bias, gossip and lies is incredibly easy.

Consider  instead what an extremely slippery slope has been established. Any serious belief that I will remain some sort of remarkably incompetent and necessary exception to the otherwise deeply held principles of  America’s standard bearers of egalitarianism is patently

 ridiculous.

Rather, the efficiency with which I was discredited and silenced proves the opposite: it  proves that those standards have already been systemically corrupted.

So, what else is new? Well, what makes my case important is the very specific national scope, coordination, and gravity of documented criminal actions.It removes this corruption from the realm of speculation about which we are accustomed to grumble and forces a public acknowledgement. I can and have proven these actions to be true. If the public reacts indifferently – so be it. That’s not my business.

Were I simply a nut obsessed with a job loss, the ongoing effort to keep me discredited would not be as obvious as it is. Huge corporate lawyers would not be tracking me on LinkedIn. Other bloggers, their petitions,emails, and tweets would not be universally  and  absolutely ignored – journalists, lawyers, and non-profits aren’t  like that unless they cannot  respond without lying, and have thus coordinated a strategic silence.

 My decision to publically criticize Mr. Trillin was not made lightly. In fact, it has been amazingly difficult – it took me over two years to decide to write this. First of all, I didn’t want to be right. I wanted him to realize that he had failed to recognize a political courage that he was bound to respect.  Over four days in Dodge City, I observed  Trillin’s remarkable vigilance as he maintained a one-man mission to seek out and squash racist behavior by swiftly inserting himself as a role model. He  also couldn’t tolerate even the potential for class injury, and threw himself into the breach at the first hint of its appearance.

 I was moved by this:  I saw it as a tribute honoring the working-class Jewish tradition from which Trillin  inherited the gift of his gaze – a gaze with no other possible source. It is a gift not only from his family, but from their culture –  and from history.

I also found myself moved by the realization that he had assumed this role in part as a  responsibility of his prominence.

`

Thus, I assumed for many, many months that my own political perspective was flawed, and that if Calvin Trillin rejected the basis for my claim to support, I had better examine it closely.

If anyone ever wants to blackmail me, a threat to publish the long email pleas I intermittently sent to Trillin just might do the trick. Writing them  was as utterly humiliating, exhausting, and bewildering as re-reading them now would be. I had  no idea of what had actually happened, and thus stupidly explained Politics 101 to him at great and embarrassing length. Eventually I was reduced to simply begging him for compassion.

Four years later, I view Calvin Trillin as another rich old white man with too much power. I call him out as a phony, an opportunist, and a class enemy. His treatment of me so profoundly contradicts the political integrity that has shaped his public life that nothing less than very public restorative action could redeem him.

Fat chance.  And as long as that wonderous and dizzying dream of a dinner or lunch invitation from Calvin never dies in the hearts of so many – who cares what I think?

 END OF PART ONE

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NOTE: I and others have written extensively re the specific allegations referenced in this post. Here are some links. The bottom one will lead you to others. I can document everything, but can no longer cram the same chronology into every article I write. The sheer scope of the case tends to erode my credibility, but who would manufacture such a fantastic list of claims?

Believe me, if one or two people from the list below is deposed, the rest will topple like dominos.

At no point was I represented by counsel – not ever.  Each attorney  worked specifically against my interests  to advance the interests of  opposing parties without my knowledge. It’s impossible to describe the confusion and  growing dread of  watching  your lawyer destroy you, while he chews you out for not trusting him and complains to your company’s  national HR office 2,000 miles away.

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Below are just some of  the individuals and organizations that  participated in some way in an extensive defamatory campaign that has been waged against me for over four years. Specifically, they have all committed  both conspiracy to defame and defamation,  but vary in terms of professional and criminal violations- as does the range of ethics issues regulated and sanctioned by their professional organizations.

Lucy Dalglish, former RCFP director,  currently Dean of U. of Maryland Journalism school

Tony Mauro, US Supreme Court reporter, National Law Journal and RCFP steering committee member

Polly Sack, Chief Counsel,  GateHouse Publishing

 Harvey Silverglate, Harvard University Law School, FIRE director, former ACLU of MA. board member

Calvin Trillin, New Yorker Magazine

Attorney Mark Johnson, Topeka, Kansas

CURRENT  SNOOPERS

Karen Flax

Vice President/Deputy General Counsel at Tribune Publishing Company

Greater Chicago Area

Online Media

Previous	Tribune Company, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (now Dentons US LLP), Northern District of Illinois, Judge Hubert L. Will
Education	New York University School of Law

 I  don’t know Ms. Flax ; we  have never met or spoken. There is one, and only one reason for the huge Tribune Publishing Company’s vice-president and deputy general counsel to examine the detailed employment history and professional references  available on the LinkedIn profile of an obscure and blackballed reporter such as myself.

Note Flax’s ties to huge global law firm Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthalm, which is also the longtime home of mild-mannered corporate thug and hit man, attorney Mark Johnson (listed above.) Mr. Johnson popped up out of the blue one day to offer me his “services”, having been hired by Daglish to assist in silencing and discrediting me.

And I thought I finally had counsel!

Silly me. Still connecting lawyers with justice and Easter with the Bunny .

Sound far-fetched? Ask me for proof. Please.

________________________________________

Karlene Goller

Consultant, First Amendment Lawyer and Media Law Professor

Another complete stranger,  Ms. Goller is exactly the sort of looming presence a blackballed reporter on food stamps is reassured to discover  inspecting remote details, such as an academic award  won seventeen years ago.

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DIRECTLY  QUOTED:

”  Karlene Goller, a former Los Angeles Times executive, provides strategic consulting for global media companies and teaches Media Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Ms. Goller served as First Amendment counsel for the Los Angeles Times and the Times Community News newspapers for more than 20 years. As the Los Angeles Times Deputy General Counsel and Vice President, Legal, she provided all aspects of newsroom counseling and litigation, as well as intellectual property matters, for content on all platforms — print, digital and multimedia. She was also responsible for representing the news organizations in connection with legislative and policy matters at the state and federal levels.

She joined the Times Mirror Company in 1990 as corporate counsel for Times Mirror Cable Television Inc. where she provided all forms of in-house counseling, including managing litigation, franchising, regulatory and legislative matters. Before joining Times Mirror, she was an associate at Cole, Raywid & Braverman in Washington, D.C., where she practiced primarily communications law counseling cable television and cellular clients, as well as litigating trade secret matters.”

Q. Why does a discredited lowly former staff reporter for an obscure Midwestern newspaper require the scrutiny of this Big Gun four years after the fact?

A.  Because Reporter Lowly has documented the truth. She won’t shut up; thus, censoring her requires vigilance.

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INCIDENT IN DODGE CITY:  What led to a showdown in the riverbed?

BY CALVIN TRILLIN   MAY 10, 2010

• ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF CRIME about the State of Kansas v. Samuel Bonilla. Last Labor Day afternoon, Tanner Brunson—accompanied by his friend Steven Holt, Holt’s daughter, his stepson, and a former boyfriend of his stepdaughter’s—drove his truck down a riverbed in Dodge City, Kansas. Holt and Brunson had consumed a lot of beer and in the riverbed they came upon Sam Bonilla, a Cox Communications cable guy, walking with his older son and his nephew. As Brunson’s truck approached, Bonilla gave him the finger. Holt and Brunson got out of the truck and as they approached Bonilla he fired on them with a .22-calibre gun. At the hospital, doctors stabilized Brunson, but Steven Holt died. Both Holt and Brunson were “good ole country boys.” Bonilla was Hispanic. Describes the history of the Hispanic community in Dodge City; almost half of the city’s current residents are Hispanic. After some hesitation, Bonilla turned himself in to the police on the evening of the shooting. He told them that he repeatedly shouted “Get back!” to Brunson and Holt before shooting, a claim confirmed by Holt’s daughter and stepson. Bonilla was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Holt and second-degree attempted murder in the wounding of Brunson. Rebecca Escalante, who runs Becky’s Bail Bonds and Tax Service, has found the Hispanics in Dodge City to be considerably less assertive than what she’d been accustomed to in Texas. Bonilla worked part-time for Escalante, and on one visit to see him in jail she took along Claire O’Brien, a reporter with the Dodge City Daily Globe. O’Brien’s article about Bonilla—in which he said he didn’t think a Hispanic could get a fair trial in Ford County— caused a sensation in Dodge City. County Attorney Terry Malone subpoenaed both O’Brien and Escalante—demanding that they reveal any anonymous sources, that O’Brien hand over her notes on the jailhouse interview, and that they both testify in a closed-door proceeding. Doug Anstaett, the executive director of the Kansas Press Association, thought the case made a good argument for the Kansas legislature to pass a shield law to protect reporters. Attorney Lucille Douglass, who began representing Bonilla, claimed that information about weapons and anti-Hispanic sentiment could have been easily obtained by subpoenaing Brunson’s MySpace page. A blog in Texas, Latina Lista, described Dodge City as “a place where some of the ‘white’ locals like to play a game they call ‘Border Patrol’ where they use their trucks to intimidate Latino pedestrians.” The implication was that Bonilla was nearly run over because he is Hispanic. Mentions gun rights. In early March, it was announced that Bonilla accepted a plea bargain on the reduced charges of voluntary manslaughter and aggravated battery, resulting in a sentence of seventy-four months. As a noncitizen who had committed a felony, he would presumably be deported after completing his sentence.

Calvin Trillin, Annals of Crime, “Incident in Dodge City,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2010, p. 30

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