If your liberal organ is leaking and smearing, you might want to see a urologist.
Rush Limbaugh lecturing anybody on “Journalism 101” would be funny if it weren’t pathetically self-serving. And the man who once compared the President’s daughter to a dog deigning to speak on how the media should treat people is just sickening.
You know, I am sort of confused here. Usually it would be libertarians and liberals protesting the harsh treatment of a weak suspect by the FBI, an organization that I personally feel is too powerful. You would expect the conservatives and authoritarian-populists to be urging the FBI on, hoping the Feds hammer this guy. If there’s to be a political slant on this issue, that’s what I’d expect it to be.
Did this person, the liberal accuser, target Hatfill for some supposedly political reason? How did this manage not only to acquire a political bent, but one opposite of what would be expected?
BTW, I finally got around to reading the Rosenberg link. Thank you Mojo and minty green. It is indeed interesting. Frankly I do not quite know what to make of it. It draws significant conclusions, which I do not have the expertise to evaluate.
I know of no evidence that this is the case, nor have I seen it alleged by anyone.
That’s the point I was getting at. Liberals are often more concerned about individual liberties, but this is a strange exception. It’s certainly surprising to see Rush Limbaugh more concerned than minty green about this individual’s civil rights!
BTW I mst admit that I just came across an editorial in WaPo complaining about Hatfill’s treatment.
BTW, here’s a possible instance of spin. Kristof’s Times column today said, “He has also failed three successive polygraph examinations since January, and canceled plans for another polygraph exam two weeks ago.”
Hatfill’s statement said, "Later, I went down to the Washington field office and an onsite polygraph was administered. After reviewing the polygraph charts in private, the polygraph examiner told me that I had passed and that he believed I had nothing to do with the anthrax letters. "
An article in the NY Post (I have misplaced the link) said the polygraph showed Hatfill was lying about certain past activities. It didn’t specifically say that he was shown to be not lying about anthrax, but that seemed to be the implication.
If Kristof said that Hatfill had flunked the polygraph examinations, but left out the fact that the polygraph showed him to be tellling the truth about anthrax, then this was unfair journalism.
For pity’s sake, wring, do you think threads exist in a vacuum? An OP by that particular OP’er is blindly partisan practically by definition, as you yourself have observed many times. It’s doing us all a favor to try to rebut it up front.
Now what’s going on with the manufactured rebuttals lately, sister? If you’re trying to give a certain knee-jerk faction on the board difficulty in continuing to categorize you as a knee-jerker, like the way Clinton denounced Sistah Souljah, I wish you’d cleared it with me ahead of time, privately. I’d have been happy to play along, just for giggles.
But as it is, I plan to continue to call right things right and wrong things wrong - and the approach you’re taking is wrong. Sorry.
Please identify a civil rights violation that has occurred in this case. There is no civil right not to be the subject of a news story.
Ahhhh, I get it now, thanks to minty green’s post. This is about not just harassment by the FBI, but by the news media. Since conservatives dislike most journalists, that’s why they’d defend the guy when they peceive harassment of an individual coming from the established media. Since liberals are big supporters of the news media and “free press” issues, they’re defending the media.
Now it makes a little sense. You think you have liberal/conservative figured out, then this monkey wrench gets thrown in. At least it makes sense in the end. Too bad there isn’t a civil liberty that would protect us from the media…oh, for the good ol’ days of common law libel, when the individual was more important than the media apparatus.
If “civil rights” is defined to mean only government infringement of liberty, then there is no “civil right” not to be libeled by the media. By that tight definition, racial discrimination in civilian job or housing also couldn’t be called “civil rights violations.”
More loosely defined, one might consider it a civil rights violation if a group of powerful media slandered an innocent person, as was done to Richard Jewell. In any event, it’s wrong, whatever you call it.
Even with the tight definition, it might be called a “civil rights violation” if the FBI carried out an organized campaign to destroy one’s reputation by means of dishonest or misleading publicity and by release of confidential data. Again, regardless of what you call it, we all agree that it’s wrong.
RexDart, I like your theory. At least it has some consistency.
You have offered no evidence whatsoever that the FBI has conducted “an organized campaign” of “dishonest or misleading publicity” or released any “confidential data.” You’ve offered
As for the press attention, we already have the torts of libel and of invasion of privacy to deal with that. Nothing that has been reported thus far has been shown to be false, as is required for a libel suit. As for invasion of privacy, that simply doesn’t apply when the information publicized is a matter of legitimate public interest–and this investigation is unquestionably a matter of legitimate public interest. Fortunately, the constitutional right to freedom of the press is not so easily cast aside.
Oops. "You’ve offered . . . " was going to turn to the media issue until I decided to start off the discussion differently. Sorry for any confusion.
My interpretation of the leaks is that they appear to have come from the FBI and some of them appear to be misleading, e.g., flunking the lie detector tests (but not the part about anthrax.) I can’t prove these possibilities. If and when FBI agents are forced to testify under oath, we may learn more.
Regarding the torts, I cannot recall what Richard Jewell’s claims were based on. Was it invasion of privacy or slander? ISTM that if Hatfill turns out to be innocent, he will be in a similar legal position to Jewell.
Defamation, it appears. Tom Brokaw said “Look, they probably got enough to arrest him. They probably have got enough to try him.” http://www.cnn.com/US/9701/03/olympic.bombing/
But the only thing you’ve suggested is not true about the media reports on Hatfill is the polygraph tests, and the only thing we have to go on there is Hatfill’s word. Given that he’s already been shown to be a lying son of a bitch w/r/t his resume, it’s no great stretch to believe that he’s lying about that too.
A. Since I’ve routinely rebutted the OP, and have chastized him for partisan bullshit, yes, I’m aware of his history. Of course, I generally manage to chastize him for the nonesense w/o doing it myself. YM obviously varied.
B. ‘clearing’ my posts through you? “Manufactured rebuttals?” Thanks for the laughs.
C. Oddly enough, I call things the way **I ** see 'em, and when I see some one acting like a jerk, I tend to mention it. I don’t check their political standing first. In this case I already had taken the OP to task, and noted others (tho I did not name them) doing the same damn thing. I think it’s hypocritical to call some one out for being knee jerk while doing the same fucking thing. Apparently you disagree.
If that were the case, isn’t he a ‘terrorist suspect’…or an ‘illegal combatant’ …or summin’ - this Administration doesn’t appear to need any evidence to detain US citizens indefinitely and without recourse to legal counsel ?
As an aside, isn’t it also a worry that an Agency charged with investigation and collation of evidence takes it upon a role akin to unsubstantiated tabloid sensationalism. I don’t quite see how that enhances the reputation of the FBI.
Huh? Brokaw was referring to Richard Jewell in 1996, not this Hatfill guy.
minty, I think you and I both know that the Bush/Cheney team has been covering up the time-travel technology that they’ve developed to travel back to the Clinton administration and engage in gross violations of civil rights.
OK, let’s suppose Tom Brokaw hadn’t uttered those fateful words. Would Richard Jewell’s overall treatment by the media have been any less wrong? Would it be morally OK to turn an innocent man’s life inside out in public, so long as you don’t actually come out and slander him? So long as you limit yourself to innuendo? (Would you want your every foible made fodder for the tabloids?)
Minty, as a lefty meself, I’m disappointed at your legalistic approach to this problem. Unless a specific law is violated, then no harm has been done? Is that really your view? Do you not see a pattern in the way the FBI uses the media to put heat on suspects? Do you not see any wrong in this process, when those suspects turn out to be innocent?
Maybe we need to keep in mind those “unenumerated rights” in the 9th amendment.
Now I will grant you, december’s OP has a (predictably) partisan spin, but even december isn’t wrong all of the time. 
And as for the first amendment argument, I’m all for freedom of the press, but it should not be used as a cudgel against the powerless.
If the FBI has been leaking false information, spoke-, Hatfill will have a defamation claim against them too (at least I think this sort of thing is actionable under the Federal Tort Claims Act–I may be wrong). If it’s not false, what’s the problem? Is the agency supposed to hide that it has obtained and executed a search warrant on a person being investigated in connection with an infamous crime? I’m not saying that leaks about an ongoing investigation are a good thing, but it’s awful hard for me to get worked up about it unless they’re lying. What can I say, I place great value on a free press, and I don’t like it when the government unecessarily hides information from the public.
And the 9th Amendment is nothing but a truism. All it says is that you can’t deny an asserted right on the basis that it isn’t specifically identified in the Constitution. It does not identify any particular rights, and it does not prevent any rights from being denied for any other reason.
The leaked information doesn’t have to be false to do harm, minty. That’s my point. Suppose the guy were secretly a member of some unpopular group, and the FBI leaked that info to the press. Or what if the FBI simply leaked that “We’ve been watching this guy for months. He’s our primary suspect.” That statement, while it might be true, would be certain to harm the target if made public.
What we’re seeing here (and what we saw in the Jewell case) is the FBI using the “free press” as a weapon. The FBI leaks info to the press in a high-profile case. The press goes into a frenzy. The FBI watches and waits for either: 1)the press to turn up something on the guy the FBI didn’t know, or 2)the suspect to crack. If neither of those things happen, well, at least the FBI has come up with a suspect to prove they’re doing something and to take some heat off themselves.
All well and good if the guy happens to be guilty. But Jewell wasn’t. And I sat and watched here in Atlanta as the free press turned him into a pariah. They dug up every bit of dirt on him they could find, and rushed it to the front page. Even the stuff which did not cross the line into slander was calculated to make him look bad. Had Jewell not fought to vindicate himself, he would remain under a cloud of suspicion to this day.
You are concerned about the FBI “hiding” information from the press? I am concerned that they may only be selectively revealing information. I fear that they are only leaking information which implicates their target, and are keeping to themselves information which might tend to exonerate him.
What we’re seeing is not merely leaks about an investigation. We’re seeing leaks used as a tool of investigation. Here. In the Jewell case. In the Lee/Los Alamos case. In the Jon Benet Ramsey case. It seems to happen every time the police have an unsolved, high profile crime, for which they need to come up with a suspect. Don’t have a suspect? Hell, enlist the press to manufacture one!
As for the Constitutional implications:
Just because a right has not yet been recognized by a court does not mean the right does not exist (my point in bringing up the 9th Amendment). And I smelled a violation of Jewell’s rights back in '96. And I smell a violation of Hatfill’s rights now. (A conclusion, incidentally, which is not affected by whether he might ultimately be found guilty.)
Why is everybody getting their knickers in a knot over a polygraph test that Hatfill may or may not have passed? Aren’t polygraph results inadmissable in court?