Ethical firestorm burning in Miami

[DoYouEverWonder]

August 7, 2005

A distraught politician blames the press for his problems, and at the center of the storm is a Miami Herald reporter whose ethics are under attack.

The year was 1987, the politician was Gary Hart, and the reporter was Tom Fiedler. After the Colorado senator denied rumors of womanizing and invited reporters to watch him, Fielder got a tip, staked out Hart's Washington townhouse and found him there with another woman.

The story derailed Hart's presidential hopes and ignited a national debate over how far journalists should go in covering politicians' private lives.

Fiedler, now the executive editor of the Herald, finds himself at the center of a new ethical firestorm after firing Jim DeFede, the paper's hard-hitting local columnist. DeFede lost his job for taping a phone conversation with a Miami politician, Arthur Teele, shortly before Teele killed himself in the newspaper's lobby on July 27.

More than 500 reporters and editors around the country, including nearly 200 current or former Herald employees, have signed a petition protesting the firing.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/07/State/Ethical_firestorm_bur.shtml

[Massacure]

1. lmao, politicians should know better than to blame the press.

The press likes to bark a lot, but has plenty of bite too.

[pitohui]

2. what ethical dilemma?

all interviews and phone calls were taped when i was writing, a tape is just another and more accurate way of making a transcript of the conversation, which my editors needed to verify what was said

florida is effin' crazy if they think reporters are not taping all conversations & calls, this is standard

sorry the dude killed himself but if you don't want people to know something you said, don't effin' say it

the editor who fired the reporter should be fired himself for hypocrisy, you know in other cases he has prob. fired lots of reporters for not having proof of quotes & statements

how could a reporter work in florida, puts you in a completely unfair spot

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. So this editor is the guy who torpedoed Hart's chances at the WH

Thus allowing the bfee into the highest reaches of our government.

I don't know if Hart would have won, but he's a damn good politician, telegenic, articulate and smart. And, usually way ahead of his time...does anyone remember his prescience regarding 9/11?

Yeah, Hart was foolish to "dare" the press...however, the public destruction of his career for a personal indiscretion set a nasty precedent. (for Democrats, only though).

MKJ

:grr:

[wli]

4. URL to Hart's prescience wrt. 9/11?

Thanks.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. Here's a fairly recent one...Hart co-chaired a National Security

panel that found categorically that a terrorist attack was imminent.

There was a lot of post 9/11 recognition of the accuracy of the report.

Condi Rice's other wake-up call
Former Sen. Gary Hart says he, too, warned Rice about an imminent terror attack on two occasions before 9/11

By David Talbot

April 2, 2004 | Richard Clarke was not the only national security expert who warned Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials about terrorist threats before 9/11. Former Senator Gary Hart also directly told senior Bush officials loudly and clearly that, in his words, "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming." Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman) of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security challenges since World War II. After completing the report, which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumseld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/02/hart/index_np.html

MKJ

[wli]

6. Thanks. n/t

[Eloriel]

7. He's the one who finally got ME to register to vote for him --

in my 30s already by that time. I think he could've won.

However, sometime after he flamed out, I read a quote from him in one of the newsweekly magazines. It seems he had very mixed feelings about the job in that it irked the hell outta him to give up that much of his privacy. It was crystal clear from that that he had subconsciously at least sabotaged his own race.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

8. Being the perceptive and complex person he is, I could see him being

ambivalent about the presidency.

I'm still personally disappointed that he didn't get the shot. And, I'm glad he's continuing to work behind the scenes. MKJ