Two Sun journalists target of a ban

[madinmaryland]

The Ehrlich administration has taken the unusual step of banning all state officials from speaking with two Sun journalists, who they say are "failing to objectively report" on state issues.
The governor's press office sent a memo Thursday to all state public information officers and to the governor's staff ordering them to not speak with State House Bureau Chief David Nitkin or columnist Michael Olesker.











"Do not return calls or comply with any requests," press secretary Shareese N. DeLeaver wrote in the memo. The ban is in effect "until further notice."

"There's no hiding the fact of The Sun's distaste for the results of this past election," said Greg Massoni, also a press secretary to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican. "And they are perfectly entitled to that opinion. We have a grave problem with their editorial page taking over the news division, and apparently that's what's happened."

Sun Editor Timothy A. Franklin, the top newsroom executive, called such a suggestion "ridiculous on its face." He said, "The editorial board and the newsroom are distinctly separate departments of the company, on separate floors of the building. We don't know what they're going to write about, and they don't know what we're going to write about. And that's as it should be."

Franklin said he offered Thursday to meet with Ehrlich and his press officers to go over specific complaints they have with Sun reporting, but that offer was turned down. He said Nitkin would continue to cover the State House, even though the ban will make his job more difficult.

"If they're refusing to explain their positions on issues, that's going to make it more challenging for us to balance stories," Franklin said. "But we'll find a way to talk to the administration." He said that other reporters who are not subject to the ban could ask questions of state officials for Nitkin.

Franklin added, "The thing that concerns me most is the administration trying to control the flow of news and information, and when the governor effectively says, 'I'll hand out information about state government, but only to reporters I approve of,' that's pretty scary in a democracy."

The governor's office pointed to two instances this week in which it felt Nitkin and Olesker were unfair.

In a column Tuesday, Olesker wrote that at a hearing in Annapolis last week, the governor's communications director, Paul E. Schurick, was "struggling mightily to keep a straight face" when Schurick said that political gain was "not a consideration" in making state pro-tourism commercials that feature the governor.

DeLeaver said Olesker did not attend that hearing and could not have known the expression on Schurick's face. Olesker said he did not need to be there to "know the patent absurdity of the remark" by Schurick.

"What I was clearly intending to say for any discerning reader was that the ads were clearly meant to profit the governor politically, and for anyone to say otherwise, they would have to struggle to keep from smiling," Olesker said yesterday. "Anyone past the age of elementary school could have figured that much out."

The second complaint was with a front-page map the Sun published Wednesday indicating properties across the state that were "being considered" for sale. In fact, the land shown on the map was all 450,000 acres of state-owned preservation land. A correction ran on Page 2A yesterday.

While that map appeared with an article written by Nitkin, he did not produce the map himself. Nevertheless, the governor's office said, he had some responsibility because the map ran with his story.

For a governor's office to take such an action is "highly unusual," said Bob Steele, a senior ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a journalism think tank. He said there are more productive ways for government officials to deal with disputes, such as going to senior editors with complaints.

"This ban on certain reporters, I believe, is counterproductive," Steele said. "It disservices the public. You take veteran journalists with sourcing and subject expertise and make it more difficult for them and the paper to do the job that needs to be done."


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.ban20nov20,1,6066045.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

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[acmavm]

1. This is so stupid. Now politicians are gonna ban journalists if the think

they're picking on them.

In a way, serves the damn media right. Spineless bastards have been kissing ass for too long, now if they show a little bit of backbone, they'll be banned. Personally I don't think it matters much. Except for a very few American media outlets, they're nothing but useless anyway. It's funny they're cutting their own throats. I go to the foreign press for the truth.

[LiberalEsto]

2. It stinks

but it's not new.
Politicians have long tried to muzzle reporters and entire newspapers.

Ages ago, as a young, gung-ho newspaper reporter, I pissed off a powerful, entrenched Democratic machine NJ mayor by investigating building permit corruption. The mayor called my wimp publisher and demanded I be taken off the Edison Township beat. I was demoted to a smaller beat in the boondocks, but I took it as a badge of honor.

Ehrlich is a disaster for Maryland. Unfortunately he's B*sh's little protegee, working to turn our Democratic state into a mini-reich. His slot-machine plan is a lousy way to fund education, and his self-promoting commercials do nothing but squander tax money that would be better spent on our schools.

[benburch]

3. Boycott Maryland?

I'm betting we could really make them pay for this.

[yellowcanine]

7. Hey wait a minute - We have a pubbie guv but we are a BLUE state.

What do you want to punish all of us for?

[Debbi801]

4. If you read Olesker's column a week or so ago, you'd have seen this coming

Olesker "dared" criticize Ehrlich in an article, not saying anything that wasn't factual, but all the same... Ehrlich is such a baby that if someone doesn't play by his rules, he packs up his marbles and goes home.

That's okay...Olesker will still be here in 2006 and Ehrlich won't be.

Debbi

[PSU84]

5. Ehrlich is Like Chimpy in many ways.

He fancies himself a protege of Shrub, and he models much of his administration on what chimpy does in DC. His relationship with the press - coddling the toadies who suck up to him and punishing those who dare to question him - is a case in point.

Ehrlich is a rat and we've got to get him out of Annapolis in '06.

[yellowcanine]

6. Does Erlich have the power to prevent anyone on the state payroll

from speaking to a particular reporter, particularly public information officers? 1st amendment and FOIA would seem to prohibit that. I would love to see a high profile court case over this.

[btrflykng9]

8. Seems par for the course

to me, especially now with Dan Rather stepping down. It just looks like one big attempt to create a media that is governed by one person.