![19kids.1841[1].jpg](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/19kids.1841%5B1%5D-thumb.jpg)
from nytimes.com
Hot on the heels of yesterday's USA Today article about the escalating nature of "advocacy" journalism, comes a disclosure from the New York Times that Kurt Eichenwald, who wrote the much lauded 2005 article "Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World" about internet child pornography rings (an article that led to both congressional hearings and arrests), gave his main source, an eighteen year old boy and the main subject of the article, $2000 — something that is expressly forbidden by the Times.
At the time of publication Eichenwald drew both plaudits and criticism for his unusually close relationship with 18-year-old Justin Berry, who had been involved in online pornography since he was thirteen years old, and whom the reporter eventually convinced to get sober, leave the world of pornography, and become a federal informant.
Jack Shafer at Slate, in particular, took issue with Eichenwald's involvement with the story, saying at the time that while he admired Eichenwald's
"journalistic enterprise and thoroughness, I'm astonished at how he loses control of his 6,500-word investigation when he appears two-thirds through it to serve not as a reporter but as the legal advocate and protector."
"Our way, I can go to sleep at night knowing that kids who were in horrible situations have been saved. I'm not sure I could have handled the alternative choice of just standing back and letting it happen"
He did not, however, disclose the payment he had made, which slides Eichenwald's behaviour along the slippery slope of journalistic advocacy into the forbidden territory of paying a source — though the outcome, which saved a number of young children from abuse, is hard to argue with.
In yesterday's AP article Eichenwald "acknowledged that he should have disclosed his $2,000 payment to his editors, but said it slipped his mind [emphasis added] amid the other complicated ethical questions surrounding the story." It seems unlikely, however, that he would have forgotten the payments over the course of his dialogue with Shafer. Eichenwald also told the AP:
"He didn't intend to write about Berry, but had come across his distressing Web identity while researching an unrelated article. Eichenwald said he and his wife decided to try to get help for the young man...We were gambling 2,000 on the possibility of saving a kid's life."
Related:
Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World [NYT]
The New York Times Legal Aid Society [Slate]
NYObserver
With twenty months still to go before the Presidential election and following Hillary and Obama's "showdown" in Selma, the New York Observer compares Barack Obama's rhetoric in Alabama to that of JFK. [NYO]
ign.com
Fox News caught up with Kenneth Eng, writer of the controversial AsianWeek piece called 'Why I Hate Blacks,' which prompted an apology from the magazine, and got him fired. Eng tells Fox that he's only as racist as Sofia Coppola or Quentin Tarantino (or Chris Tucker or Shaquile O'Neal) by which he's presumably referring to the Asian characterizations in 'Lost In Translation' and 'Kill Bill.' But mostly he seems interested in discussing with John Gibson the finer points of Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate, which may sound like a fifth-tier Emerson Lake & Palmer album, but is actually Eng's recently-published SF/fantasy novel. Which turns out to be an elaborate racial metaphor. To wit:
KENNETH ENG, AUTHOR OF "WHY I HATE BLACKS": Well no, and personally if I'm racist then so is Sofia Coppola. And more importantly I'd like to talk about the philosophy of Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate, which tells a story about cyborg dragons fighting in the Middle Ages. And in this realm, evolution has worked in a more logical way, even though it's in a fantasy setting which makes it logical that dragons are more superior than humans, in that they have intelligence and are larger and they can...GIBSON: You're talking about some of your science fiction writing. You're a science fiction writer, correct?
ENG: Yes, but it relates to this as well.
GIBSON: But in your column you say, "I hate black people." In an earlier column you said you hate white people. You also said in an earlier column, evidently, I hate Asians. Now why is it you have, I mean, do you really believe that? You hate all those different people?ENG: Well, I generally hate black and white people, but the Asian article was sarcastic. It's kind of like the sarcasm I had in my novel, in which dragons slay tons and tons of humans. But this relates to – in the sense that dragons logically follow evolution so they would be able to wield metal.
Eng goes on to identify himself as a solipsist: "First of all, I would just like to say that solipsism proves that my philosophy is that since I am the only consciousness I'm aware of, any solipsism must be real." Anyway, this guy is doing wonderful work–he's debunking the stereotype that Asians are smart.
quotidiano.net
Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, who died earlier this week after mysteriously falling out of a fifth-story window in his Moscow apartment building, was investigating Russian arms sales to Syria and Iran, and had told his newspaper, Kommersant "that he had 'received information' about the sale of Sukhoi-34 fighter jets to Syria and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran via Belarus," and was preparing a story that might cause a major scandal. You can see where this is headed: while the government is terming the incident an "incitement to suicide," the Russian journalists' union and his newspaper think he was murdered. (In fact, yesterday Kommersant ran an article with the hed 'Ivan Safronov Was Killed,' which points out that the article he was working on "could have caused a major scandal." And of course, Russia is not a stranger to recent suspicious deaths.
Safronov had been investigating Russia's ties to these states for some time. The remembrances at the end of the Kommersant piece from friends and colleagues are pretty moving.
Last week, the Village Voice aired its dirty laundry in public. Village Voice Media under-boss Bill Jensen — whom editor-in-chief David Blum had publicly stared down last month — was in town for a visit. A few days and contentious flare-ups later, Blum was out, and a few more days later, the Village Voice had hired Tony Ortega, its fifth editor in less than two years. In this business, sometimes that's how it happens. But did it all have to go down so nastily?
First, it must be said: Ortega sounds like a great choice, the perfect balance between alt-weekly journalistic chops, attitude (mohawk + clubbing = alt-cred), and New Times company man (an essential, as it turns out). Let's hope for everyone's sake that fifth time's a charm.
This isn't about Ortega, though, and it's not even about whether or not Blum was wrong for the paper, which, according to Village Voice Media executive editor Mike Lacey, Bill Jensen, a number of off-the-rec staffers, Gawker, and a whole whack of letters to the editor, he was. That's the risk of the top spot, though; others know that well. Here it must also be said, as previously dislcosed, that Blum assigned and edited my cover story in November, and the experience was a terrific one, and I learned a lot. So, bias declared. But I don't think you need to declare much of a bias to credibly make the case that Village Voice Media gave him a raw, raw deal.
