(The original entry was updated on October 20)
If you’ve listened to AM or FM since October 19 and you’re visiting this site, it probably means you heard NPR’s “All Things Considered” about the strange fate of former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald. The program presented his claim, made publicly for the first time, that he failed to tell his editors about unethical behavior because a longstanding case of epilepsy made him “forget.”
For more about why I’ve been involved for some time in this developing story, click here.
To sum up: I did an op-ed for Salon last year, wondering how Eichenwald had managed to write a story implying he’d looked at child porn on the web, when no one — not even journalists — are allowed to examine such material for research purposes. My point was not to attack Eichenwald, but to say that journalists need to look. We need to know what the real problems are with child porn, versus what is simply hype and government misinformation. Who in the media could disagree?
But in response, Eichenwald threatened to sue me for libel, and he successfully pressured Salon to remove my piece from its site. His attacks on me were vicious. I was a “maggot,” he said, “a kook.” He wrote me that if I ever said anything about him again that he deemed wrong, he would financially “wipe me off the face of the earth.” I’m a freelancer who is hardly wealthy, and the attacks were grave threats to my reputation and livelihood. What unethical (and possibly illegal) secrets did this man have in his closet to call out such crazy ire?
Those secrets have been emerging during the last several months. They include not just that Eichenwald gave thousands of dollars to a source, but also that he had administrative privileges to a website that contained child porn, and used those privileges repeatedly to sign on to the site. When the secrets are all out (and I believe there are more to come), I look forward to returning to the larger issues they’ve raised.
The main one is that civil society — including journalists! — must be able to examine all aspects of human behavior, including the fact of child pornography. We need to do this using above-board, ethical means. But we can’t nowadays, because looking is forbidden. One well-regarded journalist, Larry Matthews, was indicted a few years ago and convicted after he looked anyway. That’s a tragedy. Wouldn’t it have been great if he — and Eichenwald — had been able to do their reporting the right way? We need to change the law.
The NPR piece did not touch on this important problem in the media, though I went over it with reporter David Folkenflik during our interview.
And by concentrating on Eichenwald’s personal story about epilepsy and memory, Folkenflik missed this question: What’s the real issue when a journalist pays a source lots of money and joins the source’s illegal porn website? Is it the claim that disease made him forget to tell editors he misbehaved? Or is it the indisputable fact that he misbehaved in the first place, before “forgetting”?
Then, there’s Eichenwald’s plaint, made this weekend on Folkenflik’s “Reporter’s Notebook,” that his critics never bothered to contact him.
Unmentioned by Folkenflik is that I did try to interview Eichenwald multiple times between March and August. I asked him in person, by phone message and by email. Each time, he responded by threatening to sue me. This was on top of his earlier threats to take me and Salon to court.
And yesterday, Folkenflik told listeners he spent “months” researching his Eichenwald story. Yet he called me — Eichenwald’s main press critic, who has been reporting the story for a year — only a week before he aired his piece. When we spoke then, he said he hadn’t read the 11,000-word article I’d done months earlier for Counterpunch, outlining numerous inaccuracies and biases in Eichenwald’s Justin Berry work for the Times. While I was writing that article, Eichenwald continually threatened to sue Counterpunch for libel if it was published. After it went to press, his lawyer wrote Counterpunch a letter saying nothing in the piece was libelous. But on “All Things Considered,” the New York Times went unchallenged when an editor claimed that Eichenwald’s Times story on Berry is like “money in the bank” because no one has shown it to be inaccurate. (To see my piece, click here:counterpunch-april-20071.pdf.)
How much sloppier and more credulous can NPR reporting get?
Finally, there’s Folkenflik’s observation on the program — clearly meant as criticism — that I’m a board member of (and donate to) the National Center for Reason and Justice.
NCRJ is an “innocence project” for people with strong claims of having been falsely accused or convicted of harming children. It’s a civil rights, human rights and education non-profit that sponsors and does fund raising for about 20 cases. NPR noted, critically, that my NCRJ affiliation was not reported in stories I’ve written about Eichenwald’s work — as though this were a problem.
It’s not a problem — though Eichenwald has spent months trying to make it seem like one by dragging NCRJ’s name through unrelated court filings. He’s done this to deflect attention from the real problem: his own work.
I have over 25 years’ experience as an advocacy journalist, working mainly for alternative publications such as The Texas Observer, the Village Voice, The Nation, and many others (and I’ve published in mainstream press such as New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic Monthly). My writing has won many national awards. It stands on its own. It belongs to a proud genre in which writers frankly identify themselves as politically involved, while following a strict code of journalism ethics.
My affiliation with the National Center for Reason and Justice is part and parcel of my advocacy journalism. For years on my website, I have prominently described myself as a NCRJ director and donor. If I write about a case NCRJ has elected to sponsor, I indicate in the article that I’m a board member. I did this recently in a piece published by The New York Times. NCRJ has nothing to do with Eichenwald or with anyone accused or convicted of crimes as a result of his reporting.
For NPR to ape Eichenwald’s sad obsession with my NCRJ affiliation seems rather McCarthyist. Still, every cloud has a silver lining. By mentioning NCRJ, National Public Radio has told the country about this fine organization and its work challenging false accusations and wrongful convictions. I hope people who hear the radio program will take time to visit NCRJ’s website to learn more and perhaps get involved.