October 19, 2007
NPR … NCRJ … NATHAN (and who else but Eichenwald)
(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.
What’s ironic about Folkenflik is that he’s the same man who in 2001 slammed Geraldo Rivera over his reporting methods.
Maybe we ought to ask Folkenflik whether he likes red or white with his red herring.
[...] renders child porn more terrifying and harder to do anything about Jump to Comments Debbie Nathan raises a taboo but important point yesterday morning: We must be allowed to see the ch…. Why? Because we can't accurately report on that which we can't see. It's a [...]
If he was aware that his secret epilepsy impacted his journalistic credibility, wouldn’t he go to the extreme in keeping detailed and organized notes to protect that credibility? Isn’t that why reporters keep notes? I’m surprised Bush hasn’t nominated Eichenwald for one of the many openings in his administration.
Hello Ms. Nathan,
I’m glad to see your response to the NPR piece. I found Folkenflik’s bias actually fairly shocking, first because I have always relied on NPR as a source of even-handed information, and second because the degree of emotionalism Eichenwald displayed during the interview seemed to me to be seriously over the top.
Eichenwald seemed to be attempting to claim some higher moral ground for himself in his insistence that he was just saving an innocent boy from a life of depravity. Neither the extent of his involvement or the questionability of getting that involved in the first place were questioned.
Ugh. Just….ugh.
I left email on the NPR site telling them pretty much just what I told you, along with a comment that they had pretty seriously misrepresented your role in these events.
Best of luck and regards to you. I continue to admire your work.
Please help me understand this. How can someone who is affected by memory loss make it so the “memory loss” is selective? How can Mr. Eichenwald remember every little detail of his experience with Mr. Berry, but selectively forget all the things he did which would have called his integrity and ethics into question? The current stories are focusing on the wrong thing. The real question and story is why Mr. Eichenwald only forgot those items. As it stands right now he hasn’t forgotten anything that makes him look good or any inconsequential details, only the secret payments and administrator access. I can’t believe someone isn’t screaming foul a little louder on this one.
I just saw the 2nd DVD on the Friedmans: the one with the movie on it was damaged, so I have yet to see it. I was very impressed with your poise in that New York premier video, facing the lying detectives. She obviously thought you would sit down meekly when she took the stage again.
anyhow, here are my questions: “What did Mr. Friedman die of?” “What happened to Seth? Mrs. Friedman?” How can we help Jessie?.
In general, what can we the public do, when this kind of public hysteria grows around us? the witchhunting instinct seems to be part of this lynch mob mentality we get into in this country from time to time……almost cyclically. The United States of Amnesia, as Gore Vidal calls us.
Thanks for the work you do. NPR is rightly called ‘National Propaganda Radio’, by the way. Not coincidental when the head of the Public Broadcasting Corporation is a Republican. They hire corporate robots, not investigative reporters worth their pay there (except for Daniel Schorr).
Alice, to answer your questions:
Arnold Friedman took an overdose of prescribed heart medication while in prison and died. His death was ruled a suicide, though some in his family dispute that. Seth prefers not to be associated with the film, so I will not give details about his life; it is a private one. Mrs. Friedman is remarried. Jesse is fighting his conviction and was recently granted a hearing on a motion to overturn his conviction, based on evidence that at least some of the children who accused him were hypnotized during therapy sessions held in conjunction with the accusations. The New York Times ran an article on these efforts a few days ago.
I am on the board of the National Center for Reason and Justice (NCRJ), the “innocence project” I mentioned above. NCRJ began sponsoring Jesse’s innocence claim after “Capturing the Friedmans” came out. The group collects money for his appeal. He is being represented by Ron Kuby, a prominent attorney in New York City. You can contribute to Jesse’s appeal fund by going to NCRJ’s website: http://www.ncrj.com
As for your question: what do we do when witch hunting (what I often call “moral panic”) grows in the US? Everyone has his or her own way of responding. But in a nutshell, I think we need to support every democratic process we can that helps get objective, in-depth information to people. In any age and any country, moral panic and hysteria erupt from deep wellsprings of social anxiety. The springs these days are charged by cynical politicians and by media more out to make a buck than produce truthful, useful information. So we have to challenge the politicians and yellow journos, at the same time we try to find out as much as we can about the world, in order to quell our irrational fears about things that go bump in the night.
PS: Lately I’ve been getting posts from people who sent them with fake email addresses. My blog is comment-moderated, and I often edit posts after letting senders know beforehand that I’m doing this. I will not post comments sent with fake email addresses — or for which writers don’t respond if I contact them. Also, I do not post comments that I think are potentially libelous. Thanks. DN
And why don’t you just leave Kurt Eichenwald alone? I mean, we about had enough of the whole Berry thing already.
This site does look like pro-underage sex anyway… and that is so wrong.
Ms. Nathan, I am all for your position. Your question is: what about this law?
Your point about Eichenwald was well made. Of course we cannot condemn him for getting involved, but, then again, we have to ask on what basis does he get excused legally when he had to have broken the law.
NPR has a republican head but is hardly a pro-republican radio network. Rather the opposite, speaking as a centrist. And, taking the point further, jury members in liberal counties in California are as unwilling as juries drawn from conservative populations to listen to reason about accusations of child sex abuse according to a high-profile defense attorney from California that I know.
That is what you see here with NPR, not a “right-wing conspiracy”, but a total surrender of both sides of the political aisle and the news media to the hysteria generated around the problem.
For Jo Ann Clair: “This site looks pro-underage sex…and that is so wrong”.
Well, gee, that would depend on your definition of underage sex. 14 years old or 16? 10 or 17?
And how, in your mind, would a site that asked the question about Eichenwald be pro-underage sex?
Reminds me of so many controversies in the US such as gun control. You are either supposed to be for banning all guns or lifting all restrictions.
No place for the middle ground,and always the assumption that if you oppose one side in any way, you are automatically for the opposite side of a controversy. People who react this way have abandoned reason.
Being pro-underage sex is soo wrong JoAnn? Well hmm…that does beg several questions.
1) Does that make all of the pro-sex underagers wrong too?
Is it that this site is pro-underage sex or possibly that it is pro-discussion and anti-willful ignorance regarding a reality that already exists?
2) Should we be anti-sex in regards to underagers?
3) What is an underager?
4) What do we do with all of these sexual underagers that we already have? Some states have started putting them on sex-offender registries…is that the right approach?
5) At what age should we start being pro-sex towards other people?
6) Should we be equally sex-negative to a 3 y/o underager and a 15 y/o underager?
7) How do we stop sites like these…ones that you declare “pro-underage sex”…from creating horny, sex obsessed and lustfull underagers as it seems they have done for the last several thousand years…strangely enough…before the printed word even existed.
man…i could come up with several more…maybe you can help me out with those though.
Yes, Ms.Nathan I did comment earlier, and sorry not to have confirmed sooner.
So now you’re “promoting underage sex”? Amazing!
And to think that all this time I had no idea that sex amongst kids in their early teens, for example, needed any “promoting”.
How could I be so naive?!
When my friends and I were at the age of eleven or twelve, why weren’t you around “promoting underage sex”?
We might have felt less guilty about it.