Post by Sly Fox on Sept 25, 2005 14:48:20 GMT -5
If you've been following firestorm in Pennsylvania over Intelligent Design, a former LU student is now caught in the middle of the legal proceedings. I'm not sure what I'd do in his shoes:
ydr.com/story/doverbiology/86786/
Reporters face First Amendment dilemma
Freelance writers must decide if they’ll answer questions
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Sunday, September 25, 2005
One is a self-employed father who homeschools his youngest son.
The other is a stay-at-home mother nursing her infant daughter.
On Tuesday, Joseph Maldonado, a freelance writer with the York Daily Record/Sunday News, and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb, a freelancer for The York Dispatch, will have to decide whether they will answer a lawyer’s questions during depositions about what they saw and heard at Dover Area School Board meetings in June 2004.
Both say it will be a tough decision.
If they answer the questions, they could be crossing a line that many reporters consider sacred.
If they don’t, a federal judge could hold them in contempt of court and fine them or send them to jail. Or both.
A First Amendment trial begins Monday in federal court in Harrisburg regarding the Dover school district’s fight over intelligent design.
While Maldonado and Bernhard-Bubb didn’t want to comment on what they will do, they say it’s been weighing heavily on their minds.
Maldonado said he wakes up each morning at 4 a.m. unable to sleep. Bernhard-Bubb and her husband have been trying to make arrangements for who would watch their children during the day.
Newspapers have long argued that the First Amendment protection of the press extends to keeping reporters off the stand. They believe they must maintain their role as independent observers, and fear that such testimony would have a chilling effect on newsgathering.
Bernhard-Bubb’s and Maldonado’s dilemmas come at a time when some believe journalists’ constitutional protection is under attack. In a case that has received international attention, Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, has been sitting in prison since July, when she refused to reveal a source.
But unlike Miller, Bernhard-Bubb and Maldonado are not well-known journalists. They cover small-town school districts such as Dover and say they never thought about being thrust into the spotlight of a national story.
Maldonado grew up on Queen Street in York and graduated from William Penn Senior High School. He was raised a Baptist and ran the Bible club in high school. He spent a semester at Liberty University, a Christian college, before leaving to join the Air Force.
He eventually went back to college and earned a degree in computer systems integration at University of Great Falls.
Still, Maldonado knew he always wanted to be a writer. He has self-published a collection of his poetry and a book about his family’s history.
Bernhard-Bubb’s son is 3, and her daughter is 7 months.
She was born in Kalamazoo, Mich. She pursued an English degree at Brigham Young University. She remains one semester shy of her degree and hopes one day, perhaps when the kids are older, to return to school.
Bernhard-Bubb, 28, and her husband are Mormon.
They both worked for a while in New Mexico, teaching on a Navajo reservation.
They moved to York County in 2001 so her husband could take a job teaching in the York City School District.
Her husband is a graduate of Dover Area High School. She became a correspondent because she wanted a flexible job when she became pregnant with her son. She chose the Dover district because she thought it would be fun covering the district where her husband went to school.
Also unlike Miller, Bernhard-Bubb and Maldonado are private contractors, not employed by the newspapers for which they write.
Since the issue regarding contempt of court came up late last week, discussions regarding who would pay any court fines have not yet taken place with officials of MediaNews, said Daily Record/Sunday News Editor Jim McClure.
“We’ve been supportive of Joe and admire his tenacity and expect to remain supportive,” McClure said.
The York Dispatch’s Editor Lori Goodlin said that management there has also not had a chance to discuss who would cover them, but she said the newspaper does not expect the correspondent to foot the bill.
“We’ve told Heidi all along that we’re behind her,” Goodlin said.
Both newspapers are covering the correspondents’ legal costs.
Also because they are not newspaper employees, Maldonado and Bernhard-Bubb are paid only for the stories they write. Should they go to jail, they would not be able to work.
“My husband is kind of the breadwinner,” Bernhard-Bubb said. “But without my income, we would not survive.”
Maldonado said his family also depends on the writing income, even though he admits it’s not much.
Maldonado is also the owner of PBJJ’s, a salad and sandwich shop at Central Market. If he were in jail, he said he doesn’t know if the stand would stay open.
On Saturday, a few of his peanut butter items were out of stock at the stand. He’s holding off on reordering some things, he said, until he finds out what happens Tuesday.
Freelance writers must decide if they’ll answer questions
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Sunday, September 25, 2005
One is a self-employed father who homeschools his youngest son.
The other is a stay-at-home mother nursing her infant daughter.
On Tuesday, Joseph Maldonado, a freelance writer with the York Daily Record/Sunday News, and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb, a freelancer for The York Dispatch, will have to decide whether they will answer a lawyer’s questions during depositions about what they saw and heard at Dover Area School Board meetings in June 2004.
Both say it will be a tough decision.
If they answer the questions, they could be crossing a line that many reporters consider sacred.
If they don’t, a federal judge could hold them in contempt of court and fine them or send them to jail. Or both.
A First Amendment trial begins Monday in federal court in Harrisburg regarding the Dover school district’s fight over intelligent design.
While Maldonado and Bernhard-Bubb didn’t want to comment on what they will do, they say it’s been weighing heavily on their minds.
Maldonado said he wakes up each morning at 4 a.m. unable to sleep. Bernhard-Bubb and her husband have been trying to make arrangements for who would watch their children during the day.
Newspapers have long argued that the First Amendment protection of the press extends to keeping reporters off the stand. They believe they must maintain their role as independent observers, and fear that such testimony would have a chilling effect on newsgathering.
Bernhard-Bubb’s and Maldonado’s dilemmas come at a time when some believe journalists’ constitutional protection is under attack. In a case that has received international attention, Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, has been sitting in prison since July, when she refused to reveal a source.
But unlike Miller, Bernhard-Bubb and Maldonado are not well-known journalists. They cover small-town school districts such as Dover and say they never thought about being thrust into the spotlight of a national story.
Maldonado grew up on Queen Street in York and graduated from William Penn Senior High School. He was raised a Baptist and ran the Bible club in high school. He spent a semester at Liberty University, a Christian college, before leaving to join the Air Force.
He eventually went back to college and earned a degree in computer systems integration at University of Great Falls.
Still, Maldonado knew he always wanted to be a writer. He has self-published a collection of his poetry and a book about his family’s history.
Bernhard-Bubb’s son is 3, and her daughter is 7 months.
She was born in Kalamazoo, Mich. She pursued an English degree at Brigham Young University. She remains one semester shy of her degree and hopes one day, perhaps when the kids are older, to return to school.
Bernhard-Bubb, 28, and her husband are Mormon.
They both worked for a while in New Mexico, teaching on a Navajo reservation.
They moved to York County in 2001 so her husband could take a job teaching in the York City School District.
Her husband is a graduate of Dover Area High School. She became a correspondent because she wanted a flexible job when she became pregnant with her son. She chose the Dover district because she thought it would be fun covering the district where her husband went to school.
Also unlike Miller, Bernhard-Bubb and Maldonado are private contractors, not employed by the newspapers for which they write.
Since the issue regarding contempt of court came up late last week, discussions regarding who would pay any court fines have not yet taken place with officials of MediaNews, said Daily Record/Sunday News Editor Jim McClure.
“We’ve been supportive of Joe and admire his tenacity and expect to remain supportive,” McClure said.
The York Dispatch’s Editor Lori Goodlin said that management there has also not had a chance to discuss who would cover them, but she said the newspaper does not expect the correspondent to foot the bill.
“We’ve told Heidi all along that we’re behind her,” Goodlin said.
Both newspapers are covering the correspondents’ legal costs.
Also because they are not newspaper employees, Maldonado and Bernhard-Bubb are paid only for the stories they write. Should they go to jail, they would not be able to work.
“My husband is kind of the breadwinner,” Bernhard-Bubb said. “But without my income, we would not survive.”
Maldonado said his family also depends on the writing income, even though he admits it’s not much.
Maldonado is also the owner of PBJJ’s, a salad and sandwich shop at Central Market. If he were in jail, he said he doesn’t know if the stand would stay open.
On Saturday, a few of his peanut butter items were out of stock at the stand. He’s holding off on reordering some things, he said, until he finds out what happens Tuesday.
ydr.com/story/doverbiology/86786/
