KEISLING: The moral and ethical decline of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Part 3
As you can tell this is the 3rd part of a 3 part series. I also highly recommend reading parts 1 & 2.
Some excerpts form the above link:
Fina's letter is addressed to William Carpenter, the supervising judge of a grand jury, and reads as follows:
"RE: Grand Jury Information
"Dear Judge Carpenter:[/I]
[/I]
"We are providing this correspondence to report the release of Grand Jury information. Yesterday, the undersigned were separately contacted by an individual who represented himself as Chris Brennan, 'a reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News.' He stated that he was in possession of a 2009 email between Frank Fina, Marc Costanzo and William Davis. At the time, Frank Fina was Chief Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office and Marc Costanzo and William Davis were prosecutors in that section. The email contained a lengthy review of the evidence and testimony from a Statewide Grand Jury investigation being conducted at the time. As part of that investigation, information derived from the Grand Jury - about a certain prominent individual who was never charged - was detailed in this internal email. We are hesitant to detail this information in a correspondence but will gladly do so in person. We can represent to the Court that the email contained extensive evidence and information that clearly fall within the ambit of Grand Jury secrecy. The reporter stated that he had a copy of the email and he even recited from it when questioned about the contents. The reporter also stated that the email was only between Fina, Davis and Costanzo. We can assure the Court that none of us disclosed this email.[/I]
[/I]
"We were subsequently called by William Davis, now in private practice in Delaware County, who relayed that he too had been called by Brennan about this email. All three of us, separately, informed Brennan that he possessed secret Grand Jury information and that whoever gave it to him had likely committed a serious crime. We are also certain that, as individuals who continue to be sworn to secrecy before the Grand Jury in question, we have an obligation to disclose this apparent breach of secrecy to the current Supervising Judge.[/I]
[/I]
"We are available, at the Court's discretion, to provide further details and answer any questions regarding this matter. We would prefer to do so on the record in camera, but obviously defer to the Court in this regard."[/I]
Costanzo and Fina, who both now work for DA Seth Williams, signed the letter and cc'd it to DA Williams' First Assistant District Attorney, Edward McCann.
So, this certainly wasn't a case of disinterested officers of the court reporting a supposed leak.
It's instead a case of patronage chums of cashiered Gov. Tom Corbett diverting attention from their own problems.
Those problems include the nettlesome and pertinent question of whether the Sandusky prosecutors were sharing pornographic emails with a state Supreme Court justice and others when they should have been going after Jerry Sandusky.
Unholy intersection of politics, courts, and Philadelphia newspapers[/B][/I]
Fina's letter to the judge speaks volumes to illustrate the unholy intersection in Pennsylvania between politics, the courts, and the Philadelphia newspapers.
The Inquirer and the Daily News did little to expose wrongs in the Sandusky case or, for that matter, much of anything to expose the culture of corruption in Harrisburg and State College.
Interstate General Media, owner of the Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, in fact, controversially gave sitting Gov. Corbett his own newspaper column in 2013.
"There is no political bias or intent, other than providing content that is interesting to our readers," Interstate CEO Robert J. Hall at the time felt compelled to explain to his readers of the Republican governor's unusual column.
Now, intentionally or not, Interstate General Media is doing its best to change the conversation from the Sandusky prosecution to the much smaller question of who may have given information to its own newspaper, the Daily News.
It's all very odd, and smacks of political revenge on Kane.
Fina's current boss, DA Seth Williams, as many Pennsylvanians know, is enmeshed in a political fight with AG Kane, and has himself been frequently mentioned as a future candidate for AG Kane's job, or other offices. (Just last month the Inquirer published a fawning article titled "Seth Williams for Senate.")
Here we see, not journalism, but politics-as-usual in Pennsylvania. This isn't a court fight; it's a political mud-slinging fest, orchestrated by a dying newspaper company.
That the state courts wandered into this political mud fight is now obvious, and regrettable.
Not so obvious are the ethical problems or outright incompetence of Interstate General Media, owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, and its reporter, Chris Brennan.
Did the Inquirer and Daily News burn their source?[/I][/B]
That the Daily News’ reporter would read a secret email verbatim to Kane’s political enemies, as Fina describes in his letter to the judge, and give them ammunition to go after his source, is an amateurish and careless mistake, to say the least.
But it’s worse than just casual carelessness or incompetence on the Daily News’ part.
By all accounts, including those found in a growing mound of court documents, reporter Brennan was working on an article published a month later, on June 6, 2014, titled, “State A.G. Kane probed Philly NAACP leader Mondesire’s finances 5 years ago.”
Brennan’s article begins:
“STATE ATTORNEY General Kathleen Kane is reviewing a 2009 grand-jury investigation of J. Whyatt Mondesire, former head of the NAACP in Philadelphia, and one of his employees, according to documents obtained by the Daily News.”
It appears that reporter Brennan and Interstate General Media, intentionally or not, committed a cardinal sin in journalism: what’s known in the media business as “burning a source.”
(A cardinal sin, by the way, as defined by dictionary.com, is “an unforgivable error or misjudgment: lack of impartiality is considered a cardinal sin in broadcasting circles.”[/I])
As Brennan and the Philadelphia newspapers should know, a reporter and publisher are supposed to protect their sources, not toss them overboard, as we see here.
There is nothing illegal about burning a source. It’s simply highly unethical, and unwise.
Not only does a newspaper acting this way hurt its confidential source, it hurts itself.
No one will come to a newspaper, or a reporter, one cannot trust, particularly once it becomes known you will carelessly toss a source to the dogs, or the courts.
Interstate General Media, the Inquirer and the Daily News, have yet to explain after months of this three-ring circus how AG Kane was first identified as a source of this leaked email.
But the problem for Pennsylvanians runs deeper than this unsightly, sideshow flap.
What they’re trying to do, of course, is not only hurt Kathleen Kane politically, and hurt her in the courts.
They are trying to change the subject away from Fina’s mishandling of the Sandusky case.
This post was edited on 4/3 2:57 PM by WeR0206
As you can tell this is the 3rd part of a 3 part series. I also highly recommend reading parts 1 & 2.
Some excerpts form the above link:
Fina's letter is addressed to William Carpenter, the supervising judge of a grand jury, and reads as follows:
"RE: Grand Jury Information
"Dear Judge Carpenter:[/I]
[/I]
"We are providing this correspondence to report the release of Grand Jury information. Yesterday, the undersigned were separately contacted by an individual who represented himself as Chris Brennan, 'a reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News.' He stated that he was in possession of a 2009 email between Frank Fina, Marc Costanzo and William Davis. At the time, Frank Fina was Chief Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office and Marc Costanzo and William Davis were prosecutors in that section. The email contained a lengthy review of the evidence and testimony from a Statewide Grand Jury investigation being conducted at the time. As part of that investigation, information derived from the Grand Jury - about a certain prominent individual who was never charged - was detailed in this internal email. We are hesitant to detail this information in a correspondence but will gladly do so in person. We can represent to the Court that the email contained extensive evidence and information that clearly fall within the ambit of Grand Jury secrecy. The reporter stated that he had a copy of the email and he even recited from it when questioned about the contents. The reporter also stated that the email was only between Fina, Davis and Costanzo. We can assure the Court that none of us disclosed this email.[/I]
[/I]
"We were subsequently called by William Davis, now in private practice in Delaware County, who relayed that he too had been called by Brennan about this email. All three of us, separately, informed Brennan that he possessed secret Grand Jury information and that whoever gave it to him had likely committed a serious crime. We are also certain that, as individuals who continue to be sworn to secrecy before the Grand Jury in question, we have an obligation to disclose this apparent breach of secrecy to the current Supervising Judge.[/I]
[/I]
"We are available, at the Court's discretion, to provide further details and answer any questions regarding this matter. We would prefer to do so on the record in camera, but obviously defer to the Court in this regard."[/I]
Costanzo and Fina, who both now work for DA Seth Williams, signed the letter and cc'd it to DA Williams' First Assistant District Attorney, Edward McCann.
So, this certainly wasn't a case of disinterested officers of the court reporting a supposed leak.
It's instead a case of patronage chums of cashiered Gov. Tom Corbett diverting attention from their own problems.
Those problems include the nettlesome and pertinent question of whether the Sandusky prosecutors were sharing pornographic emails with a state Supreme Court justice and others when they should have been going after Jerry Sandusky.
Unholy intersection of politics, courts, and Philadelphia newspapers[/B][/I]
Fina's letter to the judge speaks volumes to illustrate the unholy intersection in Pennsylvania between politics, the courts, and the Philadelphia newspapers.
The Inquirer and the Daily News did little to expose wrongs in the Sandusky case or, for that matter, much of anything to expose the culture of corruption in Harrisburg and State College.
Interstate General Media, owner of the Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, in fact, controversially gave sitting Gov. Corbett his own newspaper column in 2013.
"There is no political bias or intent, other than providing content that is interesting to our readers," Interstate CEO Robert J. Hall at the time felt compelled to explain to his readers of the Republican governor's unusual column.
Now, intentionally or not, Interstate General Media is doing its best to change the conversation from the Sandusky prosecution to the much smaller question of who may have given information to its own newspaper, the Daily News.
It's all very odd, and smacks of political revenge on Kane.
Fina's current boss, DA Seth Williams, as many Pennsylvanians know, is enmeshed in a political fight with AG Kane, and has himself been frequently mentioned as a future candidate for AG Kane's job, or other offices. (Just last month the Inquirer published a fawning article titled "Seth Williams for Senate.")
Here we see, not journalism, but politics-as-usual in Pennsylvania. This isn't a court fight; it's a political mud-slinging fest, orchestrated by a dying newspaper company.
That the state courts wandered into this political mud fight is now obvious, and regrettable.
Not so obvious are the ethical problems or outright incompetence of Interstate General Media, owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, and its reporter, Chris Brennan.
Did the Inquirer and Daily News burn their source?[/I][/B]
That the Daily News’ reporter would read a secret email verbatim to Kane’s political enemies, as Fina describes in his letter to the judge, and give them ammunition to go after his source, is an amateurish and careless mistake, to say the least.
But it’s worse than just casual carelessness or incompetence on the Daily News’ part.
By all accounts, including those found in a growing mound of court documents, reporter Brennan was working on an article published a month later, on June 6, 2014, titled, “State A.G. Kane probed Philly NAACP leader Mondesire’s finances 5 years ago.”
Brennan’s article begins:
“STATE ATTORNEY General Kathleen Kane is reviewing a 2009 grand-jury investigation of J. Whyatt Mondesire, former head of the NAACP in Philadelphia, and one of his employees, according to documents obtained by the Daily News.”
It appears that reporter Brennan and Interstate General Media, intentionally or not, committed a cardinal sin in journalism: what’s known in the media business as “burning a source.”
(A cardinal sin, by the way, as defined by dictionary.com, is “an unforgivable error or misjudgment: lack of impartiality is considered a cardinal sin in broadcasting circles.”[/I])
As Brennan and the Philadelphia newspapers should know, a reporter and publisher are supposed to protect their sources, not toss them overboard, as we see here.
There is nothing illegal about burning a source. It’s simply highly unethical, and unwise.
Not only does a newspaper acting this way hurt its confidential source, it hurts itself.
No one will come to a newspaper, or a reporter, one cannot trust, particularly once it becomes known you will carelessly toss a source to the dogs, or the courts.
Interstate General Media, the Inquirer and the Daily News, have yet to explain after months of this three-ring circus how AG Kane was first identified as a source of this leaked email.
But the problem for Pennsylvanians runs deeper than this unsightly, sideshow flap.
What they’re trying to do, of course, is not only hurt Kathleen Kane politically, and hurt her in the courts.
They are trying to change the subject away from Fina’s mishandling of the Sandusky case.
This post was edited on 4/3 2:57 PM by WeR0206
