Props to the Phoenix New Times for sticking it to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The paper has been reporting on the corruption and stupidity in his office for quite some time. Check out this week’s dispatch, in which the New Times lets Arpaio have it—despite inane threats of legal action.
This article appears in Dec 21-27, 2006.
Freedom of the press! As long as it’s accurate, it’s printable.
That’s not necessarily the case. But public records are public.
Okay, true: I didn’t give any qualifiers with my statement to differentiate what should not be printed. But if it is public, then the press should not shy away or be bullied by other interests trying to keep the truth from being published.
Take, for example, when television reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre had to fight to get their whistleblowing piece on bovine growth hormones in milk broadcast because one of the companies they were reporting on pressured the news station not to air it. The result was that the reporters were fired from the station after refusing bribes to hide their discoveries. (More from their side of the story: http://www.foxbghsuit.com/) They later won an Ethics in Journalism Award from the SPJ for standing up to their employer.
The idea of not backing down was more where I was going, considering Sheriff Arpaio is doing a lot of things he shouldn’t, such as keeping that alt. weekly from his public press conferences and the like.