Hank Kalet

I have an explainer piece — basically an overview of the issue — at NJ Spotlight on a bill that would impose stricter limits on the size of ammunition magazines in New Jersey.

I’m not sure what to make of the report in Esquire yesterday saying indictments of Gov. Chris Christie’s allies are imminent, given that it is tied to a pair of unnamed sources. It certainly is titillating and, for critics of the governor, it offers another chance to get on the soapbox, but it also smacks of the kind of manipulation of the news industry that we have seen too often in the past from law enforcement officials and a failure to ask the right questions about sourcing and motive.

Here is how Esquire described what is happening:

Two sources with intimate knowledge of the case say Fishman’s pace is quickening — he has empaneled a second grand jury, and the U.S. Justice Department has sent assistant prosecutors and FBI agents to work the case.

Esquire doesn’t say why it is allowing these sources to remain anonymous, why it thought the information was so significant it had to be run even without names. And it never asks why the sources in question might want to inject this information into the public ether.

Readers of this blog know I am a consistent critic of the governor. But I also am a consistent critic of the use of unnamed sources. We use them too frequently and for the wrong reasons. The default position of every journalist should be to avoid relying on people who will not give you their names. Does this mean we shouldn’t allow sources to remain anonymous? No. By creating the default position, we force ourselves to ask questions and meet certain requirements before we break with the default. Exceptions must be well-considered and consistently applied and they must be based on a public’s need to know — so that they can protect themselves from danger or corruption, for instance, or so that they understand something they otherwise might not have experience with or access to. For me, the exceptions include (but are not limited to):

• Protecting a source against legitimate retaliation — which can include physical and economic retaliation — when the information is important to protect the public good.
• Protecting a private person’s reputation — for example, granting a homeless person or someone on public assistance anonymity so that he or she will feel comfortable sharing the details of his or her story.

Anonymity often is granted for national security stories, as well, which seems fair in most cases, though I don’t have any experience with that.

What strikes me about the Esquire piece, however, is that it smacks of the kind of abuse you usually see when the unnamed sources come from the law-enforcement community. These stories get leaked for a reason. Sometimes it is the intersection of a person “close to the investigation” wanting to demonstrate his or her significance with the need for reporters to scoop the competition. When that happens, the outcome can sometimes be disastrous — think of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. More often, though, the leak has a specific, but unstated purpose.

Sometimes that purpose is political, as it appears to have been when subpoenas of a nonprofit tied to Sen. Bob Menendez were leaked two months before the 2006 election. The subpoena — which was allegedly tied to an investigation of Menendez’s leasing of space to a nonprofit for whom he also secured federal grants — was grist for the campaign mill and posed a threat to Menendez’s re-election. The investigation, however, went nowhere and was closed in 2011. The Star-Ledger editorial board, which criticized Menendez at the time, published an editorial that re-evaluated its support of the subpoenas and laid out the primary issues — though it doesn’t address why the press ran with the leak without official confirmation. The paper, it said, thought “then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie was justified” in issuing the subpoenas because the “suspicion was that the group was paying inflated rents to Menendez as part of a corrupt deal.” The subtext is that the papers that ran with the story — and many, if not all, did — were correct to do so. Corruption was the key element.

But there is another side to these stories, especially when they develop from leaks, and that is the potential harm to someone who becomes publicly accused of wrongdoing by an unnamed and unconfirmed source.

As the Ledger said,

These are tough calls. If a prosecutor holds back, he can be accused of protecting the target. If he issues a subpoena too close to an election, he can be accused of political meddling.

But what of the news outlets? If we hold on the story for confirmation, we can be accused in the same way of “protecting the target” and we allow other news agencies to beat us to the story.

But the danger is much greater, as the Ledger said.

It is chilling to think that Menendez might have lost that election based on an allegation we now know is unfounded. And that’s why prosecutors have to be careful about dropping subpoenas during campaigns.

News outlets need to exhibit the same care — and ask the right questions. Why leak the information now? Who benefits? In the case of the Menendez probe, there remain questions about motivation, especially in the wake of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Should the subpoenas have been reported by the press without confirmation, as it was? Hindsight says no — but only because we know now that there was nothing to them and that Christie has been selective (as the Star-Ledger editorial points out). At the time, they raised legitimate questions about a senate candidate.

My point is that we need to ask better questions and have a stronger, more nuanced sense of the impact of the decisions we make.

So, let’s look at the Esquire scoop — an anonymously sourced story about the feds closing in on Christie allies — through this lens.  We might assume that it was just good reporting that ferreted out important information that was absolutely necessary to maintaining the public good — except it offers little to the larger political discussion. We knew Christie and his team were under investigation. We knew there were subpoenas and grand juries in play. None of that has been changed — and none of it justifies anonymity.

This is why the issue of motivation is important here. We are talking about a public, if anonymously sourced, declaration that keeps the scandal in the news as Christie makes the national fundraising rounds in preparation for an apparent White House run. So, maybe, it is politics driving the leak — which some may see as a nice bit of payback for Christie (see Menendez scandal above).

Or, and I think this is the most plausible explanation, the U.S. Attorney’s office may be sending a signal through the press to Christie allies that it is time for each to look out for him or herself, that indictments are coming and, when they do, all deals are off.

In either case, Esquire is being used by its sources. It gets its scoop, though in the larger scheme it is one that lacks much depth, but the sources get a whole lot more.

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According to The Wall Street Journal:

The now-empty, 4-acre Ferren Mall site will soon be torn down to make way for a mixed-use complex costing between $750 million and $1 billion that is intended to further overhaul the look of downtown New Brunswick.

The plans, according to the Journal call for a new complex that

would total 1.7 million square foot, with about 750,000 square feet of office space and between 500 and 600 apartments that would include both affordable and market-rate units. It also would have about 100,000 square feet of ground- and second-floor retail space.

 

“Modern corporate centers require places to live, entertainment venues, restaurants and shops to keep its workforce happy and accommodated,” in one central location, said Mayor Cahill. “The concept of leaving this city to work will be reversed.”

It is part of a larger redevelopment that also includes major changes on Rutgers’ College Avenue campus:

Just north of the train station, Rutgers is well under way with a $330 million redevelopment plan on its historic College Avenue campus. Also overseen by New Brunswick Development Corp., the project will include facilities for a new honors college as well as student housing and other classroom space. It also will feature a green plaza area with stores and a jumbo outdoor television screen.

 

Rutgers is one of the oldest schools in the nation and although the historic buildings make parts of the campus picturesque, a new academic building hasn’t been built on the College Avenue campus in about 50 years, said Anthony Calcado, vice president of university facilities and capital planning.

“We’re trying to target our investment so it makes a major impact for not just our students and faculty, but to those who are visiting the campus for the first time,” he said.

 

Other developments include the installation of bike lanes in and around the city, including one that will link the College Avenue campus with Douglass Residential College, another Rutgers unit that is a few miles away in New Brunswick. A number of residential projects by private developers for both students and area workers are also under way.

In other New Brunswick news this week:

From New Brunswick Today:

• Woman Who May Have Jumped From 12-Story NBPA Parking Garage Worked at RWJ Hospital

• New Brunswick to Remove Red Light Traffic Cameras This Year, At Least Temporarily

• Summer Marks Season of City Road Repairs After Rough Winter

• Woman Reportedly Shot Six Times in Front of Remsen Avenue House For Parolees

Chris Bosh seems a likeable and intelligent sort, and he’s certainly an underappreciated member of the Heat’s “Big Three.” But this quote from a story the other day (I just saw it) rankles me.

“I don’t think anybody really enjoyed this season like in years past,” Bosh told The Associated Press. “There was no, like, genuine joy all the time. It seemed like work. It was a job the whole year. Winning was just a relief. Losing was a cloud over us sometimes, and then we’d break out of it — and then go right back. But we got here. We had a chance. They were just better.”

I don’t think Bosh meant anything derogatory by the quotation — it was just an expression of his frustration after a terrible finals for his team — but it exhibits the same tone-deafness that Hillary Clinton demonstrated recently when she declared that she and former President Bill Clinton were “flat broke” when they left the White House. Bosh said the team’s efforts this past season — one in which the 30-year-old power forward earned $19 million, according to Basketball-Reference.com — “seemed like work.” It was unenjoyable, he said, difficult. It is not supposed to be like that.

Why not? He plays basketball for a paycheck — which fits the basic definition of work. For most of us, work is unenjoyable (I am lucky in this regard that I like what I do), difficult, a grind. It is a way to pay the bills and little more. Bosh’s comments indicate that he understands there is a difference between what the men outside my window are doing today — ripping up old sidewalks and curbing and pouring new concrete in 90-degree heat — and what he does, i.e., get paid an exorbitant sum to play a game. It’s just that what he does is not supposed to be like work at all and, when it is, well, it isn’t fun.

Again, I doubt any of this ran through Bosh’s mind at the time and I also doubt he has anything but respect for the people who do real work. He has been one of the more grounded people in sports for a long time. But his comments are consistent with those made by many who end up lucky enough to earn a large paycheck, which is why I brought up Clinton and her comments to Diane Sawyer. Here is what she said:

Well, if you — you have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard and it’s been amazing to me. He’s worked very hard, first of all, we had to pay off all our debts which was, you know, we had to make double the money because of obviously taxes, and pay you have at debts, and get us houses and take care of family members.

I have no reason to doubt her story’s accuracy — the Clintons may have been in debt, due to lawyers’ bills and other massive expenses — but its context. She was defending the speaking fees both she and her husband have earned over the last 14 years, time when she served as a high-profile U.S. senator and then as U.S. secretary of state and her husband had the cachet of being an ex-president and head of his own philanthropic organization. She may have been broke, but she walked out of the White House and into the Senate with an eye toward running for the presidency. Unlike most of us who are “piec(ing) together the resources for mortgages and houses,” she was connected. She was part of the American power structure. She was not at the whim of economic forces outside of her control. That’s why her comments struck such a nerve — or at least seemed to (there is no polling on this, admittedly, so the negative reaction may not be widespread). Her explanation, which was meant to show how much like the rest of us she is, ended up doing the opposite.

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I heard this striking poem this morning on the Poem-a-Day podcast. The poem, as Flynn states in his intro, creates a clash of perspectives that ultimately creates a single consciousness — which is something I’ve been striving for of late in my own work.

You can read the poem here, but I suggest also listening to the podcast (there is an audio player at the top of the poem) — Flynn’s voice adds to the poem, expands it in a way that I don’t think I can describe.

And then read the rest of his work on the Poetry Foundation site. He has one of the more compelling voices out there today.

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