Credentials Please – International AIDS Conference Edition

If you work for a major (or minor) traditional media outlet, getting credentials to attend events can be a hassle, but in my time as an editor I’ve never had credentials requests rejected for someone working for me (even freelancers).  But what if you own your own publication or news site, or  freelance writer trying to sell a story after attending an event.  Even worse, what if you are a blogger how isn’t employed by anyone except yourself?  The 2012 International AIDS Conference is only the most recent event creating challenges for bloggers who want to cover the event.

Here’s the requirements sent to a well-known blogger:

Internet journalists (Official news website):

• The complete URL’s of three articles you have written that have been published by a recognized media outlet, with your byline on the article; AND
• A letter from your editor (on the official letterhead of your organization) stating that he or she supports your application and that you have been assigned to cover the conference; AND
• A copy of your press card. If you do not have a press card, your editor must state this clearly in the above letter.

Easy enough if you are a blogger who writes for Huffington Post but what if you have your own blog. Who is your editor? What if you don’t have letterhead? And what, for heaven’s sake, is a press card.

Now this is an international conference where journalists come from countries where press cards are issued to journalists. If you cover a government entity, you may have a press card or pass that gives you access. But why is that a barrier to entry for someone who doesn’t come from a country that credentials journalists or you don’t routinely cover government agencies or offices that require credentials (or you have been turned down because, well, you can see where I’m going).

How do bloggers and other freelancers satisfy these requirements? Are there examples of press credentialing policies that you have found to be effective?

At NLGJA, we’ve wrestled with how (or if) we can help bloggers and freelancers in this regard. Is a membership card enough to satisfy some of these requirements? Since we can’t possibly write letters for people looking for credentials, is there a way of assisting journalists who lack the traditional credentials without suggesting NLGJA is “endorsing” or “assigning” the journalist? Please use our comment section to brainstorm on how NLGJA can (or should) help.

South Florida Gay News Investigates Park Arrests

If you are looking for some old-fashioned muckraking journalism for your weekend, you won’t have to look much further than the South Florida Gay News investigation of park arrests in Palm Beach. Looking at hundreds of police reports, depositions of the police, and talking to arrested men and their lawyers, the story paints a picture of potential entrapment, an unclear mandate from the parks where the arrests are taking place, and evidence that the efforts are focused solely on men pursuing sex men.

Here’s the lede:

Randy McGilton, Shawn Browser, and Gerry Sanders have never met but they have something in common: They were all arrested by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in a five-year undercover operation targeting gay men having sex in parks.

And they weren’t the only ones.

Those three men represent just a few of the more than 600 arrests made by Detectives Peter Lazar and his partner Vaniclov “Van” Garner, from 2005 to 2010. SFGN reviewed more than 300 of those police reports starting with the year 2007, but PBSO acknowledged their operation began two years before that.

Only a handful of the arrests – four to be exact — were between two men. The rest of them involved an undercover detective soliciting another man for sex using tactics that one lawyer called “disgusting,” while another lawyer questioned the legality of the detectives’ behavior.

The coverage also includes an editorial by Publisher Norm Kent where he talks about the role of the LGBT press and stonewalling by local officials:

The truth is the LGBT press is now more than entertainment magazines showcasing our nightlife. It consists of representatives in nationally affiliated organizations, from the Florida Press Association to the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association. The story we report on today was investigated over two years, and required this newspaper spending close to two thousand dollars in public records requests to review over 300 police reports and other materials.  The results speak for themselves, as does the silence of the Palm Beach sheriff’s office. Rick Bradshaw, you should be embarrassed.

Nevertheless, without the sheriff’s input, this newspaper reaches the conclusion that for a period in excess of five years a task force of officers was deployed in public parks to interdict sexual activity but wound up instead creating and then perpetuating the very criminal activity they were assigned to stop.

We conclude that the Sheriff’s office unjustly targeted, improperly arrested, and then selectively prosecuted gay men in Palm Beach County public parks.

The issue of park arrests is tricky. It’s easy to moralize on all sides of the thorny question of public sex. But this series avoids that trap by focusing instead on police tactics, showing how few cases involved actual sex, and that many of the men arrested were approached by officers (or even responded to Craigslist ads) who initiated sexual contact. The paper has done significant work here and really shown that old-fashioned investigative journalism into police behavior–even (or especially) in 2012–is still a part of the legacy of the LGBT press.

It’s unlikely that the mainstream press would have taken on an investigation like this and most park arrest stories in the mainstream press focus on the lurid side of the practice, never questioning the police behavior but instead cooperating with the police. That’s why a strong press focused on the LGBT community is important.

Bilerico’s Salvation Army Success Story

We’ve waited too long to take a look at the impact of Bil Browning’s amazing six weeks of attention after posting on Bilerico Project about his opposition to donating to the Salvation Army. The post, which has been an annual event, resulted in a huge response with stories coverage by New York Times, MSNBC, FOX, USA Today, and countless other outlets.  The publicity surrounding the story has now led to a meeting with the Salvation Army, something Browning–an NLGJA board member–has been wanting for years.  Browning is encouraging people to submit questions for his meeting with group.

While I’ve personally had mixed feelings about a boycott of Salvation Army, I’ve been incredibly impressed by the reaction to the story and the amount of attention Bil has gotten for his advocacy. It is an amazing achievement to gain the attention of outlets as diverse as the New York Times and Fox for your cause, which is a concern shared by many in the LGBT community.

Beyond the strong, clear argument made by Bil, the other part of this story is the impact social media played in getting the story to go beyond just a post on a popular blog. I sware I read the post 30-40 times on Facebook and from tweets. In the age of self-curated news, a story that spreads via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media means both more hits on the original piece and a wider dissemination of the story.

When I last accessed the story, it had been linked to 149 times on Google Plus and had received an amazing 74,650 likes on Facebook, based on access from Bilerico.  There is no telling how many times the story has been linked-to on Facebook or tweeted or how many other bloggers linked to the story in their efforts.  What is clear is that all that attention translated into even more coverage once the story went mainstream.

So congrats to Bil, social media, and other bloggers for getting this story and issue into the mainstream. And if you have questions for the Salvation Army, let Bil know.

Balanced-ish NPR Reporting on Religious Liberty?

Sometimes, you listen to a story on the radio and you keep thinking, “I just know they are about to have someone defend the LGBT community from these charges.”  But, unfortunately, you often wait and wait and wait.

The most recent example was in a story on National Public Radio on the supposed war on religion.  It wasn’t the most balanced piece in the world to begin with, with lots of time given to those who believe there is a war being waged on religious liberty and only a single defender.  I’d call it “balancedish.”

The odder thing was a fairly full-throated suggestion that the LGBT community and activists were waging war on religious liberty and believer but only an incredibly tepid rebuttal and not a single LGBT voice responding to the allegation.  The chief problem was that the allegedly neutral expert was the one who threw the hand grenade and no one was allowed to challenge it.  Here’s the section from the text of the story:

Douglas Laycock, a constitutional lawyer who argues cases on behalf of religious groups, said he doesn’t think the administration is hostile to religion. He says the administration takes the issues case by case.

“I think they’ve aggressively protected religious liberty in some issues and failed to protect it in other issues,” Laycock says. “But they’re not hostile. The hostility is in parts of the political culture — particularly in the gay rights movement and the pro-choice movement.”

It’s a larger culture war, he says — a fight that religious conservatives are worried about losing, particularly over gay rights. More and more people favor civil unions or marriage for gay couples, and more states are recognizing them.

This new reality troubles Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group, Liberty Counsel.

“I believe the greatest threat to religious liberty is the clash between religious liberty and LGBT rights,” he says.

Staver says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren’t trying to impose their religious views on others.

“What people of faith don’t want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief.”

Boston says of course religious believers want to impose their views on the world — witness the fight against same-sex marriage. But he says under the law, people can’t discriminate based on their religious beliefs, any more than a restaurant owner can cite the Bible in refusing to serve black customers. He says the solution is simple.

To recap, the neutral expert tosses the grenade that the LGBT community is “hostile” to religion and then the spokesman from Liberty Counsel is given even more time to lay out a parade of horribles focused on LGBT issues and ro support Laycock’s views. In response, we get a single soundclip from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Where are the LGBT voices responding to the charge? Why is there a lengthy discussion of LGBT rights and alleged hostility without a single response from someone representing LGBT causes and interests? Now imagine a story alleging religious conservatives or religious groups are hostile to gays without a single representative of those groups being offered the chance for a rebuttal.  It would never happen (and shouldn’t).

If you are going to talk about LGBT people being “hostile” to something, it would be nice to let an actual LGBT-identified person challenge the charge.

The Weekly Standard’s Marketing Maelstrom

Long story short.  The Weekly Standard received an ad–IOW, someone wanted the Weekly Standard’s email list and the cachet that comes with the Weekly Standard name and endorsement–from a far-right group advancing an anti-gay agenda.  Not earthshattering since Weekly Standard is known for being opposed to many gay rights efforts and is conservative.  So what’s the problem?

Well, the contents of the letter are way beyond the normal sphere of reasoned argument that some would expect from Weekly Standard and instead the letter borders on the extreme and ludicrous. Betsy Rothstein at FishbowlDC has the details.

Dear Pro-family American,

The Radical Homosexuals infiltrating the United States Congress have a plan:

Indoctrinate an entire generation of American children with pro-homosexual propaganda and eliminate traditional values from American society. Their ultimate dream is to create a new America based on sexual promiscuity in which the values you and I cherish are long forgotten.

I hate to admit it, but if they pass the deceptively named “Student Non-Discrimination Act,” (H.R. 998 & S. 555) that’s exactly what they’ll do. Better named the “Homosexual Classrooms Act,” its chief advocate in Congress is Rep. Jared Polis, himself an open homosexual and radical activist.

It sort of goes downhill from there. Justin Elliott at Salon said ”whatever one’s position on the legislation, the message is remarkable for its fierce anti-gay rhetoric, dripping with disdain and disgust for ‘homosexuals.’” HRC, predictably, has jumped into the fray.  According to Politico, the Weekly Standard’s publisher has said the ad was a mistake and blamed poor vetting.

This is obviously not the sort of advertising that we would accept, nor will we accept it in the future,” Eastland said. “It was just one of these cases where an ad came in, it was not fully vetted in the way it should be, and it got out.”

Missing, however, is any apology or comment from WS founder and editor Bill Kristol, who was busy today launching a conservative version of the Center for American Progress (which was a progressive response to the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups). Eastland told Politico that Kristol wasn’t going to condemn the email or his magazine’s behavior.

Now, news organizations are allowed to leverage or waste their reputations by assisting any groups they want.  And every media outlet has to make money, which means pimping out your email list and reputation. But I don’t understand why any media organization–even on the right-side of the ideological spectrum–would not be more careful about who they endorse by allowing their name to be used in a fundraising appeal. Why would any magazine want to risk its reputation with such a fringe organization?  More importantly, it’s unclear why a founder and editor wouldn’t want to make some move to preserve that reputation when it has been sullied, even if it appears you are bowing to pressure from a political opponent like HRC.