DC Porcupine

• 2012-05-25

  How Ron Moten’s Show Deals With Equal-Time Rules

  

  Ron Moten

  Despite all the excitement about Ron Moten’s new DC politics radio show on, some killjoys pointed out that Moten is running for the Ward 7 council seat against incumbent Yvette Alexander. How can Moten’s station, We Act Radio at 1480 AM, avoid violating equal-time rules that require stations that give time to one candidate to offer the same amount of time for other candidates that request it? 

  Essentially, by being open to the Yvette Alexander Radio Hour. If any other Ward 7 candidate wants to be heard on the Anacostia-based station, they’re welcome to it, writes station co-owner Alex Lawson in an email to DC Porcupine.

  “I can assure you that we will provide a completely equal opportunity for any qualified political candidate running for the same office if we receive an inquiry,” Lawson writes.

  Please, Councilmember Alexander, make our radio dreams come true and demand a show. Or, better still, a co-host position on Moten’s.

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  Post Botches State Dept. ‘Hacking’ Story

  For all the corrections that run in the Post, it’s rare to find a material error that would really change the story for the reader. Post reporters Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima scored one of these more drastic corrections today for a Thursday story on Hillary Clinton saying the State Department “hacked” an al-Qaeda in Yemen forum.

  Turns out, Clinton didn’t say State hacked the forum, just that they posted information about al-Qaeda’s casualties on it using the same posting access anyone has to the site. The original version of the story uses variation on “hacked” in the headline, the lead, and throughout the rest of the article.

  The article doesn’t have any quote from Clinton where she explicitly says the site was hacked. Here’s the correction that’s been appended to the story:

  Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that cyber experts had hacked into al-Qaeda’s sites to replace its rhetoric with information about Yemeni civilians killed in terrorist strikes. U.S. officials did post such information, mimicking the format used by the group, but they did so on publicly accessible forums. They did not gain unauthorized access to sites, and they did not alter content already on the sites. This version has been corrected.

  The Christian Science Monitor explains the difference that adding “hacking” to the story makes:

  Even so, early media reports of Secretary Clinton’s speech created a buzz because they mischaracterized State’s move on the Yemeni tribal sites as a hacking attack on a rogue website. That would have been novel since cyberwar hacking – taking over, spying on, or attacking a computer network or website – has been the province of intelligence agencies and US Cyber Command.

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  Texas Forever, Mayor Gray

  

  Embattled Mayor Vincent Gray tosses a football to City Paper Loose Lips writer Alan Suderman at the opening of Rosedale Community Center.

  A tipster was struck by the picture’s wistfulness:

  It had a real “Vince and Alan in happier times…” vibe

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  Handbook: No Interviews in DC Fed Court Hallways

  Remember when the Post’s Mike DeBonis got bounced earlier this month from DC’s District courthouse for trying to ask a question to disgraced councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. as he left court? Security officers at the court told DeBonis that interviews weren’t allowed in the courthouse and escorted him out.

  Apparently, they were right, at least according to the very enjoyable “Journalists’ Handbook to the Courts in the District of Columbia” (PDF):

  Interviews may be conducted in the press room, or at designated sites outside the courthouse. Interviews in the courtrooms or hallways are prohibited.

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  WaTimes’s Miller Responds, Sort Of, On Court Picture

  

  The Washington Times’s Emily Miller didn’t get back to me about running a forbidden photograph from Superior Court in an article yesterday, but she did send out the above tweet about it that suggests that she or someone else at the Times took it.

  It’s not like Miller took a picture of a witness at a homicide trial. But it does seem like remarkably high-risk/low-reward move for Miller and the rest of the Times’s reporters. The picture’s junky, and doesn’t add anything to the story. Did readers need photographic proof that the hearing took place?

  —

  Can Miller just cut the charade and come out against Home Rule? Her story, about a veteran who had his DC home raided by police for having unregistered guns after he called a suicide hotline, laments that someone who knowingly broke DC’s laws was arrested:

  Sgt. [Matt] Corrigan had three personal guns for protection and for competition in his home. He had recently moved from Virginia to the District, but had not registered them because he thought the process was too convoluted and risky.

  “It didn’t sound right that I could just carry my guns to the police station and not get arrested.” He recalled thinking that, “I’ll just wait for them to clear up this complicated process and do it then.” 

  Miller’s story suggests that Corrigan was mistreated by Metropolitan police, which may be. But the central premise of her story—that a vet shouldn’t be arrested for having unregistered pistols and a rifle—is paper-thin. 

  In related Miller news, she recently won a Clark Mollenhoff Award for Investigative Reporting from the righty Institute on Political Journalism for her series on trying to register a gun in the District.

• 2012-05-24

  WaTimes Runs Photo from Inside Superior Court

  Bold move by the Washington Times’s Emily Miller today. In a story about an Iraq vet who was arrested for having unregistered guns in the District, Miller ran an iPhone picture from a hearing at Superior Court, even though court photography is forbidden.

  There aren’t any photos credits in the online version, so it’s not clear whether someone from the Times took the picture or it was provided to them. 

  Via Mike DeBonis

• 2012-05-23

  Post Digital News Director Leaving

  Post executive director for digital news Katharine Zaleski is leaving the paper, Poynter reports. Zaleski’s joining video start-up Planet Daily. 

• 2012-05-22

  Ron Moten’s New Show is Incredibly Listenable

  

  Peaceoholics co-founder, Ward 7 GOP candidate, and general local politics player-operator Ron Moten has had a show on 1480 AM for around two months. I caught it for the first time today, and man, what a treat.

  Moten had City Paper managing editor Mike Madden and Washington Times reporter Jeffrey Anderson on as guests, but they were there mainly to serve as foils for Moten’s monologues on Washington and politics.

  There was also some life advice thrown in. In one segment, Moten says it’s important to have haters because even the grass needs horse manure to grow.

  Moten’s musical choices included him singing a capella Chuck Brown in the intro, and one of the DC-slanted spins on popular songs that he likes to produce. I always thought Kanye West’s “Power” could have done with more references to resigned mayoral aide Gerri Mason Hall. 

  The show has a tendency to turn into the Ron Moten Grievance Revue, but, as a Fenty partisan, Moten has more than enough grudges to fill the hour.

  Still, his tendency to dig up the hatchet means you have to come to the show with lots of context to fully enjoy it. In today’s episode, he made several references to Mary Cheh’s investigation of his role in the donation of a DC fire truck to Sosua, Dominican Republic. That investigation finished in early 2010.

  It will be interesting to see how long 1480 AM can continue Moten’s show without a legal threat (or, since he’s a candidate, violation of equal time provisions). In today’s show, he eagerly called out people whose alleged shady dealings he doesn’t think has been adequately investigated by the US Attorney’s Office or the media, including Cheh and City Administrator Allen Lew.

  Until then, Moten’s show is on at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays. You can listen online on their website.

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  Post Finally Says De Borchgrave Plagiarized

  

  It took a little while, but Erik Wemple finally called  Washington Times’s columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave’s lifting what is is: plagiarism. No need for “originality deficit” weaseling here.

  The AP does the same in its story. For his part, De Borchgrave remains pretty unapologetic. Here’s his statement to the AP:

  If I dropped a few quote marks inadvertently, mea culpa. Everyone makes mistakes.

  Elsewhere, the plagiarism story has already made its way into de Borchgrave’s Wikipedia page. 

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  City Paper Gets Award Nominations for Housing Complex, Annotated DC Issue

  In a list out today from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, City Paper grabbed four nominations:

  • Individual Blog: Lydia DePillis’s development and real estate blog Housing Complex.
  • Innovation/Format Buster: Annotated Guide to 2011.  
  • Arts Criticism: Reviews by Chris Klimek.
  • Investigative Reporting: Jason Cherkis’s coverage of the child welfare system. 

  Big shrug on the Annotated Guide to 2011, which seemed like a remixed Best Of issue, but otherwise, good deal. 

  You can see links to the pieces that made up City Paper’s nominated packages on AAN’s site.