While There is Freedom of the Press

These Letters Weren't Sent To The Press

By Neil Schubert

It is illegal in the United States and many other countries to intercept and disclose electronic communications. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that this means that you can use a "scanner" but that it is illegal to disclose what you hear on a scanner, unless it is a distress call, or a communication that is obviously intended to be a publicly available broadcast. The definition of a distress call is defined under the communications act.

Electronic mail is really just a modern form of the telegraph. And since those obsolete old antiquated FCC rules that were signed into law in the 1920's and the 1930's are still being enforced therefore wiretap laws of that era also apply.

While there are lots of ways for a news organization to approach e-mails about an affair between a police chief and a reporter, this was the wrong way. I had discussed at one time, leaking the Marylin Figuroa story, involving the mayor of Milwaukee in the late 1990's. The anonmyous source was somebody in city hall that had read something like a letter or an e-mail that was on the mayor's desk or computer screen, as well as a person who had been seeing an unusual pattern involving the mayor and marylin. Under no circumstance, however, did I or any other person actually obtain an e-mail from the mayor in any form or from any other source. In other words, no communication was intercepted.

Someone could say "I saw an e-mail that discussed a relationship" and that probably would not be illegal, as long as they were not hacking or accessing the data in an illegal fashion. Of course what someone says can't be proven without facts to back it up. And creating facts afterwords is really not credible.

So, regardless of what I or anyone else with a former tabloid radio program had said, there was in fact NO stolen e-mail from the Mayors office. If it was stated that way, that was drama, and it was made up. But there was a leak from city hall with regard to the matter, and that source cannot be disclosed.

However, there is a difference between heresay and stating that you DID in fact receive e-mails that were essentially hacked, that discussed a relationship between the police chief and a reporter. If I were working at the newspaper, I would probably use the delete key or the shredder, even if those e-mails were true. If there was an affair, sooner or later it would be revealed, and I would use the hearsay method to rat it out. Yes, we have a biased reporter, but a good editor could have chopped that story up and sent it back, long before it got into the magazine.

But what I actually heard on WTMJ radio was a replay of television. So what you have is news jumping from something that was illegal at the newspaper, then being re-disclosed via TV, and then via radio. While freedom of the press exists in the United States, a communication between the police chief and the reporter is an A to B communication, much like a telephone. And intercepting a communication like this is illegal, and has been for as long as I can remember.

While I had discussed getting rid of the FCC itself, the laws and rules that are in place are reasonable and in this case, it is a straight forward violation to illegally disclose stored communications. It is not like broadcast indecency rules, which I would argue are vague and really unconstitutional. This is a very clear violation of the law, and it needs to be addressed by the FCC.

At one time, newspapers, radio, and TV stations had news directors and editors. These persons would weed out the junk news, biased news, and stuff like this. A good news director would filter out the facts from news stories that are filled with bias, personal opinions, and twists based on religious beliefs. Those stories belong on talk radio. Often times, national syndicated news from networks would go on a reel of tape, and then get played back onto a cartridge tape before making it to the studio. This allowed a human to reject junk that was repeated, and censor the stories that didn't make sense, or were biased. Sure, that might mean that the story hits the internet first. However, the internet always has a credibility problem. Nobody believes it until they hear it on the radio, read it in the newspaper, or see it on TV. The internet has a habbit of picking news up from other sources, and it creates a loop of news.

What is happening is that the "real" news media has become cluttered with junk from the internet. Add to that the declining numbers and wages of reporters and news gatherers. Nobody goes out and gets news anymore, they all expect someone else to do it. It is a domino effect - one triggers the next, and the newspapers all start to sound like yahoo.com. Yes, you ran that story last year, and the year before!

The reason why newspapers are declining is that they are trying to be blogs. There is nothing wrong with a newspaper making a section of the paper for opinion columns, or letters to the editor, or even newspaper based blogs. What is happening is that people are going to msn and yahoo type sites to get news, rather than going to newspaper sites. The advantage of a newspaper was that the news was accurate, and often times the radio and tv stations would use this as a guide or even a source for their news. While there are places where the piece of paper is appropriate, the majority of younger people are using electronic sources for news.

WTMJ is being blasted with crap from other sources, some of which might even be spoofs. Hackers have found their way onto the internet, and often times stories on the web may be published in the interest of one particular political group or lobbyist. Add to that the entire Tiger Woods scandal which, I'm sorry, is completely political, and it just makes junk news. I go back to the old saying, it is really none of my business!

The problem is that WTMJ and Journal Communications has to decide whether it wants to be a tabloid or it wants to be a news organization. It might boost the ratings and sales, but, in the long run, pullitzer prize or not, it totally removes credibility.

Simply put, while this type of thing has been going on in Hollywood for many years, it is time that the FCC get involved in looking into broadcasters who are using criminals for their financial benefit. And yes, this includes Hollywood. Yes, people in that realm often times will play the media. But we need to go back to the era when people's personal lives were, as I said before, none of our business!