Telander's Note, a Column, and now SF Editor Bronstein Weighs In

Re: A Rick Telander Note on Freedom of the Press (With Update & a Column!)

Here's Bronstein...
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September 17, 2006 Sunday

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR;
A newspaper's role is to pull back the curtain

By Phil Bronstein



TWO WEEKS ago, on the last evening of August, one parent of every kid who wanted to play on a sports team at San Francisco's Riordan High School was required to attend a meeting. The topic was the dangers of steroid use. A former team doctor for the A's and 49ers talked about the destructive effects of these illegal drugs on athletes. Those effects include death; steroids have killed some teenagers trying to force their bodies and abilities to match those of their sports heroes.
This meeting is a requirement for all Central Coast Section high schools, one of several steroid-prevention moves mandated by the California Interscholastic Federation to be applied statewide. At the end of the session, the parents had to go home, discuss the issue with their kids and then the parents and kids had to sign a pledge that the teenage athletes would not use these drugs.

Not a guarantee of success by any means, but a critical start toward helping young athletes stay healthy and have reasonable, attainable goals without destroying their lives.
Two people are responsible for this big step in protecting our kids and helping them value their natural talents: Chronicle staff writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.
It was Williams' and Fainaru-Wada's stories on the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) and steroid use among athletes that spurred congressional hearings, changes in regulations for major-league sports, implementation of the new high-school rules and a fundamental change in the way people view the culture of sports.
This Thursday, federal Judge Jeffrey White will hold a hearing to decide whether Fainaru-Wada and Williams will go to jail for refusing to comply with a Justice Department subpoena that would force them to reveal confidential sources on these stories. Specifically, Justice wants to know who leaked testimony from a grand jury investigating BALCO.
The BALCO stories would not have caused the tidal wave of national debate and reaction they did if the reporters had not, as part of their diligent work, obtained and printed the grand-jury testimony of some of the country's biggest sports stars.
A number of our own readers have argued that the secrecy of grand-jury proceedings should outweigh a reporter's ability to publish those proceedings. Judge White has already ruled against Williams and Fainaru-Wada in that regard and the two are appealing that judgment. In fact, the grand-jury issue is complicated, not black and white, and its secrecy is not absolute. Grand-jury witnesses, for example, can come out of the room and give press conferences about their testimony. Sometimes documents are given to parties not bound by any secrecy provisions.
But it is the government's responsibility to safeguard its secrets, whether it's grand-jury testimony or conduct of a war ("The Pentagon Papers'' and Vietnam come to mind). The press has a different role in our system: to peel back some of the layers of secrecy and let the public know what's going on. The two roles are often at odds and that tension provides a check-and-balance that helps define an open society.
Invoking the First Amendment and Watergate, or "The Pentagon Papers'' seems like overreaching in this case. After all, this isn't about national security. Besides, the courts will decide those issues. Anyway, raising those lofty, but important, concepts tends to contribute to the public's view that the media is arrogant, sanctimonious and detached from the real world.
Sometimes that's true. Not in this case.

(More in next window)

 

Re: A Rick Telander Note on Freedom of the Press (With Update & a Column!)

(Rest of Bronstein)


The value of these reporters' work is that kids are safer, attitudes have changed and the public is more informed and aware. A big curtain was pulled back so people could see for themselves what was going on in the sports world's version of the Land of Oz. It's the public's choice whether it wants to keep believing in the wizard or not.
Let's keep in mind that Williams and Fainaru-Wada are not criminals. They are accused of being in contempt of court for protecting sources who may have violated grand-jury secrecy. The hearing Thursday is to determine what penalty, if any, should be imposed, not to punish them, but to try to coerce them into revealing their sources. Jail is one option the judge has.
Mark and Lance are not reporters with oversized egos or self-righteous views of themselves or their profession. They are reporters of great integrity who followed a story of deep interest and importance. Not only will jail be ineffective in getting them to give up their sources -- they are steadfast on that -- but they do not deserve to be put in jail.
The government itself has often spoken of waging a war on drugs; the BALCO case presumably began because the Justice Department wanted to stop steroid use. Isn't the world slightly upside down when illegal drug users are heroes, but reporters are sent to jail for work that curtails that drug use?
Reporters should not be put in jail for finding out and telling the truth, which is exactly what we ask of them.
Sportswriters across the country, not normally the first group to get involved in these things, have called Mark and Lance "heroes." To us, they are our colleagues who have done superb work throughout their careers.
Yes, The Chronicle has a very strong interest in this case, for obvious reasons. But so, we believe, does everyone else.

 

Really could have done without the 'Save the Kids' aspect of that....does anyone believe the Chronicle powers-that-be clutched the testimony in their hands and pronounced 'We must go with it! For the kids!'

 

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I tend to doubt that when the two reporters in question were in the midst of their investigation, they would high-five each other and say, "We're really gonna help the kids with this story."

That's not in anyway to diminish the job they did.

But let's be honest: the notch on the belt is for nailing Barry Bonds, not saving kids from taking steroids.

 

Saving the kids may not be why they chose to continue to follow the story, but it is a pretty nice side note. Ever since this story has broken, high schools, state associations and others have brought it to the forefront at the high school level. Heck, last night during the Yankees-Red Sox game they showed a commercial two or three times about what steroids can do to high school boys, including your balls shrinking. So, I don't see what is wrong with taking this angle on the story, especially because everyone is sick of reading about Barry Bonds.

 

But none of their Bonds reporting, at least none of the reporting that has them in this trouble, resulted in anything that will discourage kids from using steroids.

If you want to read an excellent piece by Mark in that vein, check out the story he did on the ballplayer from Petaluma who destroyed his body, and his life, to earn a scholarship at USC.

That is some good utilitarian shit.

 

You are right, I guess I meant that their reporting indirectly caused steroids to come into the mainstream in regard to high school athletes.

 

Here's a link to a piece by Dr. Denise Garibaldi that appeared in the New England Law Review. She, if no one else, seems to believe that part of the story, if not all of it, is "about the kids." Of course, she's biased. Her son, Rob, abused steroids. Perhaps as a result, he killed himself. Dr. Garibaldi testified to Congress the day McGwire refused to talk, Sosa couldn't speak English, and Palmeiro lied.


http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:XDTc-cfO27cJ:www.nesl.edu/lawrev/vol40/3/Garibaldi.pdf+%22garibaldi%22+%22baseball%22+%22bonds%22+%22fainaru-wada%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6&ie=UTF-8

 

I got into it with Fenian last week about the importance of this story.

Let me be blunt for a second.

Messing with the balls is no small thing. Anybody catch Romo on 60 Minutes last night? His voice is so high he sounds like my perimenopausal aunt Judith.

"Those things" are where you guys get a lot of your hormones, no? And what about the offspring produced from steroid users? We don't know enough about the drugs' effects yet, but will there be an entire generation of sons and daughters of steroid users who have all kinds of problems?

I would think steroids would be particularly dangerous for teenagers in this regard.

 

We're talking about two or three different things here.

1a) No one would dispute that kids shouldn't be on steroids.
1b) The BALCO reporting definitely heightened awareness, not necessarily about the dangers, but about the widespread usage.

HOWEVER:

2) The Bronstein letter, which represents the Chronicle's stand on the case, comes off as somewhat disingenuous, since many people find it hard to believe that the leaked grand jury testimony was published for the common good of saving kids. It was great investigative journalism that ripped the cover off a big scandal and knocked baseball out of its rocking chair--that should be enough (although you could even argue that changing the face of baseball serves the common good). No doubt the Chronicle is trying to substantiate its legal premise that the publication (and the need to protect sources) was indeed for the common good, but to make it about kids (as this letter attempts to do) just seems sort of transparent.

 

However, promiscuous use of them turns an independent press into a de facto tool of the government, whether that was crackpots spoon-feeding Ken Starr's lurid fantasies, Cheney's people whispering to Judy Miller, or prosecutors trying to poison the jury pool. I don't believe we can or should lose sight of this half of the story.