Media

Power of the punchline Thanks for your article, Dannagal G. Young ("Lighten up," CJR, July/August). One thing you fail to mention: Satire actually gets political results. Congress passed the 9/11 firefighters/police health bill thanks to the efforts of Daily Show outrage. Over several days, Jon Stewart and staff hammered at the topic, and the legislation soon got passed. I also...

Local Edition San Francisco, CA Year opened 2012 Owners Future Bars, aka Doug Dalton and Brian Sheehy Distinguishing features Located in the basement of the Hearst building, where the San Francisco Examiner was published, it's filled with old typewriters, printing presses, and the front pages of local newspapers from historic events, like the US declaration of war in 1941, the completion of...

An editorial discussed Iran's "determined program to attain nuclear-weapons capacity." Later, it cited pressure on Iran "to halt its aggressive program to attain a nuclear bomb." What Iran is trying to do is "attain" nuclear capacity so it can "obtain" a nuclear bomb. "Attain" and "obtain" both have the sense of "getting" something. But "attain" has embedded in it the...

Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza crime syndicate, has published an official magazine that features satirical haikus and genteel articles about angling. In response, we present highlights from the Corleone family newsletter. » Fine Dining: Clemenza shares his famous spaghetti-sauce recipe. Because you might have to cook for 20 guys some day. » How to house-sit: for when you've gotta go to the...

55 percent of American voters identified Edward Snowden as a "whistleblower" in July 2013 34 percent of American voters identified Snowden as a "traitor" in July 2013 40 days that journalists camped in the Moscow airport while Snowden waited for asylum 33 percent of Hong Kong residents consider Snowden "a hero" 956,107 YouTube views of "citizen journalism" video of arrest...

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Busted! Hair Net Hero is part of a new breed of news game (Center for Investigative Reporting) Looking for a new way to involve readers in your stories? Get them to play games. The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is launching its first videogame, Hair Net Hero, to teach children how to eat more healthfully at school. Aimed at...

Alexia Tsotsis carries bags inside her bags. The 31-year-old San Francisco co-editor of TechCrunch carries enough stuff with her "in case I'm walking down the street and someone says 'You need to be in New York right now.' I could do that," she says. She could also curl her hair, go for a run, or, yeah, cover any breaking...

In 2008, Gustavo Faleiros, a reporter at the Brazilian news outlet O Echo, sought a way to synthesize the massive amounts of data on the Amazon rainforest in an interactive, visual format. With an area spanning nine countries and 5.5 million square kilometers, the Amazon is the source of some of the most comprehensive data sets in the world....

Breaking News. Those two little words can sound a warning cry when uttered by a news anchor. But has the call to attention grown dull from overuse? In July, WDRB, a news station in Louisville, KY, announced that it was ditching the term except in cases where the news warrents it. (Like, when a story is actually breaking.) In honor...

--Associated Press, 7/23/13 --San Francisco Chronicle, 7/20/13 --Gainesville Sun, 7/3/13 --Minneapolis Star Tribune, 7/22/13

DART to KTVU, the Fox affiliate in Oakland, CA, for its infamous broadcast of bogus, racist names for the pilots involved in July's Asiana Airlines plane crash. According to the station's apology, KTVU made a phone call to the National Transportation Safety Board to confirm names, including "Sum Ting Wong" and "Bang Ding Ow," but somehow never sounded them...

Back in the day, arctic explorers had it easy. In order to dress for expeditions, they simply approached Inuit hunters and ordered the hides of whatever animals could be killed. Frederick Cook, who claimed to be the first white man to reach the North Pole, packed hare stockings, blue-fox coats, bearfur pants, and bird-skin shirts. His rival, Robert Peary, favored...

by Marshall Allen

Linda Carswell has passed a major milestone in her quest to get her husband’s heart back.

A Texas appeals court ruled Thursday against the hospital that has been blocking her from retrieving the heart of her husband, who had died unexpectedly while in the hospital’s care in 2004. The court also upheld a $2 million fraud judgment Carswell won against the hospital.

Jerry Carswell, 61, had been admitted to Christus St. Catherine Hospital, in Katy, Texas, with kidney stones and was supposed to have gone home on the day he passed away in January 2004. He had been given narcotic painkillers, but the exact cause of death was never determined.

Linda, his wife of 33 years, filed a lawsuit and discovered something that’s horrified her ever since: The hospital pathologist who did Jerry’s autopsy kept his heart. Medical providers refused to return it, as ProPublica first reported in 2011. It remains refrigerated in a hospital morgue.

Carswell compares the legal battle to recover his heart to a search and rescue mission to duly honor and respect her husband. “It’s in the hands of the people that took his life,” Carswell said. “I don’t want them to have anything that belongs to Jerry.”

On the morning that Jerry died, Linda urged hospital employees to ask the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office for a complete and independent autopsy to determine the cause of death. But a hospital employee told Carswell that the medical examiner’s office refused to take the case because officials there had been told that he died of renal failure.

That statement was described as “a material, false misrepresentation with at least reckless disregard for the truth” in the ruling by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the First District of Texas.

Hospital employees also told Carswell that a complete autopsy that’s “just like” a forensic autopsy could be performed at St. Joseph Medical Center. They did not tell Carswell that St. Joseph, at the time, was owned by the same company as Christus St. Catherine, where her husband died.

In fact, hospital autopsies are rare and are not like more thorough forensic autopsies. Carswell’s autopsy did not include any toxicology tests, which her lawyers argued might have been able to determine whether painkillers contributed to his death.

Attorneys for Christus St. Catherine have argued that Jerry’s heart cannot be returned because it’s possible evidence in the legal case. They blocked St. Joseph Medical Center, by then owned by a different company, from turning the heart over to Linda Carswell.

While finding fraud, the jury that originally heard Carswell’s case rejected a claim that medical negligence caused Jerry’s death. Carswell did not appeal the verdict, leading the appeals court to determine the hospital had no need to maintain the heart as evidence.

Attorney Erin Lunceford, who represents St. Joseph Medical Center, said she was still digesting the court opinion and discussing it with her clients. But now that the appeals court has removed the legal barrier, she said the heart could be returned, assuming the Christus hospital doesn’t otherwise intervene.

Christus attorneys did not return calls for comment. Neil McCabe, the attorney who represented Carswell before the appeals court, said it’s possible the hospital could still try and maintain possession of the heart even though the appeals court determined it’s not relevant to the fraud verdict.

Carswell said the ruling validated the mistreatment she and her family suffered. “Clearly, wrong was done in Jerry’s death,” she said. “And on top of that, clearly the hospital tried to cover things up.”

After almost 10 years, she feels she and her family can come to closure once the heart is returned. She’s selected a small box for it, and looks forward to burying it alongside her husband’s other remains.

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week: Twenty-four-hour party people -- MSNBC tries to figure out what liberals really want The NYPD Division of Un-American Activities -- After 9/11, the NYPD built in...

PROVO, UT -- When The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog published its annual list of the best state-based political reporters earlier this summer, the group of names under "Colorado" included a couple of Denver Post reporters, two from the Associated Press, and a Denver TV reporter. And then there was Peter Marcus of the weekly, tabloid-sized Colorado Statesman. Marcus, 32,...

by Joaquin Sapien

After more than a decade of national legislative efforts to end prison rape, this month was supposed to produce a significant victory: formal audits of prisons and jails around the country that would more reliably chronicle incidents of sex abuse and the consequences for its perpetrators.

But that moment of possible progress has turned out to be more complicated than many had hoped. The first round of audits will be chiefly conducted by the American Correctional Association (ACA), the very organization that has been criticized over the years for failing to identify and address safety problems at prisons across the country.

The ACA, based in Virginia, performs an array of services for the corrections industry: it provides training for guards and other officials, hosts conferences, and lobbies in Washington. But it is perhaps best known for its accreditation service. Prison officials pay the organization to evaluate facilities on issues such as inmate healthcare, sanitation, food service, and personnel training. ACA’s blessing is sought, in part, to help prisons defend against inmate lawsuits.

Now, as part of legislation aimed at reducing the incidence of sexual assaults in prison, the ACA will be responsible for helping make sure the state and federal adult prisons and juvenile detention centers it accredits are properly investigating allegations of sexual abuse, disciplining guards and inmates and providing appropriate medical attention to victims.

The development has dismayed some of those involved in improving the safety of the country’s prisons.

“If some group were closely tied to the police, would you really go to them to complain about police brutality?” asked Jack Beck, a director of the Correctional Association of New York, a non-profit organization dedicated to prison reform efforts.

“This is a way to manage this whole thing so it’s not going to rock the boat too much,” Beck said.

The American Correctional Association has yet to respond to questions for this story. If they do, we’ll post an update.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who helped author the national legislation, known as the Prison Rape Elimination Act, said he is comfortable with ACA handling the work.

“It’s the natural organization to do the audits,” Scott said. “If they turn out not to be that aggressive, then it will become a problem. But I don’t think it’s a problem now. These people have a lot invested in their professionalism.”

The U.S. Justice Department, which played a critical role in the development of the legislation, sent a four-page statement in response to questions for this story. It said the first group of auditors were “handpicked” but did not address the concerns about the propriety of ACA conducting the sex abuse audits. The department said mandatory training sessions will be required for all auditors, no matter who they work for.

Over the years, the ACA’s work for the country’s prisons and jails has been scrutinized by federal courts and occasionally found wanting.

In January 1999, a U.S. District Court in Texas presided over a lawsuit filed by prisoners who claimed they were abused by guards and other inmates. After a three-week-long fact-finding hearing, the court found that constitutional violations were widespread, this despite the fact that the state’s prisons were accredited by the ACA.

The court found that inmates in Texas state prisons lived “under conditions allowing a substantial risk of physical and sexual abuse from other inmates, as well as malicious and sadistic use of force by correctional officers.” Further, the court determined that the state “failed to take reasonable measures to protect vulnerable inmates from other, predatory prisoners and overzealous, physically aggressive state employees.”

Courts have come to similar conclusions about the conditions in ACA accredited prisons in California and Florida.

Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said such a track record undercuts the ACA’s credibility as an effective agent in the push to truly limit sexual violence in the country’s prisons. Fettig and other advocates are now pushing the Justice Department to expand its pool of potential auditors to include options other than the ACA.

Those options could include judges or lawyers or other organizations with expertise in corrections issues. The ACLU, which does not accept government funding, would not be a candidate.

“We have to make sure these audits are part of a meaningful process. Otherwise we’re missing an opportunity to create more humane facilities,” Fettig said.

The push to address sexual assaults in prison – violence that included inmates and corrections officers as well – began decades ago, and was marked by setbacks and years of delay.

In 1968, an activist named Tom Cahill was arrested at an anti-war protest and sent to a San Antonio jail, where he says he was serially raped and beaten over the course of 24 hours. Afterward, he dedicated his life to ending such violence behind bars. He staged a 60-day hunger strike outside of San Quentin, wrote countless letters to lawmakers, and started a non-profit organization called Stop Prison Rape.

In the 1990s, Cahill gained the attention of Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who, in partnership with Scott, began work on drafting and adopting legislation.

In 1998, legislation was introduced in Congress seeking a wide range of reforms and requirements, including better training for prison personnel and clear accountability and investigative measures. The legislation never made it to a floor vote.

But in 2003, similar legislation won greater backing and resulted in the formal prison rape act.

The measure called for the establishment of a national commission comprised of advocates and corrections officials. The commission was supposed to examine the problem and recommend a set of standards in two years. It took five.

The commission released a report in 2009, and at that point the Justice Department was supposed to adopt and enforce rules based on the commission’s recommendations within a year. It took three.

The final rules were released in June 2012. They called for zero tolerance of sexual abuse in prisons, increased training for corrections staff, and required independent audits for all confinement facilities once every three years.

Still, the requirements apply to all federal facilities. States can choose to abide by them or not, but risk losing federal funding if they do not. The legislation calls for a 5 percent reduction in federal financing for any state found to fall short in the reform effort.

But following the law will cost states money, too. Some prison systems will have to overhaul their surveillance systems, hire more staff, and implement new mechanisms for inmates to report sex abuse. Some governors may decide that, given the expense of reform, they would rather accept the budget reduction instead.

The Justice Department hasn’t made public which states have agreed to comply and which haven’t. The first audit was conducted last week at a federal prison in West Virginia; the next two will take place at federal facilities in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Advocates involved in pushing for the legislation are mostly proud of the final outcome, but feel it didn’t need to take so long.

“The Prison Rape Elimination Act and standards are both real milestones in the fight to once and for all eliminate sexual abuse in detention. Having said that I feel it’s a real shame that we had to fight so long and so hard for the PREA standards,” said Lovisa Stannow, who now heads the Los Angeles-based Just Detention International, which evolved out of the non-profit that Cahill started decades ago.

“These standards should have been developed more quickly, and it would’ve been possible to get them done more quickly if we hadn’t been up against really intense corrections opposition for many years.”

Stannow and other advocates have pledged to monitor the first round of audits vigilantly for any signs of leniency.

“I think we are cautiously optimistic,” said Chris Daley, Just Detention International’s representative in Washington, who also pointed out that facilities are given a deadline to correct any flaws identified by the audits. “That’s an indication that the audits aren’t just about transparency but transforming the environment within a facility so that the regulations aren’t just policies but actual practices.”

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. Megan Garber -- Staff writer at The Atlantic (and CJR alum) who covers science and innovation with a geek's infectious sense of wonder. National Geographic -- Whether it's its indispensable science...

DETROIT, MI -- The first hour of the Aug. 20 installment of Radio Times, a long-running show on Philadelphia's WHYY, was an exemplary bit of public-policy journalism. The segment's hook was a local story: Barbara Mancini, a Philadelphia-area nurse, had been charged with homicide after giving her 93-year-old father a bottle of morphine. Her father was found by a hospice...

As we approach the moment when the centerpiece of Obamacare will be implemented, on October 1, a deluge of information and spin is coming with it. In her column today in The Cook Political Report, Elizabeth Wilner predicts "an unprecedented confluence of political and product ads." Those ads will be in conflict with each other, and will be brought...