All the President’s Men

Prints

“What happened on June 17^th, I don’t think the President knew anything about.”

The film begins by covering the break in to the National Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building on June 17, 1972. It follows a reenactment of the investigation Washing Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did of a seemingly minor story that ended up leading the call for the eventual resignation of the current President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. With the support of their editors, Woodward and Bernstein revealed that the break in at Watergate was only a small part in a much larger network of intelligence gathering activities, many of which compromised citizen’s private security.

Keep I mind, this was before 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. There once was a time, when tapping a person’s phone was an invasion of privacy, even if it was committed by the government.

The investigation done by the two journalists couldn’t have gone far though, if it wasn’t for their secret source, Deep Throat. Their first story published suffered a third page posting because it lacked credible sources that didn’t mind coming forward and giving their name. With Deep Throat’s guidance, Bernstein and Woodward were able to present their findings as harder evidence which changed the placement of their subsequent stories. After the Watergate Investigation, Deep Throat was later identified as FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt.

Some say that, it wasn’t the President’s connection with the Watergate break in that stirred the American people to pressure Nixon to resign. October 20, 1973 is known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” On this night, embattled President Richard Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.

According to History.com, the “massacre” stemmed from an inquiry into the notorious June 1972 break-in at the Watergate complex, in which five Nixon operatives were caught trying to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Things began to get heated when Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox petitioned the White House for over 10 hours of secret Oval Office recordings that could possibly implicate the President’s involvement with the crime. In an act of defense, the White House denied the request and speculation began as to the possible reasons why the President could have for denying the recordings if they were not self-incriminating. Was the president hiding his fingerprints?

Self-incriminating….

For those of you that haven’t taken three classes of government and had the Bill of Rights drilled into your head; the third section for the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is commonly referred to as the “self-incrimination” clause. In principle, it protects persons accused of committing a crime from being forced to testify against themselves. In the U.S. judicial system, a person is presumed innocent, and it’s the burden to prove guilt lies on the state or national government. One of the recent headlines relating to the White House relates to the release of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s questions to the New York Times. Apparently, the release of the questions could qualify as obstruction of justice because it interferes with the natural flow of information and it could be potentially tipping off a witness. The list of questions by Mueller supposedly read like questions that develop naturally during the course of a conversation rather than an investigative inquiry. The New York Times reported that the questions appear to be more open-ended in an attempt to “penetrate the president’s thinking.”

Given the structure of the questions, it would appear that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is trying to get the President to incriminate himself since there hasn’t been much hard evidence on the Russia investigation. You’d think this is shameful behavior but what are you supposed to do when the person suspected of pulling the strings is insulated from the actions and repercussions? Donald Trump has hired people that will know what to expect he wants from them. He hires his staff according to their loyalty to do what he expects. He shouldn’t have to say what he wants; his delegates should already know what to do. Because of this, there’s a space bubble between the President and his closest campaign members. The most covert stuff is done internally, insulated from the President so he can’t be held responsible even if blame is thrown his way.

Despite the bubble, the President is increasingly becoming irritated with Robert Mueller’s investigation and the negative press generated from the investigation. On more than one occasion, he has told an office aide that he might just fire Mueller to end the investigation; but, if Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre has any lessons to teach, Trump should refrain from exercising his executive power. Not only could it negatively rile up the public, he could also lose the support from his party base and make it seem like he’s left his prints on the scene. Despite his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, none will be attained if Trump pleads the Fifth.

Shattered Glass

Throughout my journey through a fine selection of journalism movies, “Shattered Glass” has bothered me the most.  Before I decided to pursue my communications degree, I considered becoming a CPA. Both professions rely on the verifiable truthfulness of their records as proof of their honesty. According to the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics, journalists should be accountable and transparent. Professionals must acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. Explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly. The should also expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.

With that information on the table, it should be obvious to see why the premise of the film can be, in a way, disrespectful. At least, I found the main antagonist’s actions offensive because I believe that the greatest currency of journalism is integrity and journalists should never deliberately distort facts or context. I give the film four stars and I recommend it because it’ll probably start some interesting conversations. The film tells the true story of a fall from grace: the most desired reporter in D.C. from 1995-1998, Stephen Randall Glass.

During his time in The New Republic, which had a circulation of 81,500, he published 27 either partially or completely fabricated stories. For three years, the magazine had published fiction that could have influenced public policy just by being the in-flight magazine of Air Force One. Aside from the discovery of Glass’s deception, the film also tells the audience what The New Republic did to correct the mistake. The movie sounds straight forward, and it is but it’s a compelling ride like watching two trains collide. The actors convey to the audience the difficulties that can arise once you start to uncover a lie, the examinations of conscience and judgement, the challenge of friendship and professionalism.

Of all the actors though, Peter Sarsgaard deserves a special mention because he captured the challenge an editor must face when they must investigate journalistic fraud.

Chuck Lane: I’m not worried about me or the magazine, that’s fair game, but there’s a kid here that just plainly screwed up big time. His reporting was sloppy we know that, but we’re trying to handle it internally at this point just as you would.

Kambiz Foroohar: We’re going to run something along the lines of a trick was pulled and some very clever hackers managed to create an illusion.

Chuck Lane: I can’t tell you what to print or what not to print. You guys are journalists, but he could be very hurt by what you guys publish, his career …

Kambiz Foroohar: I understand, I do, I hope if I made the mistakes he made people would be generous with me, but this concerns the very field we cover. We have to run it and when we do, we need a comment from you; so, given everything that’s happened, how strongly are you going to stand by the story?

Chuck Lane: [Looking at the fake business card] I’m looking into it.

As a journalist, you should know who you’re writing for and you do have to know what you’re good at; but, you must also know about the responsibility you are accepting to be truthful, fair, and accurate with the information you are spreading.

Trumbo

“They are not our friend, believe me,” he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” – 45th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump.

The Red Scare came about in the late 1940’s and early 50’s after a series of events created an aura of national crisis. During this time the Soviet Union tested their first atom bomb, there were talks of atomic spies like the Rosenbergs, China was “lost” to Mao Zedong and the Korean War broke out. All of this promoted strong anti-Communist currents in the America. Given these state of affairs, it’s easy to see how patriotism was being tested, questioned, and bolstered but that does not forgive the foregoing of practicing of “decency.”
In the movie Trumbo, there were three lines spoken that I felt in my bones. They were:

“Are you a communist?”

“Is it against the law?”

“I don’t think he’s paranoid enough.”

 

The year 2016 was an election year and our current President said the above quote while running for the oval office. I watched him say his statements on national television and I heard those rooms fill with applause, cheer, agreement, and some laughter from the screen when Donald Trump said those lines. I did not raise my hands. I did not laugh. I did not show any form of agreement with what he said. Instead, I looked around. Before watching the tv screen, I had been walking by and talking on my phone in Spanish. People were looking at me. No one wanted to maintain any eye contact. I could feel the discomfort so thick in the air I could cut it with a knife.

 

The following months were filled with:

“Are you Mexican?”

“Are you legal?”

“Could you not talk in Spanish here?”

 

Of all the blows the Hispanic population has had to absorb, there’s one that’s finally starting to come back around. One of the major blames my community receives are “stealing” jobs and creating low wages. Now that immigration deportation record has increased exponentially by deputizing the local police force, it can be seen that there are job available in the U.S. but they’re not jobs most citizens want to do because they’re in industries with low paying wages and have pitiful labor protection laws or policies. I understand how labor shortages can drive people mad but what do you do when your work force doesn’t want to do the labor? Getting mad at the individuals who do the task isn’t the way to solve the problem. Getting mad at the industry is how you solve the problem. I can see the frustration.
This is what I can’t see: labeling individuals that see this country as the motherland of equality and opportunity as mostly a bunch of criminals. According to Census data taken between 1980 and 2000, 18 to 39 year old native-born Americans were anywhere from two to five times more likely to be incarcerated than undocumented immigrant men of the same age. Libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, also produced a study that found illegal immigrants had incarceration rates of 0.85 percent, compared to 1.53 percent for native-born Americans. Based on these statistics, the President’s claim has been unfounded and instead proves native-born Americans commit more crimes than immigrants as a whole.
Given the previous information, why did Donald Trump feel like foregoing common decency? Why did I look around after my heritage and part of my culture was being disrespected? Because even though I’m not part of the “problem” population, I am indeed part of the population. I am afraid of being arrested and being treated as a spic. I am afraid of getting pulled over and then visiting a holding cell while law enforcement tries to verify my place of birth. I am afraid of people knowing I’m a chicana that was born in California and being treated like a second-class citizen because according to my country’s President I have no country. With that said, I understand why any “Reds” were scared by Senator McCarthy.

The Social Network

*Disclaimer: This blog was made for a college assignment due in February. Excuse the lack of timeliness.*

It’s February again folks, and depression is in the air! During this month, St. Valentine’s marketing group is working at maximum capacity to foster love, affection, and kindness sprinkled with hugs or kisses. Someone might want to inform them of the market their leaving out: the lonely, the sad, the remorseful.

Scene in The Social Network after FaceSmash crashes the servers at Harvard.

Fourteen years ago, Facebook launched on February 4^th and it created the youngest Billionaire in the world that’s currently leading the largest and most influential tech companies in the world according to CNBC. That’s amazing and so were Facebook’s early years. The Social Network came out in theaters in 2010 from the adaptations of Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires.” Though the book is considered non-fiction, there is a note from the author in which he admits that discrepancies are probable since the book was made with an accumulation of interviews, multiple sources, thousands of documents and recording from court proceedings.

“I have tried to keep the chronology as close to exact as possible. In some instances, details of settings and descriptions have been changed or imagined, and identifying details of certain people altered to protect their privacy … I do employ the technique of re-creating dialogue. I have based this dialogue on the recollections of participants of the substance of conversations.” – Excerpt from the author’s note in “The Accidental Billionaires”

Despite the fact The Social Network did Mark Zuckerberg no favors when it comes to his public image, it’s difficult to scold Hollywood for simply lighting the fire with all the fuel Zuckerberg created while building his empire: Facebook.

The Social Network tells of the beginning of the largest global social network and both the person and legal problems Zuckerberg receives with his unprecedented success. Throughout the movie, I kept hearing the little voice in my head saying “Oh no, no, no,” when Zuckerberg started calling the shots without Eduardo Saverin’s opinion.

In the scene where Amelia Ritter says, “it’s really awesome, except it’s freakishly addictive,” I started wondering how Saverin didn’t know Facebook had blown up so quickly. The only reason I could think of was if the architect, Zuckerberg, wasn’t updating his business partner. Shortly following the Ritter scene, Zuckerberg is asking Saverin for more money to hire 2 interns and house them. While asking for the supplemental money, he mentions that he has found a house not far from campus. I consider this another flag on the field because not only is the man hiring people without the knowledge of his funds sponsor, he’s also blatantly using you as a wallet instead of treating you like a partner when he looked for a location, sought for a house, and decided on one without the opinion of the purchaser. From this moment on, I would have been placing my finger on the pulse of the “shared” business just so I could know that my “partner” wasn’t keeping any other information from me.

I think I would have served Zuckerberg with a warning after he told Saverin that he should move from New York to California or he would get “left behind” because Facebook was “moving faster than [they] ever imagined.” Saverin gave him the algorithm to start his FaceSmash project wish was the precursor to Facebook, gave him the funds to begin he should move from New York to California or he would get “left behind” because Facebook was “moving faster than [they] ever imagined.” Saverin was his friend, gave him the algorithm to start his FaceSmash project, gave him the funds to start Facebook and then continued to be a benefit but Zuckerberg found it simple to just leave Saverin in the past like an introduction. I don’t know how Saverin didn’t register Zuckerberg’s behavior as adversarial or indifferent when he was told he could be left behind. From that point on I would have tried to legally secure my interests and begin to make a record of the various ways I helped with the creation of Facebook.

Towards the end of the movie, you see Zuckerberg typing on his laptop and searching for an old lover’s Facebook account. He has a sober look on his face as his eyes linger on the screen. It made me wonder if he was sad and sorry. The kind of sad and sorry where you recognize it as remorse and try not to be morose. When going over the prospects in your life and seeing before you what you’re fighting for, and who you’re willing to fight against, it’s also easy to see what you missed. If from the film I could feel Zuckerberg’s remorse, I wonder how it radiated from the man in real life.

 

CNBC- “Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg: Success like mine only happens with luck, and that’s a huge problem we need to fix”

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/24/billionaire-mark-zuckerberg-success-like-mine-only-happens-with-luck.html

New York Times- “Books, Excerpt of The Accidental Billionaires’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/books/chapter-accidental-billionaires.html

Spotlight

I feel like I’m playing catch up on a lot of things from learning about the nutritional components of kale to the benefits of a Himalayan rock salt lamp. Movies aren’t any different, but I can’t complain much about that. I enjoy the process of making a movie selection more than attending the showing of a new blockbuster. Last week, a professor of mine decided to do that for me and showed the class the 2015 movie, Spotlight. I had never seen it before, and I’m glad I caught up to this film.

Cast of Spotlight movie.

The movie is set in 2001, and the journey begins when the new editor of the Boston Globe, Martin Baron, assigns a team of investigative journalists with the task of following up on a story about a Catholic priest who was accused of molesting 80 children. The journalist team called Spotlight is composed of the editor/team player Walter “Robby” Robinson, and reporters Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer. During interviews with victims and lawyers, they discover that there are court ordered sealed documents that can reveal the very real possibility of a systemic cover-up of sexual abuse within the Boston Archdioceses. A year after starting the investigation, Spotlight confirms at least 250 members of the clergy had been publicly accused of child sex abuse within Boston and that Cardinal Law had prior knowledge of the priests’ abuse of children. The story’s publication touches off a wave of sexual abuse allegations and revelations around the world exposing the organized criminal activity within the Roman Catholic Church to cover the filth on the cloth.

There are many great lessons to learn from this film like human’s ability to rationalize the truth, but I want to focus on the journalism ones.

When the Spotlight team decided to take on a story, they exemplified the standards of quality journalism: verification and documentation, teamwork, context and fairness.

Verification and Documentary

While prospecting the story the journalists go through the newspapers clips to see previous coverage and visit the court house for public information about cases. The team talks to lawyers representing alleged victims and request to speak with their clients and begin to interview the few victims whose names were public. Wanting to know what happened to the priests who were accused pedophiles, they go through church directories that trace the clergymen’s career path. While collecting this information, it’s submitted into a spreadsheet and the data suggests a horrifying pattern: church leaders relocated the clergymen from parish to parish instead of defrocking them and therefore allowing the continuation of child sex abuse by the perpetrators.

Teamwork

Baron knew doing a story that would investigate the Catholic Church would be stepping on a lot of people’s toes and considered how his new staff may also not want to take on the assignment, so he stepped up to the plate. Once Spotlight agreed to go forward and do the story, Baron meets with Cardinal Law and obtains approval from the Boston Globe’s publisher to file an appeal in the state’s court to unseal the sensitive documents. Though he was new and a complete outsider, he planted his flag alongside Spotlight and solidified his support.

Context

Everyday newsrooms decide on how they want to frame a story. When it comes to a story so big that can have an impact, you wonder how to deliver it. Baron describes three different ways the story that they have been working on can be delivered and weighs in his two cents: he wants to go after the Roman Catholic Church as an “institution” rather than focus on the priest that initiated the probe or the number of accused/alleged abusive priests. In this case, the Boston Globe will not be increasing awareness. They will expose it, try to stop it, and hope to bring change.

While I was watching the film, I found myself shocked by the push back of some characters that supported the Church despite it’s wrongdoings. For some reason, since the church did so much good then it deserved a Saint’s/King’s Pass when it came to harming the very beholders of heaven (See Matthew 19:14). Then I found myself wondering: When does journalism stop being a public service? I think the Boston Globe did excellent work exposing the clergy scandal, but I can see how devoted Catholics would wonder: What’s good vs What’s right. As a journalism student I wondered: How can I ask these victims to relive their trauma time after time just to make sure I got the facts right? When do I stop pressuring, digging? Is specificity from the victims necessary?

If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Whenever you do though, watch Truth which also came out in 2015. Tell me what you think after watching both!