Dan Kennedy

Professors as Information Censors

On a l’impression que le dessin est de moins en moins toléré, que c’est une forme d’expression qui, même au sein des médias, est encombrante. Un peu trop atypique, un peu trop libre…  Même dans les grands journaux, les dessins deviennent extrêmement consensuels, il n’y a pas beaucoup de prise de risque éditoriale, les dessins deviennent un peu insipides.  [You get the impression that cartooning has become less and less tolerated, that it’s a form of expression which, even in the heart of the media, is burdensome.  A bit too uncommon, a little too free…  Even in the big newspapers, cartoons have become extremely consensual, there’s not much editorial risk taking, the cartoons become a bit insipid.  —trans gts]

—Riss, editor of Charlie Hebdo

It is the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre.  Are Northeastern University students aware of that?  As an alumnus of NU and out of respect for the murdered cartoonists, I request that the student editors of The Huntington News override the decision made by one of their professors, Dan Kennedy, to censor information.  Indeed, Professor Kennedy refused to circulate to his students a cartoon (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/democracy-under-siege.html), which I’d sketched satirizing The Boston Globe.  I’d sent it to the columnists depicted in the cartoon, as well as to the editor and several other journalists.  In a separate email, I’d also sent it to Professor Kennedy, who teaches in the School of Journalism.

To Professor Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University:

It is highly likely you will choose NOT to present the attached cartoon to your Northeastern University journalist students… and that would represent in a nutshell your problem as a professor of journalism.  Why not address it, instead of ignoring it?  

Professor Kennedy was the only one who responded.  For that, I praise him.  From my experience, The Boston Globe tends to ignore/censor hardcore criticism with its regard, something that clearly ought to be a focus for professors of journalism.  Professor Kennedy’s response was brief.

Hi, George —

I like the one of me and Renée Loth much better.

No, I won't be presenting it to my students. It's puerile.

DK

Apropos, the other cartoon, which Professor Kennedy refers to and also refused to circulate amongst his students can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/renee-loth-and-dan-kennedy.html.  I just posted it.  “Oh, my God, this cartoon is fantastic,” had written the professor, but again he would not circulate it amongst his students.  In 2013, I’d posted a different cartoon again satirizing the professor, and again he would not circulate it amongst his students (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2013/07/rosanna-cavannah-and-dan-kennedy.html).  Moreover, last June I’d posted an “Open Letter to Northeastern University School of Journalism.”  Not one NU professor would circulate the letter to his or her students.  In fact, The Huntington News would not respond.  It can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/06/northeastern-university-school-of.html.  

In any case, rather than issue a general kill-the-messenger message-killing epithet, “puerile,” why not instead contemplate precisely what points are made in the cartoon, then via reason and fact prove the points faulty.  That should be precisely what a professor and any thinking individual does.  But when one is bound by ideology and/or career connections, one tends NOT to do that.  Sadly, to dismiss a message that one does not like with a simple epithet has become a common practice today.  Hopefully, professors are not teaching and encouraging it.  

Was Professor Kennedy’s a worthy response?  Shouldn’t his students be able to make their own determinations?  Should professors serve as academic censors of information?  In essence, would the cartoon NOT encourage debate amongst students of journalism?  And isn’t vigorous debate a prime cornerstone of a thriving democracy, even at a school of journalism?  For a professor to dismiss the clear message in the cartoon as “puerile” is troubling.  

How perchance is it “puerile,” for example, to openly criticize a highly-biased newspaper’s refusal to publish anything highly critical of its editor?  How perchance is it “puerile” to quote the puerile statements of two of its columnists, while simultaneously presenting the newspaper’s latest self-vaunting focus, “Democracy Under Siege”?  Indeed, how does publishing such puerile columns like “Miss Conduct” and “Love Letters” serve to solve the democracy-under-siege problem evoked by the Boston Globe?  How does the latter’s rejection of hardcore criticism/satire like that presented in the cartoon solve the democracy-under-siege problem?  How is it possible that Professor Kennedy seems incapable of grasping these fundamental questions?   Might the Boston Globe constitute one of the hands feeding him?  Any careerist, academic or other, knows and obeys the basic career taboo:  thou shalt not bite the hands that feed.  

How is it “puerile” to criticize/satirize the Boston Globe as a likely contributor to the democracy-under-siege problem?  Might Professor Kennedy (like him or not is irrelevant!) also be a contributor to the problem?  If so, that would explain his dismissal of the satire as “puerile,” thus not worthy of his students’ attention.  Newspapers, like the Boston Globe, publish satirical cartoons, but not when the satire targets them.  With good-taste censors like Professor Kennedy in academic positions and Globe Editor McGrory in journalism positions, democracy will remain under siege.  In fact, one must wonder what Brian McGrory and his journalist colleagues think democracy is.  Do they think it is implementation of ideology, restriction of freedom of expression, and limited debate in accord with the parameters of their particular ideology?  

Finally, for several decades now, as a Northeastern alumnus, I have tried in vain to get the library directors at the university to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal devoted to literature, democracy and dissidence.   So, how can Northeastern, year after year, ask me to contribute money?  Well, instead, I will now contribute a free subscription, but only if the librarian in charge assures that issues will be placed on the shelf and not thrown into the garbage.  The cartoon in question will appear in the next issue of the journal due out in April.  If the librarian in charge accepts the offer, then Professor Kennedy’s students will be able to circumvent his censorship of information and make their own determinations as to the worthiness or unworthiness of that particular expression of freedom of speech.  And the same goes, if the student newspaper editor decides to publish it.  

The American Dissident, unlike the bulk of journals and newspapers, not only brooks tough criticism regarding it and its editor (me), but encourages and publishes the harshest received in each and every issue.  How sad that the Boston Globe rejects that modus operandi, de facto preferring “democracy under siege.”  How about The Huntington News?  Journalism constitutes a part of the democracy-under-siege problem in America.   If it continues to deny that fact, as it tends to do, how can that possibly help resolve the problem?  If student journalists continue in that darkness, how can that help resolve the problem?   In the realm of journalism, careerism and ideology, which ineluctably oppose truth and reason, constitute two of the prime culprits.  

Riss concludes (see above quote), “I think that free expression is in itself a sufficiently fundamental value, which has a future if cartoonists have the courage to inject into their drawings courage and strength.  If it’s only to present nice cartoons which upset nobody, they might as well not sketch at all.”  [« Je pense que la liberté d’expression est déjà une valeur fondamentale suffisante.  Ce genre a de l’avenir si les dessinateurs ont le courage de donner à leur dessin de la force. Si c’est juste pour faire de l’illustration et des dessins gentils qui ne dérangent personne, autant ne rien dessiner du tout » —trans gts]

In sincerity, again, I thank Professor Kennedy for responding… because from his brief criticism, I was inspired to write this essay.  Please, professors, avoid the epithets and embrace vigorous debate and freedom of expression, democracy’s cornerstones.  

Renee Loth and Dan Kennedy

Northeastern University School of Journalism

Open Letter to 
Northeastern University School of Journalism

Against the taboo, I dared question and challenge Dan Kennedy, Associate Journalism Professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.  Unlike most writers, I always seek to push the envelope.  Truth, not career, is my modus operandi.   I criticized Professor Kennedy’s praise of Boston Globe columnist Renée Loth as “…one of the city’s most accomplished journalists…” and directed the professor to my criticism of Loth, “What Is a Journalist?”  “The fundamental flaw in journalist Renée Loth’s Boston Globe op-ed, “Julian Assange may be a hero to some, but he’s no journalist,” is its failure to define what precisely constitutes a journalist.  Does egregious bias define journalist today?”

To my surprise, the professor actually responded, though quite briefly, and not at all regarding my criticism.  The Boston Globe has yet to publish any of my critiques, regarding its editor, Renée Graham, Loth, Jeff Jacoby et al.  If the Globe were indeed such “powerful journalism on tap,” why can it NOT bear to be questioned and challenged, as I have done periodically?   In fact, the same applies to the School of Journalism and its professors!  

Well, I praised Professor Kennedy for actually responding, which in itself was quite rare in the buffered world of academe.  As a former professor, I am all too aware of that sad—very sad—world, where freedom of speech and real vigorous debate, democracy’s cornerstones, are not at all cherished.  Part of our very brief debate concerned the lack of contact information for Loth.  The professor explained that absence, stipulating Loth to be a “freelancer.”  Well, perhaps one day all the columnists would be “freelancers” and thus fully buffered from outside criticism. The professor also argued, interestingly, that op-eds like Loth’s were somehow independent of the editor:  

Your comments about McGrory indicate that you have no idea how a large newspaper operates. The editor and the editorial-page editor (Shirley Leung, who's interim) both report directly to the publisher, John Henry. Good newspapers separate the news and opinion operations, which is why McGrory has nothing to do with what appears on the opinion pages. 

But I challenged that statement:  “However, does not the publisher have any say at all in the selection of the editor?” I wrote.  “And if indeed he or she does, then how can ‘op-ed’ism’ be truly independent, as you seem to indicate it to be?”  Clearly, for example, most of the op-eds appearing in the New York Times tend to be largely—very largely—in line with the editor’s points of view.  But again, this is a deflection from my criticism.  Why did Professor Kennedy choose to ignore the egregious faults I’d underscored in Loth’s op-ed (as well as in Graham’s racist op-eds)… and thus the conflict of his praise?  

Sadly, journalism seems to have become a milieu of backslapping and self-congratulating.  Does the School of Journalism even discuss that fundamental problem?  Why will Professor Kennedy NOT, as I suggested, expose his students to the criticism I periodically lodge against journalists, often in The American Dissident, a journal of literature, democracy and dissidence?  Silence was his response.  Will silence also be the response of the purportedly independent Huntington News?  [Indeed, that was the response!]

One major conflict of interest is rarely ever evoked, for evident reasons:  CAREERISM vs. TRUTH.  The two, far more often than not, simply do not mesh.  Because I have always chosen TRUTH, my CAREER as a professor eventually terminated… and I’d have it no other way.  Well, I put that quandary to Professor Kennedy:  “And if you think they can [go together], then please, oh, please, tell me why you don’t seem to give a damn about NU’s horrendous speech-code rating, issued by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.”  In effect, how can journalism thrive in such an ambiance?  The professor did not respond.  Does The Huntington News give a damn that NU was designated Speech Code of the Month in November?   [Apparently, it doesn’t give a damn!]  Did it even report on that?  

Sadly, it seems that silence is indeed golden at NU.  The old student newspaper did not respond to my 2005 email.  

Dear Staff, The Northeastern University Voice:  

Your student newspaper does not sound like a newspaper at all.  It sounds like an organ of NU propaganda.  Is that what they teach in your school of journalism?  Why not publish the attached cartoon I did on your president with this email?  Show some backbone!  Show an openness to criticism, free speech, and vigorous debate, cornerstones of democracy.  BTW, I am class of 1972.  I expect not even a response from you.  So, surprise me!  

In 2012, I sent the following:

To First Amendment Center at Northeastern University, Journalism Professor Walter V. Robinson:   

As an NU alumnus, class of 72, can you possibly help me?  Might you know of a pro-bono lawyer?  On June 19, 2012, I was permanently trespassed w/o warning or due process by Sturgis Library director, Lucy Loomis.  The library is publicly funded.  Loomis was apparently angered especially by two letters I’d sent to the directors in the library system the week before.  The letters were partially critical of Loomis, but were written as a last ditch effort to get just one library in the system to subscribe to The American Dissident.   Three police officers accompanied the director to escort me out of the building. One of the cops grabbed and twisted my arm then frisked me because I'd simply asked why three cops were necessary and stated I did not have a weapon.  No written document for the order was issued.  The police report fails to stipulate the duration of the order.   It is ever astonishing to me that a library director could be so scornful of free speech.  One of my subscribers set up the following page on his website regarding my case:  http://sturgisbansdissident.blogspot.com/.  Thank you for your attention.

Well, there was a response, though from Larry Laughlin.  We corresponded a bit, then Laughlin simply and totally disappeared.  Then in 2015, I wrote:

To Justin Silverman, Executive Director, New England First Amendment Center, 

Is there a reason why my alma mater, Northeastern University, would house an organization with your name when said organization proves apathetic to the following? 

Presumption of innocence, as you surely know, is supposed to be a fundament of justice.  Yet I was NOT even charged with anything.  Sturgis Library (Barnstable, MA) director Lucy Loomis simply sentenced me by permanent banning on June 19, 2012, one week after I’d disseminated a critical Open Letter to the directors of the Clams Library System of Cape Cod.  When I asked Loomis for a written document stipulating my crime, the request was rejected.  When I asked for due process, the request was also rejected.  (When I’d offered a free subscription to The American Dissident, the offer was rejected.) 

A FOIA demand made by a friend was approved nine months after the banning by the State Secretary of Records, who then mandated/forced Loomis to open her (i.e., Sturgis Library) records to the public. The only pertinent document in those records was an email Loomis had sent to trustee Ted Lowry, noting that her drastic action was “for the safety of staff and the public.”  Yet I’d NEVER threatened anybody and have no police record!  In fact, I’ve got a doctoral degree and have been a professor for much of my working life.  Almost three years later, not one staff member has been threatened by me and I have not set foot on Loomis’ fiefdom.  How easy it is for corrupt-minded people like Loomis to play the he’s- a-danger-to-society card—no proof needed!  

Today, my civil rights are being denied in Barnstable, since I am not permitted to attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library, the one my taxes help support.  Not one person in Barnstable County has expressed an iota of concern.  In vain, I contacted so many pathetic apathetic people from Town Manager Tom Lynch to County Human Rights Commissioner John Reed, state reps Cleon Turner and Brian Mannal, town councilor Ann Canedy, town attorney Ruth Weil, Susan Corcoran (ACLUM), and Karen Wulf (PEN New England).  Editors Paul Pronovost (Cape Cod Times) and Noah Hoffenberg (Barnstable Patriot) both refuse to publish anything regarding any of this.  Why?  Recently, I requested Loomis and library trustees reconsider the permanent trespass penalty for exercise of freedom of expression.  Not one of them deigned to respond.  

Now, would you please reconsider your past pathetic apathy regarding the above facts and help me regain my civil rights and thus prove that freedom of speech when pertaining to institutions that serve a public function must not be punished, especially without due process?  

Thank you for your hopeful attention.  

Well, Silverman responded, but eventually also disappeared.  In October of 2017, I sent the following:  

To Exec. Dir. Jack McCorkie, Office of Alumni Relations, and Amy Lewontin, Collection Development, Northeastern University:

A couple of years ago, maybe three or four, The American Dissident was put on your short list for periodical acquisitions.  Of course, I haven’t heard a word from you.  In fact, as an NU alumnus (Class of '72), it has almost been two decades of my periodically trying in vain to interest you in subscribing.  

How can NU expect me to donate money as an alumnus, when you will not even subscribe ($20/yr) to the unique 501c3 nonprofit literary journal I’ve been publishing since 1998?  Please do give that a thought next time you call me on the telephone asking for a donation...

No response was ever received.

Renee Loth

What Is a Journalist?

The fundamental flaw in journalist Renee Loth’s Boston Globe op-ed, “Julian Assange may be a hero to some, but he’s no journalist,” is its failure to define what precisely constitutes a journalist.  Does  egregious bias define journalist today?  

Loth argues, “Full stop, please. Assange is many things: swashbuckling egotist, gleeful disrupter of the status quo, unwanted guest of the Ecuadorean government holed up in its London embassy. But a hard-working journalist he is not.”  

Does Loth believe that disrupting the corrupt “status quo” is a bad thing—is something “hard-working” journalists do not do/are not supposed to do?  Well, it seems so.  Ideology can blind  journalists like Loth to the point where they cannot see their faults, even when egregious.  A journalist like her ought to avoid using highly-subjective terms like “egotist.”  Journalists should stick to facts, reason, objectivity, and equality of treatment (e.g., for blacks and whites/for Democrats and Republicans).  Far too many do not do that!  Career inevitably trumps truth… for journalists and all other careerists.  

Loth argues, “Quite apart from the question of whether the United States should prosecute Assange for publishing classified government documents — and I think it would set a dangerous precedent at a time when press freedoms are under attack by the president himself — we need to draw some distinctions between his methods and those of mainstream reporters.”

Well, what about Hillary Clinton’s egregious, unpunished lying about the way how she handled classified government documents?  Equality under the law?  Equality in the eyes of so-called journalists?  Isn’t Trump justified in attacking the highly-biased journalists who constantly attack him?  

Loth argues, “WikiLeaks receives and distributes raw data, some of it damaging personal information of no legitimate public interest, and then sits back and enjoys the fallout.”  And yet who defines what constitutes “no legitimate public interest”?  The Democrat Party?  Journalist shills for the Democrat Party?  The concept of “public interest” is highly nebulous and can be highly partisan indeed.  Loth ought to be aware of that!  And if she is then why does she not mention it?
  

At least Loth stipulates a fact, though reluctantly:  “Although Assange is a hero to many who advocate government transparency, and although he won Australia’s highest journalism honor in 2011, to my (admittedly old-school) mind, he’s an activist.”  Does part of that old-school mind include biased reporting?  Are not most of the journalists at the Boston Globe essentially “activists” for the Democrat Party?  After all, the Globe openly endorsed Hillary Clinton!  How can journalists who endorse one political candidate over another possibly be objective?  Isn’t Loth an “activist” against Trump?  Loth seems to argue that journalists who are “activists” are not journalists.  In that sense, she self-incriminates! 

Loth argues, “Assange doesn’t generally do the tedious work of cross-checking documents, interviewing sources, seeking official responses, and providing expert analysis. That isn’t the WikiLeaks model.”  Well, apparently, it isn’t the Boston Globe model either.  Cite Assistant Editor Renee Graham’s highly racist rant against the white teenagers of Covington Catholic High School (see https://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/01/renee-graham.html).  Did Graham bother to do any research at all?  In fact, it seems she purposefully ignored the research done by others and stands by her highly faulty account even today.  No apology at all was ever issued!   

Loth states, “Yes, WikiLeaks has been declared a media organization by a tribunal in the United Kingdom, strengthening the claim that Assange deserves protections afforded working journalists, but US laws regarding press freedom are different from Britain’s.”  And yet why should judges have the power to decide whether or not one is a journalist?  Loth ought to have posed that very question.  Corrupt, highly-biased judges exist!  Why should they have the right to make such a determination?  

Loth concludes, “This has been a brutal few weeks in a brutal decade for journalism."  Well, it has also been a brutal decade for free-speech advocates, due partially to journalists like Loth and Graham who choose to ignore the struggle of such advocates and not report on their many stories.  Amazingly, no result  on the Boston Globe website appeared, for example, when I searched “Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff.”  Do Globe journalists like Loth even know who she is?  And if not, why not?

Loth argues, “The tactics employed by Assange — which blur or eliminate the lines between news, propaganda, activism, and spying — only embolden true authoritarian regimes to imprison, torture, and kill journalists. Let’s focus on protecting them.”  Again, those very tactics are employed by Loth, Graham, and other so-called journalists of the Boston Globe!  Let the Globe clean up its act before criticizing others for doing what it does!  

Rather than focusing on protecting journalists, perhaps journalists ought to focus on eliminating their egregious biases and m.o. of constant backslapping and self-congratulating.  They ought to focus on facts and reason and not oppose facts and reason when facts and reason counter bias.  The Globe would not publish my challenge of Graham’s highly faulty reportage, nor would it respond regarding Loth’s.  And so again, one is left with the highly nebulous term, “journalist.”  What is a journalist?  Well, Dan Kennedy, Associate Journalism Professor at Northeastern University, one of my alma maters, regards Loth as “…one of the city’s most accomplished journalists…”  No definition needed, of course.

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NB:  Rather than swallow vacuous, undefined, and self-congratulating memes like “real journalism matters” (Washington Post), it is best that a citizen think and pose questions, as in what the hell is “real journalism”?  Is it biased journalism?  Is it identity-politics journalism?  Is it not-reporting-on-certain-stories journalism?  Is it rejecting of uncomfortable-facts-and- opinions journalism?  Also, it is best that a citizen gain experience by actually testing the waters of journalism reality.  The following are some of my tests.  When I was a professor at Fitchburg State College (now university), the student newspaper, The Point, and the local newspaper, The Sentinel, both refused to report on my fight with the university.  The Advocate refused to publish an account of my being attacked and robbed by three blacks in Baton Rouge.  The Barnstable Patriot refused to publish my criticism of its praise for a candidate for a local Public Works position. The Cape Cod Times refused and still refuses to report on the permanent banning without warning or due process in 2012 of me from my neighborhood library, Sturgis Library.  My very civil rights are being denied today because I am prohibited from attending any cultural or political events held there.  As a rare open critic of its editor, Paul Pronovost, my opinions will never be published in that newspaper.  The Provincetown Banner refused to publish my criticism of the Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown and its use of poetry and art as a tourist magnet.  The Boston Globe refuses to publish my criticism of its anti-white racist assistant editor/columnist Renee Graham, likely another "one of the city’s most accomplished journalists."  Regarding college student editors, rarely will they publish criticism I send regarding their professors.  Thus is the reality of journalism today...