Journalists Jailed [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
The executive editor and CEO of Village Voice Media were arrested Thursday night [3] after publishing details of what they call "breathtaking abuse of the constitution [4]" in a grand jury subpoena against their Arizona newspaper, the New Times. The subpoena is part of an attempt to prosecute the paper for publishing articles criticizing Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio's questionable real estate deals [5]. The subpoena demands that the paper turn over "all documents related to articles and other content [6] published by Phoenix New Times newspaper in print and on the Phoenix New Times website, regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio from January 1, 2004 to the present." In addition, it demands information about all the online readers of the publication [7], including their Internet domain names and what other Web sites they visited before reading New Times. According to retired judge Kenneth Fields, the subpoena "touches on privacy issues of a lot of people who cannot be the subject of a grand-jury investigation. This is potentially thousands of people." Village Voice reporter Tony Ortega says the arrests show that Arpaio, who has carefully cultivated a "constant parade of television journalists [8]" to build an image as "America's toughest sheriff," is actually a "paranoid despot ... Even those reporters who may have bought Arpaio's line of bull in the past must see what an abuse of power this is, and how it threatens the journalism being done by papers that dare to question public officials."