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The Phoenix New Times and Sheriff Joe Arpaio
by Ashleigh Crowther, posted October 30, 2007
Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, October 18, 2007. Photo: Giulio Sciorio, copyright Village Voice Media LLC, 2007.
Getting arrested for voicing an opinion is probably the most flak a journalist can get. That’s what happened to Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, owners of Village Voice Media LLC and the Phoenix New Times, on October 18 in Phoenix, Arizona. The trouble began more than 3 years ago.
On July 8, 2004, Phoenix New Times columnist John Dougherty and reporter Paul Rubin published an article questioning the local sheriff’s ability to own expensive land parcels throughout the county. Sheriff Joseph Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, who makes about $78,000 per year from his sheriff’s salary, had managed to invest $790,000 cash in real estate between 1995 and 2004. Dougherty questioned how Arpaio could have afforded these purchases, and commented that Arpaio had suspiciously requested that the County Recorder’s office seal his records from public view, invoking a state law that allows sheriffs to hide their personal information from the public. (Other citizens’ information about their personal real estate investments is publicly accessible.) Dougherty published Arpaio’s home address at the end of the article, which gave Arpaio legal grounds to pursue Dougherty and the Phoenix New Times.
Sheriff Joseph “Joe” Arpaio is used to being criticized by the Phoenix New Times. Since becoming Sheriff in 1993, Arpaio has become known for his harsh, unorthodox methods for treating prison inmates. The Phoenix New Times has been keeping an eye on Arpaio, maintaining a special archive devoted to stories about Arpaio on its website.
When a media outlet receives negative feedback, it is referred to as “flak,” a concept articulated by Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent. Arpaio hit the Phoenix New Times with flak after Dougherty’s violation of Section 13-2401 provided grounds for legal action. Arpaio filed a lawsuit claiming that the Phoenix New Times had violated Section 13-2401 of the Arizona Revised Statutes, which makes it a felony to publish a sheriff’s personal information on the internet. An August 24 grand jury subpoena to the Phoenix New Times demanded "all documents related to articles and other content 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." The subpoena went even further to request information about all visitors to the Phoenix New Times website since January 1, 2004, including which websites they had visited prior to the newsweekly’s.
Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were outraged by the subpoena’s invasion of readers’ privacy, and they decided to take action. The October 18 issue of the Phoenix New Times hit newsstands with a cover story written by Larkin and Lacey titled "Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution." It gave readers a detailed overview of the lawsuit, alleged that the prosecuting attorney Dennis Wilenchik had been violating codes of courtroom conduct by requesting special meetings with the judge, and informed readers that the court had requested online visitors’ personal information. The online version of the article included a full copy of the subpoena, which readers could access by clicking on a link within the article.
Police officers arrived at Lacey’s and Larkin’s homes that night to arrest them for revealing grand jury secrets, which is a misdemeanor. According to Richard Karpel, Executive Director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (of which the Phoenix New Times is a member,) the arrest came as a surprise. “I can’t imagine they thought in their wildest dreams that they’d get arrested,” he commented in a phone interview. However, Lacey did not seem phased when he emerged from jail at 4am the next morning and spoke to a group of waiting reporters. "We're being arrested for raising hell,” he commented to Stephen Lemons, a Phoenix New Times columnist. Phoenix New Times editor Rick Barrs, who was also present, remarked to a reporter from the Arizona Republic, "They're trying to muzzle us… This is retaliation against us. And it's not just retaliation against us, it's retaliation against the press." Barr’s assertion that the arrest was meant to intimidate news outlets relates directly to Chomsky’s concept of flak, since flak may be used to deter the media from reporting on issues that are unflattering to interest groups (in this case, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.)
In this case, flak was ineffective in directing coverage of the story. Numerous news outlets reported on the scandal, including The New York Times. As a show of solidarity with the Phoenix New Times, member papers of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies published links to Sheriff Arpaio’s home address on their websites, including the Village Voice in New York.
A sort of reverse-flak actually worked in the newsweekly’s favor: negative media attention on the arrests led the Sheriff’s Office to drop the lawsuit. According to Karpel, public opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the Phoenix New Times. “There was a huge eruption, mostly in Phoenix, and it was all negative,” he commented. “Most of the journalism community that was following it condemned the actions of his office.” Karpel cited an October 19 article from the Arizona Republic to show how widespread the response was. “Normally you don’t see news stories in daily papers like the Arizona Republic taking opinions on this stuff, it’s usually… objective journalism. It wasn’t objective this time.”
Even though the Sheriff’s Office has dropped the case against the Phoenix New Times, the staff of the newsweekly plan to fight on. Phoenix New Times LLC and reporters Paul Rubin and John Dougherty filed a complaint in federal court on October 5 alleging that Section 13-2401 violates their First Amendment rights. Stephen Solomon, a professor of First Amendment law at NYU, thinks they have a strong case. “The statute appears to be a prior restraint on the press. Prior restraints are rarely upheld,” he remarked. “The Phoenix New Times obtained the sheriff's address lawfully from public records. Therefore, the state could punish the newspaper only if it could prove that publication would surely lead to imminent, irreparable harm to the sheriff.”
No matter what the court decides, the scandal is a case study in flak's role in shaping what the media is allowed to print, and shows that flak is not always an all-powerful silencer of the press.
Sources:
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Dir. Peter Wintonick. DVD. Zeitgeist Films, 2002.
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