By snoadmin
We took one for the team. Well, former Editor in Chief Joanne Tucker did, but you can’t possibly give her all the credit. There were lawyers, faculty advisors, University Police officers, hateful commenters and all sorts of players involved in what some would call the Daily 49er’s version of a gritty crime drama starring the likes Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington.
The Daily 49er reported last week on attempts by University Police to commandeer e-mail and IP addresses of users who commented on four articles posted on our newspaper’s website. In our eyes, this was a challenge to the Daily 49er’s freedom of press.
According to Tucker, Detective John Leyva slapped her with a court order on May 11 requiring the surrender of the addresses — reiterating that the court order had a non-disclosure clause prohibiting her from discussing its contents with anyone. For all intents and purposes, a detective could have shouted, “King Kong ain’t got shit on me,” and he wouldn’t have engaged in a more intimidating act.
The non-disclosure clause is rivaled only by the court order’s classification of our newspaper. On a court order that contained no docket number, the Daily 49er was labeled — akin to Facebook — an “electronic communications service company.”
Adam Goldstein, an advising attorney at the Student Press Law Center and a participant in this crime drama, made it clear that the legal justification utilized for the court order or the assumption that we are an “electronic communications service company” should only be used in “the most dire threats of national security,” not to “require newspapers to secretly hand over their notes.”
We can just imagine Die Hard’s detective John McClane yelling, “Drop it, dickhead. It’s the police.” At least his terrorists were able to takeover a Los Angeles skyscraper. We can barely recruit staff writers. Seriously, inquire within.
What’s even more striking? The court order was rendered null and void by way of a closed-door meeting between Tucker’s lawyer and the university’s. The Daily 49er isn’t passing the bar any time soon, but Thurgood Marshall wasn’t overturning legal rulings until he joined the Supreme Court.
“My issue was setting a precedent for the newspaper because the Daily 49er has never had to deal with this type of situation,” Tucker said. “I wanted to make sure we went about this in the right and legal way to set a precedent in our relationship with University Police.”
We’re sure Tucker was referring to First Amendment rights and not to being labeled a terrorist organization running a slew of social networking websites. Or at least we think so. See, along with a suspicious court order and movie-like police sequences, this crime drama comes with deep philosophical implication — not too mention a prequel.
The University Police’s court order — or what appeared to be a court order — was most likely issued in wake of a police investigation regarding the mid-April assault of transgender student Colle Carpenter. The assault, which happened on campus, prompted a myriad of angry comments on articles reporting the assault. An article reporting on a Chicana feminists conference saw similar comments earlier, but was also heavily abused after the assault.
Misuse of our comment section prompted the Daily 49er to draft a comment policy. Staff members, as well as the newspaper’s board, later approved this policy and this section of the paper addressed it stressing the protection of our readers was always a priority.
This is where the deep philosophical implications come in. We do the things we do in the name of freedom of speech and freedom of press. Sure we report the news, but a university newspaper stands for so much more.
There are no powerful special interest groups on campus, Rupert Murdoch doesn’t own 51 percent of us and we couldn’t care any less about liberal or conservative ideology. The Daily 49er reports, opines, entertains and informs unencumbered by the realties of today’s media.
So when anyone attempts to threaten a medium of exchange between our readers and us, well, that’s when we get dirty, Harry. And, no, Clint Eastwood isn’t on staff.
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