Posted on 13/12/2001
NarcoNews
Wins Rights For Internet
by Mike Burke*
On Friday, December 7, a New York State Supreme Court Judged
ruled in favor
of the muckraking online news site NarcoNews in a landmark freedom
of press
case for online news sources.
New York City Independent Media Center journalist Mike Burke
conducted a
brief email interview on Monday December 10 with Al Giordano,
the founder
of the muckraking online new site NarcoNews.com which covers
the Latin
American drug war. On Friday, December 7, a New York State Supreme
Court
Judged ruled in favor of NarcoNews in a landmark freedom of
press case for
online news sources. NarcoNews and Mario Menendez, Mexican newspaper
publisher, had been sued for libel by the Mexican banking monolith
Banamex
for exposing a top executive as a drug smuggler. After three
failed
attempts for a libel verdict in Mexican courts, Banamex filed
suit in New
York but the case was dismissed on Friday. "Since principles
of defamation
law may be applied to the Internet... this court determines
that Narco
News, its website, and the writers who post information, are
entitled to
all the First Amendment protections accorded a newspaper-magazine
or
journalist in defamation suits," ruled New York Supreme Court
Justice Paula
Omansky.
INDYMEDIA: How did the suit affect your ability to report As
NarcoNews on
the Drug War?
NARCONEWS: It was nearly fatal and took half of my hours away
from the real
work - reporting on the US-imposed "war on drugs" from Latin
America - for
the past year. I first heard I was being sued by Banamex in
late October of
2000 - almost three months after the suit had been filed. I
was in an
isolated area of Mexico and checking in with journalist Mario
Menendez by
telephone, and he had just been served papers on the lawsuit.
I had to cut
short an investigation on political prisoners in Oaxaca and
rushed back, 11
hours away, to what we affectionately call the Narco Newsroom,
which is
nothing more than a little rented house and a laptop. There,
my neighbors
were in an uproar. Armed men had come into the community, an
indigenous
town, looking for the "gringo with a mustache" and they were,
well,
diverted (at a future date I'll elaborate more on the cat-and-mouse
game
with Banamex's inept attorneys at the Akin Gump firm who failed
to legally
serve me papers on the case).
I had been in Mexico already for years. I had no money, no regular
contact
with more than a dozen people in the United States, Narco News
had about
3,000 daily readers and 185 subscribers - the site had just
been launched
in April 2000 - and I certainly couldn't afford a lawyer. The
PRI regime
was lame-duck but still in power at that time and there were
also very
reliable sources who were telling me of a plan to expell me
from the
country as has happened to 400 colleagues in journalism and
human rights
who had spent time in Zapatista territory. It was, well, a weighty
time.
In terms of workload, I would estimate that responding to this
lawsuit,
studying the law and court rules, gathering all the mountains
of
documentation about the Banamex president Roberto Hernandez's
reported
cocaine trafficking activities on his properties and the other
related
issues, travelling five times to New York to defend the case,
raising some
money so that the narconews.com internet site could have a legal
defense on
the complex technical internet jurisdiction issues, coordinating
with my
codefendant Mario Menendez, his lawyers Marty Garbus and David
Atlas, Narco
News lawyer Tom Lesser, writing legal memoranda, all of this
cost me more
than half of my hours over the past year. And I'm speaking of
more than a
40-hour work week, of course.
It's still taking time away from the reporting. Right now I'm
in Bolivia.
There is a very heated conflict between the coca growers, organized
as a
labor union, and the government, taking orders from the US Embassy,
a major
growers union leader, Casimiro Huanca, has just been assassinated,
and I'm
trying to do the ground-level reporting and maintain a "war
log" of sorts
on Narco News to inform the world. But obviously it is also
important to
respond to the press. I'm answering these questions from Indymedia
first
because, A., Indymedia supported our battle before the press
bandwagon on
our case had started, and, B., I know it will be published uncensensored
and I can send other reporters there to get some background
info.
In sum, my life of the past year has been one of a nearly full-time
professional defendant. Somehow we've also gotten some good
reporting done
on the drug war, but oh, at what a grueling work schedule. That
was made
possible by Attorney Tom Lesser coming into the case to defend
Narco News
(I had been sued twice, in effect, once as Al Giordano and also
as
"Defendant The Narco News Bulletin"). Lesser pitched a perfect
game against
the Akin Gumpsters of Banamex and the Judge has just dismissed
all the
charges at the first possible instance.
I strongly urge you and other media to interview Attorney Tom
Lesser, the
great civil liberties and free speech barrister from Massachusetts.
His
office phone number is 413-584-7331, and you can publish it.
Lesser was
*the* difference between victory and defeat on this battle.
He has been my
friend for 24 years, ever since I was a 17 year old lad being
ejected from
the New Hampshire national guard armories after anti-nuke protests
in
Seabrook, New Hampshire, and Tom was part of the legal team
into whose
custody we minors were placed after that 1977 protest. I'd say
he's taken
his custudy responsibilities quite seriously, no? Seriously,
he's a great
man and a laser sharp attorney who, from day one, plotted the
winning
strategy with this broke pro se defendant.
INDYMEDIA: Could you summarize what the court's ruling mean
for online
journalists?
NARCONEWS: So far I have only seen parts of the 29 page decision.
The key
part regarding online journalists is posted on the front page
of Narco
News: There, Judge Paula Omansky explains that she conducted
a "careful
review" of all the works published on Narco News during the
relevant time
period of the lawsuit; I had given her 568 pages of every word
and every
story and had asked her to please read it during our July 20th
court
hearing in New York. "It ain't exactly popular summer reading
or the latest
John Grisham novel" I said to her in Court. And she laughed,
saying, "I
should hope not! We get Grisham here every day!" Well, she apparently
kept
her promise and actually read all of Narco News, not just the
reports on
the narco-bankers.
She concluded that Narco News was, lo and behold, a real and
serious
project in journalism that deserves the "heightened protection"
accorded to
the New York Times and commercial newspapers and magazine based
in the
Sullivan v. NY Times decision. She said that Narco News deals
with an
important policy issue: the drug war and its affect on the peoples
of the
hemisphere. She noted that the fact that we publish letters
to the editor
and allow readers to comment makes it even more important to
protect our
First Amendment rights.
In sum, with this decision, she broke the commercial press's
legal monopoly
on First Amendment protection, and extended that protection
to an online
periodical. This is a huge precedent. It applies to Indymedia.
It applies
to the website of Washington-based independent journalist Jeremy
Bigwood,
he wrote to me yesterday, because he's been reporting on Bolivia
and the
Andean drug war, too. It applies to any independent online journalist
or
website who makes a fair and responsible attempt to publish
the facts and
opinions on important public issues. It endorses, from the Court,
the
essence of Indymedia; that citizens can and should be journalists
too, and
can and should have the same legal protections as the paid media.
The decision should be read and studied, particularly that section.
* mikeburke99@yahoo.com
For full story see
http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14874&group=webcast
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