Journalists

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke publicly for the first time Monday about the breakup of his 20-year marriage, saying he was responsible for the split even as he refused to talk about what caused it. In a somber meeting with reporters at City Hall, Villaraigosa declined to answer questions about whether the break with his wife, Corina, was triggered by another romantic relationship.

Re "Journalists' records secretly collected," May 14 With any right there are associated responsibilities and restrictions. The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms - well, not if you are a convicted felon or criminally insane. The 1st Amendment prohibits abridging the freedom of the press. I assume that does not include publishing my Social Security number or my IRA account number and password. The Associated Press' reporting of the details of a foiled terrorist plot to bring down an aircraft is not holding the government accountable.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

President Obama may be engaging in political damage control in proposing that Congress resurrect legislation to protect the confidentiality of journalists' sources. But his call for action on a federal shield law is welcome even if it is inspired by a desire to deflect criticism of the Justice Department's seizure of the phone records of the Associated Press. Although described as a "reporter's privilege," protection for confidential news sources actually benefits the public by making it easier for journalists to obtain information about wrongdoing in government and elsewhere.

WASHINGTON - Expressing outrage over national security leaks, Republicans on a House Judiciary subcommittee pressed legal experts Wednesday on whether it was possible to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information. The response was a qualified yes. "Under certain circumstances, you can see that if someone acting with impunity and knowledge of the consequences goes ahead and publishes it, that is something that I think would be worthy of prosecution and punishment," said Kenneth Wainstein, a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft who specializes in national security.

Army Archerd, a prolific reporter who chronicled the personal and professional lives of Hollywood stars and moguls for more than half a century from his columnist's perch at Daily Variety, and rocked the entertainment world when he announced in 1985 that actor Rock Hudson was suffering from AIDS, has died. He was 87. According to Variety's website, Archer died Tuesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical of a rare form of mesothelioma, "a cancer thought to be the result of his exposure to asbestos in the Navy during WWII."

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen. The Associated Press on Monday called the action a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news gathering. The government subpoenaed records covering a two-month period in early 2012 from telephones in the wire service's offices in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the homes and cellphones of at least five reporters and an editor.

  The all-suite, all-balcony Regent Seven Seas Mariner is the venue for four NPR and PBS journalists —Scott Simon, Gwen Ifill, Joseph Rosendo and Mark Samels — who will be presenters and panelists for onboard lectures and discussions about politics and culture. The journalists will also host private dinners and receptions. Itinerary: Venice to Split and Dubrovnik, Croatia; Valetta, Malta; Sicily, Florence and Pisa, Italy; Monte Carlo, Monaco and Rome. Dates: Nov. 10-20 Price: Starting at $5,799, double occupancy, including round-trip airfare from select U.S. cities, onboard meals and alcoholic beverages, shipboard gratuities, 24-hour room service and all airline fees, surcharges and taxes.

Sure, journalists can be pushy louts, too hurried or self-important to worry who gets in their way. But movies and pop culture tend to fixate on the reporter as loud, conniving or politically sold-out, at the expense of images that are much more subtle and true.

VATICAN CITY -- He's a charmer. Pope Francis on Saturday went before several thousand journalists, thanked them for their work, told a joke or two and even blessed (or at least patted) someone's guide dog. In a custom that dates at least to John Paul II, one of the pope's first public appearances was a meeting in the modern Paul VI Hall with an estimated 5,000 reporters who are based in Rome or had flown in to cover the week's historic events. Francis sat on the stage in a large but relatively simple chair and read a speech that thanked the press for its work during this “intense period” which had focused the world's eyes on the Roman Catholic Church.

WASHINGTON - Facing questions about the Justice Department's secret seizure of reporters' phone records, the White House says that it will renew its push for legislation that would offer federal protections to journalists and their sources. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that the White House had asked Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce the so-called media shield bill, which would in some cases prevent reporters from being compelled to name confidential sources.

WASHINGTON - Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday strongly defended the criminal investigation into the leak of classified details about a successful U.S. undercover operation, calling it "within the top two or three most serious leaks" of government-protected information since he became a federal prosecutor more than 35 years ago. The attorney general said he had recused himself earlier from overseeing the investigation into who told the...

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen. The Associated Press on Monday called the action a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news gathering. The government subpoenaed records covering a two-month period in early 2012 from telephones in the wire service's offices in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the homes and cellphones of at least five reporters and an editor.

CAIRO - President Mohamed Morsi, at least for the moment, appears to be channeling his softer side. The beleaguered Egyptian leader this week withdrew criminal complaints filed by his office against journalists and began nightly chats with anyone who might care to send him a tweet. The moves were calculated to calm the opposition and placate an international community dismayed by his authoritarian tendencies. Neither charismatic statesman nor eloquent visionary, Morsi nonetheless seems to be attempting to calm the nation's multiplying ills with uncharacteristic gestures.

BEIJING - In Washington, it is said, the definition of a gaffe is accidentally saying what you really think. That may be doubly true in Beijing, as Deng Yuwen can attest. Deng, an editor at the weekly newspaper run by the Central Party School, the main training institute for future Communist cadres, has taken on controversial topics in the past: deploring corruption and censorship, advocating political reform. But when he published a column calling for China to abandon its alliance with North Korea, he found himself out of a job within 48 hours.

For some criminal defense attorneys and journalists, the quest to find and exonerate an inmate wrongly convicted of murder is the white whale of their profession - endlessly pursued with a passion that borders on zeal. In his deeply reported and briskly written new book, "Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist-author Barry Siegel tells of one such quest that stretched over a decade. If it were simply a story of virtue's triumph over adversity, "Manifest Injustice" would be both important and highly readable.

TEHRAN - More than a dozen journalists were arrested in Iran on Sunday and Monday, reportedly detained for ties to foreign Farsi-language outlets, according to Iranian media. The wave of arrests marks a new crackdown on the media in Iran, five months before Iranians head to the polls. Eleven reporters were reportedly detained late on Sunday, nearly one week after Iranian public prosecutor Gholam Hossain Moseni Ejeie warned, “We know that some of the local journalists have connections with foreigners.

At the top of great social movements, charismatic leaders spin out visions of things that just might be. Closer to the bottom, it's journalists who sometimes force us to confront the way things are. Jack Nelson was one of the best journalists of the last half of the 20th century because he held a mirror up to his fellow Southerners just when the civil rights movement needed him to, and showed them a reflection they could not abide. "Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter" tells the story of Nelson's progression from a scrawny kid with middling grades and no particular consciousness about race into a crusader against inequality, who would follow a story's truth to the most uncomfortable places.

Britain's three major political parties have agreed on a new system of regulating newspapers in the aftermath of shocking invasions of privacy by some tabloid journalists. In this case, unanimity doesn't equal wisdom. The London-based Index on Censorship was right to call the new system a "sad day for press freedom in the U.K. " The new arrangement will implement recommendations of a prominent British judge who conducted an inquiry into press conduct after a "phone-hacking" scandal in which journalists illegally accessed information from the telephones of celebrities, politicians and a kidnapped girl who was later found dead.