Iran to Hear Saberi's Appeal on Sunday, But Also Loses Vital Appeal Documents

An Iranian court will hear the appeal of imprisoned journalist Roxana Saberi on Sunday, her lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said Saturday.

Khoramshahi told Nazila Fathi of The New York Times that he was optimistic that Saberi would win either an acquittal or a reduced sentence, the earlier date could complicate her defense by giving her second lawyer less time to review the case.

Ms. Saberi’s father said last week that he had hired a new lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, to defend Ms. Saberi along with her current lawyer, Mr. Khoramshahi. Mr. Saberi made the decision, he said, after he realized that another high-profile human rights lawyer was not allowed to meet with Ms. Saberi in prison to sign the paperwork for her appeal.

She eventually did sign the paperwork, which would allow her lawyers to look at her case file. But Mr. Nikbakht said Saturday that he was informed by the court that the paper she signed had been lost.

Mr. Nikbakht said he might not be able to defend Ms. Saberi if he was unable to read the case in time.

It is not clear how long it will take the court to render a ruling in the case of Saberi, who was sentenced to eight years in prison last month on espionage charges.

Iranian judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi had previously announced that the appeal would be heard behind closed doors with representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the intelligence ministry and lawyers association in attendance

Saberi had been on a humger strike. But on May 4, when her parents visited her in Tehran’s Evin prison, she agreed to begin eating again at her father’s insistence and took two spoonfuls of yogurt. She began the hunder strike on April 21.

Iranian officials told the BBC that the reporter was never on a hunger strike.

San Diego Union-Tribune Cuts 192 Jobs

The San Diego Union-Tribune is cutting 192 jobs in another round of layoffs affecting all departments at the newspaper, the Associated Press reported tonight.

The Union-Tribune said Thursday the layoffs amount to about 18 percent of its staff, which will be reduced to about 850 workers after the cuts become effective July 6.

The layoffs come three days after Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills private equity firm, completed its acquisition of the newspaper from Copley Press Inc.

The newspaper did not disclose the number of cuts in each department, including in the newsroom.

“These are tough times for the entire newspaper industry, and a time of transition for the Union-Tribune,” said Drew Schlosberg, the company's director of community and public relations, said in a Union-Tribune story. “Any decision to reduce staff is difficult.
“We will be working diligently to make the transition for those affected as easy as possible. ”

Guild Says 50 Baltimore Sun Staffers Staging Byline Strike Over Tribune's Heavy-Handed Tactics

More than 50 Baltimore Sun newsroom staff members, including reporters, photographers and other bylined content producers, launched a byline strike today protesting layoffs and heavy handed tactics by owner Tribune Co., according to the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

Newsroom staff members informed their managers today that they would withhold their bylines to protest last week's surprise layoffs of roughly 60 newsroom employees. Tribune, last week, slashed the newsroom by about one third, reducing the staff to 148 employees, a fraction of what it was in 1999 when the Chicago-based company acquired The Sun, which then boasted a newsroom staff of about 420 employees.

Some employees last week were fired while they were in the midst of writing and editing stories. Others were told to pack up their belongings immediately, and others were escorted out of the main newspaper building by security guards.

"Tribune's tactics are deplorable," said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. "Employees who poured their hearts and souls into putting out a great newspaper every day were told to get out and stay out. No fanfare, no thank you, no outplacement help, just hit the streets. Maybe that's big business Tribune way, but it isn't right. Through its actions Tribune has demonstrated that it has little regard or respect for its employees."

"These decisions were made without any discussions on alternative costs saving methods," added Brent Jones, a Sun editor and Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild representative. "We wanted to do something to show our former co‑workers that we're upset with how they were treated last week. We produce this paper and expect our voices to be heard."

Gus Sentementes, a Sun reporter and Guild representative, said "The wisdom and experience that has left The Sun in this period is shocking. Out‑of‑town and out‑of‑touch ownership has extracted a heavy toll on the newspaper."

Sentementes criticized Tribune Chairman Sam Zell for miscalculating the accelerating decline in the newspaper industry, jeopardizing The Sun's future by racking up $13 billion in debt, driving the company into bankruptcy and "degrading our 172‑year‑old institution."

"As we saw so vividly last week, the way our colleagues were so callously treated is not the way one of Baltimore's top corporate citizens ‑‑ and a civic watchdog ‑‑ should treat its own employees," Sentementes said.

Roxana Saberi Ends Hunger Strike; Request for Bail and an Appeal Are Filed

Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who is in a Tehran jail on a spying charge, has ended her hunger strike.

When Saberi’s parents visited her in Tehran’s Evin prison on May 4, she agreed to begin eating again at her father’s insistence and took two spoonfuls of yogurt. Yesterday evening, she confirmed to her parents during a phone call that she had decided to end the hunger strike she began on April 21.

Iranian officials told the BBC that the reporter was never on a hunger strike.

Through her father, who is in Iran, she expressed her gratitude for the international campaign of solidarity that has been waged on her behalf.

Saberi’s lawyers yesterday filed a request for her release on bail before the judge of the 28th chamber of the Tehran revolutionary court.

Iranian judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi announced yesterday that the appeal would be heard behind closed doors “in the course of next week” with representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the intelligence ministry and lawyers association in attendance.

“This is a travesty of justice,” Reporters sans frontières said. “Leading independent figures should be present at this appeal hearing. We call for Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi of the Human Rights Defenders Centre to be allowed to attend.”

What It's Like to Get Laid Off at the Ballpark

David Steele, a former Baltimore Sun sports columnist, describes the feelings and emotions he and his colleagues went through as they were laid off while covering the Baltimore O's baseball came. His detailed account is in Real Clear Sports:

Soon, Peter Schmuck, our columnist/blogger, told me that he had just been told to write live for the next day. That’s crazy, I said, we can’t have two columns from this game. There must be a mistake. Or some other news is breaking and I need to switch. Or my editor forgot that I told him I’d be here. Or something. Oh, it was something all right, but again, the giant hint just whizzed right over my head. Schmuck figured it was a mistake, too, and dashed off an email to tell our editor that we were both here, so let’s try to clear this up.

Not long after that, around 2 p.m., one of the other writers pulled me aside: “Maese just sent a text saying he got laid off." It was a perfectly legible sentence, but it made no sense to anyone there. It’s the middle of the game, they just had layoffs yesterday, he’s a prominent columnist … huh? It wasn’t anything to joke about, but it didn’t sound true at all. But he had, for the moment, disappeared from his seat.

I went back to my seat and saw that there was a message on my cell from the office. I hadn’t turned the ringer back up after the manager’s pre-game press conference, so I hadn’t heard it. The message: call back as soon as you get this. Good, I thought, we’ll straighten out this business of who is writing for the next day. Which, technically, is what happened. Still, apparently, I was either completely clueless or in total denial, I’m still not sure which.

It didn’t matter. I called back and got the voice mail. At 2:34 p.m. (that time-stamp is kind of stuck in my head for the time being), the office called back. I went into a hallway behind the press box and answered it with something like, “Hey, what’s up?’’ Or “What’s going on?’’ Along those lines.

My editor greeted me, paused, took a deep breath. “David, I’m sorry you have to be told this way …"

Boston Globe Reaches Tentative Deal With Guild

Negotiators for the Boston Globe's owners, The New York Times Co., and the newspaper guild reached a tentative agreement at 3 a.m. today in an effort to save New England's most famous newspaper.

Details of the agreement were not released, as reported by Jessica Heslam and Christine McConville of the Globe:

The New York Times Co., itself facing a severe financial crisis, had warned the Boston Newspaper Guild in no uncertain terms that it would order a sweeping 23 percent wage cut for all 700-plus Guild members if an agreement was not reached.

There was no word on the major sticking point during marathon negotiations over the last four days - the lifetime job guarantees held by about 190 members of the Guild, which represents editorial and advertising workers. Lifting or modifying those guarantees would leave those staffers vulnerable to layoffs.

“These negotiations have concluded this evening and we have a proposal to bring before the members of the Boston Newspaper Guild,” said Guild president Dan Totten, emerging from the latest round of intensive talks at 3:40 a.m.

“Out of respect to our members, we’re not disclosing any details until we meet with the membership and the New York Times has agreed to do the same thing.”

DOJ: Charges Over Bush Torture Memos Unlikely

An internal Justice Department inquiry is recommending that the authors of the Bush administration torture memos committed serious lapses of judgment but should not be criminally prosecuted, government officials who have access to the preliminary report told David Johnston and Scott Shane of The New York Times.

In addition, The Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that it is also likely to ask that state bar associations consider disciplinary action.

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The officials said it is possible the final report might be subject to revision, but they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations.

The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos reflected the lawyers’ independent judgments of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were skewed deliberately to justify what the C.I.A. proposed.

At issue are whether the Justice Department lawyers acted ethically in writing a series of legal opinions from 2002 to 2007. The main targets of criticism are John Yoo, Jay S. Bybee, and Steven G. Bradbury, who as senior officials in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel were the principal authors of the memos.

The opinions permitted the C.I.A. to use a number of interrogation methods that human rights groups have condemned as torture, including waterboarding, wall-slamming, head-slapping and other techniques. The opinions allowed many of these practices to be used repeatedly and in combination.

White House Press Office Stubs Toe on Joe, Calls VP 'Joe Buden'

The White House Press Office is still having trouble getting things right.

After stumbling out of the gate, the White House has once again botched a press release, this time in regards to Vice President Joe Biden, as Jimmy Orr of The Christian Science Monitor notes in this posting:

Hey, Vice President Biden isn’t the only one who can make a mistake. His press office yesterday showed it is equally as capable.

Usually his press people have to send out a statement clarifying what the vice president meant. On Monday, they had to send out an email clarifying what they meant.

But it was only a minor mistake. Like the city where the vice president was going. And the vice president’s name.

Subject

“Vice President Buden Kicks Off $32 Million Renovation and Restoration of Wilimington Train Station,” reads the subject line.

Bringing back memories of last week when a corrective email was issued following Biden’s disastrous appearance on the Today Show, his flacks quickly hit the re-send button correcting the mistakes.

After all, they know it’s Vice President Biden and not Buden.

Progress

But let’s not be negative about this. That would be petty.

It’s important to recognize progress. After all, these guys are getting better at this. The whole staff is.

Last week, it took six hours before the White House sent a statement out clarifying why Air Force One was involved in a photo op that panicked New York City.

By Thursday, it only took 90 minutes for the vice president’s office to issue a statement clarifying that Biden did not want people holing up in caves.

Yesterday? The clarifying statement was sent out in just four minutes.

The thing is, I typo all the time. But this blog is a one-man show. I have no editor backing me up. I catch what I can and make corrections as I go along. But the White House press office should be an elite operation, where multiple people look at releases before they are made public. Certainly misspelling Wilmington isn't a big deal, but Buden? They're lucky they didn't insert the letter "r."

Reading Eagle Offers No Severance to 52 Staffers It Laid Off

The Reading (Pa.) Eagle laid off 52 employees on April 30, not an unusual move in the newspaper industry these days. But management took the extraordinary step in offering no severance to the departing workers, according to Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher's report today. In addition, the newspaper offered only two weeks of extended health-care coverage.

"What has most people upset is there is absolutely no severance pay," said Al Walentis, who had worked at the paper since 1974 and served as multimedia projects coordinator when he was let go Thursday. "I tried to show some professionalism. I offered to help explain the job to someone else who would take over, but they said no."

Walentis, 57, said he was asked to leave Thursday soon after finding out his job had been terminated.

The same was true for Rebecca VanderMeulen, a four-year reporter. "I am not surprised it happened, just the way it happened," she said, referring to the lack of severance and being escorted from the building. "I wanted to stay and wrap up some loose ends [on her beat], but they didn't think it was appropriate."

Assistant Photo Editor Ron Romanski might have the longest tenure at the paper, at 45 years. He said his father was a chief photographer years before him. "It shocks everybody I talk to," he says of the lack of severance. "I'm thinking about suing them. I didn’t think it would happen to me."

Publisher William Flippin did not return Strupp's phone calls to comment. Associate Publisher Larry Orkus declined to comment on the situation, but confirmed in an e-mail to Strupp that the layoffs had occurred without severance pay. He said each worker was given two weeks of health benefits, which covered the period needed to apply for COBRA insurance.

Saberi Fed by IV, Looks 'Weak and Frail,' Father Says

U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi, on a hunger strike in an Iran Evin prison to protest her spying conviction, was hospitalized on Friday and fed intravenously, her father told the media today. She was later returned to her cell.

Saberi said his daughter looked "weak and frail" when he saw her yesterday.

The 32-year-old Iranian-American freelance journalist was tried and convicted during a one-day, closed-door trial on espionage charges and sentenced to eight years in prison. Saberi began her hunger strike to protest her imprisonment at Evin, which houses Iranian dissidents and political prisoners.

Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials in 2006, but Saberi continued to file short news items with permission from the government, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Saberi was detained in January, although no formal charges were disclosed. On April, word emerged that she had been charged with espionage.

"Without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities," Hassan Haddad, a deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency.

UK Bans Michael Savage on Grounds of Hate Speech

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced today the names of 16 people banned from entering the United Kingdom since October. One of the people banned is conservative talk-radio host Michael Savage.

"I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it's a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won't be welcome in this country," Smith told GMTV.

"Coming to this country is a privilege. If you can't live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded.

"We are publishing the names of 16 of those that we have excluded since October. We are telling people who they are and why it is we don't want them in this country."

In reference to Savage, Smith said that "this is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."

Others banned include Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe, preachers Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi and Amir Siddique, Muslim activist Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), murderer and Hezbollah terrorist Samir Al Quntar and Kashmiri terror group leader Nasr Javed. Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, the former leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang which committed 20 racially motivated murders, are also banned but are currently serving prison terms.

NYT Guild Ratifies 5 Percent Pay Cut, But Some Still Fear Layoffs

Unionized employees at the New York Times Co flagship newspaper and its digital unit ratified a deal yesterday to cut pay by 5 percent, according to a memo obtained by Robert MacMillan and Phil Wahba of Reuters, paving the way for a reduction in pay for 1,300 employees starting Tuesday.

New York Times Co management had reached a tentative agreement with the Newspaper Guild of New York last week to cut union worker pay at the Times in a bid to save $4.5 million. Employees will be given an additional 10 paid days off leave per year.

Workers will get reduced pay through the end of the year, though New York Times management rejected a Guild proposal to guarantee that there would be no layoffs during the period in which the pay cut is in effect.

"Because our members know these are extraordinarily tough times for the news business, they were willing to pitch in to help the company cut costs without layoffs," New York Guild President Bill O'Meara said in the memo. "But if management comes back in a few months and cuts jobs despite the cooperation of our members, I think they will find that the reservoir of goodwill will have run dry."

O'Meara had earlier reportedly told staffers that regardless of the vote, layoffs are going to happen, according to John Koblin of the New York Observer.

. . . union chief Bill O'Meara told Times employees at a meeting this afternoon that layoffs are likely inevitable.

"There are no guarantees that this will save any jobs," said a source who attended the meeting. "They want to cut 80 jobs, including 70 in the newsroom. All this does is cut the numbers. They are still going to have layoffs."

When Mr. O'Meara was asked about the layoffs, he said, "I don't see how there can't be," said our source.

Iran Tells Advocacy Groups to Stop Protesting Saberi Jailing

Iranian officials have told advocacy groups to stop protesting the jailing of American journalist Roxana Saberi, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters today in Tehran.

"Our judiciary is independent and ... any kind of imposition or interference in the legal process is against international regulations," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told a weekly news conference.

What international regulations he was referring to was not clear.

"Roxana's case is not a complicated issue. She is an Iranian lady whose case is under review by the appeal court," said Qashqavi. "We have to wait for the appeal court's decision."

Four U.S. members of Reporters Sans Frontières began a hunger strike Sunday outside UN headquarters in New York as part of World Press Freedom Day. Saberi has been on a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin Prison — drinking only sugared water — since April 21 to protest the espionage charges levied against her. She was transported to the prison hospital on May 1.

She was found guilty of espionage activities and sentenced to eight years in prison by a revolutionary court.

Does the Press Show More Respect for Obama Than It Did for Bush?

There was a stir this weekend over a YouTube video that showed how journalists in the White House press room rose from their seats when President Barack Obama entered the room but remained seated when President Bush had entered the room. Conservatives saw it as evidence of not only disrespect to the former president, but its favoritism toward Obama.

CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller sees it more as a rookie mistake by members of the press corps who were in the front row. In his blog, Knoller writes today that there is a different protocol in the press briefing room than at an East Room news conference.

It’s a long-standing practice for reporters to rise when the president enters the East Room for a news conference, but that hasn’t been the case in the briefing room.

I checked with two colleagues who served as senior wire service reporters during the Bush Presidency and who, in matters of press protocol, the rest of us followed.

“The briefing room is always a more informal place,” says Steve Holland of Reuters.

But the principal reason reporters remained in their seats, he said, was not to block the shot of TV cameramen and still photographers in the back of the room who were trying to make a picture of the president’s walk-in.

No disrespect was intended for President Bush and to the best of my knowledge none was taken.

Tim Graham of NewsBusters.org seems to concur that the practice is to remain seated, but I'm not sure if he thinks this is just newfound respect for the office of president:

This could be a rather mild outbreak of old-fashioned politeness to the chief. But in my two years in the White House press corps, I never saw reporters in the informal all-business setting of the briefing room stand up to greet the president (unless we were already standing, of course.)

I also noticed that reporters and cameramen were not really comfortable participating in patriotic rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance in the Bush years in East Room ceremonies -- perhaps they equated patriotism with being a Bush supporter?

Hartford Courant's Top Two Editors Leaving Posts Tomorrow

Hartfort Courant editor Cliff Teutsch and managing editor Bobbie Roessner are leaving the Hartford Courant effective tomorrow, according to Jim Romenesko. The move is an effort by management to re-organize the newspaper.

Teutsch told his staff in his own memo:

The editor's job just doesn't fit me anymore the way it needs to. Important work demands to be done here by an editor who is in synch with those above him. My best assessment is I'm not that editor. Jeff asked me to stick around for several weeks while we decided whether the fit was right; leaving now is my call.

No Closure Filing for Boston Globe; Six of Seven Unions Agree to Cuts

Management has announced that it will not file a plant-closing notice today -- as required by law -- to close the Boston Globe after reaching concessions from six of seven unions.

"We expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility, and the financial savings that we sought from these unions," Globe spokesman Robert Powers said in a statement on the Globe's website. "We are not, therefore, making a filing today." Companies are required by law to give 60-days notice to the state and employees before closing a business.

The Globe reached agreements with unions representing delivery truck drivers, mailers, press operators, electricians, machinists and technical services workers. Those unions represent about 500 employees. The agreements still must be ratified by a vote of members in each unions. The sole union without an agreement is the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents more than 600 editorial, advertising and commercial workers.

The Globe reported that Guild leaders left talks today without a deal, with the elimination of lifetime job guarantees enjoyed by about 190 members said to be a key issue separating the two sides. Leaders in unions with similar job guarantees have made concessions on the issue, but declined to release details, the Globe said.

NYT Co. Notifying Authorities of Its Plan to Shut Down Boston Globe

The New York Times Co. said last night that it is notifying federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe within weeks, writes Howard Krutz of The washington Post this morning.

The Times Co. said that it will file today a required 60-day notice of the planned shutdown under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law after it failed to get the required millions in concessions from union officials that it said it needed to keep the newspaper running.

The move could amount to a negotiating ploy to extract further concessions from the Globe's unions, since the notice does not require the Times Co. to close the paper after 60 days. Talks between the two sides continued early today, wire services reported, after a midnight deadline to forge an agreement came and went. The threat of a shutdown puts the unions under fierce pressure to produce additional savings; the Boston Newspaper Guild promptly called the step a "bullying" tactic by the company.

Some industry observers have expressed skepticism that Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would want his legacy to include the shuttering of the Globe, which his company bought in 1993.

On World Press Freedom Day, Saberi Continues Hunger Strike, Iranians Receive Petition

Reporters Sans Frontières marked World Press Freedom Day by handing in a petition for Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi’s release at the Iranian embassy in Paris. Sentenced to eight years in prison in Tehran on a charge of spying for the United States, Saberi is now on the 13th day of a hunger strike, according to Reporters Sans Frontières.

Saberi was admitted to the Evin prison hospital on May 1 because she had stopped taking liquids. “She is very weak, but she is still determined to go all the way,” her father, Reza Saberi, told Reporters Sans Frontières today.

Four members of Reporters Sans Frontières, including its secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, began a hunger strike on April 28 in Paris in solidarity with Saberi. As it symbolically took over her protest in this manner, Reporters Sans Frontières urged Saberi to end her own hunger strike. “She needs to know she is not alone,” the press freedom organization has repeatedly said.

“We are going to continue this protest in other forms,” Reporters Sans Frontières today. “Saberi has not committed any crime and must be released without delay. The Iranian president must not use this young woman for his election campaign or as a bargaining chip in his relations with Europe or the United States.”

Members of Reporters Sans Frontières have been stationed outside the Iran Air office in Paris, located at 63 Avenue des Champs-Elysées, since 11 a.m. on April 28, handing out leaflets and collecting signatures. The protest intensified all week, spreading to London, New York, Washington, Madrid and Brussels. In Paris, more than 800 people signed the petition for Saberi’s release.