By Andrew Kreig / Project Director's Blog

Washington Update this week probed the decades-long battle between Richard Nixon and Jack Anderson that helped shape the nation’s history during the Nixon Presidency. At noon (EST) March 3, Update hosts my co-host Scott Draughon and I examined new revelations about those battles with Dr. Mark Feldstein, a professor and renowned investigative reporter who authored Poisoning The Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. The show on the My Technology Lawyer Radio Network is now available worldwide by archive. Click here. We began the show with a Washington news round-up, including fall-out from several recent probes by our Project. Also, we described a sneak preview March 2 of Robert Redford’s latest film, a gripping real-life drama about the Lincoln assassination plot that holds fascinating parallels to the Vietnam-era tensions.

Among Feldstein’s book’s endorsers are Brit Hume, senior political analyst at FOX News and a former Anderson correspondent who took the lead one of Anderson’s biggest scoops, a political payoff that helped send Attorney General John Mitchell to prison. “I lived through a lot of this while working for Jack Anderson,” Hume says, “and found it a fascinating and evenhanded account.”

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director's Blog

Attorneys for three major book distributors asked a federal judge Feb. 28 to remove them from a libel lawsuit that they described as threatening public affairs book publishing in the United States if allowed to proceed. Despite those threatened stakes, there’s been virtually no news coverage of the case. This is doubtless because the book at issue ─ Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, and Lies & Murder? ─ is self-published by author Larry Sinclair and highly controversial. Just three writers at most, all for web-based media, were among the seven spectators including this editor for the hearing in Washington, DC’s federal courthouse.

The hearing helped illustrate why the Justice Integrity Project was founded last year for non-partisan legal research and reform advocacy. Our courts continually resolve important and politically-charged issues, often with scant or biased coverage by the traditional media. No matter what one thinks of Sinclair or his allegations, a near-complete news blackout of a significant court case should not be the remedy.

Let’s examine the arguments: No court has ever held a book distributor liable for merely selling a book, Amazon.com attorney Matthew Segal and Barnes & Noble counsel Linda Steinman told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in arguments echoed by Books-a-Million. Steinman said her client couldn’t continue to do business as presently if it had to research the factual basis of the 30 million titles it sells, including such controversial authors as Michael Moore, Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. “We rely on the publisher to stand behind the book,” she continued. “That’s where the redress is.” She and others argued also that the Communications Decency Act provides extra protections for Internet distributors of public affairs commentary.