Lesley Visser: EOTO #4

 Leslie Visser

Overview

Lesley Visser is a woman of many talents. Her drive, passion, humor, kindness, and work ethic are what make her one of, if not the greatest sports reporters of all time. Her list of accomplishments is the size of a book, but the impression she left on people was even more than her accomplishments. Her impact was so tremendous that she was asked directly by the Madden family to speak at John Madden's funeral. In addition, according to John Feinstein, a New York Times Best Selling Author and a columnist for the Washington Post: "Every single woman writing sports today owes a debt to Lesley Visser, who proved that women could both out-report and out-write men long before we took that for granted, as we do now." Feinstein was right on the money with this comment considering Visser was the leader of this organization in so many ways. Her nickname is “The Woman of Firsts”. Contrary to popular belief, this did not just mean first for women, this was first for everyone. 

Accomplishments

Leslie Visser’s career took off in 1974 when she began her work with the Boston Globe. She won a grant that only 20 other women received in a 95% male-dominated field, and this kickstarted her to greatness. After this she spent time at CBS, ABC, and even had a podcast for quite some time. She was so passionate about all forms of reporting and did not have a weakness. Her career started her on the path of being a print journalist, but in the end broadcast was where she flourished the most. 

She was the first to ever be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame after her many appearances on the sidelines of NFL games, first woman to appear on Monday night football,  and even reported on the SuperBowl. Not only was she present as a reporter at the SuperBowl, she was the first and only woman ever to present the Lombardi Trophy. 

Moving out of the NFL specifically, she was not only inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, but 5 others while being voted the #1 Female Sportscaster of All-Time by the National Sportscasters of America. This was due to the fact of her firsts being and not limited to: “She is the only sportscaster, male or female, to have worked on the Network Broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the World Series, the Triple Crown, the World Figure Skating Championship and the US Open Tennis.” stated on her personal website. 

Conclusion

Leslie Visser is an inspiration to many, personally as a young journalist, I am incredibly inspired by her work, her dedication, and her confidence in herself. I envy the way she has made this career and life for herself and she never backed down just because of the fear of being the “first” to do it. Also admittedly, I purchased her book immediately after researching her for this specific blog post and I am thankful that I now know the work of Leslie Visser. 

eoto #3 response blog

Whistleblowers

What’s a Whistleblower?

Defined by the National Whistleblower Center, a whistleblower is “someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to someone who is in the position to rectify the wrongdoing.” A whistleblower is not always someone who is outside of the industry that is being caught for wrong-doing, though. Quite often, the whistleblower in a situation is someone who works for the same company as the person at fault. They are seeing within operations that something is not right and they take a stand to make sure it does not continue in their workplace. 

Examples of Whistleblowers

There are incredible amounts of cases of whistleblowers, but there are a few that are absolute standouts. One of those examples took place in 2002. Colleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent, found new details around the 9/11 tragedy. She was able to uncover information that showed FBI's D.C. Headquarters was given evidence and insight about the bombers’ real intentions that day. Actually, there was evidence given approximately 30 days before the tragedy occurred. This was plenty of time to change the course of action, but instead it was covered up. Rowley spoke in court on multiple occasions with her story and evidence to back it up, and in the end, change was made because of her. The FBI took the steps to change their protocol on the “intelligence agencies” of their group. 

Another example took place in 1996. Linda Tripp was the whistleblower in this case. She had previously worked with the government and while working would keep her phone recording each conversation she had with intern, Monica Lewinsky. In these phone conversations, it was revealed by Lewinsky that she was having relations with the president at the time, Bill Clinton. Lewinsky was a very young lady and there were many different layers of problems in this case. The evidence brought by this whistleblower led to the impeachment of president Clinton. 

Conclusion

Whistleblowers are very important for getting information that is undercover. The term, at first, comes across as if it would be a negative meaning, but the reality is there are so many cases that never would have been uncovered without them. 

The Chilling Effect

 The “Chilling Effect”

Overview 

This “chilling effect” is a concept used to censor publishers. The direct definition of the chilling effect defined by thefire.org is “The chilling effect refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression for fear of running afoul of a law or regulation. Chilling effects generally occur when a law is either too broad or too vague. Individuals steer far clear from the reaches of the law for fear of retaliation, prosecution, or punitive governmental action.” Many vague laws will use the chilling effect because people are unsure of where their speech will cross a line. This does fall under a huge misconception about the chilling effect, though. It is not used in all vague laws, just select ones to ensure that the first amendment is not being broken. This effect often leads to court cases due to the matter of people not fully understanding what they can say or how much, which we will dive into a bit deeper later in this post. 

The chilling effect began in the mid 1900’s by Shauer. Shauer believed that the “chilling” was due to imperfections in the law. The way that this plays out is that people have a fear of their words being punished, though they should not legally be punished for their words under the first amendment freedom of speech. 

Overbreadth Doctrine

When speaking on the chilling effect, it is not often spoken about without its sister term “overbreadth doctrine”. The overbreadth doctrine is when "a law, regulation, or set of rules made by the government is too vague”, or overbroad. Typically, when the overbreadth doctrine is in use it is no accident. It’s usually for indirect emphasis on a topic.

In addition, it's another way that the government can practice censorship when they are unable to do anything else while also impacting protected and unprotected speech. This meaning, the “line” to be crossed with a person's freedom of speech can be difficult to depict when the broadness is a factor. Having broadness is a loophole many people attempt to use but the government still finds their own ways to stop this from being used considering they, like the chilling effect, have no way to monitor without breaking a person's freedom of speech. 

Court Cases Using the Chilling Effect

There are several cases where the chilling effect was put into place in court. The first of many important cases is the Weiman vs. Updegraff case. This was a case where voices were fighting against teachers having their own free/ fun speech in the classroom. This was something heavily fought because the only reason some students do enjoy school is because of the personality the teachers will bring to education. Without that, students are left with boring lectures about topics they have no interest in. 

Another case was the Reno vs. ACLU case. This took place in 1996-1997 and it was ruled that “the communications decency act was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech”. This was a huge issue considering there was a danger in censoring “the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed”. 

Conclusion

Learning about the chilling effect and how it impacts the government in a not-so-beneficial way is an intriguing approach to take when learning about freedom of speech. There are not many places in the law where the government does not have full control of all situations, but this is a gray area for them which will make society wonder if this is something that should be taken advantage of more in times of need or whether this should be abolished due to the danger of certain people getting away with the things they say.

Class War Blog

 War Movie Response

This movie was heartbreaking. I had never realized before how horrible this time was or that there were deliberate plans to kill people for entertainment. The press was so afraid to release the truth during the wars. Instead of in-depth explanations about the disturbing instances, they chose to glorify aspects of less importance and focus on things that mattered less. With this movie, the only way that people finally got the truth was through wikileaks. Wikileaks videos almost always begin with multiple content warnings. This is due to triggering content of course, but also because the internet believes that enough warnings may discourage people from engaging in the video, but more importantly from engaging in the truth. There is such a stigma around war and violence that people are attempting to shield the truth from the world when in reality, as sad as it is, the truth needs to be seen, heard, and understood. People need to know what is actually happening in these times and people need to know the despicable minds behind it all. 

“This wasn’t combat. This was reckless slaughter” stated an anonymous profile in the comment section of the video. This anonymous person was spot on, though. This was no real “war”, this was cruel, undeserved harm to innocent people of all ages. They had no idea this would be their last day of life, and seconds before it there were men laughing about it. It is disgusting, disgraceful, and scary that there are people like that in this world. It is just as scary as well that there are people helping to cover up these horrible people in the act.

Brief movie review blog

Goodnight and Good Luck 

Being a journalist during the 1940’s-1950’s was no easy task. The long hours and never-ending criticism took a major toll on each of them daily. Their opinions were constantly ridiculed, so was the truth. This film focuses at the start on Edward R Murrow being honored for his work on TV. Instead of making said honor focused on his accomplishment though, he goes a bit deeper in his speech. He speaks with a purpose about how TV should no longer just be solely for entertainment and fun. He says it needs to be educational to those watching. People should be gaining knowledge, not losing brain cells. This was a strong opening to the entire documentary as the rest of the documentary is people bringing each other down, exposing one another, and all around negativity around the profession they are all doing. 

CBS was the company they were all were all working for at the time. There were so many different controversies at this time in the media, but the main target was those in support of communism/ those who were communists. With that being said, the “bright” faces on television began to use this as a target for the people around them. At the hardest of times they would be accusatory of someone working for CBS being communist. When this occurred, that person kind of laughed it off because she had expected this immature nature, and she spoke her own truth.

The entire documentary was very fast-paced but it was deep and it was real. Back then with the amount of anger people had at each other and the world, there was so much behind the scenes that nobody knew about. This film brings this to light very well and is not only entertaining, but educational. 

Extra Blog

Nellie Blye

Nellie Blye was a woman of dedication. She put her all into every piece she wrote and threw herself into her projects 110%. She was a woman of many talents, which eventually led to her induction into the women's hall of fame. Her work began when she wrote a response to an offensive article she had read. Her response got buzz and from there she was offered a position at Pittsburgh Dispatch. Her early work here was focused solely on working women, starting with a series all about women who were working in factories. After this, for a full six months she focused more specifically about writing on the lives of Mexican women and their work ethics/ professions. Through this work, she did lots of traveling. As a journalist, she spoke on how much she enjoyed being able to travel for her stories because it gave her range and experience when writing about each headline she was assigned. 

 This journey was no easy ride for Blye, though. At one point in her life she was sent to a mental institution. This changed her entirely. She spoke on the fact that while she was in there she felt she was sane compared to the others who surrounded her, but it also made her wonder if that is how others felt when looking at her. During her time in the institution, they were forced to share a bath towel 45 people/ 1 towel, the food was atrocious, she was held in confinement rooms that were rat-filled, damp, lonely, and intolerable, and worst of all she was beaten, dragged by her hair, held under water, and tied down. This mental institution did some serious damage on Nellie Blye. 

The mental institution scares did not stop her from her journalism work after the fact, though. She did not skip a beat coming back to this profession where she covered WW1 stories and happened to be the first one to enter the warzone to report on what was going on. This did not last as long as she had liked when she was arrested on the mistaken impression that she was a British spy. 

Blye was a woman willing to take many risks in her profession and this set a tone for not only female journalists, but males as well on how to get the best story no matter the consequence.

Winifred Sweet

Winifred Sweet

There is so much to know about Winifred Sweet. Whether the focus is upon her bravery, talent, creativity, determination, her name in general, or her impact on the world as a whole, there is no real way to focus upon just one aspect of her. She was a journalist, but she was also an author who had many book

published in her time of being a writer. 

To begin, Winifred was a female journalist back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Her career held up for 50 years, showing just how successful she truly was. She was also known as a “Sob Sister”, which was a journalist who wrote human interest stories with sympathetic pathos. Very often she focused upon opinion writing, which had its advantages and disadvantages in the field. She passed away in 1936, but crazy enough she was working right up until her death. She had a piece published in The Examiner the week before she died. This was a clear indicator to everyone that she was the hardest worker you could find.

She spent much of her time working for the Chicago Tribune first and then her work moved to The Examiner. She was offered a position in New York as well, but this was working for her ex-husband.  She turned this offer down quickly, though it was a great opportunity, and moved to Colorado to continue her work instead.

There were not many successful women in journalism at this time. In fact, Winifred had to do some pretty crazy stunts and charades in order to be noticed or confirmed as successful. Her two craziest stunts were during the Hurricane of 1900 and her "Emergency Test". 

To start, her stunt during the Hurricane, or tidal wave, of 1900 was to dress as a young black man in order to ride upon the ship that brought her to the scene. Without this incredible disguise, she couldn’t have gotten onto the boat at all to report. Not only was she the only female reporter that was able to cover this story, she was also the very first reporter on the scene. This gave her quite a jump ahead of the others. As she approached the scene she was able to see the fires begin and in addition was first-hand experiencing the “deadliest natural disaster in American  history.” Interestingly enough though, her goal was not just to cover the full story of what was going on during this time. Her main goal overall was to raise money to relieve the damage that had been done. She also spent coverage time defending policemen and firemen claiming that they were doing their best in a situation that was so difficult to handle. She had hoped she could bring a more positive light to these people who were working so hard. 

As for her"Emergency Test", this was an even more in-depth stunt for her reporting. Within this story, she fake- fainted in front of a carriage. This drew lots of attention to her and ended with police sending her to the hospital. As this occurred, she was rudely treated by hospital workers (this was the norm for women whenever they were brought into the hospital, workers had never been kind to them). After her “drama”, she uncovered a large scandal and discovered many problems with emergency services. This stunt of hers brought a brand new respect to her name considering other reporters did not often go to these lengths to get to the bottom of a story. 

Winifred was incredibly passionate about her profession, which was what led her to do the incredible things she did. “I'd rather smell the printer's ink and hear the presses go around than go to any grand opera in the world.” She stated, explaining that her love for writing was stronger than anything else there was. This was a clear indicator of the type of person she was and the work ethic she was producing which makes it evident why she was such a phenomenon nationwide for so many years (even after her passing).