{"id":185275,"date":"2010-01-15T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/75141f45996ab2f0ed6abb3b751c9034"},"modified":"2010-01-15T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T20:30:00","slug":"targeting-the-medill-innocence-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/185275","title":{"rendered":"Targeting the Medill Innocence Project"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"At a time when student journalists are gaining traction across the country — linking with partners that\u00a0include<\/a>, for example, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> — one of their flagship organizations in Illinois, Medill University’s\u00a0Innocence Project<\/a>, is getting roundly lambasted by the state.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1999 and led by veteran reporter David Protess, undergraduates at the\u00a0Innocence Project have uncovered evidence that to date has freed 11 innocent men from prison, five of them on death row. They\u2019ve been featured by\u00a060 Minutes,<\/em> and are credited with helping reorient America\u2019s debate on the death penalty.<\/p>\n

But now, the Cook County state attorney’s office is subpoenaing their latest investigation, seeking grading criteria and emails from students involved in the case. The attorney’s office says that they respect Illinois’s reporter shield law, and that they believe it should apply to student journalists — just not these ones.<\/p>\n

According to the state, students from the Innocence Project\u00a0bribed<\/a> one source by giving him $60 in cab fare, and ‘flirted’ with another to get testimony. (Hmmm. Should flirting disqualify you from getting protection under shield laws? If so, at least a third of the reporters I know wouldn’t be covered.)<\/p>\n

Medill students aren\u2019t alone in their fight to take on the tough cases bypassed by other reporters. At the Center for Public Integrity<\/a>,\u00a0students <\/a>from Georgetown University have been working for over a year to identify former\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em> Daniel Pearl’s real killer. In 2008, students at Columbia contributed <\/a>to a front-page investigation at the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Neither are they alone in dismissing the state\u2019s gambit against an institution that has embarrassed Illinois\u2019s criminal justice system for years.\u00a0This week, the Associated Press, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0CBS News<\/em>, and the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em> <\/em>— along with over a dozen other news groups — all\u00a0filed <\/a>a brief in support of the Innocence Project’s crusade.<\/p>\n

To read more about the case, check out the February issue of Chicago Magazine<\/em>, which has a great profile<\/a> of the\u00a0Medill\u00a0Innocence Project’s Protess, as well as his current nemesis and\u00a0state attorney, Anita Alvarez.<\/p>\n

Photo Credit: <\/em>Truthout.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when student journalists are gaining traction across the country — linking with partners that\u00a0include, for example, the\u00a0New York Times — one of their flagship organizations in Illinois, Medill University’s\u00a0Innocence Project, is getting roundly lambasted by the state. Founded in 1999 and led by veteran reporter David Protess, undergraduates at the\u00a0Innocence Project have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}