Earl Caldwell (journalist)

Last updated

Earl Caldwell (born c. 1939) is an American journalist. He documented the Black Panthers from the inside in 1969, and became embroiled in a key U.S. Supreme Court decision clarifying reporters' rights. The case started when the FBI pressured Caldwell unsuccessfully to be an informant against the Black Panther Party. He worked for The New York Times , the New York Daily News , The New York Amsterdam News and is on the radio in New York City. His career as a journalist spans more than four decades. He witnessed and chronicled some of the most important civil rights events from the 1960s onwards. He was the only reporter present when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Caldwell is a founding member of the steering committee of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, as well as the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In 2009 he was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.

Contents

Biography

Caldwell started his career at The Progress in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, [1] and went on to work for the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York. [2]

He rose to fame while a reporter at The New York Times when he refused to disclose information to the FBI and the Nixon administration involving his sources in the Black Panther party. The case, United States v. Caldwell, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 when the court ruled against him. The “Caldwell Case” led to the enactment of shield laws in many states that allow reporters to protect sources and information. In addition to his work for The New York Times, Caldwell wrote for the New York Daily News.

Caldwell is writer-in-residence at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California, where he is writing The Caldwell Journals, a serialized account of the black journalist movement spawned by the 1960s civil rights movement. He previously served as the Scripps Howard Endowed Chair at Hampton University.

In addition to teaching, he has organized efforts to videotape/audiotape African-American journalists selected for an oral history collection.

Career highlights

Reporting for The New York Times, Caldwell went coast-to-coast to cover the riots that swept black America in the summers of 1967 and 1968. He was the lone reporter to witness the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in April 1968 and he was on the streets of Chicago in 1968, covering the riots as the police challenged demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention.

Caldwell covered the trial of Angela Davis, the controversial black scholar accused of a central role in the murder of a Marin County, California, judge during an escape attempt from San Quentin Prison. He also spent months in Atlanta covering the child murders and the subsequent trial of convicted killer Wayne Williams. Caldwell traveled the campaign trail with the Rev. Jesse Jackson during his historic run for the presidency in 1984, and in Africa he covered the fall of the white regime and election of the first black government in Zimbabwe.

Caldwell broke a barrier in New York City in 1979 when he became the first black journalist to write a regular column in a major daily newspaper, the New York Daily News. In April 1994, three years before the Abner Louima incident, he reported the story of six Haitian male cab drivers who came forward after being raped and sodomized by a police officer. The officer used his service revolver, uniform, and the police van for the attacks. The city did nothing. Caldwell was fired from the Daily News, and was afterward unable to find work in the mainstream press. [3]

Supreme Court

The central case in the United States Supreme Court's defining of reporters' rights was the United States v. Caldwell in 1972. This was based on Caldwell, then with The New York Times, refusing to appear before a federal grand jury and disclose confidential information involving his sources in the Black Panther Party. In a historic ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit supported Caldwell’s position. Later on, however, that decision was reversed. However, in an apparent conflict of interest, the deciding vote was cast by then Associate Justice William Rehnquist, who, as a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, had been intimately involved in the Caldwell case.

Recent activities

The Caldwell Chronicle radio program (Friday 4-6 p.m.) originates at WBAI (99.5 FM), the Pacifica radio outlet in New York, and can be heard live over the Internet (www.wbai.org).
Writer-in-Residence at Hampton University, VA in addition to teaching, he has organized efforts to videotape/audiotape African-American journalists selected for an oral history collection.

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mumia Abu-Jamal</span> American political activist and journalist convicted of the murder of a police officer

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.

A deposition in the law of the United States, or examination for discovery in the law of Canada, involves the taking of sworn, out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that may be reduced to a written transcript for later use in court or for discovery purposes. Depositions are commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada. They are almost always conducted outside court by the lawyers themselves, with no judge present to supervise the examination.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricts prosecutors from using a person's statements made in response to interrogation in police custody as evidence at their trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them.

Pacifica Foundation is an American non-profit organization that owns five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations known for their progressive/liberal political orientation. Its national headquarters adjoins station KPFK in Los Angeles, California.

<i>Democrat and Chronicle</i> Daily newspaper in Rochester, New York

The Democrat and Chronicle is a daily newspaper serving the greater Rochester, New York, area. At 245 East Main Street in downtown Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle operates under the ownership of Gannett. The paper's production facility is in the town of Greece, New York. Since the Times-Union merger in 1997, the Democrat and Chronicle is Rochester's only daily circulated newspaper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Lewis</span> American journalist (1927–2013)

Joseph Anthony Lewis was an American public intellectual and journalist. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and was a columnist for The New York Times. He is credited with creating the field of legal journalism in the United States.

Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court invalidating the use of the First Amendment as a defense for reporters summoned to testify before a grand jury. The case was argued February 23, 1972, and decided June 29 of the same year. The reporters lost their case by a vote of 5–4. This case is cited for the rule that in federal courts, a reporter may not generally avoid testifying in a criminal grand jury, and is one of a limited number of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has considered the use of reporters' privilege.

Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954), was a landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period." In a unanimous ruling, the court held that Mexican Americans and all other nationality groups in the United States have equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. This was the first case in which Mexican-American lawyers had appeared before the Supreme Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Goodale</span> American lawyer

James C. Goodale was the vice president and general counsel for The New York Times and, later, the Times' vice chairman.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press(RCFP) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that provides pro bono legal services and resources to and on behalf of journalists. The organization pursues litigation, offers direct representation, submits amicus curiae briefs, and provides other legal assistance on matters involving the First Amendment, press freedom, freedom of information, and court access issues.

Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 48, a federal statute criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals, was an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Hollingsworth v. Perry was a series of United States federal court cases that re-legalized same-sex marriage in the state of California. The case began in 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which found that banning same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the law. This decision overturned California ballot initiative Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage. After the State of California refused to defend Proposition 8, the official sponsors of Proposition 8 intervened and appealed to the Supreme Court. The case was litigated during the governorships of both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, and was thus known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger and Perry v. Brown, respectively. As Hollingsworth v. Perry, it eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which held that, in line with prior precedent, the official sponsors of a ballot initiative measure did not have Article III standing to appeal an adverse federal court ruling when the state refused to do so.

Raymond A. Brown was an American criminal defense lawyer who represented a wide variety of high-profile clients, ranging from politicians to accused spies, including New Jersey state senator Angelo Errichetti, boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and "Dr. X" physician Mario Jascalevich.

Utrice C. Leid is a Trinidadian American, former activist in the Civil Rights Movement, and journalist. She was the managing editor of The City Sun and general manager of New York radio station WBAI. In 2004, The Miami Herald wrote that she "prides herself on never working in the mainstream media during her 34 years of journalism".

John Christian Adams is an American attorney and conservative activist formerly employed by the United States Department of Justice under the George W. Bush administration. Since leaving the DOJ, Adams has become notable for making alarmist and false claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States. He has falsely accused a number of legitimate voters of being fraudulent, and has published information about them online, including Social Security numbers.

Harte-Hanks Communications Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States supplied an additional journalistic behavior that constitutes actual malice as first discussed in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In the case, the Court held that departure from responsible reporting and unreasonable reporting conduct alone were not sufficient to award a public figure damages in a libel case. However, the Court also ruled that if reporters wrote with reckless disregard for the truth, which included ignoring obvious sources for their report, plaintiffs could be awarded compensatory damages on the grounds of actual malice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chauncey Bailey</span> American journalist (1949–2007)

Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. was an American journalist noted for his work primarily on issues of the African-American community. He served as editor-in-chief of the Oakland Post in Oakland, California, from June 2007 until his murder. His 37-year career in journalism included lengthy periods as a reporter at The Detroit News and the Oakland Tribune.

Nathan Green Caldwell was an American journalist who spent fifty years on the staff of the Nashville Tennessean. He was a co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Holland</span> American journalist, author

Jesse James Holland Jr. is an American journalist, author, television personality and educator. He was one of the first African American journalists assigned to cover the Supreme Court full-time, and only the second African American editor of The Daily Mississippian, the college newspaper of the University of Mississippi. He was the former Visiting Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas, and now serves as a guest host on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

References

  1. ↑ "The Black Journalist Movement". Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved January 19, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Earl Caldwell, once a local watchdog". Archived from the original on 2013-02-03. Retrieved 2012-12-06.
  3. ↑ Curriculum mentioning Caldwell Yale University. Retrieved June 2, 2011

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.