Weekly Planet
August 12, 2004
By John F. Sugg

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Nothing triggers the onset of media weak bladders in the Tampa Bay area faster than a discussion that involves Middle East politics. Example: As the Weekly Planet pointed out last week, a Jacksonville man named Harry Shapiro six years ago planted a bomb in a synagogue in an attempt to assassinate former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Shapiro, a radical right-wing opponent of peace initiatives between Israel and Palestine, had planned to blame the bombing on — can you guess? — Arab terrorists. In a telephone threat he claimed to be a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group that Tampa’s very own most famous Arab, Sami Al-Arian, is accused of supporting.

The ostensible link to the Islamic Jihad is about the only similarity between Shapiro’s and Al Arian’s cases. Shapiro actually tried to kill people, was jailed but offered the chance to post bail, and was “sentenced” to psychiatric evaluation by federal authorities. Al-Arian, whom the feddies concede never participated in any violent act, has not been allowed to bail out and, if convicted, he certainly won’t get a cushy funny farm — he’ll serve a gazillion years of hard time.

Oh, did I mention that 1,500 people attended the Peres event? We can be grateful Shapiro, a butcher (no joke intended) and gas station attendant by trade, was incompetent in the bomb-making department. Had he been a tad better at taping together explosives and connecting them to a detonator, then conceivably a crowd of people equal to half those slain on 9/11 in the World Trade Center could have been killed.

I mention all of this as a public service because I’m quite certain you haven’t read about the incident. It got one teensy-eensy 100-word mention in The Tampa Tribune’s national briefs column in 1997 when Shapiro pleaded guilty. Nothing, nada, zilch in the St. Petersburg Times. Ever. People around the world read substantive stories about Shapiro in The New York Times, the Jerusalem Post, the Sydney, Australia Daily Telegraph, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune and many other publications. Just not those in the Tampa Bay area. Hmmm.

While you’re pondering why two puffed-up daily newspapers chose to ignore the attempted assassination of a world leader just a media stone’s throw from their offices, let’s take a look at another example:In March, Al-Arian won a stunning ruling from Federal District Judge James Moody, who said federal prosecutors would have to show that Al-Arian intended to commit a crime in order to convict him in his 50-count indictment. That’s supposed to be the norm in American justice — laws should clearly spell out what’s illegal so that people will know when they’re engaged in wrongdoing.

The government is going to have a real, real hard time convicting Al-Arian and his three co-defendants now that Moody has ruled in favor of the U.S. Constitution. Which is why the federal prosecutors want desperately to overturn Moody’s decision.

Important? Hell, yes. But you didn’t read about the decision in any detail until last week, when Moody reaffirmed it (delightfully dubbing the prosecutors as “disingenuous”). During the five months prior, the ruling received no mention in the Trib, and the Times only obliquely mentioned it once, in the 44th paragraph of a 45-paragraph story in March.

Mea maxima culpa: Yes, in our story last week, the criminal intent issue was also left to the last paragraph. But it was the first straightforward media explanation to date of the defense point. And it was only after that mention, and Moody’s reaffirmation of his decision, that the local dailies finally paid something like full attention.

The Times had a straightforward account on its Aug. 6 front page with only a small bit of disingenuousness: It tried to mask the fact that this was old news, and that the paper’s editors previously had neglected to report it in a meaningful way. A subsequent editorial, “A standard of justice,” praised Moody for setting “the proper standard.”

The Trib’s deeply buried article on Aug. 6 was the stuff of newspaper jokes — such as the one about the cub reporter stepping over the body and asking, “What’s the story?” The Trib headlined: “Co-defendant’s claim of prejudice rejected.” The headline referred to a secondary ruling by Moody that rejected a motion claiming selective enforcement by prosecutors.

(The Planet explained this defense motion in a story last week. Moody, in rejecting the motion, was wrong in stating the defense had not supplied a list of similar cases showing that Arabs were prosecuted for alleged crimes while others who clearly support terrorism go untouched. Whatever, that defense motion was largely to get the issue on the record in case it is needed for appeals.)

The Trib only dealt with the “criminal intent” at the end of its story — and in no way hinted that the prosecution had taken a torpedo below the water line.

The best reporting on the matter last week was by The Miami Herald, which had the news and the context about the importance of Moody’s ruling.

So, inquiring readers might want to know why the local dailies act so … um … curiously. The answer is simple: CYA. I’ll explain.The crusade against Al-Arian has always been a media story. First, the Arab professor was attacked by a self-described terrorism expert, Steven Emerson, who found an ally at the Tribune, Michael Fechter.

The St. Petersburg Times initially was highly critical of Emerson’s and the Tribune’s reporting, but after 9/11, the once-progressive Pinellas newspaper took a sharp turn to the right, bumped a reporter who had been critical of the government’s efforts from the Al-Arian beat, and declared that Emerson might be OK after all.

As the online magazine salon.com reported two years ago: “The Times, which for years had offered a long-running counterbalance to the Tribune’s sinister take on Al-Arian, may have precipitated Al-Arian’s (current problems) when the paper seemed to turn on him after Sept. 11.”

The current indictment, based largely on Israeli “intelligence” that has never been revealed, much less vetted, stems from the Bush administration’s wholesale post-9/11 attack on Arabs and Muslims in the United States. As Al-Arian’s attorney Bill Moffitt has stated, in the case of Palestinians — who have never attacked American interests — the Bush Justice Department is carrying water for Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, which has long sought to silence Arab voices in the United States.

That may be good politics from the Bushite perspective. But it’s not necessarily justice and American fair play.

For watchers of the daily newspapers, here’s a hint on what they won’t cover next: The feds, in a nasty bit of dirty trickery, have demanded that defense attorneys obtain security clearances. This would entail the lawyers revealing the most intimate details of their personal and financial lives — and subject them to possible pressure and intimidation from federal authorities. Moreover, if the lawyers reveal secret evidence to their clients, they could be indicted for violating their security clearance. If they don’t discuss the evidence with their clients, they wouldn’t be able to mount a full defense, and would perhaps be guilty of malpractice.

john.sugg@creativeloafing.com or letters@weeklyplanet.com