tag:annenbergfiles.org,2008://1 2008-01-07T21:05:59Z A showcase of Annenberg student work Movable Type 3.34 tag:annenbergfiles.org,2008://1.366 2008-01-04T18:52:02Z 2008-01-07T21:05:59Z

By Erica Bardin M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: After surviving the horrors of war, soldiers returning home can succumb to the mental and physical stresses of recovery. Ananda McClure shot himself in 2006 after serving three tours of...

Brian Frank By Erica Bardin M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: After surviving the horrors of war, soldiers returning home can succumb to the mental and physical stresses of recovery. Ananda McClure shot himself in 2006 after serving three tours of duty in Iraq. Now his widow, ex-wife, and children struggle to move forward. ]]> tag:annenbergfiles.org,2007://1.361 2007-12-02T16:43:20Z 2008-01-04T20:49:20Z

By Jim Wayne M.A. Candidate, Online Journalism, 2009 Print Journalism: Analyst Andrew Tyndall suggests the journalism on cable news channels serves three distinct sets of needs: news on demand; crisis coverage; and prime-time personality, news and opinion programming. These days,...

Brian Frank Print Journalism: Analyst Andrew Tyndall suggests the journalism on cable news channels serves three distinct sets of needs: news on demand; crisis coverage; and prime-time personality, news and opinion programming. These days, it isn’t too hard to tell which of those baskets is catching all the eggs. Yes, the cable news channels are in a confused state of flux, thanks in large part to the Internet. And yes, opinionated, personality-dominated programming has built a proven model for success. Even so, at some point you must be thinking to yourself, “Hey, where’s the news?” ]]> There’s a familiar headline on my TV screen: “Dad Arrest: Drunk Driving, Baby Not Strapped In!” Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a non-baby story on Nancy Grace’s CNN Headline News program. So no surprise there. What’s baffling is how much time she manages to eat up blathering about troubled teens, irresponsible parents and dangerous toys. I’ve been timing it: Six minutes, 20 seconds and running. Were it not for the mute button, I would have changed the channel six minutes, 15 seconds ago. Cut to commercial…phew. Bear in mind, Nancy Grace fills CNN Headline News’s prime-time slot. That’s right: the channel devoted solely to “headline news” sees fit to shower its largest day-part audience with this lawyer’s drawn-out, self-righteous pontifications on the day’s most insignificant goings-on. Of course, it’s not just CNN Headline News. If you’ve perused the cable news prime-time circuit lately, you may have noticed an across-the-dial lineup of personality- and opinion-driven “news” shows. They all have them, and they all look and sound awfully similar. CNN, MSNBC and Fox have veritably morphed into one. In fact, were it not for their glaring, animated logos—and in Fox’s case, an American flag—so prominently fixed in the corner of the screen, it might be pretty difficult to tell which station you’re tuned into. Analyst Andrew Tyndall suggests the journalism on cable news channels serves three distinct sets of needs: news on demand; crisis coverage; and prime-time personality, news and opinion programming. These days, it isn’t too hard to tell which of those baskets is catching all the eggs. First, a brief cable-news timeline. CNN pioneered the format in 1980, its 24-hour-news format filling a gap for many Americans between the morning paper and the evening news. CNN Headline News followed in 1982 as an abridged version of its parent, delivering all the day’s pertinent news in 30-minute chunks for the on-the-go (read: short-attention-span) news consumer. Fox News Channel and MSNBC joined the party in 1996, and the four stations have been cable’s primary all-day news sources for the last decade. OK, back to the baskets. We can infer that cable news was a concept built around Tyndall’s first set of needs, news on demand. To be sure, in 2007 that duty has long since been relinquished to the Internet. That requires no further explanation, but has without a doubt dealt a significant blow to the cable news industry. The second set of needs, crisis coverage, is one that will always draw viewers to cable news. During a crisis or major event, news consumers will willingly sacrifice the Web’s on-demand interactivity for television’s more passive, high-quality audio/visual coverage. The 2003 Iraq War gave the cable news networks their largest audience spike in recent memory, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2007 “State Of the News Media” report. Nielsen Media Research statistics show that overall cable news viewers nearly doubled during the month of Hurricane Katrina (September 2005) compared with the previous month. But in a business model, crisis coverage does not make for much of a programming strategy. For example, the PEJ report notes that 2006, short on big events and crises, yielded a drop in overall viewership for CNN Headline News. Enter the third basket: personality, news and opinion programming. Given the state of the aforementioned sets of needs, it would seem inevitable—logical, even—that cable news executives would drive content in this direction. Incidentally, Fox News Channel, the long-standing viewership leader in cable news, boasts the heaviest lineup of personality-driven programs. In 2006, nine of the top 10 cable news programs, by audience, were Fox shows. Nine of the top 10. And all of them are personality shows. Of course, “The O’Reilly Factor” rules the roost, with “Hannity & Colmes” and “On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteran” rounding out the top three. That is a proven record of success, to say the least, for talk-show journalism. And whether they like it or not, MSNBC and the CNNs have no choice but to follow suit. And they have. MSNBC has stocked its lineup with personality, particularly in the prime-time slots, where “Countdown with Keith Olberman” and “Live With Dan Abrams” abide. On CNN, it’s “Larry King Live” (the only non-Fox program in the top 10) and “Anderson Cooper 360.” And even CNN Headline News, by original design merely a cyclical “jukebox” of news, gave itself a personality facelift in December 2006, adding lawyer Nancy Grace and uber-conservative radio man Glenn Beck. Two back-to-back hours of redundant, sensationalist drivel. And for dessert, “Showbiz Tonight,” from which you are actually more likely to derive some semblance of pertinent information. But do they have to take it so far? Do they have to do it with such brash, combative drivel? Maybe they do. After all, it apparently is what we, the public, are demanding of them. Even so, at some point between Britney’s baby fat and Nancy’s baby rants, you must be thinking to yourself, “Hey, where’s the news?” Four minutes later, back from commercial break. Same headline and sub-head on the “bottom line”: “Dad Arrest: Drunk Driving, Baby Not Strapped In!” Same scrolling b-roll: the highway, a cop car, Dad’s mug shot. Four talking heads on the screen at once. God bless the mute button. tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.352 2007-11-20T02:08:13Z 2007-11-20T05:19:32Z

By Haley Poland M.A., Print Journalism, 2007 Print Journalism: Though more than 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, including 3 million in the United States, it remains one of the world’s most misunderstood neurological conditions. While some people have sporadic...

Brian Frank Print Journalism: Though more than 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, including 3 million in the United States, it remains one of the world’s most misunderstood neurological conditions. While some people have sporadic seizures and can live relatively normal lives, others may be burdened by several a day. Seizures come in as many as 40 different varieties, ranging from a momentary absence of awareness to severe and prolonged convulsions. ]]> When Rosalba Zamora was 20 years old, she witnessed her first epileptic seizure. A middle-aged man walked into the department store in Mexico where she worked and collapsed. As Zamora watched him violently and uncontrollably convulse on the ground, she thought, “If that ever happened to me, I would want to die.” Two years later Zamora had a seizure herself. She and a friend had just moved from a rural town to bustling Mexico City, and neither had been able to find a job. Zamora climbed into the top bunk one night stressed and overtired—both conditions that would prove triggers for epileptic seizures for the rest of her life. She remembers nothing of that first seizure, only the aftermath. “I woke up on the floor next to the bunk bed,” said Zamora. Her friend, who had been sleeping below, was crying hysterically, shaken and scared. “We had no idea what had happened.” Though more than 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, including 3 million in the United States alone, it remains one of the world’s most misunderstood neurological conditions. While some people, like Zamora, have sporadic seizures and can live relatively normal lives, others may be burdened by several a day. Seizures come in as many as 40 different varieties, ranging from a momentary absence of awareness to severe and prolonged convulsions. “I know that I shake, but I don’t know what they feel like because I’m asleep,” said Zamora. “And my husband is the only one who sees them because they happen at night.” He doesn’t explain much and Zamora doesn’t ask. Zamora also has short periods of dizziness or disorientation during the day, which may also be small seizures, according to her physician. But the convulsive seizures come only when she sleeps and last just a minute or two. What scientists know about epilepsy is that seizures are caused by a sudden surge of electrical activity in the brain. If normal brain activity is like a stadium full of people all talking to each other normally, a seizure is the rowdy section that heaves and hoots in unison for a few frenzied moments when its team scores, then returns to normal “conversation.” Which section of the brain has the electrical outburst varies from person to person. While scientists have determined the what of a seizure, they can’t seem to figure out why. A century of studies has revealed that epilepsy can stem from trauma to the brain: head injury, infection, brain tumor, complications at birth, alcoholism. But for more than 50 percent of people diagnosed, including Zamora, science just cannot explain why the neuronal power surges begin. The cause of the epilepsy is inexplicable, idiopathic. Over the centuries, different cultures have come up with numerous ways to explain epilepsy. In ancient Babylonia, a seizure meant a person had been captured and released by the devil. In China, some scholars described it as an excess of “yin,” the negative force that must be in balance with “yang” for bodily harmony. In Africa, explanations range from sorcery to the revenge of ancestral spirits. In Laos, the Hmong believe that epilepsy indicates a person’s potentially great powers of healing. But for Zamora and others like her, epilepsy hardly feels like healing. It feels alienating because it is so misunderstood. “Treating epilepsy is more than just dealing with a condition,” explained Dr. Christianne Heck, epileptologist and assistant professor of clinical neurology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. “It’s about fighting for people’s rights. People with epilepsy look normal because they are.” Tim de Villiers, a civil engineer who has had epilepsy since age 10, thinks education about the disease should start in schools to prevent misconceptions. "Ignorant people in general tend to fear someone who has epilepsy," said De Villiers, who runs a social support organization called Epicare for people with epilepsy and their families. "But the condition is not as dramatic as all that." Because of the stigma surrounding epilepsy and the embarrassment of public seizures, many patients are too afraid to tell others, so they stay home in the safe environment of their families. The effect can be extremely isolating, according to De Villiers. "People put themselves in boxes but have the potential to lead very normal lives," he said. "Because of the barriers that they put up around themselves, they focus inward. This becomes very stressful and can actually increase the seizures." Most physicians require their patients to keep a detailed calendar of the seizures, in an effort to find patterns and triggers. Zamora, who thanks to the anticonvulsant drug Dilantin only has a few seizures a year, said that stress and irregular sleep patterns incite the attacks. For others, triggers can be anything from anxiety and menstruation to constipation and alcohol. De Villiers said it’s about figuring out what your triggers and then determining your thresholds. He knows he can only drink so much red wine before he’s taking a risk. “It's not about giving up what you enjoy," he stressed. About 70 percent of people with epilepsy are able to control their seizures with a combination of medications, the first line of defense. Many, however, suffer from side effects like severe dizziness, drowsiness, twitching and nausea. Unlike antibiotics, which cure infection, anticonvulsant medications treat the symptoms of epilepsy by altering the way the brain’s neurons transmit electricity, thus reducing the prevalence of seizures. The 30 percent of patients who don’t respond to medication—almost a million people in the United States alone—are left searching for often hard-to come-by alternatives. In the 1950s, neuroscientists discovered that in some cases the problem can be solved by removing the culprit: the part of the brain that is the source of the seizures is surgically excised, much as a physician might remove a gangrenous toe. But to remove the problematic region, physicians must be able to pinpoint it, as well as ensure that removal of that part of the brain will not seriously impede the brain’s function, such as language, vision, or memory. In many cases, patients cannot afford the medical monitoring required, or surgery doesn’t lend itself to their particular variety of seizure. Neurostimulation is without question the most promising area of epilepsy research. In the 1990s, scientists found that the brain’s electrical outbursts (and therefore seizures) can be significantly reduced by gently stimulating the vagus nerve in the neck, which travels to the brain. Since its approval by the FDA in the late 1990s, a device called the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) has been offering hope to patients for whom medication is insufficient. The VNS is a device implanted near the collarbone that delivers mild electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve at regular intervals (for example, for 30 seconds every three minutes). A handheld magnet can also be held over the implanted device to manually activate it if the patient feels a seizure coming on. But the VNS stimulates at programmed intervals, not in response to individual seizures. Often, by the time a patient recognizes the aura (a feeling or indication that warns a seizure is coming) it is too late for the patient or family members to manually switch on the stimulator. So, scientists have created an implantable device designed to detect seizures before they begin—and prevent them. Whereas the Vagus Nerve Stimulator stimulates the nerve leading to the brain, the groundbreaking Responsive Neurostimulator (RNS) stimulates the brain directly. Developed by Neuropace Inc., the device is implanted inside the skull, and from it run two wires to the part of the brain where the seizures originate. When the device detects the “signature” of an oncoming seizure, it delivers just enough electrical stimulation to suppress it. It may prove the answer for patients who don’t respond to medications and are not candidates for surgery. The USC Medical Center-Keck School of Medicine, along with 27 other medical research institutions around the country, joined Phase II of the clinical trial to test the Responsive Neurostimulator in early 2007. Around 280 people with epilepsy from across the country will receive the device and try it out for two to three years before the FDA can approve it for commercialization. Four patients have been enrolled in the trial at USC thus far and two have already had stimulators implanted. Dr. Heck, principal investigator, said that USC will ultimately implant 10-12 devices. “It’s very exciting,” she said. “We may finally have something for patients who really have no other options.” Once the FDA approves the Spanish-language paperwork, Heck said she and her colleagues will be able to recruit patients from their clinic that treats Los Angeles’ poorest people with epilepsy. Every Friday morning at the Los Angeles County Hospital-USC Medical Center, the waiting room on the fourth floor of the Outpatient Treatment Center fills to the brim with people looking for options. The patient roster for each week is booked months in advance, but still the patients, seen on a “first-come, first-served” basis, must wait hours to meet with the five or six resident physicians who work at the epilepsy clinic as part of their neurology rotation. “We see the worst of the worst cases here,” said Dr. Laura Kalayjian, who oversees the resident physicians. “At least 30 percent of these patients cannot control their epilepsy.” Because the condition itself is not understood, treatment is always hit or miss. In one examination room, a man with a Vagus Nerve Stimulator described the side effects of his latest cocktail of epilepsy drugs. Sadly, the man’s stimulator had offered no reprieve from the seizures and had long been turned off. Physicians have been tinkering with his combination of medications ever since. In another room, an older woman broke down sobbing as she explained the difficulty of dealing with both epilepsy and depression. She had forgotten one dose of her medication and had an embarassing seizure several days later. Down the hall, a somber resident physician reluctantly went into an examination room to tell a woman that he must report her seizures to the Department of Motor Vehicles; she might lose her license. In yet another room, a young man with a buzz cut showed off a six-inch scar from brain surgery ten days before. He had not had a seizure since surgery, and hoped that if he continued his medication, it would stay that way. “Wanna see a Lamictol baby?” shouted a gleeful Dr. Kalayjian, poking her head from a doorway. Pregnancy for women with epilepsy is an uncertain undertaking. Lamictol and other anticonvulsants can cause malformative birth defects, including cleft palate and deformed limbs. Mothers-to-be must work very closely with physicians such as Dr. Kalayjian, who specialize in epilepsy issues unique to women, to minimize risk by carefully controlling their medications. Eager to hear an epilepsy success story, several physicians gathered to see Dr. Kalayjian’s patient. Inside the room, two proud young Mexican parents sat beside their pink, six-pound, one-week old son Alberto. Alberto’s mother, epileptic since childhood, had been understandably terrified prior to giving birth. “He’s perfect,” sighed Dr. Kalayjian. If the Responsive Neurostimulator is a success, it could provide an alternative to medication for expecting mothers. And with advancements in technology and treatment come advancements in understanding about epilepsy. Scientists are gradually determining what frequencies and levels of stimulation are most effective for particular seizures. A few years down the road, physicians may be able to easily tailor neurostimulation devices to patients with the push of a few buttons. It’s been almost 40 years since Rosalba Zamora fell off the bunk bed in Mexico City. And while she’s had seizures throughout her life, almost six months have passed since the last. She doesn’t need a neurostimulator, as her epilepsy can be managed well enough with medication, though she’s fascinated by the idea. “If it could improve the quality of my life, I’d probably do it,” she said. With a mischievous smile, she added, “As long as magnets wouldn’t start flying at my head.” tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.354 2007-11-19T03:36:14Z 2007-11-20T05:20:21Z

By Amy Tenowich M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: Bill Compton thought he was an archangel who needed to lead all the good people to salvation. It sounds crazy, of course. But maybe it's not so black and white....

Brian Frank By Amy Tenowich M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: Bill Compton thought he was an archangel who needed to lead all the good people to salvation. It sounds crazy, of course. But maybe it's not so black and white.]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.357 2007-11-18T03:30:31Z 2007-11-20T05:21:30Z

By Amanda Price M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Print Journalism: Had it not been for a Los Angeles judge’s decision nearly eight months ago, Mario Escobar realizes he would be back in El Salvador, not here fixing toys for his...

Brian Frank Print Journalism: Had it not been for a Los Angeles judge’s decision nearly eight months ago, Mario Escobar realizes he would be back in El Salvador, not here fixing toys for his U.S.-born child. He realizes, lately even more, that he is one of the lucky ones. ]]> In the days before his immigration hearing, a long, yellow serpent paid nightly visits to Mario Escobar’s bedside, trying to swallow him. Each time, as it got closer, the serpent became a helicopter. The images of war were visiting Escobar in his sleep as pesadillas, the nightmare scars of a child of war. They were the helicopters that flew over the capital during the final rebel offensive, Escobar’s final day in the sea of dead, charred corpses that marked the grounds of El Salvador’s civil war. Nearly 18 years after fleeing his homeland, Escobar, 29, sits on a porch in Westwood, trying to repair a small, lime-green monster truck for his 6-year-old son, Mario. Had it not been for a Los Angeles judge’s decision nearly eight months ago, Escobar realizes he would be back in El Salvador, not here fixing toys for his U.S.-born child. He realizes, lately even more, that he is one of the lucky ones. Escobar is one of a small number of Salvadorans granted political asylum in the United States. Of the 7,161 applications received from El Salvador last year, only 95 were granted, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. Over 1000 were denied. Escobar’s case is different. His asylum application was a defensive measure, filed in response to an order of deportation entered against him. But like other asylum-seekers, he faced detention, representation problems and endless waiting before an emotional day in a California courtroom determined whether he would stay in the United States or be forced to leave. Like many others fleeing conflict zones, he and his mother, Maria, crossed the border illegally. “'That’s it, we’re leaving,’” Escobar remembers his mother telling him on Nov. 11, 1989. “'We’re taking off; I’m taking you with me. I don’t know if we’re going to make it alive, but it really doesn’t matter because if we stay here, we’re going to get killed.’” Escobar and his mother lived in a constant state of violence. Before he revisits it, Escobar asks his son, diligently watching the progress of his monster truck, to go inside and watch cartoons. “Love you!” Escobar calls out, seconds before little Mario pulls the sliding-glass door shut behind him. “Something so abnormal became so normal,” Escobar said, a doorway now safely between his son and his own memories. “Just looking at neighbors being dragged out by the military, ladies being shot in front of us. That was my world.” In 1986, Escobar’s father, Angel Evaristo Escobar, was one of the victims, a murder his son suspects stemmed from Angel’s involvement with fishermen’s unions, targeted as leftist organizations by El Salvador’s authoritarian government. His mother, too, was “like a ghost; in and out” of the house where Escobar stayed with his grandfather. Two days after one of her visits, Escobar tried and failed to follow her. “I left, but I couldn’t find mom,” said Escobar. “So what other alternative I had was to join the revolution at the age of 11.” Photographs from Escobar’s time with leftist guerillas show him crouching, a wide-brimmed hat atop a skinny, 11-year-old frame. “Like any other kid holding an M16,” Escobar says, describing his time as a soldier in the revolution. It took months for his grandparents to find him after paramilitaries captured Escobar in the aftermath of an ambush, but it took only a day after reuniting with his family for his mother to decide that fleeing El Salvador’s bloody war in the middle of the night was their only hope. With little time to prepare, arranging entrance and exit visas was nearly impossible. Such is the case for many asylum-seekers who enter the U.S. “The reality is that the person who has the strongest claim to asylum, the person who’s in the greatest danger in their home country, those are individuals who are basically fleeing with the clothes on their backs from their country,” said Niels W. Frenzen, director of the Immigration Clinic at the USC Gould School of Law. “They’re not able to do planning; they’re not able to get visas,” he said. Time isn’t the only constraint, according to Ana Deutsch, clinical director of the Los Angeles-based Program for Torture Victims and Escobar’s mentor. “The U.S. doesn’t give visas easily,” she said. Yet immigrating to the United States illegally will not invalidate asylum-seekers’ legal claims. “For people that ask for asylum, meaning they are escaping a situation, it’s not considered fraud,” said Deutsch. “But they have to have a coherent explanation for the judge to understand. There has to be a reason why this person was not able to get a visa.” After arriving in the United States illegally, Escobar and his mother were arrested in San Isidro by officers of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services, now called Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Right away we were placed in jail, and my 12th birthday, I was in jail with my mom,” said Escobar. Though they were given an appointment for an immigration hearing, Escobar’s mother never showed up. Had they entered illegally more recently, the two would have been interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services arm. “We make the interview, we make the call,” said immigration services spokesman Christopher Bentley. Homeland Security officers arrange for translators when necessary, and if an asylum-seeker’s request is not initially approved, the non-citizen has the right to a hearing and further recourse through the Board of Immigration Appeals, overseen by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. “There is no standard set of questions that we promote,” Bentley said of the initial interview. “You don’t necessarily want individuals to be able to rehearse their answer to fool the system.” People who are not initially approved for asylum and file for appeals are placed in detention. “There are no documents in play because the exact identity of the individual cannot be ascertained,” Bentley said. Escobar and his mother settled in Los Angeles after missing their initial immigration hearing, but they weren’t tracked by INS or ICE, which uses its resources to find only certain categories of illegal immigrants, according to Frenzen. “As a practical matter, ICE doesn’t have any way of finding you,” he said. Though immigration law requires applicants to file for asylum within one year of arriving in the United States, Escobar was able to have his case re-opened nearly 15 years later. “He was a minor,” said Deutsch. Escobar said his mother, a 26-year-old woman at the time of the first hearing, was too scared to attend. “She was afraid they were going to deport us back to that repressive country,” said Escobar. “She decided not to go.” Yet life as an undocumented immigrant became increasingly frustrating for Escobar, who had dreams of going to college and teaching. “When you don’t have no documents, people don’t want to give you a job, and you know you have the smarts and a lot of stuff, and people just treat you like, like you’re nothing,” he said. The fear of deportation became even more acute in 2003 when Escobar married his wife, Carla. They have two children, a 10-month-old daughter and little Mario. “That’s one thing that keeps me alive, is family,” he said. Finding legal representation to help reopen his case took months. The Central American Resource Center held his case for over a year before telling Escobar they couldn’t help him. “The alien may seek legal representation at his or her own expense,” said Elaine Komis, spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Justice Department. Frenzen, director of the USC Immigration Clinic, said the expense involved is part of the problem. Sweeping immigration reform in 1996 enacted new restrictions on free legal aid, said Frenzen. Federally funded legal clinics were suddenly barred from raising money for non-U.S. citizens, and as a result, pro bono immigration lawyers became a prized commodity. “It’s a process that just has a lot of complicated pitfalls,” Frenzen said of political asylum applications. “And it’s difficult enough to negotiate with a half-decent lawyer.” Lack of legal representation during the interview stage of the asylum process often means that applicants must attend immigration hearings to review the initial denials of their claims, said Deutsch. “Usually, when they represent themselves in Anaheim in the first interview, in general, they don’t do a good job,” she said. “They may not have a coherent story or detailed story; they don’t know how much detail has to go in; they are reluctant, for whatever reason to just disclose things. They don’t understand the system.” Most immigration plaintiffs proceed without representation, according to justice department statistics from 2006, when only 113,140 cases were represented by lawyers, compared to 210,705 that were not. Legal representation becomes even more crucial, according to Deutsch, because many asylum cases are initially denied due to technicalities, a side effect of poor legal counsel. In Escobar’s case, a chance meeting with an immigration lawyer at a Hollywood coffee shop led to the immediate re-opening of his case. His lawyer, who Escobar calls his “bright star from the Middle East,” charged nothing for her services. As one hearing became two and two became four, Escobar yearned for an outcome. Though the case went before a judge in March, 2005, Escobar’s case was not resolved until October, 2006. “The rescheduling,” he said. “I mean, I don’t have words to describe it because of all of the emotional trauma you go through. You don’t know if you’re going to stay here, and here I am in the middle of my college career, my college education, thinking, ‘OK. Am I going to stay here? Are they going to kick me out? What am I going to do?’” The reason for a rescheduled hearing may be quite simple but the process is not, according to Deutsch. “The thing is that it’s not rescheduled for next week because the judge is so busy,” she said. “It’s rescheduled when the judge has an opening.” Like any court case, however, asylum hearings take time. Sometimes, as happened with the first rescheduling of Escobar’s case, the court doesn’t have all the documents necessary to proceed. “Technically, it’s not supposed to take more than three months, but in reality, it takes more than that,” said Deutsch. Months may pass before the hearings even begin. “There’s time involved in preparing the case, both from the respondent’s side and the Department of Homeland Security’s side,” said Komis, who said that “waiting for witnesses, waiting for documentation, as well as the docket for the court” is just a part of the process. Rushing may be the worst thing to do in asylum cases, according to Frenzen. “The most insignificant mistakes can end up being a basis for denial,” he said. “And that’s why if you don’t take the 20, 30, 40 hours to carefully fill out an asylum application and to write a supporting declaration, you’re likely to be denied.” The Program for Torture victims works with clients to document persecution in an applicant’s home country. “We take a lot of time to prepare the reports because we want to get to know the client, make sure that we get a good story,” said Deutsch. Providing such context can be crucial for Homeland Security interviews and appeals hearings. “If someone comes into an immigration court and makes a claim and has no documentation whatsoever to back that claim, is there going to be a favorable decision for them? Probably not,” said Bentley. Escobar’s case was bolstered by Salvadoran newspaper clippings. “There were little articles in the newspapers of El Salvador in 1989 with my name,” he said, referring to his grandmother’s efforts to track him after his kidnapping by paramilitaries. The documentation issue goes to the heart of U.S. asylum policy. “First and foremost, the burden of proof is on the applicant to establish that the applicant is a refugee,” Komis wrote in an email. Credibility, she said, is one of the most important elements of an asylum claim. For asylum-seekers with a history of persecution, however, establishing credibility can be a painful process. Efforts to document torture victims’ experiences are emotionally challenging for clients and therapists alike. “Just by talking, it puts you back into the situation where the torture occurred and brings vivid memories that you want to have as a clinician because it’s important for the credibility of the client,” said Deutsch. “But at the same time, it’s excruciating for the client.” Escobar was a child of war, not a torture victim, said Deutsch. Yet talking about his kidnapping experience brought him to tears on the stand. “I think what happened was that my lawyer didn’t know some of the stuff that happened to men when I was in captivity,” said Escobar. “It was very painful. Imagine an 11-year-old kid just being hit in the face like if you were a grown man. You know, punched, verbal abuse – you name it.” Escobar thinks his emotional reaction helped win his case. “The judge was the one actually who asked me those questions, and I think that’s when the judge knows when someone is faking it or if it’s real,” he said. “I just, I couldn’t take it. And I told him, if you send me back, it’s like sending a Jew back to the Holocaust.” The judge in Escobar’s case, William J. Martin , like all immigration court judges, was required to base his ruling on more than human compassion alone. “The immigration judge cannot use discretion to grant asylum simply because the respondent is a good person, or because the immigration judge feels sorry for him/her,” Komis said in an email. Following the law is the principal duty of immigration judges, according to Deutsch. “Many of them are very nice with good hearts, but they have to follow the rules; they have to comply with every single detail.” Escobar has nothing but praise for the judge in his case. “The Honorable Judge Martin is a wonderful man that was able to listen, and he knew that this was a very unique case,” he said. “My god, I remember that day,” said Escobar. “I was so happy.” A green card and U.S. citizenship are the next steps for Escobar, as well as a master’s degree in literature from Arizona State University. Yet his experience with the political asylum process is far from over. With a deportation order already against her, Escobar’s mother must fill out asylum paperwork. “She’s scared. I’m scared, too,” he said. “I’m on my way to graduate school and dealing with all these things.” Escobar must deal, too, with his own memories of El Salvador, something he achieves through poetry. “He loves poetry, too,” says Escobar, nodding toward Mario. By now, the green monster truck is fixed. “I like all the poetry my dad makes,” says young Mario. Escobar begins to read a poem he wrote during his asylum hearing, an unpublished and untitled work. Even as he sits on his wooden porch, his voice still seems to carry the burdens of his time in El Salvador. “Clash of space, shouldering time,” he says. “After a burning decade, cry soul of mine, cry soul of mine.” He pauses. “Cry.” tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.118 2007-11-16T21:34:31Z 2007-12-02T16:33:41Z

By Hanna Ingber Win M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Online Journalism: They tried to erase Burma from the Internet last week. In an attempt to weaken the opposition and shield itself from international opprobrium, the military junta that runs the...

Jackson DeMos By Hanna Ingber Win M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Online Journalism: They tried to erase Burma from the Internet last week. In an attempt to weaken the opposition and shield itself from international opprobrium, the military junta that runs the country tried to cut off access to the Web. It did not succeed. Related articles: Oct. 4 The Huffington Post Off The Bus Blog Oct. 9 NPR Morning Edition]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.353 2007-11-16T02:16:54Z 2007-11-20T05:25:56Z

By Laura Weber M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Print Journalism: Now, it’s in my breadth of experience that men will say or do just about anything to impress a woman – splaying their colorful tail feathers with brains, brawn...

Brian Frank By Laura Weber M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Print Journalism: Now, it’s in my breadth of experience that men will say or do just about anything to impress a woman – splaying their colorful tail feathers with brains, brawn and the ever-important sense of humor. But never in my encounters have I come across a man who used sports as a tactic.]]> Phil just called. I didn’t pick up. Poor Phil. He’s such a sweet guy. He did all the right things – technically – that a man should do on a first date. He opened doors, he bought me a rose, he was polite and he insisted on paying for dinner. He was interested in my career aspirations and he spoke emphatically about his love for everything movies. Little did Phil know, I went out with him based on the inferred connection we made over sports at the bar a week earlier. We mostly talked about how much fun it is to go to a baseball game and that we should go to one together. Then I babbled on about football, my Michigan State Spartans, SportsCenter and God only knows what else. Phil nodded and smiled, giving the occasional verbal confirmation. Sure, he seemed a little soft around the edges, but he was fairly well spoken and expressed a mild interest in mildly interesting things, so I agreed to a date. The next Saturday, Phil called me during the Michigan State, Wisconsin game. When I picked up, I was in the middle of clicking absentmindedly between TV stations, systematically avoiding the game. MSU was losing and I subscribe to the theory that if I turn the channel, they’ll start winning again. In the event of a loss, I always blame myself. “Hey, it’s Phil. How are you?” “I’m good,” I lied. “What are you up to?” “Oh, just watching some football.” “Are you? Which game?” “Wisconsin, Michigan State.” “Oh yeah?” I sat up. What a turn on. “Are we still losing? I can’t bear to watch.” “No no. You’re up – 24 to 21.” Talk dirty to me, Phil. I decided then and there, THIS was going to be a good date. Sure MSU ended up losing, which ruined my whole day, but I made sure I was looking tight and right that evening. I even made my bed – a rarity. I was horrified when Phil showed up at my apartment 15 minutes early. My hair and make-up were asunder and I had yet to put on those blue and gold peep-toe stilettos I save for special circumstances. I mean, he watched MSU on his own accord – clearly we were meant to be. And then I answered the door. Call me shallow – I’m fine with that – but I couldn’t help but think, “How drunk was I at that bar?” This kid looked just like my brother. It’s not that Phil (or my brother) is physically unattractive, it’s that he’s stylized to the degree of a production assistant, not a coaching assistant – which is cool, but not for me. Nonetheless, I set my initial reservations aside – along with my special occasion stilettos – and we headed out for the classic dinner and a movie. “Weren’t we supposed to go to a Dodgers game?” I joked as we walked to his car. “It’s the end of the season, you know.” “Oh… yeah… I uhh, was having trouble finding a schedule,” he replied. Trouble finding a schedule? In the age of the Internet? Questionable. Our date consisted of less talk about baseball or the day’s football happenings, and more about some tearjerker of a screenplay he wanted me to read that was, “like Donny Darko meets the Muppets.” And as I sat across from him under the quasi-romantic twinkle lights of Paco’s Tacos, it occurred to me that he may have only watched the Michigan State game to turn me on. Now, it’s in my breadth of experience that men will say or do just about anything to impress a woman – splaying their colorful tail feathers with brains, brawn and the ever-important sense of humor. But never in my encounters have I come across a man who used sports as a tactic. Tactics I have seen before: 1) Bar brawls (…pathetic) 2) Aloofness (…obnoxious) 3) Shaven forearms (…gross) But never sports. That’s something I’ve only seen men strain to conceal. “Wanting a guy that’s into sports isn’t shallow,” said my buddy, Jensen, when I called to commiserate about my failed date with Phil. “If that’s something that’s important to you, it’s legit.” Of course, an interest in sports isn’t the most important attribute to me when it comes to attraction, but it’s probably well situated in the Top 10. I can’t help it. I’m a product of my Freudian environment. I was raised in the pomp and circumstance of university-town living, and my dad was as hilarious and uncouth on football Saturdays as any kid could hope for in a role model. In turn, as I grew up, all of my ex-boyfriends were athletes and/or sports fanatics to the point – at times – of delirium. But they are my EX’s for a reason, and it’s because of that pattern that I decided to date someone who seemed a little less athletic and little more, I don’t know, artsy fartsy. But as I sipped on my Dos Equis and he on his Coke, it became clear to me that I could probably take Phil in a fight. And no girl wants to feel like that about her date. “There’s a certain level of manliness that comes with watching sports,” said Jensen. “Is that prejudiced and sexist to say about men? Sure. Am I prejudiced and sexist? Sure.” I’m not suggesting Phil isn’t a man – quite the opposite, in fact. Phil is just like every other man who woos and bamboozles women, finagling dates based on a fictional mutual interest. The heart wants what the heart wants… it just so happens my heart wants to talk about the way Vince Young throws a football. I’m afraid Phil can’t hang. Poor Phil. tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.8 2007-11-14T09:27:27Z 2007-11-25T20:59:49Z

By Adriana Padilla M.A., Broadcast Journalism Broadcast Journalism: The punching, the fractures, and the blood make boxing a male-dominated sport. Only 2200 amateur female boxers exist in the country. But two young ladies are determined to keep fighting their...

Annie Chenaphun By Adriana Padilla M.A., Broadcast Journalism Broadcast Journalism: The punching, the fractures, and the blood make boxing a male-dominated sport. Only 2200 amateur female boxers exist in the country. But two young ladies are determined to keep fighting their way into the big leagues. ]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.103 2007-11-12T13:00:49Z 2007-11-20T05:32:12Z

By Debra Greene M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: In a corner of Skid Row, inner-city children from Los Angeles discover music, dance and drama through Inner-City Arts. The children don't just learn dance moves. They get a lesson...

Jackson DeMos By Debra Greene M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: In a corner of Skid Row, inner-city children from Los Angeles discover music, dance and drama through Inner-City Arts. The children don't just learn dance moves. They get a lesson in creativity.]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.98 2007-11-12T12:44:48Z 2007-11-20T05:31:00Z

By Camille Garcia M.A. Candidate, Broadcast Journalism, 2008 Online Journalism: In a guide to Mexican food in Los Angeles, "Today’s Special" highlights Mama’s Hot Tamales Café, located near MacArthur Park. Along with its acclaimed tamales, it's a place where...

Jackson DeMos By Camille Garcia M.A. Candidate, Broadcast Journalism, 2008 Online Journalism: In a guide to Mexican food in Los Angeles, "Today’s Special" highlights Mama’s Hot Tamales Café, located near MacArthur Park. Along with its acclaimed tamales, it's a place where street vendors can get the training they need to launch their own businesses. ]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.97 2007-11-11T11:15:08Z 2007-11-20T05:33:11Z

By Nick Street M.A., Print Journalism, 2007 Print Journalism: Combat veterans try meditation to soothe inner pain from the war in Iraq....

Jackson DeMos By Nick Street M.A., Print Journalism, 2007 Print Journalism: Combat veterans try meditation to soothe inner pain from the war in Iraq.]]> Returning California soldiers tap Buddhist meditation to overcome war’s psychological damage By NICK STREET A big, pushy alpha male decided to air his dissatisfaction with his cell-phone service provider as he stood across the counter from Jeremy Williams, a wireless consultant with Sprint Nextel. To the outside viewer, the testy exchange between the two men wouldn’t have looked unusual, but Williams is a seven-year veteran of the Marine Corps with three tours of duty in Iraq under his belt. “I turned on killer mode,” says Williams, a 25-year-old Long Beach native stationed at Camp Pendleton during his service in the corps. “I wanted to beat him senseless. It would’ve taken one punch for me to kill him.” Williams says it took him about three hours — plus a beer, a few cigarettes and a plate of hot wings — to calm down after his confrontation with a fairly typical customer who nevertheless managed to trigger his posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “That’s just what it’s like dealing with PTSD in my daily life,” Williams says. “I’m very uncomfortable about being a civilian.” He’s not alone. According to testimony before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which is reviewing legislation to fund suicide prevention and treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder in vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Veterans Affairs hospitals can expect as many as 700,000 new cases in the next few years. It will be a big challenge for Los Angeles, since L.A. County has the largest concentration of vets in the nation, and the West Los Angeles Healthcare Center is the largest VA hospital. One of the most intriguing aspects of the Senate legislation is a provision to support research into “best practices” for suicide prevention and posttraumatic stress reduction. For troubled vets, those two simple words open up a whole new world of possibilities, including one field of therapy that might surprise people: meditation and other “mindfulness” exercises. The toll of war on the human psyche is nothing new. But the response of mental-health workers to the latest generation of traumatized warriors marks a novel turn in borrowing Eastern spiritual practices. The National Institutes of Health is funding studies of soldiers in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston involving mindfulness-based stress-reduction techniques applied to posttraumatic stress disorder. In California, psychologists and meditation teachers are developing similar strategies. Jeremy Williams, the formerly camo-clad killing machine now manning a counter at a Sprint Nextel, attended a retreat sponsored by the Coming Home Project, learning skills that put him at the leading edge of the trend. “A couple of times a week, I use relaxation techniques,” he says. “I take some time to meditate by myself, just being aware of thoughts and checking in with myself.” This from a warrior who counts the Iraq invasion of 2003 and the Second Battle of Fallujah among the “high points” of his career. The retreat was designed by Joseph Bobrow, a meditation teacher and psychologist who founded the Coming Home Project through San Francisco’s Deep Streams Zen Institute in 2005. In the 1980s, Bobrow spent two summers in Plum Village, a monastery in France where Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh led retreats for Vietnam War vets. Fast-forward to the war in Iraq. “I needed to do something to help me regulate my feelings about the war,” Bobrow says. As soon as he announced the Coming Home Project’s lineup of workshops, retreats and pro bono counseling services, he started getting referrals from VA hospitals and military medical personnel throughout California. “There’s a pretty big gap to fill,” he says. The stress-management techniques are carefully tailored to the needs of each vet because “It’s difficult to use the body as the focus of attention when the body has been injured,” he says. “In that case, the emphasis is on breath counting or simply learning to ‘watch thoughts.’ ” SOME VETS DO RESIST USING coping skills adapted from Buddhist practices, mostly because the initial experience of mindfulness — and even the word “mindfulness” itself — is so alien. For young vets used to video games and pounding music — and the din of the battlefield — “Being still is just too freaky,” Bobrow says. But while some soldiers are leery of meditation, the Buddhist notion that suffering is a shared experience can be a big help to their family members. Spouses and children of soldiers are beginning to grasp that vets aren’t the only ones affected by the trauma of war. “I realized I have secondary PTSD,” says Tonia Sargent, whose husband, Ken, returned to Camp Pendleton after he sustained a severe brain injury in Iraq. “I get triggered because he gets triggered.” Sargent, a wellness instructor, says that in the three years since her husband returned to California, they and their two daughters have had to deal with “emotional, mental and spiritual brokenness.” Yet, she says, “The system’s not prepared to help us deal with what I call a permanent bipolar situation. Every day has its highs and lows, but there’s never a medium.” At an event the Sargents attended in Houston honoring injured vets, Sargent was shocked to see how blind the well-meaning organizers were to the emotional issues faced by people like her and her husband. “Ken was so overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise that he retreated to the men’s room and started establishing a perimeter,” she says. The only space for the vets to socialize between events was a hotel bar — “a place for traumatized vets to hang out and self-medicate.” Now, the Sargents are integrating elements of Buddhist spirituality into a military and home life that also includes church groups and Bible study. “The solution for us has to be a combination of Eastern and Western ways of dealing with PTSD,” Sargent says. “Don’t just give me pills! We need to learn to feel these emotions and let them surface.” THE USE OF BARE-BONES MINDFULNESS practices to help traumatized Iraqi vets and their families could lay the groundwork for a larger reconsideration of the root causes of this kind of trauma. John Briere, director of the psychological-trauma program at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, says the medical study of mindfulness has changed the way psychologists talk about suffering. “Avoidance is our instinctive response to pain,” he says. “But if we’re driven to avoid the feelings that hurt us, we’ll keep getting hurt. The primary contribution of Buddhism to mental health has been to teach us that to the extent that we’re not avoiding internal experience, we’ve found the pathway out of suffering.” Briere notes that just as posttraumatic stress disorder in vets returning from Vietnam prompted the mental-health establishment to acknowledge that “post-childhood events are important too,” studies of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to provide impetus for change. “The current event-based definition of trauma is an artificial construct,” he argues. In fact, Briere believes that it is the overall experience of war, and not the acute horror of seeing a buddy killed by a roadside bomb, that creates lasting trauma in vets returning home to Southern California. “It’s illogical to trace the kind of trauma we’re seeing to a single experience,” he says. “It makes more sense to ask, ‘Did the war give you PTSD?’ ” Briere’s iconoclastic notion, which is gaining quiet acceptance, helps to explain a seemingly paradoxical fact: Many traumatized vets long to return to war. That’s because the battlefield and the bunker are the only places where the external world — filled with explosions, blood and the threat of death — matches the tight bundle of fear and other emotions inside. “I’m still having nightmares and flashbacks,” says Jeremy Williams. “And my wife sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night because I’m patrolling the house in my sleep. But when I talk to friends going back for their fourth tour or see a commercial for the Marine Corps, I just feel like, ‘Give me my boots back, and my M-16, and let me go do my thing.’ ” With any luck, it will be his training in mindfulness — not cigarettes, beer and his M-16 — that helps Williams adjust to life back home. Nick Street is with News21, a Carnegie-Knight initiative in journalism education at USC’s Annenberg School.]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.115 2007-11-10T11:17:12Z 2007-11-20T05:33:52Z

By Eric Berkowitz M.A., Print Journalism, 2006 Print Journalism: Judges are leaving the bench for $600-an-hour fees in private arbitration. As a result, a large number of cases are being decided out of public view. The exodus has also...

Jackson DeMos By Eric Berkowitz M.A., Print Journalism, 2006 Print Journalism: Judges are leaving the bench for $600-an-hour fees in private arbitration. As a result, a large number of cases are being decided out of public view. The exodus has also drained an overloaded court system of its most experienced jurists. ]]> Los Angeles Times Hundreds of judges have deserted the bench to enrich themselves in a system of private arbitration. The arena is largely unregulated and tilted, many say, in favor of big business and against the little guy. After nine years of hearing family law cases in her Santa Monica courtroom, Jill Robbins was tired--tired of schlepping files home every night, tired of yapping litigants who didn't really understand the process, tired of not being appreciated, tired of earning the equivalent of a junior lawyer's pay. "I wasn't enjoying myself," Robbins says, with considerable understatement. About the same time, a number of retired judges were telling Robbins about the piles of money she could make by hiring herself out to wealthy couples looking to resolve their divorces quietly. "They said, 'Oh my God, there's so much business out here; if you're thinking about it, this is the time,'" she recalls. Not only did Robbins think about it, at least two attorneys remember her talking about it--openly from the bench. They say that, shortly before giving up her commissioner's robe in 1995, Robbins announced during a hearing that she had turned in her resignation and would be starting in private practice in about two months. Then, they add, Robbins asked the lawyers who were present to keep her in mind. Apparently, many have. Robbins is now one of the city's top private family law judges, commanding $600 an hour. Her cases have included the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston split and Charlie Sheen's breakup with Denise Richards. Robbins denies soliciting business in her courtroom. "That would have been improper," she says. "I did not do that." But Robbins allows that word of her departure might have gotten out. People were calling to hire her, she acknowledges, even before she left government service. It's no mystery why. The pay-for-justice phenomenon extends nationwide, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in business a year. (Nobody has an exact figure.) But it's most prevalent in California, where a largely unregulated private system now handles more commercial cases than do the courts, according to some in the industry. In fact, Robbins is one of hundreds of judges who have abandoned the bench to enrich themselves by working in the private sector. Among them are four former California Supreme Court justices who settle disputes for arbitration companies that hawk them like merchandise. Stephen Reinhardt, who sits on the federal appellate court in Los Angeles, once compared such marketing to "the rivalry between Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol." The effect of all this is threefold. First, it has meant that a large number of cases are being decided out of public view, leaving no record or legal precedent for others to follow. Second, it has left the courts--with its overload of cases and myriad other challenges--without some of its most experienced jurists. Meanwhile, many of the best have walled themselves off behind what is, in effect, a gated community. Now, if you're rich, you not only can afford to send your kids to the best schools and obtain the best healthcare and employ the best lawyers, but you can hire the best judges too. Says California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George: It's a "two-track system of justice--one for people who can decide which trial service they want and which judge they will pick" while "others stand at the end of the line." "We're doing the luxury spa," adds former judge and arbitrator Richard Hodge, "rather than the public swimming pool." Not that the less-well-heeled don't find their way into the private arbitration arena. Which brings up my third point: Large companies are using arbitration to diminish many hard-won consumer rights. Through boilerplate clauses buried in take-it-or-leave-it contracts, those who sign up for medical care, credit cards and other essential services are being forced to go into arbitration if they have a beef, thereby relinquishing the protections of the courts and the law. A 2004 study by Stanford law professor Deborah Hensler and Rand Corp. researcher Linda Demaine found that more than 55% of consumer contracts have such clauses, leaving the public at the mercy of private judges who can rule with almost no accountability. And take a guess: When private judges are deciding between a big company and you, which way do you think they tend to lean? Until his retirement in 2004, Mitchell Shapiro was one of the city's leading franchising attorneys. I practiced law with him for six years in the 1990s. Long afterward, he worked at a large firm representing a franchise chain in an arbitration against an individual franchisee. "You're not going to lose," Shapiro says one of his partners assured him. The firm sent the arbitrator so much business, the partner explained, "he has never decided against us." Sure enough, Shapiro says, "on a very close case he came down in our favor." Outsourced justice bears little resemblance to what goes on inside the system. A big reason is this: Public judges are assigned work randomly and have no stake in the cases they preside over. By contrast, private judges are chosen by the parties involved--and it's often the one with the most leverage that really makes the call. That changes the calculus considerably. "Private judging is an oxymoron because those judges are businessmen. They are in this for money," says J. Anthony Kline, a state appellate justice in San Francisco. "In this state, there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands and, for all I know, millions of disputes that are being resolved by decision makers who are not truly independent." If they try to be, the risk is clear: They may not get hired again. "I have had an insurance company that very noticeably did not hire me further after I ruled against them in arbitration," Hodge says. "You would have to be unconscious not to be aware that if you rule a certain way, you can compromise your future business." In 2002, California passed a law requiring arbitration companies to make detailed disclosures about the cases they administer. The idea was to assure consumers that arbitration providers weren't favoring repeat users--namely businesses. However, a 2004 report by the California Dispute Resolution Institute, a private research group, found that because the disclosures have been incomplete, the core question of "whether a 'repeat user bias' exists in consumer arbitration cannot be addressed." Some, though, have little doubt what the numbers would show. As one private judge put it to me: "There's an inclination on the part of 'neutrals' to know where their bread is buttered. They're going to be neutral, but they'll be more neutral for some than others." From 1985 to 2004, when I was an attorney representing a mix of businesses and individuals, I saw a steady increase in the number of cases going into "alternative dispute resolution," a catchphrase including both private arbitrations and mediations (in which the "neutrals" try to cajole the parties to settle). And, believe me, it wasn't all bad. ADR often provided a more streamlined process, which I welcomed. Because the proceedings were held outside the courts, I didn't have to follow a bunch of complicated--and often needless--rules. What's more, private judges could be counted on to give me and my opposing counsel something all too rare in the harried courts of California: their full attention. Rather than our case being part of a crammed docket, it was treated as if it were the only one in the world. That's a huge selling point for someone like Jill Robbins. Sitting in the conference room in her husband's Westside law office, the perfectly coiffed, Prada-bagged 60-year-old touts the high level of service her clients receive. "They're going to get my undivided time," she says. "There are no interruptions. You don't get that when you're in the court system." Robbins also prides herself on keeping her mouth shut. "You're talking famous people, you're talking people who have a lot of money, you're talking people who just don't want other people knowing their business." In the confines of a law office, "you have a better chance of privacy than you have when you're walking down the halls of the courthouse." Still, as time wore on and the private-judging industry grew, I began to focus on something else: Judges were going to unsavory lengths to land good positions. In the mid-1990s, I remember, I was defending a reluctant Brentwood property seller against a buyer. After the buyer refused to answer five deposition questions, I filed a motion to compel discovery. It was an important motion, but pretty routine. When it came up for a hearing, Superior Court Judge Lawrence Waddington said he wouldn't decide it himself but, instead, would refer the matter to a private arbitrator. As I remember it, he said something like: "I can see that you guys aren't getting along. You need a discovery referee." I replied that we didn't, but Waddington didn't budge. He ordered us to hire a private referee, and we wound up with one represented by a company called Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service, or JAMS. The deposition questions finally got answered as a retired judge sat in the room, watching us and racking up billable hours. A few weeks later, as I sifted through a stack of junk mail at my office, I spotted an announcement from Waddington. He had joined JAMS and was now himself available for hire. I shook my head. Waddington told me recently that JAMS was wooing him six months before he retired, offering him a $100,000 advance against his fees. He says he never meant to benefit JAMS when he referred out my motion, and that his clerk would have worked off a list of private judges that could have come from any company. But at the same time, he adds, "JAMS was the only game in town." Waddington is still there, pulling in $400 an hour. Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925, making arbitration agreements enforceable like other contracts, and arbitration has long been a tool in labor disputes. But it wasn't until the 1970s that private judging began to take hold more generally, thanks to a prominent Los Angeles attorney named Hillel Chodos. Chodos found himself working on a case about a business deal gone bad between some lawyers and their client--a matter so complicated that he thought it needed a level of focus the courts couldn't provide. So he and his opposing counsel found an obscure rule allowing a retired judge to return to the bench temporarily to hear their case. Retired judges would sometimes act as arbitrators back then, Chodos says, but most charged little or nothing. Chodos and the other lawyer "concluded, innocently enough, that it wasn't fair to ask him to serve when we were getting hundreds of dollars an hour," Chodos recounts, so they paid him "lawyer's wages." The judge "was like a kid with a new toy," Chodos says. "He never made any money on the bench. It was a brand-new idea. He kept giggling about it." Soon, word got out. "This is exactly what created the industry," Chodos says. "I feel like I created a Frankenstein." A monster it has indeed become. As the courts got ever more crowded in the 1980s and '90s--when it would often take five years for a civil case to wend its way to trial--the demand for alternatives intensified. Services such as JAMS popped up to meet it. The growth of the industry was also fueled by a series of court opinions that broadened the range of cases available for arbitration and cut off challenges to arbitration awards. In a crucial 1992 decision, Moncharsh vs. Heily & Blase, the state Supreme Court held that an arbitrator's award can stand even if it is legally wrong and causes "substantial injustice." The result is that California now has a second legal system in which arbitrators "can rule on the basis of the tea leaves," Hodge says. "The fact is that arbitrators make mistakes . . . and there is no appeal if I make a stupid or diabolical mistake, or one that is made in bad faith. The parties are on their own." Four years after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Moncharsh, the opinion's author, former state Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas, went to work for JAMS. He charges $6,500 a day, according to a company fee schedule dated January 2006. Former Justice Edward A. Panelli, who also signed the decision, is now at JAMS too. His rate: $7,500 a day. Many in the ADR industry are reluctant to talk about the ins and outs of what they do. Not Lucie Barron. Perhaps that's because the Australian-born owner of Los Angeles- based ADR Services isn't an attorney. A voluble single mother of seven, Barron isn't one to wrap herself in a lot of high-minded talk about justice. "The whole business of resolving disputes is market-driven," she says. And when marketing judicial talent, it pays to have judges on your roster with name recognition. "We fight like crazy over the highly regarded judges. If people tell you we don't, it's not true." Barron's company represents about 85 retired judges. In 12 years, she has built her firm into an ADR "supermarket." Some of her private judges make $1 million a year, after Barron takes a 25% to 28% cut. In recent years, the courts have applied certain restrictions to sitting judges looking for private jobs, but Barron says they still find each other. She researches prospects to determine what "market segment" they might fit into. Some judges won't ever work, she explains, because they "think they are a lot better liked and respected than they really are." Barron meets the judges--sometimes in their courtrooms--to make her pitch. She also teaches them how to improve their prospects when they go private, advising them to collect lawyers' business cards for mailing lists, cultivate a reputation for settling cases and raise their public profile. One thing she doesn't do is tell cranky judges to be pleasant to lawyers. After all, she says, it goes without saying: "If you want to try to get business, you have to be good to the people who are going to be your clients." Of course, it's tough to stay too grouchy as a private judge, what with all the cash you're raking in. Most California judges make $150,696 annually--hardly chump change, but not much more than starting lawyers at big firms receive. Top-tier private judges, by contrast, charge as much as $10,000 a day. "The financial aspect of it is amazing," says David Rothman, a retired judge who now makes $600 an hour. "I never made any money as a judge or a lawyer." For some, it's simply too much to turn their backs on. "I've had some judges tell me that there's nothing they would rather do than stay in their public position," says George, the chief justice, "but they have a responsibility to put their kids through college, and they can't do it as a judge." Long-standing judges also have a pension plan that encourages retirement. If they reach age 60 and have served for 20 years, they are eligible for most of their salary. If they stay longer, they still pay into the plan, but with no added benefits. The diminishing returns of public service have fostered a culture in which many judges feel as if they're "passing through the system on their way to better-paying jobs," Reinhardt, the federal appellate judge, said in a speech. It is a transition made with little shame. Arbitrator Norman Brand recalls one retirement party announcement for a judge going into private arbitration. The invitation, he says, was covered in dollar signs. If there was ever a tool for consumers to level the playing field against the largest corporations, it's the class-action lawsuit, whereby a bunch of relatively small claims against a company are pooled into a single massive case. But in recent years, companies have figured out a way to try to immunize themselves from this threat: They've inserted prohibitions against class actions into their arbitration agreements. The practice has not come without controversy. Declaring that contractual restrictions on class suits are "inappropriate," JAMS announced in 2004 that it would start to "ensure fairness" by ignoring such prohibitions and letting class arbitrations go forward. But then Citibank, Discover Card and American Express fought back, writing JAMS out of their arbitration accords. Within a few months, JAMS reversed itself and announced that it would decide class actions on a case-by-case basis in each state. California now prohibits restrictions on many class arbitrations. Other states, notably New York and Delaware, let companies bar them. John "Jay" Welsh, JAMS's general counsel, denies that the company changed its policy under pressure. He also says that consumer cases are a small percentage of JAMS's business, so the firm wasn't concerned about losing Citibank, Discover Card and American Express as clients. (Representatives for the credit card companies declined to comment.) During the same period, another industry giant called the American Arbitration Assn. also appeared to give in to at least one company trying to bar class arbitrations. When it looked like it was going to allow a class action against AT&T, the telecommunications company's lawyers wrote to AAA President William K. Slate II. The March 2005 letter referred to the "exodus" of clients from JAMS and implied that the AAA would also lose business if it let the class action proceed. The AAA later reversed itself and barred the class action against AT&T. Slate told me that he doesn't recall the case. The AAA's general counsel, Eric Tuchmann, declined to comment, but notes that the firm administers many class arbitrations. As I dug deeper and deeper into the world of private judging, I came across no shortage of horror stories from people who found themselves, often unwittingly, caught up in arbitration. There was, for instance, Connie Nagrampa, who got into a tussle with MailCoups Inc., a Massachusetts company she served as a franchisee selling direct-mail advertising. Her agreement with MailCoups included a clause requiring the arbitration of disputes, and after Nagrampa's business failed, the company tried to recover $80,000 it said it was owed. Nagrampa lives in the Bay Area, but MailCoups initiated the arbitration against her in Los Angeles. California law generally requires that people be sued near their homes, but that standard doesn't apply in arbitrations. Nagrampa protested that she had too little money to travel, but rather than move the proceedings closer to her, the private judge at AAA transferred it farther away--to Boston. The AAA arbitrator then held the hearing without Nagrampa and ruled against her, awarding MailCoups $165,000. No explanation was given in the arbitration decision. The five-year-old case is still circulating in the appellate courts, with no end in sight. "I got the feeling by the way I was treated that I was going to lose no matter what," Nagrampa says. "I just think the little guy has no chance in arbitration." Then there was Eve Curtis. In 1999, the jewelry designer received a notice with her MBNA credit card bill saying that unless she objected immediately, all disputes would be arbitrated through an outfit called the National Arbitration Forum. Most people simply discard these envelope stuffers, but Curtis actually read it and sent in an objection. When MBNA later started an arbitration against her for allegedly unpaid bills, she reminded them that she had rejected arbitration. The arbitrator entered a $28,000 award against her anyway. She was able to undo the ruling only after lengthy legal proceedings, according to documents filed in Superior Court in Massachusetts, where Curtis lives. The NAF arbitrator, Paul Rabchenuk, declined to comment. "It's terrifying to be put through this process," Curtis says. "Every time I tried to communicate with the NAF or one of the attorneys, they just ignored me. It was decided against me before it started." Of all the cases I learned about, however, perhaps the most unsettling involved Kaiser Permanente. When attorney Russell Kussman agreed to represent Niaomi Franco, who was born in Kaiser's Fontana hospital with permanent brain damage, he felt he had an uphill climb. Franco's parents, he says, alleged that Kaiser had waited too long before performing a Caesarean section--a claim of negligence that the healthcare provider denied. At the least, Kussman was determined to go before an arbitrator who didn't depend on Kaiser's business. He chose Robert Altman, a former Superior Court judge in Los Angeles, because Altman's disclosures showed no recent or ongoing work for Kaiser. But as it turned out, the disclosures were incomplete, according to documents filed in state Superior Court in San Bernardino. Altman had done a lot of work for Kaiser, including a recent birth injury case in which he ruled for the company. Kussman says he didn't learn of this, however, until after he lost the case. No one accused Altman of omitting the information on purpose; he said in a court declaration that he believed his company, Lucie Barron's ADR Services, would provide it. The firm's failure to do so, he added, was unintentional. Even so, Kussman says he wouldn't have used Altman if he had known all the facts. The court reversed Altman's award, and a new arbitration is scheduled for December. Even if there is full disclosure this time, Kussman believes he is stuck in a system that is "by its nature corrupt." Jurors don't care about pleasing Kaiser, but any arbitrator "knows that whatever he rules, Kaiser is going to look at it and decide whether they're going to use him again. It's as simple as that." Kaiser's lawyer, Denise Taylor, challenges the idea that arbitrators are loyal to the company and says she loses more medical malpractice cases in arbitration than in court. "If an arbitrator finds for the defense too many times," Taylor says, "he or she will be blackballed by the plaintiffs' bar. It goes the other way just as much." Still, because arbitration clauses are often buried in fine print, employee manuals or the junk that comes with credit card bills, "people are obviously entering into these agreements without any understanding of what rights they're giving up," Ronald George says. I do know what I gave up. To write this story, The Times made me sign a contract in which I "waive and give up any right to a jury trial" if I wind up with a grievance against the newspaper. Instead, I've got to use JAMS. I'd rather have a jury than a JAMS judge decide such things. But, practically speaking, I had no choice.]]> tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.94 2007-11-09T10:30:04Z 2007-11-20T05:34:50Z

By Lindsay Watts M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: The scene inside the club is familiar enough -- loud music, dry ice, wandering eyes. The men are fairly average looking, but the ladies are different. Many look like Amazon...

Jackson DeMos By Lindsay Watts M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Broadcast Journalism: The scene inside the club is familiar enough -- loud music, dry ice, wandering eyes. The men are fairly average looking, but the ladies are different. Many look like Amazon women and are tall, beautiful and expertly made-up. But none of these ladies were born female. Listen Read the transcript]]> tag:annenbergfiles.org,2007://1.360 2007-11-09T06:24:00Z 2007-11-27T18:17:58Z

By Syantani Chatterjee M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Sunlight dances around the tiny bone fragments embedded in a diamond-shaped glass prism resting on a high wooden table in sculptor Maria Munroe’s home. The prism is made from the cremains—cremated...

Brian Frank By Syantani Chatterjee M.A. Candidate, Print Journalism, 2008 Sunlight dances around the tiny bone fragments embedded in a diamond-shaped glass prism resting on a high wooden table in sculptor Maria Munroe’s home. The prism is made from the cremains—cremated remains--of musician Howard Wells, who composed the score for the 1962 film “Out of the Tiger’s Mouth.”]]> Sunlight dances around the tiny bone fragments embedded in a diamond-shaped glass prism resting on a high wooden table in sculptor Maria Munroe’s home. The prism is made from the cremains—cremated remains--of musician Howard Wells, who composed the score for the 1962 film “Out of the Tiger’s Mouth.” “There’s no way of controlling how the piece comes out,” Munroe says, pointing at the dispersion of ash and bubbles in the prism, the waves rippling on the surface. “It manifests itself. The personality of a person comes through. He was a musician, you know.” The piece was made through a process called vitrification, Munroe says, converting lead crystals into a glass-like solid through the addition of additives and heat. In this case the additive used is Wells’ cremains. Munroe designs and creates what she calls Eturns, her trademarked term combining “eternal” and “urn.” Her sculptures can be either made of or used to contain cremains of loved ones. Her memorials sit in every nook of her canopied Venice home. The vitrified pieces have three different components: clear solid lead crystal, white ash and bubbles. Warming the vitrified piece sets the bubbles and ash in motion, integrating the three states of nature: solid, liquid and gas. “Gas is captured inside these bubbles, which means their molecules will forever be in motion,” Munroe says of one sculpture. “It’s an active piece. It’s become totally active; the three different forms of this person co-existing simultaneously after her life.” Many of Munroe’s sculptures embody this kinetic principle. “Maybe death isn’t as static as we think,” she says. For the late Jeffrey Blumberg, who worked in the silver department at the auction house Christie’s, Munroe created a radiant, silver, star-like sculpture with six points. In a corner in her living room, a life-size Eturn made of ebonized pear wood has a portrait of Munroe made by artist Stephen Douglas. “When I sat for the picture, I said to Steven, ‘Steven, take me out in time.’” The portrait was made 14 years ago, but bears a striking resemblance to the ivory-haired woman sitting on her sofa. “It won’t hold all of me,” she says of the sculpture. “The top part here slides back and there is a wooden Eturned egg on the inside. A part of my ashes will go in there. I know it might seem a little ominous to have one for myself, but you know, I honestly believe that it’s very consoling to have this with me. Nobody has to worry about it. “You have to live with your death on a daily basis. If you live with your death on a daily basis, and if you think about it, every minute that you are alive is so sweet, is so sweet.” Tawny, golden and crimson fish play hide and seek among rocks in the pond in Munroe’s garden. The fish swim up with their mouths wide open gulping everything in the path. As their mouths reach the water’s surface, the fish plunge headfirst on a steep descent into the emerald blackness. The ripples sparkle in tandem with a rhythmic wind. A mammoth piece of a whale’s vertebra lies next to the pond. Many years ago, a sparrow flew into Munroe’s fish pond and died. She took it out and buried it. A couple of months later, she dug up the bones and entombed them in a plaster-of-Paris egg. “The bones are in here,” Munroe says, shaking the egg. She painted an eagle with its head looking up on one side, and a runic inscription on the other. “I brought it back as an eagle because it was a little sparrow, you know, so humble,” she says. “It’s going to be a work of art, so, she gets to come back as an eagle.” Over tea, she talks about the cycle of change and transformation. “Every part of nature ages, every part of nature dies,” she says. “Some slower, some sooner, including the rocks. They will lose their shape and form and turn to dust. The water will lose its form and become another form. Everything changes.” Munroe’s friend Laurie Frank says the Eturns are the sculptor’s way “of celebrating all the people in her life, including herself.” “I imagine that her art was a calling, that this was a calling as much as anybody in any kind of religious service,” says Frank, curator of Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica. Frank met Munroe through her husband, art dealer Aldis Browne. Munroe worked continuously for about seven months in 1980 on a series based on her father, who was seriously ill. He survived, but when he died 10 years later, she began making Eturns. “I didn’t really know; I hadn’t been in that place of grief, personally before,” she says. “I had only imagined it, and sensed it and been around it. To be in it is very different. He was my first one. My first person that I did was my father.” In her work, she says, “when one is in great sadness and grief, the heart is completely open. Completely open, because of such great pain. As in love, as you know, in the state of love anything is possible. Anything is possible. It’s just infinite, and there is nothing that is impossible. The same happens in death.” After Munroe made the Eturn for her father, a woman whose mother had just died approached her. Munroe made a wooden box to hold a blown crystal Eturn which was to be made of and contain the ashes. “It took a little time because it was the first time I had worked with a person in that state,” she says. “It’s very difficult for them and for me, and also, I am extremely nervous at all times and very cautious because it is so personal that I almost don’t, I won’t approach a person. They will have to approach me.” Frank has long been interested in Munroe’s work, which ranges in price from $3,000 to $30,000. “Maria didn’t want to have a show,” Frank says. “She just wasn’t ready, and she felt that her collaboration with the people who had died or the families of the people who had died was so personal, and that it didn’t lend itself to having an exhibition.” But Frank insisted, and finally convinced Munroe that her art made the entire experience of losing a loved one beautiful, rather than a dirty secret that needed to be buried. “I just knew it would give comfort and support to so many people and inspire them and move them,” Frank says. Nothing in the show was created for the show. It was all borrowed from the families of people who had died. “It was really a gift from them to everyone who saw the work,” Frank says. “It was like all the people who had died were to have this second life. They were all so present as a part of the show.” Cemeteries are filling up. Cremation is becoming more and more a necessity. The Catholic Church, which did not sanction cremation until 1963, expanded that sanction in 1997 to allow funeral rites even after a body was cremated. “The minute they did that, my work took off,” says Munroe. Opening a book- shaped, 4-foot by 3-foot copper funeral ash vessel, Munroe noted that it was for four people. “Four members of one family that will go into a family crypt up at the old mission in Santa Barbara,” Munroe says. “The cemetery is completely filled. This problem is not unique to Santa Barbara. That’s why this book.” Munroe finds working in Los Angeles interesting “because of the influences of Hollywood. The film industry acts as the ultimate Eturn, eternally immortalizing our physicality. But the ocean will not let you forget the infinite nature of existence. Only now are people who are trying to come to terms with their mortality being able to do so. The idea of being young forever, while still attractive, is no longer the only way of life.” Frank sees Munroe’s work as part of a changing spirituality surrounding death and mortality in Los Angeles. “As a society, our whole attitude towards death has changed from something that’s hushed and solemn and not spoken about to a much more celebratory sense,” she says. At Munroe’s show, no one found the pieces so morbid or repulsive that they left the room “or thought it was some new age blather or ridiculed it in some way,” Frank says. Embracing, confronting, accepting mortality through art is a centuries-old tradition. Yet, Munroe’s art is unique in that tradition as well, Frank says. “Maria incorporates the person into their memorial,” she says. “That’s a huge step because it makes them present. It makes the dead present. Traditionally that wasn’t the case. Having the effigy of a dead person made it even more evident that they were no longer present, that they were elsewhere, that they were in the ground, or in a wall somewhere.” tag:blogs.uscannenberg.org,2007:/annenbergfiles//1.110 2007-11-07T15:16:17Z 2007-12-02T17:06:12Z

By Rocio Zamora, M.A., Print Journalism, 2007 and Alison Brody, M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Online Journalism: Many Latinos still visit botanicas when looking to solve the problems of everyday life. In these modest storefronts, people find the candles, colognes,...

Jackson DeMos By Rocio Zamora, M.A., Print Journalism, 2007 and Alison Brody, M.A., Broadcast Journalism, 2007 Online Journalism: Many Latinos still visit botanicas when looking to solve the problems of everyday life. In these modest storefronts, people find the candles, colognes, incense and soaps needed for spiritual rituals rooted in Folk Catholicism. But behind the humble storefronts lies a booming business. Rocio Zamora wrote a feature for News21 and Alison Brody produced a radio report. Brody also produced two audio slideshows: one on a factory and one on a botanica shop. ]]>