DEFEDE/Finding the right balance while striking a chord

Michael Mayo
News Columnist
Sun Sentinel

Once you throw yourself in the public eye -- as an elected official or a newspaper columnist -- you know everything you do and say will be scrutinized, and anything can lead to a quick downfall.

We were reminded of that last week with the sudden and shocking suicide of longtime Miami-Dade County politician Arthur Teele Jr. and the sudden and shocking firing of Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede.

As one who has taken on my share of politicians here in Broward County, the saga that played out to the south shook me on a few levels. As a human being, it reminded me everyone has a breaking point. As a journalist, it reminded me that, although we are just the messengers, the way the message is gathered and presented has very real consequences.

It reminded me of the delicate tightrope I have to walk. As a columnist, I have to be true to readers, fair to subjects and open with editors.

Teele's suicide makes me wonder if sometimes the media do go too far, losing their sense of decency when covering those who seem to have lost theirs. And DeFede's firing makes me wonder if honesty really is the best policy.

Teele shot himself in the Herald lobby Wednesday. He faced numerous corruption charges in state and federal court. But his breaking point might have been the widespread release of lurid details of his personal life, including alleged encounters with a male prostitute, compiled by police investigators and published by the weekly Miami New Times.

It's one thing to have the graphic details sitting in a court file, another to have them splashed out for tens of thousands of readers. The paper didn't even try to get a response from Teele or his attorney before publication. Miami New Times Editor Jim Mullin told me he could not comment.

DeFede, dealing with a distraught Teele in his final hours, activated a taping device on his home telephone without Teele's consent, a possible violation of Florida law and a betrayal of a source's trust.

For that mistake, which DeFede revealed to his bosses, he paid with his job.

As a columnist who knows the pressures, snap decisions and tripwires that come with the territory I say, "There but for the grace of God go I."

The Florida statutes covering taping conversations are complex and virtually incomprehensible, but the general rule is taping calls is forbidden without all parties' consent.

Would I have hit the record button? I make things easy on myself. I don't have a way to tape phone calls at home, and I have no idea whether my newsroom line is capable (I've barely figured out how to retrieve messages).

When I do interviews, I like to get the gist of people's positions, along with a few revealing or witty quotes. Taping might ensure 100 percent accuracy, but as this incident showed, one lapse can lead to zero percent employment.

DeFede erred in flipping the switch, but showed integrity in the aftermath. If I made a similar slip, I'd hope I'd be as honest. I'd also hope my bosses would consider the matter a little longer before making a final decision, especially after such a long and stressful day.

In my role as watchdog over public figures, I play by certain rules. I won't make fun of people's physical characteristics, just their work-related deficiencies. I won't get into personal lives unless it is the subject of criminal charges or exposes hypocrisy relating to their public roles.

For example, if a morals crusader were alleged to be frequenting a prostitute, like Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Doug Danziger a decade ago, that's fair game. But do readers really need a full description of everything that took place? Not every salacious detail has to be printed, even if they're already in the public realm.

As much I beat up former Broward elections supervisor Miriam Oliphant for her performance, I never felt the need to troll through her divorce file.

As much as I'm critical of Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne, I really don't care what he does with his free time, unless he's making money improperly through the abuse of his public position.

My credo: hit hard, keep it above the belt and follow the law and an ethical compass. Whatever happens after that is beyond a journalist's control.

DEFEDE /Tape sticks to the truth

Manning Pynn
Public Editor
Orlando Sentinel

Anyone who has tried to write down information while someone is talking -- particularly talking quickly or not in complete sentences -- knows that getting it right can be tricky.

Reporters, who do that all the time, devise their own methods to ensure accuracy: learning shorthand, inventing their own shorthand -- or, the most accurate of all, tape-recording the conversation.

If they tape-record telephone conversations, though, they can bump into a law -- in Florida and a handful of other states, at least -- that requires getting permission to do so from the people with whom they're speaking.

That became an issue this past week when the Miami Herald fired columnist Jim DeFede. The journalist had tape-recorded a telephone conversation Wednesday with former Miami Commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr., who that evening shot himself to death in the newspaper's lobby.

Teele, who had been indicted two weeks earlier on 26 federal counts of fraud and money laundering, had been the subject that day of an extensive article about allegations against him in another publication, the Miami New Times.

After the shooting, DeFede told his editors at the Herald of his conversation with the politician and acknowledged having neglected to get permission to record it, as well as having continued to tape when a distraught Teele went off the record. "In a tense situation," he explained in a statement, "I made a mistake."

Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler reacted late that evening by dismissing the columnist, saying that what he had done was unethical and potentially illegal.

Why, though, should it be either?

When someone speaks with a reporter, there is no secret about what is going on. The journalist is gathering information and recording -- in one form or another -- what is said. The objective, for both parties, should be accuracy.

Even when someone wants to say something off the record, reporters often continue recording what is said -- either by writing it down or taping it. "Off the record" means that the information is not to be published, not that it can't be recorded.

In person, reporters sometimes ask interviewees if they mind being tape-recorded. They do that not because of any legal requirement but rather as a courtesy. Tape recorders make some people more nervous than just having their words written down. For them, bringing out a tape recorder or calling attention to it can reduce candor and lead to a stilted conversation.

If the conversation is on the telephone in Florida, though, it can become a legal issue because of a statute prohibiting the "interception . . . of wire, oral, or electronic communication." Plowing through the standard legalese, you'll find language that seems pretty clearly intended to rein in the practice of third parties tapping into other people's phone conversations without their knowledge.

It's broad enough, though, to include your own conversations.

You're perfectly free to write down, verbatim, every word spoken on the phone without alerting anyone. If you tape-record it, though, you can run afoul of the law if you don't get permission from the other party.

That strikes me as absurd, particularly when one of the parties to that conversation is a reporter, whose very purpose -- and both parties know it -- is to record accurately what is being said.

DEFEDE/Blood Stains Miami's Herald

A politician commits suicide and a star reporter loses his job.

By Jonathan Darman Newsweek

Art Teele sounded different to Jim DeFede—and not in a good way. A columnist for The Miami Herald, DeFede had talked to Teele, a former Miami commissioner, countless times in the past 14 years. But when Teele dialed up last Wednesday, he sounded so dark and unhinged that DeFede's instincts told him to plug his tape recorder into the phone. The subject of an ongoing corruption investigation, Teele was obsessed with stories in the Miami media alleging he'd hired a male prostitute. "You know what happens when you Google my name now?" Teele asked. "All that comes up is the homosexual stuff." Looking down at his tape recorder, DeFede felt like a 911 dispatcher, talking to a man on the edge.

He wasn't that far off. That afternoon, Teele shot himself in the Herald's lobby, ending his life. De-Fede and the Herald, meanwhile, found themselves at the center of a bourgeoning journalistic scandal. Shortly after learning of Teele's suicide, DeFede informed Herald publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. of the tape-recorded conversation, adding that he'd neglected to ask Teele's consent to record the conversation, a journalistic error and a potential violation of Florida law. "I made an honest mistake," DeFede told NEWSWEEK, "I thought the Herald would stand by me." Late that same night, with Teele's blood still splattered on the terrazzo lobby floor, Diaz informed DeFede he was no longer an employee of The Miami Herald.

In the Herald newsroom, the dismissal was met with widespread dismay. Many reporters believed DeFede had made an honest mistake in a stressful circumstance and that the paper's response had been hasty and harsh. On Thursday, Diaz and executive editor Tom Fiedler met with staffers to explain their actions. One reporter asked Fiedler and Diaz if "the lesson we're supposed to take away from this [is] that when we do something wrong, we just shouldn't tell you about it?"

Perhaps. As DeFede left the Herald building on Wednesday, he took a call from Fiedler, who lamented, "I wish you hadn't told anybody about the tape." (Fiedler says he was simply noting the "irony" of DeFede's having gotten himself into trouble by "being so damn honest." Fiedler and Diaz note that while the Herald always looks out for the well-being of its reporters, in situations where reporters may have broken the law, the paper's first obligation is to protect itself.) DeFede says he hopes his Herald bosses will reverse their decision, but they say that isn't likely. Meanwhile, the reporter may still face charges in Miami-Dade for taping Teele's words. The Herald now says it will cover his legal costs. A remaining line of revenge for the columnist? Billable sessions for planning his defense.

With Rebecca Wakefield in Miami

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

DEFEDE / Newspaper criticized for firing columnist

Amid polls that show public distrust of the media at an all-time high, and after several recent high-profile journalism scandals, media outlets are getting increasingly tough on enforcing their internal ethics policies.

But last week's firing of a popular Miami Herald columnist raises the question of whether news organizations may be acting too hastily to reassure the public that their newsrooms are squeaky clean.

Herald columnist Jim DeFede was fired Wednesday after he volunteered to editors that he had taped a phone conversation that day between him and former city commissioner Arthur Teele Jr. without telling Teele.

Their conversation came just minutes before Teele walked into the Herald's lobby, called DeFede a second time, then shot and killed himself.

Taping a phone call without consent, legal in many states but journalistically questionable, can be a crime in Florida. No charges have been filed against DeFede.

More than 300 journalists have signed an online petition (www .journalistsfordefede.blogspot .com) calling on the paper to rethink its decision and bring back DeFede, 43, who has worked at the Herald for three years but had covered Teele for years before.

In an interview Sunday, DeFede said he was fired after an initial 10-minute conversation he had with publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. and Herald attorney Robert Beatty shortly after DeFede learned Teele was dead. DeFede said he had no reason to believe Teele planned to take his life after their final conversation.

DeFede said that the Herald executives first indicated they didn't think the taping was a big deal. DeFede said he was never given a chance to explain fully why he taped the conversation. He said he did not talk to Herald editor Tom Fiedler, who that day was at parent company Knight Ridder's headquarters in San Jose, Calif., until after he was fired.

"The first words out of his mouth were, 'I wish you hadn't told anyone about the tape.' I said, 'You guys are my family, my world. If I can't come to you, who am I supposed to talk to?' " DeFede said.

DeFede said that he impulsively began taping Teele, whom he had written about many times, favorably and unfavorably, because "the voice I was hearing was like nothing I had ever heard before: He was completely defeated, without any sense of hope. It was almost like a 911 call. I wanted to concentrate on what he was saying."

Teele, 59, an influential black Republican, had recently been indicted on corruption charges, accused of lying to get more than $20 million in airport contracts earmarked for minority businesses. And on Wednesday, another Miami newspaper had published a scathing story about his personal life.

Teele felt that investigators were out to get him, said DeFede, who considered him a friend. "He was cracking. He kept saying, 'I'm dead in the water.' " He said he asked Teele if he wanted to go on the record for a column, but Teele said no. When their first conversation ended, DeFede said, he had no plans to do anything with the tape.

DeFede said he had tried to steer Teele away from his troubles by discussing what he was writing about and a Miami building development. As such, DeFede said, he was a bit puzzled when Teele called him at home, from the lobby, to say he was dropping off some information about the development, but said there was no need for DeFede to come into the office then. Minutes later, the Herald called to say Teele had just shot himself.

Fiedler could not be reached Sunday. But in a Herald column Sunday, the editor acknowledged that his decision to fire DeFede is "perplexing. ... I say perplexing because that has been the reaction, along with anger, from many, perhaps most, within this newsroom, and from countless readers who regard Jim as a beacon of journalistic courage."

But Fiedler wrote that he had no choice. "What Jim acknowledged doing violated one of the most fundamental tenets of journalistic ethics, which holds that in all our deal- ings we act without hidden motives or practices. ... When it comes to maintaining our integrity, we must be absolutists. There can be no parsing of ethics. We cannot be a little bit unethical."

Aly Colo´n, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., says that the Herald's actions fall in line with "a pattern of quick responses from news organizations" on punishing ethical lapses.

"I'm not sure that's really the best answer in every situation," Colo´n says. "I think what may be happening is that we are acting reflexively, almost in that stereotypical, cliché-ridden phrase of 'knee jerk.' There are a lot of ethics codes being written, a lot of rules being laid down, almost finger wagging, 'Don't do this.' We benefit more when we are talking more regularly, more often about why we believe what believe."

DeFede said that he told executives that he would accept a suspension and would apologize to the newsroom and readers. Instead, "they fired me, branded me a criminal and have been calling me unethical ever since."

In firing him, DeFede said, the message the Herald is sending to its reporters is: "If you think you made a mistake or even think you might be wrong, hide it, cover it up, don't tell anyone."

But he'd love to go back. "This is the best job I ever had," DeFede said. "And I'd like to keep doing it."

An eight-year itch on 'Today'?

Is the spark gone from the on-air relationship between NBC Today co-anchors Katie Couric and Matt Lauer?

"After 81/2 years, how many people have the exact same spark of energy and enthusiasm and that same novelty they felt in the second month they were married?" Lauer tells writer Ken Auletta in this week's New Yorker magazine, out today. "Our relationship has evolved. In some ways, it has matured," Lauer says, adding later, "There is no actual tension."

Says Couric: "I can tell you with complete honesty that my relationship with Matt hasn't changed at all. We like and care about each other."

Also in the article, Couric, whose $13 million-a-year contract with NBC expires in May 2006, says she'll decide this fall what her future plans are: stay with Today, host a syndicated talk show, or perhaps move to CBS, where Dan Rather's anchor seat remains open.

Couric, 48, says she has met twice with CEO Leslie Moonves. "I have, when it's operating on all four cylinders, one of the best jobs in television," she says. "At the same time, everybody needs recharging." NBC chief Jeff Zucker, once Couric's producer on Today, says he's "confident" that Couric will stay at NBC for "many, many years to come."

Lauer, whose contract expires in two years, says he doesn't envision himself anchoring an evening news broadcast. "I just don't think that's me. The variety of what I get with this show is great for me." But Lauer, 47, also hopes to semi-retire once he turns 50, as did his pal and Today predecessor Bryant Gumbel, and anchor National Geographic specials. "I don't want to work five days a week," Lauer says.

Plenty of visitors for jailed reporter

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been jailed since July 6 when she refused to reveal her sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of CIA employee Valerie Plame's identity. But as she continues to serve her four-month term (when the grand jury will be dismissed), she has had a steady stream of visitors at the Alexandria (Va.) Detention Center.

Last week, a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, including former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, met with Miller and then called for her to be released.

"There's no good purpose in keeping this dedicated, honorable, committed professional in jail," Steiger said after the visit. "At the end of our 30-minute conversation it was emphatically clear that she is absolutely convinced that she made the right decision and is prepared to stay the course," Brokaw said.

Times managing editor Jill Abramson said she met with Miller Tuesday night.

"Her spirits seemed remarkably good, given the circumstances," Abramson said. "I think what is keeping her going is that she believes she is serving a purpose, and that is the need for a federal shield law," which would give journalists protection from having to reveal their sources.

"We talked about this a lot during my half-hour visit with her," Abramson said. "She is receiving a torrent of supporting mail, and the letters help sustain her as well. Times colleagues are begging to go, and there is a long waiting list." [USA TODAY]

TEELE / The pictures...

FIEDLER / "A tragedy of multiple dimensions"

By TOM FIEDLER
Executive Editor / The Miami Herald

When Arthur E. Teele Jr. walked into The Herald lobby shortly before 6 p.m. on Wednesday, he may well have known, even in his incomprehensibly agitated state, that in taking his life he would precipitate a tragedy of multiple dimensions.

First, and most important, would be the trauma brought to his family and friends, whose love never wavered despite the many legal and personal problems cascading upon him.

Second would be the trauma inflicted on those who work at The Herald, beginning with my colleagues who witnessed the act and including also those who feel its presence and have a new sense of vulnerability.

But former Commissioner Teele could not have known that he would also unleash a third tragedy of a different sort, one that hit a man whom both he and I admired as a journalist and friend. I'm referring, of course, to Herald Metro columnist Jim DeFede, a man of extraordinary talent who, I am proud to say, I brought to The Herald three years ago.

Jim's impact on readers -- those who love him and those who feel otherwise -- has been all that any newspaper editor could hope for in a local opinion writer. Which makes all the more perplexing my decision late Wednesday night to fire Jim for the seemingly minor offense of taping a telephone conversation with Teele, only hours before Teele's suicide, without Teele's knowledge or permission.

I say perplexing because that has been the reaction, along with anger, from many, perhaps most, within this newsroom, and from countless readers who regard Jim as a beacon of journalistic courage.

One particularly thoughtful e-mail I received from a reader argued for a reversal of my decision to dismiss Jim and pointed out the tragic irony: ''The sad thing,'' she wrote, ``is that Art Teele by killing himself at The Herald brought more attention to a good guy who was fired and distracted the public from the things [Teele] was accused of doing that got his name in the paper to begin with.''

The writer, along with many others, understood that Jim's action in tape-recording his conversation may have been illegal in Florida (although not in every state) and unethical. But is that cause to fire him?

My heart argued fiercely with my head Wednesday night that a lesser penalty would do. Jim, fine man and journalist that he is, readily admitted both the action and the violation. He said he would not only accept a punishment such as suspension, but that he would publicly defend a decision to impose it.

My heart didn't carry the argument. Generally, tape recording someone without his or her knowledge is against state law. That factored in the firing decision; all of us are expected to act within the law.

But the possibility that a law was violated was neither the only factor nor, I believe, the most important one in my decision.

Fundamental tenet

What Jim acknowledged doing violated one of the most fundamental tenets of journalistic ethics, which holds that in all our dealings we act without hidden motives or practices.

Especially troubling to me was Jim's admission that he turned on his tape recorder at a moment when Teele was clearly agitated, when his thoughts were disconnected, rambling, incoherent. Jim wasn't ethically free to write about the conversation as it was off the record at Teele's request. And no one can think that Teele would have agreed to let Jim tape that conversation had Jim asked to do so.

So why did Jim do it? Where was his justification, journalistically or ethically?

He will prevail

In the past few days I have heard powerful arguments on Jim's behalf that the state law against taping someone without consent is nonsensical and that, if Jim is prosecuted, he will prevail.

That may be, although I certainly hope it doesn't end up in court.

But fundamentally, this isn't a question of the law. It's a question of how Herald journalists, and particularly our most visible and most experienced, are expected to operate.

When it comes to maintaining our integrity, we must be absolutists. There can be no parsing of ethics. We cannot be a little bit unethical.

This isn't to say that there won't be times when we'll find it necessary to do undercover investigations or to test laws that run counter to decency. We'll do that, and we'll accept the consequences as an institution.

Breach of trust

But extraordinary cases aside, the people with whom we deal cannot think that they can trust us some of the time, even most of the time. They have to know that they can trust us all the time, in every encounter.

When we tell them a conversation is off the record, it will remain so. And when we don't tell them that their words are being recorded, they can know that they aren't.

It's all about trust. I could suspend Jim for a time, and he would, I am sure, never repeat his mistake. But the message that would send to all others who deal with us is that The Herald tolerates those who have breached that trust, even if just once.

Once, my head tells me, is too often.

IN MY OPINION / Mixed record of good and bad for Teele

By CARL HIAASEN

Who did I piss off in this town?

That's what former Miami Commissioner Arthur Teele asked Herald columnist Jim DeFede over the phone last Wednesday afternoon. Not long afterward, Teele walked into the lobby of this newspaper and made a show of shooting himself.

For those who cared about him, and there were many, the grief is deep and scorching. It might seem a harsh time for blunt words, and there's no joy in delivering them.

But facts are facts. Teele was a complicated person who did many good things. He also veered disgracefully astray. Even through the tears and tributes, that cold truth looms.

And although he's gone, it's not too late to answer his question: Who did he piss off?

He pissed off the law.

If the evidence is to be believed -- and there's a mountain of it -- he schemed, scammed and ripped off taxpayers. He took kickbacks. He lied. He stiffed the IRS. Worse, he betrayed the African-American community that he claimed to represent. It appears very much that he was corrupt, and that's why he got in trouble.

Politicians who realize the party is over react in different ways. Former County Commissioner Joe Gersten bolted to Australia. Former Miami City Manager Howard Gary turned snitch. Ex-city commissioners Humberto Hernandez and Miller Dawkins copped pleas, put on the ugly jumpsuits and did their time.

Teele chose to end his life loudly in a public place, angling not only for headlines but martyrdom -- a performer to the bitter end.

It's a cliché to talk about wasted talent, but in Art's case it was true. Among South Florida's elected officials he stood out as immensely intelligent, affable and persuasive. He could be a charismatic advocate and a commanding public speaker.

Unfortunately, he was also an egomaniac, wittily arrogant on his best days and pompous on his worst. He probably earned as many enemies as friends, but that's not what brought him down.

It was money. Teele's personal finances were a disaster. At last count he was $1.7 million in the red, half owed in back taxes to Uncle Sam.

Frantic, perpetual indebtedness is likely what drove Teele to concoct the alleged schemes that led to his two recent indictments, with a third on the way.

The initial blow was eight months ago. Prosecutors charged that, while running Miami's Community Redevelopment Agency, Teele steered construction contracts to friends and purposely bloated project costs, in exchange for more than $135,000 in payoffs.

Two weeks ago, a federal grand jury charged him with pocketing at least $59,000 for helping a major electrical firm use a small front company to get $20 million worth of contracts at Miami International Airport.

Additional corruption charges were in the works, a fact of which Teele was dejectedly aware. Already crushed by legal bills, he surely understood that even in Miami the odds of fooling three different juries are slim.

So Teele chose death over court. The way he did it was intended to shock and horrify, and it did. The misery inflicted on his family and friends by the gruesome spectacle must have been wrenching.

Yet Teele knew what he was doing. Killing one's self in a newspaper lobby will get you plenty of ink and air time.

Amid the reams of investigatory records made public, one incident stands out as an especially odious example of how far Teele had sunk, how cold-blooded he'd become.

Developer Michael Swerdlow, for whom Teele once worked as a consultant, told prosecutors that Teele had asked to borrow $705,000 to ship a load of rice to Haiti, where Teele promised it could be resold at 10 times the cost.

Swerdlow said he curtly declined and was offended that Teele would try to enlist him to rip off impoverished Haitians. I've known Swerdlow for years, and I believe every word of his account, which he repeated to me.

The real tragedy of Arthur Teele is that a public figure of such manifest intellect would turn out to be just another fast-buck hustler with no qualms about screwing over those he was elected to serve.

To the last, Teele thought first and foremost of himself.

Another unintended casualty of this story is DeFede, one of the brightest talents on this newspaper and also one of the few journalists in whom Teele continued to confide.

Three times on the day he died Teele phoned DeFede at home. On the second occasion DeFede taped part of the call, without telling Teele or getting his consent. That's against the law in Florida, and it cost DeFede his job.

I spoke with him that night. He said that while Teele was emotional on the phone, the commissioner never mentioned suicide.

''I'm still trying to process Art's death, so I can't begin to process being unemployed,'' DeFede said. It's worth noting that nobody would have known about the illegal tape if DeFede himself hadn't voluntarily informed his editors.

We who are his colleagues and admirers may grumble about how the situation was handled internally, but the fact remains that Jim's gone and this newspaper's readers are poorer for his absence.

He kicked over stones, raised holy hell, refused to play favorites and ticked off plenty of folks in high places -- exactly what a good Metro columnist is supposed to do.

It was no accident that Teele sought out DeFede. The column was widely read, and it had credibility.

If Teele were still alive, he'd be dismayed to know that DeFede got canned. He might ask Jim the same question he'd posed about himself:

Who'd you piss off?

One difference between the two men would be found in their answers. ''I made a mistake,'' DeFede said.

No such admission will be forthcoming from Arthur Teele.

DEFEDE / A politician, a journalist, a suicide and a tape

By Paul Berton

Free Press
Editor-in-Chief

On Wednesday, a Florida politician walked into the lobby of the Miami Herald, left a message for a columnist at the front desk, and then put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

It was a bizarre and traumatic event for those at the newspaper, but its aftermath is creating a buzz in the journalistic community.

Hours after the horrific suicide, the columnist was fired -- for a reason many Canadians might find surprising.

The politician was Arthur E. Teele Jr., a former city commissioner who had been charged with corruption last week. By Wednesday, more stories were breaking about Teele's sexual habits that were likely to embarrass him.

The columnist was Jim DeFede, who had known Teele for years.

The message, according to a security guard: "He said to tell DeFede to tell his wife he loves her."

DeFede's offence was perhaps not as grievous as you might imagine -- he was fired because he taped a telephone interview with Teele earlier that day.

"I thought he might commit suicide," DeFede told reporters. "It was a very tense situation. I was shaking. I wanted to preserve the record. I knew it was an important moment. I rolled the tape on impulse."

Now, in the newsroom of The London Free Press and in many, many other newsrooms across Canada and the United States and indeed the world, many journalists tape their interviews as a matter of course.

In fact, if you are talking with a journalist at The London Free Press about a story, you should assume you're being taped. Not all of us do it, but many do.

In Ontario, that's perfectly legal. The law here states that taping of telephone conversations is fine as long as one of the participants knows about it.

In Florida, however, as in eight other states, the law is different: all participants must know the conversation is being taped.

DeFede didn't tell Teele he was taping the conversation. He told his bosses about the conversation -- and the tape -- after the awful incident in the lobby, and he was fired because he had broken the law.

Some of DeFede's colleagues thought the punishment was too harsh and came too quickly and without enough consideration.

But other journalists agree he should have been fired.

"People have a reasonable expectation to know when they're going to be taped," journalism ethics Professor Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute in Florida told the Herald. "Even if it's legal, it still doesn't mean journalists should tape people without knowledge of the other party."

Many others, including me, disagree.

To be sure, it is a journalist's duty to identify herself or himself to a subject and to make it clear a story is in the works.

Sometimes, if the subject seems naive (eyewitnesses come to mind), journalists should and do take extra precautions to tell them their comments and or names may appear in the newspaper. There will always be those who, for whatever reason, don't know their comments may be made public and we must do more to ensure they understand what it means when they talk to a reporter.

But any politician, public official, business leader, athlete, public personality and many others should know their comments may be on tape.

You'd think they'd want it that way. After all, tape recordings are made to ensure accuracy. Most good reporters take notes and use the recordings only as backup.

Sometimes, if it's a difficult interview and the subject refutes the comments made in the story, reporters use the tape to defend themselves.

Subjects have a right to ask if they're being taped and get an honest answer.

If it's a radio interview, it seems only fair to tell subjects they may be heard on air, but in the newspaper, I'm afraid not.

DEFEDE / Miami Paper Fires Columnist, Adding Own Twist to Tale of Sex, Politics and Suicide

ABBY GOODNOUGH The New York Times

MIAMI - It seemed like a throwback to "Miami Vice": an eccentric politician, recently accused of money laundering and soliciting male prostitutes, fatally shoots himself in the lobby of The Miami Herald after an anguished phone conversation with a star columnist.

But the storyline grew even stranger on Thursday as employees of the newspaper reacted with outrage after learning that the columnist, Jim DeFede, had been fired for secretly taping his conversation with the distraught man - a possible violation of state law.

Mr. DeFede, who chronicles the surreal politics of South Florida, said his conversation with the man, Arthur Teele Jr., a former city commissioner recently indicted on federal charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, was so disturbing that he quietly began recording it "out of concern" for Mr. Teele.

"The idea that he might be thinking suicide was in my mind," Mr. DeFede, 42, said Thursday. "I wanted to get what he was saying down - to preserve what he was saying - so I pushed the record button."

Mr. Teele's suicide followed a police investigation into corruption that, together with his death on the polished terrazzo floor of The Herald building's lobby on Wednesday, provided yet another strange chapter in Miami's storied political history.

Because he made a recording without Mr. Teele's knowledge - a crime in Florida, unlike many other states - and because he told his bosses he had done so, Mr. DeFede, a three-year employee of The Herald, was abruptly fired Wednesday night. Now many of his colleagues are stunned. The newspaper's management is staunchly defending its action, and Mr. DeFede's dismissal is making waves as a stark example of the extreme measures by newspapers to appear beyond ethical reproach.

Orville Schell, the dean of the University of California Graduate School of Journalism, said Mr. DeFede's actions might not have elicited such a quick, sharp reaction in the past.

"Usually, somebody who had done an infraction like that and admitted it, they might have just said, 'Don't do it again,' " Mr. Schell said. "But I think in the present climate, where no media outlet feels it can sustain another hit, they're reacting with incredible rigidity and very punctiliously. Every media outlet now is bending over backwards to prove its fidelity to the higher principles to the trade."

Mr. DeFede and his former employer have differing accounts of how his dismissal unfolded in the fraught hours after Mr. Teele's death. Mr. DeFede, a muckraker with a knack for nailing wayward politicians, said Jesús Díaz Jr., The Herald's publisher, and Robert Beatty, its general counsel, were initially supportive when he told them about taping Mr. Teele.

"Robert said, 'There may be some liability here, but The Herald would defend you,' " Mr. DeFede said in a phone interview. "And Jesús said, 'Absolutely.' "

Several hours later, around 10:30 p.m., Mr. DeFede said, he was summoned to Mr. Díaz's office and told he was being fired.

In a news conference at The Herald on Thursday, Mr. Díaz said: "We never said that this was not an issue, that this would be O.K. So there was no change. This was an issue from the moment we heard what Jim had done."

Mr. Teele's suicide came on the same day that another newspaper, Miami New Times, published a compilation of excerpts from a recent investigative report on him by the Miami-Dade Police Department. Among the many sordid details was a detective's interview with a male prostitute, now in jail, who said Mr. Teele had paid him for sex and used cocaine with him.

Mr. DeFede said Mr. Teele, 59, did not mention the article during their late-afternoon conversation but talked in anguish about the prostitute's accusations, saying he was especially worried about the impact on his adult son. Mr. DeFede said he had considered Mr. Teele a friend for most of the 14 years he had known him, and that it was not uncommon for Mr. Teele to "just call me out of the blue and want to talk and vent." But something was different this time, he said.

"I realized Art was headed in a direction that scared me," Mr. DeFede said, and so in the heat of the moment he turned on his tape recorder. Mr. Teele seemed more stable when they hung up after 25 minutes, Mr. DeFede said, and even calmer when he called a second time from The Herald's lobby. Mr. DeFede was working at home, and Mr. Teele said he was leaving a packet for him at the security desk.

The Herald called minutes later to inform him of the shooting.

"I'm stunned, I'm physically shaking," Mr. DeFede recalled. "And my first reaction, looking down at the tape, is this is basically Teele's suicide note. These are his final words about the torture that his life has been through all this up and down. This is his last words; what do I do with it?"

After talking to a Herald reporter who wanted to interview him for an article about the shooting, Mr. DeFede was transferred to Mr. Díaz and Mr. Beatty, whom he told about the tape. With their permission, Mr. DeFede said, he transcribed it before bringing it to The Herald building and sitting down to write about the conversation. He was fired hours later. Even after knowing Mr. DeFede had taped Mr. Teele without his consent, the newspaper published portions of the conversation as described by Mr. DeFede.

Tom Fiedler, the paper's executive editor, said the decision was wrenching but that he, like Mr. Díaz, saw no choice.

"We expect our people to act in a highly ethical way, and Jim admitted that he had crossed that line, and I really didn't see an alternative," Mr. Fiedler said. "If we have that expectation and someone fails to abide by it, knowingly fails to abide by it, regardless of that person's talent it means they can no longer be a part of The Herald."

Though some Herald employees speculated that Knight Ridder, the newspaper's parent company, might have influenced Herald executives, a spokeswoman for Knight Ridder said The Herald made the decision to fire Mr. DeFede on its own.

Mr. Diaz said he would not turn the tape over to the police or prosecutors because Mr. Teele believed his conversation with Mr. DeFede was off the record. The Miami-Dade Police Department and the Miami-Dade state attorney's office said they had not yet considered whether to bring charges against Mr. DeFede.

The law that Mr. DeFede may have broken is murky - even his bosses said it was not clear whether he had violated it. It states that "all parties must consent to the recording or disclosure of the contents of any wire, oral or electronic communication" in Florida. But a federal appeals court found in 1991 that for business calls, recording on the phone without the other party's consent was not illegal.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va., said Mr. DeFede might have a good case in court but The Herald still had the right to fire him.

Reporters who attended a staff meeting about the firing said many were livid that it had happened so quickly - even as Mr. Teele's blood was still being removed from the building's lobby - and felt that Mr. DeFede had been too harshly punished, though some believed what he did was ethically questionable.

Mr. Fiedler said he and Mr. Díaz considered other options, like suspending Mr. DeFede, but because he "clearly understood" the law they had to go further. In a staff meeting, Mr. Fiedler said Mr. DeFede had violated a "basic tenet" of Herald policy.

Mr. DeFede said he still hoped The Herald might reconsider. "There's a dangerous, dangerous trend here of any journalist who makes any kind of mistake is automatically killed," Mr. DeFede said. "I love working at The Miami Herald. I hope that as things settle down and we can all be a little less emotional about what occurred, we can step back and look at things in a calmer way."

Louise Story contributed reporting from New York for this article.

CBS4 video: Jim DeFede talks to the media also see NBC 6

Letters from The Miami Herald readers

Herald bosses: Columnist violated ethical standards

Video: Herald execs news conference


Suicide's Aftermath Rocks Miami

Manuel Roig-Franzia Washington Post

MIAMI - The flamboyant politician is dead in the most flamboyant of ways. The muckraking columnist is out of a job. The newsroom is in an uproar, and so are many in the community.

This city with its well-refined appetite for the bizarre has been riveted to the splashy parallel melodramas unspooling in the hours since Arthur E. Teele Jr., a spectacularly skilled and spectacularly flawed Florida political legend, shot himself to death Wednesday in the Miami Herald lobby.

The public death of Teele -- a former city and county commissioner who made the runoff in the 1996 mayoral election and was active in civil rights causes -- cuts a hole in a huge corruption case, rich with allegations of shopping bags stuffed with bribe money and seedy backroom dealing. But the suicide has also touched off a journalistic firestorm, with outraged reporters here and elsewhere lashing out at Herald executives and the newspaper's parent company, Knight Ridder, for the late-night firing of star columnist Jim DeFede, the writer Teele contacted just before he took his own life.

Jesus Diaz, right, publisher of The Miami Herald, explains the newspaper's position regarding Wednesday's firing of columnist Jim DeFede, Thursday, July 28, 2005, during a meeting of newsroom employees in Miami. Listening at left is Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler. The firing came in the wake of Former City Commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr. fatally shooting himself Wednesday in the lobby of The Miami Herald building. (AP Photo/Miami Herald, Peter Andrew Bosch)

DeFede, as recognizable for his Hitchcockian silhouette as for his habit of pricking the powerful, was dismissed because he had taped phone conversations with Teele without consent, a possible violation of Florida law. But the timing of the firing -- word leaked around 11 p.m. Wednesday, five hours or so after the suicide -- angered many colleagues who said DeFede should face no more than a suspension.

DeFede voluntarily told the Herald about the taping, but not before being assured by one of the paper's lawyers, Robert Beatty, and by Publisher Jesus Diaz that he had attorney-client privilege, DeFede said in an interview Thursday night. "The Herald will support you," DeFede said he was told by Beatty.

"I trusted my employer to stand by me," DeFede said. "Suddenly, I'm out on the street. . . . To just sort of throw me out and label me a disgraced journalist is over the top."

Herald reporters and editors packed a conference room Thursday and broke into sustained applause when a reporter urged Diaz to reconsider the firing, several Herald reporters who attended said. His response was an unequivocal "no."

"It's sad," said novelist and Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen. "He was a bright spot on that Metro page, a desperately needed voice."

Some current and former Herald staffers accused the Herald and Knight Ridder of using the Teele tragedy to silence a nettlesome critic. A Web site launched to urge DeFede's rehiring crashed briefly after being overwhelmed with hits Thursday. The site -- which includes a petition signed by journalists such as humorist Dave Barry -- was set up by former Herald staffers Peter Wallsten, now a White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and Charles Savage, now a Washington correspondent for the Boston Globe.

"We are concerned that Jim's willingness in the past to offend powerful figures in Miami and, at times, his own employers, may have contributed to the hasty decision to fire him," Wallsten and Savage wrote.

DeFede's firing compounded the controversies enveloping a newspaper that many believe has plummeted in quality since its 1980s heyday amid efforts by Knight Ridder to boost profit margins. Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) accused the paper of "sensationalism" in publishing a front-page photo of Teele with blood pooling around his head.

From inside the newspaper, DeFede became one of its most stinging critics, once skewering the Herald for providing free advertising to the Free Trade Area of the Americas organization before a meeting that drew thousands of protesters to downtown Miami. DeFede had also needled Knight Ridder in characteristically acid style in one of his first columns at the Herald. After detailing millions of dollars in bonuses given to Knight Ridder Chairman Anthony P. Ridder and others, he wrote that Herald journalists who spent a Saturday reporting about the space shuttle Columbia explosion got "free pizza."

Shortly thereafter, Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler wrote a column saying "Jim's swat at Knight Ridder's drive for profits was cheap and easy -- but also misguided."

At a news conference Wednesday, Fiedler initially described DeFede's taping as a "potential" violation of Florida law. Later in the news conference, he said he fired the columnist because of the paper's "bright line" on illegal activity and "clear understanding" that the law was violated. DeFede's tapes -- containing some of Teele's final words -- may never get a full public airing, adding more intrigue. Diaz said the paper would not give the tapes to law enforcement or publish anything beyond the snippets in Thursday's articles.

But in an interview late Thursday, DeFede recounted a rambling conversation with a distraught man he described as "a friend." DeFede said he feared for Teele's safety and turned on a recorder because he wanted a record of what he called "an incredible moment." "I'm dead in the water. I'm dead in the water," DeFede said Teele told him while complaining about mounting legal defense costs.

One of the last acts by Teele -- a consummate insider source -- may have been dropping off information about a case that DeFede, whom he trusted, needed for a story. Teele called DeFede from the Herald lobby but assured him there was no rush to collect the package. "He laughed," DeFede recalled, "and said, 'It can wait until tomorrow.' " Seconds later, Teele shot himself.

When Herald executives told DeFede about the shooting, he said, his hands were trembling. For the first time, he realized he held "Art Teele's suicide note."

The man who spoke some of his last words to a columnist defied conventions, alternating between temperamental and cerebral. Teele, 59, was a popular black politician who chose the GOP, a master tactician undone by informants who accused him of baldly extorting bribes, soliciting male prostitutes and snorting cocaine. Associates of Teele's say he learned before his death that the weekly Miami New Times would publish a lengthy police report on Thursday detailing allegations made by jailed prostitutes and others.

DeFede was interrupted while finishing his own piece about Teele for Thursday's paper -- his bosses had come to let him go, though he says they made him wait 20 minutes out in the hallway before saying so. His column never ran.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

ARMENGOL / Un avión para Castro

Dentro de pocos meses el gobernante cubano, Fidel Castro, dispondrá de un nuevo avión para recorrer el mundo. Se trata de un Il-96-300, de fabricación rusa y similar al que utiliza el presidente Vladimir Putin. Está dotado de sala de reuniones, despacho, dormitorio, televisión por satélite e internet. La nave cuenta con capacidad para transportar hasta 250 pasajeros (en su versión comercial) y diez toneladas de equipaje. Tiene una autonomía de vuelo de 11,000 kilómetros, una velocidad de crucero de 900 kilómetros y alcanza la altura de 12,000 metros. De acuerdo a la agencia de noticias EFE, el moderno Il-96-300 sustituirá al viejo Il-62 construido hace 30 años especialmente para Castro —que es una copia del que en su época usaba el fallecido dirigente soviético Leonid Brezhnev. (sigue)

ANGELI / Sinodo

DISCOVERY / Back in Space

[Video][Live Launch Countdown Coverage][Other pics][Crew]

LE TOUR / Armstrong Ends Career With Seventh Tour de France Win

PARIS - Once more, and for the last time, Lance Armstrong swept into Paris today as the winner and undisputed champion of the Tour de France.

Protected by Discovery Channel teammates on his way to victory and retirement, Armstrong finished the last of 21 daily stages and mounted his final podium after a day of intermittent cold rain.

He stood there with his three children, Luke, 5, and twin daughters, Isabel and Grace, 3. Both girls wore yellow dresses to go with their father's jersey while the boy was in blue with a yellow logo.

In a brief speech after a French military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the American flag was raised on the Champs-Élysées, Armstrong praised the two riders flanking him on slightly lower steps, Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich. Basso, the Italian leader of CSC from Denmark, finished second by 4 minutes 40 seconds and Ullrich, the German leader of T-Mobile from his homeland, was third, 6:21 behind.

"It's really a dream podium," Armstrong said. He called Basso "not only my rival but a special person. It's tough to race against a friend." The Italian beamed as he held his young daughter, Domitilla.

Ullrich, who has a young daughter too but broke the family atmosphere by leaving her at home, also came in for praise from Armstrong. He then thanked his teammates, team officials and a host of others. "Vive le Tour," he concluded. "Forever."

If the ceremony had a familiar ring after Armstrong's seventh consecutive victory before his immediate retirement, the concluding stage was a rarity.

Instead of the usual mass sprint finish, the 144.5-kilometer, or 90-mile, race from the suburb of Corbeil-Essonnes north into the capital was won in a surprise breakaway by Alexandre Vinokourov, a Kazakh with T-Mobile.

He sped away from the 154 other riders with three kilometers to go on the eighth and final circuit on the Champs-Élysées. Registering his second daily victory in this 92nd Tour, Vinokourov easily held off the chasing pack and the two riders nearest him, Bradley McGee, an Australian with Française des Jeux, and Fabian Cancellara, a Swiss with Fassa Bortolo.

The victory gave the Kazakh 20 bonus seconds, enabling him to move into fifth place over Levi Leipheimer, the American leader of Gerolsteiner, by just that margin. Earlier, Vinokourov picked up six bonus seconds in an intermediate sprint, with Leipheimer second, gaining four seconds, as his teammates failed to help him by swarming over the line ahead of the Kazakh.

"Wow," Armstrong said when he greeted Vinokourov after the stage.

The winner was timed in 3 hours 40 minutes 57 seconds, a speed of 39.2 kilometers over roads made treacherous by the rain.

Among other crashes, two of Armstrong's teammates and bodyguards, George Hincapie and Yaroslav Popovych, went down just before the race reached Paris and Armstrong had to slither around them, nearly running over Hincapie.

As is the custom, the opening part of the final stage was marked by general hilarity and conversations in the pack. Armstrong even shared a Champagne toast en route with his Discovery Channel team director, Johan Bruyneel, who was driving a car. Neither did more than clink glasses.

Once the hijinks were over, the race turned serious in Paris, with frequent attacks and careful bike handling on the wet cobblestones of the broad Champs-Élysées.

There was a lot at stake even if the final overall victory was not. The fight for the green points jersey was not settled until the finish, with Thor Hushovd, a Norwegian with Crédit Agricole, first, Stuart O'Grady, an Australian with Cofidis, second, and Robbie McEwen, an Australian with Davitamon, third.

The climbers' jersey was won by Mickael Rasmussen, a Dane with Rabobank and the victim of two crashes and three bicycle changes on Saturday in a time trial that sank him from third place over all to seventh. Second for the white jersey with red polka dots was Oscar Pereiro, a Spaniard with Phonak.

Popovych was the top rider under 26, followed by Andrei Kashechkin, a Kazakh with Crédit Agricole.

For his labors, Armstrong won 400,000 euros, or $500,000, in addition to a handsome bowl just like the six others at home in Austin, Tex.

Factoring in prizes for his days in the yellow jersey, three individual stage victories, including the time trial on Saturday that Armstrong won, and first place in the team time trial, Discovery Channel earned 545,640 euros to be distributed among riders, but not the leader, and team workers. That contrasted with the lowest haul among the 21 teams, 9, 310 euros for Euskaltel.

Armstrong took no part in the duel at the finish, coasting over his final line with a smile on his face as a crowd estimated at half a million watched.

His time for the 3,593 kilometers that were covered in three weeks was 86 hours 15 minutes 2 seconds, a speed of 41.6 kilometers an hour. If that seems high considering the many mountains transited, the riders were sometimes pushed by strong tailwinds, the roads are often resurfaced before a stage and bicycles are constantly being improved.

Although this was Armstrong's seventh triumph in the world's toughest bicycle race, it was in many ways, as he has said, just more icing on the cake. His sixth victory last year broke the tie he was in with four other dominators: Jacques Anquetil, a Frenchman; Eddy Merckx, a Belgian; Bernard Hinault, another Frenchman; and Miguel Indurain, a Spaniard.

They were the Tour stars of the 1960's, 70's, 80's and 90's. This new century has belonged to Armstrong, who was stricken in 1996 with testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain, underwent chemotherapy and, after nearly two years away from the sport, began his comeback in 1998.

The next year he won his first Tour de France. Now he has won his last one.

"There was nothing on the line this year, no history, no record, no financial reward, just a promise," he said Saturday, explaining his participation. When Discovery Channel signed on as sponsor for three years this season, replacing United States Postal Service, Armstrong promised to ride the Tour one more time.

As for his retirement, he said, "Absolutely no regrets." [AP/SAMUEL ABT]

ON THE BEACH / Islamorada today

Photos by Rui

CHAVEZ / Le robaron la Laptop

El férreo equipo de seguridad del presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, quien esta semana visitó Lima, fue burlado por dos ladrones que le robaron su computadora personal, felizmente ya recuperada por la policía peruana, informaron medios de prensa.

El incidente se mantuvo en reserva al parecer para no dejar mal parado al numeroso equipo de seguridad de Chávez -incluido un perro "detecta-bombas"- que tendió un férreo cerco de seguridad en torno al presidente visitante.

El jefe de Estado venezolano estuvo en Lima el lunes con motivo de la XVI Cumbre de presidentes de la Comunidad Andina de Naciones (CAN).

Luis Alvarez Justiniano y Flor Ponce Samanamud, los autores del robo ahora capturados, se las ingeniaron para obtener credenciales similares a las que usaban los agentes secretos venezolanos con las que ingresaron, elegantemente vestidos, a un lujoso hotel de Lima con absoluta facilidad.

No ha trascendido la forma en que se apoderaron de la computadora de Chávez, celosamente guardada en una zona de "alta seguridad", pero una fuente policial, que se refugió en el anonimato, dijo que lo hicieron con "gran sagacidad y frialdad" para luego retirarse del lugar.

Pocas horas después los delincuentes fueron capturados en una rápida operación de la Policía peruana.

La denuncia del robo fue hecha por Julia Van Der Brulen, secretaria oficial de la comitiva presidencial venezolana, bajo estricta reserva, pero trascendió este viernes a los medios de prensa.

La fuente policial dijo que los audaces ladrones son delincuentes comunes, al parecer especializados en robos en hoteles, y descartó toda posibilidad de que se tratara de "espías" de alguna potencia extranjera.

Los custodios venezolanos hicieron gala de un gran despliegue de seguridad en Lima, que incluyó el cierre de calles en los lugares que visitaba Chávez.

FOGOS / Portugal está a arder

AFP / FRANCISCO LEONG

CUBA / Sigue la saga de Elián

"Su rendimiento académico es muy bueno. Magnífica actitud cognoscitiva. Es un niño disciplinado y respetuoso, no le gusta que lo regañen, por eso trata de hacer bien las cosas. Es atento, aplicado y caballeroso, sobre todo con las niñas" y "elabora sus propios discursos''.

FIDEL CASTRO

NEW YORK / Robert Klein's Comic Tour of the Neighborhood

If Robert Klein had been fingering a rubber ball as he strolled through his old Bronx neighborhood the other day, there's no doubt what he would have done when he reached the apartment house that squats across the street from Woodlawn Cemetery on the lot where he played baseball as a boy. A sign on the red brick building, next to the beige one in which he grew up, warns "Positively No Ball Playing Allowed." To Mr. Klein, even at age 63, this would have been an invitation to smash his Spaldeen against the wall.

"I got in trouble like my father did and son did," Mr. Klein recalled. "We're perky. We're a tradition."

Strip away the old bishop's crook streetlights and vintage cars from the cover photograph of Mr. Klein's droll new memoir, "The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue" (Touchstone), and his block in the Norwood section would look much like it does today. Imagine the current neighborhood without the lower-floor window bars, the snaking cable-television wires, the occasional satellite dish, and the African hair-braiding salon and Pentecostal church around the corner ("we called it Williamsbridge") and it would look eerily as it did a half century ago.

"Look," Mr. Klein said, pointing excitedly at an elderly woman walking with a cane. "She hasn't changed a bit! My first prom date!" (Just kidding.)

This neighborhood was the bosom from which bittersweet comedy seeped to transform an insecure child of the 50's from the budding physician his parents hoped he would become into a professional actor and comedian chronicling everyman's struggle with society.

"I lived in a show-business kind of home, with three other exhibitionists fighting for time at the dinner table," Mr. Klein recalled, although his father cautioned after a teacher's admonition, "Robert, don't be the class clown; being a comedian doesn't pay." (His father, Mr. Klein says, was a very poor businessman.)

"Our home was rent-controlled; it was sacrosanct," Mr. Klein said. "We were secure, even though we owned nothing."

The outside world was another story. No. 6F, the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his parents and older sister, faced the street - "our access to the world" - which meant that until he left for college most of life's little lessons, especially those inflicted by his parents (like the woman lying in the gutter, her leg mangled after being struck by a car, whose plight was invoked regularly as a mantra to look both ways) could be learned very close to home. (Expanded vistas, including his first sexual encounter, at age 15, with a Manhattan prostitute, would require a visit "downtown.")

"My parents were very careful people," he recalled. "They had a different approach to child rearing than, say, the Flying Wallendas."

If life on Decatur Avenue sometimes seemed uphill, that's because sometimes it was. The 5-degree-or-greater incline toward where the street ends at the cemetery wall was better for sledding than for baseball. Mr. Klein passed the cemetery as he walked to school, but then associated funerals with mounds of flowers and well-dressed families rather than with dying. When he was 9, though, a neighbor across the street committed suicide. The black mortuary truck that intruded on the block and interrupted a stickball game introduced him to death.

"We didn't go back to the game," he said. "We sat around and talked about what it's like to be dead. There was a little obsession there for a year and a half or two, and it has never been fully reconciled to this day. I remember the fear of my father dying. When he took a nap, I used to listen to his chest."

He still associates death with "Tales From the Crypt" comic books in his aunt's candy story in the East Tremont section and the Proustian whiff of putrefying soda from the nearly empty bottles in the back room. He remembers that the screech of the nearby Third Avenue El depressed him. He was mugged at gunpoint by a biology classmate one evening when he took a shortcut through Reservoir Oval. ("The kid said, 'This never happened'; it seemed like a fair deal to me.") Diving under his desk during air raid drills gave him nightmares about atomic attacks. After his sister was old enough to require her own makeshift bedroom, he slept on an ottoman in the living room; "get on your room," he remembers her once ordering. ("I don't mean it in a self-pitying way because I didn't know what I was missing," he says.) He always wanted a horse and longed for the last day of school because it meant going to the country, which is one reason his own son grew up in the suburbs.

By Mr. Klein's account, his was an ordinary upbringing, punctuated by signal encounters with the prostitute, the mugger and the mortuary truck, later enhanced by the time-honored anachronism of retroactively elevating the mundane. He grew up with friends who would become Penny Marshall and Ralph Lauren; he ate at Louie's, later celebrated by a shooting scene in "The Godfather"; his mother was the secretary to a neurosurgeon whom John Gunther immortalized in "Death Be Not Proud"; his father had encouraged Myron Cohen, a fellow garment salesman, to become a comedian.

"Clowning," he writes, "was my longtime ticket out of anonymity."

Last week in the lobby of his old building at 3525 Decatur, where six of the eight bulbs in the ceiling fixture were burned out and 10 of the apartments are reserved for self-sufficient mentally disabled tenants, a woman complained that the building superintendent was nowhere to be found.

"You know, we used to complain about that, too," he told her.

Still, in contrast to the deterioration he witnessed during the 1980's crack epidemic and despite the complaints, he found the streets cleaner, the buildings in good shape. "Why am I being so surprised?" he said. "They don't think so." He remembered the "lack of privacy, you hear people's business, the concentration of a lot of ethnic people who were excitable - there was a beauty to it."

Charlie Chaplin said that life is tragedy when viewed close up but comedy in a long shot. Life on Decatur Avenue seems funnier from afar. After all, Mr. Klein cried when he was 7 because his father was pressuring him to perform on television's "Children's Hour." He deliberately blew the entrance exam for Bronx Science because, having skipped the eighth grade, he had gone from "the head of the class in sixth grade to the middle among geniuses in the ninth." Yet readers can smile because they know how the story ends. Mr. Klein never became a doctor, but he makes a decent living. (By SAM ROBERTS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

EXPRESSO / O exemplo de Jardim

Jardim tem apelidado os seus inimigos políticos de "rascas", "rafeiros", "incompetentes"

UMA notícia do Público da semana passada dava conta da condenação na Madeira de um articulista que chamava «garotinho» a Alberto João Jardim, por este ter «achincalhado» um amigo seu.

O articulista acusava ainda Jardim de se fechar «na sua concha de arrogância, prepotência e completa falta de respeito pelos outros».

Curioso é que, ao mesmo tempo que condenava o autor do artigo, o tribunal do Funchal reconhecia que Jardim tem apelidado os seus inimigos políticos de «rascas», «rafeiros», «incompetentes», «covardes», «mafiosos», «parvalhões», «abutres», «malandros», «canalhas», «vigaristas», «tarados», «tontos», «broncos», «psiquicamente doentes», «subversivos idiotas», só não incluindo as expressões «bastardos» e «filhos da p...» por terem sido proferidas após as audiências de julgamento.

ALBERTO João Jardim tem-se afirmado ao longo dos anos como inimigo do «sistema» e adversário do «politicamente correcto», o que é respeitável.

O sistema político que temos não será o ideal (embora Jardim também nunca tenha apresentado uma alternativa consistente e razoável) e o «politicamente correcto» assume por vezes aspectos ridículos ou detestáveis.

Nisso, o EXPRESSO acompanha o líder madeirense.

Sucede que, quem critica, tem de se colocar num plano moral superior.

Os políticos avaliam-se pelas suas obras (e Jardim tem obra feita) mas também pela sua elevação, pela qualidade das suas intervenções, pela exemplaridade do seu comportamento.

Ora o que vemos, quando observamos Jardim?

Vemos um homem com um discurso elevado, com uma conduta irrepreensível - um homem capaz de ser apresentado aos outros como um exemplo?

É LEGÍTIMO que Alberto João Jardim faça críticas ao sistema, que mostre a sua aversão a um certo discurso alinhado com o «ar do tempo», que ataque - até - os jornalistas de Lisboa, que em sua opinião o perseguem.

Tudo isto é aceitável.

Mas para que esta mensagem passasse, Jardim teria de se dar ao respeito.

Ora o problema é que não se dá ao respeito.

Não respeita os outros nem se respeita a si próprio.

Alberto João Jardim tem razão em várias críticas que faz.

Só que a forma pouco elevada e pouco elegante como as faz acaba por levar a que se dê quase sempre mais razão aos seus adversários.

Editorial de Expresso

HASTA LUEGO / AIberto deja el Herald

Alberto Ibarguen fue el hombre que me contrató para El Nuevo Herald. El hombre que creyó en mi y me dio todo el dinero que me hizo falta para llevar a cabo todas mis locuras. El hombre que me dejó atravesar el ojo de un huracán, que me devolvió a La Habana para asistir a la llegada del Papa Juan Pablo II y después denunció a los intolerantes que me expulsaron de la isla. Fue también el editor que entre bambalinas me acompañó en los momentos difíciles de la crisis del niño Elián, que en las radios de Miami disputó, palmo a palmo, la integridad de mi trabajo frente a los demonios y me defendió contra funcionarios y políticos corruptos, que me envió a denunciar los desvaríos de Alberto Fujimori y Vladimiro Montesinos, que me pidió que investigara la economía informal en Miami y aun hoy día se divierte con esa foto mía vendiendo naranjas en Hialeah. Fue también el director que supo ser firme cuando los ímpetus de uno fueron más allá de lo normalmente permisible. Pero, por encima de todo, fue el amigo que me devolvió la confianza necesaria para volver en creer en una profesión que es la más maravillosa de todas y la cual, en nombre de todos, a partir de hoy, tiene una deuda eterna de gratitud hacia él.

El texto a continuación, sale mañana en El Nuevo Herald

Hasta luego, colega de noches de elecciones, de noches de huracán, de noches de premios; y es que Alberto quiere que lo recuerden por su pasión por el periodismo y su respeto hacia los que han trabajado a su lado.

Ayer, al despedirse de editores, reporteros y otros empleados de Miami Herald Publishing Company, Alberto Ibargüen, quien fue hasta ayer el editor de El Nuevo Herald y The Miami Herald, no pudo dejar de mostrarse conmovido por los 10 años que pasó en esta casa.

"Los voy a extrañar", confesó a unos 100 empleados congregados a su alrededor.

Poco después, en su última entrevista como editor antes de cerrar la puerta de su oficina, ya vacía de libros, papeles y cuadros, Alberto, como siempre le ha gustado que lo llamen, dijo que quiere ser recordado al timón de esta compañía "como alguien que siempre fue respetuoso del lector y del empleado. Como alguien que quiere al periodismo por lo que representa para la comunidad, y por la defensa de la libertad de expresión en la cual cree con fervor".

"He publicado muchas cosas con las cuales no estoy de acuerdo, pero absolutamente hay "que defender el derecho a decirlo, y hay que defender el derecho del periodista a escribir las verdades que encuentra", precisó.

En sus 10 años en la oficina frente a la Bahía de Biscayne, hubo momentos malos y buenos, admitió.

Los mejores fueron "estar en el escenario en un museo en Madrid recibiendo el premio Ortega y Gasset, y ver cómo le agradecían a Carlos Castañeda lo que había hecho, y recibiendo el reconocimiento del mundo hispanoparlante por la calidad de un periódico que yo había reinventado".

Y "el día en que la redacción de The Miami Herald me pidió que fuera con el subdirector a recibir el Pulitzer", y "el día en que me confirmaron que por primera vez, varias décadas, esta compañía había vuelto a la subsidiaria más rentable de Knight Ridder".

¿Los momentos más difíciles? "Cuando me di cuenta que habíamos publicado algo que no era cierto y que la corrección solamente aclaraba los hechos, pero no sanaba el daño que se puede hacer publicando algo que no es cierto", dijo.

A Alberto le sucede Jesús, Jesús Díaz, el joven ejecutivo que hasta ayer fue el gerente general de la compañía. Para él, el espacio dejado por su antecesor es un reto fascinante.

"Sustituir a Alberto es un gran honor, como también es un gran honor poder seguir trabajando con el equipo que el formó en El Nuevo Herald y The Miami Herald", declaró Díaz.

Alberto asume la próxima semana la presidencia de la Fundación Knight. ¡Felicidades!

..-Rui Ferreira

DEFEDE / What I have in common with NASA

JIM DEFEDE The Miami Herald

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.''

-W.C. Fields

OK, so I guess our eyes will have to turn skyward another day.

Personally, I'm devastated. I was excited about Wednesday's scheduled shuttle launch. I even set my alarm for 10 a.m. so I could watch all the pre-blastoff pageantry on TV.

But then, a few hours before the Space Shuttle Discovery was scheduled to lift off, the mission was postponed because of a malfunctioning fuel tank sensor.

Apparently the sensor indicated the fuel tanks were low when in actuality they were full. Which to me, didn't seem like that big a problem.

Now if it was the other way around, I could understand. You don't want to get way out in the middle of space, thinking you have plenty of gas, only to find out you are running on fumes.

I had a car in college with that very same problem. I would think I had plenty of gas and then all of sudden the engine would start sputtering and before I knew it I was coasting to a stop.

The gas gauge would show that I still had half a tank, but as soon as I would tap it with my finger the little needle would slide below the empty mark.

''Damn fuel tank sensor,'' I'd scream.

This one time, I was driving to Denver (I went to college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins), and I ran out of gas on I-25 near Loveland.

I tried hitchhiking to the nearest gas station, but no one was willing to pick me up. And truth be told, I looked pretty scruffy in college -- not the handsome, debonair figure you see above.

Plus I think I was still in my bib overalls stage back then. I now realize that probably wasn't a good look for me.

The point is, I had to walk nearly two miles to a truck stop. Complicating matters, I didn't have a gas can and I didn't want to buy one because they were expensive.

Instead, I bought a gallon jug of lemonade, quickly chugged half of it down and poured out the rest. I then rinsed the container, shook out all of the water and proceeded to the gas pump, but the attendant started giving me an attitude, saying he was not allowed to fill up a plastic jug with gasoline.

By now the heat, along with the fumes from the diesel trucks, were staring to have a negative effect on the half-gallon of lemonade in my stomach. Without warning, I vomited in front of the gas pump.

The attendant freaked out. He thought I was doing it deliberately.

''"You want gas, pump it yourself,'' he yelled, backing away from me.

I don't even remember paying for the gas. I think I just staggered off after filling my jug. There was no hope of getting a ride back to my car. Who's going to pick up some sick looking kid in bib overalls carrying a gallon jug of gasoline?

When I got back to my car, I fashioned a funnel out of a rolled up newspaper. Nevertheless, most of the gasoline spilled all over me. If I got a quart of it into the tank I was lucky.

Finally I got back into my car and with a few pumps of the gas pedal, managed to get it started.

Why do I tell you this story?

Because I'm betting the gang at NASA can overcome their malfunctioning fuel tank sensor just as I did. And they'll be on their way soon enough.

It's that ''can do'' spirit that has always made America great.

Although, if they can learn anything from my experience, I'd tell them to stay away from the lemonade.

ARMENGOL / Entre rejas

Judith Miller está en la cárcel. Su único delito ha sido el negarse a testificar frente a un gran jurado sobre una de sus fuentes. La tarea de un periodista es informar, no ayudar a la labor de policías y fiscales.

Miller prefirió ir a prisión antes que traicionar la confianza depositada en ella. No se trata de un acto de desafío y es más que la lealtad en el cumplimiento de un deber: la reportera de The New York Times está defendiendo un derecho con una firmeza digna de respeto y envidia.

Uno de los pilares en que se fundamenta la prensa de este país es el otorgarles la seguridad, a quienes tienen una información importante, de que su identidad será protegida. Este principio ha garantizado que muchos secretos salgan a la luz pública, se descubran fraudes y engaños y se divulguen planes que atentan contra la ciudadanía. (sigue)

ATENTADOS III / Surprise!

LONDRES / Atentados II

A estas alturas, alguém me pode dizer onde está a rainha, o príncipe Carlos e a Camila? Eu ainda não os vi…

LONDRES / Atentados I

I am a Londoner

LONDRES / O regreso da Al Qaeda

BASTARDS

PUB. / E agora, cinco minutos de anuncios

OUTRA REFLEXÃO / Preguntar não custa nada

Se o cu é mais pequeno que a boca...
Porque raio é que um supositório é maior do que um comprimido?

Anonimo

Desculpem mas estão enganados,
o 4 de Julho foi o dia em
que os ingleses se
livraram dos americanos.

DROGA / Maradona

Cada vez que me falam do Maradona lembro-me dum empregado de mesa num bar de putas.

REFLEXÃO / O respeito pelo trabalho

"Se vou às putas nunca me venho, não se deve gozar com quem trabalha"

Anonimo