Interesting Brown story in NH paper

[Demosthenes]

Staying neutral, and honest
Browns' supporters question even the basics

By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ
Monitor staff

July 01. 2007 10:00AM

Last week, a pair of self-described constitutional scholars from Massachusetts accompanied a California pastor and internet radio host and a former New Hampshire legislator to the Monitor to talk with me.

In an exchange that's become common in the year since I started writing about tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown, they gathered around me in the newspaper's lobby, handed me photocopied documents and spent about 20 minutes attempting to educate me about the intricacies of constitutional law.

The Browns, they said, were victims of numerous constitutional violations - the judge denied "40 of 42" motions made by the couple in their criminal case, and he disallowed all of their proposed evidence and witnesses at trial. Furthermore, the trial was conducted in an admiralty court, not the Article III court required under the Constitution. These actions, they told me, amounted to treason.

These experts didn't get their information by reading my stories or, they conceded, by reading the court record or transcript themselves. They learned these truths, as many Brown supporters have, by listening to internet talk radio and reading the group of sympathetic blogs that post "news" about their case.

In case you've missed the story, Ed and Elaine Brown are a Plainfield couple with a long history of anti-government activity. They stopped paying federal income taxes about 10 years ago and were recently tried and convicted of several related crimes. Currently, they're holed up at home, entertaining a shifting cast of supporters and threatening violence against federal officials who might try to arrest them. They've become the darlings of a variety of anti-government, anti-tax and militia groups.

As a reporter, I deal in facts. And while I've certainly received my share of the angry phone calls and critical letters to the editor that are an expected part of covering controversial stories, I've never before heard so much dissent on the basics as I have in covering the Browns.

When Ed and Elaine Brown's supporters call me to complain or to plead with me to tell the "real story," they're usually asking me to print things that are clearly false. Drawing the line between neutrality and honesty has been a constant challenge.

If you were wondering, the judge didn't dismiss 40 of 42 motions filed by the Plainfield couple before and during their trial. The real count is 30 out of 37(counting two that were granted in part and dismissed in part). He didn't disallow all their evidence and witnesses: In fact, Elaine Brown testified in her own defense and introduced a long videotape in support of her anti-tax theories.

I know these things because I read all the motions and responses as they were filed in the federal docket. I attended the five-day trial. I've listened as the Browns have spoken, in one-on-one interviews, press conferences and on their daily internet radio show. I've kept close tabs on the alternative media writing about the story on the web: the testimonials from supporters, the calls to arms and, of course, the misinformation that gets more and more distorted with each retelling.

I've taken a special interest in the personal attacks against me, which often include misspellings of my name. (One of my favorite examples: An article that received 12,000 hits titled "Why did Margot Sanger Katz spin slant this story to the dark side?" which included a link to "Margot Sangor Katz's story.")

Spirited debate

I'm not talking about the Browns' legal theories. They, like many of their sympathizers, argue that no law compels ordinary Americans to pay federal income taxes. I've listened to their views and attempted to convey them accurately. At times, I've also summarized the legal views of tax experts and prosecutors who dispute their account. I understand that there's a spirited debate about the tax law, even if the vast majority of Americans stand on the opposite side from the Browns.

What irks me are the arguments about what should be undisputed facts even to tax protesters, like whether the Browns were convicted of any crimes or whether the Browns have ever threatened federal officials. (They were and they have.) I've gotten calls, letters and nasty blog posts for printing those realities.

Last week, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul compared the Browns to Mahatma Gandhi on an internet video. When I reported this, I got calls and e-mails calling for a retraction and suggesting my story was libelous. One article on the website of an alternative news outlet slammed the Associated Press version of this story for saying that the Browns were convicted of an "elaborate scheme" to hide their income. (They were.)

"The AP's unabated drive to demonize and smear the Browns knows no bounds, and again underscores the fact that the establishment media is complicit in the propaganda war against the Browns," said the article, published on prisonplanet.com.

Selective skepticism

What I've found is that the community of readers most sympathetic to the Browns is highly skeptical of the mainstream media but applies little of that skepticism to news received from like-minded sources. So whenever a reporter uses the word "compound" to describe the couple's self-sufficient, towering concrete mansion, that reporter's story should be dismissed as clearly biased. The word "compound" has been discussed repeatedly in blog posts, web forums and radio shows as an obvious sign of media spin. These critics are right that, strictly speaking, the Browns' home is not a compound, but they're wrong in pretending that the Browns' home is just an ordinary house.

But when a blogger in Illinois, who says he has no phone contact with the family, posted an alert saying that camouflaged men have surrounded the Browns' house, the story was repeated across the web, and I got a half dozen calls and e-mails telling me that a raid was under way. I was grateful for those calls, because I wouldn't want to miss the real thing. But no one who contacted me seemed to question the motives of their source, who turned out to be wrong and has continued to post untrue and inflammatory updates. None of the bloggers who reprinted the news alert did any reporting to verify or dispute the account before posting it.

None of this makes writing about the story easy. I'm grateful for the willingness of the Browns' supporters to speak to me about their views and experiences, and I have a duty to them to treat them honestly and take their positions seriously. After I finished talking to those Massachusetts constitutional scholars, I returned to my desk and carefully read the documents they gave me before filing them away in a cabinet that is slowly filling with tax-related legal writings.

But I also have an obligation to my readers, and that's to call a spade a spade. Before I said goodbye, I told those scholars that they ought to check their facts before petitioning me again.

[Joey Smith]

Great story; I've developed tremendous respect for her as a journalist.

[webhick]

Great, now poor Margot's going to start getting death threats for refusing to tell the story the way the crackpots want it told.

My office is willing to give her the following for continuing to report reality:

• An endless supply of interns to taste her food, open her mail, and start her car.
• An endless supply of Gore-B-Gone, which will retail in 2025 for a steal at $499.95 per ounce. Guaranteed to remove even the most ground-in, blown up intern gore imaginable. Just spray it on, and the gore mysteriously vanishes in a puff of smoke. Available in three scents: Hawaiian barbecue, Soylent Green, and tuna melt.
• 72 cockroach battalions.
• 49 football playing chipmunk paratroopers.
• 7 Chippendale's dancers.
• The satisfaction knowing that we'll be forcing those E&E supporters to watch Bob's Discount Furniture commercials until their eyes and ears implode.

[Disilloosianed]

Way to go Margot! I was a reporter for a couple years and I feel her pain. My only suggestion would have been that she asked the scholars to list, in detail, all of the motions submitted and denied, so that she could have gotten a picture of all of them counting on their fingers.