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Watchdogs

Maryland

By The Center for Public Integrity

Maryland is one of 27 states in which no outside agency oversees ethical conduct of state legislators. It is one of 9 of those states where an outside ethics agency does oversee disclosure for members of the legislature, in this case only personal financial disclosure.

Maryland is among the 22 states that established outside oversight of ethical conduct and/or disclosure requirements of legislators in the post-Watergate 1970s.

Of the 32 states that have outside oversight of ethical conduct and/or disclosure requirements for legislators — 23 that cover ethics and disclosure, plus nine that cover disclosure only — Maryland is one of 17 where the legislature has some involvement in choosing commission members. Only three states — California, Hawaii and Massachusetts — have members picked without the input of the legislature.

Budget

Maryland is among 22 states that did approve a budget for its ethics agency exceeding the rate of inflation, or 7 percent, between 1997 and 2000. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Six state ethics agency budgets — in Arkansas, Georgia, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey and Washington — at least doubled during this time period.

Investigation

Of the 32 two states with outside ethics and/or disclosure oversight, only two ethics agencies — in Florida and West Virginia — cannot initiate an investigation or investigate an anonymous complaint. Only one agency, Alabama's, cannot issue subpoenas.

Accountability

'Tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won'

By Philip Knightley

There is an irreconcilable conflict in the way war is reported, highlighted once again by the allied attack on Afghanistan and the anthrax terror in the United States. Two quotations explain this conflict better than any reasoned argument.

ICIJ Member Stories

Afghanistan: Inside the Taliban

LAHORE, Pakistan — UNITED STATES and British forces that launched their assault on Afghanistan this week can expect tough guerrilla resistance from a hard core of Taliban leaders who helped found the movement and continue to lead it. Osama bin Laden and his Arab forces, who have become part of the Taliban's decision-making process, now have an integrated military role in the Taliban resistance. Defections from the movement are likely to come from the nonideological "fellow travellers" among Pashtun commanders and tribal chiefs rather than the hard core.

Accountability

The disinformation campaign

By Philip Knightley

The way wars are reported in the western media follows a depressingly predictable pattern: stage one, the crisis; stage two, the demonisation of the enemy's leader; stage three, the demonisation of the enemy as individuals; and stage four, atrocities. At the moment we are at stages two and three: efforts to show that not only Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are fanatical and cruel but that most Afghans - even many Muslims - are as well. We are already through stage one, the reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as "We're on the brink of war" or "War is inevitable."

ICIJ Member Stories

How the plotters slipped U.S. net

LONDON — As US forces converge on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's satellite phone has not been cut off. But calls to the terrorist leader's laptop-size satphone - relayed via an Inmarsat satellite 40,000 km over the Indian Ocean - are going unanswered.

Accountability

Will truth again be first casualty?

By Jacqueline Sharkey

"Well, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said he had imposed no press restrictions. In fact, he said he hadn't really even considered the issue of the press. But what Pentagon sources have been telling me [is] that as these secret war plans have been drawn up, they don't include any provision for taking reporters along, allowing them to cover any of the action. They plan to fight the war and then tell the press and the public how it turned out afterwards." -- CNN Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, September 18, 2001

Accountability

Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. helped midwife a terrorist

By Ahmed Rashid

LAHORE, Pakistan — In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.

The CIA, Britain’s MI6 and the ISI [Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI’s favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.

Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.

Well Connected

New FCC chairman had big telephone player as a major client

By Nathaniel Heller

As the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael K. Powell can draw on his experience as an FCC commissioner in trying to navigate the arcane world of telecommunications policy and the closely knit group of high-powered, multibillion dollar companies that dominate the industry.

Powell has had the opportunity to witness and regulate some of the biggest mergers in the history of American industry, as well as to develop regulatory guidelines for cutting-edge technologies, such as broadband Internet access and a new high-speed wireless Internet bandwidth.

But Powell has another experience from which to draw: On-the-job training with one of the biggest players in the game.

According to Powell's personal financial disclosure reports and a company spokesman, one of Powell's major clients at his old law firm of O'Melveny & Myers was GTE Corp., an "incumbent local exchange carrier" that held a monopoly on local phone service in various communities across the country. GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications, now the nation's largest local phone company. FCC spokesman David Fiske told The Public i that, as an FCC commissioner, Powell never recused himself from matters relating to GTE or Verizon, including the merger that was completed in 2000.

Well Connected

Telecom chief could face conflict issues

By Kristen Dorsey

A key Commerce Department official could face frequent conflict-of-interest issues because her office controls high-tech policies that affect a number of telecommunication and wireless firms for which she and her husband have worked.

As the new assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, Nancy J. Victory also serves as chief of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA is responsible for a number of key policy issues affecting telecommunications companies, including what is known as "spectrum management."

Meanwhile, her husband, Michael Senkowski, remains the lead telecom and Internet partner at Washingtons premier communications law and lobby firm, Wiley Rein & Fielding, where Victory was also a partner. Many of the firm's largest clients are keenly concerned with how the Bush administration chooses to address spectrum management issues.

According to a federal conflict-of-interest statute regarding personal financial interest for employees of the executive branch, an employee who "participates personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee" in a "particular matter in which, to his knowledge, he, his spouse, minor child, general partner . . . has a financial interest," can be subject to criminal penalties, says Title 18, U.S. Code, section 208.

There are a number of ways by which Victory or any political appointee can avoid such penalties, including making the government agency aware of personal financial interests and being cleared by the agency should those interests prove unlikely to affect the integrity of the person's decisions.

In addition, Senkowski, a member of the District of Columbia Bar, might violate conflict-of-interest rules set by the bar, as his and his firm's clients could be heavily affected by federal legislation on spectrum issues about which his wife will be advising.

Well Connected

Methodology

The Media Tracker is a searchable, online database that allows anyone to learn who owns the broadcast, cable and newspaper outlets serving any community in the United States. Using the Media Tracker and other Center for Public Integrity resources, the public can freely investigate how those owners seek to influence political decision-making in the nation's capital and in state capitals all across America.

The Media Tracker is a product of the Center's telecommunications and media project, "Well Connected." See our "Frequently Asked Questions" for more information about the project.

The Media Tracker is a compendium of more than 5 million records drawn from an array of government sources, corporate disclosure documents and the Center's own original research. Those records have been organized and compiled into a unified database that is indexed by city and ZIP code.

The Center's database team gathered records that catalog providers in the broadcast television, radio, cable, broadband and newspaper industries. Center researchers collected industry analyses and corporate disclosure documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing the properties belonging to major corporations in each industry. Center staff then unified the lists of media properties under their parent owners across all of the databases.

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