Laborfest: Film: Citizen McCaw on newspaper workers

Citizen McCaw (78 min.) 2008 US
By Sam Tyler
The film chronicles events from July 2006, when editor Jerry Roberts and five of his colleagues quit the Santa Barbara News-Press, citing owner and co-publisher Wendy McCaw’s abandonment of journalistic ethics, which McCaw denied. Since then, McCaw and dozens of her former staffers have been engaged in a fierce clash of wills that raises important national questions of journalistic ethics and media ownership. McCaw’s attorneys assert that she alone can decide how news is covered. The other side, represented by journalists and community leaders, says that journalism is a public trust, asserting that the publisher must keep out of the news operation. Citizen McCaw shows the struggle for reporters and newspaper workers rights in an atmosphere of terror as a new newspaper owner seeks to clamp down the stories that must be told. This received national publicity when the owner McCaw fired and slandered the newspaper workers.
See also:
http://www.citizenmccaw.com
http://www.laborfest.net/2009schedule.htm