Britney Needs Privacy, Mental Illness Group Says

Pop singer Britney Spears, hospitalized in Los Angeles, for psychiatric treatment, needs privacy, according to a mental illness group.

"A media circus and reckless speculation has surrounded events in the life of pop singer Britney Spears and her family," says Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). "Professional ethics require that mental health professionals who have not examined or treated individuals not presume to diagnose them. A person's treatment and recovery from any illness also is entitled to privacy -- which in fact may be an important factor in recovery."

Spears was hospitalized this week at UCLA after an escort involving multiple police vehicles, including helicopters. Media scrutiny of Britney Spears has been intense this week, with mainstream media giving her story prominent play. Some journalists have been quoting mental health professionals to get their take on Spears' condition.

Spears' hospitalization follows a year of increasingly erratic behavior in which Spears' two young children were removed from her custody.

"In the case of Britney Spears, professional ethics also are involved which the media must confront," NAMI's Fitzpatrick says. "Roy Peter Clark, vice-president of the Poynter Institute, a leading center of journalism training and ethics, recently wrote. 'There is clearly a danger zone, when life and health are at stake, when the best thing the press can do is back off. That time for Spears is probably now.'"

However, the Spears case does offer a chance to discuss mental illness more broadly and just focus on Britney Spears, Fitzpatrick says.

"NAMI believes it is important that such discussions in our homes, offices,
schools, and stores, as well as in the media, be based on facts," he says. "What is needed--for anyone--is understanding and support. We encourage everyone to focus not on Britney Spears, but on all the ordinary people in our own communities who deserve our attention."

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Majority In Poll Say Bloggers Important To Journalism

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey say bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% say citizen journalism will play a vital role, according to a new poll.

Most respondents (53%) also say the rise of free Internet-based media pose the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism and three in four (76%) say the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.

The results are based on a recent We Media -- Zogby Interactive poll.

The We Media survey results were released by iFOCOS and pollster John Zogby as part of an iFOCOS conference on media innovation hosted by theSchool of Communication at the University of Miami, with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the national survey of adults, 72% say they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. A majority of conference-goers who were polled on the subject agreed -- 55% say they were dissatisfied,and 61% say they believed traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) say they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism's future.

"We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us -- the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media," says Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference. "We've arrivedat a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society."

Peskin says that, until recently, many traditional news enterpriseshave been skeptical about We Media. "They were either fearful or dismissive of our 2003 research forecasting and documenting the change in the media ecosystem," he says. "Now the Zogby poll provides additional evidence that 'We Media' is an essential component -- perhaps the essential component --for the agenda for news and information into the future."

"The research documents the widespread recognition that control and influence on how we know what we know is shifting to a vastly moredistributed network of empowered individuals and organizations," says Andrew Nachison, co- founder of iFOCOS. "This obviously will have a big impact on how media organizations evolve and conduct business, but it's really about how we all discover, create, share and apply information, and that's important to all industries, to entrepreneurs, to non-profits, to governments, to individuals and to society as a whole. We are all part of the ecosystem."

The Zogby Interactive survey of 5,384 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 30 - Feb. 1, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.4 percentage points. The Zogby Interactive survey of 77 members of the media who attended the Miami conference carries a margin of error of +/- 11.4 percentage points. While periodic audits show the results from Zogbytelephone and Internet surveys closely track each other, a companion telephone survey of this topic was not conducted.

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National Press Club Defends Subpoenaed Reporters

The National Press Club announced its opposition to the U.S. Army's subpoenas of Oakland, Calif., freelance journalist Sarah Olson and Honolulu Star Bulletin reporter Gregg Kakesako.

The subpoenas call for the reporters to testify at the Feb. 5 court martial of Army Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq and made several disparaging remarks about the conduct of the war. A petition calling for the dismissal of the subpoena has been posted online.

"The National Press Club vehemently opposes any effort to subpoena reporters over their work," says NPC President Jerry Zremski, Washington bureau chief for The Buffalo News. "Subpoenaing reporters in an effort to make the prosecution's case -- particularly when the charge involves free speech issues -- is abhorrent and grossly perverts the foundation of press freedom this nation is built on."

The National Press Club, founded in 1908, has more than 3,700 members in Washington, D.C., and worldwide. Widely known for its Speaker Luncheon Series, televised by C-SPAN, and its public forums for visiting heads of state, the NPC also is Washington's most frequently used venue for news conferences. The NPC conducts an aggressive program of professional education for journalists, funds scholarships for journalism students ofcolor, and operates the nation's only non-academic research library for journalists. Advocacy of a free press is one of the club's central missions.


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