During the past three weeks, the New York Times published five remarkable articles about America’s economic divide. Together they paint a devastating picture of a country moving inexorably toward a two-tier society in which the rich will continue to get richer while middle-class and-blue-collar workers cling to a life of stagnant wages and high unemployment. Reader response was heavy, on the whole indicting the government in Washington from the 1990s until now as “profit before people administrations.” But no response seems to be coming from the corridors of power in politics, finance and business.

The first piece appeared Feb. 16 (dates refer to publication in the NYT print edition), “Incomes Flat In Recovery, But Not For the 1%,” by Annie Lowrey. Lowrey’s opening shot is aimed at the recent and so-called “recovery,” in which “incomes rose more than 11 percent for the top 1 percent earners during the economic recovery, but not at all for everybody else.” While her article acknowledges that President Obama has been “animated by the country’s yawning levels of inequality,” she quotes an economist who deflates his administration’s efforts because “they have been aimed at blunting the effects of income inequality, rather than tackling income inequality itself.”

The next article reveals just how big business cashes in while the little guy (and gal) struggle, “A Digital Shift On Health Data Swells Profits,” by Julie Creswell Feb. 20. As doctors and hospitals struggle to make the new digital records system work, she wrote, “the clear winners are big companies … that lobbied for the legislation and pushed aside smaller companies.” The legislation to encourage digital systems turned into a “$19 billion giveaway,” and so what was meant as a federal incentive in the 2009 stimulus bill “has been swept (away) by a gold-rush mentality, too.”

The bigger picture of what this apparently unstoppable mentality wreaks on America is revealed in the third article, “Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs,” by Nelson D. Schwartz March 3. In today’s “golden age for corporate profits,” he quotes an economist, “corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20.1 percent since the end of 2008, but disposable income inched ahead by 1.4 percent annually over the same period.” And what are we to make of that? “There hasn’t been a period in the last 50 years where these trends have been so pronounced,” the economist concluded.

And when “these trends” are so pronounced, whom do they hit the hardest? If you guessed the poor, you would have anticipated the Times’ next piece, “As Automatic Budget Cuts Go Into Effect, Poor May Be Hit Particularly Hard,” by Annie Lowrey March 4. Discussing the automatic cuts under the current sequestration, she points out the reductions in programs that help low-income Americans (the poor, if you like plain English) such as one granting “vouchers for housing to the poor and disabled” and another that provides “fortified baby formula to the children of poor women.”

While those babies will learn to do without, big businesses are receiving “a stealthy subsidy” to get bigger as the last of the articles describes: “A Stealthy Subsidy Aiding Big Business Is Growing,” by Mary Williams Walsh and Louise Story on March 5. These businesses, we are told, receive tax-exempt bonds for private projects such as stadiums, hotels and golf courses. Billions in revenues are lost at the taxpayers’ expense, and yet a report by the Government Accountability Office sighs and can only wonder “whether facilities like these provide public benefits to federal taxpayers.”

Some readers of these articles were more clear-eyed and blunt. “If this imbalance continues,” one wrote, “it won’t be long before my share of the national debt will exceed my net worth, while Romney, Apple and GE flourish.” Indeed. And another asked, rather plaintively, “Who are you going to hold accountable?”

The Times has done its job. Let’s see if America’s citizens are up to doing theirs.

George Salamon taught German literature and culture at several East Coast colleges, served as staff reporter for the St. Louis Business Journal and as senior editor for Defense Systems Review. He has published three academic books and contributed articles to the Washington Post and the American Conservative.

Can anyone post anonymous comments to a website that is privately owned but operates publicly?

When media companies provide a platform for online comments, usually at the end of news stories, can anonymous ones be barred when they are racist, hateful, vile, disgusting or uncivilized?

The answer to both questions is yes. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that anonymous speech is protected by the First Amendment from government interference. But website owners can delete anonymous comments as they see fit. And they generally cannot be held liable for the content of third-party postings.

But media companies are trying to identify and curb the small number of so-called online “trolls”' who seem addicted to attacking anyone – the writers, authority figures and even each other on the same website. These trolls hide behind their anonymity and avoid taking responsibility for what they say.

The problem has been growing over the past decade. Here’s what industry commentator James Rainey wrote in his “On the Media” column for the Los Angeles Times:

“It seems long past time for reputable news sites to clamp down on the gutter talk. Otherwise, the open-door policy at npr.org, latimes.com and many other sites drives down the quality of the conversation and alienates the kind of thoughtful guests that make the party worth coming to in the first place.”

Rainey suggested that online postings be identified with real names, just like letters to the editor.

News sites have been experimenting with blocking user comments altogether, and with various forms of comment moderation. A new wrinkle from Facebook makes that job a bit easier. The social networking site offers a third-party comments plugin. Most important, though, is that the tie-in with Facebook requires that readers must use their real names when commenting on a news story. Facebook bars the use of fake names, although the rule isn’t strictly enforced.

Many news organizations consider this a boon. Facebook and its users, such as large newspapers, say the comments have improved in quality, and the media companies can see an increase in the number of comments, or hits, on their websites. And it's the hits that publishers tout when targeting advertisers.

Not everyone is impressed. David Eaves, a consultant on public policy, openness and negotiation, wrote that banning anonymous comments is bad for the media and society.

“It is disempowering those who are most marginalized … many people – for very legitimate reasons – don’t want to use their real name,” Eaves wrote. “What ending anonymity is really about is power.”

He said the media should not be farming out its privacy policies to Facebook, which he said has more than 80 million fake accounts.

“It also means that a comment you make, 10 years hence, can be saved on a newspaper’s website, traced back to your Facebook account and used by a prospective employer to decide if you should get a job,” Eaves added.

Though anonymous comments were an accepted part of the Internet in its infancy, in recent years news websites have felt the pain. Here are some examples:

• A judge in Cleveland sued the Plain Dealer for violating her privacy when it disclosed in a news story that anonymous online comments disparaging a lawyer were made from the judge’s court computer. She settled out of court.
• The U.S. attorney in New Orleans resigned, and it was disclosed in legal motions that his senior prosecutors had been making anonymous and provocative online comments about active criminal matters on the Times-Picayune website.
• Judges have ordered media websites to turn over the identity of anonymous commenters, including one in Texas where a couple won a $13.8 million defamation lawsuit against persons who had posted that they were sexual deviants and drug dealers.
• In Alton, Ill., the Telegraph was ordered to turn over names of two online readers to police because their comments were connected to a murder investigation. A judge ruled that the names were not protected by the state’s shield law for reporters. However, in several other states judges have ruled that shield laws protected the identity of anonymous commenters.

When a commenter used a vulgar word on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, a former online editor deleted it, but it was posted again. Kurt Greenbaum found the commenter’s IP address originated at a school and called the school’s principal. The offending commenter lost his job. When word of Greenbaum’s action was reported on social websites, he was bombarded with thousands of comments, many of them attacking him and urging that he be fired. Greenbaum said all he was trying to do was keep the paper’s website from being abused.

One commenter said of the Greenbaum brouhaha that he preferred reading the comments to the news stories.

“Comments, even vulgar ones, are part of what makes it entertaining,” the commenter said.

John Seigenthaler was unhappy when he saw his biography falsified on Wikipedia in 2005. Seigenthaler is a noted First Amendment advocate, author and former Justice Department official who was injured protecting Freedom Riders. The Wikipedia bio said he was a suspect in the assassinations of John Kennedy and Kennedy’s brother, Bobby. Seigenthaler worked for months to get the infamous allegation removed from the website, which allowed volunteers to post information. At a First Amendment celebration in St. Louis last fall, he said he chose not to sue Wikipedia. He said he is against government intrusion. The best action is to complain to media officials about the “vandalism” caused by irresponsible online commenters, Seigenthaler said.

Some critics of anonymous comments say the U.S. government has helped foster the climate of freewheeling “anything goes” commenting. Under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online publishers are not to be held liable for the content posted on their websites. In the print and broadcast worlds, publishers are liable.

As they wrestle with this problem, some news outlets have flatly barred any comments. Others seek to register those who want to state their opinions. Many news organizations lack the staff to police what is said on their websites.

The problem has been discussed by members of the Society of Professional Journalists, but no stated policy has been put forth. David Sheets, director of SPJ’s Region 7, said the stance is to “let each newspaper decide what is the best policy.”

At the American Journalism Review, editor Rem Rieder pulled no punches in a piece he wrote: “It’s time for new sites to stop allowing anonymous online comments.”

Studies show that people behave much worse if their identities are secret than if their true identities are known. In an article in Slate magazine headlined, “Troll, Reveal Thyself,” writer Farhad Manjoo said people behave differently when their comments are seen by a network of friends and family – people they know.

“Don’t say anything you’d be afraid to say in front of your mom,” Manjoo advised.

In celebration of March Madness and the thrill of sports, the Society of Professional Journalists is presenting “March Madness: Covering the Wide World of Sports” for this month’s News at Noon speaker series in St. Louis, which takes place March 14 in the AT&T Room of the Missouri History Museum (co-sponsor of the event), located at 5700 Lindell Boulevard in Forest Park.

A panel of veteran sports journalists will share the ins and outs of covering sports, and speakers will reveal how they got the best stories of their careers. The audience will get an insider’s view of the interviews, sports personalities and even behind-the-scenes anecdotes that never made it to print. From the stars of the high school playing fields, to college athletes, to World Series champions, our speakers have worked on the stories that have captivated our region’s sports fans.

Panelists include St. Louis Post-Dispatch assistant sports editor Don Reed, who has been with the publication for 23 years, and Kathleen Nelson, who recently retired from the paper after serving most of her 30 years there writing about sports.

Sports photo editor Lynden Steele, who has been with the Post-Dispatch since 2007, will show some of the publications best sports images and discuss strategies for visual coverage. Steele oversees a team of photographers, including those who shoot the Cardinals, Rams and local college and high school games.

From the Telegraph (the daily newspaper in Alton, Ill.), 40-year sports desk veteran Steve Porter will also join the lineup. In 2002, Porter was elected to the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. He also is a member of Amateur Softball Association and the Alton Golf Hall of Fame.

AFP photographer Emmanuel Dunard’s photo of a praying Aline Marie at a Newtown, Conn., church brings up an issue where many photojournalists and members of the public disagree.

Marie considered her praying outside the St. Rose of Lima church on the night of the shootings to be a private moment. She says she “felt like a zoo animal” when she realized that a number of photographers from across the nation and world were photographing her.

In this and other similar circumstances, photojournalists often seem to think that a good photo trumps a person’s privacy. Accordingly, they often hide behind the “I’m shooting from a public space” rationale to justify their actions. But the “public space” position is a legal argument – and one that most members of the public either do not understand or with which they disagree.

The “privacy” issue is, for most people, one that has little to do with the law.  Rather, people tend to think that their private activities – whether or not they happen to take place in or near a public place where photojournalists might congregate – are simply that: private activities.

Members of the public – what First Amendment cases refer to as “private” rather than “public” individuals – simply see it as the decent thing to do for a photojournalist to ask to photograph, or use/publish an already taken image. Photojournalists employing such sensitivity generally tend to discover that private individuals are grateful to have been asked and gladly grant permission.

Few photojournalism ethics codes and policies require or encourage photographers to get permission from members of the public before publishing their images. Were such policies encouraged, they would make the professional lives of photojournalists more difficult. But the end result would be a public feeling better about its media. And such an outcome would justify the few extra minutes of time a photojournalist would take on an assignment.

Beef Products Inc., the South Dakota-based company suing ABC News for defamation, has asked that the case be returned to South Dakota state court and out of federal jurisdiction.

The Jan. 17 article by Reuters, headlined “BPI wants ABC ‘pink slime’ defamation case back in state court,” reports that “BPI’s attorneys argued that a state court is the proper forum because the case also involves two related companies: BPI Technology Inc. and Freezing Machines Inc. that do business in South Dakota and are incorporated in Delaware. BPI and the two other entities are all owned by Eldon and Regina Roth.”

BPI filed the lawsuit in September of last year, citing significant financial loss and damage to the company’s reputation as a result of continued coverage by ABC News. BPI claims the ABC News segments from March 2012 caused a backlash from which the company lost millions in sales. As a result of the media attention and the labeling of their lean finely textured beef product as “pink slime,” the company closed three of its four production facilities. More than 750 people lost their jobs as a result of the plant closures.

ABC News asked in November that the case be dismissed.  FoodProductDesign.com reported: “In voluminous memorandums, ABC sets forth a number of reasons why the case should be dismissed. For instance, the media giant’s lawyers declare BPI cannot state a claim under South Dakota’s Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act because ABC didn’t question the safety of BPI’s meat product. ABC also wants the court to dismiss claims of disparagement of an agricultural food product, libel and tortious interference with business relationships.”

The defamation case has not been thrown out, and action is pending.

The lawsuit was filed under South Dakota’s Agriculture Disparagement law. While many in the media deem this and other similar laws unconstitutional, agribusiness has been successful in pushing the legislation. Ag disparagement and “ag gag” laws, which are designed to limit access and unauthorized media coverage in livestock and agriculture production facilities, are still being introduced to state legislatures. In 2012 legislation was pushed in 10 states, reported grist.org. Even more attempts are expected for 2013.

There have been two new lawsuits filed related to the case. A former BPI employee, who lost his job because of the plant closures, has sued “ABC, ABC News, [Jamie] Oliver and food blogger Bettina Siegel in December for $70,000 in damages,” reports the Associated Press.

The family of a 62-year-old Minnesota man has filed a lawsuit against BPI, JBS Swift, and Tyson Fresh Meat. The man died from complications related to eating E.coli-contaminated ground beef, reported FoodSafetyNews.com. The article went on to say that BPI claims the meat consumed by the man was not from one of its facilities.

The Marler Clark law firm is representing the deceased man’s family.

“Marler Clark has also been retained to defend two former USDA employees in a defamation lawsuit filed by BPI,” reported FoodSafetyNews.com. The BPI suit against the USDA employees is directly related to the ABC News case.

Gateway Journalism Review has been covering the issue, and the lawsuit, for the past year. For more information, here are links to the previous articles:

“Pink Slime” the stuff hamburgers, hot dogs, and this week’s news are made of, published March 9, 2012.

Beef Products Inc. seeks restitution from ABC News, published Sept. 21, 2012.

Politicians, PR pros weigh in on BPI lawsuit, published Sept. 28, 2012.

ABC News wonders ‘where’s the beef’ in recent lawsuit, published Oct. 5, 2012.

Ag disparagement laws take root, published Oct. 12, 2012.

Agriculture Disparagement Laws Take Root info graphic, published Fall 2012 issue.