One Wild Day, Even By Miami Standards

Former Miami city commissioner Art Teele, Jr., under indictment for corruption, said to be imminently facing additional charges, and the subject of a damning portrayal published in Wednesday's issue of the weekly Miami New Times, walked calmly into the lobby of the Miami Herald yesterday. He placed a call from the lobby up to the desk of Herald columnist and confidante Jim DeFede. Then he pulled out a gun, put the barrel to his head, and pulled the trigger. Though responsive at first, Teele died soon after.

DeFede, a long-time muckraking Miami columnist (moving to the Herald's Metro desk from a columnist's chair at the New Times), highly regarded author, and Democratic party activist, was fired within hours of Teele's suicide. Why? The Herald explains:

The Herald fired columnist Jim DeFede Wednesday because he tape-recorded a phone conversation with Arthur E. Teele Jr. without his knowledge.

Teele had killed himself in The Herald's lobby earlier in the day without ever knowing that the columnist recorded their conversation.

Both Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler said they fired the popular Metro writer because it is illegal for anyone to tape a conversation with another person without that individual's consent in Florida.

DeFede told them that during his interview with Teele, he turned on a tape machine to record his conversation as the politician confided in him about his public corruption charges, financial problems and other sensitive issues, according to Díaz.

At one point, Teele told the columnist that he was not speaking on the record -- but DeFede continued to record him anyway without his knowledge, Díaz said.

Shades of Linda Tripp, it seems. And that's apropos, because (solely in the interest of kicking a man when he's down) Tripp may be one of the few people alive who is actually less pleasant to look at than the ever-expanding DeFede.

Well, shame about Teele and all. But what about DeFede? That he's an excellent writer is not up for debate -- I lived in Miami for about 2 1/2 years and enjoyed reading him in both the New Times and the Herald. But was his firing just? Some lawyers and several of the columnist's colleagues at the Herald told Editor & Publisher that DeFede was fired too quickly, or even may have been due special legal protections based on his status as a working journalist.

That's an argument you've seen savaged here before by my colleague Cicero, who makes a great case for "treating... reporters like every other American". I embrace this viewpoint. Reporters should be held to the same legal and ethical standards as everyone else. That's not to say that our free-speech laws are as all-encompassing as they should be -- and certainly not as strong as the Constitution says they must be -- but reporters, like Tripp and the rest of us, are due no special privileges. And so I have nothing by praise for the Herald, which moved quickly and forcefully to do the right thing.