MOTION TO RECONSIDER ORDER DENYING MOTION INTERVENE,MOTION TO APPOINT TRUSTEE OR EXAMINER AND MOTION TO HOLD TELEPHONIC HEARING ON DEBTOR’S NEGLECT OF JOURNALISTIC DUTIES
1. Intervenors Judith Seraphin and Ed Slavin respectfully file on the 201st anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday this earnest request that the Bankruptcy Judge kindly reconsider his February 9 order (Doc. 127) denying both Intervention and declining any consideration to First Amendment values in the MORRIS PUBLISHING GROUP case.
2. The Court has a mandatory duty to protect the public interest in every bankruptcy, but nowhere more when newspapers, protected by our First Amendment, are in decline and being run into the ground by the Debtors The Debtors’ contempt for “First Amendment values” must be remedied. The Courts defer to this principle in legislative construction. Steelworkers v. Sadlowski, 457 U.S. 102, 111 (1982); Reed v. UTU, 488 U.S. 319, 325 (1989). The Court must protect “First Amendment values,” Sadlowski, Reed, supra. This case concerns the soul of our community, not just dollars and cents and the selfish concerns of billionaires and millionaires.
3. The Court must honor the mandatory requirement that: "Notwithstanding any otherwise applicable nonbankruptcy law, a plan shall contain only provisions that are consistent with the interests of creditors and equity security holders and with public policy with respect to the manner of selection of any officer, director, or trustee under the plan and any successor to such officer, director, or trustee." 11 U.S.C. 1123 (a)(7) (emphasis added). The Court must vindicate “First amendment values” and help in the vital task of the preservation of our democracy.
4. The public interest will be served by granting intervention and there is no downside. See Karen Gross, “Taking Community Interests into Account in Bankruptcy: An Essay”, 72 Wash. U. L.Q. 1031 (1994), stating: "saying that community interests are important and must be taken into account in the bankruptcy process does not mean that the other interests that bankruptcy seeks to protect, such as those of creditors and equity holders, are forgotten." Gross, 1032-33n4 (emphasis in original).
5. While "Bankruptcy is a gloomy and depressing subject," Charles Warren, Bankruptcy in United States History 3 (1935), this Court has "some leeway" in considering the public interest in individual decisions to the extent that Congress has indicated that a judge should not confirm a plan unless it appears to the judge unlikely that further reorganization will not follow. Hon. Leif M. Clark, “What Constitutes Success in Chapter 11? A Roundtable Discussion,” 2 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 229, 233n89 (1994) (statement of Hon. James A. Goodman). Judge Goodman was referring to 11 U.S.C. 1129(a)(11) (1994), which says that the court should not confirm a plan unless "[c]onfirmation of the plan is not likely to be followed by the liquidation, or the need for further financial reorganization, of the debtor or any successor to the debtor under the plan, unless such liquidation or reorganization is proposed in the plan."
6. This Honorable Court has rightly allowed union members in other cases to be heard on bankruptcy matters. Likewise, newspaper readers have a legal right to be heard in defense of the First Amendment against the Debtors’ greed and mismanagement.
7. This Honorable Court swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Article VI, U.S. Constitution. This Court did not refer to the First Amendment in its Order.
8. Our Constitution is in shreds if Debtors are permitted to escape from their debts and to change nothing and to do nothing to improve the quality of the newspaper in our Nation’s Oldest City. Debtors must be held accountable by making them answer, under oath, for their disinvestment in news. Debtors’ low-quality journalism is now well-nigh irrefragable, since Intervenors’ January 19, 2010 filing is undisputed and operates as a party-opponent admission and admission by silence against both the Debtors and their creditors.
9. Intervenors are Record subscribers (and thus MORRIS creditors). Our standing is unimpeachable. We are acting as the conscience of our community. We have a right to be heard.
10. U.S. District Judge Murray Gurfein, a Nixon appointee serving his first day on the bench, wrote as the trial judge in the Pentagon Papers case that “security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." U. S. v. New York Times Co., 328 F. Supp. 324 (S.D.N.Y. 1974)(Gurfein, J.)
11. Under MORRIS PUBLISHING’s current mismanagement, the Debtors are not fulfilling their constitutional function. The Court’s unresponsive February 9, 2010 order is contrary to the genius of a free people. The Court’s function must be to guarantee “the security of our Nation” by protecting “the value of our free institutions.”
12. Under both First Amendment and bankruptcy law, your Intervenors have a right to be heard. Our Founding Fathers and successive generations of Americans fought, bled and died for our First Amendment rights.
13. This Court must vindicate those rights by holding a hearing inquiring into the declining standards of journalism at The St. Augustine Record.
14. Regarding The Oak Ridger, it turns out that MORRIS no longer owns the Oak RIdger, but mysteriously the bankruptcy filing still lists debts from a corporation named The Oak RIdger. This fact requires further inquiry from this Honorable Court).
CONCLUSION
Therefore, Intervernors respectfully move to reconsider the denial of their request that this Honorable Court appoint a Trustee to protect the public interest in zealous local, government and investigative reporting in our democracy and that that the Intervenors and other MORRIS readers be afforded notice and an opportunity to:
A. Attend by telephone any and all hearings; and
B. Present their concerns about declining news budgets and journalistic practices after full and fair disclosure and discovery, at an evidentiary hearing, with mandatory testimony by MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS owners and managers managers about the etiology of their wretched failure to cover the news without fear or favor due to declining news budgets.
Let justice be done.
Respectfully submitted,
JUDITH SERAPHIN
218B RIberia Street
St. Augustine, Florida 32084
904-829-0808
904-819-3517 (fax)
ED SLAVIN
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085
904-829-3877
904-819-3517 (fax)
FEBRUARY 12, 2010
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