Publisher's Notebook

The late great Andy Griffith passed away earlier this week.

Who knew that tucked away in an old episode of “The Andy Griffith Show,” there is a clip of Sheriff Andy Taylor giving his son Opie a lesson in attorney-client privilege?

Opie and a friend had bugged a conversation at the Mayberry jail and he pressed his paw with the tape, saying it was OK to use “if it helps the law.”

Ain’t true, Andy said. “Whether a man is guilty or innocent,” he told the boy, “we have to find that out by due process of law.”

Check it the clip at the Legal Ethics Forum blog.

http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2012/07/sheriff-andy-taylor-on-taping-attorney-client-communications-1.html

(Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

If you’re a fan of the TV show “Mad Men,” as I am, you’re glad that the 17-month wait for season five is over. Last Sunday, AMC aired two hours of the show, giving Mad Men-iacs a new dose of Don Draper and his advertising colleagues on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

The opening scene was unusual – it was set in a different ad agency (we learn later, Young & Rubicam) and some young ad men dumped water and tossed water bags at civil rights picketers below.

Several black women storm up to the agency to protest. A boy with them had been drenched by the water. The receptionist sputters that the activity couldn’t be from their office: “This is the executive floor,” she said.

“And they call us savages,” mutters one of the protestors.

Some viewers thought the entire scene was a bit over the top. A New York Times critic called it “unfortunately ham-handed.”

But as the New York Times blog “City Room” reports, it’s all true, all the way down to the dialogue. A researcher for the show came across a clip from the Times from 1966 and shared it with creator Matthew Weiner, who decided to use the scene, and the exchange, which had been transcribed by a reporter who happened to be present.

As someone once said, journalism is the first draft of history. Or in this case, of a TV script.