Posts tagged news

Twitter’s terms of service make absolutely clear that its users ‘own’ their own content. Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users.

Ben Lee, lawyer, Twitter, to the BBC. Twitter resists US court’s demand for Occupy tweets

The News: A New York state court asked Twitter to release posts written by New Inquiry Senior Editor Malcolm Harris who was arrested last fall during Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.

Twitter said no.

Via the BBC:

Mr Harris’s lawyer had tried to block access to the postings, but a judge ruled that once the messages had been sent they became the property of Twitter, meaning the defendant was not protected by Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure.

Twitter’s lawyers argued that the judge had misunderstood how the service worked, noting that the Stored Communications Act gave its members the right to challenge requests for information on their user history.

“Law enforcement agencies… are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the internet,” Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, writes at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that internet companies do so.”

A depressing hope, but good for Twitter.

humanrightswatch:

The Price of Sex (Trailer):

The Price of Sex is a feature-length documentary about young Eastern European women who’ve been drawn into a netherworld of sex trafficking and abuse. Intimate, harrowing and revealing, it is a story told by the young women who were supposed to be silenced by shame, fear and violence. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, who grew up in Bulgaria, takes us on a personal investigative journey, exposing the shadowy world of sex trafficking from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Western Europe. Filming undercover and gaining extraordinary access, Chakarova illuminates how even though some women escape to tell their stories, sex trafficking thrives. Learn more at www.priceofsex.org .

FJP: The Price of Sex was written, directed and produced by Mimi Chakarova, won the 2011 Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting.

If you’re in DC there’s a screening of the film this evening.

humanrightswatch

latimes: Times’ producer Ben Welsh created PastPages, an hourly archive of the homepages of major news media organizations. I cre­ated this site be­cause I think it ought to ex­ist. The shift­ing homepages of ma­jor me­dia sites should be saved so they can be stud­ied. Done right, I be­lieve Pas­t­Pages could serve as a re­source for schol­ars seek­ing to study cov­er­age of news events, like the up­com­ing U.S. pres­id­en­tial elec­tion.

latimes:

Times’ producer Ben Welsh created PastPages, an hourly archive of the homepages of major news media organizations.

I cre­ated this site be­cause I think it ought to ex­ist. The shift­ing homepages of ma­jor me­dia sites should be saved so they can be stud­ied. Done right, I be­lieve Pas­t­Pages could serve as a re­source for schol­ars seek­ing to study cov­er­age of news events, like the up­com­ing U.S. pres­id­en­tial elec­tion.

pastpages.org

Sixty-six percent (66%) of American Adults say they prefer reading a printed version of the newspaper, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty-eight percent (28%) like reading the online version of their preferred paper instead.

66% Prefer Reading Print Newspaper To Online Version - Rasmussen Reports™

Rasmussen Reports just released a new report looks into the way people prefer to consume their news. They have more information on their site, but there is a paywall. Via Poynter. (via onaissues)

FJP: I’m caught in the language of this. For example, I prefer to do a lot of things — wear cozy pajamas at all times, eat ice cream for dinner, be the source of wit and wisdom at a party — but that doesn’t mean I actually do it. Since I don’t have access beyond the paywall I’d be interested to know how much of that 66% actually buys a newspaper. — Michael

rasmussenreports.com

British Panel: Murdoch Not Fit to Run News Corp

Via the New York Times:

In a damning report after months of investigation into the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, a British parliamentary panel concluded on Tuesday that Mr. Murdoch was “not a fit person” to run a huge international company.

The startling conclusion about the world’s most influential media tycoon went much further in criticizing Mr. Murdoch than had been expected from Parliament’s select committee on culture, media and sport, which has conducted several inquiries into press standards, the most recent starting last year.

Via the BBC:

After initially claiming that malpractice was limited to one “rogue” reporter at the News of the World, News International has now settled dozens of civil cases admitting liability for hacking between 2001 and 2006.

More than 6,000 possible victims have been identified and the police have so far made a number of arrests in connection with an investigation reopened in January 2011 - although no charges have yet been brought.

Via the Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch, the document said, “did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking” and “turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications”.

The committee concluded that the culture of the company’s newspapers “permeated from the top” and “speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International”.

That prompted the MPs’ report to say: “We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company.”

General news is not relevant to young people because they don’t have context. It’s a lot of abstract storytelling and arguing among adults that makes no sense. So most young people end up consuming celebrity news. To top it off, news agencies, for obvious reasons, are trying to limit access to their content by making you pay for it. Well, guess what: Young people aren’t going out of their way to try to find this news, so you put up one little wall, and poof, done. They’re not even going to bother.

Said (Microsoft researcher) Danah Boyd, addressing why young people aren’t following traditional, regular news.

FJP: Can’t help but think of this, for one thing. Also, if you’re interested: Jonathan Stray on making news immersive.

via Poynter.

USA Today Bets on Adaptive Mobile

Digiday highlights USA Today’s approach to app development. USA Today is the only “big 3” publisher (WSJ, NY Times, USA Today) to not charge for content on any device, relying exclusively on advertising: 

Newspapers are experimenting with different ways of distributing content on tablets. When it comes to mobile, most publications rush to replicate their content via an app. USA Today is thinking different.

USA Today is betting on an adaptive experience that morphs with the device. While there’s no dynamic personalization based on user behavior or any type of intelligence, the articles served up on the iPad vary from person to person. For example, I read USA Today sports stories, and my colleague reads tech and advertising stories. In turn, more sports stories appear in my app than in my colleague’s app, and she therefore receives more tech and advertising stories.

“We don’t create for the paper and port to the mobile,” said Matt de Ganon, vp of mobile product and operations. “We create content, and it gets certain finite production on the digital properties; it’s a fluid experience of, here is the format that works best, and here is the subset of content that works best on smartphone, or here’s the context of tablet.”

digiday.com

Anonymous Hacks Hundreds of Chinese Government Sites Via International Business Times: The Anonymous hacking collective has landed in China, home of some of the most tightly controlled internet access in the world, and defaced hundreds of government websites in what appears to be a massive online operation against Beijing… …The defaced homepages carry a statement against the Chinese government along with the traditional Anonymous banner and the generational anthem Baba O’Riley by The Who played in background. “All these years, the Chinese communist government has subjected its people to unfair laws and unhealthy processes,” reads the statement. “Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall.” It contains also a message directed at the Chinese people: “Each of you suffers from the tyranny of that regime which knows nothing about you,” reads the message. “We are with you. […]The silence of all other countries highlights the lack of democracy and justice in China. It’s unbearable.” The defacements also provide a link with tips on how to bypass state censorship. On Pastebin, Anonymous lists the sites they’ve claimed to have hacked. And yes, Baba O’Riley does play if/when you go to them.

Anonymous Hacks Hundreds of Chinese Government Sites

Via International Business Times:

The Anonymous hacking collective has landed in China, home of some of the most tightly controlled internet access in the world, and defaced hundreds of government websites in what appears to be a massive online operation against Beijing…

…The defaced homepages carry a statement against the Chinese government along with the traditional Anonymous banner and the generational anthem Baba O’Riley by The Who played in background.

“All these years, the Chinese communist government has subjected its people to unfair laws and unhealthy processes,” reads the statement. “Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall.”

It contains also a message directed at the Chinese people: “Each of you suffers from the tyranny of that regime which knows nothing about you,” reads the message. “We are with you. […]The silence of all other countries highlights the lack of democracy and justice in China. It’s unbearable.”

The defacements also provide a link with tips on how to bypass state censorship.

On Pastebin, Anonymous lists the sites they’ve claimed to have hacked. And yes, Baba O’Riley does play if/when you go to them.

Most of the broadcast industry is opposing the new transparency regulations. This is understandable as a reflexive impulse, but it’s still disappointing. Broadcast news organizations depend on, and consistently call for, robust open-record regimes for the institutions they cover; it seems hypocritical for broadcasters to oppose applying the same principle to themselves. The stations’ public “political file” contains vital information about the American political system, since so much of the money in politics goes toward the purchase of broadcast advertising, and the sponsorship information can help make viewers aware that some of what they are seeing and hearing on the air, especially in the realm of health news, is being paid for by highly interested parties.

It won’t impose a crushing burden on the stations if they have to put information they already have online, and it will greatly enhance the public’s knowledge if it becomes possible to see online the kind of information the regulations affect. We strongly urge the FCC to implement the proposed regulations.

Excerpt of a letter from the deans of 12 American Journalism schools to the FCC in support of the commission’s purposed requirement that television stations put information online about political ad buys for local, state and federal elections.

Background, Part 01: Local and national broadcasters are required to keep files about who is buying political advertising from them. These paper files are available to anyone who cares to go down to their local station and ask for a copy. With this thing called the Internet out there, the FCC thinks it a good idea that stations put these records online. Broadcasters disagree.

Background, Part 02: American airwaves — like its parks — are part of the public commons. The US government gives private companies free licenses to broadcast on these airwaves with the understanding that broadcasters would fulfill certain public service requirements.

Background, Part 03: Disclosure advocates argue that transparently providing information about who’s purchasing political advertising, and providing it in an easily accessible manner — ie, online — is part of that public service requirement.

Background, Part 04: It is estimated that local and national broadcasters will make $3 billion selling political ads this year.

Background, Part 05: Broadcasters such as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, along with companies that own local stations, are fighting the regulation, claiming that it places an undue economic burden on their operations. Robert McDowell, a Republican FCC commissioner estimates that it could cost the industry $15 million to scan past documents, and each station somewhere north of $120,000 per year to update and maintain the online files. The National Association of Broadcasters says local stations would have “to hire approximately eight more sales personnel on at least a seasonal basis to handle the increased workload.”

Background, Part 06: Writing at the Columbia Journalism Review, Steve Waldman believes these estimates don’t pass the smell test. Not only is there this neat thing called the Internet through which the data can be published, but there are nifty contraptions called document scanners that can process up to 60 pages a minute. “So even if a station has several thousand pages to scan,” he writes, “it would require one person a few hours, not eight people full time for several months.”

Background, Part 07: When in doubt, claim you’re fighting communism. As many have pointed out, Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, which owns six local ABC affiliates as well as Politico, claims that putting the files online “would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.”

Foreground: In the meantime, with files locked away in cabinets but available to anyone willing to pound the pavement, ProPublica has begun working with students at Northwestern’s Medill Journalism School to gather information from five local stations in Chicago. They intend to expand the program as the campaign season continues, and crowdsource the effort among the greater public.

Nine Groups File Amicus Briefs to Support ACLU FOIA Request on US Drone Program

The CIA recently rejected an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request for documents that disclose the US government’s guidelines for targeting US citizens and foreign nationals with drone attacks.

In its response to the ACLU request, the CIA wrote that “it can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to this request without compromising national security concerns.”

Take it away, Glenn Greenwald:

Numerous Obama officials — including the President himself and the CIA Director — have repeatedly boasted in public about this very program. Obama recently hailed the CIA drone program by claiming that “we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied,” and added that it is “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases and so on.” Obama has told playful jokes about the same drone program. Former CIA Director and current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also likes to tell cute little jokes about CIA Predator drones, and then proclaimed in December that the drone program has “been very effective at undermining al Qaeda and their ability to plan those kinds of attacks.” Just two weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech purporting to legally justify these same drone attacks…

… Everyone in the world knows the CIA has a drone program. It is openly discussed everywhere, certainly including the multiple Muslim countries where the drones routinely create piles of corpses, and by top U.S. Government officials themselves.

But then when it comes time to test the accuracy of their public claims by requesting the most basic information about what is done and how execution targets are selected, and when it comes time to ask courts to adjudicate its legality, then suddenly National Security imperatives prevent the government even from confirming or denying the existence of the program: the very same program they’ve been publicly boasting and joking about. As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer put it after Obama publicly defended the program: “At this point, the only consequence of pretending that it’s a secret program is that the courts don’t play a role in overseeing it” – that, and ensuring that any facts that contradict these public claims remain concealed.

Nine organization have now filed an Amicus — or friends of the court — brief to support an ACLU appeal against the CIA’s refusal to disclose documents that explain “when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the United States ensures compliance with international laws relating to extrajudicial killing.”

The organizations signing the brief are:

The brief was written by the National Security Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

Forbes worked with Bitly to suss out where Americans get their news state by state. Mapped above are the favorites. Jon Bruner explains how the data was collected here. H/T: Flowing Data.

Forbes worked with Bitly to suss out where Americans get their news state by state.

Mapped above are the favorites.

Jon Bruner explains how the data was collected here.

H/T: Flowing Data.

Self Immolation Protests Rise in Tibet Via the New York Times: On March 3, a few days before the start of the spring semester, Tsering Kyi, 20, emerged from a public toilet at the town’s produce market, her wispy frame bound in gasoline-soaked blankets that had been encircled with wire, relatives and local residents said. In a flash she was a heap of flames, her fist raised defiantly, before falling to the ground, residents said. She died at the scene. Over the past year 29 Tibetans, seven of them in the last three weeks, have chosen a similarly agonizing, self-annihilating protest against Chinese policies. Of those, 22 have died… …Tsering Kyi’s death has been widely publicized by Tibetan activist groups eager to draw attention to the self-immolations. The Chinese state news media, which has ignored most of the cases, reported that she was mentally unstable after hitting her head on a radiator. Her grades started to sag, the official Xinhua news agency said, “which put a lot of pressure on her and made her lose courage for life and study.” In interviews, several Tibetan residents and relatives of Tsering Kyi’s contemptuously waved away such assertions. Instead, they were eager to discuss her devotion to her Tibetan heritage and the final moments of her life. When she emerged from the public toilets in flames, they said, the market’s Han Chinese vegetable sellers locked the front gate to prevent her from taking her protest to the street. No one, they claim, tried to douse the fire. When the police arrived, they forced witnesses to remain inside the market and returned Tsering Kyi’s body to the bathroom. Then, after collecting everyone’s cellphones, they methodically went through the devices and deleted any photographs of the incident. Related: Beijing-based Blogger Under House Arrest for Writing About Tibet, Committee to Protect Journalists. China Imposes Media Blackout on Sichuan, Qinghai and Autonomous Region of Tibet, Reporters Without Borders China Cuts Internet and Mobile Phone Service in Areas of Protest, Global Post Image: Video still of a 35-year-old nun burning herself alive via a February BBC report on self-immolation protests in Tibet.

Self Immolation Protests Rise in Tibet

Via the New York Times:

On March 3, a few days before the start of the spring semester, Tsering Kyi, 20, emerged from a public toilet at the town’s produce market, her wispy frame bound in gasoline-soaked blankets that had been encircled with wire, relatives and local residents said.

In a flash she was a heap of flames, her fist raised defiantly, before falling to the ground, residents said. She died at the scene.

Over the past year 29 Tibetans, seven of them in the last three weeks, have chosen a similarly agonizing, self-annihilating protest against Chinese policies. Of those, 22 have died…

…Tsering Kyi’s death has been widely publicized by Tibetan activist groups eager to draw attention to the self-immolations. The Chinese state news media, which has ignored most of the cases, reported that she was mentally unstable after hitting her head on a radiator. Her grades started to sag, the official Xinhua news agency said, “which put a lot of pressure on her and made her lose courage for life and study.”

In interviews, several Tibetan residents and relatives of Tsering Kyi’s contemptuously waved away such assertions. Instead, they were eager to discuss her devotion to her Tibetan heritage and the final moments of her life. When she emerged from the public toilets in flames, they said, the market’s Han Chinese vegetable sellers locked the front gate to prevent her from taking her protest to the street. No one, they claim, tried to douse the fire.

When the police arrived, they forced witnesses to remain inside the market and returned Tsering Kyi’s body to the bathroom. Then, after collecting everyone’s cellphones, they methodically went through the devices and deleted any photographs of the incident.

Related:

Image: Video still of a 35-year-old nun burning herself alive via a February BBC report on self-immolation protests in Tibet.

I don’t think they make a whit’s worth of difference. Millions more people will see the ad than will ever see the political fact check.

Rick Tyler, senior adviser to Winning Our Future, a Super PAC that backs Newt Gingrich, on the role (or lack thereof) political fact checking organizations such as FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com and others have on adding truth to political discourse.

“Truth does not win over lies just because it’s truth,” adds Craig Silverman, who writes the Poynter Institute’s media accuracy blog Regret the Error.

And just to keep things depressing: “What political admakers also know — and rely on — is that repetition of a claim increases people’s belief in it.”

Martha T. Moore, USA Today. Fact checkers help sort through political claims. 

After going through torture and persecution and such a long court case, I am devastated. This sends the signal that we are no longer free to express ourselves.

Edson Chakuma, a trade union leader in Zimbabwe, after a court found him and five others guilty of conspiring to commit public violence.

The crime: screening a film about the Arab Spring.

Via the Independent:

The group was charged with treason in February last year after they and 40 others were arrested at a trade union office, at which a film consisting of television news clips of the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt were shown.

The six say they were tortured in custody -– by being beaten with planks of wood –- until they confessed to plotting to overthrow President Mugabe, 88. The 40 others were released and, in a case that has lasted more than a year, the charges against the six were eventually downgraded from treason, which carries the death penalty.

Sentencing occurs today.

The Independent, Guilty — of watching a film on the Arab Spring in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.