Category Archives: Media

Police State Chronicles: Another Win For The Un-Free Web?

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 The latest on the BlockShopper -Jones Day trademark infringement case:

“Last April, startup real estate news site BlockShopper ran the headline “New Jones Day Lawyer Spends $760K on Sheffield” with a link to the bio for the lawyer in question—Jacob Tiedt—from the Web site of his law firm, Jones Day. In July, it ran a similar item about a home purchase by Dan Malone Jr., another Jones Day lawyer, with the link to his Jones Day bio.

BlockShopper was following standard operating procedure by linking to publicly available Web sites. But Jones Day got mad. The law firm (a big one, at 2,300 lawyers) has never publicly said why it sued; maybe the powers that be there thought the posts compromised their lawyers’ privacy. Housing records are public documents, but the Web turns public into accessible, and the firm presumably wasn’t thrilled about having its attorneys’ home purchases broadcast. Jones Day demanded that BlockShopper remove the items. When BlockShopper refused, the firm sued the 15-staff startup for trademark infringement. Jones Day’s legal theory was that BlockShopper’s link would trick readers into thinking that Jones Day was affiliated with the real estate site.This may seem far-fetched, but the judge in the case didn’t think so, and that led to a settlement this week that will require BlockShopper to change the way it creates links. And that’s not a good signal to send about the Web, where linking has been an unrestricted currency available to all….”

More at Slate, by Wendy Davis.

Comment:

I’ve had mixed thoughts about this.

Publishing Perils: Send In The Clowns

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 In an earlier post, I mentioned the perils of being an independent reporter. With no big-name organization to back you up or fight your battles for you, falling afoul of powerful people, even without intending to, can lead you into a professional – and personal quagmire. Here’s the story of one of the most chilling vendettas against an independent journalist too curious for her own good:

“The life of a freelance writer can inspire paranoia even at the best of times. Story assignments inexplicably fall through, editors change
their minds. But the surreal campaign of dirty tricks endlessly played on Jan Pottker by Ringling Bros. chief Ken Feld and his minions would
be enough to persuade even the most stoic freelancer that their career path was being plotted by Franz Kafka.

The excruciating details of Pottker’s travails are annotated in almost 10,000 pages of pretrial complaints, motions, affidavits and
depositions filed in the bowels of Superior Court for the District of Columbia. The evidence gathered so far evokes other unfortunate
milestones in the annals of corporate espionage, going back to General Motors’ infamous campaign against the young activist Ralph Nader 40
years ago through the mysterious death of Karen Silkwood on an dark Oklahoma highway in 1974.

Pottker’s personal tormentor was an obscure, innocuous-looking,36-year-old freelance writer and sometime publisher with uncommonly
close ties to high-ranking former officials of the CIA. His name was Robert Eringer….”

 More at “Send In the Clowns,” Jeff Stein,  Salon, August 31, 2001 

Comment:

I have ambiguous feelings about this. On the one hand, I empathize with Pottker, obviously.  On the other hand, reporters also have to draw a line – which they don’t any more – between investigative work essential to a story that has public value (i.e., there has to be a “public interest” element strong enough to justify the disclosures) and “dishing the dirt” about people who have lots of money or are famous but whose activities really have no strong bearing on public policy or the citizenry. That is, reporters have to be able to tell the difference between acting like a responsible Fourth Estate and simply being a nasty purveyor of  other people’s dirty laundry. After all, if the private lives of everyone in the public eye is fair game, why shouldn’t the private lives of journalists be, as well? And where’s the end to that?

Here’s an example: Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, in so far as it was conducted on the White House premises and might have made him vulnerable to blackmail, was within bounds (although the manner in which it was covered showed pretty bad judgment and taste, in my opinion).  However, retailing gossip about Ms. Clinton or Chelsea strike me as being off-limits. Pottker’s case makes the cut, but I have to wonder why she needed to have brought in the family’s sexual secrets into it.

Everyone needs a portion of their souls left to themselves, even criminals..

In my opinion, one of the reasons journalists get tempted by this stuff is their inability to make “big picture” sense of the stories they cover. Rather than connect the dots economically, or historically, or culturally, or intellectually, so much easier to splash on the prurient detail,  with the comforting assurance that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the public…..

Media-Trix: Publishing Perils

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At the head of developments that threaten freedom of speech is the stranglehold that media conglomerates exert on publishing.

True, the Internet has prevented media giants from entirely dominating the landscape. But the Internet environment itself isn’t free from the perils of the big boyz,  from Google to Amazon.

Here are some of the ways writers get ripped off:

1. Editors sit on timely manuscripts until their timeliness is undermined. Then they pass on the author’s original insights or work to other writers in their stable, or undercut them for politically or economically expedient reasons. End result, they steal credit from the writer who deserves it.

2. Editors cut manuscript for political reasons and then claim they did it for editorial reasons, so you can’t argue with them.

3. Editors subject manuscripts to unauthorized and substantial changes and then when you have to spend time to get the writing back into its original form, they try to bill you for the cost overrun.

4. Publishers not only don’t promote their authors, they can be involved in efforts to sabotage them, if they think their other book deals might warrant it.

5. Publishers call up radio/TV stations and present misleading information on copyright and contractual issues so as to derail the author’s credibility and ability to promote his/her work.  They do this fully aware that the average author cannot easily prove what’s happening in court.

6. Publishers routinely hide or misrepresent sales to defraud authors of royalties.

7. Publishers collude with other writers in their stable to defraud authors.

8. Publishers pay net profits to authors – giving them something like 5-10 cents on each dollar made….or less. But when it comes to liability, all of it is on the author, even though authors rarely if ever carry media coverage and though all publishers carry it.

9. Publishers routinely ruin books by second-rate production and promotion and then try to stick authors with the bill for corrections or returns.

10. Publishers no longer vet manuscripts with lawyers or even check them in any serious way. They don’t even do it at the author’s request, even though the authors might be forced to make multimillion dollar payments in liability settlements (and could even pay big bucks for frivolous law suits).

(more to come)

Media-Trix: Dead Men Photoshopping….

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Vanity Fair is in trouble for some digital touching up that crossed the line:

“In the mag’s March issue, famed photographer Annie Leibovitz snapped shots of acclaimed actors and their directors. Kate Winslet and hubbie Sam Mendes, who teamed up for “Revolutionary Road,” strike a pose. There’s Sean Penn and Gus Van Sant, who worked together on “Milk.” And, oddly, there’s Heath Ledger and Christopher Nolan of “The Dark Knight.” Of course, Mr. Ledger died more than a year ago, so one may be inclined to ask where the photo came from.

The answer: 2005. The shot of Ledger was apparently taken while he was promoting “Brokeback Mountain.” Editors digitally added Mr. Nolan and voilá. Some might say the digital redux is in questionable taste, but magazine reps insist they took great care and worked “with permission.” We’re a little fuzzy as to who, exactly, gave the OK. A Ouija board, perhaps?

Less controversial but still bizarre was Vanity Fair’s cover shot of President Obama from the same March issue. The photo was originally taken back in 2007 and was actually on the cover for a special issue on Africa. We’re not sure why Vanity Fair recycled, but we assume the leader of the free world was just too darn busy to come in and pose. Interestingly, unlike the Ledger photo with a second added subject, Obama’s photo redux digitally removed actor Don Cheadle. Don’t take it personally, Don. It’s just show business…..”

– “Vanity Fair’s Digital Redux,” Mike Krumboltz at The Buzz Log

Comment:

That’s our show-and-don’t-tell business for you…

Activism: Journalists Threatened By Maoists in Nepal……

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 From Nepal:

“Among genuine Maoist cadre – for they exist amidst the mass of opportunists who have signed up – there is the belief that the journalist stands in the way of change. They have been taught that journalism can never be independent and must be part of the effort to fight a class war as directed by the party.

Five journalists around the country presently face credible death threats, and the sense of insecurity in the districts is much more palpable than in Kathmandu Valley. A senior editor was recently asked pointedly and ominously, “How long do we have to suffer this indignity of criticism. Tell us, kati samma sahera basne hamilay?”

As per their politico-military training, Maoists workers as a whole continue to regard those who disagree with them as the enemy, and the critic can variously be labeled feudal, anti-people, anti-national. The leadership has done little to change this self-serving mindset, and so cadres everywhere feel confident in exhibiting hostility. If a sense of fear can be created leading to self-censorship, then regardless of what this does to the image of the party it can be useful for developing a pliant society. But the matter may spiral out of even Maoist control, for the party´s attitude towards media is being internalized by violent groups in the mid-western Tarai and elsewhere.

Amidst the violence-puja that has overtaken the country, who we had thought represented ‘civil society’ are yet to awake to the dangers, the business community seeks accommodation amidst rampant extortion, and the state administration and security mechanisms are subdued by the extremist sloganeering of Maoist leaders and ministers. For now, the journalist, human rights defender, local politician and activist stand at the frontline on behalf of the citizenry, vulnerable amidst daily threats and intimidations, beatings and attacks. Everyone understands that the attacks on the media are meant to send a message to the rest. Everyone also understands that the fall of free media will be a harbinger of years of unrest, derailment of governance, crash of the economy, and pushback of development….”

Kanak Mani Dixit, “Independent Press: Learning From Uma” in MyRepublica.com

Comment:

The Uma referenced in the article is Uma Singh, a young Nepali journalist who was murdered, according to this BBC report:

“Uma Singh, a radio journalist in her 20s, was hacked to death by between 12 and 20 men in her room in the southern city of Janakpur. Ms Singh is believed to be the first female reporter killed in the country, although journalists have long lived with violence or the threat of it.A friend and fellow journalist told the BBC there was no part of her body that was not covered with blood. She died on the way to the capital after attempts locally to help her failed. “

                      What did Uma do to get herself hacked to death?

Ameet Dhakal writes:

“Uma was a gutsy lady—sharp and fearless. It takes guts to be a woman journalist in Madhes, and you need an extra dose of it to move away from your home to another district, to live by yourself in a rented room, and do journalism while braving the likes of Matrika Yadav,* Babban Singh and others of the criminal groups mushrooming in Madhes. She wrote articles exposing Matrika Yadav, and in one of the public functions when Babban Singh was speaking on women’s rights she reprimanded him for the rape cases he was implicated in. Such examples of her audacity are aplenty.”

  *Maoist leader

Arrests have been made in the case, according to this piece at the Nepali newspaper, eKantipur.com.

Libertarian Living: The Best US Internet Law….

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“#1: 47 USC 230

This law was enacted in 1996 (as part of the Communications Decency Act, discussed below) during the heyday of the cyberspace exceptionalism movement—about the same time as Barlow’s Declaration of Independence and Johnson/Post’s Internet self-governance article. Indeed, this law is one of the most conspicuous examples of how a legislative body has set different rules for physical space and cyberspace. In this case, the law provides websites and other intermediaries a near-absolute immunization from liability for their users’ content—even if offline publishers would be liable for publishing the exact same user content in dead trees.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this law to the Internet’s evolution. Without this law, all Internet content probably would be subject to a notice-and-takedown regime like we have for copyright law (see discussion about the DMCA Online Safe Harbors below). If websites had to remove user content upon notice to avoid liability, they would act conservatively, quickly pulling down complained-about content without much fuss. So, any company unhappy with negative consumer comments could simply contact the web host, claim that the comments were defamatory (making the web host potentially liable for the content), and expect the web host to scramble to take down the user’s comment.

But in this takedown melee, only negative remarks would be targeted (there would be no legal grounds—or reason—to target positive comments). Thus, notice-and-takedown rules would result in “lopsided” databases in which only positive opinions/commentary would remain, but many negative comments could be quickly excised. This would ruin the capability of the consumer opinion sites (for example, eBay’s feedback forum and Amazon product reviews) to hold people and companies accountable for their choices. Indeed, by undermining the credibility of Internet content generally, a notice-and-takedown scheme could diminish the Internet’s vitality as a mainstream information resource.

47 USC 230 eliminates the notice-and-takedown option for people and companies trying to escape accountability. As a result, 47 USC 230 is a big part of the reason why the Internet became such a massive success.”

From, “The Best and Worst Internet Laws,” Eric Goldman, Informit.com

Activism: Canadian Internet Journalist Fights Back

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“This past June, then Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced a bill on Parliament Hill that sparked debate across creative industries nationwide. Bill C-61, a reform on copyright legislation, could have potentially strangled the freedom of online journalists without them even realizing it. Fortunately, thanks to university professor, blogger and columnist Michael Geist, thousands were aware of the impending bill. When Geist heard of the proposal in December, 2007, he took to his blog, posted videos on YouTube and set up a Facebook group called Fair Copyright For Canada. Soon, Geist was everywhere, making appearances on CBC’s The Hour and TVO’s The Agenda. The bill didn’t survive with the October election, but the debate made many realize Canada needs to update its decade-old copyright legislation. And now Geist is leading the pack of journalists seeking fair copyright laws.

As writers increasingly find their print articles published online, Geist wants to clear the confusion around internet law and what it means for journalism. Legislation like C-61 would prevent journalists from effectively conducting research and news gathering, and would squelch our freedom of expression. While the government struggles to keep up with ever-evolving internet law, Geist continues to fight to protect the rights of journalists to conduct news gathering and keep the public informed. He is armed with two master’s degrees and a doctorate in law, and is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. His technology columns appear weekly in the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen. As both a journalist and lawyer, Geist sees an urgent need to protect Canadians’ rights to use the internet for freedom of expression. “It’s often citizens who are performing journalistic activities who are the first and sometimes the most authentic source of information,” says Geist. “People who are engaged in [journalism] ought to enjoy the protection that journalists traditionally enjoy.” Geist sensed that online freedom was about to be seriously threatened a couple of years ago.

In fall 2007, rumours swirled around Ottawa that Prentice wanted to introduce legislation for anti-circumvention laws. Anti-circumvention prevents the circumvention of Digital Rights Management software placed on digital files (such as music or Word documents) by copyright holders. Under the copyright act, journalists are exempt from infringement under the Fair Dealing provision for the purpose of news reporting. But with the proposed legislation “everybody becomes a criminal, or at least an infringer,” says Geist, “once they seek to pick that lock…..”

More by Lori Grady at Ryerson’s Review of Journalism

The Mind-Control Weapon In Your Living Room

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One of Britain’s leading authority’s on children’s speech development, she completed a ten year study which showed that the background noise in the average two year olds day can delay his or her acquisition of a language by up to a year. Almost invariably the background noise came from television.
Amongst other things she found that:
· Children learn to speak from their parents and parents don’t play or talk enough with their children when the TV is on.

· Background noise from TV or radio, confuses infants. In response they learn to ignore all noise and then they ignore speech.

· Children of two years or older should not be exposed to more than two hours of TV a day.

· Children of one year old or younger should not be exposed to television at all.
Sally Ward is currently preparing to focus on television and the way it affects our attention. In particular she will be looking at Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). “. . . a lot of people think it’s chemical,” she says, but in her view . . . “it’s very peculiar that at the onset of children’s television it got a lot more prevalent, and at the onset of children’s video’s it got a lot more prevalent.”
Her concern is being reiterated in America where child psychologist John Rosemond has stirred some controversy by suggesting that ADHD is environmentally created; a suggestion that is completely at odds with the pharmaceutical industry, which maintains that the disorder is genetically inherited and makes considerable profit as a result.
“Ritalin may work, temporarily,” says Rosemond, “But pharmaceutical intervention won’t change behavioural and motivational problems.” And these he blames on television – “the endlessly changing images, flickering like the attention spans of ADHD children.”

“Television: The Hidden Picture” – Rixon Stewart, via Handmaiden’s Kitchen

Propaganda Nations: Pre-Gaza PR Offensive

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“The Directorate, which has been up and running for eight months, began planning six months ago for a Gaza operation. A forum with representatives of the press offices of the Foreign and Defence ministries, the IDF Spokesman Unit and other agencies held numerous meetings to decide on the message.

The forum held two system-wide exercises in the past two months, one aimed at foreign media and, last week, one dedicated to the Israeli press.

“One of our lessons from the Lebanon War was that there were too many uniforms in the coverage,” says Yarden Vatikay, director of the National Information Directorate, “and that doesn’t come over very positively.”

The international media were directed to a press centre set up by the Foreign Ministry in Sderot itself so that foreign reporters would spend as much time as possible in the main civilian area affected by Hamas rockets. When the IDF was represented on the international TV networks, it was by Major Avital Leibovich to project a feminine and softer image.

Ministers have been ordered by the Cabinet Secretary not to give interviews without authorisation so as not to repeat the PR disaster of a year ago, when Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatened the Palestinians with a “holocaust”. …”

More at Jewish Chronicle.

And some analysis by Juan Cole at Informed Consent:

“Having been treated to these propaganda techniques repeatedly and continuously for 8 years, the US public can suddenly hear the similarity in the assertions of Israeli officialdom and its supporters.

Of course, the Neoconservatives had borrowed a lot of their techniques from the Jabotinsky/ Likud tradition of revisionist Zionism, so what goes around comes around.”

On The Smartness Of Bombs

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“…one man was killed in a strike in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Separate airstrikes killed five other Palestinians — including a young teenage boy east of Gaza City and three children — two brothers and their cousin — who were playing in southern Gaza, according to Health Ministry official Moaiya Hassanain. One of the three reportedly was decapitated…”

That’s MSNBC.

Notice that this information is buried in the center of a long column, in paragraph 12, long after a casual reader’s eye has wandered away.

What does the reader retain?

1. The headline:  

Israel lets 300 with foreign passports exit Gaza –

Airstrikes hit mosque, Hamas homes; troops await possible ground assault

(Comment: Obviously the airstrikes also hit civilians and children, but that doesn’t make it to the headlines. And that tag about waiting for a ground assault lets you know implicitly that whatever is going on now is NOT an assault. 

2. Paragraph one:

“Israel bombed a mosque it claimed was used to store weapons and destroyed homes of more than a dozen Hamas operatives Friday, but under international pressure, the government allowed hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports to leave besieged Gaza…”

Notice the word “claim,” which sounds even-handed; it makes you think the piece is neutral. Then, notice the use of the phrase “Hamas operative” that is also repeated in the body several times before the civilians deaths are described. 

Now here’s Die Welt‘ s opening paragraph: 

“Israel killed a senior Hamas leader in an air attack on his home on Thursday, striking its first blow against the top ranks of the Islamist group in a offensive that has claimed more than 400 Palestinian lives. Nizar Rayyan, a cleric widely regarded as one of Hamas’s most hardline political leaders, had called for renewed suicide bombings inside Israel.

“The deadliest conflict in the Gaza Strip in four decades has killed at least 412 Palestinians and wounded some 1,850. About a quarter of the dead were civilians, the U.N. estimates….”

It also doesn’t mention the casualties today at the top, but at least it tries to provide some context for the story.

There has to be a better way than this.  So much for our obsession with “IQs”, “quants”, “geeks”, “rocket science”, “smart bombs” (like the 2000 pounder dropped on Gaza earlier this week). We’ve had a year where all this high-powered intelligence, delinked from common-sense and conscience, turned out to be as sub-prime as any of the debt it was sending out to the four corners of the globes.

We have more technology and science at our finger tips than any civilization in history – so much as we know of it.

But when it comes to conflict resolution (a poli sci term I detest), we’re back to the mindless world of carnivores and sharks.

Over 60,000 Muslims protested the attacks on Gaza, in countries ranging from Turkey to Egypt, Jordan, Aghanistan, and Indonesia.

They were joined by protestors in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, Omar Barghouti provides the context for the media disinformation on the assault on Palestine:

 “An Israeli army spokeswoman went further stating. “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.” Given that, in the ghetto of Gaza, Hamas is effectively the “ruling” party  — it was democratically elected, after all — and its network of social and charitable organizations are the largest provider of social services to the impoverished and besieged population, all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, public schools, hospitals, universities, law and order organs, traffic police, sewage treatment and water purification stations, ministries providing vital services to the public, mosques, public theatres and many non-governmental institutions can technically be considered “affiliated” with Hamas. Lest the reader feels that this is an exaggeration, today, in the first hours of the first day of the new year, the Israeli air force already bombed the following “targets” in Gaza: the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice. Earlier, several mosques were pulverised to the ground. So were main buildings in the Islamic University of Gaza, which serves 20,000 students. Ambulances and private homes were not spared either…..”