March 31, 2003
The war between the Pentagon and Rumsfeld
Here's today's New Yorker magazine article by Sy Hersh, perhaps the greatest investigative reporter of our generation, about the war between the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Thanks to Karlin Lillington for the pointer.
Now that we're at war
We've been inundated lately by pundits, even from progressive voices such as Bill Maher and Nicholas Kristof, who say that now that we've invaded Iraq, we should stop questioning the administration, support the war and hope it ends quickly.
It took a writer from the Bay Area, Vicki O'Day, to put the issue in its proper perspective in a letter to the NY Times:
Nicholas D. Kristof ("Hearts and Minds," column, March 28) wants us to stop talking about how we got into the war in Iraq, since this is "now a historical question."It is still relevant to ask whether this war is about control over resources while we are awarding multimillion-dollar contracts to American companies to operate in postwar Iraq.
It is still relevant to ask whether this war is aimed at promoting democracy in Iraq while political opposition groups in Iraq are being kept out of the loop as coalition forces topple their country's government.
It is still relevant to wonder whether this war is meant to provide political cover for our failing economy when the administration tells us that a huge tax cut is necessary for the sake of the troops.
We can't afford to distance ourselves from the policies and actions that led us into a war with Iraq. They are the same policies and actions that will lead us into the next war, unless the administration changes its course.
Meantime, Thomas Friedman has lost his marbles, while Salon's Scott Rosenberg has a more thoughtful analysis, The momentum of violence.
Peter Arnett gets the last word
Peter Arnett has some parting comments for NBC and the U.S. new media after he was summarily fired last weekend. Here are excerpts from "This War Is Not Working":
There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad.They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems. ...
[I am shocked] That overnight my successful NBC reporting career was turned to ashes. And why?
Because I stated the obvious to Iraqi television; that the US war timetable has fallen by the wayside.
I have made those comments to television stations around the world and now I'm making them again in the Daily Mirror.
I'm not angry. I'm not crying. But I'm also awed by this media phenomenon.
The right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here, whatever their nationality. I made the misjudgment which gave them the opportunity to do so.
I gave an impromptu interview to Iraqi television feeling that after four months of interviewing hundreds of them it was only professional courtesy to give them a few comments.
That was my Waterloo - bang! ...
New in OJR
OnlineJournalism.com has a few to-the-point synopses and summaries from last weekend's new media conference at UC Berkeley.
Glaser Online asks: Should News Sites Charge You to See the War?
And Biz2's Jimmy Guterman will be doing a daily Media on Media weblog for OJR, initially focusing on what the media think of their coverage of the war in Iraq. Best line today, from Peter Arnett in his new gig for Britain's Mirror:
"I am still in shock and awe at being fired."
Depicting the war's dead
One blogger, after seeing the dead body of an Iraqi soldier splayed across the front page of today's New York Times, suggests that the sensitivity shown in prohibiting graphic photos of war casualties apparently doesn't apply to their dead guys.
Internet radio's 'biggest geek'
Today Wired News profiles Ken Rutkowski (whom I've interviewed in the past) of KenRadio.com, calling him Internet Radio's Biggest Geek.
Media and the war
IWantMedia has a very cool page of pointers to Media and coverage of the war in Iraq, including timely quotations. From Bill O'Reilly:
"If you watch too much TV news coverage, your perspective can get warped."
Especially Fox News.
Here's the LA Times' Howard Rosenberg on Fox's coverage of the war.
Tony Blair's 'grave mistake'
This may or may not turn out to be true, but it's interesting reading. It's about U.S. neo-conservativism, and Tony Blair's unexpected alliance with it, as seen from the European center-left.
In the Guardian UK: The tragedy of this unequal partnership. By opting to join the American hard Right, Tony Blair has made the gravest mistake of his political life.
A global view of the war
In These Times: Dissatisfied with U.S. press coverage, Americans are flocking to the Web for war news from the rest of the world. Excerpt:
Itís heartening to find that Americans in large numbers thirst for alternatives to the narrow spectrum presented by our native news outlets.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
March 30, 2003
New media conference wrapup
Wasn't able to blog from UC Berkeley yesterday, the site of the sixth annual new media conference co-sponsored by USC and Cal, because they offered no wireless access. I'm told they hope to have it by next year. (My digital camera's in the shop, so had to rely on old-fashioned film. Really hard to switch back to the processed-film era.)
Some of the presentations will be available through archived webcasts on the conference site. (Related to this, the new media "dons" met before the start of the conference to chart strategies for online journalism curriculum.) The highlight, to my mind, was the final panel of the day, which featured six young people ages 10 to 21 who discussed their use of new technologies. Takeaway: Young people use digital tools in ways we can't predict, and are relying less and less often on print publications for their news and information.
One of the best lines at the conference came from 14-year-old Amy. Responding to a question about pastel-colored youth sites aimed at girls, she said, "Pink is evil."
Among the audience members: Howard Rheingold, Barry Parr and Justin Hall.
March 29, 2003
March 28, 2003
Steven Levy on warblogging and big media
Steven Levy takes on blogs, war, and conventional media in Newsweek today. (Minor point, but let's ditch the Newsweek-style spelling "webloger." Y'know: logger ... weblogger ... weblogging. Hullo? Excerpt:
Perhaps it was inevitable that this war would become the breakthrough for blogs. The bigmouths of the so-called Blogosphere have long contended that the form deserves to be seen as a significant component of 21st-century media. And in the months preceding the invasion, blogging about the impending conflict had been feisty and furious. But it wasnít until the bombs hit Baghdad that Weblogs finally found their moment. The arrival of war, and the frustratingly variegated nature of this particular conflict, called for two things: an easy-to-parse overview for news junkies who wanted information from all sides, and a personal insight that bypassed the sanitizing Cuisinart of big-media news editing. ...
Ý Ý ÝEven some of the soldiers have been blogging. An American officer calling himself L.T. Smash presents sharp observations from his bivouac and some misty-eyed patriotism.Ý Ý Ý Ý The role of professional reporters is another matter. One blogger, freelancer Chris Allbritton, used his site to solicit $10,000 from readers to fund a trip to blog from the northern front. (Heís just arrived in Turkey and will be in-country soon.) The BBC has a blog, and a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter has been using a blog to describe her stay on the USS Abraham Lincoln. But when CNN reporter Kevin Sitesís bosses found out heíd been blogging his experiences on an unaffiliated site, they told him to stop.
Ý Ý Ý Ý CNNís response was seen in the Blogosphere as one more sign that the media dinosaurs are determined to stamp out this subversive new form of reporting. But judging from the television and print reports from journalists embedded in military units, thereís another way to look at things. Consider the reports from embedded journalists working for media institutions. Theyíre ad hoc, using quick-and-dirty high-tech tools to pinpoint the reality of a single moment. They are shaped by the personal experience of the creator rather than gathering news from after-the-fact interviewing and document collection. They are delivered in the first person, creating a connection with the viewer that sometimes bulldozes over the deeper realties of the events.
Ý Ý Ý Ý In other words, theyíre a hell of a lot like blogs. Not the heavily linked Weblogs like The Agonist or Instapundit but the personal accounts of Salamóor the thousands of bloggers who use the technology to keep a running diary of their activities for a small circle of friendsóor anyone who cares to listen in.
Backpack journalists and warblogs
Two stories on online journalism's role in the Iraq war:
AP story: Backpack journalists report from combat zones.
Armed with $15,000 in satellite phones and computers, Preston Mendenhall calls himself a "one-man band" who writes stories, snaps photographs and shoots video in combat zones.
Turning to Web for war news: "The Internet has been my lifeline on war developments."
Online journals, or blogs, alerted me to stories I might have missed.I read plenty about how Iraqis were cheering at a downed American helicopter. But only through the InstaPundit blog did I find a Los Angeles Times report on Iraqi-Americans hearing relatives in Iraq denouncing Saddam Hussein for the first time.
One site, meanwhile, showed gruesome shots of what looked like dead U.S. troops. One new e-mail discussion list, GulfWar-2, referred to a site with footage of American prisoners, some wounded, being interrogated by Iraqi television.
Faulty reporting from the war front
From Editor & Publsher, a list of stories on the Iraq war that have been misreported or poorly reported so far:
1. Saddam may well have been killed in the first night's surprise attack
(March 20).
2. Even if he wasn't killed, Iraqi command and control was no doubt
"decapitated" (March 22).
3. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 22).
4. Most Iraqis soldiers will not fight for Saddam and instead are surrendering
in droves (March 22).
5. Iraqi citizens are greeting Americans as liberators (March 22).
6. An entire division of 8,000 Iraqi soldiers surrendered en masse near Basra
(March 23).
7. Several Scud missiles, banned weapons, have been launched against U.S.
forces in Kuwait (March 23).
8. Saddam's Fedayeen militia are few in number and do not pose a serious
threat (March 23).
9. Basra has been taken (March 23).
10. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 23).
11. A captured chemical plant likely produced chemical weapons (March 23).
12. Nassiriya has been taken (March 23).
13. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 24).
14. The Iraqi government faces a "major rebellion" of anti-Saddam citizens in
Basra (March 24).
15. A convoy of 1,000 Iraqi vehicles and Republican Guards are speeding south
from Baghdad to engage U.S. troops (March 25).
State of the world
Paul Saffo got this in his email in-box today:
You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war.
A photojournalist friend in Iraq
I've started reading photo credits on the hundreds of war images I'm coming across in newspapers and magazines. This morning I spotted, to my surprise, the name of an old friend, a colleague from the Sacramento Bee who left for the LA Times about seven years ago: Carolyn Cole. Many of her photos are included in the LA Times' photo gallery of the war. She's one of the few women photojournalists in the field there.
Here's her latest photo gallery this morning after the shelling in Baghdad. The third image, republished below, ran in the San Jose Mercury News this morning.
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| The Shamua family was having breakfast when an artillery shell struck, killing a mother and her two children. |
Protesters target the news media
CBS.MarketWatch.com: Not only have antiwar protesters been complaining about the war in Iraq, they're now accusing the media of bias in favor of the Bush administration. Fox News, especially, has gone overboard in using "we, are, us" in their descriptions of U.S. troops.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
QuickTopic on Kevin Sites
QuickTopic has more than 600 postings on CNN's decision to stop its correspondent Kevin Sites' personal weblog from Iraq. I think this discussion has just about run its course.
By the way, spotted Kevin Sites last night on CNN during his report from the bottom of a bomb crater. He's quite a likable fellow.
Corante's got game
Corante, which long ago became a must-stop on my daily blog travels -- they feature such weblogs as Donna Wentworth's Copyfight, Hylton Jolliffe On Blogging. Jonathan Peterson's Amateur Hour, Dana Blankenhorn's Moore's Lore, and Renee Hopkins' Idea Flow, among others -- has added another blog to its lineup.
Andy Phelps is writing Got Game? The future of play. Not only fun, but informative. Writeth Mr. Phelps:
This blog is about tracking the rise of games as a medium of popular culture, and perhaps the medium of the times. The Jonesí kids all have game consoles, but more and more itís not just Saturday morning entertainment - games are impacting peoples lives in a way never seen before. There are fan sites, art books, academic theses, and a massive entertainment industry all waking up to the fact that these things are a lot more important than we gave them credit for.
Public hasn't embraced Movielink
Wired News: My friend Katie Dean has a report from Universal City on Movielink's efforts to win the hearts and minds of film lovers.
Website offers new view of music
BBC News: A website that acts as your personal music adviser has been set up by a student at Britain's University of Southampton.
Al-Jazeera's reporting on the war
Commentary in the Guardian UK: Al-Jazeera tells the truth about war.
March 27, 2003
Journalists censored again, this time by hackers
Sheila has an instructive new item: In Defense of Al-Jazeera
Hawk thrown to the wolves
Whoa! Breaking news: Richard Perle, head of board that advises U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, resigns.
When is a free download not?
I'd been meaning to pass along my financial condolensces to my friend Glenn, who's been double hammered by the money gods this week. See Glenn's blog for all the background, but here's a quick summary from Wired News:
It seemed like a good idea at the time -- author Glen Fleishman reasoned that by offering his book, "Real World Adobe GoLive 6," as a free download, he might be able to kickstart sales, which were languishing. Rather than taking the time to download the 922 pages of the PDF file, maybe readers would decide to buy a hard copy on Amazon or elsewhere. It turns out that instead of the few hundred downloads that Fleishman was anticipating, the book was downloaded 10,000 times in just 36 hours, racking up a bandwidth bill of $15,000 (Fleishman's provider, Level 3, charges incrementally for bandwidth used)."It's a financial catastrophe. I'm a working stiff with a mortgage. I never suspected the penalty would be so high for giving something away. It's like living in Singapore and getting 15 years in jail for chewing gum. I was aware I would be charged a fortune for high bandwidth. But I never suspected we would have topped a few hundred downloads."
Fleishman could have made use of file-sharing networks like Kazaa or Gnutella, which require users to bear the cost, says sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, who recently released his first novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," as a free download. Alternatively, Fleishman could have released the book under an open Creative Commons license, which would have allowed it to be posted to the Internet Archive and other open content Web sites, says Doctorow.
"It doesn't make any sense to be the sole point of distribution for a file like this. It highlights the design flaw in the client-server Internet. The more popular a file becomes, the more of a penalty people pay to get it. I think the lesson is 'Use P2P networks.'"
IE messes up again
For some reason, Internet Explorer 6.0 just decided to reorder all of my links in alphabetical order. (No, I didn't right-click and ask for this.) So all of the links I access very frequently below the browser's address field are now screwed up. Any way to overrule IE on this, other than manually and laborioiusly?
Giving users control over text size
After my brief list of suggestions yesterday on how to improve the fabulous Technorati service, its creator, Dave Sifry, said he'd go along with giving users the ability to increase the text size on the site. Dave asked: How does one accomplish that?
I responded that I had removed the offending code from Userland's Cascading Style Sheet template on my Manila blog nearly two years ago, and so can't remember what the expunged code said, but I believe it was something like this:
body {
font-size: 0.75em; [or maybe: height="12px"]
}
Any bloggers out there using Blogger or Userland software with the CSS template intact?
kpaul said:
I dropped him an email, but maybe it was detected as spam. ;)
In any case, all you need to do is change any reference to:
font-size : 1em;
(or another size, say 12px or 10pt)
to:
font-size : 80%;
He should be able to open it up in a word processor and do a find/replace to replace all 12pt with 85% for example...
JD Lasica said:
Perfect. Thanks, kpaul.
Operation Enduring Blitzer
Light blogging today. Have work to do, and the war is messing with my head.
Real Time
Caught my first Real Time with Bill Maher the other night on HBO. He's still got it. Especially liked his tagline for this whole affair: Operation Enduring Wolf Blitzer.
Quote of the Day
From today's Washinton Post: "I wouldn't go into Baghdad until I had another armored division come up into my rear." ó Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey
Move over, honey
Is it coincidence that "reporters embedded with" a military division sounds remarkably similar to "reporters in bed with"?
FAIR report
Fairness and Accuracy in Media released a report yesterday: Lack of Skepticism Leads to Poor Reporting on Iraq Weapons Claims. It begins:
A lack of skepticism toward official U.S. sources has already led prominent American journalists into embarrassing errors in their coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, particularly in relation to claims that proof had been found that Iraq possesses banned weapons.
Free Kevin Sites
Anil Dash has built a blog tracking mentions of the CNN journalist whose Iraq war blog has been nixed by clueless CNN honchos.
World and America watching different wars
Christian Science Monitor: In the Middle East, Europe and Asia, war coverage doesn't resemble what we're seeing in the U.S. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Lessons to be re-learned
Remember that famous aphorism? "Never stop to eat at a place called Mom's. Never play poker with a man called Doc. Never start a ground war in Asia." Still seems apt.
In non-war news
Sunday's New York Times Magazine published a profile of a remarkable man, Woody Norris, and the remarkable music product you'll be hearing about soon, HSS. I don't use the word "genius" lightly, but Norris is clearly one.
Marketers turn to weblogs
NY Times: Webloggers as pitchmen.
AOL: The Free Ride Is Over
Wired News: AOL Time Warner will end free online access to some of its highest-profile magazines as part of a previously announced effort to help its troubled AOL unit. The restrictions initially apply to People and Entertainment Weekly magazines, which will only be available on the Web to AOL subscribers or people who buy the magazine.
TEACH Act and DMCA in conflict
Chronicle of Higher Ed: College Media Group Cautions That 2 Copyright Laws Could Collide.
Score One for Big Media
Biz2: The digital video recorder pioneer Sonicblue fell victim to Hollywood's bullying. With its demise go some of the best things about digital recording.
What the media may not tell you
AlterNet: "If the FCC sweeps away media ownership restrictions, what will the impact be on the watchdog role of the press?" writes Jeffrey Chester. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
The next Supernova
The next Supernova conference will be held July 8-9 in the Washington, DC, area. Speakers already on tap include:
* Reed Hundt (former FCC Chairman)
* Jonathan Schwartz (EVP of Software, Sun Microsystems)
* Joichi Ito (CEO, Neoteny Co. Ltd., Japan)
* Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect, Macromedia)
* Bruce Mehlman (Asst. Secretary of Commerce for Tech Policy)
* Craig Donato (CEO, Grand Central Networks)
* Clay Shirky (author and consultant)
March 26, 2003
How to watch Iraqi TV on the Web
I had missed the mention in Paul Boutin's blog yesterday about his new story in Slate:
The Saddam Show
How to watch Iraqi TV on the Web.
What the US media won't show us
From The Memory Hole: This Is Gulf War 2. What the US media won't show us: Unforgiving images of civilians, POWs, and soldiers on both sides.
Warning, disturbing and graphic -- but realistic -- images. If I were director of photography for a news site, I wouldn't run some of these. That's why the Internet is vital as an alternative source of news and information. Thanks to Sheila for the pointer.
To be fair, some of these kinds of images are now seeping into the mainstream media. See, for example, the latest photo essay up at the NY Times -- click on More Photos | Killed in Battle. (I wish there were a way to link to these essays, but a direct link gives you a javascript error.) And see the images in Digital Journalism During Wartime, such as the Washington Post's War in Iraq page. Here are two of the stirring images from that page, taken by Aamir Qureshi/ATP:
 |
 |
The Medium Is the Message
In the NY Times: The Medium Is the Message, an analysis of the Bush administration's apparent miscalculation in leaving Iraqi TV on the air.
Firing 'at anything that moves'
Mercury News: Anti-war activists target CNN's San Francisco office.
One can agree or disagree with the protestors, but you have to wonder why we aren't seeing more broadcast news coverage of the fighting that's taking place.
This morning's San Jose Merc carried this instructive if chilling story from a reporter on the scene:
Intense Urban Combat Takes Toll on Civilians By Patrick Peterson Mercury NewsAN-NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city, opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians.
Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally, a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.
It was impossible to know which casualties were civilians and which had been members of Iraqi loyalist militias. The militias have ambushed convoys for days as Marines tried to cross the Euphrates River on a rapid march north to Al-Kut, where they are expected to engage elements of Iraq's Republican Guard.
Signs of battle were everywhere. Burned-out shells of Russian-made tanks lay along the road. Other tanks facing a bridge had been destroyed by U.S. aircraft.
Official versions of the battles were unavailable. U.S. casualties appeared light, but it was likely that many civilians had been killed. U.S. soldiers searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets.
The shooting came as U.S. forces, targeted in recent days by Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, became increasingly aggressive in dealing with resistance. Marines were told a tracked amphibious vehicle had been ambushed by a group waving a white flag, and the plan for moving the 3rd Platoon of the 4th Amphibious Assault Battalion of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was aggressive, calling for ``suppressive fire'' throughout the area to keep insurgents at bay.
It was early in the morning, and each of the platoon's dozen 27-ton so-called amtrac vehicles carried 18 infantrymen. The vehicles formed a herringbone pattern along the street, and the Marines opened fire as they advanced.
``I started feeling comfortable, like I knew what I was doing,'' said Cpl. David Barringer, 25, a reservist who is a firefighter from Gulfport, Miss.
``I never really felt scared,'' he said, saying he had shot one militia fighter and maybe three. ``Everything we were taught, it all comes back to you.''
Up until this week, I think the strongest arguments against the Iraq war were strategic arguments -- that this war will be counterproductive, that it will incite more terrorist strikes and stir up more anti-American hatred in the rest of the world. That argument, no matter how compelling, was never likely to be embraced by a majority of Americans, who still yield judgment on foreign matters to the president. "He must know what he's doing," we collectively say.
But this week the second argument against the war has kicked in full-throttle: that this war is morally wrong. (The Catholic Church, for example, takes this position, because it is not a war of self-defense.) Now, as we're beginning to get reports of not just missiles that fall into civilian neighborhoods but U.S. soldiers firing indiscriminately at anything that moves, it's a chilling reminder that the nature of the fighting itself has become immoral.
Certainly, almost every nation on earth now embraces this view. We'll see how long it takes for the majority of Ameircans to do so.
Blogging efforts in Malaysia
A Malaysian blogger spotted my posting yesterday about Blogging, journalism and standards of fairness.
Businessman/consultant and Malaysian Business columnist Jeff Ooi writes:
I would like to alert you that there's a small group of bloggers who are making attempts to move this agenda forward in Malaysia, where mainstream media are miffed [muffled] by excessive "self-regulation". The Star of Malaysia has this cover story on its IT pullout. Oon Yeoh, who blogs for online media www.malaysiakini.com, and this writer are mentioned in this story.
The story, in English, is headlined, Blogging: New form of journalism, and cites bloggers Dan Gillmor, Nick Denton and Rebecca Blood, among others. Great to see weblogs taking root in places like Malaysia where there's less of a robust tradition of press freedoms.
New features from Technorati
Got this email announcement last night from Dave Sifry of Technorati fame (and co-founder of Sputnik):
In my minuscule amounts of spare time, I've been implementing a new set of features to Technorati, which I wanted to share with you. Last week I put up Technorati's Current Events.Today, I'm releasing two new engines that take advantage of the incredible power of the collective wisdom, and attempt to peer into the emergent behaviors blossoming in the blogging world.
The first engine is called Technorati's Breaking News.
Breaking News shows articles from about 4,000 "professional" news outlets that have been published in the last 12 hours, and that bloggers are talking about. No older news is allowed on the list, so the news stays fresh, and you get to see the most fresh, interesting news and columns in chronological order from the most authoritative news sources, but you also get to see at a glance what the pundits in the blogging world are saying about that news, and you get to follow along in the conversation, as it happens.
The second engine is called Technorati's Hot Links.
Hot Links is like Daypop on crack. :-) The top links that bloggers are talking about, in all categories, in the past 12 hours, ordered chronologically. By ranking things chronologically, you get to see the latest interesting links and sites right as the conversation about them is going on.
I'm still working out the kinks and bugs in the system, so don't be surprised if things sometimes look a little funky. If that happens, I apologize in advance. I'm also putting together the RSS feeds that will accompany the currently web-only pages.
These strike me as two more incredibly useful contributions to the media blogosphere. Dave's just an amazing fellow. Since he asks for feedback, here's a smidgen:
- Wish that Technorati gave one control over the languages in links (as Google does), since postings in Arabic or Hungarian are of little use or interest to me.
- A pet peeve: I hate the fact that I can't enlarge the fixed-size text, undoubtedly due to a flaw (deliberate or not) in the CSS.
- Wish there were a way to group related news items in Breaking News into categories (war-related items, for example), as Google News seems to find an automated way to do.
But given that this is a spare-time labor of love, can't complain at all. Great stuff. Here's Doc on the subject.
David Sifry said:
JD,
Thanks for the review and the constructive criticism. I am not an HTML designer, so my CSS expertise is jut above knuckle-scraping on the evolutionary ladder. If you or anyone else can fix my CSS file, I will gladly update the site so that it fixes the font scaling problem. TIA!
I've been thinking about the languages thing and the grouping thing for some time. Ah, to have a few more hours in a day.
Dave
Raw war footage on Reuters.com
Reuters has begun streaming video from the front lines in Iraq. Called Reuters Raw Video: Conflict in Iraq, it offers powerful images, more so than the filtered version on the cable networks.
What's more, unlike at CNN.com and ABCnews.com, it's free. You can find it at the top left of the front page (requires Flash).
Comcast tying Internet service to cable TV
From the It Ought to Be Against the Law Dept. comes this word from the Washington Post: Comcast is informing its customers that their monthly fee for Internet service will escalate unless they sign up for cable TV as well.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Aaron Brown: out of his depth?
CNN's Aaron Brown is "too studied, too enigmatic, and frankly, too weird, to be anchor material," writes media columnist Mark Jurkowitz in the Boston Globe. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Georgette said:
Rather than believing in what others say, why not give "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" a chance. Watch the program weeknights 10-11PM ET on CNN. Aaron Brown happens to be a great news anchor.
With over 250 members and still rising fast, The NewsNighters Club was formed for the best news anchor and man in general, Mr. Aaron Brown of CNN's NewsNight With Aaron Brown. It's the 1st ever online club for him. And the best. Aaron appreciates that we have the club in his honor.
GO TO THE NEWSNIGHTERS
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aaronbrown/
War articles in API, OJR
I'm going to have to find a new editing tool to create entries in before I post to Movable Type, which has lost a few of my postings over the past week, including this one ...
Some new articles on the war in Iraq from the American Press Institute:
As battles began, creativity ruled at newspapers
By Phil Nesbitt
Commentary: Are the media afraid of 'embedded' journalists?
By Phil Nesbitt
The war: The new reality TV
By MJ Bear
Expand your reporting with the Internet
By Jennifer LaFleur
From the Heartland with Charles Apple
And in OJR:
Deborah on the war coverage
Deborah has some ongoing kick-ass observations about media coverage of the war.
War a 'defining moment' for Net news
Steve Outing in Editor & Publisher: War: A Defining Moment for Net News. Online Media Climbs Evolutionary Ladder. Excerpt:
"This war may well become known as an 'Internet war,' in the same way that World War II was a 'radio war' and Vietnam a 'television war,'" says Dean Wright, the recently appointed editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com, the news organization that's currently drawing the largest Web audience. "There's no question that online news is fully a part of the mainstream media and that millions of people turn to Internet news sites during breaking news events."
Dear Raed, 'you're killing my server'
Who put those fake photos on the Dear Raed weblog out of Baghdad yesterday? His hosting service, Wired News reports.
ISP steps over the line, censors news site
Here's an outrage: Newssite shut down over war photos. Editor of Yellow Times decries 'censorship' of gruesome images. Excerpt:
The row began Sunday, when a Yellow Times editor used his home computer to save frames from the Al-Jazeera network footage of captured American POWs.Fifteen minutes after the Al-Jazeera broadcast, the shots were posted on the Yellow Times site. According to Yellow Times, the shots of the dead American soldiers chosen by the site did not show enough to allow their identities to be discerned. The site also said it included headshots of the live POWs. ...
The site bears the name Yellow Times to denounce what the editors cite as prevalent major media "yellow journalism," especially "sensationalistic" and "biased" coverage of war.
According to the editor, Vortech Hosting,Yellow Times' hosting service, began receiving complaints about the photos. Vortech then suspended the Yellow Times account for "inappropriate graphic content"
Vortech sent the following e-mail to YT [Yellow Times] notifying it of the shut down: "As 'NO' TV station in the U.S. is allowing any dead U.S. solders or POWs to be displayed and we will not ether [sic]. We understand free press and all but we don't want someone's family member to see them on some site. It is disrespectful, tacky & disgusting. No mother, brother, sister, wife or child should see their love one plastered all over the Net wounded or dead."
[Editor] Marquardt explained to WND [World Net Daily] his decision to run the photos: "We believe that in corporate media, especially in the U.S., there is a romanticized view of war" he said. Because major media don't show graphic images, he argues, people forget what real war looks like and become desensitized.
Here is a clear example of where an ISP has stepped over the line to censor material clearly protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that constitutionally protected speech on the Internet enjoys a greater degree of protection than that afforded broadcast media.
I don't know whether the answer is a boycott of the hosting service (Vortech is located in Orlando), a lawsuit against them, or Congressional action (a longshot even in a time of peace). But this is a dangerous precedent.
J-Log's kpaul emailed me: "Haven't had a chance to blog it yet as I'm at work, but I think it's pretty big news. Can't find any US sources talking about it ... yet."
So far Google News turns up only this commentary(in English) by an editor of Yellow News on ArabNews.com, which aptly notes: "Somebody doesnít like hearing the truth."
K. Paul notes that Matt Drudge has been running similar photos of the POWs and dead U.S. soldiers, presumably in an effort to whip up jingoistic fury at the Iraqis. But Drudge has had no problem with his ISP for running the photos.
(Can't find a direct link to the photos on Drudge's piece-of-crap site.)
This isn't the first time YellowTimes.org has been shut down. As editor Firas Al-Atraqchi (a Muslim Canadian journalist living on the Pacific Coast) wrote last month:
Websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict U.S. foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate."
On the online-news list, Eric Meyer points out the the ISP's terms of service contains contractual language forbiding the posting of "adult material," which the service provider's policies had previously defined to include "photos or videos showing graphic violence or death." The last time I looked, contract law doesn't trump the First Amendment.
I've emailed Firas and am awaiting a response.
Later: K. Paul found the Google cache of some photos on Drudge's site.
Staci said:
Doesn't the use of someone else's material bother you all? Why is it ok to take images someone else acquires and pays to distribute and take them for your own use however noble?
Also, what makes that site any more important than the other sites using the same service? How ok would it be if your ISP allowed one site's hyped-up traffic -- whether from a hack or extremely heavy traffic -- to damage the quality of your service? If the TOS doesn't fit your plans don't agree to it or move. I don't like what the ISP did but I think it was their right to do it. The editor has a right to publish but given the ability to use other providers I don't think the First Amendment trumps the site's rights.
BTW, technically speaking only government bodies can censor.
JD Lasica said:
>Doesn't the use of someone else's material bother you all? Why is it ok to take images someone else acquires and pays to distribute and take them for your own use however noble?
Staci, this *clearly* falls within fair use. News organizations such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Sacramento Bee and other mainstream publications do this hundreds of times a year, capturing video stills of a newsworthy event from CNN or a local news channel and reprinting it in their publications without permission. So that's a non-issue.
Also, the ISP didn't claim that heavy traffic to Yellow Times had anything to do with pulling the plug, or impinging on others' service. It simply didn't like the nature of the war content the news site posted.
This is the second time in two months this independent news site has had the plug pulled by a gutless ISP. I think that's cause for concern. If you don't, you're free not to.
Is it censorship? Over the past decade we've seen a steady increase in private-party censorship, or the privatizing of censorship, as in the use of filters in business and in libraries. They don't call it "censorware" for nothin'.
kpaul said:
[This is the second time in two months this independent news site has had the plug pulled by a gutless ISP. I think that's cause for concern. If you don't, you're free not to.]
Not to mention all the hack attacks of late, most likely by all sides of the conflict...
Remember Johnny Walker?
Speaking of prisoners of war and the Geneva Convention, check out Rense.com.
March 25, 2003
The Discovery Times mystery channel
I tried tuning into the new Discovery/New York Times Channel, which debuted tonight, to great fanfare in the New York Times (a special pullout section).
Comcast, which serves the SF East Bay, has apparently changed channel 285 from Discovery Civilization (if it still exists) to Discovery Times.
All you have is do is call an 800 number to order it -- for an additional charge.
Why in the world would I order something I've never seen? I doubt that more than a dozen out of a million households in the Bay Area will do so.
times said:
They are the NY Times. they are gods of publishing and they will become gods of tv. AOL should fear them. they'll end up with 100 million homes.
War blogs: Facts are in, spin is out
For those who missed the final segment of today's NY Times roundup of press coverage of the war, Amy Harmon focused on weblogs (and Salon): Weblogs: Facts Are in, Spin Is Out (scroll down).
My only disagreement would be with her conclusion:
Until now, Weblogs, or blogs, have mostly been platforms for their owners to spout their opinions on any given subject.But media experts say the rapid evolution of the form over the last week underscores a popular thirst for information that at least appears unfiltered by the anchors and editors of the traditional media. Bloggers are casting a wide net for information, drawing from radio, television, newspapers and even other bloggers from around the world.
The emphasis may have shifted in the past week, but the blog format has been supporting non-opinionated news summaries for years.
Dissent takes another hit
I'm reprinting this in toto from Sheila's Subterranean Homepage News:
Column cancelled: Brent Flynn of the Lewisville (Texas) Leader wrote an impassioned column on behalf of dissent, and it became his last. Here's the end of Who are the real, useful idiots? and Flynn's postscript:... If it sounds like I take these attacks personally, that's because I do. I went to my first anti-war protest last month (actually it was my first time at any kind of protest). When I was walking through the streets of downtown Dallas with thousands (and there were thousands) of fellow Dallasites, Texans, Americans, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. And no amount of brow-beating and comparisons to Lenin's unwitting dupes will change that.
No, the protesters aren't unpatriotic, un-American or useful idiots, but people who criticize them for practicing democracy in its purest form have a few things to learn about citizenship in a democratic republic. It is not merely your right to dissent when you disagree with your government's policies, IT IS YOUR CIVIC OBLIGATION.
Before the Bush hawks start exporting democracy to the Middle East through the use of military force, maybe we should make sure we've got it right in America.
--
Columnist's note: This was my last column to appear in the Star Community Newspaper cluster. It is ironic that after writing a forceful essay in support of the first amendment, my column was cancelled. I was told that because I had attended an anti-war rally, I had violated the newspaper's ethics policy that prohibits members of the editorial staff from participating in any political activity other than voting. I was also told that my objectivity as a reporter would be called into question. However, my opposition to an invasion of Iraq was well documented in previous columns before I revealed that I had participated in the protest. But instead of taking me off of my beat or terminating my employment as a staff reporter, my opinion column was cancelled-- the aspect of my job that was enhanced by my participation in the rally. In my opinion, a powerful liberal voice was unwelcome in the conservative Republican county served by my newspaper. The fact that the column was cancelled just days before the start of the US invasion of Iraq raises serious questions about the motives for the cancellation.This and more of Flynn's columns are at brentflynn.com.
As the war goes on, and dissent becomes more widespread, it will present a test of our fundamental constiitutional rights. Real patriotism lies in clinging to those values and precepts, not in trying to eliminate dissent out of fear and cowardice.
Blogging, journalism and standards of fairness
I'm quoted in an article, Blogging: the new journalism?, that went up today in DotJournalism.co.uk, the British equivalent of the Online Journalism Review. It's instructive, if only for how resistant traditional journalists remain to the blogging phenomenon.
The head of BBCNews.com surprisingly proves himself to be an old-schooler by claiming, "Dissemination of information is great, but how much of it is trustworthy? They (Blogs) are an interesting phenomenon, but I don't think they will be as talked about in a year's time."
Lloyd Shepherd, chief producer for Guardian Unlimited, says that both weblogs and the Drudge Report do not qualify as journalism.
And the author of the article wrongly maintains: "If journalism is by definition the reporting of news in a fair, balanced and accurate way, then blogging is not journalism."
Recently I wrote that weblogs do indeed sometimes serve as journalism, and that we need to move beyond that simplistic debate to discuss how to incorporate the advantages of blogging into mainstream media.
Because I'm often asked by reporters and students for quotes on the subject of blogging, journalism and new media, I'll include the entirety of my exchange with DotJournalism correspondent Jody Raynsford here:
To what extent do people now rely on blogging for breaking news stories or unmediated coverage of events? Do you think this differs depending on where you are based, e.g. US, UK, Iran?
Blogging wonít replace traditional news reports, but it will supplement and enhance them. Readers are flocking to online news sites by the millions for the latest news about the war in Iraq. But the story doesnít end there. They are also teeming to weblogs for skeptical analysis, critical commentary, alternative perspectives rarely seen in mainstream media, the views of foreigners, and the occasional first-person account. A handful of reporters in the Gulf region are maintaining weblogs to provide fuller, more personal and colorful reporting of what they are witnessing first-hand.
Certainly, locale plays an important role. But weblogs help to break down those traditional national, regional and institutional barriers. More than 10,000 Iranians and Persian-speaking people now maintain weblogs, a number that is increasing by 200 every day. I wrote about them here.
How can bloggers overcome the arguments regarding journalistic standards of fairness, balance and most importantly accuracy? When does breaking stories first become more important than verifying the truth of these stories before publication on the web?
Journalists arenít the only ones who know how to speak the truth. Bloggers are increasingly engaging in random acts of journalism whenever they report on events they witness first-hand or when they offer analysis, background or commentary to a newsworthy topic. Those who publish rumor and present it as fact will be burned fairly quickly. Individuals build up brands and track records just as media organizations do. Not all bloggers go the extra mile, but many are now taking the extra step of trying to verify a report by sending an email, picking up the phone or checking with a hoax site before publishing a report that may or may not be true.
For those who donít bother to check their facts, reputation filters and circles of trust in the blogosphere help weed out the nonsense. We all need to do a better job of fine-tuning our bull meters. But as journalist-blogger Ken Layne once said of the blogging masses, ìWe can fact-check your ass.î
What do you think the legal implications may be, in terms of libel and slander, if blogging takes off as a serious news source? For example, what if the allegations made couldn't then be substantiated?
Iím hopeful that many more news organizations hop on board the blog bandwagon. Libel and slander laws should apply in cyberspace just as they do in print and broadcast. Some bloggers will learn the hard way that the Internet is no shield to scurrilous accusations. I just donít happen to frequent any weblogs that play that game.
One of the things you have said about blogging is how much you enjoy the
interactivity with readers while writing an article. Just being the devil's
advocate but is the beauty of journalism not based on the information you
provide, but on the writer's individual take on the facts or situation? By
heavily involving the readers are you not denying them the opportunity of
your individual and fresh take on a subject?
Not at all. Interactivity doesnít take away anything from the writer, it just adds to the richness of the journalism process. A writer, if he or she is to be relevant in cyberspace, canít simply file a story and be done with it forever. Readers want to be involved in a dialogue about the writerís findings. They want to probe, question, challenge conclusions, toss out compliments, offer suggestions for missed avenues of exploration. Iíve heard from hundreds of writers who say the interaction with readers is the most rewarding part of their jobs. That interaction becomes even richer in the blogosphere.
What do you see as the future for weblogs, particularly those set up by the
print media with an online presence?
I believe the opportunities are enormous. The vast majority of media companies have missed the boat so far, and readers are turning to expert amateurs, people with a deep knowledge about a niche subject, and others with a flair for writing or interesting stories to tell ñ hundreds of thousands of bloggers who have become part of the media ecosystem. If the news media choose to ignore it, theyíll continue to lose a chance to connect with readers on an intimate daily basis. And theyíll become a bit less relevant with each passing day.