The list of First Amendment-trampling rules for Guantanamo reporters makes for dispiriting reading in today's New York Times (7/21/10)–e.g., "If information the government deems protected is inadvertently disclosed, the Pentagon can order reporters not to reveal it." But perhaps the most discouraging part of Jeremy Peters' article is the list of reporters who fell afoul of a rule requiring them to refrain from publishing "secrets" that have already been widely reported: "Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest and Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail in Toronto." What do three [...]
Jul
21
2010
Why Is the Erosion of the U.S. Constitution Mostly of Interest to Canadians?
By 5 Comments
Jun
14
2010
It's Apple's Party, and We're Just the Guests There
By 13 Comments
Media Detector, a New York Times blog, has a post today (6/14/10) about a comic book adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses that Apple is insisting be bowdlerized before it can be turned into an app for the iPad–replacing an image of a bare-breasted "milk lady" with a close-up of her face. While calling Apple's decision "disappointing," artist Robert Berry told Media Detector he did not feel "remotely censored by Apple." "It's their rules," he said. "Weâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢re coming to their dinner party at their house." When you watch TV on your Sony television, you're not attending a dinner party at Sony's [...]
Jun
01
2010
WashPost Wants More (Anti) Labor Coverage
By 10 Comments
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized protests in Maryland at the homes of several bank executives, along with follow-up rallies in Washington, D.C., at bank branches and offices. The events went largelyuncovered by the Washington Post, whichled Post ombud Andrew Alexander(5/29/10) to wonder why the paper missed a major labor story that was covered by Mother Jones (5/16/10) andthe Nation (5/20/10), among others. The story has been getting a lot of attention from right-wing activists, though, whoarearguing that aprotest outside a banker's homeis anoutrageous infringement on someone's private life. A more important point is whether the Post is paying [...]
Apr
27
2010
Can Intent to Commit Journalism Turn a Good Samaritan Into a Felon?
By 15 Comments
I'm having trouble getting my mind around the legal case against Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, who purchased an iPhone prototype that was apparently mislaid in a bar, published photographs of it on the Gawker-affiliated blog, and then returned it to Apple when the company asked for its property back. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose you're out walking and a neighbor says to you: "Look at this cool dog I found. I think I'm going to keep him." You think you know who actually owns the dog–let's call him Steve–and so you offer the neighbor some money to give it to [...]
Mar
31
2010
Beck: No to Censoring Foes, Yes to Violent Death
By 17 Comments
Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor (3/25/10) to discuss being named by Joy Behar as one of the media figures the View panelist (3/22/10) says are inspiring hate among Tea Party activists ("There is a difference between free speech and hate speech, and we've been listening to it from Beck and Limbaugh now. And these people are all juiced up by these two. That's what's happening"), Glenn Beck attempted to demonstrate his tolerance for his political foes in the following exchange: BECK: Have you or I ever said Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to make a movie? O'REILLY: No. BECK: Michael [...]
Jan
22
2010
Newspeak 2010
By 11 Comments
The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves. –Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (1/21/10), granting corporations the power to spend untold billions to do our thinking for us
Aug
25
2009
The Downside to Murdoch's Plan to Control Online News
By 4 Comments
The problem with Rupert Murdoch's proposal to create an online news consortium, in which major publishers would all band together to put their news content behind pay walls (L.A. Times, 8/21/09), is that it's not illegal to discuss news events online. And you don't want to make it illegal to discuss news events online. And yet, absent a law forbidding such discussions, there's nothing to stop someone from buying subscriptions to the various pay news sites and starting a website (like this one, but more so) in which they write about what they've learned from them–thus offering for free what [...]
Jun
30
2009
Someone (Who Could Have Been a Justice) Is Wrong on the Internet
By 4 Comments
Richard Posner is the sort of judge who gets mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee because of his supposed brilliance. But, then, he's also the person who wrote this: Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news [...]
Jun
26
2009
Why I Couldn't Say What Dan Froomkin Said Reporters Should Do
By 3 Comments
I wrote a short item on Dan Froomkin's firing for FAIR's radio show CounterSpin today: One of the bright spots at the Washington Post media enterprise was Dan Froomkin's column, "White House Watch," for WashingtonPost.com. It often struck us that Froomkin had a whole different attitude–skeptical of those in power, and critical of their journalistic enablers–than most of his colleagues at the Post Co. So it was perhaps not too surprising to hear that Froomkin, one of the Post's most popular online writers, had been fired–not long after his column was placed under the authority of editorial page editor Fred [...]
Apr
15
2009
If Google Is Handing Out Free Money, Newspapers Would Like Some
By 3 Comments
Maureen Dowd today (New York Times, 4/15/09) writes about the newspaper industry's complaints about Google: Robert Thomson, the top editor of the Wall Street Journal, denounced websites like Google as "tapeworms." His boss, Rupert Murdoch, said that big newspapers do not have to let Google "steal our copyrights." The AP has threatened to take legal action against Google and others that use the work of news organizations without obtaining permission and sharing a "fair" portion of revenue. But what's fair will be hard to prove. First of all, Google is not stealing anyone's copyrights; quoting the headline and a small [...]
Mar
27
2009
'Freedom' Means Using the Name They Tell You To
By 1 Comment
For the New York Post (3/27/09), it's "Free Dumb Tower." For the same day's New York Daily News, it means "No More Freedom." They're talking about 1 World Trade Center, which is what the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced it was calling the skyscraper it's building on the site of the old World Trade Center destroyed on September 11–rather than Freedom Tower, as it had been previously referred to. And the tabloids, naturally, are outraged. "Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero," declared the Post. "Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath [...]
