I write about issues going on in transition from traditional print media to on-line digital media in my posting Old media and digital media – part 1. This post is a continuation to it. The situation does not look too good for traditional media. Traditional media has been able to solve it’s challenges with aggregation or pay-wall. The future seems to be quite bad for traditional print media that can’t adapt to changed situation.
Despite two decades of trying, no one has found a way to make traditional news-gathering sufficiently profitable to assure its future survival. Only about a third of Americans under 35 look at a newspaper even once a week, and the percentage declines every year. A large portion of today’s readers of the few remaining good newspapers are much closer to the grave than to high school. Today’s young people skitter around the Internet. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages the great newspapers provided.
What is the future of media? There is an interesting article on future of media written in Finnish on this: Median tulevaisuus ja 13 trendiä – mitä media on vuonna 2030? It shows 13 trends that I have here translated to English, re-arranged, added my comments and links to more information to them. In 2030, the media will look very different than today.
The new gerations no longer want to pay for the media: Since the same information, benefits, entertainment provided free of charge, they are not prepared to pay. Older generations support the traditional media for some time, but they are smaller each year. Media consumption continues to rapidly change, and advertisers will follow suit digital and mobile channels, which will affect the media sales because advertisers no longer need the intermediary role of the media companies to communicate with their customers.
This does not look good for media companies, but situation even worse than that: When media personnel, production and distribution costs are rising every year and so the order than the ad revenue will be reduced year by year, deprivation twist to push media companies to the rest of the best authors, owners become impatient and expected returns are reduced. Companies are moving their marketing investment priorities for the purchased media.Corporate communications professionals continues to grow and the number of suppliers will continue to fall.
Technological developments enhance the above trends: Technology eliminates the barriers to entry to the traditional media sector and at the same time create new sectors. Technological media competition winner takes all because new scalable technology to create competitive advantages. Very many news writing tasks can be automated with near real-time and reliable enough translation technology The media world is undergoing a wholesale shift from manual processes to automated systems that strip out waste and inefficiency (The Future of Programmatic: Automation + Creativity + Scale).
Strong continuous technological change and automation mean that media consumption will continue to change for the next decade at least as strong as the previous ten years, whether we like it or not. Critical journalism makes searching for new alternative ways to do their work and to fund its work.
Media’s direction is sure to bring, and an ever increasing rate - in an increasingly digital, more mobile, more and more tailor-made … The newspapers will be read mostly on mobile devices. Information is obtained much earlier, in an increasingly digital and real-time. A lot has changed now already.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
the grugq:
Attempted coup’s failure to block internet in Turkey allowed President Erdogan and civilians to organize resistance through FaceTime, Periscope, Facebook Live
Cyberpower Crushes Coup
Rewriting the rulebook on coups, time to add cyberpower
https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cyberpower-crushes-coup-b247f3cca780#.bpgtn49ij
Mere hours after the putsch in Turkey has failed, it is still too early to understand exactly what went on. Given those constraints, I still want to discuss something which has altered “the game” so much that the existing guidebook needs to be significantly revised.
The Good Coup Guide
A coup is basically a sucker punch. The trick is to end the fight before it even begins.
Essentially, the existing leaders need to be removed from positions of power and their ability to coordinate and organise a resistance must be blocked. This is easier when there are only a few means of mass communication (e.g the TV station, or the radio station.)
eys To A Successful Putsch
The basic process is something like the following, preferably all at the same time:
Detain the existing leadership (failing that, act when they are unable to mount an effective defence, e.g. outside the country)
Seize the mass communication channels, such as TV and radio stations (to prevent any elements of the leadership coordinating an effective defense)
Restrict freedom of assembly, speech, and movement, to hinder the ability of the opposition to mount an effective defense
Finally, keep troops on the street to maintain “order” while everyone gets used to having a new ruling class
Everything has to be done quickly to minimize the period of vulnerability — from when the coup begins until it has achieved mission success (the majority of people accept them as the new rulers.)
Mobile Messengers, What Can’t They Do?
The coup in Turkey was organized and coordinated using an end to end encrypted messenger (WhatsApp), and the call to defence was sent out via an end to end encrypted messenger (FaceTime). The future is amazing.
Classic Coup Opening Move
The putsch takes over the main TV station (TRT) has the news reader read a statement announcing the coup
This is very standard stuff. Take over the means of mass communication and keep the civilians out of the way so they can’t interfere.
Don’t Forget The Cyber
But, this is the era of cyberpower. Simply taking over the TV stations is not enough. The Internet is a more powerful means of communication than TV, and it is more resilient — especially with a sophisticated population.
The failure to block the Internet meant that the coup was battling a leadership that still had a very powerful capability: cyberpower. The ability to push out information that allowed them to coordinate a defence. In addition, both Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live allowed civilians to share their experiences, disseminate information, and build moral support for direct action.
It is an Intelligence service axiom that intelligence is of no value if not disseminated. Facebook Live, Twitter, and Periscope, provide a means of real time raw intelligence collection and dissemination. The civilian population is able to stay informed and make individual decisions, that collectively, can alter the course of events.
Erdogan left his holiday hotel and boarded a jet
without access to the TV stations (he was on a plane, after all) he turned to cyberpower as a means to deliver his message and organise a resistance.
Erdogan’s call to the people to take to the streets and protect democracy and their country was successful. He was able to rally support using FaceTime (video calling) to TV stations, all from his jet above Turkey.
His calls where shown live on at least two channels, and later the mosques took up the call and were used to help organize resistance.
Cyberpower is structural
Today, the TV and radio are not the only means available to get information to people. The Turkish putsch took over some TV stations and did the standard coup style announcement: “we’re doing this for you, blah blah blah.” But they failed to eliminate the Internet, and any blocking that they were able to do was ineffective.
FaceTime Is A Cyberweapon
The Turkish people turned out in droves, watching what was happening over Twitter and Facebook and then flooding the streets to stop the tanks.
The putsch’s “sucker punch” had failed — they failed to neutralize the leadership (Erdogan was alive and free), and they failed to undermine his ability to organise a resistance.
A coup succeeds when people believe it has succeeded.
Lessons Learned
What should we learn about taking over a country with a coup in the modern age? Don’t ignore the cyber. Here are a few key things to consider which can effectively neutralize cyberweapons during a putsch:
Cut power to the city
Neutralize the leadership immediately
Capture the: telephone companies; the ISPs, and all the TV stations
Have a political party for support
Tomi Engdahl says:
Victoria Craw / NEWS.com.au:
Researcher: to avoid creating copycats, media outlets should treat terror attacks like suicides, scaling back coverage
Expert calls for terror attacks to be treated same way as suicide when it comes to media coverage
http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/expert-calls-for-terror-attacks-to-be-treated-same-way-as-suicide-when-it-comes-to-media-coverage/news-story/04d99ebfd2092d9be952928a92995360
MEDIA should treat terrorist attacks the same way as suicide when it comes to reporting in order to reduce the threat of copycat attempts, a leading expert has warned.
University of Western Australia professor Michael Jetter has previously found “media attention does indeed predict future terrorist activities”. He’s now working on an in-depth analysis of Islamist-inspired attacks and has called for an open discussion on terror and reporting in light of a wave of violence that has blighted Europe.
“The purpose of not reporting suicides fully is to not encourage copycats,” he said, having recently returned from Germany which has suffered five violent incidents in eight days.
“What German newspapers are doing is they’re blowing it up so much that everybody who is seeking attention is really given the signal that, ‘I will be famous.’ That is very likely a reason why you see so many more of those things. It’s a scary development and I do think they need to think about how they cover things.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google says links in mobile search results will soon take you to AMP version of page, if available, not the traditional HTML page — Google’s “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” more commonly known as AMP, are meant to be a reboot of the mobile web.
Google’s Instant Articles competitor is about to take over mobile search
The web is fragmenting again
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/2/12349524/google-amp-instant-articles-search-results-mobile-web-fragmentation
Google’s “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” more commonly known as AMP, are meant to be a reboot of the mobile web. Designed to fix mobile webpages that suck because they’re too slow, they have been available in a specialized carousel at the top of search results since February. When you click on an AMP link, you get a stripped-down, faster version of the article you wanted — often delivered directly from Google’s own caching servers.
Now, Google has announced that it plans to expand the delivery of AMP links beyond that carousel to all mobile search results. So when you search for a story and an article from an AMP publisher shows up in search results, clicking on that blue link will take you to the AMP version of the story instead of the traditional website.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HardwareX Is A Scientific Journal For Open Hardware
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/02/hardwarex-is-a-scientific-journal-for-open-hardware/
Disruption is a basic tenet of the Open Hardware movement. How can my innovative use of technology disrupt your dinosaur of an establishment to make something better? Whether it’s an open-source project chipping away at a monopoly or a commercial start-up upsetting an industry with a precarious business model based on past realities, we’ve become used to upstarts taking the limelight.
A famously closed monopoly is the world of academic journals. A long-established industry with a very lucrative business model hatched in the days when its product was exclusively paper-based, this industry has come under some pressure in recent years from the unfettered publishing potential of the Internet, demands for open access to public-funded research, and the increasing influence of the open-source world in science.
Elsevier, one of the larger academic publishers, has responded to this last facet with HardwareX, a publication which describes itself as “an open access journal established to promote free and open source designing, building and customizing of scientific infrastructure“. In short: a lot of hardware built for scientific research is now being created under open-source models, and this is their response.
So have the publishing dinosaurs got it right, and is this journal an exciting new opportunity for all concerned? We think it has that potential, and the results won’t be confined to laboratories. Inevitably the world of hackers and makers will benefit from open-source work coming from scientists, and vice versa.
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/hardwarex/
HardwareX journal for open source scientific hardware
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2016/07/25/hardwarex-journal-for-open-source-scientific-hardware/
https://opensource.com/life/16/7/hardwarex-open-access-journal
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Facebook changes News Feed to automatically detect “clickbait” headlines, rank stories lower if they “withhold or distort information” — Facebook says it plans to marginalize what it considers to be “clickbait” news stories from publishers in its news feed …
Shocker! Facebook Changes Its Algorithm to Avoid ‘Clickbait’
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/technology/facebook-moves-to-push-clickbait-lower-in-the-news-feed.html?_r=0
Facebook says it plans to marginalize what it considers to be “clickbait” news stories from publishers in its news feed, in another step to keep its 1.71 billion members regularly coming back to its social network.
In a change to its news feed algorithm on Thursday, Facebook said certain types of headlines would be classified as clickbait, those that “withhold or distort information.” Those stories will then appear less frequently in users’ feeds, the company said.
Facebook has been working to maintain the integrity of the news feed to keep users happy and spending as much time on Facebook as possible. The Silicon Valley company constantly tweaks its algorithms
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:
International Olympic Committee bans news agencies from using GIFs, Vines, and other short video formats in their reporting
The internet will be a barren, GIF-less void for the Olympics
http://mashable.com/2016/08/04/no-gifs-during-the-olympics/#qZXu2Dol4mqB
It only took McKayla Maroney a few seconds to generate one of the most memorable Olympic highlights of all time.
Her vault makes for one beautiful GIF. But don’t expect to see many of those during the Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee has issued its rules for news agencies covering the upcoming Summer games, and they’re calling out all GIF makers.
The rules state that “Olympic Material must not be broadcast on interactive services” because doing so could “allow the viewer to make a viewing choice within a channel and thereby view Olympic Material at times and programs other than when broadcast as part of a News Program…”
“Additionally, the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited,” the rules state.
The creation and distribution of GIFs of major events that include media rights owners has become a bigger issue recently, particularly due to the popularity of the format on social media.
That move drew plenty of criticism for what some viewed as an unnecessarily broad application of copyright.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook starts testing MSQRD selfie filters in Canada and Brazil, opening to your camera instead of a status update prompt on top of your feed — Snapchat opens to the camera by default to spur content creation, and now Facebook is trying the same starting with an Olympics-themed test in Brazil and Canada.
Facebook tests MSQRD selfie filters and opening your camera atop feed
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/05/facebook-camerafeed/
Snapchat opens to the camera by default to spur content creation, and now Facebook is trying the same starting with an Olympics-themed test in Brazil and Canada. Instead of just the “What are you doing?” text status update prompt, users will see an open camera window as Facebook executes on Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to put “video at the heart of all of our apps.”
The new feature also sports the first official integration of Facebook’s acquisition MSQRD’s animated selfie filters, which are similar to Snapchat’s selfie Lenses. Using MSQRD’s object recognition tech, users can swipe to apply different Olympics face paint like Brazilian flags and “Go Canada!” that match the contours of their face.
“The way that people share has changed a lot” Facebook Product Manager Sachin Monga tells me. “12 years ago, most of what was shared was text”
“If you look at what people are sharing, now it’s mostly photos, and soon it will be mostly videos. ”
Here, Facebook is trying to combat the reported decline in original content sharing. According to figures attained by The Information, original content sharing like status updates, photos, and home-made videos, was down 15% year over year on Facebook as of February.
Opening the News Feed to the camera will encourage Facebook’s 1.1 billion daily users to take and share more photos and videos. And thanks the MSQRD filters, people can jazz up their face so they feel less self-conscious or basic about sharing selfies.
Eventually, Facebook wants to build even more “magical augmented reality” into its camera, Monga says. Facebook already had graphic filters called “Profile frames” and the ability to add drawings, text, and doodles to your photo uploads. You also could save animated selfies from MSQRD and upload them to Facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2016 Rio Olympics
Here’s how to watch, get tech updates and find news about the games in Brazil.
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/5/12390194/2016-rio-olympics
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Washington Post will use robots to write stories about the Rio Olympics
Woodward, Bernstein … and Optimus Prime?
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/5/12383340/washington-post-olympics-software
The Washington Post has a big team of journalists covering the Rio Olympics.
Also covering the games for the paper: Robots.
The Post is using homegrown software to automatically produce hundreds of real-time news reports about the Olympics. Starting tomorrow morning, those items will appear, without human intervention, on the Post’s website, as well as in outside channels like its Twitter account.
The idea is to use artificial intelligence to quickly create simple but useful reports on scores, medal counts and other data-centric news bits — so that the Post’s human journalists can work on more interesting and complex work, says Jeremy Gilbert, who heads up new digital projects for the paper.
“We’re not trying to replace reporters,” he said. “We’re trying to free them up.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Abby Ohlheiser / Washington Post:
International Olympics Committee rules ban the posting of Olympics GIFs, Vines, and other short videos for everyone but broadcast rights holders, NBC in the US
The IOC is cracking down on Olympic GIFs. But how effective can it be?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/05/the-ioc-is-cracking-down-on-olympic-gifs-but-how-effective-can-they-be/
If there’s a viral moment at this year’s games in Rio, the International Olympic Committee wants to make sure it comes only from authorized social media sources. The IOC’s always-strict rules governing the use of moving images from inside the Olympics now include specific prohibitions on unauthorized Vines, live-streams and GIFs.
“The use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited,” say the IOC’s rules for media outlets covering the Games.
A separate document outlining social media rules for all accredited individuals attending or participating in the Games says that the IOC is fine with people posting still images from the Olympic venues (so long as they are “consistent with the Olympic values” and abide by several other behavioral directives), but not so for anything that moves
Why does any of this matter? Well, the rules (particularly those banning the use of short, animated clips from the Games) will restrict the use of one of the best tools out there to appreciate some of the Summer Games’ most popular sports.
The rules discussed above are basically supposed to ensure that no one sees any Olympic moments from sources that don’t hold the rights to show them.
In the U.S., the rights holder is NBC, and it’s going to do as much as it can to try to control the social conversation around the Games this year.
NBC partnered with many of the platforms that might otherwise compete against its coverage, including Snapchat, BuzzFeed, Facebook and Instagram. There will be Facebook Live feeds from the Olympics, but for U.S. viewers, the rules aim to make sure those moments come only from NBC or other authorized accounts.
it is inevitable that they will be memed, GIFed, and remixed beyond the IOC’s control
Tomi Engdahl says:
FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Clear Ads
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-05/ftc-to-crack-down-on-paid-celebrity-posts-that-aren-t-clear-ads
The agency says brands and the social media stars who promote their products need to be more transparent about sponsored content
Snapchat star DJ Khaled raves about Ciroc vodka. Fashion lifestyle blogger Cara Loren Van Brocklin posts a selfie with PCA Skin sunscreen. Internet personality iJustine posts Instagrams from an Intel event. Missing from their messages: any indication about whether they’ve been paid.
This uptick in celebrities peddling brand messages on their personal accounts, light on explicit disclosure, has not gone unnoticed by the U.S. government. The Federal Trade Commission is planning to get tougher: Users need to be clear when they’re getting paid to promote something, and hashtags like #ad, #sp, #sponsored –common forms of identification– are not always enough. The agency will be putting the onus on the advertisers to make sure they comply, according to Michael Ostheimer, a deputy in the FTC’s Ad Practices Division. It’s a move that could make the posts seem less authentic, reducing their impact.
Companies have been pouring marketing dollars into social media endorsements, paying everyone from a Hollywood celebrity to a mom who regularly Instagrams her baby snuggling with a puppy. Reaching consumers, especially 20-somethings, is increasingly difficult because of television’s waning marketing power.
Personal endorsements are as old as advertising itself, and there’s always been abuse. So when the FTC highlights influencer marketing as having a disclosure problem
“If consumers don’t read the words, then there is no effective disclosure,” Ostheimer said.
Hashtags like #sp and #spon may not be fully understood, especially if they’re buried at the bottom of a post
Some advertisers say influencer posts don’t deserve such careful disclosure, because they are not the same thing as a traditional ad.
The FTC has been getting the word out with online webinars and guides, speeches and engaging trade associations. “We’re not calling up each individual ad agency,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mathew Ingram / Fortune:
Facebook needs to be more transparent in cases like the deactivation of accounts for Korryn Gaines, killed during a police conflict — A number of recent events have proven that live video of breaking news can be incredibly important for understanding such situations, and in many cases …
Facebook Shuts Down Live Stream of Shooting at Police Request
http://fortune.com/2016/08/05/facebook-video-police/
Baltimore woman’s live stream shut down just before she was shot and killed by police.
A number of recent events have proven that live video of breaking news can be incredibly important for understanding such situations, and in many cases that video is being streamed on Facebook by those involved, whether it’s a shooting in Louisiana or the aftermath of a protest in Dallas.
Given that, the fact that Facebook FB 0.64% will not only remove videos in some cases but also deactivate a user’s account at the request of police also raises a host of important questions. What responsibility, if any, does the network have as a news outlet when it makes such decisions?
At some point, the police asked Facebook to shut down the woman’s social-media accounts, and the company complied.
“We did in fact reach out to social media authorities to deactivate her account, to take it offline, if you will,” Baltimore County police chief James Johnson said at the press conference. “Why? In order to preserve the integrity of the negotiation process with her and for the safety of our personnel [and] her child.”
Johnson said that not only was Gaines posting video of the operation as it unfolded, but her followers on both Facebook and Instagram were also “encouraging her not to comply” with police requests that she surrender peacefully.
According to police, none of the videos that Gaines broadcast have been deleted, but instead have been archived to serve as evidence.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lukas I. Alpert / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Gawker and Hulk Hogan in preliminary settlement talks over invasion-of-privacy case — Talks come ahead of auction that will see Gawker founder Nick Denton lose control of the company he founded — Gawker Media Group is engaged in preliminary talks with the former professional wrestler
Gawker, Hulk Hogan in Settlement Talks Over Invasion-of-Privacy Case
Talks come ahead of auction that will see Gawker founder Nick Denton lose control of the company he founded
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/gawker-and-hulk-hogan-in-settlement-talks-over-invasion-of-privacy-case-1470617756-lMyQjAxMTA2NTA2ODcwOTgyWj
Peter Sterne / Politico:
Gawker Media nears settlement with Mail Online in defamation suit over an article accusing the British tabloid of plagiarism and publishing false information
Gawker close to settlement with Mail Online in defamation suit
Read more: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/08/gawker-close-to-settlement-with-mail-online-in-defamation-suit-004700#ixzz4GiaasaFN
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jim Rutenberg / New York Times:
Examining how the media is wrestling with Trump, journalistic balance, and longstanding accusations of liberal bias
Balance, Fairness and a Proudly Provocative Presidential Candidate
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness-and-a-proudly-provocative-presidential-candidate.html
If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?
Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.
But the question that everyone is grappling with is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?
Matthew Sheffield / National Review:
Despite perceptions, conservative media exists in an echo chamber without reaching broader audiences — Sean Hannity on the set of his Fox News program (Mike Segar/Reuters) — Despite conservatives’ perceptions, conservative media exists in a small, ineffectual bubble.
The Conservative Media Echo Chamber Is Making the Right Intellectually Deaf
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438651/fox-news-conservative-media-echo-chamber-hurts-conservatives
Since the 1996 establishment of Fox News and the popularization of the Web, it has now become possible for a conservatively inclined people to consume all kinds of news and opinion catering to their specific tastes and viewpoints. Many right-leaning people have hailed this development, believing that they have finally defeated the hated liberal media. They suppose that because they can now obtain their news entirely from conservative-leaning media that this is what others do as well.
Republicans have a lot of trust in Fox News.
When considering the power and influence of Fox News, we must also consider that it is severely distrusted by people who do not lean Republican.
Besides not really reaching people who are not loyal Republicans, Fox News also has the problem that it is not very popular among people who are younger.
Conservatives Are the Only Ones Using Conservative Media
Most Americans had almost no interest in receiving news from media outlets that conservatives find trustworthy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom gives full credit to Snapchat for Stories format, and looks at how tech companies build on each others’ innovations — The one thing you never hear in Silicon Valley is an entrepreneur admit they copied someone else. Yet there in the headquarters of Facebook …
Instagram CEO on Stories: Snapchat deserves all the credit
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/silicon-copy/
The one thing you never hear in Silicon Valley is an entrepreneur admit they copied someone else. Yet there in the headquarters of Facebook, the world’s most prolific product cloner, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom surprised me.
He’d just walked me through the demo of Instagram Stories, a pixel for pixel photocopy of Snapchat Stories. The products look so similar I couldn’t help but chuckle as he progressed through the slide deck about a feature he said would probably look familiar.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Example how a random baseless social medial posting can become very expensive to business, cause personal danger and the person who posted it:
A man was awarded $115,000 after a random Facebook post destroyed his life and business
http://www.businessinsider.com/man-gets-115000-after-facebook-post-destroyed-his-life-2016-8?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
A 74-year-old Australian man was awarded $115,000 in damages caused by a libelous Facebook post about his business, and it’s a good reminder that you can’t just say anything on social media.
Here’s what happened.
“The anonymity, instaneousness and wide ranging reach of the Internet and social media make it a dangerous tool in the hands of persons who see themselves as caped crusaders or whistleblowers,” Judge Gibson said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
Media brands, including many Snapchat Discover partners, are testing Instagram Stories and report solid early traffic
Publishers Flock to New Instagram Stories
Media brands, including many Snapchat Discover partners, are seeing solid early traffic
http://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-flock-to-new-instagram-stories-1470999602
Media firms are flocking to the new Instagram Stories, and that includes many of the same companies that are part of select group of publishers creating content for Snapchat Discover.
Since Instagram introduced Stories less than two weeks ago, a flurry of media companies including CNN, Food Network, People, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan and Tastemade have taken to regularly producing Stories, and some say they are seeing solid early viewership numbers. AwesomenessTV, which caters to teens and tweens, has even run one of the first ads on the platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sex, Privacy, and Videotape: Lessons of Gawker’s Downfall
http://www.wired.com/2016/08/gawker-hulk-hogan-auction/
It was a fateful decision. A two-minute excerpt of secretly recorded video featuring professional wrestler Hulk Hogan having sex with his then-best-friend’s wife. When Gawker got hold of the video in 2012, it elected to post the excerpt on its website, setting off an improbable series of events recently culminating in bankruptcy—for the company itself, as well as its founder and CEO. Now, this week the company is being sold at auction.
Soon after the video was posted, Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bollea) sued Gawker, asserting various legal claims relating to his loss of privacy and emotional distress. Gawker tried to have the case dismissed
It shocked most legal observers, awarding Hogan $140 million in damages.
Unable to convince the court to put the damages award on hold while it appealed, Gawker headed to bankruptcy court. It was a startling turn of events: a fairly prominent news organization put in the poor house, its very existence jeopardized, by a single lawsuit.
The size of the verdict and Gawker’s resultant bankruptcy have generated headlines and substantial interest in the case. And Gawker’s descent into financial ruin may end up having lasting effects on news organizations and freedom of speech more generally. The searing lesson is that a solitary publishing misstep can cascade into an existential threat, which may lead writers and editors (or their lawyers!) to censor material they would have published before this case.
To fully understand the verdict, we need to consider how Gawker defended itself. However unorthodox Gawker’s journalism may seem to some, it brushed aside Hogan’s charges with tried and true arguments of traditional news organizations. Gawker claimed the First Amendment afforded it the right to publish the sex tape excerpt because it was a “matter of public concern”—contending Hogan opened himself up to having the video shown because he had previously spoken about his sex life in public. While similar arguments frequently allow publications to evade liability, two powerful trends intersected in this case, rendering Gawker’s old-school First Amendment defense a poor fit.
Absent a settlement, Hogan’s case against Gawker will eventually find its way to an appeals court—and Gawker may succeed in reducing the damages (which seems likely), or overturning the result altogether (less likely). The lessons of this case highlight the interplay of journalism’s evolution and the erosion of privacy. When these trends powerfully converged, Gawker landed in bankruptcy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Univision acquires Gawker Media for $135M; Denton says employees will continue work under new ownership “disentangled from the legal campaign” — Sold! — Univision has won the auction for Gawker Media. — The TV network and digital publisher has agreed to pay $135 million …
Univision is buying Gawker Media for $135 million
Sold!
http://www.recode.net/2016/8/16/12504008/univision-is-buying-gawker-media-for-135-million
Univision has won the auction for Gawker Media.
The TV network and digital publisher has agreed to pay $135 million for the bankrupt blog network, according to a person familiar with the deal.
Univision’s offer will encompass all seven of Gawker Media’s sites, including Gawker.com
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gawker.com To End Operations Next Week
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/1956258/gawkercom-to-end-operations-next-week
After nearly 14 years of operations, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week, the company’s outgoing CEO Nick Denton told the staff Thursday. The decision comes days after Univision said it would buy Gawker Media properties — Gizmodo, Jezebel, Kotaku etc (but not Gawker.com) — for a sum of $135 million.
Gawker.com to End Operations Next Week
http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-1785455712
After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.
Nick Denton, the company’s outgoing CEO, informed current staffers of the site’s fate on Thursday afternoon, just hours before a bankruptcy court in Manhattan will decide whether to approve Univision’s bid for Gawker Media’s other assets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adrienne Lafrance / Nieman Reports:
The blurring of lines between media and tech firms, Silicon Valley’s culture of secrecy, and a lack of skepticism and resources make tech reporting difficult — With the lines between media firms and tech firms blurring, coverage of the tech sector presents one of the most profound accountability challenges in modern journalism
Access, Accountability Reporting and Silicon Valley
http://niemanreports.org/articles/media-company-or-tech-firm/
With the lines between media firms and tech firms blurring, coverage of the tech sector presents one of the most profound accountability challenges in modern journalism
Companies like Google and Facebook, whose offices are shown here, are now considered essential to the journalism industry
Freebies are everywhere, but real access is scant. Powerful companies like Facebook and Google are major distributors of journalistic work, meaning newsrooms increasingly rely on tech giants to reach readers, a relationship that’s awkward at best and potentially disastrous at worst. Facebook, in particular, is also prompting major newsrooms to adjust their editorial and commercial strategies, including initiatives to broadcast live video to the social media site in exchange for payment. Other social platforms are becoming publishers, too, including Snapchat Discover and Reddit, which recently posted job listings for an editorial team.
The lines are blurring, in some cases dramatically, between what it means to be a media company and what it means to be a technology firm. The leaders of some websites with robust newsrooms, like BuzzFeed, even refer to themselves as tech companies first, journalism organizations second. Cash-rich media start-ups and at least one legacy newspaper, The Washington Post, are owned by titans of tech.
Silicon Valley’s leaders aren’t uniformly champions of the press, however. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder, poured $10 million of his own money into the lawsuit that eventually bankrupted Gawker Media Group last spring. The Gawker-Thiel showdown was a dispute in its own right, but it can also be viewed as a microcosm of the broader tension between media companies and technology companies
Against this backdrop, tech reporting presents one of the most profound accountability challenges in modern journalism. Who is best served by the coverage we have? And is it the coverage we deserve and need?
“Accountability reporting in Silicon Valley, like accountability reporting anywhere, is difficult—and essential,”
It’s also a journalistic approach that incentivizes limited access. Silicon Valley’s culture of secrecy comes, too, from the publishing power the Internet offers. Tech giants, like political candidates, no longer rely solely on the press to get out their message.
In turn, some of the world’s most powerful companies end up dictating a startling degree of coverage about them—because reporters often rely solely on information released by those companies, and, with some key exceptions, get few opportunities to question them. “It’s why a company like Google can dazzle people with the promise of some technology that’s really not ready yet,”
It’s typical to see technology coverage that simply aggregates directly from a tech company’s blog—the modern-day equivalent of a press release—with little or no analysis or additional reporting. One damning example of this lack of skepticism is evident in the early, glowing coverage of Theranos, the health-technology company that said it had developed a cheap, needle-free way to draw and test blood. It wasn’t until last year that an investigative reporter from The Wall Street Journal, prompted by a sunny New Yorker profile of the Theranos founder, began to ask serious questions about whether the technology actually worked the way Theranos claimed it did. That reporting, from John Carreyrou, encouraged other reporters to be more skeptical, too, and ultimately led to a federal criminal investigation into whether the company misled investors and regulators about the state of its technology.
Adds Kantor: “Technology companies are in the vanguard. They’re determining where the culture is headed. It’s where the culture is made, and they also let us look into our own futures.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Things Work
http://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699
Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era.
The staff will move to new jobs on other properties in Gawker Media Group, which are lively and intact, and the whole operation will continue under new ownership, after being acquired for $135 million by Univision.
The Gawker domain is also being left behind in bankruptcy.
Peter Thiel has achieved his objectives.
The flagship site, a magnet for most of the lawsuits marshaled by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, has for most media companies become simply too dangerous to own.
Peter Thiel has gotten away with what would otherwise be viewed as an act of petty revenge by reframing the debate on his terms.
As former Gawker developer Dustin Curtis says, “Though I find the result abhorrent, this is one of the most beautiful checkmates of all time by Peter Thiel.”
In cultural and business terms, this is an act of destruction, because Gawker.com was a popular and profitable digital media property—before the legal bills mounted. Gawker will be missed. But in dramatic terms, it is a fitting conclusion to this experiment in what happens when you let journalists say what they really think.
The rest of the staff and the rest of the brands—Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Jezebel, Kotaku, Jalopnik and Deadspin—are in the shelter of a Hispanic media company pursuing the broader multicultural and millennial audience.
How did we get here?
Many liberals and journalists are alarmed by the ease with which a rich and powerful man—a Trump supporter—can use the legal system to destroy an outlet that criticized him and his friends. To my mind, Gawker’s ultimate fate was predestined.
Gawker was not the first blog launched by the company. That was Gizmodo, the technology news site that is the company’s largest property. Gawker was an outlier in what became a collection of bloggy lifestyle magazines covering reader interests like video games, sports, and cars.
But Gawker was the one with the most powerful personality, the most extreme expression of the rebellious writer’s id. It absorbed the century-old tabloid cynicism about human nature, reinforced by instant data about what people actually wanted to read. As a group of journalists who had grown up on the web, it also subscribed to the internet’s most radical ideology, that information wants to be free, and that the truth shall set us free. This was a potent but dangerous combination.
Gawker’s remit was eventually so broad, news and gossip, that subject matter proved no barrier. And Gawker’s web-literate journalists picked up more story ideas from anonymous email tips, obscure web forums or hacker data dumps than they did from interviews or parties. They scorned access. To get an article massaged or fixed, there was nobody behind the scenes to call. Gawker was an island, one publicist said, uncompromised and uncompromising.
Journalismism
Because Gawker covered the media from the perspective of a smart outsider, calling out the absurdities of the industry, journalists were soon obsessed. Never underestimate the power of narcissism.
The young writers shared their generation’s skepticism. According to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey, only one in ten 18-34 year-olds trust the media. The alt right movement, suspicious of the illusion presented by media, refers to the “red pill” that you can take to reveal the reality beneath. Gawker’s politics were progressive, but it shared the belief that the real world was staged. Gawker writers, plugged into the journalists’ gossip networks, looked for the story behind the story, the version that was shared over a drink but less frequently published.
Tabloid and gossip journalism long predate Gawker, but the site was unique in its scope. TMZ, for instance, focuses its investigative energy on B-list celebrities; and is careful to maintain good relations with Hollywood lawyers and power players. But Gawker writers were not so discriminating. It was a matter of pride that Gawker ran stories that could not be published elsewhere.
Too Insidery
As if media players and celebrities were not enough, Gawker was, by the late 2000s, poking at some truly powerful people.
I started Gizmodo first, and loved Lifehacker most, but Gawker was the only site I edited.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WikiLeaks exposed sensitive data on hundreds of innocent people, including rape victims
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12601444/wikileaks-personal-data-exposed-rape-victims-saudi-arabia
AP report adds to growing concerns over how transparency group handles sensitive information
WikiLeaks has exposed the personal data on hundreds of ordinary citizens, including rape victims, sick children, and the mentally ill, according to a report published today by the Associated Press. In its analysis, the AP found that the transparency group published medical files on “scores” of innocent people, and that it “routinely” publishes other sensitive information that can be exploited by criminals, including identity records and phone numbers.
WikiLeaks has long committed itself to exposing government secrets through the publication of diplomatic cables and other classified information. But the organization has come under increased criticism for the way it handles personal data, after it published emails sent by Turkey’s ruling AKP party and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July. In the DNC leak, WikiLeaks did not redact social security numbers and credit card information, and it faced criticism for publishing a “special database” on nearly every female Turkish voter as part of the AKP leak. (Links to the database were later removed.)
The AP reports that WikiLeaks’ growing collection of documents includes viruses and spam in addition to sensitive information on innocent people.
Private information on hundreds of people including rape victims exposed on WikiLeaks’ website
http://www.itv.com/news/2016-08-23/private-information-on-hundreds-of-people-including-rape-victims-exposed-on-wikileaks-website/
An investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has found that in the last year the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary people, while hundreds of others have had sensitive family, financial, or identity records posted online.
Private lives are exposed as WikiLeaks spills its secrets
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b70da83fd111496dbdf015acbb7987fb/private-lives-are-exposed-wikileaks-spills-its-secrets?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
WikiLeaks’ global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found.
In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.
“They published everything: my phone, address, name, details,”
Attempts to reach WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were unsuccessful; a set of questions left with his site wasn’t immediately answered Tuesday. WikiLeaks’ stated mission is to bring censored or restricted material “involving war, spying and corruption” into the public eye, describing the trove amassed thus far as a “giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents.”
The library is growing quickly, with half a million files from the U.S. Democratic National Committee, Turkey’s governing party and the Saudi Foreign Ministry added in the last year or so. But the library is also filling with rogue data, including computer viruses, spam, and a compendium of personal records.
Scott Long, an LGBT rights activist who has worked in the Middle East, said the names of rape victims were off-limits. And he worried that releasing the names of people persecuted for their sexuality only risked magnifying the harm caused by oppressive officials.
“You’re legitimizing their surveillance, not combating it,” Long said.
Dietrich, the transparency activist, said he still supported WikiLeaks “in principle” but had been souring on Assange and his colleagues for a while.
“One of the labels that they really don’t like is being called ‘anti-privacy activists,’” Dietrich said in a phone interview. “But if you want to live down that label, don’t do stuff like this!”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turkish Journalist Jailed for Terrorism Was Framed, Forensics Report Shows
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/turkish-journalist-jailed-for-terrorism-was-framed-forensic-report-shows-1
Turkish investigative journalist Barış Pehlivan spent 19 months in jail, accused of terrorism based on documents found on his work computer. But when digital forensics experts examined his PC, they discovered that those files were put there by someone who removed the hard drive from the case, copied the documents, and then reinstalled the hard drive.
The attackers also attempted to control the journalist’s machine remotely, trying to infect it using malicious email attachments and thumb drives. Among the viruses detected in his computer was an extremely rare trojan called Ahtapot, in one of the only times it’s been seen in the wild.
“We have never seen a computer attacked as ferociously as Barış’s. The attackers seemed to pull everything out of their bag of tricks,” Mark Spencer, digital forensics expert at Arsenal Consulting, said.
Pehlivan went to jail in February of 2011, along with six of his colleagues, after electronic evidence seized during a police raid in 2011 appeared to connect all of them to Ergenekon, an alleged armed group accused of terrorism in Turkey.
It is not clear who perpetrated the attack
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers vs. journalists
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4442444/Engineers-vs–journalists?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160823&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160823&elqTrackId=bb6812d8001645b0913db9186d74b60e&elq=f0607658a677432eb1e4756293a30f03&elqaid=33551&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29328
In the November, 1961 issue of Electrical Design News, executive editor Lawrence L. Rosine wrote “What, No Engineers?” where he questioned the practice of technical magazines hiring journalists who covered a particular field as opposed to hiring practitioners who could write. In that case, electrical engineering. Rosine questioned the ability of a journalist to catch small errors in schematics that might slip into print, only to be caught by the readers. He then went on to list the engineering credentials of the technical staff, saying “We wouldn’t trade them for a dozen journalists.”
Given my history with publishing companies, I surmise that Cahners’ management didn’t see the added value that engineers bring to engineering publications. They didn’t understand that journalists couldn’t read schematics. Fortunately, the engineers like Rosine won that battle. If not, perhaps EDN would not have survived to year six, let alone 60.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google plans to lower search rankings of publishers’ mobile pages that use intrusive interstitial ads starting January 10 — Google has announced that it will begin cracking down on “intrusive interstitials” on January 10, 2017, because this type of ad “can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.”
Google warns it will crack down on “intrusive interstitials” in January
http://searchengineland.com/interstitialgeddon-google-warns-will-crack-intrusive-interstitials-next-january-257252
Google will reinforce its emphasis on the mobile search experience with a new penalty affecting “intrusive interstitials” on mobile web pages.
Google has announced that it will begin cracking down on “intrusive interstitials” on January 10, 2017, because this type of ad “can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.”
Google will be potentially penalizing — i.e., lowering the rankings — of these web pages. Google said “pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”
Google explained which types of interstitials are going to be problematic, including:
Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jim Weber / LinkedIn Pulse:
Sports writer says Twitter permanently banned his account with nearly 100K followers after he tweeted three Olympics GIFs
How a GIF of Aly Raisman’s Floor Routine Got Me Permanently Banned From Twitter
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-gif-aly-raismans-floor-routine-got-me-permanently-jim-weber
I thought the only people to get permanently banned from Twitter were Leslie Jones’ online bully and terrorists.
Apparently those who post a GIF of Aly Raisman Olympic floor routine also fall into the same category.
I had read that the IOC was banning the press from using GIFs but I didn’t see how that applied to me. Sure, I didn’t have the rights to any footage at the Olympics — just like countless blogs and users don’t have rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA footage that they create GIFs out of and profit from every day.
But I figured the worst thing that would happen is the GIF would be deleted from my account, as Twitter often does in these situations.
Boy was I wrong.
over 69,000 tweets and nearly 100,000 followers.
And just like that, my Twitter account had been permanently banned with a single three-minute warning.
Obviously, I wish I hadn’t posted the GIFs. But I also feel like I’m being made an example of by Twitter. After all, you can still found illegal video and GIFs of her floor exercise on the Internet here, here, here and here — just to name a few.
But it’s disappointing that Twitter will throw users under the bus to do it by permanently banning the very users that built Twitter into the vibrant community it is today. It’s even more frustrating that I didn’t have a single human interaction but was delivered form letters determining my fate — likely sent from somewhere halfway around the world.
Not only do I not plan to start a new Twitter account, I’m hesitant to post anything to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat with the knowledge that they can and will permanently shut down your account with the snap of their fingers.
Because as idealistic as social media platforms make themselves sound, at the end of the day, they’re just like every other business: They only thing they have to answer to is money.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube Plans To Bring Photos, Polls, and Text To Its Video Service
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/24/233200/youtube-plans-to-bring-photos-polls-and-text-to-its-video-service
YouTube is developing a feature internally called Backstage where users can share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with their subscribers. Backstage is expected to launch by the end of the year, possibly this fall, on mobile and desktop, initially with select popular YouTube accounts and with limited features, VentureBeat has learned. Akin to a Facebook Timeline or Twitter profile, Backstage will live alongside the Home and Videos tabs within individual YouTube channels.
Inside Backstage: YouTube’s plan to bring photos, polls, and text to the video service
http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/24/inside-backstage-youtubes-plan-to-bring-photos-polls-and-text-to-the-video-service/
YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing service, is looking beyond video to keep its homegrown stars — and their fans — from departing to competing platforms.
Amid competition from Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, YouTube is developing a feature internally called Backstage where users can share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with their subscribers. Backstage is expected to launch by the end of the year, possibly this fall, on mobile and desktop, initially with select popular YouTube accounts and with limited features, VentureBeat has learned.
Akin to a Facebook Timeline or Twitter profile, Backstage will live alongside the Home and Videos tabs within individual YouTube channels. Posts shared to Backstage will appear in reverse chronological order, and, crucially, will also appear in subscribers’ feeds and notifications, making them highly visible to fans.
While Backstage is expected to introduce entirely new types of content to YouTube, including tweet-like text posts and topical polls, it also presents new opportunities for video sharing. Backstage will eventually enable users to share both traditional YouTube videos and Backstage-only videos, possibly creating an opportunity for more intimate, or even ephemeral, video sharing between YouTubers and their fans.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alexios Mantzarlis / Poynter:
Study: frequent readers of partisan news sites are more likely to hold misperceptions even if they’re aware of evidence — Reading lots of partisan news online makes you more likely to hold inaccurate beliefs even if you are aware of the prevailing evidence, according to a study published …
The more partisan your online media diet, the less likely you are to believe fact-checkers
http://www.poynter.org/2016/the-more-partisan-your-online-media-diet-the-less-likely-you-are-to-believe-fact-checkers/427372/
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Reading lots of partisan news online makes you more likely to hold inaccurate beliefs even if you are aware of the prevailing evidence, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
The outlets described by the study to respondents as favoring liberal positions included MSNBC, Daily Kos, The New York Times and The Huffington Post. Those favoring conservative positions included The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and Drudge Report.
The result? Frequent conservative online news consumers had a 33 percent chance of being wrong about President Obama’s birth certificate despite knowing what most journalists had concluded about it. Only 3 percent of those not reading conservative news held that same belief.
Conversely, a frequent liberal online news user had a 10 percent chance of being wrong about Mitt Romney outsourcing jobs during his tenure at Bain even though they correctly indicated what fact-checkers findings were.
This ties with a research paper published in 2013 noting that readers may trust corrections originating from sources that do not ideologically benefit from the fact check more than others. So a New York Times correction of Hillary Clinton and a Fox News correction of Donald Trump would yield stronger results than the reverse.
Pushing partisan outlets to fact-check all sides of the debate may sound like a futile effort.
Fact-checking and debunking should be seen as a battle to reduce the presence of misperceptions rather than through a futile black-and-white prism that expects the elimination of all falsehoods from the public sphere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quartz:
Sources: Facebook letting go of entire Trending Topics editorial staff, consisting of 15-18 workers contracted through a third party
MOVE FAST, BREAK THINGS
Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans
http://qz.com/768122/facebook-fires-human-editors-moves-to-algorithm-for-trending-topics/
Facebook will no longer employ humans to write descriptions for items in its Trending section, which attracted controversy over allegations of political bias in May. Topics appearing in the Trending section will now appear solely as a short phrase or single word, with an indication of the number of people discussing it on the social network.
Quartz confirmed from multiple sources that Facebook has laid off the entire editorial staff on the Trending team—15-18 workers contracted through a third party. The Trending team will now be staffed entirely by engineers, who will work to check that topics and articles surfaced by the algorithms are newsworthy.
Facebook maintains that trending items have always been selected by algorithms; the former editorial staff was only responsible for writing the story descriptions seen in the Trending section, according to the company. This was disputed by former contractors hired by the tech giant who told Gizmodo in May that they were instructed to manually add some stories by hand.
Facebook investigated the claims and said it found “no evidence of systematic bias,” but that hasn’t stopped the company from making changes to the feature.
However, removing human writers from Trending doesn’t necessarily eliminate bias. Human bias can be embedded into algorithms, and extremely difficult to strip out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Newsroom:
Facebook will now select stories and excerpts automatically for Trending topic pages, show topics instead of story descriptions in Trending section
Search FYI: An Update to Trending
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/search-fyi-an-update-to-trending/
Today, we’re making some changes to the Trending feature on Facebook that will make the product more automated and will no longer require people to write descriptions for trending topics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lauren Goode / The Verge:
Inside NBC’s Olympic live streaming operation, which required a remote support staff of 1,100+ in Stamford, Connecticut — For NBC, this year’s Olympic Games coverage was more than just a series of household rating points; it was a moment of truth in a fast-changing media world.
Here’s the tech NBC built to stream the Olympics — now can it replace TV?
The audience is moving to streaming faster than the money
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/26/12646224/nbc-rio-olympics-2016-coverage-tv-ratings-streaming
For NBC, this year’s Olympic Games coverage was more than just a series of household rating points; it was a moment of truth in a fast-changing media world. To say the network won silver in prime-time television ratings would be kind: no matter which article you read, it points out that ratings were down by double digits at different points throughout the games. To say the network took home the gold in streaming video would also be an overstatement: online viewership was up, but the online experience wasn’t quite ready to replace the traditional TV experience.
Streams of the Olympics worked well, but the overall experience was fragmented
Then there’s social media, which would normally seem ancillary to both TV and online streaming but has become a growing component of the sports landscape — Twitter is streaming entire NFL games this year, for example. NBC was active on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube throughout the entirety of the Rio Games, and partnered with BuzzFeed to create content for Snapchat. But some clips seemed truncated, with quick cuts at key moments. Facebook and YouTube videos were capped at 45 seconds, with a slide at the end pointing viewers back to other means of watching the games on NBC. In essence, the footage that lived outside NBC’s paywalls was treated differently. This was true even on an internal level — to wit, clips cut by the “highlights factory” weren’t made immediately accessible to NBC Olympics social media team
“If the sports revolution is televised, the people may not watch it”
The Olympics have shown that second-screen content may no longer be just second screen, which means NBC would need to take a whole new approach to what that content actually is — not repackaged TV segments, 45-second snippets on YouTube, or delayed events, but something produced specifically for new platforms, and in a satisfying way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s time for a discussion about malvertising
Security, meet the requirement for an informed and educated populace
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/29/its_time_for_a_discussion_about_malvertising/
I don’t know that I can afford to read the news anymore. As a columnist for several tech magazines I find this somewhat ironic, but my occupation makes the truth of it no less real. Technology can solve this problem for me, but politics probably won’t allow it.
News can be consumed in a few different ways.
I can consume news through the internet. Twitter is its own form of real-time news, but suffers from horrible inaccuracy and a rushing-to-judgement that would make Fox News blush. Reddit serves a similar purpose, but acts mostly as a curation device for news written by other sources. Both Twitter and Reddit force the reader to come face to face with just how horrible human beings are to one another and can cause despair-induced suicidal ideation quicker than reading Youtube comments.
There are professional news outlets that publish online, many of which are linked to by social media such as Twitter, Reddit or Facebook. The quality of the professional news outlets varies greatly, but anyone with a little experience will know which publications are more likely to produce unbiased news.
For me, this is great! I love online news!
News outlets like money. Who doesn’t? Many of the news outlets that I frequent have erected paywalls, especially for those running adblockers.
The problem is that I’m not sure that I read enough of any but a handful of news outlets to justify a subscription.
There are, however, over a dozen outlets that I hit the wall on every month. I can’t pay $12/month for every one of them.
A startup called Blendle has appeared. Hailed by many of the earliest news organizations to sign up for it as the “iTunes of journalism”,
Blendle, like iTunes, takes 30% off the top, leaving only 70% for publishers.
Blendle lets people read an article then demand their money back. I’m not sure I’m OK with that.
Blendle also has curated “lists” of articles, which I find terrifying. Anything that herds people into reading only that which reinforces their existing biases is big time bad news. The world is already polarized enough, we don’t need help hating each other.
Elephant in the room
The reason Blendle is needed is that Baby Boomers keep dying of old age and Millennials use ad blockers. Ten years ago, I was a strong advocate of disabling adblock for specific sites. Today, despite that fact that if everyone followed my advice I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage, I simply cannot advise people to turn off their browser defences.
Personally, I’m not turning off my browser’s defences. It isn’t going to happen. I’ve been bitten one too many times by malvertising and other web nasties and those shields are staying very, very up.
Talking about this puts me in a difficult position. The view from the publishing side of the world is all too often that people who use ad blockers are “freetards” – freeloaders who don’t care about the livelihoods of those who make content and can’t suffer a little inconvenience to get free content.
What is news worth?
The question comes back to what news is worth to us. The bonanza of free quality content will only last for another few years at most. After that there will simply be no news outlets left who are capable of funding wages out of a bottomless pit of debt. They’ll fold, just like their predecessors did.
After that, what are we left with? Shock jocks and fear mongers? A cornucopia of listicles and digital fishwrappers, all masturbating ceaselessly to celebrity gossip and stories of superfoods?
I’m willing to pay $50 a month for good news. Maybe $100 if it helps bring back investigative journalism. But for that kind of money I want diversity of opinion, thought, geographic coverage…I want news.
Today, I’m not going to get that from any one outlet. Nobody has the journalist armies of yore, nor the offices in every nook and cranny worldwide.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU Copyright Reform Proposes Search Engines Pay For Snippets
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/08/28/0018216/eu-copyright-reform-proposes-search-engines-pay-for-snippets
An anonymous Slashdot reader reports that the European Commission “is planning reforms that would allow media outlets to request payment from search engines such as Google, for publishing snippets of their content in search results.” The Stack reports
EU copyright reform proposes search engines pay for snippets
https://thestack.com/world/2016/08/26/eu-copyright-reform-proposes-search-engines-pay-for-snippets/
The European Commission is currently working on major updates to existing copyright legislation, to reform copyright law to reflect digital content. One feature of this reform would allow media outlets to request payment from search engines, such as Google, for publishing snippets of their content in search results.
The working paper recommends the introduction of an EU law that covers the rights to digital reproduction of news publications. This would essentially make news publishers a new category of rights holders under copyright law, thereby ensuring that “the creative and economic contribution of news publishers is recognized and incentivized in EU law, as it is today the case for other creative sectors.”
Media outlets rely on Google and other search engines to boost traffic to their sites, while at the same time competing with them for advertising dollars.
The shift from print to digital consumption of newspaper and magazine content has created what is termed a ‘value gap’ – while a provider’s digital content is gaining popularity, revenues from digital content are not making up for the loss of print revenues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm
Just months after the discovery that Facebook’s “trending” news module was curated and tweaked by human beings, the company has eliminated its editors and left the algorithm to do its job. The results, so far, are a disaster.
Facebook announced late Friday that it had eliminated jobs in its trending module, the part of its news division where staff curated popular news for Facebook users. Over the weekend, the fully automated Facebook trending module pushed out a false story about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, a controversial piece about a comedian’s four-letter word attack on rightwing pundit Ann Coulter, and links to an article about a video of a man masturbating with a McDonald’s chicken sandwich.
In a blogpost, Facebook said the decision to drop people from the news module would allow it to operate at a greater scale.
“A more algorithmically driven process allows us to scale Trending to cover more topics and make it available to more people globally over time.”
A source familiar with the matter told the Guardian that the trending team was fired without notice in a meeting with a security guard present.
Facebook removed the offending article
Under its old, human-assisted guidelines, Facebook trends had been monitored to weed out potentially offensive or inappropriate items.
The dismissal of the trending module team appears to have been a long-term plan at Facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans
http://qz.com/768122/facebook-fires-human-editors-moves-to-algorithm-for-trending-topics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tanya Dua / Digiday:
Ex-Facebook trending news curator: business side influenced editorial, challenging journalism ethics; the news algorithm needs major improvements — Barely two days after changes to its Trending Topics section, a fake article about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly began trending on Facebook
Confessions of an ex-Facebook trending news curator: ‘They are just going to get rid of the product altogether’
http://digiday.com/platforms/former-facebook-trending-news-editor-just-going-get-rid-product-altogether/
Barely two days after changes to its Trending Topics section, a fake article about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly began trending on Facebook — before entirely disappearing on Monday morning.
The incident came on the heels of Facebook’s announcement on Friday that human curators will no longer write the short descriptions that accompany trending topics on the site. Its trending news team was then shown the door.
The changes, clearly, are not devoid of problems. For our latest Digiday Confessions, we talked to a member of the now-defunct trending news team at Facebook, who reflected on the recent developments as well as time spent working on the team.
So the purpose of the trending team was just to teach the algorithm how to eventually filter the news itself?
I would like to believe that, because that would mean that we actually served a purpose and did something good. But if you’ve used the tool in the last few days, you’d realize that the algorithm didn’t learn shit. The topics are just wrong — they have bad articles and insufficient sources. I think they are just going to get rid of the product altogether, because there is going to be backlash when people who do use the tool realize that the quality has gone down — unless there are severe algorithmic changes that improve the quality of the topics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robert Capps / Wired:
President Obama to become first commander-in-chief to edit a magazine when he guest-edits Wired’s November issue — WIRED has had some amazing guest editors over the years. J.J. Abrams on magic, mysteries, and puzzles; Bill Gates on solving the world’s biggest problems; Christopher Nolan on space …
President Barack Obama Will Guest-Edit WIRED’s November Issue
http://www.wired.com/2016/08/president-barack-obama-will-guest-edit-wireds-november-issue
WIRED has had some amazing guest editors over the years. J.J. Abrams on magic, mysteries, and puzzles; Bill Gates on solving the world’s biggest problems; Christopher Nolan on space, time, and multiple dimensions; and, most recently, Serena Williams on equality in the digital age. This November we will add President Barack Obama to our guest editor ranks—the first time WIRED (or any other magazine) has been guest-edited by a sitting president.
The theme of the issue: Frontiers. Like WIRED, our 44th president is a relentless optimist.
The White House is also announcing a Frontiers conference, inspired by the issue, which President Obama will host with the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University on October 13.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Oremus / Slate:
Three former Facebook contractors say Trending news algorithm was not ready to run autonomously, user testing was overwhelmingly negative — How Facebook’s foray into automated news went from messy to disastrous. — It seems Facebook’s human news editors weren’t quite as expendable as the company thought.
Trending Bad
How Facebook’s foray into automated news went from messy to disastrous.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/08/how_facebook_s_trending_news_feature_went_from_messy_to_disastrous.html
It seems Facebook’s human news editors weren’t quite as expendable as the company thought.
On Monday, the social network’s latest move to automate its “Trending” news section backfired when it promoted a false story by a dubious right-wing propaganda site. The story, which claimed that Fox News had fired anchor Megyn Kelly for being a “traitor,” racked up thousands of Facebook shares and was likely viewed by millions before Facebook removed it for inaccuracy.
The blunder came just three days after Facebook fired the entire New York–based team of contractors that had been curating and editing the trending news section, as Quartz first reported on Friday and Slate has confirmed. That same day, Facebook announced an “update” to its trending section—a feature that highlights news topics popular on the site—that would make it “more automated.”
Facebook’s move away from human editors was supposed to extinguish the (farcically overblown) controversy over allegations of liberal bias in the trending news section. But in its haste to mollify conservatives, the company appears to have rolled out a new product that members of its own trending news team viewed as seriously flawed.
The contractor assumed Facebook’s engineers and product managers would go back to the drawing board. Instead, on Friday, the company dumped the journalists and released the new, poorly reviewed version of trending news to the public.
Why was Facebook so eager to make this move? The company may well have deemed journalists more trouble than they’re worth after several of them set off a firestorm by criticizing the product in the press.
Journalists are a cantankerous lot, and in many ways a poor fit for Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook that thrive on opacity and cultivate the perception of neutrality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tanya Dua / Digiday:
Ex-Facebook trending news curator: business side influenced editorial, challenging journalism ethics; the news algorithm needs major improvements
Confessions of an ex-Facebook trending news curator: ‘They are just going to get rid of the product altogether’
http://digiday.com/platforms/former-facebook-trending-news-editor-just-going-get-rid-product-altogether/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Oremus / Slate:
Three Facebook Trending curators say system that fed them stories failed to improve, user testing feedback of bare-bones new version was overwhelmingly negative — How Facebook’s foray into automated news went from messy to disastrous. — It seems Facebook’s human news editors weren’t quite as expendable as the company thought.
Trending Bad
How Facebook’s foray into automated news went from messy to disastrous.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/08/how_facebook_s_trending_news_feature_went_from_messy_to_disastrous.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
Giulia Segreti / Reuters:
During Italy visit, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists the social network is not a media company and will not become a content provider — Facebook Inc. will not become a media company, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, telling students the firm would remain a technology platform.
Facebook CEO says group will not become a media company
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-zuckerberg-idUSKCN1141WN
Facebook Inc. will not become a media company, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, telling students the firm would remain a technology platform.
An increasing number of users are turning to social media networks, such as Facebook (FB.O) and Twitter (TWTR.N), to find their news, but Zuckerberg said his firm had no ambitions to become a content provider.
“No, we are a tech company, not a media company,” said Zuckerberg, after a young Italian asked him whether Facebook intended to become a news editor.
While acknowledging the role Facebook has in supplying users with news through their connections and stressing the advantages of obtaining information from different parts of the world, Zuckerberg said Facebook was “a technology company, we build the tools, we do not produce any content”.
“The world needs news companies, but also technology platforms, like what we do, and we take our role in this very seriously,” he said, speaking from Rome’s Luiss university.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Ad-blocking browser Brave launches Bitcoin-based Payments, a system to automatically and privately reward favorite websites
Ad-blocking browser Brave launches payments, so you can support sites with cash, not ad clicks
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/ad-blocking-browser-brave-launches-payments-so-you-can-support-sites-with-cash-not-ad-clicks/
The ad-blocking web browser Brave, co-founded by Mozilla’s former CEO Brendan Eich, is today rolling out its grand experiment “Brave Payments,” which will encourage web users to reward their favorite sites by automatically and anonymously sending them Bitcoin-based micropayments. The idea here is fairly radical — online publishers have always relied on ad revenue to fund their sites, but Brave believes they would be happy to go ad-free if people were willing to fund them directly.
The question is, of course, will web users actually want to pay for content that has historically been free?
It’s true that online advertisements have seemingly gotten worse over the years, but with the shift to mobile, their ability to negatively impact the web experience has increased.
Where before, web surfers suffered with pop-up ads, flashy banners, interstitials and pop-overs, software like the popular AdBlock Plus has helped mitigate many of these issues.
But on mobile, advertisements often make it difficult to read the content — even obscuring an article’s text as you scroll. Plus, along with the tracking pixels and scripts, publishers’ sites have begun to eat away at users’ bandwidth, which costs money.
That said, technology companies like Facebook and Google have been spearheading solutions to this problem, as with Facebook’s fast-loading “Instant Articles” that strip out the extraneous content, and Google’s “Accelerated Mobile Web” project, which does much of the same for sites around the web. AMP also has the support of numerous publishers, analytics providers, adtech firms and tech companies, including LinkedIn, Medium, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter and others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Analysis shows WikiLeaks’ high-profile releases often benefit Russia; US officials say WikiLeaks, Assange probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence
How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-russia.html?_r=0
American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably
have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the
agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
comScore: smartphone apps now account for half the time US users spend online, up from 41% in July 2014
Smartphone apps now account for half the time Americans spend online
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/02/smartphone-apps-now-account-for-half-the-time-americans-spend-online/
Here’s a stat that’s sure to worry Google: smartphone applications now account for half the time that U.S. users spend online, up from 41 percent back in July 2014, according to a new report from comScore. And when you add tablet applications into the mix, that figure rises to nearly 60 percent.
The new milestone was achieved this July, the report says, and is a testament to our increasing reliance on native mobile applications to deliver us the information we need, as well as the entertainment and distractions we crave – things we used to turn to the web for, in previous years.
This shift towards apps is exactly why Google has been working to integrate the “web of apps” into its search engine, and to make surfacing the information hidden in apps something its Google Search app is capable of handling.
Smartphone Apps Are Now 50% of All U.S. Digital Media Time Spent
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Smartphone-Apps-Are-Now-50-of-All-US-Digital-Media-Time-Spent
Another major digital media milestone was reached this July. Smartphone apps, which have been playing an increasingly important role in consumers’ digital lives over the past several years, now account for more than half of all Americans’ time spent online
While the smartphone app has been the most important access vehicle to the internet for some time, growing its share to a point where it now eclipses all other digital media platforms combined speaks to just how central to our lives the smartphone has become.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Follow These Three Tips for Designing the Perfect Podcast Icon
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/follow-three-tips-designing-perfect-podcast-icon/
So you’re starting a podcast. You’ve spent untold hours hammering out the format, and sweat the details on everything from subject matter to episode length. Maybe you’ve even got a name picked out. Exciting! Sounds like you’re ahead of the game. But have you given any thought to your cover art?
You should. Pixel for pixel, few plots of graphic real estate are more valuable than the icon that accompanies a podcast. As the sole item of visual information would-be listeners have to go on, it’s important to make it count.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jim Rutenberg / New York Times:
The Newspaper Association of America changes its name to the News Media Alliance
Yes, the News Can Survive the Newspaper
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/yes-the-news-can-survive-the-newspaper.html?_r=0
One day many decades hence, when your grandchildren ask you, “Grandma, what was a newspaper?” you can direct them back to Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. Because it may well go down as the day the American newspaper as we’ve known it moved out of intensive care and into the palliative wing on its way to the Great Beyond.
The Newspaper Association of America, the trade group that has represented the interests of major newspaper publishers in one form or another since 1887, is going to drop from its name the very word that defined it: “Newspaper.”
The group will be known as the News Media Alliance.
There is one obvious reason behind the change: The number of newspapers continues to drop, which has a way of depressing the association’s membership. (It has fallen to about 2,000 from roughly 2,700 in 2008, executives there say.)
the word “newspaper” has become meaningless in reference to many of the group’s members
“‘Newspaper’ is not a big enough word to describe the industry anymore,” Mr. Chavern said. “The future of this industry is much broader.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brendan Nyhan / New York Times:
Study of political news browsing of 1400 people: most read centrist sources, but some partisans, especially Republicans, consume highly polarized media heavily — Anyone who has followed this election carefully would be forgiven for thinking that voters have diverged into two separate realities.
Relatively Few People Are Partisan News Consumers, but They’re Influential
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/upshot/relatively-few-people-are-partisan-news-consumers-but-theyre-influential.html
Anyone who has followed this election carefully would be forgiven for thinking that voters have diverged into two separate realities. But it’s too soon to declare that we have entered a “post-fact” apocalypse, especially when we consider where people get information about politics.
New research shows that the great majority of people learn about political news from mainstream, relatively centrist media sources, not ideological websites or cable channels. However, relatively small numbers of partisans, especially Republicans, are heavy consumers of a highly polarized media diet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linking Without Permission Violates Copyright, Rules EU Court
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/08/202228/linking-without-permission-violates-copyright-rules-eu-court
Reuters is reporting that Playboy has won a lawsuit against a Netherlands news site for linking to photos without permission: “‘It is undisputed that GS Media (which owns GreenStijl) provided the hyperlinks to the files containing the photos for profit and that Sanoma had not authorized the publication of those photos on the internet,’
the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) said in a statement. ‘When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published.’
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today on whether posting, on a website, hyperlinks to copyright infringing works constitutes a “communication to the public” for the purposes of EU copyright law, an act which requires permission of the rights holder or other authorizing basis.
The court held that, if the links are provided “without the pursuit of financial gain by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website,” the act of posting the hyperlink is not an infringement of copyright.
Playboy wins copyright battle over web links to its images
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-playboy-copyright-idUSKCN11E1LR
Playboy won a legal fight to stop a website from posting links to images published without permission on Thursday, a decision which could have far wider consequences across the Internet.
The European Union’s top court decided that posting such links infringes copyright when the website doing it is seeking to profit from pictures published without permission.
“When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published.”
GS Media said the ruling was a blow to press freedom.
“If commercial media companies – such as GeenStijl – can no longer freely and fearlessly hyperlink it will be difficult to report on newsworthy new questions, leaked information and internal struggles and unsecure networks in large companies,” it said on GeenStijl’s website.
The issue of hyperlinking to photos and articles has become a divisive issue with the spread of the internet. Content owners argue that the ease with which people can post links to copyrighted material on the internet infringes their rights while internet users say restricting people’s ability to post links goes against the principle of freedom of information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dylan Byers / CNNMoney:
Lack of “protective pool” of reporters for Clinton and Trump leads to flawed, incomplete coverage during incidents like Clinton’s stumble at 9/11 service — Hillary Clinton’s wobbly, stumbling exit from Sunday’s September 11 commemoration set off a flurry of questions and concerns …
Hillary Clinton’s stumble highlights campaign transparency problems
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/11/media/hillary-clinton-health-protective-pool/
Hillary Clinton’s wobbly, stumbling exit from Sunday’s September 11 commemoration set off a flurry of questions and concerns about the Democratic presidential nominee’s health.
For the reporters who cover her, there was also frustration.
With less than sixty days until the election, neither Clinton nor Donald Trump has allowed for what’s known as a “protective pool,” a rotating group of reporters that travel with a candidate in order to provide a minute-to-minute account of their activities.
Without a protective pool, Clinton was able to leave the memorial site without reporters, travel to her daughter Chelsea Clinton’s apartment without reporters, and leave New York City for her home in Chappaqua, New York, without reporters. That left Clinton’s press pool scrambling to follow her around Manhattan and up to Chappaqua, always a step behind.
Still, the lack of a protective pool for either candidate highlights the degree to which both Clinton and Trump have been able to keep reporters at bay and exercise greater control over media access than previous nominees. Indeed, Trump did not even announce in advance that he would attend the memorial.
It is rare for presidential candidates to get to September of an election year without a protective pool.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mathew Ingram / Fortune:
Facebook’s claim that it isn’t a media entity is becoming increasingly untenable as the impact of its content ranking and removal policies continues to escalate — Facebook is more than just a site where people share photos of their children or pets. It has become a crucial way in which hundreds …
Here’s Why Facebook Removing That Vietnam War Photo Is So Important
http://fortune.com/2016/09/09/facebook-napalm-photo-vietnam-war/
The social network needs to admit its responsibilities as a media entity.
Facebook is more than just a site where people share photos of their children or pets. It has become a crucial way in which hundreds of millions of people get information about the world around them.
And the tension between those two things is becoming difficult to ignore.
The editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, Espen Egil Hansen, then wrote an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticizing him for doing so, entitled, “Dear Mark. I am writing this to inform you that I shall not comply with your requirement to remove this picture.”
“First you create rules that don’t distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs. Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgement,” Hansen wrote. “Finally you even censor criticism against and a discussion about the decision – and you punish the person who dares to voice criticism.”
“I appreciate the work Facebook and other media do to stop content and pictures showing abuse and violence,” the prime minister wrote. “But Facebook is wrong when they censor such images.” Removing such photos, the Norwegian PM said, is a curb on freedom of expression and amounts to the social network “editing our common history.”