Here is a really long transcript of a speech on Journalism which is well worth reading, so please give it a try, it is in many way state of the art:
Home » Dan Gillmor's Blog

My NYC Talk on Journalism Principles and Future

Dan Gillmor's Blog, Posted 05/02/06 by Dan Gillmor

Thanks again to Columbia University for inviting me this week to give the annual Hearst New Media Lecture. The audience was terrific and asked great questions (I don't have a transcript of that part, sorry.) What follows is the talk as I wrote it out, beginning after the various thank-yous to the folks who invited me (special thanks to Sree), though I did stray frequently from the written text.
I'm honored to have been invited. I'm also grateful. During the past few years I've had the privilege of working in a field that really led to this conversation we're going to have tonight. There have been ups and downs along the way. But it's been a great ride so far.

I spent more than a decade at the San Jose Mercury News, the daily newspaper of Silicon Valley. One of the ways I tended to classify some of the people I met in the technology industry was by dividing them into groups we might call the managers and the engineers. That's software and hardware engineers, not the kind who drive trains.

Here's a story I once heard. Or maybe I saw it on the Internet. Whatever, it's not original with me.

So it's lunchtime, and some managers at a software company are on their way out to a local restaurant. One of them peers up at the flag, waving in a mild breeze, and wonders aloud how tall the flagpole is. Now this is Silicon Valley, where when you have an idea you're supposed to act on it. One of them has a tape measure in his car, which he retrieves. The managers start hoisting each other up, attempting to measure the height of the thing, but they're falling all over each other and generally making a mess of it.

Meanwhile, a couple of software engineers have stopped to observe the somewhat chaotic scene. They look at each other and nod, then tell the managers to stand out of the way for a second, which by now they are only too glad to do. The engineers lift the pole out of its stand, lay it flat on the grass, take the tape and measure the thing. They give the answer to the managers and head off to their own lunch.

One of the managers looks to the others, shakes his head and says, "Typical engineers. We want the height and they give us the length."

I'm not an engineer, and I'm definitely not a corporate manager. But I like that story, because it reminds me how easily we see things in certain ways and fail to recognize or appreciate the alternatives.

This is called a "New Media" lecture. Two items: First, We are moving at light speed to a time when the expression "new media" will too many words, and we'll drop the new part; it'll just be media. I'm glad to see this school and the organizations that hire its graduates are adopting at least some of tomorrow's techniques more quickly than I predicted. That's good. Forward-looking folks are aware that there's no alternative, not to mention the fact that the journalism will benefit.

Second, I want to make this a conversation sooner than later. Eveything I've been working on in the past few years is about an evolution of journalism from the lecture mode of the past to something much closer to a conversation. That's a shift I consider absolutely essential for all of journalism's constituencies.

I don't have to tell anyone here about the turmoil in the news business over the past few years. If I noticed it a bit earlier than some, we can chalk that up partly to circumstance.

When I was writing my column for the San Jose Mercury News, We were a growing newspaper, loaded with ambition and the resources to do something about it. I was extremely well compensated -- for a newspaper guy, at any rate -- and free to follow my instincts. I used to wake up mornings thinking I'd won the journalism lottery.

Now the Mercury News is a much-diminished organization. It still has some of the best journalists and people I've know, is about to be sold to a newspaper group whose management will likely make the staff yearn for the days when the man some folks called Darth Ridder was running the company.

I'm not here to say newspapers have a right to survive. And I'm not here to say that professional journalists -- that is, people paid to produce news reports -- have a right to their jobs. Being in Silicon Valley helped me understand and appreciate this.

In our age of accelerating change, the force that the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction" guarantees that the blend of innovation, free markets and individual liberty are inevitably disruptive to business models. Creative destruction, which has slammed into the journalism field like so many others, obliges us all to keep learning and reinventing our own lives and careers. There are scary parts to this, but if we welcome innovation, while nourishing free markets and liberty with fairness and social responsibility, we will do better than under other systems.

I am here to say a few obvious things. One is the blatantly observable fact that the practice of journalism is evolving -- and at a pace so quick as to be stunning for such a conservatively run business. I'm also hoping to stretch some definitions, and maybe some boundaries, all in service of better journalism for the future.

On my blog in early 2005 I posted an essay-in-progress. It was called "The End of Objectivity (Version 0.91)." I suggested that the journalism of the new century would be better served if we all considered abandoning the worthy ideal of objectivity and replacing it with a collection of honored principles, only one of which was not already embedded in tradition. Now, by reinforcing those principles with the emerging tools of a Digital Age, we can create something even better.

By giving that blog posting a version number of less than 1.0, I wasn't just making a techie joke. I was calling attention to another reality of tomorrow's journalism. In a craft that's shifting from lecture to conversation, the publication (or broadcast or whatever) is not The End. It is somewhere in the middle of an emergent system in which we all can keep learning, and teaching.

This is increasingly doable in part because of what has changed so much for so many: the collision of technology and media, which has helped democratize communications and is turning traditional notions of journalism in new directions. Now, I don't mean democratization so much as in the sense of voting -- though collective community thinking is an intriguing and valuable part of what's coming. I mean it in the sense of wide participation.

The democratization starts with the tools of creation. They're widely available -- the computer I carry around came off the shelf with media tools that were simply unavailable a few years ago except to a highly skilled and well-paid professionals. These tools are increasingly powerful and decreasingly expensive, thanks to technology's relentless progress, and getting easier to use all the time.

They're also connected to a somewhat democratized digital communications system. I say "somewhat" because two of America's most control-freakish businesses -- namely the phone and cable companies -- are working hard to hijack the Internet for their own purposes, in ways that are flat-out dangerous to innovation and, I'd argue, our very future. I'll come back to this a bit later.

Today, at any rate, the democratization of tools and distribution has led to a related opening: of access.

Of all the major constituencies of journalism, the most important by far is what I like to call the "former audience" and what NYU's Jay Rosen, author of the great Pressthink blog, has dubbed the "people formerly known as the audience." (I don't know which of us said it first, so I'll give us both credit.)

We, the former audience, have been freed from the constraints of the manufacturing model of the 20th Century. And, more and more, we are taking advantage of our liberation. We never had to be satisfied merely with the newspaper dropped on our doorstep in the morning, or the half-hour broadcast in the evening, but it used to take some effort to assemble a more diverse and nuanced report. No longer. Now we can stop being couch potatoes and engage with the news. We can roll our own reports, from whatever sources of traditional and nontraditional media we wish, based on our own choices and recommendations from others.

Even better, we can join the emergent conversation. We can talk about and with the professionals, at least some of them. And if we wish -- as more and more people do -- we can create our own content and conversations. Not much of that latter effort is journalism in any traditional sense, but some of it plainly is, and amid the noise of the rest there is a great deal of signal, if we can just find and identify it.

The second most important of journalism's major constituencies consists of the newsmakers, the people and institutions we cover. They're learning that something new is happening to them. Members of the newsmakers' own constituencies -- of which journalists are just one -- are engaging in conversations about the newsmakers and what they do, and the old ways of communicating are being disrupted. At the same time, the newsmakers can and should be using these conversational tools to engage their various publics, internal and external, and in general to be more transparent in a world that increasingly demands and rewards openness.

The least important major constituency of journalism is, well, us: the journalists. That is NOT do say we don't matter. We do matter -- a lot. Journalism is an honorable and vital craft. It's essential to the welfare of a self-governed people, at least when we do it right. But we also know that journalism is about service. The public trust is a deeper calling than merely diverting readers, listeners and viewers from their everyday existence. At its core journalism must be about helping them conduct democracy's crucial conversations.

Trying for objectivity makes some sense in a media ecosystem that lacks diversity. If a few voices overwhelm all the others, there is a public interest in playing stories as allegedly down the middle as possible. That means not favoring one side over the other -- or others, to be more precise, as there are rarely just two sides to any issue. There have been sound business reasons to try to be "objective," too, not least that a newspaper or network didn't want to make large parts of its audience angry. No doubt, too, the lawyers have an easier time defending against libel suits when the organization can point to a process that aims for objectivity.

I'm in a mood, as the media ecosystem grows more diverse, to rethink all of this. I'd propose replacing the ideal of objectivity with some principles that may be easier to achieve. When we combine and augment them with new ways of presenting and discussing the news, they will be useful to journalists and news consumers of all kinds.

Incidentally -- apparently I have to say this in these kinds of settings -- I am not, contrary to some suggestions, out to boost citizen journalism by tearing down the traditional model. I hope to help create the conditions for a media and journalism ecosystem that's more diverse, vibrant and competitive, that includes all of the above, and not replace one flawed system with another. We need all, and they all need to be better.

The principles that collectively go beyond objectivity are thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, independence and transparency. Of course, they tend to bleed into each other, and in a several cases can even conflict or at least be somewhat orthogonal. I put this problem into the category of "Life is messy."

We all know what it means to be thorough, to keep digging and never assume we know everything. We know that accuracy is getting our facts straight. We know fairness -- however more difficult to quantify -- when we see it. Independence can include being financially independent, or having independence of thought and an eagerness to challenge our own assumptions. Transparency, the quality least in evidence in traditional journalism, though it's at long last coming into its own, is revealing biases and connections where they exist -- a crucial feature of a citizen media where true independence from the topic may likely be rare -- and exposing our inner workings to some sunshine.

Technology, deployed the right way, can give these principles a practical boost beyond anything we've seen in the non-digital media. Let's look at at examples -- a non-comprehensive list -- of what might be possible.

If accuracy starts off as a simple matter of facts, traditional and "new" journalists alike could do us all a favor by telling us what they don't know, not just what they do. On the Web, in a medium where space (and time) and layout constraints are less of an issue, we can take that a step further and invite the audience to fill us in, to help us get the actual rest of the story, or more of it.

We can also point directly, via hyperlinks -- the elemental unit of the Web -- to reference and original source materials as well as other information that supports, or maybe challenges, what we are reporting. In a journalism where being a guide counts as much as being an oracle, authority rises the more we point to other people's work -- if it's the best material on the topic or adds vital nuance or information. Yet only recently have Big Media websites started pointing outside of their own domains, and there's still obvious -- and I believe foolish -- worry about letting go of the audience. As blogging pioneer Dave Winer has said, and this is a paraphrase, "Send them away and they'll keep coming back."

And if accuracy means anything, it means correcting our inevitable mistakes quickly and prominently. On the Net, and with print in particular, we are blessed with an array of choices in how to do this. For example, we can use the "s" tag in HTML, which literally puts a strike-through line through the mistaken text, and then add the corrected material. Or we can just make it right, adding a tag line at the bottom of the posting explaining that such and such has been corrected. Audio, graphical and video errors can likewise be fixed in place.

(I'll note here that the better bloggers are among the most avid correcters of their own mistakes; their reputations rise and fall on their credibility, at least for the ones I read, and a stand-up admission of error wins the writer points for credibility -- at least if the mistakes don't happen repeatedly.)

In all such online cases, we do what newspapers and traditional broacasts cannot do: limit the damage and prevent the next person who's new to the story from getting the wrong information. I don't know about you, but when I read the corrections on Page 2 of the paper about stories that ran two or three days ago, I don't consider myself entirely enlightened. And, of course, when is the last time you recall a correction of an error on, say, the local TV station's "news" program?

The Net's superiority goes much deeper, though it has barely been tapped. For instance, I might like to be notified by e-mail if certain stories -- ones I choose -- have been corrected or updated in any significant way.

Let's focus on the word "updated" for a moment. In the journalism of tomorrow, as I noted earlier, we don't need to think in the publication or broadcast metaphors from the age of literally manufactured media, where the paper product or tape was the end of the process.

If Steven Spielberg and other Hollywood folks can create directors' cuts of their movies, why can't journalists do keep updating and improving some of their own works?

Ah, you ask, what about the historical record?

That's an easy one. Over at the much-criticized Wikipedia, every version of the article -- and I mean everything, down to the version where someone added a comma and hit the save button -- is available to anyone who wants to see it. You can even compare adjacently edited versions side by side.

Let's say I'm a reader who's new to, oh, the turmoil in Nepal, where the King is trying to avoid civil war with apparently modest political liberalization. Let's imagine, in my parallel universe of journalism, that the New York Times did its first in-depth story on the troubles there a couple of years ago and has been updating it on the Web to reflect new events -- this in addition to writing current news stories.

Maybe, being fresh to the story, all I want to do is see the current version so I can catch up. Or maybe I'd like to read the the original article -- call it the baseline copy -- and then the current one to see what's changed. Or maybe I want to see them mashed together, with the changes highlighted using colors for additions and strike-throughs for deletions.

The same could work for a blog posting by some well-connected Nepal citizen who's covering the story from home. Do I want to go back through a year's worth of postings? Probably not. But if he or she has an updated baseline posting, that would be another useful place to look.

The idea isn't new, really. The Associated Press has been using what's called the "write-through" forever -- adding new information to breaking news and telling editors what's new in the story. Let's do that for everyone, on the Web page and in a comprehensive and easy-to-understand way.

Now making this work on the page is basically a software problem -- if we want to do it. Maybe it's a nontrivial problem, as my engineer friends might say, but it's definitely solvable, and I'd recommend it.

Let's talk for a minute about fairness. Why not give people better ability to reply to what we say about them, and the audience better ways to follow and participate in that conversation. Allowing, or better yet, encouraging people to post comments is a good start, provided the comment system is handled in a way that doesn't degenerate into abusive name-calling from anonymous trolls. But how about letting the reader split the screen, and see how the person written about in the story responds alongside the original in context, if that's the reader's preferred way?

If the person talking back tells lies, journalists should note them, again in context. Fairness means listening to different viewpoints and incorporating them into the journalism, but it doesn't have to include parroting or accepting lies or distortions. That practice -- in whatever form -- amounts to the lazy equivalence that leads some journalists to get opposing quotes and give them undue weight when the facts overwhelmingly support one side. As someone said, you don't have to quote neo-Nazis for a story about the Holocaust.

How can technology support transparency? In many ways.

I don't call myself a journalist anymore, at least not the kind I was when I was writing for big newspapers. But I still offer observations on the topics that are important to me. I also have a page on Center for Citizen Media site called "Dan's Disclosures," where I lay out formal connections, financial and otherwise, that I have to several people and companies doing work in areas related to my own. And if I mention them in my blog, I note the connection in the posting and add a link to the full disclosures page.

Transparency can mean asking for help. When I was researching my book, I posted the full outline -- thousands of words -- on my blog. Then, as I was writing, I posted chapter drafts. I was looking for help in writing a better book, and got it. Even my column sometimes benefited from this approach; I'd post a blog item saying I was working on some topic or another, and that my thinking was going in a certain direction, and what did my readers think about that?

No, I didn't announce what I was working on if I thought I had a scoop, and I wouldn't suggest that others do that in most cases. But there are plenty of situations where announcing one's intentions ahead of time will produce better journalism, of whatever kind.

Transparency at Big Media can take the form of pulling back the curtains a bit, helping readers or viewers understand how news stories, and decisions about stories, get made. How far should this be taken? It would be absurd to expect reporters to scan and post on the Web the scrawlings from their notebooks.

But there's nothing wrong with acknowledging our biases, whether personal and institutional, and letting readers make up their own minds about whether to trust what we then report. At the least, the black-box school of journalism, where information goes in and our oracular lectures come out, is no longer acceptable. Necessity requires some discretion, but the public rightly wants more transparency than it's been getting.

With bloggers and other conversational media, biases tend to be up-front, though the blogosphere is hardly free of sleazy manipulation. People like the South Dakota bloggers who were on a candidate's payroll without disclosing their interest should be shunned by readers, in my opinion.

Transparency can boost authority. At a time when saying "Trust me" without evidence is an invitation to mistrust and ridicule, we'll gain more than we lose with transparency.

I've talked a fair amount about openness here. This is not only an issue for journalists in their own work. It's one of the most important policy issues facing us all. If you think media consolidation is an issue today, it's nothing compared with what we're facing tomorrow.

Earlier, I mentioned a clear and present danger to the open Internet that has nurtured a more diverse media ecosystem. The threat, in America, is the dominance of the cable and phone companies in what we laughingly call broadband data connections. I say "laughingly" because the U.S. is falling way, way behind the rest of the developed world in providing broadband access, and one reason is the dominance of companies that grew up in an environment where they dominated their worlds, and really preferred it that way.

The cable and phone companies want to control not just the pipes through which our data moves. They also want to decide what will get delivered, in what order, and at what speed. They haven't pulled this off yet, but they're getting closer every day.

Yesterday, a committee in the House of Representatives voted down an amendment to a new bill that would have required what many of us call "network neutrality." This is the idea that the people getting data -- you and me -- should make the decisions on what we get and in what order, and if necessary pay more for higher speeds. It should not be a decision made by Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner or the fake new ATT.

If they succeed in capturing the kind of control they want -- and they're closer than I would have believed possible -- we'll all be harmed.

I beg you to write and call your member of Congress and U.S. senators, and your state representatives -- the duopoly is well-wired, in the wrong way, in our state capitals, too. Tell them you want an open Internet, not a walled garden or fortress where giant companies get to pick what innovations will succeed or fail.

So much for politics. But before I get to the Q&A, which is bound to be more interesting than what has come before, allow me to make one more pitch.

I've started a new Center for Citizen Media, affiliated with the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and I have lots of ideas and plans. But I also need lots of help. If you're interested in working on projects with me, please let me know.

Here's a new one from the New York Times and there are three words in this article which you need to know. Check it out.

SERVICES SCIENCE
Although computer science is now a fixture in higher education, a couple of
decades ago academic purists scoffed at the idea that it was a real science
-- and argued that any discipline to which the word "science" has to be
fixed is no science at all. Now the same kind of debate is taking place
about "services science." New York Times journalist Steve Lohr says that
"scientists and engineers tend to regard what is taught in business schools
as a mushy combination of anecdotes, success stories and platitudes, wrapped
in jargon. Put a few success stories together, and they become a 'best
practice'." But one of service science's strongest defenders, Cal-Berkeley
professor Henry Chesbrough, argues: "We in academia have to find ways to
contribute research to improving our economic performance in services and to
help students succeed in this knowledge-based services economy." IBM, which
previously championed computer science, is now championing services science
by sponsoring workshops, awarding research grants and helping develop course
materials. In fact, IBM is itself one of the best examples of the shift
toward services, for it has evolved from being just a computer maker to a
company that 's moving into sophisticated technology services for every
aspect of business. (New York Times 18 Apr 2006)
>

Someone was asking for the Spring syllubus for this course, well here it is:
ADVANCED WRITING JOURNALISM

Clark Richardson - Instructor

SYLLABUS SPRING:

At the beginning of each class review new items posted on the class blog for discussion and further research. http://cybercats.blogspot.com/

First Class: Introduction to the class and format and review of syllabus content. Set up student blog accounts. What are the responsibilities of the press in a free country? What about a repressive country (Fifth column). Newspapers and wire services, Unit 1 “Journalism English Today”. Key Vocabulary: News Media Words. News writing. What is news (definitions) what are the readers interested in and what should they be interested in? Time sensitive, hot news. Background research stories. Future news: business forecasts, weather, and horoscopes. Small markets versus big markets. Assignment: Write and e-mail me a hot news item for campus market.

Second Class: What makes a story news. The structure of a news story, Unit 4 Journalism English Today. Disasters and Accidents the good news and the bad news, which do you, want first? News Video introduction. Key vocabulary: The Economy and the Stock Markets. Local, National and International news. What is she? Who is she? What did she do? Campus walk – looking for a story. Find it research it and write it. Distribute blog address to students. Introduce the class blog.

Third Class: Broadcast News. Broadcasting words. Unit 9 in Journalism English Today. The difference between Published media and broadcast media. Talking heads and doorknobs. Radio assignment – Podcasting and sound files. News Writing Video (No. 1-5). Video: “Up Close and Personal” first 15 minutes.

Fourth Class: Pros and cons of T.V., radio, newspapers, magazines, internet sources, news blogs and the on-line press. What’s a lead and what is a lead story? Past, present (time loaded) and future. Obituary story. News Writing Video. Second part of “Up Close and Personal”. Reserve video cameras from Media Center. Show students videotape to buy.

Fifth Class: Review blog postings. What makes a powerful video story? Third part of “Up Close and Personal”. Video assignment. Video groups assignment. News Writing Video.

Sixth Class: How to pick the story. How to research the story (News Writing Video). Sources and how they should be treated. How to tell the story (Vocabulary for print and broadcast news). Unit 9 Broadcast News “Journalism English Today” Continue video assignment media editing in Media center.

Seventh Class: Internet news and papers in other countries. International Organizations. Key vocabulary Unit 11 “Journalism English Today”. E-news , blogs and the filter function of conventional media. Who picks and who decides on what is news. Different in big and small markets, different in media type. News Writing Video. Forth part of ‘Up Close and Personal.

Eighth Class: Headlines and headline words – Thesaurus. Headlining your story. Media leads for your story. Unit 5 English in Headlines “Journalism English Today”. KILL in the paper press. Last section “Up Close and Personal”. Interview techniques first worksheet and classroom practice.

Ninth Class: Class review of student’s news videos. Class review of student audio files. Compare and critique. Critical art, music, movie review.

Tenth Class: Culture and sports. How are they different in structure and vocabulary? News Writing Video. Assignment – Sports story. Kiss and tell.

Eleventh Class: Writing and reporting –coaching the writer, focus the reporter. News Writing Video. Reporting the same story for different media, Units 12 – 13 Journalism English Today. A science story assignment.

Twelfth Class: A news nose and fire engine chasing. Asking all the questions and then what to do with the answers. Respecting and protecting sources.

Write this down in your schedule: Our Asahi Newspaper Tour will be on Monday June 19th at 1 p.m. so plan for it. Clark

Take a look at the Weekly Spin:
THE WEEKLY SPIN, April 19, 2006

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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. The Media War and Journalist Thought Crimes
2. Essential2: Better Flacking Through Chemistry
3. U.S. Public Diplomacy Goes South
4. Holy Product Placement, Batman!
5. Crunch Time for School Junk Food?
6. CNN Features Real News About Fake TV News
7. K Street to Get a TM?
8. Public Service or War Propaganda?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

== SPIN OF THE DAY ==

1. THE MEDIA WAR AND JOURNALIST THOUGHT CRIMES
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002345682
"When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Rush
Limbaugh's talk radio show" recently, he made several remarks "on
the subject of press coverage in Iraq" that have mostly escaped
notice, writes Editor and Publisher. Rumsfeld said that "the
terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have
media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate
the press in the United States. ... They're much better at
(laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are." He also
said, "There have been far fewer journalists who have stepped up to
become embedded" with military units in Iraq. One reporter told
Rumsfeld that the perception was that embedded journalists "were
really part of the problem." Rumsfeld commented, "I think that's an
inexcusable thought."
SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, April 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4739

2. ESSENTIAL2: BETTER FLACKING THROUGH CHEMISTRY
http://www.prweek.com/us/features/article/554052/Honeywell+sees+wisdom+joint+effort+Nobel+Media/
Working with Ogilvy PR, the American Chemistry Council (ACC)
launched its "Essential2" PR campaign last year, "to reposition the
$550 billion industry as not only imperative, but advantageous to
all aspects of modern life." Essential2 includes "national cable TV
spots, print ads, and a policymaker education program." PR Week
profiles the campaign's outreach to chemical company employees. ACC
named "campaign coordinators at each of its 129 member companies"
and provided them with "articles on topics ranging from chemistry's
role in preventing house fires to keeping NASCAR drivers safe." ACC
also designed an online "employee ambassador" kit with tips on "how
to discuss the benefits of chemistry, write educational letters to
the editor, contact government officials, and generate school and
community group speaking opportunities." ACC members include Dow
Corning, Bayer, DuPont and Carus Chemical, which hosted an employee
ice cream social where "ACC's MTV-style motivational video screened
as entertainment."
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req'd), April 17, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4738

3. U.S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY GOES SOUTH
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/14368770.htm
The U.S. State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy,
Karen Hughes, has "launched a campaign to make her government
simpatico" to Latin America. Last month, Hughes visited Brazil,
Panama, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia. She wants to make U.S. aid
in the region "more visible and higher profile." Latin American
countries are receiving "more money for student and youth exchange
programs, as part of a worldwide effort to bring young people into
the United States." Hughes explained, "I'm focused particularly on
young people and those who influence them." Other changes include
adding eight regional public diplomacy officers, "to write up press
releases, manage cultural and student exchanges and attend speaking
events," and using the State Department's "rapid-response unit" to
help ambassadors respond to breaking news. A recent poll found
"three out of every five Latin Americans distrust the United
States."
SOURCE: Miami Herald, April 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4737

4. HOLY PRODUCT PLACEMENT, BATMAN!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114532350031828284.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
"Product placement has become commonplace in movies and TV shows.
Now it's coming to comic books -- in part because the industry's two
giants, DC and Marvel, are promoting some of their titles as places
to reach one of Madison Avenue's most elusive audiences: guys in
their 20s," reports Brian Steinberg. DC Comics' new miniseries,
called "Rush City," will have "visible promotional support from
General Motors Corp.'s Pontiac." The series' hero will drive a
Pontiac Solstice. Marvel Entertainment "has begun putting the
'swoosh' logo from Nike Inc. in the scenes of some of its titles,
such as 'New X-Men.' So far, the emblem has appeared on a car door
and on a character's T-shirt." Marvel also signed a deal with
DaimlerChrysler, in which the new Dodge Caliber may be featured in
their comic books' cityscapes, "on billboards, T-shirts or signs
over the next four to eight months."
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), April 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4736

5. CRUNCH TIME FOR SCHOOL JUNK FOOD?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0604140127apr14,1,6207503,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a frequent proponent of
legislation protecting children, is now taking on a formidable
opponent: the snack industry. Matthew Chayes reports that Harkin has
introduced legislation that would tighten the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) definition for "foods of minimal nutritional
value." Harken wants USDA guidelines to limit saturated fat, trans
fat, added sugar and other bad stuff in schools, instead of
filtering foods by their nutrients. Aside from advocating voluntary
guidlines, industry groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom say
the problem isn't the food, it's the kids and parents. Industry
consultant Lisa Katic told the Tribune, "The industry's not going to
support a bill that's not showing results." She added that children
need more pushups, not less fat or sugar. Kelly Brownell, director
of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, told the New
York Times that he fears "that the food industry, with the soft
drink industry taking the lead, will work its hardest to weaken or
kill this act."
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, April 14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4735

6. CNN FEATURES REAL NEWS ABOUT FAKE TV NEWS
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/reliable.sources/
Our groundbreaking exposé "Fake TV News: Widespread and
Undisclosed" continues to make waves. Dan Price, co-author of the
report with CMD's Diane Farsetta, was interviewed Sunday, April 16,
by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post on his CNN Reliable Sources
program. Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein was
also interviewed and pledged bipartisan action from the FCC. Dan
Price is a CMD research consultant and novelist who has his own
website. If you click here you can view on Dan's site his appearance
on CNN' s Reliable Sources. It's some of the best news you will ever
watch and yes, it is real. Our colleagues at Free Press have made it
easy for you to contact the FCC to ask the agency to investigate
this abuse of the public airwaves and to penalize stations that
break the law by deceiving their audiences with undisclosed fake
news. Act today, and ask five friends to do the same.
SOURCE: CNN's Reliable Sources, April 16, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4734

7. K STREET TO GET A TM?
http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/041206/news2.html
While "most other Republicans" are avoiding the phrase K Street
Project, following lobbyist Jack Abramoff's January agreement to
plead guilty to corruption charges, Grover Norquist is seeking to
trademark it. Norquist's organization, Americans for Tax Reform,
runs the project as what he describes as "an innocuous list of job
openings for Washington lobbyists and a database of lobbyists'
political ties and federal campaign contributions. The lists are
circulated among high-level conservatives, with critics calling the
efforts an improper 'whitelisting' and 'blacklisting' of potential
hires," reports The Hill. Norquist says the K Street Project, which
he founded in 1989, has been wrongly described as "a nefarious
practice of Republican lawmakers pressuring groups to hire
right-leaning employees." Trademarking the phrase will allow
conservatives to "jealously guard the real phrasing" and to "sue
anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money," explained
Norquist.
SOURCE: The Hill, April 12, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4733

8. PUBLIC SERVICE OR WAR PROPAGANDA?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/08/BUGROI5SPN1.DTL&hw=propaganda&sn=001&sc=1000
In early April, "a public-service advertising campaign began ...
encouraging Americans to show support for American troops." The San
Francisco Chronicle asks, "Is it a genuine message of gratitude or
poorly designed advocacy for the war in Iraq?" The non-profit
Advertising Council designed the print, radio and online ads for the
U.S. Defense Department. The spots direct people to the Department's
"America Supports You" website. Some marketing professionals "said
they believe the message crosses into partisan territory." The
founder of Venables, Bell & Partners remarked, "I feel the war
propaganda machine." Ad Council president Ellis Verdi rejected the
criticism, saying, "What's important is that these are 18-year-old
human beings, Americans, who are under stress." The Ad Council was
formed in 1942, to increase support for World War II; its campaigns
from that time include Rosie the Riveter and "Loose Lips Sink
Ships."
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4732


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Here is a copy of Grist which is a daily eco newsletter digging up the dirt on the dirty guys. Look at this issue and if you'd like you could subscribe for free delivery to your own machine if you wanted to.

Thursday, 20 Apr 2006
It's Like Chile, Only Wider
Haven't entered our Great Peru Giveaway yet? What are you waiting for? Sign up today and you could win an eco-trip for two to this lush South American nation.

ADVERTISEMENT





NEW IN GRIST
It's All in the List
Our list of environmental goodies, oddities, and inanities

We thought about being earnest this Earth Day -- compiling some sort of inspiring list of in-the-trenches eco-heroes who need recognition and encouragement -- but then we remembered: we're Grist. So we bring you instead a capricious rundown of our favorite highs, lows, and wacky bits of the last year. Who's the hottest eco-model? The mustachiest geo-green? What's the kinkiest eco-innovation? The most self-defeating anti-Kyoto argument? Survey our superlatives to find out, then add your own ideas in Gristmill.

new in Main Dish: It's All in the List

new in Gristmill: It's All in the List


One for the Record Books, If They Survive the Floods
U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions hit record high

This week, the feds quietly -- as in, tiptoeing in socks, holding breath -- released annual stats on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, as required by the U.N. climate-change convention. The news is roughly as good as you would expect: The U.S., with only 5 percent of the world's population, is its biggest GHG polluter; emissions rose 1.7 percent between 2003 and 2004, the biggest increase since 2000, part of a 15.8 percent rise since 1990; in 2004, the U.S. spewed the equivalent of 6.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, fossil-fuel combustion was responsible for the bulk (94 percent) of the emissions. Demand for electricity in the U.S. keeps on rising, as does the number of cars on the road. Said U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson: "[T]he U.S. is making significant progress toward the president's greenhouse-gas reduction goals." Said us: What the hell are you talking about?

straight to the source: The Independent, Steve Connor, 19 Apr 2006

straight to the source: Environment News Service, 18 Apr 2006

discuss in Gristmill: EPA releases new report on greenhouse-gas emissions



NEW IN GRIST
We're So Vain, We Think This Party's About Us
A dispatch from the launch party for Vanity Fair's green issue

In case you haven't noticed, we're pretty dang excited that our own Chip Giller made the glossy green pages of the latest issue of Vanity Fair. And Vanity Fair's pretty excited to exclaim to the world that they're turning an environmental corner. This week, they did that by hosting a swank soiree at a luxury home-goods store ... but hey. One step at a time. Emily Gertz was there, and dishes the dirt on the beautiful people.

new in Dispatches: We're So Vain, We Think This Party's About Us

see also, in Gristmill: Vanity Fair green issue


Knock, Knock. Hu's There.
Oil issue looms as Chinese prez visits White House

Buying oil from unsavory regimes, thus ensuring their grip on power. Attempting to lock up oil supplies to increase geopolitical influence. Growing heedlessly and unsustainably, polluting the air and water. These are the kinds of behaviors the world can no longer tolerate from ... China. Wait, whaaa? Seriously: During Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the White House today, President Bush was expected to lecture him about oil. You see, the U.S. doesn't appreciate China's "mercantilist" policy of buying oil from places like Sudan, Burma, and, most significantly, Iran, with no heed for those countries' geopolitical misbehavior. The U.S. is attempting to build international support for economic sanctions against Iran over its budding nuclear program, and China could potentially stymie those plans. Bush planned to encourage Hu to get on board about Iran, quit buying oil from suspect regimes, and concentrate on energy efficiency. Hu planned to teach Bush the Chinese terms for "pot," "kettle," and "black."

straight to the source: The Globe and Mail, Barrie McKenna, 20 Apr 2006

straight to the source: The New York Times, David E. Sanger, 19 Apr 2006


Death Rides a Slightly Less Pale Horse
Climate change may not totally wipe out the human species

In what passes for good news on global warming these days, a new study has determined that climate sensitivity -- the extent to which climate will react to increased greenhouse-gas levels -- is likely within the mid-range of predictions. That means an atmospheric doubling of GHG levels, which everyone expects, will raise the global average temperature between roughly 2.5 and 8 degrees -- not the wacky 16-degree jump some had warned of. "This still commits us to quite a bit of climate change, but it leaves the door open to avoiding the largest and most devastating consequences," said lead researcher Gabriele C. Hegerl. Of course, a rise of 7 or 8 degrees in global average temperature will ensure massive storms, droughts, and sea-level rises, sufficient to hobble human society. But a 16-degree rise would be much more likely to wipe us out entirely. So, um ... we have a chance of maybe surviving! Who says the media never reports the good news?

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Rick Weiss, 20 Apr 2006

Message to 06 CyberCats: Welcome to your web site. You will find notices from me and updates on the latest trends and controversies in journalism today. Looking forward to working with you. Clark

Fake News. Created by Public Relations departments in businesses and government, fake news has been in the news recently and here are some new research results from the U.S.:

Dear Weekly Spin reader,

Just minutes ago, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)
published online our groundbreaking exposé, "Fake TV News:
Widespread and Undisclosed."

This multi-media report is the culmination of an intensive, ten
month investigation by CMD senior researcher Diane Farsetta and
research consultant Daniel Price. The report provides the most
extensive account to date of how corporate-funded video news
releases (VNRs) -- fake TV news -- are routinely aired, without
disclosure, as though they were independent news reports.

Read the report here:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

And then tell the Federal Communications Commission that fake news
must stop, by clicking here:
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fakenews

We are presenting the report today (April 6) in Washington DC, at a
press conference with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein and the
media reform group Free Press. We've also filed a formal complaint
with the FCC, calling for the 77 stations we caught airing fake TV
news to be held accountable. All such material must be disclosed,
to honor the audience's right to know!

Learn which TV stations we caught and watch footage of the VNRs we
tracked, plus see how TV newscasts incorporated them and/or related
satellite media tour "interviews." It's all here:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

Well are newspapers and information sources dieing? The answers are mixed but here is an update from the New York Times:
Are Papers About to Land or Take Off?

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Published: March 9, 2006


The fate of Knight Ridder newspapers, the nation's second-largest newspaper chain, could be determined any day — and with it, the future of what has come to be known as the mainstream media could become clearer.


Knight Ridder was put up for sale in November under pressure from its three biggest shareholders, who said the company's stock was undervalued. In what may be an early sign that the newspaper industry's value has declined, it appears that only two bidders are likely to make offers by the deadline, which is today. Several private equity firms looked over the property but dropped out.

Offers are expected from the McClatchy Company and from the Gannett Company in partnership with the MediaNews Group. How high they bid will be significant. Low bids would suggest pessimism about the prospects for newspapers, as readers and advertisers increasingly decamp to the Internet. High bids would indicate more optimism for their future.

Knight Ridder owns 32 daily newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The San Jose Mercury News and The Kansas City Star. As late as yesterday, a consortium of buyout firms led by Thomas H. Lee Partners of New York and including the Texas Pacific Group was still interested, but industry analysts said a Lee bid was unlikely.

That leaves the bidding to two very different newspaper companies, one small, one large, both of them respected on Wall Street for their disciplined operations and high profit margins. But there is no sure sign either will offer a price that Knight Ridder will take.

Analysts said any bid over $65 a share would probably be accepted; anything less would put the company in a quandary. If Knight Ridder were unhappy with the offers, it might drop the sale and buy back more of its own stock in an attempt to revive its share price and provide its shareholders with a special dividend.

Whatever the outcome, the process portends a stringent climate for those toiling away at Knight Ridder.

"The bottom line on Knight Ridder papers is that in order to make these deals work, someone has to get extremely aggressive with costs," said Frederick W. Searby, an analyst with J. P. Morgan. "There's no question that this means that any buyer has to go in with a very, very sharp knife and trim the fat and maybe into the muscles to get this to work."

At the same time, bids that Knight Ridder considered too low could send a further message of worry through an industry already on the defensive.

"It will be very negative," Mr. Searby said. "Given the easy money out there, if these kind of prime assets can't get taken, it will rattle a lot of investors and depress sentiment."

James M. Naughton, a former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and retired president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, was less certain of the ramifications, especially if no deal were made.

"My concern is that it will be considered a referendum on the news business rather than an acknowledgment of what it really is — the failure of Knight Ridder many years ago to protect itself in the way it organized its stock," he said, referring to the company having only a single class of stock, making it more vulnerable to takeovers.

"I don't know that it speaks to the wider issue of whether there is money to be made in newspapers because the answer is yes, a lot," Mr. Naughton said. But Knight Ridder, he said, "is more apt to be under pressure from investors and therefore more apt to do bad things to its newsrooms to try to protect itself."

In any case, analysts said that a deal, if there was one, would move quickly and could be resolved in a matter of days. Paperwork on many minor aspects of a sale has already been signed by all three parties, they said. Still, no one rules out a last-minute scenario in which McClatchy joins with Gannett and MediaNews and divvies up the Knight Ridder empire, each according to its needs.

Knight Ridder is attractive largely because, despite the current environment, its newspapers remain profitable — its overall profit margin in 2004 was 19.3 percent, which is robust, albeit lower than McClatchy's and Gannett's, which own papers with margins above 30 percent.

Moreover, Knight Ridder, which has several strong newspaper Web sites and various online ventures, could serve as a gateway to a substantial presence on the Internet, from which analysts expect strong revenue in the future. Its assets include CareerBuilder.com, a popular Web site that it owns jointly with Gannett and the Tribune Company.

The downside is that its newspapers are just that — newspapers, the emblem of the old media, with big costs for printing and distribution at a time when readers and advertisers are turning to multiple other sources of news and entertainment.

So - what's happening in journalism today. Check this story about the power of the internet to protect journalists in China:

The Great Firewall of China | A Letter's Journey in Cyberspace
The Click That Broke a Government's Grip


By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 19, 2006; Page A01

BEIJING -- The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.
Buy This Photo
Li Datong, shown outside the China Youth Daily, challenged a plan to dock reporters' pay if government officials took issue with their stories. The speed and power of the Internet helped launch a campaign that ultimately compelled a government retreat from the plan. (By Philip P. Pan -- The Washington Post)

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li's memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China's most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.

The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party's ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month's decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.

Eleven years after young Chinese returning from graduate study in the United States persuaded the party to offer Internet access to the public, China is home to one of the largest, fastest-growing and most active populations of Internet users in the world, according to several surveys. With more than 111 million people connected to the Web, China ranks second to the United States.

Although just a fraction of all Chinese go online -- and most who do play games, download music or gossip with friends -- widespread Internet use in the nation's largest cities and among the educated is changing the way Chinese learn about the world and weakening the Communist Party's monopoly on the media. Studies show China's Internet users spend more time online than they do with television and newspapers, and they are increasingly turning to the Web for news instead of traditional state outlets.

The government has sought to control what people read and write on the Web, employing a bureaucracy of censors and one of the world's most technologically sophisticated system of filters. But the success of those measures has been mixed. As a catalyst that amplifies voices and accelerates events, the Internet presents a formidable challenge to China's authoritarian political system. Again and again, ordinary Chinese have used it to challenge the government, force their opinions to be heard and alter political outcomes.

The influence of the Web has grown over the past two years, even as President Hu Jintao has pursued the country's most severe crackdown on the state media in more than a decade. The party said last week that Freezing Point would resume publishing, but Li and a colleague were fired, making them the latest in a series of editors at state publications to lose their jobs.

With newspapers, magazines and television stations coming under tighter control, journalists and their audiences have sought refuge online. The party's censors have followed, but cyberspace in China remains contested terrain, where the rules are uncertain and an eloquent argument can wield surprising power.

So - what's happening in journalism today. Check this story about the power of the internet to protect journalists in China:

The Great Firewall of China | A Letter's Journey in Cyberspace
The Click That Broke a Government's Grip


By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 19, 2006; Page A01

BEIJING -- The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.
Buy This Photo
Li Datong, shown outside the China Youth Daily, challenged a plan to dock reporters' pay if government officials took issue with their stories. The speed and power of the Internet helped launch a campaign that ultimately compelled a government retreat from the plan. (By Philip P. Pan -- The Washington Post)

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li's memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China's most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.

The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party's ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month's decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.

Eleven years after young Chinese returning from graduate study in the United States persuaded the party to offer Internet access to the public, China is home to one of the largest, fastest-growing and most active populations of Internet users in the world, according to several surveys. With more than 111 million people connected to the Web, China ranks second to the United States.

Although just a fraction of all Chinese go online -- and most who do play games, download music or gossip with friends -- widespread Internet use in the nation's largest cities and among the educated is changing the way Chinese learn about the world and weakening the Communist Party's monopoly on the media. Studies show China's Internet users spend more time online than they do with television and newspapers, and they are increasingly turning to the Web for news instead of traditional state outlets.

The government has sought to control what people read and write on the Web, employing a bureaucracy of censors and one of the world's most technologically sophisticated system of filters. But the success of those measures has been mixed. As a catalyst that amplifies voices and accelerates events, the Internet presents a formidable challenge to China's authoritarian political system. Again and again, ordinary Chinese have used it to challenge the government, force their opinions to be heard and alter political outcomes.

The influence of the Web has grown over the past two years, even as President Hu Jintao has pursued the country's most severe crackdown on the state media in more than a decade. The party said last week that Freezing Point would resume publishing, but Li and a colleague were fired, making them the latest in a series of editors at state publications to lose their jobs.

With newspapers, magazines and television stations coming under tighter control, journalists and their audiences have sought refuge online. The party's censors have followed, but cyberspace in China remains contested terrain, where the rules are uncertain and an eloquent argument can wield surprising power.

I keep telling my Academic writing classes that they have to look for reliable references and on the internet that would be the web site of established science journals,university web sites and libraries as well as government sites and large private and public international organizations-HOWEVER-WE HAVE A PROBLEM:
Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to Verify


By JULIE BOSMAN

Published: February 13, 2006- In the New York Times


When the journal Science recently retracted two papers by the South Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, it officially confirmed what he had denied for months: Dr. Hwang had fabricated evidence that he had cloned human cells.


But the editors of Science were not alone in telling the world of Dr. Hwang's research. Newspapers, wire services and television networks had initially trumpeted the news, as they often do with information served up by the leading scientific journals.

Now news organizations say they are starting to look at the science journals a bit more skeptically.

"My antennae are definitely up since this whole thing unfolded," said Rob Stein, a science reporter for The Washington Post. "I'm reading papers a lot more closely than I had in the past, just to sort of satisfy myself that any individual piece of research is valid. But we're still in sort of the same situation that the journal editors are, which is that if someone wants to completely fabricate data, it's hard to figure that out."

But other than heightened skepticism, not a lot has changed in how newspapers treat scientific journals. Indeed, newspaper editors openly acknowledge their dependence on them. At The Los Angeles Times, at least half of the science stories that run on the front page come directly from journals, said Ashley Dunn, the paper's science editor. Gideon Gil, the health and science editor for The Boston Globe, said that two of the three science stories that run on a typical day were from research that appeared in journals.

Beyond newspapers, papers from journals are routinely picked up by newsweeklies, network news, talk radio and Web sites.

"They are the way science is conducted, they're the way people share information, they're the best approximation of acceptance by knowledgeable people," said Laura Chang, science editor for The New York Times. "We do rely on them for the starting point of many of our stories, and that will not change."

There are limits to the vetting that science reporters, who are generally not scientists themselves, can do. Most journal articles have embargoes attached, giving reporters several days to call specialists in the field, check footnotes on an article and scrutinize the results.

"Scientific discoveries are more difficult because they often require in the generalist reporter a good deal of study, follow-up interviews and some guidance on how to make sense of technical matters," said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. "But I think the scandals do require both a new level of skepticism on the part of the reporter and also maybe some new protocols between scientists and journalists."

The Hwang case was not the first time journals had been duped: recently, editors at The New England Journal of Medicine said they suspected two cancer papers they published contained fabricated data. In December, the same journal said that the authors of a 2000 study on the painkiller Vioxx had omitted the fact that several patients had had heart attacks while taking the drug in a trial. A study on the painkiller Celebrex that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association was discredited when it was discovered that the authors had submitted only six months of data, instead of the 12 months of data they had collected.

While the journals have a peer review process that is in part meant to filter out fallacious papers by checking research techniques and conclusions, perhaps the greatest difficulty for science reporters is trying to catch what journal editors have missed.

After hearing the news of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, Mr. Gil of The Globe said he immediately remembered his newspaper's coverage of the stem cell papers.

"We were blown away, in part because we had written those stories on Page 1," Mr. Gil said. "And when we wrote them, we called the leading experts in the world on all this embryonic stem cell stuff, who are here in Boston. And they were as hoodwinked as anybody else."

Despite the fraud cases, most of what the journals publish is basically credible, said David Perlman, the science editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Among the most prestigious science journals that reporters consult regularly are Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"I think they and we have been burned enough that they're making efforts," Mr. Perlman said. "They're being more careful now, and I think reporters are too. I definitely have more of a 'Hey, let's look more carefully' attitude now that I did 5 or 10 years ago."
Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said in a statement in December that the journal itself was not an investigative body. But when reporting on journal findings, most news outlets fail to caution that studies must be replicated to be truly authenticated.

"Beyond Hwang, the more fundamental issue is that journals do not and cannot guarantee the truth of what they publish," said Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times. "Publication of a paper only means that, in the view of the referees who green-light it, it is interesting and not obviously false. In other words, all of the results in these journals are tentative."

The journals' own peer review processes, which are intended to be the first barrier against fraud, have come under criticism lately. A cover story in the February issue of The Scientist said that the top-tier journals were receiving more submissions every year, overtaxing peer reviewers and weakening the screening process.

After the Hwang scandal, Science announced it was considering a set of changes to better prevent fraud: Dr. Kennedy said in January that new rules could include "requiring all authors to detail their specific contributions to the research submitted, and to sign statements of concurrence with the conclusions of the work," as well as "implementing improved methods of detecting image alteration, although it appears improbable that they would have detected problems in this particular case." (Through a spokeswoman, Dr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed and said the editors were currently conducting a review of the episode.)

Some newspapers have adopted guidelines of their own to check for conflicts of interest involving authors of journal articles. The Globe instituted guidelines last July requiring reporters to ask researchers about their financial ties to studies, and to include that information in resulting articles. In its weekly health and science section, The Globe outlines any shortcomings of a study under the heading "Cautions."

Kit Frieden, the health and science editor for The Associated Press, said: "We've always had our own peer review process, where on the major studies we seek outside expert comment. We've always regarded scientific research cautiously because mistakes can be made, and I don't think that's changed."

The growing competition for the most important research among the journals may contribute to mistakes and fabrications, even in the most prestigious of the bunch. But in the end, the severe consequences of presenting fraudulent research generally act as a deterrent, said Mr. Dunn of The Los Angeles Times.

"Unlike financial fraud, where you can bamboozle somebody of their money and disappear and then start over again, in science the researchers are in one place," he said. "If they get caught in this type of thing, their careers are over."

I read Google News everyday and like it second only to BBC. However here is an interesting take from Technology Review blog by Brad King
Emerging Technology and Culture
The dotcom boom didn't fail. It transformed our society from analog to digital, all in less than ten years. Now, we're on to what's next...

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Google News Facing Down Newspapers
Posted at 12:00 AM

Search engines, RSS feeds, and other tools for navigating the Web are facing serious legal scrutiny; right now, a lawsuit brought by Agence France Presse against Google News is proceeding through the U.S. federal court system. And now a second international organization is throwing its weight behind the case, threatening to find new ways to challenge the search giant's wildly successful Google News aggregation service, according to this Reuters story.

However, the World Association of Newspapers -- the group looking into how the newspaper industry can curtail business models built on aggregation services -- says it's not interested in simply facing off in court. The group wants to find a way to financially benefit from emerging Web tools.

"It's not intended to shoot one over the bow, it's to take a group of people to look at the issue, and look at what options are open to our members," Rahnema added.

If that statement actually turns out to be true -- that the organization isn't looking for simply a legal remedy -- it would be in stark contrast to the movie and music industries, which each took hard-line stances against all forms of new electronic distribution.

A side note: it's ironic that I came across this article on a site that posts headlines of stories -- which link back to the original publisher's site.

Yes it's a changing world:
Citizen journalism slow to catch fire
Commentary: Is old media relevant? Plus, Google multiples
By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch

Veteran news executives are probably feeling a bit like GM these days -- ancient, behind-the-times, cost-burdened and pressured to remain relevant in the era of the Internet, a medium that attracts at least 70 million people a day logging on for email, news and other content and activities.

Yahoo News is No. 1, with 24.6 million unique visitors in December, up 15% from a year ago, followed by AOL at No. 4, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Google News stands at No.13 with 7.8 million unique visitors, up 22% from a year ago. Internet Broadcasting, which produces 70 television and news Web sites, shot up 29% in December, and ranks No. 5.

What mainstream news media fear is that while these Internet news hubs are attracting large audiences and advertising dollars, they're not spending the same type of money (if they're spending at all) on journalists, talent, producers, managers, editors, etc.

Google, which launched the beta version of its news service in the fall of 2002, has effectively automated many of the jobs of an editor. Yahoo's been aggregating content as well, though unlike Google, it's paid for the content in order to keep the audience on its site and sells advertising to cover the costs.

Want more, spend more

Still, it does seem clear that both Yahoo and Google want more than search-advertising dollars.

They're positioning themselves for a world where people spend as much time reading and watching news (and TV shows) on the Web as they do searching online.

Translation: Fees or branded advertising are becoming increasingly important.

When Google -- which relies virtually 100% on search dollars -- reports results after the close Tuesday, it will be interesting to hear what the company says about its plans to attract branded advertising dollars and how its relationship with Time Warner's AOL might help.

Google and Yahoo are approaching news content and video content with very different strategies. But both hope to tap into the pool of talent across the Internet in hopes a low-cost star might be born.

Google is trying to do so by enabling people to post their videos on its Google Video Store. Yahoo is doing so by incorporating blogs in its news searches and cultivating its own star. One example is Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, who attracted 736,000 unique visitors in December. As Yahoo puts it, Kevin's product is "news reporting in the new millennium -- a nexus of backpack journalism, narrative story-telling techniques, and the Internet, designed to reach a global audience hungry for information."

The question is how does Yahoo build up talent on a shoestring?

In other words, when does Yahoo sacrifice some margin to get serious about being a new media company?

The people's news

Or, how does one rely on the audience to stay engaged in either watching and or participating in creating content? A site for the people by the people sounds great in theory. But it seems that individuals drawn to such "by-the-people" reporting aren't necessarily good in supporting roles or teamwork.

Consider Dan Gillmor, a writer at the San Jose Mercury News who left that job to start a grassroots news organization written by citizen journalists. He recently wrote about how his efforts failed. He said that "fewer citizens participated, they were less interested in collaboration with one another, and the response to our initiatives was underwhelming."

He's just one example of course.

Yet even the larger, populist news sites such as Pajamasmedia.com, Backfence.com, and Buzzmachine.com, aren't getting much traction. Backfence.com says it's local news written by you and your neighbors while Pajamasmedia is news written by anyone any time -- especially when they're in their pajamas. They received fewer than 360,000 unique visitors each in December, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

The other question is advertising. How do user-generated or citizen journalist sites attract advertisers, especially if trust and credibility may be lacking in many of these sites?

Al Gore's Current, which is a television show that's predicted to have 50% of its content produced by viewers in the future, has some advertisers unnerved because the audience-generated content lacks credibility.

I'm sure it's still early for such democratic, bottoms-up endeavors. And, I don't doubt that in five years or a decade newspapers and TV news will be redefined and will have incorporated such audience participation features.

As Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at the Institute for the Future, once said: "In a In a two-year period, less happens than we would have thought and in a 10-year period, more happens than we could ever imagined."

So, for now, traditional media isn't dead. But it definitely is becoming less relevant.

Programming note

On Tuesday, I'll be interviewing Neil Budde, general manager of Yahoo News, who was the founding editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online edition, which is published by Dow Jones, the same publisher of this column.

What to do about Google stock?

Ultimately, what you pay for Google -- which reports after the close Tuesday -- depends on the multiple you're willing to pay and the return you think you might earn.

At the current price of $430, the market is likely expecting Google to earn $10 in 2006 and $13 a share in 2007. So, if by the end of 2006, a buyer is still willing to pay you 40 times the following year's projected earnings, then you'll be able to sell your Google stock to them for $520 a share. That's a 21% upside from $430.

If Google reports fourth-quarter sequential sales growth of 35%, then investors might believe Google can hit earnings of $14 or $15 a share in 2007. Applying a 40 multiple to $15 would mean Google could hit $600 by the end of this year. That's a 40% upside from $430.

If that's enough of a return for you, then it might be worth buying.

But if Google doesn't grow sales by 30% quarter-over-quarter, and margins deteriorate, then multiples might contract, meaning you won't find a buyer paying 40 times Google's '07 earnings next year, let alone 50 times, as some analysts have suggested. Moreover, it will be less likely that Google earns $13 a share in 2007, the high end of analysts' current expectations.

Currently, on average, analysts expect Google to earn somewhere between $10 and $10.50 in 2007.

If you pay a 40 times multiple for $10.50 a share in 2007, then Google's shares would be worth around $420 in a year, which is essentially zero return for the next 10 months or so.

But if Google were to report $10 a share in 2007, that would essentially indicates that Google's growth is slowing down. In that case, it's very unlikely that anyone would pay a multiple of 40. They might not even pay 35, or $350 a share.

That means if you buy it today at $430, you're looking at a downside of 19%.

But these are all optimistic assumptions. Google is expected to earn $6.06 a share for all of 2005, up from $2.64 in 2004. Let's say Google grows its earnings by a still rapid clip to "just" $9 a share by the end of 2007. Even at that rate, multiples would contract. That means Google might plunge to $315 a share, or a 27% drop.


Sound-off: Should news be written by the people?

The way the news is selected and presented continues to change:
Newspaper lets readers pick front-page stories

Lots of sites let readers pick their favorite stories, but The Wisconsin State Journal is taking advantage of that online tool to help its print edition.

Readers vote online for their favorite story each day, and the day's top vote-getter will appear on the front page of the next day's newspaper, with a "reader's choice" label. What a great idea.
Critics may resist what they see as a popularity contest undermining traditional news judgment. But we aren't too worried that you'll be scribbling up our first draft of history with Paris Hilton's daily exploits. Our unscientific poll is just another way for you to tell us what you find to be the most important, interesting or vital information of the day.

We recognize the coming transformation in the way people get their news. It isn't only that the Internet is growing as a source for local news, particularly among younger adults. Rapidly advancing technology also lets readers personalize their news reports using a myriad of sources. And nowadays nobody needs to buy ink by the barrel to publish news and comment: You just start a blog. Letting our readers actively participate in setting the news agenda is one step into a new world built around interactivity and conversations more than traditional one-way delivery of news.

"The State Journal still has the broadest local reach of any local media, and it remains a great vehicle for delivering news," editor Ellen Foley said. "But we're enhancing our online news, too, to appeal to a new generation of readers."

Another newspaper that's been using Web traffic to influence it's print edition is the Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN) - The Latest News - Chile's most widely read newspaper. For the past three years, it has been making decisions on what stories to focus on and promote in the newspaper based on how much traffic its Web site get

Some of you may be interested in this - it looks good:

'Journalistas: 100 Years of the Best Writing and Reporting by
Women Journalists,' edited by Eleanor Mills with Kira
Cochrane
Review by JILL ABRAMSON

"Journalistas" is an anthology that bills itself as the best
writing by women journalists over the past 100 years. I first
picked up the volume with annoyance - I hated the title and
still do. And I'm not a fan of anthologies. Reading them is
often like feasting on a meal of hors d'oeuvres. Such
collections tend to dilute the narrative drive that makes
much journalism compelling in the first place. And the idea
of isolating "the best writing" from women journalists seemed
dutiful. I have never been fully persuaded that women do
really speak and write in an entirely different voice from
men, so the idea of segregating them in a book did not thrill
me.

But most of the pieces collected by Eleanor Mills (an editor
at The Sunday Times of London) and Kira Cochrane (a novelist
and former journalist) are so marvelous that I quickly cast
aside my doubts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/books/review/08abramson.html?8bu&emc=bu

Adding some perspective the the item below:
CHINA CLOSING MORE THAN 5,000 COAL MINES
China, where about 5,000 miners are killed annually, will close
thousands of coal mines in a safety crackdown, the government said on
Thursday.
FULL STORY:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/01/05/china-mine060105.html

OK. Here is were you can make a new story. How many truck drivers die each year or scientists, secreteries,coal miners, soldiers, teachers, and so on, and compare that to this:
47 JOURNALISTS KILLED IN 2005
Last year was a deadly year for journalists, especially those who
challenged authority.
FULL STORY:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/01/03/cpj060103.html
Hope you all had a good Xmas and New Year Holiday and will see you next week. Clark

The survey below is of interest to journalists all over th world and you can give it a try as well. Go for it. Clark
Dear Weekly Spin subscriber,

Last year the Center for Media and Democracy issued our first annual
"Falsies Awards" to recognize the people and players responsible for
polluting the modern information environment.

For this year's Falsies Awards, we want you to help us select the
winners. We have posted a survey on our website, asking people to
rank this year's award nominees. We also provide space where you can
nominate additional names. Please take a few minutes to read the
survey and help identify he worst spinners and propagandists of 2005.
You can find the survey online at the following URL:

http://www.prwatch.org/survey/public/survey.php?name=falsies2005_copy

Thanks for your input, and stay tuned to www.prwatch.org for the
announcement later this month of this year's "Falsies Awards"
winners!

Sheldon Rampton
Research director, Center for Media and Democracy

Have a second survey on the web for you to do. It is similar to the first one but is different and would appriciate you doing it all again. Thanks Clark
STEP 1: Put your student card in the card reader attached to your computer.

STEP 2: Log in.

STEP 3: Double click on the icon for Internet Explorer. [It's conveniently located on the desktop.]

STEP 4: Type in the following web address in the address (or URL) field of Internet Explorer: http://tinyurl.com/9s2y5
[This URL is different from the one used in the first survey.]

STEP 5: Students answer the questions by selecting the appropriate menu item or point on the rating scales. There is very little that needs to be typed in this time so the time necessary for completion will be shorter.

STEP 6: Click on the 'NEXT' button to complete the survey.
PS You can do it in class time this Thur. if you'd like. CAR

Here's what news is about and what powerful people would like to stop. Some new vocabulary for you too. Clark
From The Weekley spin:
. THAT OLD CANARD LIBERAL BIAS
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6286824.html?display=Feature&referral=SUPP
"We were biased, all right - in favor of uncovering the news that
powerful people wanted to keep hidden," veteran journalist Bill
Moyers told Broadcasting & Cable. In an interview with the trade
publication, Moyers responds to accusations by the now chastened
Kenneth Tomlinson, the controversial former head of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting who has close ties to the White House, that
he is the "exemplar of liberal PBS bias." Moyers added, "If
reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by
circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington
officials is liberalism, I stand convicted. It is an old canard of
right-wing ideologues like Tomlinson to equate tough journalism with
liberalism. They hope to distract people from the message by trying
to discredit the messenger."
SOURCE: Broadcasting & Cable, November 28, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4231

How do you like this for a turn around?
| Bloggers create Press Plagiarist Of The Year Award |
| from the steal-this-website dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday December 03, @12:57 (The Media) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/03/1438224 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]mccalli writes "[1]The BBC is reporting that certain bloggers, fed up
of seeing their work just lifted by the mainstream press, have created
[2]The Press Plagiarist Of The Year award. Examples are given of national
newspapers simply cutting and pasting entire articles from web sites and
passing them off as their own."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/12/03/1438224

Links:
0. http://www.eruvia.org/
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4484718.stm
2. http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/2005/11/press-plagiarist-of-year-award.html

A good article from the Village Voice, which is the alternate weekly paper from New York City, that I'd like you to read even though it is a bit long.

Press Clips
If Old Journalism Dies . . .
Where will new media get the news?
by Sydney H. Schanberg
November 29th, 2005 11:28 AM








Trailer trash: an Iraqi "mobile lab" that wasn't
photo: DOD photo
Chattering oracles are telling us that newspapers will die soon, as the Internet takes over. That may well be—and the Internet does carry wondrous potential for improving life (as well as voluminous drivel that used to be written on the walls of public toilets). But the puzzlement is, where will the new digital providers of information get their fresh news?

It is fresh news—daily, or at least weekly, news—that keeps citizens feeling connected to the decisions and events that alter their lives. And it is newspapers, and a handful of probing magazines, that provide most of the in-depth journalism that uncovers and analyzes those fast-moving decisions and events. Blogsters, please don't jump out of your pajamas—lots of you are doing valuable and admirable work keeping mainstream journalism on its toes. But serious journalism is labor-intensive and time-consuming and therefore requires large amounts of money and health benefits and pensions. The blogosphere has plenty of time, but as yet none of the other items.

So if and when newspapers fade into darkness, as the all-seeing oracles foretell, what will happen? Perhaps, in a future time of airborne pigs, altruism will suddenly infuse our culture, and money will descend, like manna, on the Internet to pay for the reporters to do the intensive journalism needed as a check on abusive power. And if altruism or labor-friendly corporate ideologies don't magically appear? The oracles are mostly silent on that eventuality. Maybe they think samizdat is the answer. Maybe many of them don't care.

I don't have any oracular solutions. My guess is that while serious reporting may not be delivered as often on paper made from trees, it will nonetheless live long and contribute to democracy in other delivery forms. This is so because it will always be propelled by abuses of power—and abuses of power are everlasting. It being the Thanksgiving season, I thought I would offer up, in thanks, some of the superior journalism I came across over the past few weeks.

Los Angeles Times, November 20: an impressive 6,400-word piece on an Iraqi informant code-named "Curveball." His unreliable statements to German intelligence officials about Iraq's germ warfare weapons were not only used but exaggerated by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in 2003. Curveball has been examined in earlier news reports, but the striking L.A. Times piece—by Bob Drogin and John Goetz—is more detailed and breaks new ground. The German authorities, who are still holding Curveball, said they told their American counterparts that the man was mentally unstable and his information mostly secondhand, but that the CIA ignored their multiple warnings and dismissed certain proofs that he had lied. The agency didn't admit error until May 2004, a year after the invasion. Both Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell used Curveball's phony statements about "mobile biological weapons labs" prominently in major war-drum speeches before the war. The Times article quotes one of the German officials saying of those speeches: "We were shocked. Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven. . . . It was not hard intelligence." I recommend reading the story start to finish.

The New York Times and The Washington Post, November 6: Both the Times' Douglas Jehl and the Post's Walter Pincus write stories about a different Iraqi informant, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, based on a Defense Intelligence Agency document recently declassified at the request of Michigan Democratic senator Carl Levin. Jehl's lead paragraph: "A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons."
Gotham Uncovered

National Journal, November 22: Murray Waas reports that 10 days after the 9-11 attacks, "President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter." Waas reveals that Bush received the information on September 21, 2001, at his regular morning national security briefing of 30 to 45 minutes by the CIA, which also provided the president with a printed summary of the briefing points. The specific briefing, Waas writes, "was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

Rolling Stone, November 17: James Bamford, a highly regarded author who has spilled open the inner workings of the American intelligence community, writes a compelling saga about John Rendon, whose firm, the Rendon Group, "has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help 'create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power.' Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name—the Iraqi National Congress—and served as their media guru and senior adviser." Bamford says Rendon helped put Ahmad Chalabi at the helm of the INC. In the run-up to the Iraq war, Chalabi delivered to the Bush administration a series of Iraqi informants who claimed to have intelligence about Hussein's supposed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction—the purported threat that was the White House's major rationale for going to war. Bamford describes how this byzantine operation wove its way to Judith Miller of The New York Times and to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent.

The Nation, November 21: William Greider gives us a deep, insightful essay about the state of American journalism that goes beyond anything I've seen in recent times. It's titled "All the King's Media." I'll say no more; just read it.

On a concluding—and lighter—note, the White House, gripped in the fog of insanity that accompanies the crumbling of a failed regime, insisted that its spokesman Scott McClellan did not speak the words he spoke at an October 31 press briefing. David Gregory of NBC News had said to McClellan, in laying the basis for a question about the Plamegate scandal, that "we know that" both Karl Rove and the indicted I. Lewis Libby had conversations with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

McClellan replied: "That's accurate." Transcripts from Congressional Quarterly and Federal News Service show it that way. So does the video. The White House is standing by its deranged rewrite, quoting McClellan as having said: "I don't think that's accurate." See Joe Strupp's November 9 story on the Editor & Publisher website (editorandpublisher.com). Also see the video, which is linked in the story.

It all depends on what you mean by the word truth.

Here is an example of fictional news that I was talking about yesterday in class:

U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
By JEFF GERTH and SCOTT SHANE
A covert campaign is under way to plant paid propaganda in
the Iraqi news media and pay Iraqi journalists monthly
stipends.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/politics/01propaganda.html?th&emc=th

Hello everyone here are the survey instructions that I would like you to take. Please try doing it in the next couple of days.
STEP 1: Put your student card in the card reader attached to your computer.

STEP 2: Log in.

STEP 3: Double click on the icon for Internet Explorer. [It's conveniently located on the desktop.]
STEP 4: Type in the following web address in the address (or URL) field of Internet Explorer: http://tinyurl.com/d9wkf

STEP 5: Answer questions 1-3 by making choices from among the items in the pop-up menus. For questions 4-10, the answers will need to by typed into the text boxes.
STEP 6: Click on the 'NEXT' button to complete the survey.

STEP 7: Congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Japanese held over fake news site

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Police have arrested a former computer programmer for allegedly publishing a fabricated news article on a fake Yahoo Japan news Web site saying that China had invaded the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police department arrested Takahiro Yamamoto, 30, Monday on suspicion of violating patent laws, a police spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing departmental policy.

He said Yamamoto allegedly accredited the fake article to Kyodo News Agency and published it on an Internet site that he had designed to look like Yahoo! Japan Corp's news site.

The story was written in Japanese with a dateline "America, Oct. 18 Kyodo" followed by a headline saying "Chinese Military invades Okinawa," the police said.

Police had confiscated Yamamoto's personal computer and analyzed the data stored in it.

Kyodo said it and Yahoo had filed complaints to police in October.

The Web site was accessed 66,000 times until it was taken down on October 19, Kyodo said, quoting police.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo is one of the world's largest Internet portal operators, with some 345 million people using its mix of search engines, news sites and online shopping.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.