How do you feel about large international companies controlling domestic news sources?
From the New York times:
Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIM ARANGO
A tentative deal to buy his third New York newspaper would
tighten Rupert Murdoch's grip on American news media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23paper.html?th&emc=th
Murdoch Taking On F.C.C. Media Rule
By STEPHEN LABATON
Rupert Murdoch appears likely to pose the first significant
challenge to the media ownership rule that the Federal
Communications Commission recently adopted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23ownership.html?th&emc=th

Here is an example of government-military manipulation of the news, which is what we were discussing in the last class. This is from the Geeky, Nerdy, news letter from Slashdot.com:
| Pentagon Manipulating TV Analysts |
| from the media-trojan-horse dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 22, @17:31 (The Military) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/22/2010243 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]gollum123 notes an extensive article from the NYTimes on the evidence
that the military, since the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, has
been manipulating the military analysts that are ubiquitous on TV and
radio news programs, in a [1]protracted campaign to generate favorable
news coverage of the administration's war efforts. "Hidden behind that
appearance of objectivity of military analysts on the major networks, is
a Pentagon information apparatus... The effort... has sought to exploit
ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial
dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in
the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Several dozen of
the military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either
as lobbyists, senior executives, board members, or consultants. Records
and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over
access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind
of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism
coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. ...[M]embers of
this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when
they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts
acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their
access."

This article is from ButterflysandWheels.com:
Apologetics and the Surrender of the Fourth Estate

Click here if you want to print, or adjust the appearance, of this article

By Gil Gaudia

It has been debated whether the term “the Fourth Estate” which refers to journalism or a “free press” was originated by Edmund Burke, who once pointed to the gallery of reporters in the British Parliament and declared them to be the fourth, and most important, element overseeing a triumvirate of governmental power. In my opinion, this was one of the most perceptive descriptions of democracy and its processes, applying equally well to the British Parliament and the Estates General of France (from which the term was derived); the constituents were supposed to be representatives of the society’s main elements— the nobility, the middle class and the clergy. Burke was saying that the influence of a free press was, and should be, greater than any of the other three because the “word,” written and spoken, was the key to power.

(Incidentally, the “debate” arises because a guy named Thomas Carlyle is the one who actually put the following statement in writing: “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporter’s gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”)

Who said it first? Was it Burke? Was it Carlyle? Does it matter?

What does matter is that the uncertainty of Burke vs. Carlyle symbolizes the dilemma of whom or what we believe. In this country today, if we substitute the terms “United States Senate” for the “nobility” (makes you want to vomit doesn’t it?) the “House of Representatives” for the “middle class” (not very appetizing either) and “fundamentalist Christians” for the “clergy,” (Well, that’s not too bad) it is apparent that little has changed, with one glaring exception. The Fourth Estate has sold out to the combined forces of its previous antagonists and we now have the deplorable situation where the people have lost the protection of the “more important far than they all.”

Where is today’s Fourth Estate? Nowhere to be found, because sadly, with the exception of only a small minority of courageous and perceptive people, whom the other three estates have managed to portray as unpatriotic troublemakers, the American press has surrendered its role in the “reporter’s gallery,” and is no longer fulfilling Burke’s/Carlyle’s indispensable obligation. This is a devastating loss. It is devastating because access to the truth about governmental matters, of which the press has been the guardian, has been abandoned.

I talked a little bit about how paper newspapers were in trouble and here is how some are reacting:
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Papers tailor online content to increase audience, ad sales
By Associated Press (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With classified revenue dwindling, the news industry must get better at tailoring articles and display advertising to online readers, several newspaper executives said Tuesday.

Papers must more aggressively ''slice and dice'' content to readers' particular interests, Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media for Cox Newspapers Inc., said during a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Newspaper Association of America.

''We're at the early stages of doing that,'' said Levitt, whose company, a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc., owns 17 daily and 26 non-daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Palm Beach Post in Florida and the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.

Newspapers faced with dwindling print advertising are turning more to the Internet to make up for lost revenue. Overall newspaper advertising revenue last year fell 7.9 percent, including a 9.4 percent dip in print advertising that was offset partially by an 18.8 percent hike in online advertising, according to the newspaper association.

Levitt said newspapers are leaning most heavily on online display advertising, which is growing at a faster clip than classified advertising.

Other newspaper executives on the panel said the industry must first become more familiar with readers' online behavior before they can deliver personalized content and advertising.

Several executives said they're developing multiple Web sites, blogs and other products to reach distinctive audiences.

Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, said The New York Times is a ''strong believer'' in creating multiple brands.

She said its DealBook blog, which provides financial news, started as an e-mail newsletter service in 2001 and then also became a Web site two years ago. The company also has a Great Homes and Destinations Web site that provides information about the luxury real estate sector.

On Newspapers for Slashdot.com:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11 |
| from the news-that-fits dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday March 30, @14:36 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on
the [0]death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that
newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few
years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers
have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three
years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death,
that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our
product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes
on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper
and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what
Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in
the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.)
'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,'
Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the
secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking
sharp.

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252

Links:
0. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all

| Mainstream Media Finally Catching On To How News Propagates |
| from the whole-new-idea-of-trusted-networks dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 28, @13:17 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting
it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers [0]consumes
and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If
the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews
and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news
and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and
videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on
friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they
are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post,
clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237

Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20080327/152312670.shtml

Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the industry released Sunday found.
It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report.
Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found.
Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said.
The news side of the business is dynamic, but the growing ability of news consumers to find what they want without being distracted by advertising is what's making the industry go through some tough times.
"Although the audience for traditional news is maintaining itself, the staff for many of these news organizations tend to be shrinking," said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
NBC News' recent decision to name make David Gregory host of a nightly program on MSNBC, while keep his job as White House correspondent is an example of how people are being asked to do much more, he said.
News is less a product, like the day's newspaper or a nightly newscast, than a service that is constantly being updated, he said. Last week, for instance, The New York Times posted its first report linking New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring in the early afternoon, and it quickly became the day's dominant story.
Only a few years ago, newspaper Web sites were primarily considered an online morgue for that day's newspaper, Rosenstield said.
"The afternoon newspaper is in a sense being reborn online," he said.
A separate survey found journalists are, to a large degree, embracing the changes being thrust upon them. A majority say they like doing blogs and that they appreciate reader feedback on their stories. When they're asked to do multimedia projects, most journalists find the experience enriching instead of feeling overworked, he said. The newsroom is increasingly being seen as the most experimental place in the business, the report found.
Most news Web sites are no longer final destinations. The report found that many users insist that the sites, and even individual pages, offer plenty of options to navigate elsewhere for more information, the project found. Rosenstiel said he's even able to reach Washington Post stories through the New York Times' Web site.
In another unexpected finding, citizen-created Web sites and blogs are actually far less welcoming to outside commentary than the so-called mainstream media, the report said.
© 2008 The Associated Press.

Interviews are not easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK AT THIS:
Facebook founder heckled at web conference 12:18PM, Monday 10th March 2008

A keynote talk with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg descended into chaos as the audience heckled the interviewer for failing to get to the point.
Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old billionaire, was the keynote speaker at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy took the stage to question Zuckerberg, but the audience quickly grew tired of the topics she focused on, claiming that the real issues were being ignored.

"Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview," claimed audience member, Jason Pontin, via Twitter.

Lacy finally allowed the crowd to take over, and Zuckerberg was subjected to an enthusiastic barrage of questions about the real issues facing the social networking site, such as privacy and data portability.

"The audience is asking Zuckerburg better questions than Lacy did," said former Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, via his Twitter feed.

Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world
Here's one from the people at Futurismic.com that will give you something to think about:
written by Paul Raven | February 19th, 2008

Steve Rubel points us to an article at American Journalism Review that discusses the hazards of newsrooms relying on Wikipedia for research and citations. [Image by rabbleradio]

This is hardly a new story (though usually we hear about the horrors of students rather than journalists citing the online encyclopedia), but it’s not going away any time soon - in the always-on 24/7 culture of the web, the only constant is change. As Rubel puts it:

“The big question in my mind is this: when journalists cite Wikipedia articles, what happens when the facts they reference from the wiki entries change (assuming they do)? Do the reporters go back and update their articles? The news reports call more attention to the articles, potentially opening up a can of worms each time they source Wikipedia.

Seems like a big vicious cycle. Perhaps in the future these stories will carry some of the same disclaimers that Wikipedia lists.”

And if you think that’s a symptom of postmodernism running wild, what about CNN handing over the reins of iReport to the community of citizen-journalists who contribute to it? [Via SlashDot]

Are the definitions of “truth” and “consensus” converging? Were they ever really different?

The following is a good example of investigative journalism on a controversial issue:
STEPHEN STRAUSS: SCIENCE FRICTION
The vitamin D debate

Feb. 13, 2008
It’s been cold and remarkably un-sunny in my neck of Canada recently — climatic conditions which I have been repeatedly told in the past year should lead me to start scarfing down vitamin D pills, and do it in amounts which likely exceed Health Canada’s daily recommended dosage.

And even more importantly, I've been told I should also counsel you to ignore the existing suggestions and strike out on a vitamin D health path of your own, one which might see you taking up to five times today’s suggested dose. (That’s what one advocate announces he is doing).

And if I don’t, it is my fault — well "my" as in all the media — if you readers get cancer, multiple sclerosis, flu, autism, depression, diabetes, loose teeth, stroke, heart disease, osteoporosis, fractures and God knows what else.

I know that, because last year 15 scientists from around the world scolded journalists in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial for effectively condoning ill health.

"We do not think that the public media present the vitamin D story in a complete and accurate manner," they said.

"Reports about vitamin D inadequacies are presented straightforwardly, but when it comes to discussing the intake of vitamin D needed to correct the situation, outdated official recommendations for vitamin D are propagated by the public media. This probably occurs because of restrictive editorial policies driven by concern about possible litigation if media were to advise a 'toxic' intake greater than the [present upper intake level]," they — including Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto — wrote.

Well, one should take this kind of criticism to heart. I have, in the last little while, specifically been looking at a paper that came out last year in the AJCN. I did this because it made many people’s top 10 science stories of 2007 and because the finding was described in various Canadian media as strongly influencing the Canadian Cancer Society’s decision to recommend that people in this country take much more — upwards of two-and-a-half times today’s recommended 400 International Units — vitamin D on a daily basis.

The study compared over a lengthy period — four years — the cancer rates in women taking vitamin D, taking calcium without vitamin D, or taking nothing. Researchers at Creighton University in Nebraska then reported a 60 per cent decrease in collective cancer rates for the vitamin D takers when they took what was something more than twice the currently recommended dosage.

While the cancer numbers were small — only 50 cases in toto — the CCS decision meant there was lots of coverage of the research. I found upwards of 50 reports in magazines, newspapers, radio and television, but absolutely zero coverage of the criticism of the paper that appeared in the journal in recent months.

In one letter, three scientists in Texas pointed out a number of issues, not the least of which being an Iowa study which suggested that when breast cancer was looked at there was indeed a fall in cancer numbers for the first five years when a vitamin D supplement was taken. But this balanced out at 10 years and there actually seemed to be more breast cancers among women taking vitamin D after 15 years.

It is precisely these sorts of yes/no/maybe results that make science and medical writers very, very, very, very cautious about blithely recommending dose rate increases.

Then there were the questions raised by Manish Sood of the Toronto General Hospital and Amy Sood of the University of Toronto faculty of pharmacy. They pointed out that some had suggested the incidence heart disease might grow as a result of increasing the vitamin D dosages and recommending, as the CCS did, that supplements be taken year round or during fall and winter months depending on skin colour and other factors.

In light of the CCS recommendation and a possible heart disease side-effect, they concluded their letter saying: "As Canadians, we ask the question — have we just traded one problem for another?"

Sounds reasonable, but their concern was brushed back by paper authors Robert Heaney and Joan Lappe of Creighton, who responded that there is no evidence of heart problems with vitamin D doses up to 10 times what they had given people. They added, "the issue of vitamin D toxicity was exhaustively reviewed in this Journal just a few months ago and Sood and Sood may find some reassurance in that report."

Given this disagreement I, too, needed reassurance and so I went to the review where I found something very non-reassuring. Heaney and Vieth had co-authored the toxicity study with two employees of the Council For Responsible Nutrition, a Washington D.C.-based lobby group and trade association for ingredient suppliers and manufacturers in the dietary supplement industry — that is to say, the official representatives of the people who would make vitamin D.

And their roles were anything but minor. One applied "risk assessment methodology" to the results and the other "searched literature and summarized relevant findings." Ultimately what the four wrote looks extremely authoritative, and might well be so, but to my mind this collaboration represents not an apparent conflict of interest, but a genuine conflict of interest.

And let me explain it with a simple equation. Let us assume that one-third of the people in North America decide, based on the CCS recommendation, to more than double their vitamin D dosage and this costs a bare $20 per person a year. That translates into an extra $2 billion going to vitamin D manufacturers and sellers.

All of this made me go back to the original Creighton paper and look to see if there was any indication of specific conflicts of interest among the researchers in it. The paper says no, with resounding vehemence: "None of the authors was affiliated in any way with an entity involved in the manufacture or marketing of vitamin D."

Then it goes on to mention that one author, Robert Recker, was on the scientific advisory boards of Roche and Proctor & Gamble, and Heaney was on the scientific advisory board for the International Dairy Food Association and the speaker’s bureau for P & G.

It’s true that Roche doesn’t make vitamins today — but it sold the business in 2003, a time that the Creighton experiment was ongoing. The sale, by the way, was announced at the same time Roche said it had resolved lawsuits growing out of its involvement in vitamin price fixing.

But Proctor remains in the business, in that it has licensed its Olay name to another company to produce Olay vitamins, which include vitamin D in a multivitamin supplement. Not to mention the fact that Heaney reported in 2006 that he had a "financial relationship with SmithKlineGlaxo" — a company which directly produces vitamin D.

And oh, yes, it seems almost everyone doing vitamin D research — Vieth included — gets money from dairy farmers associations in either Canada or the U.S.

So I sent Recker and Heaney an e-mail asking for an explanation and Recker responded: "Neither Dr. Heaney nor I have any affiliation with the company that supplied the vitamin D for the study. We have not had affiliation with the vitamin D work for the companies you mention. I have been a scientific adviser to Roche, P & G and Smith-Kline-Glaxo, but not in their vitamin D work."

Interestingly finely parsed, but when I Google "Recker and Glaxo" I find him quoted in a company press release endorsing an osteoporosis website the company supports — a site that advocates taking vitamin D and which points out that if you have problems getting it naturally, you can buy supplements that will fill in the gap.

Recker responded in his e-mail to me that, "I do not include the statement in the press release as a potential conflict of interest since I was not making the statement out of any affiliation with GSK. I have not participated in any of the studies nor in any advisory capacity to GSK regarding any vitamin D product. There is often some confusion about what constitutes a potential conflict of interest, as might be the case here. My institution does not require that I list this as a potential conflict of interest in its management of faculty relations with industry."

Parsing a parse, if you ask me.

I then had a lengthy discussion with Vieth who quite candidly said he had been delighted to join up with the manufacturers’ association employees in the toxicity review paper because he had long admired them for being good scientists. "I was honoured when they asked," he told me.

As to money conflicts he doesn’t think that was a big issue because vitamin D is a generic product and can be made for very little. He said the pure form of the substance costs about $3,000 a kilogram to make, a figure that translates into the dose each of the women in Nebraska took to ward off cancer costing about 3.5 cents a year to make.

Then he told me he had been angered when his name had been taken off some scientific papers after he, in complete openness, told agencies and journals that he and his wife have set up a vitamin D company in Toronto called Ddrops Inc. She is now the company’s president and it sells a year’s supply of 1,000 IU liquid vitamin D for about $20. "I was told my name was being taken off papers because of my wife’s occupation. That is something I find infuriating and upsetting," he said.

A little additional research found that Elaine Vieth has told the Hamilton Spectator that pharmacies initially had little interest in selling her product, which can be sprinkled on food or in drinks, but that after the Creighton cancer study appeared she sold 30,000 bottles within two days.

I am not often struck speechless by life’s contradictions, but here I am. Who would have thought that the research pertaining to what Ddrops markets as "the sunshine vitamin in just one drop" could be so conflicted?

Nonetheless, let me be absolutely clear. I cannot say that any of the findings of any of the researchers I cite — particularly when it comes to vitamin D’s cancer preventative effects — are erroneous because of the scientists’ commercial connections. Vitamin D may indeed turn out to be the next best thing since free e-mail and ballpoint pens, but I will say that a careful journalist, a prudent journalist, a wise journalist would look at this tangled mess of conflicted interests and results and proceed exceedingly carefully in promoting a massive change in vitamin D dosage levels.

I will say that Health Canada should not be stampeded into doing anything reflexive when it comes to raising vitamin D dosage levels.

And I might also suggest that if university scientists are looking for a less conspiratorial explanation for their perception that media has been loath to join a crusade to raise the dosage levels, they would do well to consider how it looks to outside observers when researchers blithely associate with those who benefit financially from these changes.

And that advice is good on both the sunniest and the cloudiest of days.

Related link:

Take vitamin D to reduce cancer risk, Canadian Cancer Society advises

External links:

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial on vitamin D recommendations

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article on vitamin D toxicity

Creighton University backgrounder on cancer/vitamin D

(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window)
Biography

Stephen Strauss wrote articles, columns and editorials about science and technology for the Globe and Mail for more than 20 years. He has also authored three books, several book chapters, and for his efforts received numerous awards. Through all his time in journalism, he still remains smitten by the enduring wisdom of the motto of Austrian writer Karl Kraus. Say what is.

Here is a good summary via our good friends at Mantex:
Neologism Ahoy!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet

Would you know a sockpuppet if you saw one?
And even more, what would it have to do
with astroturfing - if anything?

I came across a whole slew of new terms
recently - all to do with creating bogus
identities and fake opinions on line.

A sockpuppet is a false identity used for
purposes of deception in an Internet
community. The sock sets up stupid Aunt
Sally comments which the puppeteer (in real
persona) then demolishes to gain credit.

Astroturfing gets its name from the fact
that it is pretending to be 'grassroots'
support for something - but in fact it's
a fake construction by stealth marketeers
and public relation wonks. Read it all here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet

Media Manipulator:
Scientific American Mind - February, 2008
Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction
By Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse



In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?

Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.

News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.

Spinning Straw into Fool’s Gold
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition. In a November 2005 speech, for example, President George W. Bush responded to questions about pulling troops out of Iraq by saying, “We’ve heard some people say, pull them out right now. That’s a huge mistake. It’d be a terrible mistake. It sends a bad message to our troops, and it sends a bad message to our enemy, and it sends a bad message to the Iraqis.” The statement that unnamed “people” are advocating a troop withdrawal from Iraq “right now” is a straw man, because it exaggerates the opposing viewpoint. Not even the most stalwart Bush adversaries backed an immediate troop withdrawal. Most proposed that the soldiers be sent home over several months, a more reasonable and persuasive plan that Bush undercut with his straw man.

The straw man is used in countless other contexts as well. In his acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, for instance, Bill Clinton opined: “… with all respect [to Bob Dole], we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.” Dole did discuss restoring the values of an earlier America, but Clinton falsely implied that Dole was only looking backward (whereas Clinton was looking forward). People may use a straw man to discredit theories to which they do not subscribe. Characterizing evolution, for example, as “all random chance” is a straw man argument; it misrepresents a complex theory that only partly rests on the randomness of mutations that may lead to better chances of survival.

Recently, in a 2006 paper co-authored with Scott F. Aikin, one of us (Talisse) documented a twist on the straw man tactic. In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does. In a July 2007 edition of Talking Points, Bill O’Reilly took on a claim by the New York Times that we had lost the war in Iraq by saying that “the New York Times declared defeat in Iraq Sunday on its editorial page, and there’s no question the antiwar movement has momentum.” (The editorial actually said that “some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat,” but let us assume that O’Reilly’s characterization was correct.)
O’Reilly then offered a weak man explanation for the purported defeat: “The truth is the Iraqi government and many of its citizens are simply not doing enough to defeat the terrorists and corruption. The U.S.A. can’t control that country. No nation could.... Unfortunately, the Iraqi failure to help themselves has come true.” Although Iraq’s failure to aid in fighting terrorism and corruption could be why we are losing the war, the troubles in Iraq could also stem from a host of logistical reasons, some of which may shed a negative light on the current administration. O’Reilly, however, kept any discussion of these reasons offstage, suppressing the various other possible—and possibly more likely—reasons for “defeat” in Iraq. Meanwhile his claims that the “U.S.A. can’t control that country” and that “no nation could” deflected blame from the U.S. government.

Weak man arguments are pervasive. In a 2005 editorial in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz picked on ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill, formerly at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose views he described as “hateful and ignorant.” Horowitz then went on to claim that Churchill’s radical “hate America” convictions “represent” those of a “substantial seg ment of the academic community.” Thus, he used the example of Churchill (the weak man) to argue that “tenured radicals” have made universities into leftist political institutions and subverted the academic enterprise, thereby failing to acknowledge the presence of more highly regarded and politically mainstream scholars in academia.

Trolling for Truth
Weak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.

Nevertheless, an astute consumer of the news can catch many straw man and weak man fallacies by knowing how they work. Another strategy is to always consider a speaker’s or writer’s motivation or agenda and be especially alert for skewed statements of fact in editorials, television opinion shows, and the like. It is also wise to obtain news from more balanced news sources. An alternative approach is to try to construct, in your own mind, the best argument against what you have heard before accepting it as true. Or simply ask yourself: Why should I not believe this?

Canadians are die here every week and this is what we are dieing for:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Internet Censorship's First Death Sentence? |
| from the that's-a-bit-harsh-i-think dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday February 02, @15:21 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/02/1915253 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

mrogers writes "A journalism student in Afghanistan has been [0]sentenced
to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report
criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student
was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to
Reporters Without Borders, [1]sixty people are currently in jail
worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but
this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using
the internet. Internet censorship [2]is on the rise worldwide, according
to [3]The OpenNet Initiative."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/02/02/1915253

Links:
0. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-afghan-who-dared-to-read-about-womens-rights-775972.html
1. http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=675
2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1dbb5faa-d268-11db-a7c0-000b5df10621.html
3. http://opennet.net/

0--- The Mobile Phone Novel

http://tinyurl.com/2kx9ug

This week the 2007 bestseller list, published
by Japan's biggest book distributor, Tohan,
revealed that five of the year's most successful
novels, including the top three, were first
written for downloading on mobile phones
before being republished in book form.

The number one seller, Love Sky, sold two
million copies in the last year, has recently
been released as a hit film, and has made a
star of its author, a woman in her early
20s known only as Mika.

A sequel, Your Sky, came in at number three,
and second place went to Red String by Mei,
which sold one million copies. All are written
in short, simple sentences using relatively
few characters, featuring melodramatic plots
heavy on violence, sex and tear-jerking sentiment.

Love Sky, for example, tells the story of a
teenage girl who is bullied, gang-r.a.p.e.d,
becomes pregnant and suffers a miscarriage.

http://tinyurl.com/2kx9ug

Hey they have spent billions destroying the country to free it and a small amount trying to rebuild it that has mostly been a failure. How about spending about ten percent of what has already been spent a couple of billion maybe to fix what they broke. Tell me what is freedom if you are dead? Hope Santa is coming to them too. How much do Americans spend on Xmas? On candy? On going to a movie?

MILLIONS OF IRAQI CHILDREN NEED HELP NOW: UNICEF REPORT
A United Nations report paints a grim picture of life in Iraq for two
million children, but says an improving security outlook offers the
opportunity to provide much-needed help.
FULL STORY:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2007/12/21/un-children.html

Thinking of Journalism as a career? There is a down side:

2007 deadliest year for journalists since 1994-CPJ
Tue 18 Dec 2007, 17:18 GMT
[-] Text [+]
By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - At least 64 journalists were killed in 2007, making it the deadliest year in more than a decade with Iraq the most dangerous place in the world to report, a U.S. media watchdog said on Monday.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the number of deaths was up from 56 last year and that it was still investigating whether another 22 deaths in 2007 were work-related.

"CPJ has recorded only one year with a higher death toll: 1994, when 66 journalists were killed, many in conflicts in Algeria, Bosnia and Rwanda," the group said in a statement.

For the fifth year in a row Iraq was the deadliest dateline with 31 journalists killed, most of whom were targeted and murdered, the watchdog said. All but one of the journalists killed were Iraqi, with nine of those working for international organizations, including Reuters and The Associated Press.

Another 12 media support workers, such as bodyguards and drivers, also died in Iraq during 2007, the watchdog said.

"Since the beginning of the war in March 2003, 124 journalists and 49 media workers have been killed, making it the deadliest conflict for the press in recent history. More than one-third worked for international news organizations," the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Check this article out at the Online Journalism Review: "
The readers will have the final word
Commentary: A tragedy from the U.S. midwest and an auto show in L.A. illustrate the shift in power from professional reporters to the audience.
By Robert Niles
Posted: 2007-11-16
Two examples today further drive home the lesson that the journalism media no longer provides the final word on the day's news, thanks to the Internet."
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/071116niles/

This is a trend that has affected media all over the world and should be watched closely:
Fears grow at newspapers amid recent CanWest layoffs
Last Updated: Sunday, November 11, 2007 | 10:52 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Tensions are running high in CanWest newsrooms from Montreal to Vancouver in the wake of recent layoffs at the company's television stations and fears that more cuts are ahead amid an apparent push to centralize editorial operations.

"Everybody in the newsroom has received a letter with the buyout offer," said an editor at the Vancouver Sun who didn't want to be identified.

"And in the case of the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal — those are non-unionized newsrooms so the company can do whatever it wants to do in a non-union situation. People are very fearful not just about layoffs but for the industry; deskers are quite depressed about the future of newspapers in general."

CanWest, Canada's biggest media company, is defending its decision to centralize some of its television operations and lay off 200 people at local Global stations, saying it was part of an effort to make their newsrooms more "leading edge."

Buyouts have also been offered and taken at some of the chain's largest daily newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Vancouver Sun and Province.

CanWest, based in Winnipeg, employed 10,645 people at the end of its 2006 fiscal year at newspaper, internet and broadcast businesses in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

"The media landscape has changed fairly dramatically and traditional newsroom structures have not evolved enough to be able to fully respond to this new 'always on' environment," Dervla Kelly, CanWest's corporate communications officer, said in an e-mail.

"Our papers are each looking at how they need to evolve their newsrooms to be more … fluid in their approach to content. Each of them are deciding locally what changes make the most sense for their paper, but a key focus for all is to look at how they can place more resources on delivering 'hyper-local' news, creating unique content, as well as place more resources focused on the web."

Contrary to fears inside CanWest newsrooms, Kelly said, the company is not centralizing its newspapers and cutting back on local coverage — the goal, in fact, is to bolster local coverage and simply defer some pagination duties to CanWest Editorial Services in Hamilton, Ont.

"This will allow them to put more focus and resources on generating content and less on packaging and moving content around. This does mean that some production-type jobs have been eliminated, but new positions have also been created that are focused on content and on the web."

Many aren't buying it, suggesting CanWest is making a dramatic attempt to prove to their debt-holders that it can afford to buy Alliance Atlantis and its array of successful specialty channels.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union filed a complaint with the CRTC on Friday against CanWest, saying it will be in breach of its broadcast licences if it moves ahead with plans to centralize its Global television operations without the federal agency's approval.

'Same old bugaboo'

"Why are they doing this? One reason is because they have that same old bugaboo of a lot of debt, but also on Nov. 19 they begin hearings about their purchase of Alliance Atlantis," the union's Peter Murdoch said in an interview.

"They're squeezing every which way they can in order to scrape up the change to buy Alliance Atlantis."

CanWest is only putting up 30 per cent of the money involved in the $2.3 billion Alliance Atlantis purchase. The rest is being provided by its U.S. partner, Goldman Sachs.

Centralizing news operations in an attempt to cut costs is nothing new — Quebecor has been doing it for years, for example — but it's a risky gamble for a media company, observers say.

"There are some real el-cheapo stations in the States that tried it and it was quite a flop," Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, said in an interview from Florida.

"At the very least, newspapers and local TV stations are really the sources of local news information. They're still the strongest game in town, and usually the only game in town, and the one place where newspapers have the internet beat," Edmonds said.

Erosion of local news coverage a concern: CAJ

"Centralizing is really a dangerous experiment. The viewer or the reader is smart enough to figure out the difference between locally originated news and something that's put together at a distant point, and then you risk losing that reader or that viewer forever."

Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, says her organization's members are frustrated by the lack of clear information being provided by CanWest about its future plans. A steady erosion of local news coverage is the most worrisome potential scenario, she said.

"That's our No. 1 concern," she said. "If it does shake out that there are fewer reporters in newsrooms across the country, we see that as being really detrimental for the quality of local coverage. You have to invest in good-quality journalism and it's really hard to do that when you're shrinking newsrooms."

The entire CanWest situation, others say, is symptomatic of the slow death of newspapers as media companies attempt to compete against YouTube instead of focusing on producing quality journalism.

"You'd like to think there's a breaking point, just like there was for nurses and teachers," Murdoch said. "I think at some point, journalists are going to say: 'Wait a minute, we have a real problem here in terms of own craft, our own ethics, our own standards.' And we're going to have to say and do things about it that are a little more activist than we have been in the past."

The Vancouver Sun editor said many in his newsroom are pondering taking the buyout, not because they fear they'll be laid off eventually anyway, but because of declining journalistic standards in the newspaper business.

"We were told that we're not a newspaper anymore, we're a newsroom," he said with a sigh. "We care a lot about our craft, and the standards are going out the window.

"The quality is secondary, as far as the people who are our bosses are concerned. They really don't seem to care anymore about the things that we care about. That's why people are taking the buyouts."

Assignment for this week is podcast. A radio report that you send to me as a wav. attachment to and e-mail. Deadline is Sunday, noon. See you next week. Clark

George Orwell the wonderfull strange English writer reveled to us 1984 and it did not make it at that time but has hautned us ever since, take a look at this, snoop, snoop : US Consumers Clueless About Online Tracking |
| from the just-pretend-nobody's-watching dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Monday November 05, @21:06 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/05/2351248 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Arashtamere writes "A study on consumer perceptions about online privacy,
undertaken by the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California and
the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that the [0]average American
consumer is largely unaware that every move they make online can be, and
often is, tracked by online marketers and advertising networks. Those
surveyed showed little knowledge on the extent to which online tracking
is happening or how the information obtained can be used. More than half
of those surveyed — about 55 percent — falsely assumed that a company's
privacy polices prohibited it from sharing their addresses and purchases
with affiliated companies. Nearly four out of 10 online shoppers falsely
believed that a company's privacy policy prohibits it from using
information to analyze an individuals' activities online. And a similar
number assumed that an online privacy policy meant that a company they're
doing business with wouldn't collect data on their online activities and
combine it with other information to create a behavioral profile."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/11/05/2351248

Links:
0. http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1726527222;fp;16;fpid;1
IT'S LIKE JELLO/ JUST ADD WATER AND EVERYONE LOVES EVERYTHING