The Decline of Journalism from Watergate to 'Dark Alliance'

Sad but true that some of the only real journalism is coming from not national news sources but independent international one. For example:OPINION(LEFT) PAUL ANDREW HAWTHORNE / WIREIMAGE / GETTY IMAGES (RT) PAUL ANDREW HAWTHORNE / WIREIMAGE / GETTY IMAGES The decline of journalism from Watergate to 'Dark Alliance' What if Ben Bradlee had overseen Gary Webb's investigation into the CIA, Contras and crack cocaine? October 25, 2014 2:00AM ET by Nick Schou @NickSchou There’s a great scene at the end of “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 Hollywood version of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s years-long unraveling of the Watergate scandal. It features a teletype machine cranking out headline after headline, with the last one reporting the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The ceaseless tapping hammers home an unspoken message in the movie, which ends two years before Nixon stepped down, with editor Ben Bradlee famously telling his reporters to “rest up 15 minutes, then get your asses back in gear.” The work of a watchdog never ends. The fragility of the whole investigation into the break-in and the subsequent cover-up shows how much the veracity of the news depends on the guts not only of reporters but also of their editors and publishers. “Woodstein,” as Woodward and Bernstein were jokingly known, never would have nailed Nixon had they not had the support of an editor with an iron backbone willing to stand up to the White House, which used both anonymous leaks and on-the-record denials to try to kill the story. That editor, Bradlee, passed away on Oct. 21 at the age of 93, which is too bad, because America needs the type of journalistic guts he embodied, now more than ever. A case in point involves another movie now in theaters, “Kill the Messenger,” which is based in part on my 2006 biography of investigative reporter Gary Webb. In 1996, Webb unloaded a three-part series for The San Jose Mercury-News alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency helped spark America’s crack cocaine epidemic by enabling drug traffickers tied to the Nicaraguan Contras to ship into the country and use the proceeds to fund their insurgency against the Sandinista government. Published on the Mercury-News’ website, thereby making it available to all, the series, “Dark Alliance,” became one of the first viral news pieces of the Internet era. As with Watergate, the story led to furious denials from anonymous government sources — only this time The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post rallied strenuously to defend the feds. All three papers published lengthy rebuttals to Webb’s stories, dismissing them as the work of an irresponsible journalist who bent the facts to fit his thesis, thus empowering conspiracy theorists, particularly in the African-American community, which long suspected the U.S. government of complicity in the crack trade. Never mind that a subsequent report released by the CIA at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal admitted to much wider collaboration with agency-affiliated Contra-sympathizing coke peddlers than Webb ever claimed. “Kill the Messenger,” which stars Jeremy Renner as Webb, depicts the withering media attacks that forced Webb from journalism and may have contributed to his eventual suicide in 2004. In response to the film, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times recently published stories acknowledging that, in hindsight, their attacks on Webb were overkill and that history had vindicated his basic premise. The Washington Post, on the other hand, published a scathing op-ed asserting that Webb was a fraud and commending his editor at the time, Jerry Ceppos, as “courageous” for pulling Webb off the CIA beat and authoring a letter to readers backing off the story. We are trying to follow in Gary Webb's footsteps not only because the reporting he did was so important and fearless, but how vindictive the way the CIA and media reacted underscores how urgent it is to shine a light on what they are doing. Glenn Greenwald Journalist and co-founding editor of The Intercept As a reporter who covered Webb’s story and the controversy that followed, I happened to be in a position to investigate the drug ring he exposed. One of its members was Ronald Lister, a cop-turned-arms-merchant who sold guns to crack dealers who flew to Central America at the behest of ex-CIA agents, who hired him to provide security services to the Salvadoran military and death squad founder Roberto D’Aubuisson. One of Lister’s business partners at the time was Bill Nelson, a retired CIA deputy director of operations. I had to go to court to force the agency to hand over files on Nelson’s relationship to Lister, most of which remain classified to protect U.S. national security. And that was just the findings of one reporter working for a small alt weekly in Southern California. Imagine what even three of the 17 reporters The Los Angeles Times assigned to destroy Webb could have done. It gives cause to wonder what would have happened if Bradlee rather than Ceppos had been Webb’s editor. For one thing, most of the flak Webb caught involved hyperbole that had been aided and abetted by his editors — chief among them the story’s logo, which featured the image of a crack smoker superimposed on the CIA’s official seal. Had Ceppos stood by Webb and permitted him to continue his work and had other newspapers objectively worked to advance his reporting, the true flaw of “Dark Alliance” — that it radically understated the extent of the CIA’s ties to Contra drug traffickers —wouldn’t have come out only when the CIA decided to confess its sins. But of course, Ceppos, who somehow managed to win an ethics in journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists for throwing Webb under the bus, was no Bradlee. Investigative reporting is difficult, dangerous work, and it has become something of a lost art form in mainstream American reporting, which is why whistleblowers such as former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden don’t trust American media institutions to report their secrets. Instead, Snowden looked abroad to find a reliably gutsy journalist, then–Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, to help bring to light what he knew. I recently reached Greenwald by telephone (after four mysterious click-click-click disconnections) at his home in Brazil to ask him if he saw a similarity between what happened to Webb and more recent media attacks on whistleblowers like Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame who came under fire from U.S. officials for sharing government secrets. “The established media in the U.S. is extremely close to the government and will react the same way the government does,” he told me. In the wake of Greenwald’s reporting on Snowden’s revelations, he, like Webb, was subjected to scathing personal attacks in the press, most notably from The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, who authored the most egregious assaults on Webb’s credibility after “Dark Alliance.” “The government doesn’t even have to carry out the attacks, because the media will do that for them,” Greenwald told me. “You saw that with Gary Webb — going after him personally and ganging up on him — and you see the same thing happening today.” Greenwald recently co-founded The Intercept, an independently funded investigative reporting enterprise. Webb is an “inspiration” for a new generation of whistleblowers and muckraking reporters, according to Greenwald. “We are trying to follow in his footsteps not only because the reporting he did was so important and fearless,” he says, “but how vindictive the way the CIA and media reacted underscores how urgent it is to shine a light on what they are doing.” Unfortunately, America cannot afford to depend on anarchist hackers like Assange or the occasional disillusioned spook such as Snowden to protect our democracy from corruption or abuse. Instead we need a well-functioning and -funded press that employs journalists as fearless as Webb and editors like Bradlee who are willing to carry water for their reporters rather than for the government. Nick Schou is an award-winning investigative journalist whose articles have resulted in the release from prison of wrongly convicted individuals; and in the federal indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of a Huntington Beach, California mayor. He is the managing editor of OC Weekly, the alternative news publication for California's Orange County and Long Beach communities. He is also the author of "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Epidemic Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb." The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

'New York Times' Journalist James Risen Prepared to "Pay Any Price" to Report on War on Terror

This is what real journalism is about: 'New York Times' Journalist James Risen Prepared to "Pay Any Price" to Report on War on Terror Risen, who could face prison time, says that "without aggressive investigative reporting, we can’t really have a democracy." 12 COMMENTS 12 COMMENTS A A A Email Print October 16, 2014 | In an interview with Democracy Now!, New York Times journalist James Risen talked about the investigative reporting surrounding the NSA that has put him in the center of a major press freedom case. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, who had just released a new book titled "Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War," told Amy Goodman: "You cannot have aggressive investigative reporting in America without confidential sources — and without aggressive investigative reporting, we can’t really have a democracy. I think that is what the government really fears more than anything else." Risen also detailed revelations he makes in his new book about what he calls the "homeland security-industrial complex." Below is an interview with Risen, followed by a transcript: AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend the hour with the journalist at the center of one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades: veteran New York Times investigative reporter James Risen. In 2006, Risen won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting about warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency. His story would have come out right before the 2004 presidential election of President Bush over John Kerry. It might have changed the outcome of that election. But under government pressure, The New York Times refused to publish the story for more than a year, until James Risen was publishing a book that would have had the revelations in it. He’s since been pursued by both the Bush and Obama administrations in a six-year leak investigation into that book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. James Risen now faces years in prison if he refuses to testify at the trial of a former CIA officer accused of giving him classified information. In June, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal of a court ruling forcing him to testify in the criminal trial of ex-CIA analyst Jeffrey Sterling, who prosecutors believe gave him information on the agency’s role in disrupting Iran’s nuclear program. In State of War, Risen showed that instead of hampering Iran’s efforts, the CIA effectively gave Iran a blueprint for designing a bomb. James Risen has vowed to go to jail rather than testify at Sterling’s trial, which is set to begin in January. In a story broadcast Sunday, General Michael Hayden, who led the CIA until 2009 and, before that, led the NSA, told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes he does not think Risen should be forced to divulge his source. MICHAEL HAYDEN: I’m conflicted. I know the damage that is done. And I do. But I also know the free press necessity in a free society. And it actually might be that I think, no, he’s wrong, that was a mistake, that was a terrible thing to do, America will suffer because of that story. But then I have to think about: So, how do I redress that? And if the method of redressing that actually harms the broad freedom of the press, that’s still wrong. The government needs to be strong enough to keep me safe, but I don’t want it so strong that it threatens my liberties. AMY GOODMAN: Well, the Obama administration must now decide if it will try to force James Risen’s testimony and risk sending one of the nation’s most prominent national security journalists to jail. President Obama has already developed a reputation as the most aggressive in history when it comes to targeting whistleblowers. His Justice Department has brought eight cases so far, more than all previous administrations combined. On Friday, federal prosecutors hinted they may decide not to press for Risen’s testimony, under new guidelines issued earlier this year that make it harder to subpoena journalists for their records. James Risen’s answer to this saga has been to write another book. Released today, it’s titled Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. He writes the book is his answer to how, quote, "to best challenge the government’s draconian efforts to crack down on aggressive investigative reporting and suppress the truth in the name of ceaseless war." James Risen, welcome back to Democracy Now! JAMES RISEN: Thanks for having me. AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. JAMES RISEN: Thanks. AMY GOODMAN: So, your new book is Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. You’re quoting John Kennedy here. JAMES RISEN: Yes, yes. And I think that’s what we have done since 9/11. We’ve paid an enormous price in the name of what we—we started this war after 9/11, this global war on terror, in order to seek justice or retribution or whatever you—however you want to characterize the attitude of America right after 9/11. But today it’s become essentially a search for cash, and there’s lots of people involved in the war on terror today who are doing it because they’re ambitious, because they want status or power or money. And I think of it kind of in the historical sense. The historical context is kind of like in the Middle Ages when you had the Thirty Years’ War or the Hundred Years’ War in Europe, where you developed a whole new class of mercenary soldiers, who all they did their entire careers is go from one country to another to fight wars for money. AMY GOODMAN: Well, as you expose a great deal in Pay Any Price, you yourself are under, as I just documented, enormous pressure. JAMES RISEN: Right. AMY GOODMAN: How do you continue to write these front-page pieces for The New York Times, write this book, Pay Any Price, as you face the possibility of years in jail? JAMES RISEN: Well, it’s what I do. It’s my job. You know, it’s what keeps me sane, is to keep going. If I just gave in to them, then I would be, you know, failing in what I want to do. I want to keep finding out the truth. It’s the thing I’ve tried to do my whole life, is be a reporter and be a writer. It’s the only thing I know how to do. AMY GOODMAN: Well, in a moment, we’re going to talk extensively about these stunning revelations in Pay Any Price, but if you could go back to what you revealed, before Edward Snowden, and how it eventually came into The New York Times, that won it and you a Pulitzer Prize? JAMES RISEN: Yeah, well, the—I guess you mean the original NSA stories. We, in 2004, Eric Lichtblau and I, had a number of different sources who began to tell us early on in 2004 that they were very—they knew something really big, they knew the biggest secret in the government, but they couldn’t tell us, because they were so nervous. They were very tortured by what they knew. And it took months of kind of patience and talking and reporting for Eric and I to figure out exactly what it was that they were talking about, and finally we were able to piece it all together. And in the fall of 2004, we had the story ready to go. I had a great confrontation over the telephone with Michael Hayden, who you just saw, where I read him the—I got him on the phone kind of by bluffing the PR person at the NSA and said, "I need to talk to him right now." And I was shocked that he got on the phone. And I read him the top of the draft of the story, and he goes, "[gasps]." And that’s when I knew we had it. And so, we had the story ready. But then, by, you know, then, Hayden and the government started to crack down on The New York Times and pressured them to hold the story ’til—even though it was ready about two or three weeks before the election, in mid-October 2004. And then, after the election— AMY GOODMAN: Well, wait. JAMES RISEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: Can you just explain, what does it mean when the government pressures, you know, the leading newspaper in the United States? JAMES RISEN: Well, they— AMY GOODMAN: What does that look like? Do they march through the offices of The New York Times into Bill Keller the executive editor’s office? JAMES RISEN: No. Well, usually what they ask is for us to go to them. The first meeting was between—I think it was probably early October, late September of 2004, between me and the Washington bureau chief at the time, Phil Taubman, and John McLaughlin, who was then the acting CIA director, and his chief of staff, John Moseman. And we met at the CIA director’s downtown office at the old executive office building. And it was a very funny meeting, because at that time they didn’t want to acknowledge that the story was right. They didn’t want to officially acknowledge. And so, they had all these hypothetical—we had this very weird hypothetical conversation, where they kept saying, "Well, if you were to—if the government was doing what you say they were doing, it would be very bad for you to reveal that." And then they—then, that was just the beginning of a whole series of meetings with the editors and us, the reporters, in which they said that this is the crown jewel of the U.S. counterterrorism operation, and that if you reveal this, this will damage national security. And so, that was essentially the argument that they used then and they used throughout the entire process. AMY GOODMAN: Well, it went higher than you and the Washington editor. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, it kept going higher and higher and higher. AMY GOODMAN: And the election is coming closer and closer and closer. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, yeah, and they met with Taubman and Keller. And then we had—you know, we in the newspaper, the editors and reporters—met to discuss the story, and Bill Keller decided to hold it. And then the election—you know, so he decided to not run it before the election. And then, after the election— AMY GOODMAN: I mean— JAMES RISEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it could have changed the election? I mean, explain the nut— JAMES RISEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: —of your revelation. JAMES RISEN: Basically, the story was that we found out that the U.S. was spying on Americans—the NSA was spying on Americans electronically, listening to their phone calls, international phone calls, back and forth with people overseas, and gathering lots of—doing lots of data mining on their phone and email, and also getting the content of their email, and doing that without court approval. They were going around the FISA court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, which had been set up specifically for that purpose of providing secret warrants for spying on—for eavesdropping on spies and terrorists or suspected spies and terrorists. And the government had decided to go around the law, go around the courts, and not tell anyone else that they were doing that, except a couple hand-picked people in Congress, who were like the chairmen of the intelligence committees. And they were keeping this secret from everyone so they could do it on a vast scale. And we believed that what we were—the people who talked to us about it believed that it was unconstitutional. And that’s why we were pursuing it. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Bill Binney for a minute, who we had on Democracy Now! William Binney was the National Security Agency whistleblower, spent nearly 40 years at the NSA, but retired about a month after September 11, 2001, due to concerns over unchecked domestic surveillance. Speaking on Democracy Now! in 2012, Binney explained what happened. WILLIAM BINNEY: After 9/11, all the wraps came off for NSA, and they decided to—between the White House and NSA and CIA, they decided to eliminate the protections on U.S. citizens and collect on domestically. So they started collecting from a commercial—the one commercial company that I know of that participated provided over 300—probably, on the average, about 320 million records of communication of a U.S. citizen to a U.S. citizen inside this country. AMY GOODMAN: What company? WILLIAM BINNEY: AT&T. It was long-distance communications. So they were providing billing data. At that point, I knew I could not stay, because it was a direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country. Plus it violated the pen register law and Stored Communications Act, the Electronic Privacy Act, the intelligence acts of 1947 and 1978. I mean, it was just this whole series of—plus all the laws covering federal communications governing telecoms. I mean, all those laws were being violated, including the Constitution. And that was a decision made that wasn’t going to be reversed, so I could not stay there. I had to leave. AMY GOODMAN: That was National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney. So he leaves, and he ultimately has a gun put to his head by federal authorities in his shower—he’s a diabetic amputee—his kid and his wife also being held at gunpoint. JAMES RISEN: Right, yes, unfortunately, and I have a chapter in my new book about the NSA whistleblowers early on, including Bill and Diane Roark and Tom Drake and some of the others. And it’s remarkable what happened to them at the NSA. What we found out, years later—I did not know Bill, I didn’t know Diane or Tom. They were never our sources. But what we found out was, the government thought that they were our sources for our New York Times story, and they were persecuted as a result, even though they had never come to the press. And I detail in the new book, Diane Roark, in particular, suffered amazing persecution. And she tried—even though she tried to go through the channel— AMY GOODMAN: Explain who she was—is. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, Diane Roark—along with Bill, Diane Roark was the House Intelligence Committee staffer in charge of oversight of the NSA, and right at the time of 9/11. And Bill, right after he found out about this new program, went to her, her house in suburban Washington, and told her what he had heard about. And Diane was outraged and shocked, and she couldn’t believe that it was authorized. She thought this must be some kind of rogue program that nobody really knew about. And so, she went to the chairman of the—she went to her bosses, the staff director of the House Intelligence Committee and the minority staff director, to warn them that they’ve got to tell the chairman and the vice chairman of the committee what’s going on. And then she gets this message back: "Don’t talk about this anymore. Don’t investigate it. And keep your mouth shut." And she realizes that the chairman and the vice chairman already know about it and are keeping it secret. And so, she then tries to—goes on this long odyssey within the government of going to all these powerful people that she knows inside the government to try to warn them about this illegal and unconstitutional program. And every time she goes to someone that she respects and who is very powerful, she realizes they already know, they’re in on the secret, and they’re keeping their mouths shut. And finally, about a year later—a couple years later, after our story comes out, the government thinks that she’s our source, and they raid her house, and they raid Bill’s house and a few other people, like Tom Drake. AMY GOODMAN: So, the piece doesn’t get published before the election. You try again right after the election. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, we convinced the editors, well, if you’re not going to run it now, let us try again after the election. And so, after the election, they said OK. And so Eric and I go start working on the story again. We get it re-edited by our editor, Rebecca Corbett, and we have it all ready to go again. You know, we do a lot more reporting. I remember we, Eric and I, knocked on doors, and we went to this one guy who we knew, at his house late at night right before Christmas—we knew he knew about this, and we knock on his door, and he just starts yelling at us for bothering him. And he was clearly scared. He didn’t want to talk. But we had the story ready to go by mid- to late December of 2004, and then the editors killed it again for the same reasons, that it’s national security. And so, by that time, the story was dead. I knew it was—they were not going to run it at all. And so, I had a previously scheduled book leave to work on my book, State of War, and so I decided I’m going to put it in my book. And so I did. And then, when I came back from book leave in the summer—spring or summer of 2005, you know, and I finished the book throughout the summer, and I think by late summer, I told the editors, "It’s going to be in my book, so you should think about running it." AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Bill Keller in 60 Minutes with Lesley Stahl, when she asked him, then the executive editor of The New York Times, about a meeting he was summoned to at the White House that made Keller decide not to run James Risen’s story. BILL KELLER: The president said, you know, "If there’s another attack like 9/11, you know, we’re going to be called up before Congress to explain how we let that happen, and you should be sitting alongside us." It was, in effect, you know, "You could have blood on your hands." LESLEY STAHL: He was saying, if anything goes wrong, we’re going to blame you. BILL KELLER: Right. AMY GOODMAN: That was Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. What was your answer to him? I’m sure he said that to you. JAMES RISEN: Well, we had lots of talks over about 14 months. And actually, their talks—you know, the talks we had, me and Eric had, with the editors were very high-minded. It was an interesting debate. And we debated kind of this issue of national security versus civil liberties in a lot of ways. I always thought afterwards, you know, you could have put those debates we had inside the paper on television. They were pretty interesting. But ultimately, what really, I think, convinced Bill was, in the fall of 2005, when they were—after I told them it was going to be in my book, and they decided to re-engage on the story— AMY GOODMAN: Well, that’s putting it politely. It’s going to be very embarrassing— JAMES RISEN: Yeah, right. AMY GOODMAN: —as their top national security reporter reveals his revelations not in the pages of the Times, but in your book. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, yeah. Well, what they said was, "We’ll think about putting"—after I told them it was going to be in my book, in the late summer of 2005, what they said was, "OK, we’ll think about putting it in the paper." But they weren’t committed to it. They wanted to negotiate again with the government. And so, there were a whole series of new meetings with the government, and which was very frustrating to me. What the government told them that fall was: "Risen and Lichtblau have it wrong. We’re not listening to anybody’s phone calls. We’re only getting the metadata, you know, the calling data." And when the editors came back and told us that, we told—Eric and I said, "They’re lying to you." And finally, after a while, Eric and I were able to convince them, you know, that they were being lied to, and I think that had a major impact on their final decision to run the story. AMY GOODMAN: And so, the story comes out, and you win a Pulitzer Prize for your book. But there is something else that the Times decided not to publish— JAMES RISEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: —that is what you are being prosecuted for now. JAMES RISEN: Right. There was another story, a CIA operation involving the Iran nuclear weapons program, in which the CIA had used a Russian defector to give nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. And the idea was that they were supposed to be flawed blueprints that would then send the Iranians down the wrong track on building a bomb. But the Russian told them immediately, "Oh, I can see the flaws," because he was a scientist, he was a nuclear scientist. He says, "I can see the flaws. The Iranians are going to see the flaws." And then he sent a letter. When he gave the blueprints to the Iranians, he gave a letter to the Iranians saying, "You’re going to see that there are problems in these blueprints." And so, it’s quite possible that the Iranians were able to—by being tipped off, were able to find good information in them and ignore the bad information. And that was in my book. I had written that for the paper in—before, and the editors had decided not to run it because the White House asked them not to on national security grounds. And after my book came out, the government began leak investigations of both the NSA story and other things in my book, including that story. I think they finally decided not to come after The New York Times on the NSA story, because it would have meant a major constitutional showdown. And I think they decided to find something else in my book to come after me on, to isolate me from The New York Times. And they picked the Merlin operation. AMY GOODMAN: And they want to know your source. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, they want to know who my sources are for that story. AMY GOODMAN: Did it surprise you that it went from the Bush administration to the Obama administration? JAMES RISEN: Yes. I thought that once the Obama administration came into office, that the whole thing would be dropped. And I was very surprised that the Obama administration continued to pursue the case, when, in 2009, they issued a new subpoena. And they’ve continued to pursue this ever since. AMY GOODMAN: You told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, President Obama is "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation"? JAMES RISEN: Yeah, I think that his record speaks for itself. He’s gone after—he’s prosecuted more whistleblowers and gone after more journalists than any president in history. He’s done—I think that record is going to be a major part of his legacy, of trying to erode press freedom in the United States. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist James Risen. He has just published a new book—it’s out today—called Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. When we come back, we’ll talk about what he calls "the homeland security-industrial complex." Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re spending the hour with James Risen, investigative journalist with The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His new book, just out today, is Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. You’re being pursued by the U.S. government. Will you reveal the name of your source? JAMES RISEN: No. AMY GOODMAN: Because? JAMES RISEN: I just think that the—you know, you cannot have aggressive investigative reporting in America without confidential sources. And without aggressive investigative reporting, we can’t really have a democracy, because the only real oversight for the government is an independent and aggressive press. And I think that’s what the government really fears more than anything else, is an aggressive investigative reporting in which we shine a light on what’s going on inside the government. And we can’t do that without maintaining the confidentiality of sources. AMY GOODMAN: Has President Obama, Eric Holder or anyone else in the administration signaled to you that they may not demand that you testify and reveal your source? JAMES RISEN: No. AMY GOODMAN: These reports that were in The Washington Post on Friday, and Michael Hayden saying, former NSA head saying, that perhaps you shouldn’t be prosecuted, do they encourage you? JAMES RISEN: Yeah, well, I’m glad to hear that, but we’ll see. I don’t know what’s going to happen. AMY GOODMAN: In June, Attorney General Eric Holder met with a group of journalists to discuss press freedom issues and was asked about the Justice Department’s subpoena of you, of James Risen, to testify in the trial of ex-CIA analyst Jeffrey Sterling. According to the Times, Holder said, quote, "As long as I’m attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail. As long as I’m attorney general, someone who is doing their job is not going to get prosecuted." James Risen? JAMES RISEN: Well, we’ll see. I’m not sure what that means, you know, and it’s all still in the courts right now. So... AMY GOODMAN: And Holder is resigning. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, yeah. So, we’ll see. It’s very unclear what’s going to happen next. AMY GOODMAN: Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, you have a series of stunning revelations. Why don’t you begin by laying them out? JAMES RISEN: OK. Well, you know, I set out to—to me, what the war on terror became, as I said earlier, this enormous search for power and status and cash. And I began to realize that what we had in the war on terror was we had deregulated national security. That’s essentially what Dick Cheney meant when he said the gloves come off. That means deregulating the whole national security apparatus, taking all the limits off of what we can do in national security. At the same time, we poured hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into brand-new counterterrorism programs. And the FBI, the CIA and the new Homeland Security department, all the—and the Pentagon, they all had more money than they knew what to do with. And so, they began—to me, it’s kind of like the banking crisis. You had enormous money going into a deregulated industry, meaning the counterterrorism industry, and you had lots of unintended and bizarre consequences. And so, that’s what I’ve found, is the crazy programs that developed; the bizarre nature of the whole war on terror, if you pull up the hood and look inside of it, is just stunning. And I open the book with this, to me, kind of a metaphor for everything that we have, what’s going on now, is, in 2009, there was a small ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 60, which is where the dead of the Iraq War lay buried. And it was a small group of pro-war people who were celebrating the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and which they—what they call Iraq Liberation Day. It’s the day that the statue of Saddam was pulled down in Firdos Square. And I saw Paul Wolfowitz there. And the woman who ran that—who was sponsoring that day’s ceremony was Viola Drath, who was an aging Georgetown socialite. And she was very pro-Iraq War. And then, two years later, she was found murdered in her apartment—in her house in Georgetown. And her husband, who had been going around Washington dressed as a general in the Iraqi army, was arrested for her murder. He had claimed that he had been named a general in the Iraqi army by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And after he was arrested, the police found a receipt from a printing place in Washington where he had counterfeited the letter and the certificate of being a general in the Iraqi army. And he was a total fraud. He’s now been convicted of her murder. And I thought that was a metaphor for the fact that this war on terror is—a lot of it is just a fabrication, that we are now trying to unravel and deal with. And so, I began to look and to see all of the various things that have happened in this war. One of the first things I came across was how the United States had airlifted billions of dollars to Iraq for use by the Iraqi—the new Iraqi government, and billions had been stolen and moved to Lebanon by Iraqi leaders. Then I began to look at the case of Dennis Montgomery, who was a— AMY GOODMAN: But before you go to Dennis Montgomery— JAMES RISEN: Yeah, yeah. AMY GOODMAN: —the billions of dollars from the U.S. went from Iraq to Lebanon. JAMES RISEN: Right. It was stolen— AMY GOODMAN: Where? JAMES RISEN: It was stolen from Baghdad and moved secretly to a bunker in Lebanon, where it was being held by wealthy and powerful Iraqis, because they wanted to steal it and use it for themselves, and also probably with some Lebanese money launderers who were watching over it. AMY GOODMAN: So, this billion dollars of taxpayer, U.S. taxpayer, money is— JAMES RISEN: Well, it was actually Iraqi government money that had been held in the United States, but the U.S. government was airlifting it by the U.S. Air Force. So, it was just a—you know, no one was doing any oversight of any of these programs. AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Montgomery? JAMES RISEN: Dennis Montgomery is a fascinating character, who—he was a computer software person, self-styled expert, who developed what he said was special technology that would allow him to do things with computers that other people couldn’t do. One of the things that he developed was this imaging technology that he said he could find images on broadcast network news tapes from Al Jazeera. He said that he could read special secret al-Qaeda codes in the banners on the broadcasts of Al Jazeera. And the CIA believed this. And he was giving them information based on watching hours and hours of Al Jazeera tapes, saying that "I know where the next al-Qaeda attack is going to be based—is going to happen." And the Bush administration and the CIA fell for this. AMY GOODMAN: And it was in the news zipper at the bottom of the Al Jazeera broadcasts? JAMES RISEN: Well, he says it was in the banner. But anyway. And so, it was this great—if you talk to him, he argues, well, they—that’s what they were looking for. You know, they convinced him to look for this. You know, it depends on who you talk to. But it was one of the great hoaxes of the war on terror, where they actually grounded planes in Europe, the Bush administration, based on information they were getting from Dennis Montgomery’s so-called decryption of Al Jazeera broadcasts. And then there’s a whole number of other things, like Alarbus, which was this covert program at the Pentagon where a Palestinian involved in that was actually trying to use the bank account set up by the secret program, Pentagon program, to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. And the FBI investigated this, but then tried to keep the whole thing quiet. AMY GOODMAN: How much did the U.S. government give to Dennis Montgomery? JAMES RISEN: Millions of dollars. And then he used—he was a heavy gambler and eventually, I think, had a lot of financial problems as a result of that. So, it’s a strange—to me, the Dennis Montgomery story is one of the strangest, because what it shows is, early on in the war on terror, as I said, the CIA and all these other agencies had so much money to spend on counterterrorism that they were willing to throw it at everything. They were so afraid of the next terrorist attack that they were willing to believe anybody who came up with some idea. And I called that chapter about Montgomery, you know, "The Emperor of the War on Terror," because nobody wanted to say that the emperor had no clothes. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it had very real effects, aside from spending all that money. JAMES RISEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: For example, planes being sent back. JAMES RISEN: Yes, yes. There were planes grounded. International flights between the United States and Europe and Mexico were grounded. There was talk at the White House even of shooting down planes based on this information. AMY GOODMAN: Because they could be used, as with September 11th, as weapons? JAMES RISEN: Yeah, as missiles or whatever. And so, it was crazy. It was absolutely insane. AMY GOODMAN: And it was only the French government who then did a study? JAMES RISEN: Yes, yes. Yeah, the French government finally—you know, the U.S.—the CIA and the Bush administration didn’t want to tell anybody what was really happening, where they were getting this information. You know, "This supersecret information about Al Jazeera, we can’t tell you." And finally, the French intelligence service and the French government said, "You know, you’re grounding our planes. You’ve got to tell us where you’re getting this information." And they got—they finally shared the information with them, and the French got a French tech firm to look at this, and they said, "This is nuts. This is fabrication." And after a while, the CIA was finally convinced maybe the French were right, and they stopped talking about it. They didn’t do anything else. They just like shut it down eventually, but never wanted to talk about what had really happened. AMY GOODMAN: Then Dennis Montgomery, revealed as a con man— JAMES RISEN: Yeah, yeah. AMY GOODMAN: —in jail for that? JAMES RISEN: Well, no, he’s not in jail. But it was a—he actually got more contracts after that, with the Pentagon and other agencies. And he continued to operate for a long time. You know, he kind of went from one agency to the other. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for The New York Times. His new book, just out today, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. When we come back, war corrupts, endless war corrupts absolutely. Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We’re spending the hour with James Risen, the investigative reporter for The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. It also won him, well, becoming a target, not only of the Bush administration, but of the Obama administration, for year after year, right through to today. He could face years in jail for not revealing a source on one of the stories that he has exposed around a program called Merlin and the U.S. giving flawed blueprints for a nuclear trigger to Iran. This issue of facing years in jail, how are you preparing for this? JAMES RISEN: Well, as you said, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. And it bothered me a lot more at first. I was more nervous about it when it first started. But now it’s just like kind of background noise in my life, and so I’m just kind of used to it now, because I know exactly—I have no doubts about what I’m going to do, and so that makes it pretty easy. AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re covering the very people who could put you in jail. JAMES RISEN: Yeah, sometimes, yes. As I said earlier, that’s the only way to deal with this, is to keep going and to keep—the only thing that the government respects is staying aggressive and continuing to investigate what the government is doing. And that’s the only way that we in the journalism industry can kind of force—you know, push the government back against the—to maintain press freedom in the United States.

Lindsay Beyerstein address's many of the definitions of journalism and what it is not. Basically it is not Public Relations for a company, political party,government or religion. All of the fore mentioned believe they are a special case and do not have to follow everyone else when it comes to honesty and truth and integrity. In other words they can lie about the details because their agenda is, they believe, the ultimate truth. Lindsay Beyerstein 1 hr · Chris Hedges has been ordained as a minister and he claims that journalism is literally his ministry. Journalism shouldn't be a ministry of any kind. You can't be a journalist for a church any more than you can be a journalist for a corporation or a government or a non-profit advocacy group. Journalists are independent. Churches, governments, corporations, and non-profits can support journalism, but it's not real journalism unless it's independent. Journalists should advocate for values that they believe in, but shouldn't have a competing institutional agenda. Chris Hedges Ordained to Write Posted on Oct 13, 2014 By Chris Hedges Cornel West, left, listens as James Cone speaks at Chris Hedges’ ordination Oct. 5 at the Second Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, N.J. Screen shot from Leigha Cohen’s video posted on YouTube. For Leigha Cohen’s video of the ordination service, click here. Thirty years ago I stood in a church in Albany, N.Y., with my father, a Presbyterian minister. I had graduated from Harvard Divinity School and had purchased a one-way ticket to El Salvador, where the military government, backed by the United States, was slaughtering between 700 and 1,000 people a month. I had decided, as George Orwell and James Baldwin did earlier, to use my writing as a weapon. I would stand with the oppressed. I would give them a voice. I would describe their suffering and their hopes. And I would name the injustices being done to them. It was a decision that would send me to war for two decades, to experience the worst of human evil, to taste too much of my own fear and to confront the reality of violence and random death. Advertisement But going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my “call.” I told my father, who was waiting outside the meeting room, that I was not to be ordained. It must have been hard for him to see his son come so close to ordination, only to have it slip away, and hard to know that his son was leaving for a conflict in which journalists had been killed and would be killed. What the church would not validate he did. “You,” he said, “are ordained to write.” James Baldwin, the son of a preacher and for a time a preacher himself, said he left the pulpit to preach the Gospel. Baldwin saw how the institutional church was often the enemy of mercy and justice. He saw how it too easily devolved into a sanctimonious club whose members glorified themselves at the expense of others. Baldwin, who was gay and black, was not interested in subjugating justice and love to the restrictions imposed by any institution, least of all the church. And that is why there is more Gospel, true Gospel, in Baldwin than in the writings of nearly all the theologians and preachers who were his contemporaries. His essays are sermons—among them “Princes and Powers,” “Down at the Cross,” “The Devil Finds Work,” “Sermons and Blues” and “History as Nightmare.” Baldwin deplored the self-love in American society—he counted white churches as being in the vanguard of self-love—and denounced what he called “the lie of their pretended humanism.” In his essay “Down at the Cross” he wrote: “… there was not love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. When we were told to love everybody, I had thought that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all.” He went on: “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” Baldwin, like Orwell, named truths that few others had the courage to name. He condemned evils that were held up as virtues by the powerful and the pious. And in this Baldwin was true to a spirit and power beyond his control. He was, in religious language, possessed. And he knew it. “The artist and the revolutionary function as they function,” Baldwin wrote, “and pay whatever dues they must pay behind it because they are both possessed by a vision, and they do not so much follow this vision as find themselves driven by it. Otherwise, they could never endure, much less embrace, the lives they are compelled to lead.” This was a sentiment understood by Orwell, who fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and lived with tramps in Paris and London, as well as with impoverished coal miners in the north of England. “My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice,” Orwell wrote. “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” Orwell, like Baldwin, disdained the hypocrisy of the institutional church. He acidly observed that pious Christian capitalists “do not seem to be perceptibly different” from other capitalists. “Religious belief,” he wrote, “is frequently a psychological device to avoid repentance.” Moses, the pet raven in his “Animal Farm,” is used to pacify the other animals, telling them they will all go to an animal paradise called “Sugarcandy Mountain” once their days of labor and suffering come to an end. “As long as supernatural beliefs persist, men can be exploited by cunning priests and oligarchs, and the technical progress which is the prerequisite of a just society cannot be achieved,” Orwell wrote. And yet, like Baldwin, Orwell feared the sanctification of state power and the rise of the manufactured idols that took the place of God, those who promised an earthly rather than heavenly paradise. Orwell struggled throughout his life to find a belief system strong enough to oppose it. “If our civilization does not regenerate itself, it is likely to perish,” he wrote shortly before publishing “Animal Farm.” That regeneration, at least in Europe, he said, would have to draw on a moral code “based on Christian principles.”

Just the Facts? This Dossier Goes Further

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Just the Facts? This Dossier Goes Further By NATASHA SINGEROCT. 4, 2014 Photo Credit Julia Yellow It was my birthday the other day, and, along with the usual private greetings from family and friends, I noticed a couple of public salutations about it on Twitter from entities I didn’t recognize. One was from @TalkingBizNews, a business news feed, which issued posts about my birthday and that of Lou Dobbs of Fox Business Network. Apparently, we have the same birthday. I was curious to find out where these greeters had obtained their information, since I don’t, for data security reasons, share my birth date with sites or stores. Did they get it from public records? Or had they bought it from one of the many companies that sell consumers’ details for marketing purposes? When I started looking into it, I discovered that one company had compiled information about me that was far more personal than my birthday — including references to my father’s marriages and my sister’s wedding announcement. Some of the material was factually accurate. Other elements were speculative. I have written at length about information brokers, those companies that compile, analyze and sell consumer profile data, but this experience provided an eye-opening window into the ways that companies can mix raw facts about people into a subjective soup. First, I contacted Chris Roush, the senior associate dean for undergraduate studies at the journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who runs @TalkingBizNews. He told me he typically posts the birthdays of two to three business journalists a day, information that his team often gleans from LinkedIn or Facebook. But I hadn’t posted the information online. “I frankly can’t remember how I got your birthday,” Professor Roush said. Next I contacted NewsBios, a service in Denver that also posts the birthdays of certain reporters and editors. NewsBios compiles and sells dossiers on journalists. Its executive editor is Dean Rotbart, a former reporter at The Wall Street Journal. The clients are primarily public relations firms and corporations seeking to prep company executives on the journalists who interview them. Mr. Rotbart said news organizations had also bought the profiles for use in hiring staff members or checking out their competitors. “The idea is to write true dossiers on journalists, unvarnished dossiers,” he said, “things they would not disclose or be inclined to disclose” on LinkedIn. The reports may include “information that reflects on the journalist’s character and proclivities,” according to the NewsBios site. NewsBios’ small-scale intelligence-gathering bears some resemblance to the computerized data-mining that large-scale information brokers use to classify consumers’ behavior. For instance, Experian Marketing Services, which helps companies tailor their marketing pitches, segments consumers into categories like: “postindustrial survivors,” “metropolitan strugglers” and “bourgeois prosperity.” NewsBios compiles information on journalists from public sources like voter records, real estate records and motor vehicle records. It also parses their public social media accounts for clues about their political leanings, entertainment interests and favorite sports teams. And it makes inferences based on that data. Continue reading the main story “We will literally turn over every rock that’s out there that might have some bearing on what the journalist thinks or reports,” Mr. Rotbart said. After our phone chat, Mr. Rotbart kindly sent me my own profile. A client had apparently commissioned it in 2009, the year I moved to a new job as a reporter in the business news department of this newspaper from its Style section. The profile has not been sold or updated since, he said. The dossier contained many correct facts — the universities from which I graduated, my contact information, the name of my editor at the time, a list of some front-page articles I had written, citations from published corrections to my articles. There were also a couple of errors. The profile said I had written for a magazine to which I never contributed. It also mistakenly attributed a conservative editorial — published in The Forward, where I had worked as a Moscow correspondent in the 1990s — to me, citing the piece as evidence of my personal politics. I was not much troubled by the factual errors in my profile. As people who regularly check their credit reports well know, companies often collect incorrect information — and even correct data can quickly become out of date. But I was uncomfortable with instances in the profile that speculated on my personal motives or feelings. These assumptions were often off base, yet had the potential to affect my reputation. The dossier, for instance, contained a cropped photograph of the back of my head and neck. Under the picture was a note, tagged “NewsBios Observation” to indicate that it was opinion. “The fact that only the back of her head is showing may be coincidental,” the profile said, “or it may be further evidence that she, a veteran fashion and cosmetics industry reporter, herself has a low self-esteem when it comes to appearances.” In fact, the original photo, which ran in this newspaper to accompany an article I wrote about unglamorous backstage jobs at New York Fashion Week, showed a larger scene in which I sat on the floor, painting the toenails of a fashion model. I wore a utilitarian black outfit, issued to me by the nail polish company with which I was embedded for the article. Photo The image associated with the NewsBios profile of the writer, taken from a photograph that ran with a 2008 New York Times column that she wrote about Fashion Week, was cropped to show the back of her head and neck. Credit Donna Alberico for The New York Times Even so, Mr. Rotbart contended that the profile made a reasonable deduction about my self-esteem — based on the fact that I looked frumpy in the picture and that there were fewer photos of me online than of many other reporters. When I told him I cover privacy issues — that’s the reason I have opted to use an avatar on Twitter — he allowed: “It may be 100 percent that you have a personal privacy thing.” He said that he would amend and update my profile should a client order it again. NewsBios employs techniques that journalists use: Doing web searches of people’s backgrounds, reading their social media posts to learn more about them and drawing conclusions. The difference is that journalists generally notify and seek interviews with the subjects of profiles, whereas NewsBios promises to “never contact the journalists directly.” Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Mr. Rotbart said NewsBios prepares briefs on reporters similar to those compiled by public relations firms and corporate communications departments. Corporations don’t tell journalists that they are the subjects of internal briefings, either. I also contacted Vocus and Cision, companies that each sell information about journalists to public relations professionals. Their profiles of me contained only facts, not suppositions. There is little recourse, however, for subjects of data profiling, says David C. Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. With the exception of sectors like health care and credit, most consumer data is not protected by federal information practices laws. That leaves companies free, he says, to piece together the digital bread crumbs that people leave in their wake into a simulacrum that may bear little resemblance to the actual person. “It points to the gaps in federal regulation,” says Professor Vladeck, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Data broker reports can be inaccurate and can be misconstrued in ways that are unflattering to the individual. Yet consequential decisions can be based on them.” A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 2014, on page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: Just the Facts? This Dossier Goes Further. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

News or Not

This article from the New York Times, an opinion piece is a good example of the difficulty of reading the news and coming up with a conclusion. "Obama, with Reluctance, returns to Action..." Is this true? Does the writer know? Obama might say so or infer his reluctance. However, a President, a superb politician,a Nobel Prize Peace holder, may want to appear forced, reluctant, and move in small steps. Kennedy did the same at the start of the Vietnam war. There is this tendency of American Presidents in the final term to turn to the International stage to ensure their legacy. Calculation seems more the descriptive word here. Move a little here and then not much somewhere else. And there are so many somewhere else's. Hedging bets. Perhaps waiting for the grand slam. Obama, With Reluctance, Returns to Action in Iraq By PETER BAKERAUG. 7, 2014 WASHINGTON — In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition. The mandate he gave to the armed forces was more limited than that of his predecessors, focused mainly on dropping food and water. But he also authorized targeted airstrikes “if necessary” against Islamic radicals advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil and others threatening to wipe out thousands of non-Muslims stranded on a remote mountaintop. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Iraqi security forces and volunteers took part in fighting against Islamist militants north of Baghdad on Thursday. Jihadists Rout Kurds in North and Seize Strategic Iraqi DamAUG. 7, 2014 “I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” President Obama said Thursday night. Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISISAUG. 7, 2014 As he explained himself to a national television audience, Mr. Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there. Yet his presence in the State Dining Room testified to the bleak reality that the tide of events in that ancient land have defied his predictions and aspirations before. President Obama spoke about actions taken by his administration in Iraq, including airdrops of humanitarian supplies and the authorization of airstrikes against ISIS forces. Video Credit By whitehouse.gov on Publish Date August 7, 2014. Image CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times “I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these,” he said. “I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.” Mr. Obama has spent months resisting just that. Even after the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, seized Falluja and other territory in the western part of the country at the beginning of the year and marched through Mosul and toward Baghdad by summer, the president expressed no enthusiasm for American military action. Continue reading the main story Related in Opinion In June, he sent in 300 special forces troops not to fight but to assess the situation, an assessment that has yet to be completed, and he increased surveillance passes over Iraq. But Mr. Obama rebuffed calls, including those from within his administration, to quickly send in air power to hit ISIS forces. Aides said his hand was not forced until ISIS won a series of swift and stunning victories last weekend and Wednesday night against the Kurds in the north, who have been a loyal and reliable American ally, especially compared to the Baghdad government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. ISIS threats to wipe out Yazidis and other religious minorities trapped on Mount Sinjar, they said, added to the urgency. Continue reading the main story The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has solidified control over large portions of both countries. Recent developments:1 ISIS militants captured the Mosul Dam.2 U.S. planes dropped food and water on Mount Sinjar, where as many as 40,000 Iraqis were stranded after death threats from ISIS.3 Bombings reported late Thursday were said to target ISIS fighters who had seized Gwer and Mahmour.4 Militants stormed Arsal, a town near the border in Lebanon. Related Maps and “You don’t have to have a ton of insight to know he feels reluctant,” said Douglas Ollivant, a former Iraq adviser in the White House under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush. “He wants the Iraq problem not to exist. And that’s exactly what the American people sent him to the White House to do.” But “all these factors may kind of drag him kicking and screaming into some kind of decision.” To longtime opponents of the Iraq war, the president’s decision represented a step back down a dangerous path, one that may once again entangle the United States in a bloody and destructive venture. Far better, in their view, to find alternatives like urging the United Nations to help the Iraqis conduct their own humanitarian airdrop mission. Continue reading the main story “This is a slippery slope if I ever saw one,” said Phyllis Bennis, a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a research organization for peace activists. “Whatever else we may have learned from the president’s ‘dumb war,’ it should be eminently clear that we cannot bomb Islamist extremists into submission or disappearance. Every bomb recruits more supporters.” Others disagreed. “I don’t think this is a slippery slope; this is an isolated circumstance,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington State, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, saying he supported intervening on behalf of the Kurds, as opposed to the unpopular Baghdad government. “The Kurds are worth helping and defending.” To some, this is a crisis Mr. Obama brought on himself by not trying harder to leave a residual force behind at the end of 2011 and neglecting to recognize the growing threat as the civil war in Syria next door increasingly spilled over into Iraq. Some argued that a virtual state under ISIS control posed more than the humanitarian threat Mr. Obama seemed to be focused on. “This is about America’s national security,” said Ryan Crocker, who was ambassador to Iraq under Mr. Bush and to Afghanistan under Mr. Obama. “We don’t understand real evil, organized evil, very well. This is evil incarnate. People like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the ISIS leader, “have been in a fight for a decade. They are messianic in their vision, and they are not going to stop.” But if not, then the question arises: How far is Mr. Obama willing to go? He said on Thursday that there is “no American military solution” to the Iraqi insurgency, pointing again to the need for a new politically inclusive government in Baghdad. What he might do if that fails he did not say. And while aides stressed this is a narrow mission, they acknowledged scenarios in which it could expand. Mr. Obama likewise strived to explain why this humanitarian emergency demands American military intervention when others elsewhere have not. Just a week ago, at a news conference, he made the point that the United States cannot intervene everywhere there is a crisis. “Nobody has the sense about why in some cases and not in others,” said James B. Steinberg, a former deputy secretary of state under Mr. Obama and now dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “His last news conference just leaves you scratching your head. Yeah, we can’t do everything. But what matters to us?” Iraq, of course, offers a special case, given the amount of American blood spilled since Mr. Bush’s invasion in 2003. Beyond that, Mr. Obama said that this was an instance where there was a genuine calamity in the making; the government of the country requested help, and the United States had the capacity to step in and make a difference. “The United States cannot and should not intervene every time there is a crisis in the world,” he said. But in this case, he added, “I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye.”

Use the computer to sift large documents

If you are into investigative journalism you should check this out:http://www.scribd.com/doc/230605794/Natural-Language-Processing-in-Investigative-Journalism;Natural Language Processing in Investigative Journalism Journalists frequently have far too many documents to read manually, whether it's a 10,000 page response to a Freedom of Information Request or 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables. We've spent the last three years applying NLP and visualization techniques to this problem, building a system called Overview which has now been used by journalists all over the world. In this talk I'll show you exactly how Overview's language processing pipeline works.

A great story about encouraging journalism in isolated places from The Tyee:A New Story from Attawapiskat Program trains young journalists in remote First Nation communities to report their community's news. By Lisa Charleyboy, Today, TheTyee.ca Share article via email Print this article COVER.richardspence.jpg Attawapiskat resident Richard Spence, 24, credits his participation in JHR's Northern Ontario Initiative for sparking his interest in journalism and storytelling. Photo by Danny Kresnyak. Also in this series: LEADING TOGETHER Dechinta Bush University: Learning off the Land How Do We Inspire Indigenous Youth? Apathy is Boring Engages the Rage On the Rez in Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug The Red Road Project: Trading Substances for Substance Kids Help Phone's Healthy Communities Initiative: How to Counsel the Counselors Exeko: Uniting Kanesatake through Radio Professional Networking, Indigenous-Styles A New Story from Attawapiskat Related Journalists: Please Stop Mistaking Aboriginal Ceremony for Spectacle An otherwise strong CBC story on tourism is marred by badly chosen images. How Do We Inspire Indigenous Youth? That question drove the creation of the Leading Together series that begins today. Journalists for Human Rights launches program in northern Ontario Read more: Aboriginal Affairs, Sign Up for the Tyee Newsletter go [Editor's note: This is part of a series of reports on successful youth-focused projects resulting from collaboration between indigenous communities and philanthropic organizations. Leading Together is itself a collaboration of Journalists for Human Rights, Tyee Solutions Society, Wawatay Native Communications Society, and the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation which commissioned this journalism. Look for one more Leading Together story in The Tyee next week.] Richard Spence, a 24-year-old member of the Attawapiskat First Nation, saw the camera crews come and go in 2011 and 2012, and how they portrayed his community. "All they showed were people in sheds, mouldy houses," said Spence. Those reports almost made me shameful to be from here." Months later, when Spence was invited to learn the basics of journalism in order tell more complex stories reflecting what he knew of Attawapiskat, he jumped at the chance. First Nations peoples make up four per cent of Canada's population. Yet they represent only one per cent of Canadian media professionals. Launched in spring 2013 by media development organization Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), the Northern Ontario Initiative aims to challenge that deficit. It is doing so by sending two journalism trainers to six remote communities. The goal is to train Indigenous participants to produce and freelance their radio and print stories to media outlets. Fort Severn, Weagamow, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Moose Cree, Constance Lake, Lac Seul and Attawapiskat are all participating. Richard Spence's first outing resulted in a report on how his nation's education authority board members took action to detect and remedy a buried oil leak posing danger to kids at the elementary school. From Ghana to Nishnawbe Aski The Northern Ontario Initiative is rooted in Africa. Designed and managed by Robin Pierro, a young documentary filmmaker and former freelance journalist, the project idea first came up when she was in Ghana working as a trainer with JHR. Since 2002, JHR has worked to strengthen independent media in sub-Saharan Africa by helping local journalists report ethically and effectively on human rights and good governance. While in Ghana, Pierro, now an international programs manager at JHR, witnessed the power of journalism to spark positive change first hand. She thought, "Why not take this model and tweak it to a Canadian context and start working on improving human rights issues in our own country?" Upon returning to Canada in September 2011, Pierro got busy developing her idea at JHR's Toronto headquarters. First step? Make respectful inquiries about how JHR could be of service. In practical terms, that meant Pierro spent a year speaking with First Nations people in their own communities, as well as other stakeholders, to gain their perspectives. JHR found not only valuable counsel but a powerful partner in the Wawatay Native Communications Society, which for nearly four decades has serviced the remote First Nations communities of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) located in northwestern Ontario. Begun as an emergency information network that distributed CB radios and dropped leaflets from airplanes, Wawatay Native Communications Society now operates the Wawatay News newspaper, three quarterly magazines, daily radio programs, television production services and a multimedia website. If JHR could train new First Nations journalists, those graduates would have a ready outlet through Wawatay. Buy-in from all parties It took a first proposal, and then a refined version, to earn funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Key to that second-push success was Joyce Hunter, Cree from Weenusk First Nation, now the Aboriginal liaison strategy coordinator for the City of Thunder Bay. Hunter joined Wawatay as its special projects officer after the first JHR proposal rolled in. Hunter saw potential in the idea, but also recognized there needed to be increased dialogue and buy-in from the communities. "Joyce was a huge help in strengthening the second proposal," said Pierro. "She offered a unique perspective as an Aboriginal person from a remote community who worked in journalism, and Wawatay assigning her to work with me on the proposal showed their buy-in and commitment to making this happen." The Ontario Trillium Foundation approved the second pitch in February of 2013. Accenture Canada soon came on board. "We are providing $50,000 worth of free technology consulting and with that money we are building a robust online portal to bring together the journalism trainees, the trainers and the broader community," said Theresa Ebden, director of media and analyst relations Canada at Accenture. "We will have things like tutorials, a discussion board and connect these journalists in training with real editors who will really buy their stories." Wawatay News has budgeted for purchasing stories from the newly-trained community journalists and has already published some of their work. Many other media organizations have shown great interest in running the content, provided it meets their editorial standards. Two months into the initiative, Danny Kresnyak, a roaming journalism mentor currently stationed in Constance Lake, said he had gained as much knowledge as he was sharing. "People don't want to be talked to, they want to be worked with," said Kresnyak. "The main issues right now are visibility and inclusion in the process." "Community partners need to be included in the design of goals for the project to function. Both sides must work to create a mandate they can effectively buy into. I cannot just be here, take the story and leave. I need to leave a legacy for the work to be sustainable and the project to be a success." Learning by listening Kresynak said simple acts of listening and learning have been key to fostering a better relationship with the First Nations community. "Attawapiskat [where Kresnyak spent three months as a trainer] has become a lightning rod for major media stories about social problems on reserves. Many people here feel their community has been painted in an unfortunate light," he said. "As a result, many in the street don't trust journalists and there is often an opacity when dealing with outside government, band office, and local bureaucracy. Much of my effort is dedicated to shifting this paradigm." Kenny Thomas is head councillor at Fort Severn First Nations Band, where the project's second trainer, Kimberly Stinson, worked from June to September. Fort Severn is the northernmost community in Ontario. "The reason why training and journalism is important is to provide news to others and to show others that despite our hardships we are still here and enjoying life," said Thomas. "And the stories that are written are to be written in a way that people will understand and enjoy." Pierro hopes the Northern Initiative can expand into other provinces. Ultimately, the aim is to build partnerships with universities to create fellowships and implement curriculum on how to better cover Aboriginal issues. On June 13, Aboriginal Day, Wawatay and JHR won the 2013 Innovation Award from the Canadian Ethnic Media Association. As training proceeds, one person is particularly eager to see the results. "The thought that this time next year we might have six freelance writers in six different communities who are regularly contributing to the newspaper and to the magazines is really exciting and positive for Wawatay," said Shawn Bell, former editor of Wawatay. "It's going to make Wawatay so much stronger to have those stories." Richard Spence hopes to be one of Wawatay's writers. He'd like to balance journalism with attending college to become a music teacher in Attawapiskat. Before Danny Kresnyak seized his imagination by suggesting he could tell his own community's stories, Spence was without plans for his life. Not anymore. "This project helped me see that I could improve myself and improve my community by being able to write stories about it, and help give all of Canada an idea of what it's like on the rez." [Tyee] Read more: Aboriginal Affairs,

Got this from Slashdot and I highly recommend you downloading and looking over the free PDF book Verification Handbook: In the Unverified Digital World, Are Journalists and Bloggers Equal? Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 24, 2014 @10:08AM from the but-I-play-one-on-tv dept. oztechmuse (2323576) writes "As the source of news moves increasingly away from traditional channels to the millions of people carrying mobile phones and sharing commentary, photos and video on social networks, the distinction between journalists and bloggers has become increasingly blurred. Making sense of this type of information has been as much a challenge for journalists as it has bloggers. Journalists, like bloggers, have had to learn new skills in working in this environment. Highlighting this has been the release of the Verification Handbook which attempts to educate journalists in how to process user-generated content in the form of videos or images acknowledging that much of the reporting about situations, especially emergency ones, comes from the public. The techniques outlined are accessible to anyone reporting on a story, adding to the eroding gap between bloggers and journalists."

That about sums it all up.

Most Proof Reading Misses Are In the Headlines

Subject: Fw: Proof reading is a dying art Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day. I just couldn't help but send this along. Too funny. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says Really? Ya think? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers Now that's taking things a bit far! ---------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over What a guy! --------------------------------------------------------------- Miners Refuse to Work after Death No-good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so's! They must be UNION ! ------------------------------------------------------ Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant See if that works any better than a fair trial! ---------------------------------------------------------- War Dims Hope for Peace I can see where it might have that effect! ---------------------------------------------------------------- If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile Ya think?! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures Who would have thought! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide They may be on to something! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges You mean there's something stronger than duct tape? ---------------------------------------------------------- Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge He probably IS the battery charge! ---------------------------------------------- New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group Weren't they fat enough?! ----------------------------------------------- Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft That's what he gets for eating those beans! ---------------- --------------------------------- Kids Make Nutritious Snacks Do they taste like chicken? **************************************** Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half Chainsaw Massacre all over again! *************************************************** Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors Boy, are they tall! ******************************************* And the winner is.... Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Layout

28 Newspaper And Magazine Layout Disasters buzzfeed.com How not to edit a publication.

How Biology and Physics May Come to the Aid of Journalism

Here's a new move. Thanks to 'Data Science Weekly' for alerting me to this: Most Creative People Why The New York Times Hired A Biology Researcher As Its Chief Data Scientist To help make sense of the massive troves of data produced by people clicking around its website, the Times made a (very) nontraditional hire--Chris Wiggins, a biology researcher with a PhD in theoretical physics. If you can map the human genome, maybe you can even fix journalism. By Rebecca Greenfield 0 Comments Email It doesn't come as a huge surprise that the New York Times has hired a chief data scientist. Even 162-year-old media companies know that technology will play a huge role in the future of journalism. And, despite its age, the Times hasn't shied away from digital innovation. What's surprising, however, is that the new hire, Chris Wiggins, has spent the last 10 years steeped in biology research. Wiggins's role at the paper started less officially last fall, when he used a sabbatical to apply his skills to the newsroom. "The best thing you can do with a sabbatical is to find something completely unrelated to your research to do," he explained to Fast Company. "I've been hearing for years from my students that this is where the future is and I was happy that I found a way that I could participate in building that future while building the data science skills that I've been developing in a different domain within the academy," he added. Chris Wiggins As of last week, the Times made him a permanent fixture. Wiggins, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, will spend one day a week at the paper, leading its yet-to-be built "machine learning" team. Fast Company spoke with Wiggins about what that role will entail and how having a background in biology makes him at all qualified to lead the Times into the future. FAST COMPANY: Before we get to this biology quandary, tell us about your background. Maybe that will clear things up. CHRIS WIGGINS: My PhD was in theoretical physics. I got my PhD at Princeton at a time which is now called the second string revolution. Basically, everyone was interested in string theory, except for me. I was interested in the opposite of string theory. I was interested in how we model complex real-world problems in terms of the data that we have about them. At the time I was working in biology and that's where I've been working for the last several years doing what we would now call data science. Okay, got it. So that makes a little more sense of things. But still: what does biology have to do with media? The pain that many fields are experiencing by becoming data driven is a pain that was experienced in biology 15 years ago when whole genomes started being sequenced. I think there is a lot in common about applying data science in the natural sciences and applying data science in the real world. Real people have questions from a different domain, they have abundant data, and it's a fun and creative task to try to reframe those domain questions as machine learning tasks. You lost me at machine learning tasks, what does that mean? Machine learning sits at the intersection of data engineering and mathematical modeling. The thing that makes it different from statistics traditionally, is far more focus on building algorithms. Another difference, although this is more of a spiritual difference, is that statistics traditionally has had a stronger emphasis in explaining a data set and machine learning has far more interest in building predictive models. For example, when Netflix tells you what movie to watch or when Amazon predicts what book to buy--that’s machine learning. In a way, machine learning has crept up all around you. Like Netflix--now you're speaking our language. But how does this relate to the Times? How do you plan to apply "machine learning" to the Grey Lady and its newsroom? There's a lot of potential both on the business side and the editorial side. On the business side The New York Times is interested in establishing long-term relationships with their readers. So the Times is trying to understand what are the behaviors that seem to be correlated with loyalty, what are the behaviors that seem to be correlated with dissatisfaction, particularly among subscribers--the way a long-term relationship manifests itself at the Times is via subscribers. If we're trying to understand how people engage with the site in general and in the abstract, machine learning is both useful for gaining insights about what kind of content engages users, and also good business. There is a way to listen to your customers at scale that you can do at a website that is just qualitatively different than having a focus group or giving out a survey. And what about editorially? "Anytime anyone does anything on a website, that is an event and that person leaves a trail of data. Putting all of that data together is definitely a non-trivial task." I've worked with people on the data visualization group to think about how better to cluster the results that they look at that make the data visualization more interpretable. I've worked with business analysts to think about how to present data in user engagement in a way that is more meaningful and more statistically robust. I've worked with people from the personalization team to think about how best to test and optimize their recommendation models. There's a lot of opportunities for a machine learning group that makes all the groups stronger and draws a common narrative with people thinking about data in a high-powered way throughout the company, particularly on the technology side. It's a very technologically strong company. It sounds like they have a pretty strong tech department. People at the New York Times I found to be totally optimistic. They're not putting their heads in the sand. If you look at just the changes, even on the front-facing New York Times, they've really built out a presence in interactive news and much more video. I would say people are aware of the challenges and are really working hard to build a sustainable future for journalism. I understand that part of your role is to further extend the tech department and build a team? I'll be focusing on people who do and speak machine learning. There's already excellent data engineers; there's already excellent business analysts; there's already a great data visualization group. So it's a fantastic place now to build a machine learning group to try to make sense of those data, reframe business analytics questions as prediction problems, and to work with people who will visualize and help make interpretable the insights you gain from those types of predictive models. How do you think this team led by you will change things at the Times? News has gone from a device that shows up on your door step to a website, which just opens up a whole new universe of ways of understanding your readers and listening to your readers better. Anytime anyone does anything on a website, that is an event and that person leaves a trail of data. Putting all of that data together is definitely a non-trivial task. It gives so much immediate insight into the way people use your product, how your products can be improved, what new products you should be thinking about. I think that's a real transformation for anybody in any business. [Photos courtesy of Chris Wiggins] 0 Comments Email Rebecca Greenfield Rebecca Greenfield is a Staff Writer at Fast Company, where she covers creative people doing creative things. She was previously a Staff Writer at The Atlantic Wire, where she focused on technology news. Her work has also appeared at The Atlantic and The Hairpin. Continue February 12, 2014 | 6:06 AM

Thanks, MediaMatters

The Media..what?

Here we go with change running ahead of us:Ezra Klein Is Joining Vox Media as Web Journalism Asserts Itself JAN. 26, 2014 Launch media viewer Ezra Klein spoke last week at a conference on health care. He is leaving The Washington Post for a digital start-up. Charles Dharapak/Associated Press [David Carr] David Carr THE MEDIA EQUATION After a week of speculation, it turns out that Ezra Klein, the prolific creator of The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, will be going to Vox Media, the online home of SB Nation, a sports site, and The Verge, a fast-growing technology site. His change of address could be read as the latest parable of Old Media cluelessness — allowing a journalism asset to escape who will come back to haunt them — or as another instance of a star journalist cashing in on name-brand success. But it’s more complicated than that. Mr. Klein is not running away from something, he is going toward something else. Vox is a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media, as opposed to a media company that uses technology. Everything at Vox, from the way it covers subjects, the journalists it hires and the content management systems on which it produces news, is optimized for the current age. “We are just at the beginning of how journalism should be done on the web,” Mr. Klein said. “We really wanted to build something from the ground up that helps people understand the news better. We are not just trying to scale Wonkblog, we want to improve the technology of news, and Vox has a vision of how to solve some of that.” In making the switch, Mr. Klein is part of a movement of big-name journalists who are migrating from newspaper companies to digital start-ups. Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher left Dow Jones to form Re/code with NBC. David Pogue left The New York Times for Yahoo and Nate Silver for ESPN. At the same time, independent news sites like Business Insider, BuzzFeed and Vox have all received abundant new funding, while traffic on viral sites like Upworthy and ViralNova has exploded. All the frothy news has led to speculation that a bubble is forming in the content business, but something more real is underway. I was part of the first bubble as a journalist at Inside.com in 2001 — an idea a decade ahead of its time — and this feels very different. The web was more like a set of tin cans and a thin wire back then, so news media upstarts had trouble being heard. With high broadband penetration, the web has become a fully realized consumer medium where pages load in a flash and video plays without stuttering. With those pipes now built, we are in a time very similar to the early 1980s, when big cities were finally wired for cable. What followed was an explosion of new channels, many of which have become big businesses today. The same holds true for digital. Organizations like BuzzFeed, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Vice and Vox, which have huge traffic but are still relatively small in terms of profit, will eventually mature into the legacy media of tomorrow. More and more, it’s becoming apparent that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies. They can buy their way into it, but their historical advantages are often offset by legacy costs and bureaucracy. In digital media, technology is not a wingman, it is The Man. Kenneth Lerer, manager of Lerer Ventures and one of the backers of BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, says that whenever he is pitched an editorial idea, he always asks who the technology partner is. How something is made and published is often as important as what is made. It’s worth remembering that Vox got its hands on The Verge because the people working at Engadget, a tech site owned by AOL, grew tired of trying to publish through the big, slow blob of a huge corporation. The staff came to Vox for the technology and used the flexible platform there to publish its way to an audience. Vox added Curbed, Eater and Racked last year, so Mr. Klein’s new venture will become part of a growing digital emporium. And from a standing start in 2011, The Verge has grown to over 10 million unique visitors a month, becoming a big player in technology and gadgets right out of the box. “It is not as simple as journalists going to a digital site and doubling their salary,” said Jim Bankoff, chief executive of Vox. “Many of these people, including Ezra, have a vision of creating something remarkable. There is a better way of doing things and we like to think that we are using technology in service of creativity, journalism and storytelling.” Mr. Klein, who is making the move with other colleagues at The Post, including Melissa Bell and Dylan Matthews, as well as Matthew Yglesias of Slate, said he was less interested in burnishing a personal brand than building a site that will go beyond politics and policy and serve as a prism on the rest of the news. “That’s the theory, but that’s all it is until we actually do something,” Mr. Klein said. But it still raises the question of why Jeffrey Bezos, who bought The Post in August and who has personally backed Business Insider and its founder Henry Blodget, did not want to fund Mr. Klein’s venture at The Post. He is not saying, but to start, The Post has long-festering problems with its core business. It has a strong editor in Martin Baron who is making strides, but to invest time and money in building out another discrete brand — Mr. Klein reportedly wanted a big presence and staff that could cost millions of dollars annually — would be a major distraction. Recent Comments David Mendoza 32 minutes ago The reason why this new venture could be so revolutionary is because it could change our expectations about how the news should be... David Bartlett 34 minutes ago And who is doing the actual work?So many of these 'new media' websites are merely re-sellers of the news-----still those tin... HKGuy 42 minutes ago In the whole article, Carr never mentions that sites like Curbed, Gawker and Huff Post are aggregate sites, vultures that feed on the news... See All Comments Write a comment Meanwhile, Business Insider sits at the sweet spot of digital content: high traffic, low cost, with a combination of sassy voices and viral content. Kevin Ryan, a backer and founder of the site, told me that he looked at Businessweek when it came up for sale for an effective price of zero dollars and found that it paid more than six times as much just for desk space and real estate per working journalist. While the ambitions of the journalism may be very different, Business Insider now has traffic that rivals The Wall Street Journal. And the skill set is not the same. “Digital journalism is as different from print and TV journalism as print and TV are from each other,” Mr. Blodget said by telephone from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Few people expect great print news organizations to also win in TV. Similarly, few should expect great TV or print organizations to win in digital. The news-gathering, storytelling and distribution approaches are just very different.” Great digital journalists consume and produce content at the same time, constantly publishing what they are reading and hearing. And by leaving mainstream companies, journalists are often able to get their own hands on the button to publish, which is exciting and gratifying. “If William Randolph Hearst and Bill Paley were alive today, they would think they were in heaven,” suggested Sir Michael Moritz, chairman of Sequoia Capital. But while the barrier to entry is low, one big obstacle to long-term media success remains: quality. The reason that Vice, Vox, Gawker Media’s sites and other players stick out is that they use their digital tools to make remarkable, unexpected content that people flock to. NBC did not team with Re/code simply because it knows the secret of the Internet. “I have more flexibility, and can make decisions on staff and stories so much quicker, that we can keep up with organizations that are so much bigger than we are,” Ms. Swisher said. Staring into the whirlpool of content plays, it is easy to forget that building a credible news organization that people trust still takes time. Gawker is 12 years old, AllThingsD, which became Re/code, was founded seven years ago, and BuzzFeed has been around since 2006. It may not take $200 million, as it did to create a cable network, or $50 million as a national magazine might require, but creating a digital media company takes years. (And $25 million, give or take.) With the price for web advertising dropping by the second and new competitors coming out of the screen at a very high rate, it would seem like a terrible time to jump in. But what we are witnessing now is not the formation of a bubble, it is the emergence of a lasting commercial market, a game that has winners and losers, yet is hardly zero sum.