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

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

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

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

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

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

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presented straightforwardly, but when it comes to discussing the intake of vitamin D needed to correct the situation, outdated official recommendations for vitamin D are propagated by the public media.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parsing a parse, if you ask me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related link:

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

External links:

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial on vitamin D recommendations

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article on vitamin D toxicity

Creighton University backgrounder on cancer/vitamin D

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canadians are die here every week and this is what we are dieing for:
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| Internet Censorship's First Death Sentence? |
| from the that's-a-bit-harsh-i-think dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday February 02, @15:21 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/02/1915253 |
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mrogers writes "A journalism student in Afghanistan has been [0]sentenced
to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report
criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student
was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to
Reporters Without Borders, [1]sixty people are currently in jail
worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but
this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using
the internet. Internet censorship [2]is on the rise worldwide, according
to [3]The OpenNet Initiative."

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

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

0--- The Mobile Phone Novel

http://tinyurl.com/2kx9ug

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

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

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

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

http://tinyurl.com/2kx9ug

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Same old bugaboo'

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erosion of local news coverage a concern: CAJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George Orwell the wonderfull strange English writer reveled to us 1984 and it did not make it at that time but has hautned us ever since, take a look at this, snoop, snoop : US Consumers Clueless About Online Tracking |
| from the just-pretend-nobody's-watching dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Monday November 05, @21:06 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/05/2351248 |
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Arashtamere writes "A study on consumer perceptions about online privacy,
undertaken by the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California and
the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that the [0]average American
consumer is largely unaware that every move they make online can be, and
often is, tracked by online marketers and advertising networks. Those
surveyed showed little knowledge on the extent to which online tracking
is happening or how the information obtained can be used. More than half
of those surveyed — about 55 percent — falsely assumed that a company's
privacy polices prohibited it from sharing their addresses and purchases
with affiliated companies. Nearly four out of 10 online shoppers falsely
believed that a company's privacy policy prohibits it from using
information to analyze an individuals' activities online. And a similar
number assumed that an online privacy policy meant that a company they're
doing business with wouldn't collect data on their online activities and
combine it with other information to create a behavioral profile."

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

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

What is journalism? In the U.S. a free press and journalists are protected under law so this question is an important legal one.
So this item is important in helping the definition:
-----------------------------------------------+
| Blogger Wins 1.5 Year Legal Battle |
| from the fighting-the-good-fight dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Wednesday October 31, @12:44 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/31/1624239 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]FixYourThinking writes "After nearly one and a half years of
harassment from a relentless attorney, it seems that quietly a blogger in
South Carolina has [1]won a monumental ruling in favor of bloggers. In a
summary judgement requested by the Defendant, Philip Smith was able to
obtain a special sanction after the Plaintiff attorney put a 'notice of
lien' (called lis pendens) on Smith's residence. The judge also
reprimanded the Plaintiff attorney for abusive deposition and court
procedure. The case set forth the following; 'It's not the format; it's
the content and intention that make text journalism / reporting.'"

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/31/1624239

Links:
0. http://www.fixyourthinking.com/
1. http://fixyourthinking.com/2007/10/whats-been-going-on-in-last-week.html

Here you go some government fake news, but they fessed up right away. How unusual.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| FEMA Sorry for Faking News Briefing |
| from the if-you-want-a-job-done-right-do-it-yourself dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday October 27, @03:25 (United States) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/27/067235 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]theodp writes "The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2
official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday
[1]in which FEMA employees posed as reporters. All the while, real
reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from
asking questions. In the briefing, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr.,
FEMA's deputy administrator, called on questioners who did not disclose
that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his
agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than
its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/10/27/067235

Links:
0. mailto:theodp@aol.com
1. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-102507-femabriefing,1,272790.story

Here is an example of Grist for you to look at. A free subscription to the news letter gives you one of these everyday with color pictures:

Forward to a friend | View in browser | Search Grist | Sent to carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp (change / unsubscribe)
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TOP STORY

Those Who Repeat the Past Are Doomed to Know It
Study of fossil record predicts climate change could fuel mass extinction

Climate change may fuel a mass extinction in which half of all plant and animal species could -- how to put this delicately? -- exit stage left, according to a new study. If the past 520 million years of fossil records are any predictor of the future, a globally warmed world will not bode well for biodiversity, researchers found. "We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been," said University of York ecologist Peter Mayhew. The study also found that four of five of the world's mass extinctions occurred when the Earth was significantly warmer, and that in cooler times, biodiversity tends to be higher. Researchers warned that the Earth is on track to hit temperatures similar to the higher, extinction-correlated ones in about 100 years or so.

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sources: Associated Press, The Guardian, The Guardian


TODAY'S NEWS

Char for the Course
California wildfires continue to rage

In case you haven't heard, there are some crazy fires going down in Southern California. As of this morning, some 420,000 acres have burned, igniting more than 1,500 structures, including some 1,150 homes. An estimated 700,000 people have been evacuated; six deaths have been linked to the blazes. About 15 different fires are still burning. The White House has declared a state of emergency, and health officials are urging children, the elderly, and the sick to stay indoors to avoid breathing in soot particles. Guess we'll get an answer to the question we posed last year: "Could a Western wildfire be the country's next Katrina?" But, really, we meant it rhetorically.

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sources: Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times map of the fires
see also, in Grist: Climate change making wildfires worse, study finds, Wildfires are raging -- why isn't concern about climate change?


Your Place, or Mine?
Mining-law reform bill could change rules for mines on public land

Just 135 years after its enactment, environmentalists and fiscal conservatives may finally have a shot at reforming an antiquated U.S. law that lets mining companies dig up minerals and precious metals on public lands without paying royalties nor being responsible for post-dig cleanups. A bill to change the 1872 General Mining Law passed the House Natural Resources Committee this week and could soon go up for a vote in the House. The legislation would force companies with existing claims on federal land to pay a 4 percent royalty on minerals extracted; new mines would have to pay 8 percent. Collected fees would go toward mine cleanup -- two-thirds of the total is slated for clean up of already-existing environmental damage, and one-third would go to local communities affected by mining operations. However, even if the bill passes the House relatively intact, it faces a tough battle in the Senate where majority leader Harry Reid (D), from mine-lovin' Nevada, opposes meaningful reform of the 1872 law.

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sources: Time, Associated Press
straight to the bill: Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007
see also, in Grist: Legislation introduced to overhaul ancient mining law
see also, in Gristmill: Reid gears up to defend stupid mining law


Kit Farcin'
Home lead-testing kits unreliable, says study

If you rushed out to buy a home lead-testing kit when all of Junior's toys were recalled, hope you saved the receipt: a new study says that over-the-counter kits, usually used to test paint, aren't reliable for playthings. The Consumer Product Safety Commission put 104 kits to the test and found that 56 failed to detect lead in toys, while two overachievers warned of the heavy metal where it didn't exist. Concludes the CPSC, "Based on the study, consumers should not use lead test kits to evaluate consumer products for potential lead hazards."

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sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CBC News, The News-Times


Assuming There Will Be a Future, Of Course
New report makes suggestions for sustainable energy future

Coal is the enemy of the human race, but don't take our word for it: 15 national science academies pooh-pooh the evil black rock in their new report "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future." The report also rah-rahs solar and wind power and energy efficiency, and is warily supportive of nuclear energy and cellulosic biofuels.

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sources: The New York Times, Agence France-Presse
straight to the report: Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future


Doing the Hunt Work
Fewer hunters mean less funding for conservation, states find

Many states are lamenting the declining population of a valuable species: the American hunter. Funds from hunting licenses and fees are generally directed to wildlife conservation; while the need to maintain habitat for wild critters isn't going to go away anytime soon, the number of sportsfolk in the U.S. has declined by some 35 percent since 1975. States are taking measures to boost hunter populations, including allowing novice adults to try hunting without a license, shortening safety courses, and, in Oregon, instituting a Mentored Youth Hunter Program. We hear Dick Cheney's application to be a mentor was, sadly, denied.

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source: USA Today


Read more news ...

GRIST COLUMNS AND FEATURES

Stories from the Forgotten Coast
With the Katrina-anniversary media gone, the hard work continues

It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and two months since the press descended on the area in a breathless storm-anniversary frenzy. But what goes on when the cameras go off? Today we talk with four people who are patiently working to rebuild their communities, finding out what they've lost -- and what they still hope to gain.

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new in Grist: With the Katrina-anniversary media gone, the hard work continues


Wash and Dry
On dishwashing and droughts

Q. Dear Umbra,

I recently had a wedding shower for a dear niece and invited many women relatives. I decided to forgo convenience and served everything on beautiful plates, no paper plates, no plastic silverware, no plastic cups. It was lovely, and it felt more environmentally correct than usual family gatherings which create a mountain of garbage ... Then as we washed and dishwashed everything, I thought about the water restrictions in Georgia. We are experiencing a drought of historic proportions -- so is it better to contribute to the landfill or use the water for washing dishes?

Perplexed in Georgia

A. Dearest Perplexed,

Sadly, because of the drought, there is a clear answer to guide your immediate future ...

Read the rest of Umbra's answer.

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new in Grist: On dishwashing and droughts

WORLDWIDE PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2007

Eritrea ranked last for first time while G8 members, except Russia, recover lost ground

Bloggers now threatened as much as journalists in traditional media

Eritrea has replaced North Korea in last place in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published today by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running.

“There is nothing surprising about this,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Even if we are not aware of all the press freedom violations in North Korea and Turkmenistan, which are second and third from last, Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate.”

Outside Europe - in which the top 14 countries are located - no region of the world has been spared censorship or violence towards journalists.

Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).

Infowar: strike early, strike often:
The Washington Post has a timely article about the psychology of believing news reports, even when they've been retracted - suggesting that if false information is presented early, it is more likely to be believed, while subsequent attempts to correct the information may, in fact, strengthen the false impression.

The article starts with results from a study [pdf] by psychologist Norbert Schwarz who looked at the effect of a government flier that attempted to correct myths about the flu vaccine by marking them 'true' or 'false'.

Unfortunately, the flier actually boosted people's belief in the false information, probably because we tend to think information is more likely to be true the more we hear it.

Negating a statement seems just to emphasise the initial point. The additional correction seems to get lost amid the noise.

One particularly pertinent study [pdf] not mentioned in the article, looked at the effect of retractions of false news reports made during the 2003 Iraq War on American, German and Australian participants.

For example, claims that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war after they surrendered were retracted the day after the claims were made.

The study found that the American participants' belief in the truth of an initial news report was not affected by knowledge of its subsequent retraction.

In contrast, knowing about a retraction was likely to significantly reduce belief in the initial report for Germans and Australians.

The researchers note that people are more likely to discount information if they are suspicious of the motives behind its dissemination.

The Americans rated themselves as more likely to agree with the official line that the war was to 'destroy weapons of mass destruction', whereas the Australian and German participants rated this as far less convincing.

This suggests that there may have been an element of 'motivated reasoning' in evaluating news reports.

Research has shown that this only occurs when there's sufficient information available to create a justification for the decision, even when the information is irrelevant to the main issue.

There's a wonderful example of this explained here, in relation to men's judgements about the safety of sex with HIV+ women of varying degrees of attractiveness.

So, if you want your propaganda to be effective get it in early, repeat it, give people reasons to be believe it (however irrelevant), and make yourself seem trustworthy.

As I'm sure these principles are already widely known among government and commercial PR departments, bear them in mind when evaluating public information.


Link to Washington Post article on the persistence of myths.
pdf of study 'Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation' in the Iraq war.
Link to info on motivated reasoning and example.

You could actually do this and get some extra credit as well:
Join the conversation between Times journalists and other
travelers like you. Share reviews of places you've visited.
Write a review online today!

http://ads.nyt.com/th.ad/nl-2007housedefault_text/travel031207/?_RM_REDIR_=http://travel.nytimes.com/

Here is an idea that was been around for a while but is taking on more significance -however in Japan we have a different story:

When Do You Stop The Presses?
Why the San Francisco Chronicle is a candidate to exit print

Play with me on this one: Which major American newspaper should be the first to throw up its hands and stop publishing a print product?

It's a question worth asking. This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company's chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.



And 2007 does not look materially kinder than 2006 for any of these papers. One senior executive describes the climate like this: "If you told me 24 months ago that revenues would be declining as much as they are today, I'd say you were smoking dope." Print newspapers require maintaining a costly status quo—paper, presses, trucks, and mail rooms—that, if only through rising gas prices, will only get more expensive.

WHEN, EXACTLY, do you junk something that no longer works? And which major paper should go first—not today, but within the next 18 or 24 months?

San Francisco Chronicle, I'm looking at you.

Killing printrequires acknowledging not just that the old mode is dead but also that the future means less revenue and shrunken staffs. This is why it makes sense soonest at a money-losing newspaper already grappling with those realities, and one in a major city that generates enough local ad dollars to support a sizable online business.

On paper, San Francisco is perfect: a Web-centric town, a cash-drain daily, and private ownership. Which does not mean this will happen. San Francisco is the ancestral home of the Hearst empire, the birthplace of William Randolph Hearst and the town where he ran his first paper. It could be hard for Hearst to consider the move on those grounds alone. (In Asher's deposition, though, he said Hearst briefly considered selling the Chronicle in 2005.)

There are attractions to the way things are today. The Chronicle claims 265,000 weekday subscribers and sells a year's worth of home delivery for $138. Even if you assume that discount offers bring the average subscription price to $90, that's still $23.9 million a year—not an ungodly sum, but one that nervous executives are probably loath to kiss off forever. (Distribution costs, of course, mean those dollars don't appear for free.) But what's more relevant, at least today, is that advertisers still pay more for ads in the newspaper than on the Web site. "Even if you double or triple it, the revenue [online] just isn't there yet," argues one top executive.

This is why the papers dream about getting consumers to pay for digital or online content. But water has had a hard time finding a way up that hill.

Executives might be better off wondering at what point the Globe's Boston.com or the Chronicle's sfgate.com—with unassailable market positions, excellent editorial, and massive traffic—will be worth more as a solo digital play than attached to a print newspaper. Or whether going all-in on digital might make their market's ad dollars flow there more quickly, especially if they're the only major paper in town. Or that a paper could buy tons of unsold local ad inventory from the likes of MySpace and Yahoo! (YHOO ), and then resell it profitably through its veteran sales force.

All of this requires big thinking—and spending enough to create networks of local sites and a giant local portal. And it will take a brave man or woman to pull the plug on the presses.

It almost takes a William Randolph Hearst.

For Jon Fine's blog on media and advertising, go to www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia

I've been working with Gabcast and I think it is just to hard for you to figure out. So don't worry about it. We will talk about the video stuff on Monday. Please bring your video reprots. I had said that I would give them back to you but was hoping that I could keep them if that is all right with you. Clark

Nothing on Gabcast yet but will be getting to it sometime today. Wanted you to read this though:
And finally: the war


Our pick-and-mix culture means that viewers, not broadcasters, will decide future TV news schedules

Mark Lawson
Friday July 6, 2007
The Guardian

Following two reports this week on audience loss of confidence in broadcast news, it's likely that future media historians will look back in wonder at examples of the "and finally" item which traditionally ended ITN's News at Ten. This jaunty story - an unusually musical domestic pet, an actress's unwise choice of upper clothing - was offered as reward and relief, like a sorbet at the end of a meal of strong meat.

But the convention of the playful payoff revealed two assumptions about television journalism: that the audience would sit attentively through a whole bulletin; and that there was a league of seriousness for news stories, in which war, murder, mortgages and cancer research were placed before sport, which in turn was ranked ahead of jokes.
Even now, a key part of interviews for jobs in TV and radio news asks the would-be employee to construct a "running order" for a programme from a list of notional items. Is a stabbing in Solihull more important than a massacre in Africa? Does a movie star's aversion to underwear matter more than a scheme to get under-12s reading?

In the last five years, the correct answers in these interviews have sharply changed. The ambitious applicant would be sensible to avoid the suggestion that exposed celebrity genitalia are inherently less noteworthy than starving Ethiopians. The tradition of "and finally" items lapsed partly because, these days, what might once have been a light signoff could easily be leading the headlines