Proof Read Those Headlines!

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 No,do you really think so? ------------------------------------------------------- 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! ------------------------------------------------------ J u venile 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 Did I read that right? ***************************************************

Four Futures

journalism-2025-4-options “The Shire” or “Darwin’s Game”? Here are 4 visions of what journalism might look like in 2025 A new Dutch report lays out four extreme scenarios of what the news media could look like in 10 years. You’ll find something to like or fear in each one. By Madeline Welsh @madelinebwelsh June 19, 2015, 9 a.m. 595 384 The future of journalism will come down in one of four ways. At least, that’s what a new report What’s New(s): Scenarios for the Future of Journalism, released by the Dutch Journalism Fund this week purports. And while the study looks specifically at the future of media in the Netherlands, the visions they describe are easily transferable to wherever you live. The study comes as Dutch news outlets are facing a reckoning. Many of its largest media companies, including NRC, Mediagroep Limburg, and Wegener, have been sold, and the country’s daily newspapers are going through a period of declining subscription numbers and contracting staffs. But the Netherlands has also been home to an unusually high number of startups and new projects, including Blendle, De Correspondent, NRC Q, and Dichtbij. journalism-2025-netherlands The report, which will be presented to the Dutch parliament, identifies four possible futures for 2025. There’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd,” a world where journalistic startups have crushed traditional industry and the sharing economy prevails. Journalistic enterprises are bootstrapped and rely on crowdfunding, while a healthy skepticism by the public of major media interlopers like Apple and Facebook is maintained. By contrast, there’s “A Handful of Apples,” where giant technology companies — see the aforementioned Apple and Facebook — have set the agenda. News is highly personalized, but that’s due to the fact that all the chains and distribution platforms have been tightly contracted into the webs of these huge new powers. In this dystopian future, the traditional news industry has not survived and is now ruled by tech. For the locally minded or tech-averse, the future promised by “The Shire” will seem appealing. Though traditional institutions have still not survived in this scenario, they’ve been replaced by local and regional publications that are civically inclined. On thematically driven community sites, both citizen journalists and professional reporters find an audience. Finally, the fourth vision, “Darwin’s Game,” is well, darwinian — media organizations must adapt or perish. The narrowing mechanism is, rather unexpectedly, transparency. In “Darwin’s Game,” the news-consuming public has come to have exacting standards for the quality of their journalism, and wants journalists to show their work. To survive in this world, traditional media should expect to evolve in how they see their audience. Those that don’t should not expect to survive. To go about defining these scenarios, the Dutch Journalism Fund took an unorthodox approach. Using a method pioneered by energy-company Shell, the fund gathered 150 journalists, editors, freelancers, businessmen, scientists, and technologists for a series of conferences, meetings, and interviews. Over the course of the meetings, stakeholders whittled down big picture questions to 70 or so themes of concern to the journalism industry, which they then decided were “certain” or “uncertain” to continue. This eventually broke down to two key uncertainties — are news readers looking for radical or reluctant change, and how accepting of technology will we be in the future. The possibilities: reluctant vs. radical, and do-it-yourself, vs. do-it-for me, are meant to reflect the tensions at work in the world of Dutch journalism. The combination of the two critical uncertainties creates four fictitious worlds in 2025, located at extreme points of the matrix. These worlds reflect the current hopes and fears of Dutch journalism, in particular the tension between professional and public journalism, the uncertain future of Dutch media corporations and titles, the role of hardware and software in the production and dissemination of news, and the way in which quality journalism will be funded in 2025. As for which scenario is most likely, the report’s authors believe all are equally plausible at this point. Consider this your notice.

The following article is referring to the American press specifically but it does have relevance to the state of the world press: 10 Compelling Reasons You Can Never Trust The Mainstream Media September 10, 2013 by Sophie McAdam Powered by Translate A poll in 2012 showed that trust in the mainstream media is increasing, which should worry all of us who value truth, integrity and press freedom. However, a recently released analysis by PunditFact revealed that out of every statement made by a Fox News host or guest, over half of them were completely false. What’s more, only 8% percent could even be considered “completely true.” But for anyone who regularly tunes into the conservative news show, such revelation is nothing new. PunditFact only confirmed what many have been aware of for a while now: Fox News lies – like, a lot. But keep in mind it’s not just Fox that tends to weave more tales than truth… Why? Here are 10 disturbing things everyone needs to know about the global media giants who control our supply of information, wielding immense power over the people- and even over the government. 1. Mainstream media exists solely to make profit What´s the purpose of the mainstream media? Saying that the press exists to inform, educate or entertain is like saying Apple corporation´s primary function is to make technology which will enrich our lives. Actually, the mass media industry is the same as any other in a capitalist society: it exists to make profit. Medialens, a British campaigning site which critiques mainstream (or corporate) journalism, quoted business journalist Marjorie Kelly as saying that all corporations, including those dealing with media, exist only to maximize returns to their shareholders. This is, she said, ´the law of the land…universally accepted as a kind of divine, unchallengeable truth´. Without pleasing shareholders and a board of directors, mass media enterprises simply would not exist. And once you understand this, you´ll never watch the news in the same way again. 2. Advertisers dictate content So how does the pursuit of profit affect the news we consume? Media corporations make the vast majority (typically around 75%) of their profit from advertising, meaning it´s advertisers themselves that dictate content- not journalists, and certainly not consumers. Imagine you are editor of a successful newspaper or TV channel with high circulation or viewing figures. You attract revenue from big brands and multinational corporations such as BP, Monsanto and UAE airlines. How could you then tackle important topics such as climate change, GM food or disastrous oil spills in a way that is both honest to your audience and favorable to your clients? The simple answer is you can´t. This might explain why Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times- sponsored by Goldman Sachs- is so keen to defend the crooked corporation. Andrew Marr, a political correspondent for the BBC, sums up the dilemma in his autobiography: ´The biggest question is whether advertising limits and reshapes the news agenda. It does, of course. It’s hard to make the sums add up when you are kicking the people who write the cheques.´ Enough said… 3. Billionaire tycoons & media monopolies threaten real journalism The monopolization of the press (fewer individuals or organizations controlling increasing shares of the mass media) is growing year by year, and this is a grave danger to press ethics and diversity. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch´s neo-liberal personal politics are reflected in his 175 newspapers and endorsed by pundits (see Fox news) on the 123 TV channels he owns in the USA alone. Anyone who isn´t worried by this one man´s view of the world being consumed by millions of people across the globe- from the USA to the UK, New Zealand to Asia, Europe to Australia- isn´t thinking hard enough about the consequences. It´s a grotesquely all-encompassing monopoly, leaving no doubt that Murdoch is one of the most powerful men in the world. But as the News International phone hacking scandal showed, he´s certainly not the most honorable or ethical. Neither is Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy and politician who bought British newspaper The Independent in 2010. With Lebedev´s fingers in so many pies (the billionaire oligarch is into everything from investment banking to airlines), can we really expect news coverage from this once well-respected publication to continue in the same vein? Obviously not: the paper had always carried a banner on its front page declaring itself ´free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence´, but interestingly this was dropped in September 2011. 4. Corporate press is in bed with the government Aside from the obvious, one of the most disturbing facts to emerge from Murdoch´s News International phone hacking scandal (background information here ) was the exposure of shady connections between top government officials and press tycoons. During the scandal, and throughout the subsequent Leveson inquiry into British press ethics (or lack of them), we learned of secret meetings, threats by Murdoch to politicians who didn´t do as he wanted, and that Prime Minister David Cameron has a very close friendship with The Sun´s then editor-in-chief (and CEO of News International) Rebekah Brooks. How can journalists do their job of holding politicians to account when they are vacationing together or rubbing shoulders at private dinner parties? Clearly, they don´t intend to. But the support works both ways- Cameron´s government tried to help Murdoch´s son win a bid for BSkyB, while bizarrely, warmongering ex Prime Minister Tony Blair is godfather to Murdoch´s daughter Grace. As well as ensuring an overwhelming bias in news coverage and election campaigns, flooding newspapers with cheap and easy articles from unquestioned government sources, and gagging writers from criticizing those in power, these secret connections also account for much of the corporate media´s incessant peddling of the patriotism lie– especially in the lead-up to attacks on other countries. Here´s an interesting analysis of The New York Times´s coverage of the current Syria situation for example, demonstrating how corporate journalists are failing to reflect public feeling on the issue of a full-scale attack on Assad by the US and its allies. 5. Important stories are overshadowed by trivia You could be forgiven for assuming that the most interesting part of Edward Snowden´s status as a whistleblower was his plane ride from Hong Kong to Russia, or his lengthy stint waiting in Moscow airport for someone- anyone– to offer him asylum. Because with the exception of The Guardian who published the leaks (read them in full here), the media has generally preferred not to focus on Snowden´s damning revelations about freedom and tyranny, but rather on banal trivia – his personality and background, whether his girlfriend misses him, whether he is actually a Chinese spy, and ahhh, didn´t he remind us all of Where´s Waldo as he flitted across the globe as a wanted fugitive? The same could be said of Bradley Manning´s gender re-assignment, which conveniently overshadowed the enormous injustice of his sentence. And what of Julian Assange? His profile on the globally-respected BBC is dedicated almost entirely to a subtle smearing of character, rather than detailing Wikileaks´s profound impact on our view of the world. In every case, the principal stories are forgotten as our attention, lost in a sea of trivia, is expertly diverted from the real issues at hand: those which invariably, the government wants us to forget. 6. Mainstream media doesn´t ask questions ´Check your sources, check your facts´ are golden rules in journalism 101, but you wouldn´t guess that from reading the mainstream press or watching corporate TV channels. At the time of writing, Obama is beating the war drums over Syria. Following accusations by the US and Britain that Assad was responsible for a nerve gas attack on his own civilians last month, most mainstream newspapers- like the afore-mentioned New York Times– have failed to demand evidence or call for restraint on a full-scale attack. But there are several good reasons why journalists should question the official story. Firstly, British right-wing newspaper The Daily Mail actually ran a news piece back in January this year, publishing leaked emails from a British arms company showing the US was planning a false flag chemical attack on Syria´s civilians. They would then blame it on Assad to gain public support for a subsequent full-scale invasion. The article was hastily deleted but a cached version still exists. Other recent evidence lends support to the unthinkable. It has emerged that the chemicals used to make the nerve gas were indeed shipped from Britain, and German intelligence insists Assad was not responsible for the chemical attack. Meanwhile, a hacktivist has come forward with alleged evidence of US intelligence agencies´ involvement in the massacre (download it for yourself here ), with a growing body of evidence suggesting this vile plot was hatched by Western powers. Never overlook the corporate media´s ties to big business and big government before accepting what you are told- because if journalism is dead, you have a right and a duty to ask your own questions. 7. Corporate journalists hate real journalists Michael Grunwald, senior national correspondent of Time, tweeted that he ´can´t wait to write a defense of the drone that takes out Julian Assange.´ Salon writer David Sirota rightly points out the irony of this: ´Here we have a reporter expressing excitement at the prospect of the government executing the publisher of information that became the basis for some of the most important journalism in the last decade.´ Sirota goes on to note various examples of what he calls the ´Journalists against Journalism club´, and gives several examples of how The Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has been attacked by the corporate press for publishing Snowden´s leaks. The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin called for Greenwald’s arrest, while NBC’s David Gregory´s declared that Greenwald has ´aided and abetted Snowden´. As for the question of whether journalists can indeed be outspoken, Sirota accurately notes that it all depends on whether their opinions serve or challenge the status quo, and goes on to list the hypocrisy of Greenwald´s critics in depth: ´Grunwald has saber-rattling opinions that proudly support the government’s drone strikes and surveillance. Sorkin’s opinions promote Wall Street’s interests. (The Washington Post´s David) Broder had opinions that supported, among other things, the government’s corporate-serving “free” trade agenda. (The Washington Post´s Bob) Woodward has opinions backing an ever-bigger Pentagon budget that enriches defense contractors. (The Atlantic´s Jeffrey) Goldberg promotes the Military-Industrial Complex’s generally pro-war opinions. (The New York Times´s Thomas) Friedman is all of them combined, promoting both “free” trade and “suck on this” militarism. Because these voices loyally promote the unstated assumptions that serve the power structure and that dominate American politics, all of their particular opinions aren’t even typically portrayed as opinions; they are usually portrayed as noncontroversial objectivity.´ 8. Bad news sells, good news is censored, and celebrity gossip trumps important issues It´s sad but true: bad news really does sell more newspapers. But why? Are we really so pessimistic? Do we relish the suffering of others? Are we secretly glad that something terrible happened to someone else, not us? Reading the corporate press as an alien visiting Earth you might assume so. Generally, news coverage is sensationalist and depressing as hell, with so many pages dedicated to murder, rape and pedophilia and yet none to the billions of good deeds and amazingly inspirational movements taking place every minute of every day all over the planet. But the reasons we consume bad news are perfectly logical. In times of harmony and peace, people simply don´t feel the need to educate themselves as much as they do in times of crises. That´s good news for anyone beginning to despair that humans are apathetic, hateful and dumb, and it could even be argued that this sobering and simple fact is a great incentive for the mass media industry to do something worthwhile. They could start offering the positive and hopeful angle for a change. They could use dark periods of increased public interest to convey a message of peace and justice. They could reflect humanity´s desire for solutions and our urgent concerns for the environment. They could act as the voice of a global population who has had enough of violence and lies to campaign for transparency, equality, freedom, truth, and real democracy. Would that sell newspapers? I think so. They could even hold a few politicians to account on behalf of the people, wouldn´t that be something? But for the foreseeable future, it´s likely the corporate press will just distract our attention with another picture of Rhianna´s butt, another rumor about Justin Bieber´s coke habit, or another article about Kim Kardashian (who is she again?) wearing perspex heels with swollen ankles while pregnant. Who cares about the missing $21 trillion, what was she thinking? 9. Whoever controls language controls the population Have you read George Orwell´s classic novel 1984 yet? It´s become a clichéd reference in today´s dystopia, that´s true, but with good reason. There are many- too many- parallels between Orwell´s dark imaginary future and our current reality, but one important part of his vision concerned language. Orwell coined the word ´Newspeak´ to describe a simplistic version of the English language with the aim of limiting free thought on issues that would challenge the status quo (creativity, peace, and individualism for example). The concept of Newspeak includes what Orwell called ´DoubleThink´- how language is made ambiguous or even inverted to convey the opposite of what is true. In his book, the Ministry of War is known as the Ministry of Love, for example, while the Ministry of Truth deals with propaganda and entertainment. Sound familiar yet? Another book that delves into this topic deeper is Unspeak, a must-read for anyone interested in language and power and specifically how words are distorted for political ends. Terms such as ´peace keeping missiles´, ´extremists´ and ´no-fly zones´, weapons being referred to as ´assets´, or misleading business euphemisms such as ´downsizing´ for redundancy and ´sunset´ for termination- these, and hundreds of other examples, demonstrate how powerful language can be. In a world of growing corporate media monopolization, those who wield this power can manipulate words and therefore public reaction, to encourage compliance, uphold the status quo, or provoke fear. 10. Freedom of the press no longer exists The only press that is currently free (at least for now) is the independent publication with no corporate advertisers, board of directors, shareholders or CEOs. Details of how the state has redefined journalism are noted here and are mentioned in #7, but the best recent example would be the government´s treatment of The Guardian over its publication of the Snowden leaks. As a side note, it´s possible this paper plays us as well as any other- The Guardian Media Group isn´t small fry, after all. But on the other hand- bearing in mind points 1 to 9- why should we find it hard to believe that after the NSA files were published, editor Alan Rusbridge was told by the powers that be ´you´ve had your fun, now return the files´, that government officials stormed his newsroom and smashed up hard drives, or that Greenwald´s partner David Miranda was detained for 9 hours in a London airport under the Terrorism Act as he delivered documents related to the columnist´s story? Journalism, Alan Rusbridge lamented, ´may be facing a kind of existential threat.´ As CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather wrote: ‘We have few princes and earls today, but we surely have their modern-day equivalents in the very wealthy who seek to manage the news, make unsavory facts disappear and elect representatives who are in service to their own economic and social agenda… The “free press” is no longer a check on power. It has instead become part of the power apparatus itself.’ This article (10 Compelling Reasons You Can Never Trust The Mainstream Media) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com. Read More: http://www.trueactivist.com/10-disturbing-facts-about-the-mainstream-media/

Digital Journalism: ow Good Is It?

SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT. From the New York Times Review of Books Digital Journalism: How Good Is It? Michael Massing June 4, 2015 Issue On the evening of Saturday, February 28, about one hundred people gathered in a conference room at CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies in midtown Manhattan to salute Steven Greenhouse on the occasion of his retirement from The New York Times. For thirty-one years, Greenhouse had worked at the paper, the last nineteen of them covering labor. In December, he had taken a buyout—part of a cost-cutting campaign aimed at eliminating one hundred positions from the newsroom—and the tribute to him was one of a series of doleful farewells held to mark the exodus of so many veteran reporters. Not all was gloom, however. After the announcement of Greenhouse’s departure, the Times had come under intense pressure to fill the labor beat, and in mid-February it announced that it would, with Noam Scheiber, a longtime editor and writer at The New Republic, who had left in the upheaval at that publication. More generally, the labor advocates present at the gathering expressed satisfaction at how the coverage of labor has rebounded as the interest in inequality has surged. Among the journalists present, however, there was no such cheer. “No one can feel secure,” said one Times reporter who had survived the cut. Her comment captured the climate of fear and insecurity that has gripped traditional news organizations in the digital era. “Disruption” is the catch-all phrase. Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst interviewed by NPR at the time of the shake-up at The New Republic, said that “what you’ve got is an old brand, a venerable brand…that is roiled by digital disruption the same way The New York Times is, Time Inc. is, NBC, ABC, NPR, BBC, you name it.” And, he said, “We’re really just at the beginning of that process. It’s creative disruption, as we would call it in Silicon Valley, but it can be pretty ugly in the short term.” That digital technology is disrupting the business of journalism is beyond dispute. What’s striking is how little attention has been paid to the impact that technology has had on the actual practice of journalism. The distinctive properties of the Internet—speed, immediacy, interactivity, boundless capacity, global reach—provide tremendous new opportunities for the gathering and presentation of news and information. Yet amid all the coverage of start-ups and IPOs, investments and acquisitions, little attempt has been made to evaluate the quality of Web-based journalism, despite its ever-growing influence. To try to fill that gap, I set off on a grand (though necessarily selective) tour of journalistic websites. How creative and innovative has digital journalism been? How much impact has it had? 1. As The Huffington Post marks its tenth anniversary in May, it has much to celebrate. The once-scrappy start-up now has an editorial staff of about five hundred in its New York headquarters and another forty in its Washington office, plus thirteen international editions stretching from Brazil to Japan, with more on the way. Its American edition has fifty distinct sections, and HuffPost Live offers a daily video stream of news clips, political commentary, and celebrity interviews. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, The Huffington Post is the most-visited digital-native news site, with 100 million unique visitors a month, and Arianna Huffington herself has more than 1.85 million followers on Twitter.  Clara Molden/Telegraph/Camera Press/Redux Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, talking about the baby boom generation at the Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Wales, June 2014 For all that, The Huffington Post is undergoing an identity crisis. One of its initial core innovations—using content from elsewhere—has become so dominant as to nearly choke the site. A recent in-house survey found that nearly one in every seven items posted on it comes from the Associated Press, with which it has a contract. Many other items come from Reuters, with which it also has a contract, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, with which it does not. Of course, The Huffington Post features plenty of original content, including a never-ending procession of (unpaid) opinion pieces as well as vigorous coverage of trade, lobbying, civil liberties, labor, and media. In January, the site ran a 21,000-word story about deficiencies in the treatment of drug addiction in Kentucky, and a new section called “What’s Working” highlights efforts by individuals and communities to address social problems. But even this material often seems swamped by the ever-rising tide of gossip, celebrity, titillation, and headlines of the “Rachel McAdams Doesn’t Look Like This Anymore” variety. There are sections dedicated to Healthy Living, Horoscopes, Dr. Phil, GPS for the Soul, Good News, and The Third Metric—a yardstick of success beyond the first two metrics (money and power) to include well-being, wisdom, wonder, and making a difference in the world. Since being introduced by Arianna Huffington in the spring of 2013, The Third Metric has become an essential part of the Huffington Post brand, with Huffington calling herself a “sleep evangelist” and promoting the restorative power of pajamas. The calls for rest and relaxation seem all the more jarring in light of the frantic, carnival-like atmosphere of The Huffington Post itself. When I mentioned the site in conversations with colleagues, most responded with dismissive scorn. The Huffingtonians themselves seem to sense this. In a memo sent to her staff at the end of last year, Arianna Huffington said that the site plans to end its relationship with the AP and build its own in-house news service, while “doubling down on original reporting and bringing together a new investigative team.” To head that team, The Huffington Post hired three former staff members of The New Republic—editors Greg Veis and Rachel Morris and writer Jonathan Cohn—to help “bring long-form journalism to a new audience.” The Huffington Post has been down this road before. In 2009, it set up a nonprofit Investigative Fund with a staff of eleven and a budget of nearly $2 million, and to run the unit it hired Lawrence Roberts, chief investigations editor at The Washington Post. But the long, careful projects undertaken by the fund proved an awkward fit with the site’s fast-tempo, click-hungry newsroom. Within a year, Roberts was gone, and in October 2010 the fund was folded into the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative outfit. In 2011, The Huffington Post, after being purchased by AOL for $315 million, accelerated a hiring spree that was already underway aimed at luring many big-name print-based writers and editors with generous contracts to help improve the quality of its journalism; from the Times alone came Peter Goodman, Tim O’Brien, Tom Zeller, and Lisa Belkin. The experiment went bust; most of those hires have long since departed. In a parting memo, Goodman (who had served as executive business editor) wrote of “a widespread sense” at his team “that the HuffPost is no longer fully committed to original reporting; that in a system governed largely by metrics, deep reporting and quality writing weigh in as a lack of productivity.” (He’s now editor in chief of the International Business Times, an online news publication.) Huffington Post editors claim that these print-based imports proved a poor fit in an all-digital operation. Perhaps so, but the AOL deal seems to have been a Faustian bargain for the organization; in return for a huge pot of cash, it came under relentless pressure to turn a profit. The only way to do that was by increasing ad revenues, which in turn meant drawing more readers. That explains the site’s perpetual motion, nonstop expansion, and proliferation of sections. In its early years, The Huffington Post seemed on its way to defining a new type of digital journalism. Ten years on, it seems stuck in place, struggling to recapture the innovative spirit that had once defined it. The same seems true of the first generation of digital news sites in general. After an initial burst of daring and creativity, they have entered a middle-aged lethargy. Take Talking Points Memo. When it began, in 2000, as a blog by Josh Marshall, it offered an outsider’s take on inside Washington, with much profitable burrowing into documents and records. In 2002, Marshall called attention to Trent Lott’s racist-tinged comments about Strom Thurmond, thus helping to precipitate Lott’s resignation as Senate majority leader. As TPM’s readership grew, Marshall attracted advertisers, which allowed him to hire staff. Tips from readers offered information about what was going on around the country and, drawing on them, Marshall in 2007 broke the story about the Bush administration’s partisan- inspired firing of US attorneys.* Eight years later, TPM offers roughly the same mix of blogging, aggregation (reworking content from elsewhere), news, and opinion that it did back then. The site (which is supported by a mix of ads and $50 annual subscriptions for access to extra features) does run regular “longform” pieces; a recent one offered a revealing look at the International House of Prayer, a charismatic Christian movement with ties to the Republican right. But TPM’s primary mission remains the minute parsing of national politics. When President Obama ad-libbed his zinger at the Republicans during his 2015 State of the Union address, for instance—Republicans applauded him for saying, “I have no more campaigns to run,” and he shot back, “I know, because I won both of them”—the site analyzed it from every which way. But everybody’s doing that these days, and what once seemed distinctive now seems just another voice in the instant-analysis-and-commentary crowd. Accordingly, TPM has had a hard time reproducing the kind of splash it had once made. Then there’s the smart-opinion-with-some-reporting-mixed-in set, led by Slate, Salon, and The Daily Beast. Here you can find edge, cheek, confession, and contrarianism, all served up in crisp, thousand-word packages. “Why Staples’ Terrible Sales Might Be a Godsend for the Company,” went a recent Slate headline, with the counterintuitive dash that has been its trademark since its launch in 1996. (Slate’s contrariness has become so renowned that there’s a hashtag, #slatepitch, that parodies it. Sample: “Manischewitz Gefilte Fish Is Actually Kind of Delicious.”) These sites, which all seem to blend into one another, rarely break news or cause a commotion. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I was hoping to see one of them grab hold of the event and provide a forum for the many pressing questions raised—free speech versus hate speech, anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism, the state of religious tolerance and religious fanaticism in Europe. Most of all, I hoped to hear from a range of voices that extended beyond the usual American commentators to include some Muslim ones, who, with their distinctive backgrounds and experiences, could add a different dimension to the discussion. The Internet is an ideal vehicle for mixing things up in this way, yet none of the sites seemed to have the inclination—or inspiration—to take advantage. No one better illustrates the travails of the pioneering digital generation than Andrew Sullivan. When he began blogging in 2000, his highly confessional Tory-Catholic-gay-libertarian stream of consciousness seemed fresh and original, and it inspired many others to try their hand at this exciting new form. For years, Sullivan relied on institutional backing, parking his blog (called The Dish) first at Time, then at The Atlantic, then at The Daily Beast. Encouraged by the amount of attention and traffic he was receiving, he decided in 2013 to strike out on his own.  Paul Harris/Getty Images Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, Hollywood, May 1998 In a rousing declaration, he announced that he was forswearing all advertising. Given the revenue that advertising can provide, he wrote, this was a difficult decision, but he felt that ads were not only distracting but also “created incentives for pageviews over quality content.” Getting readers to pay a small amount for content seemed “the only truly solid future for online journalism,” and in this way he hoped “to forge a path other smaller blogs and sites can follow.” This bold experiment in digital independence was closely watched in the journalistic world. The subscription price was set at $19.99 a year for unrestricted access to the site. The initial results were encouraging, with more than 30,000 signing up in the first year (and some chipping in more), for a total take of just under the $900,000 that Sullivan said he needed to support him and his staff. But feeding the beast on a daily basis proved too taxing, and in late January, Sullivan, citing fatigue and health concerns, announced he was calling it quits. The demise of The Dish was widely seen as the end of the era of the blogger. As Dylan Byers, a media reporter for Politico, observed in 2014: The appeal of “the blog,” in Sullivan’s heyday, was that if you were smart enough or provocative enough, you could cover whatever you wanted. The truth is, people want breaking news from well-sourced reporters or smart analysis from experts who know what they’re talking about. Sensibility is cheap. Today, many who once blogged now compress their thoughts into Twitter’s 140 characters. Others have headed in the opposite direction and converted their observations into well-crafted pieces of reporting and analysis as exemplified by the columns posted at newyorker.com and the mini-essays featured on this publication’s NYRblog. Nonetheless, there are many thousands of knowledgeable people blogging in their areas of expertise. Paul Krugman, for one, has saluted the contributions of the “econoblogs” that constantly check and assess work in the field. “As far as real, insightful, useful discussion of matters economic is concerned,” he has written, “this is actually a golden age.” When I checked some of those blogs, however, I found that most of the discussion on them is quite specialized. More generally, blogs have become niche-ified. Gone are the days when a Michigan-based scholar like Juan Cole could single-handedly challenge the Bush administration’s narrative on Iraq or the blogging collective Firedoglake could gain national attention for “liveblogging” the Scooter Libby trial. Sullivan himself, in explaining his decision to shut down The Dish, acknowledged his own frustrations with blogging. “Although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing,” he wrote, “I yearn for other, older forms.” He wanted to “have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged,” and to “write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me.” It’s strange that Sullivan did not convert his blog into this type of podium, with more regular contributors, reporting, and analysis. Over the years, he did publish other writers on his site and featured some longer pieces, but in the end The Dish remained essentially one man’s riffs. Even on the business side, his experiment seemed oblivious to the current realities of the Internet, where most publishers recognize the need for multiple sources of revenue and even nonprofit sites avidly seek advertisers trying to reach their particular audience. For all of the boldness of Sullivan’s experiment, he ultimately seemed unable to adapt. 2. One member of the pioneering digital generation who has thrived despite stubbornly refusing to change is Matt Drudge. The Drudge Report today looks just as drab and skeletal as it did when it went online in 1996, and it continues to deal almost exclusively in aggregation. Yet it remains highly influential, with three quarters of a billion pageviews a month. To cite just one example, the attention that Drudge (along with National Review) lavished on the virtually unknown Ben Sasse helped propel him to victory in the 2014 Republican primary for senator in Nebraska and then in the general election itself. According to Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post, the 2016 presidential race is shaping up as one in which Drudge “will have as much—and, likely, more—influence than he has ever had before.” His power derives, in part, from the angry popular appeal of the conservative online world in general. It includes The Daily Caller (a forty-person staff led by Tucker Carlson), RedState (Erick Erickson), TheBlaze (Glenn Beck), Breitbart, and The Washington Free Beacon, along with the websites of The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Fox News. This alternative information universe is driven by a continuing sense of rage at being shut out by the “lamestream media” (in Sarah Palin’s phrase). Neil Patel, the publisher of The Daily Caller (and a former top policy adviser to Dick Cheney), says that the site (which relies mainly on advertising) has taken advantage of the “massive audience” of “disgruntled conservatives” out there who distrust traditional news outlets: “That drives us, for sure.” In March, Tucker Carlson removed a column that one of his bloggers, Mickey Kaus (a pioneer of the form), had posted that was critical of Fox News. Kaus resigned, and Carlson later acknowledged that he would not allow The Daily Caller to run anything critical of Fox (where he’s also an anchor). Such enforced conformity has enabled these sites to pursue their paramount mission: delegitimizing the Obama presidency and obstructing Hillary Clinton’s chances of succeeding him. In my tour of digital sites, I did find one pioneer that has evolved: Politico. Like many outside-the-Beltway readers, I initially considered it too beholden to Washington conventions to feel much need to read it regularly. I was also put off by its incessant boasting about its “fast metabolism,” which it liked to contrast with the sluggish Washington Post. In the last few years, however, Politico has become more and more like the Post—in a good way. It now has a 160-person editorial staff covering not just horse races and insider baseball but also public policy, national news, and foreign policy. In 2011, it launched Politico Pro, a subscription-based news service with more than one hundred journalists assigned to a dozen policy areas, from agriculture and defense to health care and transportation. (A single subscription can run more than $3,000. The revenue thus generated is complemented by events to which admission is charged and by ads that run both on its website and in a print edition published daily when Congress is in session.) Politico offers thorough day-to-day coverage of lobbying, campaign finance, and legislative affairs. It also now has an online magazine with a daily mix of reports, analysis, and opinion—some of it quite hard-hitting. One piece, for instance, described the “hell” to which then Florida Governor Jeb Bush subjected Michael Schiavo—the husband of Terri Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state—with Schiavo wanting her feeding tube removed and Bush ordering it reinserted; the story was cast as a cautionary tale of “what Jeb Bush can do with executive power.” Politico Magazine was created in November 2013 by Susan Glasser, a former editor at The Washington Post and Foreign Policy, and it was considered such a success that last September she was named Politico’s editor in chief. Meanwhile, the site has continued to expand. “We are pouring millions into adding deep-dive, original reporting to the arsenal,” Jim VandeHei, Politico’s co-founder and CEO, recently informed his staff. “We not only want to be the dominant publication covering politics and policy in Washington—we want to be the dominant media player in this space nationally AND globally.” This year, Politico is introducing or expanding state operations in New York, New Jersey, and Florida—part of a “cascading series” aimed at finding “a template for saving coverage of state government.” In April, Politico (together with Axel Springer) rolled out a new European edition based in Brussels, and by the end of the year it expects to have more reporters and editors covering European politics and policy than any other organization on that continent. The growth has not come without pain. In 2014, about a quarter of its staff left—an extraordinary level of turnover that reflects the burnout caused by the grueling pace in the Politico newsroom as well as the effort to convert it into a more in-depth operation. (A request for comment from Politico went unanswered.) In plugging those holes, Politico has snapped up so many state and local reporters that there have been complaints about poaching. In March, it scored a coup by showing that Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois had inflated the mileage on his car to pad his expense accounts, leading to his resignation. Yet that feat was also a measure of Politico’s limitations. Catching a congressman fiddling with his finances lies squarely in the tradition of American scoop-making. With its fine-grained approach to Washington politics and its emphasis on being first, Politico rarely mounts sustained investigations into more systemic problems, like the way corporations have captured think tanks, or the hold that AIPAC and other lobbies have on Mideast policy, or the array of conservative groups working to kill a nuclear deal with Iran. The Internet, with its capacity for offering regular posts and updates and for chronicling links and collaborations, would seem ideally suited to exploring such matters and exposing the hidden wellsprings of power in Washington. Heading down that path, however, would require a radical rethinking of how to use the Web. Recently, Politico formed a new money-and-politics investigative team; will it be able to make the leap? A similar question could be asked of ProPublica. Since being launched in 2008, this site (which is supported almost entirely by philanthropic contributions) has established itself as the premier investigative Web-based unit. It has tackled such worthy subjects as the environmental hazards of fracking and the lax oversight of nurses, the erosion of workers’ comp and mismanagement at the Red Cross. For an investigation into financial ties between medical institutions and drug companies, ProPublica compiled a list of payments those companies made to doctors and from it built a searchable database that patients could use to look up their own physicians. ProPublica has been a leader in such creative uses of data—a boom area on the Internet. Yet it could, I think, do far more. Imagine, for instance, if ProPublica set up a database documenting the links between money, power, and ideas in America and beyond. One could enter the name of a mogul—say, hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, or BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, or Carlyle Group cofounder David Rubenstein—and find out at once the assets he controls, the boards he sits on, the philanthropies he supports, the politicians he contributes to, the lawyers and lobbies that represent him. Clicking on each link would take one to a new page showing all the pertinent information about the company, board, or philanthropy in question. Proceeding through the labyrinth could help lay bare the composition, shape, and reach of the global oligarchy—the one percent of the one percent. That data could in turn provide the basis for countless follow-up investigations by not only ProPublica but also other journalists as well as activists and scholars. To its credit, ProPublica has done much good work on the flow of political “dark money” and on Wall Street’s cooptation of federal regulators, but overall the organization seems too wed to a traditional newspaper-based approach, with its separate, siloed investigations, to try something so radical. As a result, it has not had the type of disruptive impact one might expect from an organization with an annual budget of nearly $13 million. And so it goes for the first generation of digital sites as a whole. They helped lead journalism out of the kingdom of traditional print and broadcasting into the liberating land of the Internet, only to become stranded. Meanwhile, a new generation of high-profile ventures has emerged. Have they made it to the promised land of true digital innovation? To find out, I set off on the second leg of my tour, beginning with a visit to the most-talked-about site of them all, BuzzFeed. —This is the first of three articles. Recent publications on journalism’s past, present, and future Beyond News: The Future of Journalism
by Mitchell Stephens
Columbia University Press, 232 pp., $30.00 Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney
New Press, 299 pp., $18.95 (paper) Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World
edited by Anya Schiffrin
New Press, 309 pp., $19.95 (paper) Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age
by George Brock
KoganPage, 242 pp., $24.95 (paper) Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present
by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell, and Clay Shirky
A Report by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, December 3, 2014, available at towcenter.org Rethinking Journalism: Trust and Participation in a Transformed News Landscape
edited by Chris Peters and Marcel Broersma
Routledge, 252 pp., $44.95 (paper) Saving Community Journalism: The Path to Profitability
by Penelope Muse Abernathy
University of North Carolina Press, 254 pp., $27.50 The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism
by Dean Starkman
Columbia University Press, 362 pp., $18.95 (paper)

Here is a great article from Time Magazine the is relevant everywhere: Time Inc. Network Jorge Ramos’ Message for Journalists: Take a Stand Jorge Ramos May 15, 2015 TV personality Jorge Ramos attends the 2015 Time 100 Gala at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 21, 2015 in New York City. Jorge Ramos is a news anchor, author, and TIME 100 honoree. Jorge Ramos gave this commencement speech at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism First of all, thanks to Dean Ernest J. Wilson and to the director of the School of Journalism, Willow Bay, for inviting me this morning to USC. I’m honored. More Fewer Kids Are Getting Bullied in School, Report Says Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel to Grads: ‘This Is the World We Were Born Into, and We Are Responsible for It’ Another Amtrak Passenger Says Object Struck His Train NBC News How Much Is American Pharoah Worth? NBC News Notre Dame Student Dies Day Before Graduation in Fall NBC News It’s great to be here in Trojan territory to celebrate you, to celebrate your new building and media center -the envy of any school-, to celebrate the incredible diversity in this university -we’re from all over the world, from China to the barrios of Los Angeles-, to celebrate the collaboration between Fusion (the company I work for) and USC Annenberg to train and inspire young journalists, and to celebrate the fact that many of you -one in seven, I was told- will be the first in your families to graduate from college. Well, that’s a great reason to celebrate. Popular Among Subscribers Cuba Time Magazine Cover Cuba on the Cusp Subscribe In the Line of Fire The Roots of Baltimore’s Riot I guess I was invited to talk about the future. Your future. So this is what I know for sure: I’m an immigrant and I am a journalist. These two things define me. To be an immigrant means that I left everything behind me. Everything: my family, my friends, my house and the sense the life was going to be predictable. As a young reporter, I was censored in Mexico. Back then in the early 1980’s you couldn’t criticize the president. So, of course, I did a story that criticized the president. I quit before I was fired, I sold my car -an old Volkswagen Beetle-, got a little money and moved to Los Angeles as a student. I was only 24. I didn’t know anything about this business but I did know that I didn’t want to be a censored journalist. I’ll always be grateful to the United States. This country gave the opportunities that my country of origin couldn’t give me and I hope that it continues doing the same with the immigrants who came after me. Now, let’s fast forward to the present. I have been an anchorman for almost 30 years. Before you were born I was already covering the news. But here’s the problem. Many years from now, when you’ll tell your kids that an anchorman gave your commencement speech at USC, they will ask you: “Mom, Dad, What’s an anchorman?” Most likely, you’ll have to put me in the same category of dinosaurs and other species about to be extinct. I’m not kidding. I’m sorry to say but you are entering journalism and public relations in the middle of a storm. In our profession we are living the equivalent of climate change, with the fundamentals of the business melting like icebergs in the summer, being flooded by social media and looking outside the window with anxiety and uncertainty. Everything is changing. Actually, everything is migrating to your cell phones. Newspapers are not being read in paper anymore. And guess what? We are producing television programs for people who don’t even own a television set. Now, a quick fact check: in journalism we don’t know yet how to make a lot of money with the new technologies, so don’t expect a big paycheck. Not now, at least. On the other hand, I have to confess that, as a journalist, I cannot compete with Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram. I just can’t. If there is an earthquake in China, a plane accident in France or a shooting in downtown Los Angeles, someone with a cell phone will be better positioned than me to report about what happened. The iPhone is the most successful and profitable consumer electronic invention in the history of the world. And it shows. The new rule is digital first. So, is this the end of journalism? Is everything lost right before you started? No. Absolutely not. So don’t fight change. Embrace it. I came here this morning to tell you that journalists are needed more than ever before. I came here this morning to tell you that public relations is really about communicating the truth and connecting people to people. Look, you don’t believe everything you read in social media, right? Well, that’s precisely the point. You are in the business of telling the truth, in the business of speaking truth to power. You are in a business in which credibility and trust are the most important things. With millions of tidbits of information, videos and, honestly, a lot of trash, your responsibility is to put that information in perspective, to tell us what is relevant and what is not, and to be fiercely independent. Please, don’t be partisan. Don’t be a Democrat or a Republican. Just be a journalist. Now, this is what you can do for me and for the rest of us. This is very important. You have to challenge authority. Be a rebel. Your most important social responsibility is to prevent the abuse of those who are in power. Question them. Ask tough questions. Don’t be scared. There are no forbidden or silly questions. And your attitude should be that if you don’t ask that question to the President, to the mayor, to the Senator…no one else will. Don’t look around. It is your responsibility. That’s why you chose to be a journalist. Taking responsibility is also vital for ethical and successful public relations professionals. Your integrity and reputation is your only career-long capital. Working in-house, PR pros need to be able to ask tough questions of their CEO, or their elected officials, or executive director — whether they are working at a for-profit, government or non-profit. They need to counsel transparency, and always push for the truth to be shared. The secrets are never secrets. I know, for sure, that secrets are never secrets and that questions are your greatest weapon. Now, how do you know if it’s the right question? It’s very simple. If when you think of a question it makes you tremble and your hands start sweating, then you know that’s a question you have to ask. Do it. Yes, I’m asking you to take a stand. Don’t be neutral. Neutrality is for referees in a football game. The really -really- good journalists always take a stand with those who have no voice and with those who have no rights. Maybe you don’t know it yet, but actually you chose to be a fighter. Don’t quit now. To be a journalist, more than a profession, is a behavior and a mission. You can’t go to bed or go on vacation and stop being a journalist. If you can do that, quit now. This is not for you. If you want to be famous, well, you better try Dancing with the Stars. A few days ago I interviewed George Clooney who is one of the most famous people on the planet. And he told me that his fame depended on a lot on luck. He said that if the television show in which he was a doctor, E.R., had been shown on Fridays instead of Thursdays, his career would not have been as successful. I’m not sure about that. But if George Clooney says that fame is a lot of luck, don’t fight with George Clooney on that one. Now, I can’t guarantee that you’ll become rich doing this. As I said before, we’re in the middle of a communications revolution and no one really knows where the money is. But if hell is doing over and over again things that you hate to do, journalism and public relations is exactly the opposite of that. No day has ever been the same for me in decades. And that is paradise. Finally, the great thing about being a journalist is that your job description includes being a rebel. Find what you are passionate about and speak up. Also, journalism will keep you forever young. Journalism is an art that happens only in the present and then disappears, very fast. There’s nothing you can do about your age, but there’s a lot you can do to be present, here, now. So take a stand, be present, be bold, ask tough questions, tell the truth and, please, enjoy the ride. This is the most marvelous profession in the world because the world is your newsroom. Now, go out there and start playing.

This is a long read on the pressures the modern press has to confront and deal with. It is well worth reading it all if you are interested in freedom of the press: Yes, Peter Oborne, ads hurt press freedom. But the alternative is worse  Simon Jenkins A searing indictment of the Telegraph’s HSBC reporting underlines the critical balance between holding readers’ faith and staying in business  A Reporters Sans Fontières poster. ‘The only champion of a free press is not some regulator or commission or charter board. It is the free press itself. Plurality, rivalry, disclosure, exposure and sometimes fury are the best guardians.’ Photograph: Benoit Tessier/Reuters Wednesday 18 February 2015 19.22 GMT Last modified on Thursday 19 February 2015 02.11 GMT Newspapers are institutionalised hypocrisy. They excoriate yet they cringe. They speak truth to power and then sup at its table. They stick their moral noses in the air while their bottoms rest on festering heaps of deals, perks, bribes and ads, without which they would not exist. The most amazing thing is that this murky edifice has delivered Britain a remarkably robust and free-spirited press. A commentator on the Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne, broke cover this week with a searing indictment of his paper’s evident reluctance to cover the HSBC tax evasion saga.(See Below) Newspapers tend to downplay the scoops of others, as many did the Guardian’s WikiLeaks and Snowden revelations of 2011 and 2013. But a big story trumps such rivalry, as the Telegraph found to its advantage with its MPs’ expenses exposé in 2009. Oborne’s charge – denied by the Telegraph – is that the newspaper was soft on the story not out of rivalry, nor even to its owners’ residency in a Channel Island tax haven, but from a fear of losing advertising revenue.  Telegraph's Peter Oborne resigns, saying HSBC coverage a 'fraud on readers' Read more HSBC had stopped advertising in the Telegraph in 2012 over a similar story to the Guardian’s, about tax evasion in Jersey, and the management was frantic to see revenues restored. In other words, HSBC was not just illegal and unethical but also a bully. The Guardian also recently had its HSBC ads “paused”, but declined to yield. That HSBC was chaired by an Anglican priest who took the government shilling as an ennobled minister merely illustrates the many-splendoured architecture of the British establishment. An American newspaper is said to have carried the ironic motto “As independent as resources permit”. Any student of the press knows what this means. A business page protocol ordains gentle treatment of proprietorial interests. Fashion pages would not exist without kickbacks, or travel pages without “contra” deals on hospitality and mentions. I remember perfume firms threatening to withdraw ads after stories on animal cruelty. There is no question standards are slipping. Page layouts are “bastardised” by wraparounds. Ill-shapen ads jut into editorial space, a once unthinkable concession to ad managers. I cringe when I see “sponsored content” supplements full of “advertorial”. I gather some titles now actively seek corporate sponsorship for columnists. Rupert Murdoch was robust in backing investigative reporting at Times Newspapers, especially on the Sunday Times. He did so to a fault in the case of the phone-hacking News of the World. But his Times undoubtedly restrained its China coverage when he was struggling for a media deal with Beijing. Even the Guardian cannot be regarded as immune from such pressures. In March 2007 Labour’s short-lived Pathfinder scheme, involving dire housing demolitions in the north, was inexplicably eulogised in a Guardian supplement in return for an undisclosed payment from the government. Today its “branded content partner zone” is occupied by Unilever, “whose sources of revenue allow us to explore, in more depth than editorial budgets would otherwise allow, topics that we hope are of interest”. Hence this week’s frothy promotion, under the Guardian masthead, of a “green sex sustainable” condom – though it’s also fair to point out that the Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched a withering attack on the partnership in these pages. Any loss-making journal is at the mercy of its paymasters, be they the state, commerce, philanthropy or individuals I have never come across anything as serious as Oborne’s accusations against the Telegraph and its “creative advertising solutions”. But financial necessity has become the mother of ethical invention, or at least corner-cutting. Any loss-making journal is at the mercy of its paymasters, be they the state, commerce, philanthropy or individuals. The worst newspapers are run by governments, be they the organs of authoritarian regimes or the limp newssheets issued by local councils following the collapse of a local press (aided by the BBC’s local radio). But if state ownership is journalistically barren, private ownership is a mess. It is a market dominated less by money than by power, influence and glamour. Most serious publications have for half a century depended on subsidy, which leaves them at the mercy of their boards and benefactors. The Independent struggles under the generosity of an oligarch. The Times depends on some rich man craving its ownership. The Telegraph survives through staff cuts and deals with advertisers. The Guardian’s security has been bought at the expense of years of closures and job losses at its media subsidiaries. The best guarantor of editorial integrity remains an organisation stable enough to protect its staff and their work from the tempests of the marketplace – including advertisers. Many such organisations exist. I don’t share the media commentator Clay Shirky’s forecast of an industry “going bankrupt gradually then suddenly”. Nor do I see the digital media, as does Andrew Keen, as a hell of virals, angries, trolls, click farms and “abrasive young men with personality defects … in which trust is the greatest casualty”. Newspapers and broadcasters still have the resources and skills to digest, process and transmit masses of information in such a way as to hold the faith of readers. That is a vital democratic construct. Peter Oborne may be a maverick but his Telegraph revelations are dynamite Roy Greenslade  Read more Oborne is a maverick. His works embrace such themes as The Rise of Political Lying, the Collapse of Public Standards and the achievements of Alastair Campbell. His veins run with the blood of scepticism. As such he is a corrective to any complacency on the part of what he derides as today’s “client journalists”. They are reporters who play safe, averting their eyes from such establishment outrages as the sale of peerages, corruption of politics by lobbyists, and appeasement of non-doms and tax evaders. Oborne has extended his charge sheet to venal advertisers. There is no question that the private sector is an insecure way of financing a free press that does not make money. But all other ways are worse. There are still as many daily newspapers published in Britain (nine) as there were 50 years ago, a continuous diversity available to no other western country. Online has not wiped out print. It has enhanced the penetration and prominence of both. In which case, we can only thank goodness for expediency. The only champion of a free press is not some regulator or commission or charter board. It is the free press itself. Plurality, rivalry, disclosure, exposure and sometimes fury are the best guardians. That is what we saw this week. One Oborne is worth 10 Levesons. • Press freedom • Newspapers • Newspapers & magazines • Telegraph Media Group • National newspapers • HSBC • *********************************** •  • openDemocracy • OurKingdom ◦ About ◦ Donate ◦ Debates ◦ OurNHS ◦ LocalismWatch ◦ OurBeeb ◦ Shine a light ◦ There is an Alternative • oDR • oD 50.50 • openSecurity • Transformation • More • Why I have resigned from the Telegraph • Peter Oborne 17 February 2015 • The coverage of HSBC in Britain's Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril. •  • Five years ago I was invited to become the chief political commentator of the Telegraph. It was a job I was very proud to accept. The Telegraph has long been the most important conservative-leaning newspaper in Britain, admired as much for its integrity as for its superb news coverage. When I joined the Telegraph had just broken the MPs’ expenses scandal, the most important political scoop of the 21st century. • I was very conscious that I was joining a formidable tradition of political commentary. I spent my summer holiday before taking up my duties as columnist reading the essays of the great Peter Utley, edited by Charles Moore and Simon Heffer, two other masters of the art. • No one has ever expressed quite as well as Utley the quiet decency and pragmatism of British conservatism. The Mail is raucous and populist, while the Times is proud to swing with the wind as the voice of the official class. The Telegraph stood in a different tradition. It is read by the nation as a whole, not just by the City and Westminster. It is confident of its own values. It has long been famous for the accuracy of its news reporting. I imagine its readers to be country solicitors, struggling small businessmen, harassed second secretaries in foreign embassies, schoolteachers, military folk, farmers—decent people with a stake in the country. • My grandfather, Lt Col Tom Oborne DSO, had been a Telegraph reader. He was also a churchwarden and played a role in the Petersfield Conservative Association. He had a special rack on the breakfast table and would read the paper carefully over his bacon and eggs, devoting special attention to the leaders. I often thought about my grandfather when I wrote my Telegraph columns. • ‘You don’t know what you are fucking talking about’ • Circulation was falling fast when I joined the paper in September 2010, and I suspect this panicked the owners. Waves of sackings started, and the management made it plain that it believed the future of the British press to be digital. Murdoch MacLennan, the chief executive, invited me to lunch at the Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace, where Telegraph executives like to do their business. I urged him not to take the newspaper itself for granted, pointing out that it still had a very healthy circulation of more than half a million. I added that our readers were loyal, that the paper was still very profitable and that the owners had no right to destroy it. • The sackings continued. A little while later I met Mr MacLennan by chance in the queue of mourners outside Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and once again urged him not to take Telegraph readers for granted. He replied: “You don’t know what you are fucking talking about.” • Events at the Telegraph became more and more dismaying. In January 2014 the editor, Tony Gallagher, was fired. He had been an excellent editor, well respected by staff. Mr Gallagher was replaced by an American called Jason Seiken, who took up a position called ‘Head of Content.’ In the 81 years between 1923 and 2004 the Telegraph had six editors, all of them towering figures: Arthur Watson, Colin Coote, Maurice Green, Bill Deedes, Max Hastings and Charles Moore. Since the Barclay Brothers purchased the paper 11 years ago there have been roughly six more, though it is hard to be certain since with the arrival of Mr Seiken the title of editor was abolished, then replaced by a Head of Content (Monday to Friday). There were three editors (or Heads of Content) in 2014 alone. • For the last 12 months matters have got much, much worse. The foreign desk—magnificent under the leadership of David Munk and David Wastell—has been decimated. As all reporters are aware, no newspaper can operate without skilled sub-editors. Half of these have been sacked, and the chief sub, Richard Oliver, has left. • Solecisms, unthinkable until very recently, are now commonplace. Recently readers were introduced to someone called the Duke of Wessex. Prince Edward is the Earl of Wessex. There was a front page story about deer-hunting. It was actually about deer-stalking, a completely different activity. Obviously the management don’t care about nice distinctions like this. But the readers do, and the Telegraph took great care to get these things right until very recently. • The arrival of Mr Seiken coincided with the arrival of the click culture. Stories seemed no longer judged by their importance, accuracy or appeal to those who actually bought the paper. The more important measure appeared to be the number of online visits. On 22 September Telegraph online ran a story about a woman with three breasts. One despairing executive told me that it was known this was false even before the story was published. I have no doubt it was published in order to generate online traffic, at which it may have succeeded. I am not saying that online traffic is unimportant, but over the long term, however, such episodes inflict incalculable damage on the reputation of the paper. • Open for business? • With the collapse in standards has come a most sinister development. It has long been axiomatic in quality British journalism that the advertising department and editorial should be kept rigorously apart. There is a great deal of evidence that, at the Telegraph, this distinction has collapsed. • Late last year I set to work on a story about the international banking giant HSBC. Well-known British Muslims had received letters out of the blue from HSBC informing them that their accounts had been closed. No reason was given, and it was made plain that there was no possibility of appeal. "It’s like having your water cut off," one victim told me. • When I submitted it for publication on the Telegraph website, I was at first told there would be no problem. When it was not published I made enquiries. I was fobbed off with excuses, then told there was a legal problem. When I asked the legal department, the lawyers were unaware of any difficulty. When I pushed the point, an executive took me aside and said that "there is a bit of an issue" with HSBC. Eventually I gave up in despair and offered the article to openDemocracy. It can be read here. • I researched the newspaper’s coverage of HSBC. I learnt that Harry Wilson, the admirable banking correspondent of the Telegraph, had published an online story about HSBC based on a report from a Hong Kong analyst who had claimed there was a ‘black hole’ in the HSBC accounts. This story was swiftly removed from the Telegraph website, even though there were no legal problems. When I asked HSBC whether the bank had complained about Wilson's article, or played any role in the decision to remove it, the bank declined to comment. Mr Wilson’s contemporaneous tweets referring to the story can be found here. The story itself, however, is no longer available on the website, as anybody trying to follow through the link can discover. Mr Wilson rather bravely raised this issue publicly at the ‘town hall meeting’ when Jason Seiken introduced himself to staff. He has since left the paper. • Then, on 4 November 2014, a number of papers reported a blow to HSBC profits as the bank set aside more than £1 billion for customer compensation and an investigation into the rigging of currency markets. This story was the city splash in the Times, Guardian and Mail, making a page lead in the Independent. I inspected the Telegraph coverage. It generated five paragraphs in total on page 5 of the business section. • The reporting of HSBC is part of a wider problem. On 10 May last year the Telegraph ran a long feature on Cunard’s Queen Mary II liner on the news review page. This episode looked to many like a plug for an advertiser on a page normally dedicated to serious news analysis. I again checked and certainly Telegraph competitors did not view Cunard’s liner as a major news story. Cunard is an important Telegraph advertiser. • The paper’s comment on last year’s protests in Hong Kong was bizarre. One would have expected theTelegraph of all papers to have taken a keen interest and adopted a robust position. Yet (in sharp contrast to competitors like the Times)I could not find a single leader on the subject. • At the start of December the Financial Times, the Times and the Guardian all wrote powerful leaders on the refusal by the Chinese government to allow a committee of British MPs into Hong Kong. The Telegraph remained silent. I can think of few subjects which anger and concern Telegraph readers more. • On 15 September the Telegraph published a commentary by the Chinese ambassador, just before the lucrative China Watch supplement. The headline of the ambassador’s article was beyond parody: ‘Let’s not allow Hong Kong to come between us’. On 17 September there was a four-page fashion pull-out in the middle of the news run, granted more coverage than the Scottish referendum. The Tesco false accounting story on 23 September was covered only in the business section. By contrast it was the splash, inside spread and leader in the Mail. Not that the Telegraph is short of Tesco coverage. Tesco pledging £10m to fight cancer, an inside peak at Tesco’s £35m jet and ‘Meet the cat that has lived in Tesco for 4 years’ were all deemed newsworthy. • There are other very troubling cases, many of them set out in Private Eye, which has been a major source of information for Telegraph journalists wanting to understand what is happening on their paper. There was no avoiding the impression that something had gone awry with the Telegraph’s news judgment. At this point I wrote a long letter to Murdoch MacLennan setting out all my concerns about the newspaper, and handing in my notice. I copied this letter to the Telegraph chairman, Aidan Barclay. • I received a cursory response from Mr Barclay. He wrote that he hoped I could resolve my differences with Murdoch MacLennan. I duly went to see the chief executive in mid-December. He was civil, served me tea and asked me to take off my jacket. He said that I was a valued writer, and said that he wanted me to stay. • I expressed all of my concerns about the direction of the paper. I told him that I was not leaving to join another paper. I was resigning as a matter of conscience. Mr MacLennan agreed that advertising was allowed to affect editorial, but was unapologetic, saying that “it was not as bad as all that” and adding that there was a long history of this sort of thing at the Telegraph. • I have since consulted Charles Moore, the last editor of the Telegraph before the Barclays bought the paper in 2004. Mr Moore confessed that the published accounts of Hollinger Inc, then the holding company for the Telegraph, did not receive the scrutiny they deserved. But no newspaper in history has ever given an unfavourable gloss on its owner’s accounts. Beyond that, Mr Moore told me, there had been no advertising influence on the paper’s news coverage.   • After my meeting with Mr MacLennan I received a letter from the Telegraph saying that the paper had accepted my letter of resignation, but welcomed my offer to work out my six-month notice period. However in mid January I was asked to meet a Telegraph executive, this time over tea at the Goring Hotel. He told me that my weekly column would be discontinued and there had been a "parting of the ways". • He stressed, however, that the Telegraph would continue to honour my contract until it ran out in May. For my part I said that I would leave quietly. I had no desire to damage the newspaper. For all its problems it continues to employ a large number of very fine writers. They have mortgages and families. They are doing a fine job in very trying circumstances. I prepared myself mentally for the alluring prospect of several months paid gardening leave. • Story, what story? • That was how matters stood when, on Monday of last week, BBC Panorama ran its story about HSBC and its Swiss banking arm, alleging a wide-scale tax evasion scheme, while the Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published their 'HSBC files'. All newspapers realised at once that this was a major event. The FT splashed on it for two days in a row, while the Times and the Mail gave it solid coverage spread over several pages. • You needed a microscope to find the Telegraph coverage: nothing on Monday, six slim paragraphs at the bottom left of page two on Tuesday, seven paragraphs deep in the business pages on Wednesday. The Telegraph’s reporting only looked up when the story turned into claims that there might be questions about the tax affairs of people connected to the Labour party. • After a lot of agony I have come to the conclusion that I have a duty to make all this public. There are two powerful reasons. The first concerns the future of the Telegraph under the Barclay Brothers. It might sound a pompous thing to say, but I believe the newspaper is a significant part of Britain’s civic architecture. It is the most important public voice of civilised, sceptical conservatism. • Telegraph readers are intelligent, sensible, well-informed people. They buy the newspaper because they feel that they can trust it. If advertising priorities are allowed to determine editorial judgments, how can readers continue to feel this trust? The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible. Imagine if the BBC—so often the object of Telegraph attack—had conducted itself in this way. The Telegraph would have been contemptuous. It would have insisted that heads should roll, and rightly so. • This brings me to a second and even more important point that bears not just on the fate of one newspaper but on public life as a whole. A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth. • It is not only the Telegraph that is at fault here. The past few years have seen the rise of shadowy executives who determine what truths can and what truths can’t be conveyed across the mainstream media. The criminality of News International newspapers during the phone hacking years was a particularly grotesque example of this wholly malign phenomenon. All the newspaper groups, bar the magnificent exception of the Guardian, maintained a culture of omerta around phone-hacking, even if (like the Telegraph) they had not themselves been involved. One of the consequences of this conspiracy of silence was the appointment of Andy Coulson, who has since been jailed and now faces further charges of perjury, as director of communications in 10 Downing Street. • Urgent questions to answer • Last week I made another discovery. Three years ago the Telegraph investigations team—the same lot who carried out the superb MPs’ expenses investigation—received a tip off about accounts held with HSBC in Jersey. Essentially this investigation was similar to the Panorama investigation into the Swiss banking arm of HSBC. After three months research the Telegraph resolved to publish. Six articles on this subject can now be found online, between 8 and 15 November 2012, although three are not available to view. • Thereafter no fresh reports appeared. Reporters were ordered to destroy all emails, reports and documents related to the HSBC investigation. I have now learnt, in a remarkable departure from normal practice, that at this stage lawyers for the Barclay brothers became closely involved. When I asked the Telegraph why the Barclay brothers were involved, it declined to comment. • This was the pivotal moment. From the start of 2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged. HSBC suspended its advertising with the Telegraph. Its account, I have been told by an extremely well informed insider, was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive told me, is “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”. HSBC today refused to comment when I asked whether the bank's decision to stop advertising with the Telegraph was connected in any way with the paper's investigation into the Jersey accounts.  • Winning back the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored after approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan was determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank. “He would express concern about headlines even on minor stories,” says one former Telegraph journalist. “Anything that mentioned money-laundering was just banned, even though the bank was on a final warning from the US authorities. This interference was happening on an industrial scale. • “An editorial operation that is clearly influenced by advertising is classic appeasement. Once a very powerful body know they can exert influence they know they can come back and threaten you. It totally changes the relationship you have with them. You know that even if you are robust you won’t be supported and will be undermined.” • When I sent detailed questions to the Telegraph this afternoon about its connections with advertisers, the paper gave the following response. "Your questions are full of inaccuracies, and we do not therefore intend to respond to them. More generally, like any other business, we never comment on individual commercial relationships, but our policy is absolutely clear. We aim to provide all our commercial partners with a range of advertising solutions, but the distinction between advertising and our award-winning editorial operation has always been fundamental to our business. We utterly refute any allegation to the contrary." • The evidence suggests otherwise, and the consequences of the Telegraph’s recent soft coverage of HSBC may have been profound. Would Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have been much more energetic in its own recent investigations into wide-scale tax avoidance, had the Telegraph continued to hold HSBC to account after its 2012 investigation? There are great issues here. They go to the heart of our democracy, and can no longer be ignored. • • OskarMatzerath • 2 days ago • Wow. A hearty 'well done' to you, sir. • • 
 
pretty_polly OskarMatzerath • a day ago 
Surely this is just massive hypocrisy by PO because he sweeps under the carpet anything he dislikes.......
Immigration related subjects in particular.

 
Mike Donnellan pretty_polly • a day ago 
I know what you mean and he does have his ups and downs but surely you can concede it takes a lot of courage to do what he's done? I see from the Guardian site that HSBC has put its advertising with them 'on pause', presumably in way of discouraging them from taking on Oborne like they have his former - and very waffly - colleague Matt D'Ancona so he's now effectively blacklisted himself.
I'm no great fan but I do hope he can find a highly visible home on another journal where his loyalty to his craft as a journalist means he can continue to 'out' these normally hidden, evil influences.

 
drgrumpy Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
I trust the grawn will go tell the corrupt and corrupting hsbc to go **** off.
 


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Mike Donnellan drgrumpy • a day ago 
I most certainly hope so!
Edit: and credit where credit's due, the Guardian was on HSBC's case as well. Though it sticks in my throat to say it, I might have to start perusing their rag as well :)
 
 
W.S.Becket Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
I think they are in a state worse than the Telegraph.

 
Seriously Spain W.S.Becket • a day ago 
LOL, No, they're not, Their online readership is through the roof. So much so, they've been expanding for the last couple of years.
 
 
Theraveda Seriously Spain • a day ago 
The Guardian is only kept afloat by revenues from Exchange & Mart,

 
Hemedal Theraveda • 16 hours ago 
The Guardian Media Group does not own E&M.
 
 
W.S.Becket Seriously Spain • a day ago 
So why have they just had to ask readers to stump of £500 (or was it £850) to keep the thing going. On-line readership counts for very little.
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Christopher Mooney W.S.Becket • a day ago 
Guardian makes tons from online traffic. Like the Daily Mail.
They'd both go out of business, on their print-only revenue
 


Rojo1972 Christopher Mooney • a day ago 
Are you mad? Have you actually seen the figures? The Guardian is bleeding money and the Mail online only makes a minute fraction of the profits of the print operation.
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Ben Good Rojo1972 • 18 hours ago 
What? "The Mail online only makes a minute fraction of the profits of the print operation" you are joking right? The Mail Online is one of the top WORLDWIDE websites in traffic and advertising revenue. The paper is just a bit of dust in the corner. *rolls eyes*
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James Eyre Rojo1972 • 12 hours ago 
Where are these figures?
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William Ashbless Christopher Mooney • 21 hours ago 
The Guardian used to have a reputation for journalism. It's now trash. They often print reports they know to be untrue.

 
John William Ashbless • 21 hours ago 
Such as?
 
 
Hemedal William Ashbless • 16 hours ago 
Which Guardian reports can you cite which a) were untrue and b) you can show the Guardian knew to be untrue?

 
Max Hodges Hemedal • 3 hours ago 
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Instead, the 52-year-old resident of Changwon city ended up being the victim of what many believe is a peek into a dystopian future in which supposedly benign robots turn against their human masters.
Justin surely knows that not "many" believe that.
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marqueemoons William Ashbless • 4 hours ago 
Still better than the Telegraph, then.
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abbadabbadoo Christopher Mooney • 17 hours ago 
Hay, I noted my mobile ad space is so stupid these days. They used to pick up on things I typed in otro outlets' silos and offer me coupons on Sheeba just for keystroking "MEOW!" Now the ad space seems more tuned to the topic of the story, not my latest shoe gallery. Who is that? GCHQ standing down or Google stepping up? Still sucks, TalkTalk.
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abbadabbadoo abbadabbadoo • 17 hours ago 
Seriously, admobsters, can you be more transparent? Need parental controls so you can claim you never intended to shame our nations by stealing peeks at our clicks? Verizon is claiming to increase road security...right. And now everyone wants to offer encryption services, Sorry, Two Lips, I keep mine shut. Go sell that racket to cheese land.
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abbadabbadoo Seriously Spain • 18 hours ago 
Been with them since the 2009 hacking scandal; they are starting to suck trying to pander to the digital market. Spinning on it is not my kind of advancement. Their media section, once an example to which I often pointed, looks and sounds much like the rest, now. Roy needs a rest.
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Christopher Mooney W.S.Becket • a day ago 
Oh behave
Guardian are so open, they publish Conservative leaning articles! Have you never read "comment is free"?
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chaswarnertoo Christopher Mooney • a day ago 
Aka comment macht frei. I'm proud to have been banned.
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chaswarnertoo Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
It's ok to peruse, just don't accept/ believe.😉
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abbadabbadoo Mike Donnellan • 18 hours ago 
Just when Roy's moral compass has lost its needle. He's still covering for the UK covering for Murdoch's violation of the FCPA which would have got the bum DEPORTED like Lucky Luciano, and thus without a US citizenship, Murdoch could not own FOX Broadcasting. He'd have to sell the network.
TheFisherman, he's one serious gladiator. Roy has gone to seed. He farms for Murdoch's cow because ALL telephony media outlets have bribed foreign governments and he thinks that's just ginchy, the grinch. Corruption, the essential ingredient to most media and banking these days.
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Hemedal Mike Donnellan • 16 hours ago 
"As well"? They broke the story.
 

 
Jingleballix drgrumpy • a day ago 
The Graun - doesn't need HSBC advertising because its own ad revenues are also corrupted.....
..........ever wonder why the BBC only advertise in Guardian? What about all the local and national governmental jobs? New Labour gave them a virtual monopoly. Want a teaching job? Buy the Guardian.
Guardian is receiving millions of public money - with a virtual monopoly on BBC and public sector job adverts.
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drgrumpy Jingleballix • a day ago 
The Grawn receives so much public sector spend because ... it delivers a sizeable public sector readership [and media readership] to those who wish to reach it. It's hard business on both sides. Whether or not there is also a concomitant signal of "political" alliance in the decision making process [about where to advertise jobs] I don't know.
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Ben Skipp Jingleballix • a day ago 
Actually the main source of teaching jobs isThe Times Educational Supplement and had been for decades 


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Robert Ireland Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
buahahahahaha hidden influences? try well over 40,000 years the same bloodlines running and owning all of us. Want to rot out the evil of this world, find them, exterminate them, before they exterminate US ALL.This man is principled in the education system which is only a brainwashing system to teach us what to think, with the real truth in writing hidden from us. Very, very few are even capable of seeing outside the Matrix. Fools. All of you bloody fools. Watch Television, film, listen to music, read the books they allow and you are completely theirs. The cord is not plugged into the back of our skulls, it's our own two eyes and two ears, since before we're even born. Good luck everyone thinking this man did any of us real service. He only stopped doing them theirs. roflol Every single reaction I have seen to this story is completely in keeping inside the box. Every single one. Pathetic.
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Mike Donnellan Robert Ireland • a day ago 
Out on day release from Broadmore? Your minder wants a bollocking for letting you get near a computer.
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Robert Ireland Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
too moronic to even comprehend that your emotional outburst is a direct consequence of your entire life being brainwashed into> YOU actually believing that was just your own thought. roflmao smh
 
 
Robert Ireland Robert Ireland • a day ago 
pathetic!
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oliraison Robert Ireland • a day ago 
Love the fact that you've just responded to your own comment with the word pathetic.
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Robert Ireland oliraison • a day ago 
love the fact you made my case for me and so far 23 others with you, roflol. 

 
silentstan Robert Ireland • a day ago 
indeed you are
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eric hardcastle Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
it's just another example of how Care in The Community has failed.
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Mignonette eric hardcastle • a day ago 
Please.....as a former MH professional, this kind of racist shit has little to do with mental illness and makes the lives of those with such problems even harder. I know people find it funny but could you consider not drawing such close parallels between the two in future?
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sungeipatani Mignonette • 20 hours ago 
Racist?
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Frankly Speaking Mignonette • 17 hours ago 
How is his comment racist?
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Robert Ireland eric hardcastle • a day ago 
funny thing happens when you turn off the Boob Tube, shred the paper into toilet sheets and read and research 8 or more hours daily instead of sitting in front of a box being told what you want and need. roflol You awaken to see yourself surrounded by literally millions of brainwashed people. Here's a prime example for you all. I will bet bottom dollar most of you still believe cannabis is 1. a narcotic and 2. kills brain cells. Fact, delta-9 Tetrahyrdocannibinol that so called dangerous narcotic has been found in several scientific studies to produce undifferentiated glial stem cells which are then turned into 3 different types of brain cells. YEAH, I bet this rag of a paper kept you well informed about that one and the fact it is the living Biblical Tree of Life. That it extends life in near perfect health. Taken through the food chain people are living well into their 90s with virtually zero disease factors throughout life and their communities, micro-communities. In one particular community, where they consume only the seeds directly, the community's members live well into their 110s and even into their 120s with, again, virtually zero disease factors throughout their lives. Never mind, it is now showing to cure most of our worst nightmare diseases and was already know by Queen Victoria's doctor to cure both gonorrhea and rabies, not just menstrual cramps. yeah, so much for your informing media. That acre for acre it produces over 1800 gallons of fuel grade oil which burns no carbon. while alive it absorbs over 4 times more CO2 ans SO2, while releasing over 4 times more O2 than a forest the same size. It produces a superior quality fiber than cotton, a composite 12 times stronger and lighter than steel. It effectively means to end of big oil, forestry, pharma, medicine and more. Yeah call me crazy, but you are all still brianwashed and pathetic. In another five years each and every detractor here will be eating their own words. I will still be laughing and waiting for you morons to catch up with real facts, which thus far not one single detractor has bothered to present on contra-pose. Instead relying on ad hominems. What form. Each and every social and environmental issue being debated today has its roots in a trail of money, leading to the bloody retarded and psychopathic rich and you do their bidding for them, earning not one red cent for the effort while they work YOU to death and laugh all the way to the banks they own and through which they own every single one of you, lock stock and barrel, mind, body and soul. want to know who is crazy? Look up. Look up into your own sky and see the trails for which over 53 contracts were negotiated to spray down on us. look at your food that is 1/2 as nutritious as it was in 1950, before they sold everyone on petrochemical and radioactive farming. look at your schools and the idiots it created in you. Does any of you know what happens with the now being pushed Omega Fats? Omega 3 is the precursor of anandamide, the endocannabinoid which d-9 THC mimimics and is active on every one of the thus far 15 cannabinoid specific receptors discovered on the 210 cell types each of our bodies have. You fools haven't a clue you are even being lied to on such a massive scale it is incredulous once you see it and will take you literally years, if not your entire lives to undo. smh Your insults all only lend credence to my message. Moronic and pathetic slaves. oh, the racist comment, really? You might have want of a dictionary. No one spoke of race, save yourself. every continent has on average a 200 mile submerged ancient coast line, the very place earlier civilizations are being found, as well as pyramids on every continent, most numbering far in excess of what is found in Egypt. Dating alone in Bosnia proves many of the structures were built over 30,000 years ago, at least 22,000 years before their first claimed civilizations. Seemingly the earlier the build, the larger and more exotic the materials. Not one mummy has been found inside them and tunnels connecting them all, indicating they were being used for something we have not either discovered or is also not being told. yeah, keep believing the news services and keep believing your government schools. roflol Pathetic. Has any of you read Dr. Julian Jayne's dissertation titled, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind? I highly doubt most of you could sit through it. Stupid always points at intelligence as crazy. Always. Enlightened ones always intimidate the minds that are weak. I am used to this behavior as I am at their eating crow with months to a few years and looks like you are all next as notches on my bed post, roflmao I can give you a list of well over 500 diseases and disorders whole plant cannabis oil extract (decarboxylated) can already cure. Has this rag informed you of that? NO. It is coming and you will remember it was said by a man you chose to insult. Here for you is a prophecy given me. It was written there were 4 and after the flood only 3 remained. It is here, waiting to be found, you only need seek it and it will be discovered, soon. In it is longevity of 1,000 years. 1,000 years in near perfect health. Prove me wrong. In cannabis are over 400 more compounds already in certain scientific communities being hailed as essential nutrients, 10 times more than you have been told and still get diseased for want of. Nutrients in at least two distinctly new classes and vitamins A, C (a terpene), D2, E and K1 and K2, all now being reclassified as cannabinoids themselves. Yeah, this informative truthful rag is just another government operation. now taken over by american operatives. Prove me wrong on any of this, on the merits or just stfu and go home and accept you are completely brainwashed until brain dead. roflmao DUH.
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ebsln Robert Ireland • 19 hours ago 
"That acre for acre it produces over 1800 gallons of fuel grade oil which burns no carbon. while alive it absorbs over 4 times more CO2 ans SO2, while releasing over 4 times more O2 than a forest the same size." I don't understand how a plant that absorbs carbon dioxide (as of course they all do) would not release that carbon when burned.
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Rhys ebsln • 18 hours ago 
"I don't understand how a plant that absorbs carbon dioxide (as of course they all do) would not release that carbon when burned."
Plants have a 'net zero carbon footprint' (or are carbon neutral) when burned as the only carbon dioxide they release is carbon dioxide they've already absorbed. Fossil fuels just produce more carbon when burned and add to the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.
Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
GCSE Science
Rob's a raving loony, but he's right on that one.
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Robert Ireland Rhys • 16 hours ago 
even after proving me right, you STILL went to the emotion you were taught to connect it to. I discovered this quite by happenstance one day at a friends when their son was watching old reruns of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series. The dialog was so rife with adult language and themes, from violence to sexual assault, literally, when Boris tied Natasha to the rail tracks stating what he wanted to do to her. We watched these as children, unknowningly learning emotional reactions to real life situations at the most innocent time of our lives. This language meant nothing to the child, it didn't understand the double meanings. I froze in place when I realized many of the exact phrases I would use in a similar situation were learned from that show when I was 2, 3 and 4 years old. Back then we were only allowed about 3 hours of television, if we had one at all, Today it is non-stop. Then I decided to look at more cartoons, looney toons predominantly, and again the very same things. I was floored. Immediately comprehending what I was seeing happening.
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trentender Robert Ireland • 10 hours ago 
anyone else not at all surprised that the guy who wrote the essay about the benefits of cannabis (on a thread related to HSBC and the Telegraph?!?!) is apparently suffering from the advanced stages of weed psychosis?
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CaptDMO Rhys • 14 hours ago 
Gosh, where did the carbon in those fossil fuels come from? 
Same "net zero", it's just an exponential time lag over 
plants harvested yesterday.
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Frankly Speaking Robert Ireland • 17 hours ago 
Can you calm down a bit and explain in layman's terms your comment, and it's implication that -
"Does any of you know what happens with the now being pushed Omega Fats? Omega 3 is the precursor of anandamide, the endocannabinoid which d-9 THC mimimics and is active on every one of the thus far 15 cannabinoid 
specific receptors discovered on the 210 cell types each of our bodies have"
Thank you.
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Templar Robert Ireland • 15 hours ago 
I like weed too.
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MC73 Mike Donnellan • a day ago 
Better a computer than something pointy though, eh?