WHO DETERMINES YOUR INFORMATION NEEDS? and ALONG THE CLIFF-THE WEEKENDER

SNOOPING IN THE NEWSROOM

     Have you followed the firestorm of comment about a proposed FCC study into newsroom decision making?  It's off! The FCC has junked the idea, as it should be.

       The concept, introduced late last year, was stupid for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was wrong. No one, no government agency, no consumer advocacy group, no corporate sponsor, no dunderheaded general manager or broadcast division ceo, no one should be involved in editorial, coverage, or content decision making except journalists and news personnel.  That is not because we are sainted with divine knowledge or know more about social good. No, in fact we can and have made poor decisions, but the right to make those decisions, in a nation where freedom of the press is constitutional, is the role of the press.  Over the long haul of American history, journalistic decisions have been more often right than wrong and more often in the public interest than against it.

       To work properly, the press needs to be free from interference of any sort.  Now we can argue about how well the press functions today, but that is an entirely different discussion. Still, the judgements made about what you read, see or hear from the news media need to emanate from a process that honors and hews to standards and judgements that are based on canons and codes of journalism and not from outside forces.  Historically we have been well served by the system, if not perfectly.

        Aside from the constitutional issue, there was the Orwellian level absurdity of the idea that a study could determine your, mine, or any one's "information needs"? Yes, we may have desires, curiosities and even a need for information, but in the beauty of this democratic republic the specifics of such are based on individual choices and lives. Community needs? Who determines "community?" 

        For a survey to try to ascertain "needs" and then measure or analyze how those "needs" were being met by newsroom decision making just opens so many trap doors on what is supposed to be a constitutionally protected process as to be fitting of a Paddy Chayefsky and/or George Orwell world. Or  even more fittingly a Stalinist or Hitlerian world of gulags and camps where offending journalists and readers are taught what happens to people who think for themselves or who dare to have "information needs" other than those proscribed by Big Brother or who may be in a "community" that is not sanctioned or deemed worthy or out of favor. See the hellish rat hole that ensues?

      This weekend I suspect liberals, conservatives, libertarians and anarchists can bang beer mugs, wine or cocktail glasses with real journalists in toasting the end of a bad idea. Here is an issue on which all of our tribes can agree. One less idiot idea, trotted out by a mindless Federal agency without serious forethought or consideration of implication. Free is free-even if you don't like what you see, hear or read. To the First-Cheers!

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

        You can read the latest post from Tim Cavenaugh here.  He first broke the story on the CIN. 

   

ALONG THE CLIFF

      On the way back I noted the additional message on the back of the Danger-Warning sign.

    Differing "community needs" maybe?

      See you down the trail.

TRICK SHOTS AND TRICKY CALLS & HOPE

TRICK SHOT

   If you care to, comment as to how this shot is a bit of a trick.

THE WORST KIND OF TRICK SHOT

       Iranian television's altering of Michelle Obama provides a frightening visual of what happens when religious zealots or right wing fundamentalists, in this case Islamists, have power.  

    Certainly they, or anyone else, are entitled to hold their view of what is proper, even if others regard that view as being archaic or repressive. However, it is the dishonesty and distortion of reality I find repugnant and evil. It would have been more honest to simply insert a large black spot over her exposed skin than to fabricate a gown.  Both are stupid, but at least the one measure is honest, as if to say, as your moral guardians and police we have determined that to protect, we will not permit you to see reality.

    American networks use a beep tone when they bleep what someone considers to be offensive language. That action and motivation is another discussion sometime, but for today it is enough to know the heavy handedness is at least played out in an honest fashion. It is a modest nod to  notions of honesty, though censorship of any sort is the work of tyrants. 

A CASE FOR THE COURT

     Are you watching the Supreme Court's action on whether  police can take DNA samples?

     Justice Alito says it is the "most important procedural case in decades."  

     While noting its efficacy in solving cases Justice Scalia compares it to "unreasonable search."

     Justice Ginsberg worries about the 4th Amendment which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures and requires judicial warrants and basis of probable cause.

     The preliminaries on the DNA case strikes me as an irony, coming at a time when the court ruled 5-4 to not permit challenges to the Federal Government's expanding  power to monitor your international phone calls and emails.

      It is part of the expansion of tools to fight terrorism and comes with less candor on government policies and powers, less access to those records and no challenge to the underpinning laws. 

FEBRUARY GREEN 

     Hope these images bolster those of you caught in winter's icy or snowy grip.  Spring has begun on the west coast.  She'll head your way soon.

WAITING TO BLOOM

     See you down the trail.

DID TWITTER COMMIT SUICIDE? & BIG KIDS AT RECESS

NEWS FROM THE FRONT LINE

OF THE INFORMATION WARS

It's probably a result of my decades in journalism,

broadcasting and documentary production,

but I'm super sensitive when there are 

rumblings in the "force," that is

communications and information flow.
Veteran readers may recall a couple of 
posts that shook up a few people-
Posting (link here) about the convenience of algorithms and a kind of "thought control."  
Or about the danger of cyber crime
Read the post by linking here.
Now a new battle line has been drawn.
Here's the Forbes blog on what has set off many recriminations.


Twitter Commits Social Suicide
By Mark Gibbs, Forbes
27 January 12
Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.
ith those words earlier today, in a blog posting titled "Tweets still must flow" the management ofTwitter's went over to the dark side and may well have dug their own grave
In what can only have been a fit of corporate insanity, Twitter announced that it has the ability to filter tweets to conform to the demands of various countries.
Thus, in France and Germany it is illegal to broadcast pro-Nazi sentiments and Twitter will presumably be able to block such content and inform the poster why it was blocke
Quite obviously, Twitter's management believes that there is some kind of value in being able to filter in this way but given that, over the course of 2011, the number of tweets per second (tps) ranged from a high of almost 9,000 tps down to just under 4,000 tps, any filtering has got to be computer-driven.
So, consider this tweet:
@FactsorDie Nazi Germany led the first public anti-smoking campaign.
Could that be considered to be pro-Nazi? How will a program accurately make that determination?
What concerns me is that if the algorithm Twitter uses registers a false positive (i.e. determines that the tweet is pro-Nazi when it isn't) and the tweet has any time sensitivity to it then that attribute will be completely nullified by the time the tweet makes it out of tweet-jail if it ever does.
On the other hand if the software makes a false negative (i.e. determines that the tweet is NOT pro-Nazi when it is) then the filtering is useless and Twitter will be held accountable by every political group with an axe to grind.
Now it might be argued that some percentage of false positives or false negatives will be acceptable but what is that percentage? 0.0000o01%? That equates, at a minimum of 4,000tps, to 3,456 misclassified tweets per day or 1,261,440 per year!
And will the filtering software be able to detect irony and sarcasm? I rather doubt it.
And what about the fact that Twitter will be implicitly editing all tweets? Doesn't that attract legal issues in that they are taking on an editorial responsibility and therefore become a lightning rod for lawsuits?
I see Twitter's management having made a huge epic, mistake. In trying to appease the demands of political pressure they've dug themselves a huge hole that they won't be able to climb out of. The mere fact that they have published a blog posting claiming that they can filter seals their fate.
I really like Twitter; it's a unique and amazingly rich social platform but Twitter's management may have just diminished if not wiped out their edge and their global relevance.
You can't service all of humanity if you allow the needs of politics to triumph over the needs of the people. And if you can't service all of humanity, what is your relevance?

What do you think?
It is certainly a different world from when most information flowed from major news gathering organizations dedicated to the proposition of the public's right to know and adamant about the First Amendment. That was of course a time before news organizations were expected to be profit centers and before mergers and group ownership of once competing media.  And certainly before the sophistication of data mining and social media.


DAY BOOK
ANOTHER FLASH MOB BIRTHDAY 
AND THE OLD SCHOOL HOUSE GETS A NEW CUPOLA.

The historic San Simeon school has been spiffed up.

While the Friday Lunch Flash Mob has grown to 4 tables.

 With the tradition of a candle in the chocolate chip cookie continues.

It's like big kids at recess!
See you down the trail.

ABSOLUTE

FREEDOM & COMMUNICATION
On first amendment issues, I am an absolutist.
Congress can not make laws prohibiting the
freedom of religion, speech, press or the right to assemble
to petition government for a redress of grievances.
If Congress can not prohibit those freedoms,
then no one, certainly not a commercial enterprise,
can.  Which makes what appears to be a Yahoo based
censorship program wrong. It is maddening and frustrating
in this age when we rely on communication platforms.
There is every indication that is what Yahoo was doing
with people who were trying to communicate from
the Wall Street protest demonstrations.
Here is video of what appears to be Yahoo's censorship.

Here's background on the story.
Look for updates on the story.
In this cyber age when speech and communiclation
are relayed via information platforms, we need to be
vigilant that our freedoms remain intact and 
are not encroached upon by powerful commercial
interests, who in essence control mediums of communication.
Reference an earlier post here on the new form of 
thought police. 
These are challenging times and we must not allow
disregard or lack of care to undermine what is much
too valuable to a representative democracy. 
DAY BOOK
JUST SNACKIN' AND NAPPIN'

See you down the Trail.