So who's telling the journalistic truth about Palestinian journalists?

Mondoweiss, the Dissident and others have excoriated Committee to Protect Journalists for removing certain Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza from their list of journalists.

CPJ has responded in a Twitter thread. 

Before I get into the details, two notes.

One, not all Palestinian journalists have been removed by CPJ. Only those who were affiliated, officially, with Hamas or Palestinian Jihad, and actually in combat, it says in that thread.

Two, has CPJ removed any Israeli journalists in the past? It says it has removed three when they were "not on assignment" when killed. No further information provided.

Third? Wiki's page on CPJ notes controversy a couple of years ago when it killed its Global Impunity Index. On the other hand? A link there from Arab News notes that CPJ has previously cited international organizations that call what's happening in Gaza a genocide? 

So, it's complicated.

Would the allegations have been made with a different executive director than the Jewish Jodie Ginsburg? I don't know. There are a few people with Jewish-appearing names on its board, but plenty without. And, Dave Marash, one of its advisors, once worked for Al-Jazeera English, albeit while leaving two years later, but then defending it again three years after that.

Otherwise, you have a modest set of board members of advisors outside the Anglosphere. Julie Owono, from Cameroon and France, is executive of Internet without Borders. On the other hand, she's been on Meta's, aka Facebook's, Oversight Board since it was created in 2020 and so should be seen as at least potentially a Western sellout. Otherwise, there's Phil Chetwynd, news director of Agence-France Press and himself British, and Italian national Alessandra Galloni of Reuters, the board has zero presence outside the Anglosphere, and about zero presence outside of traditional-ish media outlets.

The issue is complicated, in other words.

That said, the CPJ has opened the door for Zionist liars to claim that Israel doesn't kill journalists. I reminded them of Shireen Abu Akleh. 

And that that said, in relation to that, CPJ has opened the door for Israel to redouble its "shoot first, ask questions later" about Palestinian journalists. The Mondoweiss piece notes that basically EVERY Israeli journalist has had IDF service. The rare exception, if there is one, would be an ultra-Orthodox Jew who dodged the draft. 

Life is full of shades of gray. This is one of them. I oppose the genocide in Gaza and note that CPJ has called it out. I wish they had provided more information about the three Israeli journalists and why they were removed; it might have quieted some critics. But, CPJ appears to be being consistent, setting aside concerns about the Global Impunity Index.

The latest Texas Observer #fail — Bellingcat

That would be, per this piece, pairing with Bellingcat.

For the unawares, Bellingcat is, contra how the Observer describes it, a Cold War 2.0 and Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ facilitator. See this Mark Ames Tweet, for example. Or see this retweet by Ames, noting that Bellingcat has gone radio-silent over Gaza. Wiki glosses over most of the challenges to Bellingcat reporting. Shock me; in related news, Wiki also glosses over Alexei Navalny's alt-right nationalism, Islamophobia and more.  Update, March 1: Per this Ames Tweet, yep, Bellingcat hunting down left-wing German grannies instead of talking about Gaza is a hoot. Yes, per the NYT story, Daniella Klett was a fugitive. But, she'd done nothing in 40 years. Bellingcat could have bigger fish to fry if it wanted. And, a response Tweet to Ames notes that Bellingcat employs an ex-Stasi agent.

On Bellingcat in general? Read this for more. Even the New Republic notes that Bellingcat gets money from The National Endowment for Democracy, for doorknob's sake.

Was the Southern Poverty Law Center and its oft-overinflated (and pimped out) claims of "X is a hate group" not available as a reporting partner?

I would repeat the old joke about Bernard Rapoport turning over in his grave over the Observer, but that's been used by me so often that he would have bedspins. (Also, I don't know, vis-a-vis the Ames retweet, if he was a Zionist or not.)

Update, March 2: Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat has now blocked me, so, I can't, via Jeet Heer, see just how bad of hasbara he's spouting:

I remember when the hasbara was better. They're not even trying anymore. https://t.co/nKCvUmi9h5

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 2, 2024

There you go, if you can see it.

"Congrats" to the Observer, and any staffers who follow this blog still, or follow me on Twitter.

Let me add that an Internet search shows that MANY organizations besides Bellingcat have written about, and researched, the "Active Club movement." My comparison to the Southern Poverty Law Center didn't just come out of nowhere.

And, one Observer staffer who had followed me on Twitter, and perhaps was a follower of this blog by RSS? Editor-in-chief Gabriel Arana is now "the former," allegedly to help the Observer as it still loses money, and being replaced by fundraising staff apparently paid off what was his salary. Well, hs salary and two other editorial staff also canned. They were explicitly canned to free up money for fundraising staff. The first piece hints at unspecified additional reasons for Arana getting the boot. The two other staffers have spoken in support of the Observer. At the time, at least. Arana had radio silence. More in a separate post. That is now up. And, I wonder if wrangling over the Bellingcat partnership is part of what led Arana to get the boot.

George Polk Awards #fail

This:

The award for Foreign Reporting goes to the staff of The New York Times for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas

— George Polk Awards (@PolkAwards) February 19, 2024

Is all you need to know. (Well, if you dno't already know the actual facts in the responses, you need to know them too, of course.)

Well, yes, it gets worse. Read this thread by Zei Squirrel.

Is it any wonder that most people don't trust the MSM on many issues, nor their guardians and puffers? (Usually, with wingnuts, the mistrust is for the wrong reasons on the wrong issues, but they have mistrust too.)

The reality, per those responses, is that the Slimes, which truly lives up to that nickname in this case, has  been a reliable hasbara mouthpiece.

Waiting for CJR and Jay Rosen to do some self-reporting

 Columbia Journalism Review is often a very good overseer over what's what in today's media world.

But, it's not perfect, as I've blogged about more than once. That includes earlier this year noting that it went down a post-truth rabbit hole over COVID, had claimed last year that early-days Voice of America did NOT engage in propaganda, had language non-maven Merrill Perlman commit a paired doozy of etymological-related errors and ... that's not all.

In 2019, I accused it of pulling its punches on Zionism issues. Long ago, I issued a shark-jumping accusation about its bromance for I Fucking Love Science. 

Some of those aren't too bad, but some are. The VOA and Zionism ones in particular are serious.

And, it's getting dinged again, and will further in the future if it doesn't write about its own journalism school's massive grifting at the master's level, and that's per the journalism school's own website, via part of a Slate story on master's-degree grifting in general. Slate, in turn, referenced a Wall Street Journal piece on MFA programs in general.

First, the first degree offered? Laughable, and laughable for even more reasons than Slate lists.

NO master's degree in journalism should be an MS rather than an MA. Journalism ain't a science. Period and end of story.

OK, now, the stuff that Slate did list, starting with that More Shitty degree.

NO "master's degree" should be a nine and one-half month project. Period. But, as Slate notes, there's little regulation for what lipstick you can paint on something and call it a master's degree.

Third, $80K for tuition and "fees" which probably aren't itemized is laughable even with NYC costs of living.

BUT! Per the WSJ piece, if you're running low on money, university president Lee Bollinger will hire you as a dog walker. No, really!

But, it's not just Columbia.

Across town, at NYU, home of media critic Rosen, the WSJ piece notes a master's in publishing had enrolled students with an average debt of $116K and income of $42K. The piece was July 8 and as of 10 days later, bupkis on Rosen's Twitter feed.

And, Rosen, I've kicked you in the past, too, most recently over naivete on ideas for COVID coverage. Long before that, I kicked his ass for kissing Yascha Mounk's tuchis. And, long ago, we had Rosen the paywall hater.

In reality? Rosen and CJR ain't biting the hand that feeds them while impoverishing students. (CJR and the individuals involved in the past have never offered the slightest apology.)

Dear newspaper publishers: About those legal notices

Yes, I know many of the reasons state legislatures continue to entertain, and to sometimes pass, laws allowing local governments to avoid posting legal notices in their newspapers of record are far less than pristine. In many cases, the local governments as well as the legiscritters are perfectly fine with hiding away such information.

(Then you have schizophrenic, in its non-technical, "split personality" use, bodies like the Texas Legislature. Here in Tex-ass, the Lege will entertain, every other year, in our banana republic not-every-year body, bills to kill public notice. UNLESS it's for setting local tax rates. In that case, the Lege has EXPANDED public notice requirements over the last decade. They call it "truth in taxation," but what it really is, is trying to egg on local wingnuts to file rollback elections and other stuff.)

But, I digress.

With fewer and fewer people reading print newspapers, local governments argue back, "why should we have to pay for print notifications?" Some would just want to post it on their city, county, or school district websites (and probably eighty-six it if they could). Others, more honestly, would argue that posting on a website for a newspaper meets requirements of getting out of local government, while still saving money and potentially addressing more people.

That argument's not all wrong.

And, some local governments might argue that their local publisher wants to nickel and dime them, or even gouge them.

And, THAT argument's not all wrong.

I've seen one arguable "gouging" and a couple of "nickel and dimings."

As newspaper budgets and revenue for many of them get tighter, publishers are going to more and more start running the risk of clutching the public notice brood of eggs so tightly that they smash it.

CJR falls into its own post-truth rabbit hole

Michael Schudson, a Columbia journalism prof, no less, and his PhD student, I presume, Jueni Duyen Tran, have an overall good article at Columbia Journalism Review about whether and how much the media should have explicitly called Donald Trump a liar. (Their argument is that because Trump is indeed often detached from reality, "lie/liar" actually shouldn't be used that often.)

But, re Trump and his reaction to the coronavirus, and his many lies and reality field distortions on this, about halfway down the piece we have:

Similarly, in September 2020, as Bob Woodward published his book Rage and along with it recordings of his interviews with Trump, revealing that the president had knowingly downplayed the pandemic throughout the early months of 2020, the L-word was noticeably absent from the Times’ reporting. In several articles, the paper observed that the president “privately understood how deadly the coronavirus really was even as he was telling the public the opposite.” This qualifies as “lying”—even if, as might be argued in this case, there could have been good reason to lie to avoid contributing to a public panic.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. 

This is journalistic malpractice, to put it bluntly. Journalism should NEVER co-sign the old Platonic noble lie. And, we have non-Trumpian evidence of that in the past year.

As noted elsewhere, specifically with Fauci, Platonic noble lies almost always get outed. In Fauci's case, it's led wingnuts to quote Fauci against Fauci. 

That said, as per my Merrill Perlman post that's often been the featured post here, this is not the first foul ball from CJR.

Florida journalists' group slouches toward Gomorrah AND irrelevance

Emily Bloch and other members of the Florida Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists have hatched a true Bizarro World idea: Trademark the words "fake news" so that Trump can't use them.

First, that's not how trademarks work in general. I can say "Coca Cola" any time I want, as long as it's not monetized commercial speech that infringes on a trademark.

Second, political speech (including non-verbal speech) is recognized as having extra rights in things like this. Since Trump IS president, that would give him more protection yet.

Third, contra her claim that it's "uncertain" that the Patent and Trademark Office will grant this, I can say it's almost CERTAIN it will NOT. Google four words: "Taco Tuesday" and "LeBron James."

Fourth, this clearly violates at least the spirit of the First Amendment. Beyond it being hare-brained, it's unethical and unprofessional. It's a sad state of affairs that she roped an entire chapter of the SPJ into this stupidity.

Ms. Bloch, per her bio, has contributed to Teen Vogue, among other things. This sounds about that level of thought. I mean, the story is posted on Teen Vogue. That's something that calls itself a "magazine," isn't it?

Worse yet, at a time when ever more Americans are willing to fold, spindle and mutilate the First Amendment, and especially among youth, giving them this mental swill as intellectual feeding is more unethical yet IMO.

I Tweeted — two delayed via TweetDeck — on three themes:
1. The general nutteryness
2. The LeBron/Taco Tuesday angle
3. The not understanding trademark law.

Florida SPJ responded ... with Bloch liking the Tweet, which doubled down on what's essentially a clickbait angle.

Thanks for weighing in! As we’ve explained multiple times, across multiple platforms: We wanted to start a conversation and share resources about how to be critical about what is and isn’t news. We’re glad to have done so. Learn more at https://t.co/tEtOlGIzPs

— SPJ Florida (@SPJFla) October 24, 2019

To which I fired back:

As many journos have weighed in on #FakeNews 4 mths/years, you cld have done much better IMO. Re yr website, I start w/ MediaBias FactCheck to examine websites with which I'm unfamiliar, then go from there. W/in media, I don't always trust Politifact et al https://t.co/zGb92JBlC8

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 24, 2019

Beyond clickbait, the one other thing I think of is related to that — it's a membership recruitment tool. I'm sure that at anything below larger-level dailies, individual memberships in groups such as SPJ has continued to drop along with flatlined or dropping salaries.

Is Julian Assange a journalist?

I promised in my initial post about Assange's arrest on my primary blog that I would address this further. And here we are.

A simple answer is two words: "Yes, but ..."

And, that's with everything implied by folk psychology tropes by adding "but" after the "yes."

So, I'm going to break that out more, with a nutgraf of sorts kept down at the bottom.

So, here we go ...

Journalists don't just seek out, gather and collate information.

They analyze it.

Then they write about it.

Assange did little of the analysis or writing work even with the initial information he got from Chelsea Manning, when he had much greater degrees of freedom of space, time, and working space than he does now.

Writers, and even more, editors, make judgment calls with information they receive. Some of those judgments are whether the material is true or not. Others are whether it would be harmful to release some of it.

I think Glenn Greenwald, for whatever reasons, has gone overboard on what Edward Snowden information he and Laura Poitras have chosen not to release, but, they have made a judgment call. I think they went way beyond just going overboard when they yanked the rights to the Snowden information from the eyes of everybody but themselves — ie, no Guardian, no Intercept, etc. Frankly,  wouldn't be surprised if Ken Silverstein is right and the Russkies honeypotted Snowden but that's another story.

Assange? In the past, at a point after his working space freedom started to close up but was not that tight, made decisions to dump information without redactions, and in the case of some Afghanistan material, was rightly criticized for an endangerment factor.

That's just one issue. As Wikipedia's page on Wikileaks notes, it's released Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and more. With basically no effort at redaction.

In short, he's as much a sub-Redditor as he is a journalist.

I also said in my initial piece on the actual "yes," that to the degree it's true, he's actually like a Beltway steno in reverse in some way. He's an opiner, not a news writer, to the degree we consider him a journalist, by what he gathers, and what he solicits. I've already, along with others, criticized him for not seeking and encouraging leakers inside places like Russia and China. I've criticized more his response to that initial criticism. Today, Russia has a home-grown version of something like Wikileaks — no thanks to Assange.

I can't prove what's behind that. But, between that, and his likely lies about the source of the initial round of 2016 DNC emails — that VERY likely source being Russians, whether or not on paper officially connected to the Russian government and not a DNC employee — Assange is at least open to the charge that he deliberately refused, for clandestine reasons, to help get a Russian version of Wikileaks started. Countervailing that would be the idea that if Assange was hands-on, on getting such a movement started, even with alleged anonymity, he could turn people in.

(That said, this is a good spot for a side note.

For all the people not only (rightly) denying Russiagate, but claiming Russia can basically do no wrong? I'm thinking of the specific issue of the claim that the Internet Research Agency has no direct connection to the Russian government. Big fucking deal on a nothingburger claim. China says the same thing all the time about its Red Army hacker squads.)

Counterpunch publisher Jeff St. Clair here has the number of not only Assange, but of people like that, and of the people who believe them:

I think Julian Assange's lowest moment was his inculcation of the Seth Rich conspiracy in some of the more credulous precincts of the Left. The strangest part of the affair is that if the preposterous Rich conspiracy had proved true, it meant that Assange would have outed his source.

Now, the likes of Mark Ames and Aaron Mate haven't signed off on Seth Richism, just the IRA type stuff. But, I do Google from time to time.

When Assange, or Wikileaks as its mouthpiece, HAS made editorial judgment calls, sometimes they've been off the wall. Like criticizing the leak of the Panama Papers.

Here? I suspect 190-proof red-eyed jealousy at work — as one motive.

Another? I'm still not ready to call him a Russian agent, but the Panama Papers' attacks on Russian businessmen (Mafiyya, let's be honest) is another reason Assange attacked their release, claiming the U.S. government was behind this, which is nonsense. Ken Silverstein had done some work on Mossack Fonseca even before the main Panama Papers leak and I KNOW he's not a government agent.

And? Vlad the Impaler Putin himself cited Wikileaks in fighting to defend Russkies with likely government ties. Again, Assange may not be a Russian agent, but he has certainly left himself open to accusations of such.

Jealousy is not a one-off issue with Assange, either. Edward Snowden was among those who criticized Assange for not sufficiently curating and editing leaked materials, and Assange claimed Snowden was pandering to Hillary Clinton.

Good journalists also have good ethics. In promoting the totally base and vile Seth Rich conspiracy theory, primarily to try to cover up that the initial DNC emails came from a Russian hack, Assange has shown his lack of ethics and his willingness to outrightly lie. (Given that nobody — not Assange, Patrick Lawrence, Adam Carter or anybody else that I know of — has tried to explicitly claim that the spearphishing attack that got the later emails was not Russian-done, why the lie was engaged in was perplexing, too, and remains so.)

And, related, Silverstein thinks Snowden, if not originally a Russian agent, got compromised at some point, so who knows?

Wikipedia also raises the issue of whether or not Assange is anti-Semitic. First, to the Assange nutbar fanbois, I know well myself the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and the use of the latter as a weapon against people calling out the former. As with Russian agent questions, at a minimum, I think Assange has left himself open to anti-Semitism claims.

And, per Andrew Stewart at Washington Babylon, Assange is definitely anti-feminist, which ties back to his troubles in Sweden (which have now been opened legally AGAIN!) He's also, weirdly but openly, anti-atheist, at least on Tweets that Stew collated. And his call for more births in Europe make him come off a bit like an Anders Breivik, or other white nationalists in Europe and America. If this is journalism, it's op-ed journalism.

Assange is also an idiot at times. In the link above, I mentioned his previous issues with lack of password protection. His belief that Trump would give him a pardon or something for all the DNC leaks further shows this idiocy. By the way, to riff on Janice Joplin, schadenfreude is just another word for someone else who arrogantly still has plenty to lose.

Journalism is also a collaborate effort in some way. Even at a small community newspaper, the managing editor will bounce ideas off other staff. A publisher will be a check, if the editor doesn't voluntarily include the publisher in his or her advisors.

Assange is managing editor and publisher all in one, with a sycophantic, perhaps even cowering, editorial board, even if Kristinn Hrafnsson is listed as editor in chief.

Journalism is an art or a craft, not a science. It will always have a demarcation problem, per philosopher friend Massimo Pigliucci and his writings (in the sciences) on demarcation issues.

I wouldn't put Assange outside the bounds of journalism. But I would put him in the borderlands.

And I'm comfortable with saying that.

And if we stopped calling him a journalist, I'd be OK with that, too. We don't call Snowden one, nor has he ever presented himself as one. And, that's that buried nutgraf.

So, why IS Assange a journalist, if he is one, and Snowden is not? Is it anything other than Assange having an organized backing behind him and Snowden not? Is it Assange-generated PR related to that?

Here's option three — we call Wikileaks a journalistic organization but don't call Assange a journalist. For my personal value, this has the petard-hoisting factor of, on paper, forcing Hrafnsson and others to defend Wikileaks separately from defending Assange.

Things all kerfuffled in Marlin, Texas

It hurt somewhat to give two weeks' notice at the Marlin Democrat because I saw things that ... as I've told people, and within limits of some non-disclosure paperwork — I didn't feel comfortable with.

It felt more uncomfortable when my two weeks' notice was shortened. (I and the person making the call shortening it will use different words for what happened. I'll leave it at that.) 

It felt uncomfortable and hurt to see people in Marlin, before I prepared to move back to my previous job, see me around town not knowing I was no longer at the Democrat.

But, as I said, I "felt uncomfortable." Let's leave it at that. I've already talked to at least one person on the phone and said that was enough to share publicly.

Directly or indirectly, the Democrat will be back under the control of the Hearne folks, from all I know. That's not going to change. How much some of the things I learned after I moved back to Marlin and that made me uncomfortable will continue — for those who have heard about such things or maybe even been a victim of – I don't know.

The possibility of not being able to fix things like that — not editorial things such as writing, page layout, editing, etc. — was my primary area of discomfort.

I perhaps could have known more about some of the things that made me feel uncomfortable when I was looking for housing in Marlin, and changed my mind at that time about taking the job and moving.

I don't want to say too much more.

I've already been accused of attacking Hearne people. If saying "I don't know why they didn't want to run club news, but I will again" is attacking, so be it.

People who know me from when I was here before, or want to ask people from when I was here before, I hope still trust my word. You might not have agreed on my take on matters of opinion on local political and cultural issues in the past, but I hope nothing personal resulted from that.

As I said when I returned to Marlin, I just wanted to move forward.

I still want what's best for Marlin's future.

In fact, before I left, I told people that I'd come back to Marlin again for the right position, or at least to the Marlin area (Waco) and do what I could to boost the Marlin community.

Obviously, that job would not be as publisher of the Democrat under current ownership.

Nor, respectfully put, would it be as publisher of the Democrat under one possible alternative owner. I heard about that, and no, I don't think that would be the best possible owner.

But, if the hospital or the school district needed a PR person, or somebody in Waco or Temple needed similar? I"m there. Obviously, once I decided that I felt uncomfortable, and that I didn't think I could get more comfortable in my current circumstances, this is America and a guaranteed job of OK pay, even with the hassle of the re-move, was certainly better than nothing.

I am not joking coming back to that area for the right position, though.

Obviously, removed from Marlin again, there's not too much I can do. I may pass on an email address associated with this blog to a few people, both for tidbits about Marlin that may not get on either the paper's pages or official Facebook pages, as well as for people who honestly have jobs like I just mentioned. Or for other things.

Meanwhile, I look down the road at Hearne. A Ty Clevenger, love him, hate him, or a bit of both, has been "plugged in" there for years, and there's only so much he can do from Brooklyn.

As for other possibilities for news coverage in Marlin, or informed and caring commentary about that? Otherwise, I know choices aren't too great. Clubs don't thrill as much to having their meeting news on a Facebook group as in a newspaper, and older (and some younger) club members may not "do" Facebook that much anyway.

And, I may be wrong otherwise. Maybe some of the things that made me feel uncomfortable are readily fixed and will be. (Though some, I am sure won't be.) I made a judgment call influenced by yet other factors out of my control. I'm over a certain age, when a certain type of job discrimination can happen. And my previous job was still open.

I otherwise felt it was easier writing out some of these issues to the degree I could, and in a relatively dispassionate way with the passage of a few months.

I'm still not sure what Jim Moser, owner of both the Marlin and Hearne papers, knew about this in Marlin. I do know that Clevenger, a few years back, published Moser's email over stuff in Hearne. I also know that a few people in Marlin know Clevenger.

In any case, thanks for reading.

Columbia Journalism Review officially shark-jumps on IFLS

First, CJR senior writer Alexis Sobel Fitts writes a five-webpage cover story about "I Fucking Love Science" and its founder, Elise Andrew.

In doing so, she commits these cardinal errors:
1. Writing the story about herself as much as Andrew.
2. Ignoring Andrew's seeming very deliberate violation of not just journalistic ethics, but ethics in general through not honoring copyright of NUMEROUS science-related photos, including a number by Google+ friend of mine Alex Wild.
3. Not talking to anybody who could and would have told her about this. (Wild is among those commenting on the page.)

In other words, it's shoddy journalism for being:
1. Self-centered
2. Lazy
3. One-sided

And, other trade publications and blogs are weighing in, too. Here's Knight Science Journalism Tracker:

For starters, the profile appeared in a journalistic publication, written in an unjournalistic way, about a person whose work is not journalism. Go ahead and debate what that J-word actually means in the comments, but I’d argue that several of the fundamental tenets of journalism – such as accuracy and unbiased reporting – are missing from the CJR piece (which also happens to be this issue’s cover story).
 Instead of taking a measured, balanced look at the person behind a media phenomenon, the profile came off as an overly sunny PR puff piece. After all, Andrew is not journalism’s first self-made brand. And, oh, by the way, the profile mentions almost as an aside, there is a history of copyright infringement and plagiarism accusations being directed at IFLS.

That's about right. 

Meanwhile, doesn't CJR have a managing editor? Who let this crap be printed? Let alone, who decided this was the magazine version's cover story?

Well, these people let this crap be published:

Editor in Chief & Publisher
Elizabeth Spayd

Deputy Editor in Chief
Brent Cunningham

Associate Editor/Production Editor
Christie Chisholm

Associate Editor Kira Goldenberg

Click here to email them. Or here to suggest this, their own piece as a "dart" under the mag's "Darts and Laurels."

Worse, who made the decision to let Fitts double down on her indefensible writing with a follow-up that's even worse in some ways?

As for the claims that Andrew's not gotten any "boosts" or "helps," one of Fitts' new, additional claims? Uhh, wrong!

From a March announcement by former national late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson:

Science Channel greenlit new series “I F-ing Love Science,” executive produced by CBS’ “Late Late Show” host Craig Ferguson. Ferguson made the announcement via a videotaped message at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas on Saturday.

So, please, that's not even close to being true.

Just stop it.

Fitts is doubling down on being:

1. Self-centered
2. Lazy
3. One-sided

Hence my comment on the follow-up piece:

I'm a journalist who didn't study journalism in college, and I didn't train inside one of "legacy media's great institutions," but I still know ethics, including of attribution. So, Alexis, does Ms. Andrew deserve a "free pass" on ethics? Copyright issues apply across all streams of journalism, and communications beyond journalism, including public relations, non-journalistic book writing and more.

And, if Fitts likes the snarkiness of "new journalism," I added:

Can I copy your mugshot for for-profit use without attribution? How much of your original piece can I copy without attribution? 

So, in addition to that comment, I asked CJR on those pages to fire Fitts. 

Are journalists psychopaths?

So says a British psychologist. He ranks journalism as the sixth-highest profession, in terms of percentage of psychopaths.

His overall take:

Although people tend to think of psychopaths as killers—indeed about 15-25% of people in prison are psychopaths—in fact many people with psychopathic tendencies are not criminals.
Here are some of the traits of psychopaths:

• Self-confident
• Cold-hearted
• Manipulative
• Fearless
• Charming
• Cool under pressure
• Egocentric
• Carefree

He also notes that the idea of a "successful psychopath is largely not true, saying they earn less money than average.

Hey, there's a newspaper trait!

More seriously, I can think of three former bosses who fit at least the cold-hearted, manipulative, egocentric and carefree portions of the description.

#Poynter #PolitiFact and St. Pete Times: Overblown blowhards?

Between deliberately slapping ESPN in the face at times just to prove it's a good contract/consultant ombudsman, between financially affiliated St. Petersburg Times getting ready to call itself the Tampa ("Bay, if you will") Times while the Tampa Tribune still publishes, and other things, I'm beyond skeptical to cynical about both the paper and the media institute.


The latest? Its/their PolitiFact have awarded the claim that the GOP wants to kill Medicare the lie of the year, then said that the raft of objections to that award is all just from liberals being in an echo chamber.


Oh, technically, the GOP doesn't want to directly kill Medicare. But, privatization of it? Everybody with a brain knows that is exactly what will happen.


Basically, PolitiFact descends into he said/she said journalism:

We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false.

That's exactly the problem: Politifact made no judgment on the merits of the Ryan plan. Krugman's right: RIP PolitiFact. And, as far as I am concerned, everything else in the Poynter/St. Pete Times stable.

Update, Aug. 8: If there is any truth to this, Markos Moulitsas (Kos) may well be on the right track, that Jon Huntsman Sr., father of the GOP presidential candidate and former Utah gov, is Reid's source. It's an inter-Mormon connectedness source (and an inter-Mormon grudge — don't forget how Huntsman Jr. felt about Romney) who has place, time, connections, more.

Court: Blogger isn't journalist - he may be right

Let's see the new media fluffers' take on this:

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

Is this just a matter of Oregon needing a better shield law? That's one claim.

“My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

Dalgish may or may not be right on that. She is right on this:

“But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information.”

That's because Hernandez went further:

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon’s shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

But, Dalgish is not guaranteed to be right on this, if Cox is indeed not a journalist.


Now, contra new media fluffers who accuse old media of trying to maintain a guild system, I'm not doing that.


Let's read WHY Hernandez ruled as he did:

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

Emphasis on the last clauses are mine. Hernandez, although he appears to start from the "guild" point of view himself, goes beyond that to use generally recognized journalistic standards as a large portion of his decision.


And Cox's response, if anything, justifies Hernandez's decision:

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

“What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?” she said.

Let's try riffs on that:
1. Twenty years ago: What could be more mainstream than junk mail and a filled mailbox?
2. Sixty years ago: What could be more mainstream than Joe McCarthy and a stack of papers waved in one's hand?
3. Seventy-five years ago: What could be more mainstream than Father Coughlin?
I think you get the drift.


I'm sure Dalgish's organization and others will file amicus briefs in any appeal, but, really, they shouldn't. Both for the actual defendant and for the material facts involved.



Here's my response.


First, blogging may be journalism. It isn't automatically journalism. That's reason one professional media organizations should be wary of offering amicus briefs in this case, at least without actually taking a look at Cox's blog first.



Second, I'd potentially partially disagree with the judge that that plaintiff is not a public figure. I'd have to see the details of how big his tax shelter advice was, whether he's a defendant in the fraud case against some of his advisees and other things. He may be a public figure.


This isn't a slam-dunk one way or the other, unlike the Houston-area blogger of a few years ago, who was reporting on a criminal case, a felony, and using anonymous sources.. There's no indication that Cox was even using anonymous sources, or doing anything more than writing opinion pieces. And, even if attorney Patrick IS a public figure, while case law cuts more latitude on opinion pages in conventional newspapers and magazines, even there, there isn't a license to libel.


Given that Cox is using a "proprietary technique," which is probably called paying $99 to some SEO optimizer outfit, and boasts about that, she's not a journalist from where I stand, and probably stands guilty of the failings of effort Hernandez found.


I do agree with media analysts that a case like this shows we need SCOTUS to eventually wade in. BUT, this case ain't the vehicle for it.

Atlantic and WaPost hypocrisy fest

As readers who follow national politics may already know, the Atlantic Monthly didn’t comment on the Washington Post’s “pay-to-play” salons because it’s been doing pretty much the same thing and, so far at least, is even less repentant than the Post.

Speaking of that, though, the Post says it will conduct an internal investigation of it’s own salon plans and how they got to be the way they did.

Given that Publisher Katherine Weymouth has refused to fall on the sword herself, and still isn’t:

Weymouth said she was on vacation last week and did not see the invitation that was sent out in her name

(As if the flier invitation is the only thing wrong about this)

And Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli really can’t be as ignorant of what happened as he claims, it’s clear that “internal investigation” means scapegoat searching.

Let’s let Post political reporter Dan Balz talk about that:

“I think everyone still has questions about how this collective breakdown occurred. This was not just two people in a room. There were a number of discussions about it. That part concerned me. Everyone knows the dinners were a bad idea.”

It appears new marketing exec Charles Pelton, already fingered for the fliers about the salons, would be scapegoating target No. 1.

That said, how different is this from newspapers spiking, toning down, delaying, or otherwise bollixing up stories for fear of offending major advertisers?

Not much. So, in that sense, this is nothing new.

FOX reaches new ethical low with Photoshopping pics

Here’s the story on how it deliberately Photoshopped the pics of two NYTimes staffers.

Marshall certainly didn't have Fortas’ baggage, and there is no way Northern Republican Senators would have voted against cloture, or voted against Marshall's actual nomination.

Dateline: Maureen Dowd and New York Times editorial deceit

A “Dateline: Kerry, N.H.” tag on a column about Hillary Clinton potentially crying her way to election loses a lot of objectivity and ethical credence when it was actually filed from Jerusalem about the obesity crisis.

Meanwhile, the column itself engages in psychobabble pseudo-analysis below even her normally vapid and puerile standards.