Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

14 innovative journalism courses to follow this Fall by Aleszu Bajak.

From the post:

With classes back in session, we wanted to highlight a few forward-looking courses being taught at journalism schools across the country. But first, to introduce these syllabi, we recommend “Those Who Do, Also Teach: David Carr’s Gift to Journalism Schools,” by Molly Wright Steenson for Storybench. It’s a look at Carr’s inspiring syllabus, Press Play, and why it resonates today more than ever. Below, an excerpt from Carr’s syllabus:

While writing, shooting, and editing are often solitary activities, great work emerges in the spaces between people. We will be working in groups with peer and teacher edits. There will be a number of smaller assignments, but the goal is that you will leave here with a single piece of work that reflects your capabilities as a maker of media. But remember, evaluations will be based not just on your efforts, but on your ability to bring excellence out of the people around you.

So take a look at the following J-school courses. Check out Robert Hernandez’s experiments in VR journalism, Molly Wright Steenson’s exploration of information architecture and the media landscape, Dan Nguyen’s data reporting class, Catherine D’Ignazio’s projects melding civic art and design, and our own Jeff Howe’s media innovation studio at Northeastern University, among many others. You don’t have to be a journalism student to dig deep into the readings, try out some assignments, and learn something new.

…

If you get a thrill from discovering new information or mastering a new skill, you will have a field day with this course listing.

You want to follow Storybench, which self-describes as:

Storybench is a collaboration between the Media Innovation track at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and Esquire magazine.

At Storybench, we want to reinvigorate and reimagine what digital journalism can be. This means providing an “under the hood” look at the latest and most inventive examples of digital creativity—from data visualization projects to interactive documentaries—as well as the tools and innovators behind them.

Whether you are a veteran newsroom editor, web designer, budding coder or journalism student, Storybench will help you learn what is being built and how, so you can find your way to what might be built next.

Storybench‘s editor is Aleszu Bajak, a science journalist and former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He is an alum of Science Friday, the founder of LatinAmericanScience.org and is passionate about breaking down the divide between journalists, developers and designers. He can be reached at aleszubajak [at] gmail or at aleszu.com.

…

Enjoy!

User-generated content can traumatize journalists who work with it — a new project aims to help by Laura Hazard Owen.

From the post:

Journalists and human rights workers who work with troubling user-generated content as part of their jobs may experience vicarious trauma as a result of handling distressing content. A new research project aims to help by surveying and interviewing such workers and developing a set of best practices for news and humanitarian organizations.

Nonprofit think-tank Eyewitness Media Hub is running the project with backing from the Open Society Foundation. EMH was founded in 2014 by former Tow fellows Sam Dubberley, Pete Brown, and Claire Wardle, who had previously researched how broadcasters use user-generated content (UGC) in their news output, along with Jenni Sargent.

“A lot of research so far has [questioned whether] vicarious trauma is something that exists,” said Dubberley. “We’re starting from the premise that it does exist, and would like to understand what organizations are doing about it, and how people who are using it on a day-to-day basis feel about it.” As head of the Eurovision News Exchange, he said, “I had a team of 20 journalists sourcing content from Syria and the Arab Spring through YouTube and saw them being impacted by it, quite seriously.”

…

I am quite mystified as to why news content traumatizing journalist or members of the general pubic is a problem?

If we could vicariously experience the horrors that are financed by the United States government and others, literally be retching from fear of the next newspaper, radio broadcast or cable news broadcast, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

If anything, reporters need to take the gloves off and record death rattles, people screaming in agony, calling for death, while identifying the forces that were responsible.

One wonders how may heroes parades would happen if the streets were lined the photos of their victims, pulsing with audio of the last moments of their lives.

How proud would you feel to have butchered innocent women and children in service of your country?

Let’s bring the reality of war back to the evening dinner table. It helped end Viet-Nam. Perhaps it could help end some of the current cycle of madness.

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

From the post:

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are the top ten links for July 9 to 16: +300 sites with free geographic datasets (@sciremotesense); graphing German YouTube (@SPIEGELOLINE); Australia’s mining footprint (@ICIJorg); democratizing data (OKFN); and more.

Enjoy!

Database Launched with +300 Latin American Investigations by Gabriela Manuli.

A unique database of more than 300 investigative journalism reports from across Latin America is now available from The Institute for Press and Society (Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, or IPYS). Called BIPYS (Banco de Investigaciones Periodísticas, or Bank of Investigative Journalism) the UNESCO-backed initiative was announced July 6 at the annual conference of Abraji, Brazil’s investigative journalism association.

BIPYS is a repository of many of the best examples of investigative journalism in the region, comprised largely of winners of the annual Latin American Investigative Journalism Awards that IPYS and Transparency International have given out for the past 13 years.

Investigations cover a wide range of topics, including corruption, malfeasance, organized crime, environment, national security, and human rights.
…

See Gabriela’s post for more but in summary the site is still under development and fees being discussed.

An admirable effort considering that words in Latin American can and do have real consequences.

Unlike some places where disagreement can be quite heated but when the broadcast ends, the participants slip away for drinks together. Meanwhile, the subjects of their disagreement continue to struggle and die due to policy decisions made far, far away.

Want to make it easier to build news apps quickly? Vox Media has opensourced its solution, Autotune by Justin Ellis.

From the post:

Making a beautiful app for news is great; making a beautiful reusable app for news is better. At least that’s the thinking behind a new project released by Vox Media today: Autotune is a system meant to simplify the creation and duplication of things like data visualizations, graphics, or games.

Autotune was designed by members of the Vox Media product team to cut down on the repetitive work of taking one project — say, a an image slider — and making it easy to use elsewhere. It’s “a centralized management system for your charts, graphics, quizzes and other tools, brought to you by the Editorial Products team at Vox Media,” according to the project’s GitHub page. And, yes, that means Autotune is open source.
…

Sounds like a great project but I will have to get a cellphone to pass judgement on apps. 😉 I would have to get a Farraday cage to keep it in when not testing apps.

The Washington Post featured this headline recently: Russia is seeing conspiracies in Armenia where none exist.

So, given the past decade of false terror warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, as reported by Adam Johnson in FBI and Media Still Addicted to Ginning Up Terrorist Hysteria – But They Have Never Been Right, why hasn’t the Washington Post ran the headline:

USA is seeing terrorists where none exist

How does that go? Maybe the Washington Post should take the plank out of its eye so it can see more clearly the world around it.

PS: Will there be a terrorist attack in the United States someday? Sure, but warning about them for hundreds if not thousands of days in between demonstrates a lack of good judgement.

Twelve Tips for Getting Started With Data Journalism by Nils Mulvad and Helena Bengtsson.

No mention of Python or R, no instructions for No-SQL or SQL databases, no data cleaning exercises, and yet probably the best advice you will find for data journalism (or data science for that matter).

The essential insight of these twelve tips are that the meaning of the data, which implies answering “why does this matter?,” is the task of data journalism/science.

Anyone with sufficient help can generate graphs, produce charts, apply statistical techniques to data sets, but if it is all just technique, no one is going to care.

The twelve tips offered here are good for a daily read with your morning coffee!

Highly recommended!

FBI and Media Still Addicted to Ginning Up Terrorist Hysteria – But They Have Never Been Right by Adam Johnson is a stunning indictment of our national media as “uncritical” of goverment terrorist warnings.

I say “uncritical” because despite forty (40) false terrorist warning in a row, there has been no, repeat no terrorist attack in the United States related to those warnings. Not one.

The national media, say the New York Times of my youth, would have “broke” the news of a terrorist warning, but then it would have sought information to verify that warning. That is why is the government issuing a warning today and not yesterday, or next week?

Failing to find such evidence, which it would have in the past forty (40) cases, it would have pressed, investigated and mocked the government until its thin tissue of lies were plain for all to see.

How many times does a government source have to misrepresent facts before your report starts with:

Just in from the habitual liars at the Department of Homeland Security…

and includes a back story on how the Department of Homeland Security has never been right on one of its warnings, nor has its Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) ever caught a terrorist.

Instead, as Adam reports, this is what we get:

On Monday, several mainstream media outlets repeated the latest press release by the FBI that country was under a new “heightened terror alert” from “ISIL-inspired attacks” “leading up to the July 4th weekend.” One of the more sensational outlets, CNN, led with the breathless warning on several of its cable programs, complete with a special report by The Lead’s Jim Sciutto in primetime:

The threat was given extra credence when former CIA director—and consultant at DC PR firm Beacon Global Strategies—Michael Morell went on CBS This Morning (6/29/15) and scared the ever-living bejesus out of everyone by saying he “wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting [in the studio] next week discussing an attack on the US.” The first piece of evidence Morell used to justify his apocalyptic posture, the “50 ISIS arrests,” was accompanied by a scary map on the CBS jumbotron showing “ISIS arrests” all throughout the US:

…

But one key detail is missing from this graphic: None of these “ISIS arrests” involved any actual members of ISIS, only members of the FBI—and their network of informants—posing as such. (The one exception being the man arrested in Arizona, who, while having no contact with ISIS, was also not prompted by the FBI.) So even if one thinks the threat of “lone wolf” attacks is a serious one, it cannot be said these are really “ISIS arrests.” Perhaps on some meta-level, it shows an increase of “radicalization,” but it’s impossible to distinguish between this and simply more aggressive sting operations by the FBI.
…

I would think that competent, enterprising reporters could have ferreted out all the material that Adam mentions in his post. They could have make the case for the groundless nature of the 4th of July security warning.

But no member of the national media did.

In the aftermath of yet another bogus terror warning, the national media should say why it dons pom-poms to promote every terror alert from the FBI or DHS, instead of serving the public’s interest with critical investigation of alleged terror threats.

Hall: BBC will not call IS ‘Daesh’

From the post:

According to The Times, the director general has said that the broadcaster will not adopt the name ‘Daesh’ in place of IS as it was a ‘pejorative’ label used by enemies of the group, including Assad supporters in Syria.

Use of the name could be interpreted as support for those enemies, thereby damaging the BBC’s impartiality, the DG reasoned in his response to an open letter from 120 cross-party MPs.
…

In an age when media outlets self-censor themselves at the hint of government displeasure, Tony Hall‘s stand is a refreshing one.

The group calls itself, Islamic State and who better to know their name?

Reporters, bloggers and anyone who cares about non-partisan reporting (note, I did not say objective) should use the name, Islamic State in English language publications.

Feel free to use other terms, such as extremist, militant, terrorist, so long as you apply them equally to everyone. If you label one attack on a social gathering as a “terrorist attack,” then all attacks on social gatherings should be terrorist attacks. A car bomb is just as indiscriminate as a cruise missile or “smart” bomb.

Suggestion: Reporting on the Islamic State would be more balanced, if the Islamic State assisted journalists in seeing the results of attacks against it. It is hard for a Western public to understand civilians casualties other than through the lens of Western media.

Here are the best links, resources, and roundups from SRCCON, the conference for journalism code by Laura Hazard Owen.

From the post:

Business casual, bad coffee, dry prewritten speeches, and an 8 a.m. start with no time between sessions — these things are familiar to anyone who’s ever been to a conference. SRCCON (pronounced “Source-Con”), organized by Knight-Mozilla OpenNews and held over two days last week in Minneapolis, aims to avoid the bad conference stereotypes and offer, instead, interactive discussions about “the challenges that news technology and data teams encounter every day.”

There was an NPR-sponsored coffee station run by Manual Coffeemaker No. 1’s Craighton Berman, handcrafting individual cups of pour-over. There was on-site, full-day childcare included in the price of admission. There was local beer, non-alcoholic beer, halal meals for Ramadan, and unisex bathrooms. (There is a flip side to all this inclusiveness: SRCCON’s celebration of nerdery can feel as intimidating at first as the celebration of any other group identity that you don’t totally identify with.) The start time was 10 a.m. the first day and 11 a.m. the second. And with over 50 sessions, the conference’s 220 attendees discussed topics from ad viewability and machine learning to journalist burnout and remote work.

If that sounds cool to you, you are really going to like the collection of links to notes, slides and other resources that Laura has collected for SRCCON 2015.

Not to mention having you looking forward to SRCCON 2016, while you are developing your abilities with source code.

BBC News Labs

I saw a tweet from the BBC News Labs saying:

We were News labs before it was cool.

cc @googlenewslab

Which was followed by this lively exchange:

From the about page:

This Jekyll-powered blog is pitched at interested Journalists, Technologists and Hacker Journalists, and provides regular updates on News Labs' activities.

We hope it will open new opportunities for collaborative work, by attracting attention from like-minded people in this space.

You can still find our major updates pitched at a broader audience here on the BBC Internet Blog.

About BBC News Labs

BBC News Labs is an incubator powered by BBC Connected Studio, and is charged with driving innovation for BBC News.

Our M.O.

We work as a multi-discipline incubator, exploring scalable opportunities at the intersection of:

1. Journalism
2. Technology
3. Data

Our goals

1. Harness BBC talent & creativity to drive Innovation
2. Open new opportunities for Story-driven Journalism
3. Support Innovation Transfer into Production
4. Drive open standards through News Industry collaboration
5. Raise BBC News’ Profile as an Innovator

You can find out more on the BBC News Labs corporate website here

Get in touch

We'd be delighted to hear from you or to see if you can contribute to one of our projects. Give us a shout at:

• @BBC_News_Labs on Twitter
• On Google Plus

News Labs Links

• BBC News Labs on Github
• BBC News Labs on Slideshare
• BBC News Labs on YouTube
• BBC Internet Blog – Matt Shearer's posts
• BBC Connected Studio – They power our incubator!
• #newsHACK – our Hack Events

For your Twitter following pleasure, news labs mentioned in this post:

@BBC_News_Labs

@dpa_newslab

@DroneJLab

@FTLabs

@googlenewslab

@knightlab

Other news labs that should be added to this list?

PS: I would include @Journalism2ls. – Journalism Tools in a more general list.

Update: @NeimanLab: Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard.

Introducing the Witness Media Lab

From the webpage:

We are pleased to announce our newest initiative: the WITNESS Media Lab. The project is dedicated to unleashing the potential of eyewitness video as a powerful tool to report, monitor, and advocate for human rights.

In collaboration with the News Lab at Google, and continuing the work of its predecessor, the Human Rights Channel on YouTube, the WITNESS Media Lab will address the challenges of finding, verifying, and contextualizing eyewitness videos for the purpose of creating lasting change.

The WITNESS Media Lab will focus on one issue for a few months at a time, using new tools, strategies and platforms for research, verification and contextualization of citizen video. We will share analysis and resources publicly online via case studies, blog articles, multimedia presentations and through in-person convenings with peers. The first project will look at several cases of eyewitness video of police violence in the United States.

“We’re incredibly encouraged by the growing capacity of people everywhere to capture video of human rights abuses in their communities. We’re also aware of the critical need for skills to harness the potential of those videos, in order to turn them into tools for justice,” said Madeleine Bair, Program Manager for the WITNESS Media Lab.

Drawing on more than two decades of supporting people to use video for human rights advocacy, the WITNESS Media Lab will leverage the organization’s in-house expertise as well as that of our extensive peer networks in the fields of advocacy, technology, and journalism. Together with them, the WITNESS Media Lab will seek to develop solutions to ensure that footage taken by average citizens can impact some of the world’s most pressing and persistent injustices.

“Videos depicting human rights abuses on YouTube can be an incredibly powerful tool to expose injustice, but context is critical to ensuring they have maximum impact,” said Steve Grove of the News Lab at Google. “We’re thrilled that WITNESS is bringing their deep expertise to this space in the WITNESS Media Lab, and we are honored to be partnering with them.”

For more details visit us at WITNESS Media Lab website and follow us @WITNESS_Lab. And YouTube published an announcement today detailing their support of the WITNESS Media Lab and a two other projects focused on the power of citizen video.

Press inquiries and requests for interviews should be directed to Matisse Bustos-Hawkes at WITNESS via our press kit or on Twitter @matissebh.

If “What Witness Learned in Our Three Years Curating Human Rights Videos on Youtube,” is indicative of the work to expect from the Witness Media Lab, the Lab will be a welcome resource.

The “What Witness Learned..” is a quick introduction to some principal issues surrounding videos, such as “Verification is a Spectrum,” “Context is Key,” “New Platforms for Sharing Videos,” and, “Persistent Challenges (language, vicarious trauma, impact).”

Not in depth coverage of any of those issues but enough to give would be creators of eyewitness videos or those seeking to distribute or use them pause for reflection.

Don’t miss the Witness Resources page! A treasure trove of videos, training materials, an archive of 4,000 hours of videos from human rights defenders and other materials.

Remember that the authenticity of the image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc was questioned by then President Nixon and the New York Times published it after cropping out the media reporter on the right. To avoid showing reporters ignoring young girls burned by napalm?

Every image tells a story. What story will yours tell?

A Roundup of Tips & Tools from IRE 2015 by Gary Price.

Gary summarizes six (6) tools that were discussed at #IRE15.

Yes, I saw this at the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). The same folks who have called for sponsoring a Muckraker.

What more endorsement does anyone need?

You need to follow Gary’s column for future updates. Some of it you will already know but as investigative reporters and editors build and share resources, there will be new to you material as well.

Enjoy!



Sponsor a Muckraker: Help Us Send Journalists to Lillehammer.

From the post:

Here’s your chance to support the global spread of investigative journalism. We need your help to sponsor dozens of journalists from developing and transitioning countries to come to the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Norway this October 8-11.

Held once every two years, the GIJC is a giant training and networking event. At over 150 sessions, the world’s best journalists teach state-of-the-art investigative techniques, data analysis, cross-border reporting, online research, protecting sources, and more to reporters from some of the toughest media environments in the world.

We know from past conferences that our attendees return home to do groundbreaking investigations into corruption and abuse of power, launch investigative teams and non-profit centers, and help spread investigative reporting to where it is needed most.

…

We’ve been overwhelmed with requests to attend. GIJN and its co-host, Norway’s SKUP, have received 500 requests from more than 90 countries, and we can’t help them all. Please give what you can.

We will direct 100% of your gift to bring these journalists to GIJC15. Contributors will be publicly thanked (if they desire) on the GIJC15 conference page and social media. (Americans — your donation is fully tax deductible.)

Just click on the DONATE button, make a contribution, and write GIJC15 in the Special Instructions box. And thank you!

I don’t normally re-broadcast donation calls but the Global Investigative Journalism Conference transcends just be a good cause, public spirited, etc. sort of venture.

Think of it this way, governments, enterprises, businesses and their familiars, despite shortages, embargoes, famines, and natural disasters, all are suspiciously well fed and comfortable. Aren’t you the least bit curious why it seems to always work out that way? I am. Help sponsor a muckraker today!

Tipsheets & Links from 2015 IRE

Program listing from the recent Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference, annotated with tipsheets and links.

I don’t find the format, “Tipsheet from speaker (name)” all that useful. I’m sure that is because I don’t recognize the usual haunts of each author but I suspect that is true for many others.

Anyone working on a subject index to the tipsheets?

Apply Today To Become A 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow! by Dan Sinker.

From the post:

Today we kick off our fifth search for Knight-Mozilla Fellows. It’s been a remarkably fast five years filled with some of the most remarkable, talented, and inspiring people we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know. And now you (yes you!) can join them by applying to become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow today.

Knight-Mozilla Fellows spend ten months building, experimenting, and collaborating at the intersection of journalism and the open web. Our fellows have worked on projects that liberate data from inside PDFs, stitch together satellite imagery to demonstrate the erosion of coastline in Louisiana, help journalists understand the security implications of their work, improve our understanding of site metrics, and much much more.

We want our fellows to spend time tackling real-world problems, and so for the last five years we have embedded our fellows in some of the best newsrooms in the world. For 2016 we have an amazing lineup of fellowship hosts once again: the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, NPR, Vox Media, Frontline, Correct!v, and The Coral Project (a collaboration between the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Mozilla).

Our fellows are given the freedom to try new things, follow their passions, and write open-source code that helps to drive journalism (and the web) forward. Over the course of the next two and a half months you’ll be hearing a lot more from us about the many exciting opportunities a Knight-Mozilla Fellowship brings, the impact journalism code has had on the web, and why you (yes you!) should apply to become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow. Or, you can just apply now.

A bit mainstream for my taste but there has to be a mainstream to give the rest of us something to rebel against. 😉

Can’t argue with the experience you can gain and the street cred that goes along with it. Not to mention having your name on cutting edge work.

Give it serious consideration and pass word of the opportunity along.

It’s Time For Every Journalist To Learn Basic Data Skills by Marta Kang.

From the post:

First came the web. Then came social media. Now journalists face a new challenge on the horizon: big data.

It used to be that data journalism lived in a corner of the newsroom, in the care of investigative or business reporters. But in recent years, big data has amassed at such a rate that it can no longer be the responsibility of a few.

Numbers, Numbers On Every Beat

In 2013, IBM researchers found that 90 percent of the world’s data had been created in the previous two years. We’d suddenly gained a quantitative understanding of our world! This new knowledge base empowers us to predict the spread of disease, analyze years of government spending, and even understand how an extra cup of coffee might affect one’s sleep quality. We’ve essentially gained countless new perspectives — bird’s-eye views, granular views, inward views of ourselves — as long as we know how to make sense of the numbers.

Many news outlets have already taken to using data to drive a range of stories, from the profound to the surprising. ProPublica and NPR calculated how much limbs are worth in each state to highlight the dramatic disparity in workers’ comp benefits across the U.S. The Washington Post analyzed 30 years of groundhog forecasts and found that “a groundhog is just a groundhog,” and not a weatherman, alas.

Still, conversations about data-driven journalism have mostly focused on large-scale projects by industry powerhouses and new outlets like FiveThirtyEight and Vox.

But the job shouldn’t be left to big newsrooms with dedicated teams. In this era of big data, every journalist must master basic data skills to make use of all sources available to them.

“There’s so much data available now, and there’s basically data on every single beat, and you have reporters getting spreadsheets all the time,” Chad Skelton, a data journalist with The Vancouver Sun, told me.

…

I am very sympathetic to Martha’s agenda of motivating journalists to learn basic data skills. Reporters can hardly work in the public interest if they have to accept untested claims about data from one source or another. They need to skills to not only use data but to question data when a story sounds too good to be true.

For example, when the news broke about the data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), how many reports headlined that the Inspector General for the OPM had requested at least two of their computer systems be shut down because they “could potentially have national security implications?” U.S. Was Warned of System Open to Cyberattacks

Oh, yes, that was the zero (0) number, the empty set, nil.

Several days after the drum beat that China was responsible for the breach, with no evidence proffered to support that accusation, the full brokenness of the OPM systems is coming to light.

Not that reporters have to have every detail on the first report, but finding an Inspector General’s report on security (obviously relevant to a data breach story) isn’t an exercise in data sleuthing.

Knowing how broken the systems were reported to be by the OPM’s own Inspector General, increases the range of suspects to high school hackers, college CS students, professional hackers, other nation states, and everyone in between.

The nearest physical analogy I can think of would be to have a pallet of $100 bills in the middle of Times Square and when a majority of those go missing, inventing a security fantasy that only a bank could steal money in those quantities.

Anybody with a computer could have broken into OPM systems and it is disingenuous to posture and pretend otherwise.

Let’s teach journalist basic data skills but let’s also teach them to not repeat gibberish from government spokespersons. In many cases it isn’t news even if they say it. In the case of data breaches, it is more often than not noise.

Resources for Journalists – Global Investigative Journalism Network

I have referenced specific posts and resources at the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) before but their resources page merits separate mention.

I am more familiar with their Data Journalism Resources and Data Journalism Toolkit but they have advice on everything from Archiving Your Work to Covering Street Protests.

I’m not sure if I can paste the Paypal link so see their Sponsors and Supporters page to donate to support their work.

Phishing catches victims ‘in minutes’

From the post:

It takes 82 seconds for cyber-thieves to ensnare the first victim of a phishing campaign, a report suggests.

Compiled by Verizon, the report looks at analyses of almost 80,000 security incidents that hit thousands of companies in 2014.

It found that, in many companies, about 25% of those who received a phishing email were likely to open it.

“Training your employees is a critical element of combating this threat,” said Bob Rudis, lead author on the report.

Threat spotting

Tricking people into opening a booby-trapped message let attackers grab login credentials that could be used to trespass on a network and steal data, the report said.

“They do not have to use complex software exploits, because often they can get hold of legitimate credentials,” Mr Rudis said.
…(emphasis in original)

You might be tempted to quote this story on phishing but I wouldn’t. Not without looking further.

When I read “…a report suggests…,” without a link to the report, all sorts of alarms start ringing. If there is such a report, why no link? Is the author fearful the report isn’t as lurid as their retelling? Or fearful that readers might reach their own conclusions? And for that matter, despite being “lead author” of this alleged report, who the hell is Bob Rudis? Not quite in the same class as Prince or the Queen of England.

None of which is hard to fix:

Verizon 2015 PCI Compliance Report

Bob Rudis took a little more effort but not much: Bob Rudis (Twitter), not to mention being the co-author of: Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards (review). Which is repaid by finding a R blogger and author of a recent security analysis text.

When you read the report, to which the BBC provides no link, you discover things like:

Incentives (none) to prevent payment fraud:

Page 4: The annual cost of payment fraud in 2014 was $14 Billion.

Then Page 5 gives the lack of incentive to combat the $14 Billion in fraud, total card payments are expected to reach $20 Trillion.

In other words:

20,000,000,000,000 – 14,000,000,000 = 19,986,000,000,000

Hardly even a rounding error.

BTW, the quote that caught my eye:

More than 99% of the vulnerabilities exploited in data breaches had been known about for more than a year, Mr Rudis said. And some had been around for a decade.

Doesn’t occur in the Verizon report, so one assumes an interview with Mr. Rudis.

Moreover, it is a good illustration for why a history of exploits may be as valuable if not more so than the latest exploit.

None of that was particularly difficult but it enriches the original content with links that may be useful to readers. What’s the point of hypertext without hyperlinks?