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

Jonathan Peters‘s Shield laws and journalist’s privilege: The basics every reporter should know is a must read … before a subpoena arrives.

From his post:

COMPELLED DISCLOSURE is in the air.

A federal judge has ordered Glenn Beck to disclose the names of confidential sources he used in his reporting that a Saudi Arabian man was involved in the Boston Marathon bombing. The man sued Beck for defamation after he was cleared of any involvement.

Journalist and filmmaker Mark Boal, who wrote and produced The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, has asked a judge to block a subpoena threatened by military prosecutors who want to obtain his confidential or unpublished interviews with US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, accused of being a deserter.

A state judge has ruled that a New York Times reporter must testify at a murder trial about her jailhouse interview with the man accused of killing Anjelica Castillo, the toddler once known as Baby Hope. The judge said the interview included the only statements the man made about the crime other than those in his police confession.

If my inbox is any indication, those cases have prompted a surge of interest in shield laws and the practice of compelled disclosure. What is a shield law, exactly? When can a government official require a reporter to disclose sources or information? Who counts as a journalist under a shield law? What types of sources or information are protected? Is there a big difference between a subpoena and a search warrant?

Those are the questions I’ve been asked most often in this area, as a First Amendment lawyer and scholar, and this post will try to answer them. (Please keep in mind that I’m a lawyer, not your lawyer, and these comments shouldn’t be construed as legal advice.)
…

As useful as Jonathan’s advice, in conjunction with advice from your own lawyer, I would point out by the time a subpoena arrives, you have already lost.

Because of circumstances, a jail house interview where you are the only possible source, or bad OpSec, you have been identified as possessing information state authorities want.

As Jonathan points out, there are governments with shield laws and notions of journalist privilege, but even those have fallen on hard times.

Outside of single source situations, consider anonymous posting of information needed for your story.

You can cite the public posting, as can others, which leaves the authorities without a target for their “name of the source” subpoena. It’s public information.

No one will be able to duplicate months of research and writing with a week or two and public posting may keep the you out of the cross-hairs of local government.

Posting unpublished information is an anathema to some, who think hoarding is the only path to readers. They are the best judges of whether they are read because they hoard or because of their skills as story tellers and analysts.

As an additional precaution, I assume you have a documented story development trail that you can fight tooth and nail to keep, which when disclosed shows your reliance on the publicly posted data. Yes?

PS: Wikilinks is one example of a public posting venue. Dark web sites for states (or other administrative divisions) or cities might be more appropriate. My suggestion is to choose one that doesn’t censor data dumps. Ever.

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

A weekly feature of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and particularly good this week:

• Animated Data Visualisation: Trends in Household Debts Reveals a Constant Increase in Student Loans
• Discover Why and How The New York Times is Changing the Way They Present Interactive Content
• Analysis of Trump’s Tweets: Trump Writes Angrier Tweets on Android While His Staff Tweets More Positively On His Behalf Using an iPhone
• Analysis of Trump’s Tweets: Sharp Decline in Trump’s Own Tweets from 77 to 24 percent Suggests Tighter Campaign Control
• Open Data-Driven Articles Using Olympic Data: Edit the Source Code and Create Your Own Visualisations
• Interactive Map of Recreational Areas in Ravensburg, Germany
• Onodo: Network Visualisation and Analysis Tool for Non-Tech Users
• Opinion: Not Every Venn Diagram Has Something Worth Reporting
• Data on Teenage Pregnancies and HIV rates in Kenya
• Mapbox: How to Customise and Embed Maps on Websites

See the original post for links and very annoying “share” options. (Annoying to me, others may find them indispensable.)

Mark your calendars to check for new top ten lists and/or follow @gijn.

50 ways to measure your analytics (with apologies to Paul Simon) by Melody Kramer.

From the post:

“The problem is all inside your figures,” she said to me.
“The answer is easy if you think more than numerically.
I’d like to help you in your struggle to count your impact perfectly.
There must be (at least) 50 ways to measure success for a news article.”

She said, “It’s really not my habit to really think about the news.
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued.
But I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being crude:
There must be 50 ways to assess whether your piece is reaching the full potential audience it could.

Fifty ways to count your numbers.'”

You will have to find mechanisms to measure your analytics but Melody does give you fifty (50) things to measure!

Clever use of the Paul Simon lyrics.

Suggest a “trigger warning” that doesn’t give away the trigger in this case? 😉

How to avoid 10 common mistakes in data reporting by Catherine Sheffo.

From the post:

After getting your hands on a data set, the hardest part of incorporating data analysis into your beat is getting started — and avoiding beginners’ pitfalls along the way.

From scrambled columns to unintelligible field names, every file you receive with comes with challenges for new and experienced data reporters alike.

We talked to Sean Mussenden, chief of the data and graphics bureau at the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service, about 10 mistakes to avoid while you establish a workflow and get comfortable with data sets in your day-to-day reporting.
…

Topic map fans will recognize #5:

Mistake No. 5 – Assuming you know what the field names mean

That can easily extend to what is in the fields as well.

I would add:

Mistake No. 11 – Assuming data is truthful and unbiased

Always bear in mind data given to you has been “cooked.”

Data has been omitted, changed or added, however “raw” the data may appear to you. The act of collecting data involves omission, changes and additions. All from a point of view.

Not to mention whoever gave you data had an agenda as well.

There’s no escape from bias but you can work at serving your own agenda and not those of others.

First Draft – July Fake News Quiz by Alastair Reid.

You think you keep up with current events?

Or can read a story, critically, to separate fact from fiction?

Hopefully you will do better than I did this month!

Enjoy!

PS: It just occurred to me that this is an excellent resource for secondary school teachers who are teaching students to keep up with the news. Pass this along on education/teaching channels.

Not a guide to particular sources, although examples are mentioned, Alastair Reid sets out categories of fake news sources in The 5 sources of fake news everyone needs to look out for online.

From the post:

No, soldiers aren’t being kicked off an army base to make way for Syrian refugees. Sorry, but Ted Cruz didn’t have a Twitter meltdown and blame God for his failed presidential campaign. And that viral video of a woman being chased down a mountainside with a bear is almost definitely fake.

The internet has a fake news problem and some lies can be dangerous. A fantastic story might be entertaining, but misinformation can fundamentally change how people view the world and their fellow citizens, influencing opinions, behaviour and votes.

This isn’t really news – lies have always been part of the fabric of society, whether spoken or written – but the internet has given anyone a platform to share false information and the tools to make untruths ever harder to detect.

Understanding the origins of fake news is part of the process. So where does it come from?
…

I’m disappointed people are spreading the truth about Ted Cruz not blaming God for his failed campaign. Anything, lie, fact, rumor, etc., that blackens his reputation cannot be a bad thing in my view.

Let obscure history dissertations separate fact from fiction about Ted Cruz several centuries from now. Once we are certain the stake they should drive through his heart upon burial isn’t going to work loose. The important goal now is to limit his ability to harm the public.

And so it is with all “fake” news, there is some goal to be furthered by the spreading of the fake news.

“Official sources of propaganda” are the first group that Alastair mentions and somewhat typically the focus is on non-Western governments, although Western propaganda gets a nod in the last paragraph of that section.

My approach to Western (and other) government reports, statements by government actors or people who want to be government actors is as follows:

1. They are lying.
2. Who benefits from this lie? (Contributors, Contractors, Cronies)
3. Who is disadvantaged by this lie? (Agency infighting, career competitors)
4. Why lie about this now? (Relationship to other events and actors)
5. Is this lie consistent/inconsistent with other lies?

What other purpose would statements, reports from the government have if they weren’t intended to influence you?

Do you really think any government wants you to be an independent, well-informed participant in public decision making processes? No wonder you believe fake news so often.

Don’t you find it odd that Western reports of Islamic State bombings are always referred to as “terrorist” events and yet when Allied forces kill another 56 civilians, nary a peep of the moniker “terrorist?”

Alastair’s post is a great read and help towards avoiding some forms of fake news.

There are other sources, such as the reflex to parrot Western government views on events that are more difficult to avoid.

PS: I characterize bombing of civilians as an act of terrorism. Whether the bombing is with a suicide-vest or jet aircraft, the intent is to kill, maim, in short, to terrorize those in the area.

June’s fake news quiz: Football fans, kissing politicians and Arnie on safari by Alastair Reid, First Draft.

Alastair’s fake news quiz is a good way to find out.

Prior fake news quizzes are listed in case you want to test your long term memory.

Journalists under fire and under pressure: summer magazine 2016 by Vicky Baker.

From the post:

Index on Censorship has dedicated its milestone 250th issue to exploring the increasing threats to reporters worldwide. Its special report, Truth in Danger, Danger in Truth: Journalists Under Fire and Under Pressure, is out soon.

Highlights include Lindsey Hilsum, writing about her friend and colleague, the murdered war reporter Marie Colvin, and asking whether journalists should still be covering war zones. Stephen Grey looks at the difficulties of protecting sources in an era of mass surveillance. Valeria Costa-Kostritsky shows how Europe’s journalists are being silenced by accusations that their work threatens national security. Kaya Genç interviews Turkey’s threatened investigative journalists, and Steven Borowiec lifts the lid on the cosy relationships inside Japan’s press clubs. Plus, the inside track on what it is really like to be a local reporter in Syria and Eritrea.

Also in this issue: the late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell explores colonialism in Africa in an exclusive play extract; Jemimah Steinfeld interviews China’s most famous political cartoonist; Irene Caselli writes about the controversies and censorship of Latin America’s soap operas; and Norwegian musician Moddi tells how hate mail sparked an album of music that had been silenced.

The 250th cover is by Ben Jennings. Plus there are cartoons and illustrations by Martin Rowson, Brian John Spencer, Sam Darlow and Chinese cartoonist Rebel Pepper.

You can order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.

Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. It has produced 250 issues, with contributors including Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.

Sadly, there is no lack of volunteers for the role of censor.

There are the four horsemen of internet censorship, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, attempting to curry favor with the EU by censoring content.

Other volunteers include Jonathan Weisman (The Times deputy Washington editor), Andrew Golis (founder and CEO of This.cm), and of course, Hillary Clinton, a long time censorship advocate. To mention only a few of them.

Despite the governments and other forces supporting censorship and the never ending nature of the war against censorship, mine is not the counsel of despair.

The war against censorship cannot be waged by front line fighters alone.

The Other End of the Spear: The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio (T3R) in Modern Military Operations by John J. McGrath (2012), summarized the ratio of combat to other troops in Iraq with this graphic:

Professional armies recognize the value of non-combat roles.

Do you?

Subscribe to Index on Censorship today!

PS: While we are talking about war, remember that professional military organizations study, practice and write about war. Stripped of the occasional ideological fluff, their publications can help you avoid any number of amateurish mistakes.

Index on Censorship Big Debate: Journalism or fiction? by Josie Timms.

From the webpage:

The Index on Censorship Big Debate took place at the 5th annual Leeds Big Bookend Festival this week, where journalists and authors were invited to discuss which has the biggest impact: journalism or fiction. Index’s magazine editor Rachael Jolley was joined by assistant features editor of The Yorkshire Post Chris Bond, Yorkshire-based journalist and author Yvette Huddleston and author of the award- winning Promised Land Anthony Clavane to explore which medium is more influential and why, as part of a series of Time To Talk debates held by Eurozine. Audio from the debate will be available at Time to Talk or listen below.

Highly entertaining discussion but “debate” is a bit of a stretch.

No definition of “impact” was offered, although an informal show of hands was reported to have the vast majority remembering a work of fiction that influenced them and only a distinct minority remembering a work of journalism.

Interesting result because Dickens, a journalist, was mentioned as an influential writer of fiction. At the time, fiction was published in serialized formats (newspapers, magazines) Victorian Serial Novels, spreading the cost of a work of fiction over months, if not longer.

Dickens is a good example to not make too much of the distinction, if any, between journalism and fiction. Both are reports of the past, present or projected future from a particular point of view.

At their best, journalism and fiction inform us, enlighten us, show us other points of view, capture events and details we did not witness ourselves.

That doesn’t accord with the 0 or 1 reality of our silicon servants, but I have no desire to help AIs become equal to humans by making humans dumber.

Enjoy!

Stefano Bertolo tweets:

From the Chicago Tribune post:

On June 4, the satirical news site the Science Post published a block of “lorem ipsum” text under a frightening headline: “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting.”

Nearly 46,000 people shared the post, some of them quite earnestly — an inadvertent example, perhaps, of life imitating comedy.

Now, as if it needed further proof, the satirical headline’s been validated once again: According to a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked: In other words, most people appear to retweet news without ever reading it.
…

The missing satire link:

Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting, from the satirical news site Science Post.

The passage:

According to a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked: In other words, most people appear to retweet news without ever reading it.

should have included a link to: Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?, by Maksym Gabielkov, Arthi Ramachandran, Augustin Chaintreau, Arnaud Legout.

Careful readers, however, would have followed the link to Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?, only to discover that Dewey mis-reported the original article.

Here’s how to identify the mis-reporting:

First, as technical articles often do, the authors started with definitions. Definitions that will influence everything you read in that article.

…
In the rest of this article, we will use the following terms to describe a given URL or online article.

Shares. Number of times a URL has been published in tweets. An original tweet containing the URL or a retweet of this tweet are both considered as a new share.
…(emphasis in the original)

The important point is to remember: Every tweet counts as a “share.” If I post a tweet that is never retweeted by anyone, it goes into the share bucket and is one of the shares that was never clicked on.

That is going to impact our counting of “shares” that were never “clicked on.”

In section 3.3 Blockbusters and the share button, the authors write:

…
First, 59% of the shared URLs are never clicked or, as we call them, silent. Note that we merged URLs pointing to the same article, so out of 10 articles mentioned on Twitter, 6 typically on niche topics are never clicked ¹⁰.

Because silent URLs are so common, they actually account for a significant fraction (15%) of the whole shares we collected, more than one out of seven. An interesting paradox is that there seems to be vastly more niche content that users are willing to mention in Twitter than the content that they are actually willing to click on.
… (emphasis in the original)

To re-write that with the definition of shared inserted:

“…59% of the URLs published in a tweet or re-tweet are never clicked…”

That includes:

1. Tweet with a URL and no one clicks on the shortened URL in bit.ly
2. Re-tweet with a URL and a click on the shortened URL in bit.ly

Since tweets and re-tweets are lumped together (they may not be in the data, I haven’t seen it, yet), it isn’t possible to say how many re-tweets occurred without corresponding clicks on the shortened URLs.

I’m certain people share tweets without visiting URLs but this article isn’t authority for percentages on that claim.

Not only should you visit URLs but you should also read carefully what you find, before re-tweeting or reporting.

Investigative journalism tools by Markus Mandalka.

From the webpage:

Free software for journalists: Tutorials, bookmarks and open source tools for journalistic research, investigations and privacy and other digital tools for investigative journalism and data driven journalism or datajournalism:
…

Numerous resources organized under the following broad categories:

• Databases, digital archives, data management systems, document management systems and content management systems
• Data visualization
• Extract data or convert data
• Graphs and social network analysis (SNA)
• Import and transform or convert data
• Media monitoring, news filtering, news pipes and alerts
• Privacy, security, safety and encryption
• Reconcilation and merging
• Search engines for fulltext search and discovery
• Statistics and analytics
• Tagging and annotation
• Text mining, text analysis and document mining
• Tutorials and tips: How to use open source research tools for investigative journalism
• Universal open source toolset

A very useful site that is also available in Deutsch.

Suggestion: It’s easy to get overwhelmed by tool listings. Outline what you want from a tool in X category and go over the tools in that category with a view of selecting only one.

Use it long enough to see if it meets your current requirements. It may not be the latest or most talked about tool, but if it fits your needs and work flow, what more would you want?

That’s not to blind you to better tools, which do appear from time to time, but time spent on tool mastery is time not spent on research, writing and reporting.

@newsnerdrepos tweets every time one of 85 news github accounts posts a new repo.

Just started but what an excellent idea!

Columbia Journalism Review – Become a Charter Member

From the webpage:

For half a century, the Columbia Journalism Review has assessed the performance of American journalism, becoming an essential read for top leaders in the media industry and a respected voice of press criticism.

Now you can show your support for CJR’s role as media watchdog and advocate for a sustainable, viable and free press by becoming a Charter Member.

Your Charter Memberships benefits include:

• Subscription to the print magazine
  Two biannual issues of the newly expanded and enhanced Columbia Journalism Review.
• Members-Only eNewsletter
  Every week, members will receive an update from the editors with insights and previews available only to members.
• Quarterly Updates from the Editor
  Every three months, members will receive an insider’s report about journalism from the CJR newsroom.
• eAlerts
  Members will receive email alerts notifying them of important and timely articles.
• Invitations to CJR Events and Panel Discussions
  Members will be invited to attend live and live-streamed CJR events and panels.
• Listing on Membership Page
  In recognition of your support for the CJR mission, all Charter Members will be recognized on the website.

Plus Coming Soon:

• Exclusive Members-Only Content
  Only CJR members will have access to select CJR content and resources including the popular “Who Owns What” database.
• Members-Only Group Forum
  A place for members to discuss what’s on their minds, ask questions, and share experiences.
• Members-Only Discounts
  Exclusive CJR member discounts at other affiliated organizations.

Sign up as a Charter Member today and you will receive the Spring  issue celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes.

I need funds to be incoming but when I saw this opportunity to become a charter member of the Columbia Journalism Review, more funds became outgoing.

It really is that important.

A journalism powered bright light on government and corporations may not stop or deter actions that harm the public, but it will enable resistance.

Please join the Columbia Journalism Review and urge your friends to as well.

How fake news sites frequently trick big-time journalists by Jack Murtha.

From the post:

It would’ve been one hell of a story. Early this month, “news” surfaced that Michael Jordan—yes, the Michael Jordan—had threatened to move his NBA team, the Charlotte Hornets, from North Carolina unless the state repealed a law barring transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice. Air Jordan hadn’t seemed so heroic since he saved Bugs Bunny in the 1996 movie Space Jam.

Except the news was as fictional as the film.

A few sites posing as legitimate news organizations, including one that crudely imitates ABC News’ logo and web address, first published the bunk Jordan story. From there it spread to other media outlets, like Metro US, Elite Daily, and the Dallas Voice. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel even weaponized the false claim in an editorial against North Carolina’s law. For what felt like the millionth time, fake news sites—the kind that say they’re satirical but are nothing like The Onion—had duped journalists into buying a bogus story.

For now, forget the hoaxsters and hoodwinked journalists who continue to fuel this tire fire. The more significant culprits are the companies that enable and reward behavior that empowers fake news. In striving for traffic, prolific output, and social media hype, some newsrooms have prioritized the quick and provocative, while undervaluing reporting. This system has allowed fake news sites to essentially develop best practices to fool journalists. Facebook now lets users flag fake news stories, which then appear less frequently, or with an attached warning, in newsfeeds. But without a top-down cultural shift in journalism, garbage stories will continue to enter the mainstream.

…

I share Murtha’s annoyance with news organizations that don’t emphasize quality reporting but “fake” news stories are only the tip of that iceberg.

It is apparently standard practice with some news outlets to not include links to original press releases or documents discussed in a story. What possible benefit is derived by forcing readers to search for original sources is unclear.

Perhaps it lessens the odds of discovering the reporter didn’t read the document in question? Other suggestions?

Or stories that repeat official propaganda without raising factual or logical errors in such propaganda. The media’s dog like subservience to government on stories of terrorist “propaganda” for example.

How often does your news organization mention countering terrorist “propaganda” is difficult because much of it is true??

Perhaps better, does your news organization ever even ask if terrorist “propaganda” is true?

5 free tools for finding and verifying YouTube videos in news by Alastair Reid.

From the post:

With more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, Google’s video platform is still the most popular in the world for publicly sharing videos with the rest of humanity.

Granted, some of them may be teenagers playing computer games, unboxing consumer goods or just accidentally filming their feet, but YouTube is a vital resource for eyewitness media around news stories. Here are some tools to bear in mind for finding and verifying such footage.
…

I maintain an internal webpage with links grouped by categories. Bookmarks are too easy to forget and why bother with searching?

All five of these links will be clustered in YouTube videos.

Enjoy!

PS: If you work in one those organizations where sharing isn’t all that odd, consider having a communal internal webpage for common resources.

Recent research reveals false rumours really do travel faster and further than the truth by Craig Silverman.

From the post:

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on, or so the saying goes, and new research has sought to prove just how long it takes fact checking to catch up.

On average, it takes more than 12 hours for a false claim to be debunked online, according to two recent projects that compared how falsehoods and truths spread.

One study analyzed rumors on Twitter and found that a rumor that turns out to be true is often resolved within two hours of first emerging. But a rumor that proves false takes closer to 14 hours to be debunked.

Another study looked at how long it took for a fact check or debunking article to be published as a counter measure to a fake story. It found “a characteristic lag of approximately 13 hours between the production of misinformation and that of fact checking”.

The studies used different methodologies and look at different elements of the online rumor and misinformation ecosystem. But they both provide evidence that falsehoods spread for hours and take hold online before being debunked.

Both research groups say their findings highlight the need for better — and especially faster — approaches to countering online misinformation.
…

A counter-factual response to these reports would be the failure of false U.S. social media propaganda falling to truthful Islamic State reports. Why It’s So Hard to Stop ISIS Propaganda.

Or is it that U.S. government lies are so clumsy that they lack the punch of other falsehoods?

Or perhaps the U.S. government tells so many lies that it’s hard to judge the impact of only one?

Unless and until better/faster approaches “…to countering online misinformation” appear, consider how you can use the gap between rumor and correction to your advantage.

Is that arbitrage in truth?