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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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In the wake of Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israel this weekend—and the Israeli military’s response—journalists, researchers, open source intelligence (OSINT) experts, and fact-checkers rushed to verify the deluge of raw video footage and images being shared online by people on the ground. But users of X (formerly Twitter) seeking information on the conflict faced a flood of disinformation.

While all major world events are now accompanied almost instantly by a deluge of disinformation aimed at controlling the narrative, the scale and speed at which disinformation was being seeded about the Israel-Hamas conflict is unprecedented—particularly on X.

“For many reasons, this is the hardest time I’ve ever had covering a crisis on here,” Justin Peden, an OSINT researcher from Alabama known online as the Intel Crab, posted on X. “Credible links are now photos. On the ground news outlets struggle to reach audiences without an expensive blue check mark. Xenophobic goons are boosted by the platform’s CEO. End times, folks.”

When Peden covered the escalation in Gaza in 2021, the sources he was seeing in his feed were from people on the ground or credible news agencies. This weekend, he says, verified content or primary sources were virtually impossible to find on X.

“It’s getting incredibly hard to find people that actually live in Palestine or in southern Israel,” Peden tells WIRED. “It’s been incredibly hard to find their preliminary information and share their videos and photos. You have this perfect storm where on the ground, preliminary sources are not being amplified, especially those that maybe don’t speak English, which is a large majority of users in that area.”

Boosted by the algorithm that promotes users willing to pay X $8 a month for a premium subscription, posts from those with a blue checkmark shot to the top of news feeds for people seeking information about the conflict.

Rather than being shown verified and fact-checked information, X users were presented with video game footage passed off as footage of a Hamas attack and images of firework celebrations in Algeria presented as Israeli strikes on Hamas. There were faked pictures of soccer superstar Ronaldo holding the Palestinian flag, while a three-year-old video from the Syrian civil war repurposed to look like it was taken this weekend.

As a result, Peden says that he and his fellow OSINT researchers have to spend their time debunking years-old content rather than verifying and sharing real footage from the conflict.

Many of these videos and images racked up hundreds of thousands of views and engagements. While some later featured a note from X’s decimated community fact-checking system, many more remained untouched. And as Elon Musk has repeatedly done in recent incidents, the platform’s CEO made the situation much worse.

“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk wrote in a post to his 150 million followers on Sunday morning. Both the accounts Musk referenced are well-known spreaders of disinformation. For example, both accounts spread the lie that there had been an explosion near the White House in May, a story that made the US stock market briefly plummet before it was debunked.

Many users also pointed out that the @WarMonitors account had a history of posting antisemitic comments on X. Last year, the account replied to a post from Ye (formerly Kanye West) thanking the rapper and adding: “The overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zi0nists” while telling another X user in June to “go worship a jew lil bro.”

Musk deleted his recommendation soon after posting it, but not before it was viewed over 11 million times. Later on Sunday, Musk wrote: “As always, please try to stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like.”

Experts believe that the proliferation of disinformation on X around the Israel-Hamas conflict this weekend is largely the result of changes Musk has made to the platform over the past year, including his decision to fire most of the people responsible for tackling disinformation.

“Elon Musk’s changes to the platform work entirely to the benefit of terrorists and war propagandists,” Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab, tells WIRED. “Changes in profit and incentive structure mean that there’s a lot more tendency for people to share at high volume information which may not be true because they are trying to maximize view counts. Anyone can buy one of those little blue checks and change their profile picture to something that’s seemingly a media outlet. It takes quite a bit of work to vet who’s telling the truth and who’s not.”

X, which eliminated its entire PR team last year, responded to WIRED’s request for comment on the proliferation of disinformation on its platform with the automated message: “Busy now, please check back later.”

Peden says the Twitter algorithm has been designed to boost content that gets the most engagement, which incentivizes bad actors to share disinformation.

“The videos and images that you’re seeing of air strikes, they’re very prolific,” Peden says. “They’re very hard-hitting, and unfortunately that means engagement does incredibly, incredibly well. These images are horrible and dramatic, and they perform well. So there is an incentive by others, especially those trying to push a narrative to share an old video from years ago, just because people love looking at the stuff.”

In an echo of what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, much of the primary footage emerging from the Israel-Hamas conflict over the weekend was posted first on the encrypted message platform Telegram. From there, it was taken and reshared on other platforms, but in most cases the footage was not fact-checked first or it was taken out of context to suit the narrative being pushed by the poster.

“There’s an immense amount of primary content that was first posted in Telegram groups in one form or another, but there’s essentially no way to vet that information. Then that primary information hits others platforms, notably Twitter, where there’s an immense battle of spin and narrative taking place,” Brooking says. “You have artisans on every side, as well as sympathizers from one group or another, who are also joining this [battle].”

The situation is so bad on X right now that even seasoned OSINT researchers are being duped by fake accounts, including one that shared a false claim about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu being hospitalized over the weekend.

“Any sort of ground truth, which was always hard to get on Twitter, is now entirely out of reach,” Brooking says.

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ericdeggans · 6 months ago

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Joining the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame: Fulfillment from a life of helping a community understand itself

Journalism always seemed like a realistic career goal for me, thanks to my dad, Chuck Deggans.

He had a regular column in several newspapers around my Gary, Indiana hometown when I was growing up, writing for Black-centered newspapers like Gary INFO and The Crusader, in addition to the dominant local daily, The Post-Tribune. His column was like a local version of Jet magazine’s happenings pages, with tidbits on all the stuff going on in Gary’s Black social scenes, complete with a few photos of beautiful women in bikinis or local notables.

That’s why I spent time talking about him and my mother, Carolyn Williams, when I was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. The honor, which has surprised and gratified me, was a direct reflection of both their influences.

My mom scrimped and saved to send me to private schools we could barely afford, giving me an education and experiences that broadened my horizons invaluably. And my dad showed me a career in journalism could bring a steady paycheck, community influence and great pride – knowing you were helping a community understand itself by telling its story, again and again, every day. Which was no small lesson for a Black kid raised in a tough neighborhood with few similar role models.

The Hall of Fame class this year includes some impressive names: Max Jones, editor of the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute; Bill Benner, a former sports reporter, writer and columnist at the Indianapolis Star; Sandra Chapman, reporter/investigative journalist formerly with WISH-TV and later WTHR-TV in Indianapolis; Francisco Figueroa (1896-1951), the printer, publisher and editorial contributor to Indiana's first Spanish language newspaper, El Amigo del Hogar; Wallace Terry, 1938-2003, journalist, documentarian and author who covered war and civil rights for a variety of national newspapers and magazines and Kathy Tretter, owner and publisher of the Spencer County Leader and the Ferdinand News.

Joining this group was a distinct honor – a major highlight in a journalism life which has included everything from hosting shows on NPR and CNN to interviewing Oprah Winfrey and Prince, writing a book that predicted a lot of the modern shape of media and forcing the TV industry to face much of its hypocrisies regarding race and equity.

These days, it’s easy to despair over the waning impact of journalism, as audiences increasingly align with outlets telling them what they want to hear and those in power find more insidious ways to undermine a truly independent press.

But the Hall of Fame ceremony was poignant reminder of value in the ceaseless, constant work of journalists from my home state and around the world – a lifetime-long challenge which could not be more rewarding or necessary in the current moment.

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j4xotto · 11 months ago

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Melbourne, 2014.

The first time Jax kissed Ash, he was deadly sober.

Well, mostly sober. He remembered his skin was sticky-sweet with champagne, most of the spray having dribbled down his chin, pornographic in a way he was sure would be giffed on Tumblr and later reblogged by a hundred horny, queer Formula One fans. Everything he ever did was put under a microscope, but in that moment, he was too euphoric to care. Let me celebrate tonight, he thought. Let me throw myself into the arms of my teammate, roar with the crowd. Today, he was on the podium, he was first fucking place.

Bodies pressed in on him from every side, clapping his back and clutching onto his race suit. Pure adrenaline coarsed through him, his heart still jackhammering with the thrum of the engine. Amongst the throng of people, Jax was vaguely aware of the team principal ruffling his hair, his eyes clapping on his Mum, beaming with pride. His Dad was crying, fat tears of pride spilling down his cheeks, his baby niece propped up on his shoulders. Little Paige, who Jax remembered holding in the delivery room, wearing a bright smile for him, a number four painted in glitter on her cheek. Jax wished he could say it didn’t all pale in comparison to seeing Ash.

Because when Ash hurtled toward him in the crowd, God, his heart clenched in his chest. It felt as though he was moving in slow motion to get to him, the end goal to be eveloped in his arms. Pride beamed out from Ash’s features, eyes glittering from beneath his dark brow. Those full, pretty lips Jax had fantasised about kissing one too many times were pulled into a bright smile. And then suddenly, Ash’s arms were around him, pulling him into a hug so tight the rest of the world fell away.

“I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, Jaxxy.” he breathed, the words hot against Jax’s ear, his honeycoated Boston accent curling around the praise. It made Jax's stomach twist every time.

For just a second, Jax can live in this daydream. That Ash is his, and that he's allowed to want him. That he’s allowed to celebrate his win with the man he loves, in front of his team, at his home race. Breathing in in the slick smell of sweat against Ash’s skin, Jax knocked his Haas cap clean off his head. It fell to the ground, forgotten and probably crushed, as Jax pushed his fingers into Ash’s dark locks.

He forgot himself. In hindsight, he can admit that. When Ash pulled back, bright and blazing and beautiful, Jax moved to press his lips to the other man’s cheek.

Cameras everywhere flashed as Jax missed by half an inch, catching Ash full on the mouth. A closed mouth press of lips that leaves his trainer startled, Ash whipping his head back with wide eyes, no regard for Jax’s hurt feelings as he plastered a scowl on his face. What should’ve been the best day of his life took a sudden, steep drop off the edge of a cliff.

When Jax disentangled from his friend, his Ash, the first thing he saw was Kelly. Her blonde hair had been swept off her shoulders and fastened in a tight top knot, a precaution against the stuffy Melbourne heat. She'd pressed herself against Jax in a bright hug and a flurry of nerves moments before he stepped in the car, looking so proud she might burst. Now, when Jax's eyes met hers, they found her blue eyes brimming with rage and unshed tears. From where she was standing, Jax was sure it looked pretty bad. After all, wasn't he supposed to be her friend?

Sorry, Kelly, he remembered thinking, but I did love him first.

In the the end, Jax found himself on the doorstep to his family home. A week spent in Sydney, crying bitterly in the arms of his Mum. Jax was all too certain that his racing career was over, a sting not even Mila Otto could soothe. This horrible, hyper-masculine sport he loved so fiercely had turned its back on him for the final time. The photo was splashed over every major news outlet, and Jax was called every hateful name under the sun by every sports commentator, journalist and motor sports fan. The few times Jax dared to log into Twitter, there’s a few sweet girls with the Australian flag in their display name who tweet him a string of hearts, a reminder that he is loved and even supported. Each night involves Jax trying and failing to read a few thinkpieces on the importance of queer athletes in male dominated sports, but they just hurt his head.

There was talk about dropping him from Haas. The consolation is a stern telling off for his behaviour and a string of press conferences. Jax sitting shoulder to shoulder with other drivers as he made jokes, denied everything, no homo’d his way through it all.

If you were to ask about Jax Otto's racing season in 2014, most people would tell you about his wins. How he was consistently at pole position, how he finished P1, P2, P3 most races. How the crowd would light up with him, chanting his name as he stepped out of the car, bright, vibrant and alive.

If you were to google Jax Otto now, the picture of him kissing another man isn't even the first thing that comes up.

#oneshost;#oneshot1 #homophobia cw

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isthehorsevideocute · 1 year ago

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must be a new record or something because now we have two riders in one year stripped of their place on their national team for the Olympics. Eric Lamaze of Canada for faking cancer to try to get out of a horse sale scam conviction and now Andreas Helgstrand of Denmark for serial horse abuse. Honestly it was about time Andreas got investigated, he has the track record between his and his riders' multiple disqualifications from competition for blood in the mouths of their horses, and his competing of a horse that had only just been colicking the day before. I mean all you have to do is look at his riding style to see something ain't right

On top of all of that he's allegedly scammed clients the same way Lamaze did (save for the cancer faking). Big surprise that one of the wealthiest professionals in the equestrian world has make billions scamming people, mistreating staff, and abusing horses by running a factory that values quantity over quality. It reflects not only everything wrong with the equine world, but with the whole world as we know it.

Story here is that an investigative journalist for Denmark's tv2 station went undercover as a groom for Helgstrand's training center.

The documentary first part has been released in Denmark, and there is due to be a part two. Information we know thus far and is well documented in testimony, video, and photo evidence is as follows (graphic depictions of animal abuse under the cut:

-Riding of horses in draw reins (long reins that run through the bridle and attach to the cinch, holding the saddle in place, which creates a pull effect that when tightened draws the horse's nose in and down toward the chest), behind the vertical (the line at which the horse's head is perfectly vertical with the ground to which behind would draw the nose in toward the chest) and see-sawing (when the rider pulls the reins in a "flossing" manner putting harsh alternating pressure on the face)

-Horses being kicked hard with spurs

-Horses showing big reactions indicating extreme fear and discomfort

-Open wounds from excessive spurring

-Admissions of horses often having bloody mouths from their bridles (documented by research as often being caused by overly tight nosebands causing a loss of circulation and sensation to use muzzle and mouth causing numbness leading to the horse biting their tongue.

This is one of his rides disqualified for blood in the mouth

-Whip marks (extreme bruising)

And that's just the horses. That doesn't even delve into the treatment of staff or the scams.

And this issue is not isolated to Denmark, the guy owns numerous international brands including show venues (including American ones like the Wellington international Horse Park in Wellington FL), tack brands and outfitters, feed companies, news outlets, and jewelry sellers. He's also a major sponsor of other equestrians even outside his discipline such as German show jumper Ludger Beerbaum (who was found out in a similar undercover operaton to be poling his horses. Poling is when a person on the ground lifts the top rail on a jump so the horse hits their leg on the rail while jumping). For a full list on where his influence lies so you can boycott, milestone equestrian made this handy list

#animal abuse #not cute #Helgstrand dressage

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darkmaga-returns · 18 days ago

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Ever since Israel’s October 1st invasion of Lebanon, the Western media has been a witting, willing accomplice to the sadistic, criminal assault. Mainstream journalists have worked overtime to whitewash, distort, and conceal the Zionist entity’s murderous rampage, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, and injured and displaced many more. Serving as Tel Aviv’s perpetual megaphone and apologist is a role for which major news outlets have eagerly volunteered for decades. Their crusade has only become turbocharged following the Gaza genocide erupting.

In the first week of October, Israeli Occupation Forces fired 355 bullets at a car containing a five-year-old, then shot at rescue workers who rushed to save her life. A horrific crime - yet, per mainstream headlines, she was simply a “girl killed in Gaza”. The circumstances and perpetrators of her death, if mentioned at all, were invariably buried at the bottom of reports, well-hidden from the 80% of people who only read headlines, not accompanying articles.

By contrast, on October 15th, Sky News was very keen that its viewers know the names and faces of four “teenage” IOF soldiers “killed” in a “Hezbollah drone attack”, therefore humanizing and infantalising individuals who, by mere token of their service in the Zionist entity’s military forces, are definitionally guilty of genocide. In passing, the same report briskly noted: “‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike”. Their identities, ages, and photos, let alone clarity on who or what murdered them, weren’t provided.

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dankusner · 6 months ago

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Yes, our reporting is biased — to a degree

Reporters work hard to include a range of views, but that’s just a start The Dallas Morning News’ masthead says that we “Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question.”

It is a challenge to our newsroom and a promise to our readers.

To hear it from some members of our audience, we are falling short of that pledge.

They see a lack of fairness in the stories we publish (or don’t), our sources (or lack thereof), our photos, and in the language in those stories.

They allege bias in stories about protests over the Israel-Hamas war, education savings accounts, transgender issues, abortion, national politics, state politics and, of course, Donald Trump. And that is a partial list.

Here is my take:

Having read The News cover-to-cover every day for the past few months, I know that our reporters do get all sides of the story.

They just don’t do it consistently, which isn’t good enough.

Not surprisingly, coverage of politics draws the most criticism, maybe more so because this is a major-election year.

These days, readers are attuned to every perceived slight.

Sometimes they are off base, but more often than not, I share their ire, or at least their puzzlement.

(Some of that anger is trained on our wire stories, which our journalists don’t report and write. Or, as I’ve mentioned before, some readers confuse our news and opinion pages. We will deal with those topics in future columns.)

I do not think our reporters are consciously unfair.

I do think that sometimes, when we interview sources with whom we might be sympathetic, we are not as quick to dig for other, opposing voices.

We are selective about weaving in voices from all sides.

In particular, conservative voices are frequently missing.

No doubt conservatives — including some politicians and activists — are at times to blame, as they don’t want to be quoted in The News .

They see cooperation with us as a stain on their street cred.

Conservatives who don’t want to talk to us often turn to social media and right-leaning media personalities and outlets instead.

They don’t ignore only our journalists; they ignore all mainstream reporters.

They may not need us, but we need them.

Maybe that’s why, in conversations over the past couple of weeks, I sensed a sobriety about this issue on the part of reporters and editors.

They know this is not our sources’ problem.

It is ours.

And it is a self-reinforcing problem.

When conservative readers don’t see their points of view in our pages, their mistrust of The News deepens, and they are even more reluctant to talk when our reporters call.

So then their perspective goes missing again, and the bitter cycle of mistrust whirls on. You get the picture.

Executive Editor Katrice Hardy agrees that her staff is inconsistent about objectivity and fairness.

“We have some room to grow there,” she says. “Often our work can come across as lacking objectivity because we haven’t gotten the other side, but even if we haven’t, we often don’t say how we tried to reach the person. Sometimes when you’re not transparent about those efforts, it can appear as if you’ve never tried.”

She notes that sometimes the problem is that “we write a story and there’s not a lot of time and thought around, ‘Let’s really read this story as someone who’s reading it coldly.’ … Sometimes I think it’s very easy when you feel like you’re an expert on a topic to lose the objectivity of someone who’s never read it before.”

The work of Gromer Jeffers Jr., The News’ veteran political writer, attracts intense scrutiny.

Jeffers, who is also a regular on NBC5’s Lone Star Politics, says he tries “to write the truth, write things as they are.”

He seeks to “be fair to both sides in terms of giving them the opportunity to have their say.”

That said, he added later in our conversation, “It doesn’t mean we can’t be better. We have to make a better effort to get out there and talk to conservatives and people who lean right.”

Our Education Lab team, overseen by editor Eva-Marie Ayala, covers a host of hot-button political issues, from school choice (education savings accounts) to culture-war controversies.

Readers complain that sometimes conservative voices do not show up in those stories.

I would agree.

Her reporters do work hard to include a range of views, Ayala says.

But, echoing her colleagues, she adds that some sources, especially right-leaning ones, do not respond to us.

Hardy has told the newsroom that reporters need to be more transparent with readers when they can’t reach someone.

Stories now regularly tell us how hard reporters tried to contact a source.

One recent investigative piece, for example, said our journalists had sought to reach someone “for months,” without success.

That’s a good start.

But it is only a start.

In today’s culture of mistrust, we cannot afford to just say, “We tried.”

Our readers are smart and thoughtful, and wherever they are on the political spectrum, they deserve a journalism that’s sophisticated and fair-minded.

That is the challenge.

And the promise.

LETTERS Views and backgrounds matter

Re: “ Yes, our reporting is biased — to a degree,” by Stephen Buckley, Sunday Opinion.

Thank you for addressing an issue that seems to fall in the category of the Yeti for most news sources.

The bias you address is more than real but seems so common in the news reporting business that many if not most Americans can only scratch their heads when these sources keep doing it and no one objects.

I am saying this as someone who dearly wishes for any two alternate candidates for the next election.

As for Buckley’s piece, I was struck by his lack of acknowledging that The Dallas Morning News should pay attention to the new hires’ views and background.

The truth can never be dismissed as a lie.

It’s there in black and white.

But rearranging words or omitting context just deepens the distrust many feel when taking in the news.

Tom Youngblood, Dallas

Good to see your remorse

You can say that again, Mr. Buckley.

Even so, I’m glad that The Dallas Morning News has finally admitted its bias.

I’ve been frustrated for many years at the paper’s gradual transformation into a shill for woke, progressive causes and Democrats.

Almost every story is slanted left.

Stories positive for conservatives are routinely ignored or given short shrift.

Even your choice of which letters to print is biased.

Witness today’s [Sunday, June 16; Page 3P] selection.

Of 10 letters, only one was written by a conservative.

I, myself, have written many times, to criticize stories impugning Republicans.

But my letters were rarely printed, so I stopped writing, as have most right-leaning folks.

And I don’t believe that conservatives deserve blame for not wanting to be quoted by The Dallas Morning News .

They just dislike having their words twisted into meanings different than intended.

I also believe that your journalists and editors are indeed consciously unfair, both in the way they write their stories and in the stories they choose to print.

This is not “bias to a degree” at all, sir, it is “bias to the nth degree.” However, it’s good to see your remorse.

If you really do desire conservative opinion, we conservatives will be watching.

Larry Pivnick, Dallas

McCaa’s kindness praised

SUNDAY LETTERS

Readers weigh in on how to balance news

Better balance sought

Re: “Yes, our reporting is biased — to a degree — Reporters work hard to include a range of views, but that’s just a start,” by Stephen Buckley, June 16 Opinion.

Thank you for Buckley’s column regarding sometimes biased reporting in The Dallas Morning News .

Acknowledgement of the problem is the first step in solving it.

As a 37-year subscriber, I have definitely noticed the increasingly liberal views of the paper.

As Buckley addressed, this problem has been exacerbated by the increasing use of wire service stories from The Associated Press and other media outlets.

These stories tend to be very liberal and one-sided, reflecting the reporter’s bias.

If The News chooses to reprint these stories without balancing the content, readers have every right to blame the paper for bias.

I understand conservative sources’ reluctance to be quoted given how their quote may be used in a liberal story.

However, if a better effort is made to fully present both sides of an issue, this may change over time.

Rick Pugh, Coppell

Read widely

I appreciate Buckley’s column on the degree of bias in reporting.

Proverbs 18:17 notes “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

The ability to review the alternatives is vital for people to make educated decisions.

What some don’t realize is that in 1987 for better or worse, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine imposed on news media that required them to provide alternative views on controversial topics.

This meant media outlets could then slant their presentation to any given audience.

We are now seeing the result from this decision.

My siblings and I had a weekend out together.

We vary widely in political perspectives and had many conversations on controversial topics.

The most meaningful was discussing the need for each of us to spend a few more cycles evaluating what we read, no matter where we get it from, before solidifying our opinion about these topics.

Reading widely and understanding our personal biases is an important starting point for developing opinions.

I’m glad The Dallas Morning News is striving for the same approach in publishing.

Keith Bernard Marx, Richardson

You can’t please everyone

It may sound counterintuitive, but the newspaper business was easier during the golden days of journalism even though a city the size of Dallas might have six or more dailies, all competing with each other.

They survived by slanting their stories toward their readers’ ethnicity, profession and politics, mostly Republican or Democrat.

Besides being impeached twice, Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

Gov. Greg Abbott has done more to cripple Texas public education than any governor in the state’s history. Both statements are true, but printing them would cause howls of outrage from conservative readers.

Buckley’s attempt to keep The Dallas Morning News boat from rocking too much to port or starboard is commendable, but it misses a critical point.

Your most extreme readers don’t care about the “truth” — they care about their version of truth.

While Buckley’s goal is admirable, it’s good to remember another truth: In trying to please everyone, you wind up pleasing no one.

Holmes Brannon, Plano

Blunting ‘leftist media’

Mr. Buckley, I appreciate your candor and desire for fair reporting.

That said, I fully expect continued bias by The Dallas Morning News .

Also, I will continue to send letters to the editor because of perceived propaganda, disinformation, misinformation and lies directed at conservatives and Republicans.

Also, I will continue my letters that provide a news item censored by the leftist media. But please, Mr. Buckley, continue your journalistic efforts!

Donald Jones, Garland

Bias lies within readers Thursday’s Dallas Morning News printed several letters regarding the ongoing bias in journalism debate.

As one writer pointed out, facts are facts.

It’s been my experience that newspapers are more factual than news reporting via television.

With that said, newspapers often report in their stories that so-and-so didn’t respond to requests for interviews, thus putting the reader on notice that they were unable to report both sides of the story, not that they were biased.

One letter wanted The News to apply the “healing ointment of fairness and respect” to its reporting.

Here’s the real truth to bias:

It’s within the reader!

If we’re honest with ourselves, we read what we agree with and what we like, and consciously or unconsciously close our minds when we read something that we don’t agree with (or even refuse to finish the story).

Over the years, our society has become less and less willing to really consider openly and honestly both sides of a story.

So readers, here’s the challenge:

Work to open your minds.

If you think something you’ve read isn’t truthful, do some research on your own before you rant that newspaper stories are biased.

Danna Zoltner, Denton

Pacifying ‘woke’ customers

Re: “Good to see your remorse,” by Larry Pivnick, Tuesday Letters.

I agree with Pivnick’s comments about the bias against conservative stories and letters as exhibited by The Dallas Morning News .

I applaud Stephen Buckley’s admission of bias in the paper against conservatives.

Buckley laments that there are not many letters with a conservative viewpoint.

That is because The News has chased away the conservative readership with its bias over the years.

I know personally many conservatives who have canceled their subscriptions.

Because of the imbalance in readership viewpoints, I believe that the editorial staff responds in accordance with these numbers to keep The News afloat economically.

They do not want to anger their woke customers.

Like Pivnick, I have written many letters that went unpublished that refuted the “woke,” left-wing viewpoint.

In some cases, I have given up writing. In one instance, my letter against President Joe Biden’s open border that was published resulted in two letters that refuted my opinion, but my rebuttal letter to these two letters was not published.

Gwen McAllen, Dallas/Lake Highlands

‘The truth literally hurts’

I am an ex-Republican and a faithful reader of The Dallas Morning News .

For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone could read this paper and determine that it has a liberal leaning.

Is it because they publish viewpoints from different sides in the Opinion section?

Is it because they partnered with Politifact to help readers sort through the mountains of misinformation we are bombarded with every day?

The only answer that I can come up with is that old mental foe, cognitive dissonance.

When presented with facts and evidence that don’t align with a person’s beliefs, there is a marked mental discomfort.

The truth literally hurts.

The same thing happens when we learn new information; that is why learning is difficult.

In my opinion, the readers who see The News as left-leaning have a problem reconciling what they read here against what they see on Fox, One America News Network and Newsmax.

As your recent Politifact story detailed, these companies have paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits about their lies.

Fox admitted in court that its network is for entertainment, not news.

If you want to stop the cognitive dissonance, get your news here, or from other reputable sources.

John R. Dorgan, Flower Mound

Get to know the DMN Public Editor

A Q&A with DMN Public Editor Stephen Buckley

Stephen Buckley, The News’ public editor, recently spoke with our corporate communications group about his new role.

He shared his views on the challenges of 21st-century journalism and the importance of trust in media.

Buckley is a veteran journalist with experience as a reporter and editor of local, national and world news. He teaches journalism at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Q: Please give us a sense of your role and charge at The Dallas Morning News.

A: As I’ve gotten to know our fine journalists at The News and our readers across North Texas, the familiar refrain is “trust.”

The U.S. Constitution allows for freedom of speech and the press, but it doesn’t compel anyone to trust what we or any other publication writes.

I’m here to help continue growing the trust our readers have placed in us for almost 140 years.

Q: That’s helpful. But what does that look like?

A: It looks like being both a bridge and a mirror.

On one side of the bridge are our readers, and on the other side are our journalists and the newsgathering process.

Newsroom processes are often opaque or confusing to outsiders, and I hope I can help be a journalism sherpa, guiding and explaining. At the same time, I’m trying to help our journalists better understand how our audience is responding to their work.

I’m a mirror, too, reflecting our work back to ourselves. Reporters, editors and others who produce news coverage every day of the year are often so pressed for time that it’s tough to look back on our work and see areas for improvement or where we got it right.

I’m also an independent voice, which means that ultimately both readers and the newsroom should see me as an honest broker whose sole agenda is to help The News improve its journalism in service of democracy.

Q: What else does The News’ public editor do?

A: Our readers write frequently, often with astute questions or observations. I’ll look to help be a good teacher (I am also a professor at Duke University) and answer questions when a particular theme begins to take hold. I also meet with elected officials, community leaders, business executives, readers and others to understand where The News gets it right and the challenges of 21st-Century journalism.

Q: You’ve written that you’re independent. What does that mean, exactly?

A: Simply put, I do not have a reporting function in our newsroom. It wouldn’t be fair for me to be a newsroom member and use the mirror analogy I explained above. I do communicate regularly to our columnists and journalists. I report to Grant Moise, our publisher, who allows me exceptionally wide latitude to do my job without interference, which is the only way this role can work. But I also report to our readers, which is an honor.

Q: Tell us something about you that we wouldn’t know about you from your biography.

A: I’m a sports junkie who always has a game on. In fact, when I started out in journalism, I was a sports reporting intern for three summers before I turned to news. Also, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are my guilty pleasure.

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morganmccaskiecogc · 11 months ago

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Photojournalism | News Research

Video Notes

Changing from physical papers to internet/online presence

Decline in newspaper sales

Fewer people are interested in physical newspapers

2.25 million readers lost interest in newspapers

Half a million people stopped buying Sunday papers

Advertising makes up the majority of newspaper pages

Adverts have moved from physical newspapers to online advertising

Local papers have taken the largest hit

Advertisements are the main source of income for newspaper businesses

Journalists, editors, and newspaper staff face job loss

The newspaper has faced revolutions before (radio, TV, etc.)

Modernisation began in the 1980s

Fleet Street was the newspaper 'hub' of the country up until the '80s

"Modernisation" was transferring to computerised offices

The only major British paper not to lose readers in the previous year was The Sun

The Sun won more awards than any other paper

They reduced their price to keep customers (still retaining good profits)

The Sun's main competitor is The Mirror

120-page newspaper, 30,000 copies per hour (40 pages in colour) upgraded to 80,000 copies per hour (all pages in colour)

Investing in new technology and processes

Due to these investments, some papers had to increase prices

Free giveaways are a technique used to boost sales i.e. when The Sun was giving away a free CD copy of McFly's newest album at the time - The Sun gained 300,000 additional readers and the McFly album reached 2.5 million listeners in one weekend

Metro 55% news and 45% advertisements

Robert Murdoch - CEO of News Corporation

The digital revolution is bringing more competition

If readers can't immediately find something on your website - they'll look elsewhere

Videos were being introduced as a form of news outlet on websites/online

Online news is generally free which has an impact on newspaper profitability

Two-thirds of the Guardian's readers are out with the UK

The market is global - no longer physically/geographically restricted

Reader-specific advertising to improve adverts and reader experience

Amazon released the Kindle - subscriptions to newspapers available (as well as books) portable, user-friendly

The younger population tends not to read traditional newspapers

Presentation Questions

Where do you get news?

Television

Radio

Social Media e.g. Twitter

Online newspaper websites

Word of mouth

Four tenets of a newspaper:

Accessible by the public

Published at regular intervals

Information is current

Covers a variety of topics

Why were newspapers so powerful?

The main or only source of news for a long time

Influential

With the inevitable demise of newspapers, what are the implications for photographers today?

Less work

Reduced pay

Stock photos over hiring out

More easily accessible images via the internet

No job security

Paparazzi dominating tabloids

"Citizen" Journalism i.e. newspapers buying images from citizens/pedestrians who happened to take a snap on their phone

Benefits of online news

Larger audience

More exposure

Opportunities for press photographers

Freelance work

Agency work

Can send images to papers rather than working for them

Don't have to wait to be "discovered"

Benefits of working for an agency

Guaranteed work

Additional opportunities

Job security

Benefits

Photo Agencies

Agent France Presse

Reuters

Corbis

Getty

Magnum

Broadsheets

The Times

Sunday Times

The Telegraph

The Guardian

The Observer

The Herald

The Scotsman

The Independent

Tabloids

The Sun

The Mirror

The Daily Mail

The Daily Record

Sunday Mail

Tabloid/Broadsheet Task

What is the photographic style of the paper? Why do you think that is? Daily Record - Attention-grabbing with various images to keep the reader's attention. The Independent - Takes a more organised/structured approach primarily full of informative articles and fewer images.

How many images are in the paper? 161 images in the independent vs. 189 in The Daily Record.

How many are credited? Only 18 of the 161 images were credited to The Independent

Comment on the layout of the paper. What proportion text, what proportion images? In The Independent, there is an even split of images and text, whereas The Daily Record has slightly more images than text.

Freelance or Staff - can you tell? When looking for credited images, sometimes the same names appear which might indicate these photographers are staff for the paper as their images are used consistently throughout.

Comment on the quality of the image and effectiveness; does it tell the story? The images with accompanying text work well to help convey the story.

Look for similar stories/events. An article regarding Russia and Ukraine.

Where is the article? Page 23 in The Daily Record, page 33 in The Independent.

#cogc #hndphotography #photojournalism

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goldiers1 · 2 years ago

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What Lies Ahead for the Hong Kong Economy in 2023?

Hong Kong is a bustling global financial hub with one of the most open and vibrant economies in the world. In recent years, however, its economic growth has been hampered by political instability, a clampdown on media freedom, and the global recession caused by Covid-19. As we look ahead to 2023, it is important to consider what lies ahead for Hong Kong’s economy. In particular, Hong Kong must find ways to manage international trade relations with other countries as well as maintain its status as an attractive destination for foreign investors. Additionally, technological advancement could be key in boosting economic activity while at the same time reducing costs associated with labor and production. Finally, there are concerns that businesses may shift their operations from Hong Kong to Singapore due to more favorable tax policies there. These factors will play a major role in determining whether or not Hong Kong can sustain its current level of economic success over the next few years or if it risks being left behind by other regional economies such as China and Singapore.

Hong Kong Money, Notes and Coins. Photo by Neerav Bhatt. Flickr.

Hong Kong Economy in 2023

Hong Kong’s economy in 2023 looks to be more resilient than ever even with its own unique set of challenges. The Hong Kong government is working hard to capitalize on its strengths while addressing the changes it faces in the economic environment with new policies and initiatives. These changes are resulting in Hong Kong gaining a competitive edge, with trade and tourism seeing some growth. Hong Kong’s largest export sector, financial services, is still strong due to the city’s reputation as a hub for international commerce. It remains well-connected to the mainland economic market through both its airport and trading links, which are expected to provide additional economic investment opportunities in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is continuing to develop its infrastructure and digital capabilities, enabling it to remain a major center for business and information technology innovation. All these factors have Hong Kong poised for a healthy outlook in the near future.

Early Adopters of the Peace Plus One - Sustainability Symbol Hong Kong 3 Finger salute. Photo by Philip McMaster. Flickr.

Political Instability and Clampdown on Media

Hong Kong is in the midst of political and social unrest, perpetuated by an increasingly hostile attitude from Beijing towards Hong Kong's autonomy. For the past few years, Hong Kong citizens have been protesting their deteriorating freedom of expression rights and facing increasing levels of suppression from local media. This includes denying Journalists proper accreditation to cover the protests, cracking down on independent media outlets and reporters, and introducing laws that punish alleged disinformation. Furthermore, with Hong Kong losing its independence due to tightening control from the Chinese Government's attempts at interfering with Hong Kong’s elections, many Hongkongers are voicing their intent to protect universal suffrage and safeguard Hong Kong’s freedoms from further erosion.

Economic Impacts of Global Recession & Covid

Hong Kong has felt the devastating effects of both the global recession and COVID-19. Hong Kong is a trade center that relies heavily on growing export and import activity, making it particularly vulnerable in times of economic downturn. When the pandemic hit, Hong Kong's unemployment rate climbed to a six-year high of 6.4%. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority estimates that Hong Kong's economic growth will slow to 1% in 2020, almost four times below its projected 3.7%. The government also announced over a $60 billion stimulus package in order to provide relief to individuals and businesses. Hong Kong will likely have difficulty recovering from this double economic shock on its own; international aid and support are essential for Hong Kong's long-term fiscal health and economic recovery.

Attracting investment at Hong Kong trade and investment office. Photo by BC Gov Photos. Flickr.

International Trade Relations

The city has emerged as a major player in international trade in recent years. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China is highly integrated with the global economy, and its role in international trade is only expected to grow. Hong Kong is an important entrepôt hub for trade from mainland China and has a number of preferential agreements with foreign countries, especially in Asia that make it a more attractive destination for many businesses who want to take advantage of lower tariffs and easier access to markets abroad. The city also has the potential to be an attractive center for research and development into new trading methods, thanks to the Hong Kong government's commitment to innovation and integrating new technologies into existing models of world economics. Hong Kong is certainly proving itself as an invaluable asset to international trade now, and there are no doubts that its economic future will benefit even further as time goes on.

Financial Hub Status

Hong Kong is well-known as a world-renowned financial hub and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority emphasizes revitalizing Hong Kong’s status as an international financial center. It has made use of Hong Kong’s strategic location in Asia, well-developed infrastructure, sound legal system, and sophisticated professional services to further Hong Kong’s position in the global economy. Hong Kong also benefits from a relatively low tax rate, an independent currency backed by strong foreign exchange reserves, and access to large fund management services. The Hong Kong government has set up conventions for the development of capital market products and legislation for e-commerce and online trading that provides investors with a level of security ensuring safe transactions. In addition, Hong Kong has built up relationships with numerous countries throughout the world granting companies here access to the respective markets in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia & more. All of these features mean Hong Kong stands out as one of the most attractive markets around the world in terms of financial services – essential to any business operating globally today.

Hong Kong 5G. Photo by Mohamed Hassan. Pixabay.

Technological Advancement

Hong Kong is among the world leaders in technological advancement. Hong Kong powered ahead of its peers when it spearheaded the adoption of 5G technology earlier than many other countries, enabling Hong Kong to become one of the first smart cities in the world. Hong Kong also has a high level of digitization across different economic sectors, including banking and finance, tourism, and retail industries. Hong Kong’s drive for digital solutions has resulted in over 6 million online banking accounts as of 2020. This is a figure that rivals that of many advanced countries around the world which demonstrate Hong Kong’s rapid embrace of technology. It will be necessary for Hong Kong to continually invest in new technologies to remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment.

Business Exodus to Singapore

Singapore has become an increasingly attractive hub for international businesses. Recently, Hong Kong’s status as a premier financial center has been under strain due to civil unrest and the implementation of China’s new national security law. This has resulted in many Hong Kong-based companies seeking to relocate operations, with Singapore emerging as the top destination choice. The allure of Singapore lies in its tax benefits, welcoming immigration policy, and attractive incentives for foreign businesses. Global tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have already made moves towards setting up office spaces in the city-state. With a long list of advantages that Hong Kong can no longer offer, it's easy to see why so many companies are making the choice to pack their bags and fly eastward over the horizon to Singapore.

Court of Final Appeal Hong Kong. Photo by Cheung Yin. Unsplash.

Hong Kong Legal Reforms

Hong Kong has taken steps to protect its human rights as they continue to expand its legal system. In particular, Hong Kong aligns with the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by continuously ensuring that residents’ freedom of religion and belief is protected. The city authorities have also worked to protect equality before the law, the right to participation in government, much greater procedural requirements for police searches, protection from arbitrary detention, and the right to a fair trial. Hong Kong has adopted multiple reforms over the past several years in order to keep up with its rapidly expanding legal system as well as to ensure fundamental human rights are adequately safeguarded. These reforms serve not only as a powerful symbol of Hong Kong’s commitment to democracy but also act as an encouraging example for other countries in the world.

Conclusion

Hong Kong has become an attractive market for businesses looking to expand internationally, thanks in part to its access to other markets and high level of technological advancement. Despite this, the city-state of Singapore is increasingly becoming a popular destination choice due to its tax benefits and welcoming immigration policy. Hong Kong authorities have taken steps towards ensuring that fundamental human rights are protected through legal reforms such as aligning with the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While there may be some challenges ahead for Hong Kong’s financial sector, it remains one of the most desirable destinations for global business operations today. With an array of advantages ranging from technology advancements and legal protection all the way to international collaboration opportunities, companies will continue turning their attention towards Hong Kong – making it essential for any company operating globally today. Sources: THX News, Wikipedia & Hong Kong TDC. Read the full article

#China #HongKong #HongKongEconomics #HongKongEconomy #HongKongLaw

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eggman-is-fat-mkay · 1 year ago

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oh my fucking god tumblr --

first of all "I guarantee you that bigots and perverts will use this against trans people, neurodivergent people and women" i don't. you just pulled that out of your ass. AI algorithms that edits photos so people are smiling have been around for a fuckin while m8. you can literally go on google right now and find half a dozen different websites that will do that to a photo you upload. if you wanna gaslight someone and mislead their twitter fans you don't need a pixel.

second are you seriously going to base your purchasing decision on a phone on the AI features programmed into the camera app? are you this shallow? are you this easy to advertise to. i don't like google either but this is absurd. sure, it's a scummy feature, and there's already plenty of backlash against it even from major news outlets. but no one said you had to use this feature, or even use an operating system on your pixel that supported it. don't let google's shadily programmed camera app (literally one app on the whole phone which is only on the stock OS) (and it is the camera APP not the camera -- source: own a degoogled Pixel with non-Google camera app that has exactly 0 features beyond photo, video, gallery, and QR scan) stop you from buying the only phone capable of running GrapheneOS (the reasons you should use that are too numerous for one post)

also, given that even the journalists are speaking up saying "maybe we shouldn't go there" $5 says google is gonna remove this feature before the phone launches.

if you want to not financially support a company that would even consider releasing a phone with this feature, go ahead. i'm not your mom. but acting like google is actively enabling every anti-gay/trans/whatever-ism in the book just by suggesting this is a bridge too far don't you think?

yea i fucking hate this so fucking bad. this is fucking crazy! FUCK YOU GOOGLE!

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Journalists from the independent outlet iStories have confirmed that at least 84 non-mobilized Russian conscripts who were stationed in the Kursk region when Ukraine launched its cross-border offensive are currently missing, and at least 45 others are in Ukrainian captivity.

In an earlier analysis, journalists from BBC News Russian identified 81 missing and 38 captive conscripts. Additionally, at least three conscripts have been killed in the Kursk region since the start of Ukraine’s operation there.

iStories spoke to the families of several of the missing conscripts. The soldiers’ parents said they haven’t received any information from the Russian Defense Ministry about their children’s possible whereabouts. However, they have gotten messages from pro-war activists and bloggers — referring to themselves as “volunteer helpers” — who told the parents not to speak out publicly about the deaths, capture, or disappearances of their loved ones to avoid “playing into” Ukraine’s hands and provoking conflict with the Russian authorities.

One of these “helpers” is an activist named Svetlana Zarutskaya, who runs a chat group for a military unit. She has advised parents “not to talk with Ukes” and to contact the Federal Security Service (FSB) if anybody tries to help them find their sons.

In a conversation recorded by the mother of a missing conscript, Zarutskaya said the following:

There were conscripts stationed on our border in 1941, and our conscripts fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya! When they took their oath, they pledged allegiance to the Motherland. […] The Ukes are pushing the narrative that we’re at fault for posting the conscripts [on the border]. There’s been a major propaganda campaign aimed at turning Russian citizens against their government and against their state. But it’s important to understand: it was the Ukes who crossed our border and took the conscripts captive, and even killed some of them. And we, the Russian army, didn’t cross their borders. We haven’t crossed the new Ukrainian border anywhere.

Some of the missing conscripts’ relatives said they’ve reached out to Russian propagandists for help publicizing their situation but that everyone they contacted was afraid to help, according to iStories. Among these figures were Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Alexander Kots; blogger Semyon Pegov, who runs the popular WarGonzo Telegram channel; state media “war correspondent” Yevgeny Poddubny; Izvestia correspondent Emil Timashev; blogger Yury Podolyak; and reporters for the Yekaterinburg-based state news site Ura.ru.

The Ura.ru employees cited Russia’s law against spreading “disinformation” about the military. Propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova, meanwhile, promised the missing conscripts’ parents that she would help State Duma deputy Shamsail Saraliyev compile a prisoner exchange list, but she then went on to blame the conscripts themselves for allowing Ukrainian troops to cross the border:

Serving at the border in a country at war, they were completely relaxed — wearing civilian clothes and with no weapons. Look at the photos and videos of soldiers captured in the SVO (special military operation) zone: those guys are shell-shocked, dirty, and wounded, and it’s clear that they fought to the end. Compare them with the images of those captured in the Kursk region: some of them are wearing slippers, some are in civilian clothing, all of them look clean. [...] Surrendering without a fight, out of negligence, while drunk — it’s [tantamount to] working for the enemy.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago

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Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news

Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains. Because Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, it periodically erupts in ghastly scandal. Sometimes whistleblowers or reporters reveal historic crimes, including (but not limited to) deliberately helping to foment genocide.

Sometimes, the scandals are contemporary: either Facebook blithely announces it’s going to do something terrible, or we learn of some terrible thing underway from leaks or investigations.

Thanks to a history of anticompetitive mergers — Whatsapp, Instagram, Onavo and more — based on fraudulent promises to antitrust regulators, Facebook has grown to nearly three billion users — except FB doesn’t have users, really — it has hostages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

As Facebook’s own internal memos show, the company doesn’t just buy up competitors so users have nowhere to flee to, it also engineers in high “switching costs” to make it more painful to leave the system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

For example, Facebook’s internal memos show that the manager for its photo products set out to seduce users into entrusting FB with their family photos, because that way quitting Facebook would mean abandoning your memories of your kids, departed grandparents, etc.

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers — their true customers.

The polite term for what FB has is a “two-sided market” (selling advertisers to users and users to advertisers). The technical term is “a monopoly and a monoposony” (a monopsony is a market with a single buyer).

The colloquial term?

“A racket.”

A scam. A bezzle. A blight.

Facebook gouges advertisers on rate cards, then lies about the reach of its ads (like when it lied about the popularity of video, evincing a media-wide “pivot to video” that bankrupted dozens of news- and entertainment-sites).

Facebook didn’t set out to destroy journalism by price-fixing ads, lying to advertisers and media outlets.

FB set out to acquire a monopoly and extract monopoly rents from advertisers and publishers, with a pathological indifference to how these frauds would harm others.

Having shown a willingness to destroy journalists and media outlets to extract a few more billions for its shareholders, Facebook has attracted a lot of enemies in the media.

If you’re a whistleblower with a story to tell, there’s a journalist whose editor will allocate the resources to report your story out in depth. The combination of a rotten company and a lot of pissed off journalists produces a lot of bad ink for the company.

But the fact remains that FB has a vast pool of hostages, billions of them, and it gets to decide what they see, when and how. I used to joke with my human rights activist friends that the best use for Facebook was showing people why and how to leave Facebook.

FB’s response was predictable. As Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel write in the New York Times, FB’s Project Amplify is a Zuckerberg-led initiative to systematically promote positive coverage of FB and its founder — including articles that originate with FB itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html

That is, FB staffers are charged with writing puff pieces about how great the company is, and FB’s algorithm will push these ahead of reporting by actual journalists who present detailed, factual, multi-sourced accounts of the company’s fraudulent and depraved conduct.

Project Amplify marks a pivot from FB’s longstanding policy of issuing insincere apologies for its scandals. Company sources told the reporters that everyone figured out these don’t convince anyone, so the company turned to pushing happy-talk quackspeak instead.

One of the leaders of this project is Alex Schultz, “a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year,” but the major impetus comes from Zuck himself, one of the most hated men on the planet.

Amplify is just one of FB’s strategies for distorting the discourse about itself. In July, it neutered Crowdtangle, an widely used analytics tool that showed that FB’s top posts were unhinged far-right disinformation and conspiracies.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth

And Facebook has declared all-out legal warfare (accompanied by a disinformation campaign) to kill Adobserver, an NYU project that tracks paid political disinformation on the platform.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

By shutting down Crowdtangle and Adobserver, FB hopes to control the academic findings about the company’s role in disinformation, hate, and harassment. The company runs its own research portal where academics are expected to access data about the platform.

But as with the journalists who report on it, FB has heaped abuse on the academics who research it.

Its portal data was bad, leaving PhD and masters’ theses are at risk of retraction. Mid-dissertation researchers have been set back to square one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#facebook-sent-flawed-data-to-misinformation-researchers

In retrospect, Facebook’s decision to game its own algorithm to push pro-company quackspeak seems inevitable. It’s not just that no one believes the company’s apologies anymore (if they ever did) — it’s that the company seems incapable of hiring competent spin doctors.

Take the WSJ’s blockbuster “Facebook Files,” a series of reports detailing the company’s willingness to harm children, commit fraud, and allow millions of favored, powerful people to violate its rules with impunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-16/facebook-s-promised-to-gain-the-public-s-trust

FB’s response was genuinely pathetic. In a perfunctory blog post, its top flack — the widely despised British politician Nick Clegg, paid millions to front FB on the global stage — vilified the WSJ’s reporting without producing any factual rebuttals.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

It’s the kind of ham-fisted policy advocacy that Facebook is (in)famous for. Who can forget the absolute shitshow in India over its Internet Basics program, when it bribed telcos to exempt FB and the services it hand-picked from their data-caps?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

This Net-Neutracidal maneuver, falsely billed as a way to bring the internet to poor people (something is absolutely does not do), was the subject of a consultation by India’s telco regulators.

FB pushed deceptive alerts to millions of its Indian users, tricking them into sending a flood of form-letters to the regulator urging it to leave Internet Basics intact.

But whoever drafted the form letter didn’t bother to check whether it addressed any of the questions the regulator was consulting on. That made these millions of letters non-responsive to the consultation, so the regulator ignored them.

FB lost! It’s almost as though people who are good at fighting policy battles don’t want to work for Facebook, and the only talent they can attract are the kinds of opportunistic blunderers that no one takes seriously and everyone hates.

Weird, that.

#pluralistic

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years ago

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A Ukrainian television newscaster went on a fascist rant on national television on March 12, calling for the massacre of Russian children and the elimination of Russia from the face of the earth.

Channel 24 anchor Fahruddin Sharafmal made the statement following a report on the death of his friend, a Ukrainian Armed Forces member, who was killed fighting Russian forces over the weekend. He used the occasion to broadcast a photo of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann over his right shoulder and appeal for the murder of millions of Ukrainian citizens who are also Russians.

“I know that as a journalist, I have to be objective. I have to be balanced, in order to report information with a cold heart. But to tell you the truth, it’s very hard to keep going,” said Sharafmal.

“Especially at a time like this, since in Russia they call us Nazis, fascists and so on. I’ll allow myself to quote Adolf Eichmann, who said that in order to destroy a nation you must first of all destroy its children. Because by killing their parents the children will grow up and take revenge. By killing children they will never grow up and the nation will disappear. The Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot destroy Russian children because it is forbidden by the rules of war and it is also forbidden by various conventions including the Geneva Conventions.

“But I am not from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And when I get the chance to settle things with the Russians I will be obliged to do it. Since you call me a Nazi, I’ll adhere to the doctrine of Adolf Eichmann and will do everything in my power to ensure that your children never live on this earth. So that you can feel what it’s like when innocent civilians die. So that you can feel all the pain and suffering when you say, ‘We didn’t start the war. It was all Putin. We didn't want this war.’ We didn't want it either.

“But you have to understand it’s about the victory of the Ukrainian people. It’s not about peace. We need victory. And if we have to slaughter all your families to do it, I’ll be the first to do it. Glory to the nation! And let’s hope there will [not] be such a nation as Russia and the Russians on this earth again. Because they are just scum that pollute this land. If Ukrainians have the opportunity, which they are basically doing right now, to destroy, to slaughter, to kill, to strangle the Muscovites, I hope everyone will do their part and whack at least one Muscovite.”

This is nothing short of an appeal for ethnic cleansing.

Channel 24 is a Kiev-based station, but is owned by TRX-Lux Media. In 2019 its website was ranked 13th out of Ukraine’s 25 top most-visited news outlets. The company is run by Katerina Kit-Sadova, the wife of the mayor of the western Ukrainian city of L'viv, home to 720,000 people. Tens of thousands of its residents identify as Russian and/or use Russian as their primary language.

The first half of Sharafmal's rant remains on the station's YouTube channel, but now cuts off before Adolf Eichmann is mentioned. The major Western media has no coverage of the incident, which became more widely known because it was reported by the Russian state news service Sputnik and picked up on Twitter.

A Nazi SS Officer, Eichmann played a major role in managing the logistics of the Holocaust and was later found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1962. Eichmann is today cited in the positive only by neo-Nazis.

Sharafmal issued an apology the next day, but this has little weight. One does not call for genocide as a slip of the tongue or in a fit of rage over a deceased friend.

His ravings are an expression of the political outlook that has gripped a section of the Ukrainian ruling class. The 2014 United States-backed coup that removed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was carried out with the help of far-right forces, such as the Svoboda political party and the paramilitary gang Right Sector.

These layers have grown like weeds in Ukraine ever since and have been incorporated into Ukraine’s military and police apparatus. They form the core of forces like the Azov Battalion, whose members wear neo-Nazi emblems on their uniforms and proudly display banners with the image of Ukrainian fascist and mass murderer Stepan Bandera at their marches.

The Ukrainian far right is now being armed to the teeth and trained, with billions of dollars of military aid from the US and NATO flooding into the country. The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will send the country another $1 billion.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and various far-right and neo-Nazi elements have taken delight in posting photos of dead Russian soldiers, often accompanied by dehumanizing jokes and exhortations to commit war crimes.

In response to the shelling of cities by Russia's armed forces, the Facebook account of the Commander of Ukraine’s special forces announced it would no longer take Russian artillerymen prisoner, but kill them on the spot. The post also threatened that surrendering to Ukraine’s special forces would be worse than death and that captured Russian artillerymen would be “cut up like pigs.”

These posts are an announcement of the intent to commit war crimes, fully aligned with the spirit and content of Sharafmal’s appeal.

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boxoftheskyking · 4 years ago

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Pick Up Every Piece, Part Two

how do you write Wei Ying? All talking. How do you write Lan Zhan? Run on sentences, of course.

have some exposition. everyone is a mess, wahoo.

Part One

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Lan Zhan’s iron is broken.

There’s no reason it should be—he keeps it clean and returns it to its original box after each use, and it’s barely three years old. But no matter what he does, it does not heat. He shouldn’t even need to iron his shirt in the morning, but deadline on deadline (and budget cuts on budget cuts) mean that he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in six days and hasn’t done laundry in a week. There are dishes piled up in the kitchen sink, so he’s started avoiding the kitchen entirely on his way to crash into bed so he doesn’t have to see it.

Things break, Lan Zhan accepts this. They wear out, come to accidents, disappoint you, die. But there’s no reason for this iron not to work. There have been no odd smells, the plug is fine—he’s tried three different outlets—and it’s barely three years old.

He stands in his closet in an undershirt and boxers, one hand pressed flat against the heating element, and allows himself a two minute breakdown.

There’s no reason for it. He’s done everything right, ticked every box. He started writing at age ten and hasn’t stopped since. He was top of his class at university, edited every school paper he had access to and founded two more, he got his masters. Even factoring in nepotism—which he doesn’t like to do, because it makes him feel like a cheat—he’s gone about as far as he can as a journalist. He’s won every major award, and with his uncle as managing editor he has more freedom than most in terms of how he writes and what he covers. He served the Republic, fought for two and half years and got a Sunshot medal for it. And yet, after ten years in his chosen field, everything is dying around him. No one pays for papers anymore, no one cares for the truth anymore. Political pundits on TV and radio have taken over the readership; citizens still traumatized by war just want someone to tell them what to think, tell them everything is fine now, tell them to ignore the injustices and messes and misfortunes that surround them. When he started at the Gusu Herald there were fifty people on staff—now they’re down to under twenty, including editors. All the small town papers in the area have closed, but there’s hardly the staff to even consider local stories these days. Lan Qiren tries to hold out as the last family-owned paper in the area, but corporations are circling. It’s like he spent his whole youth building a shining bridge across a canyon, only to find the other side barren and dead, miles of cold steel and no light on the horizon.

He turns the iron and presses it against his chest, imagines it suddenly turning on, the satisfaction of the burn.

Then he unplugs the iron, puts it back in its box, and pulls on the wrinkled shirt. He pulls up the blackout curtains to let a little of the thin 7am light into the bedroom. There’s no reason to still have blackout curtains in Gusu, but he got used to it years ago and once he gets used to things he tends not to change them without reason. But he’s got plants now, gifts from his brother, and he’s trying to keep them alive. It shouldn’t be that difficult to do, he is conscientious and meticulous, but then his iron shouldn’t be broken either.

No one comments on his wrinkled appearance when he gets to work, which irks him. There is the familiar sound of phones ringing, printers going, file cabinets slamming open and closed in every direction. It’s calming to him, but he can’t help but notice how much quieter it is now than when he started. Part of it is the new computers—when he started here they were still on electric typewriters which were deafening. But mostly it just feels . . . empty.

Not completely empty, not yet.

“Hey, hey Lan Zhan,” Lan Meiling waves him over to her desk, where a half dozen reporters are gathered around a computer printout. “Did you see this? Jin Zixun’s the new head of the Trade Commission. Just announced.”

Lan Zhan winces and looks over the report.

“But we’re not a monarchy, right guys?” Liu Dong snorts, shoving Meiling’s shoulder.

“It’s not a monarchy, it’s the other thing,” Wang Tengfei says, tapping his chin. “What’s the thing where it’s not passed down by birth, but you still appoint all your family members? That’s a thing isn’t it?”

“That’s just Jin Guangshan,” Liu Dong laughs. “But hush, hush, treason.”

“Come on, what’s the word for it?” Tengfei asks again.

Meiling takes the paper back from Lan Zhan. “Wasn’t he the one who paid for his grades in college? I get them confused.”

Lan Zhan nods. “That was Jin Zixun. Who’s got the story? There should be clippings. ‘92, I think, or ‘93.”

“Who covered that? Any of you?” Su She leans over the cubicle wall, knocking the photo of Meiling’s family onto her desk. There’s no reason for him to be here; he doesn’t cover politics. He’s had the local court beat for the past three years, and has spent those three years writing the exact same story five times a week with different names and charges plugged in. Lan Zhan is completely sure that he’d cover a person fined for unpaid parking tickets and a person arrested for smuggling baby unicorns with the exact same level of interest.

“Wei Ying wrote the story,” Lan Zhan says. The group falls silent, a troubled glance flying between all but him. “Before the merger, in the Gusu Times. Lan Shu can pull the clippings for you. It was a series, I believe.”

Lan Meiling coughs. “You can find a different reference, Liu Dong. Someone in Qinghe must have covered it.”

“It was a good series,” Lan Zhan says. He’s being needlessly stubborn, but that’s nothing new. “Wei Ying got the school registrar on the record.”

Liu Dong scratches the back of his shaved head. “Yeah, but. You know. I’ll call over to Qinghe.”

“It was a good series,” Lan Zhan says again. It’s awkward enough to break up the group, everyone shuffling back to their desks or the coffee maker. Lan Zhan has that uncomfortable feeling that he’s supposed to want to apologize for something. It’s a feeling he gets a lot, and he hates it. He doesn’t want to apologize—he has nothing to apologize for. Wei Ying was a good reporter; he wrote good stories. Everything that happened after that doesn’t change the fact that he was good at what he did.

Su She follows him over to his desk, so his day is about to keep getting worse. Lan Zhan prides himself on being rational, and he has many rational reasons for disliking Su She. He’s a half-assed writer, he wouldn’t know a decently placed comma if it was unveiled to him on a pedestal by the gods, he is a busybody and a gossip, and he lives to take credit for other people’s work. He’ll offer you the phone number of one of his “connections” and then whine about how he deserves a shared byline.

But on many levels beyond the rational, Lan Zhan hates the guy. He hates the way he pronounces words, his laugh, the smell of his lunch, even his handwriting. And he’s always there.

“You knew him, didn’t you, Lan Zhan?” Su She leans on his cubicle now, though there are no photographs to knock down.

Lan Zhan’s instinctual response is Don’t call me that, which is ridiculous because it’s his name. But he hates the way his name sounds in Su She’s mouth.

“What?”

“Wei Ying. You knew him before the scandal, didn’t you?”

Lan Zhan takes an even breath. “Yes.”

“Did you work with him?”

“He was at the Times, before the merger. He never worked at the Herald.”

“But you knew him in school, right?”

If Lan Zhan wanted to be fair (he doesn’t), there’s no way for Su She to know that this line of questioning is particularly painful. He distracts himself from the sting of it by considering all of the answers he won’t be giving.

Yes. He gave me half a handjob in 1989 and I’ve thought of it every day since.

Yes. He called me his soulmate one day in the library at Gusu University and I’ve thought of it every day since.

Yes, I read the story that ruined his life before it was published, because he came to my home and asked me to read it and he was so proud, skinny and manic and over-caffeinated and burning, burning, burning, and I looked at him and I recognized the same thing that burns in me, the thing that keeps me coming back to this sad beige office every day, that makes me want to fight the inevitable like swinging swords at the sea, and I didn’t tell him not to publish. I told him it was a good story. It would not have stopped him, me telling him not to do it. But I could have tried. And I’ve thought of that every day since.

He just nods, instead.

“Is he still alive, do you think?” Su She asks casually.

The question stops Lan Zhan. “What?”

“No one’s heard from him since the war, have they? Could have died somewhere. Plenty still missing. I heard he went West, maybe, and the fighting was—”

“He is not dead.” Lan Zhan doesn’t know this for sure. But he would know, surely. Wouldn’t he? The thought honestly has not occurred to him in all these years, that Wei Ying might have died.

“Are you in touch?” Su She has a habit of asking questions like this, flipping from casual conversation to an interrogation. It makes him a terrible reporter.

“I served with his brother. He has not mentioned that Wei Ying has died. I have work to do, Su She.”

It bothers him, even after Su She leaves. He hasn’t seen Jiang Cheng in a few years, and they do not write or call each other. Jin Zixuan writes to them all about once a year, and he visits when he’s in Gusu, but he has always been the more sentimental one of the three of them, the survivors. But he thinks that Jiang Cheng would tell him if Wei Ying had died.

Perhaps he wouldn’t. Jiang Cheng was not at school with them; he may not think of Lan Zhan as a person to notify in the event of his brother’s death. Would anyone think to let him know? It wouldn’t make the papers, probably, so how would he know? Wen Qing, perhaps. If she remembered. If she is also alive.

He feels it like an itch on his skin, something unsettled in his stomach, the idea that Wei Ying might not have survived. He would know, wouldn’t he? He’d feel it, the change in the fabric of the universe. Food would taste different, his voice would sound different. He’d feel it in the moments between sleeping and waking.

He makes a cup of tea and boots up his computer. They all have emails now, which is still a relatively new part of the morning ritual, but he doesn’t mind adding it as he checks his mail, his answering machine. He had a deadline yesterday and isn’t swamped this morning, so he takes down phone numbers and flips through his calendar on autopilot while he thinks about Wei Ying.

Wei Ying probably remembers him. He definitely remembers him, it would be ridiculous for him not to, but Lan Zhan doubts he remembers their college years the same way.

(His fingers in Wei Ying’s hair, shoved against the wall in someone else’s dark bedroom, cheering and laughter from the drinking game just downstairs, cheap beer on his breath, everything spinning, spinning, his first time being drunk, his brain singing out kiss him, kiss him again, more, more, more, this is your chance, Wei Ying’s left hand on him, awkward and surprisingly tender, Wei Ying’s voice slurring in his ear “Lan Zhan I’m so glad you’re here, I’m so glad, I’m so glad I found you, Lan Zhan,” before the door bursts open and they spring apart, before Wei Ying ruffles his hair and says, “You probably won’t remember this, huh?” before they leave the party separately, before weeks of silence because what do you say to all of that, before Wei Ying and Wen Qing get together and Lan Zhan says, “I’m happy for you,” which is a lie, a lie, a lie, before Wei Ying and Wen Qing split up and Lan Zhan says, “I’m sorry to hear that,” which is a lie, a lie, a lie . . .)

He could do some digging. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to find him, and it’s not like Lan Zhan lacks resources. But every time the thought crosses his mind it feels like too much, too violating. If Wei Ying wanted to be found, he would not have disappeared. And if Wei Ying wanted Lan Zhan in his life, he knows where to find him. Lan Zhan is not the one who left.

That’s a bitter thought, and unfair.

The story of Wei Ying is not complicated, and it’s not secret, but it’s never told right.

They’d met in college, when Wei Ying transferred to Gusu in junior year, in a psych class of all places. Lan Zhan had a double major, because psychology and journalism was a logical pairing, and Wei Ying was meant to take a broadcast concentration but had broken his wrist falling off a roof and couldn’t work any of the equipment.

Lan Zhan hadn’t known what to do with him at first. Wei Ying had grabbed him for the first group project a week into the semester, declaring, “We’re kindred spirits, you know,” before writing his phone number left-handed on Lan Zhan’s arm. Lan Zhan did not know. They had barely spoken before this, but for the rest of the semester Wei Ying sat by him and they studied together and Lan Zhan pulled strings to get him onto the university paper. And Wei Ying had grinned at him one day in the library, sleep-deprived and rumpled, when Lan Zhan had finished his trailed-off sentence, and said “Ah, my soulmate.”

They were kindred spirits, Lan Zhan believed. Lan Zhan decided he wanted to be a reporter when he was ten and learned the truth about his parents. After an entire childhood of being lied to, he decided his calling in life would be to tell the truth, no matter what. It made him odd and prickly, and usually lonely, but gave him a reputation of fearlessness and ferocity that he would never regret.

Wei Ying was different. He wasn’t so invested in the truth from a moral or political perspective—he was cheerfully amoral back then, in a teenage kind of way—but he loved information and he loved being right. Puzzles and secrets attracted him, and Lan Zhan watched them open up for him like lotus flowers at every turn.

Lan Zhan settled into their friendship in a way that was unexpected, he began to rely on Wei Ying’s opinion, began to think of things from his perspective when he found himself stuck. And then he’d gotten drunk at a midwinter party and kissed Wei Ying and ruined all of it. It wasn’t Wei Ying’s fault. Lan Zhan had panicked and run and then left for break and never given Wei Ying his home number, and then when he returned Wei Ying wasn’t single anymore. He’d gone to Yiling with Wen Qing and her brother and come back someone’s boyfriend. (Wen Qing! Older, beautiful, stern and razor-sharp, who Lan Zhan had hero-worshipped, the part-time advisor to the school paper who turned down more offers than either of them would see in their lifetimes. That Wen Qing!) And Lan Zhan didn’t know how to handle it so he just . . . let it go. They stayed in touch while Wei Ying moved back to Yunmeng for a while, then got a job at the Times after the war started, and Lan Zhan joined the Herald and went to grad school, always Wei Ying reaching out first. But even after they were both single again and living in the same city, they just stayed apart.

It would be easy—completely unfair, but easy—to blame Wen Qing for all of it. But all she’d done was the same thing Lan Zhan had. Loved Wei Ying, and failed to stop him. If anything, Wen Qing is better than he is—when Wei Ying fell, at least she fell with him.

The downfall was not complicated, and he should have seen it coming. When Wei Ying showed up at his door in the middle of the night with a crumpled print out of his story, Lan Zhan should have seen where it would lead.

It was 1994, three years into the war, and Lan Zhan was in training with the cultivator corps in Lanling. In retrospect, that’s likely how Wei Ying found him—Jiang Cheng was in his unit and must have given the address. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he didn’t stop Wei Ying. Everything was so unreal, the war, the devastation, the training, cultivation itself. Everything he’d known about life, the country, physics, what is possible and what is just a legend, all of it was thrown out into a whirling storm of adapt, adapt, adapt. It was chaos, and Lan Zhan became very good at chaos.

The story would have been a bombshell in any year—over a dozen former assistants, interns, and even one sitting representative accusing the Acting President of the Republic of misconduct and abuse. Rumors about Jin Guangshan were older than his political career, and illegitimate children were hardly rare in government, but Wei Ying had been the first to get multiple accusers on the record along with recordings and photos. Wen Qing, the youngest managing editor in the country and one of only two women, had agreed to run the story.

It was a good story. A really, really good story.

But there was a war on, and Acting President Jin was the only protection the country had against the usurper Wen Ruohan and his army of traitors. Not that Jin Guangshan ever left Carp Tower himself—that’s what the oldest son was for.

The blowback was immediate—Wei Ying was forced to retract the entire story and resign, Wen Qing was fired and the Gusu Times lost every advertiser and investor on the books. It was only natural for Lan Qiren to buy it up for pocket change, the merger he’d been looking at for years. All of the women named in the story issued statements accusing Wei Ying of lying, of doctoring evidence, of hiring actors that looked like them to fill his false story with fake photos. All statements made after visits from high ranking military officers, of course. He’d heard rumors that Wen Qing’s brother had enlisted and they used him for leverage, which wouldn’t be surprising. He hadn’t expected Wen Qing to give up without a fight.

Wei Ying had written to him once, just after he disappeared, with no return address.

It’s my fault, it said. Lan Zhan, it was all true, the story was true, but I’m still a liar. I told them I could protect them all, if they went on the record. I promised. I promised Wen Qing. And I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Lan Zhan, I never wanted to be a liar.

And in the end, it meant nothing. Few enough people were getting daily papers, much less actually reading them, and with the immediate retraction, reams and reams being taken off newsstands by military police, it was barely a drop in the storm that was raging. Outside of the newsrooms themselves, at least, where Wei Ying and Wen Qing were nailed up on the wall as a cautionary tale. Free press, up to a point. Sometimes Lan Zhan thinks about what would happen if the story broke today, the impact it could have. But after the retraction, you can’t go back. He can’t think about it too long or the rage overtakes him. Rage for Wei Ying, for Wen Qing, for every person in the article who was smothered and tossed out with nothing. The kind of rage that doesn’t fade, can’t be extinguished.

Lan Zhan shakes himself. Wei Ying is alive. Wen Qing is also alive, most likely. Su She is an idiot.

He only has one message on his answering machine.

“Hey, Lan Zhan, it’s your cousin Lan Liang. Listen, I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. I don’t know if it’s your thing, or if you choose what you cover or whatever, but there’s a kid gone missing here in Moling and some very weird stuff going on at the building sites. I don’t have all the details, but it’s my uncle’s daughter-in-law’s foster kid. Cops aren’t giving them much, so I said I’d call you. I don’t know if the kid went wandering and got hurt or got lost or what, but maybe someone from the Herald can cover it, get the public interest up. Maybe someone knows something. I don’t know. Probably a long shot, but I said I’d call, so there you go. You can reach me at—”

Lan Zhan takes down the number neatly in his calendar. He can call after the 10am meeting, maybe drive out to Moling in the afternoon. The rage is still there, banked and contained and ready to be useful.

Part Three

#assorted writings #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #cql #pick up every piece #Just getting! shit! written! who! cares! if! its! good!

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