Chris Boese's Weblog

State of Terror

My old buddy Fil Sapienza found this neat Camus quotation... from 1946.

Link: fil sapienza: State of Terror.

"What with the general fear of a war now being prepared by all nations and the specific fear of murderous ideologies, who can deny that we live in a state of terror? We live in terror because persuasion is no longer possible; because man has been wholly submerged in History; because he can no longer tap that part of his nature, as real as the historical part, which he recaptures in contemplating the beauty of nature and of human faces; because we live in a world of abstractions, of bureaus and machines, of absolute ideas and of crude messianism. We suffocate among people who think they are absolutely right, whether in their machines or in their ideas. And for all who can live only in an atmosphere of human dialogue and sociability, this silence is the end of the world. To emerge from this terror, we must be able to reflect and to act accordingly. But an atmosphere of terror hardly encourages reflection. I believe, however, that instead of simply blaming everything on this fear, we should consider it as one of the basic factors in the situation, and try to do something about it. No task is more important."

- - from Camus, Neither Victims nor Executioners, 1946

Red Cross claims to own the 24-hour brainspace of all its volunteers?

Everything? Even letters home to Mom? That nascent idea that incubated in an open pit outhouse somewhere?

How about we start charging for our braintime and creativity? Post a sign, something like "This space for rent." If while pondering the cloud shapes you should think of a poem, the Red Cross will get first rights to all original metaphors. Who will file the appropriate copyright papers with the government? This metaphor belongs to the Red Cross. No one else can use it anymore.

Volunteering is work-for-hire, then. 24-hour work-for-hire. Without pay.

Thanks for the tip, BoingBoing. I also wrote about similar issues in my "Into the Blogosphere" article.

Chris ----somewhat proudly descended from Clara Barton

Link: Boing Boing: Red Cross wants all its volunteers' copyrights and patents.

Red Cross wants all its volunteers' copyrights and patents

Every volunteer for the American Red Cross is required to sign on to an agreement that covers things like proper conduct, confidentiality, and includes a requirement for all volunteers to sign over all copyright/trademark/patent rights in any work-related writing, art and inventions come up with during their term, and for a full year afterward. Why the hell does the Red Cross need to own the copyrights in the work-related blog postings you make for a year after you stop spending your free evenings handing out cookies to blood-donors? If you write a novel and include some real-life details gleaned from volunteering in a disaster-relief efforts, does the Red Cross really deserve to take all rights to it?

Disclosure and Ownership of Intellectual Property. I (i) shall promptly and fully disclose to Red Cross any and all Intellectual Property, (ii) agree that all Intellectual Property shall be owned by Red Cross, (iii) agree to and do hereby assign, transfer and convey to Red Cross the entire right, title and interest in and to all Intellectual Property, (iv) will execute and deliver any and all documents, take all actions and render any and all assistance reasonably requested by Red Cross, during or at any time after Volunteer Service, to establish Red Cross’ ownership of, or to enable Red Cross to obtain patents to or register copyrights of, any Intellectual Property, and (v) acknowledge that all Intellectual Property that is copyrightable subject matter and that qualifies as a "work made for hire" shall be automatically owned by Red Cross. In the event Red Cross is unable for any reason whatsoever to secure my signature to any document required to apply for or execute any patent, copyright, or other applications with respect to Intellectual Property, I hereby irrevocably appoint Red Cross and its authorized officers and agents as my agents and attorneys-in-fact to execute and file any such application and to do all other acts to further the prosecution and issuance of patents, copyrights, or other rights with respect to Intellectual Property with the same legal force and effect as if executed by me. As a reminder, Intellectual Property shall only include intellectual property created by me (y) in the course of Volunteer Service or using Red Cross time, equipment, information or materials, and (z) within one (1) year after termination of Volunteer Service and relating directly to work done during Volunteer Service.

80K PDF Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow

Poynter Online's 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

The actual title is "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism," which is a bit presumptious, I think. Why 11? How do you know there aren't 10 or 15? Reminds me too much of those godawful self-help article titles on the front on newsstand consumer magazines, The 5 Steps to a Tighter Tush or Six Ways to Keep Your Teen From Sneaking Out at Night.

Once you number something, you appear to exclude all other numbers. This is really a Power Point beef, I suppose. About 8 years ago I predicted that perennially useless five-paragraph essay term paper assignment would soon be replaced by a single Power Point slide, a heading and three bullets.

Unfortunately, I have lived to see this dire prediction come to pass. But I digress... Cookie-Cutter Templates R Us! Or in the immortal words of Cinderella's ugly stepsister while trying on a glass slipper, "I'll MAKE it fit!"

Link: Poynter Online - The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism.

The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

A resource guide to help you figure out how to put this industry trend to work for you and your newsroom.

By Steve Outing

"Citizen journalism." It's one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days. Many news executives are probably thinking about implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number have already done so.

But there's plenty of confusion about citizen journalism. What exactly is it? Is this something that's going to be essential to the future prosperity of news companies?

In my conversations and communications with editors, I sense plenty of confusion about the concept. There's enthusiasm about experimenting in some quarters -- about harnessing the power of an audience permitted for the first time to truly participate in the news media. But mostly I hear concern and healthy skepticism.

This article is designed to help publishers and editors understand citizen journalism and how it might be incorporated into their Web sites and legacy media.

[...]

Go read the entire article, but here are the... ahem... bullet points. [grin]

1. The first step: Opening up to public comment

2. Second step: The citizen add-on reporter

3. Now we're getting serious: Open-source reporting

4. The citizen bloghouse

5. Newsroom citizen 'transparency' blogs

6. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version

7. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version

8. Add a print edition

9. The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism

10. Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof

11. Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors

Rebecca MacKinnon on threats against Chinese bloggers

She's got a great set of blogs too. I'm digging in to these sites. Good batch of links below.

Link: RConversation: Chinese blogs threatened.

Chinese blogs threatened

Reporters Without Borders has issued a press release today voicing alarm at "the Chinese government's announced intention to close down all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered."  The following paragraph is cause for great concern:

A China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders on condition of anonymity that the Shanghai police recently rendered his website inaccessible because it had not been registered. He then phoned the MII [Ministry of Information Industry] to ask what he had to do in order to register, and was told that in his case it was "not worth bothering" because "there was no chance of an independent blog getting permission to publish."

Meanwhile, the Russian Interfax news agency reports China is using a system called Night Crawler "to block access to websites that have not been registered with authorities."

We hope to have some updates with first-hand information over at Global Voices.

Andrea at T-Salon is also on top of latest developments.
Other news reports include:

• The Blog Herald reports only 10% of Chinese bloggers have registered.
• Australian ABC News: China in Drive to Register Websites;
• The Australian: China Fights to Control the Net;

..and if you haven't read it yet, you must read Steve Cherry's The Net Effect: As China's Internet Gets a Much-Needed Makeover, Will the New Network Promote Freedom or Curtail It?

Also keep an eye on China Digital Times for updates and links.

[...]

US media silence on the Downing Street Memo

Bush and Blair even talked about it in their joint press conference, but still the US media is not reporting about it. What gives?

The TV Newser headline is:

Maybe If We All Hold Our Breath, The Media Will Cover The Downing Street Memo

Rep. John Conyer lays some of this out on the Huffington Post, relating a chat room exchange with a Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley:

Link: The Huffington Post | The Blog.

Did the Mainstream Media Get the Memo?

For the past few weeks, I and others on this blog (including its propreitor) have lamented the lack of mainstream media coverage of the Downing Street Minutes (for more info on what this is all about, go here and here). Looking in from the outside of the networks and newspapers, we have been left to surmise just what the problem really is. On a story with constitutional implications, with life and death consequences, there was first silence. Then, there was a story here and there, but no meaningful, dogged and sustained coverage. What gives?

First, this morning, I came across an insightful column on this matter from a reporter named Jefferson Morley on Washingtonpost.com. For those of you who still get your news from a paper copy with a cup of coffee, don't bother -- it isn't in the Post today, just online. Mr. Morley's beat is covering the foreign press for the Post.

[...]

Great column. And why couldn't I read this in the Post this morning?

Mr. Morley answered my question later in the day, in an online chat at Washingtonpost.com. The exchanges with readers speak for themselves and I urge you to read the chat in its entirety. A few stunners:

When asked why there has been so little coverage of the Downing Street Minutes here in the United States, Morley replies:

"I think some combination of cynicism, complacency and insulation has stifled the instincts of very good reporters. I also think there is also a failure of leadership at the senior editorial level. The issues raised by the Downing Street minutes are very serious. To pursue them is to invite confrontation. This means that 'beat' reporters cannot realistically pursue the story. I say all this way of explanation, not rationalization. There are several natural followup stories to the Downing Street memo that we should be pursuing right now."

Later he says:

"I think its because the Washington press corps is oriented around "news" as generated by the White House and the executive branch. When it comes to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the White House and the Congress have settled on the following narrative: that the U.S. government had every reason to fear the nexus of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that the intelligence community agreed that Hussein had WMD and therefore war was not only justified but necessary.

The Downing Street Memo invites the thought that maybe that was illusory, that in fact people in the Bush administration were having meetings dedicated to figuring how to, as Richard Dearlove said, 'fix the facts and the intelligence.' I think it's hard for journalists born and bred in the ways of Washington to contemplate the implications."

I would simply ask: after the abject failure of the media to expose the myth of WMD and Iraq, the cheerleading coverage of "embedded" reporters, and the transmission of propaganda to the American people (see Jessica Lynch's "rescue", Pat Tillman's tragic death, and the toppling of Saddam's statue), aren't we owed some good, sustained and thorough reporting on this?

A reader asks whether a Post reporter will ask about the Downing Street Minutes during the joint Bush-Blair appearances in Washington this week. Morley's reply: "If Post reporters don't ask Blair about the memo, they have abdicated responsibility in my view."

[...]

An odd way to be shrinking the public domain

Photography was fully democratized by Kodak with that first box camera like the one my grandma got (and still has) from the 1920s. But the movement that recorded the sight of billions of eyeballs is reduced to narrow disciplinary and professionally-credentialed borders and gates?

Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer:

Link: Boing Boing: Wal-Mart won't print digital photos that look "professional".

Wal-Mart won't print digital photos that look "professional"
Wal-Mart and other photofinishing labs are refusing to print out digital photos if they appear to have been taken by "professionals" because photographers' associations have frightened them off with the spectre of scanned-in studio shots.

Photofinishing labs increasingly are refusing to print professional-looking photographs taken by amateurs.

The reason: Photofinishers are afraid of infringing on professional photographers' copyrights...

It happened to David Watson earlier this year as he tried to get old photos of his mother printed for her funeral. The photos were of his mother, taken years ago by family members, some since deceased.

Like Helmick, he had uploaded them to Walmart.com, then went to pick them up at his local Wal-Mart in Charlotte, Mich. Watson said the manager of the photo department "felt" that three of the photos were possibly taken professionally. One of the photos in question was of his mother 50 years ago.

Link

(via Waxy)

Clear Channel exposed for faking pirate radio

Oh, this is TOO rich! I loveitloveitloveit!

Takes me back to a rising alternative press in the late 1980s, following Reagan-era media deregulation when most major newspapers in the US became part of one corporate chain or another and it seemed like independent voices vanished overnight (along with photo essay pages, double-truck anything, and most stories longer than five inches).

At the time, alt press papers were a breath of fresh air, and I watched the movement closely (this was before I first signed on to the Internet, which was still Bitnet in those days), pinning a lot of my hopes on its success.

Then a funny thing happened. The big corporate chains put some marketing and focus group people onto finding ways to co-opt the genre through seemingly-innocuous imitation. All these "fake" alt-press papers started appearing, with big local entertainment and event coverage, some pseudo-edgy features. Sure enough, the audiences couldn't tell the difference.

Luckily for me, I went online before I could get too discouraged, and what I found there gave me much more hope for the future of independent voices and media than the alternative press ever did.

But as we see below, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Link: Making Sponsors Walk the Plank - New York Times.

June 4, 2005

Making Sponsors Walk the Plank

By DAN MITCHELL

ANY company that tries to pull a fast one on an increasingly media-savvy populace should first consider the power of blogs.

Clear Channel, thought by its critics to be the best representative of the creeping corporate weaseldom that has brought on the ruination of commercial radio, tried to dupe radio listeners in Akron, Ohio, by posing as an anticorporate pirate radio station.

Via some audio trickery, Clear Channel made it sound as though pirate signals from "Radio Free Ohio" were bleeding into several of the other stations it owns. The "pirate" signals, and a Web site set up to promote the new station, lashed out at corporate radio.

Suspicious, someone using the handle "Turbo Ninja" looked up the Web site registration for radiofreeohio.org, discovered it was owned by Clear Channel, and posted the findings to the message boards on the Web site of the independent station WOXY.

"They're ripping corporate radio as a means of encouraging people to listen to a slightly different kind of corporate radio," Turbo Ninja wrote.

The posting was picked up by several blogs, and in turn by The New York Times, which quoted a Clear Channel executive saying, "There's a hole in the market here and we're going to fill it."

That hole is "progressive talk," a notion that sent Carrie MacLaren reeling. She runs the blog stayfreemagazine.org, one of the first to publicize what Clear Channel was up to. "Progressive talk," she wrote. "Yes, I will say that again: (Radio Free Ohio) is to be a progressive talk station! Now if you'll excuse me I think I'll go shove an icepick in my ear."

[...]

Dear MSM Deep Throats: Bloggers will take your tips too

This isn't about THE Deep Throat, but a new and important source for tips and leads on stories... people in mainstream media who can't pursue the stories or find their hands tied because their corporate outlet would never run it.

This doesn't surprise me, but having encountered the situation personally (working places where you pitch stories but the editors are afraid of them), young journalists are often hit with the gatekeeper argument: your pitch wasn't good enough.

I heard that for years on certain story pitches, before I stopped even making them. I've now lived long enough to see some of the stories I failed to effectively pitch in the 1980s become major issues some years later. It just galls me.

I wanted to do a piece on runaway college student debt and credit cards that are too easy to get: 1986. I wanted to look at government student loans as a choice that is no choice when your future is on the line, in other words, coerced debt. Again, 1986. I wanted to expose the legal and accepted side of perks and benefits for college male athletes and how it may be one way athletic foundations work to get around Title IX. 1987.

I got a list of these failed pitches. Always, the response I got was status quo, status quo. It was just easier to fill the hole with the same wire copy and photos everybody else has. We didn't have the budget to look into it. I wasn't experienced enough to do it. As years went on I learned to write my formula features, a variant of unpaid PR, and basically not rock the boat. And for the late 80s and early 90s at least, I had to find other ways to look for answers to my questions, in graduate school. At least then "gatekeepers" wouldn't tell me I wasn't even allowed to ask those questions.

And when enough years go by, suddenly somebody gives a damn about giving away credit cards to college students like candy. Government student loans are a massive racket. College athletics have become beyond corrupt, they've gotten blatant without checks or balances.

All because I (and a lot of other people, no doubt) couldn't make a good enough pitch?

Link: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: The Return of Deep Throat.

The Return of Deep Throat

Now he's [sic] a mainstream journalist, leaking stories to the alternative press

Extra! March/April 2005

By Dave Lindorff

I remember the excitement I felt some years ago, working in Los Angeles at the L.A. Daily News or at TV station KCET, as I’d pursue a hot story—the corruption of a blatantly racist school board member, say, or the shooting of unarmed people by the LAPD. There was always the story itself, of course, but there was also the sense that if you didn’t get it in and get it right, you’d be beaten by the competition—usually the L.A. Times, in my case, or one of the local TV stations, which back in the 1970s still did a little investigative reporting of their own.

Those days are pretty much gone. TV stations in most cities don’t do much enterprise reporting, preferring to go with whatever the police have on the blotter. And newspaper competition in most communities is a thing of the past.

Ironically, though bad for the public, the loss of an aggressive media has been my gain as a freelance journalist.

A tip about TIPS

Over the past three years or so, most of my best investigative stories have come to me courtesy of a frustrated editor at a major metropolitan daily—a principled and well-informed guy who has tried repeatedly to interest the paper’s higher-ups in big stories, only to have them ignored. That’s when he calls me with his tips.

The first time this happened was back in 2002, when my old friend sent an email with a link to a Justice Department website inviting American citizens to sign up as volunteer spies in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s “Operation TIPS.” “I think you should look into this,” my friend wrote.

Ashcroft, I learned, hoped these volunteers would become an army of 20 million citizen-spies, keeping track of and reporting on their neighbors. I signed up as a volunteer, and began investigating the program from the inside. When I experimentally tried to call in some bogus reports on neighbors, I discovered that the Justice Department was having its TIPS volunteer spies turn their raw reports on suspicious neighbors over, not to the FBI, but to the Fox network’s crime-stopper show, America’s Most Wanted!

It was a shocking exposé, which turned into a major story in Salon (8/7/02), the online magazine. CBS News (8/8/02) picked up my Salon piece and did a story based on an interview with me. People in Congress, particularly Republicans led by Rep. Dick Armey (R.-Texas), went ballistic and killed all funding for the program.

A little later, my friend was back, this time with a tip that a couple of anti-war activists had been barred from getting on a plane after the check-in clerk told them they were on a “no-fly” list. “You should look into this,” he wrote again.

I did—and found someone at the new Transportation Security Administration who admitted not only that there was a list of 1,000 or so people barred from planes as “threats to aviation,” but that there was another list, of undetermined length, of people who would be allowed to fly, but who would be harassed mercilessly each time they did so. As I looked further into this, it became apparent that the people on the second list were mostly peace activists—students, lawyers, nuns, etc.—not threats to aviation, just to administration war policy. The story, like the earlier one, ran in Salon (11/15/02) and also In These Times (11/27/02), after which it was picked up by the national and international media.

My friend’s newspaper, which could have had both these scoops, lost out for lack of interest.

[...]

The message is clear. The mainstream media are deluged with tips about important stories that the public needs to know about, but timid, lazy and budget-conscious editors simply let them pass, perhaps unwilling to incur the wrath of the administration or its allied media pressure groups. Reporters at most media corporations quickly learn that they don’t get raises or promotions for pushing these kinds of edgy pieces.

[...]

A reflection on Deep Throat

I just feel like again marking the event of this story about Watergate's shadowy "Deep Throat" identifying himself as the once number-two FBI guy, W. Mark Felt.

Charles Colson had a brief moment on "Nightline" tonight where he managed to say that Felt "betrayed Richard Nixon."

Now I happen to consider Mark Felt one of the most profound heros of our time (along with Daniel Ellsberg), and someone who had a tremendous indirect influence on my life, so my reaction to such a statement is pretty much a snort.

But thinking about it, I was struck by what it said about Colson, because even now after all this time, he sees Nixon as the wronged party, and still fails to comprehend how the Nixon administration betrayed not only Americans, but the Constitution, stated ideals that go back to the Declaration, both Jeffersonian ideals and Federalist ideals, and just basic ethical principles of integrity and good faith as an elected official.

And then you have to think about Chuck Colson a bit here, because he is one piece of work. Besides his role as a convicted Watergate cover-up criminal (he pleaded no contest to obstruction of justice, was Nixon's Chief Counsel, but is commonly known as his "hatchet man"), he became an evangelical Christian before going to prison.

After getting out, he founded a non-profit organization called "Prison Fellowship." Now whatever this organization does for good or ill, I cannot say, but if I take the statement made on TV tonight by its founder on face value, I've got to ask, "What's wrong with this picture?" (And furthermore, what is this organization really up to with its ready-made network of soon-to-be-released prisoner-recruits?)

So much is being made of increased media coverage of the religious right as a political and social force in the U.S., a force that appears to be feeling its oats these days, relishing leverage and "power-over" rather than the platform to release light and love into the world, it seems to me.

I have an issue with any organization calling itself "religious" which doesn't have ethical principles that hold up to scrutiny, both for internal consistency to the religion (that would be an issue of hypocrisy) and external consistency (meaning it has principles that can be rationally defended as an ethical "good" without deferring unnecessarily to a principle of religious authority, a "God says so" argument).

I mean, if members of the religious right want to say "God says" his followers must all dye their hair a specific color, that isn't an issue for me, but if "God says" all church members should carry guns and be prepared to shoot them at a moment's notice, that is an ethical and social decision that carries much more significance.

So Charles Colson has the nerve to impinge on the ethics of Mark Felt, a whistleblower of the highest order whom I credit with the preservation of this republic. Colson is just crying out for us to examine the ethics with which he is running this "Prison Fellowship," just as we would the ethics of others like Tom DeLay, who seek to wrap themselves in religious cloaks, perhaps hoping the cloaks hide more than they reveal.

And by extension, Colson's ethics appear to be aptly exposed in the statement that "Felt betrayed Richard Nixon," as some sort of distortion of utilitarian "ends justifies the means" ethics, but instead of the "greatest good to the greatest number," Colson's principal loyalty is to the "greatest good to Chief Executive Richard Nixon."

Isn't a religious conversion a wonderful thing?

I let Colson get me way too worked up.

What I really want to do is celebrate Mark Felt, as his family and friends clearly are doing. This is a person who is being written into the history books as we speak. I know I'm a massive sap, but the whole story just gets me all choked up.

I'm sure there will be endless analysis of his motives, other routes he could have taken. But he had no idea at the time that FBI Director Gray was in league with the forces of corruption in the White House, so if Felt had tried to bark up the chain of command, very likely he would have been squashed, if not prosecuted by Nixon's power-mongerers.

I mean, this is really a story for those alternative history fiction writers, you know? Now it can be more fully imagined and written.

Take out Felt as Deep Throat from the Watergate equation and Watergate becomes an incident more like Iran-Contra, a terrible scandal that remained largely a mystery because it didn't have a Deep Throat. Nixon stays in power. The Dirty Tricksters and Plumbers find their power increasing unchecked. The conspiracy theories everyone pooh-poohs as the domain of nutjobs turn out to be real. The Plumbers manage elections from that day forward. A culture of power and corruption utterly trumps democracy in the U.S.

It probably couldn't have stopped the disgraceful end in Vietnam, the airlift out of Saigon, but there probably wouldn't have been a Jimmy Carter either, and from there, who knows where things would have gone? Only the alternative history fiction writer who tries to imagine it.

It sort of reads like a variant of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."

To the extent that we aren't in Nixon's "Potterville," we can thank Mark Felt.

That's why I get choked up, just like when watching that movie.

And Chuck Colson, he's upset because we aren't living in Nixon's "Potterville"?! Gimmie that old time religion, eh?