Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category
Judge David Harvey spikes ‘the enemy’ guns
David Lange once said, ‘He who lives by the quip, dies by the quip’. “The problem is not technology. The problem is behaviour. We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Justice David Harvey at NetHui Judge David Harvey’s later pun about the United States being ‘the enemy’ in a discussion about the […]
Flacks will always try this on. Resist.
The New York Times reports in a vaguely-nauseating article ‘Latest Word on the Trail? I Take It Back‘ on the increasing use of ‘quote approval’ by the US presidential campaigns as a condition of interviews with people associated with the campaigns. I’ve never agreed to that request when asked by ‘newsmakers’ at all levels, or […]
There goes the whole appeal of Facebook for some personality types … well, not really
In the same way that locks are only really designed to keep out honest people, this ‘dramatic’ change to how Facebook operates will, in reality, be of minimal effect. We’ve discussed the (lack of) privacy of material posted on the world’s largest social network before. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, some people gotta SNOOP. […]
Someone who asks questions for a living does a good job of answering some
From one of the most thoughtful and illuminating* ‘Twelve Questions’ columns I’ve read … NZ Herald: Knowing what you know now about the media, would you still want to be a journalist if you were starting out in 2012? Anita McNaught: It has changed, but with a few reservations I love the way it has […]
Bad behaviour online – NetHui
These notes (by Nat Torkington @gnat — available as google doc here) are from discussion/part of Judge David Harvey‘s presentation at Nethui underway now in Auckland. They directly touch on some of the recent discussion we’ve had on the topic of online free speech and harassment. [Harvey:] This session looking at bad behaviour online. Law […]
Comments, classified
I don’t enjoy navel gazing about comments and moderation here at The Paepae. Every now and then I’m forced to think about it again because someone wants to have a crack at me or someone else in low-value terms. Usually anonymously. I tend towards no censorship beyond filtering spam (thank you Akismet) and throwing out […]
Declaring where you’re coming from
Like most people (I think), I find it interesting, at times fascinating, to speculate about WHY people do and say what they do … WHY they might express views that they hold in the way they do … and WHY they enter into discussions or debates (and sometimes flame wars) on the internet. But I’ve […]
Spy fiction? Kinda fits.
Barrister Carl Gardner, writing at Head of Legal blog: Julian Assange: Can he get out of this? … All in all, I think the [UK] Supreme Court made quite a hash of the Assange case. I’m not the only critic, either – Tiina Pajuste at the CJICL Blog argues that they were wrong to bring […]
Upstaging an important public moment
I spotted this statement from Susan Benn on behalf of the Julian Assange Defence Fund over the weekend, which makes some good points about the challenge the Swedish and British authorities (surely) must be having trying to maintain the pretense that they’re treating Julian Assange as they would any other ‘person of interest’. The ludicrous […]
The curse of hypervigilance
Recent angst-ridden discussion about comments published on the internet have reminded me of a conclusion I reached when I was myself the subject of scurrilous anonymous comment: It can bloody hurt. But some of the pain is, sadly, self-inflicted. We’ve seen again and again how anonymity seems to loosen people’s grip on civility. Some of […]
Speaking up for Madeleine Flannagan
The following is an anonymous comment in support of Madeleine Flannagan, who features in my recent post, ‘Implications of recent internet gagging attempt‘. UPDATE: The comment is now in the comment stream of the relevant post.
Some useful cyber citizen guidelines
It’s funny how even from people’s intended blows you can learn something valuable. A couple of years ago when I was blogging about the dubious operations of a gaggle of ‘internet marketing experts’ (cough) somebody, by a remarkable coincidence, set up a number of blogs linking my name to keywords like ‘scam’ and ‘ripoff’ (see […]
McDonalds putting their best foot forward?
I like this behind-the-scenes approach to marketing. Good on them. But I’ll never forget the author of The E-Myth Michael Gerber’s description of McDonalds food as “an acceptable level of mediocrity”. via Mashable
Implications of recent internet gagging attempt
UPDATE June 2013 — There have been developments on this. See this post: Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders? The decision in a recent court case involving allegations of harassment by blog post is instructive on all sorts of levels for what it tell us about the state of […]
Negative campaigning
There’s a fantastic article about negative campaigning in this month’s New York magazine… Frank Rich: Nuke ’Em Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic. It includes this distinction, which touches on some of the discussion we’ve had here earlier about political activists like Cameron Slater purporting to be ‘media’ when […]