Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category
Secret? Er…
Does anyone else have a bad feeling about this? It reminds me of ‘Joe Wilson’s War’ in Afghanistan, Ronald (‘I don’t recall’) Reagan/Oliver North’s Iran-Contra deal … and, WikiLeaks or not, how is THIS supposed to stay ‘secret’? Huh?
Honest opinion
A brief extract from Bevan Marten’s thesis ‘A FAIRLY GENUINE COMMENT ON HONEST OPINION IN NEW ZEALAND’ … (Victoria University) [PDF 400k] III UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES Common to all such jurisdictions is the major tension in the law of defamation between freedom of expression and the individual’s right to reputation. The defence of honest opinion holds […]
Harvesting the ‘wisdom of the crowd’
I know I knock Wikipedia a little bit … but it is inescapable, whether it is completely ‘trustworthy’ or not. I go there all the time — and reference it. (It’s also top-of-the-pops in search results.) I listened to this fascinating BBC documentary ‘Wikipedia at 10‘ when it first came out earlier this year, and again […]
PropertyTalk, public criticism and the public good
An interesting discussion has started about discussion forum PropertyTalk in the comments thread of my post about Linking to sources and the Sean Wood case study. Two of my favourite PropertyTalk (ex) posters poormastery and exnzpat kicked it off last night in response to comments from Perry … with some pretty strong opinions… PT moderator […]
Anyone could be a critic …
In the spirit of my recent post ‘Why am I doing this? Muckraking?‘ is this very worthwhile and thoughtful piece in the NY Times from Frank Rich: Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist … For me, anyway, the point of opinion writing is less to try to shape events, a presumptuous and foolhardy ambition at […]
Julian Assange on 60 Minutes
A decent length 60 Minutes interview with Assange. Worth watching. Still with the ‘oooh Julian Assange is soooo paranoid’ shtick. (What a disrespectful, unrealistic angle, that is.) And then there’s this ‘not one of us’ arse-covering comment (… an editorial line from CBS? You decide.) : “Some have argued that he’s [Assange] not really a […]
An insight into sociopaths and liars
This quote, from an excellent Tom Junod piece in Esquire on Murdoch’s Fox News Gruppenführer Roger Ailes, says a LOT about the trouble with trying to shame the manipulative, or liars and con artists … The pundits, the professors, the professional journalists, the left-wingers, the tree huggers, the liberal blogosphere, President Obama — they all […]
Black Hats as the ‘good guys’
For the most part, the people who attend Black Hat [Security Conference July 2011] are good guys who are there to learn how to keep our systems safe. As noted on ZDNet, Mac OS X security remains much better than that of Windows. Mac OS X 10.6.6 only included one security fix, while Microsoft’s February […]
OK. So some impersonation is acceptable, even useful
I know I sometimes rail against online impersonation and sock-puppets being used for foul and dishonest purposes (case in point: Anonymous comment vs IMPERSONATION and yesterday’s post about Aaron Barr of HBGary Federal‘s dastardly scheme.) But there are exceptions (besides Fake Steve Jobs). From The Atlantic‘s Alexis Madrigal: Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel Feb 28 […]
Dan Conover: Advertising is not enough
Very excellent and insightful piece on the past and future of “news and advertising in the 21st century” by Dan Conover at Xark … What I’m challenging is the prevailing wisdom that because advertising shaped and subsidized journalism in the 20th century, the reinvention of journalism in the 21st century is simply a matter of […]
Facebook = ‘public’
And here is a ‘definitive’ answer from the Poacher’s Union Press Council … Facebook ‘public’ says watchdog 27 February, 2011 The Press Council has rejected a complaint against the Herald on Sunday by a man upset a picture off the social networking site Facebook was used in print. Api Hemara said the picture, run in […]
In the cross-hairs: low quality, low value websites
A comment today on the Is this how Shaun Stenning handles a request for a refund? thread implies the dissatisfaction with his snipr ‘product’ is widespread: Re: SNIPRscam’ Hi, is anyone else in Melbourne/Australia interested in forcing a refund from Shaun Stenning for his Snipr scam? It seems that asking him nicely doesn’t work. I’ve […]
