As DOJ Hunts For 'Second Leaker,' Will It Also Explore Who Leaked The Intercept's Story To The AP?

from the questions-to-ponder dept

Earlier this week, Tim Cushing wrote about The Intercept's latest scoop, concerning the makeup of the US government's federal terrorist watchlist, and the fact that a large chunk of it isn't affiliated with any terrorist groups. While most of the article focused on that point, he made two other notes in passing -- the first was that it was obvious that this release was from a second leaker, not Snowden, and the second was about how the government "leaked" the story in a "friendlier" manner to the AP in order to beat The Intercept. We thought both of these asides were interesting, but they've both turned into big stories on their own.

CNN later confirmed that US government officials are now searching for the second leaker (though "second" may not be accurate either...), more or less confirming what many people had been suspecting. Meanwhile, the "scoop spoiling" by the federal government actually resulted in a semi-apology from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) who gave the scoop to the AP. The NCTC claimed it had been working with the AP on a story for a while, and after seeing what The Intercept was doing, felt it needed to give them the heads up, though it also says it could have handled the situation better. Of course, this also makes it more likely that The Intercept won't bother giving the government much time (if any) to respond on future stories. Why risk the chance of having the government spoil the scoop again?

However, with all this concern about the "second leaker," Chris Soghoian asks a very good question. If the Justice Department is going to go hunting for whoever leaked the information to The Intercept, will it similarly go after whoever at NCTC was apparently providing the same basic information to the Associated Press? Or how about the person who told CNN that the US government believes there's a "second leaker"? Because that information is also a leak, and potentially a big one, given that it will alert the leaker that the government is searching for him or her.

Somehow, we don't think the DOJ will be too concerned about those leaks. "Official" leaks happen all the time and no one cares. It's just the leaks that make the government look bad that somehow are seen as criminal.

Filed Under: government leaks, leaker, leaks, terrorism, tsdb, watchlist
Companies: associated press, cnn, the intercept

Healthcare, Journalism, And The Mad Dash For 'The Scoop'

from the getting-back-to-insights dept

As you may have heard, when the Supreme Court came out with its ruling on healthcare, CNN and Fox News jumped the gun and incorrectly reported that the Court had struck down the individual mandate. Fox News corrected the mistake pretty quickly. CNN took a bit longer (and spread the false "breaking news" story far and wide). The whole thing even had President Obama confused for a little while.

It was, of course, also great for late night television. People are referring to this as cable news' "Dewey defeats Truman" moment, while others are arguing that "breaking news is broken." Of course, being a part of the "blogging" world which is often accused by "old media" types of publishing untrue things... there is some element of schadenfreude in being able to see it made clear that the mainstream media is often no better at publishing incorrect things. Of course, some tried to flip this around, and suggest that the problem actually came about because of "new media" thinking around things like "process journalism," though there's a strong argument that reporting before reading something isn't process journalism, it's just bad journalism (i.e., process journalism is about reporting things as additional news comes out -- but in this case, the news was out, the problem was people reporting it before reading it).

A few years ago, uber-blogger Mike Arrington said something that has quite a lot of truth to it: to get attention as an online media player, you generally have to be first, funny or insightful -- and being first is often the easiest, so lots of people concentrate on that. It's the chase for "the scoop." Being funny is powerful, but very, very difficult. And... being insightful takes a lot of time and effort, and is no guarantee of attention. Generally speaking, our goal here has never been to be first with news (in fact, we often wait for others to publish so that we can link to their reports in what we write up). Personally, I like that much better. Focusing just on "the scoop" may be good for traffic in the short term, but especially for big stories like this one, I'm not sure how much value it creates in the long term.

Of course, the realities of gaining traffic often support the quick "scoop" over deeper insight. For example, Reddit -- a potential major firehose of traffic these days -- has its algorithm designed to reward quick, early votes, meaning that longer, thoughtful, insightful pieces almost have no chance, because by the time people have read and thought through them, it's "too late" to have the votes really count.

Some will argue, of course, that this is just a sign of the "bad" side of the internet: valuing quick, dirty and sometimes wrong reporting over longer, more thoughtful work. But I'm not convinced that's true. Again, there are plenty of historical examples of this in pre-internet times as well -- with Dewey Beats Truman being just one of many such examples.

Instead of just mocking those who messed up, or using a bit of confirmation bias to insist that it shows how awful things are in this "real time era," I'd be much more interested to see if we could have a discussion on how to change the incentives. How do we better reward insight and thoughtful commentary over the quick hit-scoop? Is it possible? And, if so, what needs to be done?

Filed Under: first, healthcare, hot news, scoop, scotus, traffic
Companies: cnn, fox news, reddit

CNN Claims 'Something Must Be Done' About Anonymous Bloggers

from the yes,-but... dept

If you follow political news even slightly, by now, you've probably heard about the whole Shirley Sherrod incident, involving an edited video of a talk she gave, which took her quotes out of context and made it appear she was saying exactly the opposite of what she was actually saying. The original video appeared on Andrew Breitbart's website, so it seemed kind of odd in discussing this incident, that two CNN anchors spent the majority of a video segment attacking anonymity on the internet. The first two minutes just complain about the internet in general, aided by a typically cranky Andrew Keen, but after the Keen segment, Kyra Phillips and John Roberts focus on the fact that people won't put their name behind what they say online: Of course, anonymity had nothing to do with this incident at all. All of the players were known, so it seems odd to pick on anonymity. On top of that, both Phillips and Roberts seem woefully clueless on the subject of anonymity and liability. Roberts notes that Keen told him about companies that try to ruin other companies by posting false information online. What companies? He doesn't say. Where's the proof that this is happening? He doesn't say. Why the companies who have had falsehoods spread about them by other companies haven't sued for defamation? He doesn't say. In fact, Phillips falsely implies that there are no remedies for this, and suggests it's ridiculous that people have "freedom of defamation." She goes on to say that something needs to be done, and implies that the law needs to change, saying "something's going to have to be done legally," and that there needs to be "accountability." Um.... except defamation laws already allow people to sue over anonymous falsehoods. You would think that newscasters arguing over this point would know the basics like that.

But an even bigger point, as raised by Glenn Greenwald, is the fact that CNN relies on anonymous quotes all the time. It doesn't take long to find articles on CNN that quote anonymous officials. For them to rage against "cowards" who won't stand behind what they say, and then to regularly quote "anonymous" sources, seems pretty damn hypocritical. Phillips claims anonymity online is "very unfair." Phillips also attacks the media for "giving anonymous bloggers credit or credibility." But again, CNN quotes all kinds of anonymous sources all the time.

Later on, Roberts suggests anonymous blogging "has its place" and suggests that place is Iran and North Korea. But not the US. The authors of The Federalist Papers are rolling over in their graves.

Filed Under: andrew breitbart, anonymity, bloggers, free speech, john roberts, journalists, kyra phillips, reporting, shirley sherrod
Companies: cnn

Did The AP Violate CNN's 'Hot News' Rights, Under The AP's Own Definition Of Hot News?

from the questions,-questions,-questions dept

In an otherwise silly article about CNN and the Associated Press sniping back and forth at each other over who properly broke the news of George Steinbrenner's death (the sniping is, in part, due to CNN's decision to dump its AP deal), there is one interesting tidbit. CNN's spokesperson admits that AP's mocking of CNN is silly, and notes that the AP quotes people from CNN all the time:

Pritchard noted that the AP has quoted CNN in its stories since the two parted ways, such as in a report about Virgin Airways stranding passengers on the airport tarmac in Hartford, Conn. Citations of other news organizations aren't uncommon, he notes. "We quote them, they quote us -- it happens."

Indeed. It does happen. But this is the AP that we're talking about, and they insist that blindly quoting someone else can violate the "hot news" doctrine. So, let's take a look at the Virgin Airways story. It appears that CNN kicked it off with this bit of coverage of passengers being stranded on the airplane, including quotes from the passengers.

Now, since the AP constantly changes its articles with no explanation or notice (and regularly takes down articles -- again, with no explanation or notice), it's a little difficult to track what the AP did or did not do in covering this story. However, there are some AP reports that appear to just repeat the CNN report without any additional reporting by the AP. However, the report linked above kicks off with crediting CNN, quoting CNN and then adding some AP reporting with quotes from the airlines. But all the passenger quotes are from CNN. While it's great that the AP did some additional reporting by getting quotes from the airline, it seems that the CNN quotes clearly violate the AP's own definition of hot news.

And it appears the AP recognizes that. That's because later that day, it sent out an updated version of the story that removes the CNN quotes. In other words, those quotes by CNN were considered so crucial to the AP story that it opened its original reporting by quoting them. Thus, under the AP's own definition of hot news, those quotes were clearly key to the story, and the AP simply "appropriated" them. Later on, when the story was no longer "hot" it removed those quotes.

We've been saying ever since news organizations like the AP started pushing "hot news" around again that it was going to come back to bite them. One of these days, maybe they'll realize it.

Now, I should be clear: I don't see anything, whatsoever, wrong with what the AP did in quoting CNN. As the CNN person notes, they quote each other all the time, and it adds relevant, factual information to the story. I do think it's a little sleazy of the AP to later remove those quotes and pretend they never happened, but whatever. What I have a problem with is the AP going around acting all high and mighty about its "hot news" rights, but apparently applying a huge double standard to itself.

Filed Under: hot news, journalism, reporting
Companies: ap, cnn

CNN To Dump AP As It Tries To Compete With The AP As A Wire Service

from the good-for-cnn dept

Over the past few years, we've been watching (in some bit of horror) as the Associated Press makes misstep after misstep in trying to protect its old model of doing business. Even as a non-profit, member association, the AP seems to have trouble making forward-thinking decisions. It kicked off with the AP's complaints a few years ago that Google News was somehow sending too much traffic to its members' websites, leading to a deal between the AP and Google that took traffic away those member paper websites. If I were at a member newspaper, I'd be furious -- and many newspapers were, in fact, quite upset by this. Not long afterwards, stories started popping up about newspapers ditching the AP. Then, there's been the AP's bizarre and self-defeating hatred for bloggers, combined with a laughable plan to DRM the news (an idea that's gone absolutely nowhwere).

A year ago, we suggested that other wire services really had a chance to step up, embrace what technology allows, and take away the AP's place in the news ecosystem. Reuters has done some smart things, and CNN started to make it clear that it wanted to take on the AP in the wire service business. But, it hasn't really done all that much on that front. However, with news coming out that CNN may be among those news organizations getting ready to ditch its AP relationship, perhaps it's a sign that it's finally gearing up to really try to take on the AP in the wire business.

Filed Under: wire service
Companies: ap, cnn

How To Get People To Watch TV Ads: Don't Stop The Program While You Show Them

from the good-luck-with-that dept

TV broadcasters have long struggled with how to deal with DVRs and how they allow users to skip over commercials. Perhaps the favored approach has been to come up with technological responses to try and prevent people from fast-forwarding; fewer companies have figured out that advertising is content, and needs to be treated as such. Viewers need to be given a reason to watch ads, whether it's simply entertainment or because the content offers some other value. Another idea that's being tested: not stopping the show during ad breaks. On one show on CNN, when the ads start, the studio cameras keep rolling, showing "behind-the-scenes" footage in a small box in the corner. The belief is that if there's still some bit of "program content" going, it will be enough to keep people from flipping channels or skipping ahead, even if it is just paper shuffling and makeup being touched up. It's an interesting proposition, but once viewers realize they're not missing anything of value, won't they switch away or fast-forward? And if the program content actually is valuable, won't people just not pay attention to the ads? The problem here seems to be that this is just an effort to recreate a captive audience. But without offering anything of value to the viewer -- whether it's the ads themselves or this "program content" -- they're not going to stick around and suck up the ads.

Filed Under: advertising, dvrs, tv
Companies: cnn

CNN Dusts Off Ancient Moral Panic Over Out Of Print Game That Was Banned A While Back

from the oh-come-on dept

Recently, we started receiving a whole bunch of submissions about a CNN story on the Japanese videogame Rapelay (in which part of the gameplay involves raping women). We ignored it because it's an old, old, old story, and we couldn't figure out why CNN suddenly took an interest in it. The game itself was released back in 2006 and has long been out of print. It got some headlines back in February of 2009 (over a year ago), when a UK publication noticed that some people were selling the game via Amazon. It was never Amazon itself selling the game, but some of the people who set up their own stores on the site. Either way, once the press reports came out, Amazon quickly pulled the game.

Still, as usually happens, there was a big moral panic, politicians made comments and threats and eventually Japanese officials banned the game, even though it was already out of print.

Story over, right? For no clear reason, CNN suddenly decided to bring it up as if it were a big deal again -- leading to all those submissions. However, as reader Chris Mikaitis, points out, the story keeps escalating to new levels of cluelessness. Days after the "original" late story, even after lots of people wondered why the hell CNN was bringing up such a dead story, CNN decided to do a second story on the game by the same reporter. At least, in that case, one of the people quoted scolds CNN for making a big story out of nothing:

"One of my concerns," begins Dr. Olson, "is that kids generally never hear about this stuff unless it gets this kind of publicity."

In other words, this was a dead game and a dead story, until CNN started fearmongering about it, making ridiculous statements like:

"Parents, we've got to warn you about this video game because your kids could get their hands on it."

CNN, we know that your ratings are in freefall, but manufacturing a totally ridiculous moral panic over an old game that is not in print any more, has been banned in the only country where it was released, and which was discussed way too much well over a year ago, isn't exactly the way to build either credibility or interest in your reporting.

Filed Under: moral panic, video game
Companies: cnn

Will People Pay CNN To Help Them Report The News?

from the shouldn't-that-work-in-the-other-direction? dept

I've been seeing good reviews for CNN's new iPhone app, that's apparently well-designed. Lots of people are pointing out that the app is being offered for $2, as they wonder if people will "pay for the news." Except, of course, anyone with an iPhone can access cnn.com for free via their browser. So, if they're paying for anything, it must be additional features or convenience that the app allows -- not the content itself. And, for all the good reviews of the app, there's one "feature" being promoted that I'm not so sure I understand. Everyone keeps talking up how the app will turn anyone with an iPhone into an on-the-spot reporter:

Among the high points of the CNN app: It offers the chance to essentially join the CNN reporting team. Readers are invited to submit their own photos and video clips to iReport, a feature CNN already uses on its Web site for gathering material from the public.

Reading this, all I can think is that CNN is asking people to pay it to work for CNN. If it works, bravo for CNN, but that does feel a little backwards, doesn't it? I can totally understand user-generated content sites where people do work for prestige rather than money, but I'm not sure how enticing it is to get people to pay to do work for you...

Filed Under: citizen journalism, iphone apps, news, reporting
Companies: cnn

How Reuters Should Be Responding To The AP's Suicide

from the step-up,-folks dept

Earlier today we wrote about the AP's plans to DRM the news, explaining what a backwards plan it was. The story is getting lots of play elsewhere, with many pointing to a NY Times report, where the AP's CEO Tom Curley makes some amazing statements:

"If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we're going to do that," Mr. Curley said. The goal, he said, was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use.

First of all, someone should sit Curley down and explain to him fair use -- a concept of which he appears to be ignorant. This whole exercise seems to be an attempt to pretend that you can take away fair use rights via metadata. You can't. But, more importantly (from a business perspective) this shows a near total cluelessness on how Google works. Yes, Google built a multi-billion dollar business out of "keywords" but they did so not by forcing people to pay, but by adding value to people who did pay. That's the opposite of what Curley's trying to do. If you can't understand the difference between positive value and negative value, you should not be the CEO of a major organization.

Meanwhile, Ryan Chittum, at the Columbia Journalism Review says that people should chill out because the AP isn't going after bloggers, he seems to miss a few points. First, the AP might not be "going after bloggers" now, but it certainly has shown a willingness to do so in the past. At some point, you can bet it will happen again. Furthermore, the AP claims that it's really only going after "wholesale misappropriation." Hmm. How is that defined?

"We want to stop wholesale misappropriation of our content which does occur right now--people who are copying and pasting or taking by RSS feeds dozens or hundreds of our stories."

Dear AP: your RSS feed is for syndicating your stories. If you don't want the content out there, don't syndicate the content!

But, honestly, the bigger issue is that the AP actually thinks that these spam sites rerunning the AP RSS feed (which, I'll note, links to AP stories directly) somehow harms them. These are spam sites at best. The AP claims (totally unbelievably) that such sites are taking "tens if not the hundreds of millions" of revenue away from the AP. Really? Prove it. These are tiny spam sites that get no traffic. They're not making you lose any money. If your entire business can be undermined by someone copying your headline and a snippet of your first sentence from your own RSS feed, then you have failed in business. The AP needs to hire someone who understands basic business tenets, not to mention basic technology, law and economics. The amazing thing is that I've heard from a couple AP reporters who are sickened by this as well, and feel that Curley is destroying the organization. They know this is a huge mistake.

Either way, I'm still wondering why the AP's competitors, such as Reuters and CNN (which is starting a similar wire service) haven't been a lot more vocal in trying to get more sites to look at them as a friendly alternative. We recently noted that Reuters appeared to have a much more clued-in understanding of the internet, and Chris Ahearn, the President of Reuters Media said today: "Reuters stands ready to help those who wish an alternative to the AP." That's definitely a start, but it was just in a Twitter message directed at Jeff Jarvis, rather than a much more outspoken statement. Why not be blatant about it? Post a public statement/blog post/Twitter message/Facebook message etc. that says something like:

Dear internet: We love our friends over at the Associated Press, but we believe they are making a grave mistake in trying to limit linking and fair use of content. This seems to go against the very principles of the internet and the free flow of information, in which we believe. Therefore, we encourage you to link to our work, to paraphrase it and use it to develop your own commentary. We have our RSS feeds out there because we expect you to use them, and we expect you to do great things with them. We believe our content stands on its own in quality, and see no reason to try to hide it or lock it up when we know that through cooperation and sharing we can all build on the information -- and that improves the situation for everyone. We look forward to linking, sharing and conversing with all of you.

It's time for Reuters, CNN or any other news wire to stand up and publicly tell people to switch their links away from the AP and to their own content.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, journalism, news, rss, wire services
Companies: associated press, cnn, reuthers

CNN Follows Fox News In Using DMCA To Take Down Fair Use Videos

from the thin-skinned-much? dept

What is it with cable news channels for being thinskinned the second some bloggers start posting criticism? Earlier this year, Fox News used the DMCA to take down videos that were being used in commentary, and then sought to force the site to waive its fair use rights for future video usage. So, that give liberals a chance to laugh at "conservative" Fox news... but don't laugh too hard, because now there's the flipside. The "liberal" CNN has filed a DMCA notice to have video taken down that was being used by a conservative blog for commentary purposes -- again, almost certainly fair use. Also, it sounds like some of the video footage that CNN demanded be taken down wasn't even filmed by CNN, suggesting they don't hold the copyright on it. Either way, it's quite silly for either news station to file such a notice. In both cases it was clear that the sites in question weren't trying to use the video to "compete" unfairly, but to offer criticism and commentary. The fact that both news channels went the DMCA takedown route, makes it clear that they were simply trying to shut up critics. And, of course, in both cases, it backfired, bringing more attention to the stories (and just how thinskinned) cable news networks appear to be... no matter where they might sit on the political spectrum.

Filed Under: dmca, fair use, news channels, takedowns
Companies: cnn, fox