NPR Posits Nazis Are Recruiting All Of Our Children In Online Games With Very Little Evidence

from the nein dept

At this point, journalistic handwringing over the assumed dangers of video games has moved beyond annoyance levels and into the trope category. Violence, aggression, becoming sedentary, and the erosion of social skills have all been claimed to be outcomes of video games becoming a dominant choice for entertainment among the population that isn't collecting social security checks, and all typically with little to no evidence backing it up. This has become so routine that one can almost copy and paste past responses into future arguments.

But NPR really went full moral panic mode with a post that essentially claimed the recruitment of children into rightwing and Nazi extremist groups is a full on thing, while an actual analysis of what it relied on to make that claim reveals, well, very little of substance at all.

Yesterday, NPR published an article titled “Right-Wing Hate Groups Are Recruiting Video Gamers.” It’s the latest, most exaggerated version of a gaming-flavored narrative woven by elite media orgs in an apparent attempt to explain the rise of right-wing extremism in America. This article claims that games “have become one avenue for recruitment by right-wing extremist groups”; to support this, the reporter opens her story with a tale of a 15-year-old Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player whose father, John—no last name given—was one day startled to see neo-Nazi propaganda his son had printed out.

Yesterday’s NPR article, which attempted to make this case, was riddled with the sort of factual elisions one would expect out of propaganda journalism. On the basis of one real-life example and three interviews with apparent experts, the writer claims that gamers are getting plucked out of shooty-shooty games and dropped right into neo-Nazi forums. The most basic problem here feels beneath mention: inflating one anonymous father and his anonymous son’s journey through the bad net into an entire movement is preposterous. Had the reporter spoken to even two, three or four kids who had been rescued from the clutches of Fortniteextremists, it still wouldn’t have been enough. “Where,” one would ask, “is the sense of scale?”

And, as Kotaku notes, the problem of the scale in all of this leads one to the next obvious question. If this were really happening at a level that would warrant sounding the parental klaxons, then how has it been missed by gaming journalists, journalists writ large, the federal authorities, and the federal government? Are we really expected to accept, all on the back of one anecdotal story and a couple of experts contacted for comment, that the much wider world has missed Nazi recruitment in online gaming entirely? I don't know if ya'll have noticed, but there's been a bit of a focus on Nazis and white nationalism as of late. This just flew entirely under the radar?

Even the experts cited in the NPR piece leave very much to be desired. Christian Picciolini, who I have heard speak in other forums and who I generally found to be bright and trustworthy, comes off as simply looking foolish when asked to flesh out his concerns as outlined in the NPR post.

Picciolini, who describes himself as a “former white supremacist leader,” came onto Kotaku’s radar in July, when he hosted a Reddit AMA. In it, he claimed that right-wing extremists go into multiplayer games to recruit vulnerable demographics into their cause. Intrigued, my colleague Kashmir Hill and I reached out to Picciolini to hear more. We were curious about the right-wing movers and shakers who could fit an entire political pitch into a Fortnite match.

When we asked Picciolini for evidence of his claim and an interview, he referred us to “the many who have experienced the recruitment” and attached a few screenshots of Nazi imagery in open world games like All Points Bulletin. He also forwarded a screenshot of the game Active Shooter, a school shooting simulator, which was pulled from Steam before its release. Another screenshot was from a YouTube video titled “Fag Jews” in which someone named AuTiSmGaMiNg played Call of Duty. It had 11 views.

If that response is the best that can be mustered, from someone who is supposed to be an expert witness to the core claim that Nazis are recruiting children in online games no less, then this is going to look like ginned up panic-mongering. And that's a very real problem, given that there are some very serious social issues we're dealing with in this country right now, including issues that surround xenophobic white nationalist groups. That problem does exist, but when the fight against that sort of thing is carried out by people willing to inflate the concerns on the specifics, it's easy to see how this can all result in a boy who cried wolf scenario.

Given the large swaths of the population now playing video games on the regular, a post like NPR's can only serve to damage its reputation for journalism.

When fear-mongering moves into spaces that require rigorous investigative reporting and large-scale interviewing, it stumbles into the danger zone of modern journalism: “This wild, but unlikely thing is happening, widely. Please panic.”

That sort of thing might sell as a story in the short term, but it does long term damage in building trust with the reading audience. That's far more dangerous, actually, than whatever tiny number of Nazis are actually trying to lure kids into Nazism via the video game vector.

Filed Under: evidence, moral panic, nazis, online games, recruiting, video games
Companies: npr

NPR Gives Up On News Comments; After All, Who Cares What Your Customers Have To Say?

from the this-muzzle-represents-my-love-for-you dept

We've noted time after time how the trend du jour in online media is to kill your news comment section, muzzle your valuable on-site community, then couch the decision under all manner of disingenuous prattle. Reuters and Recode, for example, killed visitor news comments several years ago because, they claimed, the companies really value conversation. The Verge also tinkered with killing comments, purportedly because it just really valued relationships. As we all know, nothing quite "builds relationships" and gets the conversation going like a muzzle, a wave, and a swift digital kick in the ass.

Other websites couch their decision to mute their users under the pretense that it's just an "experiment," and the website will return with something more interactive and wonderful down the line. More often than not, this never happens. Case in point is NPR, which announced last summer that it too would be banning all public community feedback out of a deep rooted love for building community and audience engagement:

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."

Ironically, public comments on NPR's post at the time were hugely negative, with numerous loyal readers saying the act of pushing them over to Facebook was, in effect, a giant middle finger to the readership. But because interesting discourse and community can't always be directly monetized by bean counters, this blowback was largely ignored. While NPR hinted that it might bring back comments eventually after some experimentation, a new blog post points out that won't be happening. Why? NPR traffic went up anyway despite the decision:

"At the time commenting was ended, there was speculation that the number of users coming to NPR.org would drop. In fact, the number of users for the May-to-July period grew 18 percent in 2017 compared with the year-earlier period, according to Google Analytics numbers Goo provided. (Year-over-year monthly growth has been as high as 37 percent.)"

Except the spike in NPR traffic many have had nothing to do with comments one way or the other, and could be easily attributable to the fact that the current U.S. political environment has obtained historical levels of batshit. It's also myopic to weigh the benefits of news comments by just traffic. Comments, when managed to minimize idiocy, provide an easy, public way to hold writers and publishers accountable for misleading claims or story errors in a highly visible location. Though few publishers can admit it, eliminating this public forum and returning to era of non-transparent letters to the editor is a major incentive for this shift.

At the end of the day, this fashionable assault on ye olde comment section has little to do with valuing community and conversation, and everything to do with illusory control and trying to save money. NPR admitted as much to the latter last year when asked about the decision on Twitter:

Except this narrative that giving a damn about your online community has to be time consuming and expensive is also not really supported by the facts. Studies have shown it's not really that hard to cultivate a healthier on-site comment section by simply having site employees and writers show up and treat the readership like human beings. Again, though, because the act of actually caring about quality discourse can't be directly monitored and displayed on a pie chart, it's being ignored. And that's a mistake in an era where news as a community conversation is more important than ever.

Will the world end with the loss of online news comments? No. But they do provide users with an easy and transparent way to debate, discuss and treat news as exactly what it is in the modern era: a conversation. Removing this public forum is a disservice to the news industry at large, and pretending it's being done out of some noble regard for higher human interaction only adds insult to injury.

Filed Under: comments, community, npr
Companies: npr

NPR The Latest Website To Prevent You From Commenting Because It Simply Adores 'Relationships' And 'Conversation'

from the this-muzzle-represents-my-love-for-you dept

For several years now we've documented the rise in websites that shutter their comment sections, effectively muzzling their own on-site communities. Usually this is because websites are too lazy and cheap to moderate or cultivate real conversation, or they're not particularly keen on having readers point out their inevitable errors in such a conspicuous location. But you can't just come out and admit this -- so what we get is all manner of disingenuous prattle from website editors about how the comments section is being closed because they just really value conversation, or are simply trying to build better relationships.

NPR appears to be the latest in this trend du jour, with Managing Editor of digital news Scott Montgomery penning a new missive over at the website saying the comments are closing as of August 23:

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."

Again, nothing says we "love and are engaged with" our community quite like preventing them from being able to speak to you on site (this muzzle represents my love for you, darling). The logic is, as Montgomery proceeds to proclaim, that social media is just so wonderful, on-site dialogue is no longer important:

Social media is now one of our most powerful sources for audience interaction. Our desks and programs run more than 30 Facebook pages and more than 50 Twitter accounts. We maintain vibrant presences on Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr. Our main Facebook page reaches more than 5 million people and recently has been the springboard for hundreds of hours of live video interaction and audience-first projects such as our 18,000-member "Your Money and Your Life" group.

And while those are all excellent additional avenues of interaction and traffic generation, it's still not quite the same as building brand loyalty through cultivating community and conversation on site. By outsourcing all conversation to Facebook, you're not really engaging with your readers, you're herding them to a homogonized, noisy pasture where they're no longer your problem. In short, we want you to comment -- we just want you to comment privately or someplace else so our errors aren't quite so painfully highlighted and we no longer have to try to engage you publicly. All for the sake of building deeper relationships, of course.

Montgomery talked a little more about NPR's decision on Twitter, where Mathew Ingram (one of roughly three writers I've found who gives two flying damns about the negative impact of this trend) politely pondered if NPR really tried all that hard before giving up: Except, as we've noted time and time again, studies show that it's not really that hard to cultivate a healthier on-site comment section simply by showing up. Just having a writer or editor show up and treat readers like human beings dramatically improves the overall tone of the conversation. This isn't something that requires all that much time and effort. But because editors can't clearly quantify the benefits of giving a damn in this fashion, they've decided it's easier and cheaper to just give up.

Elsewhere on NPR's website user reaction to the news has been overwhelmingly negative, with many users saying they don't have social media accounts and appreciated the on-site ability to have vaguely intelligent conversation. Says one user:

They're getting rid of a great community of discussion. It's the best forum I've known, with people from all walks of life discussing the news with a moderate amount of intelligence, and a healthy dose of wit. I'm pretty upset. After the comments go, I won't visit NPR much anymore. There's not much content compared to other sites. It was the discussion that kept me coming back.

Another reader offers a more blunt take:

And the "public" in public radio goes away, except for the pleas for money. There's no interaction any more, emails are ignored, Twitter is useless, and Facebook is a gross invasion of privacy. Sad NPR. And worse that the supposed advocate for the listener backs the decision. Perhaps if NPR had actually involved itself with the commenting instead of isolating and offshoring it, you would have found that things would have worked better for you.

Sadly, like Bloomberg, Recode, Reuters, Popular Science, and other sites, NPR and Montgomery round out the announcement by claiming that muzzling your community somehow illustrates a love of "deeper relationships" and "conversation":

In the eight years since NPR first launched its online comment section, the world of social media has changed dramatically, as has NPR's digital presence. We're constantly asking ourselves where we can create the best dialogue with you and how we can deepen that relationship. It's a question we will keep asking because the way we communicate online will keep changing. We're looking forward to continuing the conversation.

That sounds so much lovelier than "nobody in our writing or editorial staff wants to take the time to cultivate local on-site community," "we're lazily cutting corners" or "we don't like having our mistakes highlighted publicly right below our articles," don't you think?

Filed Under: comments, community, relationships
Companies: npr

How 'Reasonable Andy' Stopped NPR's Lawyers From Threatening Fan, And Actually Connected With Him

from the nice-to-see... dept

The actual story behind this is a few years old, but it was just retold in a recent video by a social media person at NPR, about how the broadcaster got control over their Facebook fan page that had been set up by a fan: Basically, this guy -- Geoff Campbell -- noticed that NPR didn't have a Facebook fan page. He emailed NPR about it and offered to set it up, and all he got back was a random "thanks for emailing us" note, which he took to mean "sure, go for it." It took some time, but eventually, NPR noticed the fan page and the lawyers freaked out, thinking that they needed to send him a cease-and-desist letter. However, as the video notes "along came 'Reasonable Andy'," who isn't named in the video, but is Andy Carvin, NPR's longtime social media guru who knows his way around the digital world better than most folks. Andy, smartly, told NPR to hold back on the legal threats, and just reached out to Geoff in a friendly manner, and a transfer of the Facebook group in a reasonable manner was arranged (though, Geoff insists that he never received any promised coffee mug). Some will note that there's nothing "remarkable" about this story. However, we still live in an age where so many organizations reach for the legal threats first, rather than seeking a friendly discussion on matters -- especially in cases where it's obviously a "fan" who is trying to help. So, it seems worth posting stories like this to try to spread the idea of holding off on the legal threats as the immediate response.

Filed Under: andy carvin, connecting, fans, reasonableness
Companies: npr

NPR Takes Down Vision Media's Claims; Will Vision Media Sue NPR -- Or Does It Only Sue Small Operations?

from the we-shall-see dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about Vision Media TV, a company that appeared to be participating in a questionable game of convincing non-profit organizations to pay tens of thousands of dollars to be featured in a television program with broadcaster Hugh Downs that would appear on "public television." The implication is that these shows will air on PBS, but that's not the case. In fact, PBS has a warning on its website telling people it's not associated with these offerings at all. We've even been approached by similar offerings (though, not involving Hugh Downs -- and the one where we were approached involved getting an "award" for "best small business" or something similar). About a year and a half ago, the NY Times wrote an article trashing Vision Media TV. The company insisted that the article was false and defamatory but, tellingly, chose not to sue.

Instead, it later sued the small site 800notes.com, because some people there had written negatively about Vision Media TV in explaining who was calling from Vision Media's phone number. Paul Alan Levy, from Public Citizen, who is defending 800Notes, also found himself targeted, after Vision Media sought to bar him from posting public documents about the case on Public Citizen's website -- an attempt that failed. Of course, it did help Levy find more info about the company, including that similar pitches have come from differently named companies, using the same address as Vision Media TV, that pitched (instead of Hugh Downs), Walter Cronkite and Mike Douglas -- both of whom ended up suing the company, claiming they were misled by the company.

Levy says he's asked Vision Media why it never sued the NY Times over its article, and the company's lawyer responded "I should have," but supposedly the statute of limitations had already passed. Well, now Levy is pointing out that Vision Media has a second chance to sue a big media player, since NPR just did a devastating takedown of Vision Media TV and its practices:

"They are selling something that they generally cannot deliver," says Garry Denny, program director of Wisconsin Public Television and a past president of the professional association of programming officials for PBS member stations. "In fact, they are probably not carried by any public television station around the country."

Officials at PBS and at PBS member stations in California, Colorado, Kentucky, New York, South Carolina and Virginia were all aware of the Hugh Downs spots. Yet not one knew of a concrete instance in which the spots featuring Downs appeared on their stations or those of others. PBS and its member stations say they adhere to guidelines banning marketing programming paid for by subjects of the programs.

To be fair, the article and Vision Media point out that the videos can be useful as marketing materials or infomercials even if they don't appear on public television -- but the whole pitch involving Hugh Downs is where things get questionable. His contract only lets him be involved if the stuff is on public television, and the marketing focuses on Downs involvement, even if that's unlikely to happen for most organizations who pay up -- which certainly suggests misleading marketing:

According to both Downs' agent and Vision Media's Miller, the retired anchor's contract limits his involvement to public television. Yet for many people approached by Vision Media's cold-calling pitchmen, he's by far the strongest selling point.

One of the firms recently pitched is Portland, Maine-based Putney Inc., which develops generic drugs for pets. "Hugh Downs! I know that name," said Jean Hoffman, Putney's CEO. "We were of course pretty excited, pretty interested, and pretty eager to cooperate."

It seemed like a splendid opportunity, until Hoffman and her colleagues started to bore in on the details. "They send the signal that they're doing a story" as journalists, Hoffman said. "Then, they try to sell us what under questioning was revealed to be advertising."

Others, who did buy into the videos, claim that the pitch about public television was what got them interested in the first place:

Robert Biggins is past president of the funeral director trade group and owner of a funeral home in Rockland, Mass. He said Vision Media's promise of a presence on public television and the involvement of Downs were crucial.

"He brings a credibility in reporting," Biggins said. "I felt that dealing with an organization that he's so intimately involved in gave us the opportunity to share our message, and to do so in a warm and gracious manner."

If their spots did not air on public television, Biggins said, "That would be a serious concern."

The National Funeral Directors Association provided NPR with a copy of the contract it signed with Vision Media. The association paid $22,900 in 2007 for the production of different versions of the spot, plus an additional $3,000 as a "location fee" -- presumably for travel costs. The contract and additional material from Patrick Wilson of American Artists, the segments' distributor, stated the "estimated reach is over 40 million households" on public television stations. The brochure also suggests the spots will reach 84 million households nationwide on cable -- the overwhelming majority of all homes subscribing to cable television.

So, if Vision Media's lawyer said he wished he had sued the NY Times over a very similar article from a couple years ago, will he now sue NPR? Or is it easier to focus on small sites with much smaller budgets?

Filed Under: lawsuits, media
Companies: npr, vision media tv

Financial Podcast Buys A Toxic Asset To See How It Works

from the reporting-by-getting-your-hands-dirty dept

I've written in the past how wonderful NPR's Planet Money podcast is. During the "dark days" of the financial crisis, it was one of the true beacons of light explaining in easy-to-understand detail what was happening, and exploring aspects of the story that the mainstream press glossed over completely. In the process, they broke some stories, highlighted some key aspects of the debate, and really brought a lot more people into the discussion about how we deal with the economic situation of the day. I still listen to every episode on the day it comes out, but in the last few months there really hasn't been that much going on in the economy that needed a really thorough breakdown.

Given that, it seems like the Planet Money crew has hit on a rather brilliant idea. Back when this whole thing started, of course, much of the focus was on the so-called "toxic assets," the derivatives made up of slices of mortgages that had been packaged and repackaged together in creative ways -- in theory to minimize the risk, but in reality, often putting all of the risk in one big basket made to look artificially safe. The focus on toxic assets has mostly fallen off the mainstream press radar, but the folks at Planet Money decided to check in on those toxic assets and dig into what a toxic asset really means. But they were having trouble getting their heads around what a toxic asset really is, how it functions and how to best explain it to their audience.

So they bought a toxic asset.

Literally, the four reporters on the team, along with their producer, each pooled about $200 of their own money, in order to buy $1,000 worth of toxic asset. They'll be tracking whether or not they make their money back, and if they make anything on top of that as well (any profits will be donated to charity). The podcast itself is fascinating, as two of the reporters spend a couple days with a company called Mission Peak Capital, based out in Kansas, which has been analyzing and buying up toxic assets. They go through the whole process of analyzing and bidding on a few of these things until they find the one they wanted. Mission Peak bought the whole asset for $36,000, marked down from $2.7 million, and then sold a $1,000 sliver to the team at Planet Money.

The Planet Money folks have set up a detailed interactive website that goes into great detail about what's in the asset -- probably a lot more detail than most previous owners of the asset knew about themselves -- as well as how much they've made and how long they have until the asset runs out for them (as more of the houses whose mortgages are included in the asset get sold, they get closer and closer to being kicked out of getting any of the remaining revenue).

The story itself is fascinating, but what really drew me to it is what a great example of modern reporting this is. This goes way beyond what we normally think of as reporting, and breaks down that mythical "impartial reporter" barrier in a very effective and useful way. Some people have suggested that the reason why journalism may be struggling these days is that people can go directly to sources themselves (or sources can broadcast themselves) without needing an intermediary to "write the story." Of course, that doesn't mean the role of a journalist goes away, but it changes drastically. In this case, the team at Planet Money has realized that in order to "report" on this story, they need to become the source themselves, and open that up wide to their audience. It's a fascinating and incredibly effective modern form of journalism, and I can't wait to see where they take it. They're already planning to try to track down some of the mortgage holders whose mortgages are in the asset, as well as homeowners and former holders of the asset. Even if you're not that interested in the details of a toxic asset, it's hard not to find the whole thing incredibly compelling. It's useful and educational interactive storytelling at its finest, which is what true journalism should be.

Filed Under: journalism, npr, planet money, toxic asset
Companies: mission peak capital, npr

Latest Bogus DMCA Takedown Sent By NPR?

from the you'd-think-they-know-better dept

You wouldn't normally associate NPR with sending bogus DMCA takedowns, but via the EFF we learn that NPR has sent a DMCA takedown to YouTube over a commercial that uses a clip from NPR. The commercial is from a group that opposes same-sex marriage, so there's likely a political angle here. NPR claims that it issued the takedown to "protect NPR's valuable reputation as a trusted and unbiased source of news," but that's not how copyright works. This is quite similar to when CBS tried to stop the McCain campaign from using a snippet of a broadcast in an ad. In both cases it seems that the use is a clear situation of fair use, with the content not being used for commercial reasons (yes, we'd like to believe that politics still isn't commercial) and only a snippet was being used.

Filed Under: dmca, takedown
Companies: npr

NPR Plays Spot The Healthcare Lobbyists At Healthcare Reform Hearing

from the nice dept

As those involved in public policy issues know all too well, much of what happens in DC is driven (or at least heavily influenced) by lobbyists. But, for the most part, the lobbyists stay out of the spotlight, allowing politicians to present their positions for them. But the lobbyists themselves are never far away -- it's just that the press always has the cameras facing the politicians, and the lobbyists go undetected. That's why it's great to see that NPR actually has tried turning the cameras around (found via Jerry Brito). At a hearing on healthcare reform, NPR photographers turned around and photographed those in the audience, and then placed the photo online, asking viewers to identify the lobbyists in attendance. Brito points out that it's not clear that enough people who would know actually have looked at the photo, but it's still a nice idea.

Filed Under: lobbyists, photograph, politics
Companies: npr

Is It Really So Wrong For A Reporter To Have An Opinion?

from the modern-media dept

There's an interesting article by NPR's ombudsman, noting that Planet Money's Adam Davidson apparently went way over the line in a recent interview with Elizabeth Warren, who's in charge of watching over the TARP program to make sure it's not abused. Apparently a ton of people complained. Davidson apologized and NPR says that what he did was wrong and that: "It's important for journalists to treat whomever they are interviewing with respect -- and to keep their opinions to themselves. Davidson did neither."

The thing is... when I heard the original broadcast that caused the problems... I actually really liked it. Davidson is a smart and knowledgeable guy who's spent an awful lot of time digging into issues around the economic crisis to get to the bottom of them, and he had a reasonable point that he was trying to make, based on all of that knowledge -- and he challenged Warren on it. The reason I liked it was that it was a reporter actually challenging someone on something, rather than simply letting it stand. This is something that has been missing from reporting in many cases. It's what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said/she said" reporting -- where a reporter asks questions to elicit a story from multiple parties, but never tries to ascertain if either story is true -- but just presents what the various people say. Davidson wasn't doing that. He was actually claiming that it seemed like Warren was trying to stretch the purpose of her job to do something that didn't necessarily fit in the role. And it was great to see a reporter actually say to someone "that's not true" because it felt like someone was finally getting challenged (no matter whether you feel Warren is in the right or not).

It was quite clear what Davidson's position was -- he laid it out -- and he challenged Warren, and it made for an interesting discussion. The whole idea that reporters must "keep their opinions to themselves" doesn't seem to make much sense. If someone is talking to a reporter and saying stuff that the reporter believes is wrong, don't they owe their audience the courtesy of digging deeper? I was impressed by Davidson, and am actually a bit disappointed that he backed down so quickly. It actually makes me wonder how much Planet Money will push back on people who state stuff that the Planet Money team feels is wrong in the future.

Filed Under: adam davidson, elizabeth warren, journalism, opinions, planet money, reporters
Companies: npr