Gizmodo Media's Clueless New Owners Tell Reporters They Can't Use Encrypted Email Any More

from the wait,-but...-whut? dept

G/O Media is the latest incarnation of Gizmodo Media, after it was sold by Univision to private equity firm Great Hill Partners earlier this year. Univision, of course, acquired "Gizmodo Media" out of the remnants of Gawker Media, after that company was forced into bankruptcy by a bogus lawsuit and a bad court ruling. There had been plenty of indications that the reporters and editors at G/O Media were chaffing under their new bosses (despite Great Hill putting media exec Jim Spanfeller in charge) as they very quickly laid off some of their best reporters, including Kashmir Hill.

Last month there were reports that the staff were "enraged at the new CEO's 'insane' direction" and the details of all that flooded out -- in classic Gawker fashion -- on one of their own sites, Deadspin, which posted a truly incredible piece of journalism entitled This Is How Things Work Now At G/O Media. It's a really damning report. And it's long. It talked a lot about how the new bosses brought in a bunch of old friends (all white men) often replacing (or simply ignoring) women who were already in those jobs. It's full of choice quotes like the following:

The internal reaction to these hires has ranged from confusion to anger. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. For instance, Rogers, who sits in a corner office in New York, still hasn’t been formally announced as a new employee internally or externally, and sources who work in sales say it’s unclear what his job description is, though he evidently has plenty of time to contribute to Forbes, where he posted 14 articles in July. (“The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do,” Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.)

Forbes is not owned by Great Hill and is a competitor to G/O Media. So, it's kinda weird for your employee, who has an office, but no title or job description, to be contributing to a competitor's site.

Anyway, things got even more bizarre last week. Perhaps, as part of management's anger at the Deadspin article, G/O Media bosses sent around a memo to all staffers that is pretty messed up if you're at all familiar with how media tends to work:

The G/O handbook declares that the company can search employees’ “personal vehicles, parcels, purses, handbags, backpacks, briefcases, lunch boxes,” review all electronic communications made on company property, and disclose those messages to others if the company deems it appropriate. The new rules also strangely allow the company to access reporters’ “tweets” and bars employees from using encrypted email programs—a common tool journalists often use to protect highly confidential sources.

Perhaps most bizarrely, the handbook also establishes an attendance policy and a dress code. Employees must arrive between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., according to the handbook, and are required to wear “smart casual” attire. “Offensive” logos or “sweatpants, exercise pants, Bermuda shorts, short shorts, biker shorts, Mini-skirts, beach dresses, midriff tops, and halter tops” are all banned.

That's the kind of thing that a really paranoid management who has totally lost control over its employees would demand. It's a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" kind of thing. Most of the stuff is just culturally clueless about how to treat reporters. But the ban on encryption -- obviously to allow management to better snoop on emails -- is positively insane. The company still employs some great investigative reporters, who regularly rely on encrypted emails to protect their sources. Requiring no such thing in a media company is suicidal.

Indeed, one of G/O's excellent reporters, Dell Cameron, has already said the company would need to fire him if they want him to stop using encryption:

Cameron later noted that he heard that the company will "scrub" the "corpolingo bullshit" and no one will be forced to give up encryption. But still. To even send around such a document suggests a pretty profound cluelessness.

Meanwhile, the reporters there are unionized, and the union notes that many of the policies in the handbook obviously contradict their existing contract and are "incompatible with our work."

The big question to me, though, is what the hell did Great Hill Partners and Spanfeller think they were buying in the first place? Didn't they have some understanding of what they were getting? Because, so far, all of these moves suggest they just bought the property without understanding literally anything about it, other than that people had heard of it and it got some traffic.

Filed Under: encryption, journalism
Companies: g/o media, gawker, gizmodo

Is There A Conspiracy Among Legacy Media Companies To Push A False Narrative About Big Tech?

from the well,-there's-some-smoke... dept

Over the last few months we've witnessed a veritable flood of misleading to simply false articles about internet companies showing up in mainstream sources. There were misleading articles in Vox and the Washington Post. And then, just recently, we saw not one but two NY Times pieces that went out of their way to misrepresent the law. And, then of course, there's the Wall Street Journal that has been misrepresenting Section 230 for ages. To date, the only one of these publications to run a serious correction (and to continue to help debunking misrepresentations) is the smallest of those listed above: Vox, who did some research and published a big mea culpa.

This has gotten many in the tech industry to begin to wonder. It's one thing for (cross aisle) grandstanding politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Blumenthal to totally misrepresent the law. But when the mainstream media is doing so on a regular basis -- it's causing a lot of talk behind the scenes about whether this is a coordinated hit. Some, like the excellent reporter Anna Wiener, recently more or less dismissed this theory as being "mostly... a facile argument," though I think she mixes up two separate issues. First, it is absolutely true that many startup founders don't know how to deal with the press well, and get personally offended by bad press coverage. And, for those entrepreneurs: fuck 'em. They should grow up and learn what the press actually does, when done right -- which includes researching and debunking nonsense (and there's a ton of nonsense in Silicon Valley).

But, that's a separate issue from whether or not there's a coordinated campaign to undermine the foundations of the internet by a few larger, legacy industries who have failed to adapt to a changing time. Indeed, we saw significant evidence of Hollywood's top lobbyists working behind the scenes (though, it occasionally slipped out publicly) to push for FOSTA, the first bill that significantly undermined Section 230.

And there's plenty more evidence of legacy industries -- mainly legacy media and entertainment companies -- plotting to take down internet companies by making use of the news. Remember, during the Sony Pictures hack, that MPAA emails were leaked, revealing "Project Goliath," which was specifically a plan to damage Google through any means necessary -- and that included using a smear campaign placed in the Wall Street Journal and on the Today Show. In an email sent to an official in Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's office by then MPAA "director of external state government affairs" official (and former ICE official) Brian Cohen, Cohen admits the "proposed plan" is to place an anti-Google smear campaign:

If that image is not showing up, the text comes from a larger strategic plan between the MPAA and various state Attorneys' General, and includes this:

Media: We want to make sure that the media is at the NAAG meeting. We propose working with MPAA (Vans), Comcast, and NewsCorp (Bill Guidera) to see about working with a PR firm to create an attack on Google (and others who are resisting AG efforts to address online piracy). This PR firm can be funded through a nonprofit dedicated to IP issues. The "live buys" should be available for the media to see, followed by a segment the next day on the Today Show (David green can help with this). After the Today Show segment, you want to have a large investor of Google (George can help us determine that) come forward and say that Google needs to change its behavior/demand reform. Next, you want NewsCorp to develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that Google's stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs and noting some of the possible causes of action we have developed.

So, sure, while it may seem "facile" for some to argue that legacy media firms are out to get big internet companies with trumped up claims in their own media properties, there's very real evidence of a conspiracy to do literally that. Not so facile.

And there's more where that comes from. In Wired's giant profile last year of the "troubles" inside Facebook, it is made clear that Rupert Murdoch used his ability to damage the company via the editorial pages of the WSJ as part of a negotiating strategy:

Zuckerberg traveled to Sun Valley, Idaho, for an annual conference hosted by billionaire Herb Allen, where moguls in short sleeves and sunglasses cavort and make plans to buy each other’s companies. But Rupert Murdoch broke the mood in a meeting that took place inside his villa. According to numerous accounts of the conversation, Murdoch and Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, explained to Zuckerberg that they had long been unhappy with Facebook and Google. The two tech giants had taken nearly the entire digital ad market and become an existential threat to serious journalism. According to people familiar with the conversation, the two News Corp leaders accused Facebook of making dramatic changes to its core algorithm without adequately consulting its media partners, wreaking havoc according to Zuckerberg’s whims. If Facebook didn’t start offering a better deal to the publishing industry, Thomson and Murdoch conveyed in stark terms, Zuckerberg could expect News Corp executives to become much more public in their denunciations and much more open in their lobbying. They had helped to make things very hard for Google in Europe. And they could do the same for Facebook in the US.

.... Inside Facebook, executives believed Murdoch might use his papers and TV stations to amplify critiques of the company. News Corp says that was not at all the case; the company threatened to deploy executives, but not its journalists.

Zuckerberg had reason to take the meeting especially seriously, according to a former Facebook executive, because he had firsthand knowledge of Murdoch’s skill in the dark arts. Back in 2007, Facebook had come under criticism from 49 state attorneys general for failing to protect young Facebook users from sexual predators and inappropriate content. Concerned parents had written to Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, who opened an investigation, and to The New York Times, which published a story. But according to a former Facebook executive in a position to know, the company believed that many of the Facebook accounts and the predatory behavior the letters referenced were fakes, traceable to News Corp lawyers or others working for Murdoch, who owned Facebook’s biggest competitor, MySpace. “We traced the creation of the Facebook accounts to IP addresses at the Apple store a block away from the MySpace offices in Santa Monica,” the executive says. “Facebook then traced interactions with those accounts to News Corp lawyers. When it comes to Facebook, Murdoch has been playing every angle he can for a long time.” (Both News Corp and its spinoff 21st Century Fox declined to comment.)

Got that? Facebook actually traced fake accounts, that were handed to long-grandstanding anti-internet crusader Richard Blumenthal (then a state AG, now a Senator) back to News Corp. And Murdoch strongly implied to Facebook execs that he needed to get a better deal from them or his publications, such as the WSJ, would put out hit pieces.

So, yes, there are legitimate points of concern to raise about big internet companies. I'm not one to normally believe in cynical conspiracy theories, but it's not at all crazy to think that the recent onslaught in major media properties may not be coming from the most ethically sound place. After all, if Hollywood has plotted in the past to do exactly that, why would anyone expect them to have given up those underhanded games?

Filed Under: attacks, behind the scenes, conspiracy, hit pieces, journalism, lobbying, media, misrepresentations, section 230
Companies: comcast, mpaa, news corp.

Unsealed Warrants Show SFPD Officer Told Judges He Was Targeting A Journalist, But Judges Approved Them Anyway

from the try-sucking-less-next-time,-your-honors dept

Three of the five warrants the San Francisco Police Department obtained to search journalist/stringer Bryan Carmody's home, office, and phones have been tossed by the judges who issued them.

The initial warrant, issued in February by Judge Rochelle East was the first be declared invalid. Judge East said the warrant application was misleading, omitting information that would have made it clear Carmody was a journalist and protected by the state's shield law. This warrant -- seeking access to phone call and text message records -- has been tossed. Since everything else in the Carmody investigation stems from this illegal search, the rest of the warrants are destined for the dustbin.

Judge East's findings have led to two more judges tossing warrants they issued. It also has led -- at least in Judge Victor Hwang's case -- to the judge possibly reading the warrant for the first time. This statement from David Snyder of the First Amendment Coalition says the warrant Judge Hwang tossed contained information about Carmody that made it clear the SFPD was targeting a journalist.

The search warrant application unsealed today shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the San Francisco Police Department knew Bryan Carmody is a journalist before they sought a search warrant for his office — and that they provided ample evidence of that fact to the San Francisco judge that authorized the unlawful search of his office.

The warrant [PDF] contains passages that indicate Carmody is in the journalism business. SFPD Sgt. Joseph Obidi dances around it a bit but ultimately delivers enough information that an attentive judge would have rejected this attempt to bypass the state's shield law.

The swearing officer notes that Carmody "is not currently employed at any of the news organizations" that published the leaked death report. But there are other passages in the affidavit's narrative that point towards Carmody's occupation.

Sgt. Watts asked Mr. Carmody if the [officers] that [leaked a copy of a death report to him] profited financially, he stated no. Sgt. Watts asked him if he profited financially, he responded by saying that he profits financially from every story he covers.

And, more explicitly:

It is my belief that Mr. Carmody still has the original copy of the police report in order to further his financial profits by selling it to other interested parties or news outlets at the time. I also believe Mr. Carmody kept the original copy the report as part of his portfolio/records of news stories he has participated in to keep track of his achievements. [...] I believe it is reasonable that someone who makes a career out of producing/selling hot news stories would keep a copy of that as part of his resume.

The affidavit also makes reference to the warrant obtained from another judge to search Carmody's residence. If so, Judge Gail Dekreon likely saw the same narrative and assertions, and yet still gave the SFPD permission to search a journalist's home. As Synder points out, this is unacceptable.

[T]hese statements represent a massive failure by both SFPD and the judiciary to recognize and safeguard the Constitutionally protected rights of Bryan Carmody and, by extension all journalists.

All the warrants will ultimately be tossed because every one of them is predicated on an invalid warrant and an illegal search of Carmody's phone records. But these should have been rejected by the judges who initially reviewed them, shutting down the SFPD's attempt to circumvent the state's shield law. The judicial branch's powers aren't just curative or restorative. They're also supposed to be preventative. Here they failed, leading to multiple rights violations that never should have been allowed to happen.

Filed Under: bryan carmody, journalism, rochelle east, sfpd

Once More With Feeling: Nearly All General Interest News Paywalls Will Fail

from the if-you're-not-one-of-the-giants dept

Just a few weeks ago we pointed out (for not the first time) that news paywalls for general interest publications did not seem likely to succeed outside of a very small number of exceptions: mainly three giant east coast newspapers which have established themselves as key news sources: the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (arguably the last one, with its focus on finance, might not even count as "general interest"). In that last post, we pointed out that even people who liked to pay for news tended to only subscribe to a single news source. That helps create a winner take all proposition where only a very small number (see above) can actually build a sustainable business model through an internet paywall.

And that means that even if you're a pretty well known newspaper, falling outside the big ones, it means you're going to be in trouble. Witness the LA Times failing paywall. As Nieman Lab notes, in terms of paper subscriptions, the LA Times used to rank above the Washington Post. But it didn't make the transition to digital the way the Post did:

Digital subscriptions at the Los Angeles Times are way below expectations, and leadership, in a memo to staff, said the future of the paper could depend on solving the issue rapidly.

Whether due to unrealistic expectations or editorial and business failures, the Times is nowhere close to meeting its digital subscription goal. The Times had hoped to double its digital subscriptions from just more than 150,000 to 300,000 this year — a number that would have to be doubled again, the memo said, to come close to covering editorial costs. But midway through the year, the Times is nowhere near that number, having netted only 13,000 digital subscriptions in 2019.

As the article notes, the LA Times basically missed the boat here, despite having a wealthy owner who could have invested a ton of money.

Of course, part of the problem here is focusing solely on paywalls as a solution. As seen by the three success stories, it can work, but in a winner-take-all kind of market, you need to be a winner, and the LA Times was not positioned to do that. And the LA Times hasn't done much to distinguish itself as to why you'd want to subscribe to it rather than its competitors.

And it doesn't look like the paper is going to figure it out any time soon. So far it's plan seems to be wishful thinking:

In a memo sent to staff on Monday afternoon and obtained by Poynter, Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine and Managing Editor Scott Kraft wrote, “Our future depends on rapid and substantial subscription revenue growth.” They added, “Performance for the first half of the year … has been disappointing.”

That's the wrong approach. Subscription growth would be one way to increase revenue -- but to do that you have to give people a reason to subscribe, and just doing the same things as those other newspapers isn't going to cut it. I'm surprised that the LA Times hasn't, instead, decided to buck the paywall trend and go in the other direction. Why not focus on opening itself up, building up traffic, and providing an alternative to the east coast papers who got all the subscribers by doing strong reporting, and then layering in other, better business models?

Unfortunately, the newspaper business keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and refuses to get creative. The possible demise of the LA Times is just one symptom of that failure to innovate.

Filed Under: journalism, news, newspapers, paywalls

Unsealed Warrant Shows SFPD Officer Misled Court About Journalist's Occupation

from the law-enforcement-still-the-best-at-law-stuff dept

One of the search warrants used by the San Francisco police department to go after a journalist for documents a PD employee leaked has been released. This is only one of the five warrants targeting "stringer" Bryan Carmody, whose house was raided by the SFPD back in May.

This search warrant targeted Carmody's phone records. It was granted on March 1st, allowing the SFPD to obtain records from Verizon. This was done supposedly to track down which cop called Carmody over a two-day period prior to the release of the leaked document to California news agencies.

Earlier this month, Judge Rochelle East quashed the warrant, saying it showed the SFPD omitted key info that would have made it clear it was targeting a journalist -- something forbidden by California's journalist shield law. The judge also unsealed the warrant. It has finally been released and it shows SFPD Sgt. Joseph Obidi writing his way around the fact that Carmody is a journalist.

In the application [PDF], Sgt. Obidi cut-and-pasted part of Carmody's LinkedIn profile. The officer included the part that said Carmody was a "Freelance Videographer." But he excluded the part that said Carmody "has decades of experience shooting, editing and reporting news," as well as the long list of new agencies he had worked with. It also excluded the fact that the SFPD had issued a press pass to Carmody -- one that was still current when the warrant was obtained.

This was pointed out during the hearing about the warrant by Judge East, who said the existence of a press pass should have told the SFPD to steer its investigation away from Carmody.

While under other circumstances in other cases there may be some question as to what a journalist is. In this case I think there is none. The fact that he has a press pass from the San Francisco Police Department indicates to this Court that he is a journalist.

The narrative in the application shows the SFPD suspected an officer or SFPD employee. Yet, the Department decided to go after a journalist for possessing and distributing a document that was illegally leaked by one of its own. It could have limited its investigation to its own staff and their phone records. But it didn't, and now it's only a few weeks away from seeing all of its warrants tossed (and hopefully unsealed) and presumably less than 365 days away from being sued by Bryan Carmody.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, bryan carmody, journalism, lies, sfpd, warrants

Judge Unseals, Tosses Warrant Used By The San Francisco PD To Obtain A Journalist's Phone Records

from the have-fun-sleeping-in-the-fucked-up-bed-you-made,-SFPD dept

Back in May, the San Francisco Police Department raided the home of a local "stringer," hoping to discover who had leaked a sensitive police report to the journalists. This raid violated the state's journalist shield law and the First Amendment. Since it was obvious the source of leaked document was an SFPD officer or employee, the raid was also incredibly stupid… unless the real point of the show of force was to discourage journalists from publishing leaked documents.

It took a few days before the SFPD police chief was willing to condemn the raid. According to the chief, the still-unseen affidavit glossed over the target's occupation -- an omission that likely would have seen the warrant application tossed if it had been included.

Speculation about the contents of at least one of the warrants is about to come to an end. The judge overseeing stringer Bryan Carmody's challenge of the warrant has ordered the affidavit to be unsealed.

“The search warrant will be unsealed with the exception of one portion,” San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East said in court.

One paragraph of the 11-page warrant must be blacked out to protect the identity of a confidential police informant. The unsealed file will be released by July 23 at 10 a.m. to attorneys for three press advocacy groups and a freelance journalist whose home was raided by police.

The same judge has also declared the warrant invalid. Matthew Keys has more details at the California Globe:

A judge in San Francisco tossed a search warrant she issued against a freelance journalist in May, saying police did not disclose to her that the target of the warrant worked in the news media industry.

The ruling, handed down in San Francisco County Superior Court, means materials gathered from the home and office of journalist Bryan C. Carmody cannot be used as evidence against him or anyone else as police continue their investigation into the leak of documents and photographs related to the death of former San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

Unfortunately, this only takes care of one of the warrants targeting Carmody. This one sought phone records linked to the numerous cellphones Carmody owns. The other warrants -- targeting Carmody's home and office -- are still being challenged.

The good news is those warrants are likely to meet the same fate. It's highly unlikely the affidavits attached to those search warrants included the fact that the target was a journalist. Two more hearings are set to discuss those warrants, but it seems pretty clear from the ruling here that SFPD officers lied to a judge (or judges) to get around the state's shield law.

If those hearings go the same way, the SFPD will lose all the evidence it collected during its bullshit raid. It won't have anything to use against Carmody, but it seems unlikely a prosecution would even be pursued at this point. But a stack of bad warrants also invalidates anything it might have wanted to use against the employee who leaked the document. The SFPD probably should have kept its internal investigation internal, rather than bring it to the doorstep of a journalist's house.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, bryan carmody, investigation, journalism, phone records, san francisco, sfpd, warrant

The CIA Wants To Make It Easier To Jail Journalists And No One In Congress Is Stopping It From Happening

from the CIA-wondering-why-we-just-can't-go-back-to-zero-accountability dept

The CIA is pushing for an expansion of a 37-year-old law that would deter journalists from covering national security issues or reporting on leaked documents. Thanks to a disillusioned CIA case officer's actions in 1975, there are currently a few limits to what can or can't be reported about covert operatives working overseas.

In 1975, Philip Agee published a memoir about his years with the CIA. Attached to his memoir -- which detailed his growing discontentment with the CIA's clandestine support of overseas dictators -- was a list of 250 CIA agents or informants. In response to this disclosure, Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which criminalized disclosing the identity of covert intelligence agents.

The IIPA did what it could to protect journalists by limiting the definition of "covert agent" to agents serving overseas and then only those who were currently working overseas when the disclosure occurred. It also required the government to show proof the person making the disclosure was "engaged in a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose" covert agents. The law was amended in 1999 to expand the coverage to include covert agents working overseas within five years of the disclosure.

Now, the CIA is seeking to strip these protections from the IIPA. The agency wants the "overseas" requirement removed, allowing it (and other intelligence agencies) to designate whoever they want as "protected" by the IIPA in perpetuity. The removal of the overseas requirement eliminates the five-year period. Disclosing identities years after the fact will now be a criminal act.

The CIA has its reasons, as Trevor Timm reports. But they're the worst reasons.

Under the proposed law, any journalist who, say, revealed the names of “covert” CIA officers that had engaged in torture or ordered drone strikes on civilians would now be subject to prosecution — even if the newsworthy actions occurred years or decades prior or the officer in question has always been located in the United States.

In fact, the CIA explicitly referenced the revelations of the agency’s Bush-era torture program in its argument to Congress for IIPA expansion. The New York Times’s Charlie Savage obtained the CIA’s private memo in which it lobbied members of Congress. Under the memo’s “justification” section, the CIA wrote:

"Particularly with the lengths organizations such as WikiLeaks are willing to go to obtain and release sensitive national security information, as well as incidents related to past Agency programs, such as the RDI investigation, the original congressional reasoning mentioned above for a narrow definition of ‘covert agent’ no longer remains valid."

RDI is the CIA's preferred term for its torture program. It stands for "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation." If the law is amended, the scope of its coverage expands, and the public gains nothing from it. Issues like drone strikes and torture programs need all the sunlight they can get. The CIA -- and other intelligence agencies -- would prefer the general public not know what's being done in their name with their tax dollars.

Unfortunately, someone who has stood up for the press for years is allowing this amendment -- attached to the 2020 budget bill -- to move forward. Rep. Adam Schiff -- the co-founder of the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press -- has done nothing to push back against this expansion of the IIPA.

Here, Schiff has a direct means to protect journalists from what’s sure to be a clear and present danger: He could refuse to insert the provision the CIA has requested into the intelligence bill. Instead, at least so far, he’s done the complete opposite.

As Timm points out, Schiff may be big on press freedom, but he's even bigger on surveillance state boosterism.

Sadly, when you take a good look at his record, Schiff has always favored the secrecy of intelligence agencies over journalists’ rights. Just a few weeks ago, he pushed Democrats to vote down a bill that would cut funding for one of the NSA’s controversial surveillance programs that collect Americans’ data without warrants.

If this amendment becomes law, reporting on covert activities will be something only criminals do. It will make it that much easier to punish journalists for printing facts. This comes at a time when the presidential administration has expressed open hostility towards journalists and the act of journalism and the Commander-in-Chief has called for the return of torture programs. Schiff -- like all of our representatives -- has a duty to protect the public from self-serving laws that encourage government misbehavior. Like far too many others, he's apparently convinced the security of the nation is more important than the people residing in it.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adam schiff, cia, covert agents, free speech, iipa, journalism