Media on HuffingtonPost.com

Michael Wolff: Could Murdoch's Love of Gossip Doom His Family?

2009-07-10T16:40:48Z

Gossip was one of the consistent themes in my conversations with Murdoch when I interviewed him over nine months last year. If I brought him gossip, he was much happier than when I did not. Sometimes I made the gossip up--that kept him as happy. Gossip, for Murdoch, is partly business intelligence, but Murdoch also likes to know who is sleeping with whom. He especially likes to know what liberals are sleeping around (but he will take conservatives, too). It is a prurient interest, but it is also leverage. He refers to having pictures and reports and files--though this may be as much what he imagines a powerful person like himself should have, whereas all he really has is some speculation from sycophantic reporters feeding him what he wants to hear.

The Guardian's report about the revelations of massive illegal tapping of government officials by private investigators in the employ of his tabloid newspapers in London has as much to do, I believe, with currying favor with Murdoch as it does with selling newspapers (no less uncovering the truth).

Did Murdoch know his daily gossip fix came from illegal wiretaps?

Continue reading on newser.com

Robert Siciliano: Sarah Palin Victim of Social Media Identity Theft, LaRussa Drops Suit

2009-07-10T16:26:32Z

Since the beginning of the presidential campaign, Sarah Palin has used Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the public. Impostors have taken every opportunity to jack her persona, even hacking into her personal email account.

Now, hackers and impostors are chiming in on Sarah Palin's resignation. The Twitter profile for ExGovSarahPalin snags and reuses graphics, photos and tweets from Sarah Palin's "Verified" Twitter acount, AKGovSarahPalin. This fake Palin account is still live as of this writing. In one tweet, a Palin impersonator invited followers to her home for a barbecue. Her security staff was reading these tweets and quickly dispatched security personnel to her home to intercept unwanted visitors.

Twitter has a "parody impersonation policy" that permits impersonation, as long as the parody is clear to readers. It's puzzling to me that they would allow this, particularly in the case of the fake Sarah Palin account, which is plastered with Governor's likeness.

Social media is not prepared for this type of use. And Twitter should rethink its policies.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, who has also fallen victim to social media identity theft and has sued Twitter, claiming damage resulting from "cybersquatting" and misappropriation of his name, has now dropped his lawsuit. One report mentions an out of court settlement that compensates LaRussa for his legal fees and includes a donation to his favorite charity. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone blogged a denial of such a settlement.

Financial identity theft is impossible to prevent 100% of the time, and so is social media identity theft. However, there are ways to lock down your name and protect yourself, or at least to mitigate the potential damage to your name and reputation.

As we spend more time online, meeting people, posting photos and offering glimpses into our personal lives, here are some action steps to keep Social Media Identity Theft at bay:

1. Register your full name and those of your spouse and kids on the most trafficked social media sites, blogs, domains or web based email accounts. If your name is already gone, include your middle initial, a period or a hyphen. It's up to you to decide whether or not to plug in your picture and basic bio, but consider leaving out your age or birthday.

2. Set up a free Google Alerts for your name and get an email every time your name pops up online. Go to iSearch.com by Intelius and search your name and any variations of your name in what would be a screen name.

3. Set up a free StepRep account for your name. StepRep is an online reputation manager that does a better job than Google Alerts does of fetching your name on the web.

4. Consider dropping a few bucks on Knowem.com and other sites like them. These online portals go out and register your name at what they consider the top social media sites. Their top is a great start. The user experience is relatively painless. There is still labor involved in setting things up with some of them. And no matter what you do, you will still find it difficult to complete the registration with all the sites. Some of the social media sites just aren't agreeable. This can save you lots of time, but is only one part of solving the social media identity theft problem.

5. Start doing things online to boost your online reputation. Blogging is best. You want Google to bring your given name to the top of search in its best light, so when anyone is searching for you they see good things. This is a combination of online reputation management and search engine optimization for your brand: YOU.

6. If you ever stumble upon someone using your likeness in the social media, be very persistent in contacting the site's administrators. They too have reputations to manage and if they see someone using your photo or likeness they would be smart to delete the stolen profile.

7. Despite all the work you may do to protect yourself, you still need the Intelius Identity Protect service I'm working with and recommend coupled with Internet security software.

Robert Siciliano, identity theft speaker, discusses scams.

Stephen Funk: Unmasking Your Power

2009-07-10T16:14:36Z

The efforts of New Organizing Institute's BootCamp participants - 60 young organizers chosen for a crash course in utilizing new media for progressive campaigning - will be tested today in an interactive online mock campaign.

We've spent all week receiving technological training and getting drilled by expert instructors in effective organizing. BootCamp would not be complete without sleep deprivation, and we've all stayed up late each night working on electing various superheroes into office. Not quite as intense as Marine Corps basic, but I must admit that I'm exhausted.

A fundamental element of our campaigns has been developing a compelling narrative: of our candidates, our campaigns, and of each person involved. Whatever drives a person to seek change in the world, either through political office or through community empowerment, it is our histories that communicate to others the values the decision were based upon.

As a veteran and activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War I can attest to the strong bonds that are formed when people are united through intense and unique experiences. My organization definitely relies on our members to relay these experiences to increase support and it is important for our members to relate their stories with civilians. This empowers veterans to choose solidarity over isolation and allows our community a better understanding of war so that we can all heal.

Perhaps NOI planned all along to create such an intense and unique experience so that each participant could leave here armed with a story to tell.

You can participate in the online election today, Friday, July 10th, from 7am-6pm EST at
www.neworganizing.com/superherovote and in case you were wondering I'm on Team Spider-Man (visit - www.votespidey.com).

Daoud Kuttab: Jordanian Parliament is Back on Air... Indirectly

2009-07-10T16:06:57Z

The gavel-to-gavel broadcast of the Jordanian Parliament was back on the air on June 7. Radio Al Balad (formerly AmmanNet), an independent community radio, succeeded in providing the public with an unfiltered version of the House of Representatives meeting. The return of live broadcasting is, however, nothing but natural.

Arab parliaments are rarely ever broadcast live. The voice of the executive branch in Arab countries is much louder than that of the legislative branch.

I understood the domination of the executive branch over the legislative back in 1997. I was running a small educational TV station in Ramallah, out of Al Quds University, when Parliament began deliberating very close to our studios. We began broadcasting gavel-to-gavel sessions of the Palestinian Legislative Council only to be jammed by the state-run Palestinian TV. When we made a fuss about that, on May 22, 1997, I was arrested and held for seven days. The night before my arrest, our station had broadcast a session of the PLC discussing a parliamentary report about corruption with the Palestinian Authority.

Three years ago, and in a totally new setting, I tried to do the same thing in Jordan. The speaker of the Parliament agreed to a request from AmmanNet radio to allow live broadcast of the Parliament. AmmanNet, which years earlier had been broadcasting on the Internet, had just received an FM licence and the broadcast provided a badly needed public service that many members of Parliament welcomed. Until then, the official Jordanian media covered the Parliament by providing daily short pieces and weekly roundups, all reflecting the government's point of view.

One member of Parliament said that the official media would often broadcast or publish the parliamentary answer of the prime minister without ever mentioning what the question was and which MP asked it.

Live broadcasting of the House of Representatives was short lived. The rise of energy costs in the winter of 2007 produced a wave of public anger at parliamentarians for their routine approval of fuel price hikes. One of the comments on the station's website, later repeated on radio, criticised the parliamentarians' indifference towards the public in an offensive manner. The insult angered the Parliament speaker who, along with the Audio Visual Council, sued the radio station and its owner. The live broadcast which was not critical was also taken off the air. A public apology was made on the website and on radio, but it failed to appease the speaker who, along with the Audio Visual Council, insisted on going to court.

The trial against the radio station lasted more than a year with the court ruled against the station and its manager, fining each JD10,000. Upon appeal, the case was thrown out and the fines cancelled.

Appeals to the Parliament speaker failed to get the broadcast back on the air, despite promises by the speaker that he was willing to forgive and forget. During two meetings with the station's manager and chair, the speaker promised to reinstate the broadcast, but nothing happened.

Various appeals by members of the Parliament also failed to produce any change. Responses varied from claiming that the broadcast cannot be reinstated while the case is in session to attempts to politically criticise the station's manager. Even at the height of the conflict between the Parliament and the established media, the speaker refused to allow broadcasting while, at the same time, criticising the print media for reducing the space MPs get in print.

The conflict with the press included a temporary boycott of the Parliament by four dailies and public criticism by weeklies and news websites. Radio Al Balad and the AmmanNet website continued regular coverage of the Parliament.

Live broadcasts returned without the direct help of the Parliament. On July 6, 2009, two and a half years after being taken off the air, Radio Al Balad was able to broadcast live the afternoon session of Parliament. The radio broadcast came thanks to an initiative by the Parliament to broadcast the sessions on the Internet. Radio Al Balad was able to pick up the Internet signal and broadcast it on the air, giving the Jordanian public the chance to hear what their elected representatives had to say. A satellite television broadcast is also planned to happen soon.

The TV broadcasts have been subcontracted to ABS, a Jordanian television service provider who is renting the Parliament space on one of Nile Sat's frequencies. No mention has been made of the cost, although the deputy speaker of Parliament said that it will be over JD100,000 a year.

Without proper campaign it will be difficult to get Jordanians to tune in to a frequency that is unknown and that has no other programme. No mention has been made as to how the tender was made, and who will be paying for it. The first session broadcast on the air, however, was short lived. At 5:45pm Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali closed the session because quorum was lost 90 minutes after its start. The topic that was being discussed was a special law about Petra Governorate.

Joe Cirincione: Post's Krauthammer Pushes Dangerous Fantasy

2009-07-10T15:50:38Z

Washington Post senior columnist Charles Krauthammer wants Russia to build more nuclear weapons. Why? Because he thinks we can shoot them out of the sky like clay pigeons. This is simply not true. The Post's promotion of this fantasy could lead to global disaster.

Krauthammer supported the arms control treaty negotiated by conservative President George W. Bush, but now opposes the similar agreement crafted by progressive President Barack Obama. Instead, he says we should "invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want."

It doesn't matter because, he claims, "We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile." This is demonstrably false. We cannot now reliably shoot down a real long-range missile. We have never been able to do this and there is no prospect that we will able to do this in the future. Claims that we can are not true. People who repeat these claims are not telling the truth.

These false claims are based on carefully staged demonstrations where interceptor rockets hit missile targets. The trick? The targets cooperate. They have known characteristics including size, velocity, radar signature, and are carefully directed into exact position for the "intercept." They even have little transponders guiding the interceptor with an electronic "here I am." Still, the successful hits are counted in single digits after 30 years of trying.

There is close to zero chance of intercepting a real long-range missile. Why? Because real missiles don't cooperate. They hide their warheads with decoys, jammers, chaff, spin, and radar-reflective coatings. If we can't see it, we can't hit it.

Our intelligence services concluded 10 years ago that any country capable of building a long-range missile (including North Korea) could build any or all of six basic "counter-measures" that could defeat any know defensive system. Russia, China and the U.S. have already done so.

Tests in the 1990s with realistic decoys (balloons with the same radar and infrared signature as the warhead) showed that our sensors could not pick out the real warhead from the fakes. Did we stop the missile defense program? No. We stopped using realistic decoys. We dumbed down the tests. Testers call this "testing for success." Most of us would call this "rigged."

This is not the first time the Washington Post has knowingly published false statements. Last week, in the only oped the Post ran before the Moscow summit, the former head of the missile defense program, retired General Trey Obering, also claimed the anti-missile system for Europe he was rushing to deploy in the last years of the Bush administration would provide "cost-effective protection." He trashed an independent joint assessment by US and Russian scientists that found the system would not work.

Two of the scientists, MIT's Ted Postol and nuclear-weapon designer Richard Garwin, wrote a detailed rebuttal, correcting Obering's factual misstatements. I have seen the oped they submitted. They objectively examine the flaws of the anti-missile interceptors and the fact that the radar cannot "discriminate between warheads and decoys."

A distinguished group of scientists wrote President Obama an open letter last week. Ten of the letter's 20 signatories have won a Nobel Prize, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, and seven are members of the National Academy of Engineering. They said, in part:

We assess that the planned European missile defense system would have essentially no capability to defend against a real missile attack. ... This system has not been proven and does not merit deployment. It would offer little or no defensive capability, even in principle. At the same time, its deployment would result in large security, political, and monetary costs.

...

Congress has required that the Secretary of Defense certify that the interceptors have been shown to work "in an operationally effective manner" through "successful, operationally realistic flight testing" before they can be deployed in Europe. This has not occurred. Testing of the interceptors has not begun and will not be completed for several years.

The interceptors proposed for Europe would use the kill vehicle and a modified version of the interceptor booster being fielded as part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. This technology has not been adequately tested and has no demonstrated capability in a realistic attack scenario. None of the GMD tests have included realistic countermeasures or tumbling warheads. All flight intercept tests have been conducted under highly scripted conditions with the defense given advance information about the attack details.

For these reasons, the intercepts achieved in past tests of the GMD system say nothing about the effectiveness of these interceptors under real-world conditions. Until these systems are subjected to an honest technical assessment and a rigorous testing program, there will be no data on which to base an assessment of how effective they might be in an actual attack.

Claiming that this system is effective when it is not is dangerous and could contribute to unwise decisions by U.S. policy makers.

But President Obama should not wait for the Washington Post to re-discover its obligation to provide its readers with facts instead of spin. He should call these scientists to the White House so he can hear first-hand why he should stick to his guns and only deploy weapons that work. Starting a new arms race is bad enough. But deploying scarecrows while the other side deploys nuclear weapons is dereliction of duty.

Timothy Karr: Helping Iran Target Iranians

2009-07-10T15:13:26Z

What more can be said about the Internet's role in the popular uprising that has shaken the Iranian regime since its widely contested election?

The power of open social networks is undisputed. The Internet's three favorite offspring -- Twitter, Facebook and YouTube -- have been heralded by mainstream media as flag-bearers for a new era of citizen journalism and activism.

But the open Internet's power cuts both ways: The tools that connect, organize and empower people can also be used to target them. The companies that profit from sales of this technology need to be held to a higher standard.

Of particular concern is the use -- and easy abuse -- of Deep Packet Inspection. DPI is a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway.

'Lawful Intercepts' and Lawless Regimes

European and North American companies are selling DPI to enable their business customers "to see, manage and monetize individual flows to individual subscribers." But this "Internet-enhancing" technology has been sought out by regimes in Iran, China and Burma for more brutal purposes.

Basij forces target computers during a June 14 midnight raid on Tehran University

Nokia Siemens Network reportedly set up this technology in Iran for "lawful intercept," only to have Tehran allegedly use it to stifle free speech, pinpoint the location of online protesters and hunt them down.

Nokia Siemens' attempts to dodge responsibility for Iran's reported abuse of their technology is typical corporate hand-washing.

"If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them," a Nokia Siemens spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. He added that the company "does have a choice about whether to do business in any country."

A Growth Industry

Had Nokia Siemens chosen not to sell DPI to Iran, another global competitor likely would have taken its place. This list includes Zeugma Systems (Canada), Camiant (USA), Openet (Ireland), Procera Networks (USA), Allot (Israel), Ixia (USA), AdvancedIO (Canada), Arbor Networks (USA) and Sandvine (Canada), among others.

These companies typically partner with Internet Service Providers to insert DPI along the main arteries of the Web. (Sandvine, for example, just announced a "global distribution agreement" with -- you guessed it -- Nokia Siemens Network.) All Net traffic in and out of Iran travels through one portal -- the Telecommunications Company of Iran -- easing the use of DPI.

Yankee Group analysts assert that U.S. ISPs are currently deploying advanced DPI equipment, although many do not disclose it publicly. Through these secret arrangements both in the United States and abroad, the DPI industry is experiencing remarkable growth.

The Nature of the Beast

"A company has a nature. Its nature is to produce economic values and wealth for its shareholders," Professor Larry Lessig often says in lectures about corporate ethics and government corruption. "A tiger has a nature, and that nature is not one you trust with your child."

And naturally, the public shouldn't expect corporations to look out for our best interests. Public policy is designed for that role -- to make it profitable for corporations to behave in ways that don't harm the rest of us.

Similarly, the tech and communications companies that are selling content-sniffing tools to governments can't be trusted to safeguard against the horrific state crimes we've witnessed in Iran.

When network operators use Deep Packet Inspection, the privacy of Internet users is compromised. But in government hands, invasion of privacy can lead to human rights violations.

Setting the Bar High for DPI

"Internet Censorship is a real challenge, and not one any particular industry -- much less any single company -- can tackle on its own, " Rep. Mary Bono Mack wrote on Wednesday in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Commerce Committee. "Efforts to promote freedom of expression and to limit the impact of censorship require both private and public sector engagement."

Rep. Bono Mack's letter echoes Free Press' call on June 22 for a congressional inquiry into the issue. But this is just a start.

Before DPI becomes more widely deployed around the world and at home, the U.S. government ought to establish legitimate criteria for authorizing the use such control and surveillance technologies.

The harm to privacy and the power to control the Internet are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be very high.

The use of DPI for commercial purposes would need to meet this high bar. But it is not clear that there is any commercial purpose that outweighs the potential harm to consumers and democracy.

Shelly Palmer: ASCAP Seeking Royalties from YouTube Clips: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer July 10, 2009

2009-07-10T14:21:36Z

ASCAP wants websites that embed videos featuring ASCAP members songs to begin paying royalties. The organization has already begun sending letters to bloggers, including Jason Calcanis, CEO of content generator Mahalo.com. While the organization is targeting specific commercial sites, YouTube, through which most embedded videos are served, has told targeted sites to contact them directly in order to settle the matter.

The New York Times first experiment with charging for online content may come in a $5 a month access fee. In a recent survey with the newspapers print subscribers, the Grey Lady also accessed if readers would pay "$2.50 a month for web access." While the company desperately needs the increase in revenue, analysts are unsure of whether or not the shift will be able to save the Times.

Sprint reached an agreement with Ericsson and will turn its wireless network over to the Swedish company. The $5 billion deal, which greatly expands Ericsson's reach, comes as Sprint tries to right its business by concentrating on "new products and customer retention." Technically, Spring is not selling the network, rather handing Ericsson the job of managing it on a daily basis.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is sueing Tagged.com over faulty membership issues. Cuomo is charging Tagged.com, a spam fueled social network, with running "deceptive e-mail marketing practice," as well as "invasion of privacy." The Attorney General claims that Tagged.com tried to trick users into giving the social network access to their digital address books, from which they would send more invitations.

Project Canoe will fail. So says Phil Leigh, Senior Analyst at Inside Digital Media in his new 71-page report entitled Future Developments in Video Advertising. I'm sure this news will be viewed as disappointing for David Verklin and his team.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV. Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars

Andrew Cherwenka: United Airlines Complaint Song Breaks 1M Views in 4 Days

2009-07-10T09:53:35Z

United Breaks Guitars, the sudden viral hit produced by distraught United Airways passenger Dave Carroll and his band, broke 1M views a mere 4 days after he posted it on YouTube.

According to his blog, Carroll decided to write the song after his guitar was broken in United's care and 9 months of back-and-forth resulted in no settlement. As he sings in his catchy song, "I've heard all your excuses and I've chased your wild gooses, and this attitude of yours I say must go."

Here's the incredibly short timeline:

• Monday - Carroll posts his video to YouTube
• Tuesday - United says in a public Twitter response "we've contacted him directly to make it right"
• Wednesday - CNN's Wolf Blitzer discusses it on air
• Friday - 1M+ YouTube views with 7,000 comments, 1M+ results in Google for search string "united breaks guitars," and 19,000 blog mentions -- not to mention the millions of viewers that watched it on CNN, other networks, and traditional media.

Carroll's goal was to get one million views in one year but he did more than just that. Remarkably, in these brief 4 days he changed United's Google search results page -- something marketers take great pains to protect. In web marketing it's often said, "You are what Google says you are," and right now 4 of the Google results on the first page for "United Airlines" point to this video. Seven of the first 10 results for a Google video search of United Airlines are damaging to the brand.

Carroll and his band are likely flying high after all this publicity but United Airlines has some serious recovery work to do.

Craig Newmark: User review sites: next big media/advertising disruption?

2009-07-10T09:16:24Z

A lot of people rely on user review sites for product or service selection, like Consumer Reports, Yelp, Amazon, or Best Buy.

Sure, we're aware of advertising for specific products or services, and that might get attention, but I bet most people just filter out most ads. Maybe they leave a brand impression.

What hapens when looking up reviews becomes easy, say on a phone, and becomes the normal way of doing things? We could see a dramatic tipping point in this direction, in the near term.

I'm guessing brand advertising will remain important, but that might represent a small portion of the
current advertising market.

What'll this do to business models for journalism and entertainment?

For me, happy to pay for trustworthy sources of news, with fact-checking and a clear separation between reporting and finance.

Disclaimer: I'm on the board of Consumer Reports.

Patricia Zohn: Culture Zohn Off the C(H)uff: Erin McKean, Founder of the Awesomepants Site Wordnik

2009-07-10T04:44:22Z

My last column on Shakespeare in the Park bemoaned the loss of the art of courtship by words. Then I learned in a unexpected but welcome counterpoint that Erin McKean's new website, Wordnik, had debuted.

I met Erin at a design conference some years back. She is a dynamo of both word and person, and this site sounds just like what the word doctor may have ordered. Why only a few days ago, someone was calling me "girlfriend" and I wondered what has happened to that word....so many different meanings now contained therein. So I asked Erin to reconnect with me to talk about words and love and friendship.

Erin McKean: One of the things we like best about Wordnik is that folks can add tags to any word -- here are all the ones that have been tagged "love."

There are some great words on this list:

Mulierose
Cicisbeo
Amatorio

But it's probably better to talk about words that are about nuances of feeling: crushes and passions are different, right?

Culture Zohn: Yes. One has always been told that a crush is more of a temporary, perhaps physical thing whereas a passion is somehow more all-consuming. The French have an even better way of putting it, coup de foudre, which to me has always combined the two: an instantaneous, but fiery capture of the heart.

But Erin, what struck me in Twelfth Night was that words, spoken words, as opposed to songs, are losing ground when it comes to the art of love. What has happened since Shakespeare's time to inhibit people from thinking that an artful phrase can move the heart? Has email helped or hurt the turn of a fiery phrase?

EM:I did a whole book of these love idioms a while back (That's Amore ). It was really fun -- my favorite was Bulgarian, I can't remember the actual Bulgarian, but it was "the blind Sunday hit me" (i.e., I fell in love at first sight). I have no idea what Sunday has to do with it!

I think its [email] hurt it, because what if you write something and god forbid it gets forwarded? I know I've written stuff in email I wouldn't like to see on somebody's blog, and it wasn't even mushy (I've been married since before email)! ... there's this electronic trail, now, that you just don't get with paper and ink. A love letter is to be savored, a love email ... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at.

I think we should start a Valentine's Tweet on Valentine's Day next year, though. Best sentiment in 140 characters, minus the hashtag.

CZ: Absent actual love letters which don't seem to be in the cards, and not being a Twitterer myself as it leaves even less time for reflection, for savoring, what are our choices? I remembered that last year somebody was doing six-word sentences which, like haikus, at least caused a momentary lull in the barrage of noise. Words can be tools for seduction but they can also be weapons. It seems to me the internet has brought reading back, albeit in a different format. How do we encourage vocabulary as a contemporary art form?

EM: Oh I think that the internet is definitely encouraging linguistic creativity! Especially with new formations (weaksauce, awesomepants) and new tropes. It's not elegant, but it is creative!

Check out Wordnik daily. It's not painful like studying those endless lists for the SATs. You'd be surprised how much your words can move hearts and minds.

Michelle Bart: Child Abduction Alert

2009-07-09T23:50:14Z

Please help us get the word out about Benjamin "Ben" Kaiser-Griffin; he has been missing since May 31, 2009 from Chandler Arizona. It's believed they may be in Hawaii or Washington State. Please lend a helping hand and help to distribute Ben's Missing Person's Flyer.

The abductor in this case, James "Jim" Kaiser has resided in Arizona for over ten years but his ties are deep in Washingtonand Hawaii. His parents, best friends, and his brother all live in Washington. His brother Joe Kaiser has information about his whereabouts but is not cooperating with Investigators. Attorney General McKenna Sues, Settles with Real Estate Investors for Mortgage Foreclosure "Rescue" Violations (this was against Joe Kaiser).

An electronic press packet will be sent to all media this week, but any help in the meantime spreading the word is much appreciated. For interviews with Ben's mom and detective Keipert, please contact Michelle Bart at 626-644-3472. They are both available to do phone and satellite interviews.

www.myspace.com/findbenjamin

Tom Alderman: Brutality in a Bucolic Amish Town -- An Audio Book Review

2009-07-09T23:09:48Z

Title: Sworn to Silence
Author: Linda Casitllo
Genre: Suspense
Length: 11 hrs, 43 min
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrator: Kathleen McInerney

COMMENT
A young, raped and blind-folded woman hangs upside-down with ankles chained to a ceiling beam, blood gushing from her slashed throat like some slaughtered animal. If this kind of graphic opening scene is a bit much for you, please don't let that stop you from going on. The killing, and subsequent eviscerations and exsanguinations, are in vivid contrast to the pastoral setting of a small Amish town in Ohio in Linda Castillo's riveting, suspense thriller, Sworn to Silence. What makes this tale so engrossing is the friction between old-world Amish simplicity and modern mayhem and being an outsider among your own people.

The main outsider here is a former Amish, now police chief of the Mayberry-like town, who's dealing with a series of brutally tortured and raped women. The lady's got three problems: she's hiding a 16 year old job-ending secret that may be revealed and connected to the current murders; she's emotionally shunned by her former Amish family and brethren; she's viewed with hostility by town leaders because of her relative inexperienced in the top cop job.

As if that weren't enough, higher-up law enforcement officials assign a emotionally shaky, rogue detective to aid the inexperienced chief, assuming he'll fail so they can fire him for cause. So, to be clear, we're not talking Batman and Robin save the world here, more like two emotionally damaged, smart, likable and dedicated cops doing their jobs - both outsiders in an insider world against considerable forces.

The chief and the rogue detective develop their own sub-plot, not surprising given Castillo's background. She's a former romance writer for Silhouette, Berkley and Harlequin series. Like several before her - Janet Evanovich, Tami Hoag, Tess Gerritsen and J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) - she makes a nifty transition from romance to the male dominated mystery-suspense genre as she deftly peels away layers of secrets and surpirises in this absorbing tale. Aside from the who-and-why-dunit part, it's the intelligent, determined, and vulnerable chief and her flawed detective that's the sell here.

Narrator, Kathleen McInerney, perfectly modulates among all the various male and female characters' menace, strengths and flaws.

For listeners attentive to gender issues, some might wish that next time out, the lady chief is allowed to save herself, rather than the strong manly-protector swooping in to rescue the damsel in danger -- perhaps a leftover from Castillo's romance writing days. Also leftover, Castillo's prose can get a little over-ripe with lines like "...the gnawing compulsion of his dark hunger." But don't let the blood-letting and occasionally over-seasoned words deter you from this first-string summer entertainment.

BOTTOM LINE
Intense suspense, appealing leads, a nasty villain, this is a battery-burner.

Giles Slade: Back To School Kindles

2009-07-09T22:15:46Z

How fast can you say, e - lec - tro - phor - e- tic?

Come September about 60% of American college textbooks -- including most freshman texts -- will be available from Amazon.com in cheaper, portable Kindle editions. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos reports that Kindle editions now account for 35% of book sales for any title available in Kindle format.

The freshman class of 2009 can be expected to arrive as every other freshman class does in new clothes, excited, well-scrubbed and horny, but many of these young adults will have Kindles under their arm. Mom, Dad, your totally uncool older brother, the neighbors you babysat for, the guys at your summer job, the assistant coach, the high school teacher who had faith in you, that older woman who thinks you're cute, one of those people may well cough up a Kindle 2 in exchange for a goodbye hug.

Give them the hug.

You'll have the K2 under your arm as you saunter into the first class. When the prof writes the name of the textbook under his name, you can press a button on your new educational device and within a minute the thing will reach your hard drive and signal its arrival.

Instructor: Dr. Frederick Wildebeest.

Textbook: Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.

'But shoot,' you say. 'Them Kindles are expensive things!'

Not any more. As of yesterday they're priced at exactly the level -- give or take -- of many other eBook readers including the Sony whose price window stretches from a basic eReader at $280 to one with all the bells and whistles. The lovingly named, Sony PRS-700, is now $350, $51 more than a K2.

This new pricing reflects many things. Estimates put the number of Kindles sold at about 1.5 million, so undoubtedly the unit manufacturing cost once estimated at about $185 has come down. But competition is also becoming greater as more models enter the market and as the market itself matures. The display maker Prime View International/Netronix that assembles the Kindle out there in the wilds of Taiwan, purchased the patents from the Cambridge based company eInk last month for $215 million. That may well have been ridiculously cheap. PVI sees enormous potential for eInk monitors.

Significantly, the cost of the monitor component in the Kindle2 had been placed at about $60, and this is exactly the amount of Amazon's current price cut. So PVI appears to be offering this key component at a much reduced price to its partner Amazon in order to drive volume sales and promote this new technology in what many believe will be a key year in the acceptance of eReaders.

Of course, once these electrophoretic screens are universally accepted as state-of-the art power-sipping alternatives to text reading LCDs PVI will take over the world as Intel once did simply by acquiring the rights to Busicom's 4004 chip** Its worth noting that general acceptance of the Busicom chip came after calculators were developed for academic use in classrooms, forcing the obsolescence of slower, less accurate and more skills-intensive slide-rules.

Anyway, with 8 weeks of summer left, you could buy a Kindle 2 at $299, and spend what you save on eTextbooks. If you order now you can still take it on summer vacation with you and then get ready for your classes while you tan since, as you lie on the beach, the Kindle will read itself to you.

(Unfortunately, the larger and more expensive Kindle DX which can download and display .pdf files currently has a three to five week waiting list. A cheaper DX is available, however, if you also subscribe to a bundle of subversive, left-leaning rags including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post).

With sales of eBook readers predicted to grow by 3 million in 2009-2010, the market for eBooks is also expected to expand considerably. Google, Sony, Amazon and PVI all hope this year may become a watershed for the devices, and many other readers will soon become available so it's reasonable to anticipate a price war by December. So if mom and dad missed a beat packing junior off to school without the appropriate technology, they can rent out the empty room and use the money to buy eReaders for Christmas-Hanukkah.

** See Made To Break (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2006): p 200.

Eric Alterman: Think Again: Conflicts of Interest by the Wealthy and for the Wealthy

2009-07-09T21:35:41Z

Crossposted with the Center for American Progress. With Danielle Ivory

The most recent controversy to embroil media bigwigs has been the proposed but now canceled salons planned by Washington Post publisher Katherine Weymouth. The problem was not with the notion of salons themselves--journalists, like anyone else, are allowed to participate in any discussions they please. Rather it was in the fact that the Post was quite clearly selling access to its journalists--and to invited lawmakers looking to curry favor with the newspaper in what it promised would be an "intimate and informal dinner and discussion 'entirely' off the record" exclusively for "those powerful few."

The discussions were to be hosted by Weymouth in her home with Marcus Brauchli, the Post's executive editor. A memo describing the events explained that, "The Washington Post is the media brand that sits at the intersection of business and policy," and promised access to "leading policymakers," together with "top Washington Post editors, columnists, and journalists."

When the story originally broke in Politico--the Post's own media ethics cop Howard Kurtz being caught flatfooted--journalists across the country had a fine time mocking the inexperienced Weymouth who, apparently desperate for revenue, did not know the first thing about the fundamentals of journalistic integrity. In fact her apology published in Sunday's paper demonstrated that if she did not then, she does now, and the Post initiated an internal review of its "salon policy."

But the practice is apparently a much more common one than was previously understood. The Atlantic Monthly has been also holding been holding a similar series of profit-making "pay-for-play" dinners for six years, each sponsored by a different corporation, in which journalists and policymakers are brought together for off-the-record conversations in a similar friendly, "nonconfrontational" atmosphere. Atlantic Monthly Media Chairman David Bradley explained that such meetings were necessary because, "the economic foundation beneath journalism is falling away ... The imperative, as I see it, is to rebuild journalism on different financial pillars. One of them, and not inconsequential to us, is events--of all types." (In fact, the crisis affecting the news business and the newspaper business in particular has nothing to do with The Atlantic, which has always been a money-losing "vanity" publication, like Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, National Review, etc. Each of these publications undertakes ideas to reduce their deficits, and each can be criticized for doing so. But let's keep our eye on the ball here.)

And for decades, the dynamic duo of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak held a similar series of high-priced conferences at which they dragooned their sources for off-the-record meetings at which other journalists were not invited even when say, the secretary of the treasury was announcing important policy shifts in U.S. economic policy.

Perhaps the worst that can be said of these salons is that the Washington Post company and the Atlantic Monthly have dragged themselves down to the level of the infamous hucksters nicknamed "Errors and Nofacts." But the problem of journalistic conflicts of interest is only going to get worse as traditional funding sources dry up. Many of these conflicts, particularly those involving friendship and typical socializing-schmoozing, may be unfortunate but are ultimately unavoidable in a town like Washington where journalistic, political, and corporate elites are so cozy and incestuous with one another.

Given the power that the perceptions created by powerful media personalities and institutions enjoy over the profits of so many industries, it is only natural for them to want to invest some of their public relations dollars in shaping their views. After all, that is what their lobbying budgets are all about. By charging tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to get access to public officials, these institutions are literally using the privileges accorded them by the First Amendment to line their own pockets by simply acting as a middle man between the lobbyist and the lobbied--however high-minded the discussion may be. As James Fallows once explained, these events are especially valuable to industries because of the "subtle immunization" that occurs. It's not simply that stories are reported in a friendlier and more sympathetic manner after friendships are struck and money changes hands. It's also that certain stories are never reported at all.

The second level of corruption comes when the journalist sits down to write the story. Take the example of the Post's Howard Kurtz, who, as the paper's media critic, is supposed to be "holier than the pope" when it comes to conflict of interest. Kurtz is paid significant amounts of cash by the very people he is ostensibly covering and over and over, he refuses to disclose these ties.

When I wrote to the Post's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, about the most recent incident of this--when in a Post chat Kurtz was identified only as a Post staff writer and columnist, rather than a paid employee of the network he was defending (something he preferred not to reveal)--I inquired as to what the Post's conflict-of-interest policy might be, as it apparently did not preclude taking cash payments from your subjects. (As Charles Kaiser has repeatedly wondered, would the Post allow a reporter covering the auto industry to pocket a regular check from General Motors?) Alexander answered:

It does. Unfortunately, The Post will not publicly disclose them--something I find unwise and short sighted. Readers such as Alterman are entitled to know the standards to which The Post holds itself. In a column several months ago, I wrote: "The Post keeps its journalistic policies largely hidden, making it virtually impossible for readers to know the paper's ethical and journalistic standards. The public should be able to easily access them online. It's not merely right but also smart to be transparent at a time when The Post is trying to hold on to readers."

Kurtz's ongoing relationship with CNN--which obviously infects not only his reporting on CNN for the Post, but also his reporting on the Post for CNN, as well as his reporting on CNN's competitors Fox, Fox Business, MSNBC, CNBC, etc. for the Post, and The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, etc, for CNN--is perhaps the most egregious ongoing conflict in all elite journalism. But it is hardly the only one.

We recently heard stories of Tom Friedman being forced to return a $75,000 speaking fee over one such revealed conflict; again, the Times proved extremely reluctant to spell out just what its policies were with regard to cash payments to its employees by outside sources. James Fallows and I have long followed the adventures of ABC's buckraking Cokie Roberts here, who, together with her husband Steve Roberts, accepts massive payments for speeches from industries with powerful stakes in issues she alleges to discuss without prejudice on ABC's "This Week" and elsewhere.

The practice is generally accepted in Washington as somehow consistent with journalistic independence and has literally been going on for decades. A recent innovation--one that is unfortunately married to the phenomenon of tens of thousands of journalists being downsized in recent years--is the creation of a firm like Abrams Research that promises that "media insiders" will "offer insights, data, and personnel never before available to businesses for image enhancement, branding, investigative reporting and the execution of the best media plan."

Unfortunately, the blogosphere--which is a corrective in many cases and is responsible for breaking the case of the Post salons--is actually making this problem far worse. Public relations firms across America are paying bloggers to assume a false identity to write phony posts to support their clients and products. Businesses are also making a point of "seeding" independent bloggers with free swag, in hopes of creating the illusion of unfiltered grassroots enthusiasm....

You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory's analysis in their recent article, "
Think Again: Conflicts of Interest by the Wealthy and for the Wealthy"

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation.

Danielle Ivory is a reporter and producer for the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Michael Wolff: The CIA and Murdoch Will Get Away With It

2009-07-09T19:47:27Z

The CIA tells lies to the rest of the American government. Rupert Murdoch's tabloids engage in nefarious means, including illegal electronic eavesdropping, to get dirt on celebrities.

The current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, has apparently admitted as much to Congress. The Guardian says Murdoch has paid out $1.6 million to secretly settle cases of phone hacking.

Each of these stories ought to be seismic. The CIA, at the center of the intelligence debacles of the last decade, ought to be investigated at least as intensely as it was in the late '70s after revelations of its internal spying. The Murdoch organization in the UK, which has as much influence on the British government as any other private business, ought to face the kind of independent examination that could, free from outside influence, send an impressive number of Murdoch lieutenants to jail.

And yet, the overwhelming likelihood is that Washington and London shrug. The CIA and the Murdoch organization are protected by their own consistently bad behavior and negative image.

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