Company asks for anonymity in suing over online safety complaints

A manufacturer upset about an online database of safety complaints has asked the court to allow it to remain anonymous in its suit against a government agency. The manufacturer claims that if it were named, it would jeopardize the interests it strives to protect by bringing suit. As of this week, there is no record [...]

Expert panel says too early to assess role of social media in Arab spring

Panelists at the U.S. Institute of Peace addressed the role of social media in recent uprisings in the Arab world with some saying that the use of social media was part of a power shift from nation states to smaller groups. Others said the information about the social media is still too mixed and scattered [...]

California court rules discrimination suit may be SLAPP

The California Fourth District Court of Appeal sent a case back to trial court directing the judge to grant the anti-SLAPP motion against a lawyer suing for sex discrimination on the grounds that her firm was referring cases to less qualified male lawyers. -db From the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, September 19, 2011, by Kenneth Ofgang. Full [...]

Huge cache of records surface in News of the World phone hacking scandal

The News of the World publisher has revealed that they discovered a huge number of documents that could provide information about the scale of the phone hacking conducted against citizens, celebrities  and the royal family. The high court judge had ordered News of the World to provide all documents that could show that the newspaper [...]

Social media forces emergency responders to provide more information

With a proliferation of social media sites, emergency responders are getting more information from the public presenting new challenges. For one, government agencies feel the need to conduct themselves with greater transparency to build trust. Sifting out fact from fiction is also a problem, and a former Wyoming governor has suggested that the social media [...]

Murdoch uses media to promote business interests

Embattled News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has routinely used his media holdings to promote his business interests, writes Joe Flint in a commentary in the Los Angeles Times. Flint says that notwithstanding his conservative stance, Murdoch has not hesitated to ally with liberal politicians including Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Flint also describes how Murdoch [...]

Company owning community newspapers files for bankruptcy

In filing for bankruptcy, West Communications said its revenues declined 25 percent since 2007 mostly from a drop in ad revenue. The company owns eight small newspapers in California and Oregon including The Union Democrat in Sonora. Westcom said it failed in a bid to renegotiate the terms of its debt to Bank of America [...]

Slaughterhouse Five among books banned recently by high school districts

Writing for the First Amendment Center, Ken Paulson objects to the censorship of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five by the Republic, Missouri school board, recalling first reading it as a freshman in high school, “As a 15-year-old, I found the book to be very challenging; it explored difficult concepts such as free will and fate in [...]

FBI teps up investigation of Mudoch’s News Corp

In response to claims of strong-arm tactics, the FBI is looking into whether Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp engaged in a concerted campaign of computer hacking. Time magazine says the FBI is looking at whether the company used illegal strong-arm tactics on rivals. News Corp said that an incidence of computer hacking traced to one of [...]

Senator Kerry says idiots do not merit ‘fair and balanced’ coverage

Former presidential candidate and Senator John Kerry says the media does have to provide equal coverage to those in the public arena who expouse ‘absurd’ ideas. He is presumably referring to the Tea Party and/or Sarah Palin, says Glynnis MacNicol in the Business Insider. MacNicol says she doesn’t ordinarily agree with ‘blame the media’ statements, [...]

Government accountability: New online information sharing can supplement whistleblowers

An open government  blogger, Micah Sifry, is optimistic that new information sharing websites will allow citizens affected by government projects and subsequent waste, fraud and inattention to share their complaints and initiate action. In his book WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency, Sifry cites the website Seeclickfix.com adopted by around 500 cities which allows citizens [...]

Boston man gains right to challenge ban on photographing police

A man who had photographed a police officer in public was denied a restraining order against the police but could proceed with his lawsuit. Demanding that he destroy the photos, a police officer chased him after she saw him take pictures of a construction scene and inadvertently include the officer. A federal judge said the man had [...]

Baptist deacon loses bid to go by pseudonym in trial over abusing teen-agers

A U.S. magistrate judge ruled that a ex-Baptist deacon accused of sexually abusing one of his female parishioners could not go by a psuedonym during his trial. The judge said the deacon’s desire to avoid embarrassing revelations did not outweigh the public’s right to know, “”Allegations of sexual assault of a minor is [sic] of [...]

Analysts say Murdoch might scuttle newspapers

Considering Rupert Murdoch’s vast holdings and the relatively unprofitable and troublesome nature of his newspapers, Murdoch may want to consider selling them off, say media analysts. News Corp. shares declined 17.4% since the phone-hacking scandal erupted two weeks ago, with losses of market value estimated in the $8 billion range. Others say that notwithstanding his [...]

Murdoch executives worked for years on cover-up of phone-hacking scandal

Rupert Murdoch’s associates worked hard to contain the phone-hacking scandal with strategies that included  hiding evidence, paying people not to sue, bribing reporters and editors to keep quiet and destroying computer equipment and e-mails. They ignored internal advice to accept full responsibility for the scandal and to deflect criticism tried to develop evidence of phone-hacking by [...]

Head of Scotland Yard resigns over Murdoch phone-hacking scandal

Claiming he had done no wrong in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, the head of Scotland Yard resigned just as former chief executive of News International, publisher of News of the World, Rebekah Brooks was arrested on charges of illegal phone tapping and bribing police. The police official said he had not been involved in the [...]

FBI investigating News Corp. over possible attempts to hack phones of 9/11 victims

The FBI is investigating News Corp.’s phone-hacking activities, and, according to one unnamed source, the investigation will determine whether News Corp. tried to hack into the phones of 9/11 victims. Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch has formed an independent committee to investigate the phone-hacking allegations, and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks resigned [...]

New York Times: Scotland Yard’s close links to Murdoch’s tabloids sets stage for botched investigation

Scotland Yard’s investigation of The News of the World phone-hacking accusations was inattentive at best, raising questions about their chummy relations with News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. Records show that the police commissioner met with executives and editors 18 times from November 2005 to November 2010 including 8 meetings with the deputy editor [...]

Murdoch withdraws bid to purchase British Sky Broadcasting

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch dropped a bid to buy control of British Sky Broadcasting, the largest pay television company in Britain. The move is thought to be strategic, allowing the wrath directed at News Corporation over the phone-hacking scandal to die down before renewing efforts to acquire the company. There is much speculation that News [...]

Opinion: Phone-hacking scandal brings a ray of sunlight to Britain

In his column in The New York Times, David Carr says that Rupert Murdoch’s phone-hacking scandal in Great Britain was exposed by “honest rivals”, namely The Guardian, The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and may reduce Murdoch’s strangle hold on political discourse in Britain. It has delayed his attempt to gain full control of [...]

Obama to hold first Twitter town hall this week

President Barack Obama will hold a Twitter town hall at 2 p.m. EST on July 6 by answering questions on his Twitter account submitted by Twitter users. From The Washington Post, July 1, 2011, by Hayley Tsukayama. Full story

Journalists developing practices for verifying information from social media

Journalists are now developing ways to verify social media content and citizen reports, says Craig Silverman in the Columbia Journalism Review. He cites a number of experts and the tips that constitute best practices. The tips include researching a source’s background for a record of reliability, using Google street, map and satellite imagery to verify [...]

Opinion: U.S. Supreme Court ruling on False Claims Act blow to whistleblowers

The U.S. Supreme Court just made it more difficult for corporate whistleblowers in ruling that documents obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act cannot be used to bring suits under the False Claims Act. The three dissenting justices noted that the decision weakens the False Claims Act as a weapon against fraud by government [...]

Supreme Court disallows using FOIA information in suits under the False Claims Act

The U.S. Supreme Court invoked the public disclosure bar in denying use of information obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act for a suit under the False Claims Act. The act allows citizens to sue on behalf of the government against those who submit false claims for payment to the U.S and collect 25 [...]

Facebook downplays trashing of Google in planted stories

Facebook hired a PR firm to persuade reporters and privacy advocates to write critical stories about Google’s Social Circle. Facebook denied that they had acted unethically, “No ’smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts [...]

Riverside court branch errs in posting notice of court closure

Court administrators hastened to say that trials at the Riverside Superior Court’s branch in Corona were open to the public after someone posted a sign to the contrary. An employee had apparently misinterpreted instructions about curtailed services to include access to criminal trials. Two Supreme Court decisions affirm access to courts except in cases in [...]

Threat of violence by Japanese mafia brings self-censorship

The National Geographic Channel delayed the airing of a documentary on the Japanese mafia after an American journalist, Jake Adelstein, sued the company saying that the show could lead to violence against people working on the production. Adelstein said he advised National Geographic not to interview members of Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, but the director [...]

Two Texas school districts remove filters on gay, bisexual and transgender internet content

Two Texas school districts in Fort Worth and Baytown said they will no longer block students from accessing gay, bisexual and transgender content on the Web. After the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the districts, they investigated and found that the filters blocked educational information not sexually explicit. -db From the Courthouse News Service, May [...]

Website for using social media to build stories open to public

The website Storify that allows users to accumulate information from the social media to build stories is now available to the public. Users can combine content with commentary and also add their own text. Reporters have used the tool to report on the Middle East uprisings and the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford. -db From [...]

Los Angeles Times criticized for publishing full text of basketball star’s slur

While The New York Times called Kobe Bryant’s verbal assault on a referee a “gay slur”, the Los Angeles Times printed the slur uncensored (“f—ing faggot”). Nancy Sullivan of the Los Angeles Times explained why they printed the full text of Bryant’s slur, “Derogatory terms such as the one in the Kobe Bryant story are [...]

Facebook offering resources to journalists to help them make greater use of the social network

Following Twitter’s example, Facebook has plans to help journalists use the network to greater advantage. It wants to provide more information on its service to make it more than just a social site. Facebook has launched a page that will be a resource for journalists with “best practices” showing how reporters have used Facebook effectively [...]

Federal judge orders Twitter to release user records in WikiLeaks inquiry

A federal judge ordered Twitter to release records of three of its users in a U.S. government investigation of WikiLeaks. In an article in PC Magazine, Chloe Albanesius quotes Elecronic Frontier Foundation legal director Cindy Cohn on the implications of the order, “We’re disappointed that the court did not recognize that people using digital tools [...]

Atlanta police agree not to stop citizens from videotaping officers on duty

Atlanta police agreed to allow citizens to videotape officers doing their job in public places so long as they do not interfere with the officers. The agreement settles a dispute between a group that films police to hold them accountable for questionable practices. In a recent incident, two Atlanta police stopped the group from filming, [...]

Significant reform: Congress taking steps to improve transparency

Both the U.S. House and Senate have made significant reforms contributing to transparency according to a commentary in OMB Watch. The Senate will end the practice of “secret holds,”  that allowed a senator to anonymously put a stop on a bill. The House will post bills online three days prior to a vote and disclose [...]

Chicago jury dismisses emotional injury suit against teacher for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ screening

After a teacher showed a class of seventh and eighth graders a segment of the movie “Brokeback Mountain” that included gay sex scenes, a student sued the teacher and Chicago Board of Education for inflicting emotional distress. After a three-day trial, the jury found that the film’s showing did not meet the “outrageousnes” standard for [...]

Murdoch offers daily news on iPad

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has launched a new daily news app available in Apple stores for use on iPad. The newspaper will have 100 pages with photos, video and graphics and include six areas: news, sports, gossip and celebrity, opinion, arts and life and apps and games. Readers will also be able to obtain local [...]

Federal judge holds telecom responsible for failure to protect underage girl

Courthouse News Service January 26, 2011 By Glynis Farrell A federal court ruled that  a telephone company that failed to observe a law requiring it to assign blockable numbers to chat lines could not shift the blame to a chat line used by a rapist who assaulted an underage girl. -db

Wikileaks founder held in England on Swedish sex charges

London police arrested Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and denied bail. Swedish authorities have been seeking his extradition for alleged sex crimes. -db Wired December 7, 2010 By David Kravets Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, was arrested Tuesday in London on Swedish rape accusations after agreeing to meet with the police. Hours later, he appeared in Magistrates [...]

Government net neutrality proposal draws widespread criticism

The new Federal Communications Commission net neutrality proposal was criticized by both liberals and conservatives, the latter for its potential for excessive regulation and the former for its guidelines favoring the rich and powerful. -db National Journal December 1, 2010 By David Hatch and Eliza Krigman U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined a framework [...]

Current information overload not without precedent

Five centuries years ago, a new technology, the printing press, spawned a deluge of books. Mankind responded with innovations for making sense of the information flood. -db Boston Globe Commentary November 28, 2010 By Ann Blair Worry about information overload has become one of the drumbeats of our time. The world’s books are being digitized, [...]

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