Facebook backs down [Updated]

Ever since Colleen Lindsay's blog gave me the heads up, I've been following the Facebook saga with some interest.

For those of you who aren't in the loop, Facebook quietly changed its Terms of Service (TOS) a couple of weeks ago, and basically granted themselves full rights in perpetuity to anything you post on Facebook. In theory, that means they could lift any of your content - photos, poems, your name, your essays - and use them in any way they saw fit. It even sounded like they wanted in on anything you linked to that streamed in from another website. (Not too sure about that - that's my amateur reading of the legalese.)

Mark Zuckerberg must have been shocked by the uproar. Several Facebook groups opposing the new TOS sprang into existence, and the major media took an active interest also. Zuckerberg's claims that Facebook would never do anything nasty with your data, that they just wanted to make formal the fact that even if you delete your account, your pictures and such will still be kicking around your friends' pages for a while. In essence, "trust us, no matter what it says, we won't really use it." This made a lot of people legitimately nervous, particularly anybody doing creative work. We're not too keen on granting rights to Facebook - in perpetuity no less - for our fiction, our music, our artwork, our photography.

The ruckus was loud and global and Zuckerberg caved. He went back to the old TOS. I, for one, am not so sure I want to reinstate my blog feed on Facebook. I've only ever posted one piece of flash fiction here, but it's the principle of the thing. I'm going to double-check my privacy settings there too.

I sure hope Blogger isn't next. Are you re-evaluating your online practices as a result of the recent brouhaha? Or have you always been ultra-careful?

[Update] And here is a wonderful link that explains Facebook privacy settings and how to customize them.


Technorati tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Privacy rights

Dealing with media bias

The BBC admitted behind closed doors to a strong liberal and anti-Christian bias. Rats! Somebody went and leaked the information, but I'm willing to bet the BBC will find a way to avoid dealing with it. Which is a shame.

I am becoming convinced that the only way to avoid media bias is to mix things up in the newsroom and on the editorial board. If your columnists or reporters have varied political and cultural leanings and are allowed to refute each other publicly, something approaching objectivity and a genuine search for the truth just might come out of the mix. And by allowing rants from different sides, you hold on to your partisan readership or audience. They tend to avoid moderate, balanced opinions, so giving them strong flavours from opposite ends of the spectrum should keep them coming back.

I offer as an example the Ottawa Citizen which has columnists ranging from the extreme right to unabashedly left and most of the spectrum inbetween. I just wish they'd argue with each other a little more often. It's fun and often informative. I'd also even out the weighting a bit more, but still, they're on the right track.

I do appreciate the dilemma the media face. Calm, objective, rational approaches aren't popular. If you don't believe me, take a look at the most popular blogs. They are almost all highly partisan and quite often nastily so. They rant. They rave. They demonize. They fling insults around with self-satsified abandon. And they always know what to say about every story the instant it breaks, which says to me that they are not great fans of research or deep thought. (There are a few exceptions, thank goodness, but they still tend to be openly partisan. They're just more reasonable about it and will tolerate dissent without getting apoplectic.)

So to all the newspaper editors and network executives who eagerly hang on my every word and are just dying for my advice on how to attain objectivity without alienating their partisan readers/audience, I would highly recommend diversifying the backgrounds of your journalists and let them have at each other.

No need to thank me. That's the freebie. Next time you pay.

Hat tip to Stubborn Facts.

Technorati tags: BBC

The ongoing saga of YouTube pornography

"Rev." Billy Bob Gisher is very satisfied with the results of his crusade against YouTube pornography.

Take a look at the number of major advertisers we caught mired in YouTube smut, that have pulled their ads, and headed for the hills. With the exception of the extremely belligerent conglomerate of Cingular, the word was most definitely on the street. This rapid attempt on the behalf of YouTube to leap into the loving arms of Google, was inevitable as after all, how could they stay afloat without major advertisers?

This is not mere bluster. If you take a look at the blow-by-blow accounts of advertisers contacted by Gisher and their responses, you will find the battle and its results well documented. I'm not in a position to evaluate how much it figured into YouTube's decision to sell but1.6 billion dollars is not a bad consolation prize.

Gisher has no intention of breathing a sigh of satisfaction and letting matters drop. He and his crony, King Bastard, are retrenching before the next phase of battle.

For a few days we will be gearing up for the larger battle against adult content which is served with little or no regard for the easy access that children have to the material. We are also gearing up to follow up on several surprise issues that came out of our investigation on YouTube.

Technorati tags: YouTube, YouTube pornography

Maher Arar's dual citizenship

A Challenge to Canada Free Press

Dick Field at Canada Free Press has come out with a particularly snarky article that makes a really big deal out of Maher Arar's dual citizenship, implying that Arar had divided loyalties, is not really committed to Canada, and brought his misery on his own head.

First, and exceedingly strange, is the fact that our media has persuaded the public that Mr. Arar is an ordinary immigrant Canadian of Syrian descent. No, he is not an ordinary Canadian like most of us. He is a citizen of Canada and a citizen of Syria. For months this writer has tried verify this fact by listening to every newscast and reading every newspaper possible in order to find out if Mr. Arar was indeed a dual citizen but no luck, nary a mention. Why the silence? Why the mystery? Apparently, the fact was discussed early in the O'Connor Inquiry and then dropped, so there is no excuse for the media.

...

Mr. Arar knew the torture practices in his own country, so we should ask Mr. Arar why he risked keeping his Syrian citizenship. Certainly by retaining his Syrian citizenship, Mr. Arar must be partly responsible for his own misfortunes, even if he is totally innocent.

I have a lot of pet peeves and dishonest, nasty journalism figures high on the list. You may remember that I participated in my own small-scale way to helping to spread the fuss about the CBC's skewed report on Prime Minister Harper.

This article raised my ire in a similar fashion. While Field castigates the media for not doing their homework, he (un)studiously neglected doing his own. So I did it for him. And sent Canada Free Press the results.

Syria makes it very difficult for expats to renounce their citizenship.
http://www.opm.gov/extra/investigate/IS-01.pdf

LOSS OF CITIZENSHIP:

VOLUNTARY: Though voluntary renunciation of Syrian citizenship is permitted by law, the Syrian Information Office stated that it is so complicated that it is best not to attempt the process. In effect, according to that Office, the process is complicated in order to discourage renunciation of Syrian citizenship. Former citizens of Syria probably maintain an unofficial dual citizenship status and would be subject to Syrian law as citizens should they return to Syria.

Therefore your rant on Maher Arar (http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/field100406.htm) is highly inaccurate. Are you going to publish a retraction?

Two days later, no answer, no acknowledgement of receipt, no posting of my letter on their "letter blog" (about one letter a week, none negative), no apology to Arar, and of course, no retraction.

The Syrian Information Office itself, in correspondence with the American government states baldly that they make it deliberately difficult to renounce Syrian citizenship. I have heard it rumoured, though I can't confirm it, that relatives remaining in Syria are targetted if you try to renounce your Syrian citizenship.

I can handle highly partisan media if they stick to truthful reporting. Canada Free Press does not seem to feel obliged to live by those standards. Smearing a man who has already endured much with shoddy, unprofessional journalism and pretending not to hear when you are called on inaccuracies is not the way to win my respect.

Dick Field and/or Canada Free Press is invited to respond.

Technorati tags: Maher Arar, Dick Field, Canada Free Press

It's so nice to know they care!

I am rather amused, or perhaps bemused, by the fact that I've had several visits to this site from the CBC. Every one of them had done a search for Christina Lawand in some form or another. I guess it's good to know they care what we think.

Christina, if it's you checking in, I for one am willing to let bygones be bygones. A personal apology and a promise to play fair in the future would about do it. And of course, coming through on that promise. Where have they been hiding you these days, anyway?

By the way, I also don't really care if you or the entire CBC is biased. As long as you're scrupulously fair and truthful in your reporting, which admittedly, is more difficult when leaning hard to one side.

Technorati tags: Christina Lawand

Gleanings from the blogosphere, Aug. 30

After my two earlier posts today, it seems appropriate to signal the Bull Moose's musings on evil and Ahmadinejad. Somehow, it ties right in.

Annie at Ambivablog is talking about the dark side of hyper-freedom, which refuses to accept any limits. Her excerpts from http://victoriaroserobin.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-is-freedom-anyway-july-4-2006.html are spot on. Unfortunately.

Anonymous Liberal muses, with some bitterness, on the importance of getting the media on your side if you are a presidential hopeful.

Technorati tags: Ahmadinejad, [tagname], [tagname]

An apology of sorts from the CBC

Stephen Taylor is running a clip from last night's CBC news broadcast in which Diana Swain apologizes on behalf of the CBC for not making it clear that Harper was not responding to the protester preceding him on Christina Lawand's newsclip. You may recall that Stephen Taylor had done a devastating exposé of the report, putting Harper's comments back into context and showing how that put an entirely different spin on things.

Most commenters on Stephen's blog felt that this was the best we could expect from the CBC although some were of the opinion that the apology was totally inadequate.

Far from displaying the merest hint of contrition, the tone suggests that they are reluctantly obligated to apologize because of the poor comprehension skills of those who complained. "It appeared as if the Prime Minister was responding directly to that particular protester."

Well no, it didn't. How could the PM, at a later press conference, possibly have been aware of and responding to the CBC's selected soundbite from a protest? The issue is that Lawand and her producer tried to make it look that way.

The CBC manipulated the edit to serve an obvious editorial agenda. They apologize, in effect, for a supposed editing mistake that accidently gave a false impression, when it is baldly obvious that the edit served the purpose of the entire piece, and was completely congruent with the editorial tone.

What about the totally gratuitous Bush/Harper slur in the piece? What about Lawand's insinuating tone of voice in the opening line when she refers to Harper meeting "a safe distance away"?

[...]A credible apology involves acknowledging what the wrong behaviour is, and a promise to change. I don't see a hint of that. We shouldn't be so credulous.

While I agree that the apology was inadequate and failed to acknowledge that the "misunderstanding" had been deliberately engineered, I am heartened that the CBC felt obliged to address this issue publicly. This is a tacit admission that they were surprised by the volume of complaints and felt the need to do damage control. I hope it also means they are aware now that any future shenanigans run a real risk of being exposed. We owe Taylor a debt of gratitude.

Technorati tags: CBC, Christina Lawand

The CBC responds [Updated]

Practising what I preach, I contacted the CBC last week about my concerns with misrepresentation on The National news broadcast. I also emailed Vince Carlin, the ombudsman for CBC, who forwarded my email to Jonathan Whitten, Executive Producer of The National, asking him to address my concerns. I got a rather lengthy reply (quite honestly, more than I was expecting). Seeing as it was funnelled through a Communications Officer, I strongly suspect it was a form letter, all the more so, since he got much more specific about my concerns than I did myself. I am not offended by this; it means that he's being called on this issue by a good number of people.

In essence, he refutes the charge of misrepresentation of the Prime Minister's position, but does concede that "The construction of the piece did make it appear the Prime Minister was responding directly to the woman protester, and that was not the case."

I do believe he is understating the degree of distortion. People retain overall impressions much better than they do words, and the overall impression was misleading and quite emotive.

But to be completely fair to the CBC, I am reproducing his response in its entirety. One last thought before I do:

It would appear that one of the greatest contributions that the blogosphere can make to public discourse is aggressively fact-checking the mainstream media.

Dear Ms. Di Giacomo:

Thank you for your email to CBC regarding a report aired on The National. Jonathan Whitten, executive producer of The National asked me to forward the following to you:

Thank you for your e-mail of August 12th addressed to Vince Carlin, CBC Ombudsman. As you know, Mr. Carlin asked me to reply.

You wrote to draw our attention to a report on the August 4 editions of THE NATIONAL that you feel is inaccurate and misleading. Specifically, you wrote that by juxtaposing a comment by a protestor with what you feel is an unrelated statement made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a news conference, the report misrepresented the Prime Minister’s views, and made him appear insensitive.

The report on THE NATIONAL on August 4th concerned the Prime Minister’s reaction to questions he was facing about the Middle East. The report began with protestors outside the Conservative caucus meeting in Cornwall, one of whom was seen saying that both sides killing innocent children is wrong and has to stop.

The Prime Minister, meeting behind closed doors, did not hear her message (although, as we reported, she was invited to meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs), but reporters did ask him about civilian deaths in a news conference held after the caucus meeting. He did not reply to the question directly, but he told reporters – including the CBC’s Christina Lawand – that his policy on the Middle East remained the same and would not change because of public opinion surveys or protests. He said that Canadians are not neutral on terrorism and that he would not call for a cease-fire until the right conditions were in place. And, he said, when properly understood, his views represent the views of most Canadians. Ms. Lawand clearly stated those views in her report.

She also included a statement from the news conference – the one to which you referred – where the Prime Minister said he is "not preoccupied in any way with reaction within individual communities."

This statement was in response to a reporter who asked specifically how he felt about what seemed to be growing support in the Jewish community for his government and ended his question by asking whether he was concerned about the negative response among some in the Arab community. Mr. Harper replied that he agreed the Middle East conflict had a pretty strong resonance in some cultural communities, but that the government “can’t take positions based on polls, we can’t take decisions based on reactions within certain domestic communities.”

In the bulk of his answer, however, he explained that the issues were far larger than the concerns of some communities. These are “serious international issues, he said, “there are not only many lives at stake, there are a lot of long term strategic interests of this country and of the world.…” He talked about two major elements of the Canadian policy, about terrorist groups, both in Canada and abroad. He talked about humanitarian concerns, including evacuation and re-construction as being among the “focuses of our activity.”

Then he returned to where he had started his answer and repeated: “I’m not concerned or preoccupied in any way with reaction within individual communities. I think that reaction is very predictable.” That was the clip included in the report following the protestor. It is logical to conclude here that the reaction he is “not concerned” with, is the kind of reaction personified by the protestor seen at the beginning of the report. Mr. Harper was talking about predictable reactions in general of which the protestor was a specific example. Some have argued that he was talking about polling within the Arab and Jewish communities, and while that's possible, he was also discussing, in addition to polling, "reactions within certain domestic communities." Far from being unrelated, as you suggest, the two are directly related.

Later in the news conference, the Prime Minister was specifically asked about the protestors outside the meeting. While he did say that it is important to listen to members of the various communities (as we reported, his Ministers met with two of the protestors) he also said “they can’t guide all of our decisions at the same time.” Far from being contradictory to his response to the earlier question, this was restating the government position that we faithfully reported throughout the piece.

I do, however, agree with your concern about the structure of the report. The construction of the piece did make it appear the Prime Minister was responding directly to the woman protester, and that was not the case. We should have taken the time to make it clear that the Prime Minister was responding to a general question, and not a specific question about the woman's concerns, and I regret that. While this does not constitute a misrepresentation of Mr. Harper's position, or the position of his Government, the program could have, and should have, taken the time to be clear about what prompted the response.

It is also my responsibility to inform you that if you are not satisfied with this response, you may wish to submit the matter for review by the CBC Ombudsman, Mr. Vince Carlin. The Office of the Ombudsman, an independent and impartial body reporting directly to the President, is responsible for evaluating program compliance with the CBC's journalistic policies. Mr. Carlin may be reached by mail at the address shown below, or by fax at (416) 205-2825, or by e-mail at ombudsman@cbc.ca

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Whitten
Executive Producer
THE NATIONAL

Box 500, Station “A”,
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6


I hope this information is helpful to you, and thank you again for
writing.


Sincerely,

Jamie Richards
Communications Officer
CBC Audience Relations

I do find it rather peculiar that he refers me to the Ombudsman, seeing as it was the ombudsman who forwarded my email in the first place. Yes, I know it's a form letter, but if I pursue this further, I would expect the ombudsman to do more than just send my concerns on. I specifically asked him to investigate and to make his findings known to the Canadian public. I fully recognize that he doesn't march to my orders, but still... one has to wonder if the ombudsman has any teeth.

Previous post on the topic of CBC, Media

Technorati tags: CBC, Media

Update: Yup, it was a form letter! I wasn't the only one...

Blatant MSM fraud

(MSM, for the uninitiated, is blogspeak for MainStream Media. I finally figured it out a couple of days ago. Yes, I'm new here too...)

This is not new news, but I thought it worthy of passing on. I'm sure 99% of the Canadian blogosphere is aware of how blogger Stephen Taylor caught the CBC red-handed in fraudulently skewing a story on Stephen Harper's stance on the Middle East.

If you're a Canadian, and you haven't seen this, you should. And after watching, tell the CBC what you think.

If you're not a Canadian, watch and see how shamelessly media can warp a story until it turns into something completely different. This is not a purely Canadian phenomenon and it might help you know what questions to ask when watching media coverage in your own country. Please note: in this case, it is a right-wing politician being placed in front of a funhouse mirror and then pilloried for being grotesque. It could just as easily have been a left-wing politician. (OK, maybe not on CBC, but on other networks.) This is not a right wing/left wing issue - it's an integrity issue.

For the media to take issue with a politician's positions is legitimate; it's called editorializing. To misrepresent those positions is dishonest. The CBC and Christina Lawand should be charged with libel.

Technorati tags: Media, CBC, Christina Lawand