Grantland || May 22, 2013
Two months ago, I sat in a crowded banquet hall in Austin, Texas, as TMZ founder, managing editor, and TMZ on TV host Harvey Levin gave an impassioned, highly charismatic, completely unapologetic keynote about the invasive empire that he has steadily built since 2005.
Want to point you all to the journosofcolor Tumblr, which is exactly what it sounds like—a feed that surfaces smart, interesting stories written by journalists of color. (via the Online News Association’s Jeanne Brooks)
The Justice Department (DOJ) seized the personal emails of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen and used other surveillance methods to investigate whether he was complicit in a leak of classified information, TheWashington Post reported Monday.
According to the report, the DOJ also examined Rosen’s phone records and tracked his visits to the State Department using security-badge data during the 2009 probe.
Looks like it’s going to be another great week in White House PR…
Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans’ information from all news outlets.
Pruitt told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the government has no business monitoring the AP’s newsgathering activities.
“And if they restrict that apparatus … the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that’s not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment,” he said.
A lawsuit has not been ruled out, but next moves haven’t been decided as of yet.
KSN-TV meteorologists ditch the television studio for a storm shelter as severe weather pounds Wichita, Kansas.
Around the two-minute mark is where things start getting crazy. Very harrowing.
A couple ticks behind on this, but Newsweek’s redesign is really, really good.
[the entire article]
We shouldn’t publish full articles unless we have to (say, if the article gets taken down). A couple of key paragraphs is fine. People can click to read the rest. And the folks that don’t want to will just miss out.
You like Ezra Klein as a writer? Don’t take away his traffic. I don’t mean to pick on anyone, and this isn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it happens far too often on Tumblr. We have to start somewhere, right? So why not here? — Ernie @ SFB
The Obama administration asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) Wednesday morning to reintroduce legislation that would help reporters protect the identity of their sources from federal officials, a White House official told The Huffington Post.
The scope of the bill and how effective it would be remains unclear, however, given prior administration opposition to a “reporter shield” law.
The request is opportunistically timed, coming just days after it was revealed that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed telephone records of 20 AP phone lines and more than 100 reporters and editors. The White House has faced heavy criticism for the subpoena, though the president has said that he was unaware of it and Attorney General Eric Holder said that he had recused himself from the investigation.
While the timing absolutely can’t be ignored, it’s hard for us not to get behind any effort to further protect reporters and their sources from federal prosecution. Still, if the Obama Administration was hoping to save face with a new reporter shield law, we suspect we aren’t the only ones who think this is too little too late.
CNN’s Jake Tapper has managed to get his hands on the critical White House email suggested as the proof that the White House was more interested in removing references to possible terrorist attacks in the now infamous Benghazi talking points then they were in telling the truth to the American public.
The actual email, written in the days following the Benghazi attack, reveals something else entirely. We now know that whoever leaked the contents of the email to various media outlets last week seriously misquoted the document, choosing to paraphrase the content in a way that made it appear that the White House was focused on protecting the State Department’s back and covering up information.
And the plot thickens…
It put the American people at risk and that is not hyperbole. Trying to determine who was responsible required very aggressive action.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder • Defending the Department of Justice’s decision to collect roughly two months worth of various Associated Press employees’ work and personal phone records as part of a criminal investigation. The DoJ is apparently investigating a leak which occured last year, revealing the existence of a failed plot to bomb a U.S. plane, during a time when the Obama Administration insisted the U.S. government was unaware of any terror attacks which might be planned to coincide with the annviersary of Osama bin Laden’s death. source
This was the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year, a shot of a number of casualties after a bombing in Gaza. The event itself wasn’t fake, but as one tech expert figured out, the photo was ‘Shopped.
UPDATE: World Press Photo is denying these allegations, and spoke to some independent experts, who found no manipulation outside of normal post-production.
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.Associated Press President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt • In a letter, sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, denouncing the Justice Department’s decision to acquire the phone records of AP journalists as well as a number of the wire service’s offices over a two-month period. The move came as a result of a 2012 AP story which leaked the news of a foiled attack on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. The move, which followed the Obama administration’s general policy of trying to shut down leaks, nonetheless was disowned by the White House. “We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. “Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.” The move has been condemned by many journalists.
Imagine an industry where every single opponent worked in the same street, competing with each other by day—drinking, brawling, fornicating, night clubbing and cocaine-snorting with each other by night. A street full of the most ruthless and amoral people in the world existed, and it was called Fleet Street.Piers Morgan • Discussing his new Starz TV show, Fleet Street, a new dramatic series about his time working the tabloid journalism circuit in the ’70s. It’s a lot like working on ShortFormBlog now.
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