In another, investigators seized the phone records of Fox News reporter James Rosen, searched his personal e-mails, tracked his visits to the State Department and traced the timing of his phone conversations with Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department security adviser. Kim was charged in 2010 as the suspected source of a Fox News report about North Korean nuclear weapon testing. Perhaps most disturbing, documents related to the secret search warrant for Rosen’s phone and e-mail records cited him as a co-conspirator in the espionage case.
This appeared to journalists to put Rosen in unprecedented jeopardy for doing his job. Although the president said in his speech Thursday that “journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” he was nevertheless adamant about pursuing government officials who he said “break the law,” presumably by discussing national security matters and other classified information with reporters, even if that scares off officials from becoming whistle-blowers or even having any contact with reporters.
Downie, who is the paper’s vice president at-large and also spent nearly two decades as the paper’s executive editor, also says that the administration “has disregarded the First Amendment and intimidated a growing number of government sources of information — most of which would not be classified — that is vital for journalists to hold leaders accountable.”
A couple ticks behind on this, but Newsweek’s redesign is really, really good.
The Legend of Ron Burgundy came to life this week when Australia TODAY host Karl Stefanovic channeled his inner-Veronica Corningstone with a last-minute change to the teleprompter lines of guest-host Roz Kelly. We don’t know about you guys, but we’d probably do this to our coworkers every single day if we worked on a televised news broadcast of any kind. Then again, that might be why we don’t work on a televised news broadcast of any kind. (ht to Gawker) source
Breaking news in the ongoing saga of the 25-year-old man accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20.
(Source: twitter.com)
We get stories much faster than we can make sense of them, informed by cellphone pictures and eyewitnesses found on social networks and dubious official sources like police scanner streams. Real life moves much slower than these technologies. There’s a gap between facts and comprehension, between finding some pictures online and making sense of how they fit into a story. What ends up filling that gap is speculation. On both Twitter and cable, people are mostly just collecting little factoids and thinking aloud about various possibilities. They’re just shooting the shit, and the excrement ends up flying everywhere and hitting innocent targets.
Farhad Manjoo, Slate. Breaking News Is Broken.
FJP: Two things here — Adopt a slow news diet or pay very close attention to how you follow breaking news. Else, as Farhad suggests, take a long walk.
(via futurejournalismproject)
The deadly and mysterious coronavirus that first appeared in Saudi Arabia last year has claimed two more victims, bringing the official death toll to 11.
The World Health Organization said a 73-year-old man from the United Arab Emirates who was taken to Germany for medical treatment died at a Munich hospital Tuesday. The United Nations health authority also announced that a man from Britain who became sick in January has died. That man had traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and presumably became infected there.
A total of 17 cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed by the WHO at this point, but a point of origin has yet to be determined. The virus is believed to have been first transmitted by a bat, but it’s unclear if another animal(s) served as an intermediary between the bat(s) and the first infected human(s).
Bank Head Resigns: Antreas Artemis, former CEO of Cyprus’ largest bank, stepped down on Tuesday, citing government interference with the Bank of Cyprus as his primary cause of departure. Banks throughout Cyprus remain closed on Tuesday, following a government ordered 48-hour delay of the previously scheduled return to semi-normalcy. Officials in Cyprus are working to verify that recently adjusted systems will function smoothly when banking operations resume, amid fears of a bank run in the recently bailed-out nation. Many in Cyprus have vehemently opposed the bailout plan, which will see steep levies on those who have more than 100 thousand euros in the bank. (Photo via EuroNews)
A treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer has, for the first time, produced remissions in adults with a deadly type of acute leukemia that resisted chemotherapy and left little hope of survival, researchers are reporting.
In one patient who was severely ill, all traces of leukemia vanished in eight days.
While it’s far from a cure, the new T-cell treatment successfully sent several patients leukemia into remission for periods ranging from a few months to two years. Currently, only 40 percent of adults diagnosed with acute leukemia survive the disease, though the rate is now much higher among children (80-90%).
The Indian Parliament’s lower house passed a landmark law Tuesday that sets tougher penalties for rapists and police who refuse to file a woman’s complaint of rape, as well as criminalizing sexual offenses such as stalking, voyeurism and acid attacks.
The amendments to the existing law incorporate some of the sweeping changes that were demanded after the fatal gang rape of a young paramedical student in New Delhi in December, an incident that sparked a nationwide outcry against the lack of safety for women.
Despite the unprecedented protests that galvanized tens of thousands of Indians, the number of incidents of sexual assault has not diminished.
Those convicted of sexual assault in India will now face the death penalty in cases where their victim(s) dies or is left in a permanently vegetative state, and mandatory minimum sentences have been raised to 20 years in prison (formerly 7-10 years). Government approval will no longer be needed to pursue charges against policemen, government officials, politicians, or judges either; however, the legislation fails to address cases of marital rape or sex crimes committed by members of the Indian military. Still, it’s pretty hard not to look at today’s changes as signs of progress.
“We have accomplished a great deal over the past seven years, as we built The Washington Examiner into a credible and respected brand in a very competitive market. The strong foundation we established with the website and daily newspaper presents us with the opportunity to shift our focus and meet a pressing need in the political content marketplace,” said Ryan McKibben, president of Clarity Media Group, the Denver-based company that owns The Washington Examiner. “As a result of research and analysis conducted over the past year, we have determined that there is an opportunity to bring our style of investigative journalism and keen analysis and commentary to covering national government and politics. The re-positioned Washington Examiner will meet that demand.”
The company also announced it has named Lou Ann Sabatier, a long-time executive and consultant in the publishing industry, chief executive officer of Clarity’s Washington Group, which in addition to The Washington Examiner includes The Weekly Standard and the website Red Alert Politics.
Under the plan announced today, the daily newspaper will continue to be published through June 14 with the new website launching June 17 and the first issue of the weekly coming out June 20. The change will require significant staffing adjustments in editorial and operations as the Examiner eliminates coverage of local news, sports and entertainment. In addition to 88 days notice, affected employees will receive severance and other separation benefits.
Rough translation: We want to be The Daily Caller, but by having a daily newspaper, we’re forced to cover local news and sports. So let’s get rid of the daily newspaper.
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
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#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
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Women who report domestic violence are exposing themselves to arrest under a new NYPD directive that orders cops to run criminal checks on the accused and the accuser, The Post has learned.
The memo by Chief of Detectives Phil Pulaski requires detectives to look at open warrants, complaint histories and even the driving records of both parties.
“You have no choice but to lock them up” if the victims turn out to have warrants, including for minor offenses like unpaid tickets, a police source said.
We’re not entirely certain who thought this up, but definitely count us among the crowd of folks who think this is a terrible idea. We understand that situations like these might seem like excellent opportunities to catch elusive criminals, but giving people any reason to second-guess calling for help in domestic violence situations doesn’t sound like a particularly great idea. Traffic tickets don’t hold the same value as people’s lives. Thoughts?
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