Boston Herald Photographer Assaults MIT Researcher

The courtroom proceedings were routine today at Star Simpson's third courtroom appearance to date in Commonwealth vs. Star Simpson. Simpson's legal team submitted a motion for dismissal which will be heard on Monday December 3rd. If the case is not dismissed, there will probably be a bench trial that same day.

Outside the courtroom, there was a bit more drama, when an abusive and disorderly Boston Herald photographer named Michael Adaskaveg assaulted and threatened an MIT researcher named Ted Moallem, after Moallem stepped in front of the photographer, blocking his line of sight.

The confrontation continued on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, as Adaskaveg resumed his loud-mouthed and unprofessional ranting and raving when I walked up to him to ask him his name.

Fortunately for me, he was wearing a Boston Herald ID badge with his name on it, which I was able to read while he foamed at the mouth at me on the grimy streets of East Boston.

Blogs and Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games

Every few years, the Internet spawns a new technology that captures the imagination of the public.

The World Wide Web has given rise to Web Forums, Blogs, and Wikis.

Now we have Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMPORGs) such as World of Warcraft and Second Life.

What's interesting is that the social dynamics on these diverse systems all have a lot in common.

On an MMPORG, one expects to sign onto an adventuring guild and do battle against dragons, monsters, and rival guilds.

Oddly enough, the same thing can happen on Web Forums, Blogs, and Wikis. Guilds, cliques, and alliances form and do battle with competing factions. The social dynamics can vary from that of a Chess game to a Soap Opera to an epic Greek Tragedy.

So what does any of this have to do with Media Ethics?

After all, an adventure drama is a far cry from a journalistic enterprise.

Or is it?

After all, the talking heads on the 24/7 cable channels mix journalism with verbal jousting.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert convert newscasting in satire.

One of the strangest beasts in this transformation of journalism into drama is Wikipedia — the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." Superficially, Wikipedia may look like a high-tech encyclopedia. But in many ways it functions as a Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game, not unlike Dungeons and Dragons.

Guilds, cliques, and cabals battle it out on a daily basis. Like Chess, one tries to marginalize opposing pieces, or remove them entirely from the playing board. There is an obscure variant of standard Chess, called Put-Back Chess, where a captured piece is returned to the board on the next move. On Wikipedia, the equivalent variant is the Sock-Puppet, in which a defeated Editor surreptitiously returns wearing a new identity.

Not surprisingly, the ethical scholar or journalist would find Wikipedia a bizarre medium in which to craft a high quality article, especially on a controversial subject where competing factions are pushing competing points of view. To survive on Wikipedia, it helps to be mean-spirited, evasive, and allied to a powerful guild.

The ethical and scholarly journalist need not apply.

Conflict Junkies

True or False: Journalists are attracted to conflict like moths to a flame.

Ben Stein is a freelance commentator who occasionally appears on CBS Sunday Morning. He narrates a new film, due out in January, entitled, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

The film explores aspects of the conflict between science and religion arising from the controversies over Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution.

There is a good NY Times article by Cornelia Dean about the film, and the controversy surrounding it. The controversy isn't just about the subject matter of the film, but the ethics of making the film, itself. Some of the scientists interviewed for the film claim they were misled about the film's slant.

I suppose people can argue about the character of the film's slant, but it occurs to me it's slanted toward controversy. And so are the characters who step up to these controversies.

There is already a Wikipedia article about the controversial film, written by members of the controversial Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design.

It's unclear whether these Wikipedia editors consider themselves to be journalists, but it's increasingly apparent they are attracted to controversy like moths to a flame.

Fake Bombs and Fake Art

I'm not an artist. I only play one on the Internet.

Which is to say that any art I produce is merely fake art of the lamest variety.

Here is my latest attempt at art...


You probably can't make out what this is, but it's a telephone punch-down block with a computer battery on the right, an electrolytic capacitor on the left, and a cluster of NE2 bulbs in the middle. It took me about 20 minutes to make it, mostly looking for the box of NE2 bulbs in the basement. Actual fabrication time was about 3 minutes.

Last week, a 19-year old MIT student with marginally more artistic talent than me constructed a similar artifact, using green LEDs instead of NE2 bulbs. She arranged them into a star pattern, since her name is Star. It was her name-tag for MIT Career Day.

And then she was arrested for displaying a 'hoax device' that journalists covering the story labeled as a 'fake bomb' in their breathless national headlines.

The only hoax was the one perpetrated by the authorities, who took one look at a harmless cluster of green LEDs and trumpeted 'hoax device' to a gullible press.

Shame on the authorities and shame on the press.

Antisocial Darwinism: Diversity and Wikicide

The popular CBS series, Survivor, illustrates the political drama of the elimination of one's rivals by voting them off the island.

The term, Social Darwinism, reflects a more conventional version of that political practice, when it comes to extinguishing an unwanted socio-cultural lineage. In the worst case, Social Darwinism devolves into Ethnic Cleansing and even Genocide. On the other side, there is the celebration of Cultural Diversity.

At the intersection of politics, culture, and religion, those of us with a scientific or journalistic perspective find no shortage of human phenomena to observe and chronicle.

On the other hand the practice of observing and chronicling the phenomenon of Social Darwinism can sometimes subject a scientist or journalist to a firsthand experience of being voted off the island.

A good example is the case of Judd Bagley vs Gary Weiss.

Judd Bagley is one of the principals behind OverStock.Com, a commercial website that remarkets surplus retail merchandise. Incidentally, Bagley is also the owner of another website, AntiSocialMedia.Net, which levels criticisms at writers who "abuse social media for personal gain." In Veni, Vidi, Wiki, Bagley turns his sights on a business journalist, Gary Weiss, whom Bagley also identifies as a frequent contributor to Wikipedia. Bagley's criticisms of Wikipedian practices and ethics is so scathing and so stinging, that neutral editors on Wikipedia can't decide how to present the controversy in Wikipedia's own article on OverStock.Com and Judd Bagley. Some editors want to brand AntiSocialMedia.Net a "Bad Site" and forbid its mention on Wikipedia. Other editors adopt the view that if a Wikipedia article is going to mention and characterize AntiSocialMedia.Net, then the article should include a live link to the so-called "Bad Site." The editors have taken their impasse to arbitration on Wikipedia.

Without passing on the merits of the charges and counter-charges arising in the above kerfuffle, there does appear to be some kind of liminal social drama in play regarding cultural diversity, freedom to publish responsible criticism, and Wikicide.

Whether Wikicide refers to critics killing off Wikipedia, or Wikipedia killing off its critics remain to be discovered.

After they finish voting each other off the island, there may not be any survivors at all.

There may not even be any island left when this war is over.

See, for example, this proposal to supplant Wikipedia by a more intelligently designed system:

Web Rivals Plot the Answer to Wikipedia

Wikipedia and Ethics in Online Journalism

Wikipedia is classified as a "tertiary source" for the purposes of finding information to support a student's investigative report on a subject. That is, a student cannot cite a Wikipedia article as a source for information in a student paper.

Last week, I learned firsthand why the content of Wikipedia articles are considered unreliable.

Elsewhere, I wrote an essay on my experience trying to correct an erroneous article in Wikipedia. It was a dispiriting nightmare.

The editors on Wikipedia are anonymous and largely untrained in journalism. The concept of ethics in journalism isn't even on their radar screen. One of them told me that truth is not even an objective of Wikipedia. Rather the criterion is whether a piece of (mis)information came from a "reliable source."

And therein lies the problem. The New York Times, for example, runs stories on lots of controversial subjects. The Times will quote the views of partisans, typically providing counterbalancing views to help the reader understand how to assess the claims of competing factions in a controversy.

But it's easy to mistake a report in the Times delineating the claims of a partisan from an affirmation that the claim is valid or factually correct. And mistakes like that evidently abound in Wikipedia, since the main criterion is whether there is a reliable source which published the claim. In other words, if the New York Times reports a quote from Bush, that would justify (in the minds of some Wikipedians) that what Bush is quoted as saying is an independently verified fact.

Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Most of the time, this isn't a big issue. But it matters when false and defamatory material finds its way into the Wikipedia biography of a living person. Wikipedia is supposed to have extra filters in place when inserting content into a biographical article. But my experience reveals that the chess game just turns into a frustrating stalemate, with no reliable method for resolving the case and getting to the ground truth. Wikipedia is not designed to get to the ground truth, especially since there is also a rule forbidding original research. Not surprisingly, there isn't much source material on a lot of living persons. If one's name is mentioned in a New York Times article, and some Wikipedia editor misinterprets the article, there isn't much hope for fixing it. Once a bureaucracy makes a mistake, it generally cannot be fixed. And Wikipedia is a rigidly rule-driven bureaucracy without sufficient responsible supervision to ensure that the chess games produces anything of lasting value to the general public (such as accurate stories that one can rely on).

No wonder teachers don't allow their students to cite Wikipedia as a reliable source.

But Wikipedia does provide an interesting example of a good idea gone awry.

And it provides a good example of how a rule-driven system becomes profoundly dysfunctional.

Western reporters in Africa struggle over when to help

By Abraham McLaughlin | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Daily journalism involves many dilemmas. But Western reporters covering developing countries often face unique conundrums: A little humanity - just the change in their pockets - can sometimes feed 10 or 20 people.
Such giving can violate a basic tenet of journalism: Observe, don't engage. It's a cornerstone of the effort to stay objective. But Western reporters often ask themselves: Should I help anyway?

One Western reporter, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, recalls doing a story on a man in Afghanistan. In 2002, the man was laboring hard to rebuild his mud house, which had been destroyed during a war. But he couldn't afford a few wooden poles for a roof.

Furthermore, his young son was in a hospital and couldn't be released until there was a house to come home to. "I never give to anyone who asks for money," says the reporter, but in rare cases, she does give. Even then, though, "I take great pains to ensure it does not come from me directly." In this case, she sent her Afghan translator back with the cash - and told him to tell the man it had come from an anonymous donor who'd heard about his case.

Different standards

But one expert on journalism ethics argues reporters working in poor countries should not feel bad about helping people, and need not go to such lengths to disguise their efforts to help. Standards are different in poor-world contexts, says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, a journalism training center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "In the US, you can tell a [poor] family how to get food stamps or how to access social services," she says. But "the safety net in the US is much more secure for the poorest of the poor than it is in Swaziland," for instance.

MORE from this Christian Science Monitor story...

Senate OKs sex-offender registry

Abuse: The national database bill, expected to become law Thursday, also would crack down on failures to register

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to approve the creation of a national sex offender registry and establishment of tough new prison sentences for offenders that fail to keep their listing current.

A child predator who kills a victim during commission of a sex crime could receive the death penalty under the act.

"We're going to get tough on these people," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Senate sponsor of the legislation, which he said would "curtail the ability of sex offenders to operate freely."

The House is expected to pass the legislation next week, and President Bush has said he will sign it Thursday, the 25th anniversary of the disappearance of Adam Walsh, for whom the bill was named. Walsh was the 6-year-old son of John Walsh, who created "America's Most Wanted" after his son was abducted and who was hailed by senators for his advocacy for the legislation.

MORE

Read this, please!

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: The Bush lynch mob against the nation's free press

Narcissism and the Journalist

File this one alongside your mental notes on
Shattered Glass and Jayson Blair.


Reporter Joe Lauria's unwitting role in the Rove 'scoop'

The May 13 story on the Web site Truthout.org was explosive: Presidential adviser Karl Rove had been indicted by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in connection with his role in leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media, it blared. The report set off hysteria on the Internet, and the mainstream media scrambled to nail it down. Only . . . it wasn't true.

As we learned last week, Rove isn't being indicted, and the supposed Truthout scoop by reporter Jason Leopold was wildly off the mark. It was but the latest installment in the tale of a troubled young reporter with a history of drug addiction whose aggressive disregard for the rules ended up embroiling me in a bizarre escapade -- and raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

In his nine-year reporting career, Leopold has managed, despite his drug abuse and a run-in with the law, to work with such big-time news organizations as the Los Angeles Times, Dow Jones Newswire and Salon. He broke some bona fide stories on the Enron scandal and the CIA leak investigation. But in every job, something always went wrong, and he got the sack. Finally, he landed at Truthout, a left-leaning Web site.

I met Leopold once, three days before his Rove story ran, to discuss his recently published memoir, "News Junkie." It seems to be an honest record of neglect and abuse by his parents, felony conviction, cocaine addiction -- and deception in the practice of journalism.

Leopold says he gets the same rush from breaking a news story that he did from snorting cocaine. To get coke, he lied, cheated and stole. To get his scoops, he has done much the same. As long as it isn't illegal, he told me, he'll do whatever it takes to get a story, especially to nail a corrupt politician or businessman. "A scoop is a scoop," he trumpets in his memoir. "Other journalists all whine about ethics, but that's a load of crap."

... [clippage]

After reading his memoir -- and watching other journalists, such as Jayson Blair at the New York Times and Jack Kelley at USA Today, crash and burn for making up stories or breaking other rules of newsgathering -- I think there's something else at play here. Leopold is in too many ways a man of his times. These days it is about the reporter, not the story; the actor, not the play; the athlete, not the game. Leopold is a product of a narcissistic culture that has not stopped at journalism's door, a culture facilitated and expanded by the Internet.

Update on Harvard student-author's plagiarism

Publisher cancels young author`s book deal

NEW YORK, NY, United States (UPI) -- Amid new allegations of plagiarism Little, Brown & Co. has canceled 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan`s two-book contract.

Viswanathan acknowledged last month her popular novel, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,' contained near-identical prose to that found in a book by Megan McCafferty, which Viswanathan said she unintentionally 'internalized.'

But Tuesday, new claims of plagiarism arose based on works by young-adult authors Sophie Kinsella and Meg Cabot.

That`s when the publisher pulled the plug, the Boston Globe reported.

'Little, Brown & Co. will not be publishing a revised edition of `How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,` nor will we publish the second book under contract,' Senior Vice President and Publisher Michael Pietsch said in a one-sentence statement.

As well, the company recalled some 50,000 unsold copies of the novel, which was published April 4.

'Opal Mehta' had a first printing of 100,000 copies, and Viswanathan had received a two-novel contract worth $500,000 at age 17, a month after arriving at Harvard.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Motive

Motive really is an interesting factor in any ethical decision. It describes the core of a person's ethical standpoint and the character of that individual. In seperating the motive from the act or decision, we really lose ethics altogether. Acts cannot really be judged when taken out of context. If a person was to shoot another in self defense, yet the motive was left out of the picture, they would solely be a murderer. If a man steals food for his family, but the motive is left out, he is a thief, but with the motive in place it brings a whole new light to the situation. On the reverse side, if a man donates a million dollars to charity solely for a tax break, is he really being charitable? It looks great with no motive in place, but the wrong motive changes the context of the situation profoundly.

As far as the media goes, motive is really one of the important factors any journalist should include in any ethical decision. Is the person being used as the means or the end? Should I print a story about Teresa's abortion to save the reputation of another? Which is the greater good? Where do my loyalties lie? Where should they lie? I believe that motive is almost as important an ethical factor than the act itself.

Just a reminder...

Final class assignments are due tomorrow (Tuesday, May 2) at noon. You may place them in the wall box outside my office door (AnSci 306) or ask the person at the main office desk (AnSci 310) to place them in my JCOM department mailbox.

The post quality here is improving all the time! I'll keep it going after you've all drifted away for the summer; remember, if you feel the impulse to talk about ethics, you're encouraged (begged, even) to drop by and chat. It's on Blogger's public listing now.

Thanks for a great semester, all. I've enjoyed our discussions immensely.

Kindness - could it be a minimalist value?

Here's poet Naomi Shihab Nye's thoughts on kindness - a favorite poem of mine, and one I'd like to give you to think about before you leave for the summer:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity 
   of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in  
   a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night  
   with plans
and the simple breath that 
   kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest 
   thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other 
   deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that 
   makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to 
   mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

What to do next?

"That the truly probing questions are being asked by bloggers rather than by national journalists is becoming increasingly commonplace," writes Glenn Greenwald, a noted blogger who has just published a book that attempts to answer the question, How Would a Patriot Act?

Greenwald's blog bio says he spent the past 10 years as a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges (including some of the highest-profile free speech cases over the past few years), civil rights cases, and corporate and security fraud matters.

Here's John Dean's blurb for the book:

"Glenn Greenwald has assembled a devastating bill of particulars against the Bush and Cheney administration's insistence on operating outside the rule of law. He has gathered solid information and marshaled a litany of abuses of power that make Richard Nixon's imperial presidency look timid. All thinking Americans must answer How Would A Patriot Act? this coming election, and those who ignore what Greenwald has to say act at our collective peril."

-- John W. Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel and
author of Conservatives Without Conscience

Plagiarize... let no one else's work evade your eyes...

Lest I fall into the trap, let me attribute the title of this post where it belongs: it's a line from a song by Tom Lehrer.

Here's the story: a hot new author, only 19 years old and a Harvard sophomore, is in hot water.

Update 2: Young Author Admits Borrowing Passages

A Harvard University sophomore with a highly publicized first novel acknowledged Monday that she had borrowed material, accidentally, from another author's work and promised to change her book for future editions.

Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life," published in March by Little, Brown and Company, was the first of a two-book deal reportedly worth six figures. But on Sunday, the Harvard Crimson cited seven passages in Viswanathan's book that closely resemble the style and language of the novels of Megan McCafferty.

"When I was in high school, I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings,' which spoke to me in a way few other books did. Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel ... and passages in these books," Viswanathan, 19, said in a statement issued by her publisher.

"While the central stories of my book and hers are completely different, I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words. I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious. My publisher and I plan to revise my novel for future printings to eliminate any inappropriate similarities.

"I sincerely apologize to Megan McCafferty and to any who feel they have been misled by these unintentional errors on my part."

The book had a first printing of 100,000 copies.

Viswanathan, who was 17 when she signed her contract with Little, Brown, is the youngest author signed by the publisher in decades. DreamWorks has already acquired the movie rights to her first book.

Schindler's List

I can’t seem to get the movie out of my head. I have been thinking about the comparison between one person's horror and another's luxory. But mostly I keep thinking about Nancy’s question, “Why would I end the course with this movie?”

I have my one answer. In the United States people have religious freedom. It is illegal to kill someone just because he or she is a Jew. However, it was legal for Germans to murder thousands of Jews in WWII. Schindler was thrown in jail for just kissing one. That is how deep the hate ran.

But I thought about how the law may have changed but ethical choices did not. Schindler still did what was right to him even though it was illegal. He worked within the system to save lives. I thought it was interesting how one person still followed his values even though an entire nation did not. Just because of one man’s (Hitler) values an entire population of people was almost eliminated.

I think this movie just goes to exemplify Bok’s discussion about needing common values and ethics for society to survive. Add the continued massacres of people all over the world…the Holocaust…Cambodia…Africa…the Middle East. All over the world people are still killing each other. I think that we need to start working toward a solution instead of adding to the death. Bok is right to say that eventually peace will result with no one left to live it.

I think that values and ethics can be a foundation for peace…one day if we start.

More on sex-offender registries

I heard this story on NPR this afternoon while I was driving home. Thought you'd be interested -- here's a link, and then when you get to the NPR site, click on the "listen to this story" button.

Many states -- including Utah -- list hard-core predators alongside people who may pose no risk to the public. There's a map at the NPR site that shows states' policies.

Murders Put Focus on Sex-Offender Registry Policies

All Things Considered, April 21, 2006 · Nobody knows why Stephen Marshall killed two men who were on the sex-offender registry in Maine. Immediately after, he took his own life.

One of the men Marshall killed, Joseph Gray, was on the registry for raping a child. The other, William Elliott, was listed because he'd slept with his girlfriend before she turned 16.

These deaths and others raise troubling questions about the public sex-offender registries which every state has. And they highlight the fact that many states list hard-core predators alongside people who may pose little risk to the community.

When Mark Perk read about the men murdered in Maine, he thought the same fate might have befallen him. "They put my name and address on there," Perk says. "Anyone can find me. Yeah, it scared us."

Perk is on Illinois' sex-offender registry for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. She's now his wife and the mother of their two children. Perk says he knows he broke the law -- but he says he's no child molester. He's just treated like one.

"My wife and I get pulled over constantly because our license is registered to a sex offender," he says.

Perk says he has received telephone calls from people calling him a child molester and threatening his life. "People pull by the house all the time, staring in the windows," he says.

(MORE)

Privacy, cyber-stalking & harassment

Speaking of privacy online, there's a good but gasp-worthy article in today's New York Times. Here's a link: A Sinister Web Entraps Victims of Cyberstalkers.

Utah's Sex Offender Registry

In case you haven't seen it for yourself, here's a link to the sex offender registry for Utah.

Note that you have to promise not to use information you find there to harass the offenders or their families and friends, and there's a reminder that such harassment is against the law.

To search it, type in your zip code.