Ethically-tangled aspects of 21st century societies and cultures. In the vein of Charles Darwin’s 1859 “entangled bank” metaphor—a complex and evolving digital ecosystem of difference and dependence, where humans, technologies, ethics, law, policy, data, and information converge and diverge. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Friday, April 5, 2024
How disinformation 'sabotages America'; WBUR, March 21, 2024
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Ethics in an age of disinformation: Free webinar series from the National Press Club Journalism Institute; National Press Club Journalism Institute, April 4, 2024
Press Release, National Press Club Journalism Institute; Ethics in an age of disinformation: Free webinar series from the National Press Club Journalism Institute
"The National Press Club Journalism Institute is pleased to announce a free, four-part webinar series focused on ethics in the age of disinformation. These discussions are geared toward equipping journalists and the public with tools to combat mis and disinformation efforts aimed at disrupting journalism and democracy.
All of these webinars are free and open to the public and are designed to provide tools and best practices to support ethical, trustworthy journalism."
Monday, April 1, 2024
From Pizzagate to the 2020 Election: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize; The New York Times, March 31, 2024
Elizabeth Williamson, The New York Times ; From Pizzagate to the 2020 Election: Forcing Liars to Pay or Apologize
"Convinced that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he is at the forefront of a small but growing cadre of lawyers deploying defamation, one of the oldest areas of the law, as a weapon against a tide of political disinformation."
Friday, February 16, 2024
5 Presidential Libraries That Offer Culture, History and ‘Labs of Democracy’; The New York Times, February 13, 2024
Lauren Sloss, The New York Times ; 5 Presidential Libraries That Offer Culture, History and ‘Labs of Democracy’
"As repositories of valuable historical documents and other records, U.S. presidential libraries have long been important destinations for scholars. But you don’t have to be an academic or even a history buff to appreciate these destinations, as many increasingly offer museums, special exhibitions and unique programming — ranging from interactive situation room experiences to musical performances — to the general public.
The first library was established by Franklin D. Roosevelt and opened to the public in 1941. Every administration since has created one of its own. (President Hoover, liking what he saw of F.D.R.’s project, established his own retroactively, in 1962.) Fifteen libraries are managed by the Office of Presidential Libraries, a part of the National Archives and Records Administration — the Presidential Libraries Act, passed in 1955, established the system of privately built and federally maintained institutions — and 13 are currently open to visitors. There are additional museums, historic monuments and sites dedicated to other presidents, like the James Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio, and some have archival components, like the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.
“President Reagan called the libraries labs of democracy because they explain how decisions are made and how policies are executed,” said Colleen Shogan, the archivist of the United States. “They give us the opportunity to learn about American democracy, and how the government functions.”
With Presidents’ Day fast approaching, consider planning a visit to a presidential library. Here are five to start."
Thursday, December 28, 2023
Clarence Williams, The Washington Post; This Arlington librarian is pushing back against book bans
Clarence Williams, The Washington Post; This Arlington librarian is pushing back against book bans
"There is something to offend and upset everyone, and if there isn't we're not doing our job," Kresh said."
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
In Missouri, years of efforts to ban books take a toll on school librarians: 'It's too painful'; St. Louis Public Radio , NPR, December 26, 2023
St. Louis Public Radio , NPR; In Missouri, years of efforts to ban books take a toll on school librarians: 'It's too painful'
"Maestas decided to speak out at a recent school board meeting for the first time against the proposed revisions. She is especially worried about the removal of diversity requirements.
“We have to have diversity in our libraries,” Maestas said. “We have to. All people have the right to be recognized or appreciated, to see themselves in the collection. And students have the right and the privilege of being able to step into the shoes of someone unlike themselves, to experience their life through 300 pages.”
The school board has indefinitely tabled the policy change.
Looking back at the past two years, Maestas doesn’t know what is behind the focus on libraries, but she thinks it is part of a broader attack on truth, public education and even democracy.
“Libraries are at the heart of our democracy,” Maestas said. “People have those First Amendment rights to learn what they want to learn, to hear what they want to hear, to say what they want to say. When you can attack those First Amendment rights and you can remove the sources of valid information and valid education from everyone, then you have the power.”"
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
How the Humble Paperback Helped Win World War II; The New York Times, October 6, 2023
Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times; How the Humble Paperback Helped Win World War II
"The paperbacks were intended to help soldiers pass the time. But they were also meant to remind them what they were fighting for, and draw a sharp contrast between American ideals and Nazi book burnings.
That’s an aspect of the story that has only grown more resonant, amid today’s partisan battles over book bans. And Manning, for one, sees a clear lesson.
“During World War II, the American public came out very much one way,” she said. “And that was that there should be no restrictions on what people read."...
Books were seen not just as diversions, but as weapons in the fight for democracy. In American propaganda, the dedication to the free exchange of ideas was explicitly contrasted with Nazi book burnings. In a 1942 message to booksellers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt extolled freedom of expression, which was at the heart of his idea of the Four Freedoms. “No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny,” he said.
But just how to get those weapons into soldiers hands was complicated. Shipping heavy books overseas was impractical. So in early 1943, the Council on Books in Wartime, a publishers’ group formed in 1942, approached Ray Trautman, the Army’s chief librarian, with the idea of producing special paperbacks for soldiers overseas. The result was the Armed Services Editions. which were designed to fit in either the breast or pants pocket of a standard-issue uniform."
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Jan. 6 shattered her family. Now they’re trying to forgive.; The Washington Post, January 9, 2023
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, The Washington Post ; Jan. 6 shattered her family. Now they’re trying to forgive.
"After rioters stormed the Capitol, relatives and friends who disagreed with their actions faced a difficult choice: Should they turn their loved ones over to authorities? Could they continue to have relationships with people accused of trying to interfere with the peaceful transition of power?"
Monday, August 21, 2023
Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.; The Washington Post, August 20, 2023
David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.
"“Beware of what is happening in Mexico,” Gálvez warns me at the end of our conversation. “Our president is capable of anything. He has no limits.”
A chilling example of what frightens many Mexicans about López Obrador happened last Wednesday morning at the president’s office, a few miles from where I was talking to Gálvez.
At his regular morning news conference that day, reporters asked López Obrador about five young men from Jalisco who had disappeared a few days before. A horrific video had just surfaced that showed the five, friends since childhood, their bodies battered and bloody, with their mouths taped shut and their hands tied behind their backs. One victim was forced to bludgeon another with a brick and then decapitate him, before he was killed himself. Investigators later recovered their badly burned bodies. The governor of Jalisco said the murders were “clearly linked to organized crime.”
And what did the president say when reporters asked him to comment on this appalling crime? “Can’t hear,” said López Obrador, cupping his hand to his ear. He then told a crude joke about a poor Mexican man who pretended he couldn’t hear a question. And then he smiled and walked offstage."
Thursday, August 10, 2023
Prominent legal, business leaders create ABA group to bolster confidence in elections; Reuters, August 9, 2023
Karen Sloan, Reuters; Prominent legal, business leaders create ABA group to bolster confidence in elections
"The American Bar Association has launched a task force aimed at bolstering public trust in elections, headed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig.
The 31-member ABA Task Force for American Democracy will look at ways to depoliticize how elections are administered, educate the public on democracy, and try to foster election innovations that address the causes of politicization, the ABA said on Wednesday when it announced the new effort. The task force comes a week after former President Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election and as the 2024 presidential race is heating up...
ABA task forces are limited by their nature in how much actual change they can effect. But the group hopes to at least expand the conversation about election integrity by holding listening tours, public conversations, and one-on-one and small group discussions with a cross section of Americans to hear about their concerns and experiences, as well as their ideas for restoring democracy, the ABA said."
Monday, July 31, 2023
Israelis’ defiance of Netanyahu holds a lesson for anyone who cares about democracy; The Guardian, July 28, 2023
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian; Israelis’ defiance of Netanyahu holds a lesson for anyone who cares about democracy
"That prompts a troubling question for all those engaged in the fight against nationalist populism, wherever they are. If all the strength and numbers Israel’s pro-democracy movement has mustered are not enough, what exactly will it take? Can it really be that a nation is powerless to stop a leader bent on destroying his country to save himself? That thought is almost too bleak to contemplate. Which is why everyone who cares about democracy, including those who are distant from Israel, should desperately want those protesters to succeed. We need them to win."
Monday, December 5, 2022
Journalist Maria Ressa explains 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator'; NPR/Fresh Air, November 30, 2022
NPR/Fresh Air ; Journalist Maria Ressa explains 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator'
"DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I am Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Our guest today, Maria Ressa, is an international journalist who's widely celebrated around the world. She was Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2018 and last year won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. But in her home country, the Philippines, Ressa faces multiple criminal charges and regulatory actions, which could shut down Rappler, the online news organization she heads, and land her in jail for decades. Rappler drew the anger of President Rodrigo Duterte, known for his violent campaign against alleged drug users, because the news site did stories about corruption and cronyism and exposed a web of online disinformation networks with ties to Duterte.
Before co-founding Rappler in 2011, Ressa spent many years covering Southeast Asia for CNN, breaking important stories about Islamic terrorist networks. Ressa's story isn't just that of a crusading journalist exposing corruption, though it is that; she's also focused on the role of social media networks, who, she says, are weakening democracy by enabling the rise of online disinformation and hate mobs in the service of authoritarian rulers around the world. Her new memoir is "How To Stand Up To A Dictator: The Fight For Our Future."...
DAVIES: To kind of summarize here, it sounds like what you're proposing is that news organizations need to overcome some of their competitive instincts and work together when there is important fact-checking to be done, connect them to other organizations in a way that puts energy and emotion into it and get that out there.
RESSA: Think about it like this. Like, if you don't have integrity of facts, you cannot have integrity of elections. And ultimately, what that means is that these elections will be swayed by information warfare. I mean, you know, it's funny. Americans actually look at the midterms. And they say, well, it wasn't as bad as it could be. Death by a thousand cuts - it's still bad. And if we follow, you know, what - the trend that we're seeing, if nothing significant changes in our information ecosystem, in the way we deliver the news, we will elect more illiberal leaders democratically in 2023, in 2024.
And what they do is they crumble institutions of democracy in their own countries, like you've seen in mine. But they do more than that. They ally together globally. And what they do is, at a certain point, the geopolitical power shift globally will change. Democracy will die. That point is 2024. We must figure out what civic engagement, what we do as citizens today, to reclaim, to make sure democracy survives."
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Democracy is under attack – and reporting that isn’t ‘violating journalistic standards’; The Guardian, September 4, 2022
Robert Reich, The Guardian; Democracy is under attack – and reporting that isn’t ‘violating journalistic standards’
"It is dangerous to believe that “balanced journalism” gives equal weight to liars and to truth-tellers, to those intent on destroying democracy and those seeking to protect it, to the enablers of an ongoing attempted coup and those who are trying to prevent it...
“Balanced journalism” does not exist halfway between facts and lies."
Friday, September 2, 2022
Book bans are threatening American democracy. Here’s how to fight back.; The Washington Post, August 9, 2022
Margaret Sullivan , The Washington Post; Book bans are threatening American democracy. Here’s how to fight back.
"“People need to mobilize, because the efforts to ban books are very active and very organized,” Nossel said.
It’s also important to keep in mind — and raise your voice to say — that book bans run counter to a core tenet of what America is supposed to stand for.
So if you’re worried about threats to democracy involving voting rights, gerrymandering and the peaceful transfer of power after elections, you should save a little mental space for this, too.
Opposing censorship in the form of book banning is a part of the same crucial fight."
Sunday, August 28, 2022
Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives; The Washington Post, August 27, 2022
Friday, April 22, 2022
Barack Obama Takes On a New Role: Fighting Disinformation; The New York Times, April 21, 2022
Steven Lee Myers and Cecilia Kang , The New York Times; Barack Obama Takes On a New Role: Fighting Disinformation
The former president has embarked on a campaign to warn that the scourge of online falsehoods has eroded the foundations of democracy.
"Mr. Obama’s approach to the issue has been characteristically deliberative. He has consulted the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and others. Through the Obama Foundation in Chicago, he has also met often with the scholars the foundation has trained; they recounted their own experiences with disinformation in a variety of fields around the world.
From those deliberations, potential solutions have begun taking shape, a theme he plans to outline broadly on Thursday. While Mr. Obama maintains that he remains “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” he has focused on the need for greater transparency and regulatory oversight of online discourse — and the ways companies have profited from manipulating audiences through their proprietary algorithms."
Saturday, April 16, 2022
New York Public Library makes banned books available for free; NPR, April 15, 2022
Deepa Shivaram, NPR ; New York Public Library makes banned books available for free
"In response to the more than 1,500 books challenged to be removed from libraries in the last year, the New York Public Library launched an effort to make some banned books available for everyone — for free.
The initiative is called Books for All and allows any reader aged 13 and older to access commonly banned books through the library's app until the end of May. There are no wait times to access the books and no fines, the library said. Typically, access to books at the New York Public Library are only available to New Yorkers with a library card.
"The recent instances of both attempted and successful book banning —primarily on titles that explore race, LGBTQ+ issues, religion, and history — are extremely disturbing and amount to an all-out attack on the very foundation of our democracy," said Tony Marx, president of the New York Public Library.
"Knowledge is power; ignorance is dangerous, breeding hate and division ... Since their inception, public libraries have worked to combat these forces simply by making all perspectives and ideas accessible to all," Marx said."
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says US businesses should pull out of Russia, calls for more aid; USA Today, March 16, 2022
Joey GarrisonCelina TeborLedyard KingJohn BaconRick RouanMatthew Brown, USA Today; Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says US businesses should pull out of Russia, calls for more aid
""Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace," he Zelenskyy said in remarks livestreamed at the U.S. Capitol. He added, “I call on you to do more."
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
ALA Stands with Ukrainian Library Community; American Libraries, March 1, 2022
American Libraries; ALA Stands with Ukrainian Library Community
"On March 1, the American Library Association (ALA) released a statement in support of the Ukrainian library community. The full statement reads as follows:
ALA and its divisions support our Ukrainian colleagues and will work with the global library community to answer the appeal from the Ukrainian Library Association to provide accurate information as a means to support democracy and freedom of expression.
ALA has adopted into its policies Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”
ALA continues to encourage our members to help raise public consciousness regarding the many ways in which disinformation and media manipulation are used to mislead public opinion in all spheres of life, and further encourages librarians to facilitate this awareness with collection development, library programming, and public outreach that draws the public’s attention to those alternative sources of information dedicated to countering and revealing the disinformation.
American Library Association Executive Board
American Association of School Librarians Board of Directors
Association for Library Service to Children Board of Directors
Association of College and Research Libraries Board of Directors
Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures Board of Directors
Public Library Association Board of Directors
Reference and User Services Association Board of Directors
Young Adult Library Services Association Board of Directors
United for Libraries Board of Directors"
Saturday, February 26, 2022
Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies; CNN, February 25, 2022
Opinion by Frida Ghitis, CNN ; Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies
"In the end, Putin did exactly what President Biden told the world he would do: He invaded Ukraine on a runway of lies.
In Russia, where most people get their news from government-controlled media, many believed Putin's claims of a nefarious threat from Ukraine. But the rest of the world saw the propaganda fall flat in real time.
"Orwellian" doesn't begin to describe the falsehoods. Putin announced he was sending "peacekeepers," as he ordered his military machine to move into Ukrainian territory. His soldiers went into Ukraine to supposedly "de-Nazify" -- smearing the Nazi label on a country that is a democracy, though a flawed one, whose president happens to be Jewish. Putin claimed Moscow needed to move in to defend Ukraine's Russian speakers from a nonexistent "genocide" by Ukrainians (a tactic made infamous of World War II).
Washington succeeded in thoroughly delegitimizing not only the phony Russian justification for war, but Putin's own credibility before the entire world. It may take some time for the Russian people, too, to grasp the depth of the deception, but eventually they will."