National Monuments From Mr. Obama; New York Times, 8/26/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; National Monuments From Mr. Obama:

"On Wednesday, a day before the 100th birthday of the National Park Service, Mr. Obama designated 87,500 acres of Maine’s north woods as a national monument, to be added to the park system and protected by the service against commercial exploitation. The transaction cost the government nothing. The land belonged to Roxanne Quimby, who lived in the Maine woods before making a fortune as a co-founder of Burt’s Bees and accumulating property with the idea of turning it into a national park. Her family also provided an endowment of $20 million for maintenance.

Then, on Friday, Mr. Obama used the same authority to greatly expand a national marine monument (established a decade ago by President George W. Bush) off the coast of his native Hawaii. The monument will encompass 582,578 square miles of land and sea, and provide protection from commercial exploitation for an estimated 7,000 species that are increasingly stressed by climate change.

Both designations drew criticism — from timber interests in Maine, fishermen in Hawaii and officials in both places who resent federal stewardship. Though neither designation will impose economic hardship, there is invariably complaining whenever Washington asserts a public interest in land that states and private interests think should be theirs. But if presidents waited until there was complete agreement, Teddy Roosevelt would never have protected the Grand Canyon and Franklin Roosevelt would never have protected Joshua Tree National Park."

Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters?; Slate, 7/28/16

Isaac Chotiner, Slate; Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters? :

"Has your opinion of him or WikiLeaks’ project changed?

Yeah, it has, because when WikiLeaks first began—one of the things that people have forgotten—they were actually very careful in redacting. In fact, there were tons of redactions when they were releasing Pentagon documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. And they even wrote a letter to the State Department before they released the cables requesting the State Department’s help in figuring out which information ought to be withheld. And I used to defend WikiLeaks all the time on the grounds that they were not indiscriminate dumpers of information; they were carefully protecting people’s reputations. And they have changed their view on that—and no longer believe, as Julian says, in redacting any information of any kind for any reason—and I definitely do not agree with that approach and think that they can be harmful to innocent people or other individuals in ways that I don’t think is acceptable."

Is Open Access To Research Biden's Answer To Curing Cancer?; Forbes, 4/22/16

Lindsey Tepe, Forbes; Is Open Access To Research Biden's Answer To Curing Cancer? :

"Vice President Joe Biden sees hope beyond the horizon for cancer research. As the man tapped by President Obama to tackle the disease with a new “cancer moonshot,” Biden addressed the nation’s leading cancer experts at their annual research meeting this week by invoking an example from outer space—the Hubble Telescope—and laying out an exciting vision for open research in the process.

The Hubble Space Telescope mission promised to bring into focus faraway objects, celestial bodies beyond the view of astronomers. But when it was first launched in 1990, a faulty mirror blurred the telescope’s vision—it wasn’t until three years later that the NASA team was able, using tiny mirrors, to improve its sight and take its first, sharp photographs of the universe. With the addition of improved spectrograph technology a few short years later, the team was able to improve its search for supermassive black holes...

Openness isn’t just an argument for the public interest, though perhaps that’s where it starts. Taxpayers in the United States currently fund almost $5 billion in cancer research annually, with an additional $800 million in the President’s Budget for fiscal year 2017 to support cancer research. Right now, the results of that research are overwhelmingly published in closed journals that can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars to access. When even Harvard can’t keep pace with the rising cost of journal subscriptions, just imagine what that means for everyone else.

Quoting an op-ed published on Monday in Wired by Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley, Biden asked the researchers assembled to imagine if, instead, we broke down these barriers to cancer research and made the findings of our public investment openly available to all. Establishing a system of open access—free, immediate access to research articles online, coupled with legal permissions to reuse it—holds the potential to address distorted priorities built into this closed system for publication."

“A remarkable feat of collaboration”: The incredible story of how the Panama Papers came to be; The Conversation via Salon, 4/6/16

Richard Sambrook, The Conversation via Salon; “A remarkable feat of collaboration”: The incredible story of how the Panama Papers came to be:

"The ICIJ has been criticised by some on social media for not putting all the material into the open for anyone to look through. For open media evangelists this would be the most transparent action to take. However, with such a huge trove of documents, any media organisation will want to ensure they act legally and responsibly – putting the material through an editorial and legal filter before publishing.

This is one of the defining differences between professional media and open data activists. In broad terms these are literally stolen documents – can news organisations justify publishing them in the greater public interest? Will undue harm to innocent figures be caused by open publication? The public interest seems clear in this case – but without knowing what else the documents contain it is hard to make a judgement about whether they should all be placed online.

The Panama Papers – like The Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, like Wikileaks Iraq War logs and like the Snowden revelations – lifts the lid on the activities of political and business elites in ways which will be discussed for many years to come.

They are also a rich example of how investigative journalism increasingly works in the age of big data and global media. We can expect to see more leaks, more international media collaborations and more reaction from governments trying to clamp down on embarrassing revelations."

No More Exposés in North Carolina; New York Times, 2/1/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; No More Exposés in North Carolina:

"The industry should welcome such scrutiny as a way to expose the worst operators. Instead, the industry’s lobbyists have taken the opposite approach, pushing for the passage of so-called “ag-gag” laws, which ban undercover recordings on farms and in slaughterhouses. These measures have failed in many states, but they have been enacted in eight. None has gone as far as North Carolina, where a new law that took effect Jan. 1 aims to silence whistle-blowers not just at agricultural facilities, but at all workplaces in the state. That includes, among others, nursing homes, day care centers, and veterans’ facilities.

Anyone who violates the law — say, by secretly taping abuses of elderly patients or farm animals and then sharing the recording with the media or an advocacy group — can be sued by business owners for bad publicity and be required to pay a fine of $5,000 for each day that person is gathering information or recording without authorization...

Activists who pose as employees to gain access to farming operations, the judge wrote, “actually advance core First Amendment values by exposing misconduct to the public eye and facilitating dialogue on issues of considerable public interest.”

As far back as the publication of “The Jungle,” which documented the horrific conditions inside Chicago meatpacking plants in the early 20th century, the public has relied on journalists and activists to expose dangerous abuses and misconduct by businesses."

Yosemite to Rename Several Iconic Places; Outside, 1/14/16

Christopher Solomon, Outside; Yosemite to Rename Several Iconic Places:

"The outgoing company also trademarked “Yosemite National Park” for merchandising purposes, said Gediman. Will you be able to buy a Yosemite T-shirt at the gift shop come March 1? “That’s something that remains to be determined,” he said.

The announcement is the latest drama in a long legal dispute between the park service and the concessionaire, DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. And it comes as the agency kicks off the centennial celebration year of America’s national parks system—when the park service would rather be feting America’s parks, not painting over signs at one of its marquee locations.

The news angered some park watchers.

“It’s a really unfortunate situation where the National Park Service is being held hostage by a corporate concessionaire who clearly does not have the public interest at heart,” said Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin. “I think this is pretty outrageous that the park service, because of a 50-plus-million-dollar lawsuit, is forced to change these historic namesakes,” Trainer said. “It’s a tragedy.”...

The federal government might find some relief, however, in a law Congress passed in late 2014 that allows the government to keep a name that’s historically associated with a building or structure that is either on, or eligible, to be included on the National Register of Historic Places, says Sitzmann."

How Twitter screwed up in shutting down its political tweet archives; Washington Post, 8/24/15

Philip Bump, Washington Post; How Twitter screwed up in shutting down its political tweet archives:

"On August 21, Twitter did something different: It shut off access to its application program interface, or API, for a tool that archived politicians' tweets. It had previously stopped access to the API for Politwoops, a site that archived American politicians' tweets. Now, projects gathering tweets from politicians in 30 countries and the European parliament are similarly disconnected.

Twitter defended the Politwoops move by saying that tweeting would be "nerve-wracking – terrifying, even" if you couldn't delete your old tweets."...

Twitter's argument is fairly simple. If you delete a tweet, it should be gone. If you don't delete it, it should be able to be surfaced. That makes sense for a company trying to sell a service to advertisers and cater to a user base of consumers. Respects privacy, but takes advantage of its increasingly substantial data pool to allow deep analysis.

But Twitter isn't just a company that matches consumers and advertisers. It's an integral part of real-time global communications, including communications from elected officials. The failure to set a different standard for different types of users -- especially as candidates increasingly use Twitter as part of their political campaigns -- is a disservice to the community that uses it. This is not a court of law in which a comment can be stricken from the record. It's a public square with a hot mic."

Research Is Just the Beginning: A Free People Must Have Open Access to the Law; Electronic Frontier Foundation, 10/23/14

Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Research Is Just the Beginning: A Free People Must Have Open Access to the Law:

"The bad news: the specter of copyright has raised its ugly head. A group of standards-development organizations (SDOs) have banded together to sue Public.Resource.Org, accusing the site of infringing copyright by reproducing and publishing a host of safety codes that those organizations drafted and then lobbied heavily to have incorporated into law. These include crucial national standards like the national electrical codes and fire safety codes. Public access to such codes—meaning not just the ability to read them, but to publish and re-use them—can be crucial when there is an industrial accident; when there is a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina; or when a home-buyer wants to know whether her house is code-compliant. Publishing the codes online, in a readily accessible format, makes it possible for reporters and other interested citizens to not only view them easily, but also to search, excerpt, and generate new insights.

The SDOs argue that they hold a copyright on those laws because the standards began their existence in the private sector and were only later "incorporated by reference" into the law. That claim conflicts with the public interest, common sense, and the rule of law.

With help from EFF and others, Public.Resource.Org is fighting back, and the outcome of this battle will have a major impact on the public interest. If any single entity owns a copyright in the law, it can sell or ration the law, as well as make all sort of rules about when, where, and how we share it."

New York Journal News Publishes Gun Owners' Names In Westchester, Rockland Counties; HuffingtonPost.com, 12/25/12

Rebecca Shapiro, HuffingtonPost.com; New York Journal News Publishes Gun Owners' Names In Westchester, Rockland Counties: "Some critics felt the Journal News article put people in danger. "Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves? What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are," one commenter wrote on the newspaper's website. Others worried that the names would expose law enforcement officials. "You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents — they have permits. Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way," Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, told Journal News reporter Worley."

When Media’s Decision in the Face of Events Is to Say Nothing About Them; New York Times, 12/23/12

Will Storey, New York Times; When Media’s Decision in the Face of Events Is to Say Nothing About Them: "For the previous decade, The A.P. had been adjusting to an increasing demand for entertainment-related news. There was frustration in the newsroom about reporting entertainment news, but widespread recognition that the industry was changing and that they had to reconsider what was newsworthy. “The A.P. was feeling our way through this transition,” Mr. Washington said. “What do we cover? What do we not cover? Do we dip our toe or go in waist-deep?” He went on to point out that reporters make decisions about what is news and what is not news every day, and that as the industry evolves, the types of news that are covered change. “Everyone knew that J.F.K. and Marilyn Monroe were sleeping together,” he said, “but no one reported it.”... “In some ways, it’s commendable,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. “What they’re doing is making public the criteria they’re applying; they are inviting the public to consider whether the criteria they are applying are valid.” On the other hand, he added, “To say, ‘I don’t care what he has to say, he’s a clown’ — you run the risk of giving insufficient consideration to potential newsmakers.”"

Journalism’s Misdeeds Get a Glance in the Mirror; New York Times, 7/29/12

David Carr, New York Times; Journalism’s Misdeeds Get a Glance in the Mirror:

"Now would seem to be journalism’s big moment to turn that light on itself, with deeply reported investigative articles about how things went so wrong: the failures of leadership, the skewed values and the willingness of an industry to treat the public with such contempt. The Guardian correctly suggested that the arrests were unprecedented in the history of newspapers."