Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics; The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper, 12/1/16

Irfan Bhukhari, The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper; Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics:

"On the academic landscape of Qatar, an international ethics summit is set to appear which will cover dozens of topics having contemporary importance from corporate citizenship in global context to ethics revolving around gender, religion, business and conflict.

A three-day International Ethics Summit themed “Morality in the Global Era: Theory, Policy and Praxis” will start from December 4 at HBKU Students Centre at Education City.

The summit will be an international opportunity for scholars, academia and audiences representing various segments of society to explore and understand a number of issues such as: Ethical Leadership and Social Responsibility; Ethics in the Professions; Integrity in Business; Corporate Citizenship in a Global Context; Ethics and the Environment; Immigration and Moral Tragedy; Ethics and Technology in the Global Age; Ethics and Sports; Ethics and Gender among others according to university’s call-for-papers and leaflet pertaining to programme-details. The summit is being sposored by RasGas."

Donald Trump’s ‘Monster’s Ball’; New York Times, 12/1/16

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; Donald Trump’s ‘Monster’s Ball’ :

"Donald Trump was elected on a wave of fake news, fake minority outreach and an 11th-hour email head fake by James Comey...

Donald Trump is a fraud, and a dangerous one. This country is depending on morally principled patriots to never let that fact be shifted from center stage.

Trump rode to victory on a cloud of vapors and vapid promises, and now he is assembling a counsel of acolytes and opportunists. Now each of us must demonstrate our fortitude in vocal, steadfast resistance.

Trump must be made to know, in no uncertain terms, that he was elected president and not anointed emperor.

Not every battle can be won, but every battle must be waged. This is the proving ground. Are you prepared to stand your ground?"

Putin brings China's Great Firewall to Russia in cybersecurity pact; Guardian, 11/29/16

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Guardian; Putin brings China's Great Firewall to Russia in cybersecurity pact:

"Russia has been working on incorporating elements of China’s Great Firewall into the “Red Web”, the country’s system of internet filtering and control, after unprecedented cyber collaboration between the countries.

A decision earlier this month to block the networking site LinkedIn in Russia is the most visible in a series of measures to bring the internet under greater state control...

In the summer, a measure known as Yarovaya’s law was introduced, which requires Russia’s telecoms and internet providers to store users’ data for six months and metadata for three years...

On 7 November, China adopted a controversial cybersecurity law that revived international concerns about censorship in the country. In a sign that collaboration between the countries is mutually beneficial, the legislation echoes Russia’s rules on data localisation and requires “critical information infrastructure operators” to be stored domestically – the law LinkedIn fell foul of. It seems the exchange of ideas has already borne fruit."

China’s Great Leap Backward; The Atlantic, December 2016

James Fallows, The Atlantic; China’s Great Leap Backward:

"China’s internet, always censored and firewalled, is now even more strictly separated from the rest of the world’s than ever before, and becoming more so. China’s own internet companies (Baidu as a search engine rather than Google, WeChat for Twitter) are more heavily censored. Virtual private networks and other work-arounds, tolerated a decade ago—the academic who invented China’s “Great Firewall” system of censorship even bragged about the six VPNs he used to keep up on foreign developments—are now under governmental assault. When you find a network that works, you dare not mention its name on social media or on a website that could alert the government to its existence. “It’s an endless cat-and-mouse,” the founder of a California-based VPN company, which I’m deliberately not identifying, recently told me. “We figure out a new route or patch, and then they notice that people are using us and they figure out how to block it. Eventually they wear most users down.” On a multiweek visit to China early last year, I switched among three VPNs and was able to reach most international sites using my hotel-room Wi-Fi. On a several-day visit last December, the hassle of making connections was not worth it, and I just did without Western news sources.

China’s print and broadcast media have always been state-controlled and pro-government. But a decade ago I heard from academics and party officials that “reasonable” criticism from the press actually had an important safety-valve function, as did online commentary, in alerting the government to emerging problem spots.

Those days are gone. Every week or two the Chinese press carries warnings, more and more explicit, by President Xi Jinping and his colleagues that dissent is not permissible and the party’s interests come first."

How to solve Facebook's fake news problem: experts pitch their ideas; Guardian, 11/29/16

Nicky Woolf, Guardian; How to solve Facebook's fake news problem: experts pitch their ideas:

"...[A] growing cadre of technologists, academics and media experts are now beginning the quixotic process of trying to think up solutions to the problem, starting with a rambling 100+ page open Google document set up by Upworthy founder Eli Pariser...

“The biggest challenge is who wants to be the arbiter of truth and what truth is,” said Claire Wardle, research director for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “The way that people receive information now is increasingly via social networks, so any solution that anybody comes up with, the social networks have to be on board.”...

Most of the solutions fall into three general categories: the hiring of human editors; crowdsourcing, and technological or algorithmic solutions."

Fake news and a 400-year-old problem: we need to resolve the ‘post-truth’ crisis; Guardian, 11/29/16

Luciano Floridi, Guardian; Fake news and a 400-year-old problem: we need to resolve the ‘post-truth’ crisis:

"In April 2016, the British government agreed with the recommendation of the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee that the government should establish a Council of Data Ethics. Such an open and independent advisory forum would bring all stakeholders together to participate in the dialogue, decision-making and implementation of solutions to common ethical problems brought about by the information revolution.

In September 2016, Amazon, DeepMind, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Google (whom I advised on the right to be forgotten) established a new ethical body called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. The Royal Society, the British Academy and the Alan Turing Institute, the national institute for data science, are working on regulatory frameworks for managing personal data, and in May 2018, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation will come into effect, strengthening the rights of individuals and their personal information. All these initiatives show a growing interest in how online platforms can be held more responsible for the content they provide, not unlike newspapers.

We need to shape and guide the future of the digital, and stop making it up as we go along. It is time to work on an innovative blueprint for a better kind of infosphere."

In today’s world, the truth is losing; Washington Post, 11/29/16

David Ignatius, Washington Post; In today’s world, the truth is losing:

"How should citizens who want a fact-based world combat this assault on truth? Stengel has approved State Department programs that teach investigative reporting and empower truth-tellers, but he’s right that this isn’t really a job for Uncle Sam.

The best hope may be the global companies that have created the social-media platforms. “They see this information war as an existential threat,” says Stengel. The tech companies have made a start: He says Twitter has removed more than 400,000 accounts, and YouTube daily deletes extremist videos.

The real challenge for global tech giants is to restore the currency of truth. Perhaps “machine learning” can identify falsehoods and expose every argument that uses them. Perhaps someday, a human-machine process will create what Stengel describes as a “global ombudsman for information.”"

How Much Disclosure About an Op-Ed Author Is Required?; New York Times, 11/30/16

Liz Spayd, New York Times; How Much Disclosure About an Op-Ed Author Is Required? :

"Who is this woman brave enough to come forward in Facebook’s defense?

Lessin’s tagline identifies her as the founder of a technology website, The Information. And near the end of her piece, she mentions in passing that her husband briefly worked at Facebook.

What neither Lessin nor The Times’s opinion editors told readers is that Lessin and her husband, Sam, have close ties to Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Sam Lessin is a long-time friend of Zuckerberg since their days at Harvard. When young Zuckerberg was shopping for money to start his business, Sam took him around to meet investors. When Sam had a business of his own, Zuckerberg bought it, and then Sam went to work at Facebook. He became the social media giant’s vice president overseeing product, and one of a handful of top executives who reported directly to Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder was even reported to be in the wedding party when Sam and Jessica got married.

I wouldn’t expect Times editors to necessarily put all that information in a piece explaining Jessica Lessin’s connections to a company she’s writing about. But simply saying her husband “worked at Facebook for a brief period” doesn’t cut it."

Facebook Shouldn’t Fact-Check; New York Times, 11/29/16

Jessica Lessin, New York Times; Facebook Shouldn’t Fact-Check:

"If you don’t believe that Facebook’s policies could sway the news industry, you haven’t been paying attention over the past five years. Publications have been suckered into tweaking their content and their business models to try to live off the traffic Facebook sends them. They’ve favored Facebook clicks over their core readers, and are no closer to addressing plummeting print revenues. What would happen if the distribution of their articles on Facebook was tied to submitting data about their sources or conforming to some site-endorsed standards about what constitutes a trustworthy news source?

My fellow reporters and editors will argue that I am letting Facebook off too easy. While my husband did work there for a brief period, my position isn’t a defense of the company, which I have covered critically for years. I simply don’t trust Facebook, or any one company, with the responsibility for determining what is true."

Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough; New York Times, 11/28/16

Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times; Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough:

'Gleevec, which made almost $5 billion for Novartis last year, has been at the center of a long battle between pharmaceutical companies and activists fighting price increases. The drug cost about $26,000 per year in 2001, and Novartis repeatedly raised the price even as competitors emerged; early this year, it was more than $120,000.

Those who support broader access to medicines argue that poor countries should reject patents and make generic versions of leukemia drugs. In 2013, India’s highest court struck down Novartis’s patent application for Gleevec, opening the way for generics. They now cost about $400 a year in India and about $9,000 in Canada."

Facebook Runs Up Against German Hate Speech Laws; New York Times, 11/28/16

Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy, New York Times; Facebook Runs Up Against German Hate Speech Laws:

"In Germany, more than almost anywhere else in the West, lawmakers, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, are demanding that Facebook go further to police what is said on the social network — a platform that now has 1.8 billion users worldwide. The country’s lawmakers also want other American tech giants to meet similar standards.

The often-heated dispute has raised concerns over maintaining freedom of speech while protecting vulnerable minorities in a country where the legacy of World War II and decades under Communism still resonate.

It is occurring amid mounting criticism of Facebook in the United States after fake news reports were shared widely on the site before the presidential election. Facebook also has been accused of allowing similar false reports to spread during elections elsewhere."

What a Map of the Fake-News Ecosystem Says About the Problem; Fortune, 11/28/16

Matthew Ingram, Fortune; What a Map of the Fake-News Ecosystem Says About the Problem:

"As debate continues over the extent to which “fake news” helped Donald Trump win the presidential race, many have talked about a network of loosely-affiliated, right-wing sites that distributed this content through social media platforms. But few have tried to describe it in scientific terms.

Jonathan Albright, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina, is an expert in data journalism who has worked for both Google and Yahoo. He specializes in media analytics and social networks, and he has created a network map or topology that describes the landscape of the fake-news ecosystem...

More than anything, the impression one gets from looking at Albright’s network map is that there are some extremely powerful “nodes” or hubs that propel a lot of the traffic involving fake news. And it also shows an entire universe of sites that many people have probably never heard of...

With the landscape of the fake-news ecosystem outlined in terms of the connections between the various nodes, it may be easier for platforms like Google and Facebook—or even for other media outlets—to track the spread of the problem and come up with potential solutions."

Fake News and the Internet Shell Game; New York Times, 11/28/16

Michael P. Lynch, New York Times; Fake News and the Internet Shell Game:

"Almost everything that we encounter online is being presented to us by for-profit algorithms, and by us, post by post, tweet by tweet. That fact, even more than the spread of fake news, can be its own sort of shell game, one that we are pulling on ourselves.

As the late-19th-century mathematician W. K. Clifford noted in his famous essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” ambivalence about objective evidence is an attitude corrosive of democracy. Clifford ends the essay by imagining someone who has “no time for the long course of study” that would make him competent to judge many questions. Clifford’s response is withering: “Then he should have no time to believe.”

And we might add, tweet."

Campus Libraries See Increase in Discriminatory Incidents; Library Journal, 11/28/16

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; Campus Libraries See Increase in Discriminatory Incidents:

"Within the libraries, administrators have used these events to highlight ongoing issues such as how to spot and respond to fake news. On a wider scale, they have stepped up their mission to support various campus communities and interest groups, particularly when it comes to student welfare. Said Hutto, “We, like a lot of colleges, have been very proactive about increasing diversity on campus. I think especially for those students, they definitely… are thinking of Reed as being a safe place. And to find out that it’s kind of like any other place is not a pleasant thing for them. We’re really concerned about them.”

In a statement released by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Chris Bourg, director of libraries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ARL Diversity and Inclusion Committee chair, stated, “While ARL libraries and archives work hard to be inclusive in their hiring, collections, services, and environments, the Association and its members will not claim neutrality in the face of discrimination, sexism, ableism, racism, homophobia, religious persecution, or other forms of oppression. We support freedom of speech and the open exchange of ideas and opinions, but we will not tolerate hate speech, silencing, inflammatory rhetoric, or any other speech or action that threatens the safety or dignity of any member of our community.”

Addressing the proactive role campus libraries can play post-election, Bourg wrote in a statement from MIT Libraries, “This election has highlighted the urgent need for open, enduring, and equitable access to credible sources of news, data, and knowledge. At the MIT Libraries we will redouble our efforts to provide not only credible sources of information to our communities, but also the expertise, services, collections, tools, and spaces that facilitate and promote the critical assessment of information. We will also continue to document and provide access to the ideas, knowledge, and perspectives of our communities, as we did by archiving the post-election posters containing the immediate reactions of MIT students and community members.”"

Congress May Hold Key to Handling Trump’s Conflicts of Interest; New York Times, 11/28/16

Peter J. Henning, New York Times; Congress May Hold Key to Handling Trump’s Conflicts of Interest:

"The key to dealing with conflicts — whether actual or potential — is transparency about any decision that could have an effect on Mr. Trump’s business interests if he decides not to divest his holdings or create a truly blind trust. Unlike the approach of many teenagers, who believe that it is easier to beg forgiveness than permission, in business the advance notice of a potential issue can lessen its impact.

The challenge is coming up with a mechanism for dealing with questions that might arise from Mr. Trump’s business interests rather than relying on the good faith of the parties involved or deflecting the issue with claims that any criticism is only political, especially in foreign countries in which the president-elect has investments, as The New York Times points out...

Some critics have pointed to potential problems Mr. Trump’s business interests could present under the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. That obscure provision provides that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.”"

Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it.; Washington Post, 11/28/16

Paul Waldman, Washington Post; Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it. :

"The entire sequence of events enables Trump to create a meta-message, which is that there’s no such thing as truth and no such thing as genuine authority. Think about it: the president-elect is claiming that an election that he won was beset by fraud, because he heard it from a lunatic radio host who thinks that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged using child actors and the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the U.S. government. At the same time, the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief is turning away the intelligence briefers who are prepared to deliver him daily updates on the world’s hotspots and potential dangers to the United States — what one might call the actual conspiracies we have to be worried about.

Trump has revealed that the entire journalistic system is based on the assumption that political actors will stay within certain parameters of truth and sanity. Some are more dishonest than others, but there’s a limit. “The President said this today” coverage can be problematic, but much of the time it’s perfectly reasonable, since he’s the most important person in the political world and his words and beliefs have a profound effect on what happens not just here but around the globe.

Trump realizes that when you step outside those limits, you can manipulate the media at will because their normal ways of doing things are inadequate to the task. You can take any idea, no matter how preposterous, and make half the country believe it. And when journalists push back, it’ll only make your supporters more firm in their loyalty.

This is part of a broader assault Trump is mounting on almost every institution of public life in America — the government, the media, the education system, even democracy itself. He’s been doing it from the beginning, not only spreading lies in a volume that had never been seen before, but continually arguing that established authority couldn’t be trusted."

Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President; New York Times, 11/26/16

Richard C. Paddock, Eric Lipton, Ellen Barry, Rod Nordland, Danny Hakim, and Simon Romero, New York Times; Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President:

"In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Mr. Trump boasted again about the global reach of his business — and his family’s ability to keep it running after he takes office.

“I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world,” Mr. Trump said, adding later: “I don’t care about my company. It doesn’t matter. My kids run it.”

In a written statement, his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said Mr. Trump and his family were committed to addressing any issues related to his financial holdings.

“Vetting of various structures and immediate transfer of the business remains a top priority for both President-elect Trump, his adult children and his executives,” she said.

But a review by The Times of these business dealings identified a menu of the kinds of complications that could create a running source of controversy for Mr. Trump, as well as tensions between his priorities as president and the needs and objectives of his companies."

Twitter Beats Back Lawsuit Over Killing of U.S. Contractors by ISIS; Inside Counsel, 11/28/16

Ross Todd, Inside Counsel; Twitter Beats Back Lawsuit Over Killing of U.S. Contractors by ISIS:

"In a ruling that should bolster a law giving social-media companies broad immunity from liability for user-generated content, Twitter Inc. on Friday beat back a lawsuit from families of two American contractors killed in an attack in Jordan inspired by the Islamic State group.

The decision from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III highlights the difficulty plaintiffs face when trying to hold social-media companies liable for allegedly providing material support to terrorists...

In a blog post on the decision published Monday, Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, wrote that the decision bodes well for companies such as Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. that have faced a recent uptick in claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act raising allegations that they provided material support for terrorists."

An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP?; Washington Post, 11/27/16

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post; An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP? :

"Republicans did an extraordinary job raising doubts about Clinton — helped, we learned courtesy of The Post, by a Russian disinformation campaign. Does the GOP want to cast itself as a band of hypocrites who cared not at all about ethics and were simply trying to win an election?...

If Trump wasn’t ready to put his business life behind him, he should not have run for president. And if Republicans — after all of their ethical sermons about Clinton — do not now demand that the incoming president unequivocally cut all of his and his family’s ties to his companies, they will be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful and partisan double standard."

Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’; Washington Post, 11/26/16

Adam Taylor, Washington Post; Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’ :

"In the parlance of 2016, we would probably refer to the Patriot's front page story as “fake news.” It's not so dissimilar to the flimsy or outright false stories that spread online in the United States this year. There may be a shared Russian link too: This week, a number of groups alleged that a Russian propaganda effort had helped spread these “fake news” stories to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton's chances in the 2016 presidential election.

But during the height of the Cold War, these false stories were referred to as something else: “disinformation.”

That term came into use in the early 1960s, and came into widespread use in the 1980s. It is based upon a Russian word: Dezinformatsiya. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, a high-ranking official in Romania's secret police who defected in 1978, the French-sounding word was invented by Joseph Stalin after World War II. A definition from the 1952 Great Soviet Encyclopedia called it the “dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion” and suggested that the Soviet Union was the target of such tactics from the West."

Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/21/16

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality:

"With the recent entry into force of the Marrakesh Treaty providing copyright exceptions for persons with visual impairments, a panel convened alongside last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meeting explored ways to transform the treaty’s promises into reality.

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met from 14-18 November. The 15 November side event was organised by the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC), which is hosted by WIPO.

Recently appointed WIPO Deputy Director General for the Copyright and Creative Industries Sector Sylvie Forbin said at the event that 25 countries have now ratified the 2013 Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, which entered into force on 30 September..."

Chris Friend, representing the World Blind Union, in the audience, presented the World Blind Union Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty: Facilitating Access to Books for Print Disabled Individuals, to be published by Oxford University Press in February.

The guide is intended to provide an analysis of the treaty to multiple audiences including parliamentarians and policymakers who adopt domestic legislation and regulations to give effect to the treaty, judges and administrators who interpret and apply those laws, and to disability rights organisations and other civil society groups who advocate for the treaty’s implementation and effective enforcement, according to the guide executive summary."

Ethics board aiming to build trust in the city; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/28/16

Adam Smeltz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Ethics board aiming to build trust in the city:

"Since the legislation passed, several organizations designated under the measure — including the Allegheny County Bar Association, the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh and the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership — nominated volunteer board members. City council finished the confirmation process in recent months.

“The board is designed to assure an open and transparent government. That’s part of our mission statement,” said Linda A. King, a lawyer hired to be the board’s executive manager on a part-time basis...

The full text of the Ethics Code is available through the board’s website at http://pittsburghpa.gov/mayor/group?id=28. Anyone who suspects that a city worker, former worker, vendor or would-be vendor has broken the code can reach Ms. King at 412-255-8882 or linda.king@pittsburghpa.gov, Mr. Peduto’s administration has said."

FAQ: What you need to know, but were afraid to ask, about the EU Open Science Cloud; Science Business, 11/24/16

Science Business Staff, Science Business; FAQ: What you need to know, but were afraid to ask, about the EU Open Science Cloud:

"Will the data in the EU science cloud be available for free?

Some of it, yes; some of it, no. The EU says that not all data ‘will necessarily be free’, due to the legitimate rights of IP holders, so there will be an opportunity for some organisations to sell access to some of their data through the cloud. Private publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, are also keen to be able to maintain charges for access to some of their services – but have also been unexpectedly enthusiastic about exploring the possible new business models that a very large, very active cloud could permit. On the other hand, some universities and research councils – among the most active proponents of free open access for research reports and text and data mining – are pushing to make the new cloud a tariff-free zone. It’s difficult to predict yet how this issue will be resolved...

What about privacy or ethical concerns?

Differing privacy and ethical policies and regulations in Europe, the US, and elsewhere could become sticking points which would prevent the cloud becoming fully global. There are legal restraints on where research data can be stored – essentially it has to be located in countries, and under the control of organisations, that are subject to EU data protection legislation, and that should make US-based commercial providers a little wary. Rules will need to be established to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the funding agencies, the data custodians, the cloud service providers and the researchers who use cloud-based data. The Commission has said these legal issues will be resolved as part of its broader rule-making efforts under its Digital Single Market – for privacy, copyright, and security of data. But it may not be so simple. The last time science and data rules collided was in 2014/15, when the EU was rewriting its data-privacy regulation; the original, EU-wide proposal would have had an unintended impact on medical research – leading medical universities across the EU to scream loudly that the EU was about to kill drug research. A muddled compromise resulted. Expect similar surprises in cloud regulation."

No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along; New York Times, 11/23/16

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along:

"[Donald Trump] ended the meeting by saying:

“I will say, The Times is, it’s a great, great American jewel. A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along well.”...

You slammed Clinton for destroying emails, then Newsweek reported last month that your companies “destroyed emails in defiance of court orders.” You slammed Clinton and the Clinton Foundation for paid speeches and conflicts of interest, then it turned out that, as BuzzFeed reported, the Trump Foundation received a $150,000 donation in exchange for your giving a 2015 speech made by video to a conference in Ukraine. You slammed Clinton about conflicts of interest while she was secretary of state, and now your possible conflicts of interest are popping up like mushrooms in a marsh.

You are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is silver.

I am not easily duped by dopes.

I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.

I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather to speak up for truth and honor and inclusion. This isn’t just about you, but also about the moral compass of those who see you for who and what you are, and know the darkness you herald is only held at bay by the lights of truth."

Jared Kushner Considers Losing Democratic Friends “Exfoliation.” But What Kind of Exfoliation?; Slate, 11/23/16

L. V. Anderson, Slate; Jared Kushner Considers Losing Democratic Friends “Exfoliation.” But What Kind of Exfoliation? :

"Asked by Forbes’ Steven Bertoni about the friends who have cut ties with Kushner since he began advising the Trump campaign, Kushner sounded blasé. “I call it an exfoliation,” he replied. “Anyone who was willing to change a friendship or not do business because of who somebody supports in politics is not somebody who has a lot of character.”

Exfoliation is an apt choice of metaphor for Kushner, who was recently described by a journalist as having “an eerily flawless complexion.” Surely someone with such glowing skin has ample firsthand knowledge of removing dead surface cells to boost skin’s health and appearance. But Kushner’s metaphor raises more questions than it answers. If losing friends and associates who value equality, tolerance, and inclusion more than social climbing is akin to exfoliation, what kind of exfoliation is it?"

Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List”; Slate, 11/23/16

Rebecca Schuman, Slate; Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List” :

"This Monday, an organization called Turning Point USA launched a website called the Professor Watchlist, which provides the full names, locations, offenses—and sometimes photographs—of liberal academics it has singled out for ignominy. In any other year in recent memory on this continent, these would be two unrelated events. But in the United States in late 2016, as the president-elect’s surrogates cite Japanese internment as a “precedent” for what may come, any “watch list” of any sort is worrying. One that targets outspoken intellectuals with views that oppose a mercurial future president who spent the weekend tweeting petulantly at the cast of a Broadway play? Abjectly terrifying.

The mission of the watch list, according to its website, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The site invites users to nominate candidates, asking that they “submit a tip” about the nefarious pinkos who teach them (that’s S-C-H-U-M-A-N with one n, by the way). Some of the professors on the list have responded thoughtfully to their inclusion; others on social media have trolled the list with complaints about Indiana Jones and Jesus...

Don’t misunderstand me. The answer is not to take the site down altogether, for that would be censorship, and censorship is not the solution, just like it isn’t the solution when the 45th president of the United States gets his fee-fees hurt. But in this time of national reckoning, responsible conservatives need to pay attention to context. Why not, for example, a site that indexes classroom bias by incident and date, instead of by the professor’s name?"

United States: Lee v. Tam: Disparaging Trademarks At The Supreme Court; Mondaq, 11/24/16

Mark Hannemann, Thomas R. Makin, Matthew G. Berkowitz, Patrick Colsher, Joseph Purcell and Eric Lucas, Mondaq; United States: Lee v. Tam: Disparaging Trademarks At The Supreme Court:

"On April 20, 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the "PTO") petitioned for a writ of certiorari on the following question:

Whether the disparagement provision in 15 U.S.C. 1052(a), which provides that no trademark shall be refused registration on account of its nature unless, inter alia, it "[c]onsists of... matter which may disparage... persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute," is facially invalid under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment."

Have I Got a Play for You; Slate, 11/25/16

Jordana Williams, Slate; Have I Got a Play for You:

"Flipping now through our patchwork golem of a script, aghast, I estimate that 80 percent of what we performed actually appears in the original Company. We left lengthy passages essentially unaltered, but fully rewrote others. Even when the lines and lyrics were unchanged, we took subtler liberties, like converting “Being Alive,” Bobby’s solo meditation on loneliness and longing, into a full company number featuring three-part harmony...

So, where were the grown-ups when all of this was happening? Why didn’t they stop us, or at least advise us that our violations of copyright ranged from artistically disastrous to legally actionable? Now that I have kids of my own, I can guess why they stepped back and let us go hog wild. They knew we’d have the rest of our lives to question and edit ourselves (and acquire permission before monkeying with someone else’s art). The heedlessness we displayed would be repellent in an adult, but is arguably kind of awesome in a bunch of kids.

My son is working on his first musical, the soon-to-be smash hit Army Chickens. He’s a very practical boy, so early on, he came to my husband and me with a bunch of questions about budgets and ticket prices and actor pay and set construction needs. “No!” I shouted, probably too vehemently. “Just write the thing however you like.” And why not? He’ll never know what his wildest dreams are if he doesn’t start out as if nothing is impossible."

Beyond business: Disgraced Theranos bloodied family, friends, neighbors; Ars Technica, 11/23/16

Beth Mole, Ars Technica; Beyond business: Disgraced Theranos bloodied family, friends, neighbors:

"If you think your Thanksgiving dinner conversation will be awkward and stressful this year, just be glad you and your family weren’t involved with Theranos.

As the once highly regarded blood-testing company crumbles under technological scandals and regulatory sanctions, the death toll of relationships among neighbors, friends, families, and long-standing partners is mounting. With lawsuits, investigative reports, and new accounts from a whistleblower, the company’s culture and inner-workings—which Theranos worked hard to obfuscate—are finally becoming clear. And what’s emerged are patterns of dishonesty, callousness, and litigiousness—if not outright belligerence.

Test of blood

Perhaps most startling of the recent revelations is the identity and family drama of one Theranos whistleblower: Tyler Shultz, grandson of George Shultz, the former secretary of state, who also happens to be a Theranos advisor. An exposé by The Wall Street Journal lays out how in the course of eight months, Tyler Shultz went from a bright-eyed Theranos employee to disgruntled whistleblower, personally disparaged by Theranos’ then-president and desperately trying to convince his grandfather to wash his hands of the doomed company."

Theranos Whistleblower Shook the Company—and His Family; Wall Street Journal, 11/18/16

John Carreyrou, Wall Street Journal; Theranos Whistleblower Shook the Company—and His Family:

"After working at Theranos Inc. for eight months, Tyler Shultz decided he had seen enough. On April 11, 2014, he emailed company founder Elizabeth Holmes to complain that Theranos had doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks."

A short history of fake news: Conservatives believed all sorts of crap long before Facebook; Salon, 11/25/16

Matthew Sheffield, Salon; A short history of fake news: Conservatives believed all sorts of crap long before Facebook:

"Conspiracy theories have long been popular in book form among conservatives as well. Since the 1950s literally scores of books have been published that promoting the theory that former president Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist or revealing the liberal plan to force all children to become gay and they managed to sell millions of copies over the years.

Most famous of these were probably John A. Stormer’s “None Dare Call It Treason” and Gary Allen and Larry Abraham’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” which spread the John Birch Society’s paranoid message about a worldwide conspiratorial elite of bankers, socialists and Jews. (One could hear strong echoes of the Birch message in Donald Trump’s campaign.)

“These books circulated far more widely than traditional conservative media — there were millions of copies,” said historian Nicole Hemmer, author of the new book “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”

Like the fake news sites of today, the conspiracy-theory literature that was so popular in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, Hemmer said, adopted many of the trappings of more credible publications.

“People saw things as having validity if they had footnotes,” she told Salon, noting “there was a validity in things that were presented as news that’s different from other sources of opinion or entertainment.”"

Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it; Guardian,11/25/16

Alex Hern, Guardian; Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it:

"Those examples are the obvious extreme of Facebook’s problem: straightforward hoaxes, mendaciously claiming to be sites that they aren’t. Dealing with them should be possible, and may even be something the social network can tackle algorithmically, as it prefers to do.

But they exist at the far end of a sliding scale, and there’s little agreement on where to draw the line. Open questions like this explain why many are wary of pushing Facebook to “take action” against fake news. “Do we really want Facebook exercising this sort of top-down power to determine what is true or false?” asks Politico’s Jack Shafer. “Wouldn’t we be revolted if one company owned all the newsstands and decided what was proper and improper reading fare?”

The thing is, Facebook isn’t like the newsstands. And it’s the differences between the two that are causing many of the problems we see today."

Germany is worried about fake news and bots ahead of election; The Verge, 11/25/16

Amar Toor, The Verge; Germany is worried about fake news and bots ahead of election:

"Angela Merkel this week warned that fake news and bots may influence Germany’s national elections next year, days after she announced plans to seek a fourth term as the country’s chancellor. In a speech to parliament on Wednesday, Merkel said that fake news and bots have “manipulated” public opinion online, adding that lawmakers must “confront this phenomenon and if necessary, regulate it," the AFP reports.

"Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren't formed the way they were 25 years ago," Merkel said. "Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them."

Donald Trump’s victory in this month’s presidential elections has sparked a debate over the role that fake news played in the US campaign, with some critics saying that Facebook and Twitter should do more to curb misinformation on its platforms. Facebook and Google this month announced that they will exclude fake news sites from their ad networks, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that the social network is taking steps to limit the spread of misinformation online."

The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy; Guardian, 11/25/16

Andrew Smith, Guardian; The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy:

"With misinformation being incentivised in this way, who could be surprised when Buzzfeed found a group of young Macedonians copying the most outlandish fabrications to more than 140 specially created pro-Trump websites and sexing up the headlines to gain clicks and go viral on Facebook?

This is important, because a recent study by the Pew Research Centre found a majority of American adults using Facebook as a source of news (which means Britain is sure to follow). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been resistant to the notion that his company, social media, or the web in general are undermining democracy (“a pretty crazy idea”), even after dozens of his own staff formed a covert taskforce to address the problem post-election. It’s easy to see why he bridles too, because if he accepts the truth that his algorithms function no more objectively than a human editor, then he bears responsibility for their choices. And once he does that, he allows the equally obvious truth that Facebook, whether it wants to be or not, is now a media organisation and must vouch for the information it disseminates...

What can be done? O’Neil champions the idea of a Hippocratic oath for the “quants”, people who create and nurture algorithms, and of regular algorithmic audits to assess their effects. More fundamentally, it would be easy for us to decide as a society and legislate accordingly that Facebook et al should be treated as media organisations, and held accountable for the information from which they profit. And it’s important that we act now, because the same truth trolls who disgraced the US election are turning their fire on the socially minded entrepreneur Elon Musk, perhaps fearful that he might go into politics – and rest assured that it won’t end there."

Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’; New York Times, 11/25/16

Andrew Higgins, Mike McIntire, Gabriel J.X. Dance, New York Times; Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’ :

"Mr. Latsabidze, who apparently has broken no laws, said that any crackdown on fake news might work in the short term but that “something else will come along to replace it.”

“If they want to, they can control everything,” he said, “but this will stop freedom of speech.”

For now, the postelection period has been bad for business, with a sharp fall in the appetite for incendiary political news favoring Mr. Trump."

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say; Washington Post, 11/24/16

Craig Timberg, Washington Post; Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say:

"The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders."

Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds; NPR, 11/23/16

Camila Domonoske, NPR; Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds:

"Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information.

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles...

The solution, they write, is to teach students — or, really, all Internet users — to read like fact checkers.

That means not just reading "vertically," on a single page or source, but looking for other sources — as well as not taking "About" pages as evidence of neutrality, and not assuming Google ranks results by reliability.

"The kinds of duties that used to be the responsibility of editors, of librarians now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses a screen to become informed about the world," Wineburg told NPR. "And so the response is not to take away these rights from ordinary citizens but to teach them how to thoughtfully engage in information seeking and evaluating in a cacophonous democracy.""

We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned; NPR, 11/23/16

Laura Sydell, NPR: We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned:

"Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it."

America's fake news problem predates Facebook; Vox, 11/21/16

Jason Mittell and Chuck Tryon, Vox; America's fake news problem predates Facebook:

"What these examples suggest is that there is a large infrastructure in place that allows conservative media to circulate and disseminate false information framed as fact. While Facebook can serve as an easy target because of its hypervisibility and its faltering response to the controversies over its newsfeed, it is too simplistic to blame our partisan media culture on a faulty algorithm alone.

As Daniel Kreiss argues at Culture Digitally, decades of fake news emerging from right-wing sources have actively and strategically built toward this moment, each helping to make such circulation of misinformation more and more acceptable. And as Jeet Heer contends at the New Republic, the rise of fake news is meeting a demand from right-wing voters looking for reasons to support their team, rather than information to guide their actions — a demand that has been cultivated by decades of conservative news striving to confirm the beliefs of its consumers.

Which brings us to today, where, as opponents of Trump’s candidacy and eventual presidency rally to avoid “normalizing” his ideas and approach, the mainstreaming of conservative fake news is a clear case of the dangers of such normalization. As we increasingly accept inaccurate peddlers of politicized misinformation as “news,” we allow our citizenry to be horrifically misinformed as part of this new normal."

I’ve Been Making Viral Fake News for the Last Six Months. It’s Way Too Easy to Dupe the Right on the Internet.; Daily Beast, 11/21/16

Marco Chacon, Daily Beast; I’ve Been Making Viral Fake News for the Last Six Months. It’s Way Too Easy to Dupe the Right on the Internet. :

"For moderates, I think it’s a bit easier to avoid pitfalls: The mainstream news may not always be accurate on everything but there is a lot of it and they get the main points right. For conservatives there is no trusted media. There are only trusted positions.

Breitbart, World Net Daily, even InfoWars now count as on-my-side places where they believe the real truth lies. When the only news you are willing to believe is partisan news, you are susceptible to stories written “in your language” that are complete, obvious, utter fabrications."

Here’s How to Fix Facebook’s Fake News; Daily Beast, 11/19/16

Michael Casey, Oliver Luckett, Daily Beast; Here’s How to Fix Facebook’s Fake News:

"[...W]e must demand transparency in the algorithms with which Facebook and other companies curate our newsfeeds. The software should be open to scrutiny and stripped of the secretive distortions with which it creates captive pools of like-minded users. The way Facebook’s software has evolved, it is now relentlessly, iteratively steering human beings into ideology camps, reinforcing groupthink and building an uncompromising liberal-versus-conservative divide.

Let’s be clear: This is no accident; this is a business model. Algorithmic curating allows social media platforms to deliver clearly defined, niche markets—Facebook’s ad marketers call them “look-alike audiences”—to advertisers who pay a “boost” fee to gain prominent placement with those targeted feeds."

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Finally Details Fake News Countermeasures; Reuters via Huffington Post, 11/19/16

Reuters via Huffington Post; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Finally Details Fake News Countermeasures:

"[Mark Zuckerberg] also said Facebook would make it easier to report false content, work with third-party verification organizations and journalists on fact-checking efforts, and explore posting warning labels on content that has been flagged as false. The company will also try to prevent fake-news providers from making money through its advertising system, as it had previously announced.

Zuckerberg said Facebook must be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” he said."

‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos; MarketWatch, 11/17/16

Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch; ‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos’ :

[Kip Currier: Ethics instructors of all stripes were served up a whopping good case study with the story of Tyler Schultz (grandson of former Secretary of State George Schultz) exposing the dazzlingly fraudulent actions of health tech powerhouse, Theranos, Inc. and its now-disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes. This is one that should and will be studied in MBA programs and ethics courses for years.]

"‘Fraud is not a trade secret. I refuse to allow bullying, intimidation and threat of legal action to take away my First Amendment right to speak out against wrongdoing.’"

Teaching an Algorithm to Understand Right and Wrong; Harvard Business Review, 11/15/16

Greg Satell, Harvard Business Review; Teaching an Algorithm to Understand Right and Wrong:

[Kip Currier: This thought-provoking Harvard Business Review article by Greg Satell marks the 1,000th post to this blog in 2016--more than I've posted in the entire previous 6 years since starting the Ethics blog in 2010. Anecdotally, and unsurprisingly, much of this year's posted corpus was plucked from the avalanche of ethics-related content generated via the most tumultuous Presidential Election in U.S. history. Ethics issues in Cyberhacking, Email and Social Media usage, Cyberbullying, Sexual Harassment, Diversity and Inclusion, Surveillance, Privacy, Censorship, "Truth" (Aside #1: Oxford Dictionaries recently declared "post-truth" the Word of the Year!), Fact-checking, Media responsibility, Self-driving cars (Aside #2: I passed an Uber test car on the way to the University of Pittsburgh campus this morning, giving a nod and a thumbs up to the two people sitting in the front seats of their metallic grey-hued autonomous vehicle wending the curves of Bigelow Boulevard's bluffs), and AI ethics provided a glut (and at times, like this summer, what felt like an unrelenting information-tsunami) of postable fodder. Last week's post-2016 election White-Hot-Topic, "Fake News"--with first-hand accounts of cringe-worthy click-incentivized content crafted by transparently unrepentant fake news scribes--remains a still-smoldering one for the blogosphere this week, vying with Conflicts of Interest for the #1 spot at the top. Or bottom, as it were. No risk in predicting that all of these thorny topics will continue to be dissected and debated in 2017. And that ethics issues--both in general and those with an information twist--are more relevant and wide-ranging than ever in our wired world. ]

"In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that it is a fact that “all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good,” but then continues, “What then do we mean by the good?” That, in essence, encapsulates the ethical dilemma. We all agree that we should be good and just, but it’s much harder to decide what that entails.

Since Aristotle’s time, the questions he raised have been continually discussed and debated. From the works of great philosophers like Kant, Bentham, and Rawls to modern-day cocktail parties and late-night dorm room bull sessions, the issues are endlessly mulled over and argued about but never come to a satisfying conclusion.

Today, as we enter a “cognitive era” of thinking machines, the problem of what should guide our actions is gaining newfound importance. If we find it so difficult to denote the principles by which a person should act justly and wisely, then how are we to encode them within the artificial intelligences we are creating? It is a question that we need to come up with answers for soon."

Scholars Delve Deeper Into The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence; NPR, 11/21/16

NPR Staff, NPR; Scholars Delve Deeper Into The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence:

"This month, a law firm gave Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University $10 million to explore the ethics of artificial intelligence — or AI. This comes after industry leaders recently joined together to form the group called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.

Peter Kalis is chairman of the law firm, K&L Gates. He says technology is dashing ahead of the law, leading to questions that were never taken seriously before. Such as what happens when you make robots that are smart, independent thinkers — and then try to limit their autonomy?...

The issues go beyond self-driving cars and renegade robots. Inside the next generation of smartphones, in those chips embedded in home appliances, and the ever-expanding collection of personal data being stored in the "cloud," questions about what's right and wrong are open to study."

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth; New York Times, 11/20/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth:

"Today’s fake news is limited only by the imaginations of its inventors and the number of shares it can garner on Facebook or Twitter.

(To wit: The one million shares of the preposterous notion that Mrs. Clinton secretly sold weapons to ISIS. BuzzFeed News — which has excelled at illuminating the fake news problem — highlighted that example in its alarming analysis showing that during the campaign cycle fake news was shared among Facebook users more often than real news was.)

That’s why people who care about the truth — citizens, journalists and, let’s hope, social media giants like Facebook, too — will have to come up with a solution to this informational nihilism, fast.

It’s easier said than done. The combination of attacks seeking to delegitimize serious news organizations and a drop in overall trust in the news media has made many people wary of legitimate fact-checking."

"Over for Dinner on Thursday"; Bizarro, 11/21/16

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Over for Dinner on Thursday"

How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites; CNet, 11/19/16

Laura Hautala, CNet; How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites:

"How to flag fake news sites

The best tool at your disposal, of course, is common sense. No matter what your political bent, if a story serves only to reinforce your beliefs, it's best to be extra skeptical before sharing it.

If a report is purportedly based on other news stories, find the original source of the information. You might find some of the quotes are correct, but the rest may have been taken out of context or fabricated.

If the potentially false story you're reading doesn't link to an original source, well, that's a bad sign. Use a search engine to look for the keywords in the story to see if that "news" is being reported by any other outlets."

Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it; PC World, 11/21/16

Mark Hachman, PCWorld; Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it:

"We decided to test who’s seeing this partisan fake news, who’s supplying it, and just how obvious it is.

We began our investigation last Monday, as the fake-news controversy gained momentum—and Facebook and Google began blocking sites that traffic in disinformation from their respective advertising networks. We set up two Facebook accounts, one favoring Hillary Clinton, and the other supporting Trump, then let Facebook recommend a series of news pages. In effect, we were asking Facebook to be our news service.

Then we sat back and watched the news roll in. We looked closely at each post to determine whether it was real news, fake news, or something in between."

City ethics board opens an office; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/21/16

Adam Smeltz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; City ethics board opens an office:

"Pittsburgh officials opened an office last week for the city’s reconstituted Ethics Hearing Board.

The board held its first public meeting in several years on Nov. 3, following new ethics legislation approved by Mayor Bill Peduto in October 2015. Board members will receive and investigate complaints under the reworked city Ethics Code, which requires independent and impartial conduct by city workers...

The board, which also can offer advice on ethical conduct, has a website."