Phone HACKING

OK.

I was totally going to write a post about the whole phone hacking frenzy, and how naming the action of accessing a voicemail box hacking is something like calling two nine-year-olds caught shoplifting a 'heist'.

It was a bit long and nit-picking, and I realised that it sounded like I had the worst inferiority complex, and- y'know, I do have some other stuff to do.

Happily, Doghouse Diaries have taken care of it and I can sleep at night.

(edit)

On a similar note, xkcd:

5 out of 10 news headlines need quote-mark libel-protection

citation jarres

Story: Student (subject and level undefined) inserts fake information into Wikipedia and is thus, by searching on this information, able to see exactly which publications use Wikipedia as a primary, unverified, source.
The execution is commendable: a compelling but fairly plausible, inoffensive, quote inserted into the biography of a relatively low-profile, if obituary-worthy, composer - a prime target for frantic internet searching from same-day deadline journalists.

If the guy who did this (one Shane Fitzgerald) has a blog I can't find it. It would be interesting to see a list of major publictions that used the quote - I kinda feel like blogs don't count, and so far I've found The Guardian (who brought the story to public attention and so covered their backs slightly, and have since changed the original article) and The Independent (who haven't at all covered their tracks).

The guy emailed them all a month later to explain what he'd done, so I'm guessing other publications may have since done an edit. Or they didn't use the quote. Who knows. But this was a pretty good way of trying to find out.

for all your satirical needs

this handy chart (from wired.com)

blinkered and happy, but still hopeful

article in The Economist the other day looking at the interrelating effects of competition and bias in the media.

I'm sometimes left pondering the fact that I love The Guardian so much even though in the main it only reinforces my views and opinions - this comfort pleasant, but is this the reason we read the news?
well... if you replace 'follow the news' with 'consume the news media' then it's a lot easier agree that pretty much so, yeah.

anyways, so the study this was looking at is particularly notable for its relatively simple but kinda innovative use of natural language processing to extract information (first processing transcripts of Congress to identify partisan phrases, then measuring their occurrence in newspaper dialog - the innovation being that even relatively subtle differences can be objectively, effectively, used in this way to identify rhetoric)

the conclusion drawn - that it is exactly the slant that each media has that leads to its profitability - is not astounding, but it is interesting that apparently even small deviations from this optimal slant have observable effects on circulation. also new to me is the finding that there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between the slant and the newspaper's ownership - being totally market-targeted does make sense, but it's still at least a little surprising.
ok, so this kind of capitalist democracy of information is naturally blinkered in each individual instance, but as they say better than I do in pointing out the advantages:

None of this is particularly helpful to seekers of the unvarnished truth. These conscientious sorts still have to find the time to read lots of newspapers to get an unbiased picture of the world. But by serving demand from a variety of political niches, competition does allow for different points of view to be represented.

(we knew most of this already, right? but it's nice that someone's done some stats on it)

I wouldn't do her either, but.

( ^ Repulsive, but still) Bit of an article on media sexism ..can't say I paid much attention til recently, with the whole presidential race and the amount of sex/attractiveness/womanliness-judgement comments thrown at the candidates going past the point of irony. ok, this is not going to go anywhere near a discussion of inherent gender differences, arguably innate perception and still quite relevant character judgements... but still. there were just so. many. better. reasons. to criticise Palin or Clinton than ones relative to our ideas of femininity. why do more male writers not get called out as being vapid when they come out with those kinda things? not that female journalists get it thrown at them too much either... umm.... update: women/media/perception of relationships ..but I'm hoping that the slights at Will Young (handbag / 'vanilla sex' - c'mon, everyone says vanilla these days, and I didn't know it came from that...) are some kinda irony. or is she just trying to even the balance? not sure this is the way to go about it. ok, I'm not gonna talk about sexism again. for a while.