On local TV stations across the United States, news anchors have been delivering the exact same message to their viewers. “Our greatest responsibility,” they begin by saying, “is to serve our communities.”
But what they are being forced to say next has left many questioning whom those stations are really being asked to serve.
On today’s episode:
• Sydney Ember, a New York Times business reporter who covers print and digital media.
• Aaron Weiss, who worked several years ago as a news director for Sinclair in Sioux City, Iowa.
Background reading:
• Anchors at local news stations across the country made identical comments about media bias. The script came from their owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group.
• David D. Smith, the chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, said his stations were no different from network news outlets.
• The largest owner of local TV stations, Sinclair has a history of supporting Republican causes.
Audio
🎧 ‘The Daily’: From Fox to Twitter to the National Guard | The New York Times
It started with a report on Fox News, and ended with calls for troops at the border with Mexico. We look at how President Trump’s approach to immigration transformed over 72 hours.
We look at how President Trump’s approach to immigration transformed over just 72 hours.
On today’s episode:
• Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who covers the White House for The New York Times.
Background reading:
• President Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to deploy the National Guard to the border with Mexico to confront what the White House calls the growing threat posed by illegal immigrants and crime.
• Three days of presidential tweets contained many false and misleading accusations. Here’s a fact-check.
Another data point in the story that we have a System 1 only President who completely lacks any System 2 capabilities.
🎧 This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • March 31st – April 6th, 2018 | Marty McGuire
IndieWeb for Drupal, IndieWeb for Businesses, and Foodspotting going under. It’s the audio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for March 31st - April 6th, 2018.
🎧 Mitch Landrieu | The Atlantic Interview
A white southern mayor confronts the history in his city.
"There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it," said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in his now-famous speech in May of 2017. As Landrieu said those words, city workers a few blocks away uprooted an enormous statue of Robert E. Lee – the last of four Confederate monuments the mayor removed from the city after a years-long process. In a conversation with The Atlantic's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Landrieu discusses the politics of race in the south, his grappling with history as a white southerner, and his own family’s connection to the story of civil rights in America.
I miss the days when I had a seemingly unending backlog of episodes to listen to. Now I just wait with bated breath for them to be released.
I love extended interviews on small topics like this one. This does a really good job of taking a look at some of the broader details behind removing Confederate statues in New Orleans.
🎧 This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition March 24th – 30th, 2018
Marty McGuire from martymcgui.reAudio edition for This Week in the IndieWeb for March 24th - 30th, 2018.
You can find all of my audio editions and subscribe with your favorite podcast app here: martymcgui.re/podcasts/indieweb/.
Music from Aaron Parecki’s 100DaysOfMusic project: Day 85 - Suit, Day 48 - Glitch, Day 49 - Floating, Day 9, and Day 11
The phrase "free as in facebook", may be making a comeback. Coined by Enrico Zini on his blog in 2015 to describe a captive wifi portal that requested personal information before giving access to the internet, it can be generalized to describe any service offered without charge in exchange for behavioral tracking, ongoing surveillance, or other monitoring, along with sale of any such information to third parties.
Angèle Christin, an assistant professor of communication at Stanford, published a study in The American Journal of Sociology exploring how real-time analytics such as click tracking affected journalists in two newsrooms, one in the U.S. and one in France. Christin explains that focusing on "clicks" certainly leads to clickbait stories about cats and celebrities, but notes that different journalists have different reasons for adapting their writing to increase clicks. [1]
🎧 This Week in Google 451 B055man69 | TWiT.TV
Shooting at YouTube Headquarters. Facebook's continuing kerfuffle. Apple snags Google's AI head. Chromebooks on school buses. Cheaper Pixel 3 on the way - but not for you. Trump vs. Amazon. Security breaches here, security breaches there, even in our underwear. Don't leave your pepperoni on the hotel balcony.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Prospect of Pardons | The New York Times
As the special counsel built his case against Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, pressure was mounting for the men to to cooperate with the Russia inquiry.Then a lawyer for President Trump came to them with an idea: What if the president were to pardon his former advisers?
On today’s episode:
• Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the Russia investigation for The New York Times.
Background reading:
• The talks about possible pardons for two former Trump adviserssuggest that the White House was concerned about what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort might reveal to the special counsel in the Russia investigation.
Presidents should not be able to grant or push potential pardons in actions in which they’re so closely involved.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: A Cold War Flashback | The New York Times
Eight years ago, the United States and Russia agreed to a spy swap that sent a Russian double agent to safety in Britain. That former spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent this month, and the Kremlin has been accused of orchestrating the attack. Why did it happen now?
On today’s episode:
• Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.
Background reading:
• President Trump joined a coordinated campaign by more than 20 countries to retaliate for the poisoning of a former Russian spy, ordering the largest-ever expulsion of Russian officials in the United States.
• It may not be a new Cold War, but relations with Russia are in some ways even more unpredictable.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: When Gun Violence Is a Daily Threat | The New York Times
As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators prepared to march in Washington in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., students on the South Side of Chicago felt sympathy, but also frustration.
Why hadn’t the gun violence in their community earned the nation’s outrage?
On today’s episode:
• Sameen Amin, a senior video producer at The New York Times.
Background coverage:
• Video: Ke’Shon Newman’s brother was shot and killed on the South Side of Chicago, where gun violence is a daily threat. He decided to join the march in Washington with high school students from Parkland, Fla.
• For some students who joined protests against gun violence over the weekend, bloodshed doesn’t come in isolated bursts of mass slaughter, it’s a constant urban reality.
• Highlights from the March for Our Lives: Students protesting guns say “enough is enough.”
🎧 This Week in Tech 660 Bankwupt | TWiT.TV
Hosted by Leo Laporte
Guests: Wesley Faulkner, Alex Wilhelm, Andy Ihnatko
Best April Fools Tech Jokes. Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service. Apple's Education Event. US wants visa applicants' social media accounts. Tim Cook talks privacy. Ready Player One review. SpaceX's satellite internet plans. Fatal Tesla crash.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Racism’s Punishing Reach | The New York Times
For decades, Americans have believed that the best way to end racial inequality is to end class inequality. But a landmark 30-year study is debunking that logic.
On today’s episode:
• Emily Badger writes about cities and urban policy for The Upshot, The New York Times’s data-driven venture.
• William O. Jawando worked in the Obama administration on My Brother’s Keeper, a mentoring initiative for black boys.
Background reading:
• Extensive data shows the punishing reach of racism for black boys.
Is there no humanity left in the world? The more I see and hear of the world, the more I want to remove the positive connotation that the word humanity is frequently assigned.
This story is both very powerful and painfully depressing for me, and yet I know there are many that are still far worse. I hope we can find something in these statistics that can help drastically improve the paying field.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Can Facebook Be Fixed? | The New York Times
Five days after details about Cambridge Analytica were made public, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, broke his silence on his company’s role in the data breach.
Minutes after posting a statement on Facebook, he spoke with The New York Times.
On today’s episode:
• Kevin Roose, a business columnist for The Times.
Background reading:
• Facebook, in crisis over the Cambridge Analytica data breach, vows to bolster security and privacy.
• A transcript of Mr. Zuckerberg’s conversation with Mr. Roose and another Times reporter, Sheera Frenkel.
I think Roose humanizes Zuckerberg a bit too much in his discussion of his interview. Facebook has some of the best and brightest engineering talent and a multi-billion dollar war chest. They’ve known about their pending problem for quite a while now and should have long since begun building a remedy. The plain truth is that they’ve actively chosen not to. Worse, even with the swirling problems in the public consciousness, they’re not actively doing anything much to fix things after-the-fact other than paying it some lip service. If Zuckerberg is as seemingly naive as Roose suggests, he needs to be removed from his position.
I’m coming much closer to calling it quits on Facebook. I’ve outlined a plan for extracting myself and just need to begin implementation. I’ve even got a potential scalable plan for family/friends who would like to leave as well.
I actually feel like my remaining on the platform is subsidizing keeping many third world people on it, and the way Facebook has been and is operating in many other countries it becomes a moral issue which is forcing me to actively seek to leave it.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Data Harvesters” | The New York Times
A young Canadian data expert came up with a plan to harvest people’s personal data off Facebook, and to use that information to influence their voting.
On today’s episode:
• Matthew Rosenberg, a New York Times reporter in Washington.
Background reading:
• Consultants for the Trump campaign exploited the Facebook data of 50 million people.
• Cambridge Analytica offered to entrap politicians through seduction or bribery.
• How researchers use Facebook “likes” to sway your thinking.
A fantastic overview of the background for the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica story.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Putin’s Grip on Russia | The New York Times
President Vladimir V. Putin has been elected to a fourth term, drawing support from more than three-quarters of voters. How is the most powerful man in Russia staying that way?
On today’s episode:
• Steven Lee Myers, a former Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times who covered Vladimir V. Putin’s rise to power and who is the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.”
Background reading:
• The long-serving Russian leader has become a model for the modern autocrat.
• Russian voters gave Mr. Putin their resounding approval for a fourth term on Sunday.
A great, but brief overview of Vladimir Putin and his backstory leading up to his present position.
🎧 This Week in Google 450 I Just Swallowed a Pollywog | TWiT.TV
Oracle vs Google, Google vs Apple
Google owes Oracle $8.8 Billion Dollars. Apple and Google fight over the classroom. Should everyone stop using Facebook? Should everybody stop using Twitter? Should everybody start using Google Plus?
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