International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: New US company owner database ‘taking way too long’ to implement, experts warn. “After ICIJ’s FinCEN Files investigation, transparency advocates cheered a new law mandating a beneficial ownership register in the U.S. Two years later, experts are expressing serious concerns.”
New York Times: At eBay, Lurid Crimes and the Search for Punishment. “‘If you are ever going to take her down .. now is the time.’ Devin Wenig, the chief executive of the e-commerce company eBay, texted those words to a deputy one summer afternoon three years ago. He was upset about a story he had just read. Within days, the writer who was the subject of Mr. Wenig’s wrath and her husband were inundated with offensive material, including live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, a Halloween mask of a bloody pig face and a manual on surviving the death of a spouse.”
International Press Institute: MFRR monitoring report documents attacks on media in Ukraine. “As the war drags on and with no end to hostilities in sight, Ukrainian media continue to adapt to a challenging new economic reality while also navigating the multiple challenges posed by information warfare. MFFR began monitoring Ukraine when the invasion began in February 2022. During the reporting period Ukraine became a candidate country in June 2022. During the first six months of 2022, the platform documented 94 attacks and violations of media freedom involving 142 targets.”
USC: First-of-its-kind media studies lab launches at USC to amplify Black social change makers on the West Coast. “As the University of Southern California’s first media studies center dedicated to saving, studying and sharing the work of prominent and hidden figures who have been central to Black social justice movements in America, the Bass Lab will create a web archive that serves as a repository for Black media and activist journalism. The archive will include digitized newspapers, magazines, photojournalism and scanned 3D objects that tell the story of Black life and culture on the West Coast. Original content in the form of recorded interviews and oral histories will also be featured. ”
Euromaidan Press: Meet the foreign journalists promoting Russia’s war propaganda. “Several foreign journalists in Ukraine are promoting Russian narratives on the war. Although portraying themselves as independent reporters in search of truth, scrutinizing their content and background reveals their own biases, fabulations, and in some cases, connections to the Russian state.”
WINA: Petition launched to bring The Hook archives back online. “The publishers of C-Ville Weekly, who also published The Hook before it was shut down in 2013, transferred ownership of its website/archive to an anonymous buyer last year. Earlier this year, the buyer removed the website/archive from the internet. The publishers of C-Ville Weekly’s have so far refused to explain why they made the decision to sell.”
Thumbsticks: Preserving games media is as important as preserving the games themselves. “Another video game website will soon disappear, along with nearly a decade of articles. In the digital age, more has to be done to preserve video games coverage and criticism.”
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: How to navigate and search ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks Database. “In the first installment of this multi-part video series, ICIJ’s training manager Jelena Cosic walks through the basics of how to search through more than 800,000 offshore entities from the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers and more.”
New York Times: Spiders Are Caught in a Global Web of Misinformation. “Recently, more than 60 researchers from around the world, including Dr. [Catherine] Scott, collected 5,348 news stories about spider bites, published online from 2010 through 2020 from 81 countries in 40 languages. They read through each story, noting whether any had factual errors or emotionally fraught language. The percentage of articles they rated sensationalistic: 43 percent. The percentage of articles that had factual errors: 47 percent.”
Reuters: U.S. lawmakers unveil bill to help news media negotiate with Google, Facebook . “A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Monday released a revised version of a bill aimed at making it easier for news organizations to negotiate collectively with platforms like Google and Facebook.”
Global Investigative Journalism Network: Why Small Investigative Outlets Lead the Way on Newsroom Digital Safety. “It’s no accident that some of the most significant progress in newsroom information security over the past decade has been in smaller, more recently-formed digital startups. While the journalistic community has historically demonstrated a poor understanding and appreciation of the importance of strong information security skills and techniques, smaller outlets are proving they can effectively incorporate strong infosec strategies into their highly adaptive and responsive workflows.”
NiemanLab: Canada’s Online News Act shows how other countries are learning from Australia’s news bill. “Why does Google care what Canada does? The answer likely lies in how this bill evolves and builds on the model implemented in Australia, and the fact that other countries around the world are watching this evolution and developing their own similar laws. The Canadian code probably won’t have a material financial impact on these platforms, but countries learning from each other, improving on the model, and it spreading globally very could. So what does the Online News Act do, what does it get right and wrong, and should it be passed, scrapped or improved?”
Poynter: Australia’s news media bargaining code pries $140 million from Google and Facebook. “More than a year after Australian political parties across the spectrum united around a law that pushed Google and Facebook to pay for the news they distribute, a further 24 smaller media outlets will now receive money from Google. This means that Google has made deals with essentially all qualifying media companies. These deals, and those struck with Facebook, have injected well over $200 million AUD into Australian journalism each year according to Rod Sims, the former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who initiated the Code.”
San Diego Union-Tribune: Administrators of popular Facebook page Tijuana 664 gunned down outside their home . “Anonymous Facebook pages in Tijuana often purport to be offering news, but the content can run the gamut from memes to copy-and-pasted stories from mainstream news organizations to insider crime blogs that offer explicit details about violence in the border city. Many local journalists have publicly spoken out about how the existence of these anonymous pages puts their safety at risk by both encouraging violence and by creating confusion among the public about the role of journalists.”
NiemanLab: The Law & Justice Journalism Project aims to help journalists covering crime and the U.S. legal system. “The impact of bad crime reporting is widespread and it can take years to repair broken trust with audiences. That’s why the Law & Justice Journalism Project is launching: to provide journalists with tools, skills, and resources to improve their coverage of crime, public safety, and the United States legal system.”
