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Bombings Trip Up Reddit in Its Turn in Spotlight

April 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

After site members, known as Redditors, turned into amateur sleuths and ended up wrongly identifying several people as possible suspects, Reddit went from a font of crowdsourced information to a purveyor of false accusations, to the subject of a reprimand by the president of the United States himself, to the center of another furious debate about the responsibilities of digital media.

Last Monday, Erik Martin, the site’s general manager, posted an apology, saying, “Activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened.”

In a subsequent interview, however, Mr. Martin was unclear about how it might play out differently in the future.  “We could have reminded people about our rules on the disclosure of personal information; we could have shut down the subReddit earlier than the moderators shut it down,” he suggested. (SubReddit is a name for threads of conversation that develop on the site.)

But, he added, except for higher vigilance and a moderation of discussion “tone,” the site was not ready to institute new rules of behavior. “Reddit is a sort of attention aggregator,” he said. “It can tell you what to pay attention to, but it is certainly not a replacement for news reporting.”

While Reddit has never pretended to be a news organization, it is learning that as it grows bigger and more influential the rest of the world expects it to exercise judgment — judgment that is often at odds with the freewheeling culture it and its members prize. (Internet host sites are shielded by federal law from liability for the speech of their users.)

Other sites have felt the need to police themselves after being scrutinized in similar situations. Craigslist, which carries classified ads of all kinds, suspended its adult services offerings in 2010 after more than a dozen state attorneys general threatened action against it, complaining that it was promoting prostitution. Last year Google, the owner of YouTube, blocked a video that mocked Islam in Libya and Egypt as violent reaction to the video spread in those countries.

This is not the first time Reddit has found itself in an embarrassing situation, and by some accounts the timing now could not be worse.

“They are sort of a subculture ready to break into the mainstream and it is too bad this was the moment,” said Robert Quigley, a senior lecturer for the College of Communication at the University of Texas, Austin.

Started in 2005 by two University of Virginia graduates, Reddit is essentially an updated version of the electronic bulletin board in which registered users, anonymous or otherwise, can post a comment or a link on a topic deemed worthy (subjects vary from pornography to cat tricks to science). Users can then vote the posts up or down as they add their own commentary.

The most popular posts appear on Reddit’s home page. A recent example is a bizarre picture of the teenage idol Justin Bieber in a ski mask with a bodyguard in a zippered one-piece sweatsuit.

The site’s traffic has more than doubled in the past 12 months, and it currently reports some 62 million unique visitors a month. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in 2006, but in 2012 was spun off as a separate entity. Advance Publications, Condé Nast’s parent company, remains the largest stockholder.

Although it is not a news organization, Reddit is used by young people as a place where they can tap into trends that do not appear on mainstream sites. It has also become an in-the-know stop for celebrities and politicians looking to gain traction with that age group. President Obama made Reddit his last official campaign stop in the waning hours of the 2012 election.

Like many digital operations, Reddit, which is based in San Francisco, keeps its staff mean and lean. It has 25 employees, and uses volunteers to police its Web site to make sure rules are obeyed. Among Reddit’s basic rules are a prohibition against vote manipulation, spam, child pornography and revealing other people’s personal information.

Still, anyone who starts a subReddit essentially becomes its dictator, deciding who can moderate and who has access. This has not always turned out so well.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/bombings-trip-up-reddit-in-its-turn-in-spotlight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder: The Atlantic Apologizes for Scientology Ad

January 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The Atlantic on Tuesday issued a simple three-word apology for publishing an advertisement by the Church of Scientology that resembled a normal article from the acclaimed magazine: “We screwed up.”

The Web page, published around lunchtime on Monday, was labeled as “sponsor content,” but otherwise looked like a sunny blog post about the church’s expansion. The page was titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year.” It was noticed by reporters at other news organizations on Monday evening and was stripped from The Atlantic’s site by midnight.

“It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes,” The Atlantic said in a statement. “We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way.”

In other words: The Web site published Scientology’s ad without considering all the consequences.

The Atlantic is far from the only digital publisher pitching advertisers on what is known as sponsored content. Gawker and BuzzFeed are among the other Web sites that have gained attention for the practice, which places an advertiser’s words and visuals (the content) within the frame of the site. The Huffington Post has a whole section front for sponsored content.

But no instance of sponsored content has come under as much criticism as this one. Gawker called the sponsored Web page “bizarre, blatant propaganda for Scientology.” Others raised questions about why all the comments on the page were supportive of the church, indicating that critical comments were being deleted. A spokeswoman for The Atlantic said that the comments were moderated by its marketing team, not by the editorial team that moderates comments on normal articles.

At the same time, others defended the arrangement as a smart business move. The church’s ad buy comes at a time when it is trying to blunt the impact of a new book about the secretive religion by Lawrence Wright, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.” The book will be published on Thursday.

On the same day, the NBC newsmagazine “Rock Center with Brian Williams” will broadcast an interview with the writer and director Paul Haggis, described by the network as “the most famous Scientologist to leave Scientology and speak out against it.”

The Atlantic said on Tuesday that it deleted the Scientology ad “until we figure all of this out,” meaning the policies that govern sponsored content.

“It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand,” the magazine said.

The magazine indicated that it was not backing away from sponsored content altogether, far from it: “We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge — sheepishly — that we got ahead of ourselves.” The statement concluded, ”We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.”

The Atlantic spokeswoman said that the handling of comments on sponsored content is one of the issues it is going to review.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/the-atlantic-apologizes-for-scientology-ad/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Cape Cod Paper Apologizes for Reporter’s Misdeeds

December 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The article, written by Karen Jeffrey, a longtime reporter, told of a “Ronald Chipman,” 46, and his family from Boston. The Chipmans apparently were oblivious about Veterans Day until they saw the parade. Ms. Jeffrey described the family in detail, including a scene in which the parents used their smartphones to find information about the holiday, creating a “teachable moment” for themselves and their children.

Maybe it was the tidiness of the tale. Or the notion that adults were unfamiliar with Veterans Day. But the article did not ring true to the editor, and she set out to find the Chipmans. She searched several databases but turned up nothing. She reported her finding to the editor in chief, Paul Pronovost.

Mr. Pronovost asked the editor to check other recent articles by Ms. Jeffrey. After more people in the articles could not be found, he then asked Ms. Jeffrey for help in locating the Chipmans. Ms. Jeffrey said she had thrown out her notes.

“That’s when the alarm bells went off,” Mr. Pronovost said. He ordered a full-scale review of her work. For three days, three editors pored over a public-records database called Accurint. They examined voter rolls and town assessor records. They checked Facebook profiles and made phone calls. And they concluded that, over the years, Ms. Jeffrey had written dozens of articles that included people who did not exist.

The next day, Dec. 5, Mr. Pronovost and the publisher, Peter Meyer, wrote a front-page apology to their readers.

“In an audit of her work, Times editors have been unable to find 69 people in 34 stories since 1998, when we began archiving stories electronically,” they wrote.

“Jeffrey admitted to fabricating people in some of these articles and giving some others false names,” they added. “She no longer works at the paper.”

The episode shocked those at The Cape Cod Times, which has a daily circulation of 36,000 and Sunday circulation of almost 40,000.

Before the apology appeared, Mr. Pronovost told newsroom staff members what had happened. “Some people had no idea at all, and some probably were shocked by the scope of what we were talking about,” he said in a recent interview in his office here. And some “just simply couldn’t believe” that Ms. Jeffrey would so such a thing.

Ms. Jeffrey, 59, who had been at the paper since 1981, was perceived as reliable. She had covered the police and courts for many years, and there were no questions raised about the people in those stories. It was only her softer features — about parades, a Red Sox home opener, a road race — that contained fabrications.

Ms. Jeffrey has not made any public statements and did not respond to several requests from The New York Times for comment. Mr. Pronovost said, “I did ask ‘why’ but she didn’t have an answer.”

Her falsifications puzzled some precisely because they involved the easy articles.

“You go to the parade, you get a quote, you put it in the story,” said Matt Pitta, the news director at Qantum Communications, which owns four radio stations in Hyannis and competes with The Cape Cod Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. “It’s not like trying to get a quote from an indicted politician who won’t speak to you.”

Many people also wondered how her fabrications could have gone on for 14 years without being discovered. Of course, nonexistent people do not call up to complain. But Mr. Pronovost said that her editors saw no red flags.

Among those most surprised were the law enforcement officers who worked with Ms. Jeffrey.

“She was always fair and accurate,” said Sheriff James M. Cummings of Barnstable County. Learning that she had fabricated stories, he said, was “like a punch in the gut.”

Detective Lt. Bob Melia of the Massachusetts State Police said that Ms. Jeffrey was a good reporter. “She reported it like it is,” he said. “If we asked her, ‘Can you keep that information out?’ she would say, ‘No, I can’t, it has to be part of the story.’ We respected her.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us/cape-cod-paper-apologizes-for-reporters-misdeeds.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: Tuesday Reading: Do You Need a Coach?

October 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

October 18

Tuesday Reading: Do You Need a Coach?

Determining whether you need a coach, free BlackBerry apps as an apology for service disruptions, weight-loss surgery’s family benefits and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ec51b8cc0f0f35b96946ec947e278422

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Media Decoder Blog: Hackers Take Over NBC Twitter Account

September 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A Twitter account belonging to NBC News was hacked on Friday evening by an entity that claimed, falsely, that an airplane had crashed at the site of ground zero in New York.

The account was swiftly taken offline and the news division apologized. The incident was deemed serious enough that the news anchor Brian Williams read the apology out loud on the “NBC Nightly News.”

“The NBC News Twitter account was hacked late this afternoon and as a result, false reports of a plane attack on ground zero were sent to @NBCNews followers,” the statement issued by the news division and read by Mr. Williams said. “We are working with Twitter to correct the situation and sincerely apologize for the scare that could have been caused by such a reckless and irresponsible act.”

The NBC Twitter account had about 130,000 followers, only a fraction of whom likely saw the Twitter message when it was posted. Still, the false claim rippled across the short messaging Web site in a matter of minutes, alarming some people on a day of heightened anxieties about potential terrorist attacks. Authorities have warned of a nonspecific bomb threat possibly tied to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The attacks will be commemorated at ground zero on Sunday.

The false claim was knocked down with impressive speed on Friday, suggesting that both Twitter and news organizations are learning how to grapple with such incidents.

Ryan Osborn, the director of social media for NBC News, said he saw the hackers’ Twitter message appear online about 40 seconds after it was posted. He was already logged into the account and quickly realized that the password had been changed. “We are taking this breach very seriously,” said Mr. Obsorn, who said the organization has existing security and password policies in place.

Mr. Osborn contacted officials at Twitter, and he said they suspended the account within eight minutes, including the account that claimed responsibility for the hack.

What helped minimize the spread of misinformation was that employees inside NBC News — and others on Twitter who recognized that the account had been hacked — immediately sent out tweets saying so. “We have a great community throughout this building and throughout the Web,” Mr. Osborn said. “It was great to see people correct such terrible misinformation.”

He added, “For anyone who works in journalism, it is terrifying to see people not respect facts. It is scary.”

Twitter declined to comment on the incident, citing a policy against commenting on individual accounts. In July, when a Twitter account belonging to Fox News was hacked and was used to disseminate false claims about President Obama, the Web site issued this series of tips about account security.

Twitter said earlier this week that it now had about 100 million active users each month, some of whom depend on the service for news and information.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5955be550126413b612f70dcfd1343b8

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