Tweeting fire in a crowded theater…

That’s what British PM David Cameron essentially argues happened in the U.K. riots.  Two men received four-year jail terms Wednesday for inflammatory Facebook posts. Never mind that nobody but police showed up for one bloke’s post about a “Smash Down” and the other man created a riot page as a drunken joke.

Just over 1,000 people have been charged with rioting and looting in London alone, and more than double that number were arrested in the street battles that have left at least five dead. Such horrible violence and wanton destruction is frightening, but thus far no arrests concerning social media posts have been connected to actual rioting. Fear and freedom face off.

Shift to American history … Back in World War I, Charles Schenck tried to pass out anti-draft leaflets to recently drafted servicemen. It didn’t matter that he never actually convinced a draftee to oppose the war effort; Schenck was convicted of espionage. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that such protests created a clear and present danger to national security.  Schenck, Holmes said, was as dangerous as someone falsely crying fire in crowded theater. Freedom of speech could be forfeited when lots of people could die from that speech.

Holmes backed off his staunch position within a year but the U.S. Courts held onto the theater metaphor for another 50 years. That’s when the courts adopted an “imminent” standard, separating actual harm from intent. In other words, the threat had to be real.

The British Parliament continues to debate whether shutting down the internet in times of severe unrest is legal or even possible. As in U.S. law, the focus for such action seems to be on imminent danger.

However, the sentences for Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe Keenan, the two men charged with inciting social disorder via Facebook, appear to be more about looking tough on crime than actually being tough. The greater ethical issues beyond the force of law are becoming apparent.

These two Facebook posters exhibited extraordinarily poor judgment. However, imposing harsh sentences on them does not make the British any safer, nor does it address the very real crises that lead to the riots in the first place.

Tornados, Floods and Fears

My 10-year-old went into an absolute panic as we drove along listening to an NPR story about the Southern tornado and flood devastation. We will be leaving Washington in a matter of months for my new job at Eastern Kentucky. Spokane has snow, lots and lots of snow, but not tornadoes. The power and destruction seemed like an alien animal to her, one she could not get her brain around.

Japan’s tsunami videos were fresh in her mind and she could not imagine gradations of awful that might be inflicted on Alabama. Once home, she huddled beside me as I paged through Facebook checking the status of Southern friends. I was grateful for social networking connections that let me immediately find out who was safe, whose house was hurt, who knew of those who had been injured or worse. My daughter had more basic needs. She asked, “What does a tornado look like?” Just then a friend posted Chris England’s video, the viral one of the twister approaching the University of Alabama. I debated showing a frightened child the truth of her fears, but I took a deep breath and pressed play.

My daughter watched the storm intensely, and gradually her shoulders began to relax and she lessened the grip on my arm. “That’s really big and scary,” she said. “If I saw that coming, I would go hide in the basement.” Then, she sighed and picked up her homework. Armed with information, my daughter found a way to face her fears. Truth gave her power.

Apple and the Ethics of Indiscretion

Which is worse: That your iPhone is tracking your every move without you knowing about it, or that this little feature was corporate accident? Apple better come up with a reason other than, “We didn’t mean to.”

Lawmakers are clamoring for an explanation that has yet to be forthcoming. New York Times’ David Pogue says the whole tracking thing just isn’t that big a deal: What else should we expect? In fact, the computer programmers who discovered it first thought the whole thing was rather nifty, at least until they realized that other people might be able to follow them. It’s not just that the data is being collected; it’s that the data is unprotected, unencrypted, unprotected, uneverything.

Perhaps spouses tracking errant partner’s iPhone whereabouts seems minor, but ITPro notes the trackers may also leave iPhone users more vulnerable to cyber thieves. But we really don’t know. We don’t know the intent Apple developers had any more than we know what the tracker might be capable of doing. Apple at the moment is oddly silent.

Privacy International director Simon Davies posted an Open Letter to Steve Jobs asking for transparency on Apple’s privacy policies, particularly in light of this tracking surprise. The London-based group’s deputy director Gus Hosein put it best: “Apple seriously screwed up here …  I don’t know how, but over the years, location data has suddenly become fair game.” And, that location data can be “very, very dangerous information to be collecting, particularly in such a haphazard way.”

Foursquare allows us to pick and choose when we tell friends where we are, and we at least get a coffee discount for the privilege of sharing. The lack of control is what is so troubling. Neilson reports today more than half of smartphone users are concerned about the privacy violations in location tracking, and that data was collected before the iPhone story broke.

Maybe we should expect to be followed. But it would be good to know whether those who are following us, actually know what they are doing.

Losing our Minds: Rise of Tablets Doesn’t Mean Rise in Reading

Sure, the birth of the tablet has been largely credited with fall of Borders and the decline of the American bookstore, at least according to the Economist. Yet Google‘s newly released study shows 84 percent of tablet users mostly play games, while less than half read e-books. That means bookstores still may have hope once the tablet novelty wears off … or reading is declining…again.

The National Endowment for the Arts called the decline of reading a national crisis in 2004, but enthusiastically reported a surprise boost in 2009 with more than half of all Americans reading literature. It remains unclear what impact the tablet really will have on American literacy in the long haul.

Every major technology has faced a similar crisis. Radio promised educational and art opportunities as justification for its advancement and led to the birth of popular music. Radio gave Bach to the backwoods and Lady Gaga, too. Television promised the same educational and arts opportunities, giving us Masterpiece Theater and also Kate Plus Eight. We shouldn’t be surprised that tablets offer us Angry Birds along with the complete portable works of Jane Austen.

Perhaps the tablet is the best and latest answer to the problem of bowling alone: you can be isolated as you play your favorite game but look hip instead of lonely.

U.S. Military Counters Extremism with Truth, a.k.a. Lies

The U.S. Military is creating fake profiles on foreign social media web sites designed to counter extremist viewpoints and paint a more attractive portrait of American policy. The new software is called the cutting edge of psychological warfare.

“The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries,” The Guardian reports. Apparently Facebook, Twitter, and sites operating in English will not be targeted because well, that would be engaging in psychological warfare on our own people.

The reasons why a fake profile approach is bad seem pretty self-evident but let’s lay them out anyway:

• American credibility in countries these profiles are targeted, places with languages such as Farsi, is already pretty low. Folks there are going to get wind of this little trick. That means any posting by anyone remotely pro-American is going to be even more suspect. Misrepresentation cheapens genuine public support.
• Lessons should be learned from the oft-criticised State Department “Shared Values” campaign from the Bush era. Only a handful of researchers have suggested the program actually worked. Whether such propaganda was successful or not, isn’t really the point. Truth should be the hallmark of American messages if we want to have real relationships with our world neighbors, Sheldon Rampton argued. Propaganda is the tool of those who merely wish to maintain power.
• Misrepresentation is a lie that insults the intelligence of an enemy and frankly places that enemy outside the social contract, Sissela Bok believes. Creating fake profiles is just another way of saying, “They are lying so anything we do is justified.” So, lies are told to promote a greater truth. That’s a pretty twisted justification for an effort encouraging American-style democracy.

In one of my first reporting jobs, my colleagues and I were pretty frustrated with how we were being managed. Our supervisors created a cash award for whomever was deemed to have the best attitude. Rather than actually listening to us or trying to make better working conditions, they tried to buy us off. It didn’t work. I can’t help but wonder if the situation is that different in the Middle East. Rather than trying to trick people into thinking favorably about Americans, perhaps we might actually engage people with integrity. Perhaps we could try actual truth spoken by real people, instead of pretend truth created by fake people.

Bar Karma and “What Others Receive”

For the cutting edge crowd-sourced drama Bar Karma to survive, CurrentTV creators need to listen to a little bit of music.

The show’s writers could use some help from Darren Solomon. He asked a bunch of musicians to create two-minute scores that could be played randomly and simultaneously on YouTube in InBFlat and on Google Maps in marker/music. 

InBFlat is fully crowd-sourced drawing on random musicians who submitted entries and the viewer’s ability to pick and choose from 20 instrument selections. Try a combination of glass marimba, electric guitar, and DSi synthesizer. marker/music narrowed the focus to a single community in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Solomon worked with students and faculty at Northern State University and placed the locations of recordings on a Google Map.

Solomon’s ethic of interactivity requires that everybody involved really participate. Yes, he makes the final cut on what sounds but the actual content is fully developed by the whole. And that is where Bar Karma falls down.

Crowd-source viewers are developing intriguing plots for Bar Karma, coming up with great variations on what happens when “a guy walks into a bar.” In this case, the bar is sort of a cosmic waystation drawing everyone from a writer whose children’s book leads to a terrorist attack to patient in the middle of highly questionable surgery.  It’s the professional team of writers who are falling flat. So the viewer part of crowd sourcing seems to be working out well, dispelling fears the program design would be just a gimmick.

Early reviewers of the first show begged for better conversations to live out the complex plots, but so far that hasn’t happened. A change of philosophy is in order. It’s not enough to say you really want to be interactive … you have to take the plunge for real. For this show to make it, the creators are going to have to throw the dialogue out for public editing just as they threw everything out from a Mazda product placement to the theme music. Frankly, the public can’t do any worse than show’s current dialogue.

 The last line of the only narrative option InBFlat gives the ethic that Bar Karma needs: “It’s not about what I produce. It’s all about what others receive.”

Gaddafi losing social media war

Perhaps one day world dictators will be effective in using social media to be persuasive. That didn’t happen today. Even as rumors swirled that Gaddafi has been shot, the Libyan government sent out a mass text message threatening protesters they would face soldiers armed with “real bullets” if they showed up for demonstrations today. They came anyway and the death toll is rising.

More benign government text messages asked workers to open stores and return to their jobs, and called on parents to keep children out of protests. All reports indicate those messages were not persuasive. Other pro-government messages promised phone credits to users who forwarded them.

And meanwhile, more than 10, 000 people signed up for a single Facebook protest page. One English language page had over 6,000 fans.

As in Egypt, barring the foreign media was ineffective at stopping information. A smart phone comes in and out of view as this camera records citizen attacks:

Mashable’s Chris Taylor points out that while revolutionaries long have been successful without technology, information has always been power. Placing information technology in the hands of people means Thomas Hobbes had it right: even the mighty can be overturned. A 58-year-old Libyan man with a cell phone was able to give eye-witness accounts in one of the most incredible interviews NPR ever produced. Link and listen.

A threat to the credibility of such interviews is their anonymity. No matter how compelling the story or how necessary anonymity may be, unnamed sources still pose the same threats to truth as in old media. Last summer, news reports circulated widely that North Korea created its own Facebook page, after launching YouTube and Twitter accounts. Forbes sent the Dear Leader a fax asking if the sites belonged to his government. A very polite response came: No, we don’t do that sort of thing. In fact, such sites are banned. Supporters outside the country created the accounts. So, North Korea did not spread international propaganda; the assumption just was that if propaganda was spread then it must be come from the government.

The check and balance to internet anonymity is internet accessibility. Lies and misattributions tend to surface in a free and open environment, even if that environment is a very thin wire.

Ethics of disclosure

After the initial shock of Lara Logan’s brutal beating and sexual assault, another realization hit me: CBS was announcing that one of its own reporters had been raped …. not in a 60 Minutes special six months later, but within days after it happened. The Central Park jogger was silent for 14 years. Even Elizabeth Smart continues to be refered to as a kidnap victim rather than sexual assault victim nearly a decade later.

I want to hear from Logan herself before deciding whether CBS’s decision to report is solid. Once the dust settles, here’s what I want to know:

• Was the decision to report on Logan’s rape made in the intensity of the moment? Good ethical decisions certainly can be, but how was Logan part of the discussion?
• Was this a policy decision made in advance in case the horrible happened? If so, who participated in making that policy? Suggesting a policy might have been created is not a criticism. I just want to know if there is one and how it got there.
• Chances unfortunately are high that Logan was not the only woman assaulted last week in Cairo. Certainly other Egyptian women may have been victims, as well as other members of news crews? What are their stories?
• How will CBS support all the victims in its employ?

ProPublica reporter Kim Baker appauled Logan for breaking the female correspondent’s code of silence. She also fears that women may be pulled off international stories, even though men have been sexually assaulted, too.  The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University has called for better strategies for media managers to support their staff members effectively after crises. As many as 86 percent of journalists have witnessed some kind of violent trauma and more than a quarter of war correspondents experience PTSD.

In the months ahead, Logan will tell her story. In the meantime, lots of people, including Nir Rosen, are going to try to capitalize on what happened to Logan. Nir Rosen mocked her in a bad tweet, then recanted to Anderson Cooper, and resigned his NYU fellowship. In his Salon piece, Rosen blames his bad judgement at least in part on his own trauma of covering the Middle East. That makes about as much sense as trying to blame Logan for the mob’s actions.

Rape is a personal assault to everything personal and private. How and when that information is shared can be a means to regaining dignity. I expect that Logan will reveal she supported CBS’ decision to report the sexual assault, and she even may have insisted that the news be released.  Other journalists victimized in the future may make the same choice, while some will want assault to remain private. Each should be given opportunity to decide for themselves.

Me and Al … Jezeera

Turn on Al Jezeera’s live feed. Go ahead. Do you feel a bit hip, edgy, maybe cooler than your less media savvy friends? Don’t just follow AJEnglish; actually retweet an Al Jezeera story. Now how do you feel? Do you wonder what your friends will think or whether Homeland Security just flagged your Twitter account? Did you just condone terrorism?

By now you have discovered that while 220 million households in 100 countries can watch Al Jezeera on their television sets, you probably are going to have to watch it via YouTube. Yes, you can watch Al Jezeera on TV in Israel but you can’t in most American cities. U.S. cable network execs have that same nagging feeling you do when thinking about giving Al Jezeera some of your Twitter time: What will people think?

Just so you know, Al Jezeera has tech savvy citizen journalism programs in addition to boasting a host of international journalism awards. The organization even has a Demand Al Jezeera campaign that lets you send a plea to your local cable or satellite provider to bring the network to your television set. Watching Al Jezeera on your own time is one thing; outing yourself as an Al Jezeera fan is another.

Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik put it best: Al Jezeera owned the Egypt coverage. Even CNN was following them. Every network may have captured the cheering crowds but Al Jezeera was the only one that gave us the music. Unfortunately, fear screams louder.

I put together a set of sample ledes on Egyptian coverage for my beginning reporting students this week. For just a moment, I hesitated about adding Al Jezeera. Would students question my integrity? Blast me in evaluations? The hesitation was just a pause rooted in what proved to be an unfounded fear. My students literally inhaled the Al Jezeera coverage when I showed them the YouTube stream and they wanted more. It was fresher, realer, more accessible. There wasn’t a wall or long shot between them and the events unfolding. The cameras were there with the people, letting my students be inside Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Yet, I could see that as much they as liked what they saw, some tensed when seeing the Arabic logo.

Juan Williams lost his NPR job after admitting on Fox News that he cringes when boarding an airplane with someone in Muslim “garb.” Having an African American commentator make such a statement left some viewers feeling validated in their fears, and others overwhelmed by the irony. Remember that President Obama said his grandmother was afraid of the black men she passed on the street, then he had to explain why he referred to her as a “typical white person” for feeling fear. No one is immune to fear or to over-generalizations.

The question remains whether Americans will choose, whether you will choose, to seek out social news networks based on fear and familiarity or on who can take you furthest into Tahrir Square.

Micro-local meets HuffPost meets the World

Two big things happened in the last 24 hours: Google exec and internet activist Wael Ghonim tweeted that he’d been released from an Egyptian jail and Arianna Huffington announced a merger with AOL.

Google has created a spreadsheet to track missing journalists and Facebook pages were set up to try to find Ghonim. Google’s tweet signaled an international exhale: “Huge relief–Wael Ghonim has been released. Our love to him and his family.”

A few hours earlier, 12:01 a.m. to be exact, Huffington posted on her blog plans to sell HuffPost to AOL and explained lots of big ideas for the future. Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian noted that AOL may be trying to play ball with the proverbial big news boys and girls and get away from an internet dial-up revenue stream, all for a $315 million price tag. Despite a healthy dose of skepticism, I am more optimistic about the growth potential for HuffPost under AOL than I am for Murdoch’s The Daily. The reason simple: The Huffpost/AOL partnership is built on the values of interactivity and access.

Interactivity was a life-saver for Ghonim. He was released because of international support that was cast on a local level inside Egypt and simultaneously around the world. Ghonim told his story and the story of others, we passed it along on Facebook and Twitter, and then he thanked us back. We all rejoice.

Those same values give AOL the potential to take the HuffPost model to the back roads of everywhere with Patch.com and even to places without internet access through mobile up links. HuffPost is trying to reach distinct targets, including ethnic minority markets and even divorcees, and offers AOL significant gifts. We’ll see where this goes but taking micro-local to Huffpost to the world may also take solid ethical values to the bank.