The Commodification of Private Lives and Political Profiles

One of the most disturbing aspects of Republican gutting of the FCC's privacy rules late last month only came to my attention  when Cathy O'Neil delivered a stunning lecture at Ithaca college Thursday evening. Titled after her book  Weapons of Math Destruction, the presentation explained the use of algorithms to capture our private information in order to profile and manipulate us. You can read a pretty good piece about her book by Mona Chalabi in the Guardian(Oct 27 2016). With the repeal of those FCC Rules our search information, political preferences, personal choices are now being collected to be sold to companies who can refine your feed based on algorithms designed to reach a 'desired' outcome. That outcome could be anything from trying a new drug for the post traumatic stress disorder you've been reading up about, to telling you who you ought to vote for based on your political searches. The release of this personal information will likely be used to codify your habits giving the media manipulation machine a birds eye view on your life. There's a piece by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan from Democracy Now on March 30 if you want an overview.

The Electronic Frontier's page gave a run down of what Comcast, Verizon and AT&T won't do with your info. As far as I can tell the statements are meaningless. Profiles will be kept on you.
Those profiles will be used without your knowledge or consent, and it will not be easy to see what they've built around your information because these algorithms are created by private individuals or companies and are the intellectual property of those who design them, regardless of the fact that they use your private information to do so. Oh, and because they are written mathematically, it would be quite difficult to find out what it means if you actually got a hold of it.  You'd need an interpreter who speaks math. The public needs to know who the people are who write these algorithms, and more importantly who funds their work and dictates the parameters to be used by the code writers? If some private corporation is interfering in my personal and political life, I need to know who they are in case their actions cause any harm.

And on the Other Hand There are Practices too Shady to be Called Journalism

There have always been dirty tricks in US politics, and publishers who are ready to capitalize on the opportunity to profit on sensationalism. Political hacks posing as journalists are not news either. What Steve Bannon does is not journalism, or even PR, he constructs frauds designed to discredit and destroy agencies that help the poor. Using good people like Juan Carlos Vera from the San Bernadino ACORN office, and Shirley Sherrod as patsies. These fabricated stories attempt to defraud the electorate and the congress in an attempt to change social policy.  Adele M. Stan's AlterNet piece from August 19, 2016, "6 Manufactured News Scandals Produced and Promoted by Breitbart News and New Trump Campaign Chief Bannon: Viral lies destroy lives, and Breitbart and Bannon are masters of this disgusting trade," gives an overview of just what type of 'work' the Bretbart Bannon brand produces.  It would not be hard to imagine Bannon staying up nights thinking of how to close the soup kitchen and blame it on the social workers.

What is frightening is the ascendancy of Steve Bannon and Breitbart News to the West Wing of the White House. Personally I think that those that seek to defraud the government or electorate by  constructing a lie which slanders and scapegoats innocent taxpayers should be in a Federal prison, not have an office at the White House. It's bad enough when beltway insiders like Matt Drdge are able to thrive by spreading rumors and out right lies; we now have an outfit which creates false propaganda and spreads it working inside the White House.


Two other pieces: Zach Tomanelli FAIR blog post of 7/23/10 "Sherrod Hoax Exposed, but Breitbart's ACORN Fraud Lives On," 

and

2) George E. Curry's entitled,"Anatomy of a smear campaign: Shirley Sherrod appeared in the St. Louis American" from 8/4/2010, which presents work by Media Matters detailing how Shirley Sherrod's life, and career at USDA were shredded. These 2 pieces focus on the more subtle part of the equation, people like Drudge and outlets like Fox pick up and run this garbage, likely knowing it's false. How do any of these outlets qualify as news services?

Fowler’s Faux Pas: Well, on the one hand there are shady journalistic practices…

Alex Koppleman, writing for Salon on 6/3/08, commented on a post by Huffington Post blogger Mayhill Fowler who questioned former President Bill Clinton while campaigning on behalf of his wife. Traveling as part of Huffington Post’s citizen journalism project, “Off the Bus,” Flower had the presence of mind to position herself to ask a question of Clinton as he was shaking hands on a rope line greeting after a campaign event.  Mainstream media has, for the most part, been overtly critical of bloggers who are often untrained in the protocols and standards of the trade as practiced by mainstream media’s ‘access’ journalists. 

Fowler's Faux Pas, which is what it appeared to be, was to ask a leading question of the former president at a public event. Ms. Fowler failed to identify herself as a journalist at an event where Clinton expected to be among supporters, not journalists. Fowler, an unpublished author and part time political blogger, may have been nervous or unprepared when her opportunity arose. Bill Clinton being a seasoned public relations master should probably have known better.

Two things raise questions as to Ms. Fowler's ethical conduct as a journalist: 1) Fowler used unfair circumstances to blindside Obama in April 2008. Anyone can slip up occasionally, but lowering the ethical bar in order to grab a scoop hurts journalism, and undermines the credibility of the profession as a whole. 2) It appears that Mayhill Fowler couched her bait for Clinton in a way that suggested that she was sympathetic to the ‘hatchet job’ somebody did on Clinton in Vanity Fair. Shortly after, she dropped Purdam’s name and mentioned that he’s Dee Dee Meyers husband. If Ms. Fowler would compromise her journalistic ethics for a titillating trifle, what breach would she be willing to make for a story of consequence?

The Park Center for Independent Media's Ninth Annual Izzy Awards

The Ninth Annual Izzy Awards, named for I.F. Izzy Stone the legendary independent journalist who exposed government deceit and assault on civil rights, were presented at Ithaca College last night. The public ceremony was preceded by a panel discussion with the award recipients hosted by Park Center founder and lifelong media critic, Professor Jeff Cohen.  

From L to R: Richard Rowley, Lucian Read, Rebecca Teitel, and Solly Granatstein, of America Divided, Shane Bauer, Seth Freed Wessler, Ari Berman and Jeff Cohen

As Cohen questioned the group about how they do such effective journalism while having such a strong point of view, Rick Rowley spoke to his desire to "break the ideology of objectivity." While main stream media divides people and obfuscates truth from above "we own the war on the ground...people have commonalities...film and video at its best is a connection making machine." By presenting real stories of people whose lives are harmed by the system they show how policies destroy families, justice and democracy. Ari Berman spoke to his passion for, "finding and telling what's true." Berman told the truth about how the first Presidential Election since the abolition of the voting rights act was fraught with illegal activities by states, which though overturned by the Federal courts, skewed the election. Seth Freed Wessler, whose work of sifting through the government's records on the deplorable healthcare in federal for profit Immigrant detention centers emulates I.F. Stone's diligence and tenacity. He explained that presenting the truth that is hidden is itself a provocative action alerting "the other actors" to play their various roles. In the face of bad governance the most revolutionary act a journalist can take is to tell the truth.

The documentary series America Divided, which is an integrated set of studies into: "inequality in education, housing, health, labor, mass incarceration and criminal justice, immigration, and the influence of money on our political system," illustrates how these issues are interrelated. In his acceptance of his award for America Divided, Lucian Read demonstrated how interrelated the work of the various recipients is by pointing out that the stories in America Divided could not have been told without the foundation provided by independent journalists like Ari Berman, Shane Bauer and Seth Freed Wessler. 

My own personal award for ballsiest journalistic undertaking would have to go to Bauer for his  four months of undercover work as a corrections officer for Corrections Corporation of America, which has since been rebranded as CoreCivic. Anyone who would put himself in that environment in order to, as Cohen said "give voice to the voiceless," deserves a medal. 

Journalism and Activism: Speaking Truth To Power IS What Journalism Is Suppose To Do

An article by David Carr entitled “Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted” appeared in the print edition of The New York Times on July 1, 2013. The article, written in response to Glenn Greenwald's reporting for The Guardian on Edward Snowden's revelations that year, was a mixed bag of important points stated clearly, and historical context misstated. Thankfully Mr. Carr did not equivocate when he said, “when it comes to divulging national secrets, the law grants journalists special protections that are afforded to no one else. To exclude some writers from the profession is to leave them naked before a government that is deeply unhappy that its secret business is on wide display.” He also reminds us of another important fact: “activism — which is admittedly accompanied by the kind of determination that can prompt discovery — can also impair vision. If an agenda is in play and momentum is at work, cracks may go unexplored.”  Unfortunately, Mr. Carr also said that when there is a desire to speak to an issue a journalist loses objectivity because, “the primary objective remains winning the argument.” That statement calls into question the journalistic integrity of any reporter who dares speak truth to power.

Mr. Carr’s article also stated that the line between journalism and activism is becoming difficult to discern, and implying that this is a recent development caused by the industry pulling back and laying off reporters. It is historically accurate that independent media has filled the gaps left by big, cumbersome media. However, this leads to one of the more troubling statements made by Mr. Carr, which reveals a convenient lack of institutional memory: “In the 1800s, journalism was underwritten by powerful people, the government or political parties. It was only when an economic incentive for information absent a political agenda took hold that an independent press also emerged.” Here he gets it wrong on two fundamental points: first, The independent press preceded the American Revolution, and reasserted itself over and over throughout American history. It has always been activist, attacking bad governance or corrupt business, and critiquing the failure of the mainstream media to cover, or uncover, those stories.

Speaking to the same issue five days earlier in the Huffington Post, Ithaca College Journalism Professor and founder of FAIR, Jeff Cohen, had this to say, "The truth is that many of the greatest journalists in our country’s history —from Ida B. Wellsto I.F. Stone — were accurate reporters of fact, but hardly dispassionate. And mainstream outlets have always had hybrid reporter/columnists offering both fact and advocacy; one of the most famous, David Broder, graced the pages of the Washington Post for years, including its front page."  

The second point Mr. Carr did not get quite right was the notion that after the 1800’s an economic incentive for information absent a political agenda took hold. The US mainstream media may have toned down its highly partisan bias over the last hundred years, but has clearly staked out a center-right bias supporting American institutional power. If the line between activism and journalism is being blurred it is by the mainstream media, which claims to be objective or ‘fair and balanced' while it systematically ignores the left. Corporate media has ‘skin in the game,’ and favors its own interest by consistently doing two things: publishing whatever sells and protecting the institutions of capital it is allied with.