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Note: This is a post I wrote originally for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Both Google and Facebook have acted surprisingly quickly to remove disinformation related to the COVID-19 virus over the past few weeks, considering their somewhat mixed track record when it comes to removing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and trolls related to political campaigns. But experts there is still a lot more that they and other digital platforms could be doing. CJR spoke this week with Karen Kornbluh and Ellen Goodman, co-authors of a new paper published by the German Marshall Fund entitled “Safeguarding Digital Democracy,” which includes a series of steps they say the major digital platforms need to take in order to deal with the problem. Kornbluh is a former US Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and a senior fellow at the GMF and director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative, and Goodman is a professor at Rutgers Law School and co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy & Law.

In addition to Kornbluh and Goodman, CJR also held two roundtables with other experts using our Galley discussion platform, one of which included Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University; Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School; Mark MacCarthy, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law school, and Victor Pickard, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. The second roundtable with Goodman and Kornbluh also included Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center; Kate Klonick from St. John’s University law school; Enrique Armijo, a law professor at Elon University; Gus Hurwitz from the Nebraska College of Law; and Evelyn Douek, a doctoral student at Harvard Law School.

“The policy debate on disinformation has been hobbled by a false choice between allowing platforms or the government to censor. We propose instead empowering citizens through updating offline protections and rights (consumer protection, civil rights, privacy, campaign finance), supporting journalism and increasing accountability of platforms,” said Kornbluh. One of the things that would improve the overall information environment and counter-balance some of the worst of what the platforms do, she and Goodman suggest, is the creation of a PBS-style funding and distribution structure for digital journalism — an entity that they argue should be funded by a tax on the advertising revenues of Facebook and Google.

Continue reading “What Google and Facebook should do to fight disinformation”

Note: This is something I originally wrote for the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I’m the chief digital writer

It’s the kind of problem many companies would love to have: Something happens that makes the world suddenly adopt your app or service by the millions, to the point where it becomes mission-critical for many, including journalists. Unfortunately for Zoom, the thing that happened is a global pandemic, and what it has done more than anything is expose some of the flaws and weaknesses in the service, which has become the de facto method of communication for everyone from politicians and teachers to doctors. Some of those flaws or weaknesses are mundane and even humorous, such as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson inadvertently sharing the meeting ID number for a cabinet meeting he held via Zoom (which could allow someone to connect to the call without permission), or the manager who enabled filters for a conversation with friends, and then couldn’t turn them off and did an entire meeting as a potato.

Somewhat more serious than that (although still on the nuisance end of the spectrum), attendees on some Zoom calls have been interrupted by pornography and other misbehavior, thanks to a phenomenon that some are calling “Zoom-bombing” (from the term “photo-bombing,” which is when someone jumps into a picture without permission). Trolls appear to be dialing in to random Zoom calls and displaying porn videos or blasting other annoying forms of audio and video, since many Zoom calls can be joined with a simple nine-digit number. The company said in a statement that hosts can prevent this by requiring a password, or by making use of various features such as the Waiting Room, which hides a new visitor until the host allows them to enter. “We are deeply upset to hear about the incidents involving this kind of attack,” the company said.

Some flaws in the software, however, could be extremely serious, such as a Windows vulnerability that could allow hackers to steal someone’s credentials. All a user has to do, according to one report from a software security blog, is to click on a link in the Zoom chat window, and if a hacker has configured the link properly, it will connect to the user registry within Windows and provide the user’s login and password (although Windows sends this in encrypted form, a researcher was able to decrypt the user info in less than 30 seconds with a standard PC). This kind of vulnerability could be a significant problem for journalists or aid workers and other agencies who need to keep their conversations anonymous for various reasons. It’s not the first back-door style vulnerability Zoom has seen: Until late last year, the app secretly installed a hidden web server on Mac computers that could potentially be used by hackers to take control of a computer’s video camera (Zoom has removed this feature).

Continue reading “Zoom under pressure as the world relies on it to communicate”

Note: I originally wrote this for the newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact an ever-widening group of cities and states, it is challenging media outlets both big and small — not just because it puts pressure on already stretched newsrooms in terms of reporting resources, but because it is also affecting the financial side of the industry, with advertising revenue declines of 20 percent in some cases. How are metropolitan and regional media outlets handling this kind of pressure, while also reporting on one of the biggest stories in recent memory? How are they making sure that their staff are taking care of themselves, even as newsrooms put in long hours — many of them working remotely in large numbers for the first time? This week on CJR’s Galley platform, we’ve been talking with editors and managers at a number of medium-sized newspapers and websites such as the Arizona Republic, Philadelphia Inquirer, Seattle Times, Dallas Morning News, Maine Today, and Salt Lake Tribune to see how they are coping.

Kim Bui, the director of audience innovation at the Arizona Republic, says her organization was cautious about being too alarmist in covering the virus in its initial stages, since the state only had one case. But as the impact of the pandemic started to become obvious, coverage ramped up, and Bui says she and the rest of the newsroom took their cues about what to cover from readers. “The good thing about interacting with them is that we know that what they are interested in is the impact on their daily lives,” she says. “How does this change my work? My kids’ school? What do I do if I feel sick? We’re trying to base coverage off of that for the core team and I and the other news directors assign out impact stories as relevant.”

Like a lot of newsrooms, the Dallas Morning News has pivoted from longer-term projects to an all-hands-on-deck approach, says Mike Orren, chief product officer at the Morning News and president of Belo Business Intelligence. But unlike some other outlets that have put all their coronavirus coverage outside the paywall, Orren says the Morning News has only made some of its content free. The paper started out with everything virus-related outside the wall, he says, but “after a few days, we talked to some of our peers and we found that we weren’t seeing the same subscription bump they were. So we pivoted and made just the ‘public health’ content free, meaning that a school closing was free, but a celebrity’s opinion was in our normal meter.”

Continue reading “How metro papers are dealing with the pressure of COVID-19”

Getting to church might involve a long walk or a car-ride for some, maybe a set of stairs. But in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, there are dozens of “churches” — not the kind you would attend mass in as a large group, but small, holy places carved into the stone — that require a lot more than that. Several of them, including one of the most famous known as Abuna Yemata Guh, are tucked inside cliffs that require “parishioners” to climb ropes, walk along steep ledges and across wooden planks thousands of feet above the ground. Some of these cave churches date back to the year 500 A.D.

Despite (or possibly because of) the effort it takes to get to them, the visit is worth it, as Zac from Australia points out in an excellent blog post about his trip to the region, where he visited several of these mountain cave churches and monasteries. In many places, self-appointed “deacons” will help guide you to the next foot-hold (climbing barefoot is recommended) or show you which tree branches to grab on to. At the top, the deacon will ring a bell of some kind to summon the priest, who will show you around the cave, with all of its incredible colored murals, and may even show you a 1,400-year-old hand-inked “bible.”

Continue reading “The amazing mountain cave churches of Ethiopia”

Note: I originally wrote this for the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Over the past couple of weeks, the coronavirus known as COVID-19 has gone from being just an annoyance to a full-blown global pandemic, with restaurants, bars, and even schools closing, stock markets plummeting, and millions of people trying to navigate a new world of “social distancing” and “self-isolation.” As the number who have been infected and hospitalized continues to mount, journalists are working overtime to try to help the public understand the crisis, and what they can or need to do about it. This week on CJR’s Galley discussion platform, we’ve been talking with reporters, editors, and other experts about how they are covering this viral threat — about the newsletters, podcasts, and other innovative projects they are creating to handle the information overload, and about how they are dealing with the personal stress and anxiety caused by reporting on it.

Continue reading “The challenges of reporting on a global pandemic”

As they tour the Capitol building in Washington, some eagle-eyed visitors notice tiny, rounded doors at floor level — looking like fairy doors, or something Alice in Wonderland might have used after she shrunk herself. What are they? If you open one, you will see a small room with nothing but a faucet sticking out of the wall — useful for filling a bucket to clean the hallways. But why the need for such a tiny door? Why not use a regular broom closet?

The reason for the doors goes back to 1851, when a fire broke out in the Capitol building, in a room that housed the Library of Congress. A guard noticed the flames through a window, but there was no water source anywhere nearby, so he had to run downstairs to get some. By the time he got back, the library was in flames, a fire that would destroy more than 35,000 volumes, including almost two-thirds of the books that were acquired from Thomas Jefferson’s estate. Manuscripts, maps, artwork, all burned.

The government asked Captain Montgomery Meigs of the US Army Corp of Engineers to design a water system that would bring water into Washington and also supply it to the Capitol building to prevent future fires. He built an aqueduct system that brought fresh water in from the Potomac, and through pipes to faucets hidden behind those small rounded doors. The building now has modern plumbing and fire-suppression systems, but in a pinch they could always use the faucets that Montgomery Meigs installed behind those miniature doors (via Architect of the Capitol)