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Two Journalists In Turkey Face Jail Over Charlie Hebdo Cartoon

Two Journalists In Turkey Face Jail Over Charlie Hebdo Cartoon

dpa (TNS)

ISTANBUL — Two Turkish journalists could face up to 4.5 years in prison for publishing a cartoon from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featuring the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the reporters said Thursday.

Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya were both accused of spreading hatred and insulting religious values.

“The media in Turkey is facing pressure,” Cetinkaya told dpa.

He said his newspaper, the leftist-nationalist Cumhuriyet, had published the image as an act of solidarity after the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris in January, which left 12 people dead.

Cetinkaya said he hoped for a fair trial and had not lost faith that the rule of law governs Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has denounced the paper, saying publishing the cartoon was a “provocation.”

There are growing concerns about press freedom and freedom of expression in Turkey, as part of fears of a wider spread of authoritarianism.

This week, Frederike Geerdink, a Dutch journalist, went on trial for allegedly spreading terrorist propaganda. She denies all the charges. It is the first criminal case against a foreign reporter since the 1990s.

Photo: Başak Ekinci via Flickr

LA Times Names Internet Strategist Nicco Mele Deputy Publisher

LA Times Names Internet Strategist Nicco Mele Deputy Publisher

By Russ Mitchell, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Nicco Mele, the Internet strategist credited with pushing political campaigns into the digital era, has been named deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

“We intend to be one of the great journalism organizations of the 21st century, not just the 20th,” Times Publisher Austin Beutner said Monday. “With Nicco, we truly have a digital native to help us reimagine our business and develop new digital revenue streams.”

Mele’s primary role will be to craft business strategy across all digital platforms, Beutner said.

“We have a brand that stands for quality and integrity,” Beutner said. Mele “believes in high-quality journalism. At an organization like ours, we need people who believe in the mission.”

Mele, 37, is co-founder of Internet consulting firm Echo & Co., a Harvard University faculty member and author of the 2013 book “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath.”

Mele said he’s up for the enormous challenge the new job poses. “The basic business dynamics are a little scary and need to be reinvented,” Mele said. “Right now, overwhelmingly, the revenue is from print, but it’s clear that over time the future is digital.”

Above all, Mele said, he plans to ensure that the Times’ reputation remains intact as he helps guide the ongoing transition from print to digital.

“Nicco’s not a journalist, but he hears the music,” said longtime newspaperman John Carroll, who served as Times editor from 2000 to 2005, when the paper won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. Mele “believes in the social mission of journalism.”

The two met when Mele volunteered for the News Literacy Project, where Carroll is chairman of the board. The program helps middle and high school students sort fact from fiction and spin in the digital age. “He did it free and in good spirit,” Carroll said. “He’s not just a technologist or a guy who only wants to make money.”

Although print circulation at the Times has stabilized, ad sales remain under pressure. Ads will long remain an essential part of the mix, Mele said, but “squeezing precious dollars from many revenue sources simultaneously” will be required to ensure the future success of the news operation. That means more emphasis on subscriptions, new products and services, and corporate sponsorships for events and “certain content.”

Mele was born in Ghana, the son of a diplomat for the United States Information Agency. After years overseas, he attended William & Mary College. He took his first job as a webmaster for Common Cause, an advocacy group that seeks greater transparency and accountability in government.

In 2003, at age 26, Mele became webmaster for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Dean was largely ignored by the national media until Mele and his team employed the Internet to fuel a grass-roots campaign that catapulted the former Vermont governor to front-runner status.

The campaign was the first high-profile political contest to use the Internet to connect supporters through early forms of social media and to raise significant donations from small donors. “He was the brains behind that,” Carroll said.

Publicist Hillary Rosen, who also worked on the Dean campaign, said “Nicco was the guru” for Internet strategy. “We hung on every word.”

Mele next ran Internet strategy for Barack Obama’s successful 2004 race for Illinois senator, and founded what is now called Echo & Co., which has worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and other institutions on Internet strategy. He also teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School and sits on the board of the university’s journalism-oriented Nieman Foundation.

Mele is a computer programmer and Internet enthusiast, but he veers from the utopian view of technology popular in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. “The thesis of my book is that the end of big institutions is profoundly dangerous to our democracy,” Mele said.

Although he accepts that legions of Internet-powered Davids will continue to disrupt government, business, media and other large institutions, Mele also believes that big institutions remain essential for the smooth functioning of society and the economy — and that the need to adapt to new technology to stay alive and relevant is urgent.

“We can’t fetishize technology and say ‘to hell with our institutions’ without suffering terrible consequences,” he writes. If large media organizations like the Times falter, he said, “we might well leave ourselves open to corruption and abuses of power the likes of which we have never seen.”

Mele is married with two young boys and a baby on the way. A self-professed nerd and “maker dad,” he owns a personal 3-D printer on which he and the boys print toys.

His family will move from Boston to Los Angeles when he starts in January. He has roots in Southern California on his mother’s side, and called L.A. “one of the most exciting cities in America. It is culturally vibrant in a way that other cities just aren’t.”

Also, L.A. is “probably one of the only cities in America that (my wife) would get excited about moving to.”

Photo via GeorgeLouis via WikiCommons

FBI Created Phony Seattle Times Story To Find Bomb-Threat Suspect

FBI Created Phony Seattle Times Story To Find Bomb-Threat Suspect

By Mike Carter, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times Web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Timberline High School in Lacey in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

The deception was publicized Monday when Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., revealed it on Twitter.

In an interview, Soghoian called the incident “outrageous” and said the practice could result in “significant collateral damage to the public trust” if law enforcement begins co-opting the media for its purposes.

The EFF documents reveal that the FBI dummied up a story with an Associated Press byline about the Thurston County bomb threats with an email link “in the style of The Seattle Times,” including details about subscriber and advertiser information.

The link was sent to the suspect’s MySpace account. When the suspect clicked on the link, the hidden FBI software sent his location and Internet Protocol information to the agents. A juvenile suspect was identified and arrested June 14.

The revelation brought a sharp response from the newspaper.

“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” said Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best.

“Not only does that cross a line, it erases it,” she said.

“Our reputation and our ability to do our job as a government watchdog are based on trust. Nothing is more fundamental to that trust than our independence — from law enforcement, from government, from corporations, and from all other special interests,” Best said. “The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.”

Frank Montoya Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI in Seattle, defended the investigation and the technique, which court records show led to the arrest and conviction of a 15-year-old student.

“Every effort we made in this investigation had the goal of preventing a tragic event like what happened at Marysville and Seattle Pacific University,” Montoya said. “We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting.

“Use of that type of technique happens in very rare circumstances and only when there is sufficient reason to believe it could be successful in resolving a threat,” he said.

Ayn Dietrich-Williams, the spokeswoman for the FBI in Seattle, pointed out that the bureau did not use a “real Seattle Times article, but material generated by the FBI in styles common in reporting and online media.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman, chief of the office’s criminal division, was reviewing the EFF documents provided to her by The Times and had no immediate comment. She pointed out that the prosecutor who oversaw the case, Kathryn Warma, has since retired.

The EFF posted 172 pages of documents concerning the FBI’s use of a software tool called a “Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier,” or CIPAV, in two cases — one involving the Timberline High School bomb threats and the other involving an extortion attempt against a cruise line in Florida. More than half of the documents relate to the Seattle case.

According to the documents, CIPAV lets the FBI “geophysically” locate a computer and its Internet Protocol address.

Soghoian said the software is activated when someone clicks on the bogus link. The technique apparently exploits the same computer security vulnerabilities used by hackers.

Police in Lacey contacted the Northwest Cyber-Crime Task Force after the school began receiving a series of bomb threats beginning in late May of 2007 and continuing into early June. The school was forced to evacuate students at least twice, and police were unable to identify a suspect.

The documents indicate the FBI in Seattle obtained a search warrant to “deploy” the CIPAV software after the task force, which is run by the FBI, received a public tip about a suspect. Special Agent Norman Sanders, in seeking the warrant, said the bureau would send a “communication” to the suspect’s computer that would make the computer identify itself for the agent. The case was taken up by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which helped draft and approve the warrant. The warrant does not say that “communication” would be a bogus news story that appeared to be published online by The Seattle Times.

AFP Photo/ Mandel Ngan

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Gannett To Split TV And Newspaper Units Into Separate Companies

Gannett To Split TV And Newspaper Units Into Separate Companies

By Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times

Gannett Co. is spinning off its publishing assets into a separate publicly traded company.

The McLean, Va.-based broadcaster and publisher whose holdings include more than 40 television stations, USA Today, and 81 local newspapers, is the latest media company to separate its newspaper and television units.

Last year, Rupert Murdoch split his entertainment and publishing assets into separate companies — 21st Century Fox and News Corp., respectively. Earlier this year, Time Warner spun off its publishing company Time Inc. and this week Tribune Media completed a spinoff of its publishing assets including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times off into a new company called Tribune Publishing.

“These transformative transactions will give both the publishing company and the broadcasting and digital company enhanced strategic, operating, financial, and regulatory flexibility to pursue growth and consolidation opportunities in their respective markets, while delivering strong cash flow to build further upon Gannett’s long-standing traditions of award-winning journalism and service to our local communities,” said Gracia Martore, president and chief executive officer of Gannett.

Traditional publishing is seen as a more challenging business with limited growth compared to television and digital media. Investors and Wall Street analysts have been encouraging these spin-offs.

The new publishing company will be virtually debt-free, Gannett said. Existing debt will remain with the broadcasting and digital company. Both Time Inc. and Tribune Publishing were saddled with heavy debt loads after they were spun off.

Martore will be chief executive of the television and digital company. Robert Dickey, president of Gannett’s U.S. community publishing division, will be chief executive for the publishing company. Gannett said it expects the spinoff to be completed by mid-2015.

Gannett is also buying the 73 percent stake of Cars.com it didn’t own for $1.8 billion from A. H. Belo, the McClatchy Company, Tribune Media Company, and Graham Holdings Company. Cars.com is a popular site for people buying and selling cars.

In a related move, Tribune Publishing entered into a five-year affiliation agreement with Cars.com.

“Upon closing, this agreement will represent significant recurring revenue for our digital classified business,” said Jack Griffin, chief executive officer of Tribune Publishing. “We’ve had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Cars.com and this agreement ensures auto dealers in key markets will continue to benefit from the scale and reach of our prominent print and digital properties.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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