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 Eugene Volokh compares CNN exec Eason Jordan's statement today with an interview he gave last year. Jordan said then: "We work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there." It's hard to reconcile that with what he said today. "I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me."  BBC: Baghdad descends into chaos. Alireza Doostdar is blogging the Iranian weblogs, in English. I met Ali at yesterday's ABCD meeting, he's a master's student at Harvard's school of education. Russell Beattie: "Wow. What have I done? It's a good thing I'm on vacation this week."  Xeni Jardin via email: "I've just learned that Kevin [Sites] and a small CNN crew were just captured by Iraqi soldiers, held at gunpoint, fired at, threatened with execution, then released after about a four-hour hell." Audio of Sites' videophone report on CNN is posted at kevinsites.net. Eason Jordan was interviewed today on NPR's All Things Considered. Earlier I got an email from Xeni Jardin suggesting that Sites' experience is retribution for Jordan's piece. Karlin Lillington: "Here is the folly of Rumsfeld's bargain-basement approach to waging war." DaveNet: Shaking our faith in Google. After mentioning the meetings I'm having with Chris Lydon and his team, I got a bunch of mail from readers in the Netherlands who work with Adam Curry saying his Blog News Network is going great and we should work with them. I've already emailed intros to Adam to the team here, and he's coming to Cambridge at the end of May. In other words, we're on it. BBC: "Apple Computer is in discussions to buy Universal Music, one of the world's leading record companies, according to press reports." Wow. Jarrett House: "What the heck is Jobs thinking." Harvard Crimson: "Students caught sharing copyrighted songs and movies online more than once will lose their network access for one year, according to a message released by Dean of the College Harry Lewis this week." John Palfrey, law school professor and Berkman director, comments on the College's rules about file sharing. Easy News Topics is a module for RSS 2.0. As noted below, the NY Times reversed their archive policy again after my last DaveNet on the subject. As noted here on Tuesday, I am working with the Times people on this issue. I agreed not to write publicly about it until we're finished talking. I've talked with a few people who I trust, on the same terms, to try to make this come out right for the Times and for the Web. I have another talk, as noted below, later today. Last year on this day Google released the Google API.  A riveting op-ed in today's NY Times raises basic issues of editorial integrity at CNN and a new window into the tyranny of Saddam's Iraq. Technically there's no doubt that Eason Jordan has admitted a major breach of editorial integrity at CNN. CNN withheld a major conflict of interest, the Iraqi government was torturing and killing their employees and their families. We are told that this did change what they reported. It's understandable that they didn't disclose, but it's probably not okay. It immediately raises the question of what other information is CNN withholding that might color their coverage of news in Iraq and elsewhere. The second disturbing angle on this piece is its historic value that will soon disappear behind the NY Times archive firewall. What was their expense in creating this important bit of editorial? It wasn't written by an employee of the New York Times Company. Sure they probably edited it. That cost something. And someone had to prepare it for their content management system. It's using a little bit of bandwidth. But what a cost, to not have this piece available for everyone to refer to, to re-read and re-consider, over the years. It could save lives. It could serve as an example of how not to do it. It's something every journalism student should study, everywhere, forever. Something to think about. News.Com: "Children using Google's SafeSearch feature, designed to filter out links to Web sites with adult content, may be shielded from far more than their parents ever intended." Lance Knobel: "The most loyal Concorde passengers are the Duchess of York, Joan Collins, Sir David Frost and Sir Elton John. Shudder." Morning notes  It was demo-day, two live sessions, one at a very beautiful conference room at a library in Havahd Yahd; and the other the regular Thursday evening thing at Berkman. My first demo was one of those disasters caused by a bug in the software. I couldn't create a new post, show the rankings page, or anything other than the home page of the site I was explaining. The fix turned out to be simple, but it didn't come in time to save my presentation. The latter demo was the third Thursday meeting and as always it's a lot of fun for me, and I hope for the people who come. We went deep this time, but still left quite a few things to talk about next week. These sessions are great. Today will be busy too, but in a different way. I'm starting to get involved in Chris Lydon's radio production group, talking about connecting weblogs and radio; and am talking with Martin Nisenholtz at NY Times Digital about archives and other topics.  |
 
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