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It annoys me that after all these years that Assange was ridiculized for his claims that the US was after him, that finally gets arrested with a US warrant of extradition and instantly all this denial disappears and the US warrant is considered entirely justified and there is no problem at all with it.

Not quite. I always ridiculed Assange because he's always been playing for sympathy as the ever-persecuted underdog. He flouts every rule, then acts so terribly surprised and hurt when he gets caught. The US is the big power, so of course Assange would claim they were hunting him, regardless of whether they were or not. As it turns out, no, the US wasn't actually hunting him for the first 6 years he was in his self-imposed bail-skipping exile, despite the assertions he makes in his fantasies.

The issue at hand here is that this is an attack on the press, saying that whenever the press publishes something the government (or other players) disapprove of, they will find a way to get back at them.

Again, no, that's not actually the case. It's saying that if you conspire to commit a crime, you'll be punished for that crime, and you can't use your press card as a shield. Nobody is above the law.

And that is how every journalist who investigates government business will understand it and will feel that their freedom of movement is shrinking fast.

That's quite the assumption. The SPJ's ethics code says journalists should "recognize that legal access to information differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast." Again, the only freedom being curtailed is that journalists shouldn't consider themselves to be above the law.

I know what it is to catch someone on a technicality and that is what this is. ... The practice of requesting more information from leakers is entirely standard practice with any journalist who functions.

Requesting is fine. There's even some debate about the ethics of paying for information. Once a journalist crosses the line into offering to help steal documents, that's not just a "technicality"... that's a crime.

Your vision of what a journalist should do is deeply flawed. I'm familiar with it, the impartial/objective neutralist journalist.

I've never said that a journalist should be impartial or objective. The SPJ says journalists should "never deliberately distort facts or context", and that's all I ask as well. Go ahead and be partial. Put a subjective spin on your reporting like any other human... that's perfectly fine.

You want the journalist to be reliable and complete when he tells you what he is looking at. But a true neutral journalist looks where he is told to look and that makes him effectively neutered.

You're making a leap there again, avoiding the point. A journalist can indeed look anywhere that he's lawfully allowed to look, regardless of the desires of his sources or anyone else. He can then report with whatever opinion or direction he wants. However, that looking must be done lawfully. Go ahead and take pictures in public places. That's (usually) legal. Go undercover and lie about who you are to get more access. That's sneaky and underhanded (and gently discouraged by the SPJ), but usually doesn't run afoul of any laws in itself.

Unfortunately, breaking a password without authorization is not lawful. Conspiring to break the laws set by the CFAA is not lawful. It's not a petty crime, either. It's a federal felony, severe enough to warrant 5 years in prison. There's certainly still debate whether the CFAA is too harsh, but for now, it's on par with manslaughter. Again, it's not something you can ignore just because you're a journalist. Journalists can't break this law without consequences any more than they can commit manslaughter with impunity.

Nobody's above the rule of law.

https://www.spj.org/ethics-pap...

Anonymous sources are being cited continuously to say all sorts of things.

Given that the stories that were being leaked often are not true... the ethical standards being applied are self evident.

I woulds argue adhering the the SPJ Code of ethics is the line, regardless of education. Don't get me wrong, being educated at an university mean you are more likely to get better writing. I prefer the journalists I read are educated and write at the college level, but that isn't needs, IMHO.

https://www.spj.org/ethicscode...

But you are replying to a person who would happily allow the government to step on your throat if it means he 'won'. trumpanzees are idiots.

I appreciate good journalism. I also understand that 99% of what is out there isn't.

That's because what you call journalism - isn't.

Remember, these are your words:

News" should be paid for by the marketers and governments that are the ones most interested in getting it out there in the public eye. News doesn't usually serve the broader public interest or provide value to the readers. The value proposition is upside down.

I.e. It should be strictly commercial.
It should be strictly "on a need to know basis" press releases by the government.
It offers no service to public.
It offers no value to readers.

The "value proposition is upside down" to you cause your perceptions are upside down from what journalism IS.

If you find that 99% of what you see is shit... there's a good chance that you're looking at the world from inside a cesspit.
OR... that you are not really into that thing you're seeing in the first place.

E.g. I for one consider 110% of all "professional" sportsball and sportgames to be utter and complete waste of oxygen.
Useless exercise of pointless "skills" by overpaid menial laborers with little to no intellectual abilities.
A ditch digger will at least dig a ditch after a while. A ball bouncer just bounces balls.
And then retires when that becomes too hard. At around 30 or so.
What a bunch of fuckin snowflakes.

Maybe you have similarly skewed views.
Mine probably stem from my lack of physical strength and dexterity in my formative years and from disinterest in collectivist parasocial entertainment or statistics for statistics' sake.

I've heard a lot of right-leaning people complain about the New York Times. I haven't, however, seen any evidence that they aren't a good source of information.

Have we already forgotten about the embarrassing Jayson Blair incident?

The number one item on my list of what constitutes a credible news source is, do they publish error corrections?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html

Or, to quote the Forbes article on Where You Find Real Facts Rather Than Alternative Facts:

"If a reporter gets facts in a story wrong, will the news outlet investigate a complaint and publish a correction? Does the publication have its own code of ethics? Or does it subscribe to and endorse the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics? And if a reporter or editor seriously violates ethical codes – such as being a blatant or serial plagiarizer, fabulist or exaggerator – will they be fired at a given news outlet? While some may criticize mainstream media outlets for a variety of sins, top outlets such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News and the New Republic have fired journalists for such ethics violations. That is remarkable in a world where some celebrities, politicians and other realms of media (other than news such as Hollywood films “based on a true story”) can spread falsehood with impunity."

He's either a public figure and his identity is important information for the public, or he's a private citizen whose identity should be protected unless he agrees to go on record.

That's where you want to make that distinction? You can only be held accountable for what you say to the public in public on a public forum, as long as you say that you said it? This seems like it's inviting abuse, but anyone who's ever done anything on the internet already knows that.

How do you feel about anonymous donations to SuperPACs then? What about anonymous bomb threats? CNN made the claim that this gif was inciting violence against journalists, that doesn't seem so different.

Granted, the idea that this gif was inciting violence is about as plausible as the claim that CNN was trying to blackmail this guy. But you've obviously bought into this idea that CNN's statement was a threat, rather than a hedge against someone who's clearly willing to change his story at the drop of a hat.

Your argument seems to be centered around the idea that this guy is unimportant, which was true. Following up an obvious lead and calling the guy who made the meme in the first place was a small part of the story, not really important but a nice little thing to flesh it out. And since Trump is involved, being thorough is expected and generally necessary. The guy's reaction was what turned this into a story in its own right.

But seriously, you keep skipping the obvious: "It is relevant where the President found the meme before retweeting it, because it gives you an insight on where the President gets his information." What are you expecting them to do here? You acknowledge that the source matters, but you don't want them to examine it. The president posted the meme unattributed (like any good redditor), so figuring out where the meme comes from is the completely obvious approach. I tried to illustrate this in a slightly humorous way above, but apparently the point wasn't made.

You say your question is: what do you get by tracking down names? The answer is: someone to talk to. The point was never the name, the point was to flesh out the story a little and maintain some standard of journalistic ethics. Look, it's #8 on the SPJ Code of Ethics:

Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.

If they're going to claim that this guy is inciting violence, or that he's racially motivated, then they need to give him a chance to explain himself.

Wikileaks is one of the few remaining upstanding journalistic organizations.

I'm pretty sure you've come up with your own personal definition of the expectations of journalism in your head to fit a predefined position of the things you support that Wikileaks does...

I won't argue that Wikileaks doesn't have a place or a valid idea of ethics. I argue instead that they are by no means more ethical journalists than other reputable sources, and in fact are among the most blatant ethically dubious journalists in some areas.

It's not hard to find common themes among most international journalism societies. Take this and this for example. After reading those ethical expectations, please explain to me how 10 of 23 news stories at https://wikileaks.org/-News-.html over the past 2 years being devoted to the organization's founder qualifies as unbiased reporting. The leaks themselves, located here, while useful, are consistently either without any context whatsoever, or are given with the same or worse consistent bias and narrative that dozens of other journalism sources are lambasted for.

Again, I'm not saying that Wikileaks and the information it provides does not have a place. I'm saying that you're a fool if you aren't willing to see that it has ethical problems that are every bit as glaring and serious as those of other journalism sources and sometimes worse.

Rico participates on an attack on a Skinny city -- destroying civilian infrastructure and killing civilians with no military objective. This is a war crime.

Please, cite the relevant laws and/or conventions, that make this raid a war crime.

http://www.spj.org/gc-text5.asp

Protocol I
Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, 8 June 1977

Part IV. Civilian Population

Section I. General Protection Against Effects of Hostilities

Chapter I. Basic rule and field of application
Art. 48. Basic rule

In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.

Chapter II. Civilians and civilian population

[...]

Art. 51. - Protection of the civilian population

[...]

2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.

2011 SPJ Black Hole Award

Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services: Hiding Child Deaths
University of Maryland: Pricing People out of their Government
Central Intelligence Agency and A.G. Eric Holder: Flagrant Destruction of Embarrassing Records
Fairfax County Police Department: Hiding the Killers of Unarmed Citizens
Broward County, Fla., School Board: Inaccurate Records

Educate yourself. Sometime after Pulitzer and before Murdoch, news outlets put great effort towards reporting objective news (admittedly, they didn't always succeed). Bias was reserved for the editorial pages.

Yes, but what is interesting and what is correct are two entirely different things. There have been many instances where one blog posts something false, and then it gets repeated and distributed by other blogs. (Witness Gizmodo's recent "new mac mini", "fake new mac mini" nonsense, or the "death" of Steve Jobs after Bloomberg accidentally published what was pretty obviously a false obituary).

While this can and does happen with "real" journalists, it happens a lot less often, because journalists have a code of ethics, which requires them to verify their sources. Journalists are inherently more trustworthy than the hacks who run blogs such as Gizmodo, or any of the zillions of blogs on blogspot, or Fox News, because real journalists will get fired if they don't check their sources and report the truth, whereas blogs will get linked and get more hits and more advertising revenue.

Certainly news/political bloggers are news sources. They tell us new things about their subjects. Hell, powerful and influential people sometimes give them scoops, exclusives, and leaks.

The idea that old media journalists have standards while bloggers do not is simply ludicrous. It's surprising that anyone makes that claim while simultaneously sharing a planet with Fox News.

In looking for information on "blogging standards", I came across this post on journalistic ethics. Author points out that, unlike real professions with real codes of conduct:

* Journalists are not licensed.
* Journalists cannot be disbarred for violating their professed standards.

The only code of conduct for journalists are the ones that they and their sponsoring organizations choose for themselves. Many embrace the code of ethics outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists, but then, so do many of the best bloggers. Bloggers consistently criticize each other and the news media when violations of these standards occur.

Professionalizing journalism -- that is, creating licensing requirements for journalism, and having a professional body which could choose to disbar bad actors -- would probably be illegal under the First Amendment. As it stands, "professional journalists" are only so in the sense that they're getting paid for it.

Actually, we're kind of at a tipping point right now. We are educating a lot of folks with what's going on with the government and the plans they have. Sites like True World History and organizations like The Campaign For Liberty are getting the word out at the grass roots and people are starting to recognize the propaganda for what it is.

Any politician that thinks they can control the population through propaganda and force of arms have made some crucial mistakes, as there still doesn't seem to be any impediment to the flow of information on the Internet (at least in the US), and people already know that journalists have major biases, and don't trust what they say without question.

Yea, that McVeigh patsy idea of theirs worked out pretty well to sway public opinion away from the private militias. But it only worked for a while, and the militias ranks are swelling again now. I wonder what the next staged event will be, and if people will buy the government line again.

'a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.'"

The geneva convention frowns upon collateral damage, though someone is not a civilian if they're holding a weapon (see the "spontaneousy takes up arms" bit.) That's not a good enough excuse. A person holding a gun is not necessarily a soldier. The could be a homeowner, defending their property from looters, for example. That's why you are supposed to give a chance of surrender. Will a robot do that, reliably? Will a robot properly identify and treat hors de combat people?

Here's a bigger, related question: a robot is a)not a person and b)maybe more durable. A human soldier is allowed to fire in defense. Picture a homeowner in wartime, guarding his house. Robot trundles by, x-rays the house, sees the weapon, charges in. He sees it heading for him, freaks out, fires at it. How can the robot possibly be justified in killing him? Even if it represents a threat, you're only threatening a machine!

Second point: this is really just "killing by proxy." Regardless of whether you pull a trigger on a machine gun, or flip a switch on the General Dynamics Deathmachine 2000: if you knew your actions would cause injury or death, you're culpable. It's not the robot that is responsible when a civilian or hors de combat soldier is killed: it's the operators. Robots don't kill people: people build, program, and operate robots that kill people.

Yes. They should. Anyone serving in a journalistic capacity should be treated as such. My point was that a case holding that people engaging in journalism via blogs are equivalent to those engaging in journalism for online newspapers, unpaid college newspapers, unpaid college online newspapers, etc. was inevitable, and the decision on that point was similarly inevitable. Thus, that aspect of the ruling was a complete eye roll and a yawn.

Is a blogger a journalist?

Are they engaging in journalistic practices? Or are they publishing hearsay and innuendo? Pre-teen girls babbling about who kissed who at last night's party definitely do not qualify. Geeks talking about what they did at work today do not qualify. People typing editorial rants (like this one) about legal cases do not qualify. This definition is the interesting question, and sadly, it was not addressed.

As you mentioned, the decision did talk about editorial judgment, but in my opinion, they got it very wrong. I'm not convinced that the people in this case were truly acting in a journalistic fashion. Real journalists take classes in journalism/communications law and ethics. I took one back in the day. In my opinion, these people were acting well outside the bounds of respectable or even acceptable journalistic practices. IMHO, if you don't follow a reasonable code of ethics, you are not a journalist. The eighth bullet point in the SPJ's code of ethics should be eye-opening.

Editorial oversight is not just about space constraints. Yes, editors usually do that, but even in newspapers, they give more information in the online version because those constraints are not there. I don't see how that is at all relevant to the question of whether publication of trade secrets constitutes journalism.

Editorial oversight also includes deciding what should and should not be published for ethical reasons. For an extreme example, if a "news rag" published the name of a rape victim, I'd damn well want them to NOT be protected by shield laws in that case. I think I speak for most people when I say that I'd want to personally beat the living shit out of that source. There are bounds of privacy, ethics, and general good taste that go into editorial decisions, and I don't think the court ruling gave due consideration to that aspect of editorial oversight.

Editorial judgment also includes determining with some degree of certainty that the information published is factually accurate. This may be waived in the case of threats to public safety, but the lack of "Apple Computer declined to comment" pretty much screams "this is not journalism" to me.

In effect, this court decision put tabloids in the same shield bucket as legitimate journalists, which sickens me to some degree. It doesn't surprise me, as a lot of the traditional news outlets these days seem to have descended to the level of tabloid journalism lately, so I'm really not surprised that people sitting on the court wouldn't know the difference, but it does sicken me to see just how low "journalism" has sunk as of late. It's a real shame to see the word journalism watered down to include such unprofessional behavior.

A professional code of ethics.

Thom at OSNews also posted his opinion on an editorial published yesterday: here

In that editorial he compares people killed for expressing their opinions to Apple suing "non-professional" journalists over exposing trade secrets. This is an absurd comparison. Apple has sued both professional and "non-professional" journalists for exposing trade secrets, they don't discriminate.

What these journalists are doing is illegal, individuals and corporations have the right to protect their own internal products and research and when these journalists get inside information and publish it without checking the source then they take the risk of getting sued. Don't want to get sued? Shoot off a message to Apple and verify that the information was obtained legally.

Comparing getting sued to getting killed is just absurd. This sort of grandstanding should be a big sign to all that this gentleman is NOT a serious journalist. Serious journalists adhere to The Journalism Code of Ethics

We already have people to decide who is and is not a journalist - for example, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and so on. This is how real journalists get press passes, by the way - they join the associations, which check their credentials, and issue passes.

The Canadian Assn. of Journalists (CAJ): the only requirement for membership is filling out a form and paying a fee. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) membership is through national organizations which are members of the IFJ Looking at the member organizations listed as members of the IFJ, all are labor unions. The primary purpose of unions is to protect the union members from competition and poor working conditions. None of the IFJ members from the US have codes of ethics or conduct readily available for public inspection. Contrast that to engineering societies, they have their codes of ethics/conduct easily discoverable. Here at the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) one can find a list of member engineering societies. Checking a few of them reveals that membership is only possible for Baccalaureate of Science: Engineering (B.S.E.) degree holders or students in B.S.E. programs. One will also discover that codes of conduct and ethics are readily available to the public. Here are some more journalist orgs but these have codes of ethics/conduct for members Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has a code but membership is open to those being paid as journalists, those retired from being paid as journalists, those who agree with the goals of the SPJ, those who live with SPJ professional members, and under-/post graduate students. International Journalists' Network (IJNet) membership is through national organizations but they do have a very prominent link to access the Codes of Ethics of member organizations.

I doubt this 'blogger' is a member of any professional journalism organizations. I doubt they have any formal training, or indeed any training whatsoever. I'm curious as to how 'journalism' can be confused with some guy writing something and distributing it to the masses. If I print flyers and distribute them on the street corner, am I a journalist? No. If I tape posters to streetlamps and hydro poles, am I a journalist? No.

Yes, you are. Are you a paid journalist? No. Are you a professional journalist? No. Does being a "professional" journalist guarantee that you will have training, formal or otherwise? No. Unlike medicine, engineering, law, and architecture to name just a few professions, journalism has no licensing requirement and no standards for becoming a journalist other than to be paid to be a journalist.

Journalism is a profession that requires both skill and responsibility. To call bloggers 'journalists' is akin to calling an MCSE an 'engineer'. The word is far from the truth, and if being called a journalist requires nothing more than a voice, then the single most important career possible in an open and democratic society suddenly means nothing. When a loud voice and a sense of self-righteousness can be considered equal to understanding of ethics, unbiased reporting, and facility with the language, then 'journalism' is suddenly just a word, and all the respect it once deserved is lost forever.

Ideally, journalism is a profession that requires skill, responsibility, ethical behavior and impartiality. Journalists, however, have no licensing process. Engineers do. AFAICT, in order to qualify as a journalist, one need only be hired to perform such duties. There are no formal requirements of edu

This is about deliberately soliciting proprietary information without concerning for the ethics/standards of journalism.

The ethics/standards of journalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_standard s
http://www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp
Canadian Journalism Standards:
http://www.caj.ca/principles/principles-statement- 2002.htm
European standards:
http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/

Did he perform proper fact checking/checking his sources? No. Did he look at balancing right to privacy versus the public interest? Was it really in the public interest? No.

Journalists routinely make decisions not to publish information which involve national security or Police stings.

Do you see serious journalist publishing trade secrets? No.

Hey Ryan, the story here isn't my paranoia, it's your lack of full disclosure. For starters, you're hyping up your website with posts using a pseudonym that you do not use on said website. The slashdot community typically frowns on such disingenuous self-promotions. Had you instead been open and said, "Hey slashdotters, here's an article I wrote on my website about XYZ" then it certainly wouldn't have come across as some sort of deception.

...what Engadget is: a subscription free news source.

Is your site really a news source or a distributor of press releases? I know that sounds like a flame, but I don't mean it that way. I think your site is probably a lot of fun to produce. At the same time, when a site's content is so product-heavy, I get suspicious about the possibility of paid placement, etc. Especially when you gush about a product like this-- "Know that new T-Mobile Sidekick II that Paris Hilton and Derek Jeter have been totin' around town?" The only reason Paris Hilton would have any tech gadget is if she's paid to endorse it. By commenting on Paris Hilton owning a Sidekick II, you've taken on the role of a mouthpiece for the Danger PR department. Does your community really care what consumer products Paris Hilton owns? Actually, it would have been a hundred times more interesting had your contacts at Danger's PR department arranged for you to interview Paris about what she does with her Sidekick rather than the CEO.

If you want to call Engadget a news source, you need to brush up on your journalism ethics. Real journalists don't accept gifts or freebies of any kind from people / companies they might write about. For example, Roger Ebert pays to see the movies he reviews. Quality journalists don't present advertisements as news. Does Engadget qualify?

Please check the Society of Professional Journalist's website on the issue:

Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

I'm the author of the article at Wired.com. I'll try to answer belately some of the questions raised by the story.

Not least of which being, yes, there were Nigerian spam scams galore in the inbox.

I was the person who correctly guessed -- on the first try -- the password to the Press account at UrukLink.net.

FWIW, when I signed in, the account had apparently been abandoned for several months. (It was over quota and rejecting new messages since Aug. 17). What caught by eye first was the message from an ATT.net account offering wireless technology to Iraq, as reported in the article.

Besides contemplating the potential illegality of my unauthorized access, I have also thought hard about the ethics of publishing the material I obtained.

Password cracking is not a generally accepted journalistic practice, as a reporter for another news organization pointed out to me today. I was also notified that the material contained in Saddam's public inbox is not exactly the Pentagon Papers. Nor is my report on the e-mails anywhere near the caliber of the Chiquita expose'.

Nonetheless, I believe, and Wired News's editors backed me on this, that the contents of the inbox were of significant public interest considering the current conflict between the USA and Iraq.

Some readers have dismissed the messages as unimportant because so many came from ordinary Internet users and small businesses (and not from heads of state or major corporations). But I think that's what makes the inbox such an interesting, if unscientific, survey of public opinion.

To minimize the harm cause by the report, we removed the names of individuals and companies who wrote to Saddam -- even those of people from whom we had obtained comments.

Brian

Posted by polar_bear:

I believe Rob and other Slashdotters have been willing to don the "new journalist" clothing in interviews and comments they've made on Slashdot - how important Slashdot has been to the "new" online journalism. If you're going to claim the title, take the responsibility. If you're not journalists, remove the word "news" from your tagline.

I love Slashdot for a lot of reasons, but as a journalist, Slashdot does make me cringe from time to time. Would it be so difficult to grow up and do things right?

As far as other online journalists...it's really a matter of who they work for. I've found that sites like Linux Today do fall short of journalistic standards, but usually news sources that have newspaper equivalents are pretty much meeting the standard. That's probably because they're mostly re-printing stuff from the paper edition and the paper edition gets more attention and is held to a higher standard because it's actually being printed. (Never underestimate the subtle value shift between print and electronic media...)

Quite frankly, though, I think most news outlets these days fall short of meeting ideal journalistic standards.

(Wondering what they are: read the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics here:
http://spj.org/ethics/code.htm