Month: November 2013

The news agency is under fire for allegedly killing stories that would upset the Chinese government. Gwynn Guilford and Gideon Lichfield have details:

The New York Times reported last week that Bloomberg had scrapped an investigative report linking China’s richest man with top party officials, as well as another article on children of Chinese leaders working at foreign banks. The Financial Times followed up today (paywall) with similar allegations. According to both papers, Matt Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, spiked the reports after they had already been fact-checked and vetted by lawyers; he allegedly told reporters on a conference call that if Bloomberg ran stories of that nature, it risked being “kicked out of China.” Winkler and other senior executives say he made no such claim, and suggested that the stories had not been scrapped but merely weren’t yet good enough to publish.

CJR’s Dean Starkman fears the worst:

News “employees” (as the Times calls them) don’t usually put their jobs on the line to talk about stories they feel are being spiked (or “postponed,” as Bloomberg puts it), no matter how bitter the internal arguments. …

There is rarely a “smoking gun” in such matters, so to speak, and it’s a difficult argument to win outright, so most frustrated reporters don’t go public on such matters, even through leaks. Plus, generally there aren’t that many people involved in an internal controversy like this, so sources are more vulnerable to exposure than they might be in your usual inside-the-newsroom stories, like, for instance, Politico’s gossipy piece on Jill Abramson. The allegations there were so vague and catty that anyone could have been the source. That’s not the case in the Bloomberg affair. And yet whomever the sources were leaked the dispute anyway, in some detail and at considerable career risk – with little upside. That’s unusual and, in my opinion, it tips the scales in their favor.

Fallows thinks through the company’s motivations:

The less-damaging rationale for this decision is Bloomberg’s concern that its reporters might be kicked out of China. The more-damaging suspicion is that the company was worried that it would lose subscribers in China for its cash-cow Bloomberg financial terminals.

But he adds that the real story here is China itself:

[L]et’s not lose sight of the larger point: Bloomberg is (apparently) wrong for acquiescing, but the real problem is obviously with the parts of the Chinese government that are afraid of what domestic and international reporters would say. Which brings us to the day’s second bit of downbeat news: the Chinese government’s refusal to renew a visa for Paul Mooney, a well-respected reporter who has spent his career covering Asia. Apparently the government didn’t like his tone about Tibet. This is part of a much more widespread pattern of making it hard for international journalists to get into China.

This is not the way a confident, big-time government behaves.

Noah Berlatsky suspects that artist David Trumble’s efforts to satirize Disney princess imagery – by depicting real-life feminists in that style – may have the opposite effect:

The point here is supposed to be that, contrary to what Disney might be suggesting, strong, inspiring women—female role models—don’t need to be princesses, and that turning them into princesses trivializes them. Heroes don’t need sparkles, and sparkles distract from the heroines. In fact, though, Trumble’s drawings don’t so much satirize princesses as, rather wonderfully, validate them.

In some cases the satire works. Turning Anne Frank into “The Holocaust Princess” (later changed to “Diary Princess”) is, baldly tasteless, as Trumble intends. The princess narrative of wealth, prestige, and gutsy triumph sits very uncomfortably next to the persecution and mass tragedy of the Holocaust. The cute, sparkly, flowery dress and big-eyed cheer comes across as inappropriate, ghoulish irony; her blank cheer almost seems to mock Frank’s real life. …

But, as it turns out, making Gloria Steinem a princess is not silly and artificial. Instead, it is awesome. Which suggests, first of all, that femininity is, or can be, awesome. It can be smart, or fierce, or courageous, just like masculinity can. In his caption for Princess Malala Yousafzai, Trumble writes, “She risked all for what she believed in, for education and equality for young girls everywhere! But never mind that … Look! Sparkles!” In the drawing itself, though, those feminine sparkles don’t make Yousafzai less determined. On the contrary, they seem part of the determination and the commitment. Gloss them as cynically as you will, but if you put stars on Malala Yousafzai’s dress, those stars mean hope.

(Image courtesy of David Trumble)

It’s called MafiaLeaks, naturally:

Despite the inevitable comparisons to WikiLeaks, the framework of the site is based on the open source project GlobaLeaks, and bears similarity to the New Yorker’s Strongbox project, as well as the late Aaron Swartz’s SecureDrop. All three emphasize the anonymity of the whistleblower: not even the recipients of the information know their identity, nor can they ever find it out. Once submitted to MafiaLeaks, the data remains on their server for 20 days, encrypted with a key which is only visible to the whistleblower and their chosen confidant. … The time, more than two weeks and less than a month, was chosen because repeat visits to an internet café could become suspicious.

Meghan Neal asks:

What if a hacker manages to exploit some security hole and trace your message back to your real identity? You’re probably getting murdered. This risk isn’t lost on the project’s founders – who obviously wish remain anonymous themselves. They write on the website’s FAQ: “We are not asking you to trust MafiaLeaks. Indeed, please do not trust MafiaLeaks! Send your information anonymously, do not leave your name, do not leave anything in the data that can be traced back to your person.”

Joe Kloc sizes up the site:

In many ways, [MafiaLeaks] presents a less controversial application of the WikiLeaks model than revealing state secrets.

Using the anonymity provided by encryption may prove an effective way to combat crime while protecting the identities of those fearing reprisal. However, the comparison between WikiLeaks and MafiaLeaks isn’t perfect. In the former’s case, there is relatively little incentive for governments to leak falsely incriminating evidence. With MafiaLeaks, there’s a considerably higher risk that the platform’s anonymity will allow it to be manipulated and exploited by organized crime family members. Further, WikiLeaks accepts primary government documents that can be verified. It isn’t entirely clear how  the leaked information on MafiaLeaks will be authenticated, or whether it will be admissible in court

But documents aren’t everything:

Lirio Abbate, an Italian journalist who has reported on Mafia for years, warns that it will be hard to obtain documents since Mafia organizations don’t issue meeting minutes or receipts for murder hits. But the site could find success if it can gather video or audio evidence. “That would be devastating, that would create an enormous anti-Mafia revolution,” Abbate told Mashable.