NewsTrust - Citizen Journalism - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Twitter and Reddit as crowdsourced fact-checking engines

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 17 (News) - New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors.

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Experimental Study of Informal Rewards in Peer Production

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Stony Brook University - By Michael Restivo, Arnout van de Rijt - Apr. 29 (Research) - We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.

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Helping readers improve Wikipedia

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wikimedia - By Fabrice Florin, Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung, Arron Halfaker, Oliver Keyes - Mar. 25 (Special Report) - The Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with editors of the English Wikipedia, is developing a tool to enable readers to contribute productively to building the encyclopedia. To that end, we started development of a new version of the Article Feedback Tool (known as AFTv5) in October 2011. The original version of the tool, which allows readers to rate articles based on a star system, launched in 2010. The new version invites readers to write comments that might help editors improve Wikipedia articles. We hope that this tool will contribute to the Wikimedia movement’s strategic goals of increasing participation and improving quality.

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Hypothes.is Reputation Workshop

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Wikipedia - By Dario Taraborelli - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - Hypothes.is founder Dan Whaley invited us to participate in the workshop to contribute to the design of this service with input from Wikimedia and to help them make design decisions for a suitable reputation model to be used by the service. Other prominent Wikipedia researchers (GroupLens founder John Riedl, and WikiTrust creator Luca de Alfaro) were among the participants.

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Leaked Stratfor Email Suggests Secret U.S. Indictment of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 29 (News Report) - "Somehow you have a private intelligence company, Stratfor, a 'shadow CIA,' as people have called it, having information about this sealed indictment—secret again—that Julian Assange doesn’t have, that WikiLeaks doesn’t have, that his lawyers don’t have," says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is a legal adviser to both Assange and to WikiLeaks. "What you see here is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy." News of the indictment comes less than a week after Army Private Bradley Manning was arraigned for allegedly leaking classified U.S. military and State Department doc

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Wikileaks Publishes Millions Of Confidential Emails From Security Firm

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Feb. 27 (News Report) - The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks began publishing on Monday more than five million emails from a U.S.-based global security analysis company that has been likened to a shadow CIA.

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Key Senator Abandons The Protect IP Ship

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Zach Carter - Jan. 18 (News) - Home to the Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks, Rubio's Florida may be the most Hollywood-centric state outside California, and Rubio had been one of the first senators to sign on in support of Protect IP when Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) introduce

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Wikipedia, Reddit To Shut Down Sites Wednesday To Protest Proposed Stop Online Piracy Act

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to "go dark" on Wednesday in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. "What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net."

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“Internet Censorship Affects Everybody”: Rebecca MacKinnon on the Global Struggle For Online Freedom

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - As protests mount against two controversial internet anti-piracy bills moving through Congress, we speak with Rebecca MacKinnon, author of the forthcoming book, “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” “If we want democracy to survive in the internet age, we really need to work to make sure that the internet evolves in a manner that is compatible with democracy,” MacKinnon says, “And that means exercising our power, not only as consumers and Internet users and investors, but also as voters to make sure that our digital lives contain the same kind of protections of our rights that we expect in physical space.” She argues that for every empowering story of the internet's role, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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As Bradley Manning Hearing Concludes, Military Prosecutors Say WikiLeaks Disclosures Aided al-Qaeda

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 23 (News Report) - the prosecution "linked Bradley Manning to aiding al-Qaeda... That essentially is criminalizing national security journalism... What they’re saying is anybody who puts this information on the internet—if you do a report on a drone strike, if you do a report on anything related to military operations, and then al-Qaeda reads it, then you could be accused of aiding the enemy."

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Iraq Combat Veteran Dan Choi Forcibly Ousted, Barred From Bradley Manning Hearing at Ft. Meade

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 21 (News Report) - Former U.S. Army Lt. Dan Choi attended the pre-trial military hearing for accused Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning this weekend, but was barred from returning on Monday. Military security handcuffed Choi, pinned to the ground and ripped off his rank. The military says Choi was heckling, but Choi maintains he never disrupted the proceedings. He is an Iraq War combat veteran, supporter of Manning, and an openly gay service member who was discharged in 2010 under the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. "What Bradley Manning did as a gay American, as a soldier — a good soldier, in fact the only soldier in his entire chain of command who did the right thing and suffers the consequences unjustly — there's no choice but for patriotic Americans to sit there and support Bradley Manning in the dignity and full honor of the uniform of service," Choi says. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Bradley Manning's Defense Strategy on Display as Military Prosecutors Rest Case in Pretrial Hearing

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Ed Pilkington - Dec. 21 (News Report) - "[The defense is] claiming ... that Manning has not been given the right to a fair pretrial hearing, because we think they’re only likely to be able to call three witnesses. Now that’s in addition to 10 witnesses they shared with the prosecution, but it’s still a tiny number compared with the total of 48 that Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, asked for," Pilkington says. "And if, by contrast, the defense is only allowed to call three of its own witnesses, that looks pretty unequal to me."

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"The Arab People Have Woken Up": Yemeni Activist Tawakkul Karman Accepts Nobel Peace Prize

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 13 (Special Report) - Today we complete our coverage with the acceptance speech of Tawakkol Karman from Yemen, the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as its youngest winner to date. Karman, a 32-year-old mother of three and an outspoken journalist and activist, has agitated for press freedoms and staged weekly sit-ins to demand the release of political prisoners from jail. She founded Women Journalists Without Chains and has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy in Yemen.

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Four lessons from Flipboard’s reinvention for the iPhone

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Dec. 07 (News Analysis) - The most popular news aggregation app for the iPad launches a new iPhone version Wednesday. Flipboard’s redesign for the smaller screen offers lessons in how publishers should tailor apps for the different needs of tablet and smartphone owners.

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Scott Campbell Films Police Shooting At Occupy Oakland: Video Sparks National Outrage (VIDEO)

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Nov. 08 (News Report) - Early Thursday morning after Occupy Oakland's general strike, Campbell filmed police as they surrounded the remaining protesters. According to Campbell, an officer asked him to step back as he approached the police line with a video camera. Campbell obliged, and then began filming about ten feet from the officers. On the video, Campbell can be heard asking "is this OK?" twice. Several seconds later, an officer shoots him with what appears to be a rubber bullet.

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WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Loses Appeal to Stop His Extradition to Sweden

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Nov. 02 (News Report) - London's High Court has ruled Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief, should be extradited from the United Kingdom to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes. Swedish authorities want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. Assange's lawyers have argued the Swedish demand is legally flawed and that the sex was consensual. They are also concerned that the U.S. government will pressure Sweden to extradite him to the United States, where an ongoing investigation is underway about the source(s) who leaked classified U.S. diplomatic cables and Department of Defense files to WikiLeaks. They are now considering an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights. For more, we speak with Helena Kennedy, an attorney on Assange's legal team. We also air a statement made by Julian Assange this morning in London. [includes rush transcript]

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Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street, Banks Too Big To Jail and the Attack on WikiLeaks

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman - Oct. 26 (News Analysis) - The prominent political and legal blogger Glenn Greenwald comments on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. "What this movement is about is more important than specific legislative demands. It…is expressing dissent to the system itself," says Greenwald. "It is not a Democratic Party organ. It is not about demanding that President Obama’s single [jobs] bill pass or anything along those lines. It is saying that we believe the system itself is radically corrupted, and we no longer are willing to tolerate it. And that’s infinitely more important than specific legislative or political demands."

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Julian Assange: WikiLeaks Could Shut Down Over Financial Woes

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 24 (News Report) - WikiLeaks said in a statement Monday that it would stop publishing for the moment in order to focus on making money – explaining that the blockade imposed by financial companies including Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and PayPal left it with no choice.

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Italian MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli dies after horrific crash

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

OpenGlobe - By Fetchcomms, OpenGlobe contributors - Oct. 24 (News Report) - Italian MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli, died Sunday in a three-bike crash only minutes into a Sepang, Malaysia race. Simoncelli, 24, died only a week after IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon perished in a fiery fifteen-car collision in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just four minutes into the Shell Advance Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit, Simoncelli's Honda motorcycle veered across the track and cut off fellow Italian Valentino Rossi, who escaped unscathed, and the United States' Colin Edwards, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

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Details of Steve Jobs' life emerge before launch of official biography

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

OpenGlobe - By Fetchcomms, OpenGlobe contributors - Oct. 21 (News Report) - New details of Steve Jobs' life have emerged as advance copies of his official biography, due to go on sale Monday, were released to media organizations. The 630-page book by Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs," sheds new light on Jobs' personal life, thoughts, and philosophies, as well as his relationships with major political figures and other companies.

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Are You Being Censored?

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Jonathan Collyer - Sep. 22 (Investigative Report) - Since the story about Yahoo blocking emails with links to occupywallstreet.org broke, we've seen a major upsurge in the number of emails from our readers regarding censorship. It seems an important time to take a serious look at the potential for Internet censorship, what it means for Progressives, and what we can do about it.

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Hacktivism's Global Reach, From Targeting Scientology to Backing Wikileaks and the Arab Spring

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 16 (Investigative Report) - In recent years, online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations. When MasterCard and Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks last December, hackers with Anonymous briefly took down the websites of both credit card giants. Other targets have included Sony, PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, the Church of Scientology, and the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Now law enforcement agencies across the world have begun cracking down on the hackers.

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A guide to Baltimore’s online news ecology

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Paper - By Michael Byrne - Aug. 09 (Special Report) - For six months, Baltimore was fortunate enough to have an organization here dedicated solely to analyzing the city’s journalistic output, NewsTrust Baltimore (the local pilot project of the larger NewsTrust organization). It was a bit like Yelp crossed with the Columbia Journalism Review. The project ceased operations on July 31 (it was always intended as a six-month pilot), leaving behind a collection of reports, one of which is a final comprehensive analysis of sorts. It eventually concludes, “The local news scene is in a state of flux with more than a little creative chaos. But patterns are emerging. As news startups and impassioned individuals become more rigorous and as traditional news organizations become more open and responsive to the public, there is a growing opportunity for collaboration across the local journalistic community.“

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NewsTrust dives into the fact-check business with expanded Truthsquad

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - Jul. 27 (News) - Just in time for the 2012 elections, the cottage industry of media fact-checking is ramping up. That latest addition is Truthsquad, which began last year as a pilot project of NewsTrust. TruthSquad will differentiate itself from its peers by bringing in the crowd, combining the talents of professional journalists with the eagerness (if not competitiveness) of the public to separate fact from less-than fact. As the Truthsquad homepage puts it, they’re “developing a pro-am network to fact-check political claims during the 2012 elections.” What’s new is additional financial backing from Craig Newmark and a partnership with the Center for Public Integrity — and with them Truthsquad plans to go big, creating widgets and tools for fact-checking statements on any news site and joining PolitiFact and FactCheck.org as part of the Internet’s informal truth-sleuth network. The big push is a new phase for NewsTrust, which plans to shift its focus from its news curation and media literacy work to focus on fact-checking and building out Truthsquad with a launch this fall. When I spoke to Fabrice Florin, executive director of NewsTrust, he said the current state of politics and media have made for a environment ripe for fact-checking.

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Future of Media: Curation, Verification and News as a Process

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 21 (News Analysis) - As part of a “social media summit” this week, the BBC posted an overview of how its user-generated content desk handles reports from the field — verifying and curating them in much the same way that Andy Carvin of NPR has been doing for the past few months during the upheaval in the Middle East. As I’ve written before, there is a growing need for this kind of curation, but there is also the need to start looking at news as a process and not as a pristine, finished product. While many media outlets have web editors who track reports on Twitter and other social media, the BBC is unique (as far as I know) in having a special desk that sits in the middle of the newsroom and pulls in reports from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and anywhere else it can find information. The desk staffers then try to verify these reports, and some of the ways they do that are fascinating.

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