Category Archives: Current Affairs

Making Sense Of The NewsCorp Phone Hacking Scandal

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The British press are in an uproar this weekend over the just-won’t-die story about how News International (the U.K. subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation, hereafter referenced as NewsCorp) “journalists” at News of the World (NotW) “hack[ed] into the mobile phone records of celebrities and public figures.” It should be news when journalists are arrested for privacy violations.

In 2007, one NotW reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, and one private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were convicted and jailed. But the story doesn’t end there.

Continue reading →

Debunking Headlines: Japan Has Not Had A Nuclear Explosion Or Meltdown

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

On Friday March 11, 2001, Japan suffered the largest earthquake in its recorded history (9.0) followed within an hour by a raging tsunami. Several nuclear power facilities have suffered damages, but as of 23.30 pm PDT Sunday March 13 there has been no nuclear explosion and no nuclear meltdown.

I wrote an article that detailed what was known about each of the four facilities with reported problems. When I was researching it, I was reminded that facts seldom get in the way of headline writing. Or tweets. This storify collection — a work in progress — highlights hyperbole; some examples are from “normal” people (not news organizations or journos).

Read the story at Storify

Wisconsin IT Department Treats Pro-Union Website Like A Porn Site

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The website DefendWisconsin.org, which supports union protesters, could not be accessed on the Wisconsin Capitol wifi network on Monday and part of Tuesday, according to various news reports.

According to CNN:

The Capitol internet service, which restricts access to certain websites considered inappropriate for lawmakers, revealed a “blocked page” when users tried to access the site using the building’s wireless system.

“Inappropriate” in the context of government web servers is usually a code word for porn.
Continue reading →

House Ties FCC Hands On Net Neutrality

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

It’s legislation by budget fiat, and it’s wrong.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR, @repgregwalden), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, successfully introduced an amendment to H.R. 1 that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from using its budget to implement net neutrality rules passed in late 2010. A similar amendment lies in wait in the Senate, offered by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and John Ensign (R-NE).  Continue reading →

Obama v Palin : A Visual Analysis

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Updated. Yesterday, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin delivered a short video statement on the tragedy in Arizona. Later in the day, President Barack Obama spoke at the memorial service in Tucson.

I’ve used Wordle to compare the two speeches.

Wordle - Palin

Sarah Palin On The Tragedy In Tucson

Wordle - Obama

Barack Obama On The Tragedy In Tucson

I’ve also written about the controversy surrounding Palin’s use of “blood libel” to castigate the media.

UPDATE:

Wordle provides a visual rhetorical analysis of a text. The size of the words relates to how often they are used; I wish that color intensity was also correlated with word frequency (darker = more frequent) but I don’t think it is.

A few caveats about these Wordle images:

  • Obama’s text is a LOT longer than Palin’s
  • I did not add any “stop” words to the stock “a, and, the, etc” list that is in Wordle*
  • I did not conflate words — which I often do (singular/plural)

I am adding a Wordle of Bobby Kennedy’s remarks on the slaying of Martin Luther King as a point of cultural (political era) comparison. Arguably, 1968 was an even more divisive time than the one we live in today.

Wordle - Bobby on MLK

Robert (Bobby) Kennedy On The Assassination of Martin Luther King

:: WiredPen permalink : Follow me on Twitter!