Category: Media

BY BEN LYONS// When an earthquake occurred at 6:25 a.m. on March 17, it may have given “robot” journalism its first big break. The early morning tremblor allowed an algorithm created by L.A. Times programmer and journalist Ken Schwencke to report the story ahead of other outlets.

The story took only about three minutes to appear online, drawing information such as the quake’s time, magnitude and epicenter from the United States Geological Survey and inserting it into a pre- fabricated template.

By GEORGE SALAMON// If watching or reading about the November 4 midterm elections already gave you acid reflux, the next morning’s New York Times could have been stroke inducing: “Did Someone Say ‘2016’? Presidential Contenders Circle” was the headline above an analysis by Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent for the paper.

Unwilling to leave bad enough alone, Martin produced sketches of the dozen leading candidates: two Democrats, one Independent and nine Republicans, reminding us that recycling has replaced what used to pass for each party’s political philosophy. Running Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) against Jeb Bush (R) ought to cause mass renunciations of citizenship and a substantial exodus to Canada and Australia. But it won’t. Instead Americans will accept the parties’ official and advertising slogans that have become par since Dwight Eisenhower (R) convinced the country in 1952 that it was “time for a change” and that he would “clean up the mess in Washington.”

By ROY MALONE// The killing of Michael Brown Jr. in August by a white Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, has produced a stream of controversial local and national news stories that portray the unarmed black teen as either the victim of police violence or a thug who got what he deserved in a “good shoot” by the officer.

A recent story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quotes a forensic pathologist, Dr. Judy Melinek of San Francisco, as viewing Brown’s autopsy report and saying that Brown was shot in the hand while struggling with the officer at his car and was “going for the gun.” She is also quoted as saying the several shots fired at Brown after he ran, did not show he had his hands up (as in surrendering) as several eyewitnesses have said.

By BEN LYONS// Monitoring Wikipedia edits made from Rus- sian government addresses, an automated tool caught controversial changes in the wake of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash in Ukraine this July. Someone at a state-run TV and radio network, VGTRK, anonymously removed mentions of Russian Federation-sourced missiles, swapping in Ukrainian soldiers as the culprits.

The program, or bot, that discovered the edit then automatically posted to Twitter on its account @RUGovEdits. A similar bot, watching for changes from Boeing IP addresses, discovered edits to the article on Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. The Boeing additions cast doubt on an analysis that found the system’s intercept rate to be low.

By WILLIAM A. BABCOCK// How should the media portray Indian nicknames and logos? Before even going there, consider:
• A few years ago the journalist telephoned the chief of Minnesota’s Ojibwa Nation. He told the chief he was reporting on Native American gambling. The chief immediately responded, “Stop right there. Only you liberal white boys call us ‘Native Americans.’ It’s ‘Indians,’ got it?”

• A young woman from a Midwest Indian reservation was asked in class what she thought about the Cleveland Indians baseball cap with the toothy, red-skinned, feather-bedecked “Chief Wahoo” logo. She responded, “That’s the most popular cap on our reservation; it’s worn by lots of kids. We know the logo’s stereotypical. We’re not stupid. What’s the big f***ing deal?”