Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
For those interested in the forensic process — and in this case, computer forensics — be sure to check out this fine, fine piece of digital detective work by Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals. He discovered evidence of a “rootkit” on his Windows PC.
We don't think journalists need to know how to DO this kind of deep-diving probing, but we should be aware that it is possible and, broadly speaking, the methods if only to know the appropriate search terms. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.
Here's WIRED Magazine's take on the story, “The Cover-Up Is the Crime“
And here's what Dan Gillmor had to say about it, with additional links.
Another example of how journalists can learn from other disciplines comes to the surface in the form of an LA Press Club meeting Nov. 9. “Digging deep: What reporters can learn from and about private investigators,” is the topic, and the panel of speakers, though large, seems rich with potential.
Here at the IAJ we also value the well done blog, “PI News Link,” run by Tamara Thompson. Check it out; enter it in your blog harvester.
We're pleased that the PBS program “Frontline” is keeping up the good fight to produce important journalism. And thanks to the Librarian's Index to the Internet for pointing us to: Private Warriors
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/ Subjects: Government contractors — United States | Public contracts — United States | Private security services | United States — Armed Forces — Management | New this week Created by je – last updated Jul 6, 2005
Be sure to drill down to the section, “Does Privatization Save Money.” A nice example of a reporter asking the right questions.
Our fellow traveler Bill Dokosh in Canada tips us to this article in the Toronto Star, “Don't tell anything to anybody,” discussing what the Canadian information commissioner learned after seven years on the job. The post is, essentially, responsible for ensuring that Canadian citizens get access to government documents.
“As a former Liberal cabinet minister, former opposition backbencher and former lobbyist for a powerful national association, John Reid thought he knew what he was getting into when he was named Canada's Information Commissioner, seven years ago. He was wrong, Reid now admits. He had no inkling that senior bureaucrats reached top-level decisions verbally to avoid leaving a paper trail. He never expected to fight an all-out court battle for access to something as innocuous as the Prime Minister's daily schedule. Most of all, he did not realize how hard it was for ordinary Canadians to get scraps of ostensibly public information, gathered on their behalf with their tax dollars.”
Amen.
Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, and a regular contributor to the Seattle Times editorial pages, suggests that today's journalism students lack the right stuff to do difficult reporting. In “The hardscrabble roots of investigative journalism,” he says: “Journalism students, at least in my experience, are less interested in hard-scrabble reporting and more interested in supporting roles.” He also says: “…The cost of uncovering a big story can be stupendous, often involving lawyers and computer experts as well as reporters, photographers and editors.
Most papers would rather spend the money on airplane tickets to cover their region's NFL or NBA teams, or so entertainment writers can make pilgrimages to Hollywood. These investments are more likely to attract readers, which in turn attract advertising dollars. The intensely bottom-line newspaper chains rarely appear on the honor roll, but always appear at the top of the profit-margin charts.
More of these investigative awards are won through the use of computer-assisted reporting, often involving the use of complex databases. A prize-winning team typically includes at least one journalist who specializes in this work, and often another who specializes in displaying the product graphically.”
By Alex Knott
“WASHINGTON, April 7, 2005 — Special interests and the lobbyists they employ have reported spending, since 1998, a total of almost $13 billion to influence Congress, the White House and more than 200 federal agencies. They've hired a couple thousand former government officials to influence federal policy on everything from abortion and adoption to taxation and welfare. And they've filed—most of the time—thousands of pages of disclosure forms with the Senate Office of Public Records and the House Clerk's Office….”
It was in the early '90s, when JTJ began thinking about and researching the process that results in the journalist's product. It eventually boiled down to the RRAW-P process: Research–>Reporting–>Analysis–>Writing and finally Publishing/Producing/Packaging. The attached paper first appeared in the Social Science Computer Review in 1994.
