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Friday, February 16, 2018
 | Are news publishers directly liable for embedding tweets that contain images not created by that tweeter?A New York federal judge ruled that when publishers from The Boston Globe to Vox Media to Breitbart “caused the embedded tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right.” By Shan Wang. |
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What strategies work best for increasing trust in local newsrooms? Trusting News has some ideas“It's not so much about gaming Facebook's algorithm or working with the Facebook changes as much as it is taking advantage of Facebook as a truly social platform.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Should we consider fake news another form of (not particularly effective) political persuasion — or something more dangerous?Plus: The lines between “fake news” and psyops, the Russians shared real news too, and “reality apathy.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Wired / Erin Griffith
Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after the mass shooting at a Florida high school →
“On RoBhat Labs’ Botcheck.me, a website created by two Berkeley students to track 1500 political propaganda bots, all of the top two-word phrases used in the last 24 hours — excluding President Trump’s name — are related to the tragedy: School shooting, gun control, high school, Florida school. The top hashtags from the last 24 hours include Parkland, guncontrol, and guncontrolnow.”
Bloomberg / Aoife White
Facbook must stop tracking Belgian web users, a Belgian court ruled →
“The social media giant must delete data it's already gathered, or it will face fines of €250,000 ($312,000) a day, a Belgian court ruled. Facebook ‘doesn't sufficiently inform’ clients about the data it gathers on their broader web use, nor does it explain what it does with the information or say how long it stores it, the Brussels Court of First Instance said in a statement.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
‘There’s an awful lot of showmanship’: Confessions of a publishing consultant on Facebook’s news feed changes →
“There's a lot of shock and floundering and not knowing what to do inwardly, while outwardly, there's a lot of posturing and big statements from publishers saying, ‘This is our new course of action; this is what we're going to do.’ It's far too early to know what the path forward is. Of course, this will have an impact — we're just not sure what.”
Poynter / Daniel Funke
Imposter tweets made it even harder for a reporter to cover Florida school shooting →
“Claire Wardle, executive director of First Draft, which is hosted in Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said in an email that this was the first time she's seen fake tweets posing as journalists' work. However, over the past couple of years, she's seen tweets chastising journalists who reach out to people affected by breaking news events. That nugget of reality is what makes these fake tweets effective, she said.”
NewsWhip / Liam Corcoran
Tips for how to succeed on Facebook as a local news publisher →
“(1) Develop a real community by doubling-down on the type of stories that differentiate your site from bigger publishers that already have a massive audience. (2) Recognize your audience's reading habits, and serve them. (3) Regularly review data, and re-engage: It's probable that not every story is going to work well in the news feed, even with the latest Facebook boost. (4) For a rundown on where to start, check out our guide to sharing analytics in the newsroom.”
The Boston Globe / Joshua Benton
The Boston Herald’s buyer Digital First Media is a vulture capitalist →
“A local owner who cares about the quality of news is better than a distant one who does, and both are better than one whose only concern is the bottom line. The Herald's sale will still need to be approved in a bankruptcy court in Delaware. I don't expect a Delaware judge to care much about the journalistic health of Boston. But just short of setting the place on fire, being bought by Digital First is about the worst outcome possible. It's less the Herald being saved than the Herald being stripped for parts,” writes Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton.
BuzzFeed / Andrew Potter
Opinion: Can the resistance take The New York Times hostage? →
“But as the industry moves in the direction of a subscription-driven business, it will learn that subscribers can collide with editorial independence just as easily as corporate advertisers can. If their willingness to pay for news (and by implied threat, stop paying) becomes central to news economics, the Resistance can take a newspaper hostage much more effectively than advertisers ever did.”
BuzzFeed / Jane Lytvynenko
Twitter says impersonating a journalist during a mass shooting doesn’t violate its rules →
“In the wake of the Florida high school shooting Wednesday, Twitter users began spreading doctored tweets targeting Miami Herald reporter Alex Harris. The first tweet faked Harris asking for pictures or video of dead bodies.’ The second doctored tweet went further, making it look like she was asking whether the shooter was white.”
The Daily Caller / Joe Simonson
IJR has laid off 15 staffers →
“Employees received notice about their termination Thursday morning via email, according to multiple recently laid-off IJR staffers. A number of veteran employees were also allegedly included in the mass layoffs. One source told the Daily Caller that eliminations hit virtually every department at the company.”