Media and Alternative Phoenixing Trends

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
— Marcus Aurelius, born around this date in 120

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.”  ... read more

Pundits and journalists love to go on about “objectivity” and the “view from nowhere,” but who does that really serve? If anything, we need more (good) context and (useful) views from somewhere. 

A fortnight before the collapse Mr Khattar was awarded property developer of the year by the Urban Taskforce, a lobbying organisation for property developers. Building homes was in the "family blood", Mr Khattar said in his acceptance speech. But it appears paying tax is not.

"They just don't have it in their DNA to pay tax," said prominent liquidator Stephen Hathway of the tens of millions of dollars Dyldam-related entities owe to the Australian Taxation Office. Bower owes the ATO almost $1 million, while former staff are owed the same amount in unpaid wages and entitlements. The Office of State Revenue is owed $309,662, Harvey Norman $132,000 and more than $15 million is owed to scores of subcontractors and tradespeople.

Ray Hadley axes major sponsor Dyldam, after subcontractors complain about company's collapse - The Sydney Morning Herald

Pre-insolvency business advisers investigated by ASIC and ATO ...

The company is often then restarted under a different name, a practice known as "phoenixing". The revelations about the scale of potential ...

Phoenixing companies too easy and lucrative in Australia, new report finds - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


Australian Tax Office puts a roof over Williams crime clan

IT myth of job skills
The Deregulation of Private Capital and the Decline of the Public Company The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

Anosh Ali, Trump’s Back-to Basics Tax Plan: It’s Tremendous! (Surly Subgroup). Fake news, but maybe accurate

I do not consider this to be a confirmed result, still the basic mechanism is of interest, especially to analyses of complacency:

Despite the near universality of the maxim that one should treat others as one ought to be treated, even well-intended advisers often advise others to act differently than they choose for themselves. We review several psychological factors that contribute to biased advice. Absent pecuniary motives to the contrary, advice tends to be paternalistically biased in favor of caution. Policies that would intuitively promote quality advice — such as making advisers accountable, taking advice from advisers who value the relationship, or having advisers disclose potential conflicts of interest — can perversely lower the quality of advice.

That is from a paper by Jason Dana and Daylian M. Cain, via Rolf Degen.  Here is further commentary from Degen.

A lot can happen in 100 days

Policy is made and laws are passed. Governments rise and fall and leaders come and go. A lot of news can be packed into 100 days…

All this talk about what’s been done in 100 days got us thinking …
What progress has Trump made in his first 100 days? 

Ivanka Trump met with jeers in Berlin as she calls father 'champion of women'...

Trump's attacks on media blamed for decline in US standing in press-freedom survey

Breitbart struggles to define its role in Trump era: Bad boy, watchdog or lapdog?

In surprise TED talk, Pope Francis embraces science, but urges humanity

United Airlines in new PR disaster after giant rabbit dies on UK flight Guardian The rabbit died. Oh dear

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times Magazine, April 25, 2017: Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug? 

OBIT GIVES US AN INSIDE LOOK AT INSIDE JOURNALISM. IT’S NOT PRETTY:

A new documentary about the New York Times arrives at just the moment America’s newspaper of record presents itself as something that stands not for news but for power, partisanship, and elitism. It’s titled “Obit,” perhaps in a witty response to the digital era’s advance on outmoded media. An inside look at how the paper’s staff of obituary writers and researchers perform their tasks, Obit may be the closest that any media-maker gets to examining the Times’ confidential procedures during this terrible period of oppositional journalism.

Obit’s timing and title is particularly apropos, considering how universally the DNC-MSM dropped the mask last year — and only a few years prior, already completed building their own mausoleum.

Related: “If you want to see, in an instant, what the New York Times has become, just consider the lead headlines in this morning’s editions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal.”

Fact-checking on foot Julien Pain was tired of preaching to the choir. After several years spent debunking viral fakes for France 24's Les Observateurs, he was on the lookout for a format that would expand the reach of his fact-checking. "I realized I was only reaching people who agreed with me," he said. Since September, he's been taking fact-checking to the streets in Facebook Live videos for France Info. Here's how it's gone

Quote of the week "A response on all three fronts — journalism, libraries, and schools — is essential to beating back this massive assault on truth. Social science tells us that our decisions and judgments depend more on shared community narratives than on individual rationality." — Librarian Barbara Fister, writing for Inside Higher Ed  Politics co-opts fact-checking In Le Monde, Mathilde Damgé takes stock of all the ways French political campaigns have tried to co-opt the cues and format of fact-checking to promote their own agenda. "While journalism doesn't mean absolute neutrality, it starts from a principle of honesty," Damgé writes. The campaign's "fact-checking" efforts have a "militant goal" and are often just a new means to pursue old ends. International fact-checking hangouts Spotted on Twitter: Ana Pastor of El Objetivo (and its "Pruebas de Verificacion") visiting Glenn Kessler and Michelle Lee of the Washington Post Fact Checker. How Tapper makes facts "so damn entertaining" GQ magazine goes deep inside the head of CNN's Jake Tapper, and how he handles the "constant assault on the truth" as he interviews fact-resistant guests on his show. Facebook & facts: Your weekly update Some people aren't too impressed by Facebook's "Tips to Spot False News" and here's why. ... Shareholders want Facebook to produce a report on how "fake news" is hurting democracy and the company itself. ... About 30,000 fake accounts were suspended by Facebook in advance of France's elections, which begin Sunday. ... Facebook's ready to roll out augmented reality, but could that make it even more difficult to determine what's real? Shouldn't we better at this by now? A sad story from Craig Silverman: He tracks the legitimate news sites that published a fake story about a husband and wife discovering that they're twins. We repeat two previous pieces of advice: This is a particularly bad time to make dumb mistakes. And, if it sounds too good/bad/ridiculous to be true, do some fact-checking. Fake news isn't exclusive to party or candidate Your regular reminder that fake news is peddled by both the left and the right. And that misinformation against Trump can also spread faster than its related correction. Celebrating fact-checking in the Balkans Are you interested in fact-checking in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia or Serbia? Submit your work and win a bursary to attend the Fourth Global Fact-Checking Summit in Madrid. Deadline is May 5. Follow that money The non-profit, non-partisan USAFacts launched this week, with a goal of explaining the facts behind government spending — local, state and federal. Former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer and his foundation are behind it. Taking the fun out of the funny papers? If someone — even a cartoon character — is driving the wrong vehicle or using the wrong word, those fact-checking comic page readers are going to catch it. 10 quick fact-checking links  (1) A New Jersey poll says that people with more political knowledge are more susceptible to misinformation.  (2) Le Monde is using Snapchat to help people spot fake news. (3) So many fake news & fact-checking events. (4) A Turkish fact-checker discusses the referendum and fact-checking on the BBC. (5) If you're at ISOJ, don't miss the fact-checking panel. (6) Don't buy the Facebook PR line on third-party fact-checking. (7) About that fake armada... (8) Keep an eye on Bloomberg and Postlight's attempt to add a fact layer to the internet. (9) Snopes’ managing editor wins a Sunshine Award. (10) A Virginia congressman starts fact-checking statements made about climate science.  Philly's Bermuda ties: How a tax haven copes with Trump, tech   Leslie Book, Whistleblower Who Prompted Voluntary Compliance Not Entitled to Reward (Procedurally Taxing). “The opinion concludes that a whistleblower who provides information that exposes taxpayer misconduct and brings about a voluntary change in a taxpayer’s behavior in future years is not entitled to receive a reward.”  Big Brother will know your sex habits AUSTRALIANS' sexual practices, religious beliefs and health records could be collected in a new government database designed to choke off terrorism financing. A covert intelligence unit called the "Fintel Alliance" has been set up to team Australia's spy and law agencies with the Immigration Department, Australian Taxation Office, banks and even PayPal. FBI allays some critics with first use of new mass-hacking warrant Ars Technica Mass hacking seems to be all the rage currently. A vigilante hacker apparently slipped secure code into vulnerable cameras and other insecure networked objects in the "Internet of Things" so that bad guys can't corral those devices into an army of zombie computers, like what happened with the record-breaking Mirai denial-of-service botnet. The Homeland Security Department issued alerts with instructions for fending off similar “Brickerbot malware,” so-named because it bricks IoT devices. And perhaps most unusual, the FBI recently obtained a single warrant in Alaska to hack the computers of thousands of victims in a bid to free them from the global botnet, Kelihos.