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Friday, April 13, 2018

Powerhouse Museum

NSW govt forced to cough up museum papers
Powerhouse Museum move to Parramatta floodplain is 'crazy' and 'risks loss of life', flood expert warns


Jill Wran 'crushed' by plans to relocate the Powerhouse 

 Rogue MP crosses the floor to expose Powerhouse Museum
UK betting giant, William Hill, is selling out of its Australian gambling operation, this country’s biggest, while it is under investigation by the Tax Office, likely for dubious transactions exposed here. Taxman closes in as William Hill skips the country

EXCLUSIVE | Prison officers walk off the job

Obeid family lose lawsuit against ICAC investigators

Publishers call for new probe into collapse of media agency Hammond and Thackeray


Cummins acknowledged in his liquidation report to creditors, and later told Mumbrella, there were “one or two” indicators that insolvent trading may have taken place, a view he said was based on a “preliminary assessment” and largely surrounded a number of payment arrangements agreed with the Australian Tax Office.


Which companies are likely to be good or bad at public relations? - That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, the community banks are likely to be good, here is one excerpt:
I think of community banks as enjoying relatively high levels of trust. Millions of Americans have walked through the doors of their local banks and dealt with the loan officers, tellers and account managers, giving the business a human face. A community bank cannot serve a region without sending out a fair number of foot soldiers. Banks tend to have longstanding roots in their communities, and a large stock of connections and accumulated social capital.
In turn, community banks have converted this personal trust into political clout. There are community banks in virtually every congressional district, and these banks have developed the art of speaking for many different segments of American society, not just a narrow coastal elite. When these banks mobilize on behalf of a political cause, they are powerful, as illustrated by the likelihood that they will get regulatory relief from the Dodd-Frank Act, probably with bipartisan support. They have such influence that one member of the Federal Reserve Board must be a community banker, even though few economists see much rationale for this provision.
Given their usefulness, it would be wrong to describe community bankers as a stagnant sector of our economy. Still, the same features that make them trusted and politically powerful also make them unlikely to be major sector disruptors.
Already you can see a problem shaping up, as perhaps the faster-growing, higher productivity gain companies will have less experience.  And indeed often the very dynamic, big tech companies are not so good at public relations:
Alternatively, let’s say you were designing a business that, whatever its other virtues might be, would not be very good at public relations.
First, you would make sure the business had come of age fairly recently. That would ensure the company didn’t have a long history of managing public relations, learning how the news media work, figuring out what it will or will not be blamed for, and rooting itself in local communities.
The next thing you might do is to concentrate the company’s broader business sector in one particular part of the country. That would ensure that the companies’ culture didn’t reflect the broadest possible swath of public opinion. Better yet, don’t choose a swing state such as Pennsylvania or Ohio, but rather opt for a region that is overwhelmingly of a single political orientation and viewed by many Americans as a bit crazy or out of touch. How about Northern California?
Which companies are likely to be good or bad at public relations?.  The clincher of course is this:
And we have been building a political system that favors the time-honored company rather than the radical innovator.

How to ensure your govt website isn't flagged as dodgy.
"Soon a popular browser will warn your website visitors if there is no secure connection backed by a valid certificate. It’s an easy fix — here’s what we did." (DTA)
 

The Berkman Klein Center is pleased to announce a new publication from the Privacy Tools project, authored by a multidisciplinary group of project collaborators from the Berkman Klein Center and the Program on Information Science at MIT Libraries. This article, titled “Practical approaches to big data privacy over time,” analyzes how privacy risks multiply as large quantities of personal data are collected over longer periods of time, draws attention to the relative weakness of data protections in the corporate and public sectors, and provides practical recommendations for protecting privacy when collecting and managing commercial and government data over extended periods of time

Malaysia moves to outlaw fake news

The Malaysian government raised eyebrows this week when both houses passed a bill outlawing fake news, punishable by up to six years in prison for both its publication and sharing. Online service providers would be responsible for third-party content, foreign news outlets reporting on Malaysia could be affected and anyone could lodge a complaint against an alleged purveyor of misinformation.
But the opposition argues the government’s definition of what constitutes fake news — “any news, information, data and reports which are wholly or partly false, whether in the form of features, visuals or audio recordings or in any other form capable of suggesting words or ideas” — is too vague and that the bill was an effort to stifle free speech ahead of the August election. Malaysia's head of state still needs to sign the bill into law, but that is expected to be a formality since he supports the bill anyway.
ICYMI: Malaysia’s fake news bill is part of a larger trend of governments intervening against misinformation. Here’s a guide to different actions around the world.

This is how we do it

Fact-checking day highlights

  • Factcheck.org solicited questions from readers on Facebook throughout the week about its fact-checking process. Then it answered them in videos on Monday.
  • France 24 did segments with Derek Thomson, director of their Observers citizen verification project, and Jane Elizabeth, director of the Accountability Journalism Program at the American Press Institute, on International Fact-Checking Day. Observers also launched a verification guide.
  • Ana Pastor’s startup Newtral published an Instagram video explaining the fact-checking methodology on her prime time TV show El Objetivo. The Spanish fact-checker also published a segment asking people whether certain claims were true or false.

This is bad

  • Facebook finds 273 fake pages and accounts linked to Russian misinformation efforts.
  • Following a shooting at YouTube’s headquarters, BuzzFeed News kept track of hoaxes about the incident.  
  • InfoWars identified a Massachusetts man as the Parkland school shooter, and he’s suing.

A closer look

If you read one more thing

The Washington Post reported this week that a new study shows fake news might have swung the U.S. election in favor of Donald Trump. But Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College, debunked that notion, pointing to a February column in The Upshot that warns against overblowing the political influence of bots and misinformation.

Quick fact-checking links

More than 75 percent of Americans think major TV and newspaper outlets report fake news, according to a new Monmouth University poll. But The Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan has some criticism of that poll.  //  Arizona’s AZ Fact Check Team looks back at seven ways politicians have mangled the truth.  //  Ireland’s Ferret Fact Service is celebrating one year in the biz.  //  Aos Fatos’ fact-checking bot Fátima grew to Twitter from Facebook and won an anti-misinformation challenge in Brazil.  //  Here’s how far automated fact-checking has come over the past two years — and the obstacles still in its way.  //  The International Center for Journalists is expanding TruthBuzz.  //  How the “teens snort condoms” non-story went viral.  //  Here’s where philanthropy to fight fake news is headed these days.  //  Fighting fake news in Mexico: WAN-IFRA writes about Verificado 2018.  //  PolitiFact published an eight-step guide to avoid falling for fake news for fact-checking day.  //  Facebook has expanded its fact-checking program to Indonesia.  //  The Washington Post’s Abby Olheiser kept track of all the major April Fools’ Day pranks on the internet this year.  //  The EU is facing more pushback on its efforts to counter disinformation.  //  Take a look inside Croatia’s Faktograf.  //  An Indonesian cabinet member threatened to shut down Facebook if the company doesn’t crack down on fake news before next year’s election.  //  Also for Fact-Checking Day: Vera Files created their own fact-checking quiz and the Better Government Association shared fact-checking tips.
via Daniel, Jane, and Alexios
 
 
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