“The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.”
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Digital Age Samaritans
Kaufman, Zachary D., Digital Age Samaritans (December 1, 2020). Boston College Law Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3741017
“Modern technology enables people to view, document, and share evidence of crimes contemporaneously or soon after commission. Electronic transmission of this material — including through social media and mobile devices — raises legal, moral, and practical questions about spectators’ responsibilities. In the digital age, will these actors be bystanders or upstanders? What role can and should the law play in shaping their behavior? This Article argues that certain witnesses who are not physically present at the scene of a crime should be held criminally accountable for failing to report specified violent offenses. Focusing on rape, police brutality, and other misconduct, this Article demonstrates that recent technological innovations create new opportunities and challenges to pursue justice and accountability. Such culpability centers on “Bad Samaritan laws”: statutes that impose a legal duty to assist others in peril through intervening directly (also known as “the duty to rescue”) or notifying authorities (also known as “the duty to report”). However, many of these antiquated laws arguably apply only to witnesses who are physically present, which limits their potential effectiveness today. Not all virtual witnesses should be subject to liability. To consider which categories of actors may warrant criminal punishment, this Article introduces a novel typology of bystanders and upstanders in the digital age. This typology draws on an original case study of the first known sexual crime livestreamed in the United States by a third party, which more than 700 people viewed. Harnessing insights from that case study and other episodes, the Article recommends that legislators should modernize, refine, and proliferate Bad Samaritan laws and that law enforcement should enforce these statutes or leverage them to obtain witness testimony. To that end, the Article proposes a model duty-to-report statute that includes features such as applicability to virtual presence and reasoned exemptions for noncompliance.”
World’s oldest known cave painting found in Indonesia PhysOrg
Beautiful portraits of Peruvian craftspeople (weavers, guitar makers, potters, bakers, farmers, etc.)
Duke Bootee, Who Changed The Course Of Hip-Hop, 69
Writer, studio musician at Sugar Hill Records, and singer, Bootee couldn’t take the upbeat party aims of early hip-hop. So he wrote “The Message” about the serious, gritty life of his hometown, Elizabeth, N.J. Questlove: “The world (me included) absolutely froze in its tracks the week it debuted on radio. … Hip-hop was once known as party fodder, a fad. ‘The Message’ pulled a 180 and proved it could be a tool of sociopolitical change.” – The New York Times
An Appraisal, And An Appreciation, Of Cicely Tyson
Wesley Morris: “Alas, she would not be playing the most daring, out-there characters. And let’s face it: the great parts were always headed to someone whiter anyway. The more audacious move was to declare herself a moral progenitor, to walk with her head high so that Denzel Washington might become a man on fire and Viola Davis could learn how to get away with murder.” – The New York Times
How Reporters Should Cover Government Going Forward
It’s impossible to look out on the current state of political discourse in this country and think that we are succeeding in our core mission of creating an informed electorate.
It’s impossible to look out at the looming and in some cases existential challenges facing our republic and our globe — among them the pandemic, climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the rise of disinformation and ethnic nationalism — and think that it’s OK for us to just keep doing what we’ve been doing.
He continues:
First of all, we’re going to rebrand you. Effective today, you are no longer political reporters (and editors); you are government reporters (and editors). That’s an important distinction, because it frees you to cover what is happening in Washington in the context of whether it is serving the people well, rather than which party is winning.
Historically, we have allowed our political journalism to be framed by the two parties. That has always created huge distortions, but never like it does today. Two-party framing limits us to covering what the leaders of those two sides consider in their interests. And, because it is appropriately not our job to take sides in partisan politics, we have felt an obligation to treat them both more or less equally.
Both parties are corrupted by money, which has badly perverted the debate for a long time. But one party, you have certainly noticed, has over the last decade or two descended into a froth of racism, grievance and reality-denial. Asking you to triangulate between today’s Democrats and today’s Republicans is effectively asking you to lobotomize yourself. I’m against that.
Defining our job as “not taking sides between the two parties” has also empowered bad-faith critics to accuse us of bias when we are simply calling out the truth. We will not take sides with one political party or the other, ever. But we will proudly, enthusiastically, take the side of wide-ranging, fact-based debate.
Government reporters. Yes, exactly. Worth reading in its entirety.
