CIR to launch investigative news channel on YouTube

The Center for Investigative Reporting announced today it will launch a new investigative news channel on YouTube that will be a hub of investigative journalism, with $800,000 in support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

CIR will curate the YouTube channel, which is expected to launch in July 2012. Journalists will be trained in audience engagement and other best practices for online video. The Investigative News Network (INN) will also be responsible for working with its member organizations to leverage the channel to reach new audiences and increase the amount of earned revenue to subsidize their public-interest journalism.

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http://cironline.org/news/cir-launch-investigative-news-channel-youtube

Ethan A. Huff - Newspaper readership collapsing as people turn to alternative news for truthful reporting

Traditional, mainstream print news appears to be on the brink of collapse as more and more people turn to independent, primarily online news sources for information. A recent report from Financial Times explains how, from almost every angle, print newspapers are taking a major hit, not only with declines in readership, but also in flailing advertising revenues.

Last year, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism put out its The State of the News Media 2011 report which found that more Americans now get their news from online sources rather than from print sources. And even though traditional newspapers are increasingly making the migration online, they are still losing $7 in print ads for every dollar in online ads they gain.

News outlets that began online rather than in print seem to be faring just fine, on the other hand, as their advertising and other revenue sources were natively designed for the online environment to begin with. But for traditional mainstream news outlets that began in print, many of which are now owned by corporate conglomerates, the situation is dire.

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http://www.naturalnews.com/035350_newspaper_circulation_collapse.html

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd - How Will Mad Men Tackle the Politics and Counterculture of the Late 1960s?

Mad Men has been absent from our TV screens for a year and a half, but the universe in which it operates has reportedly progressed almost longer, culturally speaking. When the show left off, it was set amid the paradigm shift that had begun in 1963, with Don Draper—the enigmatic, problematic quasi-protagonist—as a type of sundial showing how swiftly times were changing. While the younger employees around him are malleable, growing and bending with their era, Don Draper becomes increasingly rigid, and as culture moves on, his womanizing ways become increasingly self-sabotaging until, at the end of last season, he rejects the modern woman he loves and proposes, rather out the blue, to his much-younger secretary. He is becoming a relic, particularly when put against the case of Peggy, who in past seasons emerged from her out-of-wedlock pregnancy to become a burgeoning proto-feminist and an adventurous weed smoker. He’s looking daunted and worn out, whereas Peggy’s fresh-faced combination of enthusiasm and wariness are increasingly the way of the world.

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http://www.alternet.org/story/154675/how_will_mad_men_tackle_the_politics_and_counterculture_of_the_late_1960s

Is Your New HDTV Watching You?

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it’s the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung’s own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.

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http://hdguru.com/is-your-new-hdtv-watching-you/7643/

Facebook's Dark Side

When Darth Vader was introduced as the dark side of the Force in the first installment of the original trilogy, "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" (1977), Christopher Carpenter, the 30-year old assistant professor of communication at Western Illinois University, was not yet born.

Now, Carpenter is getting worldwide news coverage for his study of the "dark side," but on the timely subject of Facebook. Carpenter's study, "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior," is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Narcissism is defined in this study as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and an exaggerated sense of self-importance," Carpenter said.

For the average narcissist, Facebook "offers a gateway for hundreds of shallow relationships and emotionally detached communication." More importantly, for this study, social networking in general allows the user a great deal of control over how he or she is presented to and perceived by peers and other users, he added.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120319194046.htm

The “Wild West” of Supplement Safety

This week, Dateline NBC ran a “shocking exposé” of “dangerous supplements.” We separate fact from fiction.

The episode ^[2], which aired this past Sunday, was mainly about a vitamin and mineral concoction called Total Body Formula that was sold four years ago by a store in Georgia. After several users reported horrific reactions—hair falling out completely, fingernails falling off, etc.—an investigation revealed that the formula contained extraordinarily high levels of selenium.

It turns out the manufacturer misread the formula when creating the supplement, resulting in selenium levels 200 times higher than the amount indicated on the label. On top of that, the supplement was produced using methods that no reputable manufacturer would use—for example, they strained the mixture through pantyhose!

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http://www.anh-usa.org/wild-west-supplements/

Beware The 'Student Debt Bomb', says New Report

The amount of student borrowing crossed the $100 billion threshold for the first time in 2010 and total outstanding loans exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2011, according to a new report. 

The report titled, The Student Loan "Debt Bomb": America's Next Mortgage-Style Economic Crisis? (pdf), was published the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA), and paints a frightening economic picture of the world created by skyrocketing tuitions and high interest rates in a job market that continues to offer few jobs to graduates.

"How big is the danger to the US economy?" the report asks. Most worrisome to those on the ground during the 'mortgage crisis' that sent the world economy into a tailspin in 2008, is that the atmosphere and metrics around the student debt crisis feels much the same.

"As with the mortgage foreclosure crisis, the staggering amounts owed on student loans also will have repercussions for the broader economy," reads the report. "Just as the housing bubble created a mortgage debt “overhang” that absorbs the income of consumers and renders them unable to afford to engage in the consumer spending that sustains a growing economy, so too are student loans beginning to have the same effect, which will be a drag on the economy for the foreseeable future." And continues:

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/09?print

Watch Trailer to documentary:  Default: The Student Loan Documentary  http://vimeo.com/2618035

FBI seeks system to monitor social networking sites

The FBI, seeking to monitor conversations on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, recently placed a request for information from technology companies to develop a system capable of automatically sifting through the torrents of “publicly available” data for keywords relating to terrorism, crime, and other matters of national security

The FBI is the latest in a long line of federal agencies seeking to monitor conversations on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The bureau recently placed a request for information from technology companies to develop a system capable of automatically sifting through the torrents of “publicly available” data for keywords relating to terrorism, crime, and other matters of national security.

The agency’s goal is to create an early-warning system that can provide real-time open source intelligence that will improve “the FBI’s overall situational awareness.” According to the bureau’s request for information, the proposed system must  “have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats.”

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http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120210-fbi-seeks-system-to-monitor-social-networking-sites

John Pilger - The dirty war on WikiLeaks

War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception is essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/09/julian-assange-wikileaks/print

Nasty People in the Media Prime the Brain for Aggression

Research over the past few decades has shown that viewing physical violence in the media can increase aggression in adults and children. But a new study, co-authored by an Iowa State University psychology professor, has also found that onscreen relational aggression -- including social exclusion, gossip and emotional bullying -- may prime the brain for aggression.

Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State, was one of four authors of the study "'Frenemies, Fraitors, and Mean-em-aitors': Priming effects of viewing physical and relational aggression in the media on women," which was recently published by the journal Aggressive Behavior. The study of 250 college women showed that mean screens may also activate the neural networks that guide behavior.

"What this study shows is that relational aggression actually can cause a change in the way you think," said Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State. "And that matters because of course, how you think can change your behavior."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307145428.htm