Newswire

Brolo

I get an embarrassing amount of my news information from the forums.

This thread is for discussion of journalism, the posting of and commentary on interesting news stories, and will hopefully help me keep up to date on important things happening around the world.

You submit the stories and feeds, we all comment and make sense of them as a community. Simple enough, right?

Weaver

aggregate sites

Weaver

When I was kid in Germany I got to tour the AFN news studios in Frankfurt and saw the actual old newswire machines that all the new reports/stories/etc. would constantly be scrolling out of. Was neat. All in a room by themselves, all making that grinding dot-matrix print sound

Tossrock

Reddit, mostly

Brolo

I need a way to filter stories out of my Google reader.

One is that there's an endless amount of AP duplicates.

The other is that I really want to cut out sports and celebrity news, or at least make separate feeds for them. I don't need 100+ repeated stories on how Tiger Woods' current golf game is going or which porn stars he's fucking.

Edcrab

I usually stick to the BBC site and then follow up their sources

During the Cumbria shootings I had it open in the background all through the work day

Tossrock

Also what the hell are you doing up, Rolo

what the hell am I doing up

Brolo

Tossrock wrote: »

Also what the hell are you doing up, Rolo

what the hell am I doing up

Well it's 5:45 AM Toronto time

So that's like 2:45 AM California time?

obviously we are being awesome

Tossrock

3:00 am, eating Kraft macaroni and posting on the internet

w...woot

Blake T

I get a lot of my news from AFL.com.au

ASimPerson

news.google.com
reader.google.com
slashdot.org

Pretty much it.

Also, I just did by best James Earl Jones when reading "see-eee-plus-plus" aloud.

Cilla Black

5:45

christ almighty

insomnia sucks

Brolo

Also I've been reading this thing about Manning and the different takes on it, which prompted this thread.




Brad Manning released a bunch of classified information from the Pentagon into the open, and some of it was pretty damning, including the Collateral Murder video which made its way around the net back in April.

Apparently he then decided to get in contact with ex-hacker Adrian Lamo and told him about giving classified information to Wikileaks. Lamo in turn decided to turn him Manning into the FBI, claiming he had leaked thousands of classified documents to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Manning is now in detention in Kuwait, awaiting a military trial.

Assange and Wikileaks are about to release a video leaked by Manning about a civilian massacre in Afghanistan committed by US forces, that has Pentagon officials concerned. They're trying to prevent Assange from releasing the video, which has yet more people concerned about Assange's safety.

Really I'm not sure what my take on this story is - if this falls under whistleblowing or not, and what exactly should happen to Manning.

Should the Garani massacre video ever get broadcast it seems like this situation will only escalate more.

Calamity Jane

eh, somebody's gotta stick it to the man

Calamity Jane

bbc's good

i've relegated actual news watching to a hell of a lot less time than usual

there is nothing good happening ever and a dude don't want to feel perpetually down all the damn time

Meiz

For all things science:
http://www.physorg.com/

Hey, there's even an article on insomnia today:
http://www.physorg.com/news195890900.html

For all things local:
http://www.cbc.ca/

For everything else there's Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Gawker.

CrackedLens

i work at a local news station so i pick up most info during the show

celandine

I'm an ex-news junkie.

I read the NYT for news now, occasionally Reason for the partisan take, BoingBoing for civlib, and Wired for science.

In the bad old days, add:
The Economist
The Wall Street Journal
marginalrevolution.com (econ)
Megan McArdle (commentary)
interfluidity.com (banking)
Matt Yglesias (commentary)
Ta-Nehisi Coates (commentary)
fivethirtyeight (polling)
Mother Jones (good investigative reporting)

I could kill all day on the news, way back when.

atma

Rolo wrote: »

Also I've been reading this thing about Manning and the different takes on it, which prompted this thread.




Brad Manning released a bunch of classified information from the Pentagon into the open, and some of it was pretty damning, including the Collateral Murder video which made its way around the net back in April.

Apparently he then decided to get in contact with ex-hacker Adrian Lamo and told him about giving classified information to Wikileaks. Lamo in turn decided to turn him Manning into the FBI, claiming he had leaked thousands of classified documents to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Manning is now in detention in Kuwait, awaiting a military trial.

Assange and Wikileaks are about to release a video leaked by Manning about a civilian massacre in Afghanistan committed by US forces, that has Pentagon officials concerned. They're trying to prevent Assange from releasing the video, which has yet more people concerned about Assange's safety.

Really I'm not sure what my take on this story is - if this falls under whistleblowing or not, and what exactly should happen to Manning.

Should the Garani massacre video ever get broadcast it seems like this situation will only escalate more.

Circumventing the chain of command is worse than whistle-blowing it is insubordination

but revealing massacres quite possibly ordered by said chain of command is morally justifiable

These two realities exist simultaneously and will mean that yes, he will pay a very high price for what he has done.

And also that there are some out there (disclaimer: I have no sympathy for the american war machine or its representatives) who will whole-heartedly regard this guy as a hero.

I'm not there yet, but I'm not informed about the leaked materials.

When you guys played rolling tanks and symphonic music my stomach queased and I haven't tuned in since. When the airforce dropped bombs deliberately on Canadian troops in a live-fire excercise with your army, I knew I wasn't interested in the righteousness of the war.

jaziek

so this is a news megathread?

I have BBC are Al-Jazeera on RSS feeds, and I'm on reddit quite a lot.

DouglasDanger

I guess I'm kind of willfully ignorant of current events, aside from the most general sense of things. When the recession hit, I got really wrapped in the news, totally stressed about everything, gave myself ulcers and didn't sleep right for weeks.

I did read that story about the guy who lived alone and got his arm stuck.
Man, I don't know what I would do if that happened to me. He was stuck for two days in agony, with his arm stuck in the vents of his furnace. He attempted to cut his own arm off because he smelled dead stuff and knew his arm was horribly infected and he would die if he didn't cut it off. He kept passing out though, I think.

He had put something in the microwave, so he could have a snack when he was done cleaning the basement. Every few minutes, the microwave would beep, reminding him about his food. He eventually forced himself to stay with it by holding out for the next beep from his microwave.

Man this has really gotten to me

atma

Okay suddenly it dawns on me why we can't have megathreads

Artreus

Deliberately implies intent. There is no way we intentionally murdered a bunch of Canadian troops. Accidents happen during those exercises and people die. It sucks.

Clint Eastwood

don't watch the news any more

really weary of hearing more bad news about the oil spill every day

spazmojack

Weaver wrote: »

When I was kid in Germany I got to tour the AFN news studios in Frankfurt and saw the actual old newswire machines that all the new reports/stories/etc. would constantly be scrolling out of. Was neat. All in a room by themselves, all making that grinding dot-matrix print sound

did you make sure to slap someone for their terrible terrible "commercials" that air?

just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than US commercials...hoo boy.

Brolo

atma wrote: »

Rolo wrote: »

Also I've been reading this thing about Manning and the different takes on it, which prompted this thread.




Brad Manning released a bunch of classified information from the Pentagon into the open, and some of it was pretty damning, including the Collateral Murder video which made its way around the net back in April.

Apparently he then decided to get in contact with ex-hacker Adrian Lamo and told him about giving classified information to Wikileaks. Lamo in turn decided to turn him Manning into the FBI, claiming he had leaked thousands of classified documents to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Manning is now in detention in Kuwait, awaiting a military trial.

Assange and Wikileaks are about to release a video leaked by Manning about a civilian massacre in Afghanistan committed by US forces, that has Pentagon officials concerned. They're trying to prevent Assange from releasing the video, which has yet more people concerned about Assange's safety.

Really I'm not sure what my take on this story is - if this falls under whistleblowing or not, and what exactly should happen to Manning.

Should the Garani massacre video ever get broadcast it seems like this situation will only escalate more.

Circumventing the chain of command is worse than whistle-blowing it is insubordination

but revealing massacres quite possibly ordered by said chain of command is morally justifiable

These two realities exist simultaneously and will mean that yes, he will pay a very high price for what he has done.

And also that there are some out there (disclaimer: I have no sympathy for the american war machine or its representatives) who will whole-heartedly regard this guy as a hero.

I'm not there yet, but I'm not informed about the leaked materials.

When you guys played rolling tanks and symphonic music my stomach queased and I haven't tuned in since. When the airforce dropped bombs deliberately on Canadian troops in a live-fire excercise with your army, I knew I wasn't interested in the righteousness of the war.

The bombing of Canadian troops was definitely a mistake, it wasn't in any way malicious on the part of the US military. While none of the US personnel was even involved with negligence charges as some people were expecting, the military is quite lenient when it comes to pressing friendly-fire charges.

But back to the Manning thing, there's definitely two sides to this, and it's interesting to see how the media aligns itself. The Washington Post and the Times treat him like an attention-hungry kid that's simply trying to stir shit up, the Huffington Post takes Manning's side and calls him a whistleblower and makes comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg back from the Nixon days.

Calamity Jane

the american media aligns with the U.S. government by default

thanks post 9/11 american news, you goddamn cowards

L|ama

I honestly think a lot of the blame for the iraq and afghanistan wars lies with the american news media

personally I use a bit of AJE, a bit of BBC, and fox for laughs/oh god kill me now every now and then

Druhim

anyone who considers any of the Gawker sights to be news feeds should just hand over their brain right now
you're not using it any way

Brolo

Druhim wrote: »

anyone who considers any of the Gawker sights to be news feeds should just hand over their brain right now
you're not using it any way

well I mean none of them cover hard news in any way

but lifehacker and fleshbot have some pretty good stuff!

L|ama

oh yeah dailykos is pretty decent too

I mean it's biased to the point that it's nearly useless as an actual news source, but it's still nice to have that POV

Franko

Where does it say anywhere the bombing of Canadian troops was deliberate?

Meissnerd

al jazeera and CBC are great alternatives to american news channels for me. Thank god Canada is getting a Fox News, though!!

as for journalism news:

Iceland unanimously passes the strongest freedom of the press laws in the world

Romanian My Escutcheon

I don't watch the news that often. Closest thing is Colbert and Stewart, but those aren't the same things as news (obviously).

My dad watches Fox News constantly, and when he does it's all I can do not to go out there and tell him that they're deliberately lying to him.

AMP'd

I really like reading the newspaper

I don't think anything digital will ever successfully reproduce the way that newspapers have me skipping from story to story

Romanian My Escutcheon

Meissnerd wrote: »

al jazeera and CBC are great alternatives to american news channels for me. Thank god Canada is getting a Fox News, though!!

as for journalism news:

Iceland unanimously passes the strongest freedom of the press laws in the world

Oh, you poor soul, I am so sorry.

AMP'd

I'm really glad that you edited out that statement about Al-Jazeera being run by Al-Qaeda

HeadCreeps

AoR_Final wrote: »

I don't watch the news that often. Closest thing is Colbert and Stewart, but those aren't the same things as news (obviously).

My dad watches Fox News constantly, and when he does it's all I can do not to go out there and tell him that they're deliberately lying to him.

Yeah, this is me right here. Other than that though, I watch local news and sometimes a newspaper that's laying around.

Faricazy

I follow this on twitter (well, RSS): http://www.breakingnews.com/

Otherwise just going to bbc and cnn and nyt sometimes.

BoingBoing is also great.

Brolo

Anchor babies isn't a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation's toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots — the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. — for their next move.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona — and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution — to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state senator Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law-enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists — things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See "The Battle for Arizona: Will a Border Crackdown Work?")

But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the anchor and leave. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Border Fence Rises in the Southwest.")

The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that "All persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government's control over citizenship.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1996064,00.html#ixzz0rAIe0duQ

But that was 1868. Today, Pearce says, the 14th Amendment has been "hijacked" by illegal immigrants. "They use it as a wedge," he says. "This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we've created." Pearce says he is aware of the constitutional issues involved with the bill and vows to introduce it nevertheless. "We will write it right." He and other Republicans in the red state Arizona point to popular sympathy: 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think illegal immigrants whose children are born in the U.S. should not receive citizenship; support for that stance is 76% among Republicans.

Those who oppose the bill say it would lead to more discrimination and divide the community. Among them is Phoenix resident Susan Vie, who is leading a citizen group that's behind an opposing ballot initiative. She moved to the U.S. 30 years ago from Argentina, became a naturalized citizen and now works as a client-relations representative for a vaccine company. "I see a lot of hate and racism behind it," Vie says. "Consequently, I believe it will create — and it's creating it now — a separation in our society." She adds, "When people look at me, they will think, 'Is she legal or illegal?' I can already feel it right now." Vie's citizen initiative would prohibit SB1070 from taking effect and place a three-year moratorium on all related laws — including the anchor-baby bill — to buy more time for federal immigration reform. Her group is racing to collect 153,365 signatures by July 1 to qualify for the Nov. 2 general election.

Both sides expect the anchor-baby bill to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court before it is enacted. "I think it would be struck down as facially unconstitutional. I can't imagine a federal judge saying this would be O.K.," says Dan Barr, a longtime Phoenix lawyer and constitutional litigator. Potentially joining the anchor-baby bill at the Supreme Court may be SB1070, which Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law in April. It is set to take effect July 29, but at least five courtroom challenges have been filed against it. Pearce says he will win them all.

"What would the founding fathers do?" only seems to apply to laws stopping gays from getting married or the right to bear arms.

Are illegal immirants such a huge problem in the states? Obviously aside from Kuribo's Shoe Canada doesn't have many problems with illegal immigrants. Is this an issue of just racism/xenophobia that strives to keep minorities out of the border states, or is there a legitimate concern here that I'm not aware of? Stealing jobs, leeching our welfare/healthcare dollars seem to be the most common complaints, but is there anything substantive about those accusations?

Romanian My Escutcheon

AMP'd wrote: »

I'm really glad that you edited out that statement about Al-Jazeera being run by Al-Qaeda

For clarification sake, I was asking if Al-Jazeera was run by Al-Qaeda.

Then Wikipedia told me that I was wrong, so I had to put in some magic edits.

Rolo wrote: »

"What would the founding fathers do?" only seems to apply to laws stopping gays from getting married or the right to bear arms.

I'm so sick of hearing this phrase whenever people want to make a point.

The Founding Fathers would probably have no idea what to do in the kinds of situations we're facing today. These are complex issues that people have to study for years just to gain a concrete understanding of the political and social issues behind it. Expecting a group of landowners/farmers from the 18th century to just jump in and have a concrete understanding of the situation is borderline insane.

Besides, the Founding Fathers are gone. We need to define our own political and Constitutional stances, not fret about what they would've done nearly 250 years ago.

Are illegal immirants such a huge problem in the states? Obviously aside from Kuribo's Shoe Canada doesn't have many problems with illegal immigrants. Is this an issue of just racism/xenophobia that strives to keep minorities out of the border states, or is there a legitimate concern here that I'm not aware of? Stealing jobs, leeching our welfare/healthcare dollars seem to be the most common complaints, but is there anything substantive about those accusations?

I think it's a ludicrous projection of people's insecurities and fears. People are afraid of losing their jobs and homes, and when they hear about undocumented immigrants coming in and taking jobs, their fear turns into rage, and overrides their common sense. In some cases (i.e. the Republican candidate for Governor in Louisiana), it's a healthy mix of insecurity, racism/xenophobia, and fear-mongering for votes, but for the most part I just think it's a fear of uncertainty in the minds of average citizens.

What they fail to acknowledge is that these are people who are trying to find a better life over here. These aren't hardened criminals, these are people who are suffering, and who are trying to make a better life. Treating them like second-class citizens, or criminal offenders, isn't helping matters, and it needs to stop.