Assignment 10: Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a United States federal law that grants the public access to information possessed by government agencies. Upon written request, U.S. government agencies are required to release information unless it falls under one of nine exemptions listed in the Act.

The Associated Press through reviewed federal data found that the government is placing children found stranded on the border with adults who are in the country illegally. It was stated that this has been going on since the year 2014. They made no comment how often the adults in question has legal papers. Of course the children are placed with family or friends of the family but that doesn’t really clear the air. All of the information was able to be pertained because of the Freedom of Information Act.

“In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Health and Human Services provided data showing that 80 percent of the 71,000 mostly Central American children placed between February 2014 and September 2015 were sent to sponsors who were not here legally.”

Out of the children 6 percent were placed with adults who had temporary protected status, a U.S. government program that has let some Central American citizen’s stay and work in the country legally for more than a decade. Four percent were sponsored by American citizens and 1 percent by immigrants facing deportation proceedings. Many of the children were placed with sponsors who had some form of legal status or who have filed immigration applications.

It was stated that Immigration status is not a factor in determining whether someone can sponsor a child, which I believe is true. But sponsors are asked their status, and those in the country illegally must provide a backup plan to care for the children if they are deported.

During the 20-month period covered by the data, more than half of unaccompanied children were released to a parent. Many others were placed with siblings, aunts and uncles.

Potential sponsors must provide proof of identity and their relationship to the child and undergo screening and background checks. In some cases, the department's Office of Refugee Resettlement conducts a home study to determine if the placement is safe.

The office has collected information about sponsors' immigration status since at least 2005, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. Sponsors who are not the children's parents also are fingerprinted.

The statistics were culled from a database created in January 2014, according to the department.

 It’s important for us as American to know when things like this are happening in our country. That’s why the Freedom of Information Act is so important.

http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article_eb51801e-06fe-11e6-ac00-87b93e63bf21.html 

Assignment 9: College Media

Student journalism is an important part of student life on many campuses. For one it keep the student body informed on not only social event but also on the important topics. The university is required to give certain information when requested upon by the journalism organization, when they don’t hand over the information it can cause real problems. For today’s blog I chose to talk about Florida University and what happened to them when they tried to withhold information from their students.

A student news organization is battling a Florida university for the right to know the names of Student Government officials in meetings and documents. On Friday, Knight News, Inc., a student newspaper, won against the University of Central Florida in a court case that began in 2013.
The court found that a previous court should have required UCF to reveal the names of Student Government officials accused of engaging in misconduct in impeachment documents.

Previously, both the trial court and the appellate court supported the university’s claim that it could cover the names of students in Student Government documents because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, said Justin Hemlepp, an attorney for Knight News.
“If UCF somehow had won this or still finds a way to do so, it will force every other Student Government in this state at a public university or community college to shut down their records to the public, to shut down their meetings to the public,” he said. “And all the sudden all of these Student Governments will be operating in secrecy.”
The university could not be reached for comment. Also not helping their case in the end.
In court documents, the university stated that FERPA protects the rights of student information, including SG officials.In March, Knight News filed another lawsuit against UCF after the university closed an election commissions meeting to the public. The paper is arguing that Florida’s Sunshine Law allows public access to public officials, including those in SG.
In addition to the two cases filed by Knight News, Jacob Milich, a student who attempted to run for UCF Student Body president, also filed a case against the university.UCF’s elections commission removed him from the ballot following a closed-to-the-public meeting, he said.

The 25-year-old Marine veteran said he offered to drop the lawsuit if he was put back on the ballot for the elections. The university declined, he said.

Assignment 8: Investigative Journalism

Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report.

I chose to look in to a story on the New York Times website entitled Revealed: The NSA’s Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security. This story would not have broken without some investigative journalism. It’s important that the public to know about stories like this because their personal information could be at risk without them even knowing about it.

“The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.” Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The N.S.A., which has specialized in code-breaking since 1952, sees that task as essential to its mission. If it cannot decode the messages of terrorists, foreign spies and other rivals, the United States will be at serious risk. But some experts say the N.S.A.’s campaign to bypass and weaken communications security may have serious unintended consequences. They say the agency is working at cross-purposes with its other major mission, apart from eavesdropping: ensuring the security of American communications. This could be very hazardous to the safety of Americans in some people’s eyes. It’s kind of like a door once you open it can’t be closed.

By introducing such back doors, the N.S.A. has secretly accomplished what it had failed to do in the open. Two decades ago, officials grew concerned about the spread of strong encryption software like Pretty Good Privacy, or P.G.P., designed by a programmer named Phil Zimmermann. The Clinton administration fought back by proposing the Clipper Chip, which would have effectively neutered digital encryption by ensuring that the N.S.A. always had the key.

But by 2006, an N.S.A. document notes, the agency had broken into communications for three foreign airlines, one travel reservation system, one foreign government’s nuclear department and another’s Internet service by cracking the virtual private networks that protected them. By 2010, the Edgehill program, the British counter encryption effort, was unscrambling VPN traffic for 30 targets and had set a goal of an additional 300.

But the agencies’ goal was to move away from decrypting targets’ tools one by one and instead decode, in real time, all of the information flying over the world’s fiber optic cables and through its Internet hubs, only afterward searching the decrypted material for valuable intelligence.

Assignment 7: Exploiting a News Story

Exploiting a news story is basically manipulation of a story in short. Today, with our blog and web driven media cycle, nothing can escape exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and simplification.

So we’ve all heard the story of Laker player D'angelo Russell ( Aka Swaggy P) allegedly putting his teammate Nick Young “on blast” about cheating on his soon to be wife pop star Iggy Azalea. In perhaps the one of the sneakiest moves of the social media we’ve ever seen from an NBA player, LA Laker D'angelo Russell recorded a video of a private conversation he was having with his teammate  Nick Young who clearly was unaware that he was on film. It reveals that Nick cheated on Iggy Azalea sometime this year. Unfortunately for D’Angelo Russell, the Laker rookie was just hacked yesterday (so coincidental!) so there’s a chance that this video is part of what came from that hack. Iggy made her response through twitter only stating, “hmmm I see D Angelo Russell is trending... I actually liked his film. Thanks bro.”. This “video she’s referring to is the one stated earlier and is provided in the link below.

This story has literally blown up on social media and has been the topic of majority of the leading memes lately. These are big stars were talking about so there is sure to be a little ruffling of feathers when news like this get out, but geeze not this many feathers. That’s what leads me to say this story is definitely being milked for what is actually worth.

If you turn on any pop culture news outlet you’re sure to get a glimpse of this story, but why? This is someone else’s relationship, I could see this not looking too good for the Lakers in the most minute way at most but nothing too devastating. The media does this to distract us from what’s really going on what’s really important. Instead of letting us know about our dying planet all you can seem to find is over exaggerated stories of a cheating NBA player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFqGUyApyic  

Assignment 6: Copyright and Fair Use

Over the past couple of weeks YouTube sensations/stars have been struggling to keep their accounts protected. They want YouTube to change their rules on copyright. “The whole copyright system for online video is broken, allowing for obvious copyright infringement in some places, and punishing innocent people in others. Fixing it will require regulation to restore the protection of creativity.”

People have to understand that copyright is regulation. “It’s a government-created monopoly enforced through legal coercion. With copyright there is no underlying physical object to protect — the policy is about restricting the right of others to make copies, not the right of access to scarce resources. As such, there is a trade-off between enriching the common cultural heritage — the public domain — and allowing authors to profit from their work.”

YouTube, is largest video hosting site on the internet, where thousands of people have made careers and changed their lives by posting their videos. The major problem is "fair use." This is the part of U.S. law holding that people can legally copy portions of works verbatim under certain circumstances, such as critique, parody, commentary, reporting, or education.

A giant portion of YouTube's videos are  fair use, protected even under the highly flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides a legal basis for copyright holders to issue takedown notices of infringing content. Most seriously, they can file official legal papers to YouTube, which puts a copyright "strike" on the account. Three strikes, and the entire account is permanently deleted.

So on the one hand, the law of fair use is being flagrantly ground into dirt, and on the other, the biggest social media company in the world is bootstrapping a video service with blatantly ripped-off content. Online copyright needs new regulation from Congress. The existing legal framework is clearly failing to function as designed, and the profit motive is shockingly not pushing corporations to abide by existing law.

 http://theweek.com/articles/608700/copyright-laws-are-breaking-youtube-heres-how-fix-problem

Assignment 5: Reporters Privilege

Reporter's privilege in the United States (also journalist's privilege, newsman's privilege, or press privilege), is a "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources." Each states has it different laws on reporter’s privilege so I decided to look into Texas laws.

The Texas Free Flow of Information Act (also known as a reporter’s privilege) is a qualified privilege with separate civil and criminal sections. The civil section applies to confidential and non-confidential sources, journalist’s work product and published and unpublished materials. In order to require a reporter to testify or produce materials, the party who issued the subpoena must show by clear and specific evidence the following: (1) they have exhausted all reasonable efforts to get the information elsewhere, (2) the information is relevant and material to the proper administration of justice, and, (3) the information sought is essential to the maintenance of the claim or defense of the person asking for it. This statement is basically giving you an outline on what exactly reporters privilege is. This is basically the “who” and “what”. The only way that they can be made it testify is if it’s the last resource available to use in the case.

The state of the Reporter’s Privilege is considerably improved with the recent passage of the state’s shield law, although there is still uncertainty as to how some provisions will be interpreted. The new shield law (signed on May 13, 2009, and effective upon signing) has already been used on a number of occasions with mostly positive results. Basically stating that more change have been made in protecting the reporter. Not only have numerous court proceedings resulted in favorable rulings for reporters and the media, but there is considerable anecdotal evidence of many media outlets convincing the subpoenaing party to withdraw the subpoena upon being informed of the passage of the new law.        

The “journalist,” as defined in the statute, cannot be compelled to testify unless the tests set forth in the statute are met. Additionally, a subpoena may not compel a “communications service provider” or “news medium,” as defined by the statute, to disclose information unless the tests set forth in the statute are met. Unless all these status are met nothing can be done to the reporter or their information. Anything that is looked past cannot be used in a court of law.

 http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-privilege

Assignment 4: Food reviewers fired after scathing article on hipster café

Fabrication is the action or process of manufacturing or inventing something in other words it is a lie. We have all told little lies from time to time but it becomes more disturbing when it comes from a “trusted” news source. That’s why I decided to look into an article about a little restaurant called the West End Deli.

The story starts off with a bad review from Kelly Ramsay and Chloe James, former contestants on Australian reality television show My Kitchen Rules and food reviewers for The Sunday Times magazine STM, in Western Australia. These two ladies were apparently having “twitter beef” with the owner of West End Deli months before they decided to review their food. You 

In the review they stated, “Poorly executed flavors, soggy cheese, and overripe watermelon and under ripe tomatoes were amongst the criticisms in the review. Ramsay said she left a large quantity of food on her plate due to the poor quality”.

Come to find out majority of the review was trash. Why you ask? Well a list of these reasons can be found in a response letter that the restaurant posted on Facebook to everyone. Firstly the review was done by both women but both women didn’t attend the restaurant only one did and that was Ramsey with her fiancé. She added in her review that she left her plate almost full but that wasn’t the case the restaurant owner stated that their plates were basically licked clean.

Second the hipster restaurant only uses produce that is in season so some of the items that she mentioned in her review couldn’t have possibly been on her plate at that time. So she didn’t actually reflect their menu at the time.

Thirdly, after cleaning their plates and getting the bill Ramsey handed over her credit card but of course it was declined. She left with promises to come back the next day to pay it which she never did. The owner called her over a two month span until she finally (not happily) pay the $260 bill.

So, even after ditching on the bill the ladies still decided to give the restaurant a bad review it was obvious that this woman was looking to get a free meal for her and her man but when it didn’t come out her way she tried to fire back by trashing this restaurants name but all it did was backfire on them with the loss of their jobs.

http://mashable.com/2016/02/24/restaurant-reviewers-fired/#Ljy26ugX.Oq6 

Assignment 3: Deceptive Advertising

Deceptive advertising, also known as false advertising, refers to a manufacturer's use of confusing, misleading, or blatantly untrue statements when promoting a product. Advertising law will protect consumers from deceptive advertising through the enforcement of specific legislation. Many companies in America to this and get away with it all the time, but the ones that get caught are the one that blatantly lie to our faces. The only way to spot this is to be critical of what people are trying to sell you and investigate all claims before making your decision in purchasing a product or partaking in some kind of event.

Erectile dysfunction affects 1 out of 4 men in the U.S. today and although it’s a touchy subject many companies have tried to come out with a product to battle against this certain problem. Which brings me to the product known as ExtenZe. The makers say that these pills are natural male enhancement pills that are guaranteed to really increase your penis girth and penis size in just a few short weeks of taking these medically formulated enhancement pills! They openly claim that their product will, Enlarge the penile erection and penis size, Way more larger and frequent erections, More intense orgasms, The penile erection is quicker to obtain and more reliably as well as much more. If all these claims are true then why did the company just settle in court to pay 6 million dollars due to false advertising? Because of course the pills don’t work. ExtenZe claimed that its product had been clinically tested, no credible scientific evidence was ever presented for this male-enhancement product.  Their claims outraged many people in need of a solution. They even had ads that featured testimonial about their product from “real people” that were also shown to be false. In the commercial the “real people” would state that over a billion tablets were sold which was also seen to be false. While advertising the company literally made up names of ingredients that were supposed to be included in the product names such as ambesium labidrol" and "aunctus philtrum. Crazy I know! They eventually even offered full refunds to customers but made it extremely difficult for customers to get them. But as they went to court they were ordered to give back partial refund to customers as well as make a donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.  Not only were they lying but they were potentially putting people’s lives in danger with all of their lying of the ingredient the product contained. Now Extenze no longer claims to do much of anything. On its web site, it makes some vague statements about “male enhancement” and “enhanced sexual pleasure”. This is just one example of how blatantly deceiving a company can be while trying to sell you a product, but this goes for all companies. Not all are caught either most just slip right past the radar so it’s up to us to make a conscious decision about the product we buy.

Assignment 2: Tabloid

A tabloid is a newspaper having pages half the size of those of a standard newspaper, typically popular in style and dominated by headlines, photographs, and sensational stories. Well that’s the definition that the dictionary would give you but if you pick a tabloid magazine from your local store I’m pretty sure the stories would be far from sensational. If that's the case how do they keep the magazines on the shelf, how do they keep people interested? I decided to take a look into People magazine. When I first visited the site the first thing that I saw was some family controversy and a light bulb went off in my head. DUH! That's what keeps these magazines up and running, controversy but not from us normal people it's from the people we love and admire the most, the rich and famous. On the People magazine website there were all kinds of stories of rebel teens and of course the Bill Cosby and that was only the front page. The only story I read and considered to be “real news” was a story of a young girl who jumped from a burning building to save her life but sadly that didn’t even make it to the first page.

On the website they had tabs from videos to the royal family. As I searched the site there were no other stories of real news only stories of stars without makeup and picture of actors with baby bumps. As far as I could tell People magazine had used good ethical values when posting stories. Nothing was too jaw dropping the where they could possibly face a lawsuit. I believe that the only reason these tabloids are still on the shelf is because we are generally curious about the rich and famous.

Assignment 1

For my first blog I chose to take a look into a very controversial topic around the world, abortion. People have so many different opinions about abortions its only right that our news outlets do too. The first news outlet I chose to look into was CNN. CNN’s demographics also play a part in its “ opinions” 55% of viewers are white males and about 50% are between the ages of 25- 55.I researched an article put out but CNN titled “Abortion is about a child, not a choice”, really the title tells it all. The article goes on to tell a story of how the person in subject is extremely against abortion stating things such as, “As a Catholic with a deep commitment to the sanctity and inviolability of human life at any stage and any degree of usefulness, I find it very difficult to make those diagnoses, knowing in many cases it is a death sentence.”. My research from this article and many others on the site it became apparent to me that CNN is not pro choice probably due to the fact that their viewer share that same view. In another article entitled,” Let’s get real about abortion”, they brought up the idea of supporting women that have been raped and got pregnant as an alternative to having an abortion. That pretty much sums up their views on abortion.

The second news outlet I chose was the Dallas Morning News, and their article called “Congressional witch hunts targeting Planned Parenthood are about promoting lies, not truth”. The article doesn’t come out right and state anything about being pro-choice, it actually made statements of being natural on the subject. Throughout the article in question it stated how many stories about abortion are filled with lies and distorted to push someone’s beliefs on others. Statements such as “I believe medical decisions are private choices, and that government has no business dictating religious beliefs.” makes me believe that The Dallas Morning News may be a little less conservative the some of the other news outlets.

Looking at these different news outlets on the same topic was very eye-opening. It shows the difference in opinions most definitely but more than that is showed how viewership changes opinion. If I have a certain view on something I’m more likely to watch a network that has the same ideas and morals as me. In the case of abortion it’s almost impossible to find a news outlet that has differing opinions because on mainstream television its seen as almost taboo.