May 20th, 2012
Lounge Deluxe ~ Deep Desire Disclaimer: 67azurlite productions does not claim to own any music, images and/or videos seen here on any music video production. 67azurlite productions merely edited versions from public domain videos such as this one, to entertain you the viewing audience. 67azurlite production does not distribute, nor gain profits from any said productions. All material here is solely the property of their respective owner. Videos seen here are only fan made videos used for promotional purposes.
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May 20th, 2012
Hovering above all of the events, congressional resolutions, and media outreach efforts, the central goal of Project Khalid has always been to make Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid accessible and available to a wide audience. With the upcoming release of Melville House’s new edition of the novel, which validates our long-held view that this work was worthy of republication by a major press, I would like to revisit the project’s origins and make some comments about this excellent publishing house and its brilliant “Neversink Library” project.
In 2005, during a period of great crisis and uncertainty with the escalating horrors in Iraq, I went in search of a text that might help illuminate how the early Arab-American thinkers and writers who lived in Manhattan conceived of the Arab-American contact and its potential. After doing some internet searches, I stumbled across a lecture by Dr. Suheil Bushrui of the University of Maryland (now an advisory council member of Project Khalid) which advanced the argument that Ameen Rihani was a unique figure who dedicated his life to teaching Americans about the Arab world and its culture, and in turn Arab intellectual circles about American philosophy and political thought. He also mentioned that Rihani wrote a quite interesting novel called The Book of Khalid, a work that takes place substantially in New York City and offers a cultural synthesis of East and West.
Immediately, I felt that this work sounded unique and appealing (and, as somebody reasonably well-read, I was surprised that I had never heard of it), but after making some initial efforts to buy a copy I was shocked at how hard it was to find. Out-of-print in the United States since its original publication in 1911, the book was not available for purchase at online bookstores like Amazon, and it could only be found at a few dozen libraries in the country. Ultimately, to even be able to read a copy, I realized that I would have to go to the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library (where books cannot be checked out) and peruse the work there. So one morning I resolved to arrive early and see whether this obscure text had anything to offer.
After reading page one of the 1911 first edition, with its opening line about a “New York Skyscraper in the shape of a Pyramid,” I was transfixed and ended up completing the work in one long sitting. The sophistication of its style and philosophy, the power of its cross-cultural imagery, its bold attempt to fashion a politics out of Arab-American contact, and its wry sense of humor, above all, impressed upon me the merit and bold venture of this forgotten work, and, with its obvious importance as a key Arab-American cultural narrative with significant political import, that evening I resolved that trying to expose and revive this work, in honor of Rihani and to reach the American public, would become a personal mission.
However, the idea of approaching a publisher and persuading them to release an out-of-print, public domain text with no demonstrable market demand seemed absurd, and, at the time, I had no contacts or connections that would make a project like this imaginable. However, recognizing the rising importance of e-books and appreciating the ideal of making texts freely available online, I first began the process of constructing a free e-book edition from scans. Eventually, this edition was hosted on the first Project Khalid website, and the “eternal project” planned to continue to digitize early Arab-American texts, Rihani’s in particular. Later, the core of this e-text was entered into the popular Project Gutenberg e-book website.
By 2009, I was living in Washington, D.C. and orchestrating the establishment of the the Global Zero campaign on nuclear weapons, yet in the back of mind I knew that the 100th anniversary of The Book of Khalid‘s publication could be an opportunity to revisit its reputational deficit. After a chance opportunity to discuss the novel on the Arab Radio & Television (ART) program What’s Happening? with Will Youmans, I was introduced to members of the Rihani family who happened to live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. We met and discussed the idea of a centennial campaign, and the Library of Congress, CUNY Graduate Center, and New York Public Library events; the congressional resolution; and my tour of the Gulf all emerged from these discussions and with their support. However, despite all of these planned activities, the central goal of Project Khalid to make the book broadly available had not been achieved. During 2010, I had spent a great deal of time trying to interest trade publishers in the work, but I was continually told that such a public domain text was unlikely to be attractive or lucrative. It seemed that we would have to use the anniversary itself to demonstrate the book’s merit, especially in the context of the Arab Spring which only made its content more relevant and appealing.
The very morning of the Library of Congress symposium, I received a telephone call from Valerie Merians, one half of the family affair, with Dennis Loy Johnson, of Melville House Publishing. She expressed interest in reprinting The Book of Khalid, and after the event I was able to give her more detail about its publication history and literary importance. Eventually, they also asked me to write a brief afterword, which gives some detail about Rihani’s biography and addresses core themes of the work.
Now, on June 12, 2012, this edition is prepared for release under Melville’s Neversink Library series. The Neversink Library is a quite admirable project to “champion books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored.” And the series title comes from a nicely appropriate passage in Herman Melville’s White Jacket:
“I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.”
The Book of Khalid fits perfectly within Melville’s Neversink framework. Overlooked, it has been overshadowed by Kahlil Gibran’s singular phenomenon The Prophet (despite the inferences that Khalid influenced and inspired Gibran’s work). Underappreciated, critics have not always had the patience to explore the novel’s literary influences, which explain some of its possibly off-putting stylistic idiosyncrasies. Looked askance at, the novel’s dual American and Arab themes made it an oddity in both literary domains. And, finally, foolish ignored, the novel had been out-of-print in the United States since its original publication and has never truly been processed by the American literary and cultural establishment (despite its uncanny relevance to the events of the last decade).
The final production of the novel, with its orange color scheme and tasteful font use, is very beautiful. Melville House’s Christopher King developed a consistent, elegant design for the Neversink series, and here he explains the philosophy of its use of silhouettes.
As a publishing house, Melville House, especially with their New York City roots, connects with Rihani’s legacy and his extensively articulated views on the function of literature and art. In an age of cynical marketing in the publishing world, with literature and fiction often getting short shrift, Melville House consistently and insistently seems to publish works of significant literary merit. And their project of returning to classics makes a bold statement. Herman Melville’s own reputation required a boost decades after his death, and it is quite fitting for a press named after him to go mining for other neglected writers and works.
Melville House seem to embody Rihani’s motto of “Say thy say, and go thy way.” Not intimidated by the giants in book publishing and sales, their feisty and unparalleled literary blog Moby Lives makes a daily stand for cultural sanity and for economic fairness against monopoly. In an era when most cultural actors and institutions are terrified of politics, their courage to emphasize the power of political expression in literature, and to take their own stands against phenomena which affect not only their business but cultural production itself, has earned my abiding respect. As Dennis Loy Johnson affirmed recently in The Economist, Melville House seems to be an artistic project, more than a modern business enterprise, at its core.
I encourage all admirers of Ameen Rihani to pick up a copy of this edition of The Book of Khalid, and please contact me (toddfine@projectkhalid.org, +1 857-234-0920) or Melville House (Ariel Bogle, ariel@mhpbooks.com) if you are interested in writing a review or holding an event in connection with its release.
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May 20th, 2012
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May 17th, 2012
Response to ‘Walnut Cove payment’
Dear Editor,
Sharon Conaway’s “straw man” letter in the May 10 Stokes News does not acknowledge the actual request I made — for the release of the 2004 Dixon-Hughes investigation report. This report details the payment she referenced, as well as the results of an investigation of the Police Department’s policies and procedures. A straw man is defined as “an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.” To “attack a straw man” means to create the appearance of having refuted an argument by replacing it with a similar yet unequivalent argument, and refuting that argument, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
If there are parts of the report that mention Mr. Conaway by name, I would have no problem with these instances being redacted, as I said in my original comments. The public, however has an interest in knowing the results of the auditors’ investigation of the police department as a whole. This investigation was initiated by the Town Board at that time, and cost the taxpayers around $20,000 to complete. This report is independent of any SBI investigation referenced by Mrs. Conaway.
I made no false allegations in my comments to the Board on May 1. My comments were based in fact and backed up by evidence. In fact I made no allegations against Mrs. Conaway or her husband whatsoever by name, and only pointed out information that is in the public domain.
To my knowledge, there is no record of the BOC approving the large payment made to Mr. Conaway in 1997, and in fact, his position was changed from hourly to salary several years earlier, in 1993 or 1994. A review of Town records will show this, as a change in classification is also a public record. They will also show that the payment exceeded allowable amounts payable for leave time for any employee — hourly, salary, or otherwise. Compensation is a matter of public record.
I have nothing to hide. If requested, I will gladly release any information pertaining to my employment with the Town. I certainly have no problem acknowledging the existence of that information, as it seems Mrs. Conaway has a problem acknowledging the existence of the Dixon-Hughes report. With the exception of redaction to conceal personnel information that Mr. or Mrs. Conaway does not want released, this document should be treated as a public record, and the Town should not conceal information that the public has an interest in knowing.
I have no malicious intent in my request, and only wish to see the values of transparency and honesty reflected in the governance of Walnut Cove. I am still waiting patiently for the Town’s response to my public record request, and I hope that others will join me in seeking the truth.
Sincerely,
Homer Dearmin
Walnut Cove, N.C.
Disappointment over amendment
Letter to the editor:
I woke up this morning (May 9, 2012) very sad. Then I got furious. I woke up in a state and country that is supposed to be the land of the free, but that is a lie. The passing of Amendment 1 squashes freedom. We can never be the land of the free or the home of the brave as long as fear, hatred and bigotry are allowed to be written into state constitutions.
America can no longer claim a moral high ground. Not when our government allows a group of our citizens to be told that they are sub-human, not worthy of equal rights, just plain not worthy. When our children have to grow up believing that because of who they love, they are less than…..Less than perfect, less than beautiful, less than a person. A part of America is being oppressed. Those in the LGBT community are American enough to pay taxes, but not to have equal rights? Is this the America we want to give to our children? How is the oppression of the LGBT citizens any different from the oppression of Muslim women?
It is past time to stand up for the freedom that America is supposed to stand for. I have a friend who thanked me for going to a gay pride parade. She said that she appreciated the support especially considering that I had “no dog in the race.” She meant that because I am straight I had nothing to gain by supporting the parade. Well, my friend, I say that yes I do have a dog in this race. I have you and every other member of the LGBT community. I will stand and fight beside every Joe, Peter and Kyle; every Bess, Alice and Jane. I will stand with the LGBT community and fight for an America that should be free and equal for all its citizens.
How do we get to that free and equal America? We need to turn this fight back to where it belongs. We should finally pass a 28th amendment to the United States Constitution. What would that be? Very simply, it is the Equal Rights Amendment. It is the amendment that brave men and women have been fighting for since the 1920’s. Our Declaration of Independence states that “All Men are Created Equal.” All men…..that means woMen, gay Men, lesbian woMen, etc….With the 28th amendment in place, then state constitutional amendments like North Carolina’s amendment 1 will not be allowed to stand. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution states that laws written by Congress supersede state laws and constitutions.
We must now focus our efforts on passing the Federal Equal Rights Amendment. Then and only then will we see the true light of freedom that America offers. Let us tell our children, “You are not less than. You are wonderful and perfect just the way you are.” I ask that we all stand together for our children, for our country, for freedom. Together we will be heard and together we will win equality for all.
Thank you,
Tracey Meszaros
King, N.C.
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May 17th, 2012
Last Friday, the blogger known as Archbishop Cranmer made a bold claim: “Advertising Standards Authority persecutes His Grace,” the headline announced.
The ASA sent him “all manner of official papers, formal documentation and threatening notices which demand answers to sundry questions by a certain deadline.” The correspondence was part of an investigation into an ad (which you can see here) that appeared on Cranmer’s blog, urging people to sign a petition on behalf of the Coalition 4 Marriage. Complainants said they found the ad “homophobic” and “offensive,” and although the investigation was not into Cranmer specifically, he was required to respond to that particular charge.
I was immediately quite irked by what seemed to me to be an attempt to silence an ad that, in the scheme of things, is no big deal. As a supporter of same-sex marriage, I want to see the debate won by reasoned argument, not by getting someone with a bit of clout to shut the other side up.
On Monday, “His Grace” responded publicly to the ASA. That someone trying to defend himself against charges of homophobia would make a clever pun on “smouldering faggots” was hardly the wisest step, but then the question wasn’t whether Cranmer was homophobic, but whether the ad was worthy of complaints to the ASA and a heavy-handed investigation.
On Wednesday, the ASA responded to the controversy, which by now had expanded beyond the blogosphere and into the mainstream media:
One of the bloggers on whose blog the ads appeared has raised concerns about us contacting him as part of our investigation. We have long found it useful to ask, in confidence, publishers of ads subject to ‘offence’ complaints for their views, because they can give us a valuable insight into whether or not their readers are likely to be offended. They are not the subject of our investigation, as we have made clear to them in this case, and they are not compelled to respond.
Valuable insight? Not compelled to respond? This did not sound like what Cranmer had claimed, or what I understood to be the situation, so I returned to read and reread everything Cranmer had written on the subject. I found it difficult to get a clear picture of what exactly the ASA said to Cranmer directly and in what context, however. He had received an email, accompanied by a bundle of 10 pages, all of which he had cited extensively, but there were obvious gaps where he had filled in with his own words. So, via Twitter, I made a very reasonable request: Could he please publish the entire correspondence online?
Can We See the Documents?
It was Cranmer himself who had said, when he first announced his persecution, that he had no intention of respecting the ASA’s request for confidentiality:
He is instructed by the ‘Investigations Executive’ of this inquisition to keep all this confidential.
However, Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are?
So confidentiality was not a problem.
“That is the full email,” he replied, “minus the salutation and the sign-off.”
“In your original post? Looks like lots of little quotes, some paraphrasing, etc. Hard to gauge entire email.”
“No, the email is quoted in full. The ‘bundle’ is too big to publish in its entirety. The excerpts are not misrepresented.”
So the reason he won’t publish the attached bundle is because it’s too big. He says the excerpts aren’t misrepresented, but that’s not the point, is it? The whole point is we shouldn’t have to take his word, just as we shouldn’t have to take the ASA’s word. At this stage, I suspected if there were any big misrepresentation, it was from the ASA. But it was obvious the full documentation would confirm it.
“Surely very easy, and v helpful for onlookers, just to post original email in full? Not sure what ‘bundle’ is. … Still difficult to compare email with ASA response; not clear in your first post what’s verbatim & what’s your interpretation.”
“A bundle is ten pages of A4. It really is very simply: verbatim quotes are indented or in quotation marks.”
“So there are gaps, & it would very helpful, & make things very clear, if you filled in gaps by posting entire email verbatim.”
He didn’t seem to be getting it. I understood quite well that indentation and quotation marks indicated a verbatim quote. My problem was with the little gaps. Finally, to make things as easy as possible for the Archbishop, I posted all the quotes to a single document to demonstrate unequivocally that there were gaps.
“Bear with me. Here’s all the direct quotes you provided, minus your own paraphrases: http://t.co/cXy2kMGJ“
“For the third time, is not remotely practicable to post 10 PAGES on a blog. You are free to doubt and disbelieve.”
Here Cranmer really dropped the ball. Having gone to great lengths to argue his case on his blog, now he refuses to argue, and appears to say: Well, I’m not giving you that evidence; you’ll just have to believe me or disbelieve me. Note that again he offers the same reason: It’s impractical.
Then I was suspicious. I didn’t suspect some grand cover-up, but I was puzzled why Cranmer was so resistant. He was clearly making excuses; anyone with enough web savvy to run a blog knows that posting a few documents online is not impractical. Ten pages is not too big. If you can’t upload something directly to your blog, there are thousands of free services where you can easily host ten pages of documentation.
I emailed Archbishop Cranmer and asked once again, hoping I might get a more reasonable response in private. I even offered to host the documents myself if that was a problem. He replied to educate me on the difference between an email and a bundle and to give me another reason why he wouldn’t upload the documents, which he hadn’t even hinted at on Twitter:
You appear to be ignoring the fact (which has now been publicised numerous times) that this bundle contains numerous other pieces of information (recipients’ names, details) which it is simply not appropriate to put into the public domain. As His Grace has made clear, two of these letters are addressed to a third party. It is neither his right nor desire to drag them into his dispute.
It seemed the size of the bundle, twice offered as an excuse, wasn’t relevant at all. It was true that he had said on his blog that the bundle contained material addressed to third parties, but why didn’t simply point to that as the reason in the first place instead of making up unrelated excuses?
He ended his reply, “You are free to go on insinuating that he is concealing facts and misrepresenting the ASA.”
I replied, a bit irritatedly (but in no way impolitely — I’ll publish the emails I sent if anyone thinks that’s relevant), that I had stuck my neck out defending his freedom of speech, which to most of my fellow gays and liberals, or at least the most vocal ones, makes me look like a total sucker. I let him know I wasn’t suspicious at all until he started getting evasive over publishing everything he received from the ASA.
“Not remotely practicable” clearly falls down as a reason. While his second reason is better, it is still unconvincing. He could always simply black out identifying details. Remember, breaking ASA’s request for confidentiality is not in itself a concern for Cranmer at all. If it’s a simple matter of third parties’ sensitive information, he can publish and simply omit names and such where necessary.
What Did the ASA Tell Cranmer, and Is It Persecution?
The Archbishop’s unnecessary awkwardness over all this prompted me to go back and read and reread his claims. The main problem in piecing together exactly what the ASA told Cranmer directly is that all but the short email prefacing the bundle was addressed to other parties. From what I’ve been able to piece together, the following is the only part of the ASA’s communication addressed directly to Archbishop Cranmer:
The attached summarises a complaint we have received about the enclosed advertising, which appeared on the ‘Archbishop Cranmer’ blog. The complaint falls under the harm and offence section of the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. Please explain why you thought the advertising was suitable for your readers and whether readers have complained to you direct. Please respond by 21st May at the latest. Please keep this correspondence confidential. If you require a postal copy please let me know.
I’m assuming this is the email, as Cranmer told me by email that it was “quoted in full: it consisted of four or five lines of text.” His complaint is that the email is “terse,” that there’s a “tone of asserted authority” and, while they said, “please,” it “reads like a series of demands.” A deadline is “emphatically imposed,” and there’s no mention that he is “not being compelled to respond.”
Agreed. It is fairly terse, and it does present responding as the only option. There’s no suggestion that he’s allowed to ignore the request.
But the strongest and most oft-repeated quotes are from the bundle, none of which, it seems, were directly addressed to Cranmer, which he acknowledges. Yet they form the basis of his claim that he is being persecuted, intimidated, harrassed and threatened. For example:
What you need to do
We need you to respond to the complaint. The CAP Code requires marketers to avoid causing serious or widespread offence. We require you to explain your rationale for the ad and comment specifically on the points raised in the attached complaint notification. We will be happy to receive anything else you think is relevant.
It is for you to decide what to submit, but we will need to see robust documentary evidence to back the claims and a clear explanation from you of its relevance and why you think it substantiates the claims. It is not enough to send references to or abstracts of documents and papers without sending the reports in full and specifically highlighting the relevant parts explaining why they are relevant to the matter in hand.
Yet the way Cranmer represents this information is confusing:
Now, call His Grace obtuse or pedantic if you wish, but this plainly says: ‘We need you to respond to the complaint.’ This statement is not qualified. While these attached letters from the bundle were addressed to a third party, His Grace was manifestly expected to glean from them precisely what was being demanded of him. … Since His Grace has had to assume that parts of this communication (the request to respond to Issue 2) apply to him (it is not specified in the covering email), it is not unreasonable to assume that these demands and deadlines also apply to him. There is manifestly an intimidating request for ‘robust documentary evidence’, followed by a threat that non-response is ‘considered a breach of The CAP Code’ and may itself be subject to investigation.
Without seeing the original documents, how can we say for sure these demands apply to him, especially when Cranmer tells us himself they were explicitly addressed to a third party?
He also takes exception to the following, which appears somewhere in the bundle:
Who we are
The ASA investigates complaints to ensure that non-broadcast marketing communications comply with The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (The CAP Code), prepared by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). We also investigate complaints to ensure that TV and radio advertising complies with The UK Code of Broadcast Advertising (The BCAP Code). The Government, the Office of Fair Trading and the Courts recognise the ASA as the “established means” of regulating non-broadcast advertising.
He finds mentions of “government,” “courts” and “established means” daunting, and so this paragraph, too, becomes part of the evidence that the ASA is persecuting, harrassing, intimidating him. Yet we have no context for these remarks, and we know most of the bundle was addressed to a third party anyway, so the idea these particular terms are being invoked as part of some unique targeting of Cranmer is at best unproven. It doesn’t show the ASA was trying to intimidate him so much as it shows he felt intimidated by them. There’s a big difference.
What Do We Know about Cranmer and the ASA?
We know several parties complained about the Coalition 4 Marriage ad that appeared on Cranmer’s blog, among other websites. We know Cranmer received an email addressed directly to him and several documents addressed to third parties. We know he was asked to look at all these documents and comment specifically on the ad and why he thought it was “suitable for his readers.”
The more I look into what was said to Cranmer directly, the more I think there is some truth to this tweet by @EyeEdinburgh:
Think @His_Grace got frightened by an official-looking email, &now cannot bring himself to admit he was wrong
Archbishop Cranmer was spooked. He got a snotty email from an official body, the combination of terseness, legalese and demands panicked him, and he rallied his troops forthwith.
Is the ASA off the Hook?
While events don’t reflect brilliantly on Archbishop Cranmer, especially after his evasiveness yesterday, the ASA looks far from good. Putting aside hysterical claims of persecution and intimidation, if what I think I can glean for sure from the convoluted information Cranmer has made available is correct, the ASA looks ham-fisted and dishonest.
They sent a request to Cranmer with no indication that his compliance was voluntary. He was given a request and a deadline — how else to interpret that other than a demand? With the email were 10 pages of miscellany with no clear instructions how they related specifically to him.
Cranmer’s mistake was, in the absence of clear guidance, to assume it all applied to him, and to interpret the entire thing as a mean conspiracy against him. He went ballistic, and his champions joined him in denouncing it as persecution.
Somewhere in the crevices of the ASA office, someone just as easily spooked was terrified by this uproar. So the ASA responded immediately with what seems — again, I could say for sure if only a certain churchman would let us see everything in context — like a barefaced lie. They said it was a voluntary opportunity for Cranmer to provide valuable information, but this wasn’t made clear as they claimed. The opposite seemed true.
Nor do the complainants look very good — whoever they are — for reasons I explained when I first wrote about this story. (The Jewish Gay & Lesbian Group is not even among them, contrary to what the ASA claimed; a JGLG member simply complained independently, as the association now makes clear on its website.)
I see Archbishop Cranmer has asked the ASA, via his blog, to allow him to make the documents available. I’ve no idea why he thinks he needs to ask the ASA, since he’s made clear he doesn’t respect their request for confidentiality. I assume the ASA is not in the habit of responding directly to blogs anyway, and I doubt he’s contacted them directly to ask permission.
I suspect if and when we do get to see everything in context, we’ll see that the most intimidating stuff wasn’t addressed to Cranmer at all, and he may, not for the first time, be forced to recant.
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May 14th, 2012
By Cory Doctorow - Share this article
When we think of journalists’ anonymous sources, we think of the proverbial whistleblower. Company insiders, or civil servants, ready to violate their nondisclosure agreements to expose some wrongdoing, or perhaps to settle some score. On the other, sleazier, end of the scale, we might think of tipsters: a cash-strapped waiter at a restaurant who sells the story of a celebrity food-fight to a tabloid, a blabby nurse at a plastic surgery clinic who spills the beans on some captain of industry’s chin-augmentation.
But the most commonly cited anonymous sources in the news today are the official, on-the-record spokespeople for corporations. And the anonymous speech that is protected by the journalists who quote them is the most bland, anodyne stuff you can imagine.
My first run-in with this was back in 1996 or 1997, when I wrote my first feature for Wired magazine, about a “dumpster diver” who harvested trash from high-tech companies’ skips and resold it. After watching him make several thousand dollars out of a skip belonging to Acer America, I called them up and spoke to their head of security, who was on the line with a minder from Acer’s PR company. He said something bland and reassuring about how it would cost more to sell this stuff themselves than they’d earn on it. I asked why they didn’t give it to schools, and the PR minder said, “It’s something we’ll have to look into.”
I quoted both of them in the article and was shocked when Wired‘s fact-checker phoned me before it went to press to tell me that the PR person denied having said anything. I had her on tape and I stuck to my guns, and those perfectly innocuous words went into the article, much to her evident (and inexplicable) consternation.
PR people, both in-house and outside contractors, have adopted a gospel that holds that they themselves should never appear in an article. When I asked around about this practice, PR people defended it, saying that their success would be judged by the extent to which they were absent from the story. It’s as though the odd doctrine that companies are people means that companies can’t admit that they are made up of people. When a PR person says something innocuous, he is speaking ex cathedra, voice of the company embodied, which has possessed him and speaks through him, without interpretation or engagement by the person himself. He is the company’s living embodiment, without name or identity.
This is a phenomenon that I run into again and again. Last year, I dug into the Times’s paywall numbers, spending a week talking off and on with the senior spokesperson for the paper. At the end of our conversation, she revealed that she had only been speaking to me with the understanding that I not name her in the article. Surprised that the official, designated spokesperson for The Times would expect to remain unnamed in print, I asked if anything she’d told me was incriminating to her. No, she said, all the facts she’d relayed were “in the public domain,” and she had not violated any confidences in relaying them to me. Her job was to tell me these facts, and her job was to make sure that no one knew who had told me these facts.
More recently, I was chasing up a story BBC’s insistence that Ofcom hold its report on adding DRM to high-definition digital TV in confidence. No one at the BBC’s press relations office would return my phone messages, and when a press officer there responded in writing, he or she refused to disclose his or her identity. I don’t even know if the emails I received came from one person or several people.
PR people are seemingly incapable of understanding why anyone would object to this. After I posted about a researcher’s conclusion that T-Mobile UK was fiddling with the packets in its data network in a way that prevented secure connections, I was contacted by a representative from Nelson Bostock Communications. This person wrote on T-Mobile’s behalf to ask for a phone call. Given the technical nature of the matter, I emailed back that I’d prefer a written exchange, and said that I would only communicate on the condition that it was all on the record, from a named person. The PR person replied with a fairly spin-laden answer and noted “Statement to be attributed to a T-Mobile spokesperson.” Either this person had poor reading comprehension or just couldn’t believe that someone would ask for a named person would have statements attributed to them. Indeed, when I asked about this, I got another reply with the same attribution instruction. I replied that we had nothing to say if I couldn’t quote someone by name, and never heard back.
Then, when I got a lead on a story about a spot of corporate misbehavior. I asked the company for an on-the-record statement. I got one, which made it all seem rather a tempest in a teapot. Just as I was deciding not to write about this after all, I got an email from an in-house PR person at the company asking if she could talk to me “on background” about this. I replied that, as I’d stated, I was only interested in talking to named, on-the-record people, unless she or he was planning on telling me something that would get her or him fired or disciplined. That is, if she or he was going to relay official company statements in her or his capacity as a company spokesperson, I expected to be able to attribute them to her or him. She or he replied that she or he could talk if I could attribute this to “someone close to the company.” I reiterated that this wasn’t something I’d do for official statements, and she or he thanked me politely and suggested some websites I could look to for clarity.
I went back to the BBC and asked if someone in the press department could speak to me, on the record, as a named person, about why no one there would speak as a named person on the record. A person who asked not to be named said, “it’s absolutely standard practice to request a quote is attributed to a spokesperson for an organisation rather than in an individual’s name. This is because it demonstrates the statement is being officially given on behalf of the organisation, as opposed to by an individual employee offering what might be their private opinion. This approach is routinely adopted by most communications teams, be they broadcasters, public sector organisations or private companies.”
When I asked if I could attribute this to the person who’d replied to my email, she or he said, “I’ve clearly articulated the BBC’s position to you, and in line with this I’ve asked that you attribute it to a BBC spokesperson.” Of course, I’d started the conversation by asking that a named person go on-the-record, but again, this seems to be an impossible request in the world of PR.
I asked whether the BBC’s newsgathering guidelines had anything to say on the subject, and the anonymous person pointed me to the BBC Editorial Guidelines on Anonymity. As a set of principles for protecting the identities of whistleblowers, dissidents, and witnesses and victims of crimes, these are without flaw.
But I can’t understand why they’d apply to corporate spokespeople.
News, as we all know, is governed by the Ws: Who, what, where, when and why. When you are writing up a factual, detailed account of an event, who matters every bit as much as what and the rest of it. The identity of a person who makes a statement is newsworthy and relevant. Without this fact, we are deprived of a key metric for determining credibility: identity. If a PR person says something at company “A” that turns out to have been a knowing lie, then we should be very skeptical of everything she says for companies B, C and on, throughout her employment history, unto Z.
Many people in PR start out in journalism school. When I taught at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, the students intending to work in PR went to the same classes as the students who intended to become working journalists. They heard all about the importance of establishing the key facts when reporting on a story. The shock on display when a journalist asks for statements to be attributed to human beings, rather than the companies that employ them, is unconvincing and unbecoming.
Let’s be clear here. I’m not talking about sticking a pad under someone’s nose at the site of an industrial accident and saying, “You work here then? Can you tell me what happened? What’s your name?” and getting that poor shocked person fired.
I’m talking about attending the press conference and asking the official spokesperson, making prepared statements on behalf of the company, what his name is. This is relevant. The reason that human beings deliver these statements is so that we’ll believe them and report on them, because statements attached to people are more convincing than anonymous, unsigned missives on the company website. If we are going to give statements credence because they originate with humans, then we should know who those humans are.
Read more:
A fatal lack of accountability, by Heather Brooke
Screenwipe on anonymous sourcing
Everything tagged Journalism at Boing Boing
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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May 14th, 2012
State officials have not yet given private Medicaid operators permission to do business in the Louisville area, but that hasn’t stopped one company from trying to make inroads.
Currently, Passport Health Plan runs Medicaid in and around Louisville. The federal government has ordered the state to open the region to competition, but the area remains closed. In anticipation of a change, United Healthcare recently sent letters to dental centers in the area, encouraging them to sign up with United once the state allows outside companies to begin operations.
United officials say the letter is just preparation to serve more Kentucky patients.
“Our understanding from information in the public domain, is that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is considering a change to its Medicaid program in Region 3. If a change in the region is made and an opportunity to serve the Medicaid population becomes available to United Healthcare, we are preparing to provide Medicaid beneficiaries with the same kind of quality healthcare programs and services received by our current 360,000 United Healthcare members in the state,” Molly McMillen, United’s director of public relations, said in a statement.
State officials declined to say whether they were aware of United’s actions. Instead they say anyone anticipating more competition in the region is relying on speculation.
Tagged as:
medicaid,
Passport Heath Plan,
United Healthcare
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May 11th, 2012
“Dear Mister Chairman,
Congratulations on your election.
We thank the secretariat for preparing the document CDIP/9/INF/2 Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain, and support all of these recommendations.
Communia is the international association on the Public Domain. Our mission is to offer expertise and research about the public domain in the digital age. Communia started as a network funded by the European Commission between 2007 and 2011 anddeveloped a set of policy recommendations to enrich and sustain the Public Domain. Several are in line with the recommendations proposed by Professor Séverine Dusollier and one is explicitly mentioned in the document prepared by the secretariat, proposing to re-establish some formalities: “in order to prevent unnecessary and unwanted protection of works of authorship, full copyright protection should only be granted to works that have been registered by their authors. Non registered works should only get moral rights protection”. Registration would serve several means, in particular, help to identify and locate Public Domain works, identify Right Holders and avoid orphan works.
On recommendation 1.f to develop informational and technical tools to identify content which is in the Public Domain, we think a good way of enhancing the interoperability of private registries, Public Domain calculators and public databases would be to recommend or even mandate the use of open standards. WIPO could certainly play a vanguard role by continuing coordinating initiatives and maybe at least partially host or list several of these systems.
Such technical or informational tools identifying content of the public domain shall be coordinated with existing rights management structures such as collective rights management organizations. The creation of public registries at national levels listing works on which right-holders have willfully waived their rights and/or whose right-holders cannot be found or identified shall help improving legal certainty for users. The ability of right-holders to not fully exercise all of their rights shall be taken into account in the legal framework of the mandates between collecting societies and their members. This shall be part of the common information technology infrastructure that is likely to be proposed by the European Commission in its upcoming framework Directive on collective rights management.
We also recommend to consider other recommendations from the study, recommendations 1.e on orphan works, 2.b to encourage legal deposit and 2.c on the role of libraries because they are complementary to recommendation 1.f to identify content which is in the Public Domain.
Regarding recommendation 1.c to legitimate voluntary relinquishment as a legitimate exercise of copyright, we follow the recommendation of the secretariat to commission a study on relinquishment which will clarify the enforceability of tools such as CC0 dedication to the Public Domain in different jurisdictions. We would like to recall that actually, Public Domain is the rule and copyright is the exception. Moral rights regime shouldn’t be seen as a difficulty to circumvent, on the contrary, dedicating a work to the Public Domain, should be fully considered as a way to exercise one’s moral rights. Dedication to the Public Domain is a more positive expression than voluntary relinquishment of rights, reflecting the value of contributing to a common pool of reusable works.
Finally, we also welcome recommendation 2.a to enhance the availability of Public Domain works notably by cooperating with UNESCO and cultural heritage institutions. A good way to promote this cooperation is indeed to propose guidelines to museums. But a better way to protect the Public Domain would be to reinforce it statutorily.
Such a positive recognition could be achieved by implementing recommendations 3.a, b and c proposing to define legal means to prevent the recapture of exclusivity in works that are in the PD because the PD is at threat and deserves a positive legal definition to be protected from privatization.
We state that that “Digital reproductions of works that are in the Public Domain must also belong to the Public Domain. Use of works in the public domain should not be limited by any means, either legal or technical. Any false or misleading attempt to misappropriate Public Domain material must be declared unlawful. False or misleading attempts to claim exclusivity over Public Domain material must be sanctioned.”
The use of a Public Domain Mark such as the tool developed by CC or a stronger equivalent with metadata carrying the stamp of the affirmer, being a national library, the ministry of culture or these public and private registries we are talking about, would be extremely useful to both identify Public Domain works and prevent their misappropriation by adding another layer of rights.
We would like to clarify that we consider that Public Domain is related to copyright, and not to Traditional Knowledge, which is another part of IP, and we don’t understand why the promotion of the Public Domain and the protection of the Traditional Knowledge should be opposed, they are different matters and as such, our definition of the Public Domain does not target Traditional Knowledge, collective rights of the community could be respected in the same way moral rights act for authors of copyrightable works. Traditional Knowledge should not be in the Public Domain just because it’s not copyrighted.
Finally, we think that “Digitization projects that receive public funding must at the minimum ensure that all digitized content is publicly available online.” Digitization project financed by private funding could also have a legal framework preventing to re-establish exclusivity. We would finally like to recall that not all private efforts are led by a certain wealthy search engine, but can also reflect the public interest. Another type of public-private partnership with experts from Wikipedia has shown extremely good results, for instance at the Chateau de Versailles, the British Museum, the Library of the Chilean National Congress, the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City or the Smithsonian Archives. For example, the publication on Wikimedia Commons of images of works from the former Dutch colonies curated by the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam gave access to their own cultural heritage to Indonesians, because it was not available there. These experiences can be replicated and adapted to local context at extremely low cost, through the opening of collection to voluntary photographers, collaboration with curators to draft notices and metadatas, upload of Public Domain material in databases so they can be reused, or even translation of notices by students through instant messaging tools. Public participation to preservation is a powerful way to provide more visibility to collections in the respect of local communities. But these experiences can be led only if works are available under open access licenses or under Public Domain conditions.
It is our great pleasure to be accredited and to participate to this CDIP session where the Public Domain is at the heart of the agenda. Thank you.”
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May 11th, 2012
When you know how to find free online content using public domain material then some of the hurdles for growing an information market business, such as creating content on a regular basis and in product creation itself, is made ever so slightly easier. And once you get used to sourcing and using such content, you will find that your information marketing business will be able to take great strides forward.
The proposition of free to use ready made, quality and valuable content and resources is a very attractive one for a very large number of people who are seeking to start an internet business but may not be fully keen on the prospect of having to actually roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. There is still a number of people who would like the idea of having an internet business yet are rather hesitant about actually having to roll up their sleeves and get stuck into the work that is required. It can still be hard to believe but there are still some people who believe that because it is based on the internet then it will just be a case of creating a website and the traffic and customers will flow to it and buy without any of the work required.
The reality is rather different. Like any business it needs focus, dedication, and taking action. That is not to say you can’t take advantage of fast processes and solutions and this is where public domain material really ticks the boxes. Some people just don’t want to create their own product from scratch or may not have the time, skill or confidence to do it. Public domain content is the answer as the basic material has already been created for you and is free to use.
These free references can be adapted into a pdf format and offered as eBooks, reports or can be turned into audios, even vidoes as there is really no limit as to what you can do with the content.. So it is all there for you to utilise. The job as an information marketer is to format and market it. There is a huge selection of topics and the quality of the resources is excellent. And don’t forget, the material can be changed to suit your purpose and if these changes are significant enough, you have the right for your changed text to be copyrighted, so in effect you have sole rights to use it.
The first method to search for free public domain material is to undertake a keyword search in the search engines. There will be a great and wide choice of resources that you can then investigate which shall include book sellers offering books and references that are available as public domain material. Plus also there are dedicated websites that source, format and offer such material for anyone to acquire. These often take the form of a membership site and in return for a small monthly payment, a wide selection of valuable and good quality content is made available for you to use as you wish.
Every online information marketer should avail themselves of the opportunities that public domain material makes available. It can solve the problem of spending a lot of time creating content from scratch by taking the raw public domain content and putting your own voice to it. Before you know it, you will have unique, valuable content that you can call your own and the opportunity to create in demand products in a variety of formats. And it is all sourced from freely available content, just as long as you know where to look and then how to profit from it.
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May 8th, 2012
AudioBooks are becoming more and more popular now a days. Like music and movies, there are also a huge number of AudioBooks available out there which are completely free to listen and Download. But Often it becomes very difficult for us to find those free AudioBooks. If you are also looking for free to listen audio books, then AudioLiterate is the perfect place for you because it has good collection of AudioBooks from classical and public domain titles, which you can listen and Download legally for free.
All of the audiobooks on AudioLiterate are available for free, with the majority of them being public domain works that have been lovingly read and recorded by a range of volunteers. Thanks has to be given to sites like LibriVox and Archive.org who’ve made this possible through allowing the syndication of their content. AudioLiterate aims to push this content to a wider audience in a way that is more accessible and will appeal to new users.
New free audiobooks are getting added to their archive every day, so their collection is growing day by day. AudioLiterate has been designed to make it as easy as possible to find great audiobook titles. The homepage features an advanced search module which allows you to filter by author and genre and price – either Free (public domain) or Free (with a free trial). You can also just search directly there by entering keywords of your choice. On the homepage you will find their editor’s pick of featured free titles as well as a summary of genres and latest listings.
If you click on any of your Favorite Title, then a new page dedicated for that Title will open up. You can Download all the chapters at once or alternatively you can choose to stream each chapter with their embedded audio player.
It is not a secret that their collection of free AudioBooks is not a huge one. But New free audiobooks are getting added to their archive every day, so their collection is growing day by day. I personally loved the simplicity of their website and their well categorized collection. All the AudioBooks are Categorized by genre and author and therefore it becomes very easy to search and find your favorite Title. If the book is not very well-known to you then you can even read the book description before listening. Overall AudioLiterate is a very good place for all AudioBook lovers.
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