WTF IS A “LIFESTYLE DIRECTOR” ANYWAY? When I saw that Gallup issued a poll showing Mrs. Clinton’s lowest-ever favorability ratings, I thought to myself “who cares, she’s not really going to run for anything.”

But when I heard this editor (oh, excuse me, “Lifestyle Director”) from Time Magazine dismiss the poll by telling Tucker Carlson that Clinton is not a public figure, I actually burst out laughing.

There must be some DSM vernacular for people who are so desperate that they invert reality, no?

Behind the Political Curtain at Facebook: Bloomberg’s Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin take readers on a tour of the mess that is Facebook, who tries to have it both ways.  On the one hand, FB has tried to portray itself as a unknowing victim of any alleged Russian election-meddling (“hey, we only cashed the checks”) but Silver exposes Facebook’s coziness with various governments:

“In some of the world’s biggest democracies—from India and Brazil to Germany and the U.K.—the [Facebook] unit’s employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide technical assistance for live streams at official state events.”

And some of those governments have a bad record of using social media to less than enlightening ends. Facebook’s relationship with India is a good example. As Indian Prime Minister Modi’s social media reach grew, his followers increasingly turned to Facebook and WhatsApp to target harassment campaigns against his political rivals. India has become a hotbed for fake news, with one hoax story this year that circulated on WhatsApp leading to two separate mob beatings resulting in seven deaths. The nation has also become an increasingly dangerous place for opposition parties and reporters. In the past year, several journalists critical of the ruling party have been killed. Hindu extremists who back Modi’s party have used social media to issue death threats against Muslims or critics of the government.

Silver and Elgin have a terrific track record of exposing the use by Arab regimes of telecom apps to suppress — and even make disappear — political dissents, and broke the story on FinFisher, a malware used  to hunt down political opponents.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Showing an advance copy of your story to a subject for approval is a cardinal sin of journalism. But it paid off handsomely for Glenn Thrush, who used his obsequious charms on the Clinton Machine to land himself a plum gig as a White House reporter for The New York Times. But the rules of journalism pale in comparison to exposing your employer to a potential sexual harassment lawsuit: “New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush to be dismissed from White House beat after suspension” reports Business Insider.

“The sexual misconduct allegations against Thrush come amid a wave of similar reports from women spanning a multitude of industries in recent months, many of which included bombshell original reporting from The Times’ own staff.”

An abuse victims’ lawyer could really go to town on the company in a civil suit if it could be shown they knew about it and ignored complaints. Editor Dean Baquet said in a statement that “While we believe that Glenn has acted offensively, we have decided that he does not deserve to be fired […] Each case has to be evaluated based on individual circumstances. We believe this is an appropriate response to Glenn’s situation.”

To my mind, that’s laudable, because the instantaneous reaction to such allegations seems to have veered off the Due Process rails, and people are being fired without so much as an opportunity to address the allegations.

The Heritage Foundation has found a new President: Kay Coles James. She served in a wide range of public service capacities under Presidents Reagan and Bush, including stints as associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and as assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The best part is that the Heritage Foundation’s press release does not lead with or exaggerate the fact that she is an African-American woman and lets her accomplishments speak for themselves. Meritocracies thrive. Here’s wishing her the best of luck.
*Disclosure: I represent and advise The Daily Signal, Heritage’s independent news organization on media law and intellectual property matters.

“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” Tavis Smiley refuses to go quietly into that good night after being sacked by PBS, reports ABC:

“If having a consensual relationship with a colleague years ago is the stuff that leads to this kind of public humiliation and personal destruction, heaven help us,” he said. “This has gone too far. And I, for one, intend to fight back.”

Smiley claims that PBS wouldn’t allow him to present any evidence or challenge the allegations. I’m not an employment law specialist, and there are quite possibly contract law issues in play here. To be sure, without facts it’s hard to make up one’s mind about PBS’ treatment of Smiley.

Nonetheless, it raises two important questions: First, has the combination of assumed guilt and trial-by-media in harassment allegations indeed gone “too far?” And second, even if PBS did not make a “statement” defaming Smiley, can an action (like publicly suspending or firing someone) be interpreted as a defamatory statement?
*Classical reference in headline.

“FBI appears to have investigated – and considered prosecuting – FOIA requesters“: Investigative reporting blog and FOIA tool provider Muckrock shows that as far back as 2016, the FBI refused to produce documents that had the names of deceased FBI staff (nullifying any privacy concerns), but consistently failed to redact personal information about the requesters — a clear violation of privacy:

“Despite redacting the names and email addresses of the public servants handling the case, the FBI released not only the author’s name and address in the file (technically improper since there was no waiver, albeit understandable) but the name, email address and home address of another requester who also used the script to file requests. Their name along with their email and physical addresses were left unredacted not once, not twice, not thrice – but seven times, not including the email headers, several of which also showed their name and email address.”

Other emails show that the FBI’s Obama-era FOIA office consulted a number of people from the Criminal Justice Information Services division for the purpose of singling out “suspicious” FOIA requests for possible prosecution targeting.

I’d love to know what they considered a “suspicious” FOIA request.

WELL THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW (Part Deux): Voice of America reports that “Virtual Reality Allows Patients to Preview Their Own Surgery.”

The night before Luna’s surgery, Collins gives her a headset to wear and lets her travel through her own brain. Luna admits being “a nervous wreck” before seeing the path Steinberg would take to locate the aneurysm. She sees where he will clip off its growth so the clot can be resorbed, eliminating her pain. “Now I understand exactly what’s going to happen,” Luna says. Her husband also took a turn at the virtual reality flight. “This makes me understand it 100 percent,” Rene Luna says. “That extra understanding gives me a lot more confidence.”

Good pilots file a flight plan, so why not brain surgeons? Also sounds like a good way to ward off frivolous malpractice suits by developing a record before surgery.

MSNBC ANALYST: “It’s ‘Unfortunate’ Voters Shape Public Policy.” I think what MSNBC’s Elise Jordan *really* means is that it’s unfortunate that those knuckle-dragging, gun-and-bible-clinging, fly-over proles who work with their hands have a vote at all:

“I think it’s unfortunate that we are designing — that we are designing public policy in a way that, you know, comes down to how you voted in an election.”

FLASHBACK: Elections have consequences.

Understatement of the Year: “It’s probably long overdue.” — Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.

“State Drops Case Against Lucian Wintrich, White House Correspondent For Gateway Pundit, In UConn Tussle“: A moment of clarity in Connecticut, where reporter and public speaker Lucian Wintrich was attacked by Catherine Gregory, a local community college employee who stole his speaking material. Incredibly, when Wintrich tried to take his notes back, UConn police charged *him* with disorderly conduct. Says Wintrich’s lawyer:

“Free speech matters, it’s OK to be white, black, brown or anything in between,” he said. “My client came to Connecticut and was treated like a criminal for no reason. He sought to obtain his notes back when they were stolen by reasonable means, the prosecution saw that.”

Several days later, police contacted Wintrich and asked him to press larceny charges against her, and he did. Good for him. Punch back twice as hard.

**DISCLOSURE** I have represented Gateway Pundit in unrelated media law matters.

QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES: Granted, Fox is the pot calling the kettle black, but I’ve been harping on the failure of news organizations to conduct and publish serious and genuinely independent autopsies for quite a while. And I must be right, because Prof. Jacobson and I are in are agreement:

Cornell University law professor and Legal Insurrection founder William Jacobson said [NBC President] Lack had no business overseeing the investigation. “It’s hard to see how an internal investigation that reports to senior executives would be viewed as complete and transparent when the conduct or lack of conduct of senior executives, such as Andrew Lack, necessarily should an issue,” Jacobson told Fox News.

Jacobson continues:

“Anything other than an independent outside investigation that reports to the NBC Universal Board of Directors would raise questions as to whether responsibility is being pushed down to lower corporate levels.”

And going a step further, not only is a secret investigation in-house insufficient, it seems to me that media organizations — who live and die on readership trust — should not allow their usual outside law firms to do this, because they have a vested interest in client relations.

FLASHBACK: “Ted Kennedy Made Secret Overtures to Russia to Prevent Ronald Reagan’s Re-Election.” From The Daily Signal in 2016:

Kennedy then offered up the possibility of having top media personalities such as Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, and Elton Raul, president of the board of the ABC television network, travel to Moscow to do television interviews with Andropov.

Everything old is new again. Except it’s a pretty safe bet that Trump does not have the social currency with today’s media elites to arrange favorable coverage of anything, with the possible exception of Fox News.

VARIETY: Harvey Weinstein vs Michael Moore: Who do you cheer for? It’s really tough to pick a side here.

BuzzFeed missed its earnings by 20% and YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!

PRESIDENT TWEETS, ROME BURNS: While The President’s gratuitous snark about Elizabeth Warren dominates the news cycle, major media seems to be missing the real news that will seriously affect them as journalists and the public at large. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a provision of law that allows the government to conduct mass surveillance of innocent people, including Americans. The Hill reminds readers that Congress is poised to jam through reauthorization of this mass surveillance:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has marked up the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act, S. 2010. The bill, sponsored by Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is actually worse than existing law. It explicitly allows the attorney general to use [electronic communications] information collected under Section 702 for domestic crimes that have nothing to do with national security and forbids judicial review of that decision.

The idea of walling off such action from judicial review ought to put a scare into anyone. Moreover:

The House version of the USA Liberty Act, for instance, has a weak warrant requirement, which would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct backdoor searches of electronic communications collected by the NSA for domestic, non-terrorism investigations.

The potential for abuse is endless.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: It appears the next wave of problems for social media is “comment poisoning.” I can see a group (The Russians!!! The Russians!!!) sabotaging opponents and forcing removal of YouTube channels by simply adding offensive comments. Sez The Wall Street Journal:

“The Times of London reported that YouTube videos featuring young girls—in many cases apparently filming themselves, sometimes in underwear—drew hundreds of pedophiliac comments, including encouragement to do lewd acts and links to child-abuse content. The Times reported that the site displayed recommendations for similar videos, such as a view of naked toddlers taking a bath […] Videos, if posted innocently, might not in and of themselves violate YouTube’s terms of service; however, many comments posted by viewers clearly do.”

This is the same reason that many blogs, like AboveTheLaw have simply dropped their comment sections. The cost of policing trolls, ‘bots and spam is simply not worth the return on investment.

DO YOUR PART AND FRY MORE FOODS: The Telegraph (UK) is good at finding “scientists” who will say anything. Here, finally, they find some scientists who have useful information:

“In large cities like London, cooking fat is known to be responsible for 10 per cent of small particles in the air, so researchers believe frying food could have a noticeable impact on cloud formation and rainy weather. In fact, the effect is so large it could even have a cooling effect on the planet, and potentially slow down global warming.”

I, for one, am waiting for the government to offer tax incentives on deep fryers, because, you know, global warming. I’m willing to make that sacrifice if it helps Mother Gaia.

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR MORE THINGS TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT: Forget about global warming, North Korea, race relations or giant metal robots who want to steal your medicine. The New Yorker has found a historian/researcher who claims that “that there are probably around two thousand serial killers at large in the U.S.” The Daily Mail summarized the story with a Rogue’s Gallery of serial killers.

This comes two days after Newsweek published a spurious and much-ridiculed article noting that both Charles Manson and Donald Trump “used language” to “attract followers.” Imagine that. If Newsweek really wants to freak out their readership, they should publish a follow-up reporting that there are approximately two thousand Donald Trumps at large in the U.S.

**UPDATE** Newsweek removes reference to Trump, saying that “An earlier version of this story did not meet Newsweek’s editorial standards and has been revised accordingly.” 

**UPDATE 2 ** Newsweek still has original headline up on their Twitter feed…for now.

IN FINANCE WE CALL THIS A “DEATH SPIRAL:” Law School Won’t Admit New Students. Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Valparaiso University  announced Thursday that its law school would no longer admit new students. The law school is more than 130 years old, but it has been struggling to enroll enough students to function. Only 29 new students enrolled this fall, down from more than 200 as recently as 2013.

Asked why the university didn’t follow the lead of Whittier and simply shut down the law school, [President] Heckler said, “We have a 138-year tradition and very strong people.” […] The university will consider locations anywhere in the country, he said. Further, it will consider affiliations with law schools that do not share the university’s faith, provided there is respect for the law school’s commitment to service. Faculty members would have to support the new location or partner, he said. Depending on location, accreditors and state agencies might also be involved in a review of any proposed change.

Good luck with that.

OK, WHERE’S THE FLYING CAR I WAS PROMISED? The world’s first human head transplant has been carried out on a corpse in China in an 18-hour operation that showed it was possible to successfully reconnect the spine, nerves and blood vessels, The Telegraph reports.

At a press conference in Vienna on Friday morning, Italian Professor Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, announced that a team at Harbin Medical University had “realised the first human head transplant” and said an operation on a live human will take place “imminently”.

I suggest they harvest heads from Congress, because you’d want one that’s never been used.

WASHINGTONBABYLON.COM’S KEN SILVERSTEIN — one of my favorite curmudgeons — digs up a little nugget from the Don Jr./WikiLeaks traffic. Ken’s question is worth asking:

Why is Mother Jones helping run a site first started by a fucking Political Action Committee (PAC)? It’s like nobody noticed this because they’re all going bat shit over anything having to do with Trump, including the rather pedestrian revelations made in The Atlantic‘s much overhyped story. The rather disturbing relationship with the PAC is disclosed at PutinTrump.org but this isn’t about disclosure. The issue is whether any journalism outfit should be collaborating on a project that was created by a PAC.

I suppose it should shock nobody that Mother Jones has long been a leftist publication, and maybe there’s room for “advocacy journalism.” But it becomes hard to take them seriously:

A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote to Don Jr. The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee, a PAC with seemingly one purpose, and one purpose only.

Says Silverstein: “It’s almost like Mother Jones et al. were the Clinton campaign’s rabid rapid response team.”

FREE SPEECH IS SEXY AGAIN: The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to six First Amendment cases this term, reports Bloomberg‘s Greg Stohr, three of them just yesterday.

They include a high-profile fight over a Colorado baker who refuses to make cakes for same-sex weddings and a challenge to the requirement in some states that public-sector workers pay for the cost of union representation […] In the new California case, a state law requires licensed pregnancy clinics to tell patients that they can call a county health department to learn about state-funded prenatal, family planning and abortion services. The law is being challenged by clinics that oppose abortion […] The justices also said Monday they will use a Minnesota case to consider guaranteeing people the right to wear political apparel when they go to the polls to vote. The final case involves a man who says he was arrested in retaliation for suing and politically criticizing his local government.

Not surprisingly, law professors are all over the place on what it means and what will happen. Harvard Law prof Rebecca Tushnet told Bloomberg that “the current court interprets the First Amendment more expansively in many ways than it did in the past,” while Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at UCLA School of Law says the latest issues are “mostly variations on topics the justices have been debating for decades.”

**DISCLOSURE: I defended Greg Stohr for more than 12 years at Bloomberg and did the pre-publication vetting of his book “A Black and White Case” about the landmark Gratz v. Bollinger affirmative action case.

BEWARE THE PIOUS: Our moral and intellectual betters in the news industry have some explaining to do, in light of the most recent American Society of News Editors‘ study:

In 2017, minorities comprised 16.55 percent of employees reported by all newsrooms in our survey, compared to 16.94 percent in 2016. Among daily newspapers, about 16.31 percent of employees were racial minorities (compared to 16.65 percent in 2016), and 24.3 percent of employees at online-only news websites were minorities (compared to 23.3 percent in 2016). The percent of journalists of color was still greatest at the largest news organizations. For example, at newspapers with daily circulations of 500,000 and above, nearly a quarter (23.4 percent) of the average workforce was made up of minorities (compared to 23.7 percent in 2016). The average newsroom workforce at all 661 legacy and digital sites was about 11.2 percent minority (up from 10.6 percent in 2016).

Of course, it can be carried to the opposite extreme.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, PART DEUX: You can draw all the cartoons of Trump as an orange baboon you want, and the worst you’ll face is an angry or incoherent Tweet. Try that stuff in India, brave Social Justice Keyboard Warriors:

G Balakrishnan, 36, a freelancer associated with an online news portal, was held in Tamil Nadu’s state capital Chennai on Sunday for the caricature that blamed Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and top officials for not acting against loan sharks active in the state. He was charged with publishing defamatory and obscene material under the Indian Penal Code as well as the Information Technology Act, crimes punishable with three years in jail, police officer Anita Arokyamery said. (Emphasis added).

BONUS GAME: Try this in China or Saudi Arabia and see how long you last.

PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS CORRECT: ELECTIONS DO HAVE CONSEQUENCES. A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of www.dnainfo.com and Gothamist voted to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down. The owner’s logic is unfathomable to the denizens of the People’s Republic of Zabar’s:

“DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure.”

**DISCLOSURE** I was a member of The Newspaper Guild for many years when I worked at Time Inc., but those were in flush times when the First Amendment was basically a license to print money.