"Images can't be verified": The limits of social media?

In previous posts, I have illustrated how information integrity concepts, and assurance more broadly, have played a role in media reporting. In the post, I noted the following as way way to act as a check on the media:

"Another probably more plausible approach is to leverage crowd sourcing and organize it to enable people comment or blow the whistle on information that is produced in a manner that is inaccurate, incomplete or invalid. The Guardian actually did this for the MPs expenses: they built an app that allowed ordinary users to analyze MPs expenses (if interested check out the Google Docs Spreadsheet with this info). As noted in the article, there was another attempt to build such an app (see here for the alternative). This is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that no one organization has the ability to monopolize such initiatives. However, it is bad in the sense that the efforts of the crowd are effectively divided. Regardless, it does illustrate that the potential for "crowd sourced audits"."

However, the events in Egypt, Syria, and the coverage of  the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, illustrate the limits of social media on its ability to act as a check as a means to counter "official sources".  As noted in the following excerpt in the WSJ, there is a significant discrepancy in the death toll in the recent events in Egypt:

"The Associated Press cited the Ministry of Health as saying 525 people were killed across the country, with 3,717 injured. Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault, the Associated Press reported.

The Brotherhood placed the number of fatalities far higher—saying 2,200 people had been killed and more than 10,000 wounded."

To put the number of dead into perspective, the number killed (if the Brotherhood numbers are accurate) is the same scale as the number that died in September 11, 2001, which was 2,977.

What is interesting is that the Egyptian military actually targeted camera men to prevent images of the massacre from leaking out. For example, Mick Deane, a cameraman from Sky News was shot and killed by the Egyptian army. Also, as you can see in the video below, Ahmed Asem  (an Egyptian photojournalist) was killed while filming the Egyptian army kills others:


In Syria, even after horrifying images of chemical attacks were available from YouTube (no link was provided due to the gruesome nature of the attacks; however they can easily be found by putting "Syria Chemical Attacks" in YouTube), the mainstream continues to refer to them as "alleged".

With respect to the Occupy Movement, almost 8,000 people have been arrested. However, the mainstream media does not cover this and so a major crackdown on a significant social movement is effectively invisible to the mainstream society.

So what does this have to do with information integrity?

I have been fascinated with the portability of information integrity concepts to any information system, including the mass media system. For example, if one reads Manufacturing Consent, it is essentially a book that evaluates how the media is able to apply concepts, such as decision-usefulness, completeness, validity, etc to the way information is published or broadcast.

And this is the link to the social media.

One may think that with official media being unable to compete with social media, that the it will be replaced by social media. However, this is only from a business perspective. the real question is whether social media does actually alter the ability of the mass media to set the parameters of debate. In other words, can you or I can get on a blog expose the truth about something and create change society, based on the blog post?

As illustrated by the examples above, when the official media does not actually corroborate the social media, it effectively prevents social media from having an impact on society. I had mentioned in this in one of my earlier posts, the official media is still seen as a source of trust and verification, whereas social media is not. This ultimately prevents social media from ever truly supplanting old media, as people in a society ultimate rely on collective institutions to bind them together in a cohesive. So despite social media giving people the ability to contribute to the landscape ideas, it has not fundamentally altered the essence of power structures in society.

In other words, the "information system" that is within the society still remains where it always has.  And when the citizenry make decisions about societal matters, they ultimate rely on this information system for their opinions and beliefs, simply because the other sources can be doctored and faked, i.e. there are no official "information integrity" controls around social media. Consequently,  countries - be they dictatorial or democratic - can crackdown on their citizens and social media will not "materially" affect society's opinions or belief about the plight about that group or their cause.

CNET, CES and Crowd-sourced audits: Independence does matter

In a previous post, I looked at how the editorial interference from CBS forced CNET to award the Best in Show category to another contestant because CBS was involved in litigation against the company who actually did win best in show. The perspective that I took was more of a "decision usefulness" perspective: could a reader actually figure out who the real winner is due to the use of disclaimers. 

Others were much more outraged over this lack of objectivity. 

Since my post, Greg Sandoval, a reporter at CNET, has resigned over the controversy (click here to see his tweet).  More importantly, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) itselft has taken a firm stand against this move by CBS. As noted in this press release, they have effectively overturned CNET's decision and have awarded the Best in Show to both the Hopper and Razor's Edge (effectively CNET's second choice). They have also are requesting a request for proposal for "a new partner to run the Best of CES awards program". 

Looking at the heart of the issue, the question is how does one maintain independence when reporting on a matter? 

We can take a look at what the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) and the Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB) have written about independence in this publication. On page 7, they cite the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) and breakdown independence in two categories: 

• "Independence of mind: The state of mind that permits the expression of a conclusion without being affected by influences that compromise professional judgment, thereby allowing an individual to act with integrity and exercise objectivity and professional skepticism.
• "Independence in appearance: The avoidance of facts and circumstances that are so significant that a reasonable and informed  third party would be likely to conclude, weighing all the specific facts and circumstances, that a firm’s, or a member of the audit team’s, integrity, objectivity or professional skepticism has been compromised."

The publication also a number of threats to independence. The two probably most relevant are the "self-interest threat" and the "intimidation threat", which I think are probably most relevant to the CNET-CES controversy. Effectively, CBS's objectivity of the reporters was put aside in favour of the self-interest emanating from their litigation against DISH (who makes the Hopper). 

But the more interesting one to explore is the "intimidation threat". And this is most felt by reporters and editors who are pressured to abandon their view in favour of what the parent company wanted. And it speaks to a fundamental flaw in journalism: the press depends on money from the companies and others that they need to write about. The biggest illustration of this is what went down between Fox News and Jane Akre and Steve Wilson when they were forced to stop reporting about the health effects of drinking milk from cows that had been given Monanto's Bovine Growth Hormone. The reporters were fired when they refused to give into the "intimidation threat". They initially won their case under Florida's whistle blower law, but when Fox appealed they lost. The reason? The media has no obligation to tell the truth.  

So the challenge remains as to how does one remain independent when they need to eat and pay their bills in a free market system? Greg took the principled stance as, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson did, but not everyone can afford to pay the prices. People have to pay rent and take care of their families. The reality is that if society really cares about have access to information that has integrity they need to pay for it.

Is it time to have audited standards for the media, similar to the one used for financial information generated by financial companies? 

Although not perfect by any stretch of the imagination - the accounting scandals, a la Enron, serve as an important reminder of the lack of perfection in the system - the way financial information is subjected to testing serves at least as a starting to point as way to understand what needs to be there to ensure the information has integrity. 

Another probably more plausible approach is to leverage crowd sourcing and organize it to enable people comment or blow the whistle on information that is produced in a manner that is inaccurate, incomplete or invalid. The Guardian actually did this for the MPs expenses: they built an app that allowed ordinary users to analyze MPs expenses (if interested check out the Google Docs Spreadsheet with this info). As noted in the article, there was another attempt to build such an app (see here for the alternative). This is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that no one organization has the ability to monopolize such initiatives. However, it is bad in the sense that the efforts of the crowd are effectively divided. Regardless, it does illustrate that the potential for "crowd sourced audits". 

Auditing the Media: Was CNET's CES coverage complete?

As noted in the Tech News Today (TNT) report on Friday, CNET's parent CBS banned its staff from awarding Dish's "Hopper" an award as part of their reporting the Consumer Electronics Show that just wrapped up last week. As reported by CNN, the bottom of CNET's 'Best of 2013' page notes the following:

"The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such products."

Some may point to this as a legal risk management move: CBS had to stop CNET from awarding this to Dish to avoid it being used against them in court. However,  Ayaz Akhtar, a non-practicing lawyer and host of TNT, noted in his commentary on the issue that CNET awarding a prize would have little impact on the course of litigation  (but listen to the show for the proper context and for how he worded this. He's careful to avoid any misrepresentation and it's not an exact quote).

The real issue, in my humble opinion, is to looking at whether media be relied on to report on issues objectively. One could say that due to the lack of independence of CNET on the matter, makes their reporting of CES lack objectivity. This is the standard of care that a financial auditor is held to when auditing a company. For example, auditors are prevented from holding stock in companies that they audit. Should the media be held to the same standard?


For me this incident illustrates how the concepts of financial information integrity are portable to other arenas, such as understanding news coverage. Financial information produced by companies listed on stock exchanges is subjected intense scrutiny and regulation. Accountants/auditors were required to develop a framework to analyze how financial information can be provided to investors in a reliable that enables them to make effective investment allocation decisions. This financial “information production” process is essentially similar to the “information production” process produced by the media: data is gathered, summarized and presented to the user/reader to make a decision. The latter is the key difference. For example, if someone is going to rely on CNET's CES coverage to understand the best products out there, then they could make an erroneous decision because CNET did not cover dish's product.

The following is a list of audit objectives (i.e. completeness, accuracy, etc) that financial information must meet in order to reliable for decision making purposes.

• Completeness – is the information presented completed, i.e. everything that is out there is included in the medium
• Accuracy – is the information congruent with the original event
• Timely – was the information reported in a timely manner, to be useful to the user
• Validity – does the information faithfully represent the underlying reality that is presented

Another important concept, especially to media coverage, is the one  of "presentation & disclosure – is the presentation of the information impartial. In financial statements, companies may engage in transactions to alter the presentation of items, e.g. bury accounts payable into accounts receivable so the user won't be able to accurately assess the ratio of current assets to current liabilities. Media has a greater ability to do this. And I don't mean to pick on the CNET people because they at least tried to inform the reader about their bias, but the statement they mentioned is at the bottom and not at the top. That is, some readers may miss it.

Overall, it's hard to say whether that the coverage lacked integrity and more specifically was "incomplete". On the one hand, one could argue their analysis was in complete because they excluded Dish's product. However, they did provide full disclosure although it is buried at the bottom. But one can easily search for Dish's product on the Internet and see what other reviewers are saying (e.g. such as PCMag's review). But it does illustrate that media consumers need to be aware of such risks and do their best to understand where corporate conflicts exist and how such coverage can be biased.

DNSChanger Virus & Trust on the Internet

I came across this forum in a CNET Newsletter which I subscribe to. The immediate issue on hand is the DNSChanger trojan. As discussed in this post, it is a nasty piece of malware that has infected not just PCs and Macs, but also routers and other network hardware. As mentioned on my post on the virus attacks on Macs, the culprits are not attention seeking hackers but an Estonian criminal gang that managed to steal $14 million from its victims. Although the FBI was able to catch the criminal gang and the rogue DNS server, they were unable to shut off the rogue servers immediately because this would result in the infected computers being suddenly cut off from the Internet. So instead the FBI "chose to keep the rogue DNS servers active and convert it to a legitimate DNS system for infected computers" and conduct an awareness campaign to alert users about this potential infection before shutting off the rogue DNS server. They plan to do this on July 9 2012.


For more information on how to address this issue, see:

• The Canadian government resource page to fight this issue (thanks to SC Magazine). Once you accept the T&C at the bottom, you system will be checked to see if it has the DNSChanger Trojan.
• The DNSChanger Working Group Site, which is managed by a consortium of experts and groups. 
• The FBI's post on this.  

The other aspect of this story relates to credibility on the Internet. "Barbara" submitted a classic "Dear Editor" letter to CNET which was the subject of the feed I received in my email. She did not know whether she should download the tools from DCWG.org and thought it could be a scam (see the first post at the top). Although she more than likely Googled (or Binged) the topic, she did not trust the results. Instead, she needed to turn to CNET as a "trusted intermediary" to verify that the tool the FBI was offering to clean the system was indeed legitimate. This illustrates a challenge for the new "here comes everybody" approach to the Internet enabled media: How do we verify claims on the Internet? Clay Shirky (who is the author of the book Here Come's Everybody) has analyzed how the Internet as a broadcast medium has made it possible to get one's news on events outside of the traditional mediums of print, television or radio, which were controlled by professional journalists. The implications of his analysis is that the previous monopoly that journalists had on broadcasting will be undermined by just regular people who can supplant such traditional media organizations through blogs, wikis and the like.  However, Barbara's concern about being duped by nefarious actors on the open Internet highlights how there continues to be a need for trusted institutions or individuals, such as CNET, to add credibility to news in order to effectively act on something such as the DNSChanger trojan.

This, however, does not mean that pre-existing business model of the media, which relied on its on monopoly on broadcast technology will continue to be viable. Changes will have to be made. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica was able to successfully shift from its previous model to of selling physical books to an online subscription model. In fact, 2012 will be the last year that they will be selling its iconic set of encyclopedias. More importantly, Encyclopedia's new approach is a good example of how people are willing to pay a premium for an "authenticated encyclopedia" instead of solely relying on the "free encyclopedia" Wikipedia. That being said, Encyclopedia Britannica's model may not work for traditional news outlet. As Jeff Jarvis,  professor in journalism at CUNY and author of "What would Google do?", points out on his post on the danger of pay walls, media organizations stand to lose audiences and therefore "Googlejuice" by adopting this approach. His post highlights the conundrum that media organizations find themselves in. Do they opt for the pay walls which are akin to the old way of doing things? Or do they embrace the "Googlejuice" and rely on online ads and greater user interaction? It will be interesting to see how this all gets sorted out.