Memory Holes and the Internet (updated) 801
blamanj writes "As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem. A recent Slashdot article discussed this in regard to the White House. Now, The Memory Hole has noticed that Time magazine has pulled an article by Bush, Sr. on why it was a bad idea to try and overthrow Saddam. How can we keep corporate America honest?" Update: 11/11 22:16 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh (former Time, Inc. employee, among other things) writes in with the non-conspiracy explanation for the change, below.
Declan writes "It is silly to claim that Bush Sr. and Scowcroft would strong-arm Time Inc. into removing an article from time.com -- when that article was an excerpt from their book that you can buy today from Amazon.com for $21.
Another explanation is more likely. And, yes, a quick search turns up a May 2003 article from Slate that debunks this rumor. It turns out that Time Inc. only had permission from the publisher to post the content for a limited time."
"Keep" them honest? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this any different? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tinfoil Argument (Score:2, Interesting)
Care to present an alternate reason why it's missing, then?
Virg
It's like the old joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
Answer: His/Her lips move.
Lets face it, nobody wants to "Look bad" and if they can alter the records to "help you" forget what they said/did, they will do it. It's what keeps them in power and in control.
Or did we forget that its the winners that write the history books.
-Goran
Online Journalism Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
Silent protest (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone at Time should take notice. (And no, we have never been at war with Oceania...)
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Stalin went so far as to edit his own family though...
Re:The Excerpt (Score:1, Interesting)
This time around it's a little different. We're much better prepared, and despite all the hopes and dreams of Slashdot readers and liberals everywhere, we're doing pretty well so far. Funny that those who were so loathe to take Saddam to task for anything for so many years are now screaming for instant results and claiming total failure so quickly.
Re:Worried about memory holes? (Score:4, Interesting)
The story is about a news site that has pulled an article that might embarrass the current president, so I provide links to "alternative" "left-wing" news sites that often have their own copy of the story because they've already posted it, or they have an editorial about the article in question. I remember this Bush Sr. article being fairly heavily discussed when it was first noticed well before the war started. If you look at the histories of some of those sites, you'll find it.
And while I'm at it, I forgot two of the most relevant:
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [fair.org] (more serious)
Take Back the Media [takebackthemedia.com] (more rabid)
Also John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:easy (Score:4, Interesting)
2-4 years, I expect.
Thankfully the Internet Archive is there and also has several instances [archive.org] of the lost page.
In fact, it does a significantly better job of this than Google does.
A robust Internet memory would require three or four such archives under different political control (the Way Back machine itself depends on the Smithsonian and thus possibly on funds coming from the US government.)
I'd like to see net archives made by the British Library, by the Library of Congress, by the UN, by the EU, etc.
The problem wijth this (Score:5, Interesting)
If robots.txts are carefully used, a file can be kept out of archive.org and robots.txt forever.
And it isn't really like archive.org, if it saw these as a problem, could ignore robots.txt files, since the most common reason for robots.txt is to keep a crawler from falling into a CGI script containing something that, from a crawler standpoint, is a bottomless pit of randomly generated links to itself.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Interesting)
Proof the article existed (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only is the Times playing at Big Brother, they are not even competent when doing this... A simple Google search restricted to the times website found that in 2 sec.
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conservative: "doesn't"
I dunno, sounds pretty accurate to me.
Seriously, though, I think the libertarians are the only conservatives left. FDR solidified the United States as a nationalist, statist, leftist institution and nothing has rolled that back. The only thing that has changed are the myriad ways that so-called conservatives and liberals have chosen to manifest the State's power, whether commercially, militarily, socially, etc.
Corporatism, ala Big Business, is just as statist as any other monopolistic power grab.
-l
p.s., I'm not against all statist, nationalist reforms in the U.S. since the 30s and 40s. It simply irritates me that a bunch of liberals think they're conservative just because they spend state money on the rich, elderly, and religious.
Selective Memory / Censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
The ability to revise history on the 'Net is far too easy since there are so few copies of any particular piece of content... and, despite the ability to make copies, the ability to distribute them relies on an infrastructure that cannot always be trusted.
So now history may be revised. What happens when we have no foundation to build upon?
(Wondering whether Lysenko's biology better fits the 'Net than it did... biology.)
The Idiot chills out for five minutes (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at this page, and as you are looking, reflect upon it, asking yourself if any other leader of any other country at any point in history would have reacted even remotely similarly.
If this doesn't convince you that The Idiot isn't in charge of the country - or worse, that the 9-11 attack was expected, which is the obvious conclusion from the hundreds of reports from the CIA, FBI and other intelligence reports from around the world which were wilfully ignored - then I'm not sure what will.
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
FAIR is truthful and seems to follow the general rules of journalistic integrity.
But their articles and research do generally focus on flaws in "conservative"* media.
This could either mean that FAIR is biased or that there is a "conservative"* trend in media.
I would actually like to see a "conservative"* version of FAIR. Does something like that exist? A collection of research which objectivly illustrates "liberal"* bias in media.
*I hate the words "liberal" and "conservative" since there is nothing particularly liberal about liberals nor conservative about conservatives but most people understand the secondary meaning of the words so I risk the confusion.
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't put you in jail -- directly. They can command government leverage to do that. Think Elcomsoft. Think RIAA. Think Scientology. They can jail you anytime they want by picking up a phone and getting their legal staff on the job. It's up to you to raise millions to defend yourself.
Corporations can't die. They can come after you for all eternity. Governments can be unelected.
Corporations are just collections of men, with their own agendas, but they pretend to be faceless artificial people who are therefore untouchable.
You can't pick and choose news corporations to find the best news for you. IF THEY ARE ALTERING THE HISTORICAL RECORD, HOW WOULD YOU EVER KNOW??? Informed consent is necessary to make a decision in a free market.
Corporations can collude in secret to remove articles that a partisan mindset shared among managers deems unsuitable. Governments cannot, at least not until this administration, hide what they do for very long.
People do pick and choose governments with ease, every four years. Try firing Microsoft.
Corporations, though "persons" with constitutional rights, have absolutely no personal accountability whatsoever for their actions. Want to talk to Time Warner about erasing the record? What is "Time"? Can you schedule an appointment with it? Make it do jail time?
Corporations now are the government. What do you call that form of government, komrade? "Police state" is a question begging term. Who owns the cops? Apparently the Secret Service has been ordering all the local law enforcement around the country to round up protesters in the President's path and detain them. Who owns the cops? Skylarov was yanked by cops on the sayso of Adobe; who owned the cops? Kevin Mitnick spent years in prison without charges because the corporations he insulted wanted him to rot, period. They seem to own the courts, don't they? The RIAA now can issue its own subpoenas and ruin people financially without ever talking to a court or the cops.
When the corporation becomes the law, you have a real police state. All the trappings of a democracy run by immortal, untouchable god-kings, who do whatever they like to whomever they like.
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Example. American high school teacher that I know through a friend asks her class immediately before the invasion -- Gulf War II -- how many of them feel fairly certain that Saddam has nuclear capability. Most of the class did. Nuclear. Now, we know that Saddam didn't have nukes. Biological or chemical maybe, maybe. But nuclear, no way. That program was destroyed years ago and there was no evidence to the contrary. How easy is it to do what you want in a democracy if your citizens are kept ill-informed?
As for the government being the corporations, it's not unheard of in alien lands (like Canada) to have government-owned corporations, to protect interests that can't be trusted to those who see money as the bottom line. Let's face it: an executive can run a business like a sinking ship if that golden parachute is waiting, and we simply cannot afford , as a country, for that to happen to health care, our police, our prisons, and our utilities (though that last is being tinkered with). Some things are a public trust, and what is wrong with running them as a service (to break even) than for a profit? Now for obvious reasons that couldn't be the case with the media -- but that again shows why it is, and has to be, a class apart.
Let me point out what is really wrong with this Time magazine history-rewrite. They deleted the article from the table of contents. It's the difference between walking out of a store with an unpaid-for good in your hands, obviously forgetful and in a rush, and having that same article stuffed into your bag. That is Orwellian.
How much would you pay for the Truth? (Score:2, Interesting)
Un-F*cking-Believable! (Score:2, Interesting)
It goes to show the immense influence government agents have over mainstream media. The biggest lie of this decade is that the media is liberal. In the televised news world, CNN is also known to be heavily influenced by government agents, and Fox News is a lost cause.
The Memory Hole should be rewarded for their vigilance against lies from mainstream media. Sadly, most people think that mainstream media will protect them from government abuse by reporting on those abuses. Yet, Time has proven that as a corporate animal it is obviously too immature to ensure its own good conduct. What we need is a news organization that operates on democratic, not strictly capitalistic principles. Raw capitalism is fine for most organizations. But, news, worthy news, is not one of them. A democratic organization must be behind the news broadcast or print, not a bottom-line oriented organization. Think of Ben Franklin as the person who started a newspaper for the cause of man, not the image of Ben on that greenback which has the ability to alter the truth so readily.
Get your democratic news here [kpfk.org] and here [pacifica.org].
= 9J =
Re: The "Liberal" Media (Score:3, Interesting)
> Oh, yeah...the liberal media "Myth". Right. The only reason you think it's a "myth" is that you agree with the editorializing they pass off as "news".
Nope. The reason I know that most of the US media is conservative is that I don't agree with the editorializing they pass off as "news".
We need REAL LIBRARIES (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Archive.org (Score:2, Interesting)
If I have no idea that there is information available on a particular subject, I'm less likely to ask for it. Even if I *do* ask for it, it's the fact that (today) I cane instantly share this information with a few billion people that makes it dangerous. That kind of distribution would have been impossible 20 years ago without a substantial cash outlay.
Knowing that the current administration is hiding things means that you are aware of some things that apparently need to be hidden by someone, not that it is any worse (or better) than the situation has been in the past. THAT is my argument. Our peripheral vision has increased to the point that we can make pretty good guesses about things that 2 decades ago would have been considered crackpot theories.
Re:The Idiot chills out for five minutes (Score:2, Interesting)
Surely it's not a conspiracy if I'm talking about the CIA and the FBI though? I mean, they're part of the American Government, right? And about documents released via the United States Freedom of Information Act. Is Noam Chomsky a `left wing conspiracy nut` too? I guess it's not worth bothering to check out his sources and footnotes then.
You could check this out:
http://tacitconsent.freehomepage.com/sudan.
(it contains a link the the New York Times - that famous hotbed of left-wing conspiracy theories)
Search the document for the text "The final reason the two events", and read on for information about Sudan's information about bin Laden, which it offered to the United States, only to have it turned down. Read the whole paragraph, including the final sentence. (Note - the CIA isn't full of left-wing conspiracy theorists).
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hatfield said it was 3 sources close to Dubya and when pressed, he named Karl Rove [bushwatch.com].