I'd really like it if Clifton elaborated on this point somewhat, particularly the "increasingly" element of the comment. As…

but no, they won’t teach you how to steal credit card data.

I think the gist of Jane Clifton’s column is that she senses the barbarians tearing down the gates. Just wait till Anonymous have their turn...

This writer naturally accepts tips from all-comers with a glad cry but very few leakers fit the profile of the noble whistle-blower. Most have an agenda of…

You don't have to go to J-school to go into journalism. Period. That is the way it should be. A free, unregulated press demands it.

Certainly not in suburban Melbourne... elsewhere, I couldn't be 100% sure, but I cant see them not migrating over the whole eastern time-zone and S.A. by now if they were introduced 150-200 years ago to one part of it.. The big red dry bit…

SteveH, thanks for this. The Public Address community is a remarkable source of diverse information... information…

I spent my first 11 years of life in Australia… before I came to NZ I had assumed that big fluffy bumble bees were just a children’s story-book fantasy… I consulted with my mother (40+ at…

And why is there no bumblebees in Australia, clearly they can't fly very far...

Embarrassing data breach.

Yes, we wouldn't want to inadvertently disclose anything sensitive.

Not so. Everyone knows that the function of the sporran is to make viewing of the, erm, vital & interesting bits impossible – even by leetle crawly stealth cameras...

Noted.

Oh come on! Clark Kent wears glasses!

Just remind him that the cameras can probably see right up his kilt. Might give some of the viewing audience a bit more of an view than intended.

I've just confirmed that we have Kiwicon organiser and Insomnia Security employee Adam Boileau on Media3 this week to talk about matters raised in Keith's post.

He'll be on with Toby Manhire, who will be talking about this column.

Some of media's privileged access and legal indemnity comes from serving the former, not the latter. If we change the social contract, let's revisit those as well.

As was raised during the Commerce Commission review of new media, if someone is performing the…

I think that's sound. The "If" in there is an important caveat. Time and resource might not take money, in a different model. People…

Super (language) geekery ahoy! Or was that a veiled attempt to troll?

And for my attempt to cap out irony for this thread – really, hyphenating hitpoints?

So how does that work when it comes to TV news? Which…

As in many things, you get what you pay for. As a few people including Russell have pointed out the…

Trusting autocomplete to choose your variable name.

In fact, I think that pretty much everyone in NZ comes to work and feels that they are doing a decent and useful job. That includes my own field of IT.

the ability, at age 9,
to reproduce your name
from a machine artifact,*
stirs something...

...something I have yet
to satisfactorily assuage.…

The question of whether insults should be subject to legal strictures is quite, quite separate from the question of how Russell chooses to moderate discourse in his own online space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY

I’ve edited the abuse out of Islander’s responses but I…

you actually dont know ANYTHING about small-town papers, do you?

Quite. I was looking through the Grey River Argus on Papers Past. The outbreak of World War One merited page 5 coverage.

With all due respect, you have no understanding of smalltown journalism what so-ever-

Y’know, the GES was locally fearless:…

How are journalists trained these days? Is it an undergrad degree or diploma? Could the quality of journalism be improved if it were postgrad and would be journalists did a degree in something else first?

I can only speak for myself, but I did the postgraduate course (Grad Dip.J) at…

I havent yet commented to any extent on this thread.
I will base…

Same. Have been enjoying their Twitter feed. Firm commitment to standards doesn't prevent strong advocacy pieces either.

A recent one on the conseqences for fact-impaired radio jock Alan Jones and his employer seems relevant to this thread. Imagine if our regulator had…

+1.

This is a surprisingly rancorous discussion.

In an attempt to add something new, can I commend theconversation.edu as really welcome media development. It's the joint effort of a half…

Aren't the longer, more analytical pieces supposed to be for weeklies and montlies? Aren't our daily newspapers and radio and TV supposed to just keep us up to date with developments?

In Russell's interview with John Campbell I was quite impressed with Campbell's…

Quick! Somebody phone 'Académie francaise and complain about the creeping frenchification of English!

If your argument…

Fortunately, as I was saying to my partner during a rugby commentary the other day, English has lots of hit-points, and regenerates.

That 'rule' annoys me. Anyone know where it came from?

+1

Wish I had more of it

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/music/news/article.cfm?c_id=264&objectid=10769305

Serious questions have now been raised because the Pin for each card is the last four digits of the card number, which is imprinted on the front.

Bizarre!!!

And something I am pretty appalling at when I am writing here. Twitter helps.

I’m assuming that’s an error. 333wpm…

I learned soon enough that I couldn’t write myself two-minute speeches in the middle of TV (and radio) scripts. It’s quite a…

Ideally, none. If it’s being done right. A 50 second story (for radio broadcast) is about 150 words long. A three minute piece is about 1000. (Including the audio for…

That's a different issue, but yes. There are all kinds of structural factors that compromise journalism. But economy and timeliness are usually key skills of the job.

I remember it was raining
that Labour Day they cracked
the Great Game's DNA...
Bucketing down,…

There's an old adage about a military commander at an isolated base. Headquarters…

Do point out for us the other stories that lead you to conclude this particular journo is a 'scumbag'. I'm comfortable forming opinions about people's character from a consistent pattern of behaviour. Just seeing more of yours than hers in this instance.…

Absolutely.

Although I prefer to use a whiteboard. From my interaction with experts in my own field…

With me, as with Russell I suspect, this was what attracted me to journalism, unlike Russell I was useless at it so, instead, went into the useless field of construction..…

Personal attacks don't strengthen your argument. Play the ball.

It's not the truth, it's your opinion. I think it's…

Surely we can expect that journalists have the capacity for both, or have a dual covering of the situation. I am sorry , but from a lay person’s point of view journalists not understanding just doesn’t cut it. They should seek the right knowledge.

Well, ok, but if "must…

Rob O'Neill on Media3 said it was important for NZ journalists to look after one another's sources as well.

Now, if only certain journalists would engage in such a practice, like understanding stuff before leaping to judgement.
Nice to see so many new faces, as it were. (cos we can't actually see you, it's not like we're GCSB or anything:-)

I agree Russel but I wanted to check that…

If I understand Keith correctly, the target of the HDPA story is the person Keith recommended to the journalist as an expert commentator.

It's not really acceptable that the…

in the real world of english speakers.For better or worse hacker means someone who attacks systems

There are english speakers and there are English speakers, I'd assume the reason you wouldn't give hacker as your profession is that it's (as knowledge bro pointed out – def 1) technically more of…

That's the reasoning Mr Roughan used about Campbell Live's coverage of Chch school closures, as discussed here recently. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Quite. It was specious spin rapidly applied by govt and parroted unthinkingly by some media outlets.

That's not particularly relevant without any evidence that it's true in this case. You're stretching a bit.

Keith's original story was outing the security flaw at MSD and had nothing to do with this particular hacker as far as I can see. As I understood it the TVNZ story seems only tangentially related to the MSD…

Keith's blog posts explained his side clearly and at some length. I would have thought a journo writing about the subject would have read them. 36,000 other people did, according to…

Any evidence that such a situation applies here? It's a pretty basic part of a journalist's job.

Classic. It's kind of become a badge of pride, though. In my last job there was a guy who was deliberately scrofulous to an extreme degree that I was sure was 90% affectation. I think he felt that his credibility as a computer…

I was inferring an interview didn’t happen because Paul doesn’t appear to be interviewed in the TVNZ piece. It only shows snippets from his youtube vid.

Not sure about the sexual partners aspect, but back in the day when I worked for a large NZ consulting firm we used to ensure our 'IT security people' didn't talk to the client without a chaperone/interpreter. Too easy to scare the horses otherwise.

Do you have a link about the reporter "not having an opportunity"?

I'm talking earlier, when writing became something a wider group could do – nothing to do with technology. Was a narrow profession before that.

Without the opportunity of speaking to an insider it seems…

I just remember it was what the kid on Whiz Kids called himself. He also talked to his computer and gave it a name. I remember at the time thinking that there was almost nothing realistic about the show (most particularly the geek love-triangle), having seen up…

I don't think I'd say the challenge faced by journalists is quite as stark as justifying handwriting after the printing press was invented. That's like the most…

+1

You called Sir?
Ok, let us begin.
hacker: n.

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum…

Absolutely the latter. I would be distinctly queasy…

Yeah, nice post. Is the whistleblower's legislation meant to legally oblige or require employees to use it for reporting things, or is it more intended…

The location and nature of value is shifting, just like it did when scribes were no longer the only ones who could write.…

Nice post, thanks. Sure seems an angle worthy of a journo's attention..

The strategic fix is to make journalism a high-status, high-value career and attract better-qualified, or more specialised people.

I can't think how to do that, though. Indeed, being unable to think of how that could work, makes me think that can't be the solution, or perhaps not…

That’s certainly not my experience, although I can’t comment on how much the Science Media Centre might make a difference (no separate experimental control group…

To be fair a lot of the time our language is too divergent for a lay person to even remotely understand what is being said.…

John you are defending an indefensibly poor job by an MSM reporter and you are doing it by denigrating someone who has just demonstrated his ability as a journalist to find and coherently report a technical…

I'm in complete agreement....

And i expect, my personal areas of expertise have no, or low cross-over…

In my (science-based) experience it's usually a matter of context; they have the facts, but haven't put them in the context which makes them accurate. Sometimes the lack of…

Sounds like a by-product of the bums-on-seats degree Fordism model. It's as if journalism is now a law unto itself, like the global finance sector over the past generation.

Partly the Julian Assange factor I suspect.

Big issue with hiring experts is that they would cost and cost is even more of an issue now than it ever was.

I wish I could remember who was being interviewed at the time I was listening, except that I think it was someone who'd been in…

Well that veiled reference failed.

Hey John hum any tune you want

It'd be sweet if we focused on the reporting and not the person.

Law stories are frequently…

As "Auto Mechanic" is a term for people who understand how cars work, rather…

Far out. I know the, um, cognitive inconsistency, of this has already been pointed out, but as a latecomer to the thread I would like to lend my support to the pointing out of said cognitive inconsistency. I mean, really?…

Nah, I’m calling it: it’s knowledge.

It's editing.

'Hack' seems reasonably descriptive ... oh, wait you're not talking about the journalism are you?

It's the equivalent of "comics aren't just for kids any more!" – it looks like an exciting story to someone who hasn't been paying attention.

Tech saw the way specialist fields get treated in Parliament during the file sharing debate, and they saw it…

The ones I know — and there are quite a few,…

Recommended Viewing: The Lone Gunmen, or the Lone Gunmen on The X-Files, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is another goodie.

The program was cancelled after thirteen episodes....The plot of the first episode,…

I couldn't say for certain, but I feel bad right now for some of the government IT and IS people I know who are really smart and careful at…

I'm 37 and since I was a child the term "hacker" has popularly described someone with malicious intent.…

maybe we’re discussing a different post.

Who knows?

maybe we're discussing a different post.

What is likely to be already compromised and by whom? For security or commercial purposes?

#theskyisfalling

I'm not seeing a big difference there.

Knowledge doesn't really come into it. We want unbiased fact based journalism. As has been acknowledged from the outset, there's nothing particularly tekky about this. It's in the Adj.

Good idea. InternetNZ and the IITP come to mind.

You’re right. Let’s talk to some people who could make this happen.

Edit: Actually, SMC manager Peter Griffin is an IT journalist himself. Perhaps them extending their area of competence would be the smartest way to achieve this.

An equivalent of the Science Media Centre might be useful to raise journalists' understanding about IT matters – though, like information security, that also requires ongoing governance buy-in by their editors, publishers and industry.

This needs a broader response than finger-pointing…

unless they keep doing shit like this

Doing shit is about behaviour, not about product.

Word.

I've been meaning to clarify that point. It's come up…

I think you should take the trouble to understand the story before you start patronising people.

I don’t think Keith is obliged to sit there quietly when a journalist grossly abuses a commentator he has directed them to. HDPA has basically written that story to imply that Paul Craig is a criminal…