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When St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch delivered the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for any crimes in the shooting of Michael Brown, McCulloch found a new perpetrator to blame instead: social media. Apparently Facebook and Twitter, where many of the initial accounts of the shooting were shared, really cramped local law enforcements ability to control the narrative around the shooting.

On August 9, Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson, McCulloch said. Within minutes, various accounts of the incident began appearing on social mediaaccounts filled with speculation and little, if any, solid, accurate information. McCulloch then proceeded with his bizarre lecture, crediting the August protests that followed the shooting to social media and, oh, one more small, insignificant factor: the underlying tensions between the police department and a significant part of the neighborhood.

As McCulloch detailed the steps of the investigation, he made an outrageous claim: the most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for somethinganythingto talk about. Following close behind were the nonstop rumors on social media.

One might think a significant challenge to Ferguson law enforcement would be how to communicate effectively and safely with the residents whom they serve. Maybe they should try Twitter.

Its true that the 24-hour news cycle and social media feed each other. Social media can and often does foster and exacerbate conflict. Not everyone sharing information online does so as a public service. But does McCulloch really want to say that it would have been easier to conduct this investigation if so many people hadnt been paying attention? And most important, did he really want to make that the focus of his speech?

Needless to say, social media didnt create the underlying tensions between the Ferguson police and residents, but it did help share its relevant contexts, like the staggering racial disparity in arrests.

McCulloch admitted that he can recognize, of course, that the lack of accurate detail surrounding the shooting frustrates the media and the general public and helps breed suspicion among those who are already distrustful of the system. And yet, despite that historically hard-earned suspicion and distrust, his message remained here is why you should trust the system.

No doubt McCullochs job would have been easier if everyone in Ferguson, St. Louis and the rest of the country had sat back and patiently waited to be told what to think. But that is not how humans respond to trauma, especially when the roots of the trauma lie in law enforcement and other institutions of authority. Humans talk sharing anger and frustration and fear, trading gossip and confirmed facts alike.

Sure, social media also opens an investigation up to more scrutiny. But to complain about that in the wake of this heartbreaking decision was a pretty unbelievable feat of misdirection.

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Ferguson prosecutor blasts social media, outrageously misses the point

Another Prick In The Dil
Keep it peaceful. 🙂 Lyrics below We don #39;t need no patronizing We don #39;t need no media control Enda you #39;re a prevaricator Taoiseach leave our kids alone Hey! Taoiseach! Leave our kids...

By: Anuderpric Indadol

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Another Prick In The Dil - Video

Media release

7 November 2014

Battle for our Birds protecting Catlins mhua

The Department of Conservation tomorrow (Saturday 8 November) begins its Battle for our Birds pest control in the Catlins to protect an important at risk population of mhua/yellowhead in the beech forest.

As well as mhua, the operation will protect long-tailed bats/pekapeka at risk from rising predator numbers fuelled by heavy beech seed-fall.

DOC Catlins ranger Cheryl Pullar said monitoring results show there has been a full silver beech mast in the Catlins and rapidly rising rat and mice numbers.

Monitoring of rodents has shown that mice are increasing throughout the forest and are particularly dense in lower altitude areas where tracking is at 78%. This will trigger a stoat plague over the summer, just as mhua are nesting and trying to raise their young. Rats are not at worrying numbers yet but will soon bounce back, Cheryl said.

These birds are particularly vulnerable to predation by rats, mice and stoats because they nest in holes in trees.

The aerial 1080 predator control will knock down rodent and possum numbers. Stoats will also be reduced as a result of eating poisoned carcasses.

A pre-feed operation begins tomorrow with aerial application of non-toxic baits over 10,100 ha of conservation land in the Catlins.

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Battle for our Birds protecting Catlins mhua

We all have our guilty pleasures, and for many of us, they come in the form ofmovies, TV shows, or videosthat are, shall we say, ofquestionabletaste. Privately, you may relish in the Real Housewives ofinsert city name here, terrible B-rated Sci-Fi flicks, scandalous Anime, or compilations of kittens in knitted bodysuits(hey, were not here to judge), but were willing to bet you arent interested in sharing this stuff with your curiouschildren, taunting friends, or worse, your judgemental mother-in-law. For those who use Plex as a media server, this has been a problem the software has lacked any kind of parental controls or privacy measures, so when you grant someone access toyour collection, you share your entirecollection the good and the bad. But recently Plex announced a new feature coming to itssoftware, called Plex Home,whichmakes it possible to pick and choose exactly who sees what through its media server.

Related:Chromecast shines even brighter with new Plex features

Announced on its blog, Plex says that Plex Home has been over two years in the making, and that it aims to bring fine-grained parental controls and more to users by moving server managementto its Plex web app. Users will now be able to easily specify exact content ratings accessible by all theirfriends and family. It is important to note that some basic Multi-user features and Now Playing features will be available to anyone who uses the free version of Plex, but the really good stuff will be limited to Plex Pass holders. Recently, Plex hiked up Plex Pass rates, and they are now as follows: $4.99/month, $39.99/year, and $149.99/lifetime.

Whats the good stuff we refer to? For one: Label-based sharing will make specifying who can see whichcontent extremely easy. For example, you could choose to share only certain family videos with your parents and in-laws, and share only your recently-acquired Miles Davis box setcollection with your jazzer buddy.

Managing content forthose living in the home in which Plex is hosted will also be made extremely easy, especially for those kids whodont have a username, email, or password. Plex promises switching between users will be extremely quick, and that PINs will only be required where specified. So, for instance, those under 13 in the home would be able to access their approved content by simply selecting their profile, not additional actions needed, while accessing Dads account will require the use of a PIN as a password.

Finally, Plex promises access to any of the apps that come with a Plex Pass for everyone in the home. This should come in useful for those in a single home that operates separate Roku accounts, or those who opt to use several different kinds of media streaming hardware, such as the Google Nexus Player, which requires users to have a Plex Pass if they want access to Plex at all.

Related:Google Nexus Player review

Just chalk this up as one more reason to choose Plex as a media server, and perhaps the most compelling reason to throw a chunk of change down for a paid subscription. Plexs development has always been user-driven, and this is yet another example of its developers answering its supporters call.

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Plex will now let you keep your private videos hidden with new Plex Home feature

For decades, but especially since the Edsa People Power Revolt restored press freedom in the country, the Philippines has prided itself in having one of the freest, if not THE freest press, in the region.

Recovering from the repression and control of the media during the Marcos dictatorship, journalists basked not just in the sudden freedoms they enjoyed, but also in the number of employment opportunities that emerged, with the sudden blooming of media outletsnewspapers, magazines, radio stations and even TV networks, some of which reverted to the old owners displaced by martial law.

Not everyone, of course, welcomed the wild and wooly media environment that emerged with the Marcoses departure. As former president Fidel Ramos once declared, whenever he read the days papers, some make me want to commit suicide, while others make me want to commit homicide.

These days the media profession faces challenges that in those heady post-Edsa days werent even on the horizon. The advent of new information technology has threatened the viabilitynay, the very lifeof whats now called traditional media. Even as newspapers and broadcast outfits struggle to remain relevant and keep their advertising advantage over that of Facebook, blogs, e-magazines and such micro news sources like Twitter, they must also contend with the emergence of a world where everybody with a cell phone can become a journalist.

I would think that in such a world, media boundaries would be widening rather than narrowing, and that entities that must deal with all kinds of mediaespecially governmentswould learn how to better relate to all kinds of people dealing with and demanding information, confirmation, opinion and judgment.

In this post-WikiLeaks world, nothing remains secret for long, and governments cannot hope to dictate the manner and conduct of coverage in a media environment that is as loose, uncontrollable and almost boundless as it is today.

* * *

All this is by way of preface to news that the Bureau of Immigration has decided to blacklist nine unnamed Hong Kong journalists for allegedly posing a security threat to P-Noy.

The blacklisting stems from a press conference that the President held during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit held in Bali, Indonesia, last year. During that event, the nine journalists, as some reports put it, crossed the line when they aggressively questioned P-Noy about the continuing controversy over the botched rescue of hostages (who were all Hong Kong residents) at the Luneta in 2010.

BI spokesperson Elaine Tan defended the decision, saying that showing disrespect or mak(ing) offensive utterances to symbols of Philippine authority is sufficient reason to ban an individual from entering a country.

Continued here:
Journalists behaving badly