#2- Supermarket tabloids

Tabloid journalism inhabits a special place in the world, those places being the checkout aisle at any supermarket and the internet. From more outrageous publications like the New York Daily News telling any tale about a politician, to more acceptable outlets like People and TMZ covering that celebrity gossip that people care about. Tabloids by and large operate on the principle that as Director David Fincher puts it "people are perverts", they want to know every detail of someones life especially the parts that are taboo we know this and they know this. This business of collecting rumors and fabrication will only stop when people stop looking which will be never and because of that they have the power and money which allows them to do what they do.

Karen McDougal

Enter The National Enquirer a tabloid that you no doubt have seen in its usual spot in the check-out aisle has been recently discovered to have "assisted" President Donald Trump in the cover-up of stories involving an affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal and the payoff of a Trump tower doorman Dino Sajudin. McDougal's affair with Trump began in around 2006 and lasted until 2007 all of which Trump's is married to his current wife Melania. This affair remained a secret until 2016 when McDougal was in talks to tell all to ABC when the Enquirer's parent company American Media(AMI) agreed to pay her $150,000 for two years of fitness columns, magazine covers, and most importantly the life rights to the relationship with "the married man" who is Donald Trump. McDougal thought that the story would be published but the agreement that she reached with AMI forbid her from being able to tell the story anywhere and did not obligate AMI to publish it. This tactic is called "catch and kill" and is not the only documented time AMI has used this. Dino Sajudin was paid by AMI $30,000 dollars in so that he would not talk about a rumor that Trump allegedly fathered a child with a former housekeeper. Why exactly is AMI so concerned with Donald Trump you might ask it can't be for circulation reasons as they did not publish either story.

David Pecker and Trump

Well it is very simple as the current CEO of AMI David Pecker and the President are long time friends, with Pecker saying that he greatly admires Trump. This is backed up further from former American Media spokesman Stu Zakim saying, " This boils down to friendship. Pecker is taking care of his friends,". McDougal and Sajudin are just of the stories that we know of that were subject to the "catch and kill" tactic with Zakim also saying that, "AMI has often paid for stories to take them off the market -- i.e., no one else can print it -- to protect David's friends. Trump is one of his close friends, so take the leap". The fact that a man like David Pecker the CEO of The National Enquirer helps his friend Trump really makes every time Trump says "fake news" reach new levels of irony.

Wall Street Journal article here.
CNN article about "catch and kill" here.
CNN article about Sajuin payoff here.

#10 - Freedom of Information

Like many countries around the world Canada has a law which allows for citizens access to information that would otherwise be unknown to them. The aptly named Access to Information Act serves as useful tool so that journalists and citizens can be more informed on the goings on of their own government. The requested information would then be examined for anything that could be security concern and be distributed to the person who requested it. The information that was requested would now become a public record and could be accessed. 

David Fraser

Since this is such a common practice it is surprising that a 19 year old Halifax, Nova Scotia man's home was raided by police on April 11th. Why was he raided well he had downloaded all 7,000 documents from the Nova Scotia freedom-of-information web portal. Some of those 7,000 documents contained personal information that the local Halifax government said he "illegally accessed". Now, he is facing the charge of "unauthorized access of a computer" which carries a sentence of up to ten years. A charge that David Fraser a privacy lawyer said was "jumping the gun, unless the police got a statement from him at the time that did in fact have some fraudulent or nefarious purpose". 

Evan D'Entremont

The question then is what exactly was the 19 year-old's intent. As it would turn out according to the him their was no nefarious intent. He says that he was interested in a labor dispute involving teachers. This led him to the freedom-of-information web portal and after looking through many documents with no success decided to just download them all. This was done by creating a simple script and using the number at the end of every URL on the website and copying the data. A process that software engineer Evan D'Entremont says he has done "hundreds of times" in security research. It is apparently so common that Fraser even said that it is used by search engines and online archives.

The raid and his charging has led to outrage with D'Entremont saying that the 19 year-old is being "railroaded" to cover for the government. Fraser had a very similar take saying, " It certainly does have the appearance that charge was laid in order to appear that they were doing something about this. Obviously, this was something that's particularly embarrassing to the provincial government and I can imagine that there is a fair amount of pressure to find a scapegoat, point the finger and press some charges".


Link to CBC.ca article on initial story here.
Link to from BleepingComputer here.
Link to article with Fraser and D'Entremont here.

9# - College Media

College newspapers exist in a difficult time, print is very quickly becoming entirely irrelevant and most news is consumed from online sources. The problem of where the funding will come from has become a priority at many institutions of student journalism. This was the case at the Southern Methodist Universities The Daily Campus who was closing due to funding problems and after providing ninety years of service. Its closing and the student backlash at the university acted as a catalyst for other student news outlets to take notice of their situation. 

Image from collegemediamatters.com

That is where Melissa Gomez, the editor in chief at the The Independent Florida Alligator comes in. Gomez along with other managing editors have decided have created the #SaveStudentNewrooms hashtag as a call to arms of other student media outlets for Support Student Journalism Day. A media blitz of editorials on the importance of student news outlets, videos, best stories produced by said outlet, testimonials of alumni, and how they can donate to their outlet all occurring on April 25th. Now while this might be successful this time in helping some college media outlets stay afloat a more permanent solution is needed. So, Gomez has formed a private Facebook group along with other heads of student media outlets so that they better understand the issues they face and offer support to each other. This group is not purely for their own benefit as the group wants to expand the platform to as many outlets as possible in the hope that this will allow for better understanding of the issues with one of it founders Catilin Ostroff saying, "We hope to have the people who have the answers start talking to each other. These issues are going to be very real in the next 10-15 years. Aggressive and accountable coverage of these insinuations is going to be so important". 

Link the article covering the #SaveStudentNewsrooms here.    

8# - Investigative Journalism

In 2017, a storm came to five states in the Midwest and while this would normally be a normal weather event the storm stayed and flooded the area. Roads, rail, and river all closed. Residents all over the area fortified homes that had not been flooded with assistance from the National Guard. At the end of it, the damage totaled $1.7 billion and a human cost of five lives.

Elkhart, Indiana

In the aftermath of that event ProPublica along with Reveal from The Center of Investigative Reporting and the Telegraph of Alton, Illinois published a story the revealed a lobbying group called the 408 Coalition and their efforts to remove regulation from the levee system. The regulation they seek to remove is the Section 408 permit which is an authorization the Army Corp of Engineers give to a district if they want to raise their levee and determine if this would be "injurious to the public interest". The 408 Coalition see this as Federal overreach and wish it to be replaced with the 1944 statue that leaves out the part about "public interest".

Who is the 408 Coalition? Well that was difficult seeing as how the Coalition has no public records or website and the organization itself does not keep records. It took a guess from a Telegraph of Alton, Illinois reporter to guess that the Sny Island Levee Drainage District who has ignored the regulation in the past, might be involved and upon further investigation this turned out to be true. Not only were Sny involved they were the Coalitions largest contributor and brought at least 22 other local drainage districts from Missouri and Illinois into the fold. 

Rep. Garrett Graves

With all of the districts banding together it is not surprising to learn the 408 Coalition has spent $230,000 lobbying and that is just what has been officially reported to congress, with reporters discovering $98,000 being spent by individual districts. This allowed for the Coalition block two amendments in the water resources bill, one of which was written by Louisiana Republican Representative Garrett Graves who has been skeptical of the Corp's since Katrina. He has praised the Coalition saying, " The 408 Coalition is attacking real injustice" and the Coalition in response held a fundraiser for him in Washington. The Coalition also has had some influence in the White House with two of their talking points being delivered to a White House infrastructure adviser. This happened before the Trump administration infrastructure plan which includes the idea to simplify taking levees out of the federal system. 

Now, while the 408 Coalition has disbanded as of the end of 2017. This is not the end for its members with many including the Sny becoming clients publicly of the Husch Blackwell lobbying firm. 

ProPublica article here. 

Reuters article on the 2016 article here.