Category Archives: Media

This is bad reporting.

Media, Politics, , , , , ,

Let’s assume you’re a normal person. And let’s propose a scenario in which, after years of gridlock between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, the GOP finally seems to be willing to give a little — now that they’ve definitively lost the last two presidential elections and polling appears to be mostly on the side of Democratic policies.

In such a situation, you’d probably welcome the prospect of a Republican thaw and assume it may help produce actual bipartisan legislation for once, no?

Well, no. Not if you’re the New York Times:

But the politics of one core dispute between Democrats and Republicans — what to do about Medicare — are changing. And some of those changes complicate President Obama’s agenda, even as he continues to flex his postelection muscle.

One shift is the shrinking magnitude of the Medicare spending problem — a consequence, at least for now, of a recent slowdown in the rise of health care costs. That diminishes the willingness of Congressional Democrats, and perhaps the administration, too, to accept the sort of Medicare curbs that Mr. Obama has indicated that he favors.

Another is a moderation in the public stance of Republican leaders. In recent weeks, they have advocated smaller changes to Medicare than the “premium support” or voucher plan that Mitt Romney advocated and that Mr. Obama denounced in last year’s presidential campaign.

As a result, Mr. Obama’s ability to deliver a bipartisan compromise on entitlement spending may be waning even as Republicans edge closer to one.

That’s right: Republican moderation is partly why President Obama may be unable to “deliver a bipartisan compromise.” If that sounds ridiculously counterintuitive, it’s because it is.

Yes, I realize the point of the article: that Obama and the Democrats now feel they have the upper hand, which might make them likelier to press their advantage while they have it — thus derailing the hope of a deal. (Never mind the fact that there is virtually no historical/empirical basis to support the notion that the Democrats have taken, or will ever take, advantage of whatever leverage they have.)

But this contorted logic only makes any sense in the context of the conventional wisdom that major media players like the New York Times help create. Mainstream journalists love to mock bloggy sites like Politico for their seeming giddiness in reporting on Washington insider politics, and yet this article — appearing in the Paper of Record, no less — is Beltway cynicism at its worst.

Maybe if the Times focused less on creating counter-incentives that don’t yet exist and exerted more effort instead on sensible reporting of actual political developments, we wouldn’t have so many of these manufactured crises in the first place.

Delusion of the day

Media, Politics, , , ,

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounded the alarm that Iran was approaching “a red line.” Did the U.S. president even mention any of this? No, he was running around the country crying wolf and catastrophizing about an invented crisis. The real international threats go unremarked upon. For all intents and purposes Netanyahu is now the West’s protector.

What they said:

http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statuses/305764175563591681

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A Big Data divide at the Times

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David Brooks says Big Data matters, but perhaps not as much as people think:

Big data has trouble with big problems. If you are trying to figure out which e-mail produces the most campaign contributions, you can do a randomized control experiment. But let’s say you are trying to stimulate an economy in a recession. You don’t have an alternate society to use as a control group. For example, we’ve had huge debates over the best economic stimulus, with mountains of data, and as far as I know not a single major player in this debate has been persuaded by data to switch sides.

Paul Krugman takes a look and says, “Waittt a minute here:”

It would be lovely to live in a world in which the failure of interest rates to soar as predicted would lead Brian Riedl of Heritage and Niall Ferguson to concede that their anti-stimulus critiques of 2009 were based on a completely wrong model; in which the economic downturns that have followed austerity policies almost everywhere they have been applied would lead Alberto Alesina to concede that his work on expansionary austerity was probably flawed, and lead George Osborne to proclaim publicly that he led Britain down the wrong path. But such things very rarely happen, and the fact that they don’t happen has nothing to do with the limitations of data…

So yes, it has been disappointing to see so many people sticking to their positions on fiscal policy despite overwhelming evidence that those positions are wrong. But the fault lies not in our data, but in ourselves.

It’s a good point from Krugman, who’s also been quite busy dealing with other knuckleheads.

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Beyond the Dish meter, part II

Media, Technology, , , , , ,

A week ago, I took a look at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Dish, in order to see how the implementation of a “Read On” meter had affected the content structure of his blog. I found the following:

Bottom line: Andrew Sullivan has almost perfectly inverted his “Read On” content from before to after the implementation of the meter. From January 1 to 7, he posted 231 times; of those, only 52 (22.5%) included “Read On” buttons. Of those 52 “Read On” sections, 35 consisted primarily of third-party content (67.3%), 12 mostly contained material produced by Andrew and his readers (23.1%), and the remaining 5 were a combination of Andrew/readers and third-party content (9.6%).

From February 4 to 10, however, several things changed. The number of total posts was almost identical to the January period (227), but — as he promised — there were significantly fewer “Read On” posts in the first week of the new meter (27, or only 11.9% of the total). Of those 27, 19 contained content primarily contributed by Andrew and his readers (70.4%), 5 contained a combination (18.5%), and only 3 “Read On” sections during the entire week contained content mostly attributable to third parties (11.1%, or 1.3% of the entire population of posts this past week).

For more on the methodology of exactly how I categorized Sullivan’s various posts, see the original post. The first graph below depicts the stats for January 1 – 7, a week I chose as the control group for The Dish‘s content structure before the meter:

Before the meter.
Before the meter.

This second graph portrays the composition of The Dish‘s content from the very first full week that the meter was in effect, February 4 – 10:

Just after the meter.
The first week of the meter.

As Sullivan pointed out, The Dish rolled out the meter slowly in its first week: compared to the control week in January, when 22% of all posts contained “Read On” buttons, only 12% of all posts had the button in the first week of the meter. Furthermore, the type of content behind the meter was quite different: whereas the control period was dominated by third-party content beyond the “Read On” button, in the first week of the meter the majority of “Read On” sections primarily contained content produced by Andrew Sullivan and his readers.

Because that first week under the new meter was intended to be a bit of a test run, it remained to be seen how the stats would change (or stay the same) once the “Read On” button began to be used at a more normal frequency. So as a follow-up, I’ve now conducted an identical study of the very next week, February 11 – 17.

The total number of posts was similar to that of the previous two periods (237). Of those posts, 50 (21.1%) contained a “Read On” button: note that this is almost exactly the same percentage as in the control week (22.5%). Of those 50 sections located after the “Read On” button, 22 (44.0%) contained content primarily produced by Andrew and his readers, 20 (40.0%) contained content mostly taken from third-party sources, and the remaining 8 (16.0%) contained a combination of both. See the graph below:

The second week of the meter.
The second week of the meter.

Again, I have shared the entire Excel spreadsheet here, in case anyone wishes to contest my methodology or categorization. As I mentioned in my original post:

Obviously, there is a small subjective element to the endeavor. However, this is probably much less significant than one might think: the vast majority of posts on The Dish – and this applies equally to the “Read On” and non-”Read On” sections of each post – quite clearly fall into one of the three categories specified above: content produced primarily by Andrew and/or his readers, content produced primarily by third parties, and content containing a mixture of both.

So after a pretty significant dip in “Read On” posts in the first week of the meter — while the kinks were being ironed out — The Dish‘s content has since returned to its pre-meter ratio of non-“Read On” to “Read On” posts. However, what lies beyond the meter has shifted: whereas 67.3% of all “Read On” sections before the meter contained mostly third-party content, now the plurality of “Read Ons” (44.0%) consist of content provided by Andrew and his readers (from analysis to letters to views from people’s windows). The proportion composed of third-party content has fallen to 40.0%, with the remaining 16.0% of all “Read On” sections comprised of material that contains both.

What this likely means is that Sullivan and his team have taken to heart the precautions of readers and commentators who noted that, to charge for content, the part that’s hidden to non-subscribers should tend to be more original — as opposed to a curation of third-party material.

One thing I didn’t touch on in my original post, but which I did measure, is the composition of every post before the “Read On” button — that is, the portion of each post one can see whether or not one is a subscriber. (This includes posts without a “Read On” button at all.) In the January 1 – 7 period, content was divided thusly: 67.5% of pre-“Read On” sections were primarily third-party content, 21.6% were content produced by Andrew Sullivan and his readers, and the remaining 10.8% were a mixture of both. (This was an almost identical proportion to the composition of the material after the “Read On” button during the same period.)

For the February 4 – 10 period, these numbers were: 64.8% = third-party content, 22.5% = Andrew/readers, and 12.8% = a combination. (I’m rounding to one decimal point here, so that’s why it doesn’t add up to exactly 100.0%.)

And for this last week (February 11 – 17), here are the proportions: 63.7% = third-party content, 21.5% = Andrew/readers, and 14.8% = a combination. Considering the fact that all three time periods had almost identical compositions of material before the “Read On” button, the significant changes in material beyond the button present an even starker contrast.

I believe Sullivan mentioned recently that if the pace of subscribers didn’t pick up, he may “nudge” them towards paying their dues. This could happen in one of two ways. Either he could reduce the number of monthly “Read On” clicks it takes to trigger the meter (it’s currently at seven), or he could introduce more “Read On” posts as a percentage of his total posts. As an early subscriber, it doesn’t really matter to me which one he chooses. But so far at least, the content lying beyond the “Read On” button certainly seems to justify the annual fee.

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The Christopher Dorner story, and the media’s complicity with the police

Media, , , , , , ,

Max Blumenthal was monitoring a police scanner during the standoff between alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner and the police who had surrounded the cabin where he was staying:

In an initial dispatch, a deputy reported seeing “blood spatter” inside the cabins. Dorner, who had just engaged in a firefight with deputies that killed one officer and wounded another, may have been wounded in the exchange. There was no sign of his presence, let alone his resistance, according to police dispatches.

It was then that the deputies decided to burn the cabin down.

“We’re gonna go ahead with the plan with the burner,” one sheriff’s deputy told another. “Like we talked about.” Minutes later, another deputy’s voice crackled across the radio: “The burner’s deployed and we have a fire…”

Over the course of the next hour, I listened as the sheriffs carefully managed the fire, ensuring that it burned the cabin thoroughly. Dorner, a former member of the LAPD who had accused his ex-colleagues of abuse and racism in a lengthy, detailed manifesto, was inside. The cops seemed to have little interest in taking him alive.

“Burn that fucking house down!” shouted a deputy through a scanner transmission inadvertently broadcast on the Los Angeles local news channel, KCAL 9. “Fucking burn this motherfucker!” another cop could be heard exclaiming.

This fact hardly registered in the media, however:

At the time that I am writing this, some online media outlets are beginning to entertain the possibility that San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deliberately set the fire that killed Dorner – a fact that I reported on Twitter as soon the sheriff’s department order came down. If there is any doubt about the authenticity of theYouTube clip containing audio of the sheriff deputies’ orders to burn the cabin down, I can verify that it is the real thing. I was listening to the same transmissions when they first blared across the police scanners.

In the hours after the standoff, however, the police cover-up remained unchallenged thanks largely to local media complicity. An initialLos Angeles Times report recounted the incident in a passive voice, claiming “flames began to spread through the structure, and gunshots, probably set off by the fire, were heard.” Similarly, LA’s ABC affiliate, KABC, quoted Bachman’s vague comment about “that cabin that caught fire,” failing to explore why it was aflame or who torched it.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reported claims by anonymous “law enforcement sources” that the sheriffs used “incendiary tear gas” to flush Dorner out of the cabin. The sources claimed the deputies who had besieged the cabin were under a “constant barrage of gunfire” and that, “There weren’t a lot of options.”

This is almost certainly a lie.

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A State of the Union “prebuttal”

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Brendan Nyhan at the Columbia Journalism Review tries to dampen the hype:

So far, there has been less hype about the power of the bully pulpit than usual—The Washington Post even ran a story today headlined “Impact of State of Union speeches isn’t very lasting.” But the stakes are lower than the media’s overwrought phrasing often suggests. Politico’s Glenn Thrush wrote yesterday, for instance, that “If Americans perceive Obama as too partisan, he’ll lose a serious share of his personal popularity.” In reality, however, Obama isn’t likely to significantly increase his approvalor significantly reduce it. And even if he did make a major blunder, we wouldn’t know it from the ill-conceived instant polls of speech watchers that tend to shape reporting and punditry in the aftermath of the State of the Union. Here’s hoping some media outlets take a better approach in 2013 so this column doesn’t become an annual tradition.

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Read on and on: The Dish, before and after the meter

Media, Technology, , , , , ,

dishAs most of the world knows by now — and by that I refer mainly to people like the ones that populate my Twitter feed — Andrew Sullivan has cut himself loose. On Monday, February 4th, The Dish officially switched over from the Daily Beast to Sullivan’s own WordPress-hosted site.

The change comes with a few extra bells and whistles: no ads or clutter, automatic resizing on smartphones (although this has yet to work on my iPhone), infinite scrolling, and so on. Probably my favorite new feature is the search engine — or as Sullivan put it, “I have given a sharp dagger for anyone who wants to make me look foolish.” On the very first day his new site appeared, in fact, I inadvertently stumbled upon this gem from October 2002:

The last phony anti-war argument was that President Bush had yet to “make the case” for war against Iraq, as if grown-ups didn’t have the capacity to make their own minds up on the issue without constant guidance from the commander-in-chief. But that surely must now be in tatters as a point, since the president has made speech after speech in the last year clearly laying out the rationale for the war on terror, a rationale that has always included defanging Saddam.

Oops.

Anyway, the main transformation of The Dish is that it will now charge for its content. More precisely, after seven “Read On” clicks within a 30-day period, readers will be directed to a subscription page, where they’ll be able to sign up for a year of The Dish at the very manageable annual rate of $19.99.

As a medium-intensity Dish obsessive (on the spectrum, I’m somewhere between “regular reader” and “currently tattooing the Dish beagle to my forehead”) and aspiring journalist, I took great interest in Sullivan’s gamble, which basically amounted to throwing off the corporate chains — chains that were accompanied, of course, by a large financial backing — and going it alone. I began to wonder, as did many other readers, how the switch from a principally advertising-supported venture to one backed directly by the readers would affect the content and form of The Dish itself.

This being Andrew Sullivan, he was only too happy to share his readers’ concerns in the days leading up to the switchover. (In fact, Sullivan’s masochistic willingness, rare among bloggers, to frequently publish reader emails excoriating his commentary is one of the main reasons I was so happy to subscribe to the new reader-supported iteration of The Dish.)

After Sullivan published one reader’s blunt adieu to The Dish on January 3rd — “For better or worse I like my Internet free,” (s)he declared, and then, one hopes, enrolled in Microeconomics 101 — he reassured his audience: “A reminder to our reader and others that the vast majority of Dish content will remain free to non-members.”

Two weeks later, in response to more reader reactions, Sullivan again noted: “Even if all of my longer posts are metered, only a portion of my writing will go behind the read-on, thus allowing all readers to get the gist of the post, regardless of subscription.”

Perhaps most interestingly to me, however, was the cautionary point raised by another reader several days earlier:

Another reader worries that “there may be potential copyright issues if it was less than 50% original content/comments by the Dish team with a “charge” being issued by the Dish.” But another writes:

The read-on might actually work to the external sources’ advantage, in that non-payers will then have more reason to follow the link to the original if they’re interested.

The above-mentioned post, in fact, contained a variety of creative suggestions from readers as to how, exactly, Sullivan should handle the “Read On” issue. Now that all content beyond the “Read On” button (after the first seven monthly clicks, that is) requires payment, it would be interesting to see just what type of content Sullivan is placing behind the “paywall” (a term Sullivan himself dislikes but which more or less describes his new model).

Long story short: I’ve just now completed such a study. First, I analyzed every post on The Dish in the one-week period from January 1 to January 7, 2013, in which I categorized each entry by:

A) whether it included a “Read On” button

B) what type of content came before the “Read On” button (as in, the part that is visible without expanding the post): (1) primarily Sullivan and/or reader commentary, (2) primarily third-party content (e.g. excerpts from an article, column, or essay), or (3) a combination of both Sullivan/readers and third-party content (as when Sullivan excerpts articles and then critiques their points, rather than, for example, simply excerpting another article rebutting the first one)

C) what type of content came beyond the “Read On” button (using the same criteria), if there was one

I chose the first week of 2013 (somewhat arbitrarily) as my control group because it preceded the implementation of the meter model. I then performed the same analysis on all posts on The Dish in the week from February 4th (the first full day under the new meter model) to February 10th. (All times are in EST, by the way.)

A few caveats are in order. First, as Andrew Sullivan himself made clear, the opening week of his new site is not exactly a perfect representation of how the “Read On” button will be utilized in the future. On February 6th, in response to a reader who questioned the additional value granted by subscribing, Sullivan noted:

That’s because after two days, we’ve been going easy on the meter. We’ll adjust as we go along. We want to keep the majority of the site free, but the deeper analyses, reader threads, my own writing, and other features will slowly become less accessible to the non-subscriber. It’s a balance, and we’re trying to figure our way forward with it.

As you will see below, so far this formulation has meant a significant departure from Sullivan’s use of “Read On” prior to the advent of the meter. Back then, in my sample, over two-thirds of all “Read On” segments — that is, the portions of his posts that lay beyond the “Read On” button — consisted primarily of third-party content. Now, however, “deeper analyses, reader threads, [his] own writing, and other features” have gained an increasing share of the “Read On” pie. (Again, keep in mind that things are still in flux: it’s only been a week.)

A second caution applies to my criteria for categorizing the posts. Obviously, there is a small subjective element to the endeavor. However, this is probably much less significant than one might think: the vast majority of posts on The Dish — and this applies equally to the “Read On” and non-“Read On” sections of each post — quite clearly fall into one of the three categories specified above: content produced primarily by Andrew and/or his readers, content produced primarily by third parties, and content containing a mixture of both.

To use some of his more popular features as an example, both sections of a typical “View From Your Window” post (both the content before and beyond the “Read On” button, in other words) would obviously fall into the first category. A “Mental Health Break,” which rarely contains a “Read On” button, would usually fit into the second, since these posts generally consist of a video produced by someone else with no more than an accompanying line or two from Sullivan. And an “Yglesias Award Nominee” post, while possibly fitting into the second category, often instead went into the third — as Sullivan frequently added his own commentary to the quote itself (either in the pre- or post-“Read On” sections of the post). Anyway, in the interest of transparency, I have included a link to my full Excel spreadsheet analysis here.

Bottom line: Andrew Sullivan has almost perfectly inverted his “Read On” content from before to after the implementation of the meter. From January 1 to 7, he posted 231 times; of those, only 52 (22.5%) included “Read On” buttons. Of those 52 “Read On” sections, 35 consisted primarily of third-party content (67.3%), 12 mostly contained material produced by Andrew and his readers (23.1%), and the remaining 5 were a combination of Andrew/readers and third-party content (9.6%).

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 1.02.23 AM

From February 4 to 10, however, several things changed. The number of total posts was almost identical to the January period (227), but — as he promised — there were significantly fewer “Read On” posts in the first week of the new meter (27, or only 11.9% of the total). Of those 27, 19 contained content primarily contributed by Andrew and his readers (70.4%), 5 contained a combination (18.5%), and only 3 “Read On” sections during the entire week contained content mostly attributable to third parties (11.1%, or 1.3% of the entire population of posts this past week).

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 1.03.58 AM

Of course, only time will tell if this trend of more original material after the “Read On” button continues. It would certainly make sense, since this section is now being charged for after seven monthly clicks (which probably took the average Dish reader, what, five minutes to hit on February 4th?). I’d expect the percentage of posts that contain “Read On” buttons to rise pretty soon, because that’s one of the primary added-value propositions of subscribing. But I suppose how quickly this all happens will depend on a number of factors, including how many new subscribers Sullivan is scooping up on a regular basis now that more and more casual readers are starting to hit the meter.

In any case, I’m excited to see a blogger of Sullivan’s caliber jumping into such a bold experiment, and I wish him the best! I certainly don’t always agree with him, but even when he’s wrong, he’s never boring.

The cost of innovation

Media, Technology, ,
samsung
(Photo credit: Samsung.com.)

Every time a business hits it big — in this case, Samsung with its steady line of state-of-the-art phones and tablets — some intrepid reporter feels the need to explain that a significant portion of its success is attributable to the company’s organizational structure, its ethos, or the number of complimentary amenities available at the headquarter’s on-site gym. The latest exemplar of this approach:

Designers of the Galaxy S III say they drew inspiration from trips to Cambodia and Helsinki, a Salvador Dalí art exhibit and even a balloon ride in an African forest. (It employs 1,000 designers with different backgrounds like psychology, sociology, economy management and engineering.)

“The research process is unimaginable,” said Donghoon Chang, an executive vice president of Samsung who leads the company’s design efforts. “We go through all avenues to make sure we read the trends correctly.” He says that when the company researches markets for any particular product, it is also looking at trends in fashion, automobiles and interior design.

Hangil Song, a Samsung product designer, described a visit to the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore, where he said he was amazed by the views of the sky, the cityscape and the water. He wanted to create an effect where water was overflowing from the screen. As a result, taps and swipes on the Galaxy S III’s phone screen create a unique ripple effect.

That’s quite the overhead for a CPU-intensive transition visual.

Where is the outcry?

Education, Media, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The New York Times reports on soccer team Beitar Jerusalem’s recruitment of two Muslim players — who aren’t even Arab; they’re from Chechnya — and the reaction of racist fans:

The team, Beitar Jerusalem, has long been linked to Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and for 15 years has been notorious for racism and violence, including an incident last spring in which fans stormed a local mall chanting “Death to Arabs” and beat up several Arab employees. Founded in 1936, it is the only one of Israel’s professional soccer teams never to have recruited an Arab player.

The current controversy concerns the team’s addition of two Muslim players from Chechnya. Although one is injured, the other is expected to play for the first time in a match on Sunday against a team from Sakhnin, an Arab-Israeli town.

In anticipation of the Muslim players’ arrival, some fans unfurled a banner at the team’s Jan. 26 game saying “Beitar Pure Forever.” Some critics said the banner was reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s expulsion of Jews from sport, and it led to nationwide soul-searching.

The greatest irony?

“We cannot accept such racist behavior,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The Jewish people, who suffered excommunications and expulsions, need to represent a light unto the nations.”

There has long been a double standard in the American media in which blatant Israeli racism towards Arabs and Muslims is largely ignored — or, at best, excused as an outlier — while even the slightest hint of negative sentiments towards Israel — even if motivated primarily by political considerations — is reflexively excoriated as anti-Semitic.

Take, for example, the recent brouhaha at Brooklyn College, where a predictable uproar was fortunately insufficient to prevent the institution from holding an event featuring speakers who support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (B.D.S.) policies relating to Israel. Following the event, Brooklyn College professor Corey Robin blogged about a previous speaker at the school:

In March 2011, David Horowitz spoke at Brooklyn College. Someone yesterday brought to my attention this report from the event. A few highlights:

Given this context, it was all the more disturbing last night when I looked across the crowd and saw tears run down the face of a member of the Palestine Club as Horowitz said to the group of mostly nodding heads, “All through history people have been oppressed but no people has done what the Palestinians have done—no people has shown itself so morally sick as the Palestinians have.”

Horowitz, who admitted he had actually never even been to Israel, proceeded to give everyone a lesson in Middle East politics: according to him, Muslims in the Middle East are “Islamic Nazi’s” who “want to kill Jews, that’s their agenda.” He added later, “all Muslim associations are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

…

The most revealing moment came when a young Arab-American woman directed a question to Horowitz and the audience: “You talk about Muslims as if you know them—We have a Muslim American Society, we have a Palestine Club [on campus]. I want to raise the question to any of the Jews in this room, and students, have you guys ever been threatened by a Muslim on campus or an Arab?” To this, the crowd almost unanimously spun around in their seats to face the young woman and replied “yes.” Someone shouted, “and we’re scared when we see Muslims on buses and airplanes too.”

Horowitz encouraged anti-Muslim hate by telling the crowd, “no other people have sunk so low as the Palestinians have and yet everybody is afraid to say this,” claiming that Muslims are a “protected species in this country” and that he’s “wait[ing] for the day when the good Muslims step forward.”

As Robin then asked:

First, how is it that the comments of Horowitz can be so easily admitted into the mansion of “the open exchange of ideas” while the comments of Butler and Barghouti [who spoke at the recent BDS event] seem to threaten the very foundation of that edifice?

It’s a good question, but not one we’re likely to see answered by traditional media establishments any time soon.

Lessons in technology for the journalist crowd

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The Columbia Journalism Review has some helpful tips for sniffing out hoaxes:

The audience received a thorough primer on forensic image analysis techniques. Recalling doctored images from “superstorm” Sandy and a hoax video of an eagle grabbing a baby that went viral in December, Farid and Clinch walked through methods and tips for quickly identifying phony images. Reflections and shadows in photographs have to line up according to basic optical principals, for instance. Another rule of thumb: Any picture with an unusually placed shark is fake.