Media

We tend to think of the Lehman crash as a bad thing. And, well, it was. But, on the bright side, its fifth anniversary did at least inspire some excellent journalistic retrospectives. Hey, it's something, so let's have a look: A must, if maddening, read, for instance, is the Center for Public Integrity's where-are-they-now series that finds the usual...

Back in 2008, Dan Catt took a picture of his young son drinking from a juice box, the flaps ingeniously lifted up to give his small hands something to grip. He posted the picture on Flickr with the title "Parent Hacks: The Juice Box Flaps" and a caption explaining that the flap trick keeps kid "from squirting juice all over...

In February 2012, Megan Twohey was looking at reports on the difficulties with international adoptions when she noticed a gap in coverage: What happened to the children after they reached the United States? She took to the Internet, scouring it for information on foreign adoptions, until she stumbled upon online forums for American parents who wished to offload their unwanted...

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week: A plea for caution from Russia -- What Putin has to say to Americans about Syria Harvard Business School case study: gender equity -- Year after...

by Jeff Larson and Justin Elliott

Following revelations about the NSA’s covert influence on computer security standards, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, announced earlier this week it is revisiting some of its encryption standards.

But in a little-noticed footnote, NIST went a step further, saying it is “strongly” recommending against even using one of the standards. The institute sets standards for everything from the time to weights to computer security that are used by the government and widely adopted by industry.

As ProPublica, the New York Times, and the Guardian reported last week, documents provided by Edward Snowden suggest that the NSA has heavily influenced the standard, which has been used around the world.  

In its statement Tuesday, NIST acknowledged that the NSA participates in creating cryptography standards “because of its recognized expertise” and because NIST is required by law to consult with the spy agency.

“We are not deliberately, knowingly, working to undermine or weaken encryption,” NIST chief Patrick Gallagher said at a public conference Tuesday.

Various versions of Microsoft Windows, including those used in tablets and smartphones, contain implementations of the standard, though the NSA-influenced portion isn’t enabled by default. Developers creating applications for the platform must choose to enable it.

The New York Times noted earlier this week that documents provided by Snowden show the spy agency played a crucial role in writing the standard that NIST is now cautioning against using, which was first published in 2006.

The NIST standard describes what is known as an “elliptic curve-based deterministic random bit generator.” This bit of computer code is one way to produce random numbers that are the cornerstone of encryption technology used on the Internet. If the numbers generated are not random but in fact predictable, the encryption can be more easily cracked.

The Times reported that the Snowden documents suggest the NSA was involved in creating the number generator.

Researchers say the evidence of NSA influence raises questions about whether any of the standards developed by NIST can be trusted.

“NIST's decisions used to be opaque and frustrating,” said Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. “Now they're opaque and potentially malicious. Which is too bad because NIST performs such a useful service.”

Cryptographers have long suspected the standard in question was faulty. Seven years ago, a pair of researchers in the Netherlands authored a paper that said the random number generator was insecure and that attacks against it could “be run on an ordinary PC.” A year after that, in 2007, two Microsoft engineers flagged the standard as potentially containing a backdoor.

Following the criticism, the standard was revised in 2007 to include an optional workaround.

The NSA has long been involved in encryption matters at the standards institute.

"NIST follows NSA's lead in developing certain cryptographic standards," a 1993 Government Accountability Office report noted.

A 2002 law mandates that NIST set information security standards and lists the NSA merely as one of several other agencies that must be consulted.

Asked how often standards are reopened, NIST spokesperson Gail Porter, said, “It’s not frequent, but it does happen.” She added that it would be “difficult to give you an exact number of times.”

Asked whether Microsoft would continue to use the encryption standard in some of its software, a spokesperson said the company "is evaluating NIST’s recent recommendations and as always, will take the appropriate action to protect our customers."

The NSA declined to comment.

Dear Leaders of Journalism: I cannot recommend highly enough that you start talking to people outside your circles. #riptide #silos— Jeanne Brooks (@jmfbrooks) September 9, 2013 On September 9, three fellows at Harvard's Shorenstein Center and Nieman Journalism Lab published Riptide, an "oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, from 1980 to the present." In crafting...

It's hard to say what the retiree healthcare segment on NBC Nightly News last Tuesday was all about. It was a confusing, garbled, too-brief mess of a story on one of the most complex and important topics for older people and those nearing retirement. That's a shame, since people in this demographic still watch the evening news shows and...

by Lois Beckett

Sept. 13: This story has been updated. It was originally published on March 7, 2013.

We’re continuing to learn new details about how the American government is collecting bulk records of citizens’ communications -- from demanding that a telephone company hand over the daily records of “all telephone calls in its systems,” to collecting an unknown number of emails, instant messages and Facebook messages.

It’s not clear how much information about ordinary people’s conversations the National Security Agency has gathered. But we do know there’s a thriving public market for data on individual Americans -- especially data about the things we buy and might want to buy.

Consumer data companies scoop up large amounts of consumer information about people around the world and sell it, providing marketers details about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you drive. But many people still don't know data brokers exist.

Regulators and some in Congress have been taking a closer look at this industry, and are beginning to push the companies to give consumers more information and control over what happens to their data. The prominent data broker Acxiom recently launched aboutthedata.com, a site that allows you to review some of the information the company has connected to your name -- and, potentially, edit and update it as well.

Here's a look (originally published in March) at what we know about the consumer data industry.

How much do these companies know about individual people?

They start with the basics, like names, addresses and contact information, and add on demographics, like age, race, occupation and "education level," according to consumer data firm Acxiom's overview of its various categories.

But that's just the beginning: The companies collect lists of people experiencing "life-event triggers" like getting married, buying a home, sending a kid to college — or even getting divorced.

Credit reporting giant Experian has a separate marketing services division, which sells lists of "names of expectant parents and families with newborns" that are "updated weekly."

The companies also collect data about your hobbies and many of the purchases you make. Want to buy a list of people who read romance novels? Epsilon can sell you that, as well as a list of people who donate to international aid charities.

A subsidiary of credit reporting company Equifax even collects detailed salary and paystub information for roughly 38 percent of employed Americans, as NBC news reported. As part of handling employee verification requests, the company gets the information directly from employers.

Equifax said in a statement that the information is only sold to customers "who have been verified through a detailed credentialing process." It added that if a mortgage company or other lender wants to access information about your salary, they must obtain your permission to do so.

Of course, data companies typically don't have all of this information on any one person. As Acxiom notes in its overview, "No individual record ever contains all the possible data." And some of the data these companies sell is really just a guess about your background or preferences, based on the characteristics of your neighborhood, or other people in a similar age or demographic group.

Where are they getting all this info?

The stores where you shop sell it to them.

Datalogix, for instance, which collects information from store loyalty cards, says it has information on more than $1 trillion in consumer spending "across 1400+ leading brands." It doesn't say which ones. (Datalogix did not respond to our requests for comment.)

Data companies usually refuse to say exactly what companies sell them information, citing competitive reasons. And retailers also don't make it easy for you to find out whether they're selling your information.

But thanks to California's "Shine the Light" law, researchers at U.C. Berkeley were able to get a small glimpse of how companies sell or share your data. The study recruited volunteers to ask more than 80 companies how the volunteers' information was being shared.

Only two companies actually responded with details about how volunteers' information had been shared. Upscale furniture store Restoration Hardware said that it had sent "your name, address and what you purchased" to seven other companies, including a data "cooperative" that allows retailers to pool data about customer transactions, and another company that later became part of Datalogix. (Restoration Hardware hasn't responded to our request for comment.)

Walt Disney also responded and described sharing even more information: not just a person's name and address and what they purchased, but their age, occupation, and the number, age and gender of their children. It listed companies that received data, among them companies owned by Disney, like ABC and ESPN, as well as others, including Honda, HarperCollins Publishing, Almay cosmetics, and yogurt company Dannon.

But Disney spokeswoman Zenia Mucha said that Disney's letter, sent in 2007, "wasn't clear" about how the data was actually shared with different companies on the list. Outside companies like Honda only received personal information as part of a contest, sweepstakes, or other joint promotion that they had done with Disney, Mucha said. The data was shared "for the fulfillment of that contest prize, not for their own marketing purposes."

Where else do data brokers get information about me?

Government records and other publicly available information, including some sources that may surprise you. Your state Department of Motor Vehicles, for instance, may sell personal information — like your name, address, and the type of vehicles you own — to data companies, although only for certain permitted purposes, including identify verification.

Public voting records, which include information about your party registration and how often you vote, can also be bought and sold for commercial purposes in some states.

Are there limits to the kinds of data these companies can buy and sell?

Yes, certain kinds of sensitive data are protected — but much of your information can be bought and sold without any input from you.

Federal law protects the confidentiality of your medical records and your conversations with your doctor. There are also strict rules regarding the sale of information used to determine your credit-worthiness, or your eligibility for employment, insurance and housing. For instance, consumers have the right to view and correct their own credit reports, and potential employers have to ask for your consent before they buy a credit report about you.

Other than certain kinds of protected data — including medical records and data used for credit reports — consumers have no legal right to control or even monitor how information about them is bought and sold. As the FTC notes, "There are no current laws requiring data brokers to maintain the privacy of consumer data unless they use that data for credit, employment, insurance, housing, or other similar purposes."

So they don't sell information about my health?

Actually, they do.

Data companies can capture information about your "interests" in certain health conditions based on what you buy — or what you search for online. Datalogix has lists of people classified as "allergy sufferers" and "dieters." Acxiom sells data on whether an individual has an "online search propensity" for a certain "ailment or prescription."

Consumer data is also beginning to be used to evaluate whether you're making healthy choices.

One health insurance company recently bought data on more than three million people's consumer purchases in order to flag health-related actions, like purchasing plus-sized clothing, the Wall Street Journal reported. (The company bought purchasing information for current plan members, not as part of screening people for potential coverage.)

Spokeswoman Michelle Douglas said that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina would use the data to target free programming offers to their customers.

Douglas suggested that it might be more valuable for companies to use consumer data "to determine ways to help me improve my health" rather than "to buy my data to send me pre-paid credit card applications or catalogs full of stuff they want me to buy."

Do companies collect information about my social media profiles and what I do online?

Yes.

As we highlighted last year, some data companies record — and then resell — all kinds of information you post online, including your screen names, website addresses, interests, hometown and professional history, and how many friends or followers you have.

Acxiom said it collects information about which social media sites individual people use, and "whether they are a heavy or a light user," but that they do not collect information about "individual postings" or your "lists of friends."

More traditional consumer data can also be connected with information about what you do online. Datalogix, the company that collects loyalty card data, has partnered with Facebook to track whether Facebook users who see ads for certain products actually end up buying them at local stores, as the Financial Times reported last year.

Is there a way to find out exactly what these data companies know about me? (Updated 9/5/2013)

Not really -- although that’s beginning to change.

You have the right to review and correct your credit report. But with marketing data, there's often no way to know exactly what information is attached to your name — or whether it's accurate.

Most companies offer, at best, a partial picture.

In September, Acxiom debuted aboutthedata.com, which allows to you review and edit some of the company’s marketing data on you, by entering your name, address, birth date and the last four digits of your social security number.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Julie Brill tweeted that “more data brokers should follow” Acxiom’s example. But the effort received mixed reviews from users, privacy advocates and government regulators, the New York Times reported.

Previously, Acxiom only let customers review a smaller slice of the information the company sells about them, including criminal history, as New York Times reporter Natasha Singer described last year. When Singer requested and finally received her report in 2012, all it included was a record of her residential addresses.

Other companies also offer some access. A spokeswoman for Epsilon said it allows consumers to review "high level information" about their data — like whether or not you’ve purchased "home furnishings" merchandise. (Requests to review this information cost $5 and can only be made by postal mail.)

RapLeaf, a company that advertises that it has "real-time data" on 80 percent of U.S. email addresses, says it gives customers "total control over the data we have on you," and allows them to review and edit the categories it associates with them (like "estimated household income" and "Likely Political Contributor to Republicans").

How do I know when someone has purchased data about me?

Most of the time, you don't.

When you're checking out at a store and a cashier asks you for your Zip code, the store isn't just getting that single piece of information. Acxiom and other data companies offer services that allow stores to use your Zip code and the name on your credit card to pinpoint your home address — without asking you for it directly.

Is there any way to stop the companies from collecting and sharing information about me?

Yes, but it would require a whole lot of work.

Many data brokers offer consumers the chance to "opt out" of being included in their databases, or at least from receiving advertising enabled by that company. Rapleaf, for instance, has a "Permanent opt-out" that "deletes information associated with your email address from the Rapleaf database."

But to actually opt-out effectively, you need to know about all the different data brokers and where to find their opt-outs. Most consumers, of course, don't have that information.

In their privacy report last year, the FTC suggested that data brokers should create a centralized website that would make it easier for consumers to learn about the existence of these companies and their rights regarding the data they collect.

How many people do these companies have information on?

Basically everyone in the U.S. and many beyond it. Acxiom, recently profiled by the New York Times, says it has information on 500 million people worldwide, including "nearly every U.S. consumer."

After the 9/11 attacks, CNN reported, Acxiom was able to locate 11 of the 19 hijackers in its database.

How is all of this data actually used?

Mostly to sell you stuff. Companies want to buy lists of people who might be interested in what they're selling — and also want to learn more about their current customers.

They also sell their information for other purposes, including identity verification, fraud prevention and background checks.

If new privacy laws are passed, will they include the right to see what data these companies have collected about me?

Unlikely.

In a report on privacy last year, the Federal Trade Commission recommended that Congress pass legislation "that would provide consumers with access to information about them held by a data broker." President Barack Obama has also proposed a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that would give consumers the right to access and correct certain information about them.

But this probably won't include access to marketing data, which the Federal Trade Commission considers less sensitive than data used for credit reports or identity verification.

In terms of marketing data, "we think at the very least consumers should have access to the general categories of data the companies have about consumers," said Maneesha Mithal of the FTC's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.

Data companies have also pushed back against the idea of opening up marketing profiles for individual consumers' inspection.

Even if there were errors in your marketing data profile, "the worst thing that could happen is that you get an advertising offer that isn't relevant to you," said Rachel Thomas, the vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association.

"The fraud and security risks that you run by opening up those files is higher than any potential harm that could happen to the consumer," Thomas said.

!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");How do data brokers impact you? Join Lois and other tech reporters for a discussion of data brokers and privacy this Friday at 1 p.m. ET. You can tweet us your questions with #MyDataChat.

Even on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington--a march he organized--the name Bayard Rustin rings hardly any bells. Rustin was an intellectual, an iconoclast, a civil rights leader, and a pacifist. He was also openly gay. He fought segregation through peaceful, civil disobedience and was a key advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., yet fellow activists held him...

The New York Times's DealBook once again publishes a story about how the valiant crimefighters at the SEC who really, really wanted to prosecute wrongdoers for the financial crisis but found themselves thwarted by the higher standards of "justice." That's the gist, anyway. The piece shows the pluses and minuses of the type of reporting practiced by the paper's DealBook...

There's a concept in psychology called "inattentional blindness." In study after study, if people are focused on one task, they will literally not see something else right in front of them--like someone in a gorilla suit beating her chest in the middle of a group of people who are throwing a ball around. I wonder if inattentional blindness is what...

Google released an unusual report on Tuesday--"How Google Fights Piracy," a 25-page document that detailed its anti-piracy principles, the efforts it has made to minimize piracy, and the limits of its power to stop illegal downloading. This wasn't a well-researched white paper, proposing new ideas, and it wasn't a press release--it didn't contain any news. It resembled most closely a...

by Blair Hickman

Live chat with Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica: Where do we go when we can no longer care for ourselves?

As America's population ages, assisted living facilities have emerged as an attractive option for people too ill or frail to live on their own. But is this growing industry – which now houses nearly 750,000 elderly Americans – capable of adequately caring for the seniors in their facilities? 

A recent investigation by ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE found evidence that the assisted living industry's biggest player, Emeritus Senior Living, allowed the drive for profits to trump quality care. State authorities have often responded to fatal mistakes in Emeritus facilities and those run by other assisted living chains by handing out meager fines – or no fines at all. An upcoming report by the Center for Investigative Reporting has also found serious shortcomings in California's regulatory system.

So what's the best way to regulate elder care facilities? Are current laws falling short? And what can you do to ensure your loved one gets the best and safest care possible?

Join  ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting on Thursday, September 12 at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET, where reporters Ryan Gabrielson and A.C. Thompson will be available to answer your questions about how to improve regulation and better protect America's elderly. If you can't make the chat, you can also leave your questions and comments in advance in the box below.

Key Takeaways:

• Several residents are happy with their care in assisted living facilities. But the resident population has gotten "more ill and frail than ever before," according to reporter A.C. Thompson, and regulators don't seem to have kept up with the progression. In the course of our reporting, we found cases in which a person with dementia died after drinking toxic dishwashing liquid, cases of jumping or falling from windows and numerous instances in which people died as a result of violence. "If roughly nine percent of the people in assisted living are unhappy, well," said Thompson, "that is a fairly large number."
• For years, no one outside the California Department of Public Health monitored regulators' activity, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting's Ryan Gabrielson. His latest report found that for decades, the state's health department neglected hundreds of cases of abuse at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They then dismissed the cases with little investigation. 
• Though Gabrielson and Thompson haven't seen much voluntary change from assisted living facilities, California lawmakers are beginning to toughen penalties. State senator Ed Hernandez says the $150 fine for deaths in California assisted living is too low. 
• If you're making decisions about a loved one's care, research problem caregivers in advance. Gabrielson recommends the federal health care exclusions list, state licensing and abuse search registries and the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. UT San Diego has advice on searching for an assisted living facility. We also have seven questions you should ask during your search. 

Related reading: If you like this chat, you may also be interested in our list of seven questions to ask when searching for assisted living, our 4-part investigation into Emeritus Senior Living and FRONTLINE’s film on the assisted living industry.

BuzzFeed's Peter Lauria, a former Daily Beast employee, scooped Daily Beast editor Tina Brown on Wednesday by announcing her plans to leave the news outlet when her contract expires in January. Upstaging Brown, whose new project is to advance "theatrical journalism" in her Tina Brown Live Media organization, Lauria's BuzzFeed article cited a "source with direct knowledge" before Brown herself...

The other night, my father, a lawyer, sat down with a fistful of hospital-related news clippings--as he often does when we haven't seen each other for a while--and began to read aloud this headline from a blurb in the New York State Law Digest: Hospital owes no general duty to drunk patient, brought in by friend, to bar him from...

by Justin Elliott

Today, Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed about Syria in the New York Times. The piece was placed by the public-relations giant Ketchum, Buzzfeed reported. On Nov. 16, 2012, we explored how Ketchum placed pro-Russia op-eds in American publications by businesspeople and others without disclosing the role of the Russian government. Ketchum's latest public filing says it was paid $1.9 million by Russia for the six-month period ending May 31, 2013. It received another $3.7 million for its work for Russian energy giant Gazprom over the same period. Here is our original report.

Several opinion columns praising Russia and published in the last two years on CNBC’s web site and the Huffington Post were written by seemingly independent professionals but were placed on behalf of the Russian government by its public-relations firm, Ketchum.

The columns, written by two businessmen, a lawyer, and an academic, heap praise on the Russian government for its “ambitious modernization strategy” and “enforcement of laws designed to better protect business and reduce corruption.” One of the CNBC opinion pieces, authored by an executive at a Moscow-based investment bank, concludes that “Russia may well be the most dynamic place on the continent.”

There’s nothing unusual about Ketchum’s work on behalf of Russia. Public relations firms constantly peddle op-eds on behalf of politicians, corporations, and governments. Rarely if ever do publications disclose the role of a PR firm in placing an op-ed, so it’s unusual to get a glimpse behind the scenes and see how an op-ed was generated.

What readers of the CNBC and Huffington Post pieces did not know — but Justice Department foreign agent registration filings by Ketchum show — is that the columns were placed by the public-relations firm working on a contract with the Russian government to, among other things, promote the country “as a place favorable for foreign investments.”

In at least one case, a Ketchum subcontractor reached out to a writer and offered to place his columns in media outlets. The writer, Adrian Pabst, a lecturer in politics at the University of Kent, said that his views were his own and that he was not influenced or paid by Ketchum.

A spokesman for CNBC, which published the pieces on the Guest Blog section of its website, declined to comment. A Huffington Post spokesman said the column placed by Ketchum did not violate the site’s policy.

Ketchum spokeswoman Jackie Burton told ProPublica that when the firm corresponds with experts or the media on behalf of Russia, “consistent with Ketchum’s policies and industry standards, we clearly state that we represent the Russian Federation.”

Russia, often criticized for human rights abuses and corruption, paid handsomely for the public-relations work. From mid-2006 to mid-2012, Ketchum received almost $23 million in fees and expenses on the Russia account and an additional $17 million on the account of Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy giant, according to foreign agent filings.

Op-ed editors interviewed by ProPublica said they work to include full disclosure of relevant financial interests or conflicts — or decline to run pieces that read like advertorial.

“People write op-eds because they have agendas. Separating out what’s an ethical agenda from an unethical agenda is really tough,” says Sue Horton, op-ed editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Horton said the role of the Russian government’s public-relations firm in placing the CNBC and Huffington Post op-eds "absolutely seems like something the reader would want to know.”

The op-eds placed by Ketchum for Russia, according to the filings, are:

• A March 2010 CNBC piece by Peter Gerendasi, then managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Russia, that praises the government of then-President Dmitry Medvedev for its “strategic priorities [of] diversification, innovation, promoting small business, supporting families and strengthening the country's financial system so that it can provide the investment capital that will enable business to grow and people to realize their potential.” Gerendasi declined to comment on the piece and PricewaterhouseCoopers said it did not pay Ketchum to place the piece and declined to comment further.
• An April 2010 CNBC piece by Kingsmill Bond, then chief strategist at the Moscow investment bank Troika Dialog, that ran under the headline “Russia—Europe's Bright Light of Growth.” It called Russia possibly “the most dynamic place on the continent” for investors. Bond, now at Citigroup, told ProPublica he could not recall Ketchum’s role in the piece.
• A September 2010 Huffington Post piece, titled “President Medvedev's Project Of Modernization,” by Pabst, the University of Kent academic. While acknowledging human rights and corruption problems, the thrust of Pabst’s op-ed was praise for Medvedev’s “transformational vision for Russia's domestic politics and foreign policy.” Pabst told ProPublica he was contacted by a Ketchum subcontractor, Portland Communications, and that he was not paid to write the piece. The piece, as well as another he wrote for a web site run by Ketchum, “reflect my own ideas and arguments,” he said in an email.
• A January 2012 CNBC piece by Laura Brank, the head of the Russia practice for the international law firm Dechert. Brank praised the Russian government for working to overcome the perception of an inhospitable investment climate “through the implementation and enforcement of laws designed to better protect business and reduce corruption.” Brank did not respond to requests for comment.

While Ketchum maintains it always identifies its client when dealing with the media, the 2010 email sent by Ketchum to Huffington Post pitching the Pabst column did not mention that Russia was the firm’s client. (See the full email.)

“Below is a piece from Adrian Pabst, a leading Russia scholar in Europe,” wrote then-Ketchum Vice President Matt Stearns, who is now at UnitedHealth Group.

Ketchum says that Stearns had in previous correspondence identified Russia as his client to the Huffington Post editor, including to set up "a blog on the editor’s site for a member of the Russian government." The company did not provide that correspondence.

Huffington Post spokesman Rhoades Alderson said the site has a policy requiring bloggers to disclose any financial conflicts of interest related to the issue they are writing about, but Pabst did not violate the policy.

“The job of our blog editors is to make sure all of our posts add value for our readers,” Alderson said in a statement. “Part of that is making judgment calls about the transparency of each blogger's motive, even in cases when there is no technical violation of the disclosure policy. A submission by a PR firm raises flags but is not automatically disqualified if the blog adds value and is in keeping with our guidelines.”

Placement of op-eds is a standard part of the influence game, but it’s rare for readers ever to find out who is behind the curtain.

In 2011, top public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller came under criticism after it asked a blogger to author an op-ed criticizing Google’s privacy standards. Burson was working on a contract for Facebook at the time.

Public-relations firms have also been known to write op-eds and have them placed under the byline of a third party, and even to pay experts to write favorable op-eds. There’s no evidence Ketchum paid any of the authors of the Russia op-eds or that it ghost-wrote them.

Update: This post has been updated with more detail on Ketchum's correspondence with Huffington Post.

Over the weekend the Daily Mail's David Rose published a long screed on climate change with some pretty startling revelations: Namely that global warming, as evidenced by depleting sea ice, had paused, causing scientists to believe we are heading for a period of--wait for it-- "Global Cooling." "Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of...

It looks like The Daily Beast is in real trouble. Barry Diller is getting rid of Tina Brown, according to BuzzFeed's Peter Lauria and it's clear the site just doesn't work financially and won't anytime soon: As for the future of The Daily Beast website that Brown edits, no decision has been made. Included among the options IAC is considering...

CHARLESTON, SC -- With all due respect to Texas, North Carolina has become ground zero in the voting wars. An omnibus bill signed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory on Aug. 12 made the Tar Heel State the first to drastically change its election laws since the Supreme Court's landmark decision on the Voting Rights Act. Since then, ballot battles have...

by Joe Sexton

After 24 years in office, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes went down in defeat Tuesday night in New York City’s Democratic primary.

In the end, both those who admired Hynes and those who had come to vilify him can likely now agree on one thing: He had simply stayed in office too long.

It seems inarguable, after all, that the known perils of comfortable incumbency – complacency, arrogance, worse – played some role in Hynes’s defeat. Such accusations had been at the heart of what proved to be the successful campaign of Kenneth P. Thompson, a former federal prosecutor who will now become the first African-American district attorney in Brooklyn’s history.

"The Democratic voters of the county today decided that there should be a change in this office and its direction," Hynes said in a concession speech Tuesday night.

Hynes had come into office in 1990 as a civic champion, a special state prosecutor who had investigated the notoriously corrupt nursing home industry and who had won convictions against members of a white mob who chased a black man to his death in Howard Beach, Queens. He exits with what many regard as a record of innovation, but also with what many had come to see as a record of troubled prosecutions and cronyism and personal vendettas.

The New York Daily News, a reliable backer of Hynes over the decades, endorsed Thompson, asserting that Hynes had presided over an array of “miscarriages of justice.”

Hynes's ouster gives rise to a number of things worth considering:

1. Pure appreciation of how rare such a defeat is. Not since 1955 had an incumbent district attorney been unseated in New York City by way of the ballot box. In Brooklyn, the last time an incumbent prosecutor was removed via the vote came in 1911. That’s not a typo: 1911.

Richard Brown in Queens has been in office since 1991. Robert Johnson in the Bronx has been the borough’s top prosecutor since 1989. Robert Morgenthau served as Manhattan district attorney for nearly 35 years before retiring at age 89.

"There is something unique about the district attorney's office that makes the power of incumbency far more powerful than in any other race," Guy V. Molinari, the legendary Staten Island politician, once told the New York Times. "People somehow feel that changing the person in charge of law enforcement somehow would make life easier for the bad guys, the criminals. When it comes to law enforcement, people don't want to disturb the status quo."

2. What about the idea of term limits? There are states and counties around the country where term limits have been imposed on local prosecutors. But the two referenda that placed term limits on locally elected officials in New York City exempted district attorneys.

“I have really mixed feelings about the question of term limits for prosecutors,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor of law at Columbia University. “DAs have a tendency to get entrenched. And I’m not sure that leads to the exercise of the kind of zeal and good judgment that we expect of people with such powers. That said, I’m not sure more politics and more elections is the solution.”

The notion of term limits faces particular challenges in New York, and the saga of the efforts by voters on Long Island to impose term limits on a local prosecutor is instructive.

In 2001, voters in Nassau County appeared to have spoken: No district attorney could serve longer that 12 consecutive years in office. Term limits, the voters made clear in a referendum, ought to be imposed not only on those who enact laws – the county legislators - but on those charged with enforcing them.

Just last month, however, New York state’s highest court ruled that Nassau County voters had no authority to limit the terms for their district attorney. Local district attorneys, whether in Nassau County or Brooklyn, were in certain respects officers of the state, and only the state could determine how long they could remain in office.

There is thus little chance of term limits for district attorneys in New York being adopted anytime soon. Term limits for state officials has gained no traction over the years, and most experts agree the legislators are unlikely to adopt laws limiting their time in office.

“It’s clear to me the best way to address the question of prosecutors being in office too long would be for them to, at some point, agree to step aside,” said Richman, the Columbia professor. “It’s also clear to me that’s never going to happen.”