e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

April 2020
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
     
   


Brave Whistleblowers Are Being Punished For Saving Lives During A Pandemic

Furnished content.


The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance of whistleblowers to a free and unfettered press. Throughout this emergency, it has been whistleblowers playing a critical role in informing the general public and forcing governments to make important public health decisions. And it has been whistleblowers that have pierced the will of governments around the world who have tried to downplay the significance of the threat facing their citizens.In China, where the virus is believed to have originated, the government's "fail-safe" system for spotting contagious outbreaks failed to pick up the new illness, reportedly because local officials withheld information for political reasons. Instead, central health authorities learned about the outbreak when whistleblowers leaked internal local government documents.These documents emerged alongside observations from Dr. Li Wenliang, widely known as "the whistleblower doctor," who warned colleagues about new patterns of illness in WhatsApp messages now credited with raising the alarm about the new virus. He was detained and forced to confess to spreading false rumors in January, and was subsequently diagnosed with COVID-19, leading to his death in February. The Chinese government faced massive online backlash for its handling of the Li case, and has subsequently attempted to reclaim him as a national hero.In the United States, where the official response has been fractured and at times incoherent, whistleblowers have played a key role in escalating issues within the government and to the press.It was reported in February that U.S. health workers were given neither special training nor protective gear when handling Americans who were in quarantine on Air Force bases after being evacuated from coronavirus hot zones. The information underlying that reporting came from a whistleblower report shared with Congress and obtained by media outlets.That person's identity is not publicly known, and members of Congress have reported that she has been subjected to professional retaliation.In the Navy, leadership was not taking adequate steps to protect its sailors from contracting and spreading coronavirus, according to a letter sent from aircraft carrier captain Brett Crozier to his superiors. The letter described conditions on the U.S.S. Roosevelt, which Crozier led, as it was ravaged by coronavirus. It was sent to multiple recipients through unclassified channels, which Navy officials said could encourage it to be leaked as it ultimately was, to the San Francisco Chronicle.Although the Navy has not publicly named a suspect for that leak, it fired Captain Crozier for his role in its release. (Crozier later tested positive for coronavirus as well.) The Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, flew to Guam to address the crew of that ship in a profanity-laden tirade that included a warning not to consider acts of whistleblowing in the public interest. In particular, Modly's address included the lines:

There is no, no situation where you go to the media. Because the media has an agenda and the agenda that they have depends on which side of the political aisle they sit and I'm sorry that's the way the country is now, but it's the truth and they use it to divide us and use it to embarrass the Navy.
His admonition against leaking was apparently ineffective, as audio and transcripts from his speech were released to multiple outlets immediately. Modly initially defended his remarks, but has since stepped down from his post.Some of the most shocking stories about the disarray in the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak have concerned the shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, used every day in medical settings. The reasons for the shortages are varied ranging from an insufficient national stockpile to the absence of a strategy for coordinating supplies between states but reporting on the shortages has likely made a significant difference in spurring action to remedy those problems.Some hospital administrators, however, have been openly hostile in their response to that reporting. In fact, at many hospitals around the country, doctors and nurses have been told that they could be fired for speaking with the media about the lack of PPE available to them. As the New York Times reported, in the epicenter of the crisis in the United States, every major private hospital system has sent memos in recent weeks ordering workers not to speak with the media, as have some public hospitals. Several nurses and doctors in the U.S. have already been suspended or fired for posting on Facebook about PPE shortages, protesting the shortages, or talking to the media about them.These examples show courageous individuals going out of their way to correct the wrongs they've observed. In many cases, these are people who are already putting their life on the line for public health, taking extra steps to fight for the truth. That impulse should be rewarded, and at times governments have pursued that ideal, through legislative efforts to protect whistleblowers, or even reward them for their service.Unfortunately, at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the impulse to root out corruption and inform the people has instead been punished at every turn. Most recently, this can be seen in the Trump administration's decision to fire the intelligence community inspector general responsible for fielding the whistleblower complaint that led to President Trump's impeachment last year.Under any circumstances, that willingness to engage in political retribution and retaliation against a whistleblower would be cause for concern. But during a global pandemic, where a clear view of the facts as they are is of paramount concern, it may truly be a question of life and death.Republished from the Freedom of the Press Foundation blog.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 14-Apr-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Esports Gets Local With Facebook's New DIY Tournament Tool

Furnished content.


The evolution of esports has been in progress for some time now. Once met with chuckles and the rolling of eyes, now esports is big business. We've seen esports hit certain checkpoints on its way to full legitimacy, from college scholarships, to leagues run by IRL professional sports organizations, all the way up to having esports tournaments broadcast by the likes of ESPN.But part of what makes professional sports fun, and what would represent the next step in the growth of esports, would be to see play start to occur at the non-professional and local level. Facebook looks to be trying to bring that very thing about with a new platform for do-it-yourself esports tournaments.

Today, Facebook Gaming is launching Tournaments, a new feature that lets users create, join or follow virtual game tournaments. The tool offers everything from registration to seeding, bracket management and score entry. You can host single elimination, double elimination or round robin tournaments, and best of all, it’s open to anyone.Facebook says it’s meant to be a “one-stop shop for everything critically important for tournament organizers.” It should also offer better discovery for tournament participants, and provide developers and communities with an easy way to connect. Creators can host tournaments while streaming, and the feature includes new charity tools that let creators fundraise for important causes.
Now, this is Facebook, so we all need to be wary of this entire thing morphing into some advertisement-wrapped, data-slurping nightmare rather than what it should be: the digital equivalent of beer league softball. If that is in fact what Tournaments becomes, you might start to see a much wider number of people adopt esports as a hobby, which will directly feedback into the interest of professional esports leagues. That is exactly how it works with baseball, golf, and other sports: you play the game as a kid or as an amateur, and it makes you appreciate the skill of the professionals all the more.It's also worth noting that, whether by mistake or design, Facebook is managing to announce Tournaments at the perfect moment in history.
The product isn’t quite complete, but Facebook recognizes that gaming is one way people can stay connected, safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is opening early access to Tournaments. You can test it out beginning today at https://www.facebook.com/gaming/tournaments.While Twitch still dominates the game streaming market, Facebook Gaming is on the rise. By the end of last year, the platform had an 8.5 percent market share, and it saw a 210 percent increase in monthly viewership year-over-year. The Tournaments feature could help Facebook Gaming standout a bit more.
With all of the social media connections, there is some ease in using Facebook to run your own esports tourneys as well. Again, we'll have to see just how good Facebook's execution on all of this is, but a good platform for DIY esports can only drive it further into the mainstream.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 14-Apr-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



April 2020
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
     
   







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1055)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (170)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com