The two men in charge. (Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia Commons)

James Goodale, the chief counsel to The New York Times when the paper published the Pentagon Papers, says that the Obama administration has been more restrictive of the First Amendment than any other president in history, even Richard Nixon. In his new book, Fighting for the Press, Goodale implores journalists to put pressure on Obama, who he believes gets a free pass a Republican president wouldn’t get from the press.

In a conversation with the Columbia Journalism Review, Goodale points to the administration’s use of the 1917 Espionage Act to sedate American journalism. “The biggest challenge to the press today is the threatened prosecution of WikiLeaks, and it’s absolutely frightening,” he said. During Obama’s two terms, the Espionage Act has been used to prosecute more alleged leakers than all former presidential offices combined.

Goodale said journalists don’t seem to consider this much of a problem. “They don’t believe it,” he told CJR. “I actually have talked to two investigative reporters who are household names, and I said, ‘Do you realize what’s happening to you if this goes forward?’ And I talk, I get no response, and the subject shifts to other parts of the book. No one seems to care.”

(Time Warner/Wikimedia Commons)

The widespread criticism of CNN’s coverage of the Steubenville rape convictions highlights the deeply problematic ways most mainstream American media outlets approached the story, according to Mallary Jean Tenore at Poynter. On Monday, a petition asking CNN to apologize for its coverage of the Steubenville convictions–which many saw as apologetic for the rapists–gained more than 30,000 signatures on Change.org.

(SEE MORE: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC Air Name Of Steubenville Rape Victim)

Tenore’s post shows how, given the limited access the media had to information about the victim, the narrative surrounding the suspects became increasingly warped. She argues that many journalists lost sight of the important complexities of the story and its implications on “rape culture.”

“There’s no doubt that covering rape is difficult,” Tenore says. “[I]t takes time and resources to report on the nuances of the crime, offer context about how common rape is, and explore both sides of the story. But that’s exactly the kind of reporting we need more of.”

Many have said that if it hadn’t been for the efforts of bloggers and the hacker activist group Anonymous, it’s possible the rape allegations may have never been investigated. The New York Times profiled the efforts of blogger Alexandria Goddard, who grew up in Steubenville and helped piece together much of the social media constellation that became crucial in identifying suspects.

Tenore’s Poynter post also showcases Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, who analyzed the football team’s influence in the town where “a culture of extreme arrogance collapse[d] in two tearful rape convictions.”

(SEE MORE: Gawker’s post railing against CNN’s interest in the “promising futures” of the rapists.)

Anonymous activists in their Guy Fawkes masks. (Vincent Diamante/Wikimedia Commons)

A Reuters social media editor was indicted Thursday for helping the hacker group Anonymous gain access to the Tribune Co. web server and disrupt an L.A. Times online story, according to the L.A. Times. Matthew Keys, 26, faces 10 years in prison if he’s convicted on all charges. Keys allegedly gave Anonymous hackers log-in credentials that they used to change the headline, byline and teaser of an L.A. Times story about House Major Leader Steny Hoyer in 2010.

Keys is the deputy social media editor at Reuters and is well-known on Twitter (TIME put his profile on their 2012 list of the 140 Best Twitter Feeds). He hasn’t responded to requests for interviews, but he did post this on Twitter: “I am fine. I found out the same way most of you did: From Twitter. Tonight I’m going to take a break. Tomorrow, business as usual.”

For now, he still works at Reuters, but TIME reported that Reuters said it’s aware of his indictment but refused to comment until their investigations are completed. Their spokesman did note that Keys is being charged for alleged crimes from 2010 and he started working at Reuters in 2012.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Jeff Jarvis tackles the question of how ethical and shrewd it is for the media to publish things like a map of gun permit applicants.  Some journalists, like David Carr and Jim Wilse (who Jarvis says is the “best American newspaper editor [he's] ever worked with”), have felt uneasy about such releases.

Jarvis comes to a different conclusion: “It is not up to journalists to decide what gun permits are public information.  It’s up to us as citizens to decide that, as a matter of law.  If there is something wrong with that, then change the law.  If society is not comfortable with making that information public, then don’t try to make it somewhat public, public-with-effort…There’s no half-pregnant.  In the net age, there’s no slightly public.”

Given that I had just been mulling this question myself (and that the OLD MEDIA is not where people go to learn about new hip blogsters), I figured “eh” and let it go. (Not that I had a choice, it’s there forever.) Then a realized an advanced beginner level of google search proficiency could also take you to me. Why am I telling you this? Because I think, for me, the solution is to keep doing just what I am – I’m not totally out there, but I’m not too hard to find (especially the more of my 20 million closest friends and colleagues and people I would have gone to band camp with, had I gone, I decide to let know.) I also wanted to reward (ha! maybe punish?) folks who blogroll me or subscribe via a newsreader or email (see, the left hand side under “share the love”) with some special subscriber only bulletins for those who know me or have become washwords fans so… to sum up, I’ll stay just where I am… behind the curtain… for now.

Tags: identity, anonymous, share, reality, real, out, outting, who, who am i, anon,