Portside

• Despite Donald Trump’s Deep Unpopularity, MSNBC is Moving to the Right – Matthew Sheffield (Salon)
• Roger Ailes Was One of the Worst Americans Ever – Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)
• How One Major Internet Company Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web – Ken Schwencke (ProPublica)
• Their Code Was Used to Hack Sony and Create 'Wannacry.' Meet the 'Lazarus Group,' the Armed Robbers of the Internet – Matt Pearce (Los Angeles Times)
• Voices for Internet Freedom Forum in L.A.'s Skid Row Lifts Up Community Voices – Joseph Torres (Free Press)
• Q&A: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, Trump, and Truth – Pete Vernon (Columbia Journalism Review)

Despite Donald Trump’s Deep Unpopularity, MSNBC is Moving to the Right

By Matthew Sheffield
May 15, 2017
Salon

One would think that in light of the success MSNBC found in promoting anti-Bush voices that it would be doubling down on the strategy now that Donald Trump, an even more unpopular Republican, is in the White House. Instead, the very opposite thing is happening: MSNBC is hiring right-leaning commentators and former Fox News anchors.
The shift appears to be based in part on the idea that with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress as well as the presidency, having too many overtly anti-GOP commentators is a liability for NBC reporters attempting to get access to cover stories.

Roger Ailes Was One of the Worst Americans Ever

By Matt Taibbi
May 18, 2017
Rolling Stone

Ailes was the Christopher Columbus of hate. When the former daytime TV executive and political strategist looked across the American continent, he saw money laying around in giant piles. He knew all that was needed to pick it up was a) the total abandonment of any sense of decency or civic duty in the news business, and b) the factory-like production of news stories that spoke to Americans' worst fantasies about each other.

How One Major Internet Company Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web

By Ken Schwencke
May 4, 2017
ProPublica

Since its launch in 2013, the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer has quickly become the go-to spot for racists on the internet.
The operations of such extreme sites are made possible, in part, by an otherwise very mainstream internet company — Cloudflare. Based in San Francisco, Cloudflare operates more than 100 data centers spread across the world, serving as a sort of middleman for websites — speeding up delivery of a site’s content and protecting it from several kinds of attacks.
The widespread use of Cloudflare’s services by racist groups is not an accident. Cloudflare has said it is not in the business of censoring websites and will not deny its services to even the most offensive purveyors of hate.

Their Code Was Used to Hack Sony and Create 'Wannacry.' Meet the 'Lazarus Group,' the Armed Robbers of the Internet

By Matt Pearce
May 18, 2017
Los Angeles Times

On Feb. 4, 2016, as employees left work to enjoy their weekends, the central bank of Bangladesh began firing off dozens of transfer orders to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, asking to remove money from its accounts — almost $1 billion.
The attack’s audacity, and the weaknesses it exposed, stunned bankers and financial regulators. Months later, cybersecurity researchers concluded that it was yet another notch in the belt of one of the most destructive hacker collectives on the Internet, the “Lazarus Group,” previously accused of being behind the devastating 2014 Sony Pictures Entertainment hack and other attacks — and working for North Korea.

Voices for Internet Freedom Forum in L.A.'s Skid Row Lifts Up Community Voices

By Joseph Torres
May 12, 2017
Free Press

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn confessed “that a small part” of her was feeling “a little down” when she arrived at the Los Angeles Community Action Network in the city’s Skid Row neighborhood on Wednesday for a public forum on internet-related issues.
As the lone Democrat on Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, Clyburn is fighting to prevent Chairman Ajit Pai from gutting rules to protect Net Neutrality and increase broadband adoption in low-income communities.
Clyburn heard stories from Los Angeles residents on why the internet is so critical to the health and well being of their communities. The forum was hosted by Voices for Internet Freedom — made up of the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Free Press and the National Hispanic Media Coalition — along with 18 Million Rising and Common Cause.

Q&A: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, Trump, and Truth

By Pete Vernon
May 18, 2017
Columbia Journalism Review

Over the course of 16 years as co-host of WNYC’s On The Media, Brooke Gladstone has had a front-row seat to coverage of the century’s biggest stories and the changing nature of the way the public consumes and understands journalism.
Drawing on the work of writers from Neil Postman to Walter Lippmann to Jonathan Swift, as well as conversations with contemporary media critics, Gladstone explores the current state of our political realities, with a focus on the multiplicity of ways people experience the world.