Portside

Tech Companies have been in bed with the Pentagon for a long time; Feds Swap Data with Thousands of Firms; Balloon-powered Internet on the Horizon; Emotional Data Tugs at Internet Heartstrings; Uncertain Funding for Nonprofit News Sites; Who Needs Reporters Anyway?

Internet Blocking in Turkey, Jordan and the U.K.; Before the Elections in Iran, the US Says It's OK to Sell Them Cellphones; Internet Revolution in Cuba

Kochs to Buy L.A.Times? Unions Say "No!"; Massive Biometric Database Proposal Hidden In Immigration Bill; NSA Releases Guide to Internet Spying; Scandal Sheets on the DoJ/AP Leak and Bloomberg Reporters Stalking Their Customers; Hollywood Challenges Books for the Blind; Girl Coder Beats the Boys in Hackathon Competition

New York Times is asked to examine its coverage of Venezuela and Honduras by leading journalists, activists and media scholars. "Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez's presidency-and we recognize that reasonable people can disagree about it-there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times's coverage of the two governments."

Racializing the Boston Bombers; LA Times Drops the "I-Word"; NY Times, Not So Much; ESPN Becomes New Conduit to Obama; Newspapers Remain Immobile; Online Ads Follow You Around; New Fight Over Internet `Wiretapping'; Feds Becoming Big Customer of Consumer Data Collected by Corporations; Decade of iTunes Killed the CD Industry; Journalism or Churnalism?; Wikipedia Has Women Problems

Reports of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons are part of a retold drama riddled with plot-holes

The news, with the usual notable exceptions, was generally a tawdry affair in the service of power. Still, can there be any question that, as the newspaper fades, we're entering a new age of conglomerated mainstream chaos? You only needed to check out the "coverage" of the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath - which you would have had to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss... What possible dreams (other than coverage nightmares) could emerge from that? - Tom Engelhardt

Bombing in Boston: Social Media Got It Wrong; Digital Surveillance Got It Right; Cell Service Could Have Gotten Shut Down; Organizing Against CISPA Ramps Up; Crowdsourcing the Gun Control Bill; YouTube Shoots Down Viacom Again; The Orwellian Potential of Google Glass; NY Post Circles the Drain; A Virtual Newsroom Wins a Pulitzer; The Ongoing Gender Gap of the Global Internet; Bringing E-books to Third World Phones