Category: self help

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Anonymous Sources: What are the Advantages and Disadvantages?

Anonymous Sources!

They’re in Front Page News Sections, but when should one use them?

According to the Associated Press stylebook, an anonymous source should only be used when the source absolutely insists on remaining “off the record”.

Journalists therefore must follow a “strict set of guidelines” when going this way.  Above all the source must be information driven not opinion and must be vital to the news report.

A 2005 report of major front-page news found “13 percent used anonymous sources” as the basis for telling the story.
In response, Los Angeles Resident, Roxana Jimenez says, “If you can find 87 percent of sources that are willing to be sited, than you can find 13 percent, so there’s really no excuse to use anonymous sources, especially when you want your stuff to be credible.”

The truth of the matter is any reporter who uses an anonymous source “must get approval from their news managers” and must explain why the source chose to remain anonymous.  (AP Stylebook)

Jimenez says, “The only place she thinks using an anonymous source is acceptable is in tabloids.”

In a post on Facebook, Saharra Kalyesubula from West Hills, Calif., answers the number one reason for using anonymous sources is “to protect the innocent.”

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Automatic License Plate Readers: ‘Invasion of Privacy’ or ‘For our protection’?

The recent addition of License Plate Scanners to Law Enforcement cars in roughly 38 States is raising concern amongst residents. 

Station located on San Fernando Rd
Photo taken outside station
Photography by: Julie White

In San Diego, Calif, the cameras have been in use for four months and the Sheriff’s Department Spokeswoman, Jan Caldwell, confirms that the cameras have helped recover a “stolen car within the first ten minutes” of deployment.

But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa (ACLU) argue that the cameras “represent a potential threat to the privacy of Innocent (people)”.

 

In California, there are distinct laws regarding invasion of privacy—

  1. If a person “knowingly enters onto a land of another person without permission.”
  2. And If they “attempts to capture, in a manner that is offensive to a reasonable person, any type of visual image, sound recording,  or other physical impression” of person

The scanners are meant to help law enforcement fight crime and terrorism, but in a report from 

Photo taken of back plate of car
Photography by: Julie White

Bloomberg Businessweek,

“ACLU says, their biggest concern is figuring out ‘how long the location and movements of people are being kept on file’ after the pictures are taken by cameras mounted on police cars.In a question posted on Facebook that asked if “License plate scanners should be used to curb crime or if they are an invasion of privacy”,  Manuel Vasquez of San Fernando, Calif. answered, “Invasion of Privacy”.

Thus far in Los Angeles County, according to a the July 2012 report in the Police Chief Magazine, there are only “12 cars fully installed with the systems, 8 in the Compton area and 4 in the La Habra Heights area.”

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Words

What’s in a word. That any other would mean so many, many different connotations.

I love the spanish language. I love looking up a word that I don’t know or think I know the meaning of and finding out what it truly means.
For example, yesterday someone stuck their nose in someone else’s business when they were communicating in spanish with another employee and they totally took everything out of context.
They thought that person was talking about them and calling them a bad word.
Well I looked that word up and to my surprise found out it was a mexican greeting and not a bad word at all at least not in the context that they were using it in.
I don’t want to say the word because it could also be used in other ways but, one should be careful with any word because you never know who’s listening.
You don’t want to ever offend someone else.