When it comes to pursuing sources, the authors who work for major news organizations have a key advantage. They are in regular touch with Obama aides for their day jobs and can obtain [...]]]> Writing books about the Obama Administration is a lucrative business for journalists, particularly those who can get inside access.  From the Washington Post:

When it comes to pursuing sources, the authors who work for major news organizations have a key advantage. They are in regular touch with Obama aides for their day jobs and can obtain tidbits by agreeing to embargo them until their books come out. But they also face a delicate balancing act, since tough stories might alienate potential sources and flattering ones might loosen tongues.

The last sentence indicates that there may be some quid pro quo going on, in which journalists provide favorable coverage or withhold bad news so that they can preserve their relationships with Administration insiders.

Glenn Greenwald reacts to this Post article for Salon, writing

That’s an understatement.   Those oozing conflicts lead to things like this– a glowing New Yorker profile of Rahm Emanuel so sycophantic it made the skin crawl — followed up by an even more one-sided love letter to Larry Summers, both from the eager, wanna-be White House stenographer/author Ryan Lizza.  It’s what causes Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter to proclaim one day (when Obama favored it) that real health care reform "depends on whether Obama gets approval for a ‘public option’," only to turn around less than two months later (once Obama said it was unnecessary) and proclaim that the Left is foolishly obsessing on the un-important public option.

In fact, journalists could withhold negative stories that might result in more revenue for their news organizations, only to reveal them in their book, thereby using their employer’s heft in order to gain inside access, denying their employer the benefits, and pocketing the gains for themselves, all the while denying the American people of honest analysis.

From a publication called the Washington Note:

Edward Luce, Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times, who has been one of the few to resist the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ offers from the White House has found himself in a dust-up with the White House for his recent article co-authored with Daniel Dombey, "US Foreign Policy: Waiting on a Sun King".

Luce was given access to one senior official for the piece, but because Luce reported that National Security Adviser Jim Jones may be on his way out and that Obama’s national security team lacks a top tier strategic thinker — other than Obama himself perhaps — Luce has been pummeled by the White House who think he violated a quid pro quo deal to do a fluff story in exchange for access.

Luce reported to me, "The FT never does these kind of deals. "

The findings could help researchers to improve their understanding of the fluctuations in solar activity that can, at their peak, scramble electricity grids and throw Global-Positioning-System devices off by dozens of metres.

Yikes!  Sounds dangerous, considering all the devices that rely on GPS.  Note that coronal mass ejections, a type of [...]]]> From the latest edition of Nature:

The findings could help researchers to improve their understanding of the fluctuations in solar activity that can, at their peak, scramble electricity grids and throw Global-Positioning-System devices off by dozens of metres.

Yikes!  Sounds dangerous, considering all the devices that rely on GPS.  Note that coronal mass ejections, a type of solar activity, is one of the “scientific explanations” used as “evidence” that the world will end in 2012, the idea being that such activity will destroy electrical grids in industrialized countries, leading to a general decay of civilization.  However, the National Academy of Sciences did issue a report a couple of years ago discussing the real threat posed by such solar activity, and it is sobering.  This is an example of how government should be engaged in low-probability disaster prevention.

…extreme dissatisfaction with aid agencies who ignore even the most obvious signs that some aid effort is not working. (Example cited in the Brookings book: a World Bank computer kiosk program in India celebrated as a “success” in its “Empowerment” sourcebook. Except that the computers sat in places without functioning electricty or Internet [...]]]> From Bill Easterly’s blog post:

…extreme dissatisfaction with aid agencies who ignore even the most obvious signs that some aid effort is not working. (Example cited in the Brookings book: a World Bank computer kiosk program in India celebrated as a “success” in its “Empowerment” sourcebook. Except that the computers sat in places without functioning electricty or Internet connections. Critics pointed that out, and yet officials still defended the program as contributing to “Empowerment.”…)

With regard to non-profits in general (as opposed to just aid agencies), I wonder if there are non-profit organizations that are essentially watchdogs of the non-profit sector.  If not, there ought to be.  Perhaps, once the fog has cleared in Haiti, if you are thinking of engaging in philanthropy or charity, you should donate to an organization whose goal it is to promote greater accountability in the sector.