Skeet blogged last month about how his new-ish employer Google advised him not to accept his seventh consecutive "MVP" award from competitor Microsoft. Online outrage ensued, and Skeet now reports that he's reached an understanding with Google: Skeet won't sign the Microsoft nondisclosure agreement associated with the program — this just covers pre-release software MVPs get access to, another MVP told us — or accept any of the fringe benefits, like (we presume) the special tech support.

In return, Skeet can accept the award. In other words, you can look, but don't touch. And to think this is the same company accused of digital "promiscuity."

(Pic: Skeet, by Ade Oshineye)

This was the Wall Street Journal's first real test of journalism ethics under Rupert Murdoch's ownership. And, surprisingly, they've fucking failed, big time. The story broke yesterday afternoon—complete with a leaked email showing top execs at Burson-Marsteller suggesting how to use the latest column by Penn, their CEO, as a tool to recruit clients from the industry he wrote about. The paper assured us yesterday they were "looking into it," and cited their clear conflict of interest policy. That policy, they assured us, was the Dow Jones Code of Conduct that we excerpted in our own post yesterday, which demands that the company ensure that:

* Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers or information providers;
* Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or
* There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings.

Well. Didn't take long to throw that away! Today, WSJ spokesman Robert Christie explained the results of the paper's thorough investigation like so:

"Mark has assured us that through our conversations that he's complied with his conflict of interest policy. He does not have any glamping clients nor did they target them before the column appeared."

That's right: The WSJ's investigation consisted of calling Mark Penn and asking him, "Hey, did you comply with that conflict of interest policy?" The world-famous investigative skills of the WSJ in action, ladies and gentlemen. As a follow-up, we asked Christie if he was implying that it's fine for a columnist to go recruiting clients from a column he just wrote after it's published. His reply:

Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop.

The Wall Street Journal is "pretty sure" that Mark Penn's PR firm will stop using its CEO's purportedly unbiased column as a business recruitment tool! Why are they "pretty sure?" Because Mark Penn said so! Fuck that published email evidence, anyhow! It was on a "blog," and "blogging" hasn't been a Microtrend for like two years.

Here's what this means for you, the reader of the WSJ: You should assume, when you read a Mark Penn column, that Burson-Marsteller will run to the leading companies in any industry mentioned in that column and set up meetings for them with Mark Penn, who will try to use that column as a tool to recruit them as PR clients. If you really want to be safe, intellectually, it only makes sense to also assume that Mark Penn may decide what to write his columns about based on the business needs of Burson-Marsteller—which are, after all, his primary responsibility.

You should also assume that any other WSJ contributing columnist could be doing the same thing. Because the paper clearly does not consider it a firing offense.

Don't worry, Mark Penn. We won't forget about you. We're looking forward to your next column.

[Previously: The Full Story]

Ornish's appointment as HuffPo medical editor was first reported in Salon two weeks ago; HuffPo issued a formal announcement today. Ornish's practice of taking money from people who make terrible, unhealthy food is controversial but not unprecedented; Ornish's clients no doubt appreciate the title of his book Eat More, Weigh Less, if not the content, which says to avoid meat and simple sugars. The Harvard-trained medical professor is at least open about his deals; his latest HuffPo column openly admits taking money from Safeway, then quicky urges Congress — under lobbying by Safeway CEO Steve Burd — to emulate the grocery chain's health plan.

Safeway cut costs partly by incentivizing patients to exercise and quit smoking. But Ornish never mentioned its less pleasant side: the plan shifted costs to patients, spiking deductibles and requiring people to pay 20 percent "coinsurance" when they got sick. The net impact was to raise costs for many diseased people who, through no fault of their own, were not well enough to meet Safeway's incentives. These problems have all been outlined by one Dr. Don McCanne, who you might know from such websites as.... the Huffington Post. Let's see if the good doctor contributes there again.

(Pic: Huffington and Ornish at Huffington's 2004 book party. Getty Images.)

Stein detailed on his American Spectator diary how he used to be allowed to do whatever he wanted at the Times, even making a TV ad for Comcast and releasing a nutty creationist documentary. Then he questioned the legality of Obama firing a bailed-out CEO; suddenly Stein's copy got spiked. He criticized Obama's lack of focus; then immediately got fired over the supposed "conflict" over his latest batch of ads.

You can attack Obama from the left at the Times but not from the right.

Read between the lines. Sure, Stein's latest TV spots were a much bigger conflict of interest than his prior ads; as Reuters' Felix Salmon writes, "Stein provides financial advice in his column, and he provides financial advice in the ad." And it's true the credit-report company he endorsed was a bait-and-switch operation from a deceptive corporation. But, bottom line, Stein spoke truth to power and was brought down by "the haters and the weak-willed."

This persecution is why Stein is entitled to call himself a "poor... servant" and argue that he's under seige by "the atheists and neo-Darwinists" and by "the real power in this country," Goldman Sachs. Despite all this, he manages to maintain homes in both Beverly Hills and Malibu. And if you want to know his secret, tough luck, because someone just canceled his finance column.

Stein was pilloried online for his endorsement of the bait-and-switch operation, which offers a free credit score but charges an outrageous $30 per month to see the credit report behind the score. As Reuters blogger Felix Salmon pointed out, consumers can get a free online report under federal law.

The Times' issue, though, is that Stein has violated its ethics policy, which states "it is an inherent conflict for a journalist to perform public relations work, paid or unpaid." Salmon blogged about that issue, too. It's surprising that it hasn't come up until now; Stein has been a regular contributor to the Times for four years, and is quite recognizable to TV audiences. After playing a high-school teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off (R.I.P. John Hughes), Stein went on to host two shows on Comedy Central, including the Emmy-award-winning Win Ben Stein's Money, and a show on VH1. He also frequently appeared in cameo roles on sitcoms like Seinfeld.

A tipster informed us this morning that Stein had been given the boot, and Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis has confirmed, writing:

Ben Stein's fine work for us as a columnist for Sunday Business had to end, we told him, after we learned that he had become a commercial spokesman for FreeScore, a financial services company. Ben didn't understand when he signed on with FreeScore that this might pose a potential conflict for him as a contributing columnist for the Times, because he hadn't written about credit scores or this company. But, we decided that being a commercial spokesman for FreeScore while writing his column wouldn't be appropriate.

We are sorry to lose him as a columnist, and appreciate his work for the Times over the years.

Stein retains his career as a sometime TV pundit (Fox News, CBS Sunday Morning, CNBC), his column on Yahoo! Finance and his "diary" at American Spectator, the once-fearsome conservative journal. He also has any residuals from his reviled anti-evolution movie.

We wonder if Stein will continue calling himself an "economist," as he did in the Times...

...even though his only economics degree is a B.A., from Columbia. We never understood how he had earned the "economist" label, but, at this point, whatever.

By January 2008 the two companies were competing in cell-phone operating systems, wireless hardware and Web services, and half of Apple's board was Google insiders, a draw-dropping instance of Silicon Valley inbreeding that Apple nevertheless shrugged off. So what's changed? Google has since launched "Chrome OS," but it's doubtful Apple sees the unreleased Linux window manager as a real threat.

The real worry: Two federal agencies are now investigating ties between Apple and Google. Micrososft's high-powered flacks, experts in antitrust who have retained Schmidt's ex-girlfriend, may deny lobbying on the matter. But after effectively buying the future of Google neighbor Yahoo, the Redmond, Washington company must be thrilled to see its longtime detractors in Silicon Valley further splintered.

(Pic: Jobs and Schmidt at the iPhone introduction, Macworld, January 2007. AP.)

According to an SEC filing, Google put an additional $2.6 million into 23andMe, following up a $3.9 million investment in 2007. And Google, which has been laying off workers, is renting space to Wojcicki's firm. On what terms? No one outside Google knows, except for one appraiser whose opinion is unclear. From the SEC filing:

In June 2009, Google also entered into a lease agreement with 23andMe... The terms and conditions of the lease with 23andMe were reviewed by an independent real estate appraiser.

It's not clear whether Wojcicki, who recently gave birth to son Benji, will work from the new digs, but the proximity to Brin — and to Google's free child care — would certainly help her keep child-rearing and a high-powered career in easier balance. Whether the deal is as good for Google shareholders remains unclear.

Consider, first, that AOL is buying Armstrong out of what sounds like a dud company — the sort of startup that can devour an investor's equity entirely.

Armstrong's Patch is a "hyperlocal" news website, mixing reporting from its own journalists with contributions from volunteers. Though it's had precious few successes, citizen journalism remains notoriously tricky from an editorial standpoint, to say nothing of profitability. And Patch has been ambushed with some formidable competition: The New York Times rolled out its own local blogging effort in the exact three communities where Patch debuted.

For this, AOL paid around $10 million, helping Armstrong recoup his otherwise imperiled seed investment?

Then there's the question of AOL's real interest. It's far more likely the company bought Patch to nail down Armstrong than out of some sudden resurgence of interest in local news (as Kara Swisher of All Things D notes, AOL had already been down this road with Digital City and CityGuide).

AOL wanted to hire Armstrong from Google just a couple of months before AOL detached from Time Warner. There would have been negotiations. And what better time for savvy salesman Armstrong to mention his growing interest in Patch than when AOL hoped to focus his attention elsewhere? "Distracted by Patch? We'll take it off your hands for you."

That sort of arrangement wouldn't be particularly transparent for AOL shareholders, who should know where compensation ends and strategic investments begin. But presumably Armstrong can lead them to the same conclusion as his former bosses: That he's worth every penny.

Corporate awards might seem silly, but for some entrepreneurs, they are among the few forms of recognition still within reach. And the Insider's Silicon Alley Awards, intended to "celebrate the resilience of New York's digital industry in the face of the global economic collapse," has its share of obsessives. One even wonders if the selection process has been tilted in favor of nominees with financial ties to the Insider.

Henry Blodget's publication yesterday released its final list of nominees. The nominees were selected by the Insider with input from an online poll.

As our tipster notes, the 25 finalists include Gilt Groupe, co-founded by the same team that started Silicon Alley Insider; Huffington Post, co-founded by Insider investor Ken Lerer; and Thrillist, started by Ken's son Ben Lerer.

It's hard to argue with, say, HuffPo's impact over the past year; it pioneered a particularly effective form of citizen journalism and grew both its traffic and profile by leaps and bounds. But, as with the other two nominees, its links to the Insider were not disclosed; maybe they should have been, as our tipster argues, if only to keep the awards above reproach.

Blodget, who says he "understand[s] the concern about disclosures," he since added a note to his nomination post outlining "every possible conflict I could think of." And while he conceded "there was definitely some subjectivity in the selection of the final nominees," he defended his process:

We explained up front that, while we would take the nominations and votes into account when picking the final 5 nominees, the votes would not determine our selections.

The reason we don't use straight votes in these things, by the way, is that we have learned from experience that they are too easy to game...

For what it's worth, we won't be involved in picking the winners [see explanation at bottom of this post].

For those still dissatisfied with the process, just remember: It's only an arbitrary prize. They're a dime a dozen. If you don't win SAI's, why not go for a Webby? They hand those out to practically anyone!

Ed Wyatt, we hear, didn't show up at the party. So, uh, everything is fine now. Forget this little "Party At Sony Exec's House" ever happened. Just forget it. Unless you were there, in which case, email us.
[The whole story]

Now, to the untrained eye this may appear to be that ancient, hibernating specimen called a "conflict of interest." When we called up Steinhauer to ask if she thought it was, she said, "Jamie Lynton [wife of Michael] is one of my oldest friends" and asked semi-rhetorically, "Do I cover the movie beat?"

The Times' Hollywood coverage is run by its culture desk, while Steinhauer answers to the national desk. "I don't have anything to do with the cultural coverage," she said. But that's where her husband, New York Times Hollywood reporter Ed Wyatt works; Steinhauer pointed out that her husband covers TV, not movies, so this shouldn't conflict him.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Well! This is one of those cases where only extremely smart people can understand that this is fine. For example, Sony Pictures also makes television shows, which, we've established is what Ed Wyatt, Jennifer Steinhauer's husband, covers. He just wrote a story about Sony Pictures on March 23, in which Michael Lynton was quoted. Maybe it would be better if his wife—who also happens to be the NYT's L.A. bureau chief (we're being repetitive on purpose)—did not allow the head of Sony Pictures to host her book parties?

Of course, the NYT is far more expert in this issue than we are! Bernie Weinraub, their old Hollywood correspondent, is married to Amy Pascal— who heads Sony's movie studio. Before he retired in 2005, he also claimed to only cover television. So they know what they're doing here.

It may be that Sony Pictures executives are so inherently interesting, and honest, that NYT staffers based in LA naturally gravitate towards them. Which, okay then! Anybody can have any friends they want. But you can't have any job you want, always. The Times has already been embarrassed by its staffers' speaking fees this week. Sometimes it's better to have an abundance of caution, rather than no caution.

The Flat One gave a speech to the "Bay Area Air Quality Management District" last week, and charged his normal fee, $75,000, which also includes a chance for some of the attendees to ask him questions (regarding ice cream preferences only). So then a motherfucking poor media critic at the LA Times gets all pissy and starts asking questions about whether this is "good" or "fair" or whatever and then they discover hey, the NYT doesn't even let you give paid speeches to lobbying groups like that, and now Tommy has to give back the money!

Do you think Thomas Friedman likes to fly to the West Coast on an airplane and ride in a taxi and stay in a hotel, for free? That's three columns worth of material for him, but no, he does not like to do it for fucking free. Sprawling suburban mega-mansions aren't fucking free.

[LAT]

Fox's Thomas McInerney is a shill, as established in David Batstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the retired lieutenant general's work, and that of others, to promote the war in Iraq using talking points spoon-fed by Donald Rumseld's Defense Department. ("Good work - we will use it," McInerney once wrote his handlers.)

Like other retired generals, McInerney had defense-industry clients who profited from the war; contractors who placed McInerney on their boards and hired him as a consultant.

McInerney is still going to bat for them. As we reported earlier this month, he went on Fox News immediately after Somali pirates hijacked an American cargo ship to bizarrely insist the supersonic, air-to-air F-22 Raptor jet fighter was perfect for killing pirates, using the same cannon nearly every other U.S. fighter has, plus a high-altitude spy drone and a refueling tanker.

The F-22, the drone and at least one tanker are made, in part or whole, by McInerney's sometime consulting client Northrop Grumman. Northrop is a major subcontractor on the F-22; McInerney consulted for another F-22 contractor, Cobham. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to cut new orders of the plane.

Fox News by now is well aware of McInerney's industry ties. And yet it again indulged his single-minded ranting in support of the F-22 and against the Secretary of Defense this past weekend on America's News HQ, as Media Matters is reporting. (See clip above.)

No disclosure of McInerney's conflict of interest was forthcoming as he said it's only a matter of time before third-world powers like Iraq outfox our fighter pilots:

We would not have been able to conduct Operation Iraqi Freedom nor Operation Northern Watch or Southern Watch with only 100 F-22s with the threat coming for 30 years.

On the off chance Iraq did acquire some sort of superfighter technology after crawling out of lawlessness, we'd still have the F-35 Lightning II, but Fox's Jamie Colby didn't bring that up. Which is a little bizarre: If the commander-in-chief and his Republican-appointed Secretary of Defense say troops are better off with F-22 money spent elsewhere, why is Fox News swallowing whole private-sector efforts to claw that money back?

The network does have its pride. In fact, it's rather famous for it. Even a disclaimer is apparently too much to ask as Fox's shill general tears into the Department of Defense. Running one might clarify the debate over military spending priorities, and thus benefit American troops, but it would also imply the Times had a point in its Pulitzer-winning series. The combative news network isn't about to let that happen.

[Media Matters]

Buckley told the Washington Post his memoir has eroded his standing within Manhattan society, even prior to its release. It depicts his father Willilam F. Buckley Jr. relieving himself out of a car window, ditching Christopher's Yale graduation in boredom and, apparently suffering dementia, planning a party for dead associates.

The book also reveals that the conservative icon considered suicide in his last days, amid emphysema and a heavy regimen of pills, before heeding the Catholic Church's prohibition against the act.

It turns out Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times Book Review nearly broke this news first in the Times, two days after William F. Buckley's February death — until Christopher Buckley strong-armed him.

Tanenhaus was under pressure from senior Times editors to write a story, but agreed to sit on the news after Buckley threatened to cut off his access to his father's papers, Buckley said. Tanenhaus needed that access because he was writing a biography of the late Buckley, a conflict of interest between his duties as a Times editor and as a book author.

Maybe Tanenhaus sold his editors the same line Chris Buckley used on him: That William Buckley disclosed his suicide thoughts only for a book, not for use in as a one-off newspaper story. But the net effect of Christopher Buckley's arm-twisting was that he was able to publish the news about his father's impulse before Tanenhaus.

Buckley told the Post he believed the information would be twisted by blogs — by us! — if the Times published it out of context:

"It would have been a nightmare," Buckley says as lunch draws to a close. He feared the inevitable headline: "Buckley Contemplated Suicide in Last Days." "Run that through the blogosphere and see what Gawker makes of it: 'Lion of the Right Offed Self.' "

Instead, the news appeared weeks later in the gossip section of the New York Post, a seemingly odd venue for someone trying to protect his father's image against sensationalism (the headline: "BILL BUCKLEY'S MORBID END"). The item was careful to credit Buckley's book. Go figure.

[Washington Post]

McInerney is no stranger to shilling. Last year, the New York Times busted the retired lieutenant general for acting as an on-air puppet to George W. Bush's Department of Defense, helping promote war in Iraq. "Good work — we will use it," the general wrote the Pentagon after swallowing a fresh batch of talking points.

McInerney "sits on the boards of several military contractors," the Times wrote. Those are typically well-paid positions.

The talking head has worked as a consultant to Northrop Grumman. Northrop is a major contractor on the F-22 Raptor, a fighter slashed from the Pentagon's new budget proposal. Contractors are already organizing a fight in Congress.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that McInerney turned up on Fox today to say the Raptor, a fighter designed to cruise a supersonic speeds and shoot down other airplanes, is ideal for escorting U.S. ships and fighting off the hot military enemy of the moment, bands of pirates — especially if you pair it with Northrop's spy drone (scandalously over budget) and an in-flight refueling tanker (like the Northrop model McInerney consulted on).

See the clip above, found by Mike Byhoff in our video department (and mentioned in a previous post).

It doesn't take an Air Force general to see how bizarre McInerney's military reasoning is. The analyst told Fox the F-22, at $146 million each, would be great against pirates due to its fast "reaction time" and 20 milimeter cannon.

He neglected to mention virtually every U.S. fighter made in the last 30 years carries such a cannon (usually the six-barrel M-61 Vulcan, the same one the F-22 uses), including the F/A-18 Hornet already in use by the U.S. Navy (pictured left). He also fails to mention that, no matter how fast the F-22 might be, it can't be based off an aircraft carrier. So its reaction time could never be as good (from a land base on, say, the Arabian Peninsula) as a Hornet or other existing Navy jet floating in the waters nearest the pirates.

Finally, McInerney fails to mention that, though capable of ground attack, the F-22 is optimized for air-to-air operations, i.e., shooting down other fighters.

The idea of going after hostage-taking pirates with an advanced fighter jet and a high-altitude drone is absurd on its face. Prior to intercepting its prey, a pirate ship could be taken with anything from a cheap, Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator (for small ships) to an inexpensive helicopter to almost any existing fighter plane. Once hostages are involved, there's very a little any attack aircraft could do, short of dropping in some commandos.

But military realism need not matter to either Fox or its shill general. McInerney's fantasy not only helps his benefactors — we need the Raptor to keep away evil pirates, you see — it also no doubt holds a certain sexy Top Gun appeal to many Fox News viewers. It's a win-win, at least until more people start calling Fox on its weapons-lobby footsie.

(First thumbnail picture, of F-22, by Rob Shenk)

Friedman is set to meet tomorrow with Fox News chief Roger Ailes and John Moody, the news network's executive vice president for editorial, the source said. Friedman will have a chance to plead his case, but the meeting could well end with the columnist losing his job.

Friedman is in hot water for posting to FoxNews.com Thursday a review of the forthcoming movie Wolverine. The freelance columnist based his comments on an unfinished version of the movie that leaked onto the internet last week. "It's so much easier than going out in the rain!" he wrote. "I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer."

You can imagine how this went over at Wolverine producer 20th Century Fox, which last week called in the FBI to find out who leaked the film. The studio complained corporate sibling Fox News, according to Nikki Finke, and parent company News Corp. publicly condemned the review and requested its removal. Fox News promptly deleted the piece.

Finke wrote that Ailes then fired Friedman, a development seemingly confirmed by a statement News Corp. supplied to the New York Times, reading, "Fox News… terminated Mr. Friedman."

But Fox News' only statement on the affair (also given to the Times) is that "This is an internal matter that we aren't prepared to discuss at this time."

And in fact Friedman has not been fired, according to the Fox News source, although he could well be terminated during tomorrow's meeting. The delay in firing Friedman (despite News Corp.'s announcement) could be read as a play by Ailes to assert the news division's independence from film studio 20th within the News Corp. empire.

The meeting also gives Fox News time to reconcile its own definition of journalistic ethics with 20th Century Fox's. The film studio says Friedman shouldn't have broken the law in the service of a story. But Fox News seems more comfortable with such mischief. Network anchor Shep Smith wasn't fired after he was arrested for running over a competing reporter with his car so he could snag parking space, even though the incident resulted in felony battery charges (later apparently dropped without explanation).

When Bill O'Reilly's former producer accused the Fox News host of sexual harassment, producing lengthy conversation transcripts O'Reilly never denied, sibling publication the New York Post slammed her in a story headlined "'Lunatic' O'Reilly Gal Went Nuts in Bar." O'Reilly settled the suit and, of course, retains his job.

And Fox is unrepentant about stalking a liberal blogger, sending a camera crew to tail her from her apartment across state lines to Virginia.

The Observer reports that Abrams has been talking to some of the best media writers in NYC about coming over to start his "on-line Web property that will include some level of blogging of and about the media," as he puts it, all lawyerly-like:

But the Observer has learned the list of writers and editors who've spoken to Mr. Abrams includes Gawker's politics editor Alex Pareene, Advertising Age 'Media Guy' columnist Simon Dumenco, former New York Magazine senior editor Jesse Oxfeld, Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici, and The Observer's own John Koblin.
So far none of the conversations have resulted in a hiring.

Ha, well the bright side is that all the good writers are now conflicted out of writing about it, so I can write about it! The description of exactly what Abrams wants here is a bit vague, but evidently he'd like a respectable media blog, run by respectable people, to confer a level of legitimacy upon his PR firm, which is decidedly not legitimate, because it pays active journalists to be consultants for things they might cover, or are already covering, which is the very DEFINITION of a conflict of interest.

Here's Abrams' own defense of his business model, which, we'll just note, assumes that you, the readers, are none too insightful.

But hey, sounds like he's trying to get some good talent ($50-80K salaries!), and assuming that he left them alone, this blog could be good! The downside is that it will be fronting a sellout factory. You can take that for what it's worth. Which, in this job market, is nothing. [NYO]

In her op-ed, Daphne Merkin cast the Madoff scam not as the evil actions of one man and a handful of credulous money managers who funneled billions to him, but as a natural result of people buying into Madoff's "mishpocha, [a sense of] of being part of an extended family." And everyone who lost money was not a "victim":

No one was holding a gun to anyone's head, saying sign up with Mr. Madoff or else...
(Although those who were duped are referred to in the press as "victims," it seems to me it would be more accurate to define them as casualties. Victims are specifically sought out; casualties are an indirect consequence of some larger action.)

Daphne Merkin's parenthetical disclosure in the piece said, in full: "I did not know Mr. Madoff nor did I invest with his firm, but have a sibling who did business with him."

Quite the understatement, Daphne! Her brother is J. Ezra Merkin, the fabulously wealthy money manager who reaped millions from clients by, as the Times says, "placing all of the investors' eggs in Mr. Madoff's basket and charging a hefty fee for doing so." Merkin earned 1.5% of investor's capital (minimum investment: $500K) for handing their money over to Madoff. His Ascot Partners fund lost "nearly all" of its $1.8 billion.

Now Ezra, who had "what is believed to be the world's biggest collection of Rothko paintings," has shuttered his fund, resigned as chairman of GMAC, gotten tons of bad press, and is waiting for the wave of investor lawsuits that's surely coming his way.

So it's not all that surprising his sister, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, would try to do a little PR for him. Don't blame the big financiers, this thing is everyone's fault, hey! But it is pretty surprising the Times would allow such an obviously conflicted piece to be published with such a paltry disclosure. And the Public Editor agrees. A reader forwarded us this email they received from Clark Hoyt this morning:

Dear Reader:

Thank you for writing about the Daphne Merkin Op-Ed in Sunday's Times. I agree with you that the disclosure that Ms. Merkin's unnamed sibling "did business" with Bernard Madoff was completely inadequate. Given the degree of J. Ezra Merkin's involvement with Madoff, I think much more needed to be spelled out — including name, nature of the relationship and the subsequent lawsuits — so that readers could make up their own minds about whether any of it was relevant to Ms. Merkin's argument that Madoff's victims should be called casualties because they were eager to invest with him. Of course, they wouldn't have been eager to do so if they had known he was a swindler. And it has been reported that, in at least one case involving J. Ezra Merkin, his clients did not know that their funds were going ultimately to Madoff.

I have corresponded with Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of The Times, who agrees that there should have been greater disclosure. Mr. Rosenthal does not contemplate an editor's note. I am considering what I want to do about this.

Sincerely,

Clark Hoyt
Public Editor
The New York Times

A tipster tells us that Zuckerberg sent an email to Facebook staff reacting to criticism of the changes: "He said something like 'the most disruptive companies don't listen to their customers.'" Another tipster who has seen the email says Zuckerberg implied that companies were "stupid" for "listening to their customers." The anti-customer diktat has many Facebook employees up in arms, we hear. (Anyone care to send us the full memo?)

"Disruptive" is a good description for the changes Facebook made. Unlike past changes, like the controversial introduction of Facebook's News Feed — a summary of friends' activities on the site, including status updates — or the tweaks Facebook made last fall, Facebook's new "Stream" takes away far more than it adds. No wonder even Silicon Valley insiders, normally the biggest champions of anything and everything brand new, hate it.

Damn the critics, full speed ahead! That's what Zuckerberg seems to be saying. if our tipster is right, Zuckerberg would rather Facebook be "disruptive" than, say, popular, useful, or successful.

What's a good example of a disruptive company? Why, Twitter, which Zuckerberg tried to buy for $500 million in cash and stock. Having failed to grab Twitter, Zuckerberg has redesigned his website in its image — a steady stream of real-time updates which are impossible to follow unless you stay on the website all day long. Which sounds great, unless you have a job, a family, or a life.

The notion that Facebook should not listen to its customers contradicts what Zuckerberg was saying just a month ago when he was reacting to a groundswell of criticism over Facebook's new terms of service, which seemed to imply Facebook could keep publishing users' text and photos even after they deleted their accounts. At the time, Zuckerberg took listening to feedback to a loopy extreme, promising the online equivalent of a constitutional convention for Facebook users to decide how the site's legalese should read.

There's no such user convention promised over Facebook's design, however. But who would expect a 24-year-old to be anything but fickle and inconsistent?

Here's the question: If Zuckerberg is no longer listening to Facebook's users, who is he listening to? We hear that Facebook's top executives are furious over Zuckerberg's close personal ties to former Facebook executive Matt Cohler (pictured to Zuckerberg's left, above).

Cohler, an early Facebook employee who helped direct the company's strategy, left last fall to join Benchmark Capital, a prominent Silicon Valley venture-capital firm best known for backing eBay. But he has remained, to this day, on Facebook's payroll as a special advisor to Zuckerberg.

Last June, that seemed untroubling. But last month, Benchmark invested in Twitter at an eye-popping $230 million valuation. And Zuckerberg's conscious, obvious mimicking of Twitter is the best endorsement he could have given the startup.

(Photo via SiliconBeat)