The following 3 videos first appeared on the Help Me Investigate blog, Help Me Investigate: Health and Help Me Investigate: Welfare. I thought I’d collect them together here too. As always, these are published under a Creative Commons licence, so you are welcome to re-use, edit and combine with other video, with attribution (and a link!).

First, Heather Brooke’s tips for starting to investigate public bodies:

Her advice on investigating health, welfare and crime:

And on using the Data Protection Act:

By Ryan Chittum Sure enough, the Justice Department charged former Credit Suisse CDO executive Kareem Serageldin with fraud for allegedly artificially inflating CDO values. Two of his underlings pleaded guilty and say Serageldin orchestrated the scheme. The NYT: The government’s case against the former Credit Suisse traders depicts a brazen scheme to artificially increase the price of bonds on their books...

Brian Steinberg, of Advertising Age, says the much anticipated adverts are released early as companies aim to create online buzz for their products

The Sacramento Bee has suspended award-winning photojournalist Bryan Patrick over a front page photograph they say he digitally manipulated, and in the aftermath Bee editors have launched an investigation.

By Ryan Chittum News that Sony's board has picked a new CEO gets page-one play in The Wall Street Journal, apparently because Kazuo Hirai gave the paper an exclusive interview. But the story is weak, almost entirely from Hirai's and the company's perspective, and it probably should have been stuck somewhere inside the paper. There's not even much news value here, much...

Location-based photo sharing app Trover has rolled out an update that adds a lists feature, tagging functionality and a revamped news feed that includes user curation.

Philadelphia Media Network and its two city dailies have been put on the auction block by owner Alden Global Capital. Is the private equity firm choosing the Journal Register Co., which it bought last summer, over the struggling Philadelphia dailies?

AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group announced Thursday that it will launch the Huffington Post Streaming Network — which will stream live news video from New York and Los Angeles studios — this summer.

ConnecTV, a social TV partnership of more than 200 local TV stations, today launched online and for the iPad, providing synchronized content and conversations around what is on TV.

The New York Times is planning to remake its technology blog (Bits) and its health blog along the lines of its DealBook business blog, the company said Thursday.

Digital advertising revenue across The New York Times Co.’s digital properties — primarily NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com, Boston.com, About.com — fell 4.9% to $95.7 million from $100.6 million, according to the company's fourth-quarter earnings report released today.

James Q. Wilson, “Angry about inequality? Don’t blame the rich,” the Washington Post–argues that income inequality is increasing, but that it’s not something to worry about, partly due to social mobility.

Tax Foundation, “Income Inequality Is Lower Now Than It Was Under Clinton“, via Paul Caron–arguing that inequality has been decreasing.

NY Times, “Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds“:

The findings by the two professors — Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Jacob L. Vigdor of Duke — were generally seconded by a spectrum of other experts with several caveats and an admonition that the study should not be seen as declaring the end of all segregation.

Via the Freakonomics blog, this working paper by Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian tackles a big question with an interesting design. Abstract:

This paper examines the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. To establish a causal relationship, we exploit time variation in food aid caused by fluctuations in U.S. wheat production together with cross-sectional variation in a country’s tendency to receive any food aid from the United States. Our estimates show that an increase in U.S. food aid increases the incidence, onset and duration of civil conflicts in recipient countries. Our results suggest that the effects are larger for smaller scale civil conflicts. No effect is found on interstate warfare.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, will be in court on Friday to appeal a ruling denying him bail.

News Corp. named Bloomberg LP executive Lex Fenwick as its new CEO of The Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones & Co., ending a search that began after Les Hinton left in July, a casualty of the phone-hacking scandal that’s embroiled the company in Britain.

Unlike his predecessor, who was a longtime Murdoch soldier and confidant, Fenwick is a News Corp. outsider, and his selection could be seen as aimed at helping distance the division from the phone-hacking troubles. Fenwick spent 25 years at Dow Jones rival Bloomberg, most recently was CEO of Bloomberg Ventures, a unit he started in 2008 to enhance and expand existing Bloomberg products. Talks to hire him as CEO were reported recently by The New York Times.

Hinton left as he faced scrutiny for his role as executive chairman of News Corp. division News International, which published the scandalized (and since shuttered) British tabloid News of the World. In resigning, Hinton apologized for the actions of News of the World while saying he was “ignorant of what apparently happened.” Dow Jones president Todd Larsen has been leading the company in the interim.

Fenwick will be based in New York and report to Chase Carey, president and COO of News Corp. He starts in his new position Feb. 13. 

The Sacramento Bee has suspended an award-winning photographer for combining two photos of an egret eating a frog into one image, an ethical violation that Sean Elliot, president of the National Press Photographers Association, called a “betrayal.”

Elliot said… Read more

Marc Raboy and Jeremy Shtern’s collection Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada is a series of essays by Canadian media and communications scholars on the past, present and future of Canadian communication rights.

read more

Mr. Fenwick, a long-time Bloomberg L.P. executive, is filling a six-month vacancy created when Les Hinton resigned amid the phone-hacking scandal in Britain.