The public editor (ombudsman) of the New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, has looked into the newspaper’s extremely questionable actions in a recent situation — withholding key facts from articles at the request of the Obama administration and then actively misleading readers — and concluded that the paper did the right thing. I could not disagree more.

Let me note here that I’ve known Brisbane for many years. We’ve been colleagues at several news companies, and he’s a friend. But I believe he got this one very wrong.

The case at hand: Raymond Davis, who either works for the CIA or has extremely close ties, shot and killed two people in Pakistan recently. (The Times says he’s a “private contractor” — read: mercenary — who provided security for CIA agents; the Guardian says he’s a CIA spy.)  The U.S. government persuaded the Times and several other news organizations to hold back on his affiliation/employment after the shootings, which have caused a huge uproar in Pakistan, a nation that has increasingly tense relations with America.

But the Times didn’t just withhold that information. It actively dissembled. As Brisbane writes:

For nearly two weeks, The Times tried to report on the Davis affair while sealing off the C.I.A connection. In practice, this meant its stories contained material that, in the cold light of retrospect, seems very misleading. Here’s an example from an article on Feb. 11 that referred to a statement issued by the American government:

“The statement on Friday night said that Mr. Davis was assigned as an ‘administrative and technical’ member of the staff at the American Embassy in Islamabad. But his exact duties have not been explained, and the reason he was driving alone with a Glock handgun, a pocket telescope and GPS equipment has fueled speculation in the Pakistani news media.”

How can a news outlet stay credible when readers learn later that it has concealed what it knows?

The answer is it cannot. And, as Brisbane himself notes, what the Times did was more than simply conceal. When it reported that “Davis’ exact duties have not been explained,” it was, quite simply, being deceitful to its audience.

I appreciate that the newspaper was trying to do the right thing here. It wanted to help protect the life of someone who might be in serious jeopardy if it told the truth it knew. The editors believed they had two options only: Tell the full story (or as much as they actually knew), or deceive the readers by telling only part of it truthfully and using deliberately misleading language in places. I’d have some discomfort picking either option, though if those were genuinely the only two choices I’d have picked the first.

But there was a third option: Say nothing at all — pretend the situation doesn’t exist and write nothing about it. The Times makes daily decisions about what it considers newsworthy, not to mention what stories it feels it’s gathered enough information to tell in the first place.

The say-nothing option wouldn’t have been a lot more palatable; indeed, it would have made the paper look as if it didn’t have a clue about a major story, or, as people would have speculated, that it was not publishing anything for its own (probably political) reasons. But it would have been less dishonorable than the route the paper chose to travel.

Printing nothing would have been journalistic nonfeasance, what Webster describes as the “failure to do what ought to be done.” What the newspaper printed was, in my view, malfeasance — outright journalistic wrongdoing.

At MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, Jack Driscoll sees Mediactive as a common-sense follow-up to We the Media. The book, he writes, assumes “we no longer are receptacles of information but active participants in the process, who are called on to break out of our ‘comfort zone’ like a chick cracking open its shell.”

Is it finally dawning on the news business that Apple is not a friend, nor an ally, nor even a partner in any true sense of the world?There are some signs of sanity emerging in the week since Apple announced its terms of engagement for offering subscriptions via mobile apps, rules that were arrogant even by that company’s standard.

To recap: The company’s new in-app subscription rules, issued a week ago in a press release purporting to quote Supreme Leader Steve Jobs, reinforced Apple’s determination to be publications’ gatekeeper in every sense of that word. What took publishers aback was the financial part of the rules: To publish via Apple’s iOS ecosystem — currently the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) – news organizations must agree to give Apple a 30 percent cut of every transaction with audiences. Apple had already made it clear that it would take a cut of in-app advertising sales. Moreover, publishers were not allowed to charge a higher price for the app subscription than they do in any other format — and they couldn’t even put a link into the app showing potential customers how to buy subscriptions elsewhere.

This was too much even for some of Apple’s many media-business acolytes. Even so, the most serious protests have come not for news organizations but rather from companies like Rhapsody, which sells music subscriptions and realized that Apple’s plan was either to kill or own their businesses. News organizations, whether out of fear or caution or both, have been largely silent. A few have already acceded to Apple’s demands.

Meanwhile, after having adapted Readability software as part of its Safari browser, Apple refused to allow this tiny startup to offer the same functionality as an app — because that would interfere with Apple’s insistence that it alone will control how anyone makes money.

All of this goes to the bigger picture in the new publishing environment: the need for content creators to recognize that they need to actively seek options. One of the most interesting is Google’s One Pass system, which is more in the category of announcement-ware than reality at this point. The much lower cost to publishers — 10 percent instead of 30 percent — is the most obvious lure. Another, for publishers, is sharing key subscriber information, but if Google is smart it will offer users an opt-out in at least some circumstances.

An interesting experiment is Time’s Sports Illustrated mega-approach, called “All Access,” or a subscription to print plus online versions (other than iPad). The mistake here, I believe, is charging more for a digital-only subscription than a print one. The economics of that approach are good only for Time, not its customers who are not as stupid as the company thinks they are.

The All Access system also gives Time editorial control over what it produces. What remains the most publisher-antagonistic element of the Apple ecosystem is the one thing that most media companies still hate to discuss: To even exist in that ecosystem, they must give Apple — not their own editors — final say over whether the content they produce is acceptable under Apple’s “we’ll disallow or remove it if we don’t like it” rules.

You find not a hint of this, for example, in this week’s “Media Equation” column by the New York Times’ normally sensible David Carr. This isn’t the first time he’s neglected that particular elephant in the room (and the New York Times Co.’s dealings with Apple remain a mystery that gets no comment from the company), but I wish he’d address the issue one of these days, as it’s not trivial and goes to the heart of free speech in an online world.

I’m grateful to folks who’ve found and reported mistakes in the book. Not only do I plan to name you on a special page, but I’ll be offering you a copy of the next print edition of the book (later this year, I hope). I haven’t worked out the details, but consider this a promise.

Fine print: As you might guess, this applies only to the first person to report each specific mistake.

UPDATED

Apple has finally clarified what it will demand of publishers that want to sell subscriptions through its iPhone and iPad app ecosystem. The demands are extortionate, and traditional publishers agreeing to them are crazy if not suicidal.

Here’s Apple’s official pronouncement. Key items:

Apple will permit publications to sell subscriptions from inside their apps. But look at what Apple then demands:

Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

The arrogance of this is stunning. Consider, first, that publishers are not allowed to sell their content at a higher price inside the App Store even though Apple takes 30 percent of the money. And then consider that publishers are not allowed even to show their audiences, from inside the apps, how they can bypass Apple and get the subscription directly from the publishers themselves.

The second demand is in line with Apple’s current insistence that it can decide what content is allowed within news organizations’ apps. The cowardice they’ve shown in this arena has surely emboldened Apple to extend it in this anti-customer way.

None of this should surprise anyone who’s been watching Apple take firmer and firmer control of the iOS ecosystem, or who’s watched media companies compete for the right to be Apple’s pets. But it’s discouraging nonetheless.

The Apple deal will make more sense to startup publishers that want to avoid billing issues by leaving the back-end finances to Apple. Even they, however, should realize that they’re turning over their futures to a company that is not working in their interest in the long run.

What this should do is lead publishers, especially traditional ones, to speed up their development of HTML5 applications and apps for other operating systems like Android. But as the lemmings head for the cliff, I’m not holding my breath waiting for them to change course.

UPDATE: Ryan Carson pleads with people to “fight Apple’s subscription extortion.”

We already know that Arianna Huffington is smart. She and her small team have built a media company from nothing in just a few years, and now they’re flipping it to AOL, where she’ll be content editor in chief. The price sounds bizarrely high to me at $315 million, but so do lots of prices these days in what looks like a new Internet bubble.

Others have commented at length on the synergy of the deal. If AOL is going after a link-driven community, the blend could work in the long run. The Huffington Post has been evolving from its origins, as the left-wing op-ed page of the Internet, into a blend of aggregation, curation, pandering — all of which have been done with some genuinely intriguing if not innovative technology initiatives — and some home-grown content. The first three of those are likely to be, in the end, much more important for the business than the original content.

AOL has been rolling the dice at an ever-more-frantic rate lately on digital content. The reported $25 million it paid for TechCrunch made sense to me, and I think it’s way too early to say, as many are doing, that the Patch local-news service is failing. But there’s a common thread in many of the content initiatives: paying low (or no) money to the people providing the content, and having lots and lots of it.

Indeed, the Huffington Post’s home-grown content, for the most part, has been especially notable for its low cost to Huffington: low as in free. Although some actual paid journalists work for the organization, her blogger network is an amazing achievement; she’s persuaded untold numbers of people to write for nothing, to have their names on the page as compensation for their labor. Exploitive? Sure, in a way, but let’s also recognize the fact that people want to put their stuff on the site. No one writes for the New York Times op-ed page for the money; it’s for the platform to spread ideas.

And, based on the email Huffington sent to her bloggers, that’s the model she plans to continue. Here’s part of that email:

Together, our companies will have a combined base of 117 million unique U.S. visitors a month — and 250 million around the world — so your posts will have an even bigger impact on the national and global conversation. That’s the only real change you’ll notice — more people reading what you wrote.

It’s hard to imagine something that sends a more dismissive message. Which is why I’m hoping that Huffington will recognize how this looks and then do the right thing: namely, cut a bunch of checks to a bunch of the most productive contributors on whose work she’s built a significant part of her new fortune. They’ve earned some of the spoils. I think Huffington is smart enough to know not just the PR value of doing this. And, and feel free to call me naive for saying this, I also think she’s wise enough to know why she should do it on more ethical grounds, too.

Updated: I added several resources as well as text to show device support. I also clarified the introduction a bit.

A great discussion began on Quora asking “What apps should every journalist have on their iPhone?” Both professional journalists and recreational reporters jumped in on the discussion with enough suggestions to cover most bases when you need to capture news and publish it quickly from a mobile device. While not all are as useful to non-professional journalists, having some of the same apps available can serve the you well in the pursuit to be an active media participant.

For this post, I’ve pulled from the best suggestions there and have added some of my own. I’ve also added Android alternatives to iPhone-only apps. I’ll be updating the Resources section with more mobile apps and welcome your suggestions in the comments.

Apps that improve phone calls and SMS
Actual phone calls and SMS (text messages) are already the killer apps of mobile. However, they can be enhanced by some useful applications.

• Skype offers flexibility as an IM and live-voice client, giving options beyond using just your mobile carrier for communication. (iPhone, Android, Blackberry)
• bnter – Bnter allows you to tell stories by recreating your SMS conversations and publish them to the web. It’s an interesting way to visualize a text conversation. (Any device with a  web browser)
• Apple’s own FaceTime video chat client adds the nonverbal communication that comes with face-to-face conversation. (iPhone)
• Fring is a video call and chat client that works as a good Android alternative to FaceTime (iPhone, Android)
• GroupMe helps you organize and send SMS messages to groups of people. (iPhone, Android)

Apps that improve consumption
While individual news organizations are creating great applications of their own, RSS and Twitter clients are still a great way to customize your news consumption experience.

• Reeder is an iPhone RSS app that connects with a user’s Google Reader Account.
• Google’s own Reader app for Android.
• NetNewsWire is an RSS reader with a solid version for the iPhone. It also syncs with Google Reader.
• Twitter lists are an efficient route for consuming news via mobile device. Make or borrow lists of both individual journalists and publications where you get news.

Apps that improve note taking
While many note applications exist, here are a couple good places to start. Much will depend with personal preference over time, but features to look for are organization, tagging, search capability and the ability to sync to the cloud and other devices.

• Evernote allows the user to take notes, tag them and then sync them across multiple devices as the notes are backed up on the cloud. (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Win Mobile)
• SimpleNote is a popular note-taking application that replaces the iPhone’s standard Notes app. If you’re a Mac user, an open-source application called Notational Velocity adds syncing to Simplenote and the pair are quickly becoming a popular combo. (iPhone/Mac)

Apps for recording
The photo, video and audio capturing bases can be covered with just a few good apps. Here are several to start with.

• Instagram is a crowd favorite for taking photos and publishing them quickly. (iPhone)
• Picplz offers some of the same functionality as Instagram, but is available on Android. (iPhone, Android)
• For audio, both CinchCast and AudioBoo are worth checking out. Each allow for quickly capturing and then publishing audio, integrating with many social sites. (Both on iPhone and Android)
• For live streaming video, Bambuser, JustinTV, Qik and Ustream are all good options. (All support both iPhone and Android)
• Soundcloud allows other users to comment on the timeline of published audio files. This is a great feature for discussing long files of breaking news that haven’t yet been edited as users can quickly see the places creating the most discussion and jump right to that point. (iPhone, Android)

Apps for publishing
Many of the recording apps have their own publishing features built-in. However, the apps listed below help you interact with other publishing tools through your mobile device.

• For blogging, WordPress, Posterous and Tumblr all have mobile applications that allow you to publish to your blog from your phone. (All on iPhone and Android)
• Disqus offers an application that allows you to curate and respond to comments on your blog as well as comment elsewhere. It integrates with WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and other publishing platforms. (iPhone, Android)

Apps that do other useful things

• Dropbox is a file-storage application that simplifies sharing files across devices and sharing them with others. As it syncs to the cloud, it also serves as a backup application and offers a lot of use to those recording in volatile situations where there’s a risk of a phone being confiscated. (iPhone, Android)
• Photoshop Express is a nice tool for editing photos and images on your mobile phone. (iPhone, Android)
• 5-0 Radio is a police scanner application that can be useful for keeping up with local crime and safety on the iPhone. Scanner Radio is a well-rated Android alternative.
• Glympse allows you to publish your location in real time. It varies from other location check-in apps in that it allows you to specify times at a location and map a path of travel. It has interesting implications for covering a story that changes locations over time.

Many, many more apps are out there with promising journalistic applications. Jump in on the comments and tell us what you’ve found to help you consume and create media.