described as an internet product prodigy and data crusader aaron swartz co-founder of reddit is dead just twenty six years old family friends and the online community are mourning his apparent suicide coming up a look back at his life his appearances here on r t and the federal charges many blame for his death. we've all heard of the wars in iraq and afghanistan and the covert missions the u.s. is undertaking in yemen pakistan and libya well like a look now at the new a shadow war in mali a western forces have been pitted against islamic rebels. and is it possible for a television news network to separate real journalism from reality shows and

entertainment is it bad for business or the new reality we'll have some answers coming up next. is monday january fourteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching. i want to begin today by taking a few moments to honor and remember aaron swartz who was found dead in his apartment in new york on friday night apparently from a suicide here's a quick look back at his life. even as a young man programmer aaron swartz was described as a computer wizard among his many accomplishments during his short life aaron helped create r.s.s. at age fourteen the tool now universally used to help users subscribe to online information he also formed a company that later merged with reddit he also co-founded demand progress

a group that fights efforts to restrict internet freedoms and also promote social justice issues these were causes near and dear to his heart and many times he appeared on this network to lay out in detail the ways in which it was like the patriot act as well as propose internet laws like sopa and pipa actually violated the constitution party had a chance to speak with aaron over the years his message always resilient always promoting a free and open internet the world is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government doesn't get to just spy and knew that they need at least independent improvement they need to go to a nonpartisan independent judge and get permission right i mean it's it's common sense and it's the foundation of the constitution's the government is constrained by having someone else check off to make sure they're not abusing their powers july fourth is a good time to remember what this country was founded that wasn't founded on here was unfounded on terror it wasn't founded on the idea that there are some criminals

out there so we better take away everyone's rights that's not on the exact opposite notion that it's better to let a guilty man go free than the put an innocent person in jail that it's better to protect everyone's for you know the speech than the crackdown and make sure nobody is ever offended and yeah freedom is messy is the former president said but i think it's important to protect the whole promise of our constitutional rights is that they're freedoms that are so important to us that yes we take risks on the physical risks to protect them i mean you know we have a whole system of trials without what we'd be safer if we could just throw people in jail randomly probably a little bit that's not a crime a country i would want to live. about a year and a half ago swartz was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to j. store and a store the subscription only service for distributing scientific and literary journals he was accused of illegally downloading about five million articles and documents and making them public his trial was scheduled to begin in april and the swartz family says they blame in part the u.s.

criminal justice system for his death in a statement they wrote quote erin's death is not simply a personal tragedy it is the product of a criminal justice system right with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach decisions made by officials in the massachusetts u.s. attorney's office and at mit contributed to his death the u.s. attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges carrying potentially over thirty years in prison to punish an alleged crime had no victim meanwhile unlike j. store and mighty refuse to stand up for aaron and its own communities most cherished principles today we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost services for aaron swartz will be held tuesday outside of chicago he was just twenty six years old and for more on the life and legacy of aaron forth i was joined earlier by archie correspondent well in

a quite naive now we first discussed the recent interview she had with heart. i interviewed aaron back in october i was working on a story with respect to cybersecurity and cyberwar my impression of him is that he's very well read he is very principled and he knows everything there is to know about cyber security at least in my opinion he's a tough critic though he took the position where he believed that the u.s. government and us corporations were beginning are beginning to use the internet as an offensive tool in the internet he said is becoming part of this global so called battlefield where viruses are now being spread from country to country he said that the obama administration he believed was beginning to use the internet as a weapon instead of spreading freedom of speech and democracy as you pointed out in your package aaron swartz was a pioneer of a free internet and internet that would not be censored

a vehicle that would allow all people to have access to all information he was quite kind the interview was about ten to fifteen minutes long but he was very easy to access he was readily available for the interview very well mannered in my brief interview with him and seemed very very determined and loyal to his cause of cause again we can repeat to keeping the internet open and free of any censorship or any government intrusion and as we know that cause got him into some legal trouble we just found out today marina that federal prosecutors prosecutors have actually dropped the case against him this is pretty common when the defendant in a case dies but there is a bigger story here and that is the story of the chief prosecutor in this case carmen ortiz what can you tell us about her and about the way she pursued aaron well i could tell you this the suicide of aaron swartz has prompted a wave of protests and criticism directed at u.s.

attorney carmen ortiz here she was seeking. to put aaron in prison for thirty five years are in charges for. him illegally downloading millions of academic articles as you pointed out chris you know swartz was indicted on thirteen counts including wire fraud and computer fraud by sunday evening nearly nine thousand people have already signed an online petition asking president obama to remove ortiz as u.s. attorney now a lot of critics believe that ortiz was going after erin to make an example out of him and that the punishment that she was seeking did not justify the alleged crime that she was using her position of power to intimidate him to take advantage of his circumstance and she has a history of going after defendants with what some say very very heavy sentences so right now there is

a lot of blowback headed her way thousands of people on line criticizing the way that she dealt with aaron swartz as keats and dealt with him. as a human being and we should also mention that according to the wall street journal swartz's attorney was attempting to negotiate a plea deal as recently as last wednesday but ortiz's office reports would not budge very much because of something else i read about carmen ortiz is that from what i understand she was named massachusetts person of the year a couple of years ago two thousand and eleven somebody considered perhaps a choice for future governors or certainly somebody that the spotlight was shining on perhaps for a different reason now you know that erin's death and all that it has brought about has come to light i want to talk to you about another aspect of this case and that is massachusetts institute of technology mit announced it has launched an internal

probe into the events leading up to aaron swartz his death just go into a little bit of detail about. the mit aspect of this story well aaron wasn't a student at mit but it was it was mit that was the prime reason that led to the federal trial against him we should mention on sunday the president of massachusetts institute of technology did write a letter expressing his condolences and referred to aaron swartz as a gifted brilliant creative young man and mired by many now on the way the institution played a main role in his lawsuit is because according to prosecutors according to the again swartz in two thousand and eleven he was arrested and charged with sneaking into mit's network closet and using the school's connection to download millions of academic and research files from g. store without paying for them and that's how mit is involved store

according to reports didn't want to press any charges but mit did not come out publicly to defend swartz in any case or to prevent this prosecution from going forward in the aftermath of his suicide and his friends and families saying that this prosecution in this case contributed to his suicide mit is now launching an internal investigation to see if the school in any way contributed to the feds that have unfolded in past days and for those of us going to shocked and saddened by aaron swartz was really interesting sort of watching everything unfold on twitter i mean from the new york times to the new yorker wired to all of the you know web savvy publications remembering honoring aaron i thought this was interesting too the u.s. senator ron wyden of oregon tweeted this over the weekend he said deeply saddened by the loss of aaron swartz i was privileged to work with him on. his advocacy for

the greater good will be missed i mean really briefly marina just talk about the influence words had on policy especially. proposed laws on internet freedoms he had to influence not just on internet freedoms and policy i mean this this young man was considered a you know a prodigy a computer prodigy he but first and foremost in the last few years of his life that was his alternate focus to keep the internet free and open and accessible to all users to to prevent any government intrusion censorship or surveillance but we should mention in case are viewers don't know that aaron swartz at the age of thirteen filters first web site at the age of fourteen he was the coo creator of the r.s.s. feed he developed several popular websites such as reddit helped create creative commons dot com and he also lastly founded demand progress an internet group that campaigns against web censorship people ultimately known as

a cyber robinhood as zone one that always wanted to stand up for internet freedom for anybody that was going online life that was much too short but a legacy that will live on for quite some time r.t. correspondent marina important talking to us about aaron swartz thanks so much. well we're quite some time now we here at r t have been covering the issue of drones both from the international and domestic perspective now in particular we've been watching local police departments consider and adopt the use of surveillance drones well now the big apple is thinking about buying. here's a picture of new york police commissioner ray kelly during a rare public interview late last week during that conversation kelly said that the new york police department is looking into the use of drones for surveillance purposes kelly said that he wouldn't rule out any potential tool that could help the n.y.p.d. do its job better in particular kelly said that drones could help the police size

up protests and demonstrations but how much more how does the n.y.p.d. really need it already has three thousand closed circuit cameras as to use extra eyes plus of course the thirty four thousand five hundred officers in uniform which amounts to approximately sixty nine thousand eyes drones do have the advantage of flying in the sky of course and providing an aerial view now how the n.y.p.d. would handle the privacy issues that go hand in hand with drone surveillance that is an open question however the new york police department has recently come under fire for its huge spying apparatus which has focused on surveilling muslim americans in the tri state area so just what will new york city look like with drones dotting its famous sky line well if we see something we'll say something. i want to turn now to a developing story out of africa a shadow war once again pitting pitting western troops against islamic radicals it's happening in the northern city of kona in mali

a landlocked country in the western part of africa last week insurgents are control of the region and soon after french forces got involved it was apparently not enough though rebel forces are making advances despite french airstrikes though the french military action did prompt an islamic leader to say that france had quote opened the gate. of hell for all of its citizens today the associated press reported that the u.s. has offered drones to help in the fight earlier today i brought a knee a quite a founder of the democracy and conflict research institute to help us understand more about this region and about the conflict unfolding there. you know the molly has actually been at war scenes general area of last year and this is when people marlins who had been living in libya and fighting for colonel gadhafi to their arms hundreds of them and went all the way to mali now mali doesn't share a border with libya so if they had to go through need and all the jury and the

guard and they started fighting the government as a continuation of ethnic basis. lasted for over fifty years and the government of the mali an army who do us i've been training for about four or five years and some of us have written raising questions about you collapsed very suddenly and their fighters took over the northern sixty percent of mali but they also had allies they were fighting for independence their allies were islamists who wanted to impose sharia law the site took over most of the country and they were implementing harsh rule cutting of. stormy. couples who've children out of wedlock a very harsh condition and so the africans damali and said the rest of the africans took the keys to the united nations seeking help to take back their country one other quick piece that is very important that i forgot in march the one of the

soldiers that the u.s. trained actually overthrew the democratic government so in mali you have a confluence of actually four crisis wow so much going on there and i think it's important to note too that mali gained its independence from france back in one thousand nine hundred sixty and then had its first democratic elections in one thousand nine hundred two because a little bit about you know just what happened what's happening now is that undue sort of that kind of progress that was made oh yes absolutely destroyed it completely because in fact the kool-aid by the u.s. trained soldier called cutting our model sanogo who do you. in over ten years he's been to the united states like six seven times so extensive trainee there was a month to go for the president to end his term former president i might have to money to really hear about through him forced him into exile and govern and the west africans forced cuts in son to go out so he was actually trained by the us

government and overthrew that and look radically i like that got. hard for long on democratic government so it pained many of us and that's one of the many criticisms that many of us have about u.s. policy towards mali but even seems that a kid in my view the africans have been the un because the one thing they wanted to avoid they wanted to help mali take back his country establish order but he said they did no want to do it like george bush did which is invade iraq outside of international law so they've been spending months in the u.n. security council begging for support beggin for legal authorization begging for funding and it's been very slow and i frankly have been critical of the u.s. rule in the security council just a couple of days ago i came across a piece of news where the main u.s. soldier the chief for the chairman of the joint chiefs was here well mali we don't think it is serious enough to you holly is hugely seriously destabilize all of west

africa so as bad as the french intervention looks if you look into mali now most people support it most of the west african support it because this mom is had taken over about sixty percent of the country way back in the summer and just last week they started moving south they are now about three hundred miles or about four hundred kilometers away from the capital now friends did it for its own interests by the hop industry is helping the africans the west african foot soldiers will get into their country now from. it's about five hundred troops and he's using the strikes and we should say to you i mean that in light of sort of what happened over the weekend we've heard from united kingdom germany and even the united states they have pledged their support now so talk about how that support my affect things moving forward here because. i had wanted it to happen earlier the

u.n. blessing of support india africa has to take hold of the country and bring some order and democracy it took a long time in the security council but finally in december twenty two resolution unanimously twenty five but you have to make good plans to flu intervene now of course some people are raising questions as to where the world for instance fits in with the with the result lucian the problem is that it would have to queue months to properly train the africans her over that islam is moved very quickly and he. gives short of the carpet or so fronts in my view hard to move quickly and all the other major players i would use the western media players because drone to be the view from moscow and the view from beijing of the members in the security guards or how they feel about it but as you said correctly the europeans germany britain the

united states the horsy ok will support the fridge i want to take this sort of out of just molly i know that there are several examples of this going on especially around africa and i just over the weekend we saw a failed mission in somalia and this is when a french team was actually trying to rescue one of its kind of secret agents i think a man by the name of denis allaire alex a secret agent believed to be held since two thousand and nine by al shabaab apparently though insurgents killed the hostage during this raid despite help from u.s. combat aircraft as well so talk a little bit about the bigger issue this is not concentrated in. region it is not it is not actually you know there are three very big dangerous pockets of. in segin see islam. militant insurgencies in somalia in northern nigeria. and then of course mali and this stretch across the width of africa in the few

years that we've be linked together it will cause even more problems now i kill even though mali is we're on the west and somalia is we on days the two are linked because in fact what we are here is the president or london paris ones who decided i was going to intervene in mali what we are putting together what we are speculating he then decided ok we have some information live rescue our hostage. in somalia and it went from there you are right president obama just sent a letter to the congress because u.s. law says that if we mix in the military moves and goes into a foreign country with a military he has to perform congress so we know that he held the french in somalia because not the letter he sent to congress after the event after they even so much really to talk about sadly we're out of time thank you so much for coming in mia quite a the founder of the democracy and conflict research institute i think so much my

pleasure thanks for having me. so i had here on r t mixing business with pleasure and we say is combining real journalism with entertainment programs like thirty rock and sixteen hundred pounds but is a boost in the ratings worth risking credibility some answers next.

let me let me are going to let me ask you a question. on this morning where we have our. biggest thank you very much by saying there's again you're in the situation we're being i think we talk about surveillance we. all right when you turn on the news you expect to see commercials after every couple of segments you get a few commercials and right before the show comes back the network has some promotions for its other offerings but savvy viewers are noticing that in many cases mainstream channels more and more are merging the two together using news as

an opportunity to promote entertainment shows and vice versa the los angeles times says quote the idea of media companies making use of their platforms to advertise their own assets and personalities is nothing new a.b.c.'s good morning america has no qualms about using its valuable time to talk about dancing with the stars but n.b.c. is becoming the most aggressive in doing so and if i could continues it could harm the credibility of the news division here's an example of what n.b.c. executives are calling quote project symphony. just before us tonight was the premiere of sixteen hundred penn a comedic portrayal of the life of the first family in the white house josh gad plays the son in the series which he helped to create tonight we've asked him to sit down with our colleague jenna bush hager who played an actual member of the first family during the presidency of her father well tonight they compare notes on the fictional white house versus the actual one so is this the merging of news and

entertainment just smart business or does it degrade the news earlier today i was joined by danny schechter a journalist and filmmaker from our new york studios to discuss this matter further and what he thinks is behind it. bush lead someone in the white house she lived in the white house and father was the president you know the distinction between fiction and faction between reality and you know attempts to emulate reality are continuing so to such a degree that you can't tell what's real and what isn't real and of course hoping to profit from all of this and benefit from all of this are the entertainment companies who will never miss a promotional opportunity they spend more money on promos than programs they're into trying to market their brands in every possible way that they can and the facts in a way be damned news credibility doesn't mean anything to them news ratings mean

something to them and rakes in the dollars danny right let's put up another example here. well the program has changed the way your program when you finish your program you and i have two or three other programs to do press pass after the tonight show tonight show website jay's go i mean there is just so much more media now that you do then you have to tweet out the new instagram stuff then you send out pictures so i mean there's the show doesn't just end anymore you that do almost another show for another hour or so after you finish your regular show ok so this is n.b.c.'s jay leno on you know the meet the press segment on n.b.c. called press pass talking about this but danny had asked i mean shouldn't viewers and consumers also be held responsible i mean they are after all the ones watching yes they are but you know it's a question of what else is there to watch people who are maybe a little more knowledgeable see what many americans are watching networks

thinking that the news they present is the news is all the news and of course it isn't and we have this kind of border line narrowing line between the personalities and the and the issues and unfortunately it's hard sometimes to make a distinction you see this and hollywood as well with the movie about the bin laden you know escapade you know of the seal tick sil's team six where various facts were invented although they appear to be real the same thing with argo which won the golden globes last night there's this whole lack of respect for truth and more and more. an emphasis on what we call truth plus you know an attempt to turn the proof. other into entertainment products it is tough because when you know when you look at successful role models or business models online which frankly most media companies are doing these days they see models like the huffington post

like buzz feed places where cute puppy photos get tens of thousands of hits and then often drop people to click on the news stories or stories about divorce so you know on one hand it is a model that seems to be working so from a business standpoint you can sort of see why the television media companies are doing it but danny talk about the impact of the effect that this is having on us as i don't think it is working there actually losing viewers and losing audience the crew the allies news and information and they don't inform the american people very well about what's really happening so jay leno himself used to do this bit on his show where he went out you know into the into the public and he held up two pictures here's president carter here's mr peanut who do you recognize some people recognize mr peanut but not president carter this is a deliberate effort to dumb down the american people the news networks are are part

of it and they have been for years what do you think that i mean can we expect these profit driven outlets to attempt quality news coverage in the future or does journalistic integrity rank below ratings and making money well what's happening is that the viewers are actually leaving the network environment they're going in they're going to twitter they're going to other news outlets looking for information from you know news outlets from around the world like mark t. and al-jazeera and others and they're trying to find the truth and reality as opposed to fiction and no reality well it certainly is an interesting topic one that we wanted to you know going to light and just sort of put out there and talk about always good to have you on the show danny schechter thanks so much. well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com.