Crowds can be a dangerous place for reporters, especially during war or unrest. Just last Friday, colleagues in Bahrain found themselves under fire from a helicopter that seemed to have singled them out as targets. But women reporters face another set of challenges. We are often harassed in ways that male colleagues are not. This is a hazard of the job that most of us have experienced and few of us talk about.

Koch Industries Inc. and its employees and subsidiaries spent $1.2 million in the last election helping to elect Republican governors who are now trying to take away bargaining rights of state workers. Now the Koch-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which helped organize a rally on Feb. 19 to support Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, yesterday announced a $342,200 ad campaign backing his efforts.

More evidence is piling up that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren't what they seem. The anonymity of the web gives companies and governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns that create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. It now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed.