“Like a slow-motion coup”: Brazil is on the brink of a disinformation disaster
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Monday, June 13, 2022
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“Like a slow-motion coup”: Brazil is on the brink of a disinformation disaster“I think about January 6, and the fact that Brazil is a much younger democracy. I'm really worried. Everybody knows this is going to happen, because every single day [President Jair Bolsonaro] says these things.” By Julia Angwin, The Markup. |
What We’re Reading
Press Gazette / William Turvill
The Chinese business site Caixin has the most digital subscribers of any non-English-language publication →
It has about 850,000 of them. Behind Caixin: Japan’s Nikkei (816,000), Germany’s Bild (603,000), France’s Le Monde (420,000), Italy’s Corriere della Sera (384,000), and Argentina’s La Nación (343,000), France’s L’Équipe (332,000), Brazil’s O Globo (306,000) and Folha de São Paulo (300,000), and Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza (280,000).
San Francisco Chronicle / Emilio Garcia-Ruiz
A new San Francisco Chronicle initiative aims to find solutions to the city’s historic problems →
“The idea of ‘solutions journalism’ has been around for decades, much of it done to limited effect. We are taking a different approach. We will soon launch a major poll of city residents…to ask for your views on what's happening in the city. Your responses will drive public discussions and inform our journalism.”
The Guardian / Tory Shepherd
The Sydney Morning Herald outed a celebrity, then removed the column that outed her, then said it really didn’t out her after all →
“Our weekly Private Sydney celebrity column last week asked Wilson if she wished to comment about her new partner. We would have asked the same questions had Wilson’s new partner been a man. To say that the Herald ‘outed’ Wilson is wrong.”
The New York Times / Jeremy W. Peters
Who is the former TV news chief helping the January 6 committee? →
“With a handful of production staff, it is his job to sift through and edit down a voluminous amount of images from police body cams, hallway surveillance video, and raw footage from a documentarian — hours and hours of recordings that captured the insurrection as it unfolded.”
The Angry Editor / James Welsh
A lack of newsroom diversity is hurting readers →
“…pay interns — pay them really really well so that they can do it full time without the support of their parents. Stop awarding fellowships to elite universities only. Stop developing relationships with elite universities only. And stop making a degree a requirement for jobs because that’s absurd.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
The Wall Street Journal has debuted a new commerce site called Buy Side →
“Keeping the section free will help the company tap into more search ad revenue coming from Google, [chief revenue officer Josh] Stinchcomb said…The company will review the types of products and services that cater to a typical Wall Street Journal reader — a professionally driven consumer navigating return to office changes and has an interest in the economy.”
Los Angeles Times / Nathan Solis
Journalist Yashar Ali has filed a defamation suit against Los Angeles Magazine for a profile of him →
“In his lawsuit, Ali says the magazine did not assign a fact-checker, which is a regular practice for a story of that length, and did not verify any of Kiefer’s allegations or give Ali the chance to disprove any of the claims made in the story…[editor Maer Roshan said] that Los Angeles Magazine stood by its story.”
The Seattle Times / Brier Dudley
Like local newspapers need another problem: Newsprint prices are soaring →
“The Ponderay Newsprint Mill north of Spokane went bankrupt and closed in 2020. It was partly owned by a consortium of national newspaper chains that contracted, merged and were acquired by hedge funds. In January it restarted as a cryptocurrency mill.”
Voice of America / Sirwan Kajjo
Former Voice of America director Amanda Bennett told the Senate she’s ready to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media →
“My entire journalistic career has been devoted to giving truthful news and information and not advocating for any position whatsoever, especially not a repressive regime.”
Variety / Patrick Frater
FactWire is Hong Kong’s latest independent news outlet to be shut down →
“It is the fourth closure in the last year of a significant news organization that is not aligned with the city establishment’s pro-Beijing camp. The injection by Beijing in July 2020 of a National Security Law, and powerful security apparatus in the city, is seen by media organizations to have significantly reduced the freedoms of the press.”
Los Angeles Times / Kate Linthicum
As El Salvador’s president tries to silence the press, two journalist brothers are exposing his ties to street gangs →
“It was the kind of journalism that has distinguished the Salvadoran press. In the three decades since peace accords ended the nation’s bloody civil war, El Salvador had become a beacon of media freedom in a region where journalists are sometimes jailed and even killed for hard-hitting work exposing the powerful and the corrupt.”
Press Gazette / Bron Maher
Carole Cadwalladr’s libel win is “the most important judgment of the year” in the U.K. →
“Today’s judgment is an important vindication not just of Carole, but of the right of everyone to express themselves freely on matters of public interest. The judge undertook a highly detailed and careful examination of what Carole said…and rightly found that Carole was entitled to say what she honestly and reasonably believed based on years of investigation.”
The Guardian / Haroon Siddique
Arron Banks has lost his libel action against Guardian reporter Carole Cadwalladr →
“Banks, who funded the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, sued Cadwalladr personally over two instances in which she said the businessman was lying about his relationship with the Russian state…In a written judgment handed down on Monday, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled…that Cadwalladr initially had successfully established a public interest defence under section 4 of the Defamation Act.”
The Washington Post / Erik Wemple
A Washington Post correction is reviving the debate over using “due to an editing error” →
“Reporters get bylines and prizes when they do well, and editors don't.” vs. “Writers are held accountable because our names are on the bylines. Why should writers be held accountable when it's not their fault?”
Poynter / Amaris Castillo
“They keep threatening to arrest us”: San Antonio Express-News editor on the newsroom’s struggle to tell the stories of Uvalde →
“We're missing out on the stories of who these young children were, and that's very important for this narrative because people need to realize that these are real children whose lives were cut short. The other thing that it's impeding us from is interviewing survivors who might be able to give us firsthand accounts of how the situation unfolded — those eyewitnesses to help reconstruct what actually happened that day. That's particularly important right now, given the lack of information that authorities are giving us. To me, this feels like an effort to control the narrative. It's in their self-interest for us not to talk to the family or to the survivors.”
WSJ / Alexandra Bruell and Keach Hagey
Facebook is rethinking its commitment to pay for news, and publishers stand to lose millions →
“The company has paid average annual fees of more than $15 million to the Washington Post, just over $20 million to the New York Times, and more than $10 million to The Wall Street Journal.”
The Daily Beast / Corbin Bolies
After a week of infighting, The Washington Post fired reporter Felicia Sonmez for “insubordination” and “maligning co-workers online” →
"We cannot allow you to continue to work as a journalist representing The Washington Post," the termination email read. Sonmez had spent the week calling out colleagues and the paper's management for “downplaying the Post's workplace issues.”
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