This report sees journalistic “bias” less as partisanship and more as relying on too-comfortable habits
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Monday, January 30, 2023
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This report sees journalistic “bias” less as partisanship and more as relying on too-comfortable habits“The first step is to accept that broad impartiality brings a stronger obligation to look.” By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
Los Angeles Times / Stephen Battaglio
CNN boss Chris Licht wanted to air the network’s morning editorial meeting live on air →
“But I was talked out of it for a variety of reasons.” “Lawyers probably talked you out of it.”
NBC News / Rebecca Shabad and Julia Ainsley
DOJ charges 3 men in murder-for-hire plot against U.S. journalist critical of Iran →
“The attempted assassination occurred after the FBI and federal officials disrupted an Iranian group’s previous attempt to silence [Masih] Alinejad on U.S. soil. But the second plot last summer didn’t succeed either.”
Los Angeles Times / Meredith Blake
“I'm used to it just being me, my iPhone, a pad and a pen” →
Nikole Hannah-Jones on converting The 1619 Project into a documentary series: “It's really challenging to create intimacy with people when you're asking them to share very traumatic experiences but there's this whole crew around you. And right when you're having that person-to-person moment, they're like, ‘Cut, we have to change the battery.'”
Semafor / Ben Smith
Can you build a newsroom on TikTok? →
“The News Movement, a video news organization started by former top executives at the BBC and News Corp., is hoping to establish its brand in the United States in part by acquiring The Recount, a social video startup that got millions of views but failed to figure out a revenue model.”
Rest of World / Russell Brandom
Why is the BBC Modi documentary so hard to find? Some blame lies with the BBC itself →
“Facebook's parent company Meta identified takedown notices from the BBC, rather than a request from the Indian government, as the reason for removing the documentary from the platform.”
Medium / Scott Lamb
How Medium is approaching AI-generated writing →
“We welcome the responsible use of AI-assistive technology on Medium. To promote transparency, and help set reader expectations, we require that any story created with AI assistance be clearly labeled as such.”
The Wall Street Journal / Jeff Horwitz and Salvador Rodriguez
Meta has a plan to turn around Facebook and Instagram: AI →
“Meta's AI efforts involve computational work more complex than anything it had previously attempted. The company is working to use the data it has more efficiently, detecting deeper correlations in user behaviors that could help predict which ads they might consider relevant, according to people familiar with the effort.”
AdExchanger / Sarah Sluis
“Apple is fine with advertising, as long as they get to control it on their terms” →
Apple”The IAB also blasted legislators' branding of personalized advertising as a form of surveillance capitalism. ‘It's time to call out this dystopian nonsense for what it is: insane,’ Cohen told the audience.”
Esquire / Sophie Vershbow
Inside Book Twitter’s final(?) days →
“It feels like the castle we made is being swept off the table by a billionaire’s tantrum.”
The New York Times / Ken Bensinger and Maggie Haberman
During his social media exile, Donald Trump has gotten more extreme and more QAnon-friendly →
“Now, Mr. Trump's increasingly probable return to major platforms raises the prospect that he will carry over his more radicalized behavior to a far wider audience on Facebook and Instagram, with a combined five billion active users, and Twitter, with 360 million active users.”
The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
News organizations grapple with showing horrific Tyre Nichols and Paul Pelosi videos →
“Viewers trying to watch an NBC News video of the beating on YouTube were told that ‘the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.'”
Middle East Eye / Mustafa Abu Sneineh
BBC Arabic radio goes off air after 85 years of broadcasting →
“The closure of BBC Arabic and Persian radio was announced in September as part of a plan to cut costs and focus on digital content production.”
The Wrap / Joseph Kapsch
CNN just suffered its worst ratings week in 9 years →
“…averaging just 444,000 viewers in primetime, 93,000 in the all-important age 25-54 news demographic.” Fox News by the same measures: 2 million and 256,000.
The Verge / Jay Peters
Apple is reportedly working on a way to make AR apps that’s as simple as talking to Siri →
“If the development tools actually do work as intended, it could significantly lower the barrier to entry for making AR apps for the headset.”
The New York Times / Stuart A. Thompson
On Trump’s social network, ads for miracle cures, scams, and fake merchandise →
“The more you stray from that safe center, the more you become the fringe or the extreme on anything, then the less money you're going to get.”
BBC News
AP deletes “the French” tweet and apologizes after it is widely mocked →
“The AP stylebook Twitter account had recommended writers avoid using ‘the’ in phrases like ‘the disabled, the poor and the French.’ It said this could be dehumanizing.”
The Guardian / Josh Taylor
Australia is cracking down on influencers endorsing products without disclosure →
“The number of tip-offs reflects the community concern about the ever-increasing number of manipulative marketing techniques on social media, designed to exploit or pressure consumers into purchasing goods or services.”
The Verge / Mitchell Clark
Twitter vows to take “less severe actions” against rule-breaking accounts →
“The ‘less severe actions’ are things that Twitter has been doing for years, such as limiting visibility of a tweet, or telling a user to remove a tweet before they can get back onto the site. Today's change is that Twitter is promising to reach for those tools more often, instead of going straight for the ban button.”
The Guardian / Jan-Werner Müller
Facebook is allowing Trump back. The platform hasn’t learned its lesson. →
“…Trump has neither paid any price for various offenses against democracy, nor ever shown the slightest repentance for his role in what Facebook, in its official announcement, gingerly calls ‘civil unrest’ (as if we were talking about some general conflagration, with all sides to blame).”
Press Gazette / Bron Maher
At least 1,000 jobs cut in English-language news media in January →
“The job losses accelerate a trend that began in the second half of 2022, when media companies cut more than 1,000 editorial roles across four months.”
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