Shocking events, brilliantly told
Media statistic of the week?
Why do readers cancel news subscriptions? Nieman Lab asked and here’s what they found: The No. 1 reason people say they cancel a subscription is money .?
Nearly a third of respondents (31%) cited money as the primary reason. That was followed closely by the 30% who said they cancel due to ideology or politics. Among other reasons, 13% said the content wasn’t good enough—the publication had become too clickbaity or non-substantive, or the content generally wasn’t useful to them or just wasn’t worth paying for.?
And Laura Trujillo highlights “The sweetest and saddest answer: In The NYT, he didn’t see a stack of paper. He saw 57 years’ worth of Sunday mornings with the person he loved.” You’ll want to read the piece to see more of the comments shared by the survey respondents.
This past week in the media industry?
A strange decision
The Wall Street Journal’s decision to run an unannotated lie-filled letter to the editor from former President Trump last week didn’t go unnoticed. “When a major national newspaper knowingly publishes falsehoods,” is how Michael Barbaro introduced it.?
CNN’s Brian Stelter spoke to several unnamed Journal reporters who objected to the letter being published , although none were surprised that it was published. Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post also wrote about the backlash over the publication of the letter for pushing the traditional boundaries of a letters-to-the-editor page.
“Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal willingly gave its imprimatur to another ‘big lie,’ about the 2020 election by giving Trump a LTE end run around journalistic standards & the truth. It not only disgraced itself but all the real reporters working there,” Reed Richardson said.??
“Wall Street Journal goes ‘full Murdoch’ with Trump letter,” added Patrick Phillips .
The response from the Journal’s Editorial Board came next, with The Facts on Trump’s Fraud Letter , which argues that Trump’s “2020 monomania is news, and it reflects on his fitness for 2024.”
As Bill Grueskin notes, “The WSJ edit page now has a fact-check of the Trump election whoppers they published yesterday … and they also examine a false rumor (spouted by @LindseyGrahamSC) that Trump cited as ‘evidence.’”
All in all, “A strange decision by the @WSJ editorial board,” tweets Terry Cowgill . “The paper ran a lengthy letter yesterday from 45 that was full of lies and distortions about last year’s election. Then today out comes an editorial debunking the letter.”
A lot to think about
Meanwhile, “This is so very often true: ‘A right-wing outlet let ideology motivate their reporting, while the mainstream media couldn’t be bothered to report on it in the first place.’”
Ben Smith is quoting Jen Monroe , who writes at Arc Digital that the Loudoun County Sexual Assault Story Shows the Danger of Media Bias .
Cathy Young calls it an “Incisive look by @jenniferm_q at @arcdigi at the #LoudounCounty bathroom sexual assault case and the dual problem of media bias: The Daily Wire tendentiously screwed up the reporting, the rest of the media ignored the story.”
“Lot to think about in this piece,” adds Michael Hobbes . “The core problem is that right-wing media fixates on two or three misrepresented anecdotes every week. Mainstream sources would need to make debunking these stories an entire beat — and would end up giving them oxygen.”
Daming stuff
In Honduras, a prominent PR firm is spreading disinformation ahead of the presidential elections on November 28, using a network of Facebook pages and websites made to appear as legitimate news outlets.
Leo Schwartz has the scoop at Rest of World, with details from a new investigation—potentially the first to identify a Latin American firm orchestrating these efforts and demonstrating how its operations spread across platforms. “Damning stuff,” tweets Cengiz Yar .
“Will citizens in #Honduras ever get a shot at free and fair elections absent of political manipulation?” Parker Asmann wonders. “Concerning report by @leomschwartz for @restofworld ahead of presidential elections next month.”
Thorny questions
In this piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Caleb Pershan explains that on June 21, Yahoo! reported that Alfi’s stock was going “parabolic.” On June 22, its price rose above $16 per share. But on June 10, Alfi had started paying Benzinga to promote the company. Yahoo syndicated Benzinga’s stories without a disclosure.
Jon Allsop describes it as “this super-interesting story exploring how certain financial news sites syndicate paid content promoting certain stocks without disclosing it as spon-con—a practice that raises thorny regulatory questions.”
Jeremy Berke says “There is... a lot of this in the cannabis industry.” And Keith Larsen notices “There’s always a Miami connection.”?
Taking on ‘the ATM of the disinfo economy’
Next, “In important ad-tech news, industry watchdog Check My Ads (@CheckMyAdsHQ) just announced that it has officially formed a non-profit,” tweets Mark Stenberg . “As @catthekin and @nandoodles write, ‘The advertising supply chain is the ATM of the disinformation economy.’”
Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi have launched the Check My Ads Institute, a nonprofit watchdog investigating ad-funded disinformation, and they’re fired up and ready to rip out the beating heart of the disinformation .
“OK, LET'S GO,” tweets Jammi. “It’s been 5 years since @slpng_giants — and your ads are still ending up on hateful, bigoted and racist websites. Who keeps putting them there? The adtech industry. So today, we’re getting them their very own watchdog. ??
Sounds like a mess
On to some interesting media developments in the U.K.??
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First, Jim Waterson of the Guardian reports that the BBC plans to appoint external investigators to assess the impartiality of its coverage of contentious topics .
“[BBC director general] Tim Davie has spotted a can of worms and has opened it, let’s see what happens next,” tweets Waterson.?
And indeed, Phil Harrison thinks “We need to watch this like hawks. Who will these external investigators be? On what basis will they be appointed? How will the public consultations work? Does ‘impartiality’ mean ‘balance’? As in, climate change deniers get their say on climate change?”
In the meantime, “Can someone sit Tim Davie down and explain what impartiality is and is not, please, because this is a nightmare,” says Chris Sutcliffe .
And next, Martin Bryant says, “Well this sounds like a mess. Good luck with proving someone *knows* what they’re saying about someone else on social media is false, and making Twitter pile-ons an offence could be very sinister, depending on how ‘pile-on’ is defined.”
He’s referring to the scoop by Matt Dathan of The Times that online trolls could face two years in prison for sending messages or posting content that causes “psychological harm” under legislation in the U.K. targeting online hate.?
Jasper Jackson points out, “It’s pretty easy to see how using such broad definitions to create criminal offences could be used to stifle free speech. This does not seem like the carefully thought out Online Harms Bill we were hoping for…”
Just wow
Don’t-miss the Guardian longread from Poppy Sebag-Montefiore on how two BBC journalists risked their jobs to reveal the truth about Jimmy Savile .?
Those journalists were Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones , and as Jones explains on Twitter, “10 years ago Sir Jimmy #Savile had just died & BBC News was preparing state funeral type coverage of his memorial service. Meanwhile in the Newsnight office myself, the brilliant, brave (& very funny) Liz MacKean & @hamlivingston were preparing to expose him as a monster. Poppy (who wrote this piece) was working with Liz on another project at the time & saw what happened.”?
“Just wow,” says Alice Woolley . “What an incredible piece about two courageous and driven journalists and how they – and the people whose stories they wanted to tell – were totally undermined by BBC bosses. Shocking events, brilliantly told.”
Paul Mason calls it a “Superb long read on the Newsnight/Savile scandal - a major institutional failure whose perpetrators were never properly held to account ???? - and the heroism of Liz and Mei never fully recognised.”?
MacKean died in August of 2017 at the age of 52. Jamie Roberton quotes Sebag-Montefiore, “When I miss Liz’s friendship, I look online for an account of what she helped to achieve...on Savile, but I can never find one. So here it is,” describing this as “A brilliant - though infuriating -read on how two BBC journalists fought to expose the truth about Savile.”
Lots of Substack takes
“Here’s a story about journalist entrepreneurs and the tensions within newsrooms new opportunities are creating,” tweets Ben Mullin , of his Wall Street Journal piece, Journalists Venture Beyond Their Newsrooms to Try to Cash In .
That story has a few scoops within it. For example, Mullin found out that Substack approached CNN contributor Van Jones about doing a newsletter earlier this year, but Jeff Zucker opposed it. Plus, “Another scoop in here,” he tweets. “@PunchbowlNews, the political news startup from @apalmerdc, @JakeSherman and @bresreports, has more than 100,000 subscribers and is on pace to generate $10 million of revenue annually. They only have 8 employees!”
“Lots of Substack takes, but I think this article makes clear that the real subscription newsletter champs are @apalmerdc and @JakeSherman,” tweets Matthew Yglesias .
Social media news
At The New York Times, Adam Satariano writes about Novara, a London news group that fell victim to YouTube’s opaque and sometimes arbitrary enforcement of its rules. His piece reveals How a Mistake by YouTube Shows Its Power Over Media .
Kellye Whitney points out, “When a company is in a monopoly position, the gatekeeper role often leads to criticism from multiple directions. Novara’s experience is indicative of the thorny #freespeech issues YouTube faces as the world’s largest online video service.”
Here’s an interesting question: Twitter amplifies conservative politicians. Is it because users mock them? ?
In The Washington Post, Megan Brown , Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker have written about their new research suggesting conservative politicians are “ratioed” more often—which may explain why they’re in your timeline.?
So… “Actually, The Ratio Is Good,” tweets Mike Madden .
Greg Pak says this research is a “Reminder that professional trolls, including many politicians, WANT you to dunk on them. That’s how they get clicks and make money.”
Speaking of tamping down on trolls, CBC News editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon explains why CBC is keeping Facebook comments closed on news posts . The goal is “to make online spaces safer by minimizing harassment and abuse of our story subjects, commenters.”
Kurt Seifried sees it as “More evidence that @facebook (sorry, meta) is basically the worst thing to happen to Western Democracy ever. TL;DR: disabling Facebook comments didn’t impact traffic, or the real comments (just go to CBC’s website) and reduced toxicity a lot.”
Now it can be told
As The Verge turns 10 , editor-in-chief Nilay Patel writes about the future. To celebrate the milestone, Patel says, “We have a massive collection of stories looking back at our last 10 years and ahead at the next 10 on the site all week, edited by @jake_k and @KaraVerlaney, and produced by @billiamjoel. It’s going to be really fun - here’s my little opening note.”
Patel also shares that he “Had a lot of fun talking to @delia_cai about The Verge and how tech coverage has changed over the past decade! Also, this story about us frantically searching for stories about fish technology to feed the Yahoo algo in our early days is 100 percent true.”
“Now it can be told: @reckless reveals the history of Fish Fridays on the @verge,” tweets Casey Newton .
That’s from Delia Cai’s Vanity Fair interview with Patel, “It Might Well Be Unsolvable”: Nilay Patel on Facebook’s Reckoning With Reality-And the Metaverse-Size Problems Yet to Come .?
People are sharing more than just fish stories from this piece (although that part is getting a lot of attention). “When asked about Facebook’s rebrand and focus on the metaverse @reckless makes a very good point,” says Christoph Derndorfer-Medosch . “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.” And Brandy Zadrozny urges, “Editors, be like @reckless.”
A few more
Sales Attendant at Amazon
3 年Nice