Media News

News about the media.

Bots of Media Fun

by


Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 4/1/125

Headline:  “Bloomberg and the Bots”

Subhead:  “Bloomberg insists its journalists have “full control” over its error-prone A.I. bot—but staffers tell Status they can’t stop it from publishing errors.”

“A few days ago, The New York Times published a remarkable story: Bloomberg News, one of the most powerful forces in business journalism, had introduced factual errors into at least three dozen article pages using its new “takeaways” carousel. The recently introduced artificial intelligence feature, which has been prominently affixed to the top of most stories, was designed to spotlight key points in its reporting.

“In a statement to The Times, a Bloomberg spokesperson moved to dismiss concerns about the A.I. carousel, telling reporter Katie Robertson that it is “transparent when stories are updated or corrected.” But it was what the spokesperson said next that caught the attention of reporters inside the Bloomberg newsroom.

“Journalists have full control over whether a summary appears—both before and after publication—and can remove any that don’t meet our standards,” the Bloomberg spokesperson asserted to The Times. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/bloomberg-news-ai-summaries

 

Media Overload

by


Article in The Guardian by Michael Savage. 4/1/25

Headline:  “‘I can’t cope with it any more’: newsrooms scramble to retain audiences amid the big switch-off”

Subhead:  “In an international survey last year, 39% of respondents said they selectively avoid news to some degree”

“When Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, informed her staff recently that she was shaking up how they worked as part of a drive to combat “the growing trend of news avoidance”, she had in mind the likes of Dave Ayres, a handyman from Leeds.

“ ‘I used to have the news on the TV every morning for an hour or so as I got the children ready for school and completed my household tasks,’ he said. ‘Now it has literally been switched off and unplugged. I can’t cope with it any more. It’s just too much and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

“Though he dips into his favourite news apps occasionally in the evening, he now strictly limits his news consumption. He’s not alone. The Guardian has been contacted by a series of one-time news junkies who are now seeking to restrict their news intake after suffering from disturbed sleep or a downturn in their mood.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/01/i-cant-cope-with-it-any-more-newsrooms-scramble-to-retain-audiences-amid-the-big-switch-off

Spreading Media Greatness South

by

Article in The Guardian by Rachel Savage, 3/26/25

Headline:  “Trump names pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa”

Subhead:  “Leo Brent Bozell III, founder of a conservative media group, is president’s nomination amid rising diplomatic tensions”

“Donald Trump has nominated a conservative, pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa, at a time when the relationship between the two countries is at a nadir.

“Leo Brent Bozell III founded the Media Research Center – whose website states it is ‘a blog site designed to broadcast conservative values, culture, and politics [and] to expose liberal media bias’ – in 1987.

“His son Leo Brent Bozell IV was sentenced to 45 months in prison in May 2024 for assaulting police and smashing windows in the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots. He was released in January as part of Trump’s mass pardon.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/26/trump-names-pro-israel-media-activist-as-us-ambassador-to-south-africa

Journalists in Danger

by


Article in Bellingcat by Staff. 3/27/25

Headline:  “Shot From Above: The Dangerous Work of Drone Journalists in Gaza”

“According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 165 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. In fact, according to CPJ, last year was the deadliest year for journalists worldwide since they began documenting deaths in 1992.

Gathering aerial footage of Gaza is a dangerous task, and Bellingcat along with our partners at Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Standard, Paper Trail Media, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and RFI identified several cases where drone journalists were killed or injured shortly after capturing aerial images.

The Gaza Project is a collaborative investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, involving more than 40 journalists representing 12 media outlets (Forbidden Stories, Paper Trail Media, RFI, Bellingcat, Die Zeit, Le Monde, France 24, ARIJ, The Seventh Eye/Shakuf +972 Magazine, ZDF and Der Standard) who continued the work of Gazan journalists and investigated about the threats and difficulties they are facing.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/03/27/gaza-israel-palestine-shot-killed-injured-destroyed-dangerous-drone-journalists-in-gaza/

Progressive Media Activist Dies

by


Article in Free Press by Timothy Karr, 3/27/25

Headline:  “Free Press Mourns the Death of Co-Founder and Scholar Robert W. McChesney”

“McChesney was the author or editor of 27 books, including Rich Media, Poor Democracy; The Problem of the Media; and Digital Disconnect. He co-authored several books with his frequent co-author and close friend John Nichols, including The Death and Life of American Journalism and Dollarocracy. McChesney was the president of Free Press in its early years and served on its board of directors afterward. . .”

“While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public’s ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people’s needs and sustains democracy. . .”

https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney

– – – – –

Article in The Nation by John Nichols, 3/27/25

Headline:  “Robert McChesney, the Great Champion of Journalism and Democracy, Has Died”

“The academic and activist inspired generations of people to challenge corporate power and support a media reform movement that lives on.

“Bob McChesney, who died on Tuesday at the age of 72, first introduced himself to me almost 30 years ago, on the set of a public television news program in Madison, Wisconsin. Bob was a distinguished University of Wisconsin professor who was gaining an international reputation for his groundbreaking analysis of the threat to democracy posed by corporate control of media. Raising his arguments in books, speeches, and frequent C-Span appearances, he was well on his way to becoming one of the great public intellectuals of his time. . .”

“The program was framed as a debate about the future of journalism. Bob was positioned as the doomsayer, warning about how media consolidation was killing journalism. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-mcchesney-obituary/

Texting the Media

by


Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 3/27/25

Headline: “Fox defense for negligent texting of war plans: Top Trump national security officials are incompetent”

“Fox News personalities’ new argument in support of their former colleagues who discussed pending military strikes on an unsecured text chain is that those former colleagues — now America’s top military, national security, and intelligence officials — are easy to deceive. . .”

“But on Tuesday, they came up with a new excuse — one which amounts to arguing that the nation’s top national security officials are morons.

“When Fox host Laura Ingraham asked Waltz to explain Goldberg’s presence on the Signal chat, Waltz dissembled.

“ ‘I’m not a conspiracy theorist,’ Waltz began, before offering a conspiracy theory in which ‘somehow’ Goldberg ‘gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into the group.’

The national security adviser added that Goldberg may have somehow ‘deliberately’ ensured that his contact information was attached to a Trump official’s contact name, adding that the administration has ‘the best technical minds’ trying to ascertain how such a thing happened. . .”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-defense-negligent-texting-war-plans-top-trump-national-security-officials-are

– – – – –

Article in Daily Kos by Oliver Willis, 3/26/25

Headline:  “Media downplays Trump team’s massive leak fiasco as mere ‘blunder'”

“Many mainstream media outlets are minimizing or trivializing the Trump administration’s leak of highly sensitive war plans, and in doing so, they are echoing President Donald Trump’s spin on the scandal.

“After The Atlantic reported on Monday that top Trump officials had mistakenly included the outlet’s top editor in an unsecured group chat, Trump told reporters that the breach was merely a ‘glitch.’ And Trump’s allies struck the same tone in appearances in right-wing media.

On Tuesday, USA Today described the incident as a ‘relatable fail.’ In the story, reporters Jessica Guynn and Bailey Schulz likened the leak of war plans to ill-timed responses in family group texts.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/26/2312682/-Media-downplays-Trump-team-s-massive-leak-fiasco-as-mere-blunder?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web

Checkmate, Media!

by


Article in The Bukwark by Andrew Egger, 3/27/25

Headline:  “The Only Strategy They Know”

“When the Signalgate story broke, we thought to ourselves: Okay, that’s the most politically self-destructive thing the White House will do for a while. But we were wrong. Somehow, the White House’s political response to the story has been even dumber.

“Yesterday, JVL (Joanathan V. Last) took stock of the administration’s clown car of flailing responses: the inexplicable attempt to paint the release of authentic internal screenshots as a ‘hoax,’ the bizarre assertions that the information in the chat wouldn’t have been classified, the attempts to turn the whole thing into a ‘Jeffrey Goldberg sucks and can’t be trusted’ media story.

“Since then, things have gotten sillier still. On Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt scolded the White House press corps for prioritizing the story over news of U.S. business investment or Trump’s latest ‘election integrity’ executive order. JD Vance jeered at Goldberg for declining to publish the name of a CIA officer involved—an action Goldberg took at the request of Trump’s CIA. Donald Trump himself complained that the story was a ‘witch hunt’ and suggested that ‘I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you.’ (All the more reason not to share attack plans on it, then!) . . .”

https://www.thebulwark.com/

Wrong Signal Sent to Media

by


Article in Mediaite by Colby Hall, 3/25/25

Headline: “Trump Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk”

“President Donald Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was not classified multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday afternoon. But his defiant tone may have just backed his administration into a corner of litigious federal investigations, potentially giving one of his most prominent and influential critics a major win.

“On Monday, Goldberg dropped a bombshell report about Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally adding him to a group chat in which the principals committee – the heads of the top American national security agencies — discussed plans to strike Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month.”

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/trump-just-handed-his-biggest-enemy-in-media-a-slam-dunk/

– – – – –

Article in Daily Mail by Laura Parnaby, 3/25/25

Headline:  “Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg threatens to release MORE war plans texts after being included in group chat”

“Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, told Tim Miller on the Bulwark Podcast his team is mulling over releasing the full trove of Signal app messages.

” ‘My colleagues and I and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this,’ Goldberg told the podcast.

” ‘But just because they’re irresponsible with material, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible.’

“Goldberg made the jaw-dropping revelation on Monday that Trump’s national security team had added him to a top secret chat about military strikes in Yemen.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14536191/atlantic-editor-jeffrey-goldberg-threatens-release-war-plans-group-chat.html

– – – – –

Article in Raw Story by Damoel Hampton, 3/24/25

Headline: ” ‘Disaster’: Hegseth’s rant attacking reporter who got his war plan lights up social media”

“Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth found himself under fire on social media as he lashed out at a journalist who appeared to be inadvertently included in a private group chat on the app Signal — and was privy to top-secret war plans.

“On March 15, just hours before the U.S. launched a series of strikes, Hegseth shared operational details in a Signal group chat that mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Goldberg wrote Monday. The leaked information contained operational details of upcoming strikes on Yemen, specifics on targets, weapons to be deployed and the sequence of attacks. . .”

“. . .Predictably, social media critics lit up at Hegseth’s comments. . .”

https://www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth-2671396988/

—–

Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 3/25/25

Headline: “Atlantic editor suggests he’s open to sharing Hegseth’s full war plans texts publicly “

“Jeffery Goldberg, the top editor of The Atlantic, said he could be open to sharing more details from a Signal group chat he was mistakenly added to by top U.S. officials that contained secret war plans. . .”

“. . .Goldberg reported he saw in a message, sent to the group by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, specific weapons systems, human targets and other top secret information before he left the chat. He did not publish the specific information as part of his report, citing national security concerns.

“. . .During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe contended that the Signal chat in question did not include classified information.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5212821-atlantic-editor-suggests-hes-open-to-sharing-hegseths-full-war-plans-texts-publicly/

Media Stop China War-Plans Briefing

by


Article on Democracy Now by Staff, 3/24/25

Headline:  “Pentagon Hosts Elon Musk But Skips Briefing on China After Media Reports”

“Elon Musk visited the Pentagon Friday for a high-level meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others. The New York Times had reported Musk was scheduled to receive a briefing on top-secret U.S. plans for a potential war with China, but the briefing was canceled after it was reported in the press. Musk threatened to go after whoever leaked what he called “maliciously false information” to the Times. Musk has close business ties with China, which is Tesla’s second-largest market. China is also the home of Tesla’s largest factory.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/24/headlines/pentagon_hosts_elon_musk_but_skips_briefing_on_china_after_media_reports

Changing Face of Local Journalism

by


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Sarah Stonbely, 3/20/23

Headline:  “The changing face of local journalism”

Subhead:  “Rethinking what counts as local news”

“One of the major journalism themes of 2025 is emerging: the role, and importance, of nontraditional, or journalism-adjacent information providers. From influencer/creator/independent news producers, to AI-generated content, to civic media, defining who qualifies as a journalist is as difficult as it has ever been.This idea was front and center at the recent Knight Media Forum, where several discussions showed clearly that the idea of what qualifies as journalism is expanding – largely out of necessity, but also as an overdue acknowledgement of the fact that sometimes the most vital local journalism comes not from a newspaper but from a newsletter or Facebook group.

“There is now a broader willingness to consider – or perhaps, more accurately, to see – the myriad other ways that people share and receive important local information and news. The further we get into the local journalism crisis, the more we’re forced to confront the fact that sustainable local journalism cannot, and will not, look as it did in the past. The rise of the newsfluencer is the latest iteration of this message. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/the-changing-face-of-local-journalism.php