Media News

News about the media.

Maybe All News is Not Real, Ya’ Think?

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A film about manufactured news – driven by ratings:

From the prescient Sidney 1976 Lumet film “Network” about a deranged news anchor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cSGvqQHpjs

Article by Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times 3/7/24

Headline” “Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.”

Not too long ago, this modest website about the media was subject to a DNS attack by Russian bots and over 4,000 fake accounts had to be removed. Took some time. So it’s no surprise that some – over there – have also set up fake news sites (some are very crude) to influence things here.

Here’s the article for you to peruse, however NYT is paywalled.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240416212423/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/media/russia-us-news-sites.html?searchResultPosition=1

Leading by Bleeding

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Sinclair Broadcasting has a formula for making money off of tragedy. From Washington Post 2/16/24.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/16/sinclair-broadcasting-conservative-media-trump/

Headline: “Sinclair’s recipe for TV news: Crime, homelessness, illegal drugs”

Sub-headline: “The local news powerhouse, whose chairman recently bought the Baltimore Sun, focuses on fear in broadcasts that often align with Donald Trump’s view of cities”

Are the Media Facing an Extinction, Dinosaur-Level Event?

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From the 2/10/24 New Yorker article by Claire Malone
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“A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker—all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker. The Washington Post, which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/is-the-media-prepared-for-an-extinction-level-event

“Two hundred and four counties in the U.S. now have no local news—high-poverty areas are most affected—and, by the end of this year, it’s expected that the U.S. will have lost a third of its newspapers,” the article also said.

News Deserts Need Watering

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From The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan 1/18/24

Headline:  “Local newspapers are withering under destructive owners. We should worry”

https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2024/jan/18/local-newspapers-media-chain-ownership-baltimore-sun-sinclair

“You can see this trend almost everywhere. Newspapers have faded and the growth of digital news outlets – while encouraging – hasn’t kept up with the losses. There are far fewer reporters now than 15 years ago, and they are much more concentrated in places like Washington DC and New York City. Local newspapers go out of business every week.”

“That turns huge swaths of the US into “news deserts” – places where there is virtually no credible local journalism. Democracy suffers as citizens become less engaged and more polarized, and as government corruption flourishes because the watchdog has gone silent.”

Decline in Local News Coverage Affects All Americans

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From Associated Press 11/15/23

“The decline of local news in the United States is speeding up despite attention paid to the issue, to the point where the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.” Giant media corporations continue to dominate American information outlets – even digital media decline.

https://apnews.com/article/local-newspapers-closing-jobs-3ad83659a6ee070ae3f39144dd840c1b