Don’t Like Media – Sue ‘Em

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Article from The Guardian by Maya Yang, 11/15/24

Headline:  “Trump sues for billions from media he says is biased against him”

Subhead:  “President-elect intensifies longstanding media hostility by filing lawsuits against New York Times, CBS and others”

“With only two months left until Donald Trump returns to the White House, the president-elect and convicted felon has been waging lawfare by a flurry of lawsuits against media companies and publishers that have been critical of him.

“The lawsuits come amid growing fears of what a second Trump term would mean for press freedom as Trump intensifies his longstanding hostility against the media – which he called ‘the enemy camp’ in his victory speech last week.”

“. . .In response to Trump’s re-election victory and his repeated attacks against journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists has called Trump’s threats against the press a ‘clear and direct danger to media freedom.’

“ ‘The hostile media climate fostered during Donald Trump’s first presidency – expected to continue in his forthcoming second term – poses great risks to media inside and outside the country,’ ” CPJ added.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/15/trump-sues-media-outlets-bias

Idiotic Medium buys Idiotic Website

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latest post from Infowars


Update:

Article in The Guardian by Anna Betts and agency, 11/15/24

Headline:  “Judge orders hearing to review Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’s InfoWars”

Subhead:  “Judge to audit if conspiracy theorist’s bankruptcy auction was fair, which could delay buying process for satire site”

“On Thursday morning, it was announced that the Onion had bought InfoWars at Jones’s bankruptcy auction.

“But later that day, the judge overseeing Jones’s bankruptcy case held an emergency hearing, during which lawyers representing Jones and a company affiliated with him expressed concerns about the auction process. The judge has ordered an evidentiary hearing for next week to determine if the auction was conducted fairly, which could delay the process.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/15/the-onion-infowars-bankruptcy

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Article in The Guardian by Anna Betts, 11/14/24

Headline: “The Onion buys rightwing conspiracy theory site Infowars with plans to make it ‘very funny, ‘very stupid’ ”

Subhead:  “Satirical news outlet purchases media platform run by Alex Jones at a court-ordered auction”

“The satirical news outlet The Onion has purchased Infowars, the rightwing media platform run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, at a court-ordered auction.”

“CEO Ben Collins confirmed this in a post on Bluesky on Thursday, writing: ‘The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars. We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website. We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off.’ ”

“. . . The sale follows a judge’s order earlier this year for Jones to liquidate his personal assets, to help him to pay off the $1.4bn he was ordered to pay the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six educators when they took him to court for defamation after he falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax, and that they were actors who staged the shooting as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/14/onion-info-wars-alex-jones

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Article in Status News by Oliver Darcy, 11/14/24

Headline:  “Not Satire: The Onion acquires Infowars“

“As part of the deal, The Onion, owned by Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson and led by chief executive Ben Collins, acquired Infowars‘ website, product inventory, customers lists, social media accounts, and intellectual property.”

“. . . Owen Shroyer, a popular Infowars personality, expressed disbelief at the news The Onion had acquired the company.

“ ‘It’s almost like a satire of a satire,” Shroyer said on Infowars’ final broadcast. “It’s like a joke of a joke.’ ”

https://www.status.news/p/not-satire-the-onion-acquires-infowars

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Article in Common Dreams by Julia Conley, 11/14/24

Headline:  “Media Justice as The Onion Buys Infowars From ‘Hateful’ (and Bankrupt) Alex Jones”

Subhead:  ” ‘This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane,’ said the CEO of The Onion. “

“In what one journalist called an “insane twist” to the long saga of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ use of his online platform to spread rampant disinformation, satirical newspaper The Onion on Thursday announced it had won an auction to buy Infowars, Jones’ bankrupt publication. ”

“. . . ‘The Onion’s goal with the acquisition is to end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion’s relentless barrage of humor for good,’ said the company in a press release, which did not state how much The Onion paid for Infowars. ”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/infowars-auction

 

Techno Global Media Hegemony

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Article in TechXplore by Lewis Mitchell, Jono Tuke and Melissa Humphries, 11/14/24

Headline: “Elon Musk has turned X into a globally influential media platform—and there’s more to come”

“During the recent United States presidential election campaign, tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) saw record high usage.”

“. . . He aims to create a platform for messages, payments, video and more, similar to China’s WeChat . . . ”

“. . . Musk, and therefore X, is also poised to take a bigger role in day-to-day US politics—and not just in his newly announced role, which will see him in charge of cutting government spending.”

“. . . Since the election, alternative social media platform Bluesky has reportedly gained 1 million members as some users of X attempt to flee the perceived far-right platform.”

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-11-elon-musk-globally-influential-media.html

Media Called “X” is Ghosted

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Article in Raw Story by Agence France-Presse, 11/13/24

 

” ‘We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives,’ the left-leaning newspaper, which has nearly 11 million followers on X, said in a statement on its website.

“It added that its “resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere

.”This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” the statement noted.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/guardian-quits-x-social-media-platform-citing-racism-conspiracy-theories-2024-11-13/

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Article In Al Jazerra, 11/13/24

Headline:  “The Guardian to no longer post on ‘toxic media platform’ X”

Subhead:  “The British news outlet quits X citing ‘disturbing content’ on the platform, including racism and conspiracy theories.”

“British news outlet The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on X due to the ‘disturbing content’ on the ‘toxic media platform’, including racism and conspiracy theories.

“The Guardian wrote on its website on Wednesday that it had been considering the decision to stop posting on the social media outlet for a while, but the US election earlier in November “underlined” its decision.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/13/the-guardian-to-no-longer-post-on-toxic-media-platform-x

How Will Media Handle Attacks From T?

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Article in The Washington Post by Eric Wemple 11/11/24

Headline:  “Will there be a retribution of media? I answered your questions.”

“I am guessing that the new Trump admin will at least attempt to freeze out the traditional media (ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, WPO, etc) for criticizing him during the election. How will the media handle that?

“Hey there: “Guessing” is about all we can do at this moment, simply because the Trump folks haven’t written up, printed out and published their COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR HANDLING THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA. Recall that there are two opposing forces at work here: One is that Trump loves having the media at his fingertips, assembled at the White House and available to coming running in with cameras and recorders at a moment’s notice.”

“. . . Should the media have a strategy to safeguard press freedom under the next presidency?

“Yes, and it does: Fight all attacks on the First Amendment. That, you can count on, and it applies to anyone who occupies the White House.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/11/erik-wemple-media-live-chat/

Reporter Behind Bars

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Article from Committee to Protect Journalists, 11/11/24

Headline:  “Turkish journalist Furkan Karabay arrested over reporting on opposition arrest”

“The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Turkish authorities to immediately free reporter Furkan Karabay, who was seized from his home at dawn on Friday after he published a report about the arrest of an opposition mayor.

” ‘Journalist Furkan Karabay is the latest in a long line of journalists who have ended up behind bars in Turkey simply for publishing critical reporting and commentary,’ said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Karabay must not waste months of his life in prison, waiting to be indicted and tried. Turkey’s constant oppression of the free press is an obstacle to citizens’ rights to access information”.

https://cpj.org/2024/11/turkish-journalist-furkan-karabay-arrested-over-reporting-on-opposition-arre

Technofascism and the Media

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Article in The Guardian by Joan Donovan, 11/11/24

Headline: “First came the bots, then came the bosses – we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation”

Subhead: “Tech leaders’ politics are encoded into their platforms – and with Trump’s ascent, they have direct access to the Oval Office”

“. . . When tech CEOs encode their political beliefs into the design of platforms, it’s a form of technofascism, where technology is used for political suppression of speech and to repress the organization of resistance to the state or capitalism.

“Content moderation at these platforms now reflects the principles of the CEO and what that person believes is in the public’s interest. The political opinions of tech’s overlords, like Musk and Zuckerberg, are now directly embedded in their algorithms.”

“. . .Whether it’s Musk’s strategy of overloading users with posts from himself and Trump, or Zuckerberg’s silencing of political discussion, it’s citizens who suffer from such chilling of speech.”

“If we are to disarm disinformers, we need a whole of society approach that values real Talk (Timely, Accurate Local Knowledge) and community safety. . . .  But most of all, it’s going to require that you and I do something quickly to protect those already in the crosshairs of Trump’s new world order, by donating to or joining community organizations tackling issues such as women’s rights and immigration. Even subscribing to a local news outlet is a profound political act these days. Let that sink in.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-disinformation

Conspiracies and the media

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Article in The Guardian by Steve Rose, 11/8./24

Headline:  “A reporter down the rabbit hole: Gabriel Gatehouse on edgelords, conspiracy theories and Trump’s America”

Subhead:  “The former BBC journalist has spent four years considering the misfits, misinformation and manipulation that are now central to US politics. In his new book, The Coming Storm, he weaves a terrifying narrative”

“. . . The parallels between media reporting and conspiracy theory manufacturing are uncomfortably close, especially now that “the media” is itself fragmented into different camps, each pushing its own conflicting version of reality. ‘If some people take this series as a sort of critique of establishment media, then we’ll be happy about that,’ he says. Bias is unavoidable: ‘You’re not just putting facts in there in a random order; you are crafting a narrative, so obviously you are choosing what to include and what to leave out.’ As a conspiracist, you can be more cavalier, but as a journalist, “You’ve got to do that in as honest a way as possible, but you can’t help but go into a story with some kind of preconceived idea of what the story is.”

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/08/gabriel-gatehouse-coming-storm-conspiracy-theories-trump-america

Targeting Journalists

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Article in New York Times by By Kavitha Chekuru, 11/10/24

Headline: “Israel Keeps Attacking Journalists. When Will the U.S. Intervene?”

“At least 129 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza started last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; the Gaza media office puts that number much higher, at 188. This has been the deadliest year for journalists since the C.P.J. began recording the numbers in 1992. The group has said that in the first 10 weeks of the war, more journalists were killed than had been killed in any country over an entire year.

“The C.P.J. has also determined that five journalists who were killed, including one in Lebanon, were ‘directly targeted” by Israeli forces, and the organization is investigating more than 20 others.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/opinion/israel-war-journalists-killed-gaza.html

Alternative Media Changed Things

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Article in The Washington Post by Manuel Roig-Franzia, Elahe Izadi, 11/8/24

Headline:  “As Trump joined the podcast revolution, legacy media got left out”

Subhead:  “The 2024 election result makes clear how much alternative forms of news have changed the game.”

” . . .There is no question that this election was probably a breaking point in terms of the role legacy media plays in political campaigns,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a co-host of the popular liberal podcast, “Pod Save America.” Trump “paid no price” for mostly ignoring legacy media — appearances on Fox News aside — in the final month-and-a-half of the campaign, something that would have been unheard of in elections past, said Pfeiffer, who was communications director in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“. . . At the same time, traditional legacy media audiences, particularly for news, have eroded over the decades. Daily newspaper circulation, digital traffic to newspaper websites and local television news ratings are all down, per Pew. About 15 years ago, as many as 90 percent of households paid to get TV channels; now, it’s barely half. Television is still the single most common way Americans get their political news, according to Pew, but it’s way more popular among older Americans than those younger than 29, whose most common source is social media.”

“. . . “They don’t need the legacy media,” she said. “They know they can sit in a room full of podcasters and whatever else you want to call the influencers that lead his base and they will write down his every word, even if it’s spelled backwards.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/11/08/podcasts-joe-rogan-trump/