Choire Sicha writes: Today, New York Times honcho Dean Baquet ordered a company-wide “reset” in how his staff should think about Twitter. Mostly, he’d like them to never look at it again. You can see why. Most of the people who work for him are very bad at being on Twitter, and their tweets truly are just not good. And then their bosses are so obsessed with Twitter too, and on edge about it. A cycle of humiliation ensues. They…
Politico reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is open to a neutral status for his country and a “compromise” on the contested Donbas region as part of peace negotiations with Russia, he said in an interview with several Russian outlets on Sunday. “Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are prepared to go through with it,” Zelenskyy told Russian news organizations Meduza, Kommersant, Novaya Gazeta and TV Rain, speaking in Russian throughout the interview. For Ukraine, neutrality would…
The Wall Street Journal reports: In the hours after three journalists working for Fox News in Ukraine took fire on March 14, staffers from rival news organization CNN stepped up to assist the cable network. Clarissa Ward, chief international correspondent for CNN, and Trey Yingst, a foreign correspondent for Fox News, worked in CNN’s makeshift newsroom in a Kyiv hotel suite, calling morgues and hospitals to track down Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, a consultant for…
The Guardian reports: Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has praised Fox News for its coverage, appearing on the Russian state-controlled RT network to hail the right-leaning US cable channel, whose primetime host Tucker Carlson has played down the invasion. “We know the manners and the tricks that are being used by the western countries to manipulate media, we understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent western media,” said Lavrov, speaking in English in a studio…
Yair Rosenberg writes: Douglas Macgregor is a retired U.S. Army colonel who has become Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s go-to foreign policy expert. In recent appearances on the channel, he has argued that the U.S. should not sanction Russia and that Vladimir Putin should be allowed to annex as much of Ukraine as he wants, which is why many today consider Macgregor to be less a neutral observer than a Russia apologist. What they may not know is that he’s…
Mother Jones reports: On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson. “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine,…
The New York Times reports: The New York Times said on Tuesday that it was temporarily removing its journalists from Russia in the wake of harsh new legislation that effectively outlaws independent reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Russia’s new legislation seeks to criminalize independent, accurate news reporting about the war against Ukraine. For the safety and security of our editorial staff working in the region, we are moving them out of the country for now,” a spokeswoman for…
Masha Gessen writes: Whenever TV Rain, Russia’s last independent television channel, was broadcasting live, the lights in its vast loft were dimmed and conversations were hushed, because its studio was cordoned off from the rest of the space only by partial-height glass partitions. When I got to the loft just before ten on Tuesday night, the lights were low, as usual, but the noise level was veering into risky territory. Mikhail Fishman, who hosts a Friday-night news-analysis program, was in…
CNN reports: RT America will cease productions and lay off most of its staff, according to a memo from T&R Productions, the production company behind the Russian state-funded network, which CNN obtained. Misha Solodovnikov, the general manager of T&R Productions, told staff in the memo that it will be “ceasing production” at all of its locations “as a result of unforeseen business interruption events.” “Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent…
The Wall Street Journal reports: News Corp was the target of a hack that accessed emails and documents of journalists and other employees, an incursion the company’s cybersecurity consultant said was likely meant to gather intelligence to benefit China’s interests. The attack, discovered on Jan. 20, affected a number of publications and business units including The Wall Street Journal and its parent Dow Jones; the New York Post; the company’s U.K. news operation; and News Corp headquarters, according to an…
Margaret Sullivan writes: Many questions still swirl around Wednesday’s startling announcement that, after nine years, Jeff Zucker’s reign as CNN president was over. Was his ouster really all about his failure to disclose to his corporate bosses a consensual relationship with another top network executive? How much of a factor was the continuing mess over former host Chris Cuomo’s firing in December? To what extent were the network’s flagging ratings part of the calculation? It will all eventually be revealed…
Politico reports: The launch of the website Grid earlier this month represented the latest bet that the market for explainer journalism still exists in the digital space. But unlike others in the field, Grid has a unique origin story, one that involves early ties to a global consulting firm best known for its crisis communications management and lobbying work on behalf of foreign governments, most notably the United Arab Emirates. Months before Grid brought on board any writers or staff,…
Reuters reports: The largest satellite provider in the United States said late Friday it will drop One America News, a move that could financially cripple the rightwing TV network known for fueling conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The announcement by DirecTV, which is 70% owned by AT&T, comes three months after a Reuters investigation revealed that OAN’s founder testified that AT&T inspired him to create the network. Court testimony also showed that OAN receives nearly all of its revenue…
Eric Weiner writes: The critics are right. The mainstream media is biased. It is not a political bias, though, no liberal or conservative slant, but something even more insidious: a bad-news bias. During my decades as a daily journalist, at The New York Times and NPR, I knew that reporting on happy people and places wasn’t going to advance my career. No one told me this. They didn’t need to. The bad-news bias is simply understood. “If it bleeds, it…
Raghu Adiga writes: Earlier this week, Israeli media reported a person who was hospitalized with evidence of both seasonal flu and COVID at the same time. This unvaccinated and pregnant person had mild symptoms and was discharged without any complications. A person being infected with both the COVID-causing SARS-CoV2 virus and an influenza virus can happen; we just had one such person in our hospital last month whom we treated and discharged without a whole lot of fanfare. However, the…
Margaret Sullivan writes: The House Jan. 6 committee asked this week that Fox News host Sean Hannity appear and answer investigators’ questions about his text messages to President Trump’s aides before, during and after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The response from Hannity’s lawyer was every bit as predictable as it was laughable. “We remain very concerned about the constitutional implications especially as it relates to the First Amendment,” wrote Jay Sekulow, the Trump-team lawyer who represents Hannity. He…