Attention to the Unseen

William Bredderman reports: A slick online media machine has recruited a slew of characters from Russian state-affiliated outlets—and joined a sprawling multinational network of pro-Moscow, pro-Beijing content creators backed by a U.S. businessman reportedly probed in India for ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Since it started posting to Instagram and Youtube in early 2020, nearly all BreakThrough News’ camera-facing personalities have been veterans of Kremlin-backed outfits: former Radio Sputnik host Eugene Puryear; pundit Rania Khalek of video generator ‘In the Now;’ Kei Pritsker, Abby Martin, and Brian…

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Oliver Darcy writes: It has been one week since CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump — and the fierce fallout stemming from the event is still reverberating. While accepting the prestigious Columbia Journalism Award and serving as the school’s 2023 commencement speaker, Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday became the first network anchor to publicly voice dissent with management over the town hall, which has spawned a storm of fierce backlash. Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, disclosed that she had met with…

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Variety reports: The mystery surrounding Tucker Carlson’s ouster from the airwaves at Fox News — and his future plans in media — are coming into sharper focus. On April 26, Carlson spoke by phone with one of Fox Corp.’s eight board members, who told the host that his recent benching was a condition of Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the conversation. The unnamed board member told Carlson that the condition does…

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Megan Garber writes: In the 1960s, when television was the revolutionary technology reshaping American life, the historian Daniel Boorstin published The Image, his seminal criticism of the media in the age of the screen. In it, Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to describe the spectacle that exists merely to be documented: the press conference, the news release, the campaign rally. The coinage informs today’s idea of the media event: the thing that occurs primarily so that journalists can tell their…

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Philip Bump writes: The morning after the channel’s widely pilloried “town hall” with former president Donald Trump, CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht defended the program in a call with staffers. “While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story,” Licht said, according to journalist Brian Stelter, adding that Trump’s supporters are “a large swath of America.” On his own show Thursday night, CNN host Anderson Cooper made a similar…

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The New York Times reports: A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race. The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing. In the message, sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed…

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Julia Davis reports: The explosive news of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News came as a surprise to many, including some of his biggest fans: propagandists who are shilling for the Kremlin on Russian state TV. During Monday’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, state TV propagandists discussed the best ways for Russia to attack America on its own turf, citing internal divisions and conflicts as an opening that should be continually probed and exploited. This conversation naturally led…

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Gabriel Sherman reports: The media world was blindsided by the news that Tucker Carlson and Fox News would be parting ways. So was Carlson. On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off. According to a source briefed on the conversation, Carlson was stunned by his sudden ouster from his 8 p.m. show, the most watched program in cable news…

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The Guardian reports: In a seemingly long gone era – before the Trump presidency, and Covid, and the 2020 election – Doni Chamberlain would get the occasional call from a displeased reader who had taken issue with one of her columns. They would sometimes call her stupid and use profanities. Today, when people don’t like her pieces, Chamberlain said, they tell her she’s a communist who doesn’t deserve to live. One local conservative radio host said she should be hanged….

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Jack Shafer writes: If it seems fairly daft to congratulate Rupert Murdoch on settling the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case at a cost of $787.5 million, you probably need to be brought up to speed on how the tycoon excises malignancies when they threaten his core businesses. Murdoch’s company paid $100 million to celebrities and crime victims in his tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain, according to the Washington Post. Another $50 million went one year to women at Fox News who alleged sexual harassment…

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