Co-founder says site sits between telephone company and newspaper as content provider
Facebook must accept some form of state regulation, acknowledging its status as a content provider somewhere between a newspaper and a telephone company, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said.
He also claimed an era of clean democratic elections, free of interference by foreign governments, is closer due to Facebook now employing 35,000 staff working on monitoring content and security.
Continue reading...Agenda-setting newspapers and TV stations facing scramble to survive amid state dysfunction
For nearly 80 years since its postwar independence, Lebanon has been a haven for regional media, giving a platform to journalism and entertainment that few other countries in the Middle East would dare to match.
Its newspapers set agendas, its TV stations tested boundaries, and its proprietors defied both war and downturn, producing content that challenged state narratives and tested the patience of the powerful.
Continue reading...Among those named in document are frequent guests Rudy Giuliani, John Solomon, Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova
Fox News has a credibility problem. Most critics of the cable news network will be well aware of that, but in this case the admission is coming from Fox News itself.
An internal research briefing obtained by the Daily Beast names four regular contributors to the network for peddling “disinformation”, particularly when it comes to the Ukraine scandal that led to Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Continue reading...Prosecutors had accused the journalist of helping a group hack into the phones of local authorities
A Brazilian judge has rejected charges against the US journalist Glenn Greenwald stemming from his role in producing a series of damaging political exposés involving the celebrity justice minister of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Federal prosecutors last month accused Greenwald – a staunch Bolsonaro critic – of being part of a “criminal” group of hackers which had allegedly pilfered messages from the mobile phones of Brazilian prosecutors and judges.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
The SDLP’s Colum Eastwood asks about the involvement of the IRA in the murder of Paul Quinn in 2007. It was claimed Quinn was a criminal, he says. That was a lie, he says.
Johnson says the government will implement the Stormont House agreement so as to provide justice for victims.
The SNP’s Owen Thompson asks when the report into Russian interference in UK elections will be published.
Johnson says it will be published when the intelligence and security committee is reconstituted. He says conspiracy theorists will be disappointed by its conclusions.
Continue reading...Juliette Kayyem has left NSO, which denies its technology has been used to target activists
A former Obama administration official who has faced criticism from press freedom groups for her role as a senior adviser at NSO Group has stepped down from the Israeli spyware company.
The disclosure of the public departure of Juliette Kayyem, a high-profile national security expert and Harvard professor, as a senior adviser to NSO came just one day after a controversy over her role at the spyware group prompted Harvard to cancel an online seminar she was due to host.
Continue reading...Report also urges government to consider making firms such as Facebook share their data
New regulation should be passed to control the algorithms that promote content such as posts, videos and adverts on social networks, the UK government’s advisory body on AI ethics has recommended.
As part of a forthcoming overhaul of regulation covering the internet, the government should also consider requiring social media platforms to allow independent researchers access to their data if they are researching issues of public concern, the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) suggested. That could include topics such as the effects of social media on mental health, or its role in spreading misinformation.
Continue reading...Journalists in Downing Street walk out after Johnson aide tries to exclude some reporters
Political journalists boycotted a Downing Street briefing on Monday after one of Boris Johnson’s aides banned selected reporters from attending.
The confrontation took place inside No 10 after Lee Cain, Johnson’s most senior communications adviser, tried to exclude reporters from the Mirror, the i, HuffPost, PoliticsHome, the Independent and others from an official government briefing.
Continue reading...The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17
Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”
That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.
Continue reading...Creator Peter Morgan reveals fifth season will be the last of the Netflix drama
The fifth series of Netflix’s The Crown will be its last, its creator and writer, Peter Morgan, has revealed, as Imelda Staunton is confirmed to replace Olivia Colman as the Queen.
Fans of the critically acclaimed show, watched by more than 73m households worldwide, had hoped for a sixth series, which Morgan himself had originally planned. But, he said he believed it was time to stop.
Continue reading...Controversial rightwing commentator locked out of the social media site after complaints from anti-racism campaigners
The controversial rightwing commentator Katie Hopkins has had her Twitter account suspended for violating the terms of the social media site.
Hopkins’ account was still visible online on Thursday night, but Twitter said that Hopkins had been temporarily locked out of the platform for violating its anti-hate policy.
Continue reading...Harry told Ipso that article implied he misled public about pictures of a rhino, elephant and lion
The Duke of Sussex has lost a complaint against the Mail on Sunday over a claim by the newspaper that dramatic wildlife pictures he took in Africa did not highlight the fact the animals were sedated and tethered.
Prince Harry complained to press standards regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) that the newspaper had breached a clause of the editors’ code of practice relating to accuracy over its article about photographs he took of a rhino, elephant and a lion.
Continue reading...Move follows efforts to reduce carbon footprint and increase reporting on climate crisis
The Guardian will no longer accept advertising from oil and gas companies, becoming the first major global news organisation to institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels.
The move, which follows efforts to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and increase reporting on the climate emergency, was announced on Wednesday and will be implemented with immediate effect. The ban will apply to any business primarily involved in extracting fossil fuels, including many of the world’s largest polluters.
Continue reading...European assembly says WikiLeaks founder’s detention ‘sets dangerous precedent’
Julian Assange’s detention “sets a dangerous precedent for journalists”, according to politicians from the Council of Europe’s parliamentary arm, who voted on Tuesday to oppose the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the US.
The words of support for Assange and implicit criticism of the UK government will be contained in a final report produced by the Labour peer Lord Foulkes for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which focuses on upholding human rights across the continent.
Continue reading...State department investigates after New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard says his phone was targeted in 2018
A New York Times reporter was allegedly targeted with spyware linked to Saudi Arabia in 2018, at a time when the kingdom was targeting several Saudi dissidents around the world.
A new report by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School found that Ben Hubbard, who has written a book about Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, was targeted by spyware known as “Pegasus”, which is made by Israel’s NSO Group.
Continue reading...Rick Wilson, whose joke about Trump playing to his base led to the spat, hits back at first daughter’s ‘breathtaking hypocrisy’
Ivanka Trump has waded into a row over a CNN segment in which host Don Lemon laughed as two guests ridiculed supporters of her father.
Related: How to dump Trump: Rick Wilson on Running Against the Devil
Continue reading...Papers lodged in high court civil case say family was put under unlawful surveillance
Private detectives were hired by the Sunday People newspaper to target the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002, it has been alleged.
The claims are made in legal papers lodged as part of a civil action being taken by a range of claimants, including Prince Harry.
Continue reading...A guide to ‘the bottom-feeders, crooked lawyers and gossip mongers who created the 45th president’ demands to be read
In February 2019, Jeff Bezos accused David Pecker and the National Enquirer of extortion and blackmail after the tabloid published intimate pictures taken by the Amazon chief. Pecker and co denied being motivated by a desire to aid Donald Trump or receiving a major assist from Saudi Arabia. It was just about gossip.
Related: 'Click I agree': the UN rapporteur says prince tried to intimidate Bezos with message
Continue reading...Secretary of state screamed obscenities and demanded host Mary Louise Kelly find Ukraine on a map, journalist says
Mike Pompeo is said to have unleashed a foul-mouth tirade at a well known US radio host after she asked him questions about Ukraine in an interview.
Mary Louise Kelly, a respected broadcaster on National Public Radio (NPR), sat down for a pre-arranged interview with the secretary of state on Friday, whose wrath was apparently triggered by a string of questions about Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Kelly asked Pompeo whether he owed Yovanovitch an apology for not defending her in the face of a smear campaign orchestrated by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associates.
Continue reading...Associated Press says Vanessa Nakate was excised from image, which also featured Greta Thunberg, ‘purely on composition grounds’
Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has called out racism in media after she was cropped out of a photo featuring prominent climate activists including Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer and Isabelle Axelsson.
Nakate made the comment in a video which has since gone viral, adding that she now understood “the definition of the word racism” for the first time in her life.
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