Category Archives: Media

Trump campaign sues New York Times for libel over Russia story

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  • Suit alleges ‘extreme bias’ in knowingly publishing falsehood
  • Opinion piece titled ‘The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo’

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign said on Wednesday it had filed a libel suit against the New York Times accusing the newspaper of intentionally publishing a false opinion article related to Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

In an escalation of the Republican president’s long-running battle with the news media, campaign officials said the lawsuit was being filed in New York state supreme court, the state’s trial-level court.

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Facebook users would tell social media platform their bank balance for $8.44 a month

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Study of people across six countries finds German users would charge most for sharing personal data

German Facebook users would want the social media platform to pay them about $8 per month for sharing their contact information, while US users would only seek $3.50, according to a study of how people in various countries value their private information.

The study by US-based thinktank the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) is the first that attempts to quantify the value of online privacy and data. It assessed how much privacy is worth in six countries by looking at the habits of people in the United States, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Argentina.

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Barbara B Smith, groundbreaking model and lifestyle guru, dies aged 70

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  • Author and entrepreneur had early onset Alzheimer’s
  • Eponymous Manhattan restaurant achieved society success

The groundbreaking model, restaurateur and lifestyle guru Barbara B Smith, known to many as “the black Martha Stewart”, has died, her family announced on Sunday. She was 70.

Smith died on Saturday evening after suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease, which she was found to have in 2013. Following her diagnosis, Smith and her husband, Dan Gasby, raised awareness of the disease and particularly its impacts on the African American community.

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Julian Assange was ‘harassed’ by cell search, father claims

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John Shipton says his son’s Belmarsh room was targeted on eve of extradition hearing

Julian Assange’s father has claimed his son was “harassed” by a prison cell search the day before his extradition hearing was planned to begin.

John Shipton visited the WikiLeaks founder at Belmarsh prison in south-east London for two hours on Sunday.

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Lawyers to seek asylum for Julian Assange in France

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Assange’s European defence team say it is their duty to raise case with Emmanuel Macron

Julian Assange’s European defence team have said they will try to seek asylum for him in France. Hearings over Assange’s extradition from the UK to the US on spying charges are due to start next week in London.

Éric Dupond-Moretti said the “fate and the status of all journalists” was at stake in Assange’s case. “We consider the situation is sufficiently serious,” he said, “that our duty is to talk about it” with the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

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Julian Assange: Australian MPs call on UK to block US extradition

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Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jail

Boris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who have flown to the UK to visit the WikiLeaks founder.

Andrew Wilkie, an independent federal MP, said the extradition of Assange, who has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, would set a dangerous precedent.

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Politicians condemn press intrusion after Caroline Flack’s death

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ITV says Sunday’s Love Island will not be broadcast as calls mount for regulation of traditional and social media

Politicians have condemned press intrusion, calling for more regulation of both traditional and social media after the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack.

The former Love Island presenter is understood to have taken her own life on Saturday at her home in Islington, London. She had been charged with assaulting her partner and was due to stand trial in several weeks’ time.

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YouTube at 15: what happened to some of the platform’s biggest early stars?

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As YouTube celebrates its 15th birthday, we talk to five early adopters about how the all-singing all-dancing platform has evolved

Late on the evening of 14 February 2005, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen registered the website YouTube.com. Two months later, when the first video (of Karim briefly describing the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo) was uploaded, a platform was launched that has gone on to change the world.

Today, more than 2bn of us visit YouTube monthly, and 500 hours of footage is uploaded every minute. That’s a far cry from the 18-second video that started it all. Its stars are multi-millionaires: YouTube’s highest earner in 2019 was an eight-year-old called Ryan, who netted $26m. The number of creators earning five or six figures has increased by more than 40% year on year. At first, users earned a few hundred pounds for mentioning products in their videos; now they can make hundreds of thousands, and much more through exclusive brand deals. Not many like talking about their income: it makes them less relatable.

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook must accept some state regulation

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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.

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Lebanon’s financial crisis leaves its envied media industry in freefall

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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.

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Fox News guests spread ‘disinformation’ – says leaked internal memo

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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.

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Brazil: judge dismisses cybercrimes accusations against Glenn Greenwald

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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.

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PMQs: Boris Johnson faces Jeremy Corbyn – live news

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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.

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Ex-Obama official exits Israeli spyware firm amid press freedom row

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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.

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Algorithms on social media need regulation, says UK’s AI adviser

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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.

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Political journalists boycott No 10 briefing after reporter ban

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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.

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Rachel Maddow on her critics: ‘Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on! Give me more!’

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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”.

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The Crown will end after season five, with Imelda Staunton as Queen

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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.

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Katie Hopkins’ Twitter account suspended

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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.

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Prince Harry loses Mail on Sunday complaint over sedated wildlife photos

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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.

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