Category Archives: Media

Prominent Britons of colour condemn BBC over Naga Munchetty complaint

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Corporation accused of racial discrimination after presenter reprimanded for Trump remarks

More than 40 prominent broadcasters, celebrities and actors of colour have condemned the BBC, demanding it reconsider a decision partially upholding a complaint against the presenter Naga Munchetty, calling it “deeply flawed, illegal and contrary to the spirit and purpose of public broadcasting”.

In a letter published in the Guardian, the actors Lenny Henry, Adrian Lester and David Harewood, and presenters Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Gillian Joseph are among signatories describing the decision as “racially discriminatory treatment”.

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Johnson offers words of praise to Egypt’s leader despite repression

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Banning of BBC and crackdown on protests seemingly not on agenda at PM’s talks with Sisi

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, lavished praise on Egypt at a bilateral meeting with its president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, in New York, hours before the UK hosted a global media freedom conference with Amal Clooney, the UK’s special envoy on media freedom.

Sisi has just instigated a fresh massive crackdown on journalists following the outbreak of protests against corruption in Egypt.

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Woman behind ‘French #MeToo’ found guilty of defaming media executive

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Sandra Muller calls verdict in favour of Eric Brion ‘backwards step’ and vows to appeal

A woman who launched a French version of the #MeToo campaign to expose abusive male behaviour has been found guilty of defaming a media executive she accused of making lewd and sexist remarks.

Sandra Muller said Eric Brion had humiliated her with sexual remarks at a function in Cannes in 2012. She was ordered to pay €15,000 in damages to the executive and €5,000 in legal fees, and was also told to delete a tweet about him and publish the statements issued by the court on her Twitter account and in two press outlets.

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Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

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Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims

TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.

The documents, revealed by the Guardian for the first time, lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app.

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Facebook suspends thousands of apps over privacy issues

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Removals are part of inquiry into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook has suspended tens of thousands of apps from the platform for privacy reasons, it announced in a blogpost on Friday.

The removals come as part of an ongoing investigation into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018. The news also reveals that the platform is home to more problematic apps than previously thought.

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Ian Paisley Jr criticised by NUJ for personal attack on journalist

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North Antrim MP accused Sam McBride of lying as part of agenda to destroy DUP

Ian Paisley Jr has been strongly criticised by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) for personal comments he made about a reporter in Belfast.

The North Antrim MP accused the News Letter’s political editor, Sam McBride, of lying as part of “an agenda to attempt to undermine and destroy the DUP”. In a 750-word Facebook post, since removed, Paisley described the journalist as “incredibly immature, intellectually weak and a simplistic fellow”.

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The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century

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Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say

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Julian Assange to remain in jail pending extradition to US

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WikiLeaks founder’s custody will be extended after current prison terms comes to end

Julian Assange will stay in prison after the custody period on his current jail term ends because of his “history of absconding”.

As home secretary, Sajid Javid signed an order in June allowing Assange’s extradition to the US over hacking allegations. A 50-week jail term was imposed in the UK after he had jumped previous bail by going into hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

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Twitter blocks accounts of Raúl Castro and Cuban state-run media outlets

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Mariela Castro and state media journalists were also blocked in move Cuban Union of Journalists called ‘massive censorship’

Twitter has blocked the accounts of the Cuban Communist party leader Raúl Castro, his daughter Mariela Castro and Cuba’s top state-run media outlets, a move the Cuban Union of Journalists denounced as “massive censorship”.

Related: Cuba is driving dissidents off island with threats of violence and jail, report finds

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Tanzanian journalist could face up to five years in jail without trial

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Charges against Erick Kabendera preclude bail, say lawyers, as national media council claims case has been ‘politically handled’

A Tanzanian journalist charged with money laundering and leading organised crime could face up to five years in jail without trial because bail is not guaranteed in cases involving alleged economic crimes, his legal team has warned.

Erick Kabendera’s lawyers and family also criticised Tanzanian immigration authorities for refusing to return his wife and children’s passports, even though allegations over his citizenship have been dropped.

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Gwyneth Paltrow ‘a crucial source’ in Harvey Weinstein revelations

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A new book says the actor was scared of going on the record at first but then encouraged other women to speak out

Gwyneth Paltrow has been named a key figure in the New York Times story that first catalogued a series of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and led to the film producer’s dismissal from his own company and subsequent prosecution.

In a new book titled She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey – the New York Times reporters whose story on 5 October 2017 triggered Weinstein’s downfall – Paltrow is said to have been “scared to go on the record but became an early, crucial source, sharing her account of sexual harassment and trying to recruit other actresses to speak”.

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German Millionaire quizshow fan wins €1m – after 15 years trying

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Jan Stroh built replica studio in his cellar, complete with palm trees and sound effects

A German lawyer who spent 15 years re-enacting episodes of the TV quizshow Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in his cellar, said his hobby had paid off as he walked away with the top prize this week.

Jan Stroh, 35, even crudely reconstructed the studio of the German version of the programme in the basement of his Hamburg home, complete with palm trees and exotic seascape backdrop, victory glitter and sound effects.

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Lebedev dinner with Mohammed bin Salman raises questions over Saudi links

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Independent owner hosted Saudi leader in London last year

Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Independent and the Evening Standard, hosted a private dinner for the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, raising further questions about the media mogul’s links to the de facto ruler of the Middle Eastern kingdom.

Lebedev’s news outlets are being investigated due to public interest concerns over a mysterious Saudi investment made through a web of offshore bank accounts, with the UK government suggesting that the Independent and Evening Standard are now part-owned by the Saudi state. The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, has until Friday to decide whether or not to appeal against a court ruling that the UK government missed a deadline to intervene in the deal.

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Chinese deepfake app Zao sparks privacy row after going viral

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Critics say face-swap app could spread misinformation on a massive scale

A Chinese app that lets users convincingly swap their faces with film or TV characters has rapidly become one of the country’s most downloaded apps, triggering a privacy row.

Related: The rise of the deepfake and the threat to democracy

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Valerie Harper, Emmy award-winning star of TV series Rhoda, dies aged 80

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Harper was a breakout star on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then the lead of her own series, Rhoda

Valerie Harper, who stole hearts and busted TV taboos as the brash, self-deprecating Rhoda Morgenstern on back-to-back hit sitcoms in the 1970s, has died aged 80.

Longtime family friend Dan Watt confirmed Harper died on Friday, adding the family was not immediately releasing any further details. She had been suffering from cancer for years, and her husband said recently he had been advised to put her in hospice care.

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China denies credentials to Wall Street Journal reporter

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Chun Han Wong, who covered Xi Jinping extensively, is in effect expelled from country

Chinese authorities have declined to renew the press credentials of a Beijing-based Wall Street Journal reporter, in effect expelling a journalist who extensively covered President Xi Jinping and Communist party politics.

The foreign ministry said on Friday in response to a faxed question about the Singaporean reporter Chun Han Wong’s visa that some foreign journalists with the “evil intention to smear and attack China” were not welcome.

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PewDiePie surpasses 100m subscriber mark on YouTube

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Controversial gaming vlogger, 29, is owner of second most popular channel by subscribers

The gaming vlogger Felix Kjellberg, AKA PewDiePie, has surpassed 100 million subscribers on YouTube.

Kjellberg, the owner of the channel with the second highest number of subscribers on the video sharing site, built a legion of young fans with his “let’s play” game commentaries, but he has also attracted controversy.

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Russia Today puts Japan on the map, where New Zealand should be

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New channel apologises to New Zealanders for map mix-up that also labelled Papua New Guinea as South Korea

Russian news channel RT has apologised for apparently accidentally labelling New Zealand as “Japan”, and Papua New Guinea as “South Korea” in an embarrassing southern hemisphere mix-up.

The mistake came in a segment produced by their US bureau about potential new missile bases in “Japan, South Korea and Australia”. But in a large, erroneous graphic only Australia was correctly labelled.

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The murky life and death of Robert Maxwell – and how it shaped his daughter Ghislaine

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Was it murder? Suicide? Or just an accident? Almost 30 years before Jeffrey Epstein’s demise, Ghislaine Maxwell was caught up in another shocking and scandal-ridden mystery

At one time, everyone knew where to find Ghislaine Maxwell. The former aide-de-camp of the disgraced, now deceased, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was a fixture in Manhattan’s most fashionable salons. With an impressive list of contacts, including Prince Andrew and Chelsea Clinton, she was a regular at fundraisers, book launches and society weddings.

The last place anyone would have expected to see her was a Los Angeles shopping mall, where the 57-year-old was photographed in a burger joint last week, just days after Epstein’s suicide in a New York jail, where he was being held on charges of sex trafficking underage girls.

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Alan Jones says advertisers who leave his program will be replaced by others

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Total of 19 big advertisers have dropped his breakfast program after comments he made about Jacinda Ardern

Broadcaster Alan Jones says advertisers who chose to abandon his program because of his slurs against women will be replaced by others.

“I’ve got no comment about the advertisers, they can make their own judgement if they go,” a defiant Jones told Nine News. “There will be others that take their place.”

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