The Apprentice host says his wife is upset he has never been allowed to keep a statuette
Awards season is in full swing but one man feels particularly hard done by: Alan Sugar.
The host of The Apprentice has called for himself to be given his own special award in recognition of the reality show’s success, after revealing that his wife is upset that he has never been allowed to keep a Bafta statuette.
Continue reading...Regional trend sees criminal law repeatedly weaponised to target journalists and muzzle free and fair reporting
Standing on the court steps earlier this month after spending a night in detention, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa spoke defiantly to the dozens of gathered cameras. This was, she pointed out, the sixth time she had posted bail in the space of 18 months. “I will pay more bail than convicted criminals,” said Ressa. “I will pay more bail than Imelda Marcos.”
Ressa, the editor and founder of Rappler, a Philippine online news outlet which has been highly critical of president Rodrigo Duterte, has borne the brunt of a targeted crackdown on opposition media in the Philippines, a country which just two years ago was considered something of a beacon of free press in south-east Asia.
Continue reading...Herald Sun newspaper’s depiction of player ‘spitting the dummy’ at US Open had been widely condemned
A Herald Sun cartoon that depicted Serena Williams jumping in the air and “spitting the dummy” after losing a match to Naomi Osaka was not racist, the Press Council has found.
The News Corp cartoon came under global condemnation in September last year for publishing what some saw as a racist, sexist cartoon.
Continue reading...Elecia R. Dexter takes reins of Democrat-Reporter from Goodloe Sutton, who called for return of Ku Klux Klan
A small-town Alabama newspaper that drew condemnation for an editorial this month calling for the Ku Klux Klan to “ride again” has named an African American woman as its new editor and publisher, the paper has said.
On Friday, Elecia R. Dexter took the reins of the weekly Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama, from Goodloe Sutton, 79, the longtime owner of the paper who wrote the incendiary editorial that brought sharp rebukes from elected officials in the state and the public.
Continue reading...Epic Games joins Nestlé in abandoning video site over comments section scandal
The maker of Fortnite has pulled adverts from YouTube amid concerns that promotions for the video game, which is popular with children, were appearing alongside comments posted by paedophiles.
Epic Games confirmed it had withdrawn its adverts from the Google-owned site, joining Nestlé in temporarily abandoning it due to the latest scandal over inappropriate content.
Continue reading...Rutger Bregman is the Dutch historian who became a global sensation after an appearance at this year’s Davos summit, where he accused attending billionaires of ignoring taxation. Now he has created another viral moment in an extremely uncomfortable interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.
Bregman so riled Carson with his accusations of hypocrisy, critiques of Fox’s conservative agenda, and attacks on Donald Trump that the TV host called him a “moron” and angrily told him: “Go fuck yourself.”
Continue reading...Damian Collins warns of ‘deepfake films’ showing doctored footage of politicians
Online disinformation is only going to get more sophisticated, the chair of the committee investigating disinformation and fake news, Damian Collins, has warned.
Related: Facebook labelled 'digital gangsters' by report on fake news
Continue reading...The latest World Health Organization report on measles epidemics shows that cases jumped by 50% last year. In one of the poorest and least connected countries in the world, Madagascar, nearly a thousand children are reported to have died after a measles outbreak in the countryside. The real figure is likely to be much higher, because of difficulties of reporting. An emergency programme of vaccination seems to have contained that epidemic for the moment but it is a reminder of how devastating the disease can be against unprepared populations. In the rich world, meanwhile, previously prepared populations are having their defences dismantled from the inside.
The discovery of ad campaigns against vaccination on Facebook that are carefully targeted at pregnant women is unusually worrying. It shows how the widespread availability of sophisticated advertising techniques is going to give considerable power to people who previously had no way of getting their message across to large numbers. In the most recent US campaigns against vaccination, 147 different advertisements have been used and some viewed more than 5m times. There is an arms race under way, whether we like it or not.
Continue reading...The editor-in-chief of American Vogue talks to Jess Cartner-Morley about Michelle Obama, fake news and only spending 20 minutes at parties.
Portraits by Tyler Mitchell
• Read more from the spring/summer 2019 edition of The Fashion, our biannual fashion supplement
One morning last August, Anna Wintour was playing tennis with her coach in the 40-acre grounds of her Long Island summerhouse. She noticed he seemed a little distracted: “But his wife was about to have a baby, so I thought he was nervous about that.” Then it struck her that they had attracted an unusual number of spectators. The house was brimful with family, but it was earlier than most people get up on a weekend. (“I’m a morning person,” says Wintour, for whom anything later than 5am constitutes a lie-in.) As she prepared to serve, she heard a car pull up. “I am pretty OCD about guests and where they are sleeping. I thought, I’m not expecting anyone else, I don’t have any more rooms. Who is this? And then I thought – that looks like Roger [Federer, with whom Wintour is good friends]. And that looks like [his wife] Mirka. And that looks like their twins.” Wintour’s daughter Bee Shaffer, it transpired, had arranged for a Federer-Wintour family tennis tournament, “which was the best gift a daughter could give a tennis-mad mother. I got to play doubles with Roger for the first time in our very long friendship, against my two nephews.” Twenty-five floors above Manhattan, behind the ebonised mahogany Alan Buchsbaum desk from which she has ruled the fashion world for three decades, she leans back in her chair and smiles at the memory. “We won, of course.”
Continue reading...The extremist group’s enduring influence in Mogadishu makes the Somali capital a dangerous place to live and work
Once every other month, journalist Hassan Dahir, 28, leaves his hostel in central Mogadishu under the cover of darkness to visit his mother in Yaqshid district, north-east of the capital.
He will spend the night with her and return to his rented room before dawn.
Continue reading...Philippines president Duterte government accused of shameless persecution
The editor of an online newspaper in the Philippines has been arrested on charges of cyber-libel as part of what the country’s journalists’ union said was a campaign of intimidation against voices critical of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Speaking from the headquarters of news website Rappler on Wednesday before she was taken away by four plainclothes officers, Maria Ressa said she was not intimidated. “These legal acrobatics show how far the government will go to silence journalists, including the pettiness of forcing me to spend the night in jail,” she added.
Continue reading...A man was seen shoving BBC cameraman Ron Skeans before being pulled away, according to a BBC video
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has condemned an attack on a BBC cameraman by a supporter of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in El Paso, Texas.
Asked whether it was acceptable for Trump to whip up his fans to the point that a cameraman was attacked, Hunt told Sky News: “It is never acceptable when journalists and cameramen are attacked just for doing their job.“
Continue reading...Five suspended over role in group that allegedly harassed other journalists for years
A clique of French journalists has been accused of bullying female colleagues via social media.
Six people have been suspended for their role in the closed Facebook group Ligue du LOL, a macho online “boys’ club” that reportedly harassed female and minority ethnic journalists for years.
Continue reading...Pete Hegseth denies existence of germs, saying: ‘I can’t see them, therefore they’re not real’
Donald Trump’s favourite TV show, Fox & Friends, has a reputation for giving airtime to conspiracy theories that benefit the White House agenda. But host Pete Hegseth may now have managed to upset the famously germaphobic president – by revealing that he has not washed his hands in a decade.
Related: Trump and the Fox & Friends show. Think ego, not news
Continue reading...As the British comedian’s show returns, he discusses fighting fake news, why Brexit is worse than Trump’s presidency – and his attempt to convert his kids to Marmite
The Donald Trump presidency, John Oliver observed in 2017, is a marathon. “It’s painful, it’s pointless and the majority of you didn’t even agree to run it; you were just signed up by your dumbest friend,” he told viewers. “And though you’re exhausted and your whole body is screaming for you to give up and your nipples are chafing for some reason, the stakes are too high for any of us to stop.”
Activists, politicians, judges, journalists and concerned citizens are all running the race. Some have embraced the challenge and now, past the halfway point, are finding hope as they see the 2020 election on the horizon. Others have wobbled, legs buckling, consumed by the anxiety that they will never make it. Oliver, a cheerful and charming presence in a conference room at HBO’s headquarters in New York, is surely one of those runners wearing a wacky costume, pointing out the absurdity of the exercise while embodying the stamina and stoicism required to reach the finish line.
Continue reading...The Democrat officially announces campaign to be next American president at a rally in Massachusetts
Continue reading...Businessman faces string of allegations by employees after injunction is lifted
Philip Green allegedly subjected people working in his business empire to abuse and other inappropriate behaviour that was at times racial, physical and sexual, according to a report.
A host of serious allegations were published on Friday evening by the Daily Telegraph after an injunction obtained by the businessman was lifted.
Continue reading...Newspaper will now be able to publish allegations of bullying and sexual harassment
The high court has brought Sir Philip Green’s legal action against the Daily Telegraph to an end, with the newspaper saying it will publish allegations of bullying and sexual harassment against the retail tycoon “in the coming days”.
The Topshop boss had been granted a temporary injunction blocking the Daily Telegraph from publishing allegations of misconduct made by five employees, who had all received substantial payments and signed non-disclosure agreements after settling their claims.
Continue reading...Amazon chief alleges tabloid threatened to publish nude images of him
Jeff Bezos has accused the publisher of the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail” in a blogpost alleging it threatened to publish revealing personal photos unless the Amazon chief executive publicly affirmed the paper’s reporting was not politically motivated.
Bezos, who is the world’s richest man and owns the Washington Post, became the subject of tabloid papers in January after he and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing. Shortly after, the National Enquirer published “intimate text messages” revealing Bezos’s relationship with Lauren Sánchez, a former TV anchor.
Continue reading...Social media site announces action following criticism from British teenager’s father
Instagram has announced it will ban all graphic self-harm images from its platform after the father of British teenager Molly Russell said it was partly to blame for her death.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said “no graphic self-harm image” would in future be allowed on the platform.
Continue reading...