Category Archives: Media

Mark Zuckerberg to receive $700m from Meta dividends

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Facebook’s parent company to pay out to shareholders as it reports $40bn revenues for final quarter

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is expected to receive $700m (£549m) a year in dividends.

On Thursday, Meta announced it would pay its first-ever quarterly dividend to investors since Facebook floated on the stock market in 2012, after beating Wall Street expectations with $40bn in revenues for the final quarter last year.

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‘I just got laid off’: news startup the Messenger abruptly shutters after a year

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Employees blindsided by news that company blew through $50m investment, will offer no severance and will cut off healthcare

The Messenger, a news startup launched last year with a $50m investment and a nonpartisan perspective, is shutting down, according to multiple news reports.

In a staff email, the publication’s founder, Jimmy Finkelstein, wrote that the company had pursued all options “over the past few weeks, literally until last night” but made the “painful” decision to shut down the site effective immediately after failing to raise “sufficient capital to reach profitability”.

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Telegraph takeover decision put back by fresh inquiry into Barclay family’s UAE-backed deal

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Regulators’ reports on public interest risk now due on 11 March after late change in consortium’s structure prompts further review

A second investigation has been launched into the Barclay family’s deal to transfer control of the Telegraph newspaper group, pushing the deadline for regulators’ reports on the public interest threat it poses by more than six weeks.

The UK government moved swiftly to order the second watchdog inquiry after the Barclays’ UAE-backed consortium partner revealed a last-minute corporate structure change.

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Palestinian journalist leaves Gaza after 108 days chronicling war

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Photojournalist Motaz Azaiza says he left ‘with a broken heart’ and hopes to return to help rebuild Gaza

The Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, a key chronicler of the war in Gaza, has been evacuated from the strip and found refuge in Qatar.

Azaiza, 24, who has 18.5 million Instagram followers, said in a video posted to the platform this week that he had been able to secure passage out of the blockaded coastal territory after documenting 108 days of the impact on civilians of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

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Virgin Media is most complained about UK broadband provider

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Ofcom figures show Virgin attracted about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband

Virgin Media is the UK’s most complained about broadband provider according to the latest figures, compounding woes for the firm, which is already under investigation by the communications regulator.

Figures released by Ofcom on Thursday showed that the number of complaints made about Virgin’s internet services between July and September were nearly double that of the next-most complained about provider, with Virgin attracting about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband.

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The Telegraph hopes to reshape Tory party in its own image

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Amid the paper’s own crises, the intent seems clear: a new leader to lower taxes and crack down on immigration

The Daily Telegraph has long been known as the Conservatives’ de facto house journal. But, with its central role in recent manoeuvrings to undermine Rishi Sunak, it seems the paper is taking this a step further, and hopes to reshape the party in its ideological image.

In the past 10 days, the Telegraph – itself experiencing flux with a takeover looming – has published not just a withering comment piece from a Tory MP calling for Sunak to go, but detailed polling seeking to explain why it would be better for the party if he did.

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BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz is ‘completely biased’, minister claims

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Comments by Huw Merriman come day after No 10 forced to deny government pursuing agenda against BBC

A minister has lashed out at a satirical Radio 4 show as being “completely biased” in the latest allegation from the Conservatives about BBC impartiality.

Huw Merriman, a transport minister, also referenced the BBC’s coverage of universal credit when challenged to give examples of supposed bias a day after a row was sparked by remarks by the culture secretary.

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Erwin James, former Guardian prison columnist, dies aged 66

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James wrote A Life Inside column while serving sentence for murder and later edited Inside Time newspaper

Erwin James, the writer of an influential Guardian column about life in prison who would go on to be a leading voice on criminal justice, has died.

James, real name Erwin James Monahan, was convicted of murder in 1984 and served 20 years in prison.

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Netflix places $5bn bet on live streaming with WWE Raw deal

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Entertainment giant has dabbled with live events in bid to shore up its dominant position as world’s largest streaming platform

Netflix has unveiled a $5bn push into live television after striking a decade-long deal with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to broadcast the hit wrestling show Raw.

The entertainment giant, which led the on-demand streaming revolution, has dabbled with live events in recent years in a bid to shore up its dominant position as the world’s largest streaming platform.

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ABC denies sacking Antoinette Lattouf and attempts to have termination case thrown out

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Move comes as pressure mounts on broadcaster’s management with union members passing vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson

The ABC has claimed it did not sack the journalist Antoinette Lattouf from her casual radio role, paving the way to attempt to have her termination case thrown out.

It comes as pressure mounts on the broadcaster’s management, with union members passing a vote of no confidence in the managing director, David Anderson.

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Flanders government looks to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenue

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Belgium already takes a cut from Netflix and Disney and new income will support local TV production

Cute cat videos, fried chicken clips and viral dances could soon help to finance Belgian TV, with the Flanders government on the verge of passing laws to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenues with local television producers.

“Politically speaking, it is important in audiovisual and media services that there are obligations on companies to invest in local TV content,” the media minister for the Flemish government, Benjamin Dalle, told the Guardian.

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Newspapers stolen after a story about rape charges at Colorado police chief’s house

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Theft occurred on day the Ouray County Plaindealer published story about alleged sexual assault at party at police chief’s house

Nearly all the copies of a small-town Colorado newspaper were stolen from newspaper racks on the same day the Ouray County Plaindealer published a story about charges being filed over rapes alleged to have occurred at an underage drinking party at the police chief’s house while the chief was asleep, the owner and publisher said Friday.

Mike Wiggins vowed to get to the bottom of it, posting Thursday on X, formerly Twitter: “If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably. We’ll find out who did this. And another press run is imminent.”

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Israel added to list of ‘worst jailers of journalists’ for first time

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Israel is in sixth place after the Committee to Protect Journalists recorded 18 Palestinian journalists in its jails

Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza.

A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday said that for the first time Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.

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Sheryl Sandberg to leave board of Facebook parent Meta

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Former chief operating officer was lead architect of Facebook’s digital advertising-driven business model

Sheryl Sandberg is to step down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, nearly two years after quitting her executive role at the business.

Sandberg was the lead architect of Facebook’s digital advertising-driven business model as Meta’s chief operating officer.

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ABC Sydney staff threaten to strike over termination of radio host Antoinette Lattouf

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Comes as national broadcaster files its response to wrongful dismissal claim brought by presenter

ABC journalists in the broadcaster’s Sydney offices have threatened a walkout unless management addresses concerns over the handling of the termination of radio host Antoinette Lattouf.

On Tuesday morning, the Sydney Morning Herald reported it had seen a chain of leaked WhatsApp messages showing a letter-writing campaign from pro-Israel lobbyists targeting the ABC managing director, David Anderson, and the chair, Ita Buttrose, in the week starting 18 December over Lattouf’s December fill-in job on ABC radio in Sydney.

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Leading tech journalist quits Substack over platform’s Nazi newsletters

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Reporter Casey Newton takes more than 170,000 subscribers elsewhere over company’s failure to police extremist content

Platformer, a prominent tech newsletter founded by the veteran reporter Casey Newton, is leaving Substack over the company’s failure to police extremist content.

In a post explaining the decision, Newton said his team had identified seven Substack publications “that conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis and called for violence against Jews, among other groups”. He said after weeks of back-and-forth discussions with company leaders about their “laissez-faire approach to content moderation”, he decided to part ways with the platform.

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Netflix pulls Indian film after backlash from rightwing Hindu groups

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Annapoorani: the Goddess of Food criticised for depiction of deity and member of vegetarian caste cooking and eating meat

Netflix is embroiled in a backlash in India from rightwing Hindu groups over a film accused of offending religious sentiments for its depiction of a deity and a member of a traditionally vegetarian caste cooking and eating meat.

Annapoorani: the Goddess of Food, a film made in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, tells the story of a young woman of the privileged Brahmin caste, whose father cooks food in a Hindu temple, and her aspirations to become one of India’s best chefs.

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Jewish students condemn antisemitic tweets about French PM Gabriel Attal

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Students’ union calls for sanctions over posts on social network that have also contained homophobic abuse

The French Union of Jewish Students has called for sanctions against people who have written antisemitic and homophobic comments about France’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, on the social network X.

Attal, 34, who was appointed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, this week, is France’s youngest prime minister and also the first out gay politician in the job.

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Bill Ackman ‘losing it’ over plagiarism allegations against wife, Axel Springer says

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Business Insider ran reports on Nexi Oxman, wife of billionaire investor who helped oust Harvard head over alleged plagiarism

The billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who helped oust Claudine Gay as Harvard president in a scandal over alleged plagiarism and campus antisemitism, is “completely losing it” over stories in which Business Insider said his wife, the academic Neri Oxman, “plagiarised some passages” in her own dissertation.

So said Adib Sisani, communications director for Axel Springer, the German company that owns Insider, in comments to the news website Puck.

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Ex-Malaysian PM’s lawyer pressures Netflix to take down documentary

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Defence counsel for Najib Razak, jailed over fraud scandal, says Man on the Run is ‘sub judice and contemptuous’

A lawyer acting for the disgraced former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has called for the takedown of a Netflix documentary about a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that occurred under his administration.

Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead defence counsel for Najib, who is serving a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, said Man on the Run was “sub judice and contemptuous”, according to local media reports.

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