Category Archives: Media

Lufthansa’s ‘green’ adverts banned in UK for misleading consumers

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Airline claim that it was protecting the world’s future is latest ad to fall foul of ASA rules

An ad campaign by Lufthansa claiming that its green initiatives were protecting the world has been banned by the UK advertising watchdog, which ruled it was misleading consumers over the environmental impact of flying.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation into the campaign – which featured a plane with an image of the Earth on its underside and the strapline: “Connecting the world. Protecting its future” – over concerns the German airline was giving consumers a “misleading impression of its environmental impact”.

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BBC to suspend licence fee for King Charles coronation ceremony

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One-off dispensation for weekend celebrations will allow venues to screen events without a TV licence

The BBC is to suspend the licence fee as part of a one-off dispensation for the king’s coronation weekend.

The move will allow venues to screen the live coronation ceremony coverage on 6 May and the coronation concert on 7 May without needing to buy a TV licence.

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‘A new page’: European newspapers hail Northern Ireland deal

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Rishi Sunak lauded for making ‘adult relationship’ possible between UK and EU after post-Brexit dispute

Continental media have welcomed the deal settling the EU’s bitter post-Brexit dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland, hoping it may herald a new “adult relationship” that had been unthinkable while the “untrustworthy” Boris Johnson was in Downing Street.

In France, where the president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed “an important decision” that would “preserve the Good Friday agreement and protect our European internal market”, Le Monde called the Windsor framework a significant breakthrough.

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Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrative

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Network owner also admitted in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit deposition that Trump’s claims were ‘damaging to everybody’

Newly released court documents reveal that Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News, acknowledged under oath that several Fox News hosts endorsed Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The mogul made the admission during a deposition in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of maligning its reputation. In his deposition, Murdoch said that the hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed” the false narrative promoted by Trump.

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Meta-funded online tool lets people remove their explicit images from the internet

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Take It Down allows anyone to anonymously generate a digital fingerprint of the image they want deleted, without uploading it

“Once you send that photo, you can’t take it back,” goes the warning to teenagers, often ignoring the reality that many teens send explicit images of themselves under duress, or without understanding the consequences.

A new online tool aims to give some control back to teens, or people who were once teens, and take down explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet.

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Dilbert cartoon dropped by US newspapers over creator’s racist comments

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Once-popular cartoon scrapped from hundreds of papers after Scott Adams calls Black people a ‘hate group’ on his YouTube show

The comic strip Dilbert has been dropped from multiple US newspapers in response to racist comments by its creator, Scott Adams, who called Black Americans a “hate group” and urged white people to “get the hell away” from Black people in a YouTube video.

Adams’s comments on 22 February came in response to a conservative organization’s poll which appeared to show that 26% of Black respondents said they disagreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white”. Another 21% said they were not sure.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

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Bernard Ingham, press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, dies aged 90

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Family pay tribute to man they described as ‘a journalist to his bones’

Margaret Thatcher’s former press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham has died at the age of 90 after a short illness, his family has said.

Ingham was a journalist with the Guardian in the 1970s before going into communications for the government. He served as press secretary for Thatcher for almost her entire time as prime minister.

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RT videos spreading Ukraine disinformation on YouTube despite ban – report

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The platform banned the Russia-controlled publication last year for its Ukraine falsehoods, but its content is still posted on various channels

Hundreds of videos produced by the Russia-controlled publication RT have found their way on to YouTube in the past year, despite the platform’s ban of such media last year.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, banned all Russian state-funded media from its platform globally in March 2022, citing a policy barring content that “denies, minimizes or trivializes well-documented violent events” as Russia sought to guide the narrative on its war in Ukraine.

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New York Times reporters criticise union for backing trans coverage protest

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High-profile reporters say in letter ‘We are journalists, not activists’ after contributors protest coverage of trans issues

A dispute at the New York Times over its coverage of transgender issues deepened with news of a letter signed by high-profile reporters, criticising the Times’ union president for her own letter on the issue, in which she said staff who protested the paper’s trans coverage were concerned about “a hostile working environment”.

“Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace,” read the new letter, signed by the chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, political correspondent Lisa Lerer and other senior figures and reported by Vanity Fair.

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US local news outlets need tax breaks to help save democracy, says advocate

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Steven Waldman says a new initiative, Rebuild Local News, wants to revitalize hundreds of outlets decimated by the industry

Local news organizations across the United States need to be given serious government financial help, especially in the form of tax breaks, in order to stave off a crisis in the media sector and help save US democracy, a leading advocate for non-profit journalism has said.

Steven Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, said a new initiative, called Rebuild Local News, wanted to revitalize hundreds of local news outlets across America decimated by changes in the industry, shifts in the sector’s advertising revenue structure and more recently, the pandemic.

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Bangladesh shuts down main opposition newspaper

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Campaigners fear media crackdown under PM Sheikh Hasina after suspension order upheld

The only newspaper of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has stopped publishing after a government suspension order was upheld, stoking fears about media freedom in the south Asian nation.

Campaigners and foreign governments including the US have long expressed worries about efforts by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to silence criticism and what they see as creeping authoritarianism.

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Facebook and Instagram to get paid verification as Twitter charges for two-factor SMS authentication

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Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk’s lead in introducing fee for blue ticks, as Twitter gets set to charge for 2FA via SMS

Facebook and Instagram users will soon need to pay to be verified on the social media platforms, as Meta follows in the footsteps of rival platform Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the service would first roll out in Australia and New Zealand later this week.

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Tributes paid after death of former Guardian writer Henry McDonald

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Longtime Ireland correspondent McDonald, 57, lauded after untimely death following treatment for cancer

Political leaders in Northern Ireland have led tributes to the writer and former Guardian and Observer correspondent Henry McDonald, who has died at the age of 57.

Family, friends and media colleagues expressed shock and sadness on Sunday after McDonald died at the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast, where he was being treated for cancer.

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‘Greenwashing’ firms face steep new UK fines for misleading claims

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Legislation could see companies fined millions of pounds for making unproven environmental assertions to sell their products

When the hydrogen-powered Hyundai Nexo car was launched in the UK in the spring of 2019, it was described as “so beautifully clean” that it “purifies the air as it goes”.

Hyundai Motor UK claimed that if 10,000 of its cars were on the road, carbon emission reduction would be “equivalent to planting 60,000 trees”.

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Nearly 1,000 contributors protest New York Times’ coverage of trans people

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The letter – also signed by thousands of subscribers – says the paper’s reporting has been used in support of anti-trans legislation

Nearly 1,000 New York Times contributors, in addition to tens of thousands of subscribers and readers of the Times, signed an open letter on Wednesday to the paper’s standards editor condemning the publication’s coverage of transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people.

A second letter organized by the nonprofit Glaad (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) on Wednesday spoke against what it called “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people” in the Times.

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India accuses BBC of tax evasion amid Modi documentary row

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Country’s finance ministry claims broadcaster has not fully declared its income and profits

India’s finance ministry has accused the BBC of tax evasion, saying that it had not fully declared its income and profits from its operations in the country.

Indian tax authorities ended three days of searches of the British broadcaster’s Delhi and Mumbai offices on Thursday night. Opposition political parties and other media organisations have criticised the searches as an attempt to intimidate the media.

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Political aides hacked by ‘Team Jorge’ in run-up to Kenyan election

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Revelation shows dangers posed by bad actors and paid operatives in democratic systems across Africa

An Israeli disinformation specialist hired to run covert dirty tricks campaigns in African elections hacked political advisers close to Kenya’s president, William Ruto, in the run-up to last year’s election, an investigation can reveal.

The interference did not prevent Ruto winning the poll, nor the peaceful transfer of power in Kenya, but the revelation highlights the growing risks posed by the involvement of bad actors and paid operatives in the relatively new democratic systems and institutions across Africa.

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BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout

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Searches come weeks after release of documentary critical of PM that was later blocked by government

BBC offices in India have been raided by tax department officials, just weeks after the release of a documentary critical of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which was later blocked by the government.

According to those working at the broadcaster, more than a dozen officials from the country’s income tax department turned up at the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai, where hundreds of employees are based, to conduct a “survey”. Documents and phones of several journalists were taken and the offices sealed.

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German ballet director ‘smeared dog faeces on critic’s face’ after bad review

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Marco Goecke allegedly confronted Wiebke Hüster at Hanover State Opera, furious at her verdict on a previous show

The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.

Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.

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News Corp to cut 1,250 jobs after missing second-quarter estimates

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Reduced ad spends due to rising inflation and higher interest rates have battered Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate

Media conglomerate News Corp said on Thursday that it would cut 1,250 jobs after it missed estimates for second-quarter earnings due to weakness in its news and digital real estate businesses.

Rising inflation and higher interest rates are forcing companies to curb their ad and marketing spend, denting one of the major sources of revenue for companies such as News Corp, which has major publishing platforms including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the US, The Sun and The Times in the UK, and The Australian.

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