Category Archives: Media

Anna Politkovskaya film inspired by Guardian’s obituary

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Exclusive: Film-maker Miriam Segal says article made her feel compelled to tell story of anti-Putin journalist murdered in 2006

The Guardian’s obituary on Anna Politkovskaya, the anti-Putin journalist whose murder in 2006 shocked the world, has inspired a British film-maker to make a movie about her.

As Miriam Segal reached the end of the article, she felt compelled to make a film about a seemingly “normal woman who literally couldn’t turn away”, who “braved the Chechen killing fields and put her own life in jeopardy to expose Russian state corruption”.

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AP apologises and deletes widely mocked tweet about ‘the French’

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Organisation clarifies initial advice, which included term in list of phrases it thought could be dehumanising

The Associated Press Stylebook, considered one of the most reliable guides to correct use of the English language for journalists, has apologised after producing a list of terms it thought could be dehumanising that included “the French”.

The organisation tweeted advice not to use generic labels for groups of people who share a single common trait, giving as examples the poor, the mentally ill and the college-educated. It also included grouping together everyone from the European nation under the same banner.

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Senior EU official calls for a ‘Radio Free Russia’ to help exiled media

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Vĕra Jourová says the bloc has a moral duty and the project would not necessarily mean a new station

A senior EU official has called for a “Radio Free Russia” to help independent Russian media distribute content in their home country and evade heavy censorship.

Vĕra Jourová, the European Commission vice-president in charge of values and transparency, said the EU had a moral duty to support democratic ideals in Russia. “We should not give up on the Russian society … regardless of how few or how many want to hear the real news, not Kremlin propaganda,” she said.

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BuzzFeed to use AI to ‘enhance’ its content and quizzes – report

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Platform will also use technology from ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence firm, Open AI, to ‘inform’ brainstorming

BuzzFeed is reportedly planning to use artificial intelligence to personalize and enhance its online quizzes and content, the company announced to employees this week.

Jonah Peretti, the chief executive, announced the efforts in an internal memo.

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Rod Stewart calls Sky News offering to pay for NHS hospital scans

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Singer said the situation in UK was ‘so bad’ and it was time to ‘change the bloody government’

Rod Stewart called a phone-in segment on Sky News to offer to pay for people to have hospital scans, amid the rising number of people on NHS waiting lists.

The 78-year-old rock star, who has previously backed the Conservatives, said he had never seen the situation in the UK “so bad” and called for Labour to be given a chance to run the country, adding: “Change the bloody government.”

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Biden vows to veto Republican plans that threaten economic ‘chaos’ – as it happened

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The US economy expanded at a 2.9% annual pace from October through December, ending 2022 with momentum despite the pressure of high interest rates and widespread fears of a looming recession, the Associated Press reports.

Thursday’s estimate from the Commerce Department showed that the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP)— the broadest gauge of economic output — decelerated last quarter from the 3.2% annual growth rate it had posted from July through September.

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Russia outlaws Meduza in attempt to stamp out independent news

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Outlet declared ‘undesirable’, with journalists, sources and donors facing threat of prosecution

Russia has declared the news outlet Meduza an “undesirable organisation”, in effect outlawing one of the country’s best-known sources of independent reporting on the Kremlin and war in Ukraine.

Meduza, founded by Russian journalists in Riga, Latvia, in 2014, was declared an undesirable organisation by the general prosecutor’s office on Thursday for “posing a threat to the foundations of the Russian Federation’s constitutional order and national security”.

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‘Reckless’: Fury among rights groups as Facebook lifts Trump ban

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Civil rights groups voice anger at ‘unethical’ decision, while others say the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office

The news that Meta will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban has been met with fury and indignation among civil rights and online safety advocates.

The former US president will be allowed to return to the platforms “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offences”, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision on Wednesday.

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Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announces

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Ex-president to be allowed back ‘in coming weeks … with new guardrails in place’ after ban that followed January 6 attack

In a highly anticipated decision, Meta has said it will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban from the platforms over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection.

Meta will allow Trump to return “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision.

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Labour asks why Treasury unit let sanctioned oligarch bring UK libel case

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Key Putin ally, who founded Wagner mercenaries, attempted to ‘subvert sanctions and silence journalist’

The Treasury must explain how the Russian founder of a mercenary army was given permission to circumvent sanctions, to attempt to silence a British journalist, Labour has said.

In a letter to Jeremy Hunt, seen by the Guardian, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Pat McFadden, said that No 11 had to say why it had granted the permission and whether similar allowances had been made for other sanctioned oligarchs to use libel lawsuits.

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Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’

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Fred Ryan says former secretary of state ‘outrageously misrepresents’ Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabian regime

The publisher of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan, has blasted the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for “outrageously misrepresenting” and “spreading vile falsehoods” about Jamal Khashoggi, the Post columnist murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018.

“It is shameful that Pompeo would spread vile falsehoods to dishonor a courageous man’s life and service and his commitment to principles Americans hold dear as a ploy to sell books,” Ryan said.

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UK government ‘let lawyers bypass sanctions’ to help Putin ally sue journalist

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Documents seen by Open Democracy show UK firm got approval to engage with Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin

British lawyers were given government dispensation to bypass sanctions in order to help Yevgeny Prigozhin, the controversial Russian businessman and Wagner group founder, sue a journalist, according to documents made available to the website Open Democracy.

The documents concern a libel case brought by Prigozhin against Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative group Bellingcat, in 2021. The revelations will raise further questions about the abuse of UK libel law by the super-rich.

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More journalists killed in Latin America and Caribbean than Ukraine in 2022

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Committee to Protect Journalist reports region accounted for almost half of the 67 deaths worldwide

More journalists were killed in Latin America and the Caribbean than in any other part of the world last year, including the Ukraine war zone, the press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said.

In a report released on Tuesday, the group said that, globally, at least 67 journalists and media workers had been killed in 2022, nearly double the 2021 figure of 45.

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India invokes emergency laws to ban BBC Modi documentary

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Government accused of ‘censorship’ over ban on film about PM’s role in violence during 2002 Gujarat riots

The Indian government has invoked emergency laws to block a BBC documentary examining the role of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, during riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

Controversy has erupted in India over the first episode of the two-part programme, India: The Modi Question, which tracked his rise through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata party and his appointment as chief minister of Gujarat.

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Nadhim Zahawi’s future threatened as Labour steps up pressure over tax affairs

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Angela Rayner says Rishi Sunak should come clean about any concerns raised with No 10 about ex-chancellor and HMRC penalty

Nadhim Zahawi’s political future appeared under increasing threat on Sunday night, after Labour pushed hard for answers about his tax issues and government colleagues offered little support for his plight.

After a weekend dominated by questions over the Conservative party chair’s tax position, Labour signalled its intention to pin the controversy on to Rishi Sunak, demanding the prime minister explain if he knew about the issue when he appointed Zahawi to his cabinet.

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Labour urges inquiry into claim BBC chairman ‘helped Boris Johnson secure loan guarantee’

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Reports Richard Sharp helped ex-PM arrange guarantee on £800,000 loan before he was recommended for job

Labour is calling for an investigation after claims that the BBC chair helped Boris Johnson arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 weeks before he was recommended for the job by the then prime minister.

The party has written to the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Daniel Greenberg, after a report in the Sunday Times that Tory donor Richard Sharp was involved in talks about financing Johnson when he found himself in financial difficulty in late 2020.

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‘English flirting’: Dimoldenberg v Garfield is real magic

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The brief encounters between an actor and an interviewer have been compared to Austen’s novels and Hollywood’s golden age

He’s a Hollywood A-lister, recently named a man of the year and routinely included among the sexiest alive. She is an awkward art-school graduate who has his shirtless photo as the wallpaper on her phone. And they just can’t seem to stop running into each other.

The television personality Amelia Dimoldenberg and the actor Andrew Garfield have been hailed as a real-life romcom in the making for their brief but memorable – and, now, heavily hyped – encounters at awards shows.

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Biden accused of hypocrisy as he seeks extradition of Julian Assange

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Ad-hoc tribunal of legal experts and supporters pressures US administration to drop ‘attack on press freedom’

Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists detained around the world while the US president continues seeking the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.

The campaign to pressure the Biden administration to drop the charges moved to Washington DC on Friday with a hearing of the Belmarsh Tribunal, an ad hoc gathering of legal experts and supporters named after the London prison where Assange is being detained.

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As independent media blossoms in Cuba, journalists face a crackdown

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‘Chilling’ new criminal law penalizing internationally funded journalism comes as repression in the country is on the rise

Since graduating from the University of Havana’s faculty of journalism in 2021, Pedro Sosa, 24, has photographed families of political prisoners and written about the chronic lack of medicine and syringes in Cuba’s fraying medical system.

It was risky work on an island that brooks little dissent, but in September things came to a head: he was interrogated by state security and told that if he didn’t renounce his work for the independent media outlets El Toque (the Touch) and El Estornudo (the Sneeze) he could face jail.

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Trump pleads with Meta to restore Facebook account

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Former president’s lawyers petition company to allow access following ban from platform in wake of 2021 Capitol attack

Donald Trump has petitioned Meta to restore his access to Facebook, as he reportedly looks to shift his 2024 presidential campaign into a higher gear.

The former president was banned from Facebook more than two years ago, after his followers attacked the US Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

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