Category Archives: Media

Netflix with ads draws some big brands – but others are unimpressed

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L’Oréal and Budweiser owner advertise on Basic with Ads but high prices for slots put off some agencies

Netflix has launched its first subscription package featuring ads in a drive to reignite growth by attracting cost-conscious users, but the hurried launch, high prices for slots and accompanying demands have left some advertisers unconvinced.

Basic with Ads, which went live in 12 countries this week, costs £4.99 a month in the UK – £2 less than its cheapest ad-free package – and hopes to lure households whose budgets are shrinking in the cost of living crisis.

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Eric Allison, Guardian’s prison correspondent, dies at 79

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Former inmate, who claimed to be only man to escape from Strangeways, joined paper at 60 and worked to expose cruelty of prison system

Eric Allison, who became the Guardian’s prison correspondent aged 60 after spending much of his life in jail, has died. He had been recently diagnosed with secondary bone cancer and was 79.

Allison, who claimed to be the only man to ever escape from Strangeways prison in Manchester, joined the Guardian in 2003 after serving multiple jail terms for fraud, theft and burglary.

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TikTok tells European users its staff in China get access to their data

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Privacy policy update confirms data of continent’s users available to range of TikTok bases including in Brazil, Israel and US

TikTok is spelling out to its European users that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the platform.

The Chinese-owned social video app is updating its privacy policy to confirm that staff in countries, including China, are allowed to access user data to ensure their experience of the platform is “consistent, enjoyable and safe”.

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Banned Twitter accounts will not be reinstated until after US midterms

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Elon Musk says setting up process over those barred, including Donald Trump, will take ‘at least a few more weeks’

Banned Twitter accounts including Donald Trump’s will not be reinstated until after the US midterm elections at least, the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, has said.

The Tesla chief executive’s statement came as a study revealed that Twitter had taken down six disinformation networks on the platform linked to China and Iran that had been tweeting about the 8 November elections.

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Rogue employee who hacked New York Post apologizes for ‘utmost betrayal’

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Miguel Gonzalez, 25, blames ‘my own stupidity’ for tantrum that led him to post fake sexist and racist headlines on paper’s website

The New York Post employee who was fired after publishing a slew of phony, sexist and racist headlines on the newspaper’s website and Twitter account has apologized for what he described as a tantrum and the “utmost betrayal”.

“I let my own stupidity get the best of me,” Miguel Gonzalez told the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter in a piece published late on Monday. “I deserved to get fired for a very volatile, irresponsible and disgusting action and an utmost betrayal of the New York Post.

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Indian police raid news site’s office over retracted article about BJP official

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Homes of several editors of the Wire also raided after complaint about story based on falsified documents

Police in Delhi have raided the premises of a news website known for its fierce criticism of the Indian government, over a retracted article about a politician in charge of the ruling party’s social media campaigns.

Officers arrived at the homes of several editors of the Wire in the middle of the night and seized their laptops and phones. They also searched the website’s office in the capital.

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Phone hacking: Mirror Group to pay damages to ex-partner of Kerry Katona

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David Cunningham wins apology and ‘substantial’ damages over articles published in 2005 and 2006

A former partner of Kerry Katona has won an apology for phone hacking and “substantial” damages from the publisher of the Mirror.

David Cunningham, an engineer, brought a claim against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which also publishes the People and the Sunday Mirror, over 36 articles published in 2005 and 2006 while he was in a relationship with the former Atomic Kitten singer.

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Like Trump, Elon Musk reveals a vapid mind super-charged by wealth and ego | Siva Vaidhyanathan

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Musk, despite his wealth, good fortune and global influence, is not a serious person – but he is toying with dangerous ideas

It took less than 48 hours for Elon Musk to reveal just how dangerous his new toy can be to this world. Replying to a tweet from former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the man worth more than $210bn with more than 112 million Twitter followers spread a dangerous conspiracy theory intended to distract people from an attempted political assassination just one week before a major US election.

Clinton had warned that “the Republican party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories”, in response not just to the attack on home and spouse of Nancy Pelosi but a slew of attempted kidnappings and threats against elected officials who have stood up to the Trump agenda and the attempted overthrow of the US government in January 2021.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

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Elon Musk considers charging Twitter users $20 a month for verified accounts

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World’s richest person plans revamp of social media platform, asking users if he should bring back Vine

Elon Musk is considering charging Twitter users $20 (£17.30) a month or $240 a year for a blue tick on their account, as the world’s richest person prepares an overhaul of the social media platform.

The Tesla chief executive is planning changes to Twitter’s Blue subscription service, according to the tech newsletter Platformer, including raising the $4.99 a month fee to $19.99. Users verified by the platform – who carry a blue tick flagging them as an authentic source – would have 90 days to sign up to Blue or lose their check mark.

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BBC local radio stations face big cuts to content made for their area

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Exclusive: cost-cutting plans would leave local stations in England with hardly any programmes made for their own listeners

BBC local radio stations could be left with just a handful of programmes specific to their area under proposals set to be announced this week.

A fresh round of BBC cuts is due to be announced on Monday, with sources telling the Guardian it will herald the end of most local radio stations as truly distinctive standalone outlets.

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Government urged to investigate report Liz Truss’s phone was hacked

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Breach discovered during Tory leadership in summer but details suppressed, the Mail on Sunday reports

The government has been urged to launch an urgent investigation after reports that Liz Truss’s phone was hacked.

The breach was discovered when Truss, then the foreign secretary, was running for the Tory leadership in the summer, but details were suppressed by the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, the Mail on Sunday reported.

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From Ed Balls to BTS: the greatest hits in Twitter’s history

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To mark the site’s takeover by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, we present a survey of its most media-friendly moments

Twitter has great influence for a social media platform. It has a comparatively modest 230 million users, given that the likes of Instagram, Facebook and TikTok have user bases that run into the billions. But Twitter is beloved of politicians, celebrities, commentators and journalists and can have a great impact on the political and news cycle as a result. Here are some of the best-known and notorious tweets in the company’s 16-year history.

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Iran accuses journalists who reported Mahsa Amini’s death of spying for CIA

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Spying charge levelled at Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi carries death penalty as Tehran seeks to suppress running protests

Two female journalists who were instrumental in reporting the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in the custody of Iran’s morality police has sparked nationwide protests, have been labelled as CIA foreign agents by the Iranian regime.

Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who were arrested shortly after news broke of Amini’s death and who are reportedly being held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, were accused of being foreign agents in a joint statement released by Iran’s ministry of intelligence and the intelligence organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards last night.

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Dahmer series creator says relatives of victims did not reply to contact efforts

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Ryan Murphy says controversial show’s team tried to speak to about 20 friends and family of serial killer’s victims

The creator of Netflix’s recent controversial series on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has said his team tried to speak with about 20 of the victims’ friends and family before the show’s release but no one called back.

Series creator Ryan Murphy’s remarks counter claims by some victims’ relatives that no one from the production notified them of the show or consulted them.

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The Sun always backs the winner: can the Murdoch papers warm to Keir Starmer?

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Former DPP Starmer tried to send head of News UK Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking 10 years ago

Ten years ago Keir Starmer attempted to send Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking.

Now Starmer could cause another headache for the boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire. She has to work out how her Tory-backing newspapers – which include the Sun and the Times – handle the growing popularity of the man who is favourite to become the next prime minister.

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Twitter takeover: fears raised over disinformation and hate speech

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EU commissioner says Elon Musk’s platform must ‘fly by our rules’ as UK minister raises concerns over content moderation

Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition has been polarizing, sparking reactions from politicians, regulators and non-profits across different continents.

Some have expressed concerns about potential changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies now that it’s in the hands of the Tesla billionaire, while others celebrated how they expect the platform’s newly minted leader will handle content and speech on Twitter.

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‘Sunak’s crisis cabinet’: what the papers say after prime minister’s reshuffle

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UK front pages offer their assessments of the prime minister’s new cabinet and outline the scale of the challenges ahead

Rishi Sunak’s sudden return to the top of British politics and the unveiling of his new cabinet dominates the UK front pages on Wednesday.

The Guardian headlines “PM’s reshuffle gamble on first day in charge” and leads with an image of Rishi Sunak meeting King Charles at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

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HBO Max series ¡García! brings fictional Francoist spy to small screen

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Show portrays adventures of agent who wakes from cryogenic sleep to find himself in modern Spain

Three years after the remains of Francisco Franco were finally removed from the granite chambers of the Valley of the Fallen, another relic of the dictatorial regime is stirring from a long slumber deep inside the monument’s damp and bone-stacked caverns.

Fortunately, the relic in question is not a long-dead falangista but rather a fictional Francoist secret agent whose adventures in contemporary Spain have moved from the pages of three graphic novels to the small screen.

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Pakistani journalist killed by police in Kenya ‘was case of mistaken identity’

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Police say Arshad Sharif was shot after his car failed to stop at a roadblock near Nairobi

Kenya’s national police service has said it regretted the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had been living in hiding in the country and was shot dead in Nairobi in an incident it described as a case of mistaken identity.

Officers opened fire on Arshad Sharif, 50, and a friend on Sunday after they allegedly drove through a security roadblock outside the Kenyan capital.

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‘Bojo: It’s a no’: what the papers say as Johnson pulls out and Sunak surges ahead

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The UK newspaper front pages cover the latest in twist in the Tory leadership battle

Boris Johnson’s sudden exit from the Tory leadership race fills the UK front pages on Monday.

The Guardian goes with, “‘Not the right time’: Johnson out of race to lead the Tories”. The paper writes that the “Former PM struggled for backing” and that his “withdrawal leaves Sunak as frontrunner in battle for No 10”.

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