Category Archives: Media

Tory whips ‘asking questions’ to find MP behind Angela Rayner claims

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Speaker seeks meeting with Mail on Sunday editor as PM threatens to unleash ‘terrors of the earth’

Conservative whips have said they are trying to find out the identity of the Tory MP responsible for misogynistic attacks on Angela Rayner, with a view to taking disciplinary action after Boris Johnson threatened to unleash “the terrors of the earth” against the culprit.

The prime minister hit out at the “sexist, misogynistic tripe” in the Mail on Sunday, which ran allegations from an anonymous MP that Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, deliberately tried to distract Johnson by crossing and uncrossing her legs in the House of Commons.

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Hong Kong’s Human Rights Press Awards scrapped over security law fears

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Foreign Correspondent’s Club’s decision sparks outrage from journalists and resignations from press freedom committee

Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club has scrapped its annual human rights press awards just days before it was due to announce winners, out of fear it would violate the city’s wide-ranging national security law.

The decision sparked a number of resignations from the club’s press freedom committee, and public criticism from journalists and former award winners, who described the move as sad, and evidence that it could no longer serve in its mission to defend the press.

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Biden: Republicans’ Disney law shows ‘far right has taken over party’

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Florida strips company of self-governing power for opposing Governor Ron DeSantis’s ‘don’t say gay’ law

For Joe Biden, the vote by Florida Republicans on Thursday to strip Disney of its self-governing powers was a step too far.

“Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse,” the president exclaimed at a fundraiser in Oregon, in apparent disbelief that state governor Ron DeSantis’s culture wars had reached the gates of the Magic Kingdom.

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Singapore editor jailed for defamation over corruption claims

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Terry Xu was convicted last year after publishing a letter alleging ‘corruption at the highest echelons’

The editor of a now-closed Singaporean news outlet has been jailed for three weeks for defamation over a letter published on the site that alleged corruption among government ministers.

Terry Xu, the former editor of the Online Citizen, was convicted last year for the publication of a letter that said there was “corruption at the highest echelons”.

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No 10 goes into battle with archbishops over Rwanda asylum plan

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Downing Street refuses to deny PM told MPs archbishops were being unfairly critical as church figures defend Justin Welby

Downing Street has gone into open battle with the Church of England over its condemnation of the Rwanda deportation scheme, with No 10 officials doubling down on Boris Johnson’s claim that archbishops were being unfairly critical.

The prime minister reportedly told Conservative MPs on Tuesday evening that senior clergy had criticised plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda more than they had condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This was not denied by No 10.

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Far-right InfoWars website files for bankruptcy protection

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Site’s founder, Alex Jones, was found liable for damages in lawsuits related to lies he spread about 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting

Facing multiple defamation lawsuits, the far-right website InfoWars on Sunday voluntarily filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Texas.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures put a hold on all civil litigation faced by companies that file for the protection and allows them to prepare turnaround plans while remaining operational.

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If Netflix is stumbling will Wall Street renew or cancel?

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It disrupted the market and has more than 200m subscribers. But with slower growth, some say Netflix must change its game

Twelve years ago Jeff Bewkes, then chief executive of Time Warner, compared Netflix to the Albanian army. “It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so,” Bewkes told the New York Times, disparaging the streaming service’s ability to take on the established media players.

Well, the Albanian army won. Time Warner followed Netflix into streaming, NBCUniversal and Disney came after and so it carried on. In Britain, BBC and ITV invested in their streaming portals. Media was now living in Netflix’s world.

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Hugh Grant brings phone-hacking claim against the Sun

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Ten years after settling case against News of the World, actor now taking action against another Rupert Murdoch title

Hugh Grant is leading a renewed attempt to prove phone hacking took place at the Sun, even as Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper continues to maintain no illegality took place there.

The actor has followed Paul Gascoigne and Sienna Miller in bringing a so-called “Sun-only” phone-hacking claim, specifically alleging that illegality took place at the daily tabloid in the 2000s. Rebekah Brooks, the current chief executive of Murdoch’s News UK business, was editor of the Sun during the period in question.

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BBC Three: relaunched live TV channel struggles to win viewers

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Most broadcasts fail to attract more than 100,000 viewers, according to official ratings

When BBC Three relaunched as a live television channel earlier this year, the corporation hoped its counterintuitive punt on a youth-focused broadcast outlet would help it reach new audiences. Instead, the channel’s shows are consistently being beaten in the ratings by repeats of old history programmes featuring the deceased steeplejack Fred Dibnah on BBC Four.

Most of BBC Three’s programmes have so far failed to attract more than 100,000 viewers on live television, according to official viewing figures, while some shows are lucky to get a tenth of that. Even the programmes that do perform relatively well – such as episodes of MasterChef Australia – are rarely the original distinctive in-house shows that the channel exists to provide.

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Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for more than $40bn

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Tech entrepreneur makes offer of $54.20 a share in cash to ‘unlock potential’ of social media site

Elon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for more than $40bn, saying he wants to release its “extraordinary potential” to boost free speech and democracy across the world.

The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. The news came just days after he bought a 9.2% stake in the social media company and was subsequently offered a seat on the board, but then refused to take up the position.

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BBC warns of fake video claiming Ukraine carried out Kramatorsk attack

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Video mocked up with BBC News logo has been aired on Russian state TV and spread across social media

The BBC has warned that a video carrying its branding in which it is claimed that a missile attack on a railway station that killed dozens was carried out by Ukraine is fake.

The video, mocked up with a BBC News logo and using similar graphics to the broadcaster, gives the false impression that it has confirmed that Ukrainian armed forces were behind the attack on Kramatorsk railway station on Friday.

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Inquiry into leak of Matt Hancock kiss images leads to no prosecutions

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ICO finds insufficient evidence against those suspected of capturing footage of minister with colleague

No one will be prosecuted over the leak of CCTV footage showing Matt Hancock engaged in a clinch with a colleague in his office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced.

The footage and stills of the embrace, which prompted his resignation as health secretary, were leaked to the Sun in June last year. It was most likely obtained by someone using their phone to record a CCTV screen, the ICO said.

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Shanghai TV channel postpones Covid spin show after backlash

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Residents express dismay online about tribute to city’s handling of outbreak after extended lockdown

A state-owned TV station in Shanghai has postponed a show that highlights the positive sides of the city’s response to an Omicron outbreak after an online backlash.

Shanghai Dragon Television, the city’s main TV channel that also broadcasts via satellite to Chinese-speaking audiences globally, announced the decision on social media late on Tuesday night, hours after it was criticised online. Dragon TV said it welcomed “valuable feedback to our work”.

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There is ‘no one News Corp view’ on election, head of company’s Australian arm tells staff

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News Corp Australasia executive chairman issues all-staff memo, with scrutiny on election coverage likely to increase

Rupert Murdoch’s Australian lieutenant has told News Corp journalists there is “no one News Corp view” about the election and that individual editors are free to decide which party to endorse.

Executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, Michael Miller, said it was important to remember that “electorate issues in Surry Hills differ greatly to those in Broken Hill” and that audiences “expect us to interrogate all parties and all sides”.

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All-female newsroom launched in Somalia to widen media’s scope

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The pioneering Bilan project, funded by UN, will report on gender-based violence, women in politics and female entrepreneurs

The first all-women media house in Somalia has been launched, creating a rare opportunity for female journalists in the country to research and publish stories they want to tell.

Led by one of the few female senior news producers in the country, the team of six will produce content for TV, radio and online media on issues such as gender-based violence, women in politics and female entrepreneurs.

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Prominent Hong Kong journalist Allan Au reportedly held on sedition charge

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Reporter and lecturer’s arrest in dawn raid another blow to city’s press amid Beijing crackdown

A veteran Hong Kong journalist has been arrested by national security police for allegedly conspiring to publish “seditious materials”, a police source and local media said, in the latest blow against press freedom.

Allan Au, a 54-year-old reporter and journalism lecturer, was arrested in a dawn raid on Monday by Hong Kong’s national security police unit, multiple local media outlets reported.

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Elon Musk unveils vision for Twitter after joining board

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The Tesla boss, who now has a 9.2% stake in the social network, has offered suggestions and criticisms in a series of tweets

Elon Musk has set out his vision for Twitter after buying a 9.2% stake in the company, in a series of posts on the social network described by one commentator as having “chaos energy”.

Since being appointed to the Twitter board on Tuesday, Musk has posted a stream of open questions about the present and future of the site, proposing new features, highlighting areas of concern, and making jokes. Typically for the Tesla billionaire, it was not always clear which was which.

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Lara Logan, who compared Fauci to Mengele, says Fox News pushed her out

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Logan says network ‘does not want independent thinkers’ as Fox stays quiet on reports it dropped her after November remark

The former CBS reporter Lara Logan, who compared Dr Anthony Fauci to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, has claimed she was “pushed out” at Fox News because the conservative network does not want “independent thinkers”.

“I was definitely pushed out,” Logan told Eric Metaxas, a conservative radio host, this week. “I mean, there is no doubt about that. They don’t want independent thinkers. They don’t want people who follow the facts regardless of the politics.”

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Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

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State news agency publishes article decrying ‘Ukrainianism’ as an ‘artificial anti-Russian construct with no civilisational substance’

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”.

After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal purges and “re-education” that western officials said could provoke further abuses on the ground.

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UK’s transparency laws are being undermined, warn journalists

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Letter signed by several MPs urges better enforcement of transparency law, as government accused of obstructing requests

More than 100 journalists, politicians and campaigners have signed an open letter warning that the UK’s freedom of information (FoI) laws are being undermined by a lack of resources and government departments obstructing lawful requests.

The signatories include the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Katharine Viner, the editor of the Observer, Paul Webster, as well as the shadow solicitor general, Andy Slaughter, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, and the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas.

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