Category Archives: Media

‘The history boys’: joy unconfined as papers celebrate England’s semi-final win

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Footballers now have to match the ‘immortals of 1966’ after reaching their first final for 55 years

The joy of England’s footballers reaching a major final for the first time in 55 years is given due justice on the front pages of the papers – along with a sense of relief that the team finally managed to do the job.

The Mirror’s headline is simply “Finally” noting that Harry Kane’s winning goal means that “after 55 years of hurt Harry and his heroes beat the Danes … now to match the heroes of 1966”.

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Guardian journalist helped me see a way out, ex-cult member recalls

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Former Children of God member says simple question put to her by Walter Schwarz was life-changing

It was a simple question to a child, one routinely asked by adults: what do you want to be when you grow up? But for 11-year-old Bexy Cameron, who had never known anything but the strict religious cult she was born into, it was life-changing.

Her brief encounter with the Guardian journalist Walter Schwarz in the 1990s led to her escaping the Children of God cult at the age of 15, leaving behind her parents and siblings. Now she has written a memoir, Cult Following, about growing up in a movement founded by a controlling sexual predator. The last line of her acknowledgments reads: “Eternal gratitude to Walter Schwarz (RIP). Who knows what would have happened without that ‘one simple question’?”

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Spain’s far-right Vox party under fire for veiled Twitter threat against editor

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Party doxxes satirical editor, suggesting followers demand he ‘takes responsibility when he leaves his office’

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has criticised the far-right Spanish party Vox for suggesting that the head of an editorial group that publishes a satirical magazine that frequently lampoons the party be held to account for its content on the street outside his office.

On Tuesday, Vox’s official Twitter account published the person’s name and photograph, and accused the magazine, El Jueves, of “spreading hate against millions of Spaniards on a daily basis”.

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Spike Lee: ‘You hope that black people will stop being hunted down like animals’

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The director has spoken about race at the Cannes film festival, where he is the first black president of the Palme d’Or jury

Spike Lee commented on the US’s current racial justice crisis in typically forthright fashion at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday, saying he hoped the time had come that “black people will stop being hunted down like animals”.

Lee, who is the president of the jury that will pick the winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or, was speaking at the jury’s press conference on the first day of the festival. Having been asked a question about his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, which contains a scene in which a black youth, Radio Raheem, is killed by police, Lee responded: “I wrote it in 1988. When you see brother Eric Garner, when you see king George Floyd murdered, lynched, I think of Radio Raheem; and you would think and hope that 30 motherfucking years later, that black people stop being hunted down like animals.”

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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TfL hit by £100m fall in ad revenue across tube, rail and bus network

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Exclusive: record low level of London journeys during Covid crisis drives down commercial income

Transport for London (TfL) has recorded a £100m plunge in advertising revenue across its network of tube stations, trains and buses after Covid-19 pandemic restrictions kept commuters away from travelling to work.

TfL’s advertising estate – which comprises more than 100,000 billboards, posters and panels throughout the capital’s tube and rail network, in trains and on buses and shelters – is one of the largest and most valuable in the world.

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‘A real slog’: How one New Zealand media company is trying to make trust pay

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Over the past year, one of New Zealand’s news giants ditched Facebook, pivoted to ‘trust’ and gave shares to employees. Can it survive?

The question of trust has dogged journalists for decades. “A kind of confidence man,” Janet Malcolm labels the journalist, in The Journalist and the Murderer, “preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them”. That view seems to resonate with the public. Asked to rank their trusted professions, people rank journalism in the murky depths – beaten to the bottom only by politicians.

For reporters who prefer to see themselves as truth-tellers, holding power to account, or at least providing a useful public service, that rankles. For others, trust becomes a point of fascination – the missing piece in the puzzle of how to make digital news pay for itself.

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The Oxford vaccine: the trials and tribulations of a world-saving jab

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Amid bemusement from scientists at the deluge of often undeserved criticism, the Guardian pieces together the story behind the vaccine’s successes and failures

In January 2020, when most of the world slept soundly in ignorance of the pandemic coming its way, a group of scientists at Oxford University got to work on a vaccine to save the planet. They wanted it to be highly effective, cheap, and easy to use in even the poorest countries.

Prof Sarah Gilbert, Prof Andrew Pollard and others pulled it off. With speed crucial, they designed it and launched into trials before bringing in a business partner. The giant Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca would manufacture it, license it around the world – and not make a profit until the pandemic was over.

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‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU plans to cut British TV

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EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown content

It was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.

“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said.

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‘The pressure is unbearable’: final days of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily

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Newspaper’s closure shows how pro-democracy movement and press freedom are being crushed

On Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have to shut the paper unless authorities unfroze its finances.

As she stood holding her microphone towards the government official, Kwan did not dare look at her phone and the news it heralded: Apple Daily was shutting down. Today.

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Love Island earns ITV £12m before new series as advertisers jostle to take part

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The most commercialised show on British television has signed up nine official partners

Love Island has netted ITV more than £12m in revenues even before the first episode of the new series of the hit reality show airs on Monday, as sponsors and advertisers rush to attach themselves to the most commercialised show on British television.

With uncertainty over Covid restrictions scuppering holidays abroad for a second successive year, the arrival of the feelgood summer juggernaut could not be more perfectly timed to tap into a viewer and advertising boom.

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The Guardian view on Hong Kong’s Apple Daily: gone but not forgotten | Editorial

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The outspoken tabloid’s closure is a chilling moment. But as Beijing silences dissent, the spirit of resistance endures

Apple Daily is dead. At midnight on Wednesday, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy news outlet closed, forced out of business after authorities froze the assets of the 26-year-old tabloid and arrested executives and journalists. Through its outspoken support for protests, it had come to stand for resistance itself: for the freedom to know what is happening, to challenge authorities, and to imagine and demand another Hong Kong.

Beijing is determined to crush that resistance. Each day it turns the screws further. Many have fallen silent already, but Apple Daily was defiant. Its owner, Jimmy Lai, already jailed over a protest, could face life in prison due to further charges under the draconian national security law. The editor-in-chief and chief executive of its parent company have been charged with conspiracy to collude with “external elements” after 500 officers raided its headquarters last week. Authorities say that the case relates to articles calling for sanctions on the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, some published before the imposition of the security law, which is not supposed to be retroactive. This vindictive action marks the criminalisation of journalism. On Wednesday, the company announced it was closing overnight, citing employee safety and staffing levels after officers arrested its lead opinion writer.

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‘A haven for free-thinkers’: Pakistan creatives mourn loss of progressive arts space

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‘Tragic’ closure of Sabeen Mahmud’s community venue T2F in Karachi comes as PM Imran Khan accused of fostering censorship and intolerance

Danial Shah turned to Sabeen Mahmud, for help with his first photo exhibition when all other organisations refused to show his work. Shah’s photographs cover political and cultural issues, such as local elections and women’s rights. Some refused to work with him on political grounds, while others did not reply at all.

After a meeting at Mahmud’s community space, T2F, in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, she agreed to host his exhibition. But Mahmud, a 40-year-old human rights activist who oversaw a programme of progressive arts at T2F, did not get to see Shah’s first exhibition. She was murdered a few months after their meeting.

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Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, symbol of pro-democracy movement, to close

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Tabloid founded by Jimmy Lai and targeted by police raid last week will print final edition on Thursday

Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, will shut down online at midnight on Wednesday and print its final edition on Thursday, in a move observers fear signals the death knell for press freedom in the territory.

The paper and its activist founder, Jimmy Lai, had become symbols of the pro-democracy movement and a thorn in the side of Hong Kong’s government and police, making it a prime target in the government’s efforts to stifle Hong Kong’s media.

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‘The blackest day’: Apple Daily’s demise comes as no surprise

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Analysis: a palpable chill has run through the Hong Kong media, amid warnings about ‘fake news’

The fate of Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s bestselling tabloids, should not come as a surprise. On the day Jimmy Lai, its founder, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in April, a commentary in the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao called for a ban on Apple Daily in order to “close national security loopholes”.

The 72-year-old media tycoon and his 26-year-old newspaper have been among the most high-profile critics of Beijing and the controversial national security law (NSL), which they deem “draconian”, but which the authorities say is “necessary”. The law bars secession, subversion and foreign collusion.

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Hong Kong police arrest editorial writer at Apple Daily newspaper

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Arrest of journalist who publishes under the name Li Ping is the first of a writer at the pro-democracy newspaper

The editorial writer for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper has been arrested, the latest move in a media crackdown under the national security law that saw hundreds of police raid its newsroom and arrest senior figures last week.

Police confirmed the arrest of a 55-year-old man in Tseung Kwan O on Wednesday morning, “on suspicion of conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security”.

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Top Nicaraguan journalist flees country amid escalating crackdown

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  • Carlos Fernando Chamorro: ‘They won’t silence journalism’
  • Chamorro’s sister among 19 jailed in pre-election crackdown

Nicaragua’s most prominent journalist has fled the country for a second time after police raided his house during a widening crackdown on opposition figures by the country’s Sandinista rulers.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of the Confidencial website and a member of one of the country’s most influential political families, said on Tuesday he had left the Central American country to “safeguard his freedom”.

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Hong Kong leader refuses to say how media can avoid arrest in wake of Apple Daily raids

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Carrie Lam denies arrest of senior editorial figures at pro-democracy paper and seizure of its assets was an attack on press freedom

Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has refused to clarify how journalists can avoid breaking the vaguely defined national security law following the raid and prosecution of journalists at a pro-democracy newspaper.

At a regular press conference on Tuesday the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, defended the arrest of senior Apple Daily executives under the national security law (NSL) – two of whom have been charged with conspiracy to commit collusion with a foreign country – as well as the raid of its newsroom and freezing of assets.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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