Annual special – where garish sweaters meet unrestrained children – airs on Friday evening
It is possibly the most anticipated moment in Ireland’s cultural calendar, a television event that draws huge ratings, unites the diaspora and is parsed as a barometer for the mood of the nation.
Expectation builds months in advance, rumours about the theme, leaks about participants, sometimes alarm that the formula may change.
Continue reading...Actor ordered to pay £630,000 after libel action against Sun over ‘wife beater’ allegations
The Hollywood actor Johnny Depp has been refused permission to appeal after losing his high stakes libel action against the Sun over its description of him as a “wife beater”.
A high court judge also ordered the actor to make an initial payment to the Sun’s publishers, New Group Newspapers (NGN), of almost £630,000 in legal fees.
Continue reading...The pop star’s Disney+ movie about quarantine album Folklore reveals the potency of her songwriting, though it’s hazy on any ‘pandemic epiphanies’
Pre-pandemic, few artists were so keenly attuned to the music industry’s calendar as Taylor Swift. She timed her album releases for awards contention and singles to sustain her world tours; the promotional cycle for 1989, released in 2014, seemed to go on for years. With coronavirus, that “circus” – as she puts it on Mirrorball, one of a few songs on her “quarantine album”, Folklore, that address the pandemic directly – was abruptly called off.
Stripped of those structures, “this lockdown could have been a time where I absolutely lost my mind”, Swift says in The Long Pond Studio Sessions, a film that explores the making and meaning of Folklore. Instead, in a matter of months, she created an album as good as any she has ever written. She collaborated remotely with the National’s Aaron Dessner, writing to his musical sketches and self-recording her performances at home.
Continue reading...The veteran Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has publicly named 21 Republican senators he says have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for [Donald] Trump and his fitness” for office.
As Trump continued to try to subvert the results of a presidential election he clearly lost to Joe Biden, Bernstein said on Twitter he was “not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially [sic]”.
Continue reading...Former rivals to star in Leveson-style inquiry into mogul’s near-monopoly of the country’s media
In high public office, both men lived and died at the word of the world’s most influential media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. But now two former Australian prime ministers are at the vanguard of a campaign to redress the balance of power. It is a movement that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, the respective former Labor and Liberal leaders of Australia, hope will go on to undermine all of Murdoch’s international enterprises.
The two former PMs were once rivals but are to appear as joint star witnesses at an upcoming Australian parliamentary inquiry into Murdoch’s dominance of the Australian political debate. Both are to argue that News Corp Australia has become the propaganda arm of the rightwing Liberal government.
Continue reading...Princess’s brother says investigation should be free to examine every aspect of 1995 Martin Bashir interview
Earl Spencer has said he is “not at all satisfied” with the scope of the BBC’s investigation into the 1995 Panorama interview with his sister Princess Diana.
The news came as a source close to Prince Harry said he is “getting regular updates” about the inquiry into journalist Martin Bashir’s conduct in arranging the landmark show.
Continue reading...Al-Hudood (the Limits) has attracted ire of authorities in Middle East since 2013
A groundbreaking Arabic satirical news site that skewers the Middle East’s politicians and pieties – dodging the ire of hostile governments and their online supporters – has launched an English language edition.
Al-Hudood (the Limits), with deadpan headlines reminiscent of the US publication the Onion, has rankled authorities in the Arab world since launching in 2013. It gives new audiences a taste of groundbreaking humour that ranges from dry (“Students at local school memorise lesson in independent thinking”) to dark (“Intelligence service corrects beliefs of man who thought he only feared God”) to pitch-black (“Syrian dies of natural causes”).
Continue reading...Footballer’s wife seeking vindication after being accused of leaking stories to the Sun
Rebekah Vardy has brought a libel action against Coleen Rooney only as a last resort to “vindicate her reputation”, the high court was told at a preliminary hearing of the high-profile dispute between the wives of two England footballers.
Vardy has faced “widespread hostility and abuse” as a result of being accused of leaking details about the private life of her former friend, her barrister told the court on Thursday.
Continue reading...Contrary to their dismissive framing as manufactured robots, South Korea’s BTS use social media, documentary and storytelling to make themselves into profoundly human stars
BTS’s leader RM looks up from under a black baseball cap, then stares back down at his hands. “Doing the promotional interviews, [I kept saying], ‘Music truly transcends every barrier.’ But even while I was saying it I questioned myself if I indeed believe it.”
It’s late September, and the rapper is confiding in over one million fans live from his Seoul studio. His “complex set of feelings” about the explosive, record-breaking success of Dynamite – the first fully English-language single from the South Korean megastars – is not the celebration you’d expect from a band that just topped the US Billboard Hot 100, the first K-pop act to do so. But this kind of frank, unfiltered conversation is exactly what their global “Army” fanbase love: BTS’s candid social media presence has included their fans in every step of their artistic journey, and, as they release new album Be this week, has made them the biggest pop group on the planet.
Continue reading...Concern among some users that Fleet feature, similar to stories on Snapchat and Instagram, creates opportunities for online harassment
Twitter has launched a new feature worldwide called ‘fleets’: tweets that disappear after 24 hours, similar to the stories feature on Snapchat and Instagram.
Twitter has previously announced its plan for these ephemeral tweets, dubbed “fleets”, and tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
Continue reading...Facing protests in the Muslim world over his response to terror attacks in France, President Emmanuel Macron phoned a New York Times media columnist to rail against “bias” in the English-language media and accuse some newspapers of “legitimising this violence”.
Related: Trump adviser says it 'looks like' Biden has won and predicts 'very professional transition' – live
Continue reading...The rightwing channel was the first to call Arizona for Biden – and Trump and his supporters have been furious ever since
It was about 11.20pm on election night when Fox News made the call. The Democratic candidate had clinched a key swing state, a win that could set them on a path to be president of the United States.
In the Fox News studio, Karl Rove, conservative panelist and longtime Republican strategist, was apoplectic. Around the country, Republican supporters were bereft. Fox News launched an immediate inquisition into its own decision, but the network stood by the call.
Continue reading...Broadcaster claimed document proved royal was not coerced into doing 1995 interview
The BBC says it has found the handwritten note from Princess Diana that it claimed clears Martin Bashir of wrongdoing in relation to his landmark 1995 interview with the royal.
The broadcaster had previously said it had lost the crucial piece of paper, which it used to explain away Bashir’s use of fake bank statements to gain an introduction to Diana.
Continue reading...Israel Vázquez became the third journalist to be murdered in two weeks – and the eighth this year – while reporting on Monday
Early on Monday morning, Israel Vázquez, a crime reporter in the Mexican city of Salamanca, received a tip that a plastic bag full of human remains had been dumped at the side of a street.
He reached the scene before the police, but as he prepared to broadcast on Facebook live, gunmen opened fire from a passing car, and shot him eight times. He died of his injuries later in the day.
Continue reading...President turns to right-wing network Newsmax for support after Fox warned viewers Trump’s election victory claims were false
Donald Trump has unleashed a torrent of tweets denouncing Fox News, accusing the network of having forgotten “what made them successful, what got them there”.
“They forgot the Golden Goose,” Trump wrote in a tweet posted at midday on Thursday:
Continue reading...Exclusive: The Dalai Lama warns of terrible consequences of climate inaction
The Dalai Lama has appealed to world leaders to take urgent action against climate change, warning of ecological destruction affecting the lives of billions and ruining the planet, including his birth country, Tibet.
As a call to action he has brought out a new book declaring that if Buddha returned to this world, “Buddha would be green”.
Continue reading...The coronavirus pandemic has left us living more and more of our lives online. But the place where we chat with friends, get our news and form our opinions is full of vile and dangerous conspiracy theories. Is the world’s biggest social network doing enough to combat them?
As with many others in Britain, lockdown hit Rachel and her husband, Philip, hard. Almost overnight, the couple, both in their early 50s, found themselves cut off from friends, family and colleagues. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, they had both been working every day; now Philip found himself furloughed, while Rachel was put on rotation with other essential staff, working fewer shifts at odd hours. They were unable to meet up with their four adult sons and daughters. They had to attend a family funeral while remaining socially distanced.
Initially, Rachel coped in the way many others did. She played more video games than normal, and felt stressed at work, but as far as possible she managed. Her husband didn’t. For him, it seemed there must be more to it than the authorities struggling to cope with a novel virus and evolving expert advice. “The regularly changing and conflicting information that was coming from the government added to the feeling in him that they were making things up or covering something up,” Rachel says now.
Continue reading...Virgilio Maganes shot outside his home in what NUJP says is 18th such killing under Duterte
A Filipino journalist who survived a previous attempt on his life by pretending to be dead has been killed outside his home, police have said..
Virgilio Maganes, 62, who was a commentator for DWPR radio station in the northern province of Pangasinan, died instantly after he was shot six times by motorcycle-riding gunmen, Major Christian Alucod told AFP.
Continue reading...Diana’s brother Earl Spencer claims journalist produced fake documents to win trust of family
The BBC has pledged to hold a full independent investigation into how Martin Bashir obtained his career-defining interview with Princess Diana in 1995, following fresh claims that he produced fake documents and used other deceitful tactics to win the trust of her family.
Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, confirmed that the terms of the investigation would be announced in the coming days: “The BBC is taking this very seriously and we want to get to the truth. We are in the process of commissioning a robust and independent investigation.”
Continue reading...Journalists call for removal of clause that would ban footage disseminated ‘with intent to harm’ officers
A proposed bill in France that would make it illegal to disseminate photographs or videos identifying police and gendarmes “with intent to harm” is a danger to press freedom, critics have warned.
The measure comes amid growing concern about allegations of police violence in the country. It is outlined in draft global security legislation to be presented to the Assemblée Nationale next week.
Continue reading...