Former President Trump, in a recent statement, criticized NBC and CNN for not broadcasting his victory speech in full after his win in Iowa’s caucuses. Addressing a crowd in New Hampshire, Trump expressed his dismay, saying, “NBC and CNN refused to air my victory speech. Think of it — because they are crooked. They’re dishonest, and frankly, they should have their licenses or whatever they have: Take it away.”
MSNBC, part of the NBC network, has regularly not shown Trump’s speeches since his presidency ended. Rachel Maddow, a prominent pundit on MSNBC, explained the network’s stance, stating, “There is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to remarks by former President Trump.” She emphasized the difficulty of the decision, acknowledging the cost of broadcasting potentially untrue statements and the impact on the network’s integrity.
CNN aired portions of Trump’s speech but cut away when he shifted to what anchor Jake Tapper described as “anti-immigrant rhetoric.” In contrast, Fox News and other media outlets broadcasted the speech in full.
Trump has a history of criticizing MSNBC, even threatening to investigate Comcast, its parent company, and accusing it of treason. He has also consistently labeled CNN as “fake news,” expressing dissatisfaction with their coverage of his actions and statements.
X, the social media platform facing advertiser retention challenges since Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover, announced the launch of three new shows. The shows will be hosted by former CNN anchor Don Lemon, former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, and sports commentator Jim Rome.
This move follows the platform’s addition of ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson last June. Musk’s tenure has drawn conservative support despite controversies, including spreading the “great replacement” theory and legal battles with Media Matters for America over antisemitic content.
The European Union initiated a probe in December into X’s handling of disinformation and illegal content. Amidst these challenges, X’s business handle posted about a “transformational” 2024, focusing on original content and influential personalities.
Lemon, dismissed from CNN for misconduct and controversial remarks, will host a thrice-weekly 30-minute show covering various topics. He emphasized the need for a platform allowing “honest debate and discussion.”
Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party citing its “elitist cabal of warmongers,” plans a documentary-style show to uncover “truths” often suppressed by those in power. Rome, hyped about his partnership with X, will stream his show five days a week post-Super Bowl.
Mehdi Hasan, host of “The Mehdi Hasan Show” on MSNBC, announced his departure from the network during his final episode. He stated, “I’ve decided that it’s time for me to look for a new challenge… Tonight is not just my final episode… It’s my last day with MSNBC. Yes, I’ve decided to leave.” This move comes after MSNBC’s decision in November to cancel his show amid a weekend programming overhaul, with Ayman Mohyeldin’s show taking over Hasan’s slot.
Originally, Hasan intended to stay with MSNBC as an on-camera analyst and fill-in host post-cancellation. However, he revealed a change of plans, expressing, “It’s been an absolute blast during this live show on MSNBC for the past three years… But as we begin 2024 with an election coming, a war still ongoing and too many Trump trials honestly to even keep track of, and with this show going away, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to look for a new challenge.”
Hasan joined MSNBC in 2021, hosting the Sunday evening show. The network confirmed his departure to The Hill.
As reported by Poynter Institute, the media industry faced a wave of layoffs in 2023, surpassing the total number of job cuts in 2021 and 2022 combined. According to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an employment firm, there were 20,324 job cuts through November, the highest since 2020. The cuts affected various media sectors, including magazines, public radio, trade publications, and cable networks. Significant layoffs occurred at major news organizations like CNN, Gannett, The Washington Post, NBCUniversal, and ABC News.
The reasons for these layoffs are multifaceted. Some news organizations admitted to overbudgeting, resulting in cuts when revenue projections fell short. The challenging economic climate, marked by high inflation and a weak advertising market, exacerbated the situation. Additionally, changing news consumption patterns, with audiences increasingly turning to social media and search for news, have impacted traditional news outlets.
The decline in the newspaper industry, ongoing for decades, continued as dependence on print revenue became unsustainable due to dropping circulation and the rise of online advertising. Magazines also faced significant challenges, with notable publications like National Geographic and Popular Science making drastic changes. Digital outlets, once seen as the future of journalism, struggled with profitability in a market dominated by major tech platforms.
The layoffs have broader implications for the media landscape, including the quality and diversity of news reporting. As newsrooms shrink, there’s a growing concern about the deterioration of the overall information environment, with high-quality reporting often underpinning online content.
The situation has sparked an uptick in newsroom unions, with increased visibility and labor organizing becoming more prominent. However, challenges remain in contract negotiations, even for established unions.
Looking ahead, while there are initiatives like the Press Forward pledging support for local news, the overall outlook for the news industry remains grim, with no clear reversal of its decades-long decline in sight.
The media industry has witnessed a notable increase in job cuts in 2023, with 20,324 layoffs reported so far, marking the highest year-to-date figure since 2020, which saw 30,211 cuts by November. This trend is particularly pronounced in the news sector, encompassing broadcast, digital, and print media.
As reported by Poynter, the news sector has experienced 2,681 job cuts in 2023, exceeding the totals of 1,808 in 2022 and 1,511 in 2021. These figures highlight the ongoing challenges within the media industry.
Forbes notes that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce, illustrating the widespread impact of these challenges. Additionally, Business Insider observes that layoffs are affecting various sectors, including media.
The Indiana Gazette reports that the U.S. media industry faced about 17,500 job cuts in the first half of 2023, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This data points to significant restructuring within the industry.
G/O Media has ceased operations of the feminist publication Jezebel after 16 years and laid off 23 employees as part of a company-wide reduction. The decision was confirmed by CEO Jim Spanfeller in an internal memo, citing the absence of expected marketing revenue despite economic expansion. The layoffs occurred shortly after the dismissal of Merrill Brown, the editorial director hired in January.
Despite attempts to sell Jezebel, no buyers emerged, leading to its closure. This move is part of a series of changes within G/O Media, including the acquisition of Quartz and the sale of Lifehacker.
The layoffs extend beyond Jezebel, affecting editorial staff at Kotaku, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and Quartz. Brown’s departure adds to the growing number of editorial leaders leaving G/O Media. The company is restructuring its editorial department, introducing an office of editorial oversight for increased accountability.
Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee.
Among those no longer labeled was National Public Radio in the U.S., which announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was designated state-affiliated media, a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China.
Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but NPR — which relies on the government for a tiny fraction of its funding — said it was still misleading.
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Swedish public radio made similar decisions to quit tweeting. CBC’s government-funded label vanished Friday, along with the state-affiliated tags on media accounts including Sputnik and RT in Russia and Xinhua in China.
Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is.
High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump.
The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify the individual accounts, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.
Celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to author Stephen King and Star Trek’s William Shatner, have balked at joining — although on Thursday, all three had blue checks indicating that the account paid for verification.
King, for one, said he hadn’t paid.
“My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t,” King tweeted Thursday. “Just so you know.”
In a reply to King’s tweet, Musk said “You’re welcome namaste” and in another tweet he said he’s “paying for a few personally.” He later tweeted he was just paying for King, Shatner and James.
My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t.
Singer Dionne Warwick tweeted earlier in the week that the site’s verification system “is an absolute mess.”
“The way Twitter is going anyone could be me now,” Warwick said. She had earlier vowed not to pay for Twitter Blue, saying the monthly fee “could (and will) be going toward my extra hot lattes.”
On Thursday, Warwick lost her blue check (which is actually a white check mark in a blue background).
For users who still had a blue check Thursday, a popup message indicated that the account “is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.” Verifying a phone number simply means that the person has a phone number and they verified that they have access to it — it does not confirm the person’s identity.
It wasn’t just celebrities and journalists who lost their blue checks Thursday. Many government agencies, nonprofits and public-service accounts around the world found themselves no longer verified, raising concerns that Twitter could lose its status as a platform for getting accurate, up-to-date information from authentic sources, including in emergencies.
While Twitter offers gold checks for “verified organizations” and gray checks for government organizations and their affiliates, it’s not clear how the platform doles these out.
FILE – A Twitter logo hangs outside the company’s offices in San Francisco, on Dec. 19, 2022.
The official Twitter account of the New York City government, which earlier had a blue check, tweeted on Thursday that “This is an authentic Twitter account representing the New York City Government This is the only account for @NYCGov run by New York City government” in an attempt to clear up confusion.
A newly created spoof account with 36 followers (also without a blue check), disagreed: “No, you’re not. THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.”
Soon, another spoof account — purporting to be Pope Francis — weighed in too: “By the authority vested in me, Pope Francis, I declare @NYC_GOVERNMENT the official New York City Government. Peace be with you.”
Fewer than 5% of legacy verified accounts appear to have paid to join Twitter Blue as of Thursday, according to an analysis by Travis Brown, a Berlin-based developer of software for tracking social media.
Musk’s move has riled up some high-profile users and pleased some right-wing figures and Musk fans who thought the marks were unfair. But it is not an obvious money-maker for the social media platform that has long relied on advertising for most of its revenue.
Digital intelligence platform Similarweb analyzed how many people signed up for Twitter Blue on their desktop computers and only detected 116,000 confirmed sign-ups last month, which at $8 or $11 per month does not represent a major revenue stream. The analysis did not count accounts bought via mobile apps.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks at the “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships,” marketing conference in Miami Beach, Florida, on April 18, 2023. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
CHANDAN KHANNA via Getty Images
After buying San Francisco-based Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his assertion that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities, news reporters and others granted verification for free by Twitter’s previous leadership.
Twitter began tagging profiles with a blue check mark starting about 14 years ago. Along with shielding celebrities from impersonators, one of the main reasons was to provide an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts impersonating people. Most “legacy blue checks,” including the accounts of politicians, activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, are not household names.
One of Musk’s first product moves after taking over Twitter was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch.
The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers are supposed to see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominently.
AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
BROOKLYN, N.Y., February 24, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has recognized Kazoo, an independently published quarterly print magazine for girls, ages 5 to 12, for awards in the categories of General Excellence, Best Print Design, and Best Print Illustration.
Kazoo is nominated for General Excellence-Special Interest, the most prestigious honor in the publishing industry; for Best Print Design for The Brave Issue (#27); and for Best Print Illustration for “Look for the Light” by Lucy Knisley in The Future Issue (#26). Kazoo is the only children’s magazine recognized in 2023.
In 2023, Kazoo published four powerful issues: The Brave Issue (#27), which inspires girls to dream boldly and make their voices heard; The Future Issue (#26), which encourages them to imagine—and build—a better tomorrow; The Ocean Issue (#25), which takes them on a deep dive into the science and secrets of the sea; and The Magic Issue (#24), which sparks their wonder and curiosity about the world. Every 64-page, ad-free issue is filled with visually stunning illustrations, clever comics, powerful fiction, and interactive stories, and each supports Kazoo‘s simple, yet still radical, mission: to celebrate girls for being strong, smart, fierce and true to themselves.
The three 2023 ASME nods mark Kazoo magazine’s eighth ASME nomination in just seven years, having previously been nominated in 2017, 2019, and 2021 for General Excellence-Special Interest and twice in 2022 for Best Single Topic Issue and Best Illustrated Story. Kazoo won the highest honor in the category of General Excellence-Special Interest in 2019.
This year, 243 national and regional media organizations entered the National Magazine Awards. Finalists and winners will be honored at the annual presentation of the National Magazine Awards at Terminal 5, in New York City, on Tuesday, March 28.
MORE ABOUT KAZOO MAGAZINE:
Kazoo: A Magazine for Girls Who Aren’t Afraid to Make Some Noise is the story of a little quarterly magazine that could. We’re print-only by design, ad-free by choice, and we launched in 2016 after running what was the highest-funded journalism campaign in crowdfunding history. With a full-time staff of one, Kazoo now reaches subscribers in 51 countries worldwide and counts among its contributors Stacey Abrams, Margaret Atwood, Amy Sherald, Greta Thunberg, and others. Our mission is as radical as it is essential: to celebrate girls, 5 to 12, for being strong, smart, fierce and true to themselves.
Representation matters, especially to kids, so celebrating all kinds of girls and women in our pages is not a quota to fill; it’s part of our purpose.
Twitter is still banning several prominent journalists from the social media platform who are refusing to delete tweets they were ordered to eliminate.
The disputed tweets mention or link to Twitter account @ElonJet, which has tracked Musk’s private jet flights using publicly available information. Musk has claimed tracking his flights risk his safety — even though he has posted his own real-time locations, including when he attended the World Cup final in Qatar just last Sunday.
But not one of the banned journalists’ tweets about @ElonJet disclosed information about Musk or his jet’s location, despite Musk’s claim that the journalists had posted “assassination coordinates,” The Washington Post reported.
The journalists have pointed out that their tweets are part of legitimate reporting.
Many of the ostracized journalists suspect Musk — who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist — is holding other grudges against them over their coverage of him.
“The rules are arbitrary and capricious,” banned journalist Steve Herman, Voice of America’s chief national correspondent, told the Post. “They appear to be based on the whims of the owner of the platform.”
Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell said he has no intention of deleting a tweet which referred to Musk’s suspension of Twitter competitor Mastodon over its link to its version of @ElonJet.
“Hell, no. I’m not deleting a tweet that contained factual information and didn’t violate anyone’s rules,” Harwell said. “It’s his platform. He can ban anyone he wants. And we can point out how he’s making up pretextual rules that just so happen to target journalism he doesn’t like.”
Micah Lee of the Intercept filed an appeal to Twitter on his banishment, he noted in an article, because he wrote that he didn’t want to “bend the knee to the Mad King of Twitter.” Twitter responded that it would not overturn the decision, Lee reported.
“I’ve been writing critically about billionaire Elon Musk since he took over Twitter — particularly about his “free speech” hypocrisy and his censorship of left-wing accounts,” Lee wrote. “This must have angered him.”
Ryan Mac of the New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN and Susan Li of Fox Business, among others, are also still banned on Twitter.
Musk could not be reached for comment.
United Nations officials have blasted the “dangerous precedent” of Musk’s crackdown on journalists.
European Union leaders are warning that Musk’s actions have already run afoul of the continent’s digital regulations ensuring free speech.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration declared Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity in the lawsuit filed by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s decision to try to protect the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
And despite backing up the crown prince in his bid to block the lawsuit against him, the State Department “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the administration’s court filing late Thursday said.
Saudi officials killed Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. They are believed to have dismembered him, although his remains have never been found. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had approved the killing of the widely known and respected journalist, who had written critically of Prince Mohammed’s harsh ways of silencing of those he considered rivals or critics.
The Biden administration statement Thursday noted visa restrictions and other penalties that it had meted out to lower-ranking Saudi officials in the death.
“From the earliest days of this Administration, the United States Government has expressed its grave concerns regarding Saudi agents’ responsibility for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder,” the State Department said. Its statement did not mention the crown prince’s own alleged role.
Hatice Cengiz, slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, attends a press conference calling for the Trump administration to release details about his killing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 3, 2020. – US lawmakers vowed Tuesday to force the release of an intelligence report on the killing of Saudi dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi, accusing President Donald Trump of blocking it to protect the kingdom. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
Biden as a candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi.
“I think it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said in a 2019 CNN town hall, as a candidate. “And I think we should have nailed it as that. I publicly said at the time we should treat it that way and there should be consequences relating to how we deal with those — that power.”
But Biden as president has sought to ease tensions with the kingdom, including bumping fists with Prince Mohammed on a July trip to the kingdom, as the U.S. works to persuade Saudi Arabia to undo a series of cuts in oil production.
Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and DAWN sued the crown prince, his top aides and others in Washington federal court over their alleged roles in Khashoggi’s killing. Saudi Arabia says the prince had no direct role in the slaying.
“It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has singlehandedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable,” the head of DAWN, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement, using the prince’s acronym.
Biden in February 2021 had ruled out the U.S. government imposing punishment on Prince Mohammed himself in the killing of Khashoggi, a resident of the Washington area. Biden, speaking after he authorized release of a declassified version of the intelligence community’s findings on Prince Mohammed’s role in the killing, argued at the time there was no precedent for the U.S. to move against the leader of a strategic partner.
The U.S. military long has safeguarded Saudi Arabia from external enemies, in exchange for Saudi Arabia keeping global oil markets afloat.
“It’s impossible to read the Biden administration’s move today as anything more than a capitulation to Saudi pressure tactics, including slashing oil output to twist our arms to recognize MBS’s fake immunity ploy,” Whitson said.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – OCTOBER 08: A man holds a poster of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a protest organized by members of the Turkish-Arabic Media Association at the entrance to Saudi Arabia’s consulate on October 8, 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. Fears are growing over the fate of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Turkish officials said they believe he was murdered inside the Saudi consulate. Saudi consulate officials have said that missing writer and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi went missing after leaving the consulate, however the statement directly contradicts other sources including Turkish officials. Jamal Khashoggi a Saudi writer critical of the Kingdom and a contributor to the Washington Post was living in self-imposed exile in the U.S. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Chris McGrath via Getty Images
A federal judge in Washington had given the U.S. government until midnight Thursday to express an opinion on the claim by the crown prince’s lawyers that Prince Mohammed’s high official standing renders him legally immune in the case.
The Biden administration also had the option of not stating an opinion either way.
Sovereign immunity, a concept rooted in international law, holds that states and their officials are protected from some legal proceedings in other foreign states’ domestic courts.
Upholding the concept of “sovereign immunity” helps ensure that American leaders in turn don’t have to worry about being hauled into foreign courts to face lawsuits in other countries, the State Department said.
Human rights advocates had argued that the Biden administration would embolden Prince Mohammed and other authoritarian leaders around the world in more rights abuses if it supported the crown prince’s claim that his high office shielded him from prosecution.
Prince Mohammed serves as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler in the stead of his aged father, King Salman. The Saudi king in September also temporarily transferred his title of prime minister — a title normally held by the Saudi monarch — to Prince Mohammed. Critics called it a bid to strengthen Mohammed’s immunity claim.
