ReportWire

Tag: News media

  • Growing more complex by the day: How should journalists govern use of AI in their products?

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    Like so many sectors of the economy, the news industry is hurtling toward a future where artificial intelligence plays a major role — grappling with questions about how much the technology is used, what consumers should be told about it, whether anything can be done for the journalists who will be left behind.

    These issues were on the minds of reporters for the independent outlet ProPublica as they walked picket lines earlier this month. They’re inching toward a potential strike, in what is believed would be the first such job action in the news business where how to deal with AI is the chief sticking point.

    Few expect this dispute will be the last.

    AI has undeniably helped journalists, simplifying complex tasks and saving time, particularly with data-focused stories. News organizations are using it to help sift through the Epstein files. AI suggests headlines, summarizes stories. Transcription technology has largely eliminated the need for a human to type up interviews. These days, even a simple Google search frequently involves AI.

    Yet rushing to see how AI can help a financially troubled industry has resulted in several cases of publications owning up to errors.

    Within the past year, Bloomberg issued several corrections for mistakes in AI-generated news summaries. Business Insider and Wired were forced to remove articles by a fake author named Margaux Blanchard. The Los Angeles Times had trouble with AI and opinion pieces. Ars Technica said AI fabricated quotes, and the publication that has frequently reported on the risks of overreliance on AI tools embarrassed itself further by failing to follow its policy to tell readers when the tool is used.

    The ProPublica dispute is noteworthy for how it touches on issues that are frequently cause for debates. The union representing ProPublica’s journalists, negotiating its first contract with the the outlet known for investigative reporting, says it wants commitments that mirror those sought elsewhere in the industry about disclosure and the role of humans in the use of AI.

    Along with holding informational pickets, union members pledged overwhelmingly that they would be willing to strike without a satisfactory agreement, said Jen Sheehan, spokeswoman for the New York Guild, the union that represents many journalists in the city.

    “It feels to me pretty monumental when we think about the trajectory of AI and journalism,” said Alex Mahadevan, an expert on the topic at the Poynter Institute journalism think tank.

    ProPublica has rejected its requests, the union said. Insight into why can be found in an essay, “Something Big is Happening,” that circulated widely this month. Author and investor Matt Shumer, who said he’s spent six years building an AI startup, wrote that the technology is advancing so quickly that “if you haven’t tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you.”

    Small wonder, then, that news executives are reluctant to put guarantees in writing that could quickly become outdated.

    Rather than make promises that can’t be kept, ProPublica is exploring how technology can create more space for investigative reporting, company spokesman Tyson Evans said. In the “unlikely event” of AI-related layoffs, ProPublica is proposing expanded severance packages for those affected, he said.

    “We’re approaching AI with both curiosity and skepticism,” Evans said. “It would be a mistake to freeze editorial decisions in a contract that will last years.”

    Fifty-seven of 283 contracts at U.S. news organizations negotiated by the NewsGuild-USA contain language related to artificial intelligence, said Jon Schleuss, president of the union that represents more journalists than any in the country. The first such deals happened in 2023, and The Associated Press was one pioneer. He wants provisions in more contracts.

    It won’t be easy, judging by the reluctance of many outlets to be tied down. The organization Trusting News, which encourages news organizations to develop and make public its policies on AI use, estimates that less than half of U.S. outlets have done so.

    “I think it is becoming harder,” Schleuss said, “because too many newsrooms are being run by the greedy side of the organization and not by the journalism side of the organization.”

    The guild pushing for contracts that guarantee AI won’t eliminate jobs. That’s no surprise; unions exist to protect jobs. Schleuss characterized a proposal that ensures an actual journalist is involved when AI is used as a way to prevent errors and help an outlet build trust with its readers.

    “Humans are actually so much better at going out, finding the story, interviewing sources, bringing back the relevant pieces, asking the hard follow-up questions and putting that in a way that people can understand and see, whether it’s a news story or a video,” he said. “Humans are way better at doing that than AI ever will be.”

    Apparently, not everyone in journalism agrees. Chris Quinn, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, wrote this month of his disgust with a recent college graduate who turned down a job offer because the person had been taught that AI was bad for journalism.

    Quinn’s newspaper has been sending some of its journalists out to cover stories by interviewing people, collecting quotes and information, then feeding it to a computer to write. While a human will edit what the computer spits out, an integral part of the process — a reporter using his or her judgment about how to tell a story — has been stripped from their hands. Quinn defended it as the best use of limited resources.

    Research shows that a vast majority of American consumers believe that it’s very important that newsrooms tell the public when AI is used to write stories or edit photographs, said Benjamin Toff, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota. But here’s the rub: Such disclosure makes them trust the outlet’s stories less, not more.

    A significant minority — 30% in a study Toff conducted last year — doesn’t want AI used in journalism at all.

    Telling a reader that AI was used is not as simple as it sounds. “There are just so many, many uses of AI in journalism, from the very beginning of the reporting process to when you hit publish, that just broadly declaring that when AI is used in the newsgathering process that you have to disclose it, just seems like it is actually a disservice to the reader in some cases,” Poynter’s Mahadevan said.

    Two lawmakers in New York state — the nation’s publishing capital — introduced legislation this month requiring clear disclaimers when artificial intelligence is used in an published content. There’s no immediate word on its chances for passage, but both sponsors are Democrats in a legislature controlled by that party.

    Mahadevan believes it’s fair to have policies that requires human involvement — editing to prevent slip-ups, for example. But even these declarations are open to interpretation, he said. If an outlet uses chatbots to answer reader questions, are they being edited by a human being?

    “Speaking realistically, the newsroom of the future is going to look completely different than it does today,” he said. “Which means people will lose jobs. There will be new jobs. So I think it’s important that we are having these conversations right now because audiences do not want a newsroom completely taken over by AI.”

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    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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  • Red lines and increasing self-censorship reshape Hong Kong’s once freewheeling press scene

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    HONG KONG — From 18th place to 140th. That’s how much Hong Kong’s ranking plunged in a global press freedom index over some 20 years.

    Behind the decline are the shutdown of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, more red lines for journalists and increasing self-censorship across the territory. The erosion of press freedom parallels a broader curtailment of the city’s Western-style civil liberties since 2020, when Beijing imposed a national security law to eradicate challenges to its rule.

    Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai was convicted in December under the security law, facing up to life in prison. Hearings will begin on Monday for Lai and other defendants in the case to argue for a shorter sentence.

    His trial has been watched closely by foreign governments and political observers as a barometer of media freedom in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The government insists that his case has nothing to do with press freedom.

    Hong Kong’s media environment was once freewheeling. Journalists often asked the government aggressive questions even as the owners of their outlets were pro-Beijing. News outlets regularly broke stories critical of politicians and officials.

    But the space for reporters has drastically narrowed after China imposed the security law, which it deemed necessary for stability after huge anti-government protests in 2019.

    In 2020, Lai became one of the first prominent figures charged under the law. Within a year, authorities used the same law to arrest senior executives of Apple Daily. They raided its office and froze $2.3 million of its assets, effectively forcing the newspaper to shut down in June 2021.

    Online news site Stand News met a similar fate in December of that year, with arrests, police raids and asset freezes forcing its shutdown. By 2022, Hong Kong had plunged 68 places to 148th in the press-freedom index compiled by media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.

    In 2024, two Stand News editors became the first journalists since 1997 to be convicted of conspiracy to publish seditious articles under a separate, colonial-era law.

    In December, Lai was found guilty of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious articles. Six Apple Daily executives charged in the same case had entered guilty pleas, admitting they conspired with Lai to request sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

    Francis Lee, a journalism and communication professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the Apple Daily and Stand News cases indicate that some common news practices of the past are no longer permitted. The Stand News case showed that some strongly critical commentaries with relatively intense expression might be considered seditious, he said. Lai’s case involved allegations of calling for foreign sanctions.

    “Maybe some advocacy journalism was at least permitted within the legal framework back then,” he said, referring to before the security law was introduced. “Today, it’s no longer allowed.”

    Self-censorship has become more prominent, but not only because of politics. Lee said mainstream news outlets face greater pressure not to upset their vital revenue streams, including advertisers and big companies, amid a difficult business environment.

    Many large companies in the city value the vast mainland Chinese market and ties with the government.

    Finding interviewees is not easy, either. “In Hong Kong nowadays, when some topics and perspectives cannot be reported, it’s not just because of media outlets practicing self-censorship,” Lee said. “No one is willing to speak. Self-censorship is a broad social phenomenon.”

    Many opposition politicians and leading activists were jailed under the security law. Dozens of civil society groups closed down. Facing potential risks, some residents also became more reluctant to talk to reporters.

    Hong Kong Journalists Association chairperson Selina Cheng said many stories perceived to be politically sensitive or potentially questioning the authorities are not always easily published. There is an outsized concern over including responses from the government and pro-China groups to create balance, she said.

    “To do journalism in Hong Kong means that people always have to worry at the back of their heads: What are the risks that they may get involved in?” said Cheng.

    A massive fire that killed at least 161 people in an apartment complex in late November revealed some of these shifts.

    After the fire broke out on Nov. 26, reporters, including those from newer online outlets, went out in force to cover Hong Kong’s deadliest blaze in decades. They interviewed affected residents, investigated scaffolding nettings that authorities said had contributed to the blaze’s rapid spread, and reported on concerns over the government’s oversight.

    Cheng was encouraged by the coverage of the aftermath. But warnings and arrests followed.

    Beijing’s national security arm in Hong Kong summoned representatives of several foreign news outlets, including The Associated Press, on Dec. 6. The Office for Safeguarding National Security said some foreign media had spread false information and smeared the government’s relief efforts after the fire and attacked the legislative election.

    After arrests of non-journalists who posted allegedly seditious content online or organized a petition, public voices grew quieter, leaving reporters with fewer interviewees, Lee said.

    A planned news conference related to the fire, organized by people including former pro-democracy district councilors, was canceled. Bruce Liu, an organizer, was summoned by police for a meeting the same day. An investigative report on the maintenance project by a pro-Beijing newspaper is no longer viewable on its website.

    Ellie Yuen, who wrote a social media post questioning regulators’ oversight that went viral, said she stopped posting about the fire for “obvious reasons” without elaborating.

    Cheng raised concerns over what she called the “more covert muscling of people speaking out.”

    “If this keeps happening, then it’s much harder for the public to know what they’re missing out on,” she said.

    In an emailed reply to the AP’s questions, the government strongly condemned attempts to use the fire as an excuse to smear the administration with baseless accusations.

    “Human rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents have all along been firmly protected by the constitution and the Basic Law,” it said.

    Beyond reporting restrictions, Cheng’s trade union previously raised concerns about some journalists facing unwarranted tax audits and harassment through anonymous messages. The Inland Revenue Department has maintained that the background of a taxpayer has no bearing on its reviews.

    Cheng has launched a lawsuit against her former employer, The Wall Street Journal, for allegedly firing her over her union role.

    Both Cheng and Lee said journalists are still learning to survive in the narrowing space.

    In October, Cheng’s association showed journalists’ ratings of the city’s press-freedom index rebounded slightly.

    “Today’s situation is far from the previous state of freedom,” Lee said. “Self-censorship throughout society is severe. Yet some media outlets are still finding ways.”

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  • Trump administration thanks the media for keeping quiet before the strike that captured Maduro

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    In the wake of last weekend’s U.S. military action in Venezuela, the news media got something it has seldom heard from the Trump administration: a “thank you.”

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio credited news organizations that had learned in advance about Saturday’s strike that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with not putting the mission in jeopardy by publicly reporting on it before it happened.

    Rubio’s acknowledgment was particularly noteworthy because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cited a mistrust of journalists’ ability to responsibly handle sensitive information as one of the chief reasons for imposing restrictive new press rules on Pentagon reporters. Most mainstream news organizations have left posts in the Pentagon rather than agree to Hegseth’s policy.

    Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Rubio said the Republican administration withheld information about the mission from Congress ahead of time because “it will leak. It’s as simple as that.” But the primary reason was operational security, he said.

    “Frankly, a number of media outlets had gotten leaks that this was coming and held it for that very reason,” Rubio said. “And we thank them for doing that or lives could have been lost. American lives.”

    Semafor, citing “people familiar with communications between the administration and news organizations,” reported that The New York Times and The Washington Post had both learned of the raid in advance but held off reporting on it to avoid endangering U.S. military personnel. Representatives for both outlets declined to comment to The Associated Press on Monday.

    Withholding information on a planned mission for that reason is routine for news organizations, said Dana Priest, a longtime national security reporter at the Post who now teaches at the University of Maryland. Even after the fact, the Post has asked government authorities about whether revealing certain details could endanger people, she said.

    When The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in a text chain last spring where Hegseth revealed information about a military attack in Yemen, the journalist did not report on the events until well after U.S. personnel was out of danger and the information had been thoroughly checked out.

    Most Americans learned of the Venezuela attack in the predawn hours of Saturday when President Donald Trump announced it on his Truth Social platform upon completion.

    While The Associated Press did not have advance word that the operation would happen, its journalists in Venezuela heard and observed explosions taking place there, and that was reported on the news wire more than two hours before Trump’s announcement. The U.S. involvement was not made clear until Trump’s post, however.

    Hegseth, in defending rules that restrict reporters’ movements and reporting in the Pentagon, told Fox News last year that “we have expectations that you’re not soliciting classified or sensitive information.” The Times last month filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the rules.

    Decisions on whether to report information that could put lives or a mission in danger often involve high-level discussions between editors and government officials. But Priest stressed that in a country with freedom of the press, the ultimate decision on whether to report the information lies with the news organization.

    Generations ago, President John F. Kennedy persuaded editors at the Times not to report when it learned in advance of a U.S.-backed attack by Cuban exiles on Fidel Castro’s forces at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The mission proved a monumental failure, and a Times editor, Bill Keller, later said that Kennedy expressed regret that the newspaper had not reported on what it had known because it could have prevented a fiasco.

    Many mainstream journalists covering the military and national security have extensive experience dealing with sensitive issues, Priest said. But there’s a difference, she said, between reporting information that could put someone in danger and that which could prove embarrassing to an administration.

    “The reporters are not going to be deterred by a ridiculously broad censorship edict by the Trump administration,” Priest said. “They’re going to dig in and work even harder. Their mission is not to curry favor with the Trump administration. It’s to report information to the public.”

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    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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  • A rough year for journalists in 2025, with a little hope for things to turn around

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    NEW YORK — By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press.

    It’s likely to be the deadliest year on record for journalists and media workers. The number of assaults on reporters in the U.S. nearly equals the last three years combined. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one woman “piggy.” And the ranks of those doing the job continues to thin.

    It’s hard to think of a darker time for journalists. So say many, including Tim Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter and now program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America. “It’s safe to say this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times.”

    Worldwide, the 126 media industry people killed in 2025 by early December matched the number of deaths in all of 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and last year was a record-setter. Israel’s bombing of Gaza accounted for 85 of those deaths, 82 of them Palestinians.

    “It’s extremely concerning,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unfortunately, it’s not just, of course, about the sheer numbers of journalists and media workers killed, it’s also about the failure to obtain justice or get accountability for those killings.

    “What we know from decades of doing this work is that impunity breeds impunity,” she said. “So a failure to tackle journalists’ killings creates an environment where those killings continue.”

    The committee estimates there are at least 323 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

    None of those killed this year were from the United States. But the work on American soil has still been dangerous. There have been 170 reports of assaults on journalists in the United States this year, 160 of them at the hands of law enforcement, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Many of those reports came from coverage of immigration enforcement efforts.

    It’s impossible to look past the influence of President Donald Trump, who frequently seethes with anger at the press while simultaneously interacting with journalists more than any president in memory — frequently answering their cellphone calls.

    “Trump has always attacked the press,” Richardson said. “But during the second term, he’s turned that into government action to restrict and punish and intimidate journalists.”

    The Associated Press learned that quickly, when Trump limited the outlet’s access to cover him after it refused to follow his lead to rename the Gulf of Mexico. It launched a court fight that has remained unresolved. Trump has also extracted settlements from ABC and CBS News in lawsuits over stories that displeased him, and is suing The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

    Long angry about a perceived bias against conservatives on PBS and NPR newscasts, Trump and his allies in Congress successfully cut funding for public broadcasting as a whole. The president has also moved to shut down government-run organizations that beam news to all parts of the world.

    “The U.S. is a major investor in media development, in independent media outlets in countries that have little or no independent media, or as a source of information for people in countries where there is no free media,” Ginsberg said. “The evisceration of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America is another blow to press freedom globally.”

    Others in his administration take Trump’s lead, like when his press office chose the day after Thanksgiving to launch a web portal to complain about outlets or journalists being unfair.

    “It’s part of this overall strategy that we’re seeing from certain governments, notably the United States, to paint all journalists who don’t simply (repeat) the narrative put out by the government as fake news, as dubious, as dodgy, as criminal,” Ginsberg said.

    Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has portrayed journalists as dark figures skulking around Pentagon halls to uncover classified secrets as his rationale for putting in restrictive rules for coverage.

    That’s led to the most notable example of journalists fighting back: most mainstream news outlets gave up their credentials to work in the Pentagon rather than agree to these rules, and are still breaking stories while working off-site. The New York Times has sued to overturn the rules. The newspaper also publicly defends itself when attacked by the president, such as when he complained about its coverage of his health.

    Despite the more organized effort against the press, the public has taken little notice. The Pew Research Center said that 36% of Americans reported earlier this year hearing about the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, compared to 72% who said that at the same point in his first term.

    Polls consistently show that journalists have never been popular, and are likely to elicit little sympathy when their work becomes harder.

    “Really, the harm falls on the public with so much of this because the public depends on this independent reporting to understand and scrutinize the decisions that are being made by the most powerful office in the world,” Richardson said.

    The news industry as a whole is more than two decades in to a retrenchment caused largely by a collapse in the advertising market, and every year brings more reports of journalists laid off as a result. One of the year’s most sobering statistics came in a report by the organizations Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News: in 2002, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 people in the United States and by this year, it was down to just over eight.

    Asked if they could find reasons for optimism, both Ginsberg and Richardson pointed to the rise of some independent local news organizations, shoots of growth in a barren landscape, places like the Baltimore Banner, Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia and Outlier Media in Michigan.

    As much as they are derided in Trump’s America, influential Axios CEO Jim VandeHei noted in a column recently that reporters at mainstream media outlets are still working hard and able to set the nation’s agenda with their reporting.

    As he told the AP: “Over time, people will hopefully come to their senses and say, ‘Hey, the media like anything else is imperfect but, man, it’s a nice thing to have a free press.’”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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  • How chummy is too chummy? Epstein emails shine light on relationships between journalists, sources

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    The emails to and from Jeffrey Epstein released this week shine a light on the delicate relationship between reporters and their sources. And, as can be the case, bright light isn’t always flattering.

    Messages between Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019, and journalists Michael Wolff and Landon Thomas Jr. are frequently chummy and, in one case, show Wolff giving Epstein advice on how to deal with the media —- a line journalists are taught not to cross. Wolff specializes in the “you are there” inside accounts that are possible with intensive reporting, though some of his work has been questioned.

    People frequently see journalists in public settings, conducting an interview or asking questions at a news conference. Private phone calls, texts or messages — where reporters try to ingratiate themselves with sources who may not otherwise be inclined to give information — are inherently different. But ethical rules remain and are followed by most in American journalism.

    Wolff’s advice came in a December 2015 exchange, where the writer said he heard CNN was going to ask then-presidential candidate Donald Trump about his relationship with Epstein. If we could craft an answer for him, Epstein wondered, what would it be?

    “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff replied. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

    Advice on media relations for convicted sex offender

    The exchange left some experts aghast.

    Independence is vital for a journalist, and Wolff compromised it, said Dan Kennedy, a media writer and professor at Northeastern University.

    Kathleen Bartzen Culver’s voice rises in anger just contemplating the example. Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said there are plenty of ethical issues to maneuver every day, like whether a reporter should give $20 after interviewing a poor person who lost benefits during the government shutdown.

    “Giving PR advice to a convicted sex offender isn’t one of them,” she said.

    Wolff, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, wrote books like “Fire and Fury,” about the opening days of the first Trump administration, and “The Man Who Owns the News,” a biography of Rupert Murdoch. “Historically, one of the problems with Wolff’s omniscience is that while he may know all, he gets some of it wrong,” the late David Carr of The New York Times wrote in a review of the Murdoch book.

    Wolff, who did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press, admitted on the “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast that some of the email messages were embarrassing. But he said his knowledge of the media offers “the kind of cachet that gives me a place at the table, which has gotten me the Epstein story, if anybody wanted to pay attention.”

    At one point in 2016, Wolff turns the table, seeking counsel from Epstein on what he should ask during an upcoming interview with Trump. That’s a legitimate journalistic exercise, part of the reporting that goes into preparing for an interview.

    A 2016 exchange with Epstein mixed a plea for an interview with some advice: “There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him off. Interested?”

    Wolff said on the podcast that part of his role is “play-acting” to get sources to reveal things they would not tell other people. And he took on his critics.

    “These are not people that have written the kind of books that I have written,” he said, “and I often make the distinction between journalists who do what they do — daily reporters working for organizations, working within a very prescribed set of rules — and what I do. I’m a writer who manages to make relationships that let me tell a story in the ways that The New York Times or other very reputable journalistic organizations are unable to tell.”

    Author Michael Wolff discusses his latest book on March 14, 2025, in New York. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP, File)

    A distinction that not every reader makes

    Not everyone sees the difference when considering works of nonfiction. Culver cited journalism that took courage and skill to report and said, “I find it heartbreaking when that kind of work is sullied by this kind of garbage.”

    Should a journalist act differently in public or private? They’re not supposed to. That explains why Connie Chung had a hard time living down her 1995 exchange with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s mother. Gingrich initially ducked when Chung asked how her son felt about Hillary Clinton until Chung asked — on camera — “why don’t you just whisper it to me — just between you and me.”

    Many of the exchanges between Epstein and the journalists are chatty, gossipy — seemingly harmless, yet not the sort of things one would like to see published years later. Northeastern’s Kennedy read some of the emails between Wolff and Epstein and said “it just seemed like kibbitzing with a child molester for no apparent purpose.”

    In one email conversation, the former New York Times reporter Thomas mentions that he’s been getting calls from another journalist who is writing a book on Epstein. “He seems very interested in your relationship with the news media,” Thomas wrote. “I told him you were a hell of a guy :).”

    Thomas also didn’t hide his feelings about Trump in one conversation — a personal opinion that most reporters learn to keep to themselves. “I am getting worried,” Thomas wrote in July 2016. “Is he ever going to implode?”

    Relations between journalist and source: Step carefully

    Journalists should take care to maintain boundaries, especially when dealing with people who are inexperienced with the media. There’s admittedly a fine line: A reporter needs a source’s trust, but it’s a form of deception if a source begins to think of the journalist as a friend who would never betray them.

    People most commonly think of politics when considering bias in journalism. More frequently, bias shows up in relationships, whether a reporter likes or dislikes someone they are dealing with, Culver said.

    “I advise my students to be human with their sources,” she said. “Not to be friendly or sweet, but to come at it with respect and understanding.”

    Thomas stopped working at The Times in 2019 after editors discovered a violation of its ethical standards. National Public Radio reported that Thomas had solicited a $30,000 contribution from Epstein for a charity the journalist supported.

    In one exchange that was widely noticed online, Epstein asked Thomas in 2015 if he would like photos of Trump and girls in bikinis taken in his kitchen. “Yes!!!” the reporter replied.

    But The Times said no such photos were forthcoming.

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.socia l

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  • Pentagon announces ‘new’ press corps filled with conservative news outlets

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    Several conservative news outlets said Wednesday they had agreed to a new press policy rejected by virtually all legacy media organizations and will take their place in the Pentagon to cover Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the U.S. military.

    The new Pentagon press corps will include the Gateway Pundit, the National Pulse, Human Events, podcaster Tim Pool, the Just the News website founded by journalist John Solomon, Frontlines by Turning Point USA and LindellTV, run by “MyPillow” CEO Mike Lindell.

    The Pentagon’s announcement came less than a week after dozens of reporters from outlets like The New York Times, The Associated Press, CNN and the Washington Post turned in their access badges rather than agree to a policy the journalists say will restrict them to covering news approved by Hegseth.

    Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, announced the “next generation” of the Pentagon press corps with more than 60 journalists who had agreed to the new policy. He said 26 journalists who had previously been part of the press corps were among the signees. The department wouldn’t say who any of them were, but several outlets reposted his message on X saying they had signed on.

    There isn’t even unanimity among organizations that appeal to conservative consumers. Fox News Channel, by far the most popular news source for fans of President Donald Trump, was among the walkouts, as was Newsmax.

    In a post on X, Parnell denounced the “self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon.”

    “Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media,” Parnell wrote. “We look forward to beginning a fresh relationship with members of the new Pentagon press corps.”

    The journalists who left the Pentagon haven’t stopped working covering the U.S. military. Many have been reporting aggressively, for example, on stories about strikes against boats in central America alleged to be part of the drug trade.

    By not being in the Pentagon, “reporters will have to work harder, there’s no question about it,” said Barbara Starr, a longtime Pentagon reporter retired from CNN.

    “But the real price is paid by the American people and the American military families,” Starr said. “Military families who have their sons and daughters serving, they want to know everything and they want to know it fast.”

    Starr wondered about Hegseth: “What is he so afraid of?” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a biting piece about the defense secretary over the weekend titled “Fraidy-Cat at the Pentagon.” But Hegseth’s boss, President Trump, has expressed support for the new media policy and Hegseth’s aggressive moves mirror some of those made by the administration. The president has sued outlets like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal for their coverage of him.

    Some of the outlets that accepted Hegseth’s rules will have to staff up for their new roles: Just the News, for example, posted an ad online seeking a Pentagon reporter.

    The Gateway Pundit’s White House correspondent, Jordan Conradson, posted on Wednesday that he was excited to join the Pentagon press corps “and help restore honest journalism after agreeing to follow basic rules … something the legacy media refuses to do!”

    Lindell, whose My Pillow ads once blanketed Fox News before he joined the political media, posted a statement that LindellTV was “proud to be part of a new generation of news organizations reshaping how real information reaches the public.”

    Some of the publications pronounce themselves conservative in their mission statements. The “about” page on the National Pulse features a picture of Trump.

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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  • Deloitte to partially refund Australia for report with apparent AI-generated errors

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    MELBOURNE, Australia — MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Deloitte Australia will partially refund the 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) paid by the Australian government for a report that was littered with apparent AI-generated errors, including a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment and references to nonexistent academic research papers.

    The financial services firm’s report to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations was originally published on the department’s website in July. A revised version was published Friday after Chris Rudge, a Sydney University researcher of health and welfare law, said he alerted the media that the report was “full of fabricated references.”

    Deloitte had reviewed the 237-page report and “confirmed some footnotes and references were incorrect,” the department said in a statement Tuesday.

    “Deloitte had agreed to repay the final instalment under its contract,” the department said. The amount will be made public after the refund is reimbursed.

    Asked to comment on the report’s inaccuracies, Deloitte told The Associated Press in a statement the “matter has been resolved directly with the client.”

    Deloitte did not respond when asked if the errors were generated by AI.

    A tendency for generative AI systems to fabricate information is known as hallucination.

    The report reviewed departmental IT systems’ use of automated penalties in Australia’s welfare system. The department said the “substance” of the report had been maintained and there were no changes to its recommendations.

    The revised version included a disclosure that a generative AI language system, Azure OpenAI, was used in writing the report.

    Quotes attributed to a federal court judge were removed, as well as references to nonexistent reports attributed to law and software engineering experts.

    Rudge said he found up to 20 errors in the first version of the report.

    The first error that jumped out at him wrongly stated that Lisa Burton Crawford, a Sydney University professor of public and constitutional law, had written a nonexistent book with a title suggesting it was outside her field of expertise.

    “I instantaneously knew it was either hallucinated by AI or the world’s best kept secret because I’d never heard of the book and it sounded preposterous,” Rudge said.

    Work by his academic colleagues had been used as “tokens of legitimacy,” cited by the report’s authors but not read, Rudge said, addding that he considered misquoting a judge was a more serious error in a report that was effectively an audit of the department’s legal compliance.

    “They’ve totally misquoted a court case then made up a quotation from a judge and I thought, well hang on: that’s actually a bit bigger than academics’ egos. That’s about misstating the law to the Australian government in a report that they rely on. So I thought it was important to stand up for diligence,” Rudge said.

    Senator Barbara Pocock, the Australian Greens party’s spokesperson on the public sector, said Deloitte should refund the entire AU$440,000 ($290,000).

    Deloitte “misused AI and used it very inappropriately: misquoted a judge, used references that are non-existent,” Pocock told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “I mean, the kinds of things that a first-year university student would be in deep trouble for.”

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  • A new policy on access at the Pentagon has journalists and the Trump administration at odds

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    Journalists who cover the Pentagon and the Trump admnistration are in a standoff about new rules that limit the access of the media to most areas within the Pentagon and appear to condition overall entry to the building on an agreement to restrictions in reporting.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team characterizes the changes as an effort to protect national security and the safety of those who work at the Pentagon, while many in the press see it as an effort to exert control and avoid embarrassing stories.

    Journalists who want to hold on to badges that permit access to the Pentagon were told on Sept. 19 they must sign a letter acknowledging the new rules by this Tuesday or the badge “will be revoked.” The new policy says that Defense Department information “must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if unclassified.” Classified material faces even tighter restrictions.

    That level of control immediately alarmed journalists and their advocates.

    “Asking independent journalists to submit to these kinds of restrictions is at stark odds with the constitutional protections of a free press in a democracy, and a continued attempt to throttle the public’s right to understand what their government is doing,” said Charles Stadtlander, spokesman for The New York Times.

    In a subsequent letter to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Hegseth aide Sean Parnell suggested that journalists misunderstood some of the new rules. He said, for example, that the restriction against releasing unclassified information is the policy that Pentagon officials must follow — not something the journalists must abide by.

    “It should come as no surprise that the mainstream media is once again misrepresenting the Pentagon’s press procedures,” Parnell said in a post on X. “Let’s be absolutely clear: Journalists are not required to clear their stories with us. That claim is a lie.”

    However, the new policy says that journalists who encourage Pentagon officials to break the rules — in other words, ask sources for information — could be subject to losing their building access.

    While it appeared that Parnell sought to soften some of the hard edges of his policy in response to questions raised by the reporters’ committee, there’s still enough confusion to merit a meeting to clear things up, said Grayson Clary, a lawyer for RCFP. There’s some wariness among news organizations about what they would be agreeing to if they sign the letter, and it’s not clear how many people — if any — have done so.

    The new rules continue a tense relationship between the press and the Hegseth team, which had already evicted some news outlets from their regular workspaces in favor of friendlier outlets and limited the ability of reporters to roam around the Pentagon. Hegseth and Parnell seldom hold press briefings.

    Parnell did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

    “It’s control, just 100% control,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. Goldberg, who is not stationed at the Pentagon, wrote the most embarrassing story of Hegseth’s tenure so far when he was inadvertently included in a Signal group chat where Hegseth and other national officials discussed an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen. The brouhaha became widely known as “Signalgate.”

    Pentagon leadership was also reportedly unhappy over a story that said Elon Musk was to get a briefing on military strategy for China, leading President Donald Trump to stop it, and other stories about initial assessments of damage in the military strike against Iran.

    No American reporter accredited to the Pentagon that he knows is interested in subverting national security or putting anyone in the military in harm’s way, Goldberg said.

    In his own case, Goldberg did not report on what he learned until after the attack was over. He said he contacted officials in the group chat to ask if there was anything he learned that was harmful to the country in any way. He did not include in his story the name of a CIA official mentioned in the messages who was technically still undercover, he said.

    “The only people in Signalgate who were putting American troops in harm’s way were the national leadership of the United States by discussing on a commercial messaging app the launch times of strikes on a hostile country,” he said.

    Access to officials in the Pentagon has been invaluable in helping reporters understand what is going on, said Dana Priest, a longtime national security reporter at The Washington Post who is now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. With the exception of a few areas, reporters are not permitted under the new rules to walk through the Pentagon without an official escort.

    Priest said the corridors of the Pentagon were like areas around Congress where reporters buttonhole politicians. Priest recalled staking out military officials waiting for them to come out of a bathroom.

    “They know the goal of the media is to get around the official gobbledygook and get out the truth,” Priest said. “They may not help you. But some of them want to help Americans know what is going on.”

    Experienced national security reporters know there are many ways to get information, including through other channels of government and people in the private sector. “The Pentagon is always very well versed in the advantages of controlling the story, so they always try to do that,” she said. “The reporters know that. They’ve known that for decades.”

    Reporters who don’t follow the new rules won’t necessarily be expelled immediately, Parnell told the reporter’s committee. But access will be determined by Hegseth’s team.

    While reporters already stationed in the Pentagon were given until Sept. 30 to sign, they were allowed to request an additional five days for legal review.

    Although the Times, Washington Post and Atlantic all put out statements against the Pentagon’s plan, none of the publications would say what they have recommended that their reporters do — perhaps an indication that they consider negotiations potentially fruitful.

    President Donald Trump hasn’t hesitated to fight the media when he thinks he’s been wronged, launching lawsuits against CBS News, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal and the Times. Yet he’s also frequently accessible to the press, more so than many of his predecessors, and there has been some uncertainty in the White House about the Pentagon’s policy.

    When a reporter asked, “should the Pentagon be in charge of deciding what reporters can report on?” the president replied, “No, I don’t think so. Listen, nothing stops reporters. You know that.”

    Goldberg noted that it’s more than just an issue for reporters. “The American people have a right to know what the world’s most powerful military does in their name and with their money,” he said. “That seems fairly obvious to me.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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  • A new policy on access at the Pentagon has journalists and the Trump administration at odds

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    Journalists who cover the Pentagon and the Trump admnistration are in a standoff about new rules that limit the access of the media to most areas within the Pentagon and appear to condition overall entry to the building on an agreement to restrictions in reporting.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team characterizes the changes as an effort to protect national security and the safety of those who work at the Pentagon, while many in the press see it as an effort to exert control and avoid embarrassing stories.

    Journalists who want to hold on to badges that permit access to the Pentagon were told on Sept. 19 they must sign a letter acknowledging the new rules by this Tuesday or the badge “will be revoked.” The new policy says that Defense Department information “must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if unclassified.” Classified material faces even tighter restrictions.

    That level of control immediately alarmed journalists and their advocates.

    “Asking independent journalists to submit to these kinds of restrictions is at stark odds with the constitutional protections of a free press in a democracy, and a continued attempt to throttle the public’s right to understand what their government is doing,” said Charles Stadtlander, spokesman for The New York Times.

    In a subsequent letter to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Hegseth aide Sean Parnell suggested that journalists misunderstood some of the new rules. He said, for example, that the restriction against releasing unclassified information is the policy that Pentagon officials must follow — not something the journalists must abide by.

    “It should come as no surprise that the mainstream media is once again misrepresenting the Pentagon’s press procedures,” Parnell said in a post on X. “Let’s be absolutely clear: Journalists are not required to clear their stories with us. That claim is a lie.”

    However, the new policy says that journalists who encourage Pentagon officials to break the rules — in other words, ask sources for information — could be subject to losing their building access.

    While it appeared that Parnell sought to soften some of the hard edges of his policy in response to questions raised by the reporters’ committee, there’s still enough confusion to merit a meeting to clear things up, said Grayson Clary, a lawyer for RCFP. There’s some wariness among news organizations about what they would be agreeing to if they sign the letter, and it’s not clear how many people — if any — have done so.

    The new rules continue a tense relationship between the press and the Hegseth team, which had already evicted some news outlets from their regular workspaces in favor of friendlier outlets and limited the ability of reporters to roam around the Pentagon. Hegseth and Parnell seldom hold press briefings.

    Parnell did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

    “It’s control, just 100% control,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. Goldberg, who is not stationed at the Pentagon, wrote the most embarrassing story of Hegseth’s tenure so far when he was inadvertently included in a Signal group chat where Hegseth and other national officials discussed an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen. The brouhaha became widely known as “Signalgate.”

    Pentagon leadership was also reportedly unhappy over a story that said Elon Musk was to get a briefing on military strategy for China, leading President Donald Trump to stop it, and other stories about initial assessments of damage in the military strike against Iran.

    No American reporter accredited to the Pentagon that he knows is interested in subverting national security or putting anyone in the military in harm’s way, Goldberg said.

    In his own case, Goldberg did not report on what he learned until after the attack was over. He said he contacted officials in the group chat to ask if there was anything he learned that was harmful to the country in any way. He did not include in his story the name of a CIA official mentioned in the messages who was technically still undercover, he said.

    “The only people in Signalgate who were putting American troops in harm’s way were the national leadership of the United States by discussing on a commercial messaging app the launch times of strikes on a hostile country,” he said.

    Access to officials in the Pentagon has been invaluable in helping reporters understand what is going on, said Dana Priest, a longtime national security reporter at The Washington Post who is now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. With the exception of a few areas, reporters are not permitted under the new rules to walk through the Pentagon without an official escort.

    Priest said the corridors of the Pentagon were like areas around Congress where reporters buttonhole politicians. Priest recalled staking out military officials waiting for them to come out of a bathroom.

    “They know the goal of the media is to get around the official gobbledygook and get out the truth,” Priest said. “They may not help you. But some of them want to help Americans know what is going on.”

    Experienced national security reporters know there are many ways to get information, including through other channels of government and people in the private sector. “The Pentagon is always very well versed in the advantages of controlling the story, so they always try to do that,” she said. “The reporters know that. They’ve known that for decades.”

    Reporters who don’t follow the new rules won’t necessarily be expelled immediately, Parnell told the reporter’s committee. But access will be determined by Hegseth’s team.

    While reporters already stationed in the Pentagon were given until Sept. 30 to sign, they were allowed to request an additional five days for legal review.

    Although the Times, Washington Post and Atlantic all put out statements against the Pentagon’s plan, none of the publications would say what they have recommended that their reporters do — perhaps an indication that they consider negotiations potentially fruitful.

    President Donald Trump hasn’t hesitated to fight the media when he thinks he’s been wronged, launching lawsuits against CBS News, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal and the Times. Yet he’s also frequently accessible to the press, more so than many of his predecessors, and there has been some uncertainty in the White House about the Pentagon’s policy.

    When a reporter asked, “should the Pentagon be in charge of deciding what reporters can report on?” the president replied, “No, I don’t think so. Listen, nothing stops reporters. You know that.”

    Goldberg noted that it’s more than just an issue for reporters. “The American people have a right to know what the world’s most powerful military does in their name and with their money,” he said. “That seems fairly obvious to me.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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  • Police in Kathmandu open fire on anti-government protesters, killing 8 and injuring several more, Nepal’s media report

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    Police in Kathmandu open fire on anti-government protesters, killing 8 and injuring several more, Nepal’s media report

    KATHMANDU, Nepal — Police in Kathmandu open fire on anti-government protesters, killing 8 and injuring several more, Nepal’s media report.

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  • The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will stop printing newspapers on December 31

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    (CNN) — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced on Thursday that it will print its final physical newspaper edition on December 31, making it the latest storied newspaper to discontinue offering its news in print.

    The changeup means the AJC will be a digital-only publication starting January 1, 2026. The AJC said the transition is intended to transform the paper into a “modern media company,” as well as free up money to invest in its journalism.

    The AJC’s digital readership has outpaced its print circulation, a shift that is “only accelerating,” Andrew Morse, president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said in a statement.

    “Embracing our digital future means we can focus every resource and every ounce of energy on producing world-class journalism and delivering it to each of you in the most impactful way,” Morse said in a letter to readers.

    “We knew this day would come and have been planning for it,” he added.

    Andrew Morse, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s president and publisher, told readers on Thursday that the newspaper would print its final physical edition on December 31, 2025. Credit: Paras Griffin / Getty Images via CNN Newsource

    Despite doing away with its physical media, the AJC will continue producing an ePaper and launch an app this fall.

    The digital-only transition follows a two-year period during which the 157-year-old AJC has added muscle to its digital offerings. The publication has updated its newsroom, revamping its digital product services and introducing a suite of digital products to consumers, including newsletters, podcasts, and original video content. The AJC has also extended its ambitions beyond Atlanta, opening new offices in Athens, Macon and Savannah. It plans to reach additional markets.

    As a result of its transformation, the AJC said in a statement that it has experienced “double-digit digital subscriber growth and has expanded its audience in key content areas.”

    Alex Taylor, chair and chief executive of Cox Enterprises, AJC’s parent company, hailed the change as “an important decision in the evolution of the AJC.”

    “Journalism is critical to our community and society — and so is the way we produce it,” Taylor said. “I’m proud of our team for making these decisions, as much as I will miss the nostalgia of seeing the paper in my driveway every morning.”

    The AJC is only the latest periodical to discontinue its physical edition. Between diminishing physical circulation, dwindling physical ad revenue and high production and distribution costs, several publications have found it difficult over the last decade to rationalize maintaining a physical format.

    Just in February, the New Jersey’s Star Ledger opted to do away with its print edition entirely. Others have reduced the frequency of their physical circulation. In January, Iowa’s Dubuque Telegraph Herald and The Cedar Rapids Gazette announced they would print only three days a week.

    Still, there are some exceptions to this trend, especially where niche audiences are concerned. The Onion, the satirical newspaper that revived its physical newspaper in August 2024, has seen its print edition thrive.

    Some magazines, which readers often view as more premium experiences, are also partially enjoying a renaissance after years of struggle. In mid-August, The Spectator announced it plans to double the print output of its US edition to 24 issues this fall, as part of its relaunch.

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  • By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

    By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

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    NEW YORK — Among the legacy news outlets that have come up empty in their efforts to interview Kamala Harris and Donald Trump during the general election campaign: NPR, The New York Times, PBS and The Washington Post.

    Yet Harris chose to meet with Alex Cooper for her “Call Her Daddy” podcast and talk a little Bay Area basketball with the fellows on “All the Smoke.” Trump rejected “60 Minutes,” but has hung out with the bros on the “Bussin’ With the Boys” and “Flagrant.” Harris sat Thursday for an interview in Georgia with former NFL player Shannon Sharpe for his podcast “Club Shay Shay.”

    During this truncated campaign, some of the traditional giants of journalism are being pushed aside. The growing popularity of podcasts and their ability to help candidates in a tight race target a specific sliver of the electorate is a big reason why.

    There are certainly exceptions. Harris spoke to NBC News’ Hallie Jackson on Tuesday and held a CNN town hall on Wednesday. But political columnist John Heilemann of Puck noticed what he called “an ancient, dying beast railing against the diminishment of its status and stature in the new world.”

    “The campaigns have their structures and their media plans are very carefully thought through, even if we don’t agree with them,” said Sara Just, senior executive producer of the PBS “NewsHour.” “Obviously, we hope they will do long, probing interviews with PBS.”

    Journalists consider that an important service. Said Eric Marrapodi, vice president for news programming at NPR: “I think Americans deserve to hear the candidates have their ideas challenged.”

    That sounds like a campaign staff’s worst nightmare, infinite opportunities for their candidates to trip up and have an unplanned story dominate the news cycle. And to what end? Most legacy news organizations don’t have the reach they used to, and their audience skews old.

    For half a century, a “60 Minutes” interview near the election was considered a key stop for presidential candidates. But Trump shunned broadcast television’s most influential news show this year, and has criticized the way its interview with Harris was edited.

    The former president has stuck largely to what he perceives as friendly venues with direct access to his base audience, and continually feeds interviews to Fox News Channel despite grumbling he doesn’t find the network loyal enough. Indeed, Fox has also proven important to the Democratic ticket, which believes that appearing on its shows demonstrates willingness to deal with a hostile environment.

    Harris’ interview with Bret Baier was so contentious that it became fodder for a “Saturday Night Live” parody. After her running mate, Tim Walz, was interviewed by Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday” earlier this month, the campaign sought and received a return engagement the next week.

    “I was a little surprised,” Bream admitted to Walz. “What’s that about?”

    In general, television networks don’t have the audience they once did. CNN, for example, reached 1.24 million viewers per evening during the third quarter of 2016, when Trump first ran, and 924,000 this year, according to the Nielsen company. Broadcast networks are so named for their ability to reach a broad audience; sometimes candidates need that, often they don’t.

    The picture is more dire at newspapers, which collectively boasted 37.8 million in Sunday circulation in 2016 and dropped to 20.9 million by 2022, the Pew Research Center said. Candidates once submitted to tough interviews with newspaper editorial boards in the hope of winning an endorsement; now many newspapers don’t even bother making that choice.

    For years, candidates have been able to target advertising messages with great specificity — a swing state, even competitive cities, for example. The media now offers more opportunities to micro-message in the same way. Eager to shore up support among Black men, Harris appeared on Charlamagne Tha God’s influential radio program — CNN and MSNBC even simulcast it — and was interviewed by MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.

    “The View” and Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” where Harris has appeared, enabled her to talk to people less inclined to follow the news.

    Few outlets offer the opportunity to zero in on an audience better than podcasts, which have essentially doubled in listenership since 2016.

    The format is narrowcasting at its finest, said Andy Bowers, co-founder of the on-demand audio company Spooler Media. People who listen to podcasts often feel an intense loyalty to their favorites, almost like they’re part of a club of people with similar traits and interests — and a candidate has been invited into that club for a day.

    “You’re talking to a specific audience with a specific bent and frame of mind,” said Tom Bettag, a University of Maryland journalism professor. “That’s very helpful to somebody who is trying to avoid saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

    For her interview with Alex Cooper on “Call Her Daddy,” Harris appeared on the most popular podcast for women. They discussed abortion, and one of Cooper’s questions sounded like a grooved pitch: “What do you think of Trump saying he will be a protector of women?”

    On the “Flagrant” podcast, hosts asked questions about Trump’s children and how he felt during his assassination attempt. Host Akaash Singh interrupted Trump at one point to compliment him on how he raised his children.

    “I think I like this interview,” Trump said. His appearance on the podcast, one of several efforts he has made to reach young men, has been seen by nearly 5.5 million people on YouTube alone.

    Issues come up during these discussions, often mixed with the personal. On “All the Smoke,” the hosts began by asking Harris about the blind date where she met her husband.

    Certainly not everyone is writing an obituary for traditional journalists and their coverage of campaigns. “I don’t view it as a big break that takes away from legacy media,” said Rick Klein, ABC’s Washington bureau chief. ABC’s opportunity to question the candidates came in the most public of forums, when the network hosted the only debate between Harris and Trump.

    Of the 10 sources of campaign news with the most views on TikTok over the past 60 days, six were legacy news outlets, according to Zelf, a social video analytics company. They were ABC News, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, Univision and the Daily Mail.

    For a strong news organization, there’s also a lot more that goes into covering a presidential campaign than sit-down interviews with candidates.

    “I don’t think journalists should worry too much about access journalism,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of the Hofstra University School of Communication and a former NBC News producer. “We should do journalism.”

    David Halbfinger, political editor of The New York Times, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions based on a campaign that was unusually short due to Harris’ late entrance into the race. The Times has followed the campaign aggressively with trend stories, investigations and spot news coverage.

    “It’s hard to know what the lessons will be,” Halbfinger said. “For a long time, candidates have tried to go around the news media. One way or another, the mainstream media does its job so I don’t know how effective that strategy is. But it will be an interesting case study someday to see.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.

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  • By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

    By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — Among the legacy news outlets that have come up empty in their efforts to interview Kamala Harris and Donald Trump during the general election campaign: NPR, The New York Times, PBS and The Washington Post.

    Yet Harris chose to meet with Alex Cooper for her “Call Her Daddy” podcast and talk a little Bay Area basketball with the fellows on “All the Smoke.” Trump rejected “60 Minutes,” but has hung out with the bros on the “Bussin’ With the Boys” and “Flagrant.”

    During this truncated campaign, some of the traditional giants of journalism are being pushed aside. The growing popularity of podcasts and their ability to help candidates in a tight race target a specific sliver of the electorate is a big reason why.

    There are certainly exceptions. Harris spoke to NBC News’ Hallie Jackson on Tuesday and held a CNN town hall on Wednesday. But political columnist John Heilemann of Puck noticed what he called “an ancient, dying beast railing against the diminishment of its status and stature in the new world.”

    “The campaigns have their structures and their media plans are very carefully thought through, even if we don’t agree with them,” said Sara Just, senior executive producer of the PBS “NewsHour.” “Obviously, we hope they will do long, probing interviews with PBS.”

    Journalists consider that an important service. Said Eric Marrapodi, vice president for news programming at NPR: “I think Americans deserve to hear the candidates have their ideas challenged.”

    That sounds like a campaign staff’s worst nightmare, infinite opportunities for their candidates to trip up and have an unplanned story dominate the news cycle. And to what end? Most legacy news organizations don’t have the reach they used to, and their audience skews old.

    For half a century, a “60 Minutes” interview near the election was considered a key stop for presidential candidates. But Trump shunned broadcast television’s most influential news show this year, and has criticized the way its interview with Harris was edited.

    The former president has stuck largely to what he perceives as friendly venues with direct access to his base audience, and continually feeds interviews to Fox News Channel despite grumbling he doesn’t find the network loyal enough. Indeed, Fox has also proven important to the Democratic ticket, which believes that appearing on its shows demonstrates willingness to deal with a hostile environment.

    Harris’ interview with Bret Baier was so contentious that it became fodder for a “Saturday Night Live” parody. After her running mate, Tim Walz, was interviewed by Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday” earlier this month, the campaign sought and received a return engagement the next week.

    “I was a little surprised,” Bream admitted to Walz. “What’s that about?”

    In general, television networks don’t have the audience they once did. CNN, for example, reached 1.24 million viewers per evening during the third quarter of 2016, when Trump first ran, and 924,000 this year, according to the Nielsen company. Broadcast networks are so named for their ability to reach a broad audience; sometimes candidates need that, often they don’t.

    The picture is more dire at newspapers, which collectively boasted 37.8 million in Sunday circulation in 2016 and dropped to 20.9 million by 2022, the Pew Research Center said. Candidates once submitted to tough interviews with newspaper editorial boards in the hope of winning an endorsement; now many newspapers don’t even bother making that choice.

    For years, candidates have been able to target advertising messages with great specificity — a swing state, even competitive cities, for example. The media now offers more opportunities to micro-message in the same way. Eager to shore up support among Black men, Harris appeared on Charlamagne Tha God’s influential radio program — CNN and MSNBC even simulcast it — and was interviewed by MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.

    “The View” and Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” where Harris has appeared, enabled her to talk to people less inclined to follow the news.

    Few outlets offer the opportunity to zero in on an audience better than podcasts, which have essentially doubled in listenership since 2016.

    The format is narrowcasting at its finest, said Andy Bowers, co-founder of the on-demand audio company Spooler Media. People who listen to podcasts often feel an intense loyalty to their favorites, almost like they’re part of a club of people with similar traits and interests — and a candidate has been invited into that club for a day.

    “You’re talking to a specific audience with a specific bent and frame of mind,” said Tom Bettag, a University of Maryland journalism professor. “That’s very helpful to somebody who is trying to avoid saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

    For her interview with Alex Cooper on “Call Her Daddy,” Harris appeared on the most popular podcast for women. They discussed abortion, and one of Cooper’s questions sounded like a grooved pitch: “What do you think of Trump saying he will be a protector of women?”

    On the “Flagrant” podcast, hosts asked questions about Trump’s children and how he felt during his assassination attempt. Host Akaash Singh interrupted Trump at one point to compliment him on how he raised his children.

    “I think I like this interview,” Trump said. His appearance on the podcast, one of several efforts he has made to reach young men, has been seen by nearly 5.5 million people on YouTube alone.

    Issues come up during these discussions, often mixed with the personal. On “All the Smoke,” the hosts began by asking Harris about the blind date where she met her husband.

    Certainly not everyone is writing an obituary for traditional journalists and their coverage of campaigns. “I don’t view it as a big break that takes away from legacy media,” said Rick Klein, ABC’s Washington bureau chief. ABC’s opportunity to question the candidates came in the most public of forums, when the network hosted the only debate between Harris and Trump.

    Of the 10 sources of campaign news with the most views on TikTok over the past 60 days, six were legacy news outlets, according to Zelf, a social video analytics company. They were ABC News, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, Univision and the Daily Mail.

    For a strong news organization, there’s also a lot more that goes into covering a presidential campaign than sit-down interviews with candidates.

    “I don’t think journalists should worry too much about access journalism,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of the Hofstra University School of Communication and a former NBC News producer. “We should do journalism.”

    David Halbfinger, political editor of The New York Times, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions based on a campaign that was unusually short due to Harris’ late entrance into the race. The Times has followed the campaign aggressively with trend stories, investigations and spot news coverage.

    “It’s hard to know what the lessons will be,” Halbfinger said. “For a long time, candidates have tried to go around the news media. One way or another, the mainstream media does its job so I don’t know how effective that strategy is. But it will be an interesting case study someday to see.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.

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  • It’s not just Harris and Trump who have a lot at stake in next week’s debate. ABC News does, too

    It’s not just Harris and Trump who have a lot at stake in next week’s debate. ABC News does, too

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    NEW YORK — Hours after ABC News released the rules for next Tuesday’s presidential debate, resolving a final dispute in Donald Trump’s favor, the former president was on the attack — against ABC News.

    “I think a lot of people will be watching to see how nasty they are, how unfair they are,” he said Wednesday on a Fox News town hall.

    It was an unsubtle reminder that Trump and Kamala Harris aren’t the only ones with a lot at stake in Philadelphia next week. The same is true for ABC News and moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, in what is the only scheduled debate between the presidential contenders this fall.

    Multiple outlets will televise and stream it. But unlike in past years, when presidential debates were organized by a bipartisan commission, this is solely an ABC News production. It won’t include a live audience.

    “This is a huge opportunity for ABC News,” said Ben Sherwood, former ABC News president and now publisher & CEO of the Daily Beast. “It’s like getting to host, moderate and produce the Super Bowl of politics. It gives the network luster at a time broadcast television is in decline.”

    That is, of course, if things go well.

    The ABC debate was set last spring, when President Joe Biden was the likely Democratic nominee. When he dropped out, it was unclear if the debate would go on. Harris and Trump eventually gave the go-ahead, although the Republican’s repeated criticism of ABC last month raised questions about it again.

    It all had little effect on ABC’s planning, said Rick Klein, the network’s Washington bureau chief. “It truly wasn’t a lot of turmoil on our end of things,” he said.

    Biden and Trump debated on June 27 — what seems a lifetime ago. That event was put on by CNN, although it is remembered more for Biden’s shaky performance that eventually led him to end his campaign than for anything done by the network or its moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.

    “At the end of the day, this is about helping to create a forum for the candidates to communicate with the public,” Klein said. “It’s a huge responsibility. It’s a humbling responsibility.”

    An estimated 51.3 million people watched Biden and Trump in June. But that was before many people were truly tuned into the election, and the potential rematch of the 2020 campaign was drawing little enthusiasm. Tuesday’s debate will almost certainly reach more people, whether or not it approaches the record debate audience of 84 million for the first face-off between Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016.

    Muir’s “World News Tonight” has led the evening news ratings for eight years, making him effectively America’s most popular newscaster. Many nights “World News Tonight” has a bigger audience than anything on prime-time television.

    One secret to his success has been ABC’s efforts to craft an apolitical image for him. Tuesday’s audience will be his biggest ever — including people largely unfamiliar with Muir because they seek news elsewhere — and it’s for a political event in polarized times.

    Davis has a lower profile, though she hosts ABC’s nightly streaming newscast, fills in for Muir and has moderated presidential nominating debates in the past. Many will be seeing her in action Tuesday for the first time.

    Although more complicated in the Trump years, the role of debate moderator is often akin to baseball umpires — it indicates they’ve done a good job when you don’t really notice them. If Muir or Davis figure prominently in Wednesday morning’s stories, that’s probably not a good sign.

    “It’s absolutely a minefield,” said Tom Bettag, former ABC News “Nightline” producer. “Ask Chris Wallace.”

    Wallace was well respected, considered even-handed and, in 2020 when he moderated the first Biden-Trump debate, was working at Fox News “so the Trump people couldn’t accuse him of being a liberal hack,” Bettag said. “And it still blew up pretty badly. ” Trump’s frequent interruptions exasperated Biden and led to criticism that Wallace lost control of the evening.

    There’s less of a chance of that happening this year because debate rules call for a candidate’s microphone to be muted when their opponent is speaking, something Trump’s campaign sought because interruptions turn many voters off.

    An open mic led to one of Harris’ most-remembered exchanges in her 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence. “Mr. Vice President, I am speaking,” she said when Pence interrupted one of her answers, a moment many women could relate to in business situations with men.

    While Bash and Tapper occasionally tried to steer Trump or Biden back to the questions when the politicians ducked in CNN’s June debate, they would not correct any lies or misstatements, many of which were pointed out in post-debate analysis. While Klein would not commit to the same policy, he did say that “it’s a debate between them and we’re there to facilitate the conversation.”

    Even before his Fox News appearance this week, Trump had repeatedly criticized ABC News, even though he agreed twice to participate in a debate on the network.

    He has targeted network political journalists George Stephanopoulos and Jonathan Karl specifically. The former president last spring filed a defamation lawsuit against Stephanopoulos over comments the journalist made about Trump being held liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. ABC has said Stephanopoulos is not involved in debate preparation.

    Trump has also spoken about the reported friendship between Harris and Dana Walden, a top executive at ABC’s parent Walt Disney Co., whose oversight has recently expanded to include ABC News. ABC has said Walden is not involved in any news coverage decisions.

    To a certain extent, Trump’s comments can be seen as “working the refs,” or appealing to supporters who don’t like the press. A nightmare scenario for ABC is Trump lashing out on Tuesday if he feels things aren’t going well for him.

    “From our perspective, we just have to do our job and do it as well as we can,” Klein said.

    He wouldn’t give any details about how ABC’s preparations are going, such as what figures have been assigned to portray Harris or Trump in mock debates.

    Bettag, a University of Maryland journalism professor who is teaching a course this fall on covering the presidential campaign, has been involved in these preps before. He advises Muir and Davis to take some deep breaths.

    “The most important thing is to stay cool, which is hard to do since they’re likely to get yelled at,” he said. “It’s really important to try to keep their voices down and stay steady.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder

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  • A Hong Kong court convicts 2 journalists in a landmark sedition case

    A Hong Kong court convicts 2 journalists in a landmark sedition case

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    HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court on Thursday convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedoms in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

    The trial of Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam was Hong Kong’s first involving the media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

    Stand News, which closed in December 2021, had been one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government as it waged a crackdown on dissent following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

    It was shut down just months after the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai is fighting collusion charges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.

    Chung and Lam had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications — charges that were brought under a colonial-era sedition law used increasingly to crush dissidents. They face up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640) for a first offense.

    Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd., the outlet’s holding company, was convicted on the same charge. It had no representatives during the trial, which began in October 2022.

    Judge Kwok Wai-kin said in his written judgment that Stand News became a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests.

    Chung Pui-kuen, the former chief editor of Hong Kong’s now-shuttered outlet Stand News, walks outside on bail after he was found guilty in a landmark sedition trial under a colonial-era law, in Wanchai District Court in Hong Kong on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Billy H.C. Kwok)

    He said a conviction is deemed proportional “when speech, in the relevant context, is deemed to have caused potential damage to national security and intends to seriously undermine the authority of the Chinese central government or the Hong Kong government, and that it must be stopped.”

    The case was centered on 17 articles Stand News had published. Prosecutors said some promoted “illegal ideologies,” or smeared the security law and law enforcement officers. Judge Kwok ruled that 11 carried seditious intent, including commentaries written by activist Nathan Law and esteemed journalists Allan Au and Chan Pui-man. Chan is also Chung’s wife.

    The judge found that the other six did not carry seditious intent, including in interviews with pro-democracy ex-lawmakers Law and Ted Hui, who are among overseas-based activists targeted by Hong Kong police bounties.

    Chung appeared calm after the verdict while Lam did not appear in court due to health reasons. They were given bail pending sentencing on Sept. 26.

    Defense lawyer Audrey Eu read out a mitigation statement from Lam, who said Stand News reporters sought to run a news outlet with fully independent editorial standards. “The only way for journalists to defend press freedom is reporting,” Eu quoted Lam as saying.

    Image

    A worker carrying some containers walks past police officers during a raid on the office of Stand News during a raid in Hong Kong, Dec. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

    Eu did not read out Chung’s mitigation letter in court. But local media outlets quoted his letter, in which he wrote that many Hong Kongers who are not journalists have held to their beliefs, and some have lost their own freedom because they care about everyone’s freedom in the community.

    “Accurately recording and reporting their stories and thoughts is an inescapable responsibility of journalists,” he wrote in that letter.

    After the verdict, former Stand News journalist Ronson Chan said nobody had told reporters that they might be arrested if they did any interviews or write anything.

    The delivery of the verdict was delayed several times for various reasons, including awaiting the appeal outcome of another landmark sedition case. Dozens of residents and reporters lined up to secure a seat for the hearing.

    Image

    Protesters from Hong Kong in Taiwan and local supporters hold slogans reading “Protest Against Totalitarian Liquidation of Stand News” and ” Support Press Freedom in Hong Kong” to protest outside of the Bank of China in Taipei, Taiwan, Dec. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)

    Resident Kevin Ng, who was among the first in the line, said he used to be a reader of Stand News and has been following the trial. Ng, 28, said he read less news after its shutdown, feeling the city has lost some critical voices.

    “They reported the truth, they defended press freedom,” Ng, who works in risk management industry, said of the editors.

    Stand News shut down following a police raid at its office and the arrests of its leaders. Armed with a warrant to seize relevant journalistic materials, more than 200 officers participated in the operation.

    Days after Stand News shut down, independent news outlet Citizen News also announced it would cease operations, citing the deteriorating media environment and the potential risks to its staff.

    Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021. Self-censorship has also become more prominent during the political crackdown on dissent. In March, the city government enacted another new security law that raised concerns it could further curtail press freedom.

    Francis Lee, journalism and communication professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the ruling on which articles were seditious appears to be drawing lines. Whenever an article is about a one-sided political stance, highly critical or viewed as lacking factual basis, then that could be considered as smearing, Lee said.

    Some of the court’s logic differs from how journalists typically think, he said. Journalists “may have to be more cautious from now on.”

    Eric Lai, a research fellow at Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the ruling is in line with “the anti-free-speech trend” of rulings since the 2020 security law took effect, criminalizing journalists carrying out their professional duties.

    Foreign governments criticized the convictions. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller wrote on X that it was a “direct attack on media freedom.”

    However, Eric Chan, Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary for Administration, insisted that when journalists conduct their reporting based on facts, there would not be any restrictions on such freedom.

    Steve Li, chief superintendent of the police national security department, told reporters the ruling showed their enforcement three years ago — criticized by some as a suppression of free press — was necessary.

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  • California announces new deal with tech to fund journalism, AI research

    California announces new deal with tech to fund journalism, AI research

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will be the first U.S. state to direct millions of dollars from taxpayer money and tech companies to help pay for journalism and AI research under a new deal announced Wednesday.

    Under the first-in-the-nation agreement, the state and tech companies would collectively pay roughly $250 million over five years to support California-based news organization and create an AI research program. The initiatives are set to kick in in 2025 with $100 million the first year, and the majority of the money would go to news organizations, said Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who brokered the deal.

    “This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy.”

    Wicks’ office didn’t immediately answer questions about specifics on how much funding would come from the state, which news organizations would be eligible and how much money would go to the AI research program.

    The deal effectively marks the end of a yearlong fight between tech giants and lawmakers over Wicks’ proposal to require companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies for linking to their content.

    The bill, modelled after a legislation in Canada aiming at providing financial help to local news organizations, faced intense backlash from the tech industry, which launched ads over the summer to attack the bill. Google also tried to pressure lawmakers to drop the bill by temporarily removing news websites from some people’s search results in April.

    “This partnership represents a cross-sector commitment to supporting a free and vibrant press, empowering local news outlets up and down the state to continue in their essential work,” Wicks said in a statement. “This is just the beginning.”

    California has tried different ways to stop the loss of journalism jobs, which have been disappearing rapidly as legacy media companies have struggled to profit in the digital age. More than 2,500 newspapers have closed in the U.S. since 2005, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. California has lost more than 100 news organizations in the past decade, according to Wicks’ office.

    The Wednesday agreement is supported by California News Publishers Association, which represents more than 700 news organizations, Google’s corporate parent Alphabet and OpenAI. But journalists, including those in Media Guild of the West, slammed the deal and said it would hurt California news organizations.

    State Sen. Steve Glazer, who authored a bill to provide news organizations a tax credit for hiring full-time journalists, said the agreement “seriously undercuts our work toward a long term solution to rescue independent journalism.”

    State Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire also said the deal doesn’t go far enough to address the dire situation in California.

    “Newsrooms have been hollowed out across this state while tech platforms have seen multi-billion dollar profits,” he said in a statement. “We have concerns that this proposal lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media, and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry.”

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  • French actor and heartthrob Alain Delon has died at age 88, French media report

    French actor and heartthrob Alain Delon has died at age 88, French media report

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    French actor and heartthrob Alain Delon has died at age 88, French media report

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  • FACT FOCUS: Online reports falsely claim Biden suffered a ‘medical emergency’ on Air Force One

    FACT FOCUS: Online reports falsely claim Biden suffered a ‘medical emergency’ on Air Force One

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    False reports that President Joe Biden had a “medical emergency” while traveling back to Delaware on Friday after a campaign stop in Wisconsin, spread widely on social media on Friday. They were without merit.

    Here’s a look at the facts.

    ___

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden had a “medical emergency” aboard Air Force One on Friday.

    AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There were no signs of a medical emergency on the flight, according to an Associated Press reporter who was traveling with Biden. Air Force One arrived at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, at 7:22 p.m. The president exited the plane on his own, saluted and spoke with an officer at the base of the stairs and took a question from a reporter before leaving the airport.

    THE FACTS: As Biden returned to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, after a campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday social media users falsely claimed that the president had suffered a “medical emergency” aboard Air Force One.

    Air Force One landed in New Castle, Delaware, at 7:22 p.m. about the same time posts started spreading about Biden’s alleged medical emergency.

    “I just received a tip from an anonymous source,” reads one X post. “My source says that Joe Biden is currently experiencing a medical emergency on Air Force One as I type this. No further details are known.”

    Another X post states: “Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One right now. Press access has been removed.” It had received approximately 15,000 likes and 10,900 shares as of Saturday morning.

    The posts presented no evidence that such an event occurred. Press access was not removed.

    Video shows Biden walking down the steps of Air Force One in Delaware, speaking with an officer, answering a reporter’s question about whether he would watch a highly anticipated interview he did with ABC News’ George Stephanopolous and getting into a car, all without issue.

    There were no signs of an emergency aboard Air Force One and the press was not denied access to the plane at any point, according to an AP reporter who was traveling on Air Force One with Biden during the flight from Wisconsin to Delaware. The reporter added that press was able to move about the plane as usual and that a door separating press from Biden’s top staff was open for most of the flight.

    White House spokesperson Andrew Bates called the claim “100% false” in an X post on Friday night.

    Other posts claimed that the press did not see Biden when the presidential motorcade arrived at his home Friday night and that his campaign had canceled upcoming events as a result of the supposed emergency.

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    A press pool was in Biden’s motorcade when he was dropped off at his Wilmington home, according to the AP reporter who was traveling with the president. The reporter said journalists did not see him enter the house, but they routinely do not see him enter his Wilmington home because it is set back from the street and it is typical to only see the motorcade going through the gates leading to the house.

    Biden had no public events planned for Saturday. He was scheduled to speak at a National Education Association convention on Sunday, but canceled after the union’s staff announced a strike on Friday.

    “President Biden is a fierce supporter of unions and he won’t cross a picket line,” his campaign said in a statement. “The President is still planning to travel to Pennsylvania this weekend.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Colleen Long and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Stampede at religious event in India has killed at least 60 people

    Stampede at religious event in India has killed at least 60 people

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    LUCKNOW, India — A stampede among thousands of people at a religious gathering in northern India killed at least 60 and left scores injured, officials said Tuesday, adding that many women and children were among the dead and the toll could rise.

    Attendees had rushed to leave the makeshift tent following an event with Hindu figure Bhole Baba, local media reported, citing authorities who said heat and suffocation inside could have been a factor. Video of the aftermath showed the structure appeared to have collapsed. Women wailed over the dead.

    Deadly stampedes are relatively common around Indian religious festivals, where large crowds gather in small areas with shoddy infrastructure and few safety measures.

    Police officer Rajesh Singh said there was likely overcrowding in the event in a village in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh state, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) southwest of the state capital, Lucknow.

    Initial reports suggested that over 15,000 people had gathered for the event, which had permission to host about 5,000.

    “People started falling one upon another, one upon another. Those who were crushed died. People there pulled them out,” witness Shakuntala Devi told the Press Trust of India news agency.

    Bodies were brought to hospitals and morgues by trucks and private vehicles, government official Matadin Saroj said. Government official Ashish Kumar told The Associated Press that at least 60 bodies, many of them women and children, had reached mortuaries in the district.

    More than 150 people were admitted to hospitals, medical official Umesh Tripathi said.

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to the families of the dead and said the federal government was working with state authorities to ensure the injured received help.

    Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, called the stampede “extremely sad and heart-wrenching” in a post on social media platform X. He said authorities were investigating the cause.

    In 2013, pilgrims visiting a temple for a popular Hindu festival in central Madhya Pradesh state trampled each other amid fears that a bridge would collapse. At least 115 were crushed to death or died in the river.

    In 2011, more than 100 Hindu devotees died in a crush at a religious festival in the southern state of Kerala.

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  • The AP is setting up a sister organization seeking grants to support local and state news

    The AP is setting up a sister organization seeking grants to support local and state news

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    NEW YORK — The Associated Press says it is setting up a sister organization that will seek to raise money in support of state and local news reporting, as the crisis in that sector shows little sign of abating.

    The organization, which will have a board of directors independent of the AP, will solicit philanthropic spending to boost this news coverage, both within the AP and through outside organizations, the news outlet said Tuesday.

    “We feel we have to lean in at this point, not pull back,” said Daisy Veerasingham, the AP’s president and CEO. “But the supporting mechanism — the local newspaper market that used to support this — can’t afford to do that anymore.”

    Veerasingham said she’s been encouraged by preliminary talks with some funders who have expressed concern about the state of local journalism.

    Like other news organizations, the AP has turned to philanthropies for help in recent years, accepting grants totaling $60.9 million over the past seven years. It has used this money to expand coverage in certain subject areas, such as climate and religion.

    The local news industry has collapsed over the past two decades, with the number of journalists working in newspapers dropping from 75,000 to 31,000 in 2022, according to Northwestern University. More than half of the nation’s counties have no local news outlets or only one.

    While the AP has similarly cut back on staffing in the 50 states, it refused on Tuesday to detail the extent.

    The organization has recently announced collaborations to share news with several nonprofit news outlets, including the Texas Tribune, CalMatters, South Dakota News Watch, the Honolulu Civil Beat and others.

    “We want to add new products and services to help the industry,” Veerasingham said.

    AP in particular can play an important role in bolstering coverage of government and political news in the states, said Tim Franklin, who leads the local news initiative at Northwestern’s Medill journalism school. The Pew Research Center has detailed that there are fewer full-time reporters working in statehouses than there were a decade ago.

    Led by the Knight Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, an initiative launched last year pledged $500 million to build local news sources and help existing ones survive and make digital transitions. But the scope of the problem is much larger, Franklin said.

    With fewer news sources, Franklin worries about the spread of misinformation and the growth of partisan local news outlets wreaking havoc on the upcoming election season.

    “The bottom line is the need to find a sustainable model for independent local news in this country,” he said.

    Once funded primarily by newspaper members of its cooperative, the AP has been forced to diversify in recent years, a need driven home when the Gannett and McClatchy news chains said earlier this year they will stop using AP journalism.

    Besides philanthropy, the AP has been more aggressively marketing its own news website and asking for reader donations. “We believe there is a gap in the U.S. market, in the consumer arena, for people who want independent, fact-based, non-partisan news, and that’s the role that the AP plays in the ecosystem,” Veerasingham said.

    The AP offers a range of services to the industry and outside — serving as the exclusive commercial photo partner of the NFL, for example. It was among the first news organizations to make a deal with an artificial intelligence company to license its archive of news stories.

    “Any media organization is going to have to have a mixed portfolio in the way that it supports itself,” Veerasingham said.

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

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