@timkarr
A crash-scene investigation at the crossroads of new media & public policy. Against media concentration; for robust local journalism & digital democracy. Still attempting to master the cold take. www.freepress.net - This Free Press is not for sale.
Paramount Skydance's stock dipped below $10 today, an all-time low for the merged company. The pre-merger price is now at its lowest since Aug 2009 — the end of the Great Recession.
Mega-mergers are not just bad for workers and consumers, but for shareholders, too.
He probably thinks this post is about him:
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
If Ellison finances his WBD deal w/billions from China & Arab states, "would CNN & CBS News have to disclose in all of their pieces that they are partly owned by nation-states with a vested interest in the conflicts?" asks @oliverdarcy.bsky.social.
They'd have an ethical obligation to do so.
Glynnis MacNicol's piece on JFK Jr's courtship of Carolyn Bessette (now depicted in a breezy FX series) IS a love story.
Though not one devoted to the tragic couple, but to the analog serendipity of the NYC of the early 90s, before we became chained to our smartphones.
I miss it as well.
My colleague @juliorvarela.com wrote this breaking piece about ICE detaining *another* journalist for their work covering ICE: pressingissues.org/ice-detains-...
People buried the lead some ten paragraphs down:
"Children James and Elisabeth Murdoch and Prudence MacLeod were notably absent."
people.com/hugh-jackman...
...Trump is the least popular US president in the 75-year history of approval polls, & the war in Iran has the least support of any modern US war—with public approval ratings as low as 27 percent.
Two facts that the media routinely leave out of White House coverage. /ends
youtu.be/wMACcxskDXM?...
...The president lacks a public mandate, and he never truly had one, being elected to his second term with less than half (49.8 percent) of the popular vote...
www.cnn.com/election/202...
...A new Quinnipiac poll shows Trump facing "deep disapproval among voters nationwide."
Support for the president from independents has collapsed, with 66 percent saying they disapprove of Trump's performance...
www.newsweek.com/trump-approv...
... And he's only above water in nine of the country's 50 states.
Those nine rural states represent only 7.8% of the U.S. population, and 9.5% of the electoral college...
During his Feb. 24 SOTU address, Trump said the United States had made a “turnaround for the ages.”
"The president’s net approval rating—which fell this week to -19—suggests that Americans are not persuaded," reports The Economist...
www.economist.com/interactive/...
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Aren't there laws against this sort of insider trading?
NFLX stock jumped 25 percent in the aftermath of Paramount taking over the deal, as was expected should the streaming giant walk away.
Kleptocracy at work.
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
One CBS News source told me the following about Scott MacFarlane's decision to leave:
"He was pissed they barely marked Jan 6 and both sides it during Tony’s roadshow.
Made a point of saying he spent more time on our partners the BBC than CBS."
The Discourse has become sort of numb to the fact that the richest guy on earth and owner of a major social media platform just routinely spits out the kind of nakedly white supremacist shit that until a decade ago you rarely saw outside of places like Stormfront.
Fox subbed in old footage of POTUS "honoring" fallen U.S. soldiers w/o his hat instead of the image from the weekend w/him disrespectfully wearing one. Then apologized for the "mistake."
"When it comes to coverage of Trump, it’s hard to give Fox News the benefit of the doubt," writes Tom Jones.
The message behind their money is clear:
“Give us military and surveillance contracts and we’ll help spread Trump’s authoritarian gospel to billions of people who use our platforms every day.”
More from FP's @timkarr.bsky.social:
www.freepress.net/blog/big-tec...
It’s Ukraine’s turn to ask if we even said “thank you”.
Escalation is real.
Rubio: “Let me tell you, Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics.”
Interesting! Anthropic's Claude, the AI tool that the Pentagon famously banned last week, continues to play a crucial role in the U.S. military campaign in Iran, three people familiar with the situation told the @washingtonpost.com:
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
With so much at stake it’s worth examining the serious consequences that would result from a Paramount/WBD merger, which would allow one family to transform so much supposedly free & independent media into mouthpieces of Trump's far-right agenda.
I list five:
www.freepress.net/blog/five-wa...
Jon Brodkin exposes the nonsense & hypocrisy driving Chairman Carr's claims that equal-time rules must apply to late-night comedians (like Colbert) who broadcast newsworthy interviews with political candidates.
Funny thing, Carr didn't seem to mind when Sean Hannity did the same over the air.
... And despite OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's claim that his technology would not be used for "autonomous killing systems," the company is now redefining what that actually means so it can profit from the trillion-dollar military technological complex:
www.freepress.net/blog/big-tec...
Its principal investors include Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank.
Wannabe peace negotiator Jared Kushner is also involved, recently investing $1 billion through his equity firm Thrive Capital.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
OpenAi was originally conceived as a public-benefit corporation that was *dedicated to ensuring that artificial intelligence benefits humanity*.
From the @theguardian.com report:
Terminator (1984) seems more and more prophetic by the day:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.
"If we accept that nothing is true, we find ourselves among aspiring and real dictators who have good stories and media monopolies," writes @timothysnyder.bsky.social.
"American power is being used to destroy the order that America made..."
snyder.substack.com/p/losing-the...
