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Media News Round-Up – Sep 11th ’22

Photo by Hatice Yardım on Unsplash

Hi everyone, Eliz Mizon here with the Media Reform Coalition blog.

For even more media news and analysis, the latest media reform campaigns, and relevant content from around the web, visit my Power and Pop Culture newsletter.

For now, here’s your media news digest:

Climate Tipping Points Warning Buried

Exactly half an hour after the death of the Queen was announced, The Guardian published an alarming report on a new scientific paper, showing that we are now beginning to reach the climate tipping points scientists have long warned us about.

News editors have continued to prioritise blanket coverage of the Queen’s death over this, and all other, information.

Read and share the tipping points report.

This Week’s Media News

  • Liz Truss is reportedly planning to “dilute” the incoming Online Safety Bill. Free speech concerns had been expressed from both left and right over wording in the bill saying speech that was “legal but harmful” must be addressed. Truss says “tweaks” are needed to protect free speech. (FT)
  • Michelle Donelan has been appointed Culture Secretary after Nadine Dorries resigned last week. Donelan has worked in television, including in marketing for Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment. PACT has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister in Dorries’ wake, asking her to halt the privatisation of Channel 4. (Variety)
  • The second Reach strike, a three-day walkout planned for Sep 13-15, has been postponed in light of Queen Elizabeth’s passing. In addition, a new pay offer has been made by the company to the union, and workers will vote on it next week. (Hold the Front Page)
  • Emily Maitlis has been highly praised, and also come under fire, for her 2022 MacTaggart lecture in which she criticised governmental influence within the BBC. She questioned the broadcaster’s apology to the government for her criticism of Dominic Cummings, and the appointment of “agent of the Conservative party” Robbie Gibb to the board. She vocalised her fears for democracy due to corporate press interference. (The Guardian)
  • Robert Telles, a government official in Las Vegas, has been arrested for the murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German. German had previously reported on “turmoil” in the public office that Telles oversaw. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
  • Conservative politicians in the US have been distributing campaign adverts styled as newspapers to groups of registered voters, tailored to their community. One in Chicago is ‘titled’ the “Chicago City Wire”; one in DuPage County called the “DuPage Policy Journal” showed “two full pages of photos of men – mostly Black and Latino” whom the publication says will be released from prison because of Democratic legislation. (NBC Chicago)
  • California’s new budget has promised $25 million for local news fellowships. The funding will be distributed via UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2023. (Nieman Lab)
  • After its recent securing of $42 million in residuals from Netflix, the Writers Guild of America has done the same for its members with payments owed by Amazon. A settlement of $4 million has been agreed for 37 writers, from 31 films on Prime. WGA West said Amazon has “been systematically undervaluing imputed license fees”. (Deadline)
  • The Saudi and Gulf Co-operation Council, a media watchdog for Middle Eastern states, has demanded that Netflix remove all content deemed to violate “Islamic and societal values and principles”. Details on violating content haven’t been given, but it’s assumed that LGBT representation is a primary target. (BBC)
  • Ralph Nader has launched a Washington D.C.-based print newspaper, the Capitol Hill Citizen, setting out to address the “scoop-obsessed” Washington press and the “gulag of clutter, diversion, ads, intrusions and excess abundance” of online news. “The paper’s coverage centers on the issues that Nader had devoted his career to exposing[…]: the growth of corporate influence on Capitol Hill, the steady erosion of congressional power, the perennial corruption of U.S. lawmakers and, of course, the follies and failures of the mainstream political media.” (Politico)
  • Workers at Conde Nast publications that don’t have their own individual unions (e.g. The New Yorker, Pitchfork) have won voluntary recognition from the company for their publisher-wide union:

 

See you next week!

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