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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.

And another piece that isn’t getting enough attention, in my humble opinion: Governments urged to act after oil giants accused of misleading public.

Read and share the tipping points report.

This Week’s Media News

• The European Union has revealed plans for new media freedom laws, and for the provision on “stable” funding for public interest media. The body claims it wants to combat state spying, political pressure on news outlets, and the placement of political adverts to protect independence across member states amid “mounting concern” about political influence on outlets across the continent. “No public media should be turned into a propaganda channel,” said the European Commission’s Vice President. (AP)
• Ex-BBC local DJ Alex Belfield has been sentenced to 5 years and 26 weeks imprisonment for serious stalking and harassment offences. He targeted other broadcasters including Jeremy Vine, who described an “avalanche of hate” for a period of years. (Sky News)
• Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s few remaining independent news outlets, has been stripped of its last media licence. Editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was a recent winner of Nobel Peace honours. He accused the Russian Supreme Court of “murder” and of depriving its 27 million readers of information. (Reuters)
• Twitter’s shareholders have voted to go ahead with Elon Musk’s $44bn (£38bn) buyout proposal. (BBC)
• A small Dutch town has taken Twitter to court, demanding the platform delete messages relating to a conspiracy theory about it having been home to a Satanic paedophile ring. The original conspiracists are in jail on other online harassment charges and had previously been ordered to remove the content, but rumours still abound, leading to visits by conspiracists. (The Guardian)
• Union members of the New York Times and NBC News have refused to go into the office, in defiance of their employers’ plans. (WSJ)
• YouTube has claimed that a “small experiment” consisting of expanded “ad pods”—ad breaks of up to ten unskippable ads—has now “concluded.” (9to5 Google)
• Disney have released employee pay data based on race and gender for the first time. It shows just a fraction of a percent of difference between the pay rates of men and women, and between White people and people of colour when “base pay is adjusted for roles, experience and location”. (Bloomberg)

See you next week!

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