Good morning! Scroll down for two scoops, plus the latest on TikTok, The AP, Elon Musk, Conan O'Brien, Shari Franke, Drake, Nintendo Switch, and much more... |
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FCC chair draws 'bright line' |
Jessica Rosenworcel, the outgoing Democratic chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is taking bold action on the way out the door, rejecting what she described as four efforts to weaponize the government's TV licensing authority for political purposes.
Rosenworcel is not just tidying up before her term ends on Jan. 20, she is trying to convince others about the value of a clean house. She is clearly concerned that President-elect Donald Trump and his pick for FCC chair, Brendan Carr, might use the agency that oversees US telecommunications to punish media outlets.
Today, according to a statement obtained by CNN, she is dismissing all of the pending petitions and complaints before the FCC that, she asserted, "seek to curtail freedom of the press."
By doing so, "we draw a bright line at a moment when clarity about government interference with the free press is needed more than ever," Rosenworcel's statement says. "The action we take makes clear two things. First, the FCC should not be the President's speech police. Second, the FCC should not be journalism’s censor-in-chief."
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The context is obvious. Trump has called for every major American TV news network to be punished for one reason or another, according to a CNN review of his speeches and social media posts. On at least 25 occasions, Trump has said certain TV licenses should be revoked, almost always in reaction to interview questions he disliked or programming he detested.
The FCC has historically prided itself on its independence. But Carr, who takes charge at the agency next week, has echoed (in more polite terms) Trump's grievances with media outlets and spoken sympathetically about some of the pending complaints against station owners.
So by throwing out the pending petitions, Rosenworcel is putting the Biden-era FCC on the record about the role of government before the second Trump era begins. (Yes, the complainants could go ahead and re-file once Carr takes charge.)
One of the dismissed petitions targeted Fox's Philly TV station in an attempt to hold the Murdochs accountable for Fox News Channel's falsehoods. The other three complaints were pro-Trump in nature and were filed by the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit. Check out my full story for details.
Rosenworcel said all four cases "ask the FCC to penalize broadcast television stations because they dislike station behavior, content, or coverage," and that's simply not the role of the US government...
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More journalists behind bars |
Liam Reilly writes: Later today, the Committee to Protect Journalists will release its annual census of journalists imprisoned around the world. The group gave us an exclusive preview of the data, which shows that 361 journalists were incarcerated as of December 1, a troublingly high total that's just shy of the global record of 370 set in 2022. CPJ says the primary drivers were authoritarian repression, war, and political or economic instability...
>> The committee also welcomed yesterday's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and called for "unconditional access to journalists and independent human rights experts to investigate crimes committed against the media during the 15-month long war."
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Biden's exit interview with MSNBC |
Following President Biden's farewell address last night, Lawrence O'Donnell will interview POTUS in the Oval Office today in what MSNBC calls Biden's "final interview as president." The sit-down will air on Lawrence's 10 p.m. broadcast... |
Many Americans share Biden's professed concern about the "tech industrial complex." But can Biden really say that his administration and Democrats in Congress took all the best steps to ensure that Big Tech helps the country more than it hurts? Biden might point to the FTC's antitrust actions against Google and Meta, and his administration's rulemaking around AI, but by virtually every measure, the "tech industrial complex" is more powerful than it was when Biden took office...
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Seriously: Define it! Google searches for "oligarchy" spiked the moment Biden warned that "an oligarchy is taking shape in America." The top search was simply "what is an oligarchy," and many of the other searches were also asking for definitions. It's a great reminder that news outlets, while summarizing and dissecting the president's speech, should not assume that viewers know everything...
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Trump is "exploring unconventional ways to rescue TikTok from a nationwide ban," The Washington Post's Drew Harwell and Elizabeth Dwoskin reported yesterday. CNN's team has more here.
Late last night, NBC reported that the Biden administration is also "considering ways to keep TikTok available" if the ban is upheld by the Supreme Court. Key quote: "If the administration moves forward with any such plan, it would mean the popular app's going down would not define his last full day in office, and it would defer the issue" to Trump.
Lest we forget, this ban was approved by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and a widely-shared belief that the app is a national security threat! This morning CNN's Kasie Hunt brought that up with Democratic and Republican lawmakers...
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The race to replace TikTok |
CNN's Clare Duffy is out with a new story about "the competition to become the new home for TikTok users." She points out that "even after yearslong efforts by mainstream, big tech platforms to replicate the short-form video app's popular features, users still feel there's no true TikTok replacement." Read on...
>> RedNote and Lemon8 are still topping the app store charts, leading one tech exec to text me and ask, "Aren't we just trading one Chinese app for another?"
>> Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos gave RedNote a whirl and found the experience to be "amusing and utterly confusing," finding that it "seems impossible to parse what's potentially propaganda, what's ironically pretending to be propaganda, and what are earnest complaints about the US government — or earnest welcome messages from Chinese citizens."
>> Keep an eye on Clapper – the app is now #3 on both Apple and Android, and a rep tells me 1.4 million new users have joined in the past week...
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Political notes and quotes |
>> When Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was detained in Iran last month, Elon Musk played a key role in facilitating her release, Farnaz Fassihi, Emma Bubola, and Ed Wong report. (NYT)
>> Karine Jean-Pierre held her final WH press briefing yesterday... (Deadline)
>> While reporters are bracing "not just for [Trump's] usual rhetorical lashings but for much worse," Paul Farhi writes that "there have been some mildly encouraging signs for the mainstream news media since the election." (Vanity Fair)
>> NYT Opinion's first focus group of 2025 is with male Trump voters – "men who prefer Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, YouTube and X over the mainstream media." Here, they share X accounts and podcasts they follow... (NYT)
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Post staffers plead with Bezos |
This letter to Jeff Bezos from about 400 Washington Post employees, asking him to intervene at the newspaper, was intended to be a private plea for help, not a public venting session. But newsrooms are often gossipy places, and the letter leaked out, first to NPR's David Folkenflik. The letter takes issue with publisher William Lewis and asks Bezos to come visit the DC HQ. Hey, Bezos will be in town next week for the inauguration...
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Right-wing stars target wildfire aid
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Liam Reilly writes: Top right-wing media personalities are calling on the government to withhold or place conditions on aid for victims of the L.A. wildfires, blaming California's own policies for the scale of the devastation and response. This has been a dominant theme on Fox, warping the public discourse about the federal response. More here...
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>> This morning Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2 (see above) will come out later this year. No release date or price yet, but there is a new Mario Kart game... (IGN)
>> OpenAI will "underwrite the expansion of Axios to four cities of its choice as part of a broader content-sharing and technology deal," Sara Fischer reports. (Axios)
>> "Google says its AI chatbot Gemini will deliver up-to-date news from The Associated Press in the tech giant's first such deal with a news publisher." (AP)
>> Matt Bond, head of content distribution for NBCUniversal, is stepping down. (Variety)
>> Shari Franke's book "The House of My Mother," which alleges abuse by her YouTube-star mom and "exposes the perils of influencer culture," just debuted at #1 on the NYT nonfiction best seller list. (NYT)
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>> Apple's Tim Cook and Google's Sundar Pichai will be at the inauguration with their fellow tech CEOs. (Reuters)
>> "An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes," Sarah Perez reports. (TechCrunch)
>> "An A.I. app for creating nonconsensual nude images of anyone is getting the vast majority of its traffic directly from Meta platforms, where the app is buying thousands of explicit ads featuring nonconsensual nudity of celebrities and influencers," Emanuel Maiberg reports. (404 Media)
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Drake sues his label for defamation |
"Drake has filed a defamation and harassment lawsuit" against his own record label, Universal Music Group, "alleging that the mega media corporation improperly promoted his rival Kendrick Lamar's diss track to damage his career and gain leverage over future contract negotiations," the Washington Post's Herb Scribner reports.
In a statement to Variety, the label said the claims are untrue and called the lawsuit "illogical..."
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Sports + entertainment talkers |
>> We wrote earlier this week about media companies making big donations to help with fire relief. Tech giants are doing the same: "YouTube, Google, Meta and Snap are pitching in to help L.A. recover." (Variety)
>> "LIV Golf has plugged in its two biggest offseason puzzle pieces in the last 24 hours, with the league announcing new CEO Scott O'Neil on Wednesday, and now on Thursday confirming its media deal with Fox Sports." (Sports Biz Journal)
>> Fox will stream its Super Bowl LIX telecast "on its sister broadband outlet Tubi, a change from the recent past when the company made a stream available via Fox Sports digital outlets," Brian Steinberg reports. (Variety)
>> New this morning: "Conan O'Brien will be the next recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor," coming up this March in DC. (THR)
>> "Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department' finished 2024 as the most popular album of the year in the U.S." (Billboard)
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