emily bell
@emilybell
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Prof + Director - Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia J School. Director, Guardian Media Group . bylines -assorted . @emilybell @mastodon (+ Bluesky)
Joined March 2007
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North Carolina
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Taking a moment to think about how utterly crazy it is that in 2022 a company with a significant dataset of private and public communications, that has municipalities, companies and governments on the platform, can switch ownership with pretty much zero scrutiny
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Alito’s draft heavily references English legal precedent, including that of famed jurist Sir Matthew Hale who, it should be noted, had at least two women executed for witchcraft and wrote a treatise supporting marital rape
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podcast genres : 1. Men going on about things. 2. Whispery crime 3.Millennials talking over each other 4. Should be 20 minutes shorter
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dilemma of the Wolff book for journalism commentators : those who said press should break the rules, not normalize Trump, call it what it is etc., did not anticipate the most effective route to that would be by pulling off the most audacious act of access journalism of all time
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Radio 4 Today programme : ‘Later we are going to be hearing from Steve Bannon’
WHY ? Why would you give him airtime?
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I wish CNN commentators would stop saying ‘something I thought I would never see’ instead of ‘this was an entirely foreseeable consequence of the past four years’
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Suspension of accounts is step one, step two is implementing a policy which reflects the fact that powerful individuals need more restrictions, and *more* scrutiny from platforms ...rather than less
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...for those saying the police did nothing yesterday. Not entirely true : they arrested Washington Post journalists for filming protests
With
@wleaming
, still rolling the camera while we were being arrested for filming protests outside the Capitol.
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Imagining the discussion among the FB comms team ‘Omg - how do we stop this story ?? It spread so quickly! and some of it isn’t even right! people are just sharing it regardless- saying it’s a breach and it’s not!..clicking those angry face emojis ..what can we do? ‘
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The appointment of Tim Davie as Director General of the BBC is proving a catastrophic mistake. Crucially - he is unequipped to stand up for the independence of BBC journalists in the face of meddling from an inappropriately hands-on right wing chair.
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A war in Europe, preceded by a years long propaganda and influence campaign that destabilized, captured and divided European and US populations. This does not seem a random path
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The Murdoch pivot ...
Panic-stricken Donald Trump Jr. calls for 'total war' in clueless tweet
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I wish there was a scheme whereby burnt out journalists could spend a year doing very very low key reporting in small towns or villages that don’t have news services ....
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We should do this with the Internet
I just remembered how TV used to end, around dawn, with the national anthem and then static.
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@jelani9
Influencer 101…direct to camera (the fact it’s filmed selfie-style is hugely effective) , addressing a person not a meeting…it subverts the established image of wartime politicians; bureaucratic , protected, remote, removed from risk
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There is a case to be made that the
@maitlis
‘open’ strikes the wrong tone for Newsnight (I don’t necessarily agree but it could be argued) . That call ought to be established between programme editor and the head of news. This is reactive, weak and institutionally embarrassing
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This interview is embarrassing and irrelevant . Steve Bannon has zero to say of importance on anything and here is a credulous interview on
@BBCRadio4
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Everyone who has lived through the last 4 months in NYC is changed by the experience. Today NYC provisionally 0 deaths, and case numbers flat. This is why 👇
It is a boiling hot and humid sweaty nyc day and 99% of people going into Prospect Park are wearing masks — I truly think people need more credit for how well they are trying to protect others from this virus, despite deep discomfort to themselves personally!!!
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@lindayacc
Look at the blue checks. Look at your timeline. Find an important story breaking somewhere else in the world and try to follow reliable updates. Your company created the ability to identify a sort of hierarchy of information, then your owner systematically destroyed it….
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I have read so many predictions and trends about journalism in the past few weeks. The most significant trend, mostly unacknowledged, is that of politicians realizing they do not need to provide access or engagement with journalists, or even tell the truth, to be electable
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for those interested in why Sir Matthew Hale’s views on abortion are suddenly relevant
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The
@nytimes
online presentation of its stunning front page is a wonderful piece of work too. The scroll has dignity and impact
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I would like to make a program which is a cross between In Our Time and BBC Question Time - where people ask questions about our current political moment but they are answered by thoughtful experts
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OpenAI fires women on the board- (board chair who oversaw fuck up stays🤷♀️) - joining board is *Larry Summers* who once said women don’t have the same ‘intrinsic aptitude’ for STEM, and associated with Jeffrey Epstein even after he was convicted of sex offences
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
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the Gannett layoffs today are enraging and confounding.We have a publishing economy where Axios (no offence to them, it’s a good product) is bought for half a billion dollars and the Gannett ceo is on $7m a year, yet we cannot keep politics and education reporters in local posts
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I don’t want to become sentimental about tv news shows - dwindling in popularity as they are - but the decision to totally eviscerate the ONLY serious daily tv news discussion show that BBC tv carries is just a flat out bad decision
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The opening of
@RanaAyyub
‘s Substack today is required reading (and in fact exactly what we are covering in class tonight)
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Capitalism is the enemy of journalism in many ways: overpayment and greed among the executive and investors, corrupted incentives embedded in tech platforms, a complete absence of sensible alternative funding models , a widespread misunderstanding that profit does not equal value
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I can’t read one more piece about ‘modernizing the BBC’ which fails to mention how incredibly important a public service news and media organisation is in the 21st century. The narrow concept of ‘innovation’ promulgated by Silicon Valley and gobbled up as gospel are truly toxic
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A couple of years ago I was talking to the news editor of a Ukrainian news provider. She described an exhausting and grim cycle of her reporters spending most of their time just reporting on disinformation campaigns. And here we are.
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Yes
@jonathanvswan
definitely delivered one of the all time great political interviews. However, it is in the long tradition of combative Australian (and British) no nonsense interviews which American journalists have often been too cautious /courteous to conduct
.
@jonathanvswan
: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
@realdonaldtrump
: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”
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As they say, some personal news. I am very lucky to be able to do what I do with the wonderful team
@TowCenter
. None of it would be possible without the support of
@TowFdn
and colleagues at
@columbiajourn
. Extremely honored to be the first Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism
With the
@TowFdn
, we are pleased to announce that Prof.
@EmilyBell
has been named to the newly endowed chair of Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism.
Read more:
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A mind-boggling case in Montana of how disinformation is a new playbook at local level. The thinned down local newspaper is no match for a barrage of nonsense on the Internet
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As we go into 2020, the local vulnerability of journalism is acute . The problem is policy makers have little interest in mending a system which suits them to be broken
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What a completely horrible error of judgement . *Any* issue-based advertising takeover of a masthead or homepage should by default be against the rules of a news publication ...
The Washington Post has a Trump campaign ad dominating its homepage right now:
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I am actively put off ever seeking public office in my homeland by the insane number of workplace parties you apparently have to attend
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Every journalist needs to share this.
@mariaressa
has been a beacon of energetic reporting in Duterte’s dark world
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Reducing an entire population to a deep level of scepticism about all sources information is a key part of psyops. So you might want to think about this morning as an object lesson in what it feels like to lose the ‘fight against misinformation ‘
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I got to know
@RanaAyyub
a little this year through a
@bbcworldservice
series on press freedom. She is a remarkable journalist, brave in the face of danger and harassment . Dexter Filkins’ profile of her, her work and the nature of repression in Modi’s India is essential reading
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Just to be really clear here, two white men, with ZERO journalistic experience between them, and BOTH with explicit ties to the Conservative Party are launching a re-education camp at the BBC for ‘media bias’. Astonishing
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Thinking a lot about a new type of journalism and its intersection with social media. And, often it is the previously often marginalized women who are redefining this practice. ���
@RanaAyyub
on activism ‘ I am an active journalist’
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This is so on point. It’s 8 months since COVID was on the global radar. Almost 6 months since a pandemic was declared. The commercial technology sector has so far made no significant or lasting contribution to helping ameliorate the crisis...
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Imagine a world where reporters didn’t have two years to pick through the puzzle pieces of a damning story
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Journalism works -
@propublica
reporting forced this change
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God bless Peter Snow (and
@KirstyWark
and all those who made Newsnight so indispensable over the years) for saying on
@BBCRadio4
Media Show that the BBC cutting key news shows and reducing reporting resource - as the world falls apart and election is called - is madness
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Twitter fact checking a Trump tweet is an interesting development. It feels as though there is (finally) a limit being imposed. I would imagine that we are not that far from outright removal of tweets - not least as it benefits both parties for very different reasons
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It has taken a pandemic to fully demonstrate what it means that America does not have a ‘public health’ system. Of course a lack of universal healthcare is its root, but it’s effects extend to having no deep culture of shared messaging or responsibility around public health.
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Even the responses to this show what an impossible, exhausting task reporters in India face when they write things the authorities don’t like…
A full page in the Washington Post today about the witch-hunt against me. Cannot thank my colleagues and publication for having my back at such a crucial time for me. I promise to keep fighting the truth
@elopezgross
@washingtonpost
@wppressfreedom
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The Murdochs and Fox News are culpable. The Silicon Valley execs who courted this division on their platforms are culpable. Network executives and editors who lacked the ability to treat the threat seriously are culpable
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I had a conversation earlier this year with
@peterpomeranzev
- who said (of Putin) that we had reached a phase where there was no longer pretense if something was a lie. Lying without shame is a display of force. It demonstrates the truth does not matter.
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Pre social media, you televise a debate , a fly lands on someone’s head, it makes it to paragraph 12 on p2. Post social media, not sure what happened in the debate, but the fly now has its own Netflix series and lives in a TikTok hype house with other celebrity insects
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Now realizing my marriage has lasted as long as it has, (25 years) because both of us have spent the vast majority of it at work ...
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Systematic reportedly skilled terrorist attacks in Austin, seemingly racially motivated. Two already dead, a number of others injured. This is a story which has not had enough political or media attention
JUST IN: Fourth Austin explosion leaves two men injured
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Oh yes so it is - Facebook is blocking the link to the
@AP
story about its hack as potential spam h/t
@kateconger
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@Richard_Pendry
I know what he thinks. Steve Bannon has never*stopped* being interviewed by the press. He has no platform, no responsibility, no job or relevance. And yet - at a time of deep uk crisis - the main agenda setting programme of the day is interviewing him *again*...
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Agreeing with many journalists on here, that all the
#usopen
match reports I’ve read are palid in comparison to the excellent Sally Jenkins piece in the
@washingtonpost
. Sports desks famously lack diversity - and this morning it really shows
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The news cycle is fast, so icymi yesterday. This is among the most important pieces I’ve read about Facebook’s policies and practices. It highlights how democracy can depend on Facebook’s PR strategy - if it’s not a story, it’s not a priority
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How to rebuild trust in journalism ?
1. Report stories that are true.
2. See 1.
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American media : ‘can we say ‘shithole’?’
British media ‘shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole shithole ...’etc
Free speech paradox
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HRH Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne bookended the era of mass electronic media. Her coronation was used to sell TV sets, her death was Tweeted out by the Palace. The medium suited the message - not sure same will be true of the next 70 years
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We talk of ‘news’ ‘fake news’ and ‘advertising’ as distinct types of content . But the FB infrastructure can render them indistinguishable
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Foreign political outfits masquerade as news to interfere with the electoral process. Here’s another - Nigel Farage is dodging health and immigration requirements is in the US as ‘a journalist’ sponsored by
@Telegraph
.
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Idiocy. C4 is not going to ‘compete against Netflix’ . You have one UK media asset that theoretically *could* have developed a rival platform in about 2008 - the BBC - but that pass was sold too by lack of governmental foresight and caving into Murdoch lobbying.
Channel 4 rightly holds a cherished place in British life and I want that to remain the case. I have come to the conclusion that government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon. 1/3
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Fascinating that Don’t Look Up has received such a panning by the critics - yet almost all the other journalists in my timeline absolutely loved it….
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Several times this week I have wondered whether those in technology companies and some parts of the media who tried their hardest to discredit
@carolecadwalla
‘s reporting, would admit they should have directed their energies into the issues she was raising instead
Ok. Deep breath.
I think we may look back on this as the first Great Information War. Except we're already 8 years in.
The first Great Information War began in 2014. The invasion of Ukraine is the latest front. And the idea it doesn't already involve us is fiction, a lie.
1/
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Exercise some editorial judgement ffs. She appeared on the Apprentice and rose to prominence through a column that was so bad even the Daily Mail noticed. Oh and she is a racist and a bigot, and in her own country she is *completely ignored* by anyone with any sense
Read my story on Katie Hopkins, the British commentator who’s been repeatedly called a racist and a bigot by UK press, who has again become someone who Trump seeks validation from, including just before the shootings Saturday. He’s retweeted her repeatedly
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If you are a news network in America and you are not showing this, you are not a news network
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Although we are beyond ’new low’ territory - this is a new low
Trump to Hungary's far-right leader Viktor Orbán: "You're respected all over Europe. Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that's okay. You've done a good job and you've kept your country safe."
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The appearance of Facebook News and a bankruptcy filing for McClatchy is just another incremental step in an astonishingly swift change of control in communications . It has taken place with zero public consultation, policy or regulation . Incredible when you think about it
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For all the enormous amount of griping about what is wrong with the media, it is worth noting that the good reporters who go and do and see and report are the last line of defense against atrocity and corruption.
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If you need a restorative for your shattered faith in human nature, or to be reminded that not everyone attracted to power is inevitably awful, this is recommended
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It’s only 7am ET but the winner of the Internet today is …..
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@nytimes
I once joined the ‘express’ queue in Waitrose and put my basket on the floor. The person ahead of me stepped back and moved my basket with their foot. I said ‘oh I’m sorry’ and they DID NOT immediately respond ‘oh no, I’m sorry it’s all my fault’. ..And they had 11 items
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Terrific piece by
@columbiajourn
academic dean
@SheilaCoronel
on both
@mariaressa
and the crushing of press freedom in the Philippines
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Twitter vs not Twitter isn't a simple binary, particularly not for news journalism. The 24 hour global connectivity has changed almost everything about workflows in newsrooms and even for freelance journalists. It changes commissioning, newsgathering, sourcing, verification...
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The Dominion vs Fox complaint is an explosive expose of corrupt media practice . Fox top brass putting people they know have ‘crazy’ theories on air, calling for fact checkers to be sacked - a startling picture of greed and lies. Here’s the full text
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Facebook and News Corp strategies are actually *very* similar - focused on profit via regulatory manipulation . Dine with, flatter and suck up to the incumbent power right up to the moment it is no longer potent , then a swift defenestration, whether by headline or takedown
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What Facebook demonstrates via the somewhat inevitable Infowars decision, is that editorial decisions do not scale, they are culturally specific and liable to change over time. Put that in your algorithm
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You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about
My considered opinion on the Democratic candidates is they all look shit.
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….An event which showcased technical incompetence, delivered with the charisma and panache of a 4th quarter earnings call, and which had the seemingly impossible outcome of making people think more positively about Donald Trump and Fox News…
Tonight’s reflection — we just heard a rare and unscripted conversation, on a range of important topics, with a Presidential candidate — all launched on Twitter. That’s historical. Let’s do more. Freedom of speech is priceless.
@elonmusk
,
@DavidSacks
,
@RonDeSantis
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"The media" IS Facebook, Twitter, and Google. They are at the HEART of newsroom consciousness, they shape workflows, story presentation, commissioning, distribution and marketing strategies etc. How could they not? They are the sea that we all swim in
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sparks joy
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too good
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Anyway congrats Silicon Valley on disrupting the business model for legacy media so comprehensively , it has been replaced by that most innovative start up idea, the overseas dictatorship
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Smartest thing anyone has said on this . No the media did not *finally catch on* to how to report on this in the last week - their relationship to power is fundamental to how they operate (caveat - not all media etc)
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British men turning up to run everything is - and I cannot state this too strongly - a bad idea
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Wow -
Jacinda Ardern resigns as prime minister of New Zealand
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Key point of piece : With signals of authority and tone erased from our information environment, we have a wide, systemic crisis in news .
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The
@nytimes
has had much criticism lately - sometimes deserved - but the tax story is a model of clarity, no punches pulled.
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One thing I have learned in ...33 years of writing and editing in fancy journalism is that the copy of some of the greatest reporters is so raw you could clean your oven with it. And the reporting of some great writers is ...yikes
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If you have half a billion hate speech comments, maybe just shut the comments
YouTube has removed more than 100,000 videos and over 17,000 channels for violating its hate speech rules in April through June, which is 5x more than it removed in the previous three months. It also took down over 500 million comments over hate speech.
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Context for US media columnists for the storm-off of Piers Morgan from a popular morning show in the UK. Britain follows the US in many things - including two new right wing news channels: GB News and News UK (Murdoch-owned Fox lite) .. timing seems more than coincidental
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I have been following
@RanaAyyub
and her links on Kashmir - the constant threats againster her are terrifying, and the story here has been somewhat buried in the blizzard of domestic news
Seven million people were cut off from all communications in Kashmir so their sovereignty could be seized on the q.t.
Say so, and a Gamergate-like army of trolls will descend.
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