Peter Bale - curated media news: self-serving media; Russia fines; oligarchy; and more - Issue #17
Fox and News Corp. want the GOP to back new bills aimed at tightening regulation of Big Tech.
It is inevitable companies will use lobbyists to defend their interests but this seems spectacularly self-serving by Fox and News. Rupert and News CEO Robert Thomson are totally aligned in their suspicion and fear of the big platforms and the "greedy geeks" they believe run them.
In a sense, this is more of the same: media companies who have lost the advertising market to bigger and better competitors now want their journalism to be "saved" by the platforms.
Fresh from declaring Alexei Navalny's organisation an extremist group, Russia goes after the remaining avenues for free dialogue.
David was a much-respected colleague at CNN and this makes for uncomfortable reading given the extent to which the Justice Dept was prepared to try to bully him and CNN into staying silent while it dug around in the correspondence of one of the leading defence reporters.
Sort of good to hear and I know John a little and admire some of the work of wind-up-artist extraordinaire Andrew Neil. I saw a list of GB News backers this week and was intrigued to see "shadowy" Legatum Institute which has some odd New Zealand connections. I have long suspected there is much more to it than meets the eye but want to know more.
The concept of solutions journalism is a good one even if it is only to open pathways for an audience to contribute something or take action. Some fear it straddles the area of campaigning but I suspect if the motivations are transparent it actually helps readers feel empowered to act.
A great read for the weekend. I really respect Anne Applebaum and this rather dystopian view of Poland going the way of Russia is alarming.
If you can get past the mutual self-regard in this podcast, I reckon Obama says much that is really interesting about his methods to deliver on his objectives, not always by triumphing over others but gaining compromise.