Sinclair Broadcasting: All the News That Isn't
Donald Trump said he crushed it with Black journalists last week. You'd believe that too if you read the news story Sinclair sent to 40 percent of American households.
HISTORY's Moment in Media The Evolution of Time Magazine's "Person of the Year": The People, the Groups and the Concepts
Charles Lindbergh earned his place in history when he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, touching down in Paris on May 21, 1927. Time magazine, only four years old, had the habit of placing a portrait of a newsmaker on each issue's cover. That week, the publication neglected to put the aviator inside its iconic red border. (It was instead King George V and Queen Mary of the United Kingdom.)
Fox News Got a Bargain: Putin and Xi Did, Too
Eyepopping tab or not, the Fox-Dominion deal was far from one-sided. Fox News dodged even a hint of guilt for profiting from its years of promoting disinformation and deception in primetime. Rest assured the outcome brought smiles in Moscow and Beijing.
In the Months Before Christmas -- 2022
MediaVillage is pleased to continue a popular tradition with the publication of Steve Fajen’s annual holiday poem.
Beware the Four Symptoms of Self-Defeating Disease
Two of the biggest macro-stories last week were the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and expanded lockdown across more than 30 cities in China due to COVID-19. Two of the bigger micro-stories last week were the shutting down of CNN+ just 32 days after launch and the 40 percent plunge in Netflix stock. Though each was different they shared a common trait -- a surprising reversal of fortune! Defeat seemed to be snatched from the jaws of victory!
Ukraine: It's Not Just the Shooting War That Deserves Prime Time
It might seem ridiculous to suggest that Americans who can daily view, hear, read and click on hundreds of stories covering Russia's war on Ukraine need more. The fact is, they do. When it comes to the latest on this historical turning point, whether the broadcast and cable audiences are casual news consumers, crisis junkies, or click-happy channel changers, they're barely getting a fraction of what they need.
Profiles in Courage, Here and There
From war zones to world capitals, journalists these days literally are under the gun. The deaths in Ukraine of two Fox News reporters and an American documentary filmmaker this month tragically underscore the point. So does President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on Russian journalists whose acts of defiance, including at state-run outlets, reflect their bravery in the face of an increasingly repressive regime.
New Narratives Amplify Coverage of the Ukraine War
The human tragedy on the ground in Ukraine is hard to fathom or look at. No amount of imagination can match the pain and the destruction on the ground. It is one of the reasons that Putin has for the first time in his 20-year reign shut down everything that is not under his control (including social media and every small independent newspaper, broadcast or online service) and has promised three-year to 15-year sentences for even carrying a placard with the word "War" on it (because in Orwellian speak it is "a special military operation" to liberate and "de-nazify" a country). But the world of storytelling and media has changed. Not just in the past decade but very dramatically in the last two or three years, and this changing narrative landscape plus a new generation of narrators and voices combined with new media behaviors is increasingly difficult to control from top down.
Media Coverage of the War: A Commentary on Why Devils are in the Details
News coverage of Vladimir Putin's two-week-old invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainians' heroic resistance and suffering reflects the power as well as the limits of broadcast journalism in all its forms. As the old adage goes, war is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It presents the television medium with a daunting challenge: Its journalism must deliver real-time reporting of crucial events while manufacturing substance to fill the empty hours in-between. Not surprisingly, like the real-world experience of combat 24/7, when it comes to covering a war, what shows up on screen is a mixed picture at best.
Putin Just Fired Russia's Real Journalists: Put Them on the Payroll
Vladimir Putin swept up the remnants of Russia's free press last week when his apparatchiks unplugged Echo of Moscow and TV Rain, among the last independent radio and TV outlets respectively, for reporting the facts about his invasion of Ukraine. Following orders, the Duma, Russia's parliament, is cementing censorship in place with a new law that criminalizes spreading "false news" on Russian military operations. For western news networks covering an increasingly authoritarian regime, Putin's travesties present a golden opportunity to hire real Russian journalists who can bring the facts to audiences in their homeland as well as abroad.
Journalism Covers a War Like No Other: It's Not Just in Ukraine
A few days before Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, Vladislav Surkov, then Vladimir Putin's chief image-maker, ideologue and eminence grise, published a short story. Among other things, Surkov masterminded and helped manage the disinformation campaign against Ukraine. Surkov left the Kremlin in 2021, but it would be a mistake to ignore his futuristic tale about a fifth world war. With Russian forces poised to attack Ukraine, it's an outline of Putin's strategy. Unfortunately, the news media can't seem to figure out how to cover the story, much less explain its play by play.
Disinformation: It's Time to Feature All the News that Isn't Fit to Print
The headlines were striking, the content plausible, and the breaking news a scoop that couldn't be beat. Official Russian documents provided two weeks ago to Britain's Guardian newspaper reportedly revealed Vladimir Putin chaired a Kremlin meeting in 2016 that ordered his political warriors to put Donald Trump in the White House. Time may or may not tell whether the leaked memoranda are real, although their veracity isn't really the issue. The plausible story is only the latest to break atop the sea of disinformation inundating the news media. Unfortunately, few if any news organizations are giving the rising tide the attention it deserves.
Apple Daily and Annapolis: Two Farewells to the Free Press
The Capital Gazette in Annapolis Maryland and the Apple Daily in Hong Kong may not appear to have much in common, but each reflects the challenge facing democracy when the role of the free press diminishes or disappears. While it may seem a stretch to compare a small-town American newspaper just sold to Alden Global Capital, the vulture fund that specializes in buying and then gutting distressed papers, and a popular pro-democracy tabloid doomed by Beijing's authoritarians as they snuff out Hong Kong's last freedoms, the parallels and their consequences are anything but.
The War on American Democracy: Will Big Media Step Up?
National Intelligence Director Avril Haines' announcement last month that the intelligence community is launching the Foreign Malign Influence Center is a step in the right direction. It's also long overdue. The new center has a crucial job: To focus the community on disinformation in order to help blunt foreign meddling in American politics. The spies could have used some Madison Avenue brainstorming in branding their start-up, but its clunky moniker isn't the only thing that needs the media world's help.
