There is the question of Maggie Haberman. Why so many Trump scoops saved for her book that could clearly have helped civic health if aired in real time in the journal of record? There is the matter of her strange symbiotic relationship with Trump, which pre-dates her time at the Times. Trump ran for next-level celebrity, and Haberman has become a celebrity journalist and Trump-whisperer because of her access to him over the years. Was it ethical for her save so much game changing information for her book? Elizabeth Spiers has a good take, from the perspective of a journalist. And Paul Samuelson, also on the thread, has an interesting take from the perspective of the publishers. (Twitter)
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has always been a bit of a media joke. Just sleazy. There are many reasons why the Golden Globes — their award show — was laughable, but the fact that before their 2021 ceremony it was revealed that they had no black members (as well as a terrible record of recognizing African-American achievement) led to their eventual downfall. The pendulum swings! “The organization has since added 103 new voters to its ranks, marking the first time that voters located outside the US have been added to a voting pool representing 62 countries,” Jackie McLaughlin writes. “The HFPA said that with the current HFPA membership, the overall Golden Globe Awards voting body is now 52% female, 51.5% racially and ethnically diverse, with 19.5% Latinx, 12% Asian, 10% Black and 10% Middle Eastern.” And the Showrunner is Emmy Award winner Collins, the first black producer of the Superbowl Halftime show in 2020. (Deadline)
“What’s happened: NASA is celebrating the success of humanity’s first test of a planetary defense system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to change its orbit. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, was intentionally smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos at 7.14pm ET last night, spelling the end to a successful 10 month mission. A small camera mounted on DART livestreamed the spacecraft’s steady progress towards the 160 meter-wide asteroid, located about 6.8 million miles from Earth, back to controllers based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The strike was “basically a bullseye,” mission systems engineer Elena Adams said. Why it matters: While Dimorphos had not been on course to crash into Earth, the project demonstrates NASA’s ability to deflect a dangerous meteorite collision in the future.” (MIT Technology Review)
“Tucker Carlson spoke at the funeral service of Hells Angels head Ralph ‘Sonny’ Barger over the weekend, The Guardian's Martin Pengelly reported Monday. In a video of his remarks posted online, Carlson said he flew from Maine to California for the funeral. As Pengelly pointed out, the Justice Department considers the Hells Angels to be an outlaw motorcycle gang that poses a "serious national domestic threat" due in part to its "activity relating to drug-trafficking." Ironically, the DOJ says that "more specifically" the group is connected to "cross-border drug smuggling." Fox News spokespeople didn't respond to requests for comment.” (Reliable Sources)
“‘What's the difference when you get pulled over by the police if you have a Kennedy at the wheel?’ asks the always elegant, always spicy Christina Oxenberg. ‘You do not get a ticket if anything you get genuflections and sycophantic groveling. Not a good look.” Hmm. Which Kennedy? Probably all. (Patreon — subscription required)
“Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous nation, with the largest economy in East Africa. But it is ethnically fractured, with more than eighty distinct groups, many of them beset by old enmities and overlapping territorial claims. (Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed) came to power in 2018, promising to heal the country’s divisions … Abiy writes in his book that human beings have a ‘direct existential need’ to be free of massacres and wars, and not long after his election he delivered a surprising advance. For two decades, Ethiopia had been in a hostile standoff with its neighbor Eritrea—the lingering aftereffect of a war that claimed as many as a hundred thousand lives. Abiy forged a peace deal, which ended the standoff and earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of his efforts to ‘promote reconciliation, solidarity and social justice.’ At the Nobel ceremony, in Oslo, he invoked both the Bible and the Quran: ‘Before we can harvest peace dividends, we must plant seeds of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the hearts and minds of our citizens.’ But the spirit of reconciliation did not flourish in Abiy’s Ethiopia. In November, 2020, just eleven months after he was awarded the Nobel, violence erupted in Tigray, a rebellious region in the north. Abiy’s army became embroiled in a conflict that involved gruesome ethnic killing, gang rapes, and mass executions. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans were soon on the brink of starvation, while others poured across the Sudanese border to find refuge in hastily built camps. The violence has sparked an international argument about Abiy.” (The New Yorker)
“In Sunday’s elections in Italy, triggered by the premature fall of Mario Draghi’s government, the right-wing coalition of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli D’Italia, seem set to score a decisive victory … On the educational axis a pattern emerges that is visible in many modern democracies and has been highlighted by Thomas Piketty. Amongst those with University degrees the center-Left PD will likely score more votes than the Fratelli and the Lega put together. Liberal progressive politics has become the domain above all of better educated Italian voters. The Fratelli achieve relatively similar support across all educational levels whereas the Lega sees a clear bias towards the lowest levels of qualification. And this is confirmed when we look at occupational data. The center-left PD does best with the liberal professions, white-collar workers and teachers. It does badly with workers and the unemployed. The Lega vote is heavily tilted towards workers, whereas 5Star scores highly amongst the unemployed.” (AdamTooze)
“Oprah Winfrey has spent most of her career talking, so it’s a little surprising that the only sound you hear from the porch of her second home in Maui is absolute silence … Oprah Winfrey has spent most of her career talking, so it’s a little surprising that the only sound you hear from the porch of her second home in Maui is absolute silence. As the story goes, the TV icon placed copies of Natalie Baszile’s novel ‘Queen Sugar’ around her home — on both bedside tables, in the kitchen and on the porch — hoping DuVernay would pick it up to read it while on vacation in 2015. DuVernay doesn’t remember where the copy she finally grabbed was located, but doing so changed her life. Seven years later, the BFFs are seated at a slate-gray table in Winfrey’s kitchen to discuss the legacy of the family drama, now in its final season, which includes hiring only women directors (41 of them), nurturing them, and then happily letting them loose on the industry.” (Variety)
“In recent days, the Maroon 5 singer has been the subject of claims that he sent flirtatious Instagram messages to a string of women. Model Sumner Stroh also alleged that (Adam) Levine cheated on his wife, Behati Prinsloo, last year. In an Instagram story, Levine admitted to speaking to women ‘in a flirtatious manner’ but denied that he had had a physical affair. A number of other women have since shared similar messages they claim are from Levine. Those messages have given new fodder to the internet’s meme machine, making it impossible to scroll through Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter without being confronted by jokes taking screenshots of the alleged messages out of context … The raw material—Levine’s alleged sexts—are vague enough to be deployed in a number of different situations. And they’re as subtle as some of Maroon 5’s crooniest songs. ‘This genre of meme requires almost zero cultural literacy,’ Turvy says, ‘so it can be understood and created by basically anyone.’ And they are being created by plenty of people. People have remixed Levine’s alleged request that he ‘may need to see the booty’ of Stroh, followed by the word ‘Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk’ (with 25 Ks), into the minds of pirates, among others. One Twitter user said it was ‘truly a gift, and we need to incorporate it into the lexicon.’” (WIRED)
“IN AUGUST, Twitter, Google, TikTok, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, released statements about how they intended to handle election-related misinformation on their platforms in advance. For the most part, it seemed they weren’t planning to change much. Now, with the November 8 midterms drawing closer, Change the Terms, a coalition of about 60 civil rights organizations say the social platforms have not done nearly enough to stop continued misinformation about ‘the Big Lie’—that is, the unfounded claim that the 2020 election was somehow fraudulent. ‘There’s a question of: Are we going to have a democracy?’ Jessica González, a Free Press executive involved with the coalition, recently told the Washington Post. ‘And yet, I don’t think they are taking that question seriously. We can’t keep playing the same games over and over again, because the stakes are really high.’” (Mathew Ingram/CJR)
“On the consumer side, television continues to be Hearst's biggest source of profits, Swartz said in an interview.
Hearst owns 20% of ESPN and 50% of A&E, both through joint ventures with Disney. It also owns 33 local television stations across the country, with flagship markets in Boston and Orlando.
While TV is, in aggregate, Hearst's biggest source of profits, its Fitch Group bond rating business, which operates in dozens of countries overseas, is Hearst's single biggest contributor to profits, Swartz said.
The 135-year-old company is owned by a family trust, in which only five of the 13 seats on the board of trustees are reserved for descendants of the Hearst family. The rest are made up of current and former Hearst executives.” (Sarah Fischer/Axios)