I love this story for a thousand reasons, but mostly because it was the perfect way to handle an asshole in a fraught situation. “In her 11 years of doing standup, this was by far the worst heckler Ariel Elias had ever encountered. The comedian’s gig at the Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey on Oct. 8 started like any other, so she never anticipated becoming the subject of a viral video and the latest example of the comedy stage becoming the scene of an unsettling incident. Elias had spent the majority of her 20-minute set talking about female body image before launching into a pre-planned question-and-answer portion of her set. A joke she ends on appears on some merchandise she sells after the show. That’s when a woman in the audience, seated at a large table of people attending a raucous birthday party, yelled to her on stage: ‘Did you vote for Trump?’ ‘I wasn’t talking about politics,’ she tells CNN. ‘I think I was honestly talking about my period. It just felt like she was looking for a fight, and I really don’t think I did anything to like elicit that.’ The woman was kicked out. Then the man seated next to her hurled a beer can – fast – at Elias’ head. In the aforementioned video of the moment, many in the audience react with shock. Elias says she didn’t see the beer fly by her head, but she heard it loudly thump behind her. ‘I just like heard it against the wall and then I felt the back of my legs were wet, and I was trying to figure out what happened,’ she says. ‘And then I looked down and I saw the beer can and put it together and people were furious that that had happened, which was nice. So I’m glad a mob mentality didn’t take over against me.’” (CNN)
“Elon Musk, who is poised to take control of Twitter, has raised a new round of questions about how the climate of social media could change with his revelation that he reached out to Kanye West after the rapper’s anti-Semitic tweets. ‘Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart,’ Musk wrote in a tweet Monday night. The Tesla founder, who is negotiating final details of his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, has already sent loud signals about his concerns about how speech is controlled on the platform. It is widely expected that former President Donald Trump and others who have been banned by the social media platform will be welcomed back. The West affair takes Musk’s position to a different level, given the backlash against West in recent days. Potential changes in Twitter’s moderation policies were front and center after Musk clinched a deal to buy the platform in April. But he walked away in July, Twitter sued and attention was then riveted by the legal drama, including a whistleblower, as the two sides sparred over texts, Slack messages and general discovery. Musk, who was staring down a deposition and possibly facing tough odds in a trial set for Oct. 17, renewed his $44 billion offer last week pending financing. A Delaware Chancery Court Judge stayed the trial and gave him until Oct. 28 to close the deal, refocusing attention on the real life impact of a Musk-owned Twitter just as the West controversy emerged. Twitter locked the rapper’s account for a violation of the social media platform’s policies after he tweeted Saturday that he was going ‘death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.’” (Dade Hayes & Jill Goldsmith/DEADLINE)
“Chris Albrecht, the former chairman of HBO and current president of Legendary Television, has been placed on administrative leave, according to the company. The suspension comes as a forthcoming book, It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO by Felix Gillette and John Koblin, reveals new details about how Albrecht allegedly disparaged a staffer who exited HBO following a settlement that was brokered by HBO. (Albrecht’s rep denies the allegations.) A Legendary spokesperson said Monday that Albrecht has been placed on a leave of absence, and declined to comment further. According to an early draft of the book reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, the authors detail a previously reported allegation that Albrecht choked Sasha Emerson, a former exec vp and rising star at HBO in late 1980s and early 1990s (Albrecht’s rep denies the allegation). The incident, which allegedly took place in her office in the summer of 1991, months after Albrecht and Emerson, who were both married at the time, ended their consensual affair, according to the book. In the immediate aftermath, Emerson detailed the incident to a friend as well as to HBO’s Michael Fuchs. A police report was never filed. ‘After more than 30 years an old, flawed story is now being refurbished and recycled for the sake of sales. I have sincerely apologized to those whom I offended with disrespect and utterly unacceptable behavior. But that doesn’t sell books or generate media attention. Some things do indeed age well; but bad reporting does not,’ Albrecht said in a statement to THR. Emerson, following mediation with HBO, took a settlement and left the network, the book notes. The settlement was never revealed to the HBO board and Emerson’s departure was not explained internally, according to the book.” (Lesley Goldberg/THR)
“Five hours of behind-the-scenes backstabbing, big-money hardball, and the creation of piercing attacks on then president Donald Trump—all of which unspools in Showtime’s The Lincoln Project documentary series, which premiered October 7—make Schmidt’s words come across as an epic understatement. ‘We thought we were going to be telling a story like The War Room,’ says Fisher Stevens, a codirector of the new five-part series, referencing the classic 1993 film that chronicled the strategists running Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, a movie that helped turn George Stephanopoulos and James Carville into political cult heroes. ‘Little did we know the story would turn.’ Fisher and his directing partner, Karim Amer, ended up capturing two brutal wars: the external, intended one against Trump’s reelection, and the internal, unexpected one among Schmidt and the other Lincoln Project principals, when ego, tens of millions of dollars, and a sex scandal set off bitter infighting.The Lincoln Project was an irresistible subject even before the controversy. In late 2019, a group of high-powered Republican political strategists—including people who had helped manufacture the modern right-wing, Fox News–ified version of the party—came together to try to deny Trump a second term in the White House. ‘It looked as if there would be a bit of a Frankenstein aspect to the Lincoln Project story,’ Amer says. Indeed: Schmidt, as John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, was the one who first suggested considering Sarah Palin as a running mate. The group’s top staff gathered in Park City, Utah, for the final two months of the 2020 campaign, and the documentary’s camera crew was given extraordinary access to its sausage-making. The Lincoln Project was a forceful enemy of Trump because it was led by high-quality Republican spin artists. This presented a challenge for the documentarians: to not completely buy into the story being told by a bunch of consummate storytellers.” (Chris Smith/VF)
“It was as if the Grand Canyon Times’ sports section had put a list of local football stars in a blender and printed the results. A brief profile on star running back Bijan Robinson was topped with a picture of tight end Aaron Greene, whose own biography showed a professional headshot of long snapper Ethan Nguyen. Other athletes’ profile pictures and biographical details also appeared randomized in the full-page spread on ‘former area high school football players.’ The rest of the paper—which was shared online by bemused Arizona sports fans—was chock-full of conservative political content, particularly articles championing Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters. The Grand Canyon Times isn’t a traditional newspaper. It’s part of an opaque media organization that recycles right-wing news articles across a network of hyperlocal-sounding news websites, which are padded out with press releases. As the 2022 midterm elections approach, conservative campaigns have tapped the network to send realistic-looking (and unsolicited) newspapers to voters in critical districts.In publications like the Grand Canyon Times, the line between newspaper and political advertisement can be porous. At least two print editions of the paper, reviewed by The Daily Beast, contained disclaimers that described the contents as ‘paid for by the Saving Arizona PAC.’ The PAC, which supports Masters’ Senate campaign, has received more than $13 million from conservative billionaire Peter Thiel.” (Kelly Weill/TheDailyBeast)
“Social media companies have increasingly played major roles in political discourse around the world and according to one expert, the fallout has been significant. ‘We've had extraordinary damage done to democracy, public health, public safety, and people's ability to make their own choices,’ Roger McNamee, managing director at Elevation Partners and an early Facebook investor, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). ‘Yet policymakers have done nothing, absolutely nothing.’ Companies like Facebook-parent Meta (META) and Twitter (TWTR) have garnered criticism over the past decade, largely due to their dissemination of misinformation/disinformation as it relates to elections. In recent years, Twitter in particular has been lambasted for elevating the platforms of former President Donald Trump, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and, most recently, rapper Kanye West.” (Alexandra Garfinkle/Yahoo!News)
“Tech giants and news organisations sparring over news reporting isn’t new. Companies often complain to journalists about getting nuances wrong and usually air their dismay ‘off the record.’ Journalists usually agree to include the rebuttals provided the companies can offer the same assertions on-record. The companies don’t follow through and the conversation typically ends there and the world never finds out about what is more often than not a very mundane thing. That’s one of the factors that makes Indian news outlet The Wire’s reporting this week on Instagram and Meta’s responses remarkable. Lawmakers and newsrooms in the U.S. and India are closely watching one of the strangest episodes of a newsroom and its subject publicly disputing — and doubling down on their claims. The Wire, an organization known best for holding the ruling party to account in a way that very few do, reported on Monday that Facebook has given governing party BJP’s top digital operative an unchecked ability to remove content from the platform. The report, which relies on what it claims are internal documents, appears to advance WSJ’s reporting of an internal company program called XCheck, where Facebook shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process. Meta insists that the XCheck program ‘has nothing to do with the ability to report posts’ and has publicly called the documents ‘fabricated.’ Andy Stone, Meta’s comms, tweeted: ‘The posts in question were surfaced for review by automated systems, not humans. And the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.’ The unexpected twist came on Tuesday, when Wire doubled down on its reporting, claiming to include a picture that appeared to show an alleged email Stone sent to internal teams where he is questioning members how the documents leaked. The picture also showed that Facebook maintains a watchlist of journalists. Wire’s response immediately went viral for several hours and most people believed it. In a way that separates it from most other companies, Facebook has earned a reputation where its denials are not really taken on face value. This is the reason why at least two major outlets in India have chosen not to acknowledge Wire’s story — nor Meta’s denials of those reporting, according to two people familiar with the matter. (Though in its credit, Facebook is suing the Indian government over right to users’ privacy.)” (Manish Singh & Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)