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Thursday, November 13, 2025 |
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TGIT. The BBC is preparing to say sorry to President Trump, the EU is opening a new probe of how Google treats news publishers; and Disney is increasing its content spend again. Plus: But first... |
Making inequality more visible |
America's longest government shutdown is over. What was the defining image of the political stalemate? I'd pick one of the aerial photos showing long lines of cars outside food banks.
The shutdown made the normally invisible suffering of Americans more visible. And that's thanks in large part to thoughtful news media coverage. "Affordability" is the buzzword of the moment, but stress about the cost of living is part of a much bigger story. It's about inequality in America.
As David Wallace-Wells wrote yesterday, we're seeing "a resurgence of the politics of inequality, obscured for almost a decade by culture wars both left and right, but which seemed absolutely central to American politics before Donald Trump and the backlash to him swamped everything else."
Right now, "higher income and lower income households are living in two different worlds," Joe Wadford, an economist at the Bank of America Institute, told CNN's Matt Egan.
So the press has to keep straddling those two worlds, documenting the disparities, showing how millions of Americans are "struggling to make ends meet in an increasingly unaffordable economy." Egan did that here, with accounts from ordinary Americans...
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Retaliation for an MSNBC interview? |
This WaPo headline caught my eye today: "Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP."
A furloughed USDA employee and union leader was interviewed on MSNBC last month about how the shutdown could hurt people who rely on food benefits. The next day, Ellen Mei was told "the process to remove her from her position had begun." Her colleagues say "the move is part of a concerted effort by the Trump administration to chill speech among federal employees..."
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Politico Playbook captured the split reactions to the latest Jeffrey Epstein emails and revelations with eight words this morning: "Media goes wild, MAGA goes meh over Epstein."
Fox News was slow to report on the emails, as The Independent's Justin Baragona wrote here. And most of Fox's coverage was defensive of Trump; when Sean Hannity's liberal guest Stephanie Miller called out the network's disinterest in the news, Hannity immediately rebutted with a Bill Clinton reference.
Pro-Trump media types spent years demanding more info about Epstein's crimes. Now... not so much. The National Pulse's Raheem Kassam justified the apathy this way to Axios: "As soon as the legacy media suddenly started caring about it, and only about one person in particular, it became sus to MAGA." Uh-huh.
"All we know is that Trump wants us to stop talking about the subject," The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait wrote. "That's usually what you want when the subject includes evidence that you have behaved in a manner beyond reproach."
As Playbooker Jack Blanchard said, it's the "same old, same old" situation: "Different bubbles getting hyped about different issues; talking past one another; no sense of a shared narrative; few shared facts."
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Still no Disney-YouTube TV deal... |
This morning's Disney earnings conference call came and went without news of a carriage deal with YouTube TV. Disney CFO Hugh Johnston had some fighting words on CNBC, saying, "We're in the middle of negotiations right now" and "we're ready to go as long as they want to." Later, on the earnings call, he noted that while Disney is losing some revenue from YouTube TV, it is "picking up" some "by virtue of subscribers moving elsewhere." Bob Iger ended the call by saying we're "working tirelessly to close this deal..."
>> What's the holdup? The Athletic's Andrew Marchand says, "The question of how much to pay for Disney’s ancillary non-sports networks, such as Freeform, FX and National Geographic, remains an obstacle."
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Disney to hike content $$ spend again |
Disney shares dropped about 6% in premarket trading after this morning's earnings release. Revenues were roughly flat and slightly below analysts' expectations. "Operating income dropped 21% as cord-cutting accelerated and ad dollars continued to shift toward streaming," Yahoo's Allie Canal wrote.
>> Disney said this morning that it "plans to increase its spending on content next year by $1 billion to a total of $24 billion, underscoring how the competition for consumer attention remains fierce — and expensive," THR's Alex Weprin wrote.
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EU probing Google for 'demoting' news stories in search results |
Antitrust watchdogs in the EU are launching another investigation of Alphabet, this time probing Google for "demoting media publishers' content in search results."
Here's the press release. "We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry," Teresa Ribera of the European Commission says.
The EU probe risks "worsening fraught relations with the Trump administration," Samuel Stolton noted in the lead of his Bloomberg story...
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BBC to apologize to Trump? |
The headline atop today's copy of The Daily Telegraph, the British paper that triggered this BBC crisis ten days ago, says "BBC ready to apologise to Trump over doctored video."
The story relays what Michael Savage reported for The Guardian yesterday: That BBC leaders are prepared to formally say sorry to Trump "as part of its efforts to resolve his billion-dollar legal threat over its editing of one of his speeches." But it's hard to imagine that a personal apology will satisfy Trump and his legal team...
>> Related: The BBC's own media reporters ask, "Why would anyone want to be the new BBC director general?"
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Here's how the anti-BBC machine works |
The right-wing channel GB News has been trying to gain market share in the UK, with little to show for it. But the Trump White House has been promoting the channel, just as the channel promotes Trump.
Yesterday, GB News reporter Bev Turner was standing in Karoline Leavitt's "new media seat," and she delivered a Trumpy summary of the BBC edit scandal before asking, "Given that the organization is publicly funded, is the president prepared to bankrupt the BBC in his pursuit of truth and justice?"
Leavitt didn't answer, but she bashed the Beeb as a "leftist propaganda machine" and said Trump thinks it's "extremely unfortunate" that the BBC is "subsidized by British taxpayers." Of course, Trump doesn't get a say about that...
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If you claim you were hacked... |
...You have to be prepared to prove it.
Last month, Mike Graham was suspended from Rupert Murdoch's TalkTV in the UK after a racist post appeared on his Facebook page. Graham insisted that he had been hacked. However, he's now been dismissed from the channel altogether — "after the company said he had failed to cooperate with an investigation" into the alleged hacking. The aforementioned Michael Savage has the full story here.
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Freedom House is holding a webinar about its annual Freedom on the Net report at 10 a.m. ET. Check out the report here.
The newsletter platform Beehiiv is holding a virtual event at 1 p.m. ET to announce big expansion plans.
The Texas Tribune Festival is getting underway in Austin.
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How Fox misled the viewer-in-chief |
ProPublica reporter Rob Davis has compiled the definitive piece about how Fox News consistently misled viewers — including the viewer-in-chief — about Portland, Oregon, "before Trump sent troops." The misleading picture used footage "from the 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd and said it was from 2025." Check out the incredibly detailed story here…
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>> New this morning via Kevin Collier: "Former FCC chairs urge agency to repeal 'news distortion' policy invoked by Trump administration." But that's not going to happen under Brendan Carr because the policy gives him some power. (NBC)
>> House Democrats have sent David Ellison a letter "accusing Paramount of 'stonewalling congressional oversight,'" Max Tani reports. (X)
>> Speaking of Paramount, last night's "South Park" episode "mocked the Trump administration harder than ever." (Daily Beast)
>> New York AG Letitia James rallied for fired Condé Nast workers yesterday, "telling the company, 'I'll see you in court.'" (Business Insider)
>> Vanity Fair unveiled a new logo this morning. (IG)
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Today's fresh hell: 'AI deportation videos' |
"The latest trend in Facebook’s ever downward spiral down the AI slop toilet are AI deportation videos," 404 Media's Jason Koebler reports. He says the videos from an account called "USA Journey 897" often imagine "workplace deportations," but some "are similar to horrifying, real videos we have seen from ICE raids in Chicago and L.A." Details here…
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OpenAI is asking a federal judge "to reverse an order that required it to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT chat logs amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times and other news outlets," Blake Brittain reports for Reuters.
OpenAI headlined its blog post about the dispute, "Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy." In it, the company argues that your private ChatGPT dialogues may be "handed over to The Times to sift through at will in a speculative fishing expedition." But the NYT says OpenAI's post "purposely misleads its users and omits the facts" since the original court order requires OpenAI "to provide a sample of chats" that are "anonymized by OpenAI itself." Once I read that part, I shrugged...
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More of today's tech talk |
>> "Ireland's media regulator has opened an investigation" into X, "saying that the company is failing to remove content users report as illegal." (Bloomberg)
>> Spotify "has announced plans to bring music videos to its platform in the US following a beta launch overseas last year." (Variety)
>> And Apple has launched a $229.95 iPhone Pocket "sock" to "widespread bemusement," Jack Guy writes. (CNN)
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'Unthinkable things are happening' |
Jennifer Aniston spoke with Elle magazine for its Women in Hollywood cover series, and her friend Jimmy Kimmel's recent suspension came up:
“Unthinkable things are happening. It’s very dangerous and very unfortunate. But at the end of the day, we’re the viewers. We subscribe to these networks and streaming services, so it really comes down to the people and their voices. All those subscription cancellations spoke volumes."
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>> The George Lucas spaceship in Expo Park — excuse me, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — now has an opening date: Sept. 22, 2026. (NYT)
>> Adele will make her acting debut in Tom Ford's "Cry to Heaven." (Deadline)
>> I loved this trailer: 20th Century Studios released a teaser for "The Devil Wears Prada 2." (YouTube)
>> My kids loved this one: Nintendo shared the official trailer for "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie." (YouTube)
>> And last but not least, Disney just released the trailer for Taylor Swift‘s "The End of an Era" docuseries. (YouTube)
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