“Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings”

— New York Times, June 24, 2023

“The social media giant Meta has confirmed that it will end access to news on its social media sites for all Canadian users before Bill C-18, the Online News Act, comes into force,” the CBC reports.

“The law will force tech giants like Meta and Google to pay news outlets for posting their journalism on their platforms.”

“The two leading GOP presidential contenders had very different interview experiences with Fox News in the past week — each an illustration of the influence that even a damaged Fox has over the Republican nominating process,” the AP reports.

“Their appearances alone are evidence that Fox, weakened financially by the $787 million settlement over defamation charges reached with Dominion Voting Systems and suffering in the ratings following Tucker Carlson’s firing, remains the media kingmaker for Republicans who want to be president.”

New York Times: “In most of the country, state and local laws require public announcements — about town meetings, elections, land sales and dozens of other routine occurrences — to be published in old-fashioned, print-and-ink newspapers, as well as online, so that citizens are aware of matters of public note. The payments for publishing these notices are among the steadiest sources of revenue left for local papers.”

“Sometimes, though, public officials revoke the contracts in an effort to punish their hometown newspapers for aggressive coverage of local politics.”

“Such retaliation is not new, but it appears to be occurring more frequently now, when terms like ‘fake news’ have become part of the popular lexicon.”

Fox News host Jesse Watters launched into a tirade against San Francisco’s homeless population: “San Francisco’s been hollowed out. All that’s left is rich tech titans working from home and just bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk.”

He also referred to the homeless as “urine-soaked junkies” and “vagabonds and zombies.”

Fox News is finalizing a settlement with Abby Grossberg, the former senior producer who filed two explosive lawsuits against the network in March, CNN reports.

“Pardoning Is Not Enough: We Must All Perform Seppuku for Donald Trump”

— National Review, June 14, 2023.

On Tuesday night, as Fox News aired footage of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the onscreen text read “wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested,” Insider reports.

The Atlantic looks into how Lara Logan went from a respected 60 Minutes correspondent to someone who trades in conspiracy theories that even far-right media disavow. 

Fox News sent a “cease and desist” letter to ex-host Tucker Carlson after he launched his new series on Twitter, Axios reports.

Semafor: “Later this month, the company will begin arbitration with former host Chris Cuomo over his $125 million claim he was wrongly fired in in 2021. The New York proceeding includes previously undisclosed text messages in which CNN’s parent company, then known as WarnerMedia, sought to use the news network’s close relationship with then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — Chris’ brother — to advance Warner’s commercial interests.”

Fortune: “With a two-thirds female leadership triad, CNN joins every other major U.S. news organization as being woman-led. The presidents of all major networks are women; Kimberly Godwin helms ABC News, Rashida Jones heads MSNBC, Rebecca Blumenstein leads NBC News, Wendy McMahon leads CBS News, and Suzanne Scott leads Fox News.”

“The tides have long been turning in the media. The New York Times’ CEO is a woman (Meredith Kopit Levien), and women are currently editors-in-chief at the Washington Post (Sally Buzbee), the Wall Street Journal (Emma Tucker), Reuters (Alessandra Galloni), McClatchy (Robyn Tomlin), and, yes, Fortune (Alyson Shontell).”

“Fox News Wednesday notified Tucker Carlson’s lawyers that the former prime-time anchor violated his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday,” Axios reports.

“A breach of contract claim sets Fox News up to explore potential legal action against Carlson, a move that would intensify the already thorny public battle between the two parties.”

Washington Post: “Carlson picked up some of his usual, conspiracy-theory-tinged topics and sympathies to the Russian government in the video, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘sweaty and rat-like’ and suggesting without evidence that Ukraine was responsible for the destruction of a major dam on its territory.”

“He also accused mainstream media outlets of suppressing a claim from a former military officer that the U.S. government has secret knowledge of alien spacecraft.”

Ben Smith: “Licht’s departure is on its surface a management debacle and a reminder that you can’t run a television network if you can’t keep your key asset, the high-profile on-air talent, happy. And now it’s a hard management crisis to fix, because WarnerDiscovery chief David Zaslav has been half-running the place all along, and I’m not sure who will want to half-run it with him now.”

“But it’s also a strategic debacle in which cheap talk about shifting CNN from anti-Trump confrontation toward an imagined center simply didn’t find an audience.”

“And the most obvious explanation is the one that people in media have been saying so long we’ve stopped believing it: Cable news is in a broad, secular decline. Even the best managers and executives won’t be able to reverse that.”

Chris Licht, the embattled head of CNN, will be leaving the company, Puck reports.

New York Times: “Mr. Licht’s short tenure at CNN was marked by one controversy after another, culminating in his exit on Wednesday. He got off to a bumpy start even before his first day when he shuttered the CNN+ streaming service at the request of its network’s new owners, who were concerned it was losing too much money. The cuts resulted in scores of layoffs, which didn’t endear staffers to the new boss.”

Oliver Darcy: “In the wake of The Atlantic‘s explosive story, I’ve spoken with dozens of staffers across the company. There are a wide range of emotions coursing through the halls of CNN. Some staffers are frustrated. Others are angry. Many are sad about the awful state of affairs that has taken hold of an organization they love.”

“There is one near-universal sentiment, however, that has been communicated to me: Licht has lost the room.”

From Tim Alberta’s very long, must-read piece on CNN in The Atlantic:

“At the least, even absent some official agreement, it seemed obvious that CNN leaders had been contorting the coverage to keep Trump happy—perhaps to prevent him from walking offstage. At one point during the pregame show, when the words sexual abuse appeared on the CNN chyron, one of Licht’s lieutenants phoned the control room. His instructions stunned everyone who overheard them: The chyron needed to come down immediately.”

Alberta adds via Twitter: “Cannot overstate how shocked/shaken CNN staffers were at the time of this episode, and how irate others have been as the story spread. Justifiably so. If this decision was indeed made to appease the Trump team—to keep him from quitting the town hall—it is an absolute scandal.”