Money from Google, Trolls from Russia, Context from Twitter, Tim Davie for BBC and No TV-listing for New Yorkers
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Let’s see what has happened last week in media.
Top 5 news of the week. Explained.
1. Professor of Economics calculated how much Facebook and Google should pay to news media in Australia
What’s up:
We’ve told already about the “fight for Australia“, where local government wants to force tech companies to pay for having news media in the search results and in the users’ feed. Both Google and Facebook don’t want to do it. This week Facebook said it will ban the ability to share news from Australian media. So the clash is gettin harder.
Glenn Withers, professor of Economics (Australian National University) calculated the amount of money that Google and Facebook should pay a year. He’s got $560 million.
“Four in five respondents rated public interest journalism as either somewhat or very important. Perhaps most relevantly, over half were willing to pay more in tax if necessary to support it.
When it comes to an actual dollar value, we used these surveys to calculate that a majority of Australians are willing to pay up to $560 million per year in additional tax to support more public interest journalism.”
Why it is important:
First of all — we have the numbers. And the clash now has something calculable. And we have something to talk about. Of course this is unofficial, and the real numbers will be different. But as Withers says, this is the top point.
Go deeper: News media in Australia strike back against Facebook
2. Russian troll farm used deepfakes to create journalists who create misinformation
What’s up:
According to Facebook, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) created the network of pages and profiles to promote misinformation from website PeaceData (it sounds funny in Russian, in English there is an equivalent of the word “peacedata“ — “fucking awesome“). The journalists and the editors of PeaceData were real freelancers but with AI-generated headshots. In total, Facebook identified just 13 accounts and two pages on the platform, while Twitter suspended only five accounts.
Why it is important:
The narrative of troll farm moved from alt-right to the left and they became more sophisticated in terms of technics. Reuters have found one of the freelancer. She told that she was promised to get $100–250 per article this summer. And she said — okay, why not earning some money during the corona crisis.
“So I feel like if I can be fooled by something like this, anyone could be. But it’s probably the most interesting thing that’s going to happen to me for a very long time.”
I think we are in trouble with such an approach.
Go deeper: How Russia’s Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election
3. Twitter is going to add context to Trending topics
What’s up:
The social media company is trying to downsize the number of fakes and thinks that if we have a context we’ll be able to see if the topic full of fakes and has a purpose to be promoted by some forces. Let’s see… Visually we’ll just see a little bit more about the particular trend:
Why it is important:
Maybe (!) it will help to downsize the number of people who spread fakes. But how about fun tweets with memes that often are trending too? What kind of context we are going to see?
4. GB News — is a news TV-channel that “will be opposed to BBC”
What’s up:
Ofcom awarded GB News a license to broadcast in Great Britain. The new channel will be Fox News-like — as the founders said. According to Guardian, it is devised in the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire by the former Fox News executive David Rhodes.
Andrew Cole, one of the co-founders of GB News said that “BBC possibly the most biased propaganda machine in the world“. “The people need and want this new perspective”, added Cole. And GB News will give British people the truth. Okay.
Why it is important:
Fox News is the most popular and the most populistic news channel in US. But for now there are no such media in Great Britain despite alt-right ideas are popular there. So people who voted for Brexit and who believe this ideas will have their voice. And frankly this scares a little (we know how does Fox News like to spread misinformation!).
5. Spotify is censoring the Joe Rogan’s podcast
What’s up:
Now we have Joe Rogan on Spotify. Exclusively on Spotify. But with some shows missing. For example, there are no shows with far-right commentator Stefan Molyneux, with comedian Tommy Chong, with Alex Jones of InfoWars and others.
Why it is important:
Big players will create their own rules. And there is a compromise: we give you the money, we’ll take your audience but we’ll tell what is right and what is wrong for them. So think twice when Spotify offers you to buy your show.
Something visual about media.
The Belorussian state-backed newspaper “Minskaya Pravda“ (Minsk Truth) tried to copy the idea of the Guardian Weekly cover. And put Alexander Lukashenko’s PR-queen Natalia Eismont on the front page. Have a look.
And read more about the journalists who were detained during doing their job on the street of Minsk. There you can find a report from the court where the justice is missing (in Russian).
The one who was in the spotlight this week
There is new (not brand new but still…) BBC director general. Tim Davie replaced Tony Hall and will face some crucial challenges.
(photo: Guardian)
One of the most important problem to be solved is the fee. Davie has to secure a new funding deal with the government, which is threatening to decriminalise non-payment of the license fee.
His first speech was dedicated to the challenges. Davie said the BBC had to focus on impartiality to address accusations of bias from politicians on both sides of the political divide.
Guardian made a profile of new BBC boss who once was director general for a short period of time (just before Tony Hall — from November 2012 till April 2013).
“Tim Davie, 53, has no hands-on experience of journalism or programme-making. He started at the BBC 15 years ago running the marketing department, and he has spent the last 10 years increasing revenues at the BBC’s commercial arm. He has been a loyal servant, recently turning down the chance to run the Premier League.”
Before the 1st of September 2020 (when he put the crown on his head) he run BBC Studios.
We’ve spotted it this week
Many Americans remain skeptical toward the news media, questioning not only the quality of journalists’ work but their intentions behind it. The newest research from Pew Research Center has some data about it.
- 53% saying news organizations do not care about the people they report on, 30 percentage points higher than the portion who says news outlets do care (23%).
- About half (48%) have at least a fair amount of confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, while 51% say they have little to no confidence that this is the case.
- 36% thinking media harm democracy.
- 48% saying journalists do their job on behalf of public interests.
- Another 48% thinking that media loose the influence on society.
- 57% want to build the close relationship with media
They did it right! Or wrong
After 81 years, last weekend was the end for daily television listings in the print editions of The New York Times.
“The majority of subscribers won’t even notice the removal of the TV grid and accompanying What’s on TV column after this weekend’s papers: For years now, The Times has published the grid only in its New York City edition, and not the national one. But like any cancellation, the change is sure to leave some readers disappointed.’“
But there is a silver lining. The vacant newspaper pages will be filled with pieces about arts.
We can use it
Do you feel like someone has way more prime-time slots on TV than others? You are not alone. Specialists from Stanford University created for us Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer.
This tool analyze the prime-time TV spots using face recognition algorithm. And now anyone can query “the amount of time people appear and the amount of time words are heard in cable TV news.”
In a couple of words
- Facebook is testing new feature “News Subscription Account Linking”. Users who linked their accounts made an average of 111% more article clicks compared to those who weren’t part of the test group. Also publishers’ Facebook followers jumped from 34% to more than 97% among subscribers who had linked their accounts.
- Programmatic ad spend is now returning to its pre-pandemic levels. The number of advertisers running programmatic ads through the end of July is up 36% since January, and total programmatic spend between April and July is up 11% year-over-year.
- Advertisers like Fox News a lot. From May to July cable TV prime-time ad revenues rose 31.5% to $158.7 million versus the previous three-month period (February-April). Fox News had the best results, rising 44.3% to $79.7 million, while CNN gained 28.4% to $45.7 million and MSNBC was 11.8% higher to $33.3 million.
- Time 100 is outpacing its 2019 revenue by 37%, with the projection that it will double year over year. Time 100 Talks — a virtual event that has since expanded into a weekly show on Time.com, now it has averages 5 million views per episode.
- Do you remember SMS? Now we have news there! The New Paper is the text message-based daily digest, which aims to make fact-first news easy to consume. It is already profitable with over 7,000 paid subscribers and $400,000 in annualized recurring revenue. The company offers users a 7-day free trial, after which it charges $5 per month.
A glance on the big piece
Do you think that local journalism would be much stronger if news publishers hadn’t started giving stories away for free online 20 years ago?
David Higgerson has an answer for you:
“Had local journalism gone behind a paywall in the 2000s, there would be next to no local journalism still functioning in the UK now.
To conclude that publishers made a mistake by not launching paywalls in the early 2000s is to forget why many of those owners entered publishing in the first place: to make money.”
