國際傳媒新聞：2018/11/02~2018/11/08
An Infowars editor has provided us with a dizzying example of video manipulation that’s created a “choose your own reality” crisis
“This video analysis by BuzzFeed News demonstrates what the GIF conversion process does to video. While it’s not technically ‘sped up’ by intent, it effectively is in practice. The video-to-GIF conversion removes frames from the source material by reducing the frame rate. The GIF-making tool GIF Brewery, for example, typically reduces source video to 10 frames per second. Raw, televised video typically has a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second.”
BUZZFEED NEWS / CHARLIE WARZEL / NOV 8
How fake news came to Winnipeg 100 years ago
Headline: “ARMISTICE IS SIGNED?” (No, it hadn’t been.)
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS / KEN GOLDSTEIN / NOV 8
White House suspends press pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta after his testy exchange with Trump
“I never thought that in this country I wouldn’t be able to cover the president of the United States just for asking a question.”
WASHINGTON POST / AMY B WANG AND PAUL FARHI / NOV 8
Vice Media plans to shrink its workforce by as much as 15 percent through a hiring freeze
“Revenue at the Brooklyn-based company is expected to be roughly flat this year, the people said, coming in between $600 and $650 million, on par with 2017. That number is more than $100 million below the projection Vice offered private-equity firm TPG in the summer of 2017. TPG’s investment gave Vice a $5.7 billion valuation, the highest of any new-media company.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL / KEACH HAGEY, BENJAMIN MULLIN, AND ALEXANDRA BRUELL / NOV 8
The networks dawdled on calling the House until Fox News went for it first
“ABC, CBS and NBC allotted a supersize block of time — three hours in prime time — to feed viewers’ appetite for political news. Usually, midterms only merit an hour of coverage on the Big Three broadcast stations, usually starting at 10 p.m. Cable news networks, whose ratings now regularly beat rival channels like ESPN, constructed glossy new sets for the occasion; Fox News, for instance, built a hub outside its studio on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES / MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM AND JOHN KOBLIN / NOV 7
After the Pittsburgh shooting, national and local outlets relied on each other
“Tow Center senior research fellow Priyanjana Bengani has been using news organizations’ social media feeds to research trends in local and national coverage. By cross-referencing a list of prominent national news sources with local news organizations reporting at the site of the shooting, Bengani is able to show which outlets cited one another over three days—Saturday, the day of the shooting, Sunday, and Monday—either to bolster or to criticize their reporting.”
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW / PRIYANJANA BENGANI / NOV 7
Mood boards and social media lockdown: How one newsroom is dealing with notification overload
“Alex Entwistle, assistant editor, BBC Radio 5 Live is dialling down the pressure in an innovative way. He has turned off social media messages during certain office hours, introduced meetings at the end of the working day and has encouraged his team to express their feelings through a musical ‘mood board’.”
JOURNALISM.CO.UK / JOHN CROWLEY / NOV 7
TicToc, Bloomberg’s Twitter news network, is creating 50 Twitter Moments (one for each state) related to the midterms
“Its Twitter Moments — which enables TicToc to stitch together multiple tweets into slideshow-like stories — will include real-time updates on election outcomes, a ‘what you need to know about the candidates’ segment, and verified tweets from the candidates themselves as well as from other politicians, Bloomberg reporters and thought leaders in the space. At the end of the night, TicToc will create one Master Moment that contains every state-level Moment so viewers can get the entire overview of the night.”
THE WRAP / MATT LOPEZ / NOV 6
6 types of misinformation to beware of on Election Day. (And what to do if you spot them.)
“Voters across Indiana who filed absentee ballots last month have been receiving text messages purporting to be from President Trump — and claiming their votes have not been registered. The texts included a link to a Republican National Committee website that asks users to enter their names, addresses and phone numbers and then provides information about their polling locations.”
NEW YORK TIMES / KEVIN ROOSE / NOV 6
The Guardian launches Guardian Voice Lab, with funding from Google
It “will explore ways to deliver quality journalism through engaging and unique audio experiences on a smart speaker device. The project is scheduled to run for six months with funding from Google.”
THE GUARDIAN / NOV 6
How newsletter publishers re-engage lapsed subscribers
“Lapsed subscribers pose a different kind of risk for publishers with paid newsletters. Substack, a newsletter service that powers paid newsletters including Bill Bishop’s Sinocism and Matt Taibbi’s The Foundation, will begin messaging subscribers two weeks before their year-long subscriptions are set to expire.”
DIGIDAY / MAX WILLENS / NOV 6
Facebook pulls the Trump campaign’s racist anti-immigration ad
“‘This ad violates Facebook’s advertising policy against sensational content so we are rejecting it. While the video is allowed to be posted on Facebook, it cannot receive paid distribution,’ Facebook said in a statement Monday afternoon…. According to data from Facebook’s ad archive, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. spent at least $20,000 and possibly as much as $80,000 on the ad buy.”
CNN BUSINESS / DONIE O’SULLIVAN / NOV 5
After CNN chose not to run Trump’s racist migrant ad, NBC aired it — and now changed its mind
“Fox News, which had been running the spot, also announced that it would pull it. ‘Upon further review, FOX News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,’ ad sales president Marianne Gambelli said Monday in a statement. “
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER / MARISA GUTHRIE / NOV 5
The Guardian has received donations from more than 1 million people but is “not a charity”
“In 2017/18 Guardian Media Group reported profit before tax of £53.2m, up from a loss of £25.1m the year before.”
PRESS GAZETTE / FREDDY MAYHEW / NOV 5
How are the fact-checkers doing in Trump’s “avalanche” of claims?
“There are 11 rallies planned between [October 30] and the Nov. 6 midterm elections, according to Trump’s campaign website. For fact-checkers, that’s a chilling and leisure-stealing prospect. As Dale notes, the rallies are Trump’s ‘most dishonest venue.’”
WASHINGTON POST / ERIK WEMPLE / NOV 5
Newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall
“Younger newsroom employees show greater racial, ethnic and gender diversity than their older colleagues, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data… The racial, ethnic and gender differences by age are notable because the bulk of newsroom employees are in the younger age groups. About seven-in-ten newsroom employees are younger than 50: 28% are ages 18 to 29 and 42% are ages 30 to 49. Only about three-in-ten newsroom employees are 50 and older.”
PEW RESEARCH CENTER / ELIZABETH GRIECO / NOV 2
Lachlan Murdoch says he has no plans to change Fox News
“I’ve run newspapers since I was 21, 22 years old, and as a standard practice … I don’t tell journalists what to say or what to write. That’s not my role.”
NBC NEWS / CLAIRE ATKINSON / NOV 2
Facebook expands the breaking news label to Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and the UK
“Over the last several months we ran a test that allowed more than 100 news publishers from North America, Latin America, Europe, India and Australia to identify and label stories as ‘breaking news’ on Facebook. We found that people engaged more actively with stories marked as breaking news, showing us that this product helps people find news that’s important to them.”
FACEBOOK / JOEY RHYU / NOV 2
“A new level of audacity for impunity and journalist murders”
“To the disgruntlement of a growing number of professional politicians, populist blowhards and indignant establishment figures, the noisy, dogged and determined press continues to poke its nose into unwelcome places. But the costs of doing so are rising; the women and men on the front lines of public interest journalism have never been so vulnerable, and states never so reluctant to stand by them.”
WAN-IFRA / ANDREW HESLOP / NOV 2
