The evidence is in this excellent book
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Monday, June 15, 2020
Apple News algorithms pick more celeb stories than human editors, study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/apple-news-algorithms-pick-more-celeb-stories-than-human-editors-says-study
Last month, Microsoft decided to replace all of the human editors who curate stories for the company’s MSN News service with algorithms that could do the same work.
Less than a week later, however, the robot editors had embroiled the company in a race row after illustrating a story about the Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall with a picture of her bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock, the only other mixed-race member of the group. The algorithms then attempted to post a story about their own error, forcing the few remaining human editors to intervene.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Prepare For The Death & Rebirth of Hollywood
https://medium.com/@RichardJanes/prepare-for-the-death-rebirth-of-hollywood-f3853aacbee0
Hit badly by COVID-19 with closed theme parks, cruise lines, and no live sporting events, we won’t see a cash purchase from Disney, but every shareholder of a failing movie exhibitor won’t pass up on the chance to see their certificates exchanged for notes that bear the mouse.
Disney already has over 200 retail stores in dying shopping malls across the country — just go to any business journal right now and look at how many retailers are reporting that they have stopped paying rent and they won’t be in a position to reopen many of their stores even once the all clear has been given. Shopping malls were already dying. This will be the final nail in the coffin for many of them.
Hit badly by COVID-19 with closed theme parks, cruise lines, and no live sporting events, we won’t see a cash purchase from Disney, but every shareholder of a failing movie exhibitor won’t pass up on the chance to see their certificates exchanged for notes that bear the mouse.
Disney already has over 200 retail stores in dying shopping malls across the country — just go to any business journal right now and look at how many retailers are reporting that they have stopped paying rent and they won’t be in a position to reopen many of their stores even once the all clear has been given. Shopping malls were already dying. This will be the final nail in the coffin for many of them.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
Extra terrestrial: how lockdown revived linear TV
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2020/may/04/extra-terrestrial-how-lockdown-revived-linear-tv
Michael Sheen as Chris Tarrant in Quiz, which became event television for ITV earlier this month. Photograph: Matt Frost/ITV
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Studios bypass cinemas with lucrative lockdown premieres
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/02/studios-bypass-cinemas-with-lucrative-streaming-premieres-the-end
Universal’s latest on-demand hit, kept out of theatres by Covid-19, has made more profit in three weeks than its predecessor did in five months on the big screen
The Screen on the Green in Islington, north London. Cinemas may be closed for some time. Photograph: Philip Sharkey/TGS Photo/Rex Shutterstock
Universal’s latest on-demand hit, kept out of theatres by Covid-19, has made more profit in three weeks than its predecessor did in five months on the big screen
Monday, April 27, 2020
Friday, April 24, 2020
Newspapers are enjoying a surge in popularity, but they're struggling to survive
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/newspapers-journalists-coronavirus-press-democracy
Thomas Jefferson’s famous preference for “newspapers without a government”, if the alternative is government without newspapers, may be stretching a point. It remains strange that so vital a pillar of democracy as an independent and diverse press should be at the mercy of a private market. Over the years, that pillar has been damaged by chicanery, bias, vulgarity and sensation. Yet for all that and in most democracies, the market has more or less delivered. In the digital age, that is no longer guaranteed.
Thomas Jefferson’s famous preference for “newspapers without a government”, if the alternative is government without newspapers, may be stretching a point. It remains strange that so vital a pillar of democracy as an independent and diverse press should be at the mercy of a private market. Over the years, that pillar has been damaged by chicanery, bias, vulgarity and sensation. Yet for all that and in most democracies, the market has more or less delivered. In the digital age, that is no longer guaranteed.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Russian newspaper staff rebel against editor accused of censorship
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/russian-newspaper-staff-rebel-against-editor-accused-of-censorship
On Wednesday, Ksenia Boletskaya, the newspaper’s media editor, wrote that Shmarov had banned the publication of polls by the independent pollster Levada because the Kremlin had opposed them, and that Shmarov had blocked reporters from criticising Putin’s plans to use constitutional amendments to “zero out” his presidential terms, potentially allowing him to hold power until 2036. “For failing to follow the bans, you’ll be fired,” Boletskaya wrote.
A number of independent outlets claim they have been censored by owners with pro-government views. In 2014, staff at the news website Lenta.ru complained of censorship and quit en masse after the site’s editor was dismissed.
In 2016, a newly installed manager of RBC, another business news site, which had written about controversial topics including Putin’s children, told reporters there were “solid double lines” that the reporters had to be careful not to cross. Asked what those were, the manager replied: “Unfortunately, nobody knows where the solid double line is.”
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