There are three “all-time difficult gigs”, said Jonathan Maitland in The Spectator: prime minister, England football manager, and director-general of the BBC – a job that may just be “The Most Impossible In The World”. And unlike the other two, there are no “potential big wins”, only “potential catastrophes”.

Now we know the next person to be handed the poisoned chalice: Matt Brittin. The former president of Google in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as a former Great Britain rowing bronze medallist, is set to take the battered reins following Tim Davie’s resignation. Will Brittin’s reign “end with a similar catastrophe?”

‘Baffling to the point of idiocy’

Just what the BBC doesn’t need, another leftie, said Robin Aitken in The Telegraph. Brittin, 57, was appointed non-executive director of The Guardian Media Group last year. Twenty years ago, he was director of strategy and digital at The Mirror. You don’t end up in senior positions at Britain’s leftist publications without sharing “left-wing sympathies yourself”. Given that government-commissioned research by Ipsos found last year that 52% of people don’t trust the BBC to be impartial, and most of those will be “right-of-centre voters”, that should’ve “counted heavily against him”.

The appointment is “baffling to the point of idiocy”, said Jawad Iqbal in The Times. The BBC is “besieged” by “seemingly endless rows” about impartiality and bias, not to mention Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar lawsuit and its “recent howler”, broadcasting the N-word during coverage of the Baftas. The “root cause” of every crisis is its journalism and programming – things Brittin “knows diddly squat about”.

Yet the board seems to think the answer to this “calamitous” run is to give control to a “tech bro” who, just like Davie, has “no relevant broadcasting experience”. The BBC needs someone who can “reconnect it to its core values”, and argue its case for continued public funding, yet Brittin is a “product of the morality-free, algorithm-obsessed world of the tech giants”. “What could possibly go wrong, apart from everything?”

Inspirational team leader who can 'manage complexity'

But people within Google have “only good things to say about Brittin”, said the BBC’s culture and media editor Katie Razzall. They say he’s an “inspirational leader and a great team player”, who commands loyalty. They had “no concerns” about his lack of editorial or broadcasting experience.

And in fairness, Brittin always seems “positive and cheerful” – certainly “less arrogant” than the stereotypical tech bro, said Politico’s executive editor Anne McElvoy in The Independent. That might be one reason he impressed the BBC’s board, “browbeaten after an annus horribilis”. He is an “experienced team leader who can manage complexity”, and as a former champion rower, “naturally competitive and steely”. But the challenges – tying down the terms of the Royal Charter, working with streaming platforms like YouTube without “ending up trapped under the wheels of big tech interests” – aren’t abating. Brittin won the job from a “depleted field” from which “many industry players absented themselves”. As one leading broadcast figure put it: “the pay is not that good for the blood pressure damage.”

But these are also “seismic times for global media”, said Lionel Barber in the Financial Times. With Larry and David Ellison seizing control of CBS News, CNN and a slice of TikTok in the US, while tech firms spend billions on data centres, a “new age of disruption is upon us”. Brittin’s appointment “suggests the penny has dropped” in the UK. He understands how technology has “transformed media consumption”. Squabbles over the TV licence fee or the BBC’s perceived elitism “miss the bigger picture”. Russia, China and Maga ideologues are “spreading disinformation to undermine confidence in British institutions and democracy”. Yet the BBC, the world’s biggest and most recognised public service broadcaster, has suffered a 40% cut in real terms in its budget since 2010. Its governance needs a “radical overhaul”. Muddling through is “no longer an option”.

The Trump administration has identified a new enemy in its war on Iran, said Caitlin Vogus in The Guardian: the American media. Frustrated that outlets are daring to inform the public about U.S. casualties, the conflict’s economic fallout, and the administration’s “lack of planning or strategy,” President Trump and his allies are pressuring news organizations to provide favorable coverage—or else. Trump has mused online about “charges for TREASON” for journalists and “lowlife ‘papers’” that “perpetuate LIES.” Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters that air what he deems “hoaxes and news distortions.” And Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth has used Pentagon briefings to assail outlets for being insufficiently patriotic, saying “the sooner” CNN is taken over by Trump-friendly billionaire and Paramount owner David Ellison, “the better.” It seems that, rather than a free press, the Trump administration wants a media that “operates more like that in, well, Iran,” with “obedient, state-run broadcasters that run propaganda praising a supreme leader and his wars.”

“Carr’s threats ring hollow,” said Brian Stelter in CNN.com. The FCC hasn’t yanked a broadcaster’s license in decades, and any revocation attempt would spark an ugly, years-long litigation battle “with many opportunities for stations to beat back the Trump administration’s pressure.” Broadcasters would be favored to win any case, by arguing their free speech rights are threatened by “Trump’s retributive streak” and by noting that reporting the truth of the war is in the public’s interest. Still, “station owners have to be willing to defend themselves. And that’s not always a given.” Carr knows that some outlets will change their coverage rather than “go through the arduous work of defending themselves,” said Tom Jones in Poynter.org. And he knows that broadcasters are uniquely vulnerable to pressure when they have a merger requiring FCC approval—like station owners Nexstar and Sinclair, which temporarily pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show last year after Carr complained about the comedian.

This ongoing crusade against the free press is deeply un-American, but also highly revealing, said Steve Benen in MS.now. When a war is going well, administrations typically don’t “whine incessantly about media coverage” and threaten news organizations. If Trump and his team genuinely felt confident about achieving their objectives in Iran, they wouldn’t be making the “kind of hysterical press complaints we’re seeing now.” They can shoot the messenger, but that won’t change the fact that their unpopular war in Iran is not going to plan.

Paramount Skydance appears to have won the bidding war to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery. If the $110.9 billion deal goes through, it will place a vast media kingdom in the hands of Paramount CEO and staunch Trump administration supporter David Ellison, with his father, billionaire Larry Ellison, also likely to play a role. This includes nearly unprecedented access to a variety of news organizations and Hollywood tentpoles.

CBS News

CBS is already under the auspices of Paramount as the company’s flagship network. Under Ellison’s tenure, the Tiffany Network has undergone major changes; Paramount’s prior owners controversially announced the cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” with some, including Colbert, alleging this came at the behest of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. After Ellison purchased Paramount, he “subsequently made additional pledges to the FCC’s Carr to win support,” said NPR.

Ellison also “promised the cessation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout Paramount and the addition of an ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias,” said NPR. Under Ellison, Paramount named Bari Weiss, the founder of the right-leaning site The Free Press, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss “contended CBS and much of the rest of the media has been too reflexively hostile to conservatives and the president, and she’s sought to revamp the newsroom.”

CNN

A Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would give the Ellisons command of another major news network: CNN. Following the revamping of CBS by Bari Weiss, the “concern is that similar changes could be in store for CNN,” said the Los Angeles Times, with Weiss potentially playing a major role at that network too. CNN, even more so than CBS, has been in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs, and he has “personally called for the ouster of hosts at the network who have questioned his policies.”

Employees at CNN should not “jump to conclusions about the future,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson said in a memo in an attempt to calm the waters. Ellison has also said CNN will remain editorially independent. Still, reporters have “expressed a combination of fear and concern,” seven current CNN employees said to NBC News. The mood inside CNN is “shaken” and “depressing,” the employees added, as “no one wants to work for the Ellisons. And if Bari is going to be running CNN, expect people to leave.”

HBO Max/Paramount+

The merger would give the Ellisons control of two major streaming services, HBO Max and Paramount+. These platforms will be “combined into one streaming service if regulators approve” the deal, said CNBC, citing a conference call from Ellison. This would create a streaming behemoth unlike any in Hollywood today, as the “service would have about 200 million subscribers given existing totals.”

No details have yet been given on any potential price increases for the merged streamer, but HBO is “likely to be a sub-brand within the larger service,” said CNBC, though Ellison has said he doesn’t want to disrupt HBO’s programming. The “streaming environment has already become more consolidated in recent years,” said The Washington Post, most notably in the form of Hulu and Disney+. Disney “offers streaming bundles to customers who want to subscribe to both and another with ESPN+.”

Warner Bros. Studios

Besides CNN, Warner Bros. Studios is likely the gem the Ellisons are going after the most, as Warner Bros. owns the “second-biggest trove of movie properties after Disney,” said The New York Times. This includes major Hollywood franchises like “The Lord of the Rings,” “Batman” and “Harry Potter,” with HBO Max currently developing the latter into a television series.

While most think of Warner Bros. as a film studio, the combination with Paramount could “cause a major reset of the TV studio business,” said The Hollywood Reporter. The two studios have “more than 100 series currently airing or about to premiere and another 25 to 30 more either greenlit for future dates or in development.” The two studios’ “output touches almost every part of the TV landscape,” and this could remain true for the foreseeable future if the deal closes.

Paramount Pictures

With the Ellisons’ current Paramount projects looking to get absorbed into Warner Bros. Studios, questions have swirled about theatrical releases, especially among movie fans. The combined company has “no intention to pull back on production. We obviously intend to make 30 movies a year, basically 15 films from Paramount, 15 films from Warner Bros,” Ellison told reporters.

Given this intention, the major question is “how do you pull off a major studio release schedule of 30 titles considering the most that have unspooled recently by a major studio was Universal’s 20 titles last year (a total that included Focus Features),” said Deadline. Some in the movie industry don’t think it’s possible, and “‘there aren’t 30 dates on the calendar’ is a common criticism heard among many studio sources.”

DC Studios

Within Warner Bros., there is one entity that is being watched closely amid merger talks: DC Studios. While “Superman” director James Gunn is currently at the studio’s helm with plans for an extended DC universe, a merger “may result in changes to whatever plans DC Studios has for its superhero franchises,” said Forbes. This could include potential changes to the upcoming “Superman” sequel, as well as plans for characters like Batman.

If Ellison inks the deal, he will “obtain a newly minted DC superhero cinematic universe that’s already flying high at the box office and enjoying immense critical and mainstream audience approval,” said Forbes. But when it comes to Gunn, he could end up butting heads with Ellison; it is “no secret he’s not a fan of the current presidential regime, and he’s already been targeted by MAGA once,” said Comics Beat. Even so, keeping a “steady supply of hit DC superhero movies would seem to be a desired outcome no matter who buys the studio.”

Cable networks

A unified Paramount-Warner Bros. would also open up the floodgates to a wide variety of cable offerings. While cable has largely ceded way to streaming in recent years, the Ellisons are “betting they can wring some life out of” these networks, said the Times. Paramount currently owns major channels like MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET. A purchase of Warner Bros. would add HGTV, the Food Network, Discovery, TLC, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, TBS and TNT to its list.

But this consolidation is providing “another source of fear that more massive job losses are on the horizon for a division that has already faced steep cuts in recent years,” said Variety. Most of Paramount’s current cable channels “run with skeleton staffs.” As of now, Ellison has said he does not plan to sell any cable channels if a deal goes through.

What happened

Longevity influencer Dr. Peter Attia said Monday he has stepped down from his new position as a CBS News contributor, weeks after his name appeared more than 1,700 times in Jeffrey Epstein emails released by the Justice Department. CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss announced Attia’s hire last month as part of her slate of new contributors.

Who said what

Attia apologized earlier this month for his “embarrassing, tasteless and indefensible” emails with Epstein between 2015 and 2018, after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting sex with a minor but before his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. Attia said he was not involved in any of Epstein’s criminal activity or “sexual abuse or exploitation.” A spokesperson said Monday that Attia “stepped back to ensure his involvement didn’t become a distraction” for the network while his contributor role “had not yet meaningfully begun.”

The controversy is the “latest setback” for CBS News since Weiss took over last year, The New York Times said. After the Epstein emails were released, the network “went silent on the matter, with representatives not responding to multiple requests for comment” on Attia’s status. He “had been expected to remain a contributor,” given that Weiss is a prominent “critic of so-called ‘cancel culture,’” The Hollywood Reporter said.

What next?

Several other companies “said they had parted ways with Attia” in recent weeks, including supplement company AG1, Virta Health and protein-bar maker David, The Wall Street Journal said. His popular weekly show “hasn’t released a new podcast episode since late last month.”

What happened

CBS Tuesday disputed “Late Night” host Stephen Colbert’s on-air assertion Monday night that network lawyers had “in no uncertain terms” told him not to air an interview with James Talarico, a Democratic Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate, because of threats from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. CBS said “The Late Show” was “not prohibited” from airing the interview but “was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule.” Colbert pushed back on that “crap” statement. “They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS’s lawyers,” he said.

Who said what

The FCC’s equal-time rule requires radio and broadcast television stations that give airtime to one candidate to “offer comparable time to other candidates competing in the given contest,” The Associated Press said. But it has several exemptions, including for “bona fide” news programming. “Media companies have long taken it as a given that late-night shows qualified for the same exemption,” The New York Times said.

But Carr has “remade” the FCC into a “speech enforcer tackling perceived liberal bias in the media industry,” threatening to “take action against broadcasters that do not follow rarely enforced FCC rules,” The Washington Post said. After Carr issued new “guidance” last month that late-night and daytime talk shows should not count on the “bona fide” exemption, the FCC opened an equal-time investigation of ABC’s “The View” over another Talarico interview.

Carr’s guidance “applies only to television and not radio, which is home to many right-leaning talk shows,” The Wall Street Journal said. The equal-time rule also doesn’t apply to cable TV or streaming, so “The Late Show” posted Colbert’s Talarico interview online. “I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico said in the video. Republicans “ran against cancel culture, and now they are trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read, and this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture. The kind that comes from the top.”

What next?

Talarico has “used the controversy to garner attention for his Senate candidacy,” CNN said. His Colbert interview was viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube Tuesday, the first day of early voting in his March 3 primary fight against Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

The digital age has killed off thousands of American newspapers, said Ashley Parker in The Atlantic. But at The Washington Post, “we’re witnessing a murder.” This month, at the direction of its owner, Jeff Bezos, Post executive editor Matt Murray laid off—by Zoom—nearly half of the paper’s editorial staff, more than 350 reporters, including correspondents reporting from the front line in Ukraine and most of those covering the D.C. region. Explaining the cuts, Murray cited the paper’s financial losses—$100 million in 2024 alone—which he blamed in part on the Post’s liberal slant. “We too often write from one perspective,” he said, “for one slice of the audience.” But these excuses make no sense, said Margaret Sullivan in The Guardian. The New York Times is “profitable and expanding,” with a political stance arguably to the left of the Post’s. And for Bezos, who is worth close to $250 billion and just casually splashed $75 million on a Melania Trump documentary that’s “leaving seats empty in a theater near you,” the Post’s losses are “essentially pocket change.” Was this really a business decision? Or did the Amazon founder gut the paper that brought down President Nixon to “curry favor” with President Trump?

Bezos is wildly rich, it’s true, said Ben Domenech in the New York Post. He could keep “lighting cash on fire” indefinitely if he wanted to keep the Post afloat and unchanged. But why would he want that? Any newspaper that loses $100 million a year is clearly not giving people “the stories they want or need to read.” For the Post to survive long-term, radical change is in order, including a return to the political center and away from “race-focused, pro-transgender, anti-Trump coverage.” The Post’s 2017 reinvention as a “Democracy Dies in Darkness organ of Resistance” was good for a short-term spike in subscribers, said National Review in an editorial, but it didn’t last. The notion that Bezos is somehow “obligated” to keep funding that failed experiment “reeks of entitlement.”

But Bezos is largely to blame for the paper’s woes, said Alex Kirshner in Slate. His 2024 decision to kill a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris “drove away 250,000 paying subscribers,” about 10% of the digital subscriber base, and the “bleeding” continued when he decreed that the opinion section would stop fretting about authoritarianism and focus instead on “personal liberties and free markets.” Nobody wanted a center-right Post, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch: not the paper’s liberal subscribers, nor the conservatives Bezos hoped to woo, who prefer the “insane slopaganda” of cable news and social media. At this point, he should admit defeat and “just sell the paper.” There must be some “civic-minded billionaire” out there willing to save one of the world’s great newspapers.

It’s “not going to happen,” said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. In Trump’s authoritarian America, what billionaire wants to invite a flood of frivolous 10-figure lawsuits, even criminal prosecutions, by funding journalism that holds the president accountable? And why would Bezos sell? asked Eoin Higgins in The Intercept. If he now does to the Post what billionaires Larry and David Ellison have done to CBS News—gutting the newsroom and imparting a “rightward,” Trump-friendly spin to its coverage—he’ll be lavishly rewarded in merger approvals and new government contracts for his many ventures. Maybe there is some benevolent billionaire willing to swoop in and save the Post, but if Bezos has taught us anything, it’s that “billionaires are only benevolent until they’re not.”

The Washington Post was, until recently, among the US’s most venerable papers, said Jill Abramson in The Boston Globe. Its reporting on the Watergate scandal under the legendary editor Ben Bradlee made history; the reporters responsible, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, have inspired generations of journalists since; the paper’s writers and photographers were admired the world over.

‘Mortal wound’

Alas, the Post today is a shadow of that former self, and last week it announced that it is laying off more than 300 people – a third of its already pared-back staff. Its ranks of local and international reporters are being decimated, and the sports and books sections are to close. This is not a cut. It is “a mortal wound”. And nor should it be mistaken for a “media story”, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. These layoffs will leave “the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth” without a major newspaper – and “during the Trump administration no less”.

“It sucks when your job gets blown up,” said Scott McKay in The American Spectator. But let’s face it: the Post’s glory days are long over. The paper lost $77 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024. Last year its weekday print circulation fell below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years, said John R. Puri in National Review. The companies that own The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, are making record profits. You can’t blame Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million, for rationalising the business. If all those fulminating about these cuts had actually read the output of the Post’s now-unemployed journalists, they’d still have their jobs.

Accelerated decline

Bezos isn’t bothered about the Post’s operating losses, said Alex Kirshner on Slate. With a net worth of $240 billion, he could sustain them for “hundreds of lifetimes”. When he bought the paper, he made much of the fact that he wasn’t driven purely by a profit motive. But latterly, he seems to have used his ownership of the Post to appease Donald Trump and so boost the fortunes of his other interests, such as Amazon and Blue Origin.

He stepped in to stop the paper endorsing Kamala Harris for president – a decision that cost it 250,000 subscribers. He shifted the paper’s opinion section to be more pro-Trump; he made not a squeak of protest when the FBI recently raided the home of a Post reporter, seizing her devices. Bezos hasn’t just presided over the Post’s decline; he’s deliberately accelerated it, for the sake of “his own bottom line”.

Many in the media industry feared layoffs when reports emerged that The Washington Post would restructure its newsroom. After several hundred journalists lost their jobs at the newspaper and entire news desks were shuttered yesterday, the reality was more sweeping than anticipated, drawing widespread scrutiny in what one news outlet called a “murder.” There was additional blowback given the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, is one of the world’s wealthiest people.

‘Scaling back’ coverage

The Post has laid off “about 30% of all its employees,” including people “on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom,” said The New York Times. This decision was made because the company had “lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs,” said Matt Murray, the executive editor of the Post, on a call with newsroom employees.

The historic publication is also restructuring its entire newsroom output. The newspaper is “scaling back foreign coverage and shutting down some sections of the paper,” said CBS News. Most notable was the Post’s sports desk, which will be axed entirely, though it will keep “some sports reporters who will write feature stories,” said NPR. This came as a shock since the Post has long been considered the gold standard for sports reporting, an “apex of the business” that “remained one of the pinnacles of the American sportswriter’s dream until recently,” said sports media outlet Awful Announcing.

In addition to sports and international coverage cuts, the paper’s “metro section will shrink, and the books section will close, as will the ‘Post Reports’ daily news podcast,” said the Times. Despite this, Murray maintained an optimistic tone. The restructuring will “place The Washington Post on a stronger footing” and position the paper for a “rapidly changing era of new technologies and evolving user habits,” he said in a letter to the newsroom obtained by CBS.

‘Among the darkest days’

Bezos and publisher Will Lewis are “embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special,” said The Atlantic in an article titled “The Murder of The Washington Post.” This is not the first time Bezos and Lewis have made cuts at the paper, and if they “continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.”

Former Post employees also condemned the culling. “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” said Marty Baron, the Post’s former editor, in a statement. The Post’s “ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”

The Post “faces serious business challenges,” said Axios, especially regarding its shrinking subscriber base. The “challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top,” said Baron, and the Post’s readers were “driven away by the hundreds of thousands.”

Scott Adams spoke for frustrated cubicle dwellers across the U.S. In his wry syndicated comic strip, Dilbert, the cartoonist lampooned corporate America’s inane, jargon-spewing middle managers in the 1990s and 2000s. Millions of readers saw themselves in the eponymous, potato-shaped protagonist, a powerless engineer who had to suffer through pointless meetings and moronic dictates from incompetent bosses. Dilbert was joined by a cast of recognizable office stereotypes, including the underappreciated Alice, cynical Wally, and the ineffective Pointy-Haired Boss. The strip’s success enabled Adams to write several semiserious business books, including 1996’s The Dilbert Principle, which theorized that companies promoted their most ineffective workers to management because “they’re the ones you don’t want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for
not doing their assignments.”

Scott Raymond Adams was born in Windham, N.Y., and as a “Peanuts fan” dreamed of becoming a cartoonist since the age of 5, said The New York Times. But he opted for a more pragmatic path: economics and MBA degrees and corporate gigs at Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell in San Francisco. Dilbert emerged from Adams’ habit of sketching cartoons of his co-workers and bosses during “dull meetings” and faxing them to colleagues. In 1989, he secured a deal to distribute his work to 35 newspapers, but he stuck with his day job for several years, drawing the comic before commuting to the office. He finally escaped his cubicle in 1995, as Dilbert took off.

By the 2000s, Dilbert was ubiquitous, running in 2,000 papers internationally and spawning “books and other merchandise, desktop computer games, and an animated TV show,” said Rolling Stone. Adams, however, became increasingly controversial: He was “known for baiting progressives and proponents of political correctness,” said the San Francisco Chronicle, and “mocked inclusion and hiring quotas,” which he blamed for not getting promoted in his pre-Dilbert days. As he moved further right, he questioned the death toll of the Holocaust, became a Donald Trump supporter, made disparaging remarks about women, and called Black people “a hate group.” In 2023, the vast majority of papers carrying Dilbert dropped the strip. But his work left a mark. “My comics weren’t funny in the ha-ha sense,” Adams wrote. “But they reminded people of their jobs, and that seemed to be enough.”

Stars and Stripes is the official newspaper of the U.S. Department of Defense, but it has always made independent editorial decisions — until now. The Defense Department has announced that Stars and Stripes will now be under the control of the Pentagon, which plans to move the newspaper’s coverage away from what it calls “woke distractions.” Many critics say this is just the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on press freedoms.

What did the commentators say?

The Defense Department will be “returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement on X. The Pentagon is going to “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Stars and Stripes will now highlight “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability.” It will also no longer publish newswire reports from outlets like The Associated Press, according to Parnell.

This marks a significant shift for Stars and Stripes, which was first published during the Civil War and has been “editorially independent from Defense Department officials since a congressional mandate in the 1990s,” said The Hill. But the change “follows the Trump administration’s restrictions on Pentagon journalists,” most of whom have chosen to “give up working from the building rather than sign on to new, constricting rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.” The news also comes after The Washington Post reported that applicants to Stars and Stripes are “being asked how they would support the president’s policy priorities.”

The government additionally published a Federal Register rule that “struck previous policy regarding Stars and Stripes’ business operations, including a requirement for a civilian editor and an independent ombudsman,” said The Guardian. All of these updates have drawn “immediate censure from press freedom groups as the latest attempt by the Pentagon to stifle criticism and control what is written about it.”

American troops “deserve credible, trustworthy news guaranteed by the First Amendment, a cornerstone of the Constitution they defend,” said Tim Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director for PEN America, in a statement. The Pentagon’s action “tramples both the First Amendment and the congressional mandate that the publication remain editorially independent.” Stars and Stripes itself raised similar concerns. The “people who risk their lives in defense of the Constitution have earned the right to the press freedoms of the First Amendment,” said Stars and Stripes Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin in an article for the newspaper.

What next?

Amid the takeover, there is “growing unease among the staff about the Pentagon's plans for the paper and its original reporting,” said Business Insider. Many staffers are also reportedly worried about their jobs after it was “reported the Pentagon plans to staff Stars and Stripes with more active-duty personnel.” This could potentially mean “layoffs for civilian reporters and fewer stories that spotlight problems.”

If the Department of Defense “begins to dictate what the coverage should be, what the ‘news’ should be in Stars and Stripes,” the newspaper “loses its credibility and harms its mission to provide fair and impartial news to the military community,” said Stars and Stripes Ombudsman Jacqueline Smith to Business Insider. Smith also published an op-ed calling for more independent assistance for the newspaper.

Ofcom has launched an investigation into X over reports that the social media platform’s AI chatbot Grok is generating deepfake nudes of people without their consent, as well as sexualised images of children.

Under pressure to act, X last week limited access to Grok’s image generation tool to paid subscribers. This was criticised by Downing Street as merely turning “the creation of unlawful images into a premium service” but, said No. 10, it proved X could move quickly to address the problem if it wanted to.

Now the UK media regulator could follow Malaysia and Indonesia in blocking Grok, or go one step further and recommend suspending access to X altogether.

How serious is the problem?

“The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026,” said The Guardian. “Relatively tame requests by X users to alter photographs to show women in bikinis” quickly turned into “increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible”.

Analysis by the newspaper found that, by the end of the first week of January, as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour. Some requests “asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies”.

“None of this should come as a surprise,” said Clare McGlynn in The New Statesman. Elon Musk’s AI chatbot was “designed to have fewer ‘guardrails’ than its competitors”.

While images of naked, non-consenting women had been “circulating with impunity on the platform for weeks”, the final straw, and what appears to have finally prompted Ofcom to act, was when Grok generated images of the Princess of Wales in a bikini.

What action could Ofcom take?

Ofcom will investigate whether X is in breach of the Online Safety Act, specifically whether non-consensual undressed images of people “may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography” and if sexualised images of children “may amount to child sexual abuse material”.

Under the law, the regulator can fine businesses up to £18 million, or 10% of their global revenue, as well as take criminal action. It can order payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, “effectively banning them, though this would require agreement from the courts”, said The Independent.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said the regulator would have her “full support” to block access to X in the UK if the platform was found to be in breach of the law and refused to comply.

“Other parties want Ofcom to move faster, or get out of the way,” said Politico. The Liberal Democrats have urged the National Crime Agency “to take charge”, arguing that “the situation went well beyond Ofcom’s remit as communications watchdog”. It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation warned that criminals have used Grok to create child sexual abuse imagery.

“We cannot wait for a far off verdict,” the party’s tech spokesperson Victoria Collins said, calling for Ofcom to immediately block X from operating in the UK while a full investigation takes place.

What has the reaction been?

Billionaire X owner Elon Musk said the UK government “wants any excuse for censorship”. A ban would also “cause uproar in Washington”, said The Telegraph. The White House has “become increasingly hawkish towards attempts to censor American companies and its citizens”.

There is a “chance” that blocking X in the UK could lead to the US sanctioning British officials, starting with those working at Ofcom, said The New Statesman’s US correspondent Freddie Hayward. “These threats are sold to Americans as free speech protections, but they are also designed to force the British government to change course.” Depending on the outcome of the Ofcom investigation, Keir Starmer “might have to accept that protecting free speech has become an issue of national security”.

‘One factor will decide how much you enjoy TV next year’

Alan Sepinwall at The New York Times

If Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros. goes through, Netflix and HBO “will become one,” says Alan Sepinwall. This “consolidation would mean that the streaming wars,” a “competition that resulted in innovative and exciting programming,” are over. Will TV “return” to being “low on risk, low on cost and concerned only with producing programming that brings in the biggest possible audience”? Netflix “can’t take its corporate victory as validation of its programming philosophy. It must not just absorb HBO; it must embrace the HBO approach.”

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‘Yes, women’s rights are under threat around the world. But we have found hope in unlikely places.’

Rahila Gupta at The Guardian

You might think that “women’s rights are being concreted over,” says Rahila Gupta. But “I found women’s resistance erupting like green shoots through the cracks.” Perhaps the “most inspirational advance in women’s rights” is “taking place in the unlikeliest of places”: the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (popularly known as Rojava). Here, women “have pinned their colors to secularism in recognition of the pernicious impact of religion” on their “freedoms.”

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‘Here is to a quarter century of US military havoc’

Belen Fernandez at Al Jazeera

It is “hard to understate the extent to which global events have been shaped by the military excesses of the United States” over the last 25 years, says Belen Fernandez. George W. Bush launched the “‘global war on terror,’” Barack Obama dropped “26,172 bombs on seven different countries” in his final year in office and Joe Biden expanded Washington’s “support for Israeli massacres of Palestinians.” Now, Trump’s “newly rebranded Department of War goes about blowing up boats willy-nilly off the coast of Venezuela.”

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‘We don’t need New Year’s resolutions. We need rest.’

Rachel Bearn at Time

“Conventional wisdom is that we should reinvent ourselves at the beginning of the new year,” says Rachel Bearn. But “January is not the time for reinvention,” it’s the time for “radical rest.” In winter, we should “follow nature” and “create our own version of hibernation,” preparing “slowly and quietly for the year to come.” When we “align ourselves with nature’s slower rhythm, we discover a gentler form of progress — the quiet kind that builds strength beneath the surface.”

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Life in the fast lane

A Chinese man who refused to sell his house to make way for a new motorway has ended up stranded in the middle of the four-lane bypass. Huang Ping, who lives in Jiangsu province with his young grandson, was offered £180,000 to vacate the property. He declined, apparently assuming a better offer would follow, but none did. “I do regret it a bit,” he admitted. “If I could turn back time, I would agree to the demolition conditions they offered. Now it feels like I lost a big bet.”

Speak of the devil

A couple from North Yorkshire defended their decision to name their son Lucifer. Jess Bell and Stefan Wake explained that they had settled on the name after enjoying the Netflix series “Lucifer”, about the fallen angel. “The name is lovely and it actually means ‘light bringer’, which is exactly what he has done for our lives,” Bell said. “We are just normal, loving parents and certainly have no interest in associating our son with the devil.”

Rule-bending bridge

Seven engineers working on an infrastructure project in Bhopal, India, were suspended after images of a road bridge with a near-right-angle turn went viral. The engineers said there had not been enough land for a more gradual turn, but an inquiry deemed the bridge, over a railway line, a safety risk, and ordered that major corrections be undertaken.

The pull of potholes

Residents of a village near Wrexham became so irate about the state of one of the local roads, they turned it into a pothole theme park. A sign at the entrance to the road in Pontfadog said that “Pothole Land” boasted “the deepest, longest, widest” potholes in Wales, and that visitors would have the chance to enjoy “two kilometres of award-winning potholes with very little actual road to spoil your fun”. The attraction was closed after the council began work to fill in some of the potholes.

Putting up a fight

A Malaysian man was reported to be offering his services as a “villain for hire” for men who wanted to come across as heroes – by fighting him off in front of their girlfriends. Shazali Sulaiman, 28, said he started his business after being told that his unkempt hair and biker clothes made him look like a gang member. “Are you tired of your partner thinking you are weak? For a reasonable fee, I can help you prove them wrong,” he promised on social media. Clients can decide the precise time and place for the confrontations, he said. “It is all just an act,” he added. “No one gets hurt. I am the only ‘loser’.”

Hard times

Bryan Johnson – the tech millionaire known for his strict anti-ageing regimen – claimed this year to have the “penis age” of a 22-year-old. The American entrepreneur told Mail Online that he’d used a sensor to measure his erections through the night, and the data had shown that his penile health was on a similar level to that of his 19-year-old son, whose erections he’d also assessed. “His duration is two minutes longer than mine,” he clarified on X. “Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright.”

Taken for a ride

A man who bought a £20,000 car to replace his stolen Honda Civic discovered that his new car was actually his old car. Ewan Valentine, 36, from Solihull, woke up in February to find that his Honda had gone. He later spotted the same model, with a lower mileage, on sale some 70 miles away, and went to pick it up. It was only when he was on his way home that he noticed some familiar-looking items – a tent peg and Mars bar wrappers – lying around in the vehicle, and found his parents’ address in the satnav. “I nearly crashed, to be honest,” he said.

Crushed by candy

A lorry driver from Barnsley had to spend six days in intensive care after eating 3kg of cola bottles in 72 hours. Nathan Rimmington, 33, ordered a bulk bag of the sweets after developing a sudden “hankering” for them – and found that he “couldn’t stop eating”. By the end of his binge, he was sweating profusely and was in so much pain that he couldn’t walk. In hospital he was treated for inflammation of the intestine – diagnosed as acute diverticulitis. “It was really stupid,” he admitted.

On-the-game name

A woman in the US who wanted to name her baby girl in honour of both of her grandparents decided to combine their names – Charlotte and Harvey – and thus ended up with a daughter called “Harlotte”. The 20-year-old mother is said to have got the birth registration documents finalised – and only then revealed her choice to her wider family. “You named the baby ‘whore’?” a horrified relation exclaimed – at which point the upset mother “started screaming”.

Puppy popularity

Tourists started to flock to a stretch of the Yangtze River in Hubei province, China, after a local man noticed that the cliff edge looked like the outline of a dog’s head. He called it “Puppy Mountain”, and posted a photo of it on social media that attracted 120,000 likes in 10 days. “It is so magical and cute,” said Guo Qingshan. “The puppy’s posture looks like he is drinking water, or looking at some fish.”

Inappropriate behaviour

A Dublin woman called for the city’s statue of Molly Malone to be raised onto a plinth, as so many people have stroked the fictional fishmonger’s ample bosom for luck that the bronze there has lost its patina. “People clamour around her, kiss her cheek, kiss her boobs, it’s all inappropriate,” Tilly Cripwell lamented. “I walk by the Oscar Wilde statue every day. You don’t see people rubbing his crotch for good luck.”

White fright

A cruise company issued an apology after footage circulated of several of its crew members dressed in what looked like Ku Klux Klan (KKK) costumes. P&O Cruises Australia explained that its staff were actually dressed as “upside-down snow cones” for a festive event on the trip, last December, and said that the individuals in question had “never heard” of the KKK. One passenger told the media that the event had generated a lot of excitement, but when the staff came trooping out in their all-white boiler suits and pointy hats, everyone went “very quiet”.

What happened

Paramount Skydance Monday launched a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, seeking to undo Netflix’s purchase of Warner’s studio and streaming businesses. Paramount said its $77.9 billion all-cash bid for the whole company, including CNN, offered better value to shareholders than the $72 billion purchase price agreed to by Netflix and Warner on Friday. It was Paramount chief David Ellison’s sixth bid for the company in 12 weeks.

Who said what

“We’re really here to finish what we started,” Ellison told CNBC Monday. His debt-heavy offer was backed by his father, billionaire Larry Ellison — a friend of President Donald Trump — and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, among other investors. “Presidents are not supposed to influence the regulators who review major corporate deals,” The New York Times said, but Trump is “placing himself directly in the middle” of the “biggest media deal of the decade.”

Trump said Sunday night he would “be involved” in approving any Warner sale, and Netflix’s increased share of the streaming industry “could be a problem.” Both proposed deals “present antitrust concerns in a traditional regulatory environment,” The Washington Post said, but “Trump’s evident interest in weighing in on the deal, and his familial involvement in the stakeholders, casts a more uncertain and possibly more political frame” on the jockeying.

Larry Ellison called Trump after the Netflix deal was announced “and told him the transaction would hurt competition,” The Wall Street Journal said Monday, citing White House sources, while David Ellison has assured administration officials “he’d make sweeping changes to CNN,” a “common target” of Trump’s ire. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who also reportedly met with Trump last week, said Monday that Paramount’s hostile bid “was entirely expected” and he was “super confident” his merger would go through.

What next?

Trump “will want Paramount and Netflix to compete for his approval of a deal,” the Journal said, citing a person close to the president. Trump told reporters Monday that “none of them are particularly great friends of mine,” and “I want to do what’s right.” Warner shareholders have until Jan. 8 to vote on Paramount’s tender offer.

BBC chair Samir Shah appeared in front of a Commons select committee yesterday to answer questions over the departures of director general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, as well as allegations of “institutional bias” at the corporation.

The committee chair Caroline Dinenage appeared less than satisfied with Shah’s answers, describing his comments as “wishy-washy”. Conservative MP Dinenage told the BBC that the committee was not “wildly enthused that the board is in safe hands. There are clearly some issues of governance – there is clearly some chaos at the heart of the BBC board.”

What did the commentators say?

If you were expecting a “gladiatorial showdown” at the Culture, Media and Sport committee hearing on Monday, “you'd have been left wondering where the swords were”, said Katie Razzall on the BBC. A “nervous” Shah soon relaxed when “he realised these MPs had not come equipped for mortal combat”.

Both Shah and Michael Prescott – the former journalist and editorial adviser to the BBC who wrote the damning internal memo on bias in its reporting that was leaked to The Telegraph – dismissed claims that the BBC was institutionally biased.

Robbie Gibb, the BBC board member and former communications chief for Tory prime minister Theresa May who himself has been accused of political interference, also played down rumours of a “politically motivated coup” as “ridiculous” and “complete nonsense”. “Whether that is enough to quell the critics is another matter”, said Razzall, and it “certainly didn't make riveting TV”.

Compared to the “seismic outrage” against the BBC in the last month, disappointingly, “there was nothing much to write home about” after the committee hearing, said former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in The Independent. This “gentle nudging” by MPs “would not have been out of place at a rural Quaker meeting house”, and took us no closer to understanding what the alleged problems at the BBC are.

Shah’s explanations “came tumbling out, but it was not entirely clear what they meant”, and any reasoning for the delays in responding to the Donald Trump “Panorama” video scandal “was not easy to follow”.

In short, “a force 10 typhoon had just ripped through a great national institution. But nobody could quite put their finger on why.”

What next?

On top of appointing a new director general and CEO of news, the BBC must contend with a possible legal battle with Donald Trump over the October 2024 “Panorama” episode that included a misleading edit of a speech he made prior to the 6 January riots in 2021. The US president has threatened to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion.

This is “a moment of peril” for the broadcaster, said former BBC chief creative officer Pat Younge in The Guardian. We must not ape the US, where “sycophantic media executives have caved in to politically motivated legal threats”. A strong BBC needs several guarantees: a permanent charter, a “proper funding settlement”, a governance board “appointed by an independent body” and a renewed commitment to ensuring content reflects “the lives of nations and regions throughout the country”.

The 15-day standoff between Disney and Google could change the media landscape forever, said Lukas I. Alpert in MarketWatch. The media giant struck a deal last week to finally get its television channels, including ABC, National Geographic, and ESPN, back on Google’s YouTube TV streaming service, where they had been blacked out since Halloween. Terms of the deal weren’t publicized, but Disney, which was losing $4 million a day in ad revenue, agreed to make its full lineup of sports available on YouTube TV, a substantial concession. The lengthy stalemate “represented a modern twist on an old kind” of media fight—and one that’s happening more often. “Disputes over carriage fees,” or what distributors have to pay TV companies for the rights to show their programming, are a holdover from the cable days. But “the prime battleground today” is streaming— and the streamers “appear far more willing to flex their muscle as their command of audiences continues to grow.” YouTube TV’s market share remains below traditional cable operators like Comcast, Charter, and DirecTV, “but it is fast catching up.” In the entertainment business, “with the eyeballs goes the power.”

Media companies like Disney have fought back against cord-cutting “by squeezing existing pay-TV customers for more money,” said James Faris in Business Insider. It has created “a vicious cycle where fewer people have a pay-TV subscription, except for die-hard fans of sports or cable news.” At some point, pay-TV customers will likely “balk at how high their monthly bills have gotten.” That gives the big streaming platforms an advantage that they can continue to press in future negotiations. This heavyweight battle suggests there will be more such fights “between those who make the content and those who control the pipes,” said Sujeet Indap in the Financial Times. Google, a $3.5 trillion behemoth, clearly isn’t afraid to stand firm on prices. This is the fourth carriage dispute that YouTube TV has been involved in this year alone.

Meanwhile, cord-cutters are being forced to shell out ever more for streaming services, said Melissa Korn in The Wall Street Journal. Since 2019, the monthly price of a Disney+ subscription has gone up 172%, while AppleTV+ has spiked 160% and Peacock 120%. This “streamflation” adds up, because the average U.S. household pays for about 4.5 streaming services. As prices have risen, so have the work-arounds. There are now “more options to switch to lower-cost ad-supported tiers,” if you’re willing to sit through commercials. And some of the streaming companies have started bundling their products again: You can buy a combo of Peacock and Apple TV, or one of ESPN and Fox. All the package deals could save you some money—or, just like in the old cable days, leave you paying for content you never watch.

“The magazine industry is in mourning,” said The New Statesman. Condé Nast announced earlier this month it would be folding Teen Vogue into its flagship Vogue magazine to “provide a more unified reader experience across titles”.

At first glance, this appears like just “another casualty of a fragile market”. But it’s a decision that also marks a significant “ideological turning point”. For the last nine years, Teen Vogue has paved the way for a “new approach to women’s media” that deliberately incorporates progressive politics into its editorial coverage, alongside fashion and lifestyle articles. “Now it has been essentially shut down.”

Fall from grace

Teen Vogue’s shift to the left can be traced back to shortly after the 2016 US presidential election, when it published an article that “set the internet ablaze”, said The Guardian. The piece was headlined “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America”.

From then on, the magazine intensified its political coverage, becoming “an unlikely hearth for progressive, even radical, feminism within the manicured offices of its publisher”. Now, almost a decade since undergoing this transformation, “Trump is once again in the White House, and Teen Vogue as it was once known is gone”.

Its closure comes at a time of deepening “turbulence for journalism, particularly of the progressive variety”. Many of the trailblazing feminist blogs “now lay dead or dying”, while youth-focused websites like Vice and Vox have “shed jobs at astonishing rates”. These outlets often shone a light on the marginalised groups who have “fallen under the glare of the Trump administration’s microscope”.

Enter the ‘womanosphere’

Over the same period, there has been an increase in the number of conservative women’s media outlets. The Conservateur, for example, launched in 2020 with articles “heralding Melania Trump’s style” alongside “essays on the virtues of marrying powerful men”, said The New Statesman. And Evie Magazine, which has amassed a quarter of a million Instagram followers, is “rife” with anti-contraception stories and “tips for becoming the perfect housewife”.

Across the pond, despite not feeling quite as “glossy and seductive” as the US titles, sites like The Conservative Woman are thriving, with its aim of challenging the “virtue-signalling, intolerant and self-interested elites”. Existing within the broader online “womanosphere”, these publications “frame regressive feminine ideals as a corrective to ‘wokeness’ and the ‘radical left’”.

The unravelling of Teen Vogue has been met with reactions “predictably split along political lines”, said The Free Press. On the right there has been much “celebration”, together with the “occasional cheeky suggestion” that Melania Trump, who Teen Vogue often mocked for her outfits, put the magazine on a “hit list”. The “other side” has expressed “outrage” at the decision to close Teen Vogue at exactly the time its staff claim it is most needed.

In reality, Teen Vogue was “being written by and for millennials”, convinced they were giving a “new, politically obsessed generation the content they craved”. But it turned out “conspicuous wokeness” was the “exclusive passion” of the publication’s “ageing millennial writers and readers”, while the teens it claimed to represent had “long been getting their news from TikTok”. That the magazine would “fade into oblivion at the same time as its millennial fan base slouched out of their 20s” is “not only unsurprising, it was inevitable”.

What happened

Paramount Skydance, Comcast and Netflix Thursday submitted rival bids for Warner Bros. Discovery, seeking all or part of the media giant’s studio, streaming and cable network assets, several news organizations reported.

Paramount, which was rebuffed in three previous unsolicited bids, was the only contender “pursuing all of Warner Discovery,” including CNN and its other cable channels, The Wall Street Journal said, while Netflix and Comcast were “bidding only for the studios, HBO and streaming service HBO Max.”

Who said what

The outcome of the bidding war “could alter the trajectory of the entertainment business,” The New York Times said. Warner CEO David Zaslav “was said to be enthusiastic about a potential bid from Netflix,” which notably pledged to “continue theatrical releases for movies from Warner Bros. Discovery,” but Paramount’s new chief David Ellison has “cultivated a relationship” with President Donald Trump, and “any bidder would need approval from federal regulators.”

Any successful offer would represent a “significant consolidation in the media industry,” Reuters said. Paramount’s ownership would give it a “32% share of the North American theatrical market, according to Comscore,” while a combination of Warner Bros. and Comcast’s NBCUniversal would have a market share that “exceed 43%.”

What next?

The bids “are nonbinding, and additional rounds are expected,” the Journal said, but “Warner Discovery has indicated it would like to have the process concluded by the end of the year.” The “Hollywood colossus” might also “ultimately decide not to sell itself to any bidders,” the Times said, and instead pursue its plan to split into two companies.

“The goal here is to create an open-source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge,” said Elon Musk on X, as his xAI company rolled out its first version of AI-powered online encyclopaedia Grokipedia.

Having already set out to revolutionise electric cars, explore space, upend social media, and roll back the state, Musk’s latest venture is “something altogether more fundamental: a new version of the truth”, said Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times.

‘AI as a solution to the bias problem’

Named after X’s built-in AI factchecker, Grok, the origins of Grokipedia date back to the end of last year, when Musk told followers to “stop donating to Wokepedia”. Accusing Wikipedia of spending too much money on diversity, equity and inclusion, he branded the online encyclopaedia “an extension of legacy media propaganda”.

Things ramped up in late September, when Donald Trump’s AI tsar David Sacks posted on X that Wikipedia was “hopelessly biased”, saying “an army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections” – a claim rebutted by its founder.

While there may be some commercial motivation at play, Filippo Trevisan, an associate professor of public communication at American University in Washington DC, told DW, the true impetus behind the project is ideological. Grokipedia “responds to those criticisms of Wikipedia from so many figures within the American conservative and the right-leaning world”. This is Musk’s bid to “present AI as a solution to the bias problem”.

“There is a growing belief that algorithmic aggregation is more trustworthy than human-to-human insight,” David Larsson Heidenblad, deputy director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in Sweden, told The Guardian. The “Silicon Valley mindset” focuses on learning through trial and error, in contrast to the traditional academic process of “building trust over time and scholarship over long periods”.

‘A major own goal’

Given the deep hostility towards Wikipedia, it is odd that Grokipedia appears to use the site as its “primary source”, said Vox, although it “injects some far-right politics and conspiracy theories into certain topics before presenting the information as fact”. On launch there was, for example, no article on “apartheid”, but a defence of “white genocide theory” – “one of Musk’s ideological obsessions and the centre of many unhinged Grok rants earlier this year”.

While many of the pages appear “fairly similar” to Wikipedia “in terms of tone and content”, said Wired, a “number of notable Grokipedia entries denounced the mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and sometimes perpetuated historical inaccuracies”. In one instance, an entry made the unsubstantiated claim that “the proliferation of porn exacerbated the HIV/Aids epidemic in the 1980s”.

“The main distinction between the two comes in how information is checked and processed,” said DW. “Wikipedia relies on collaborative community editing”, with processes in place to identify and correct errors. Grokipedia has no human editorial involvement and appears to “lack such oversight”, Roxana Radu, associate professor of Digital Technologies and Public Policy at Oxford University, told the news site.

“Instead of setting up a serious challenger to Wikipedia, Musk has scored a major own goal,” said Kelly in the FT. Grokipedia demonstrates that, “while humans might be highly imperfect, biased and tribal beings, they are still better than AI at getting to the truth”.

Larry Ellison has been a Silicon Valley titan for nearly half a century. Now 81, with the help of his son David, he is redefining himself as a 21st-century version of the 20th-century press baron, at the head of an empire straddling tech, media and politics.

‘CEO of everything’

Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories in 1977 with an initial investment of just $2,000. The software and database company, which would later become Oracle Corporation, is now valued at more than $800 billion, and Ellison still owns 40%.

He stepped down as CEO in 2014 but, far from calling it a day, the octogenarian has since “clawed his way back to the top of the tech heap”, said the Financial Times.

Ellison is “forging new personal alliances” as he attempts to position himself in the “vanguard of the AI revolution”. His net worth has doubled in the last year, largely due to the key role Oracle is playing in building AI infrastructure, entering lucrative deals with the likes of OpenAI and governments around the world. His big bet on artificial intelligence saw him briefly become the world’s richest person in September.

Until recently, Ellison’s extracurricular interests have “tended to skew towards yachting, tennis, anti-ageing research and buying an island in Hawaii”, said the BBC, and a late-in-life transformation into media mogul is “an unlikely path”. Yet with son David in tow, he has “taken on a new dimension” as the pair pursue deals “that would give them control over some of the biggest media companies on the planet”.

In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media, the Hollywood production company behind hit films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible”, secured an $8 billion deal to purchase Paramount and its subsidiaries, including MTV, Comedy Central and the influential CBS News network. The company is also in talks to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent media conglomerate behind brands like HBO, CNN and TBS.

Oracle has also been chosen to be part of a consortium to take over a minority stake in TikTok’s US operations, giving it a greater role in retraining the algorithm that serves up what people see.

These deals, in particular the one to acquire a stake in TikTok, would not have been possible without the explicit support of Donald Trump. Asked about the future of TikTok recently, the president did not hesitate to answer: “I’d like Larry to buy it.” Earlier this year, Trump called Ellison “an amazing man and amazing business person” and “sort of CEO of everything”. And indeed, “taken together, these investments put Ellison at the heart of some of the world’s most powerful outlets in both traditional and new media”, said The Telegraph.

‘Dangerous for democracy’

It is “against the backdrop of wider White House pressure on the media” that the Ellisons’ “growing power and ties to Trump have stoked alarm on the left, where critics fear the president’s ability to influence news coverage of his administration”, said the BBC.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has called for any Paramount-Warner Bros. merger to be blocked as a “dangerous concentration of power”, while US media watchdog Fair warned recently that “the Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy. And given their closeness to the Trump regime, that seems to be the point.”

So far, the Ellisons “have not indicated that they intend to advance a political agenda with their media empire”, said The Washington Post. David, who has donated to the Democratic Party and in 2022 described himself as a “socially liberal person”, wrote after the Paramount-Skydance merger that “everything we do will be rooted in trust, guided by facts”. He said the company wants to “look at the 70% of the country that kind of would define themselves as centre left to centre right”.

The big question now is whether it is the father or the son who will ultimately decide the direction of what could soon be one of the world’s biggest and most influential media companies. Whether Larry Ellison’s takeover of the US media is “born of ideology or merely a pragmatic approach to protecting his business interests remains unclear”, said The Telegraph, “but it comes as Trump tightens his grip over his liberal media foes”.

The network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite is getting a new look. Paramount announced on Monday that Bari Weiss — founder of The Free Press, an online publication known mostly for anti-woke, pro-Israel opinionating — will be the new editor in chief of CBS News.

The Free Press brand emphasizes a sharply “contrarian point of view on politics and culture,” said The Wall Street Journal. Weiss, who started the publication after leaving The New York Times, saying that progressive staffers had bullied her for her views, will likely bring that same sensibility to CBS. The network is aiming at “that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right,” said Paramount CEO David Ellison. For her part, Weiss said she wants to create news that “doesn’t seek to demonize, but seeks to understand.” Network TV is in trouble, with broadcasts attracting “half the audience they commanded a quarter of a century ago,” said the Journal. Which raises the question: “Can Bari Weiss reinvent CBS News?”

‘Power’s version of the truth’

Weiss’ rise to the top of CBS News has been “seen as part of an effort to appease Donald Trump,” said Jon Allsop at The New Yorker. The network has already settled a “risible” presidential lawsuit and canceled Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. But Trump and Weiss “might not always be on the same team” and a “MAGA-fied CBS isn’t a guarantee.” It is more likely Weiss’ biggest impact will be on “stories that seem to animate her most — campus protests and Israel.”

“How far CBS News has fallen,” said Sophia Tesfaye at Salon. Weiss “appears to have been hand-picked” despite “having zero broadcast news experience” by Larry Ellison, who is also a “top Trump donor.” (His company, Skydance, bought CBS as part of its recent purchase of Paramount.) The takeover of CBS News by Ellison and Weiss is a “sign of media decay” in which the “supposed watchdogs are now operatives.” As a result, we are more likely to get “power’s version of the truth” from our news.

Weiss is admittedly an “unorthodox choice to run a massive news organization” like CBS, said Chris Cillizza at his So What newsletter. But “mainstream media is failing,” with a collapsing business model and polling that shows legacy outlets have “almost completely lost the trust of the public.” Critics may worry that CBS is “putting an ideologue in charge of its whole operation.” There is an upside: Unlike most media executives, “her beliefs are out there for you to see and judge.”

A center-right operation?

Weiss has made a career of “pillorying the mainstream media for everything they get wrong,” said Andrew Prokop at Vox. The question is whether CBS News will merely be “somewhat more responsive to conservatives’ critiques” or if it will become a wholly “center-right operation.” A full revamp could look like Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X. But “you don’t put Weiss in charge of your mainstream media organization if you are seeking only minor changes.”

Hollywood has long been obsessed with tales of popular actors fighting to keep young rivals from replacing them on the marquee. Exhibit A: “All About Eve.” Now the competition is coming not from fresh-faced ingenues but from an artificial intelligence “actor” named Tilly Norwood.

Norwood is a “British-accented brunette” who does not exist in the real world, said Vanity Fair. The creator, Dutch producer Eline Van der Velden, expects to sign Norwood with a talent agency and hopes it can rival stars like Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson at the box office. Norwood “is not a replacement for a human being but a creative work — a piece of art,” Van der Velden said on Instagram. The backlash from Hollywood has been both fierce and a bit despairing. The arrival of an “AI actor” is the “end of the industry as we know it,” director Luca Guadagnino said on X.

"Guilds, actors and filmmakers” have reacted to Norwood’s emergence with an “immediate wave of backlash,” said The Associated Press. Acting performances should remain “human-centered,” the Screen Actors Guild said in a statement. Film and TV audiences “aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.” The use of AI in film and TV productions was a “major bargaining point” in the 2023 actors strike, said the AP, but its implementation continues to be “hotly debated."

What did the commentators say?

Calling Norwood an actor is “inaccurate, it’s insulting,” Jenelle Riley said at Variety. Van der Velden calls Norwood a “creation,” though terms like “deepfake” or “animated character” might also work. Van der Velden’s references to Portman and Johansson reveal a “grotesque lack of understanding” of how acting works and “precisely what makes those actors special.” Norwood is merely an “attractive face that can repeat lines.” Unlike Johansson, “you’re not going to see Norwood suing Disney for pay she’s owed.” That may be part of the appeal.

Norwood “represents Tinseltown’s death knell,” Vinay Menon said at The Toronto Star. Artificial intelligence is already making it a “scary time” to be a “law student, a young software engineer, a young data analyst, a young accountant” or any other kind of young professional starting a career. The problem? “Human greed.” There is no evidence Norwood “could nail a Nespresso ad,” but AI is “impervious” to the annoyances of human actors who “flub lines” and “have contract demands.” The best that those humans can hope for is that Norwood’s debut is a “box office bomb."

What next?

Finding an agent for Norwood might be tough. Norwood “does not have a future” at some of the best-known talent agencies, said The Wrap. “We represent humans,” said Richard Weitz, the co-chairman of WME Group. Gersh Agency will also not sign Norwood, said Variety. But the issue of AI performance is “going to keep coming up,” said Gersh President Leslie Siebert. “And we have to figure out how to deal with it in the proper way."

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"Assassination," wrote George Bernard Shaw, "is the extreme form of censorship." This truth was brought home to the world this week, said Binoy Kampmark on Middle East Monitor, when a prominent Palestinian journalist, Anas al-Sharif, was killed along with three of his Al Jazeera colleagues by an air strike on a press tent in Gaza City.

An Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman confirmed that Sharif had been deliberately targeted, claiming that intelligence obtained before the strike proved he was "an active Hamas military wing operative". Sceptics dismissed that claim, asking how Sharif could have led a rocket-launching squad while reporting in front of a camera all day.

A different IDF spokesman had levelled the same accusation at Sharif last month, prompting calls from the Committee to Protect Journalists for the "international community" to safeguard the life of the 28-year-old father of two.

Journalists targeted

This is just the latest horror to hit journalists in Gaza, said Fiona O'Brien in The London Standard. Israel has banned all foreign reporters from entering the enclave, leaving only local ones like Sharif to tell the world what's going on there.

Almost 200 have been killed since the war began in 2023, "at least 46 of whom were directly targeted". Others have died of hunger. "Several correspondents have collapsed live on air."

In a statement last month, the outgoing board of the AFP press agency said it was the first time since the agency's founding in 1944 that it had seen colleagues dying "not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation".

A shameful assault

Sharif was "never likely to be an impartial witness" to the Gaza War, said the Daily Mail. He was born and raised in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp. His father was killed by an Israeli bomb. And like all local journalists, he could "work only with the tacit approval of the Hamas-run authorities".

But even if he was a Hamas sympathiser, that in itself wouldn't justify killing him, still less the other members of his film crew, about whom no such claims have been made. If Israel has direct evidence that Sharif was engaged in terrorism, they should produce it. In the absence of such material, this killing looks like a shameful assault on press freedom.

Sydney Sweeney has fronted a new American Eagle ad campaign, featuring tight jeans, retro visuals and one very questionable pun that seems to have sparked a culture war.

The video campaign sees the "Euphoria" star first referencing her inherited looks as "genes", before explaining her "jeans" are blue. The campaign slogan continues the play on words: "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans".

'Parallels to alt-right ideals'

"On paper", Sweeney, an "all-American blonde", is the "ideal spokesperson" for the brand, said Fran Hoepfner in Vulture. But in a country where diversity initiatives are "under attack" and "mass deportations" occur daily, an advert on "how awesome it is to be white and blonde-haired and blue-eyed" comes across as "tasteless".

It's "hard to ignore the parallels to alt-right ideals" and historical ideas about eugenics, with a play on the word "jeans/genes" and a focus on Sweeney's "stereotypically Aryan features", said Natalie Fear in Creative Bloq. Whether it's an "unfortunate choice of tone" or a veiled "dog whistle", it's puzzling that this advertisement was approved at all.

Whatever the campaign's intentions, the wider reaction to it clearly reflects an "unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation", said Hannah Holland on MSNBC. Advertisements are "mirrors of society", and "sometimes what they reflect can be ugly and startling".

'Stifling sanctimony'

The "woke outrage" is predictable but it's about time for a return to "American exceptionalism", where women can be "sultry, bold and unapologetically feminine", said Kelly Sadler in The Washington Times. While left-wing thinkpieces "blather on", trying to connect the ad to "neo-Nazis", there are some "irrefutable truths" that cannot be ignored: namely, that "men and women are attracted to each other", and that ads work best when they are "beautiful, aspirational or stylish".

Indeed, it is "hardly a revolutionary concept" that an attractive woman should be used by a fashion brand to sell merchandise, said Paul Burke in The Spectator. The "stifling sanctimony" of "pompous, po-faced pearl-clutchers" is frustrating at best, and claims the advertisement is being used to push "white supremacy" are "so vile, they're almost laughable". Sadly, this is something we must now expect from a "miserable movement in its death throes".

"Despite the backlash", stocks in American Eagle have jumped "20% over the past five days", said The Hill. Controversy may be the best-fitting marketing strategy of all.

"Folks, I'm going to go ahead and say it. Cancel culture has gone too far."

That was US TV host Stephen Colbert on Monday reflecting on the controversial decision to end "The Late Show".

Late-night talk shows are "enormous totems on the US media landscape", said Euronews, "so news that CBS is axing its version after more than 30 years has sent shockwaves across the industry".

The network insisted the decision was solely "financial" and made "against a challenging backdrop in late night". Many have given this argument short shrift seeing as the show has been the highest-rated late-night offering for nine consecutive seasons. Others have questioned the timing of the announcement, coming just days after Colbert attacked CBS parent company Paramount for settling a $16 million lawsuit with Donald Trump. Paramount requires federal approval for a pending $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.

Eyeballs and advertisers

"Late night used to command attention from insomniacs, college students and marketers looking to reach an audience that was traditionally younger than primetime," said The Hollywood Reporter. "But those days are long gone," and the format increasingly "seems like a relic of a bygone era".

In truth, late-night TV has been "struggling for years", said Reuters, "as viewers increasingly cut the cable TV cord and migrate to streaming". The younger element is increasingly turning to YouTube or TikTok, "leaving smaller, ageing TV audiences and declining ad revenues".

Advertising revenue for Colbert's show has dropped 40% since 2018, according to ad tracking firm Guideline. Go back 15 years and popular late-night shows could earn $100 million a year, now they operate losses running to the tens of millions.

"Colbert might be number one, but who watches late-night TV anymore?" one insider bluntly told the New York Post.

Just like the shock when Blockbuster Video finally called it quits after years of falling revenues, so the end of late-night shows has been "every bit as writ-in-stone", said the tabloid.

These "retro programmes" that started broadcasting in the 1950s as an "experiment to fill time" command way too few viewers "to justify their exorbitant cost anymore".

'Smaller and more sustainable'

"Given the way the broadcasting winds are blowing, this cancellation is unlikely to be the last," said the BBC. Other late-night legacy shows hosted by the likes of Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel "might soon follow".

In this sense, CBS has "ripped off a bandage that the big three networks have been applying to similar wounds for years", said Jesse Hassenger in The Guardian.

"These types of programmes are generally not a genre people will stream or watch via catch-up," said Frances Taylor, TV previews editor at Radio Times. Late shows have also been replaced by YouTube formats or popular podcasts as the first place publicists now offer their stars.

All this means that the future of late-night talk shows and the comedians who host them likely lies in "embracing the reach of digital media, and creating something new at a smaller, more sustainable scale", said The Hollywood Reporter.

"The economic model of YouTube has improved to the point where it can sustain a real business. Maybe not one of the scale or scope of the CBS Late Show, but certainly something that rhymes with it."

Bill Moyers was a legend in public broadcasting, known for deep dives into scandals like Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair. He'd always been idealistic: He started out in politics, working in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, where he helped create and run the Peace Corps and found the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. When he moved to journalism, his primary mission was still public service. Soft-spoken and cerebral, Moyers specialized in long-form documentaries and interviews delving into knotty issues such as inequality, race, crime, and government corruption. He did stints at CBS and NBC but spent most of his career at PBS, free from what he called the corrupting constraints of corporate media. "In a profit-seeking environment," he said, "you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America."

Billy Don Moyers grew up in Marshall, Texas, where his father was a day laborer, said The Washington Post. A standout student "who pushed himself so hard" he got ulcers, he studied journalism at North Texas State College, then attended seminary and was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 20. While in college, Moyers took a summer job on the Senate campaign of fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, and soon left the ministry to work for him. When Johnson rose to the presidency in 1963, "Moyers ascended as well," said the Los Angeles Times. Dubbed "LBJ's young man in charge of everything" by Time, he was a key policy aide, supervising Great Society legislation and serving as press secretary. But as he grew "disenchanted with the escalation of the Vietnam War," he split with Johnson, and he left the administration in 1967.

Moyers worked as publisher of Newsday for a few years until he clashed with the conservative owner, said The New York Times. He launched his own weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, at PBS in 1972. In the decades that followed, he "applied his earnest, deferential style to interviews with poets, philosophers, and educators, often on the subject of values and ideas." He racked up more than 30 Emmy Awards, including for the Frontline series Two American Families. In later years, he warned starkly of the growing influence of billionaires on American politics. "We are so close to losing our democracy to the mercenary class," he said in 2013. "The predators in Washington are only this far from monopoly control over government. They have bought the political system lock, stock, and pork barrel."

When Gary Lineker "mistakenly" shared antisemitic material on social media, it was the "final straw" for BBC bosses. The "Match of the Day" host's inability to accept that his "voicing of strongly-held views" could have an impact on the broadcaster's "need for impartiality", had long "caused problems", said Katie Razzall, the BBC's culture and media editor.

The "sorry end" to Lineker's BBC career highlights how important – in an age when high-profile personalities have huge followings on social media – the broadcaster's editorial guidelines are to its reputation management.

What are the rules and who has to follow them?

"Defining impartiality is easy: it means reflecting all sides of arguments and not favouring any side," say the BBC's editorial guidelines. "But putting impartiality in practice is more difficult."

The broadcaster's guidelines demand the "highest level of impartiality in News and Current Affairs and factual journalism (including sport)", and especially "in relation to controversial subjects and major matters".

The BBC does not allow, for example, "expression of personal views" by its news and current affairs presenters, reporters and journalists, "other than in exceptional and defined circumstances". It is not expected, however, that the same requirement will apply to those who work on comedy or drama or other output.

What about personal social media accounts?

In its social media guidance, the BBC says staff and freelancers are "required to respect civility in public discourse and to not bring the BBC into disrepute", although they are not expected to uphold impartiality when posting online.

But stricter rules apply for "individuals working in news and current affairs, sports journalism, and factual journalism", as well as those in senior management positions. This includes not revealing how you vote, not supporting a campaign, not expressing support for any political party or a view on any issue which is a "matter of current political debate, or on a matter of public policy".

How have the BBC guidelines changed?

The BBC updated its social media guidance in 2023, after Lineker was suspended over a tweet about the government's asylum-seeker policy, which he said was publicised with language "not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".

An independent review by former ITN boss John Hardie recommended that high-profile presenters hosting "flagship programmes" should be able to "express views on issues and policies" but must not endorse or attack a political party, criticise the character of individual UK politicians, or take up an official role in campaigning groups. These additional measures apply while a programme or series is on air and for a two-week window before and after it's been broadcast, and cover stars such as Alex Jones from "The One Show" and "Strictly Come Dancing" hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.

Have other stars broken impartiality rules?

Lineker is far from the first person to fall foul of the BBC's impartiality rules – even if he is probably the most high-profile. In fact, there have been a number of cases in recent years where presenters have been suspended or sacked, predominantly for posting criticism of the government.

In 2021, then-"Newsnight" presenter Emily Maitlis was reprimanded for sharing a "clearly controversial" social media post related to the government's response to the Covid pandemic. The BBC's complaints unit said she had breached editorial guidelines by failing to provide "surrounding context" to ensure impartiality. A year previously, she had also been deemed to have breached impartiality rules with a "Newsnight" opening that was critical of Dominic Cummings' lockdown-busting trip to Barnard Castle.

In 2022, news presenter Martine Croxall was temporarily suspended for asking on-air if she was "allowed to be this gleeful" about Boris Johnson's failed bid to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader. A year later, Carol Vorderman stepped down from her weekly show on BBC Radio Wales after a series of posts critical of the Conservative government, including one which said "this iteration of the Tory Party needs to be utterly dismantled at the next election". Vorderman said she was not "prepared to lose my voice on social media".

Gary Lineker has "apologised unreservedly" after he shared a social media post critical of Zionism that included an illustration of a rat.

After critics accused the BBC football presenter of promoting antisemitic imagery, Lineker insisted he hadn't noticed the rat, was unaware of its use in anti-Jewish propaganda and would "never knowingly share anything antisemitic".

Why are rats an antisemitic symbol?

Jews were frequently represented as a pestilent species like rats or cockroaches in Germany as the Nazi party rose to power. Der Stürmer, a weekly newspaper notorious for its virulent antisemitism, depicted a Nazi gassing Jewish 'rats' huddled around the base of a tree in one cover image from as early as 1927. "When the vermin are dead," the caption said, "the German oak will flourish once more.

The Nazis were not the first to use comparisons with rats to dehumanise targets. In 1909, the US satirical magazine Puck published a cartoon that depicted European immigrants arriving in New York City as a swarm of rodents. As recently as 2015, the Daily Mail ran a cartoon that showed refugees arriving in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, with rats scurrying alongside them.

What other animals have been used?

Snakes are often associated with "malevolence", "slyness" and "hidden unfriendly intentions", said the Dangerous Street Project, and they've appeared in propaganda for decades. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, US propaganda depicted Japan as a snake attacking the US, in the form of a bald eagle.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Hutu media referred to Tutsis as "snakes" and "cockroaches". There have recently been comparisons between Palestinians and snakes on Israeli social media, in an effort to "dehumanise" them, said Turkey's Anadolu news agency.

In 2015, Katie Hopkins wrote a column for The Sun comparing migrants to cockroaches. The article, published hours before 800 people died when a fishing vessel packed with migrants capsized off the coast of Libya, drew widespread criticism, including from the UN's human rights chief.

While speaking about refugees during the 2016 US election campaign, Donald Trump quoted from the 1968 Al Wilson hit "The Snake", which includes the line: "You knew I was a snake before you took me in."

The comparisons can also be more general. In Hungary, Roma people have been described as animals that are "not fit to live among people", reported Der Spiegel. After Hamas's 7 October attacks, the Israeli defence minister said Israel was "fighting against human animals" and would "act accordingly".

Why are animal metaphors so common?

The depiction of enemies as subhuman dates as far back as ancient China, Egypt and Mesopotamia, author David Livingstone Smith told NPR. It re-emerges in the 18th century, when white Europeans "modestly placed themselves at the very pinnacle" of a hierarchy, with sub-Saharan Africans and Native Americans mostly seen as "soulless animals". This "dramatic dehumanisation" enabled "great atrocities" against marginalised groups.

Researchers from Stanford University, the University of California and Tel Aviv University found that acknowledging another person's "capacity to feel" encourages us to avoid harming them, said El Pais. Conversely, when we ignore or deny their ability to feel, it's easier to be abusive or violent towards them.

In another study, after researchers "subtly primed" participants to associate Black people with apes, said psychology researcher Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo on The Conversation, the participants became more likely to "tolerate aggressive, violent policing" of Black criminal suspects.

"Once someone is dehumanised", we "deny them the consideration, compassion and empathy" that we would usually give other human beings, relaxing our "instinctive aversion" to "aggression and violence" towards our fellow humans.

Ruth Buzzi thwacked her way to comedy stardom. As the frumpy, paranoid Gladys Ormphby on the NBC sketch show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, she was swathed in dowdy brown clothes, her hair parted severely down the center and a hairnet knotted at her forehead. A woman with no patience for lecherous men, Gladys was both a joke and a feminist symbol, clutching her purse as a weapon to swat any cad who got too fresh. Buzzi played plenty of other characters during her 1968–73 Laugh-In run, earning a Golden Globe award and five Emmy nominations. But Gladys was the most popular, and Buzzi appeared in that persona on other variety and talk shows as well—with the handbag. "It looked vicious, but it was just a felt purse lined and filled with old pantyhose and cotton," she said. "I was able to swing it with all my might and it still wouldn't hurt anyone. Although it sounded great with a thud when it landed."

Raised in Connecticut, Buzzi was the daughter of a renowned Swiss sculptor. Though she was head cheerleader in high school, she struggled in ballet class, said The Hollywood Reporter. Her teacher suggested making the dance comical, and "it was a big hit!" she said. "I continued to do funny dances and funny this and funny that." After graduation, she "boldly moved across the country to enroll at the Pasadena Playhouse," studying alongside Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. Playing clumsy housekeeper Agnes Gooch in the play Auntie Mame inspired her to experiment with slumping posture and bad hair—the beginnings of what would become Gladys. After making her Broadway debut in 1966's Sweet Charity, she found her niche as an absurd outsider starting with a role on ABC's That Girl.

Yet she wouldn't be typecast. Her "restless creativity" had her taking roles all over, said The Washington Post, in off-Broadway shows, movies like 1976's Freaky Friday, sitcoms, and commercials. She even had a recurring role on Sesame Street in the 1990s, as shopkeeper Ruthie. She only fully retired in 2021 to spend time on her Texas ranch. "Nothing in her career, however, had the enduring appeal of her determinedly unappealing" Gladys, said The New York Times. "So many people ask me to hit them with my purse"—even Elton John, she said in 2016. "He immediately made his way over to me and said, 'For God's sakes, Ruth, please hit me with your purse. That's been on my bucket list for years!'"

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For single issue print products, when we dispatch them to you. If your basket contains multiple single issues, we will treat each as a separate order;

For single issue digital products, when we make the digital product available for download or viewing. Usually this will be immediately;

For subscriptions to print products, when we dispatch the first publication included in your subscription. Usually this will be either the next edition published or the most recent available edition depending on stock;

For subscriptions to digital products, when we make the first publication included in your subscription available for download or viewing. Usually this will be immediately.

Sometimes we reject orders

Sometimes we reject orders. This is done at our discretion but reasons for rejection may be, for example, because a print product is unexpectedly out of stock, because the issuer of your payment card refuses to authorise payment to us, because you are located outside our delivery areas, as stated on our website, or because the product was mispriced by us. When this happens, we let you know as soon as possible and refund any sums you have paid.

We can also reject part of an order if for example your basket contains multiple single issue orders, multiple subscriptions, or a mix of single issues and subscriptions. If we reject part of your order, we will refund you in relation to that part. For example, if your order contains multiple single issues and we are unable to fulfil one of those single issue orders, we will refund you in respect of that one single issue. We will charge you for the parts of your order that we do dispatch.

Prices and Payment Terms

All prices, discounts, and promotions posted on this Site are subject to change without notice. The price charged for a product will be the price in effect at the time the order is placed and will be set out in your order confirmation email, although subscriptions may be subject to price increases in the future. If your subscription renews, it may renew at a different price. We will send you a renewal notice prior to charging you the new subscription rate and you will be able to end your subscription if you do not want it to continue at the new price. Posted prices do not include applicable taxes or charges for shipping and handling. All such applicable taxes and charges will be added to your order total. We strive to display accurate price information, however, we may, on occasion, make inadvertent typographical errors, inaccuracies, or omissions related to pricing and availability. We reserve the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions at any time and to cancel any orders arising from such occurrences.

We may offer, from time to time, promotions on the Site that may affect pricing and that are governed by terms and conditions separate from these Terms. If there is a conflict between the terms for a promotion and these Terms, the promotion terms will govern.

Terms of payment are within our sole discretion and payment must be received by us before we accept an order. We accept the payment methods that are presented to you during the order process for all purchases. You represent and warrant that (i) the credit card information you supply to us is true, correct, and complete, (ii) you are duly authorized to use such credit card for the purchase, (iii) charges incurred by you will be honored by your credit card company, and (iv) you will pay charges incurred by you at the posted prices, including shipping and handling charges and all applicable taxes, if any, regardless of the amount quoted on the Site at the time of your order. You are responsible for telling us about any changes to your credit card or other payment information. We may cancel your order if we are unable to take payment due to incorrect or outdated payment information.

Shipments; Delivery; Title and Risk of Loss

We will arrange for shipment of print products to you. Please check the individual print product page for specific delivery options. You will pay all shipping and handling charges specified during the ordering process. Shipping and handling charges are reimbursement for the costs we incur in the processing, handling, packing, shipping, and delivery of your order.

Title and risk of loss to a print product will pass to you upon full payment and delivery. Shipping and delivery dates are estimates only and cannot be guaranteed. We are not liable for any delays in shipments.

If your order includes a Subscription to a digital product, you will have access to any issues of the digital product included for as long as you subscribe. Once your subscription ends you lose access and you will not have any title in respect of those digital products. If you purchase a single issue digital product, we will make this available to you immediately.

Returns and Refunds

If you change your mind after purchasing a single issue print product or single issue digital product you will not be eligible for a refund unless you are told otherwise during your order process. To request a refund, you must contact us on the toll-free telephone number or email address stated in your order confirmation.

If you change your mind after purchasing a subscription you can cancel at any time using your online subscriber account, or by contacting us on the telephone number or email address stated in your order confirmation.. If you cancel you will receive a refund for any unmailed print products or unpublished digital products for the rest of your current subscription term.

If you consented to an automatically renewing subscription you will receive a notice confirming your renewal details, including your renewal date and any change in price, before you are charged for a new subscription period.

Refunds are usually processed within approximately fourteen business days of our receipt of your cancellation request. Your refund will be credited back to the same payment method used to make the original purchase on the Site.

We can withdraw products

We can stop providing a print product or digital product, including a subscription to any print product or digital product. We’ll let you know as soon as we can in advance. If you are subscribed to a withdrawn product you will have the option to receive another print product or digital product (as applicable) for the remainder of your subscription contract term or end the subscription contract and receive a refund of any sums you’ve paid in advance for issues of the print product or digital product which won’t be provided. We won’t refund you for any print product or digital product you have already received.

We can end our contract with you

We can end our contract with you for a subscription for any reason at our sole discretion. If we end your subscription contract you will either receive a refund of any payments made for unmailed print products or unpublished digital products for the rest of your current subscription term and we will take no further payments from you.

We are not responsible for websites we link to

Where our products contain links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Those links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or the information, or any products or services, you may obtain from them. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources. There is more information about the links we include to other websites in our Privacy Notice.

Warranty and Disclaimers

We work continuously to ensure our products meet your needs. However, for legal reasons, we offer the products without warranties unless specifically stated in our Privacy Notice or any other agreements or terms entered into by you and Future that are governed by, or incorporate, these Terms (“Other Terms”). The law says we need to explain this with specific language in capital letters. Here is that explanation:

ALL PRODUCTS OFFERED ON THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCTS OFFERED ON THIS SITE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY (A) WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY; (B) WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE; OR (C) WARRANTY AGAINST INFRINGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF A THIRD PARTY; WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED BY LAW, COURSE OF DEALING, COURSE OF PERFORMANCE, USAGE OF TRADE, OR OTHERWISE.

SOME JURISDICTIONS LIMIT OR DO NOT ALLOW THE DISCLAIMER OF IMPLIED OR OTHER WARRANTIES SO THE ABOVE DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Limitation of Liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL WE BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE OR ENHANCED DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF, OR RELATING TO, AND/OR IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BREACH OF THESE TERMS, REGARDLESS OF (A) WHETHER SUCH DAMAGES WERE FORESEEABLE, (B) WHETHER OR NOT WE WERE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND (C) THE LEGAL OR EQUITABLE THEORY (CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE) UPON WHICH THE CLAIM IS BASED.

OUR SOLE AND ENTIRE MAXIMUM LIABILITY AND YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE ACTUAL AMOUNT PAID BY YOU FOR THE PRODUCTS YOU HAVE ORDERED THROUGH OUR SITE.

IF APPLICABLE LAW DOES NOT ALLOW ALL OR ANY PART OF THE ABOVE LIMITATION OF LIABILITY TO APPLY TO YOU, THE LIMITATIONS WILL APPLY TO YOU ONLY TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.

Goods Not for Resale or Export

You represent and warrant that you are buying products or services from the Site for your own personal or household use only, and not for resale or export. You further represent and warrant that all purchases are intended for final delivery to locations within the US.

Privacy

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. Our Privacy Notice governs the processing of all personal data collected from you in connection with your purchase of products through the Site.

Force Majeure

We will not be liable or responsible to you, nor be deemed to have defaulted or breached these Terms, for any failure or delay in our performance under these Terms when and to the extent such failure or delay is caused by or results from acts or circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of God, flood, fire, earthquake, explosion, governmental actions, war, invasion or hostilities (whether war is declared or not), terrorist threats or acts, riot or other civil unrest, national emergency, revolution, insurrection, epidemic, lockouts, strikes or other labor disputes (whether or not relating to our workforce), or restraints or delays affecting carriers or inability or delay in obtaining supplies of adequate or suitable materials, materials or telecommunication breakdown or power outage.

Dispute Resolution; Binding Arbitration; Class Action and Jury Waiver

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION (THE “ARBITRATION AGREEMENT”) CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS. IT PROVIDES FOR RESOLUTION OF MOST DISPUTES THROUGH INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION INSTEAD OF COURT TRIALS AND CLASS ACTIONS. THIS SECTION ALSO CONTAINS A JURY TRIAL WAIVER AND A WAIVER OF ANY AND ALL RIGHTS TO PROCEED IN CLASS, COLLECTIVE, CONSOLIDATED (OTHER THAN ANY BATCHING PROCEDURES CONDUCTED BY THE ARBITRAL FORUM), PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION IN ARBITRATION OR LITIGATION TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.

Definitions

“ADR Services” means ADR Services, Inc., www.adrservices.com.

“ADR Services Batching Procedure” means for the ADR Services to (i) administer claims in at least 20 batches, with the discretion to create additional batches if ADR Services finds that they are necessary to facilitate the efficient resolution of demands; and (ii) apply a single initial filing fee and administrative fee per batch for each side with respect to the fees set forth in ADR Services’ then-current Mass Consumer Non-Employment Arbitration Fee Schedule.

“ADR Services Rules” means ADR Services rules and procedures then in effect.

“Dispute” means any dispute, claim, or controversy between you and Future Parties, including but not limited to disputes, claims, or controversies related to or arising from the Services, or these Terms or Other Terms, including, without limitation, those relating to the formation, breach, termination, enforcement, interpretation, validity, scope, or applicability of the Terms, Other Terms, and the Arbitration Agreement included herein.

“FAA” means that Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 512.

“Future Parties” means Future and Future’s predecessors in interest, successors, and assigns, as well as its respective past, present, and future parents, subsidiaries and affiliates.

“NAM” means National Arbitration and Mediation (www.namadr.com).

“NAM Rules” means NAM rules and procedures, including any supplementary rules and fee schedules, then in effect.

“Notice Address” means ArbitrationNotices@Futurenet.com, to which a Notice of Dispute from you to Future Parties must be emailed.

“Notice of Dispute or “Notice” means a notice of Dispute from you to any Future Party.

“Opt-Out Notice” means the written opt-out notice to opt out of the Arbitration Agreement.

“Opt-Out Period” means within 30 days of the date that you first purchase a Product after the posting of these Terms.

“Products” means products made available for purchase through the Site.

Mandatory Individual Arbitration

Any Dispute, whether such Dispute arose before, on, or subsequent to you entering these Terms, and if not resolved through the informal dispute resolution procedure set forth below, shall be exclusively resolved by individual, binding arbitration in accordance with this Arbitration Agreement. The arbitrator, and not any federal, state, or local court or agency, shall have exclusive authority to resolve any Disputes relating to the interpretation, applicability, enforceability, or formation of this Arbitration Agreement, including any claim that all or any part of this Arbitration Agreement is void or voidable. The arbitrator shall also be responsible for determining all threshold arbitrability issues, including issues relating to whether these Terms are unconscionable or illusory, in whole or in part, and any defense to arbitration, including waiver, delay, laches, or estoppel.

Notwithstanding the foregoing and the Class Action/Jury Trial Waiver below, you and Future Parties each retain the right to seek injunctive or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to prevent the actual or threatened infringement, misappropriation or violation of a party’s copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, patents, or other IP rights. Any legal action by Future Parties against a non-consumer or its interactions with governmental and regulatory authorities shall not be subject to arbitration. Either party may also elect to have Disputes heard in small claims court seeking only individualized relief, so long as the action is not removed or appealed to a court of general jurisdiction.

To the fullest extent permissible by applicable law, all claims against Future Parties, including but not limited to claims arising out of or relating in any way to the Products or the Terms, must be filed within one year after such claim or cause of action arose or it will be forever barred.

If any court or arbitrator determines that this Arbitration Agreement is void or unenforceable for any reason as to Disputes arising before the date of posting of this Arbitration Agreement, then you may still be bound to previous versions of this Arbitration Agreement by reason of your separate agreement to those previous versions.

If any Dispute is determined not to be subject to arbitration or resolution in small claims court, the exclusive jurisdiction and venue for proceedings concerning such Dispute shall be the federal or state courts of competent jurisdiction in New York, and shall be interpreted, governed, and enforced in accordance with substantive and procedural law of the State of New York, without regard to choice of law or conflict of law provisions.

If you or Future Parties files or causes to be filed in court (other than small claims court) a complaint alleging a Dispute that is subject to arbitration under this Arbitration Agreement, the defendant/respondent will notify the party or the party’s attorney (if an attorney has entered an appearance) of the existence of this Arbitration Agreement, and request that the complaint be withdrawn. If the party does not withdraw the action within 10 calendar days of service of that notice, and the defendant/respondent successfully moves to compel arbitration of the Dispute, the defendant/respondent shall be entitled to its costs and fees (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) incurred in seeking to enforce this Arbitration Agreement.

Class Action / Jury Trial Waiver

You and Future Parties agree that, to the fullest extent permitted by law, each party is waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate as a plaintiff, claimant, or class member in any class, collective, consolidated (other than any batching procedures conducted by the arbitral forum), private attorney general, or representative proceeding. This means that you and Future Parties may not bring a claim on behalf of a class or group and may not bring a claim on behalf of any other person unless doing so as a parent, guardian, or ward of a minor or in another similar capacity for an individual who cannot otherwise bring their own individual claim. This also means that you and Future Parties may not participate in any class, collective, consolidated (other than any batching procedures conducted by the arbitral forum), private attorney general, or representative proceeding brought by any third party.

Unless both you and Future Parties agree in writing, any arbitration will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class, collective, consolidated (other than any batching procedures conducted by the arbitral forum), or representative proceeding. If any court or arbitrator determines that this Class Action/Jury Trial Waiver is void or unenforceable for any reason or that an arbitration can proceed on a class basis, then the Arbitration Agreement shall be deemed null and void in its entirety, and you and Future Parties shall be deemed not to have agreed to arbitrate Disputes.

To the extent that any claims are allowed to proceed on a class, collective, consolidated (other than any batching procedures conducted by the arbitral forum), or representative basis, such claims must be litigated in a federal or state court of competent jurisdiction in New York ,and the parties agree that litigation of those claims shall be stayed pending the outcome of any individual claims in arbitration.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, you or Future Parties may participate in a class-wide settlement.

Opt-Out Procedures

To opt out of this Arbitration Agreement, you must send us a written Opt-Out Notice by email at ArbitrationNotices@Futurenet.com within the Opt-Out Period. The Opt-Out Notice must contain your full legal name, your complete mailing and email address and phone number, a clear statement that you wish to opt out of this Arbitration Agreement, and your signature. If your Opt-Out Period has passed, you are not eligible to opt out of this Arbitration Agreement. If you opt out of this Arbitration Agreement, all other provisions of the Terms will continue to apply to you. Additionally, if you opt out of this Arbitration Agreement, you may still be bound to previous versions of this Arbitration Agreement by reason of your separate agreement to those previous versions. In other words, opting out of this Arbitration Agreement shall have no effect on any previous, other, or future arbitration agreements you may enter into with Future Parties. As stated above, if you do not opt out of this Arbitration Agreement within the Opt-Out Period, then you will be bound to the terms and conditions of this Arbitration Agreement which shall supersede and replace in its entirety all previous versions of Future Parties’ arbitration agreements and class action provisions. If you timely provide Future Parties’ with a valid Opt-Out Notice, all Disputes shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of, and you consent to venue in, the state and federal courts located in New York.

Rules and Governing Law

Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Notice and Informal Dispute Resolution Procedures: You and we agree that good-faith, informal efforts to resolve disputes often can result in a prompt, cost-effective and mutually beneficial outcome. Therefore, in the event of a Dispute, you and Future Parties each agree to send the other party a written Notice of Dispute. A Notice of Dispute from you to Future Parties must be emailed to the Notice Address. Any Notice of Dispute must include (i) the claimant’s full legal name, complete mailing address, and email address; (ii) a description of the nature and basis of the claim or dispute; (iii) any relevant facts regarding claimant’s use of the Site, including whether claimant receives any emails associated with the Site, whether claimant has made a purchase of Products, and if so, the date(s) of the purchase(s); and (iv) a personally signed statement from the claimant (and not their counsel) verifying the accuracy of the contents of the Notice. The Notice must be individualized, meaning it can concern only your dispute and no other person’s dispute. Future Parties will send any Notice of Dispute to you at the email address or mailing address it has for you, if any.

After receipt of a Notice of Dispute, the parties shall engage in a good faith effort to resolve the Dispute for a period of 60 days (which can be extended by agreement). You and we agree that, after receipt of the Notice of Dispute, the recipient may request an individualized telephone or video settlement conference (which can be held after the 60-day period) and both parties will attend (with counsel, if represented). You and we agree that the parties (and counsel, if represented) shall work cooperatively to schedule the conference at the earliest mutually-convenient time and to seek to reach a resolution.

Compliance with this Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Notice and Informal Dispute Resolution Procedures section is a condition precedent to initiating arbitration. Any applicable limitations period (including statute of limitations) and any filing fee deadlines shall be tolled while the parties engage in the informal dispute resolution procedures set forth in this subsection. All of the Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Notice and Informal Dispute Resolution Procedures are essential so that you and Future Parties have a meaningful opportunity to resolve disputes informally. If any aspect of these requirements has not been met, the parties agree that a court of competent jurisdiction may enjoin the filing or stay the prosecution of an arbitration. Nothing in this paragraph limits the right of a party to seek damages for non-compliance with these Procedures in arbitration.

If the parties cannot resolve the Dispute through the Informal Dispute Resolution Procedures above, you and Future Parties each agree that all Disputes shall be resolved exclusively through final and binding individual arbitration, rather than in court. The parties may agree to waive hearings and resolve Disputes through submission of documents. Any arbitration hearing will be conducted remotely by telephone or video conference to the extent possible, but if the arbitrator determines, or the parties agree, that a hearing should be conducted in person, the arbitration hearing will take place as close to your residence as practicable, or another agreed upon locale, and shall be before one arbitrator.

All Disputes shall be submitted to NAM, for arbitration before one arbitrator. The arbitration will be administered by NAM in accordance with the NAM Rules, except as modified by this Arbitration Agreement. A party who desires to initiate arbitration must provide the other party with a written Demand for Arbitration as specified in the NAM Rules. A form for initiating arbitration proceedings is available on NAM’s website at https://www.namadr.com/resources/rules-fees-forms/. You and we agree that the party initiating arbitration must submit a certification that they have complied with and completed the Mandatory Pre-Arbitration Notice and Informal Dispute Resolution Procedures requirements referenced above, and that they are a party to the Arbitration Agreement enclosed with or attached to the demand for arbitration. The demand for arbitration and certification must be personally signed by the party initiating arbitration (and their counsel, if represented). The parties agree that submission of the certification shall be required for the claim to be deemed properly filed. For additional information on how to commence an arbitration proceeding, you can contact NAM at customerservice@namadr.com.

If NAM determines that 25 or more substantially similar arbitration demands presented by or with the assistance, coordination, or cooperation of the same law firm, group of law firms, cooperating law firms, or organization are allowed to be submitted for arbitration, NAM’s mass filing fee structure shall apply and the parties agree that the arbitrations will proceed in accordance with the batching process as follows: (i) NAM shall administer the arbitration demands in batches of at least 25 claims, with the discretion to create additional batches if NAM finds that they are necessary to facilitate the efficient resolution of demands; (ii) NAM shall provide for the resolution of each batch as a single consolidated arbitration with one procedural calendar and one hearing (if any) and one final award; and (iii) following such determination of a mass filing, NAM shall apply a single initial filing fee and administrative fee per batch for each side with respect to the fees set forth in NAM’s fee schedule. You agree to cooperate in good faith to implement this batch approach to facilitate the efficient resolution of these claims. All parties agree that arbitrations are of a “substantially similar nature” for purposes of this batching procedure for claims administered by NAM if they arise out of or relate to the same event or factual scenario and raise the same or similar legal issues and seek the same or similar relief. This batching procedure for claims administered by NAM shall in no way be interpreted as authorizing class arbitrations of any kind. Future Parties reserve all rights and defenses as to each and any demand and claimant. If any court or arbitrator determines that this batching procedure for claims administered by NAM and the ADR Services Batching Procedure (see below) are both void or unenforceable for any reason or that an arbitration can proceed on a class basis, then the Arbitration Agreement shall be deemed null and void in its entirety, and you and Future Parties shall be deemed not to have agreed to arbitrate Disputes.

If NAM notifies the parties in writing that it is not available to arbitrate any claim, or if NAM is otherwise unable to arbitrate any claim, that claim shall be submitted to ADR Services, for final and binding individual arbitration before one arbitrator. The arbitration will be administered by ADR Services in accordance with the ADR Services Rules, except as modified by this Arbitration Agreement. If there are 20 or more substantially similar claims that are allowed to be submitted for arbitration but cannot be arbitrated by NAM, and are presented to ADR Services by or with the assistance, coordination, or cooperation of the same law firm, group of law firms, cooperating law firms, or organization, ADR Services shall (i) administer those claims in at least 20 batches, with the discretion to create additional batches if ADR Services finds that they are necessary to facilitate the efficient resolution of demands; and (ii) apply a single initial filing fee and administrative fee per batch for each side with respect to the fees set forth in ADR Services’ then-current Mass Consumer Non-Employment Arbitration Fee Schedule. You agree to cooperate in good faith to implement this ADR Services Batching Procedure to facilitate the efficient resolution of these claims. This ADR Services Batching Procedure shall in no way be interpreted as authorizing class arbitrations of any kind. Future Parties reserve all rights and defenses as to each and any demand and claimant.

Notwithstanding any choice of law or other provision in these Terms, the parties agree and acknowledge that this Arbitration Agreement evidences a transaction involving interstate commerce and that the FAA, will govern its interpretation and enforcement and any proceedings under it. It is the intent of the parties that the FAA and the NAM Rules or ADR Services Rules (as applicable) shall preempt all state laws to the fullest extent permitted by law. If the FAA and the NAM Rules or ADR Services Rules (as applicable) are found to not apply to any issue that arises under this Arbitration Agreement, then that issue shall be interpreted, governed, and enforced in accordance with substantive and procedural law of the State of New York without regard to choice of law or conflict of law provisions.

At the conclusion of the arbitration proceeding, the arbitrator shall issue a reasoned written decision sufficient to explain the essential findings and conclusions on which the award is based. An arbitrator’s award that has been fully satisfied shall not be entered in any court.

As in court, you and Future Parties agree that any counsel representing a party in arbitration certifies when initiating and proceeding in arbitration that they are complying with the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b) and any applicable state laws of similar import, including certification that the claim or relief sought is neither frivolous nor brought for an improper purpose. The arbitrator is authorized to impose any sanctions under the NAM Rules or ADR Services Rules (as applicable), Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, or applicable federal or state law, against all appropriate represented parties and counsel.

Except as expressly provided in the Arbitration Agreement, the arbitrator may grant any remedy, relief, or outcome that the parties could have received in court, including awards of attorneys’ fees and costs, in accordance with applicable law.

Arbitrator’s Fees: You and we agree that arbitration should be cost-effective for all parties and that any party may engage with NAM, ADR Services (as applicable), and/or the arbitrator to address the apportionment of the arbitrator’s fees.

Confidentiality: The parties agree that the arbitrator is authorized to issue an order requiring that confidential information of either party disclosed during the arbitration (whether in documents or orally) may not be used or disclosed except in connection with the arbitration or a proceeding to enforce the arbitration award and that any permitted court filing of confidential information must be done under seal to the furthest extent permitted by law.

Requirement of Individualized Relief: The parties agree that the arbitrator is authorized, upon either party’s request, to award declaratory or injunctive relief only in favor of the individual party seeking relief and only to the extent necessary to provide relief warranted by that party’s individual claim. If any of the prohibitions on non-individualized declaratory or injunctive relief, class, representative, and private attorney general claims, or consolidation set forth under this Arbitration Agreement are found to be unenforceable with respect to a particular claim or with respect to a particular request for relief (such as a request for injunctive relief sought with respect to a particular claim), then, after exhaustion of all appeals, the parties agree such a claim or request for relief shall be decided by a court of competent jurisdiction, after all other arbitrable claims and requests for relief are arbitrated.

You agree that any arbitrations between you and Future Parties will be subject to this Arbitration Agreement and not to any prior arbitration agreement you had with Future Parties, and, notwithstanding any provision in these Terms to the contrary, you agree that this Arbitration Agreement amends any prior arbitration agreement you had with Future Parties, including with respect to claims that arose before this or any prior arbitration agreement.

Opt-Out of Future Changes to Arbitration Agreement

Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, if Future Parties make any future change to this Arbitration Agreement (other than a change to the Notice Address or other non-material changes), you may reject any such change by sending Future Parties an email to ArbitrationNotices@Futurenet.com within 30 days of the posting of the amended arbitration agreement that provides: (i) your full legal name, (ii) your complete mailing address, (iii) your phone number, (iv) the change(s) you are rejecting, (v) and, if applicable, the username or email address associated with any purchase from Future Parties. It must include a statement, personally signed by you, that you wish to reject the specified change to the Arbitration Agreement. This is not an opt out of arbitration altogether.

Severability & Survival

If any provision of this Arbitration Agreement, or a portion thereof, is found to be void, invalid, or otherwise unenforceable, then that portion shall be deemed to be severable and, if possible, superseded by a valid, enforceable provision, or portion thereof, that matches the intent of the original provision, or portion thereof, as closely as possible. The remainder of this Arbitration Agreement shall continue to be enforceable and valid according to the terms contained herein.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, if any court or arbitrator determines that the batching procedure for claims administered by NAM (set forth above) and the ADR Services Batching Procedure are both void or unenforceable for any reason or that an arbitration can proceed on a class basis, then, after exhaustion of all appeals, the Arbitration Agreement shall be deemed null and void in its entirety.

This Arbitration Agreement shall survive termination of these Terms. Except as provided in the opt-out provisions set forth above, the terms and conditions of this Arbitration Agreement shall supersede and replace any and all previous arbitration and class action/jury waiver agreements you may have entered into with Future Parties.

Notice for California users

Under California Civil Code Section 1789.3, California users of the online services are entitled to the following specific consumer rights notice: The Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs may be contacted in writing at 400 R Street, Suite 1080, Sacramento, California 95814, or by telephone at (916) 445-1254 or (800) 952-5210.

Notice to New Jersey users

The section on limitation of liability do not apply to New Jersey residents to the extent that New Jersey’s Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty, and Notice Act (TCCWNA) (N.J.S.A. §§ 56:12-14 to 56:12-18) prohibits such application.

Miscellaneous

You will not assign any of your rights or delegate any of your obligations under these Terms, in whole or in part, by operation of law or otherwise, without our prior written consent. No assignment or delegation relieves you of any of your obligations under these Terms. We may assign or transfer any of our rights or obligations hereunder without your permission and without notice to you.

The failure by us to enforce any right or provision of these Terms will not constitute a waiver of future enforcement of that right or provision. The waiver of any right or provision will be effective only if in writing and signed by our duly authorized representative. Except as expressly set forth in these Terms, the exercise by either party of any of its remedies under these Terms will be without prejudice to its other remedies under these Terms or otherwise.

These Terms do not and are not intended to confer any rights or remedies upon any person other than you.

If any provision of these Terms is invalid, illegal, void, or unenforceable, then that provision will be deemed severed from these Terms and will not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions of these Terms.

Our order confirmation, these Terms and any other applicable terms, such as our Website Terms of Use and our Privacy Notice will be deemed the final and integrated agreement between you and us on the matters contained in these Terms.

Val Kilmer smoldered with intensity, for better and for worse. The Adonis-faced actor had a reputation for disappearing into his roles: Critic Roger Ebert called his turn as singer Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991) "not a case of casting, but of possession." Other high-profile roles included aviator Tom "Iceman" Kazansky in the smash hit Top Gun (1986), gunfighter Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1993), and Batman in Batman Forever (1995). But Kilmer was also known as an eccentric perfectionist who could be a nightmare on set. "The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate," Entertainment Weekly dubbed him in a 1996 story; directors called him "childish," "impossible," and a "damaged megalomaniac." Kilmer was unapologetic. "I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some," he said in 2021. "I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed."

Kilmer grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth, Calif., where his father was a real estate developer, said the Los Angeles Times. Destined for acting, he performed in TV commercials as a kid and at 16 was accepted into the prestigious Juilliard drama program. The night before he left, his younger brother drowned in a swimming pool; Kilmer said "he never fully recovered." After graduating he appeared off-Broadway, then gained notice in Real Genius (1985) before he "broke through" as Tom Cruise's rival in Top Gun. It was in The Doors, though, "that he earned movie star status." With typical intensity Kilmer "immersed himself" in playing Morrison, said The Times (U.K.). He studied videos of the singer "obsessively" and sang so convincingly that Morrison's former bandmates couldn't tell the two voices apart.

Kilmer's bad reputation peaked with the filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), a "disastrous production" marred by his tantrums and feuding, said Variety. Soon "studio roles dwindled," and he "appeared mostly in independent films and supporting roles." Keeping a home base on a New Mexico ranch, he spent years touring a one-man Mark Twain show, Citizen Twain. In 2021, seven years after he was diagnosed with the throat cancer that stole his voice, he was the subject of a documentary, Val, depicting him as "an introspective thinker with an artist's soul." He told an interviewer that year that he would change nothing about his career, saying, "I've witnessed and experienced miracles."

Shortly before he took his front-row seat at Donald Trump's inauguration, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was making sweeping changes to Facebook's content moderation systems, to curb censorship and prioritise free speech.

Yet it seems this "ethos goes only so far", said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times – because Meta is now doing its best to silence the speech of a former senior Facebook staffer. Last week, its lawyers won an injunction to stop Sarah Wynn-Williams promoting her memoir of her years at the firm, citing the terms of her severance deal. Happily, though, this ham-fisted censorship effort has backfired: her publisher has declined to be cowed, and thanks to all the free publicity, "Careless People" (the title comes from a line about the destructive rich in "The Great Gatsby") is now a bestseller.

It makes for damning reading, said Steven Poole in The Guardian. A former New Zealand diplomat, Wynn-Williams joined the firm in 2011 as an idealist. But over time, she realised that Facebook had a toxic work culture. She claims that its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, invited her to share her bed on a private jet, and was miffed when she declined; and that a male executive told her off for not being "responsive" enough after the birth of her child – though she'd been in a coma. Zuckerberg himself is depicted as a "giant man-baby" – an autocrat so thin-skinned his staff let him win at board games.

More seriously, she claims Facebook offered to help advertisers target teenagers at their most vulnerable, by issuing an alert when they deleted a selfie or used the word "worthless". She says Zuckerberg misled Congress about the compromises he was willing to offer Beijing to get into China; and says he ignored warnings about the way Facebook was being used to whip up sectarian violence in Myanmar.

The book (which Meta says is full of lies and half-truths) is also revealing about Facebook's role in US politics, said Emma Duncan in The Times. In 2016, its staff helped the Trump campaign to use its data to micro-target voters with messaging and misinformation. Zuckerberg was cross when Facebook was held responsible for the election result; but then he realised the level of power it meant he had, and he started talking about making his own White House bid.

Now, of course, there is no chance of the US reining in the tech giants, said John Naughton in The Observer – just as AI is making these firms more powerful than ever. Truly, it is time for the British government to "grow some backbone", and treat this as a national security issue.

Split Fiction

“Split Fiction will go down as one of the most beloved co-op games of this generation,” said Christopher Byrd in The New York Times. A split-screen adventure in which you and a friend play as aspiring writers whose sci-fi and fantasy ideas are coming to life in real time, the Hazelight Studios release delivers so many dazzling spectacles that you happily overlook the predictability of its overarching storyline.

Across eight chapters, players hopscotch among settings that present rising stakes, and while a friend and I were amazed by the final level, an earlier chance to pilot a two-headed insect through various platforming challenges was “an experience unlike any we had encountered before.” Like It Takes Two, Hazelight’s previous hit, Split Fiction demands that players work in tandem, said Ash Parrish in The Verge. At the same time, it’s “forgiving enough that players at different skill levels (say, parent and child) can still play together.” When my husband and I navigated a pinball level with him controlling the ball and me the paddles, “our minds and bodies melded together” and “it was honestly kinda sexy.”

Monster Hunter: Wilds

Monster Hunter: Wilds The newest addition to the 20-year-old Monster Hunter franchise “doesn’t let up for a second,” said Keza MacDonald in The Guardian. For the first 15 hours, it’s “all killer, no filler,” and “a far cry from the ponderous older games” as you engage in “incomparably thrilling” battles with a series of ferocious creatures, including a giant spider, a fire-ape, and an electrified wyvern that you can wear down only by calling on “every trick you know.” Better yet, the game “can’t be reduced to a series of fights”— because its greatest awards arrive once you become a student of its subtleties and a mentor to other players.

Wilds is easily “the best Monster Hunter campaign ever,” said Jake Green in TechRadar. “Streamlined and punchy,” it’s entirely gimmick-free, “with the headline feature being the seamless open world.” Once I was freed of the demands of the game’s battles, “I spent hours simply riding through each region,” watching pink-furred apes snooze in the sun, huge raptors circle above, and leaf-cutting ants march in formation. “You can practically hear David Attenborough narrating the whole thing.”

Tucker Carlson's transformation from bow-tied, mainstream conservative journalist to MAGA ideological firebrand happened over the course of more than 20 years. Once a fixture of traditional Republican-leaning outlets like The Weekly Standard, Carlson moved to the right as a prime time host for Fox News and then off the ideological map when he was fired from the network in 2023 and founded his own media operation. It has been a lucrative career path for him, but also one that has made him into a highly divisive figure in American politics and media.

How he made his fortune

Carlson graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut in 1991 with a degree in history and no set plan for what to do with it. Journalism was not his first choice, but after he "failed to get into the CIA," Carlson determined that "reporting seemed like an exciting fallback," said The Washingtonian. He landed his first high-profile job at the newly launched conservative magazine The Weekly Standard in 1995. Carlson positioned himself as a "facts-driven reporter" who "was a journalist, not an ideologue," despite working at a conservative publication, said Mother Jones.

Print journalism is not a path to riches for most people, but Carlson's prominence and compensation increased when he was hired by CNN in 2000 to host "The Spin Room" and then in 2001 moved to the debate program "Crossfire" as a co-host. Throughout this period he wore his signature bow tie, becoming known as the "self-assured young conservative who dressed like a spelling-bee champion," said The New Yorker. The show "was canceled in early 2005 after a tense on-air exchange where comedian Jon Stewart called Carlson a 'dick,'" said Business Insider.

In 2004 he was hired by PBS to host a show called "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered," which "lasted about a year and ran at the same time as CNN's 'Crossfire,'" said The New York Times. In 2005 he was hired by MSNBC to host an evening talk show called "Tucker." The show "never really found its footing in the ratings," and was canceled in 2008, said Reuters.

Jobless journalist to prime-time titan on Fox

After MSNBC, Carlson struggled through an uncertain period before landing with Fox News in 2009, where he would eventually become one of the network's biggest stars during the first Trump administration. He also cofounded online outlet The Daily Caller with Neil Patel in 2010, which became a "pioneer in online conservative journalism" and "placed an emphasis on original reporting," said The New York Times. In 2020, Carlson sold his stake in the site for an unknown amount.

In 2016, Fox News put him in the departing Bill O'Reilly's 8 p.m. prime time slot with a show called "Tucker Carlson Tonight." He struck a "populist tone about elites who are out to get the average American," said The Associated Press. Thanks to his rising popularity, Carlson landed an "eight figure, two book deal" with publisher Threshold Editions in 2017, said the Los Angeles Times. In 2020, his controversial Fox News show "broke the record for most-watched cable news program in U.S. history, cracking more than 4.5 million viewers on average for that quarter," said Yahoo News.

But his role in propagating President Trump's baseless conspiracy theory about how the 2020 election was stolen eventually put him on the outs with the network's leadership, who fired him. Fox was forced to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million. At the time, Carlson was "making between $15 million and $20 million a year" at Fox News, said Forbes.

After leaving Fox, he launched the subscription-based Tucker Carlson Network, "which is essentially staffed by the people who used to work for him at Fox," said The Associated Press. Carlson's new network has repeatedly courted controversy, including when he flew to Moscow to interview Russia's autocratic President Vladimir Putin, "fueling both the Russian president's anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and Carlson's drive for renewed relevance in his post-Fox career," said NPR. His income from the new venture is unknown.

Carlson owns two homes in Boca Grande, Florida. He purchased a four-bedroom house for $2.9 million in January 2020 and then in 2022 "picked up a second '60s-era house right next door for $5.5 million," said Realtor.com. Because Carlson has never run for office or needed to publicly disclose his finances, his net worth is a matter of speculation. But AOL estimated his net worth at $30 million in April 2023, and MSN estimated his net worth at $50 million as of December 27, 2024.

The MeidasTouch Podcast

(MeidasTouch Network)

The Joe Rogan Experience has met its match, said Julia Ornedo in The Daily Beast. While Rogan and other Trump-friendly hosts still hold most of the top slots on Spotify’s daily podcast chart, brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meiselas—all progressive warriors—have shot to the No. 1 position in Podscribe’s monthly ranking and now vie regularly for the daily crown. The brothers’ MeidasTouch podcast more than doubled its reach in the weeks following Trump’s inauguration, while Rogan’s audience was declining by 32 percent. But progressives shouldn’t get too excited about MeidasTouch’s surge, said Dustin Rowles in Pajiba. The Meiselases are media professionals who for several years have been flooding social media platforms with political content funded by their own Super PAC. “They’re basically a rapid-response team for the DNC, if the DNC were run entirely by clickbait merchants.” Looked at another way, “they’re podcast equivalent of that liberal aunt who posts on Facebook every half hour. In person, she’s great! Online, she needs to chill out.”

The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan

(Club Random Studios)

Besides fronting The Smashing Pumpkins, ’90s rock hero Billy Corgan is now also a wrestling promoter, café owner, and video podcast host, said Dean Fields in American Songwriter. With The Magnificent Others, he’s out to celebrate overlooked or misunderstood artists, relying on shared professional experiences to coax unique insights and stories from guests such as Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Gene Simmons of Kiss. “I would like to think that my interview with Gene, which is 90 minutes, is going to be a far different interview than any interview you’d see with Gene,” Corgan has said. It has proved “inspiring” to hear Corgan handle these long interviews and create a conversation he thinks is worthwhile, said Anagricel Duran in NME. In upcoming episodes, he’ll present one of the last interviews with recently deceased soul legend Sam Moore, as well as Mark Laita, host of the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly. Keep an ear peeled for his chat with singer Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons, which Corgan says generated the show’s craziest story so far.

YouTube is the new kingmaker for podcasts, said Ashley Carman in Bloomberg. The 20-year-old video-streaming service, owned by Google, said last week that “more than 1 billion people a month are now viewing podcast content” on its platform. That means that more people watch podcasts now than are listening to them on Spotify or Apple. YouTube is fueling the transition by “offering as much as $300,000 to podcasters to entice them to create video versions of their shows.” The interview-oriented, talk show–style content that has come to dominate in podcasting lends itself easily to video, said Angela Yang in NBC News.com. And people are increasingly watching YouTube not on their phones, but on their televisions. In effect, “people sitting in front of a TV today might be more likely to flick on a podcast than a prime-time talk show.”

The pivot to video began during the pandemic, said Ben Cohen in The Wall Street Journal. Hosts “started recording their Zoom conversations,” and listeners had such a craving for human interaction “that they actually watched them.” Creators quickly realized “they could make real money turning their audio podcasts into videos, since YouTube pays them a share of advertising revenue from their content.” And audiences seem to love it. Young people, especially, report “feeling more connected to their favorite hosts because they can see them.”

The YouTube format has opened the door to minimal-production shows in which podcasters flip on a camera and talk, said Davey Alba in Bloomberg. It’s a format that’s worked magic for right-wing hosts such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Logan Paul, who don’t “style themselves as political pundits,” yet have frequently opined on politics and “described men as victims of a Democratic campaign to strip them of their power.” All of this is “sandwiched between free-wheeling discussions of sports, masculinity, internet culture, gambling, and pranks,” which has made their shows catnip “to a voting bloc that helped propel Donald Trump back to the White House.”

The risk is that YouTube reduces podcasts to a stream of sound bites, said Dan Granger in Variety. The podcast medium gave hosts “the ability to have long-form, complex conversations,” and listeners, to this point, have proven willing to be deeply engrossed for 60-plus minute episodes. This new YouTube format, however, means “catering to younger, clip-loving audiences across social media, relying on sound bites to garner attention.” All sorts of biases also get introduced when video enters the equation, said Nicholas Quah in New York magazine. A former print journalist who now makes audio-only narrative projects said of female podcasters: “If we wanted to be in TV, we would’ve gone into broadcast journalism.”

Jeff Bezos seemed the "perfect white knight" when he bought the struggling Washington Post in 2013, said Jill Abramson in The Boston Globe. The billionaire didn't even bother to negotiate over the $250 million price tag and promised to be a "hands-off" owner. For years he honoured that pledge, but shortly before the last presidential election, he badly "tarnished" the paper's reputation by spiking a Washington Post editorial endorsing Kamala Harris – a move that led to some 250,000 cancelled subscriptions. And last week Bezos went further.

In a memo to Post staff, he explained that the paper's opinion pages would henceforth consistently champion "personal liberties and free markets". "We'll cover other topics too of course," he wrote, "but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others." The Post's opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned over the edict.

Honestly, the fuss people have made of this, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. There's nothing new about owners determining the editorial line of newspapers. The Washington Post has been "synonymous with crusading liberalism" since it exposed the Watergate scandal, but its politics were different in the 1930s, when it was owned by the Republican banker Eugene Meyer. Besides, what's so bad about emphasising liberty and free markets? They're hardly "the hallmarks of authoritarian rule".

Bezos is entitled to put his mark on the Post, agreed Roger Simon on Substack. It could be a smart commercial move, too, given the uncertain future of the Murdoch media empire. If the more liberal family members get their way and push the politics of papers such as The Wall Street Journal to the left, it could present an opening for the Post.

It's a "rotten business decision", said Michael Schaffer on Politico. The Post has always sought to reflect a wide range of views on its op-ed pages, to grow its readership. If Bezos seems to be controlling the paper to "curry favour with his new pal Donald Trump", then readers won't trust it. Bezos says papers don't need to cover all views because "the internet does that job"; he just cares about freedom. Does that "include, say, the freedom to start a union at an Amazon warehouse? Or run a business without worrying that some monopolistic e-commerce behemoth is going to drive you under?" These sound like good subjects for debate "on a pluralistic op-ed page somewhere".

Elon Musk has started a war on Wikipedia after the outlet made reference to his gesture at Trump's inauguration, which many have compared to the Nazi salute. While Wikipedia did not directly accuse Musk of doing a Nazi salute, he still flagged the organization for being far-left, previously calling it "Wokepedia." On X Musk called for people to "Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored!" This is just another instance of him attacking media sources who seem to represent conflicting views to his own.

What is the conflict between Musk and Wikipedia?

Musk has had minor conflicts with Wikipedia for months. In October 2024, he offered to donate $1 billion to Wikipedia to change the name to "Dickipedia." In December 2024, he was already calling for people to stop donating to the site after a far-right X account incorrectly claimed that the Wikimedia Foundation "devotes $50 million a year to 'diversity and inclusion' projects," said Le Monde. "In reality, this sum mainly finances the encyclopedia's development, lawyers' salaries and cybersecurity measures."

The conflict has ramped up since Trump's inauguration. After Musk's call to defund the website, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on X that the description on the website of Musk's actions was not inaccurate and that "Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale." He added that "if Elon wanted to help, he'd be encouraging kind and thoughtful intellectual people he agrees with to engage." In addition, claims that Wikipedia has been coopted by the far-left are inaccurate. While it is "certainly not immune to bad information, disagreement or political warfare," Wikipedia's "openness and transparency rules have made it a remarkably reliable platform in a decidedly unreliable age," said The Atlantic. "Evidence that it's an outright propaganda arm of the left, or of any political party, is thin."

Is there a larger problem at play?

Musk has been "increasingly critical of legacy media organizations, which he claims misrepresent his beliefs and actions," said Newsweek. "The opposition to him from Wikipedia represents a break from other tech companies, which have become increasingly friendly towards Donald Trump and his officials in the wake of his election victory." But Wikipedia does not operate like other media organizations. "Thanks to the contributions of a global community of hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors, Wikipedia continues to be a reliable, trusted resource for all," said a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation to Newsweek.

Wikipedia has a nonprofit model, and "the people who are constantly writing and rewriting Wikipedia entries are disaggregated volunteers — rather than bendable to one man's ideological views," said The Atlantic. Instead, Musk's actions, some say, represent an attack on free speech. "He is highly tolerant of inaccuracy, misinformation, criticism, even hate," Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said to The Independent. "But when the subject of the speech is himself, or his agenda, his objectives, and his companies, it's quite the opposite."

Many worry that Wikipedia contributors could be targeted next. According to documents obtained by the independent news organization Forward, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank responsible for Project 2025, wants to "use facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia, who mostly work under pseudonyms." It is not yet clear what the organization would do after identifying the contributors.

Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori's appearance on the Grammys' red carpet was unexpected by all accounts. They had gatecrashed, said The Times' Caitlin Moran. His former glittering music career is not so glittering now, hence the no-invite status. But it was his wife, an architect and former model from Australia, that everyone was looking at.

Lowering a long, fur coat and turning to face the photographers, Censori revealed she was naked except for a "fully transparent mini dress, and no underwear," said The Guardian's Moira Donegan. She appeared completely nude.

'Nowhere to hide'

But this isn't about how much of her body a young woman revealed, said Moran. After all, the Grammys is often "a very titty, bummy event". The concern is that we can't be sure if Censori is really ok with it.

Since marrying West in 2023, she has rarely been seen without him, noted Donegan. She has shown form for fewer rather than more clothes, too. And the effect is "heightened by the proximity" of West, who is often clad in "too much clothing beside Censori's too little".

At the Grammys, Censori had "nowhere to hide" though. The practically non-existent dress gave her "no comfort or shelter". "'Make a scene,' West seems to be saying to her", said Moran. But the scene she makes is a depressing one and one, according to Page Six, that had them escorted from the building soon after.

'Sometimes things are what they look like'

At first glance, this is a woman "apparently brimming with body confidence", said Vogue's Raven Smith, but "there are concerns about this particular woman's silence: we've heard very little from Bianca during her Kanye tenure".

Indeed, said Donegan. "The exposure of Censori's body is contrasted with the enigma of her mind." Let's not jump to conclusions, though, said Smith. A woman can make "a zillion choices we wouldn't personally make ourselves and still not have that mean she's being coerced".

It would certainly play more easily on our mind to imagine Censori and West "partaking, together, in a critique of gender and celebrity", said Donegan. Seeing her as an artist allows us to view Censori as "something more hopeful and complicated than a victim of brutality", though she cautions, "sometimes things are what they look like".

The worst thing about the phone hacking scandal is, of course, the misery it caused to those whose privacy was invaded, said The Independent. But the damage spread further than that: it tarnished the reputation of all journalists, and by further eroding trust in the media, it undermined a fundamental pillar of our democracy.

So even those who do not share all of Prince Harry's views about the press should commend him for his long campaign to bring to account those responsible for tabloid phone hacking, surveillance and other nefarious practices – and welcome the victory he scored last week, when Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) finally admitted that "unlawful activities" had taken place at The Sun. As part of a last-minute settlement, Harry also won "substantial damages" and an apology for the "serious intrusion" into his private life, and that of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, by The Sun and the defunct News of the World.

It is a vindication of sorts, but this is not the result Harry hoped for, said Victoria Ward in The Daily Telegraph. Only six weeks ago, he said he'd not settle because his goal was full accountability, to bring "closure" for all the victims who'd had to settle. Yet last week, he and former Labour MP Tom Watson – the last two claimants – capitulated, in return for a limited acceptance of liability: NGN admitted that investigators hired by The Sun had acted unlawfully, but denied wrongdoing by its own journalists at the paper.

Harry had been made an offer he could not refuse, said Jane Martinson in The Guardian. Had he rejected the settlement – believed to be £10 million – then been awarded a penny less in court, he'd have been liable for both sides' costs, which exceed £30 million. This rule is designed to stop litigants from clogging up the system, but the powerful can use it to avoid public scrutiny, said Robert Shrimsley in the FT. NGN had already paid out an estimated $1 billion to settle more than 1,300 cases, and spare its executives from having to testify about the scandal and their efforts to contain it. A further £10 million must have seemed small beer to bring the saga to an end.

The only hope left now for transparency is if the police decide to reopen their investigation. Until then, there is no real victory: the Murdochs and their top executives – including former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks – "remain unbowed; fêted and fawned upon". Like the Buchanans in "The Great Gatsby", the business has "been able to wreck lives then retreat into their money". The "warrior prince won more than most", but "even he could not meet the full price of justice".

The Washington Post is one of the most storied organizations in American journalism. But it is in crisis, losing reporting talent, suffering a loss of readers and facing a staff rebellion against publisher Will Lewis.

The Post has been swamped by "one debacle after another," since Lewis took charge of the newspaper a year ago, said NPR. The decision by the owner (and billionaire Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos to cancel the Post's traditional presidential endorsement in an apparent effort to placate newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump was a huge blow, causing "hundreds of thousands of subscribers" to cancel their subscriptions. Layoffs have led to fewer journalists on the job, contributing to plummeting morale that led some of the survivors to flee for jobs elsewhere. A "clear vision" to put the Post back on track to journalistic and financial success remains "elusive," said NPR.

More than 400 Post staffers last week sent a letter to Bezos asking him to "get personally involved to turn the paper back in the right direction," said Poynter. The staffers said in the letter they were "deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions" that caused readers to bolt. They asked for a face-to-face meeting with Bezos in the service of "restoring trust that has been lost." Bezos did not immediately reply.

What did the commentators say?

Bezos has "plunged my beloved Washington Post into darkness," said Eleanor Clift at The Daily Beast. Post reporters have done a "first-rate job covering Trump," but Bezos' decision to pacify the incoming president (with the non-endorsement, as well Amazon's $40 million expense on a documentary about Melania Trump) has raised the specter their journalism could be "compromised by anything that could damage Bezos' financial interests." Bezos' decision to get on Trump's good side "has ramifications far beyond the Post newsroom."

If the Post is to remain viable, it must "retain, not lose, its talent," Margaret Sullivan said at The Guardian. It's not "unreasonable to question" whether the Post can maintain its independence in the Trump era, and "Bezos may not care." But if he does care, he should "show up — soon" in the newsroom to talk to reporters, and recommit to the "importance of editorial freedom." He should also dump Lewis, who has overseen a rapid decline in the Post's standing. For the sake of both journalism and "democracy itself, I sure hope he finds a way to do it."

What next?

On the eve of Trump's inauguration, the Post unveiled a new mission statement: "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." The slogan is intended as an "internal rallying point for employees," said The New York Times. And the paper's chief strategy officer has announced a goal of reaching 200 million paying users. That's an audacious target: The Post currently has fewer than 3 million digital subscribers.

"Sesame Street" has loomed large in the imaginations of America's children for a half-century. Big Bird? Bert and Ernie? Elmo? What would childhood look like without them? Everyone might find out.

The show is "facing significant business and creative hurdles as it enters its 55th season," said The Washington Post. New episodes have premiered on HBO and its streaming service, Max, since 2016, but the company is not renewing the show's contract, and "Sesame Street" has yet to find a replacement network or streaming service. Most alarmingly, the show's audience has "shrunk as competition has grown," said the Post: The Nielsen ratings put "Sesame Street" in 14th place for streaming kids' shows in 2023.

The decision to end the run of "Sesame Street" is "part of a broader corporate shift away from children's programming" at Max, said The New York Times. A company spokesman said the streaming service has decided to "prioritize our focus on stories for adults and families." That might ultimately work to the series' benefit as it looks to find a new home. Other streaming services like Disney Plus, Netflix and YouTube Kids "have more content for parents to play for kids," said The Verge.

What did the commentators say?

The show's young target audience "might not care" about its future, Candice Frederick said at Huffington Post. The conversation about what happens next for "Sesame Street" might be "15 or 20 years too late." The show still aims to help children with "social, emotional and literacy skills" but some observers say the show "lost a lot of appeal to its core audience years ago." Marilisa Jiménez García, associate professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University-Camden, said the show backed away from its core educational mission to emphasize "puppets, puppets, puppets, cartoons, cartoons, cartoons."

The series is "more essential than ever," Alan Sepinwall said at Rolling Stone. At a historical moment when "we have grown increasingly tribal and isolated from one another," the ethos of "Sesame Street" is that people different of backgrounds "can be best pals despite disagreeing on almost everything." It is "awfully troubling" that the show's future is now in doubt, but it is still such a big brand that it is easy to "imagine Apple or another streamer stepping in to rescue Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and friends," Sepinwall said. A television landscape without "Sesame Street" would be "much emptier and sadder."

What next?

The show is being "reimagined" for the future, said The Hollywood Reporter. A 56th season, if it happens, will feature a shift away from the show's current "magazine" format of multiple short segments in favor of "two longer, more narrative-driven segments." Children have changed, say the show's producers, which means "Sesame Street" must also change. Kay Wilson Stallings, the executive vice president of Sesame Workshop, said the creators of "Sesame Street" always imagined it "like an experiment."

"Welcome to Meghan Markle's influencer era," said The Independent. The Duchess of Sussex has launched a new Instagram account with a "straightforward but somehow slightly grandiose mononymic username, @meghan", that will take us "behind the scenes" of her life with Prince Harry in California.

Markle's debut post is a "brief, ever-so-casual clip" that shows her running barefoot towards the ocean dressed in a flowing white shirt and jeans, leaning down to write '2025' in the sand with her finger in "a moment of perfectly rehearsed spontaneity".

The unveiling came as the first trailer dropped for her gleaming new Netflix series, "With Love, Meghan", that will celebrate the "joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship", said Claudia Cockerell in London's The Standard.

'Queen of Huns'

It seems Markle is on track to "follow the Goop playbook", said Cockerell. The foundations are clearly being laid for Markle to establish herself as an influencer, but things have changed considerably since she launched her lifestyle blog, "The Tig", in 2014.

To be successful on Instagram she'll need to give people "confessional pieces to camera" and "a look-in at the life that she and Harry lead". It simply isn't enough to share "wordless, faceless videos on beaches".

I have "always had a soft spot for Meghan", but the whole thing feels, "for lack of a kinder word, cringe", said Rebecca Reid on the i news site. "But then maybe that's the key?" Perhaps Markle should "bypass cool and head straight for cheugy". As long as she avoids hiring "anyone who knows anything about social media", she "might enjoy a renaissance as Queen of the Huns".

'Meghan, the trad wife'

"We've had Meghan, the actress, Meghan, the people's princess, and Meghan the wound-licking, Oprah-confiding ex-royal", said The Times. Now it seems the Duchess of Sussex has a "new guise": "Meghan, the trad wife".

If the "honey-hued trailer" for Markle's new Netflix show seems "a little Stepfordy for a self-identified and vocal feminist, then you wouldn't be wrong". But it's not exactly surprising given the "fickle nature" of the internet trend cycle: "ostentatious displays of domesticity are de rigueur". With the popularity of housewife influencers soaring, and Instagrammable dinner party tables becoming a "status symbol", it seems "With Love, Meghan" is "bang on the money".

Of course, opening up her life online will inevitably draw an "extra dose of criticism", said The Independent. For every person who follows her account in "good faith", another will be "keeping tabs" on her only to "build ammunition to attack her with".

Still, "a 'hate follow' is still a follow" and Markle will be able to "capitalise on that obsession". "Social media offers the potential to make money from her detractors – it might just give Meghan the last laugh after all."

The podcast revolution started in the pandemic and, though some genres have started to feel saturated, it has not slowed down.

Comedy

Some great news for comedy fans this year was the return, after a long gap, of the "very funny and utterly bizarre" "The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show", said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. It proved "well worth the wait, especially if you like your comedy daft and Pythonesque". On his superb sitcom "Thanks a Lot, Milton Jones!", the comedian Milton Jones "uses audio exactly as it should be used: to create utterly bananas situations that would cost thousands to film", said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. It's "genuinely laugh-out-loud" funny.

"Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes" was a terrific 12-part series, and the perfect tonic for a winter afternoon, said James Marriott in The Times. Hislop's optimism is infectious as he explores the history of jokes in English, starting with the Anglo-Saxons. More cerebral but still "completely beguiling" was "Close Readings: On Satire" – a "fascinating" and unpretentious exploration of satire, from Erasmus and Donne to Wilde and Waugh, presented by All Souls fellows Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell.

Double acts

It has become a podcasting cliché to have hosts from "opposite sides of the fence creating a safe space for civil discussion", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. But the excellent "A Muslim & A Jew Go There" – with Sayeeda Warsi and David Baddiel – feels more "a necessary show of friendship and understanding" in febrile times than a last gasp of a tired formula. Most of the podcasts in the Rest Is... stable leave me a bit cold, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. But "The Rest Is Entertainment", with Richard Osman and The Guardian's Marina Hyde, is a witty, charming, well-informed treat. Another terrific celebrity two-hander is "Miss Me?", from lifelong friends Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, which stands out for its mix of boldness and intimacy, said The Observer, and is a "complete hoot".

Society

"Things Fell Apart", Jon Ronson's acclaimed podcast about the origins of the culture wars, returned for a second season that was "even better than the first", said Eliana Dockterman in Time magazine. Its "engrossing" tales take surprising "twists and turns", and though there are warm moments, the "overall effect is chilling". Another riveting series was Dan Taberski's "Hysterical", about a psychogenic illness – involving Tourette's-like symptoms – that affected girls in upstate New York in 2011, in the largest known case of mass hysteria since the Salem witch trials. "Shell Game" is a funny but unnerving series about the perils and potential of AI, said New York Magazine. And six years on from its last outing, "Serial" returned with a superb series about Guantánamo and America's "forever war", drawing on first-hand accounts from detainees and guards.

Professor David Runciman was one of the hosts of the long-running podcast "Talking Politics". His new venture, "Past Present Future" – a broader series exploring everything from great political films to the representation of robots in 20th-century art – proved equally essential, said James Marriott in The Times, who especially enjoyed a strand on the history of "bad ideas". Similarly "intellectually inspiring" was "Democracy's Year of Peril", in which the FT's Martin Wolf and leading political thinkers discussed the future of liberal democracy.

"Afghan Star" told the "compelling story" of a popular TV talent show that launched in 2005, four years after the fall of the Taliban, said Jenny McCartney in The Spectator. The series is a vivid depiction of the suffering and resilience of ordinary Afghans. "Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust" offered an absorbing investigation into what McCartney called the "painfully intense" love affair between so many Americans and their guns. And "Cocaine Inc." was a searing look at the impact of the cocaine industry.

History

"Three Million", an exploration of the 1943 Bengal famine, was one of the most thought-provoking history podcasts I've heard in years, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. "The Brighton Bomb", about the IRA's attack during the Tory Party conference in 1984, was "transfixing" and evocative. "Events I thought I knew all about surprised me afresh like an unfolding thriller." And "Blood on the Dance Floor", about the murder of an off-duty officer at Belfast's first gay club, was sad but "gripping", and "brilliantly produced".

"The Butterfly King", exploring the suspicious death of Boris III, the last king of Bulgaria, was a "masterclass in suspenseful sleuthing and creative storytelling", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. The "beautifully produced" "D-Day: The Tide Turns" told the story of the invasion by focusing on the people who made it possible – including airmen and medics, said The Economist. Also recommended: "The Belgrano Diary" and "History's Secret Heroes".

Arts & music

Between 1972 and 1976, Stevie Wonder released five albums that turned him into a pop colossus, said Eliana Dockterman in Time. "The Wonder of Stevie", made by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris, was a "joyful celebration" of the period. "Legend: The Joni Mitchell Story", narrated by the American singer Jesca Hoop, was an "engrossingly moving" biographical overview of the great singer-songwriter, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. Fans should also check out "The Road to Joni", a more freewheeling affair exploring her influence on Americana artists.

Jake Shears' music and chat podcast "Queer the Music: Jake Shears on the Songs That Changed Lives" is a warm-hearted "triumph", said The Guardian. "Blame it on the Fame: Milli Vanilli" offers an absorbing account of the "fake" pop group created by Boney M producer Frank Farian, exploring wider questions of blackness, exploitation and cancel culture. And "Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?" is a "belly-achingly funny" look at what has been dubbed "pop culture's biggest conspiracy theory".

Well-being

Podcasts aimed at self- improvement are, for "this grouchy listener, frequently irritating", said Fiona Sturges in the FT. "Self Help", presented by artist and writer Scottee, is emphatically "not one of those". It's a "delightful" and "warmly intimate" series in which the listener joins Scottee on walks around Scotland while he delivers "compelling monologues" on what he calls "a life spent clinically mad".

"Untold: The Retreat", a superb series from the FT's Madison Marriage, explores the Goenka network, which promotes a type of intensive meditation known as Vipassana, said GQ. It presents evidence that this can be highly dangerous if taken to excess, and includes harrowing accounts of hallucinations, psychosis, and worse.

"How Do You Cope? ...with Elis and John" is a warm and insightful series in which well-known guests open up about the mental health challenges they have overcome, said Hannah Verdier in The Guardian. Esther Perel's relationship-therapy podcast "Where Shall We Begin?" returned with the mini-series "The Arc of Love", on which Perel is "stricter than ever", said The Times – and "weirdly, unerringly, terrifyingly right" about her patients. Also recommended: "School of Rock Bottom", Oliver Mason's absorbing and often moving interview podcast about addiction and recovery.

True crime

Released late last year, but still winning accolades in 2024, was "Ghost Story". Tristan Redman's gripping series starts with a story about a haunted bedroom, said Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer, but soon becomes less about the supernatural than that other "age-old source of drama – family secrets".

Podcasting has become, said James Marriott in The Times, "almost dementedly preoccupied" with scammers, catfishers and the like. But even if you think you've had your fill, he urged listeners to try two outstanding series. "The Pirate of Prague", about the Czech-born financial fraudster Viktor Kožený, is an astonishing story told with wit and brio. And "Kill List" is ghoulishly gripping about a site on the dark web where people solicit contract killings. "Seeking house to be burned down with occupants inside. No survivors," runs a typical order, offering a fee of a few thousand dollars. The twist, as journalist Carl Miller related in The Times, is that the website is a scam, conning the homicidal.

"To Catch a Scorpion" was a rare true-crime podcast that actually led to the arrest of its "scumbag" protagonist, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Barzan Majeed (aka Scorpion) was the kingpin of a cross-Channel people- smuggling operation; the podcast is a "riveting" account of the BBC's successful quest to track him down.

Miscellany

"What Did You Do Yesterday?", from broadcaster Max Rushden and comedian David O'Doherty, is "delightful", said James Marriott in The Times. It seems that when you get "really funny people" to talk about seemingly mundane topics, you end up with an illuminating guide to "the different textures of people's lives".

In "Strangers on a Bench", Tom Rosenthal interviews people he sees sitting on benches; the results are "moving and true". "Subcultures often make for podcast gold," said The Economist. That applies to the best sports podcast of the year, "Broomgate", about a scandal in the world of curling. It was a joy to welcome back Kirsty Young, said Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. In the excellent "Young Again", she probes famous people about the advice they'd give their younger selves. And it was very sad to bid farewell to Michael Mosley, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times; his series "Just One Thing" has changed many lives, and he will be "greatly missed".

The media industry is one business that is breathing a sigh of relief at the end of 2024. The year has been, by almost all calculable metrics, a bad one for the news. From layoffs and continued consolidations to heavy criticism levied at the coverage of the presidential election, these past 12 months amounted to a year of reckoning for the fourth estate.

And if the incoming presidential administration is an indicator, the media business will not be receiving any breaks as the new year arrives. President-elect Donald Trump and those around him have pledged to go after those in the media they view as enemies, a trend that is likely to continue throughout his second term.

Media landscape changes and consolidations

Media layoffs began ramping up significantly in 2023, and they continued throughout almost all of 2024. Over 500 journalists were laid off from media outlets in January 2024 alone, according to reports, and they kept coming as the year went on. CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Vox Media, Time magazine, NBC News and ABC News were among the legacy media players that saw large job cuts this year.

Many of these media companies also dealt with internal strife. The Washington Post "found itself in some turmoil" in June after the "abrupt departure of the newspaper's executive editor and a hastily announced restructuring plan aimed at stopping an exodus of readers over the past few years," said The Associated Press. This came as the Post continued to shed readers, as its "website had 101 million unique visitors a month in 2020, and had dropped to 50 million at the end of 2023."

With the urge to save money also comes consolidations that will continue to shrink the media landscape. Beyond newspapers, this consolidation is being heavily seen in TV news. The "broadcast news landscape is changing as ownership of the U.S. television market consolidates," said the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In the past 10 years, there "have been $23 billion in broadcast TV ownership deals, further concentrating an industry in which the three largest owners control 40% of all local news stations and are present in over 80% of media markets."

Media and politics

By far the most consequential media story in 2024 was the industry's relationship with the presidential election. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise given polls consistently show that American trust in the media is continuing to fall. Americans have "significant concerns about misinformation — and the role played by the media itself along with politicians and social media companies in spreading it," said the AP.

Media owners' influence on their newsrooms was especially notable this election cycle. Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has "waded into the publication's opinion section in ways that he hadn't until this fall's presidential campaign," said The New York Times, and reportedly told opinion editors that an anti-Trump op-ed "could not be published unless the paper also published an editorial with an opposing view."

The Washington Post also received heavy criticism for not endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in 36 years. This reportedly came at the behest of the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos, and "more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions" in the following days, said NPR. If "this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would've been fine," former Post editor Marty Baron said to NPR. But "this was made within a couple of weeks of the election," and it "was clearly made for other reasons, not for reasons of high principle."

And the news landscape is likely to continue shifting away from traditional media organizations toward sources like influencers and podcasts. The "legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth-telling is in. No more complaining about the media," right-wing activist James O'Keefe said on X. "You are the media."

A Nevada court has delivered "a delicious end-of-season plot twist" to the Murdoch family "soap opera", said Crikey (Australia). In a sealed decision released last weekend, a probate commissioner has ruled against Rupert Murdoch's attempt to alter the terms of a family trust to leave his older son, Lachlan – who shares his right-wing agenda – in control of the media empire, while stripping three of his other children of their voting rights. The commissioner found that the patriarch and his chosen heir had acted in "bad faith" in trying to force through the change. The decision is "a resounding victory" for siblings Prudence, Elisabeth and James Murdoch after a "bitter legal dispute", said the FT. But it may not be over yet. Murdoch, 93, plans to appeal.

This was a case of reality imitating art, said Athena Stavrou in The Independent. According to court documents obtained by The New York Times, the Murdoch children began planning a strategy for their father's eventual death after watching an episode of HBO's "Succession", inspired partly by the Murdochs, which showed "chaos erupting within Logan Roy's media dynasty". In the ensuing deeply contentious feud over the future of the empire, which spans several continents and includes such powerful outlets as Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, Lachlan instigated the plan to change the trust – named "Project Family Harmony" – in mid-2023. Agreeing to it was perhaps "the last manoeuvre of Murdoch's seven-decade career", said DealBook in The New York Times. He may have feared a "corporate coup" after his death, even though the three other children said they had no intention of ousting their brother from his managing roles at Fox News and News Corp, which owns the newspapers.

For all Lachlan's "paranoid schemes", changing the terms of the trust was always a long shot, said Stephen Mayne on Crikey. It would have meant proving the other beneficiaries "would face disaster" unless he was "given complete control" – and his "record is nothing to write home about". Still, with Fox News scheduled to hit "peak power" during the second Trump presidency, "the family empire has arguably never been in ruder financial health". News Corp shares hit a record high this month, and Fox's ratings and profits are soaring. Their combined market capitalisation is now around $40 billion. Some believe the more liberal Murdochs might opt to sell the "cash machine", rather than managing it more moderately. But the implications of this ruling are potentially "seismic", wrote academics Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd on The Conversation. "If Prudence, James and Elisabeth... are up for a fight, the world could soon be in for a fascinating media transition."

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One of the most controversial platforms on the internet might have a new owner, as the satirical news publication The Onion is trying to purchase the far-right website Infowars. Infowars was sold at auction out of bankruptcy, and the transaction would end control of the website by its longtime owner and founder, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Jones has long been a lightning rod figure, and was forced to put Infowars up for sale after losing a Connecticut-based defamation lawsuit, putting him on the hook for $1.5 billion in damages. But The Onion and its parent company, Global Tetrahedron LLC, intend to keep Infowars alive if the deal closes — something that Jones and his lawyers are trying to prevent.

Why does The Onion want Infowars?

The outlet wants to help pay the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, most of whom are Jones' estate creditors. Jones was sued for defamation by the families for claiming on his show that the massacre "was performed by actors following a script written by government officials to bolster the push for gun control," said ABC News. A $1.4 billion verdict was handed down against Jones in 2022. However, the Sandy Hook families have not seen any of this money because Jones filed for bankruptcy and moved to liquidate his assets.

The Onion's bid for the website was reportedly $1.75 million, and the Sandy Hook families "agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," said ABC News. Infowars "has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society," Global Tetrahedron CEO Bryce P. Tetraeder said in an article. In keeping with The Onion's satirical style, The Onion plans on making Infowars a "very funny, very stupid website," the site's CEO, Ben Collins, said on social media.

But Jones is not going down without a fight After The Onion moved to buy Infowars, the judge for Jones' bankruptcy case paused the sale and "ordered an evidentiary hearing" to "determine if the auction was conducted fairly, which could delay the process" of the deal, said The Guardian. Jones himself is also suing The Onion, calling the deal unfair and "sheer nonsense." The sale is going to that evidentiary hearing, and "I'm going to figure out exactly what happened," said Judge Christopher Lopez, though he added, "I personally don't care who wins the auction. I care about process and transparency."

What happens to Infowars?

The specifics of what The Onion will do with Infowars if the sale goes through have not been fleshed out, but it has been made clear that the site will not be closed down completely. Rather, The Onion will "shutter Jones' Infowars and rebuild the website, featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators," said NBC News. It is expected to launch the new site in January 2025.

The Onion also set up a partnership with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, in which the group will have an "exclusive advertising deal" for gun safety promotions, said CNN. Everytown was established in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting and is now the largest gun control group in the U.S.

Everytown and The Onion "will continue to raise awareness on Infowars' channels about gun violence prevention and present actual solutions to our nation's gun violence crisis, including bipartisan, common-sense measures and public safety initiatives backed by Everytown," the organization said in a press release. Gun control has long played a role in The Onion's stories. The website has published a satirical article, "'No Way To Prevent This', Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens," 37 times since 2014.