What happened

The satirical news outlet The Onion on Monday said it had reached an agreement to temporarily take over right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones’ Infowars platform and turn it into a parody site. Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022 after a court ordered him to pay $1.4 billion in damages to the families of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Onion’s plan requires approval from Texas District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin.

Who said what

Under the proposed deal, The Onion would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars’ site and intellectual property for six months or a year, covering rent and utilities “until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale,” NPR said. It’s a “Hail Mary bid” by The Onion, Politico said, after a federal judge “blocked its initial plan to acquire Infowars in 2024 during a bankruptcy auction,” calling the process flawed. “We are excited to lie constantly for cold, hard cash, but this time in a cool way,” Onion CEO Ben Collins said Monday, and “we’ll make sure some of it gets back” to the Sandy Hook families.

What next?

Jones “vowed to fight the licensing proposal in court” on his show Monday, but “acknowledged he and his crew could be kicked out” of their Austin studio by the end of the month, The Associated Press said.

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”.

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.

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.”

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.”

Read more

‘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.”

Read more

‘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.”

Read more

‘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.”

Read more

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”.

It has been more than three years since Liz Truss’ disastrous 49-day premiership ended, with the Daily Star declaring victory for its “very own 60p lettuce” in its tongue-in-cheek longevity contest. Now the former PM is back with her own weekly streaming show, pitched as the “home of the counter-revolution”.

In the first episode of “The Liz Truss Show”, which appeared on YouTube at the weekend, the ex-Tory leader declared that “Britain is going to hell in a handcart”, laid into the “fake news BBC” and claimed the “steel towns, mill towns and car towns” of middle England “are being killed off by eco zealots”.

‘Coping mechanism’

“The show started an hour late because Liz forgot to put her watch back in October” and things didn’t get much better from there, said John Crace in The Guardian. Despite her omnipresence on the lucrative right-wing speaking circuit and her ex-prime ministerial allowance, the show appeared to have been filmed in a “makeshift studio”, with editing reminiscent of “a 12-year-old intern doped up on ketamine”.

Viewers were treated to a “deranged diatribe” on “the deep state”, “Islamists” and the “governing elite”, all of whom apparently were more to blame for her downfall than Truss herself. “It’s almost painful to watch someone so lacking in any self-awareness.” This was nothing less than watching Truss “commit a drive-by on herself”.

Ultimately, this show is “less about charting a new redemptive path than it is about rewriting the story of her humiliation”, said UnHerd. A figure “defined entirely by her public fall from grace” and “ostracisation from the political class she had dedicated her life to joining”, this is “more about providing her with a coping mechanism than her viewers with thought-provoking content”.

‘Liz lectures’

“The Liz Truss Show” should be understood not just as the “classic conspiracy theorist’s yearning to make their bonkers views heard”, but also as “an audiovisual cover letter addressed to Donald Trump”, said Imogen West-Knights in The Independent.

Yet despite calls for Britain to undergo a Trump-style revolution, it seems “highly unlikely” that this show “is going to have a wide appeal among Maga types on either side of the Atlantic”. In truth, if “you’re into small boats rhetoric and hand-wringing content about raising the birth rate, you already have so many more eloquent nutters, more possessed of a kind of demonic alt-right charisma, to pick from”.

Truss “can’t start a revolution by chatting with polished media performers in a TV studio”, said Lloyd Evans in The Spectator. Her guests, such as academic and right-wing commentator Matthew Goodwin, “agreed with everything she said”, making the show feel more like a “bank holiday book-club or a gripe session at Wetherspoons”.

With its “mixture of invective, self-justification and political brainstorming”, the show’s “emotional theme is ‘Liz lectures’ rather than ‘Liz learns’. If she were to embrace her foes with an open mind, she may win over a few recruits” but “being angry and radical is pointless. And until her enemies start watching her show, she’s an irrelevance.”

“The Lords of England have stopped the barbarians at the gate of The Telegraph,” said Due Diligence in the Financial Times.

After a drawn-out sale, described as the “auction from hell”, the media group is set to end up in the hands of Lord Rothermere – owner and chair of Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), whose great-grandfather co-founded the Daily Mail in 1896. If the government and competition regulators clear the £500 million deal, “the tie-up will create one of the most powerful right-leaning media groups in Britain”.

The UK likes to present itself as “open for business”. Not in this case. For more than two years, ministers and the newspaper’s own reporters have “helped fend off potential buyers from New York to Abu Dhabi”. When Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital withdrew earlier this month, it cleared the way for Rothermere to pounce.

It’s not clear how DMGT (which also owns Metro and The i Paper) will fund the deal, which will give it more than 50% of circulation in the UK newspaper market, said Dominic Ponsford in Press Gazette. But given that newspapers are “a far smaller part of the media than they were”, it’s unlikely to be blocked.

Plenty of Britons will have misgivings about the creation of “a right-leaning media powerhouse” when the populist Reform UK party is riding so high in the polls, said Bloomberg. But regulators should consider that the Telegraph has been “a stranded asset” for several years, said media analyst Claire Enders. “It’s a case of industrial logic”: there should be “operational synergies” of £40 million to £50 million annually. And after the spurning of so many foreign suitors, there’s also “a face-saving dimension to this deal”. As former FT editor Lionel Barber told The Guardian: “This is a very British stitch-up.”

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 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”.

The impartiality row that led to yesterday’s dramatic resignation of BBC Director General Tim Davie and his head of news, Deborah Turness, is part of a “strategy by the hard right to replace the truth with propaganda”, said Lib Dem leader Ed Davey.

As the fallout continues today, the BBC board is facing questions about “what exactly led to such a nuclear outcome behind the scenes”, said Politico’s London Playbook, amid “angry claims of a complete institutional failure from some, and a right-wing ‘coup’ from others”.

What did the commentators say?

Given the BBC’s “fraudulent editing of a Donald Trump speech”, it was only right that Davie took “responsibility for an organisation riddled with liberal bias”, said The Sun’s editorial board. Only “new leadership can change its DNA to reflect the opinions of its viewers – not just a liberal metropolitan elite that sneers at concerns about mass immigration, Brexit and the cost of net zero”.

“The ‘Panorama’-caught-lying scandal is as embarrassing, and enjoyable, as the discovery that a puritanical pastor is an alcoholic gambler with a Catholic mistress,” said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph. The recent “litany of errors” at the BBC has been “so great as to indicate a cultural rot from the head down”.

The BBC is “very much a co-author of this story”, said Sonia Sodha in The Times, but that has not stopped many wanting to “lay the blame wholly at the door of dark forces running an organised campaign” to bring the corporation down.

Insiders, and many on the left, are talking of “coup”, said The Guardian’s Michael Savage, blaming Turness’ resignation in particular on “a campaign by political enemies of the BBC” to shift the corporation to the right.

It’s “a national disgrace”, said David Yelland, former editor of The Sun, on X. “The corporation’s board has effectively been undermined, and elements close to it have worked with hostile newspaper editors”, Boris Johnson and “enemies of public service broadcasting”.

“It’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes,” presenter Nick Robinson said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation.” And “both things are happening at the same time”.

What next?

A story is now emerging “about the functionality and make-up of the BBC board, and its role in what has happened”, said the BBC’s Katie Razzall. The weekend’s resignations have laid bare “a rift between the board and the news division”, with the board apparently preventing Turness from putting out an apology.

All this could not have come at a worse time for the BBC. It is about to begin negotiations on renewing its charter, due to expire in 2027, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has already refused to rule out scrapping the licence fee altogether from 2028.

Continued BBC funding goes “hand in hand” with the question of “erosion of trust”, Caroline Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee, told Playbook. “It’s all about the public having faith that the BBC is a trusted broadcaster that they’re happy to pay the license fee for.”

The BBC is “caught in political and economic headwinds”, said Jane Martinson in The Guardian. The corporation should have stood up to the attacks from The Telegraph and Donald Trump. Now, it simply looks “weak and cowardly, just when it needs to be robust and brave”.

“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”.

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."

"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."

"Death, death to the IDF." The broadcasting of the incendiary chant by hip-hop punk duo Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury Festival on Saturday has thrown the BBC into turmoil.

Many are asking how the set went out live without any editorial oversight or intervention and then remained available to watch on iPlayer for five hours before it was taken down. There's "a feeling" that the incident might very well "mark the end of Glastonbury as televisual experience", said Nick Hilton in The i Paper.

'Too slow to act'

BBC bosses "were confident" that by deciding not to livestream Belfast rap group Kneecap, "they had headed off the day's only controversy", said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. But "nobody appeared to have done due diligence on the act appearing directly before Kneecap on the West Holts stage".

I'm told due diligence was done on Bob Vylan, said Katie Razzall, culture and media editor at the BBC. But "it's the BBC's reaction as the set unfolded, and the perception it was too slow to act, that is a bigger problem". And, with it now confirmed that BBC Director General Tim Davie was at the festival and was made aware of what was being chanted, that problem seems bigger still.

"Letting Bob Vylan go out live and unfiltered was a shocking editorial failure," one BBC insider told Adam Sherwin at The i Paper. "They are supposed to monitor the live feeds. Someone should have cut it straight away. Senior heads should roll."

'Shoot the messenger'

"There are significant murmurings within New Broadcasting House that the current lavish broadcast of the festival has had its day," said The i Paper's Hilton.

The BBC's decision, in the mid-1990s, to partner with the festival and then, 15 years later, stream multiple acts simultaneously on iPlayer, has "unlocked live music for a population who wouldn't dare brave the raucous atmosphere on founder Michael Eavis' dairy farm". It has also "exposed the BBC to its least favourite commodity: risk".

"The BBC certainly has questions to answer" about this year's coverage, said former BBC presenter Roger Bolton in The Independent. Those responsible should be disciplined "but we are also in danger of straying into 'shoot the messenger' territory".

A full investigation is a "waste of time and money", said Melanie McDonagh in London's The Standard. For "the stupid performer," it would "gratify his self-regard enormously"; for the BBC, "it would be dignifying incompetence as malice".

It's "simple", said Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman. "Glastonbury needn’t apologise, and the BBC has bigger things to worry about than broadcasting bad music by admittedly unpleasant but staggeringly banal rappers."

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

"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."

Helping a… hedgehog?

Finding a lifeless hedgehog in the road, a quick-thinking animal lover scooped it up, placed it in a box with some food and rushed it over to her local wildlife hospital. There, it was examined by vets, who immediately identified it as the fluffy bobble from a woolly hat. "I would have immediately known from the weight," said Janet Kotze, of Lower Moss Wood Wildlife Hospital in Knutsford. Still, "bless her, her heart was in the right place".

Banking on a dead uncle

A Brazilian woman was charged with attempted theft and the violation of a corpse after wheeling her dead uncle into a bank in Rio de Janeiro and trying to take out a $3,300 loan in his name. In footage of the incident, Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, can be seen asking Paulo Braga, 68, who had died hours before: "Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign." When a suspicious bank employee pointed out that Braga "doesn't look well at all", Nunes replied: "He doesn't say anything. He's like that" – then tried to force a pen into his hand.

Google gets it wrong

Google's new AI search tool was widely mocked for generating erratic and inaccurate answers. In one case, its AI Overviews urged users to mix glue with cheese to make it stick to pizza. In another, it was asked: "Can cockroaches live in your penis?" and replied: "Absolutely!", then added: "It's totally normal, too." It advised users to eat "one small rock per day"; to cook chicken at 38°C; and to smoke "two to three cigarettes a day" if pregnant. Asked to name fruits that "end with 'um'", the AI replied: "Applum, bananum, strawberrum, tomatum and coconut."

Re-appraising Hitler

A private high school in Atlanta was criticised for setting pupils an Adolf Hitler-themed assignment. Eighth-graders (aged 13-14) were asked to "rate Adolf Hitler as a 'solution seeker'", and offered as options: Approaching Expectations, Meets Expectations and Exceeds Expectations. Pupils were also asked to rate Hitler "as an Ethical Decision-Maker". Mount Vernon School's principal explained that the assignment (which has since been removed from the curriculum) had been intended to "boost student knowledge of factual events".

Big babies

A soft-play centre in West Sussex was criticised for hosting an event for adults who enjoy dressing as babies. Wild Wonderland, in Lancing, normally welcomes children under 14, but last December it was used for a party that had been advertised on a fetish website. According to The Argus, the over-25s event offered story time with milk and biscuits, and a "nappy change room". However, attendees were urged to bring their own nappies and wipes. In response to complaints from regular customers, a spokesman for the play centre apologised, but added: "Who are we to judge?"

When mail goes mal

A postman in France who hoarded 13,000 letters, apparently so that he could clock off early, was charged with breach of trust. The man was supposed to be delivering post in L'Isle-d'Abeau, near Lyon. But a lot of it ended up in his garage. "I was overwhelmed by the work, which is huge. I'm speaking for all the postmen and -women in France," the facteur explained of his reasons for failing to deliver his full mailbag. "You don't realise it, but it's a huge job. You have to distribute, you have to distribute."

Russian-doll racism

Yale University held an anti-racism event this year to explore the scourge of racism within the anti-racism movement. Organisers of the three-week webinar series – entitled "Unmasking Racism in Anti-Racism Education" – said they would be using "decolonising methods" to uproot "the racism that is embedded in our existing anti-racism frameworks". The stated aim of the programme was to help solve the puzzle of why racism is continuing to flourish, "despite ongoing anti-racism efforts".

Sanpro station

The proposed design for a train station in China was ridiculed for its resemblance to a giant sanitary pad. Officials in Nanjing, where the station is due to be built, insisted that the design was inspired by the city's plum blossoms. "Why can we all tell it is a sanitary pad immediately, but the architects can't?" demanded one social media user.

Delighting in dullness

A Facebook group called Dull Men's Club, whose motto is "Celebrate the ordinary", went from strength to strength this year. In one post, a 50-year- old called Andy uploaded a photo of a wheel he'd made out of Pringles that he called "The Ringle". Another user dubbed it "the Lord of the Ringles". In other posts, men discuss their favourite pylons and roundabouts, and compliment each other on their mown lawns, tidy sheds and descaled kettles.

Coming up short

British men have fared very poorly in an international comparison of average penis size produced earlier this year. According to Worlddata, which reviewed 40 studies spanning 88 countries, the nation with the largest average erect penis length is Ecuador (6.9in), followed by Cameroon (6.56in) and Bolivia (6.5in). The UK ranks 68th, with an average length of 5.16in. Almost "the only people we can feel superior around, when it comes to our trousers, are Cambodia and Yemen", lamented Caitlin Moran in The Times. "The rest of the world is putting on a sympathetic face and saying, 'But you have lovely eyes, Britain! And a kind heart!'"

Rat gone random

A respected science journal has apologised for publishing a paper that included a "wildly incorrect" AI-generated diagram of a rat, which featured four testicles and a disproportionately vast penis, and was accompanied by garbled text, reported Vice. The creature – depicted in the peer-reviewed Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology – was shown sitting upright like a squirrel and was surrounded by nonsensical words such as "dissilced" and "testtomcels". The paper has since been retracted; the use of dubious AI-generated diagrams in science literature is seen as a growing problem.

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".

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.

A group of Venezuelan media organisations has launched a news show using AI-generated anchors, said CNN.

"Venezuela Retweets" is hosted by two AI avatars named "La Chama" (the girl) and "El Pana" (the dude). They share real news created by journalists who have found "reporting the news an increasingly dangerous business".

Many Western journalists may view artificial intelligence as a "looming threat to livelihoods" but these Venezuelan journalists see it "more favourably", as a "protection". The AI news anchors can "shelter their real-life journalists" from the crackdown launched by authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro since he claimed victory in July's disputed election.

"Right now, being a journalist in Venezuela is a bit like being a firefighter," Carlos Eduardo Huertas, the director of Connectas (a Colombia-based platform coordinating the initiative) told the US broadcaster. "You still need to attend the fire, even though it’s dangerous. The Girl and The Dude want to be instruments for our firefighters: we don't want to replace journalists but to protect them."

Response to repression

"Restrictions on freedom of speech in Venezuela are nothing new," said CNN.

But at least 16 journalists have been detained in the recent anti-government protests that erupted after Maduro claimed victory, according to Espacio Public, a Venezuelan organisation that measures freedom of the press. Some face charges of terrorism or incitement to hatred; others are "unsure even of what they are accused", said CNN.

Journalists are now using "Venezuela Retweets" to report the news that Maduro's regime "deems unfit to print", said The Guardian. The initiative involves about 20 Venezuelan news and fact-checking outlets and about 100 journalists, whose content is turned into daily newscasts read by the AI-generated avatars.

Intense government censorship and threats against anti-Maduro content means that most Venezuelans get their news through social media. So, "Venezuela Retweets" is specifically designed to be shared on social media: the avatars read news in clips that can be posted on Instagram or Facebook, or forwarded on WhatsApp – which makes the videos harder to track.

In the debut broadcast in August, the female presenter explained that she and her co-host hoped to spread the word about "what is really happening in Venezuela".

"But before we go on – in case you haven’t noticed – we want to let you know that we aren't real," the avatar added.

The use of AI is a response to "the persecution and the growing repression that our colleagues are suffering in Venezuela", where the uncertainty over the safety of doing their job "grows by the minute", Huertas told The Guardian. The increasingly authoritarian regime meant that "being on camera is no longer so sensible".

Even the name Venezuela Retweets – "Operación Retuit" in Spanish – is an ironic nod to the chilling euphemism coined by Maduro's regime for its harsh crackdown: "Operación Tun Tun" or Knock Knock.

AI as freedom of expression

Maduro's government has also cancelled the passports of "dozens of journalists and activists" without explanation since the vote, said the Financial Times. Rights groups have described it as an "intensifying campaign of repression", following what most nations have denounced as a stolen election.

The number of cancelled passports is likely to be far higher, the Caracas-based human-rights organisation Laboratorio de Paz told the FT, because of Venezuelans' "fear of reporting cases".

"Unlike murder or torture, which have a higher political cost, the government has found that passport cancellation is an effective way to neutralise and muffle critical voices with minimal effort," said Rafael Uzcátegui, co-director of Laboratorio de Paz.

One journalist only discovered her passport had been cancelled while she was abroad. "I asked myself, 'Now where do I come from?'," she told the paper. She is not sure whether she will try to return home.

Maduro has also "moved to stifle online dissent", said the FT, "blocking access to X" and "encouraging citizens to uninstall" WhatsApp.

"It's a policy to instigate fear," another Venezuelan journalist told the paper.

But "Venezuela Retweets" is "gaining traction", said CNN. Organisations involved in freedom of the press elsewhere in Latin America have been in touch, said Huertas. He hopes to make the content available in Russian, Chinese and other languages to reach audiences in countries allied with Maduro.

In authoritarian nations, said CNN, there is a "widespread interest for using AI as a freedom-of-expression tool".

The Magic Circle is trying to track down its first female member, who duped her way into the all-male magicians' society by disguising herself as a teenage boy named Raymond.

Sophie Lloyd was expelled by the society in 1991 for "deliberate deception" after revealing her ruse. But with attitudes changing in the "old boys' club" of magic, the group now wants her back.

The 'greatest deception'

Back in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the world wide web "pinged into existence" and the Magic Circle "readied itself for the 21st century by finally admitting women into its ranks", said The Times. But immediately after voting to allow women to be members, the group expelled one who had lurked secretly in their midst for two years.

Lloyd was admitted to the society in 1989, posing as a bespectacled teenage boy called Raymond with "a particular knack for making a £5 note burst into flames and then reappear".

An actor by profession, Lloyd had been coached for the deception by a magician called Jenny Winstanley, who originally hoped to join the Magic Circle herself, but thought Lloyd would stand a better chance of making the trick work. Winstanley's hunch was correct: Lloyd not only hoodwinked the judging panel in her 20-minute entrance exam, she even went for a drink with the examiner without him noticing.

Following the council meeting that voted to allow women to join, Lloyd threw off her wig and glasses to reveal that she was in fact a 28-year-old woman called Sophie. When Lloyd revealed her true self, the council realised it had "been fooled by perhaps the greatest deception of all", and its response was "swift and severe", said The Times. Lloyd was expelled from the society and threatened with legal action. The group's honorary secretary, Christopher Pratt, didn't see the funny side of it at all, telling The Guardian at the time: "If you find this amusing, well, that's your prerogative."

For her part, Lloyd told the Canadian broadcaster CBC after her expulsion that she was tired of the world of magic, adding that the experience had "really put me off". She has since disappeared, but the society hopes to "welcome her back", said president Marvin Berglas. Laura London, the first female chair of the Magic Circle, said the group is "so desperate to right this wrong".

'Glamorous assistants'

Although "much has changed" since the 1990s, magic is "still a male-dominated sector", said The Guardian. Of the Magic Circle's 1,700 members, only 5% are women. In a hint of progress, the figure is higher in its Young Magician's Club for 10- to 18-year-olds. "The fact that it's changing now is great," said London, "but boy, it's taken a long time." In the US, 93% of the Academy of Magical Arts' magician-level members are male.

Magic has "long been the preserve of men", said the i news site. "For more than a century women have served as the glamorous assistants to male magicians." Clothes "played a role in this", it added: women magicians are "at a disadvantage", as more tight-fitting clothing "leaves nowhere to hide the all-important mechanics of tricks" compared to a traditional suit.

Katherine Rhodes, a skilled close-up magician, said that although women haven't "smashed the glass ceiling of magic yet", it "has a massive crack in it – maybe even a hole". Times are "changing but there are decades of 'boys only' views to undo".

The Magic Circle is hoping that by "extending an olive branch" to its first, unofficial female member, "others may soon follow", said The Times. Meanwhile, the Magic Circle hopes to make a movie of Lloyd's "extraordinary heist", said London.

How can you really know who on the internet is real and who is not?

That is the basis of what is known as the dead internet theory, a "joke-cum-conspiracy that says if you're reading these words online, you're the last person on the internet", said Prospect. "Everyone else is a bot."

Dead internet theory posits that the vast majority of internet traffic, posts and users is now being driven by bots and AI-generated content. This, say proponents, is in turn being driven by governments and corporations to shape the direction of the internet and manipulate people for engagement.

When did the theory emerge?

Versions of dead internet theory have been floating around on the fringes of the web in forums such as 4Chan since the late 2010s.

But, according to Forbes, it was "solidified and amplified" in 2021 in a lengthy post entitled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake". Originally shared on the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe, the post suggested that the internet "died" around 2016 or early 2017, and was now "empty and devoid of people".

The post cited a New York magazine article from 2018 with the headline "How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually", which warned the proliferation of bots was so extreme that some YouTube employees feared the imminent "Inversion". This is the tipping point when the proportion of fake traffic would prompt YouTube's systems to see bots as authentic and humans as inauthentic.

The post, steeped in "unease, paranoia and loneliness," encapsulates a "deep disappointment at the state of the modern internet", said Forbes. Dead internet theory paints a world in which AI has "successfully drowned out the majority of online human activity, reshaping the internet into a more controlled, algorithmic form that exists only to sell products and ideas".

The theory hit the mainstream later in 2021 in an essay for The Atlantic by Kaitlyn Tiffany. "Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls, and idly curious lovers of chitchat," she said. But "unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it".

Is the internet really dead?

The theory "wasn't wrong", said Alex Hern in The Guardian, "it was just too soon". In 2021, the internet "felt" dead because more sophisticated understanding of manipulating algorithms "was driving people to act like robots. In 2024, the opposite has happened," he wrote: "the robots are posting like people".

Hern cites the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk in 2022 and the release of ChatGPT that same year as just two examples of this shift. Large language models, specifically, have led to an explosion of AI-generated material that mimics human-made content. Were a model like GPT-3 to "get loose", warned Timothy Shoup, of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, then the internet would be "completely unrecognisable", with 99% to 99.9% of content online AI-generated by 2025 to 2030.

ArsTechnica reported this month that dead internet theory had "come to life" with a new AI-powered social media app, SocialAI, that "takes the social media 'filter bubble' to an extreme with 100% fake interactions".

All this means that even since 2021, when it entered the mainstream, reality has indeed "begun to mirror this once unserious conspiracy", said Prospect.

Low-quality AI-generated content that is filling up social media and search results, from viral images to regurgitated news articles, has come to "dominate our online worlds".

In this way, the web is being "taken over by a global, automated ad fraud system, and whether or not any human sees any of it is entirely irrelevant. The things that generate real value for us are being pushed further and further to the margins, unable to compete with this brutal new algorithmic reality."

Do bots control the internet?

The internet might feel "boring, broken, spammy and algorithmic", said Forbes, but "other than reposting content made by people, bots don't lead the internet in the way the theory suggests – influencers do, and the bots follow their lead".

To this extent, the dead internet theory "might not reflect the reality of the average browsing experience, but it does describe the feeling of boredom and alienation that can accompany it". Like the best conspiracy theories, it has "fictionalised a depressing truth; the internet has been walled off by mega-corporations, and is now beginning to fill up with AI-generated sludge".

If it feels as though the "public-facing net is in the latter stages of a zombie apocalypse", said Hern, the "good news is that there are safe havens". "Private social" activity like WhatsApp and Discord servers, can "hide from the onslaught in secrecy", while smaller communities such as Bluesky and Mastodon are "safe through obscurity, for now".

For the time being, "I expect to see large platforms cotton on to the wasteland their services have become, and use a combination of account verification and AI detection to try and restore some humanity to their offerings. Whether it will be too late by then, though, is an open question."

 A "momentous" court battle to determine the future of Rupert Murdoch's media empire and his £14.9 billion family trust begins in Nevada today.

The fate of "a string of newspapers and television channels consumed by millions of people around the world" is at stake, as well as "thousands of jobs" and "billions of pounds", said Sky News.

The 93-year-old media mogul "has spent decades building up his news brands, making them some of the most powerful and influential in the Western world".

But the case will pit the most influential man in news against three of his children in a battle to gain the most voting shares and thus the power to control News Corp and Fox News after the billionaire dies.

What is the court case about?

At the heart of the case is a £14.9 billion family trust created in 1999, when Rupert Murdoch was divorcing his second wife, Anna. Instead of seeking a larger share of his fortune, Anna had an "irrevocable family trust" set up for her three children (Elisabeth, Lachlan and James) and Murdoch's eldest child Prudence (born to his first wife, Patricia Booker), which meant that when Murdoch died, his News Corp and Fox voting shares would be divided between them. 

Murdoch went on to have two more children with his third wife, Wendi Deng. They had equal access to the money in the trust, but no power inside the company.

However, last November, Murdoch began legal action to change this "irrevocable" arrangement, to give his chosen successor, Lachlan, full control. Prudence, Elisabeth and James are now contesting the move.

Why does Murdoch want to change the trust?

Political differences are said to play a significant role. Lachlan is thought to more closely share his father's right-wing views and has been a strong supporter of Fox News' conservative editorial line, which Murdoch believes is important for the continued success of his media empire. 

In contrast, Prudence, Elisabeth and James are thought to be more moderate in their political beliefs. James, in particular, has been openly critical of Fox News, resigning from News Corp's board in 2020 due to disagreements over its editorial content.

What could change?

The New York Times revealed that Murdoch wanted to change the terms of the trust to ensure his eldest son, Lachlan, would go on to run his businesses without "interference" from his other siblings.

According to reports, Murdoch wants to give Lachlan "permanent, exclusive control" of the companies after his death in a plan dubbed "Project Harmony".

"It is ironic that Rupert has managed to get James, Elisabeth and Prudence together, as before the case they didn't share much common ground," said one long-time News Corp executive, speaking to The Telegraph. "The case might not have made it into 'Succession' because it may have been too unbelievable, but this family rewrites the rules with every rift and twist. Rupert keeps the family together, but once he has gone the siblings are likely to devolve into all out war." 

What are the potential outcomes of the case?

The court case could go in a number of directions. If Murdoch wins – an earlier hearing concluded that Murdoch could change the terms of the trust if he could demonstrate he was acting in good faith, for the sole benefit of his heirs – Lachlan would take control of News Corp and Fox, likely continuing their current conservative editorial direction.

But if the other siblings win, they could challenge or even dismantle Lachlan's leadership, possibly altering the political stance of the companies and selling off assets. 

A third possibility is that the case could end in a compromise, with the siblings potentially selling their stakes in the trust. Recent reports suggested that talks have been held about this option, but they have failed to progress.

Why is the case so significant?

Beyond the family and financial drama, the case could have big implications for the future of the global news media. Murdoch's empire includes influential outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, The Times, The Australian and Fox News, all of which shape public opinion in the US, UK and Australia. 

Investors and analysts will also be closely watching the case and wondering if significant changes in the structure and direction of Murdoch's media empire could soon be on their way.

What happens next?

The trial is being held privately at Washoe County Courthouse in Reno, Nevada, with the media barred from proceedings. It's expected to unfold over the next week with testimony from Murdoch and his children. 

Magazine publishing giant Condé Nast has signed a deal with OpenAI, the latest tie-up between a major media organisation and the artificial intelligence start-up.

The deal will "expand the reach of Condé Nast's content", CEO Roger Lynch told staff. OpenAI said its products, such as ChatGPT, would be able to use content from Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and other Condé Nast-owned titles, to give "fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources", according to its blog post. 

Publishers are "increasingly" signing deals with AI companies to license the use of their content, said Press Gazette – despite "early doubts" and the high-profile legal action by The New York Times against OpenAI and its main backer, Microsoft. Such deals "commonly include" access to and use of news publishers' content, with a citation "currently promised". But others are more sceptical, and even litigious.

To sue or to sign

OpenAI "knows that high-quality data matters" in the AI business – and news publishers have "vast amounts of it", said The Guardian. AI labs develop large language models (LLMs), which underpin tools such as ChatGPT, by using "trillions of words" online to train them. This "vital resource" helps LLMs understand text-based prompts and come up with an answer. 

But "ravenous" AI models "always need more data". So as AI labs "grow increasingly hungry for reliable, timely, and above all human-written text", the news industry is "assessing how best to react". 

In January, The Information reported that OpenAI had offered some organisations "as little as between $1 million and $5 million" a year to train its LLMs on their copyrighted articles. "That's a tiny amount even for small publishers."

However, the deal News Corp signed with OpenAI in May is reportedly worth more than $250 million over five years, according to The Wall Street Journal. That gives access to articles from the WSJ, the New York Post and Barron's, among others.

OpenAI has already signed licensing deals with the US news agency The Associated Press, French newspaper Le Monde, El País owner Prisa Media and Germany's Axel Springer, which publishes the Bild tabloid. 

But other news publications and media outlets are "aggressively trying to protect their businesses" from being scraped for AI-generated content, said CNBC. By the end of last year most big publishers, including Reuters, The Guardian and the BBC, were already blocking AI crawlers from scraping their sites, said the Financial Times citing the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

The New York Times filed a suit against OpenAI and Microsoft in December, claiming intellectual property violation and copyright infringement. Microsoft and OpenAI are accountable for "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages", according to a filing in New York. 

The Center for Investigative Reporting, the oldest nonprofit newsroom in the US, announced a similar suit in June. "OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful," said chief executive Monika Bauerlein, "but they never asked for permission or offered compensation."

This "free rider behaviour" violates copyright. If the practice continues, the public's access to the truth will be "limited to AI-generated summaries of a disappearing news landscape".

A deal with the devil?

So what's in it for publishers? When The Atlantic announced a "strategic content and product partnership" with OpenAI in May, chief executive Nicholas Thompson said it would make the reporting "more discoverable" to millions of users. 

In June, search engine start-up Perplexity AI launched a revenue-sharing model for publishers. Outlets such as Fortune, Time, Der Spiegel and WordPress.com joined the search chatbot's "Publishers Program", after weeks of accusing it of plagiarism.

The Financial Times has also agreed to license its content to generative AI start-up Prorata.ai, which says it will share 50% of the advertising revenue with publishers when it launches its chatbot this autumn.

This won't pay journalists' salaries, but it at least "establishes an economic model" that publishers "could promote more widely", said Richard Waters in the FT. This is all "still up for grabs", which gives the industry an "important opening".

Many in the media industry "seem to have learned from their painful experience with online gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook". But do publishers have "any better chance of holding on to their audiences and online revenues than they did before?"

Not if history is anything to go by, said Jessica Lessin, the founder of The Information, in The Atlantic. News firms "strike deals to try and ride out the next digital wave", and make "concessions" to platforms that attempt to "take all of the audience (and trust) that great journalism attracts" – without having to do the "complicated and expensive work" of the journalism. "And it never, ever works as planned."

"Has any fall from grace ever been so catastrophic or more profound?" asked Jan Moir in the Daily Mail.

For 20 years, BBC news anchor Huw Edwards was Britain's master of ceremonies, covering national events from general elections to royal weddings. He was even entrusted with delivering the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II to the nation.

All that came to a shattering close last July, when he was identified as the BBC figure accused of paying a 17-year-old boy for sexual images; then last week, 14 months after he'd presided over the King's coronation, he appeared at a magistrates' court in London to plead guilty to making indecent images of children as young as seven. (He had been sent them on WhatsApp, but the law classes this as "making", as it means there is another copy of the image.) He now faces up to ten years in prison.

BBC bosses facing questions

His reputation lies in tatters, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction, but our national broadcaster also has serious questions to answer, namely: why did it continue to pay Edwards his full £475,000 salary – including a £40,000 pay rise – even after it had been informed of his arrest, in November 2023, for possessing illegal images?

Or, to put it another way: "What level of depravity must a top BBC star sink to in order to get sacked?" BBC bosses say that it would have been legally complicated to fire Edwards, who had been admitted to a clinic suffering from mental health issues, before any charges had even been brought. He finally resigned this April, on medical grounds.

But it has been reported that the BBC's own internal inquiry, launched last year, had revealed evidence of plenty of other potentially sackable offences: former and present employees said they'd received inappropriate messages from him; a junior producer said he'd been invited by a "pushy" Edwards to share his hotel room in Windsor on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral. But it seems the BBC swept all this under the carpet. Such is the level of public anger, it is now facing calls from ministers, and its own presenters, to try to claw back some of the money it paid Edwards.

Untouchable 'demigods'

"If it feels like we've been here before, that's probably because we have," said Rosa Silverman in The Daily Telegraph. Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall: Edwards is just the latest in a line of male BBC "talent" to have been guilty of horrible crimes.

Why is the BBC so scandal-prone? Insiders say it is partly due to a culture in which stars are treated as untouchable "demigods"; this means that if other employees do complain about them to senior managers, they are either ignored or driven out – creating deep-seated resentment.

Clearly, the BBC's management has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust, internally and externally, said Jane Martinson in The Observer. But to use this case as a stick with which to beat the BBC as a news provider would be wrong. Edwards was the public face of the BBC, often reading out stories prepared by others; but he was not its "beating heart".

Media titan Rupert Murdoch is 93, so thoughts have inevitably turned to the next iteration of his News Corp boardroom. A new report has revealed that Murdoch is seemingly in a legal dispute with his children over who will take over his media empire when he dies. 

As first reported by The New York Times, Murdoch is "locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family's media empire." In a rift that is reminiscent of HBO's smash-hit TV series "Succession," Murdoch and his eldest son Lachlan are fighting it out in the courts to make sure the latter is able to control News Corp, the holding company of brands like The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Fox Corp and others. But three of Murdoch's other children are looking to take control of their own, and are now fighting back. 

What is the crux of the legal battle? 

Murdoch is allegedly attempting to "preserve [his media empire] as a conservative political force," said the Times. Currently, his family trust "hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Mr. Murdoch dies." However, Murdoch is reportedly attempting to change the terms of the trust to ensure that Lachlan alone "would remain in charge of his vast collection of television networks and newspapers," arguing that "only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent."

As a result, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are battling the other three children — James, Elisabeth and Prudence Murdoch — in a Reno, Nevada, court. A probate commissioner in the city "found last month that the family's irrevocable trust can be rewritten if Murdoch can prove he is acting in good faith to protect the value of the trust's holdings," said The Guardian. This is likely why Murdoch is pushing hard to hand sole control to his eldest son, as "Lachlan Murdoch is seen as the most conservative of Murdoch's children and his father is arguing that his political beliefs are essential to maintaining the value of the right-leaning media company."

James, Elisabeth and Prudence, who were "said to have been blindsided by the move, have reportedly hired their own legal team to contest their father's plans," said Fortune. A trial in the case is supposedly set to begin in September. 

How could this affect the Murdoch family?

Any "restructuring of the trust would have significant implications for decision-making at the top of the Murdoch empire, including any major mergers or other strategic transactions News Corp and Fox pursue," said The Wall Street Journal. The patriarch "has always sought to keep his media enterprise in the family's hands, and he brought several of his children into the business over the years." Murdoch also "dubbed Lachlan 'first among equals,'" said the Journal. The family battle has become so infamous that Murdoch himself is "widely believed to be the inspiration for the character of Logan Roy" in the aforementioned TV show "Succession," said CNN. 

Lachlan's brother James in particular has expressed opinions that are different from most News Corp brands, especially when it comes to the outlet Lachlan currently helms, Fox News. There are "views I really disagree with on Fox," James said to The New Yorker in 2019. James eventually left his seat on News Corps' board of directors because of his "disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," he said in his resignation letter. 

Murdoch's other children have also been on the outskirts; Elisabeth and Prudence "made it a point to distance themselves from the family business," as "Elisabeth left the media empire years ago in 2000, while Prudence is said to be the least involved in the business," said Business Insider. 

The director general of the BBC has apologised to former "Strictly Come Dancing" contestants who have complained of mistreatment and abusive behaviour at the hands of their professional dance partners – but says the show will go on.

Speaking to journalists as the corporation released its annual report, Tim Davie said he was "very sorry that anyone has had an experience that hasn't been wholly positive – that's something we do need to reflect on", singling out "learnings specifically about oversight in the training rooms that we had needed to address", the BBC reported. He added: "We never tolerate unacceptable behaviour of any kind."

The BBC announced last week that it would introduce measures to "strengthen welfare and support" on its popular entertainment show, including a chaperone who will be present "at all times" during training room rehearsals.

Addressing rampant media speculation about the future of the BBC's flagship entertainment show, Davie said that series 20  – a milestone in the show's history – will go ahead as planned, and that this year's line-up is ready and "itching to get going", according to Deadline's Jake Kanter.

It follows the departure of two of the show's stars – pro dancers Graziano Di Prima and Giovanni Pernice – amid allegations of abusive behaviour towards their celebrity partners during training. A third dancer, as yet unnamed, is apparently being investigated ahead of the show's return to screens in the autumn for its 20th series. Dancer-turned-judge Anton Du Beke is also facing a possible misconduct complaint over historic allegations from one of his former celebrity partners.

 Here's how the scandal has unfolded so far:

6 January: The Sun reports that actor Amanda Abbington, who pulled out part-way through the show's 19th series for "medical reasons", has requested rehearsal room footage of her training sessions with pro dancer Giovanni Pernice as she seeks legal advice. The anonymous show insider said the atmosphere in rehearsals was sometimes "tense" and described Pernice as a "perfectionist".

17 May: Reports in the media claim that the BBC are investigating Pernice's conduct after two past celebrity partners lodged formal complaints through legal firm Carter Ruck, which is also representing Abbington. 

18 May: Amid swirling rumours that Pernice would not be included in the line-up for the next series, the dancer posts a statement to his Instagram account in which he denies "any suggestion of abusive or threatening behaviour" and said: "I look forward to clearing my name".

10 June: The BBC unveils the pro dancers taking part in series 20 of "Strictly Come Dancing". Pernice is not among them.

16 June: Pernice posts on his Instagram for a second time, saying he is "cooperating fully" with the BBC investigation. He repeats his denial of any abusive behaviour and says the latest allegations are "simply false", and that he looks forward to "establishing the truth".

13 July: Reports emerge in the media that pro dancer Graziano Di Prima is also being investigated after production staff came forward with concerns about training room incidents with his celebrity partner, "Love Island" star Zara McDermott.

That day, Di Prima announces that he is leaving "Strictly" in an Instagram post that says he "deeply" regrets the events leading up to his departure, which he links to his "intense passion and determination to win". "When the time is right I will share my story," he adds.

A BBC spokesperson confirms that Di Prima is "no longer a part of the line-up of professional dancers for the upcoming series".

16 July: McDermott publicly addresses the allegations for the first time on her Instagram account, saying she did not come forward because she was scared of "public backlash". While much of the show was an "amazing" experience, she said, "inside the training room was very different", adding that some of the incidents caught on camera were "incredibly distressing to watch".

Later that day, the BBC announces that all rehearsals will be supervised by production staff, and that two new roles have been created to look after the welfare of contestants and professionals.

That evening, The Sun reveals that a third dancer – who no longer works on the show – is a "person of interest" in the ongoing investigation.

17 July: The Mirror reports that Anton Du Beke is "bracing himself" for a legal complaint from law firm Carter Ruck over historic allegations concerning his former dance partner Laila Rouass. Du Beke used a racial slur towards her when they were paired together in 2009, which was reported in the media at the time and resulted in Du Beke making a public apology.

21 July: Paralympian Will Bayley claims he suffered a life-changing injury after he was pushed to make a jump in rehearsals by pro partner Janette Manrara in 2019, despite voicing concerns to her and the show's bosses. The table tennis star, who has a condition that limits certain limb movements, said he was encouraged to leap from a table. He tore knee ligaments, which forced him to pull out of the series. The injury left him "depressed, bed ridden and caused a huge impact on his sports career", said The Sun.

23 July: BBC director general downplays rumours that "Strictly Come Dancing" could be postponed or cancelled in response to the scandal, and says series 20 will proceed as normal. Tim Davie apologised to contestants who felt mistreated, saying that competitiveness is to be expected but "there are limits and the line should never be crossed".

"It's the Sun wot won it" has gone down in British political folklore as the moment newspapers allegedly proved they had the power to swing an election.

The infamous front-page headline followed John Major's victory in the 1992 general election after being endorsed by The Sun, then the most widely read paper in Britain.

Three decades on, the power of the tabloid press has diminished significantly, but former Sun editor David Yelland told The New Statesman last year that newspaper endorsements were still "important" and "reverberate around the Westminster village like sonic booms".

What did the commentators say?

Although newspaper endorsements are "no longer as significant" as they were in past elections, said the i news site, they are "still highly sought after" by political parties.

Take Labour, which despite a consistent 20-point lead over the Conservatives, has spent considerable time and effort trying to woo Fleet Street, particularly the Rupert Murdoch-owned stable: The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.

Ayesha Hazarika, a former Labour adviser who now sits in the Lords, told i news that although newspaper endorsements are "not as potent as they once were", it was still a "significant move" for The Sunday Times to back Labour for the first time in almost 20 years. Support for Scottish Labour in the Daily Record and Sunday Mail was "also worth noting", she said, as polls suggest the party is neck and neck with the SNP.

It might matter less today than a decade ago but winning the support of The Sun, which has backed the Conservatives for the past 15 years, and to a lesser extent The Times, is seen as a "symbolic prize" by the Labour leadership, according to i news.

The Sun and Times's collective circulation may have fallen below a million – compared to The Sun's four million daily copies in 1997 – but they still hold a "special sway" over the Starmer operation, said Archie Bland in The Guardian. Along with their Sunday counterparts, the two Murdoch-owned papers are "viewed as the only Tory-supporting newspapers that might be turned".

Pat McFadden, Labour's election campaign coordinator, suggested as much when he told LBC that these endorsements "matter" because they demonstrate broadening appeal.

Yes, the number of voters likely to be persuaded by a formal endorsement would probably be "trivial", said Bland. "But if an editor can be persuaded that Starmer deserves a shot, Labour's stories will get a more sympathetic hearing." 

Attaining a "Blair-ish breadth of support" could reassure some voters. Likewise, the "BBC – more influential than any newspaper – is still swayed by Fleet Street's choices, starting with Radio 4’s 'Today' programme and echoing through the rest of the day".

"Influence the input, and you will have fewer occasions to scream at the editor of the 'Six O'Clock News'," said Bland.

Starmer biographer and former Labour adviser Tom Baldwin said that while a formal endorsement from The Sun would be a "bonus", the leader's main priority has been to avoid the kind of "campaign of vilification" that the paper unleashed on his predecessors Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.

What next?

"Sceptics have long argued that The Sun simply backs the party it already expects to win," said William Turvill in The New Statesman, "and that, while front pages and scoops do influence readers, endorsements themselves sway few voters." And "this feeling is only strengthened by the decline in newspapers' print fortunes".

But endorsements do still matter in one sense, said Yelland, "because they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and because, especially in the case of Rupert Murdoch, there are very few examples – if any – of his papers getting it wrong". They matter "because the political parties, leaders and the lobby are obsessed with them".

If Labour wins on Thursday, as is widely expected, it "won't be because of its press backing", said Politics.co.uk. "But like any observer of events, newspaper editorial boards can see the direction of travel." 

Any further endorsements "will only strengthen the 'Change' narrative at this election's core". Ultimately, Fleet Street's backing of Starmer "amounts – at the very least – to another striking sign of the times for Rishi Sunak et al".

As the 2024 U.S. election draws closer, a dark facet of the media world has some in the industry on edge: a particular type of fake news website that is designed to appear legitimate. The ubiquity of these sites has led to a rise in what those in the news business call "pink-slime" journalism. 

The problem is becoming more pervasive as it becomes harder to discern real news stories from phony ones. While not solely focused on politics, these fake news websites, which are seen on both sides of the political aisle, will likely continue to play a looming role in the election and beyond. What is pink-slime journalism, and why is it making reporters so nervous? 

What is pink-slime journalism?

Named after a meat byproduct, pink-slime journalism describes "outlets that publish poor quality reports that appear to be local news," said the Poynter Institute. In other words, they are fake news websites posing as legitimate sources of local news. The rise of pink-slime journalism can be almost directly tied to the demise of local newspapers in recent years. 

Many of these low-profile local publications, especially in small towns, have "either gone out of business or are struggling to survive," and pink-slime websites have cropped up in their place, said the Poynter Institute. They often slide under the radar by claiming to "cover local and hyperlocal news, sometimes taking advantage of news deserts." And unlike actual newspapers, pink-slime journalism is mostly "produced via automation and templates."

How many of these websites are there?

The exact amount is unclear, but they have been on a steady rise ahead of the election, and do not appear to be going away. There are at least 1,265 identifiable websites that claim to be independent news outlets but are really pink-slime publications, according to a recent report from the misinformation watchdog group NewsGuard.

In comparison, there are only 1,213 daily local newspapers left in the United States, according to Northwestern University's Local News Initiative. The fact that there are now more pink-slime publications than genuine local publications in the U.S. has shined a spotlight on the omnipresence of misinformation in the media landscape. 

Who is behind these websites?

Within the identified pink-slime websites in NewsGuard's report, there are "eight primary organizations that have been identified as supporting most of the sites identified — four lean conservative and four lean progressive," said Axios. The majority of the sites were created at the behest of the conservative network Metric Media. Most of Metric Media's sites "don't include much information about the sites' funders or management," and typically "lack bylines and many are outdated or marked as 'press release submissions.'"

Other organizations identified by Axios as allegedly backing pink-slime websites are Courier Newsroom and States Newsroom. Both reportedly receive donations from left-wing backers, though these groups are "much more explicit about their funding and motives," said Axios; Courier Newsroom "aims to tackle disinformation by funding local newsrooms with a progressive perspective," while States Newsroom was "incubated originally via a left-leaning nonprofit called The Hopewell Fund."

Some pink-slime outlets are almost immediately identifiable as fake. One website called Chicago City Wire recently ran an article on an "upcoming local event about decriminalizing sex work under the salacious headline 'Hookers and chicken parm,'" said Ars Technica. This article "has no named byline and does not mention chicken parm apart from in its headline." Instead, it "taps into ongoing American culture wars, labeling a local LGBTQ+ organization as a 'pro-homosexual and cross-dresser rights group.'" 

Beyond American borders, Russian disinformation is reportedly playing a role in the rise of pink-slime as well. A separate report from NewsGuard found that a Florida man was fronting a network of at least 167 Russian disinformation websites being disseminated across the web.

And while the majority of pink-slime is found online, print journalism is not entirely immune; physical newspapers are allegedly often used to target voters in several states. This past April, the Illinois State Board of Elections asked the state's attorney general to investigate a pink-slime publication used by the same conservative backer of Metric Media in 2022. The "DuPage Policy Journal" was disseminated across northern Illinois and designed to look like a real newspaper, but was actually part of a far-right GOP campaign, the Chicago Tribune reported.  

"It is disappointing when an organization shows such little regard for voters," said Bernadette Matthews, the Illinois board's executive director, per the Tribune. 

Major changes are happening at one of America's newspapers of record. The Washington Post announced in early June that its executive editor, Sally Buzbee, would be departing the company. The announcement came from the Post's publisher and CEO, William Lewis, who joined the paper in 2023. 

Lewis also announced Buzbee's replacement, and it raised some eyebrows across the media landscape. Matt Murray, the former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, will temporarily serve as the Post's executive editor until the presidential election this November. Following the election, Robert Winnett, the current deputy editor of the British newspaper the Telegraph, will replace Murray as the Post's permanent executive editor. In addition, the Post will be launching a new "service and social media journalism" division that offers a differing perspective from traditional media. 

The Journal and the Telegraph are considered among the most conservative mainstream newspapers in the U.S. and U.K., respectively. As such, the announcement that their editors will lead the Post, a mostly liberal outlet, reportedly caused concerns that the newsroom could end up seeing a rightward shift. But others are skeptical that a significant ideological move will occur.

'A dive headlong into the abyss' 

It is "certainly fair to question why the Post — with its very American, play-it-straight self-conception — will soon hand its core news product to a longtime editor at the Bible of British Conservatism (with a big C)," said Jon Allsop for the Columbia Journalism Review. The question also remains as to how a "Brit immersed in that country's distinctive political culture will adapt to America's, despite the superficial similarities between the two that culture warriors — including at The Telegraph — like to echo and invoke." 

When Winnett takes over in November, experts say some of the practices that are commonplace at his conservative Telegraph will be contrary to American media. This includes a "payment of a six-figure sum to obtain the documents crucial to [an] expenses investigation, [which] runs counter to the more stringent reporting ethics followed by American news organizations," said Michael M. Grynbaum for The New York Times. This could prove to foster a change in how the Post gathers and reports the news.  

Criticism has been levied toward publisher Lewis himself, who has allegedly worked to kill multiple stories that he was involved in. During a recent newsroom meeting, Post investigative reporter expressed dismay that Lewis had "chosen people with a very different culture from the Washington Post," according to an account of the meeting from the Guardian.

As a result of all of this, "you understand my skepticism that Buzbee's ouster will improve the quality of the Washington Post's work," said Drew Magary for SFGate. Instead, the changes feel "very much like a dive headlong into the abyss," and it feels like the outlet is transforming into "one that wants to give op-ed space to Joe Rogan," said Magary. The Post was "one of the few remaining legacy pubs that consistently seemed both willing and able to serve as a check on an increasingly deranged political system," but "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to say that."

Douse the thought of a right-wing Post with flame retardant

It is unlikely that the team Lewis has built will completely "Wall Street Journal-ify and Rupert Murdoch-ize the Washington Post," said Jack Shafer for Politico, referring to the media magnate behind conservative titans like Fox News, the Journal and the New York Post. Some are predicting that the "remodeled newspaper will be guided by British attitude and experience" and that the "new, Brit-heavy, Murdoch-pedigreed leadership will turn the Post into a fiery right-wing tablet," but you should "douse that thought with flame retardant."

"None of the new Lewis crew seem to tilt that way, not even Murray when he ran the news pages of the Journal," Shafer said of the Post possibly shifting to the right. He noted that under Murray's leadership, the conservative Journal was the outlet that broke the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump story in 2018. 

If anything, the Post itself is less likely to be damaged by these changes than local news outlets, some experts say. Any "efforts to make organizations like the Post and the Times more attractive to subscribers may contribute to the trends hurting local news," Paul Farhi, a recently retired media reporter at the Post, said to The Associated Press. 

Loaded, the iconic lads' magazine of the 1990s, is returning after a nine-year hiatus with a self-declared mission to allow men to "ogle beautiful women" once more.

At its peak, the monthly magazine sold more than 450,000 copies. Danni Levy, the new executive editor, said the relaunch is aimed at the original Loaded audience, who are "now living happily at home with their wife and kids". But not everyone is convinced it will work.

'Absolutely trash'

Speaking on ITV's "This Morning", journalist Isla Traquair said the rebrand was "inspiring a mid-life crisis across the country", and, posting on social media, writer Rebecca Reid said the relaunched content was "absolutely trash".

Writing for the i news site, Reid said that the closure of magazines like Loaded, Nuts and Zoo was a "genuine loss to men because what replaced them was deeply, darkly worse". A "tongue-in-cheek piece about the best way to ask your girlfriend for oral sex" was "positively wholesome" compared to the "Andrew Tates of the world" telling boys that women should "bear responsibility" for being sexually assaulted.

But the Loaded relaunch is bewildering, she said. "It feels like someone wanted to throw a lot of money at doing something countercultural and pro-men, but didn’t bother doing any research at all into what men want."

Two of the men who originally launched the magazine felt the same. A "safe space for ogling" as the magazine has been pitched is "missing the point", wrote James Brown in The Independent, and, writing for The Telegraph, Brown's one-time deputy, Tim Southwell, said he didn't "see anything in the new Loaded to suggest they have the slightest idea about what Loaded readers really liked about Loaded".

'Safe space'

But men "may actually be less keen on ogling women than they used to", said Zoe Strimpel on UnHerd, and "not just because of the shifting sands around 'consent'". Rather the internet has "seen to it that women have become old hat now to the most sexually jaded generation of Western men in history".

As "lad mag culture seized the zeitgeist" in the 1990s, a "sort of mutant feminism took hold that didn't serve us well", said Kate Spicer in The Times. Heavy drinking does not equal "emancipation", and "neither does sleeping around or knowing the offside rule". Women morphed from being "honorary blokes" to "taking all our clothes off", so "I doubt you'll find any intelligent women thrilling over the Loaded shtick in 2024". 

Levy said that her target audience for the reboot will be "the original Loaded audience who are now living happily at home with their wife and kids" but "still reminisce about their nights spent clubbing until 3am, drinking £1 shots, with a bedroom covered in posters of half-naked women".

The Guardian's Pass Notes said this vision was "grim" and made Loaded "the magazine for middle-aged men who can't face up to the reality that they're expected to function as adults in society".

But "in fairness", it added, Levy "made a better argument" about Loaded hoping to occupy a safe space between the "attitude that no one can say or do anything" and the tsunami of online pornography that is "giving youngsters a warped idea of sexual normality". 

Labour and the Conservatives have opened a new general election battleground by launching accounts on the video-sharing app TikTok.

The social media landscape has radically changed since the last election in December 2019, when TikTok was the new kid on the block and a relative minnow compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter (now X). Turbocharged during the pandemic, the platform has enjoyed remarkable global growth in recent years and now boasts around 9 million UK users, the vast majority of them under 30.

This makes it a potential electoral goldmine for political parties hoping to tap into a famously hard-to-reach and disengaged demographic. 

The Chinese app was banned from UK government devices in March 2023 due to data security concerns, and while these have not disappeared "the political reality appears to have trumped them", said James Titcomb in The Telegraph.

How are political parties using it?

"The first surprising thing about the TikTok accounts of the Conservatives and Labour is that neither are more than a week old," said Metro. Despite the "mammoth influence" that the social network holds over young people, both parties decided to wait until the general election was called last week before setting up on the platform.

Given TikTok's user demographic it is perhaps unsurprising that both parties have chosen to focus much of their early content on the Conservatives' controversial plans to reintroduce national service for 18-year-olds.

Unlike other social media platforms, paid-for political advertising is banned on TikTok, meaning the parties will be hoping to "create content that performs well organically", said The Times.

So far Labour has opted for a "President Biden-style blend of humorous content, which is often less slick than those graphics and videos found on other platforms, alongside more traditional promotional videos". Unlike the Conservatives' initial efforts, which included a staid Rishi Sunak talking directly to camera, Labour has released a series of tongue-in-cheek videos featuring Lord Farquaad from "Shrek" and the late Cilla Black mocking the national service policy.

"It's pretty clear that Labour have a savvier social media team," Chris Stokel-Walker, author of "TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App", told The Independent. Meanwhile, "for someone meant to be tech-savvy, Sunak's TikTok presence has been pretty pathetic".

Can it actually make a difference?

Social media has been a "vital part of winning elections for almost two decades," said Titcomb. Barack Obama used Facebook to finance his 2008 path to the White House, while Donald Trump's activity on Twitter won him billions of dollars' worth of free publicity in 2016. But "hogging the online limelight is more crucial than ever" today.

As the percentage of voters who get their news from traditional sources – such as TV, radio and newspapers – has fallen, the importance of social media to deliver key campaign messages has exploded. In 2023, 10% of people said they got their news from TikTok. This is more than Radio 1, said Titcomb, and among 12- to 15-year-olds, "it is Britain's second-biggest source after the BBC".

Newly relaxed election spending limits mean millions more are set to be spent on digital campaigning than in any previous poll, but given young people's traditionally low turnout at elections, the impact of TikTok on the overall outcome is debatable.

The platform is deemed so valuable for Democrats in the US that Gina Raimondo, the US commerce secretary, speculated last year that any ban could "literally lose every voter under 35, for ever".

So will Labour win the TikTok battle?

While Labour's message will likely resonate more with the younger TikTok demographic, Keir Starmer and Sunak "face a similar challenge", said The Spectator's political editor Katy Balls.

Some of the politicians who do best on the platform are "strident, dynamic and straight-talking". The right-wing populist Javier Milei used TikTok for his successful campaign for the Argentinian presidency last year, while closer to home Nigel Farage, a two-year veteran of the app, has racked up almost 600,000 followers, more than 10 times the number Labour had reached as of early this week.

It may not be either Sunak or Starmer's most natural environment, said Balls, but "there is a clear electoral prize for whichever leader can make the platform work to their advantage".

The internet seems infinite, yet vast amounts of online content is vanishing, according to a new study. 

The Pew Research Center found that 38% of web pages that existed in 2013 "are no longer accessible a decade later" – showing "just how fleeting online content" has become in an era of "digital decay".

'Algorithms are deciding'

Most people think of the internet as a "place where content lasts forever", said The Independent, but the reality is that "vast amounts of news and important reference content are disappearing".

The study authors said that most of these lost pages are "deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website", a practice carried out for a variety of reasons. 

Many sites are "sacrificing" old material "at the altar of Google" in a bid to benefit from search algorithms, said Simon Brew on Whynow. The Google algorithm favours fast-loading websites, and removing "thin content" allows for a quicker loading time. And while some of these pages will be "duplicated material", others will be older, genuine news articles that "algorithms are deciding" are not worth keeping.

Other reasons for shedding pages include "sizeable restructures and redesigns" in which archive material is deemed "not compatible" with new technologies.

It's not just web pages either. According to the Pew study, one in five posts on X are "no longer publicly visible on the site just months after being posted". Of these posts, 60% were lost because the account was made private, suspended or deleted entirely.

Feels both 'abandoned and crowded'

Many removed pages appear to be "of little immediate value to anyone", said Brew, but vast swathes of news, government and Wikipedia pages now include broken links to "important reference content".

 Amid the online proliferation of disinformation, it is becoming "harder to surface and verify information" from sources that may have previously existed, said Wired. And on social media sites such as X, a "real" sense of "platform decay" and fleeting bot-generated content is creating a "digital space that feels abandoned and crowded at once".

'A reminder to be sceptical'

There is "some fightback" to combat disappearing content from the internet, said Brew. But it is coming from non-profit archive sites that will struggle to compete with big corporations whose decisions to remove content are "determined primarily by the pursuit of the pound or dollar". 

Campaigners fear that as the "world wide web grows, it’s narrowing", and its "own active history is being removed, with not an eyebrow being batted".

The removal of that content also makes the internet a less recognisable space, one that is "no longer for humans, by humans", said academics Jake Renzella and Vlada Rozova on The Conversation. Online interactions are becoming ever more "synthetic" as AI and algorithm-generated content takes a greater hold.

The freedom for people to create and share on the internet is "what made it so powerful" in the first place, but the rapid removal of human-generated content is a "reminder to be sceptical" and to navigate the internet with a "critical mind".