The Chompsky Weekly #60
#LookUp
Happy Easter, everyone.
If Jesus were here today, he’d probably still sidle out of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, and shout “CHRIST ALIVE!”
But this time, not as an announcement. It would be because of the similarity between the real-life media response to climate activism to that in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up.
I explained a little more about the background to this last week:
It’s Tuesday April 19th, 2022
Media News
The Washington Post Guild has published its latest “Pay Study”, a comprehensive report on worker progress (and/or lack of it) at the paper. It demonstrates wins in equitable hiring practices, including of their first female executive editor, and remaining inequalities e.g. in gender and racial pay gaps. (The Post Guild)
Alex Jones’ InfoWars has filed for bankruptcy, after several defamation lawsuits from parents of victims in the Sandy Hook tragedy which Jones claimed was a hoax. (NPR)
Journalists in Russia continue to face arrest and prosecution. Last week four student journalists were sentenced to two years’ “corrective labour” for publishing a video defending freedom of assembly. (The Guardian)
Some Ukrainian journalists who have found new audiences in the West are now managing to fund their publications entirely via crowdfunding platforms. (FT)
Spotify has announced it will consider restricting misinformation even when it doesn’t officially breach platform standards: “In instances when content touches on sensitive topics but does not cross the threshold which would require removal under our Platform Rules, we may take steps to restrict and limit its reach”. (NiemanLab)
UK households are cancelling streaming subscriptions in “record numbers” in response to inflation: around 1.5 million in the last 3 months. While most streaming platform subscribers have retained at least one of their subscriptions, many with multiple accounts across the likes of Disney+, NOW and Apple TV have whittled them to a single one. (FT)
BBC Three has continued to struggle after returning to traditional broadcasting. The channel, which platforms content for a youth audience, struggled during its brief online-only period. After returning to broadcast television, its latest ratings show programming frequently struggling to top 100k views. (The Guardian)
In a long-running case between LinkedIn and a rival website, an appeals court in the US has ruled that scraping publicly-available data from websites is legal. (TechCrunch)