Tag: media

Categories
Business

Choice on Trump Media Merger Plan Is Deferred

Decision on Trump Media Merger Plan Is Deferred

The future of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media platform remains in doubt after a well-funded company it was planning to merge with announced on Tuesday that it would need a few more days to gather shareholder support, act to extend the deadline for completion.

Digital World Acquisition held a meeting Tuesday to announce the outcome of the shareholder vote to extend the deadline for the merger to be completed by another year. But shortly after the meeting began, Digital World chief executive officer Patrick Orlando announced that he was adjourning the meeting to Thursday to give investors more time to vote.

If Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) can’t get 65 percent of shareholders to approve the extension, it could be forced to liquidate the nearly $300 million it raised in an IPO last September return to shareholders.

But the SPAC’s sponsor, also chaired by Mr Orlando, said in a regulatory filing Tuesday afternoon that liquidation could be avoided even if shareholders don’t agree to the one-year extension. The filing says the sponsor is willing to give Digital World an additional $2.8 million to give it an additional three months to close the deal.

The SPAC’s charter allows the sponsor to unilaterally extend the period for completing a deal by depositing funds into the special bank account used to store the dollars raised from the IPO

The potential failure of the deal has raised questions about the future of Trump Media & Technology Group and its flagship social media app Truth Social, the Twitter-like platform that backed Mr Trump after Twitter blocked him from posting the Post January 6th. 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Digital World, which went public a year ago, had taken until Sept. 8 – Thursday – to complete a merger with another company. Duplicate investigations by federal prosecutors and securities regulators thwarted the merger and led to the delay.

Without the cash injection from Digital World, Trump Media may need to raise additional funding or find another merger partner.

Meanwhile, one of Trump Media’s key business partners, Rumble, is nearing completion of its own merger with a SPAC. On September 15, CF Acquisition Corp. VI to announce whether its shareholders have approved a merger with Rumble, an online video platform that offers a conservative alternative to YouTube.

Following the announcement, Digital World shares fell about 15 percent. They closed at just over $22, down more than 11 percent on the day.

Categories
Health

How Native Media Spreads Misinformation From Vaccine Skeptics

How Local Media Spreads Misinformation From Vaccine Skeptics

One radio show that appears to have been part of this effect is Coast to Coast AM, which airs on 640 local stations and reaches nearly three million listeners a week. His host, George Noory, has had Dr. Tenpenny interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr., an attorney and anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the Health Nut News website and a vaccine skeptic.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

The activists used their segments on the show to reinforce their messages. In an advertising campaign for Dr. For example, Tenpenny’s appearance to discuss the coronavirus in April 2020 said the Coast to Coast AM website, “It claims that there are so many unknowns about testing, tracking, symptoms and other factors that the information we have communicated about the disease are meaningless. “

This line was posted on Dr. Tenpenny shared and tweeted by some of her followers.

In a statement, Mr. Noory said: “We have all views on my program, and that includes people who are against vaccines.”

Vaccine misinformation has also been posted on websites pretending to be local news but which are paid websites. These pages, where articles are ordered and paid for by conservative think tanks, political activists, corporate executives and public relations experts, were created to fill the vacuum left by the loss of local publications.

Recent articles on some of these sites, like Last Frontier News in Alaska and Bowling Green Today in Kentucky, highlighted people who died after receiving the Covid vaccines, without saying that a Times review found it unclear whether the vaccines were responsible were . The stories followed a pattern established on anti-vaccine blogs to pull data from a national database on post-vaccination deaths without explaining the boundaries of the data.

Last Frontier News and Bowling Green Today did not respond to requests for comment.

At least one local radio host recently revoked his anti-vaccination stance. Phil Valentine, a conservative radio host in Tennessee, said in a blog post in December that he would not get the vaccine because his likelihood of dying from the virus was “far less than one percent”.

Categories
Business

Related Press Begins Overview of Social Media Coverage After Emily Wilder Firing

A.P. Begins Review of Social Media Policy After Journalist’s Firing

The Associated Press has launched a review of its social media guidelines after more than 150 employees publicly condemned the firing of a young journalist for violating these guidelines.

In a memo to global newsrooms Monday, the AP’s top editors said they heard the concerns of many journalists over the weekend and were “determined to broaden the conversation on the AP’s approach to social media.”

The news agency faced a backlash after Emily Wilder, a 22-year-old news worker who joined the company in Arizona, was fired on May 19, three weeks after she was hired.

Ms. Wilder, who graduated from Stanford University in 2020 and worked in the Republic of Arizona, said in a statement Friday that she was the subject of a campaign by Stanford College Republicans whose social media posts were based on their pro Palestine had drawn attention to activism at the university. She added that her editors had assured her that she would not be fired for her previous legal work.

“Less than 48 hours later, the AP fired me,” she said. “The reason given was that I allegedly violated The AP’s social media guidelines between my first day and Wednesday. In the meantime, powerful conservatives like Senator Tom Cotton, Ben Shapiro, and Robert Spencer have cursed me repeatedly online. When I asked my managers what exact tweets were violating the guidelines or how, they refused to tell me. “

Ms. Wilder, who is Jewish, tweeted about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians while at The AP. In a tweet, she said that “using” Israel “but never” Palestine “or” war “but not” siege and occupation “are political choices – yet the media makes these exact decisions all the time without being biased to be marked. “

Dozens of AP journalists signed an open letter after Ms. Wilder’s dismissal, criticizing the news agency and asking for clarification on how it had violated the company’s social media guidelines.

In business today

Updated

May 25, 2021 at 5:16 p.m. ET

“The lack of clarity about the violations of social media policy has made AP journalists afraid of getting involved in any form on social media – often critical for our work,” the letter said.

Ten editorial directors responded in a memo on Monday to staff announcing a plan to review their policies. They said formal groups would discuss ideas and make recommendations, and a committee of staff would review the recommendations by September 1st. Any policy changes would then be brought up in the next round of contract negotiations with the union representing AP workers, the News Media Guild.

“One of the issues raised in the past few days is the belief that social media restrictions prevent you from being your real self, and that it disproportionately does this to color journalists, LGBTQ journalists and others who are often attacked online harms, “says the memo.

The editors said in the note that “much of the coverage” of Ms. Wilder’s dismissal does not accurately reflect “a difficult decision that we did not make lightly”.

Lauren Easton, a spokeswoman for The AP, said the company had generally not commented on staff, but confirmed that Ms. Wilder has been fired for violating social media policy.

“We understand that other news organizations may not have made the same decision,” she said. “While many news organizations offer viewpoints, opinion columnists, and editorials, AP does not. We do not express an opinion. Our foundation is fact-based, unbiased reporting. “

Categories
Business

A.P. Begins Evaluation of Social Media Coverage After Journalist’s Firing

A.P. Begins Review of Social Media Policy After Journalist’s Firing

The Associated Press has launched a review of its social media guidelines after more than 150 employees publicly condemned the firing of a young journalist for violating these guidelines.

In a memo to global newsrooms Monday, the AP’s top editors said they heard the concerns of many journalists over the weekend and were “determined to broaden the conversation on the AP’s approach to social media.”

The news agency faced a backlash after Emily Wilder, a 22-year-old news worker who joined the company in Arizona, was fired on May 19, three weeks after she was hired.

Ms. Wilder, who graduated from Stanford University in 2020 and worked in the Republic of Arizona, said in a statement Friday that she was the subject of a campaign by Stanford College Republicans whose social media posts were based on their pro Palestine had drawn attention to activism at the university. She added that her editors had assured her that she would not be fired for her previous legal work.

“Less than 48 hours later, the AP fired me,” she said. “The reason given was that I allegedly violated The AP’s social media guidelines between my first day and Wednesday. In the meantime, powerful conservatives like Senator Tom Cotton, Ben Shapiro, and Robert Spencer have cursed me repeatedly online. When I asked my managers what exact tweets were violating the guidelines or how, they refused to tell me. “

Ms. Wilder, who is Jewish, tweeted about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians while at The AP. In a tweet, she said that “using” Israel “but never” Palestine “or” war “but not” siege and occupation “are political choices – yet the media makes these exact decisions all the time without being biased to be marked. “

Dozens of AP journalists signed an open letter after Ms. Wilder’s dismissal, criticizing the news agency and asking for clarification on how it had violated the company’s social media guidelines.

In business today

Updated

May 25, 2021 at 5:16 p.m. ET

“The lack of clarity about the violations of social media policy has made AP journalists afraid of getting involved in any form on social media – often critical for our work,” the letter said.

Ten editorial directors responded in a memo on Monday to staff announcing a plan to review their policies. They said formal groups would discuss ideas and make recommendations, and a committee of staff would review the recommendations by September 1st. Any policy changes would then be brought up in the next round of contract negotiations with the union representing AP workers, the News Media Guild.

“One of the issues raised in the past few days is the belief that social media restrictions prevent you from being your real self, and that it disproportionately does this to color journalists, LGBTQ journalists and others who are often attacked online harms, “says the memo.

The editors said in the note that “much of the coverage” of Ms. Wilder’s dismissal does not accurately reflect “a difficult decision that we did not make lightly”.

Lauren Easton, a spokeswoman for The AP, said the company had generally not commented on staff, but confirmed that Ms. Wilder has been fired for violating social media policy.

“We understand that other news organizations may not have made the same decision,” she said. “While many news organizations offer viewpoints, opinion columnists, and editorials, AP does not. We do not express an opinion. Our foundation is fact-based, unbiased reporting. “

Categories
Business

individuals use social media to seek out hospitals, drugs

Pandemic far from over despite vaccinations

A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) looks after a Covid-19 patient at a Covid-19 care center set up in the Shehnai Banquet Hall and at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP ), one of the largest COVID-19 institutions.

Naveen Sharma | SOPA pictures | LightRocket | Getty Images

As India’s devastating second wave of the coronavirus outbreak overwhelmed the healthcare system, desperate users turned to social media to seek help from the public as hospital beds and oxygen supplies became scarce.

People who need help for themselves or their relatives have made inquiries on websites like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Others gathered information about hospital bed availability, as well as contact details for oxygen cylinder providers and other scarce resources. In many cases, the efforts have helped save lives.

“Quite often we just hear one very dystopian social media narrative in which political polarization is increasing and causing deep levels of social harm,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital freedom organization in India, told CNBC.

“But social media also has the potential to bring people together,” he said, explaining why it is important to fight for the right kind of incentive-based system design and algorithmic accountability when it comes to social media.

“I think this Covid disaster, which continues in India, shows the promise that social media can be used as a tool for organizing relief supplies and calling for greater political accountability at all levels – from our health officials to decision-makers who Set budgets, “said Gupta.

Social media cannot replace the core responsibility of the state to help citizens in times of crisis.

Ankur bisen

Technopak consultant

#CovidSOS

Twitter hashtags like #CovidSOS and #CovidEmergency became popular with users searching for hospital beds, ventilators, and oxygen bottles. The retweet feature helped expand their inquiries.

Strangers banded together to help each other through the unprecedented crisis.

Volunteers have gathered up-to-date information in Google Sheets, which is widely shared on social platforms.

Some have set up websites to track vaccine availability while others have created apps that generate Twitter search links that users can use to find Covid-19 resources in their cities. Many people also volunteered to prepare homemade meals for patients who were quarantined at home while others offered help with tasks such as grocery shopping.

For its part, Twitter has added a Covid-19 resource page to improve the visibility of information.

Social media influencers, celebrities, and politicians also participated in the crowdsourcing effort. Some of them helped organize beds and oxygen bottles as India’s daily caseload rose in April and early May.

Although Twitter has become the most visible social media platform in India’s crowdsourcing efforts due to its ability to amplify inquiries and tag influencers and politicians, Gupta said other platforms have been used extensively as well.

He said volunteers also came together in WhatsApp groups to focus on more detailed communities like housing associations and alumni groups. Gen-Z – or those born between 1996 and early 2010 – and younger millennials turned to Instagram, he said.

Daily cases in India have peaked at more than 414,000 new infections per day, which was reached on May 7th. However, experts say the virus is spreading in rural India, where health infrastructure is not prepared for unexpected surges.

On Twitter, which has a greater impact in the urban centers of India compared to rural areas, users have already started gathering resources and initiatives to respond to the outbreak in India’s countryside.

Deficiencies in the Indian health system

Users who turned to social media for help also reflected how ill-prepared the Indian health system was to respond to a sudden response Increase in cases. Growing case numbers and rising death tolls exposed the deep-seated problems that persist in the Indian health system after decades of neglect and underinvestment.

“Social media cannot replace the core responsibility of the state to help citizens in times of crisis,” Ankur Bisen, senior vice president of Indian management consultancy Technopak Advisors, told CNBC. It can only act as a complementary channel and not replace the core functions of the state such as disaster management and health care, he said.

Bisen added that in this case, social media is the only option for many as the other media are lacking – this only poorly reflects how central and state governments are struggling to cope with the Covid-19 crisis, he said .

“The state often has to deal with disasters and ensure that it communicates and comforts the citizens, that the state is watching their backs, which it has not done here,” Bisen said. He added that social media “is always a complementary medium and can never be the main driver in managing disasters”.

Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation said some of the volunteers had been threatened by the authorities for their informal and legal efforts.

Local media reported last month that some Covid-19 aid groups that provided hospital beds and oxygen information through messaging apps like WhatsApp, Discord and Telegram had been disbanded, while some online resource trackers were deleted.

Volunteers complained about police threats demanding their closure – but police have denied making such demands. In Uttar Pradesh, the BBC reported that police had charged a man who tried to use Twitter to find oxygen for his dying grandfather.

The Supreme Court of India reportedly said there should be no crackdown when people voice their complaints on issues such as lack of oxygen and others on social platforms. This came after the federal government, under new regulations, ordered social platforms to cut jobs that were critical to dealing with the pandemic, according to the New York Times.

Social media fraud

Another unfortunate outcome, according to Gupta, was the proliferation of a black market in resources where malicious actors on social media cheated on vulnerable people.

“While social media – Twitter in particular – has broadly mitigated the harmful effects of the current wave, I would say that it has actually saved lives, it has also shown that there is very little tolerance for opinion and expression Freedom of expression exists, “he said.

Additionally, “there are law and order issues that always arise due to social interaction … and certain participants may use them maliciously,” he added.

Gupta added that the efforts of the volunteer groups continue to this day, but state services have also caught up to some extent.

Categories
Business

Florida, in a First, Will Effective Social Media Corporations That Bar Candidates

Florida, in a First, Will Fine Social Media Companies That Bar Candidates

WASHINGTON — Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state.

The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories.

Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites.”

“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” he said in a statement.

The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump’s accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online.

More than a hundred bills targeting the companies’ moderation practices have been filed nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.

Twitter declined to comment. Google and Facebook did not immediately offer comments on the signing of the bill.

The Florida law makes it illegal to bar a candidate for state office for more than 14 days, in a move that would seem to outlaw the kind of permanent ban the social media platforms applied to Mr. Trump’s accounts. Companies would be fined $250,000 per day for cases where they barred a candidate for statewide office. The fine is lower for candidates seeking other offices.

The law says the platforms cannot take down or otherwise prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise” that reaches a certain size. Conservatives were outraged last year when Facebook and Twitter limited the reach of a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop it said belonged to Hunter Biden, the younger son of President Biden.

Under the law, platforms are also required to be clear about how they decide to take down content or leave it up. Users could sue the platform if they felt those terms were inconsistently applied.

A late amendment to the bill exempts companies from the law if they own a theme park or an entertainment venue larger than 25 acres. That means the law is unlikely to apply to websites owned by Disney, which operates the Walt Disney World Resort, and Comcast, which owns Universal Studios Florida.

In Florida, as in dozens of other states, the Republican lawmakers’ push to punish social media companies follows the party’s other efforts to feed the demands of a conservative base that remains loyal to Mr. Trump.

Florida, along with Republican-run legislatures in Oklahoma and Iowa, have in recent weeks passed legislation limiting the right to protest and providing immunity to drivers who strike protesters in public streets.

And the Republican push to make voting harder continues unabated after Mr. Trump’s relentless lying about the results of the 2020 election. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed into law new restrictions on voting, as did Mr. DeSantis in Florida, and Texas Republicans are poised to soon pass the nation’s biggest rollback of voting rights.

The partywide, nationwide push stems from Mr. Trump’s repeated grievances. During his failed re-election campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly pushed to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to certain tech firms from liability for user-generated content, even as he used their platforms to spread misinformation. Twitter and Facebook eventually barred Mr. Trump after he inspired his supporters, using their platforms, to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Republican lawmakers in Florida have echoed Mr. Trump’s statements.

“I have had numerous constituents come to me saying that they were banned or de-platformed on social media sites,” Representative Blaise Ingoglia said during the debate over the bill.

But Democrats, libertarian groups and tech companies all say the law violates the tech companies’ First Amendment rights to decide how to handle content on their own platforms. It also may prove impossible to bring complaints under the law because of Section 230, the legal protections for web platforms that Mr. Trump has attacked.

“It is the government telling private entities how to speak,” said Carl Szabo, the vice president at NetChoice, a trade association that includes Facebook, Google and Twitter as members. “In general, it’s a gross misreading of the First Amendment.” He said the First Amendment was designed to protect sites like Reddit from government intervention, not protect “politicians from Reddit.”

The Florida measure is likely to be challenged in court, said Jeff Kosseff, a professor of cybersecurity law at the Naval Academy.

“I think this is the beginning of testing judges’ limits on these sorts of restrictions for social media,” he said.

Categories
Business

Discovery and AT&T: How a Big Media Deal Was Performed

Discovery and AT&T: How a Huge Media Deal Was Done

Deals are rarely smooth, and an anomaly with Discovery’s share price dovetailed with the negotiations. Discovery’s stock began to inexplicably rocket in February and March to $75 from $45 because of a convoluted trading scandal involving Archegos, a little-known private investment firm that bet big on Discovery and other companies via derivatives using billions in borrowed money.

With banks forced to buy shares to hedge their spiraling exposure to Archegos, Discovery’s market value jumped nearly 60 percent, for no obvious reason to outsiders. But by May, the stock had returned to where it was during Mr. Zaslav’s initial approach, and the two sides ultimately forged a deal that gave 71 percent of the new company to AT&T shareholders and 29 percent to Discovery.

Now, the trick was closing it before word could leak out.

One awkward conversation awaiting Mr. Stankey was with Jason Kilar, the former chief of Hulu tapped by AT&T, with great fanfare, just a year earlier to lead WarnerMedia. To mark the occasion of his first anniversary on the job, Mr. Kilar had agreed — with AT&T’s blessing — to be profiled by The Wall Street Journal. He invited a reporter in late April to interview him on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., unaware that across the country, his colleagues were feverishly working to close the deal.

At some point during the week of May 3, Mr. Stankey dropped the bomb: He informed Mr. Kilar that the company would soon change hands, and it was unclear what Mr. Kilar’s role might be. The 2,600-word Journal profile of Mr. Kilar, which included a quote from Mr. Stankey, was published on May 14, three days before the deal was announced.

Usually a cheerful presence on Twitter, Mr. Kilar didn’t bother sharing the article with his 37,000 followers. By the weekend, Mr. Kilar had retained the entertainment power lawyer Allen Grubman to start negotiating his exit.

A little after 7 a.m. on Sunday, Mr. Zaslav boarded a corporate jet at a small airport on the East End of Long Island, not far from his home, to head to AT&T’s Dallas headquarters to put the finishing touches on the deal. But just over an hour into the flight, word got out through Bloomberg’s black-and-orange terminal screens: “AT&T is in talks to combine content assets with Discovery.”

Categories
Business

After Media Detour, AT&T Confronts Previous Issues

After Media Detour, AT&T Confronts Old Problems

“It would have been an amazing merger,” said David Barden, senior research analyst at Bank of America. “It would have somehow maintained AT & T’s growth juggernaut through acquisition – not organic – but it failed.”

Mr. Stephenson then looked at the attractive profit margins in the media and entertainment sectors. In 2014, he announced a deal for DirecTV, a deal he promised to “redefine the industry”.

But AT&T bought its way into the pay-TV industry at its peak. Not long after acquiring the satellite service, consumers were walking in droves.

“One thing they didn’t do – they couldn’t have predicted was that 2014 was the last year linear video would grow,” Barden said, referring to the cable television business. “Because who was out there in the wings? This little company called Netflix. “Customers started cutting their cables and cable subscriptions began to decline.

Then came Time Warner. Numerous analysts pointed out that owning a company that makes money by distributing shows and movies as widely as possible does not give AT&T an advantage. In other words, HBO and CNN would still need to be licensed to competitors like Verizon’s television service or cable giants like Comcast. AT&T would have a hard time keeping the contents to themselves.

The Justice Department sued AT&T for blocking the deal but lost its case in court.

Makan Delrahim, the former Justice Department antitrust chief who oversaw the lawsuit, said in an interview that AT & T’s widespread deal is a “classic case” of corporate misconduct. The company “went through a number of mergers and acquisitions and was not rational to do business,” he said, “T-Mobile, DirecTV and Time Warner. And this is the result. “

Mr. Whitacre, the founding chairman of the modern AT&T, offered a different view.

“The business we did when I was chairman – which was a long time – was taking over the companies we were familiar with, the companies we were in,” he said in an interview. “And when I left, that changed.”

Mr. Whitacre, who is still an AT&T shareholder, said he liked the Discovery deal and brought the company back to “where we come from if you will”.

Categories
Business

How Lies on Social Media Are Inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian Battle

Lies on Social Media Inflame Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

In a 28-second video posted on Twitter this week by a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian militants appeared to be launching rocket attacks on Israelis from densely populated civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.

At least, Ofir Gendelman, Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, said the video. But his tweet with the footage, which was shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis escalated, wasn’t from Gaza. It wasn’t even that week.

Instead, the video he shared, which can be found on many YouTube channels and other video hosting sites, was from 2018. According to captions in older versions of the video, militants were shown, the rockets not from Gaza but from Syria or Libya fired from Syria.

The video was just misinformation circulated on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media this week about the increasing violence between Israelis and Palestinians when Israeli military forces attacked Gaza early Friday. The false information included videos, photos, and text clips that allegedly came from government officials in the area. Earlier this week, unfounded claims were made that Israeli soldiers had invaded Gaza or that Palestinian mobs were raging through sleepy Israeli suburbs.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, the lies were amplified as they were shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, and spread on WhatsApp and Telegram groups with thousands of members. The effects of the misinformation are potentially fatal, disinformation experts said, creating tension between Israelis and Palestinians when suspicions and suspicions were already high.

“Much of this is a rumor and a broken phone, but it’s being shared right now because people are desperate to share information about the developing situation,” said Arieh Kovler, a Jerusalem political analyst and independent researcher who studies misinformation . “What makes it more confusing is that it’s a mix of false claims and real stuff that is being attributed to the wrong place or time.”

Twitter and Facebook, which own Instagram and WhatsApp, did not respond to requests for comment. Christina LoNigro, a spokeswoman for WhatsApp, said the company has put limits on how many times people can forward a message in an attempt to contain misinformation.

TikTok said in a statement, “Our teams have worked quickly to encourage, and continue to work, to encourage and remove misinformation, attempts, violence, and other content that violates our community guidelines.”

The Times found several misinformation this week spreading through Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods and activist WhatsApp groups. One, which appeared as a block of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli citizens.

“Palestinians are coming, parents protect their children,” said the message, which specifically pointed to several suburbs north of Tel Aviv. Thousands of people belonged to one of the Telegram groups where the post was shared. The post then appeared in several WhatsApp groups that had tens to hundreds of members.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Updated

May 16, 2021, 7:21 p.m. ET

The Israeli police did not respond to a request for comment. There were no reports of violence in any of the areas named in the message.

Another post earlier this week, written in Arabic and sent to a WhatsApp group of over 200 members, warned that Israeli soldiers would be invading Gaza.

“The invasion is coming,” read the text that asked people to pray for their families.

Arabic and Hebrew language news sources also appeared to reinforce some of the misinformation. Several Israeli news outlets recently discussed a video showing a family with a wrapped body going to a funeral to drop the body when a police siren sounded. The video was cited by news organizations as evidence that Palestinian families held false funerals and exaggerated the number of people killed in the conflict.

In fact, the video appeared on YouTube over a year ago and may have featured a Jordanian family holding a fake funeral, according to the title of the original video.

Clips from another video showing religious Jews ripping their clothes as a sign of devotion were also broadcast on Arabic-language news sites this week. The clips were cited as evidence that Jews faked their own injuries during clashes in Jerusalem.

That was wrong, according to Times analysis, the video was uploaded several times to WhatsApp and Facebook earlier this year.

There is a long history of misinformation between Israeli and Palestinian groups, with false allegations and conspiracies increasing in moments of heightened violence in the region.

In recent years, Facebook has removed several Iranian disinformation campaigns in an attempt to fuel tension between Israelis and Palestinians. Twitter also shut down a network of fake accounts in 2019 that was smeared on opponents of Mr. Netanyahu.

The grainy video Mr Gendelman shared on Twitter Wednesday, allegedly showing Palestinian militants launching rocket attacks on Israelis, was removed Thursday after Twitter labeled it “misleading content”. Mr. Gendelman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Gendelman also appears to have misrepresented the content of other videos. On Tuesday, he posted a video on Twitter instructing three adult men to lie down on the floor with their bodies being arranged by a nearby crowd. Mr Gendelman said the video showed Palestinians staging bodies for a photo opportunity.

Mr Kovler, who traced the video back to its source, said the video was posted on TikTok in March. The accompanying text states that the footage shows people practicing for a bomb drill.

Categories
Business

AT&T-Discovery Deal Would Create a Media Juggernaut

AT&T-Discovery Deal Would Create a Media Juggernaut

Less than three years after AT&T spent more than $ 85 billion and millions more to fend off a government challenge to buy Time Warner, one of the biggest prizes in the media, the phone company signed up for one decided on a completely different strategy.

AT&T is in advanced talks to merge its media businesses, including CNN, with Discovery Inc. Two people were informed of the deal on Sunday. The plan would include all of AT & T’s Warner Media assets, including HBO and Warner Bros., one respondent said. The parties could announce a deal as early as Monday, the person said, saying the talks were still ongoing and the final details had not yet been worked out.

Should AT&T and Discovery agree on a deal, two of the country’s largest media companies would be merged. AT & T’s WarnerMedia group also includes the sports-heavy cable networks TNT and TBS. Discovery has a strong line of reality-based cable channels including Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, HGTV, the Food Network and Animal Planet.

WarnerMedia is led by Jason Kilar, 50, one of the first streaming pioneers and the first CEO of Hulu. David Zaslav, 60, has headed Discovery for 14 years and helped make it a reality giant. It is unclear who would run the new business.

Bloomberg News first reported on the potential deal.

The deal would create a new company bigger than Netflix or NBCUniversal. WarnerMedia and Discovery had combined sales of more than $ 41 billion with operating income of over $ 10 billion last year. That would have vaulted it in front of Netflix and NBCUniversal and behind the Walt Disney Company.

In other words, in order to compete for an audience that is increasingly tied to Facebook, YouTube or TikTok, media companies need to get even bigger. It could spark another round of media deals.

Both AT&T and Discovery have invested heavily in streaming to compete with Netflix and Disney. AT&T poured billions into the development of HBO Max, a streaming platform that now has around 20 million customers. Discovery has 15 million streaming subscribers worldwide, most of them for its Discovery + app.

The merger would also be a major U-turn for AT&T, a telecommunications giant better known for maintaining fiber optic lines and cell towers than producing entertainment and promoting Hollywood talent. Industry watchers questioned AT & T’s daring purchase of Time Warner at a time when cable cutting was only accelerating. The spin-off indicates a failed acquisition strategy.

“AT&T didn’t know what they were buying,” said Brian Wieser, a longtime Wall Street analyst. “The strategy underlying the acquisition” was probably flawed. “

Brooks Barnes, Lauren Hirsch and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed to the coverage.

This is a developing story. Check for updates again.