#Angelo Carusone

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A number of bombshell revelations about the inner workings of Fox News have come to light as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network.

Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, has admitted under oath that many hosts on his network “endorsed” Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election for financial, not political, reasons, stating, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”

In court filings, Dominion also revealed that Murdoch had given Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner confidential information about Biden’s campaign ads and debate strategy in possible violation of election laws.

Our guest, Angelo Carusone, is president of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, which recently sent a Federal Elections Commission complaint against Fox News based on evidence from the Dominion lawsuit.

“All the way from Rupert Murdoch on down to the show producers, they knew what they were saying was not true, that it was actually a lie, and they did it anyway,” says Carusone.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk may have put the final nail in X’s coffin. On Wednesday, Musk appeared to endorse an antisemitic post by user @breakingbaht alleging that “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” In response, Musk posted, “You have spoken the actual truth.”

The original post seemed to echo the beliefs of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which is popular among white supremacists and right-wing extremists. The backlash has been swift. In a statement earlier today, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates condemned the “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” and marquee advertisers have been quick to pull their business. IBM, Disney, Liongsgate, and the European Union have pulled advertising from X in response to Musk’s post. According to a report in Axios, Apple has also paused advertising on X.

At the time of publication, Apple had not responded to multiple requests for comment, nor has it confirmed that it is pulling its advertising from X.

“Advertisers like IBM and Apple aren’t just big names, they’re big spenders on X,” says Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a media watchdog group which has been tracking advertiser behavior on X. Carusone, citing data shared by data insights firm Sensor Tower, says that in July, the top five advertisers on X by spending were Apple, FinanceBuzz.io, Amazon, Mondelez International, and Hewlett-Packard. In the past, Apple has frequently been among the top 20 advertisers on X.

Carusone adds that Apple typically signals a certain level of brand safety to other, smaller advertisers. The company is also known for its stringent policies around controversial content in its App Store and on its own platforms. If Apple has paused, or plans to pause, its advertising on X, it “could have a halo effect,” Carusone claims, scaring other advertisers away from the platform. “It goes way beyond money.”

In August, X CEO Linda Yaccarino emphasized that the company was expanding its brand-safety tools, designed to give advertisers and marketers more control over what kind of content their ads appeared in proximity to.

But this recent spate of antisemitic content on X, and the juxtaposition of big-brand ads next to it, only underscores to advertisers that X is a risky bet, experts argue. “Even with those tools, if you’re an advertiser right now you’re thinking, there’s quite literally nothing I can do on this platform to improve my experience,” Carusone says.

“The problem with X is not only that there's misinformation and antisemitic content on the platform, and other hateful content as well, but that it's being spread by Musk himself,” says Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst for social media at Insider Intelligence, a market research firm.

“The brand safety concern for advertisers isn't just about the content but about the platform and the leadership.” Enberg argues that Musk has treated the company like something he could remake in his own image, not understanding that “what he wants and what he seemingly believes is not necessarily aligned with what users and advertisers on the platform want and believe.”

Under Musk’s leadership, X is expected to see an unprecedented 54 percent drop in advertising revenue, which previously accounted for more than 90 percent of the company’s total.

Even before Musk took ownership of then-Twitter, experts worried that his particular brand of free speech absolutism would lead to a flood of trolls and hate speech on the platform. In his first weeks as owner, Musk laid off nearly everyone working on trust and safety, the teams responsible for ensuring that hate speech, violence, and inappropriate content stay off the platform. (Hate speech did, in fact, increase under Musk’s leadership.) Musk’s lax approach to content moderation also nearly got the platform banned during the 2022 presidential runoffs in Brazil, the platform’s third largest market.

In response, advertisers began to flee, worried about the brand safety risks of their products appearing next to hateful or inflammatory posts. Since joining X as CEO earlier this year, Yaccarino, formerly global advertising lead at NBCUniversal, has seemingly been hampered in her ability to woo back advertisers by Musk’s decisions. And while X has claimed it was regaining advertisers, an October study from Media Matters found that X’s 100 largest advertisers were spending 90 percent less than they did before Musk’s takeover.

[antidrumpfs]

On American Voices, Angelo Carusone explains why Fox must be held accountable.

Carusone: If Fox isn't held accountable, “then Trump and others that follow along will also never be able to have any accountability applied to them either”

[beardedmrbean]

Elon Musk's social media company X on Monday sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization had defamed the platform.

Media Matters had published a report claiming ads for major brands had appeared alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist posts.

X said the report aimed to "drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp."

IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast said last week that they had stopped advertising on X after the Media Matters report.

This was a new setback for X, which gets most of revenue from advertisements.

The platform, formerly known as Twitter, claims Media Matters misrepresented the typical experience on X, with the intention of harm.

What does the lawsuit say?

The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in Texas, claimed Media Matters "manipulated" X by using accounts that exclusively followed accounts for major brands or users known to produce fringe content, and "resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing" the feed until it found ads next to extremist posts.

Media Matters, a Washington DC-based nonprofit, has called the lawsuit "frivolous."

The nonprofit's president, Angelo Carusone, said the lawsuit was "meant to bully X's critics into silence," and that he was looking forward to winning the case.

X said in the lawsuit that ads for IBM, Comcast and Oracle only appeared alongside hateful content for one viewer, which the social platform claimed was Media Matters.

The Media Matters report said ads from Apple and Oracle were also placed next to antisemitic material on X. It also said it found ads from Amazon, NBA Mexico, NBCUniversal and others next to white nationalist hashtags.

Since Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion (€40 billion) in October 2022, several advertisers have fled the platform due to Musk's controversial posts and layoffs.

The ad revenue for X has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since Musk's takeover, reported Reuters.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances. 

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.”  Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote. 

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

[Heather Cox Richardson :: Letters From An American]

[radiofreederry]

[dwagom]

thread by Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo on twitter)

1/ Given all the recent revelations about Fox News' internal machinations from the Dominion filings, I'd like to give a sense of just how delicate this moment is for Fox.. I'll start with advertisers, then talk about cable agreements and close with likely cascading litigation

2/ Advertisers. Fox News is already suffering with advertisers quite a bit. Yea, they have MyPillow and vegetable pill sponsors. But, overall, advertising isn'tas robust as it could be -- especially for prime time. For ex, Fox is currently Fox News' 4th biggest advertiser. Weird

3/ For the most part though, the really big and beloved brands largely eschew Fox. That said, pharmaceutical companies heavily advertise on Fox and then it's companies like @GM and @LibertyMutual that are largely left funding Fox partisan deceptions.

4/ By now though, most people know that advertising revenue is really just gravy on top for Fox. They could have $0 in ad revenue and they'd still have a 90% profit margin. That's because they have guaranteed revenue from cable companies.

5/ Every cable company pays a fee to channels to carry them - it's called a carriage fee. It's usual a nominal fee though. Not for Fox News. Fox News is the second most expensive channel on every one's cable bill (ESPN is #1). And that is by design.

6/ About 10 years ago, Fox News set out to leverage their rabid audience and insulate themselves from pressures of the ad industry. I won't get into how they did it. But short of it is, they lied and bullied their way into getting cable companies to massively overpay for Fox Ne

7/ Why's this matter? Well, Fox News has to renegotiate about 60% of all their cable contracts over the next year. And they not only need to keep their currently inflated rate, they need to actually increase it by quite a bit to offset the ad losses.

8/ These Dominion revelations are going to make it a lot harder for their efforts to be successful. There are ~90M cable subscribers. 87M who never touch Fox News are forced to basically pay a premium channel fee for it -- and now Fox wants more. Very winnable consumer fight.

9/ You all saw how effective these efforts were at getting cable companies to rethink their relationships with OAN and Newsman. It can absolutely happen with Fox. Want more? You can sign up at https://unfoxmycablebox.com

10/ There actually hasn't been renewals to really fight about yet, but they are coming. And in fact, the people that signed up at UnFox got an email back in December and helped ensure that Fox lost its very first carriage fight in its history. More on horizon.

11/ Lastly, these Dominion revelations expose Fox/Murdochs to additional liability. Make no mistake, Shareholders will file lawsuits in the coming months. I have already seen about half a dozen firms post noticed looking for clients to file such lawsuits.

12/ The effects on the Murdochs/Fox will cascade. But only if consumers act and ensure that Fox isn't about to force through massive increases in carriage fees and if media/others treat Fox like political operation that it is and not prop up veneer that it's a news network.

13/ Posting an update because the cascade is starting. The efforts to formalize legal action by shareholders is ramping up.

https://www.mediamatters.org/rupert-murdoch/dominion-filings-show-fox-board-members-knew-they-were-betraying-their-obligations

(source)

[pashterlengkap]

Elon Musk’s antisemitism is scaring away huge advertisers from X

It started last week with a widely shared tweet. Billionaire X owner Elon Musk agreed with a poster on his diminishing platform that Jewish communities have been pushing “hatred against whites” and are now reaping an invasion by “hordes of minorities” — both allude to the conspiratorial “Great Replacement Theory” that suspects a world-controlling Jewish cabal’s plan to replace white people with darker-skinned folks. Related: Mike Johnson says his pals would use trans laws to spy on naked girls He argued that trans people shouldn’t have rights because his friends were peeping Toms. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk wrote in response to the post. Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you: Subscribe to our Newsletter The very next day, Media Matters, the respected media watchdog group, released a report revealing just how prevalent hate speech like Musk’s is on X. “As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the nonprofit wrote last Thursday, “his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The company’s placements come after CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that brands are ‘protected from the risk of being next to’ toxic posts on the platform.” Before the day was out, IBM released a statement saying that it had “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.” “IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination,” the tech giant added. Apple followed shortly after. By Friday, the advertiser revolt included Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and the Max streaming platform. With hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue out the door and a continually decreasing user base — which has already shrunk by 13% since Musk’s takeover in October 2022 —Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s vow earlier this year that the disintegrating platform would become profitable again by 2024 has become just another post that didn’t age well. On Sunday, Musk tried to deflect attention away from his antisemitic comment by writing, “This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all.” This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2023 But by the following Monday, with his business strategy crumbling around him at his own hands, Musk laid blame for fleeing advertisers on the messenger, suing Media Matters for reporting the facts of X’s hateful, unmoderated content. “Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform,” according to Musk’s complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. “Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.” “Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in the statement. Musk has “admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified.” By Tuesday, Musk was attempting to buy sympathy for his antisemitism with a pledge to throw money at the Israel/Gaza conflict.… http://dlvr.it/SzJNwl

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on https://yaroreviews.info/2023/11/elon-musks-x-sues-media-matters-over-antisemitism-analysis

Elon Musk's X sues Media Matters over antisemitism analysis

Getty Images

By Max Matza

BBC News

Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a left-leaning pressure group that accused the site of allowing antisemitic posts next to advertising.

X’s lawsuit alleges that Media Matters for America “manipulated” data in an attempt to “destroy” the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Firms including Apple, Disney, IBM and Comcast have paused adverts on X since the watchdog released its analysis.

After Mr Musk threatened the lawsuit, Media Matters called him a bully.

The advocacy group said last week that ads had appeared on X alongside posts supporting Nazism, such as Hitler quotes and Holocaust denial.

Separately, Mr Musk himself last week was accused of amplifying an antisemitic trope on the platform.

The lawsuit, filed in Texas on Monday, argues: “Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.

“Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”

Getty Images

X said in the lawsuit that ads for Comcast, Oracle and IBM had only appeared alongside hateful content for Media Matters, and no other viewer.

Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of X, posted on Monday: “Here’s the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article.”

Twitter and hate speech: What’s the evidence?

Who is Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s ‘superwoman’?

In the wake of the Media Matters allegations, the European Commission, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount and Lionsgate have also pulled ad dollars from X.

On Saturday, Mr Musk vowed to file a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters, and anyone “who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company”.

In response, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said they would win any legal action.

“Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate,” Mr Carusone said in a statement.

Founded in 2004, Media Matters is known for its criticism of conservative commentators and media outlets.

It describes itself as a non-profit “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the US media”.

Last Wednesday, Mr Musk came under fire after he replied to a post sharing a conspiracy theory accusing Jewish communities of pushing hatred against white people, calling it “actual truth”.

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur later denied antisemitism, saying his comments referred not to all Jewish people, but to groups like the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-hate monitor.

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Meanwhile, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Monday that he had opened an investigation into Media Matters “for potential fraudulent activity” over its allegations about X.

His office released a statement calling the liberal group a “radical anti-free speech organization”.

Mr Paxton also vowed to ensure that “the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square”.

Also on Monday the White House announced President Joe Biden would join Threads – the Meta-owned rival to X.

Threads accounts have also been created for the president, first lady, vice-president and second gentleman.

Related Topics

Elon Musk

Social media ads boycott

Twitter

Censorship

Texas

United States

More on this story

Who is Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s ‘superwoman’?

5 June

X ad boycott gathers pace amid antisemitism storm

2 days ago

White House criticises Musk over antisemitic lie

3 days ago

[mariacallous]

In a move that surely made the Succession theme play in the heads of all who got the push notification, Rupert Murdoch announced today that the “time is right” for him to step down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corp, ending his seven-decade reign as mastermind of the media landscape. His retirement won’t begin until November, but the great unbundling of his media empire has already begun.

Still, what an empire it is, or was. Murdoch, 92, got his start at 21 years old, when his father died and left him in charge of his relatively small Australian newspaper company. On taking the helm, he upped circulation by shifting their coverage to be more tabloidy. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s he continued to build that portfolio, gobbling up everything from The Sun in the UK to The Village Voice and New York magazine in the US.

By the 1980s, Murdoch was casting his gaze toward film and TV, taking over regional news stations and the movie studio 20th Century Fox. The Fox broadcast network launched in 1986, Fox News a decade later. By the early aughts, Murdoch set his sights on new media, writing a Scrooge McDuck–sized $580 million check to then-superhot social network Myspace.

Soon, a spark lit a fuse that set the whole dumpster on fire.

It’s an easy shorthand to say “Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp ruined discourse,” but that’s also not far from the truth. (The notion of “truth” is also something Murdoch’s empire has had a hand in destabilizing.) News Corp ownership effectively ruined Myspace, making way for platforms like Facebook and Twitter to host the public square, but the influence of Murdoch and his companies spread regardless. As WIRED reporters Vittoria Elliott and Peter Guest noted earlier this year, Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson “helped bring often dangerous misinformation into the mainstream around the world.” Murdoch may have never controlled Facebook or Twitter, but the people his companies platformed dominated the conversation on them anyway.

“For Rupert Murdoch, all of his media empire was a way of trying to push certain ideas,” says Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

In the US, this was most evident in the way Fox News wed itself with the Trump administration, a marriage that was for a long time beneficial to both parties but also led to Fox News agreeing to pay $787 million to settle a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems that “would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election,” as the Associated Press put it. It also led to revelations that Carlson, in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, sent texts saying that he hated Trump “passionately.” Carlson was canned by Fox News in April.

Murdoch newspapers in the UK backed Brexit and got caught up in a phone hacking scandal. In Australia, where his family’s news empire still holds massive influence, Murdoch periodicals showed skepticism about climate change. Today, as news spread that Murdoch was stepping down, Angelo Carusone, the CEO of watchdog group Media Matters for America, issued a statement saying, “The world is worse off because of Rupert Murdoch. No one should sugarcoat the damage he caused.”

Still, the empire Murdoch built, though vast, is dwindling. Murdoch pushed out Roger Ailes, the man behind the ascent of Fox News, in 2016. (Ailes died a year later.) News Corp sold off 21st Century Fox to Disney in 2019 for $71.3 billion. (Fox News and the Fox broadcast network were spun off into Fox Corporation as a result of the deal.) As of this summer, News Corp profits are down 75 percent year over year. As the media industry goes through a series of massive shake-ups ranging from the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger to the increasing dominance of Apple and Amazon, everything is getting unbundled and rebundled, including Murdoch’s empire.

Not that Murdoch hasn’t tried to have a hand in how those bundles come together. Murdoch abandoned a plan earlier this year to consolidate Fox Corporation and News Corp, a move he said could give the entertainment and publishing business better scale, after shareholders opposed it. “Fox is certainly diminished,” Carusone says. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to keep this big thing together.”

When Murdoch steps down in the fall, his son, Lachlan, will become chair of News Corp and remain Fox Corporation’s CEO and executive chair. (Cue the “eldest boy” memes.) It remains to be seen where Lachlan will take the empire from here or whether he’ll be able to maintain the same hold on political messaging as his father. Following the transition, Rupert Murdoch plans to stay on as chair emeritus of the companies, and in a message to his staff today said that in his new role he would still “be involved every day in the contest of ideas.” Perhaps, though, with his empire shrinking, that contest will no longer be an all-out war.

[antidrumpfs]

“Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive”

[jess-halbert]

MSNBC interviews Angelo Carusone, Media Matters president, and NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrony as they review extremism spikes on Twitter, speculate on causes, and present solutions to the issues at hand since Musk's acquisition of the platform.

[scottiestoybox]

On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains that the right-wing echo chamber has been in lockstep reacting to Trump's latest indictment

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-explains-right-wing-echo-chamber-has-been-lockstep-reacting Again thanks to ten Bears for the link.  Hugs  https://homelessonthehighdesert.com/ Carusone: “It’s one of the few weeks we’ve had in a while where there’s almost uniformity. Whether it’s Fox News, or talk radio, or Alex Jones, they’re all saying the same…