There’s some very good news out of Russia this morning, as three U.S. citizens who have been wrongly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin’s government —Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva — are reportedly on the verge of being released.
Oddly, the Journal, which has been fierce in keeping the spotlight on Gershkovich, does not yet have the report. But according to BBC News, the three are part of a larger swap involving “at least 24 prisoners,” including eight Russians who will be returned to Moscow.
Authorities in the U.K. have begun a “special equiry” — I believe it’s fair to call it a criminal investigation — into accusations that Washington Post publisher Will Lewis ordered the destruction of 30 million emails related to the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal and then tried to cover it up. News of the investigation was broken by The Guardian.
After several weeks of thinking about it, I’ve switched to a new theme for Media Nation. (“Theme” is WordPress-speak for “design.”) I’m still on the lookout for something better, but for now I think this will be an improvement. Why did I do this?
• My previous theme, Lovecraft, struck me as a bit too artsy for what I was looking for. The new theme, Twenty Sixteen, is more straightforward and newsier.
• As one of WordPress’ official themes, Twenty Sixteen receives regular maintenance updates. Lovecraft hadn’t been updated since 2022.
• With Lovecraft, you couldn’t see a link for commenting unless you clicked through to the individual post. As a result, I had to add “Leave a comment | Read comments” by hand to each post. Twenty Sixteen not only handles that automatically, but it gives you a count of how many people have commented. That way, you’ll know whether it’s worth clicking or not.
• Change is good.
Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions for a better theme, I’m all ears.
Washington Post publisher Will Lewis. 2019 public domain photo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Few media executives have benefited from the political chaos of the past month more than Washington Post publisher Will Lewis.
Before the presidential debate of June 27, Lewis seemed to be hanging by a thread over revelations that he was involved in covering up the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids back in 2011. He’s also come under fire for approving payments to a source while he was working at another paper and, more recently, demanding that journalists — including Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who later left the paper — not report on his transgressions.
Since the debate, which led to weeks of frenzied coverage regarding President Biden’s age and fitness, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, and the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris (not to mention an assassination attempt against Donald Trump), Lewis’ fate had been forgotten.
Until now.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who earlier revealed that Lewis promised him an exclusive interview if Folkenflik would give Lewis’ ethical problems a good leaving-alone, reported on Tuesday that new documents show Lewis has been accused of making up a story 13 years ago “to shield evidence from police of possible crimes at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.” The accusations were leveled as part of a lawsuit brought against Murdoch’s tabloids by Prince Harry and other prominent political figures in the U.K.
Folkenflik’s story is filled with names and details, but essentially Lewis is accused of faking a security threat “to justify the deletion of millions of emails dating from the start of 2008 through the end of 2010.” Here’s the heart of Folkenflik’s report:
In July 2011, when police first learned of the deleted emails, Lewis explained that Murdoch’s company was compelled to get rid of them because of a tip that he and a senior executive received nearly six months earlier: an “outside source” told them that former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was conspiring with a News UK employee and another person to steal the emails of the CEO. That unnamed person was said to be Tom Watson, then a leading member of parliament and critic of the Murdochs. The IT person was later alleged to have been a former News UK staffer.
Brown has denounced the claim as false and outrageous. He’s asked Scotland Yard for a criminal investigation of the episode involving Lewis. Watson, who is among scores of litigants suing News UK alleging illegal invasions of privacy, has denied it. In court, the lead trial attorney for Watson, Harry and the others called the story “a ruse.”
Writing in The Guardian, Caroline Davies goes into detail about minutes of a meeting between police officials and Lewis in July 2011. In the excerpt below, “Rebekah” is Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Murdoch’s News International company, and “BCL” is the law firm that was representing Murdoch’s interests. Here’s what Lewis reportedly told detectives:
We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s emails and had passed them to Tom Watson MP.
This came to Rebekah. I was asked to meet the source. I will consult with BCL as to whether I can tell you the identity of the source. The source repeated the threat. Then the source came back and said it was a former member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown. This added to our anxieties. We took steps to try and be more specific around her emails.
Folkenflik and Davies report that Lewis is also accused of leaking an audio recording aimed at harming a critic of Murdoch’s proposed acquisition of the Sky broadcasting service. That acquisition was nixed after the phone-hacking schedule came to light.
Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, though he would not speak with Folkenflik.
The Post, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is one of our three great daily newspapers. We all have an interest in its surviving and thriving after several years of losing circulation and money. It’s been clear for some time that Lewis lacks the ethical compass needed to lead the Post.
Owner Jeff Bezos might have hoped that Lewis had survived the worst of it. But as the most recent developments show, this saga is not done playing out. It’s hard to see how it will end well for Lewis.
We watched Kamala Harris’ speech in Atlanta on YouTube, and it was extraordinary — her pitch-perfect message casting liberalism as patriotism, her taunting of Donald Trump, and the sheer joy she brought to the proceedings. I was impressed with her body language and comfort level as well. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this for a long time, and I just hope it can continue.
Gin Dumcius of CommonWealth Beacon reports on a ludicrous custom: legislators offering amendments to bills and then quickly withdrawing them, apparently for the sole purpose of drawing attention to a pet cause.
The New York Times has been doing tremendous work on the failures of the Secret Service and local law enforcement that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. The latest (free link) shows that officials had multiple warning signs that should have led them to shut down the rally before Trump ever took the stage. It was truly a failure of epic proportions.
Last week the Times published a visual investigation with similar conclusions: the shooter had been spotted and seemed suspicious enough to have attracted the notice of security officers. They lost track of him. And they allowed the rally to go ahead, leading to the death of a retired firefighter and serious injury to two other attendees.
The idea behind having a weekly newsletter for paid supporters is to offer something extra. Today, though, I thought I would unlock my most recent newsletter so that you can see what you’ll get if you join for $5 a month. Every Thursday I send out a collection of commentary, photography, a round-up of the week’s posts and a song. I hope you’ll consider joining. To become a paid supporter, just click here.
According to its “About” page, Waltham Community Access Corp., which operates two local access stations for the benefit of cable subscribers, “is funded by a percentage of the gross revenues from Comcast and RCN cable.” This is a typical arrangement, mandated by state law. And though WCAC describes itself as an “independent nonprofit corporation,” the revenues that access channels receive from cable providers are generally passed through to them by local government. What’s more, the cable providers themselves are licensed by each city and town.
In other words, local access outlets like WCAC may not be part of the government, but they certainly have a relationship with the government. Which is why the actions taken by WCAC last September, just before a city election, were especially pernicious. According to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court by a citizen journalism group known as Channel 781 News, WCAC filed a complaint with YouTube claiming copyright infringement because Channel 781 had made use of clips of government meetings. Again, as is typical of local access operations, WCAC carries some municipal meetings in full and then posts them online. According to a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit on Channel 781’s behalf, WCAC violated Channel 781’s rights under the “fair use” exception to copyright law:
The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says.
“WCAC knew it had no right to stop people from using video recordings of public meetings, but asked YouTube to shut us down anyway,” Channel 781 cofounder Josh Kastorf said. “Democracy relies on an informed public, and there must be consequences for anyone who abuses the DMCA to silence journalists and cut off people’s access to government.”
WCAC’s actions — which have earned it a New England Muzzle Award — resulted in the temporary shutdown of Channel 781, according to a story from last September in The Justice, the student newspaper at Brandeis University. At that time, Justice reporter Lea Zaharoni wrote that WCAC did not respond to a request for comment. But Zaharoni found that the president of WCAC’s board also served as a city official, and observed that Channel 781 had reported critically on yet another organization that particular official was involved with.
Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, who has published a comprehensive account of the lawsuit, found a statement posted by WCAC executive director Maria Sheehan that has since been taken down:
Our station is a private nonprofit that does not receive taxpayer funding. Over recent years, photographs from our news department, and video from the MAC channel, have been reproduced without our permission. We know this is a reality of the world we live in, but we put copyright disclaimers on our media for a reason. Some have used our content to score political points under the veil of anonymity. Others have used it to encourage residents to hate. This practice can damage reputations and spread misinformation and we do not want to be a part of that. So as we head into a contentious election season, I’m asking the public to respect people who work hard to create our original content. In the interest of transparency, we will entertain requests to reuse our content for free, but misuse is wrong, and it is illegal. Moving forward, the Waltham Channel will take whatever legal steps necessary to protect our content.
According to the EFF, “WCAC sent three copyright infringement notices to YouTube referencing 15 specific Channel 781 videos, leading YouTube to deactivate the account and render all of its content inaccessible. YouTube didn’t restore access to the videos until two months later, after a lengthy intervention by EFF.”
In its lawsuit, the EFF asks that the court issue an order to prevent WCAC from targeting Channel 781. Damages and attorney’s fees are being sought as well.
If there has been one consolation about Fox News’ ongoing subversion of our political discourse — and even of democracy itself — it has been the near-certainty that 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch does not actually have a pact with the Lord of the Underworld and will at some point depart this vale of tears. His rabidly right-wing son Lachlan Murdoch, who Rupe put in charge a few years ago, is outnumbered by three of his siblings, and they reportedly have more moderate views.
Now that is in danger. On Wednesday, The New York Times published a deep dive (free link) into legal steps Murdoch is taking that are aimed at ensuring Lachlan’s continued reign after Rupert himself has departed the scene. Reporters Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler write that the old man is seeking to rewrite the terms of a trust that specifies four of his many children will share equal control of his media empire:
The trust currently hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Mr. Murdoch dies. But he is arguing in court that only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent, and thus protect its commercial value for all his heirs.
The toxic effects of a ruling in Rupert’s favor can’t be exaggerated. We in the media like to focus on how Mark Zuckerberg has profited by allowing Facebook to be weaponized by shadowy, malignant forces and how Elon Musk has transformed the cesspool that was Twitter into a far worse place that indulges far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists like, well, himself.
But Fox News is without question the single most influential player on the right, flagrantly promoting lies of omission and commission, including the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. Fox had to pay a $787 million settlement to the Dominion voting machine company for deliberately lying that Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden. But other than firing its biggest star, Tucker Carlson, for reasons that have never been fully explained, Fox has continued on its lying, hate-mongering way.
It’s disheartening to think that this might continue long after Rupert Murdoch’s departure.
The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says.
