August 2025 – Page 2 – Media Nation

Seems like old times: Facebook is once again inflicting harm on the rest of us, this time using AI

This AI image of “Big sis Billie” was generated by Meta AI at the prompting of a Reuters journalist.

There was a time when it seemed like every other week I was writing about some terrible thing we had learned about Facebook or one of Meta’s other platforms.

There was Facebook’s complicity in the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Or the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the personal data of millions of people on Facebook was hoovered up so that Steve Bannon could target political ads to them. Or Instagram’s ties to depression among teenage girls.

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Now Jeff Horwitz, who uncovered much of Facebook’s nefarious behavior when he was at The Wall Street Journal, is back with an in-depth report for Reuters on how Meta’s use of artificial intelligence led to the accidental death of a mentally disabled man and how it’s being used to seduce children as well.

The man, a 76-year-old stroke survivor named Thongbue Wongbandue, suffered fatal injuries when he fell while running for a train so that he could meet his AI-generated paramour, “Big sis Billie,” who had repeatedly assured Wongbandue in their online encounters that she was real.

As for interactions with children, Horwitz writes:

An internal Meta policy document seen by Reuters as well as interviews with people familiar with its chatbot training show that the company’s policies have treated romantic overtures as a feature of its generative AI products, which are available to users aged 13 and older.

“It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” according to Meta’s “GenAI: Content Risk Standards.” The standards are used by Meta staff and contractors who build and train the company’s generative AI products, defining what they should and shouldn’t treat as permissible chatbot behavior. Meta said it struck that provision after Reuters inquired about the document earlier this month.

Yes, the Zuckerborg’s strategy going back many years now is to back off when caught — and then move on to some other antisocial business practice.

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, and especially during his brief, chaotic stint in the Trump White House, Mark Zuckerberg has gotten something of a free pass. Just this week it was announced that Threads, a Meta product launched for users who were fleeing Twitter, now has 400 million active monthly users, making it about two-thirds as large as Twitter/X. (An independent alternative, Bluesky, trails far behind.)

Well, Zuckerberg is still out there wreaking havoc, and AI has given him (and Musk and all the rest) a new toy with which to make money while harming the rest of us.

No, Jeanine Pirro’s vile op-ed is not further evidence that Jeff Bezos is wrecking The Washington Post

Jeanine Pirro. Photo (cc) 2021 by Gage Skidmore.

Because Jeff Bezos has taken a wrecking ball to The Washington Post’s opinion section, critics have become sensitive to any hint that the billionaire owner is paying obeisance to Donald Trump.

Which brings me to an op-ed the Post published Tuesday evening (gift link) by newly confirmed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro about Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into Washington, D.C., in order to crack down on a crime wave that, by all credible accounts, does not exist. I haven’t been able to find any media commentary criticizing the Post for running Pirro’s piece, but I have seen grumbling on social media along with yet another round of vows by readers to cancel their subscriptions.

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Deciding whether to run such a piece is not just a journalistic decision but also an ethical one. Pirro’s major qualification for her job as D.C.’s top prosecutor is having served as a Trump-worshipping talk-show host on Fox News, although it has to be said that she served as both a prosecutor and a judge many years ago. Her op-ed defends an authoritarian president who is militarizing the nation’s capital just because he can. Should the Post have just said no?

The Post itself editorialized against her appointment (gift link) back in May. Part of the paper’s objection was over process, but the editorial also called out her judgment and noted that her executive producer at Fox News had referred to her as a “reckless maniac” in promoting the voting-machine conspiracy that led to a $787.5 million libel settlement by her then-employer.

Which is to say that the Post’s editorial board, compromised though it may be, saw fit to stand up to Pirro and Trump as recently as three months ago. No doubt the new opinion editor, Adam O’Neal, decided to run Pirro’s op-ed for the most ordinary of reasons: it was submitted (if not necessarily written) by a high-ranking government official with responsibility for a significant issue in the news.

In that regard, it’s useful to remember the mess over The New York Times’ decision to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton back in 2020 in which Cotton endorsed the use of military force to crush violent Black Lives Matter protesters. As I wrote for GBH News, the Times shouldn’t have run the piece for several reasons. Among other things, the editors did not insist that Cotton address an earlier public statement he’d made suggesting that violent protesters should be killed on the streets, and he was allowed to make an entirely unsubstantiated assertion that antifa was involved in the protests.

We later learned that editorial-page editor James Bennet hadn’t even bothered to read Cotton’s screed before publishing it. Bennet, whose miscues were piling up (including his inserting a false assertion into an editorial that led to Sarah Palin’s endless libel suit against the Times), was soon fired.

Pirro’s op-ed strikes me as unremarkable right-wing boilerplate about what she describes as a need to crack down on youthful offenders. She calls on the D.C. Council to amend or reverse three laws that would strip those offenders of important rights and protections. The op-ed says in part:

Unfortunately, young criminals have been emboldened to think they can get away with committing crime in this city, and, very often, they do. But together with our local and federal partners, our message to them today is: We will identify you, prosecute you and convict you. For any juveniles: We are going to push to change the laws so that if you commit any violent crime, I have jurisdiction to prosecute you where you belong — in adult court.

Don’t get me wrong. This is terrible, vile stuff, but the question is whether the Post should have run her op-ed. I think the answer is yes. It’s a newsworthy piece by a public official who’s close to the president. If I were editing the piece, I would have insisted that she address the falling crime rate in D.C. (As a general principle, I think editorial-page editors need to insist on standards of truthfulness and accuracy in outside contributions.) Overall, though, I don’t think Pirro’s piece is nearly as objectionable as Cotton’s was five years ago.

The Post, given its location in the nation’s capital, has always been a favored landing spot for op-eds by high-ranking government officials. The best way to have prevented Pirro’s op-ed from running would have been to keep Trump out of the White House. But it’s far too late for that.

What we know about Israel’s targeted killings of six Al Jazeera journalists

2023 photo of Gaza war damage via Wikimedia Commons

Poynter media columnist Tom Jones has a thorough roundup of how news organizations covered Israel’s killing on Sunday of six Al Jazeera journalists, observing that Anas al-Sharif, who was apparently the target, had predicted his death.

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As Jones writes, Israel claims that al-Sharif had been actively involved in Hamas’ terrorist attacks. Al-Sharif had denied the allegation, and the killings were condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which issued a statement saying, “Israel is murdering the messengers.”

Al Jazeera called the killings a “targeted assassination,” as they surely were. The right-wing Jerusalem Post ran a headline that said “Israeli military kills Hamas terrorist doubling as Al Jazeera reporter near Shifa Hospital,” claiming: “Documents shared by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] included personnel rosters, lists of terror training courses, phone directories, and salary documents for Al-Sharif.”

Ironically, the Post’s story is attributed to its own staff and to Reuters, the international wire service for which al-Sharif shared in a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2024.

The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz runs a straightforward account of the killings. The Times of Israel’s live blog currently leads with a story about media organizations that have condemned the attacks as well as a statement by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he is “gravely concerned.”

CPJ reports: “With Sunday’s killing of six journalists, 192 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war on October 7, 2023. At least 184 of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.”

The Plymouth Independent is seeking a top editor as Mark Pothier says he’ll step aside

*The Mayflower II, docked in Plymouth Harbor. Photo (cc) 2025 by Dan Kennedy.*

Less than two years after its founding, the Plymouth Independent has established itself as one of the larger and more stable hyperlocal news startups in Massachusetts. Now it’s moving on to a new phase.

Founding executive editor and CEO Mark Pothier announced this morning that he’s stepping aside as soon as a successor is named. Pothier’s not going anywhere, explaining that he plans to stick around as a reporter, bringing the size of the news staff from three full-timers to four. A chief development officer will be hired as well, all the better to raise funds for an anonymous $1 million matching grant that will be used to start an endowment. Pothier writes:

My promise to the board was that I would build the site and organization over at least two years. My two-year anniversary is in September. There’s always more to do that we can’t get to. My email in-box seems to have a life of its own. This job has been all-consuming. I’m glad I signed up for it.

Plymouth is among the largest towns in the state, with a population of about 66,000. Nevertheless, a four-person staff is unusual these days, and it’s a lot for a digital-only nonprofit. The Independent’s staff is also unusually high-powered, as both Pothier and staff reporter Andrea Estes are Boston Globe veterans and the other staff reporter, Fred Thys, worked for prominent news outlets such as WBUR and VTDigger. Globe reporting legend Walter Robinson, a Plymouth resident, is among its board members.

The Independent’s aggressive reporting has also been the subject of two New England Muzzle Awards I’ve given out to town officials for stonewalling and threatening the news site.

The Independent’s search for an executive editor to replace Pothier is now under way. You can view the job listing here. As you’ll see, it’s a good-paying job with decent benefits. What follows is the full text of Pothier’s announcement.

Continue reading “The Plymouth Independent is seeking a top editor as Mark Pothier says he’ll step aside”

The Associated Press tells its book critics that it’s ending weekly reviews

Terrible news from The Associated Press. Media Nation correspondent J.A. passes along this note from Anthony McCartney, the AP’s global entertainment and lifestyle editor.

AP to end its weekly book reviews

Dear AP book reviewers,

I am writing to share that the AP is ending its weekly book reviews, beginning Sept. 1. This was a difficult decision but one made after a thorough review of AP’s story offerings and what is being most read on our website and mobile apps as well as what customers are using. Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews. AP will continue covering books as stories, but at the moment those will handled exclusively by staffers.

I want to thank you for your time and commitment to reviewing books for the AP. All current review assignments through Aug. 31 will be honored and your invoices will be paid. (Please submit those as you normally would, and file final invoices by Sept. 15.)

I want to take a moment to thank Carolyn, who has coordinated reviews and made sure relevant titles were covered, and Mark, who has edited the reviews and incorporated best practices for trying to get reviews to appear in search results and get as many readers as possible.

Thank you again for your diligence and work on reviews. I wish you all the best.

From the CJR, a more nuanced view of where The Washington Post may be heading

Where is The Washington Post heading? Certainly from outside the paper’s walls, the situation looks grim, as staff members are streaming toward the exits in droves, especially but not exclusively from the opinion side. But as disgusted as I am by Jeff Bezos’ shift from model owner to boss from hell over the past couple of years, I’ve held out hope that all may not be lost — as long as he doesn’t mess with the news operation. So far, he hasn’t.

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Which is why I want to call your attention to this Jon Allsop piece from the Columbia Journalism Review. He recounts the devastation in minute detail, but he offers more nuance than I’ve seen elsewhere. He also buries the lead. The key is his wrap-up:

[J]ournalism is more of a team sport than the industry focus on its stars sometimes acknowledges, and the Post is clearly retaining a corps of incredibly talented journalists. In their departure notes, [chief political reporter Dan] Balz and [sports columnist Sally] Jenkins both emphasized this fact, with the latter writing that she sees “the glimmer of a new Washington Post — one that moves”; it will have “to be right-sized,” she added, “and young trees planted, but when the clocks all start chiming at the same time, it will be glorious.” Chelsea Janes, who covers baseball for the Post, and is staying, reacted to news of Jenkins’s exit with a different metaphor — that of a sports team that has been torn apart for unclear reasons — but added that there’s “plenty of talent still on the roster, and everyone on that roster plays to win.” I can sympathize with Janes’s analogy: my English soccer team is currently in the process of a full-scale rebuild, and a lot about it sucks. But it also feels like a moment of opportunity. That is, if the owners and management know what they’re doing. The same is true in journalism.

The challenge is finding an audience for the Post now that Bezos’ feckless leadership has allowed the paper to be caricatured as a mouthpiece for Donald Trump, even though it’s not, and even though its news coverage remains superb. It also doesn’t help that he’s stuck with Will Lewis as his publisher despite Scotland Yard’s ongoing interest in Lewis’ possible involvement in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. I would love it if Bezos returned to the generous, hands-off owner I wrote about in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls,” but that’s not likely to happen.

Even so, we still have three great national newspapers — the Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If the Journal can survive and thrive despite Murdoch family ownership (by the way, here’s a terrific profile of Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker by The Guardian’s Michael Savage), then the Post can overcome Bezos. That is, assuming Bezos wants it.

Media Nation on semi-hiatus

We’re heading out later today for the rest of the week, and I’m not planning on writing anything unless there’s huge media news. I’ll try to send out an abbreviated supporters newsletter sometime on Thursday. Behave yourselves.

In a village without a newspaper, a small digital outlet is keeping tabs and asking questions

Update, Aug. 7: The Institute for Justice reports that Scarsdale Village has canceled its contract with Flock Safety in response to community opposition. Local activist Josh Frankel tells Media Nation: “Local journalism + grassroots advocacy for the win.”

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Among the more harmful effects of the local news crisis is that it empowers elected officials to engage in dubious behavior without anyone keeping an eye on them. But what happens when important public business is moved out of view of the watchdog?

That’s what happened in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale Village, New York, where the board of trustees surreptitiously approved a $2.1 million contract in April that places the community under surveillance in the name of public safety.

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The story was laid out over the weekend in Drop Site, an investigative newsletter founded by Intercept veterans Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill and Nausicaa Renner. According to reporter Ka (Jessica) Burbank, the trustees used vaguely worded language about “public safety equipment” on an advance agenda and then went into executive (closed) session to approve a contract with a company known as Flock Safety.

As resident Josh Frankel told Burbank, “I don’t think that anybody who looked at the agenda in advance would have thought that public safety equipment involved live cameras, license plate readers, drone technology, basically a mass surveillance system.” Frankel added that “maybe you’re thinking public safety equipment is a traffic light, a crosswalk, a yield sign, something along those lines, but not mass surveillance.”

Flock Safety, a $7.5 billion company, has a presence in 5,000 communities in 49 states as well as a reputation for secretive dealings with local officials. “Flock’s technology has been used to assist with everything from ICE investigations in Illinois to abortion investigations in Texas,” Burbank writes. Flock’s website says: “Protect your community, business or school 24/7 with coverage that never sleeps.”

The story is long and detailed, but there’s a wrinkle that I want to call your attention to. Because even though the legacy newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, closed in 2024, the community is served by an independent journalist, Joanne Wallenstein, who runs a 26-year-old digital news project called Scarsdale 10583. And she was very much there when the Flock deal was struck behind closed doors. Burbank writes that Wallenstein “has produced countless articles since April 8th, covering her own correspondence with the board, press releases, and board meetings.” Wallenstein is quoted as saying:

Village officials blamed the lack of notice on the demise of the Scarsdale Inquirer. However, Scarsdale 10583 has been covering the news and published weekly since 2009. In this case, the reason no one knew about the Flock contract was because no advance notice was given. The resolution was not included in the agenda and there was no public hearing. It had nothing to do with the loss of the local newspaper.

The story was also covered by local television in June as well as by a website called Scarsdale Insider, although the latter has not published new material of any kind since June 24.

This is often the way it works. A local news outlet covers something suspicious and keeps hammering away at it. With repetition, it draws the attention of larger media organizations such as a television newscast and, in this case, a small but nevertheless national project like Drop Site. Finally, it breaks through to the mainstream.

So good for Joanne Wallenstein and Scarsdale 10583. Without her, this story might never have seen the light of day.

How to improve your Airpods listening experience if your hearing isn’t what it used to be

Miles Davis at the Nice Jazz Festival. Photo (cc) 1989 by Oliver Nurock.

If you love to listen to music and your hearing isn’t what it used to be, especially on the high end, I have a life hack for you. I have moderate hearing loss in both ears, and before you start in on me, yes, I listened to very loud music occasionally when I was young, and was in a band, but every older member of my family had significant hearing loss. So in my case it’s more genetic than environmental.

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The two loudest concerts I ever attended, by the way, were John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana at the Music Hall (now the Boch Center) in 1973 and Miles Davis’ comeback concert at Kix Disco in 1981, where we had the misfortune of being parked directly in front of a speaker column. In both cases I felt the after-effects for days. (You can hear Miles’ great show from that night, mixed in with some material from New York and Tokyo, at a comfortably lower volume on the album “We Want Miles.”)

Anyway, last fall I got hearing aids, and it’s been a life-changer. Immediately I could hear what my students were saying without having to run around the classroom to get closer to them (I told myself it helped me appear energetic), and I could hear my colleagues at faculty meetings (a mixed blessing; just kidding!). When listening to music live, through a Bluetooth speaker or in my car, I’ll adjust the EQ on my hearing aids to boost the bass and turn down the treble, which as best as I can tell approximates what it ought to be for a person with normal hearing.

I can also listen to music directly through my hearing aids, but that proved to be a non-starter. They’re fine for a phone call, but for anything more than that the sound is tinny. Worse, there’s no noise cancellation. So what to do?

I have a pair of Apple Airpods Pro 2, which I love, and so I would remove my hearing aids and use the Airpods. But now that I had a better basis for comparing the sound to what it should be, I discovered that the Airpods were muddy and bassy, even if I chose “Treble Booster” in the EQ. They would OK for podcasts, but audio quality was a disappointment. Theoretically I could wear good-quality headphones over my hearing aids, but that didn’t seem like a smart solution. For one thing, I’d have to buy headphones, and I had my Airpods sitting right there.

So at the suggestion of some Facebook friends, I started exploring the hearing aid option on my Airpods. Problem solved. Here’s what you do if you use an iPhone: Go into the Bluetooth settings and tap on the circled “i” for information next to your Airpods. Choose “Take a Hearing Test.” I took the test, but you also have the option of entering the results from your most recent hearing test. The graph turned out to be pretty much the same as from my last real test.

After you’ve done that, enter “Hearing Assistance” and make sure that “Hearing Aid,” “Media Assist” and “Adjust Music and Video” are all toggled on. You can do the same with “Adjust Calls and FaceTime” if you like. (See the image.)

It turned out to be transformative, as I was hearing music with a brightness and clarity I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. One of the first things I did was listen to the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” all the way through while I was on a walk, with noise cancellation on. I chose “Abbey Road” because I knew it was exceptionally well produced, and I was blown away by the clarity. I’ll tell you, those boys could play! Podcasts sound much better, too.

A couple of weeks ago I listened to Duke Ellington’s first sacred concert and loved it — but it was muddy. Now I can’t wait to listen to it again.

‘What Works in Community News’ will be featured at a GBH News event at Rozzie Bound Co-op

*Photo via Rozzie Bound Co-op’s Facebook page*

Ellen Clegg and I are excited to report that Rozzie Bound Co-op, an independent bookstore in Roslindale, Massachusetts, is hosting a GBH Listening Session on Thursday, Aug. 21 — and it’s designated our book, “What Works in Community News,” as the recommended read.

“Magdeila Matta, a community producer with GBH News, is looking to engage with folks and learn how they engage with the media, as well as open up space for people to share what’s going on in their communities,” according to the announcement. “Come to this session to talk to Magdeila about what news matters to you.”

“What Works in Community News,” a close-up look at successful independent news in nine different parts of the country, has been longlisted for a Mass Book Award by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Rozzie Bound Co-op is located at 739 South St. The listening session will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. And here’s a GBH News article on the story behind the bookstore.