When the Federal Communications Commission was vetting right-wing media conglomerate Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s $3.9 billion proposal to merge with competitor Tribune Media last year, Democrats in the House asked the agency’s inspector general to investigate whether chairman and Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai was…
Read anything interesting in the news lately? No, really. I’m still catching up, because for much of the past week, I was vacationing in lovely Cook Forest, Pennsylvania, during which my access to the internet was limited to whatever stretches of 4G could be obtained amid supply runs to town. This was indeed lovely—an…
Gawker Media—Gizmodo’s former parent company which is now in bankruptcy proceedings following a lawsuit secretly funded by Peter Thiel—is up for sale, with a tentative auction date of July 21st. Fantastic news: There’s already a bidder with plans to purchase the site and make it a fountain of good, very…
Elon Musk, in the midst of a crusade against traditional media, offered up an example of an “excellent” analysis that could serve as an example of what good journalism should look like. Just one problem: as Slate pointed out, the publication seems to have ties to a cult.
Comedy is hard, and the past was no better. Just look at, say, what 19th-century jerks considered acceptable territory for an April Fools’ Day prank.
Facebook is taking a huge amount of heat this week amid mounting scandals over its allegedly reckless handling of user data, vulnerability to propaganda and disinformation efforts, and whether or not its internal response to those issues was mostly concerned with shoving those problems under a rug. The company’s stock…
Sam Nunberg, formerly an aide on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, launched an hours-long, barely comprehensible tear through the media involving numerous back-to-back TV interviews as well as phone calls to local media on Monday. Nunberg is very upset that special counsel Robert Mueller has issued him grand jury…
Hi, National Geographic, it’s me, Ryan. I got your package today and I guess I’m wondering—why did you send me a pseudoscientific crystal healing water bottle with your name on it?
Glenn Haab, the father of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School junior and mass shooting survivor Colton Haab, has admitted that he altered words in an email sent by a CNN producer, ultimately producing the illusion the news network had demanded his son only ask their pre-written questions at a televised forum on guns…
Google is rolling out a bevy of new open-source Accelerated Mobile Page tools for developers this week, coming in two flavors: AMP for email and AMP Stories. While anyone who reads news online might have already seen AMP articles, these new tools have the potential to shape what people see and do online in Google’s…
If you were even semi-conscious during the last two years, you’ll know that social media can wreak havoc on a functioning democracy. Facebook is finally admitting that it’s part of the problem. Facebook also wants you to believe in an imaginary future, a hypothetical someday when Mark Zuckerberg figures out how to…
It’s really not that hard to write a science news story, I promise. Some new scientific results come out, you talk to a scientist on the phone and ask them what they did, then you ask a few other people who know about the research if the results made sense. It’s a lot like, well, any other reporting.
On Sunday, one man decided to take to the skies with a consumer drone to spread his manifesto over two NFL stadiums in California. He probably would’ve been better off just posting on Reddit.
Twitter has not exactly survived the last few months with a sterling reputation, in between continued controversy over its failure to adequately address rampant harassment, allegations it sold political ads to Russian foreign agents, and most recently news it had verified the account of neo-Nazi Charlottesville…
Numerous advertisers pulled out from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show this week after Hannity urged his viewers to treat claims Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually molested minors decades ago with entirely too much skepticism. Among them were Realtor.com, 23andMe, and ELOQUII, but most notable was Keurig, which…
President Donald Trump denied on Saturday reports that he had ordered the Department of Justice to halt the $85.4 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner unless the combined company sells off Turner Broadcasting, a group of cable channels which includes Trump’s hated arch-enemy CNN.
Facebook tests of a major change to the way its News Feed works in at least six countries have once again raised fears the social media giant—a powerful gatekeeper between publishers and audiences—could be preparing to doom parts of the media, the Guardian reported.
Google is planning to roll out a new system in which it helps news publishers zero in on potential subscribers in exchange for a revenue split—but the search giant says the feature is not anywhere near release.
On Wednesday, freshly divorced former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who has been teasing some sort of bizarre internet-based venture titled the Scaramucci Post for weeks, finally revealed what the damn thing is.
Facebook founder and NASCAR enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg likes a lot of things. He likes Facebook. He likes being in charge of Facebook. He even likes talking about how much he likes being in charge of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg does not, however, like it when reporters publish embarrassing but true details about how he…
