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Diamond Sports Misses Interest Payment, Bally’s Dire Situation, Negotiating Bankruptcy [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By William McClain
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 22, 2023
292 views
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  • Diamond Sports is on the verge of bankruptcy, due to its crippling debt, and the leagues must come to an agreement with the company’s creditors in order to prevent a free-fall bankruptcy.
  • Cord-cutting and virtual bundles such as YouTube TV have caused a decrease in the number of people paying carriage fees, leading to a decline in revenue for Diamond Sports.
  • The company has not made an operating profit since 2019, and its operating cash flow has been negative for over a year.
  • The negotiations are centered around Diamond Sports entering a Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a reorganization plan, in which Sinclair would give up most of its ownership stake in exchange for restructuring or forgiving up to $8 billion of its debt.
  • Sports leagues would grant additional rights to Diamond Sports, particularly digital rights, to help put the regional sports network on stronger footing.
  • In the event that the parties cannot come to an agreement, the leagues and creditors would be in greater danger of not being paid at all.
  • The NBA may seize the opportunity to prioritize their national TV deals and have fewer games, enhancing the value of those that are nationally televised.

Published February 22, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post Diamond Sports Misses Interest Payment, Bally’s Dire Situation, Negotiating Bankruptcy

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Why Fox News Lied to Its Viewers [Adam Serwer, The Atlantic]

By William McClain
In [The Atlantic]
February 20, 2023
263 views
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  • Fox News lies to its viewers, and there is evidence to prove it. This is not a mere accusation or allegation, it is a fact.
  • It is difficult to determine whether people are making false statements knowingly or not, but with Fox News, there is proof of their commitment to knowingly misleading their viewers.
  • The most compelling example of Fox News consciously lying to its viewers is the Dominion defamation lawsuit, in which evidence shows Fox knew that the election fraud allegations were baseless, but kept airing them due to fear of losing viewers to Newsmax.
  • Fox News’s lawyers argue that they were merely covering newsworthy allegations and exercising editorial judgment, but internally they knew this would lead their audience to see the fictitious allegations as legitimate, which is irresponsible.
  • This reveals a Fox News propaganda feedback loop, and that despite the right-wing argument that conservatives distrust mainstream media outlets because they do not tell the truth, Fox News executives and personalities understand that their own network loses traction with its audience when it fails to tell the lies the audience wishes to hear.
  • Finally, if Fox News beats the lawsuit, it is because of the very free-speech protections that the conservative movement has spent years railing against.

Published February 19, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Adam Serwer’s original post Why Fox News Lied to Its Viewers

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The environmental awakening of Tucker Carlson [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
February 15, 2023
283 views
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• On February 3, a freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed in Ohio near the small town of East Palestine, releasing toxic fumes and causing a massive fire.
• Residents were ordered to evacuate and there are ongoing concerns about the safety of their air, soil, and water.
• Far-right pundit Tucker Carlson expressed concern that the EPA was not aggressive enough in exercising its regulatory authority to protect residents.
• It would take regulations and reining in corporate greed to minimize the risk of train derailments and protect communities from environmental disasters.
• Rail companies have vehemently opposed federal safety initiatives for years, especially when it comes to the transport of hazardous materials.
• The Trump administration authorized the transport of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) by rail and the Biden administration has yet to reinstate the brake rule or expand the kinds of trains subjected to tougher safety regulations.
• Freight rail has become more dangerous due to cost-cutting systems like Precision Scheduled Railroading, which has resulted in job cuts and reduced inspection times.
• Norfolk Southern has used the higher profits from Precision Scheduled Railroading to repurchase shares of its own stock, benefiting executives and investors.

Published February 15, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post The environmental awakening of Tucker Carlson

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Why you can’t trust the media [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
February 15, 2023
268 views
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• The media is often blamed for declining trust, but there is little evidence that it has gotten worse since the pre-Vietnam era.
• In the past, journalists often collaborated with government officials to mislead people, and didn’t report on JFK’s affairs or FDR’s paralysis.
• Today, the media landscape is much more competitive, and mistakes are widely publicized.
• The main problem is that the news-reading audience doesn’t care about accuracy, and is more interested in cheap talk and fandom-style interest.
• Examples of this include the criticism of 538’s election forecasts, and the criticism of CNN’s “mostly peaceful” chyron.

Published February 15, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Why you can’t trust the media

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The Real-World Impact of Our Reporting [Bari Weiss, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
February 15, 2023
270 views
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• The House Oversight Committee summoned four former Twitter executives to answer questions about The Free Press’ Twitter Files reporting.
• Jamie Reed, a whistleblower from inside an American pediatric gender clinic, spoke out publicly about her experience in an article published by The Free Press.
• The story generated a major reaction among law enforcement and policy makers, including Senator Josh Hawley’s office and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
• The Free Press is launching a new audio documentary, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper and premiering on February 21.
• Jennifer Sey, who wrote about leaving a top job at Levi Strauss & Co. in order to speak her mind, is hosting an FP Forum tonight.
• The Free Press is driving the political and cultural conversation in the U.S. and beyond, and readers can join the community with a 25% discount for their first year.

Published February 15, 2023
Visit The Free Press to read Bari Weiss’s original post The Real-World Impact of Our Reporting

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Instagram’s co-founders are mounting a comeback [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
January 31, 2023
298 views
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• Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of Instagram, have created a new venture called Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand user interests and will soon let users discuss articles with friends.
• Artifact is a kind of TikTok for text, Google Reader reborn as a mobile app, or a surprise attack on Twitter.
• The app opens to a feed of popular articles chosen from a curated list of publishers, and users can follow other users and comment on posts.
• The breakthrough that enabled Artifact was the transformer, which Google invented in 2017 and allowed machine learning systems to understand language using far fewer inputs.
• Artifact is attempting to do the same thing as TikTok, but for text, and is funded by Systrom and Krieger themselves.
• The company plans to include only publishers who adhere to editorial standards of quality, and will remove individual posts that promote falsehoods.
• The team of seven people working on the app includes Robby Stein, a top product executive at Instagram from 2016 to 2021.

Published January 31, 2023
Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post Instagram’s co-founders are mounting a comeback

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Can ‘radioactive data’ save the internet from AI’s influence? [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
January 12, 2023
187 views
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• AI-generated text is increasingly being used in mainstream media, with CNET and the Associated Press using automation technology to publish articles.
• Character A.I. is a website that allows users to interact with chatbots that mimic real people and fictional characters.
• AI-generated text can be used to spread propaganda and other influence operations, and is difficult to detect.
• Solutions to this problem include regulating AI models, regulating access to them, developing tools to identify AI influence operations, and promoting media literacy.
• Platforms can also collaborate with AI developers to identify inauthentic content, and the concept of “radioactive data” has been proposed as a way to trace AI-generated text back to its source.

Published January 13, 2023. Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post.

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The Creative Underclass is Still Raging [Freddie deBoer]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
January 9, 2023
258 views
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• The internet is full of negative emotion, and the creative underclass is still raging.
• People with unrealized dreams in creative industries are often angry due to thwarted ambition and the sense that they were meant for more than comfort.
• These people are often college-educated and gainfully employed, yet they are still resentful of those who have succeeded in creative fields.
• They are often jealous of those who have achieved success despite no clear advantage in talent, worth, or effort.
• Nate Silver is an example of someone who is conspicuously successful and enviable, and thus a target of the creative underclass.
• The economics of media and publishing have shifted since the heyday of Gawker, making it impossible for a new Gawker to emerge today.
• Professional writing is still enviable, but the rewards are far more humble than in the past.
• It’s difficult to have an appropriate perspective on the anger from those who don’t have the same opportunities as the creative underclass.
• Bullshit jobs aren’t that bad, and most people would kill to have them.
• We need to shatter the myth of just deserts and remind people that they don’t control their own destinies.
• We can never achieve a world where everyone enjoys public acclaim, and people need to find a way to deal with that.

Published January 9, 2023. Visit Freddie deBoer’s substack to read the original post.

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Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying [Astral Codex Ten]

By Spencer Chen
In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]
December 29, 2022
187 views
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  • The media very rarely lies, but often presents true facts in misleading ways.
  • Commenters proposed counterexamples of the media lying, but upon further examination, these examples were found to be true facts presented in a misleading way.
  • Examples of this include Fox News’ Senator Rand Paul Claims Statistical Fraud In States Where Trump Lost, The Daily Sceptic’s Twice As Many Vaccine Deaths As COVID Deaths In US Households, Poll Finds, Los Angeles Times’ The Flu Has Killed Far More People Than Coronavirus. Why All The Frenzy About COVID-19?, and Infowars’ FBI Says No One Killed At Sandy Hook.
  • In each case, the media was not making anything up, but rather presenting true facts in a deceptive way.
  • Censorship is not a primitive action, as it requires subjective judgment calls about which sources’ true facts are important vs. irrelevant, which sources’ studies are valid versus flawed, and which sources’ points that you don’t have good responses to are too annoying or conspiratorial to take seriously.
  • People want to believe that the bad people are doing something fundamentally different than the good people, but wrong people are just trying to reason under uncertainty and evaluate the relative strength of different sources of evidence – the same thing we’re doing.
  • Confirmation bias and motivated reasoning are just misfires of normal Bayesian reasoning and mis-applied reinforcement learning, respectively.

Click HERE for original. Published December 29, 2022

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The Media Very Rarely Lies [Astral Codex Ten]

By Spencer Chen
In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]
December 22, 2022
272 views
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  • The media rarely lies explicitly and directly, but often misinforms people by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boosting some events while ignoring others.
  • Examples of this are seen in both the alternative and establishment medias, such as Infowars and the New York Times.
  • Censorship of “misinformation” is difficult to define objectively and will always involve a judgment call by a person in power enforcing their values.

Click HERE for original. Published December 22, 2022

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