Cut through the noise

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Media statistic of the week

31.3 million viewers watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC and Peacock, reports Rick Porter for The Hollywood Reporter (THR). That’s up 10% from last year, hitting an all-time high for the second year in a row. Plus, all those viewers stayed nice and dry while keeping up with the tradition. 

The box office had a pretty good weekend, too. Anthony D’Alessandro of Deadline reports Thanksgiving 5-Day U.S. Box Office Hitting Amazing All-Time $420M High; AMC Boss Adam Aron Declares “A National Phenomenon." You can thank the Moana-Wicked-Gladiator II trio for that: Moana brought in $17.4 million in admissions, Wicked $8.7 million and Gladiator II $3.3 million between Wednesday to Sunday. 

This past week in the media industry 

Reporters brace for impact

The countdown to Donald Trump’s second spin in the White House is on, and reporters are getting ready. 

Natalie Korach reports for Vanity Fair: Reporters Brace for the Frenzy of a Second Trump White House. “Everybody’s exhausted and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times (NYT), says of White House reporters already consumed by covering a second Donald Trump administration.” 

Yet those steeped in covering Trump know what it will take. “If Trump kicks us out of the White House briefing room,” says Baker, “we’ll still cover from the outside.”

George Packer touches on this new era for his piece in The Atlantic, The End of Democratic Delusions and what he calls “the Trump Reaction.” “Instead of chasing phantoms on social media, journalists should do what we’ve done in every age: expose the lies and graft of oligarchs and plutocrats, and tell the stories of people who can’t speak for themselves.”

There is also a microscope on how reporters will frame the news over the next four years. For example, take this piece of news: Trump taps loyalist Kash Patel as choice for FBI director from Dan De Luce, Ken Dilanian, David Rohde, and Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News. 

“News outlets are all for some reason emphasizing that Patel is a loyalist versus the more important fact that he’s an extremist and conspiracy theorist with no allegiance to the truth,” says Oliver Darcy who writes the newsletter Status. “If you’re a casual reader, just perusing news sites, these headlines give off the impression Patel is just loyal to Trump. Not that he has promised to warp the FBI and use its awesome powers to seek vengeance on the press and others.”

Another piece of news that is sparking debate is this statement from President Joe Biden, pardoning his son, Hunter. “It is a rich gift to those who want to blow up the justice system as we know it, and who claim the government is a self-dealing club for hypocritical elites,” says Alexander Burns for POLITICO in his story Joe Biden’s Parting Insult.

All in all, journalists have a lot of work to do, and not all may be up for it. “Audiences turn to trusted journalists to cut through the noise, but unfortunately some are abdicating their duties, either because they lack the will or desire to articulate what they very well know to be true,” says Darcy.

“X” marks the strike

This is a big one: European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X, reports Jack Peat for The London Economic. This move encompasses over 295,000 journalists in 44 countries. “We cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists”, said the president of EFJ, Maja Sever. “X is a platform that no longer serves the public interest at all, but the special ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies.”

Feven Merid reports on the Twitter-to-X transformation and its impact in great length for Columbia Journalism Review (CJR): How Twitter Turning to X Changed Journalism.

It looks like a majority of journalists, agree. Kat Tenbarge reports Journalists flock to Bluesky as X becomes increasingly ‘toxic', for NBC News.

“We have posts that are exactly the same on Twitter and on Bluesky, and with those identical posts, Bluesky is getting 20 times the engagement or more than Twitter,” said Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press in the piece. “Seeing a social media platform that doesn’t throttle links really makes it clear how badly we were being limited.”

But no matter what social media platform you prefer, keep a skeptical eye as a Majority of social media influencers don’t verify information before sharing it, study finds, reports Liam Reilly for CNN.

And speaking of influencers, TikTok’s Future No Clearer With Trump Cabinet Picks’ Remarks reports Eric Mack for Newsmax.

In the midst of all of this is the objection X filed in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy. Jason Koebler of 404 Media explains why X's Objection to the Onion Buying InfoWars Is a Reminder You Do Not Own Your Social Media Accounts.

Too good to be true? It might be AI

We’re getting used to a world where AI-generated writing exists. Yet it can still be surprising to read something you think is written by a human, and is in fact not. One place AI is thriving? LinkedIn. Kate Knibbs writes for WIRED, Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated. “Over 54 percent of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-generated, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by the AI detection startup Originality AI.” (Editor’s note: This LinkedIn post, however, is not one of them.)

It’s not all smoke and mirrors, though. Nick Clegg of Meta published a release of What We Saw on Our Platforms During 2024’s Global Elections, stating that “during the election period, ratings on AI content related to elections, politics and social topics represented less than 1% of all fact-checked misinformation.”

Clegg also writes, “As part of our efforts to prevent people using Meta’s Imagine AI image generator to create election-related deepfakes, we rejected 590,000 requests to generate images of President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and President Biden in the month leading up to election day.”

Still, AI is a hot topic with the media. Canada’s major news organizations band together to sue ChatGPT creator OpenAI reports Josh Rubin for the Toronto Star. The suit claims “the company is illegally using news articles to train its ChatGPT software.”

For an in-depth look at AI, read this from Ina Fried of Axios: What OpenAI knows about you.

More notable media stories

• Taylor Swift Is a Perfect Example of How Publishing Is Changing, writes Lora Kelley for The Atlantic.
• Speaking of books, here are 100 Notable Books of 2024 according to The New York Times (NYT).
• Judge dismisses defamation suit against Fox News brought by Jan. 6 figure, reports Alan Feuer for NYT. The judge said the case failed to prove Fox News former host Tucker Carlson acted with actual malice.
• More layoffs, this time at Dotdash Meredith. For The Wrap, Sean Burch reports Dotdash Meredith Cuts 53 Jobs as Print Business Remains ‘Challenged’.
• Forbes editorial staffers walk off the job the same day as release of the company's '30 Under 30' list reports Kendall Tietz for Fox News.
• From the Pew Research Center: Most Americans continue to say media scrutiny keeps politicians from doing things they shouldn’t by Sara Naseer. “In the new survey, 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say media criticism helps keep political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t. Two-thirds of Republicans and GOP leaners say the same.”
• Here we go: The Verge now has a subscription by Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge.

From the Muck Rack Team

Newsletters can certainly feel like a dime a dozen these days. However, when you find one that’s essential to your day-to-day operations it’s truly priceless. That’s how we feel about the Source of Sources newsletter, the latest venture from Peter Shankman, formerly of HARO. Here are 3 reasons why every PR pro should subscribe to the SOS newsletter to improve outreach for your clients.