Journalism Today. 17 Dec 2024

By Gretel Kahn

🗞️ 3 top news stories

1. Are SLAPPs reaching the United States? SLAPPs or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are a method of journalistic threat designed to silence and intimidate journalists by burdening them with legal costs. In his latest attack against the press, incoming president Trump now has a new legal target: The Des Moines Register newspaper, which he said he plans to sue in the coming days over its final poll of Iowa voters that showed him losing the November election to Vice President Kamala Harris. This comes just days after his first successful defamation case against ABC News. | Read

• A key quote. “We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for The Register’s parent company Gannett, said in a statement. They further acknowledged in the statement that “the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer.”

2. More journalists’ deaths in the Gaza region. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced Israel’s killing of four Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past week. They are Ahmed Al-Louh, Mohammed Balousha, Mohammed Jabr al-Qrinawi and Eman Shanti. According to the organization, the Israel-Gaza war has killed more journalists over the course of a year than in any other conflict CPJ has documented. In addition to the journalists that have been killed, over 70 Palestinian journalists remain in prison since the start of the war. | Read

• A key quote. “At least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed worldwide in 2024,” said CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Israel is responsible for two thirds of those deaths and yet continues to act with total impunity when it comes to the killing of journalists and its attacks on the media. The international community has failed in its obligations to hold Israel accountable for its actions.”

3. Australia’s ongoing battle with big tech. Australia is planning to implement new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms. In 2021, the country passed laws to make tech giants, such as Google and Meta, compensate media companies for the links that lure readers and advertising revenue. Earlier this year Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced it would not renew payment deals it had in place with Australian news organisations, setting up a standoff with lawmakers. | Read

• From our archive. In 2023, the Canadian government introduced a law that would require tech giants such as Meta and Google to make fair commercial deals with outlets for the news that is shared on their platforms. In response to the law, Meta blocked news for anyone accessing Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Gretel Kahn spoke with three independent publishers to learn how the blackout was impacting them and how they are surviving. | Read 

📊 Chart of the day

AI and trust. Public trust in different entities to make responsible use of generative AI is generally quite low, but it varies depending on the institution. While around half of respondents in most of the six countries we surveyed trust scientists and healthcare professionals to use generative AI responsibly, the figures drop below 40% for most other sectors. Figures for social media companies are low, as are those for news media, ranging from 12% in the UK to 30% in Argentina and the US. | Read the report

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☕Coffee break

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos deactivated his account on X, after his network agreed to donate $15 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation case following on-air comments that the anchor made. | Read

TikTok asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block a potential ban on the popular social media app pending an appeal of a lower-court ruling. | Read

Major news outlets like Fox, MSNBC, and CBS are leveraging their reporters' personal TikTok accounts rather than the companies' own to reach younger audiences. As we have shown in a special chapter in our latest Digital News Report, users are increasingly drawn to engaging individuals, regardless of who employs them, or even whether they work for a news organisation. | Read

Authorities in Serbia have repeatedly used Cellebrite tools to unlock mobile phones of journalists and activists so they could then infect them with potent malware, according to a new report from human rights organization Amnesty International. | Read

Carlos Watson, co-founder of the digital media outlet Ozy Media, has been sentenced to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders by lying about the company's finances. | Read

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Are you our next Director? The University of Oxford is seeking a new Director of the Reuters Institute. They will have the strategic vision, academic credentials and public engagement skills to ensure the Reuters Institute continues to thrive. Applications close Friday 17 January, 17.00 UK time. | Find out more and how to apply

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📚 One piece from our archive

Covering rape and abortion in India. In 2024 Indian journalist Japleen Pasricha founded Feminism in India, a bilingual feminist media platform. Her goal was to have more Indian feminist digital content written by Indian women for Indian women. Today the site is made by a team of ten people publishing original pieces in both Hindi and English and media guides on how to report on issues such as gender-based violence and abortion. Our contributor Raksha Kumar spoke to Pasricha in an interview where she discussed the work of her news site, the content of the media guides her team has created, and the shortcomings of newsrooms in India when reporting about sensitive topics such as sexual assault. | Read

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