TV News LIES

There are “multiple victims” in a shooting at a high school in the northeast part of the province of British Columbia, Canadian police said Tuesday.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sgt. Kris Clark confirmed in a text message to Canadian Press that there are victims at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia’s Peace region in what police have called an “active shooter” situation, but couldn’t say how many people were involved or the extent of their injuries.

Police earlier said a suspect is believed to be dead, but officers are working to determine whether a second suspect is involved.

They are asking residents of the town of Tumbler Ridge, which has a population of about 2,400 people, to stay inside as additional police resources are being deployed to the area from neighboring areas.

More...

The Washington Post’s international desks and reporters who covered Silicon Valley — including the one assigned to Jeff Bezos’ sprawling e-commerce empire — were among the hardest hit when the capital’s most storied newspaper announced sweeping layoffs on Wednesday.

The bloodbath left the Post’s newsroom questioning the paper’s future, with one anonymous laid-off reporter telling HuffPost: “Are we a global news organization or do we just want to be Politico now?”

Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, said in an all-staff Zoom call that the publication would undergo “a broad strategic reset” leading to “a significant staff reduction.”

In practice, this means big hits to local coverage, closing the sports section “in its current form,” eliminating the books section, shrinking the international team, restructuring the metro section, flattening the photography team and suspending its “Post Reports” podcast ― effectively gutting a legendary newsroom famed for breaking the Watergate scandal as it looks to respond to shifts in news consumption.

More...

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing this weekend after she didn’t show up to church Sunday morning near her home in the Tucson, Ariz., area.

Here is everything we know about her disappearance:

What’s the latest on the investigation?

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said during a news conference on Monday that Nancy Guthrie was last seen Saturday evening around 9 p.m. Her family reported her missing around noon Sunday after she did not show up to church. 

“We believe now, after we processed that crime scene, that we do in fact have a crime scene, and we‘re asking the community‘s help,” Nanos said. 

Nancy Guthrie did not suffer from dementia and had full cognitive function, though she had physical limitations and was not able to walk more than 50 yards on her own, the sheriff said.

Police were combing through hours of surveillance video at the home and imploring neighbors in Guthrie’s area to do the same on Monday.

The FBI is aware of the case, NBC News reported, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with homicide detectives, were assisting with the search, according to the sheriff. 

Nanos expressed urgency as he said Nancy Guthrie needs medication that if not taken within 24 hours of her disappearance could be “fatal.”

More...

On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman swirled, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, but her words rang true to me. The network is one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely dependable reporting – especially in breaking news situations like the one that was developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

But CNN, now 45 years old, is in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.

America’s media system isn’t set up for that lofty goal. It’s set up for corporate profitability, for shareholder gain, for ever-increasing size and ever-decreasing competition.

“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? and a University of Pennsylvania media policy professor.

The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.

More...

TikTok has signed a deal to spin-off its U.S. operations to a group controlled by mostly American investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison.

TikTok's hyper-engaging algorithm and the massive amount of data the app has collected on millions of Americans is set to be overseen by the new U.S. firm. According to the agreement, TikTok's U.S. algorithm will be retrained with only Americans' data. Content moderation rules around what is permitted and what is not will be set by the new investor-controlled entity.

Yet the underlying algorithm will still be owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, with the blessing of American auditors, according to an internal TikTok memo reviewed by NPR and two sources familiar with the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.

"With an American majority running the content moderation, concerns about foreign propaganda seem to have been alleviated," said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University who studies the regulation of new technology. "But it is possible that the American TikTok might end up censoring or hiding speech that is permissible on the global TikTok platform. I would hope that the U.S. content moderation team would allow speech that the American owners might dislike."

More...

Being a member of the Pentagon press corps was once one of the more prestigious assignments in US journalism, a position reserved for heavy hitters from venerable newspapers and news channels, reporters at the peak of their powers.

Almost all credentialed reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their Pentagon press passes in October, rather than sign a 21-page Pentagon document that set restrictions on journalistic activities.

Those constraints include requiring news organizations to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material – in effect limiting journalists to reporting on officially provided information – and agreeing to limits on journalists entering certain parts of the Pentagon.

More...