sweet like justice, karma is a queen
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
A new study out of the Reuters Institute published by Dr. Richard Fletcher and Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen details what people think of generative AI in the news from six different countries around the world.
Here’s a snippet of the study, which includes much more detail on general AI use, awareness of different AI tools and how AI will impact various industries:
“Asked to assess what they think news produced mostly by AI with some human oversight might mean for the quality of news, people tend to expect it to be less trustworthy and less transparent, but more up to date and (by a large margin) cheaper for publishers to produce.
Very few people (8%) think that news produced by AI will be more worth paying for compared to news produced by humans.”
The six countries surveyed include: Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the UK and the USA.
This past week in the media industry
Justice Department legal news
In last week’s big legal news, the Justice Department is suing to break up Live Nation over alleged antitrust violations.
“The lawsuit, joined by 30 states and filed Thursday, follows a DOJ investigation into whether Live Nation maintains a monopoly in the ticketing industry, a probe launched in 2022 and bolstered by fan complaints after a botched rollout for tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour,” writes Ece Yildirim and Sarah Whitten for CNBC.
“sweet like justice, karma is a queen,” tweets Hannah S. Rabinowitz, citing Swift lyrics.
PBS’ Mae Anderson breaks down the situation further: “Live Nation and Ticketmaster which have long clashed with artists and fans, have always denied they act in a monopolistic manner. They say they aren’t to blame for high ticket prices. They said Thursday that the DOJ’s lawsuit ‘won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows.’”
CNN’s Brian Fung and Hannah S. Rabinowitz also report: “But fans hoping to save money aren’t yet out of the woods, as the suit will likely take years to make its way through the court system. Meanwhile, the exorbitant fees they know all too well aren’t likely to be dramatically affected.”
OpenAI bullet points
- Wall Street Journal owner News Corp struck a major content-licensing pact with the generative artificial-intelligence company OpenAI, reports Alexandra Bruell, Sam Schechner and Deepa Seetharaman.
Here are more details from the trio:
“The deal could be worth more than $250 million over five years, including compensation in the form of cash and credits for use of OpenAI technology, according to people familiar with the situation. OpenAI would use content from News Corp’s consumer-facing news publications, including archives, to answer users’ queries and train its technology.”
- Have you been following what’s going on with Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI? If you need a refresher, this piece by The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel will get you up to speed.
Here’s one of Warzel’s poignant takeaways:
“But the situation is also a tidy microcosm of the raw deal at the center of generative AI,
a technology that is built off data scraped from the internet, generally without the consent of creators or copyright owners. Multiple artists and publishers, including The New York Times, have sued AI companies for this reason, but the tech firms remain unchastened, prevaricating when asked point-blank about the provenance of their training data. At the core of these deflections is an implication: The hypothetical superintelligence they are building is too big, too world-changing, too important for prosaic concerns such as copyright and attribution. The Johansson scandal is merely a reminder of AI’s manifest-destiny philosophy: This is happening, whether you like it or not.”
“OpenAI wants to eliminate all the jobs,” tweets Peter Greene.
- “Financial Times chief executive John Ridding has told other news publishers they ‘have leverage and should insist on payment’ from AI companies,” reports Charlotte Tobitt for Press Gazette. These words of wisdom came during a keynote speech at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen.
“The payment matters, for principle and for revenue of course, but also important is the opportunity to extend our reach and to understand how users will interact with AI. As with the digital and mobile revolutions, pulling up the drawbridge or trying to hold back the tide is not going to be a strategy for success,” he said.
A few more
- Cool news from Axios’ Sara Fischer about the Associated Press’ plans for covering the 2024 election: they’ve partnered with five local newsrooms to share and distribute content. “The new partnerships feature content-sharing agreements with nonprofit outlets based in California (CalMatters), Hawaii (Honolulu Civil Beat), Montana (Montana Free Press), Nebraska (Nebraska Journalism Trust) and South Dakota (South Dakota News Watch),” Fischer writes.
- In an effort to reach more Hispanic Texans, reporters at The Texas Tribune have turned to some unconventional IRL promotional methods, according to Nieman Lab’s Sarah Scire.
- Here’s a fascinating Q&A between Netflix executive Ted Sarandos and New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro. One tidbit from the piece: Netflix’s biggest competitor according to Sarandos? “We compete for screen time. Social media, including YouTube, other streaming apps, gaming.”
- In other Netflix news, “Leave The World Behind” was the most-watched film (and title) globally in the second half of 2023, according to Variety’s Todd Spangler.
- The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen dives into the process and release of Apple Music’s newly unveiled “provocative ranking of the 100 best albums ever made.” “This, as it happens, is exactly what Apple Music wants you to do with the 100 Best Albums list: discuss it, debate it, even disagree with it. Maybe you were pleasantly surprised and actually liked it. Maybe you hated it. As long as you’re talking about it,” writes Cohen.
- Semafor is launching a new podcast called Mixed Signals, according to Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman.
- “GBH announced layoffs of 31 staff members representing 4% of its overall workforce,” writes GBH’s Liz Neisloss. Roughly 10% of the GBH News staff were among those laid off.
From the Muck Rack team
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