Business of Media
Papers chase Roberts-Smith for $10m
The conduct of war hero Ben Roberts-Smith during the defamation “trial of the century” will come under the microscope as the victorious newspapers look to recover more than $10 million in legal costs, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Pelly.
The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times are also waiting to see whether Roberts-Smith lodges an appeal against the decision of Justice Anthony Besanko before the deadline of July 13.
Decisions can be overruled only if there are errors in how the judge conducted the trial, or with their findings of fact.
MinterEllison partner Peter Bartlett, who acted for the papers, said it was “telling” that Justice Besanko had preferred the accounts of the paper’s witnesses over those called by Roberts-Smith.
“I think that will make it very difficult for Roberts-Smith to appeal, or successfully appeal. And appeal judges are very reluctant to overturn decisions made by a judge who was assessing the credit of a witness.”
See Also: “It’s a complicated picture”: Nick McKenzie speaks after Ben Roberts-Smith verdict
Behind the Victorian government’s cutting move to online advertising
The Victorian government’s ban on metro print advertising has been described as a blow to the state’s newspapers that will mean millions of dollars shift away from Victoria’s two largest titles, The Age and Herald Sun, reports Nine Publishing’s Calum Jaspan.
The decision, which comes into effect on July 1, was based on judgement about “where the audience is”, Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday.
“We’re not making any apology for focusing our efforts much more acutely on online, digital [and] television – that’s where the audience is and that’s where the return on investment for taxpayers is,” Andrews said.
In 2022, state and federal governments spent $40.1 million on advertising in newspapers, almost a fifth of the$209.3 million in total newspaper bookings, according to Standard Media Index. Total print bookings declined by 8.2 per cent in 2022, while $106.9 million was spent digitally, a rise of 7.1 per cent year-on-year.
The Andrews government has been cutting its print advertising spend for several years. As of 2021-22, 9.6 per cent of the state’s $150.6 million media budget went to the “press” category, equating to $14.46 million.
Tucker Carlson lawyer hits back at Fox News claim of contract breach
Responding to Fox News’s contention that Tucker Carlson was in breach of contract when he debuted his Twitter show this week, a lawyer for the fired hard-right host accused the network of attacking his client’s first amendment rights, reports The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly.
“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds,” said attorney Bryan Freedman in response to reports, first by Axios, about a letter to Carlson from a lawyer for Fox.
“Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”
Carlson was fired in April in the aftermath of a $787.5m settlement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems, which sued for defamation over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election.
Before the settlement, Fox News mounted its defense on first amendment lines.
News Brands
CNN’s CEO talked to a reporter, and lost his job
At 7 am on Wednesday, as a cloud of smoke enveloped Manhattan, CNN chief executive Chris Licht left his apartment building and strolled half a block to Central Park for a meeting with his boss, David Zaslav, report John Koblin, Benjamin Mullin, and James Stewart for Nine Publishing.
The men had taken this park walk before. In early 2022, Zaslav used the same setting to offer a job that Licht would later describe as a “calling”: the chairmanship of CNN, which Zaslav’s corporate empire was about to acquire in a media megadeal.
This time, the walk was briefer, and the message tougher: Licht was fired after just 13 months.
His abrupt exit was the latest convulsion for one of the world’s pre-eminent news organisations, whose unyielding string of crises has sapped newsroom morale, eaten into profits and raised questions about the viability of down-the-middle TV journalism in a polarised age.
It was also a hammer blow to Licht, a successful television producer with little experience managing a large organisation who had pledged to remake CNN as a fair-minded voice for viewers disenchanted with the partisan scrum of cable news. Even as his troubles mounted – plunging ratings, a Don Lemon scandal, and a much-criticised town hall with former president Donald Trump – Licht told associates that he was certain that Zaslav, whom he considered a mentor, would defend him.
Who are the four people running CNN now?
On Wednesday, Chris Licht’s turbulent tenure at CNN was abruptly cut short, just over a year after he stepped into the top job, reports The New York Times’ Katie Robertson.
The network will be managed on an interim basis by a group of three editorial executives — Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley and Eric Sherling — until a permanent replacement for Licht is found. The trio will be supported by the recently hired chief operating officer, David Leavy.
Here’s a look at CNN’s new leaders.
Television
What are networks not looking for?
Recently, I posted quotes from network execs speaking at Screen Forever about what they were looking for, reports TV Tonight.
Today the flipside… what are they not looking for? Here were their answers.
Christian Broadcasting Network founder and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson dies at 93
Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia TV station into a global evangelical network, ran for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America, has died at 93, reports the ABC.
Robertson’s death on Thursday was announced by his broadcasting company, the Christian Broadcasting Network.
He died at his home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, according to a statement from his son, Gordon Robertson. No cause of death was given.
For more than half a century, Robertson was a familiar presence in American living rooms, known for his 700 Club television show, and in later years, his televised pronouncements of God’s judgement, blaming natural disasters on everything from homosexuality to the teaching of evolution.
The money poured in as he solicited donations, his influence soared, and he brought a huge following with him when he moved directly into politics by seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1988.
Robertson pioneered the now-common strategy of courting Iowa’s network of evangelical Christian churches, and finished in second place in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of vice-president George HW Bush.