Business of Media
Twitter tests edit button but denies Musk was involved
Twitter said it had started internal testing of an edit button and that work on the feature began last year, before new top shareholder and board member Elon Musk polled users on the topic, reports Washington Post’s Belinda Cao.
The ability to edit tweets after posting them had been the most requested feature for many years according to Twitter’s head of consumer product Jay Sullivan, who wrote in a thread elaborating on the company’s announcement. About 74 per cent of the more than 4.4 million votes cast in Musk’s poll this week were in favour of adding the functionality.
Musk started the poll after disclosing this week that he had taken a more than 9 per cent stake in Twitter. He filed a new form with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) classifying himself as an active investor, a day after he was late submitting a form for passive shareholders. Twitter agreed on Tuesday to add Musk to its board.
Propaganda surged on social media after invasion of Ukraine, Meta reports
Russia-aligned hackers compromised the social media accounts of dozens of Ukrainian military officers, attempting to upload videos of defeated and surrendering Ukrainian soldiers before being stopped by Meta, a new report revealed, reports The Guardian’s Kari Paul.
The report from Facebook and Instagram’s parent company detailed a surge in social media disinformation this year, including an increase in contentlinked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It also indicated an uptick in domestic disinformation and propaganda in countries around the world, suggesting that tactics pioneered by foreign intelligence agencies are now being used more widely.
News Brands
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age clean up at Citi Business Journalism awards
Journalists from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have been honoured at the 2022 Citi Journalism Awards for Excellence, which recognise outstanding business and finance reporting across Australia and New Zealand, report the Nine owned mastheads.
The awards recognise the critical role media plays in the Australian and New Zealand business landscape, and encourage excellence in business and finance reporting in the two countries.
A panel of independent judges from the business and regulatory community determined the winners on criteria including originality in thinking and impact.
Ukraine coverage helps Daily Mail become top news publisher on Facebook
The Daily Mail was biggest news publisher in the world on Facebook in March, knocking the Daily Wire off its long-held top spot, according to an independent ranking, reports Press Gazette’s Aisha Majid.
The UK publisher had 32.7m Facebook likes, shares, and comments to its web content posted on Facebook last month, according to media monitoring company NewsWhip.
The Daily Mail surpassed its closest competitor, Ben Shapiro’s US conservative news website Daily Wire, which had been in first position for over a year, by 7m interactions.
Agencies
Communications consultancies form The Civic Partnership
Public affairs and strategic communications consultancies, The Civic Group, Civic Reputation, and Civic Financial Communications have adopted a new partnership model and will now be known as The Civic Partnership.
The Civic Partnership will bring a management advisory approach to help clients anticipate, participate and communicate for influence and outcomes, a first for communications consultancies in Australia.
A number of recent senior additions have joined the new advisory firm, including Federal Government Minister, Alan Griffin, ex-Ogilvy Managing Director Leon Beswick, and Chris Brinkworth (founder of Civic Data), one of Australia’s MarTech and AdTech leaders.
Left to right Sam Bishop, Leon Beswick, Lucy Kozlowski, Chris Newman, Jason Aldworth, Chris Brinkworth, Jason Fonseca, Rebecca Harrison, Alan Griffin, Mark Hawthorne, and Rora Furman.
Since the first agency launched in 2011, Civic’s service proposition has steadily expanded to meet the needs of clients in an ever-evolving communications landscape.
With the launch of Civic Data in 2021, the group’s data and privacy offering has the know-how and technology demanded by the data revolution, delivering solutions that are relevant, scalable and future-proof while ensuring ethics, governance and compliance are bonded to strategic growth.
Television
TalkTV builds larger studio to contain Piers Morgan’s ambitions for nightly show
A new purpose-built studio in Ealing has been created to accommodate Piers Morgan’s ambitions for his new nightly show on TalkTV, reports Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt.
Piers Morgan Uncensored, launching along with the rest of TalkTV’s primetime programming on Monday 25 April (and Tuesday 26 April at 9.00pm AEST on Sky News in Australia), will air for an hour each night from a state-of-the-art studio in Ealing, west London which as recently as mid-January was a concrete husk.
Winnie Dunbar Nelson, the executive editor behind the show who has worked with Morgan for almost 12 years, told Press Gazette that the ex-News of the World and Mirror editor wants to avoid being stuck behind a desk talking to his guests.
“We realised that the infrastructure in The News Building where we originally wanted to do his show couldn’t accommodate him moving around and being crazy and so the bosses agreed that we need to have some space to spread our wings,” she said.
Disturbing video surfaces of MAFS star Olivia
A disturbing video has surfaced on social media showing controversial Married At First Sight contestant Olivia Frazer speaking about the effect the show has had on her, reports news.com.au.
The video, posted on Facebook by reality TV gossip site The Wash, shows Olivia and several other 2022 MAFS contestants caught on the street at night as they meet up for a post-show reunion.
In the brief video, Olivia tells an unidentified interviewer behind the camera that at one stage during her time on MAFS, she was so upset she told a producer that she wanted to “throw herself off the balcony”. She claims the producer told her: “Don’t say that.”
“You said that as a joke, right?” the male interviewer can be heard asking. “That’s a very strong thing to say.”
Olivia shrugs.
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The Morning Show’s Larry Emdur releases memoir, Happy As
Larry Emdur’s friends and family were gobsmacked to discover he was writing his memoirs. Not because the veteran TV host doesn’t have great anecdotes, but rather because they’d never even seen him so much as turn a book’s page, reports News Corp’s Siobhan Duck.
“I was kicked out of school having failed English miserably,” Emdur admits, laughing that he preferred surfing to studying.
“So, yes, this (writing a book) was a very interesting concept. I wondered from the start whether I could actually do this, but I wanted to show my kids that you can tackle things every now and again that scare you.”
Emdur has proven his teachers wrong, penning his biography Happy As.
Sports Media
NRLW television ratings soar in bumper 2022 season
New television ratings data shows a surge in interest in the NRLW competition, with some matches rivalling NRL games for viewers, reports SMH’s Sam Phillips.
On the eve of the first NRLW grand final involving two NSW clubs – the Dragons and Roosters – the Herald has obtained television ratings data for the 2022 season that reveals the extent of the growth of the women’s game.
In 2020 – the last season played due to Covid constraints – the average audience for an NRLW match on Channel Nine was about 98,000 and on Foxtel about 35,000, taking the combined average to about 133,000.
In 2022, the average audience on Channel Nine has eclipsed the combined average for both broadcasters in 2020. About 150,000 people have tuned in to watch NRLW matches on Channel Nine in metropolitan and regional markets.
The 53 per cent increase in viewers on Nine is reflected in a similar rise on Foxtel, which has seen most games attract between 50,000 and 60,000 viewers.