 Jason Miller |
Gizmodo Media Group is being sued for $100 million by former White House communications director and CNN commentator Jason Miller. The suit claims that Splinter, one of GMG’s news sites, colluded with Miller’s ex-lover to plant a false story that he slipped an abortion pill into the smoothie of a pregnant stripper. It goes on to say that “the false accusations ended Miller’s relationship with CNN and put his entire career in serious jeopardy.” Miller claims that the allegation was in a filing that had been sealed by the court, though The Daily Beast said in a report that couldn't be confirmed. The site also reports that a source with direct knowledge said that Miller is being represented in the suit by Ken Turkel and Shane Vogt. Turker and Vogt were on the legal team that represented Hulk Hogan in his successful lawsuit against Gawker over its publishing a sex tape featuring Hogan. That team was led by Charles Harder, who is now an attorney for president Trump. Following that decision, parts of Gawker Media were spun off to become Gizmodo Media Group.
 Mohammed bin Salman |
Talent agency Endeavor is attempting to call off a deal under which the Saudi government would have invested $400 million in the company. Earlier this year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Los Angeles, meeting with a series of Hollywood executives that included Endeavor CEO, Ari Emanuel. For Endeavor, Saudi Arabia represented a new market for its clients, as well as for the agency’s growing stream of content, such as mixed-martial-arts organization UFC. The country had also recently lifted a ban on movie theaters, and production houses were allegedly considering the Saudi desert for shooting locations. In addition to Endeavor, such Hollywood heavyweights as AMC and Imax have financial dealings with the Saudis. According to The Hollywood Reporter, most of those companies have either refused to comment or say they are monitoring the situation.
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Facebook inflated ad viewing time averages it reported by as much as 900 percent and then lied about doing so, according to a lawsuit filed on Oct. 16. The inflated numbers were due to what the company says was a calculating error. Facebook says it did not discover the error until August 2016 and fixed it by the time the company made a public statement about the issue the following month. However, the lawsuit claims that Facebook knew about the miscalculated metrics in January 2015, keeping the problem secret for well over a year. Facebook’s optimistic numbers about online video viewership are widely credited as one cause behind the “pivot to video” that resulted in the major shift of resources away from traditional journalism and toward video production made by many media organizations. "Suggestions that we in any way tried to hide this issue from our partners are false," Facebook told CNBC. "We told our customers about the error when we discovered it — and updated our help center to explain the issue."
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
Trump Media & Technology Group is discussing a spin-off of the Truth Social platform following the expected closing of its $6B merger deal with TAE Technologies... Condé Nast sells off Them, the digital LGBTQ-focused platform it launched in 2017, to Equalpride, publisher of Out, The Advocate, Out Traveler, Health PLUS Wellness and Pride.com... CBS News has parted ways with longevity influencer Peter Attia, one of the 19 contributors that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought on as part of her plan to present a wider variety of voices on the platform. 
Symbolic.ai forms a partnership with News Corp to begin using the company’s AI-native publisher platform in the newsrooms of News Corp publications to augment research, writing and publishing... Mediaite launches a newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters... The Fund for American Studies launches the Journalism Excellence Fellowship, a program that will provide promising young journalists the opportunity to work alongside top writers, reporters, and media professionals.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has roots going back to 1786, is going out of business, the paper’s owners, Block Communications, announced on Jan. 7... GQ editor Will Welch is stepping down to take on a new Paris-based role with the musician Pharrell, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton... Semafor says it has raised $30 million on a $330 million valuation, following its first profitable year. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
