 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."
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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