 |
Three Republican Congressmen are calling for the immediate suspension of press credentials of reporters for the Al Jazeera Media News Network until it complies with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Michael Waltz (FL), Jack Bergman (MI) and Alex Mooney (WV) view Al Jazeera as the propaganda arm of Qatar, which funds the satellite TV network.
They cite various media reports about Qatar’s widespread spying on Members of Congress and its effort to influence US policy by leaking damaging information, including hacked contents, to the media.
In their Feb. 2 letter to House leadership, the Congressmen note that credentialed members of the House and Senate galleries enjoy unparalleled access to the US Capitol.
“While this access is necessary for the media to provide accurate reporting to the American public, it is also the kind of access coveted by foreign powers seeking sensitive information from inside Congress,” they wrote.
Al Jazeera’s various units have 136 credentialed staffers. That towers over the 82 New York Times staffers with credentials.
Waltz, Bergman and Mooney say they have no reason to doubt that most of Al Jazeera’s are legit, but that is not their case.
They wrote: “A media company with a substantial presence on Capitol Hill is the perfect front for inserting just a handful of intelligence operatives among the credentialled journalists, who would be effectively camouflaged by the presence of so many others also employed by Al Jazeera.”
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
