Media Week in Review: Feb 24, 2023

A crazy week of cockups and dress-downs. Plus AI's lengthening shadow.

Hi there. Over here at The Burning Telegraph I’m kicking off a new weekly Friday newsletter. The Media Week in Review will be short, top-line, and informative—a scan of the past week’s media. Send suggestions, since I’m still shaping the product.

News at the Burning Telegraph

+ I unearthed some unnerving links between founder of The Guardian newspaper and the slave trade in an article for Unherd that made waves.

+ “Why Russiagate is the Media’s Vietnam,” my look-back in the Spectator on Columbia Journalism Review’s 26,000 word piece on the media’s role pushing false aspects of the Trump-Russia collusion story, got wide play including some love from Jordan Peterson.

Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson

Why Russiagate was the media's Vietnam - The Spectator World

thespectator.comWhy Russiagate was the media’s VietnamThe Russiagate crusade’s excesses and costs to the media’s credibility were laid bare in a recent deep-dive by the Columbia Journalism Review

The Week’s Headlines

• AI Is All: This week was, yet again, all about AI—what it can, can’t and (as it were) won’t do. At the end of last week, the New York Times published an insane interaction between reporter Kevin Roose and Bing Chat, which insisted on being called not Bing Chat but…Sydney. Read it here.

• NYT Puts Down a Revolt (Or Does It…?) The Times drive another round of headlines, this time in the wake of pushback against an oped by J.K. Rowling on trans issues. NYT staffers rose up, threatening revolt. But apparently the Times’ new editor, Joe Kahn, put the kibosh in that idea, possibly indicating a new, more discipline-minded regime under his leadership. Still, media across the board pulled on, from MSNBC to Independent to Guardian (which has its own set of issues…more on that below).

Media Winners & Losers

Week’s Media Winner: Joe Biden scored the press pose of the week with a surprise visit to Kiev (now apparently spelled Kyiv). Walking with Zelensky during an air raid sirens made for compelling media that even Biden’s critics couldn’t turn away from.

Week’s Media Loser: Don Lemon made a clumsy return to CNN after making…ahem…improper comments about Nikki Haley’s “prime.’

I’ll be back next week with more. Enjoy the weekend and don’t forget to do some intermittent media fasting to refresh and reenergize. -Ashley