Journalism

Morgan Murphy Media, a privately-held broadcast group, has rare openings for a general manager and news director at its Madison and La Crosse, Wis., TV stations. Morgan Murphy is committed to quality journalism, and has won five national Edward R. Murrow Awards from the RTDNA in the past four years, including the top prize for overall excellence in 2016.

Former Fox News Channel newswoman Gretchen Carlson says she’s asked to be let out of her NDA and talked to other Fox News employees who left with similar settlements about pressing the network to be let out of the agreements. “Companies are saying that they want to be open and transparent and that they have worked tirelessly to make their work environments safer,” she told The Associated Press. “And if that’s the truth, then they should let us out.”

The Fox News Channel and a commentator, Britt McHenry, continue to be at odds over her claim of sexual harassment by Tyrus, another of the outlet’s personalities.

Broadcasting emerged on the AM band in the years immediately following World War I. Among the pioneers was Westinghouse Electric, whose KDKA Pittsburgh broadcast the results of the presidential election on Nov. 2, 1920, spurring radio into the commercial realm and establishing broadcasting’s interest in public affairs programming.

The interactive watch party hosted by WCMH, Nexstar’s NBC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, was also made available to all the Nexstar TV stations. “So if they were watching on desktop, they could click the options with their mouse, or if they were watching on their phone, they could tap the screen to vote,” said Haley Townsend, WCMH’s digital director.

CNN, HuffPost and Rolling Stone incorrectly said Joe Arpaio was an ex-felon, but U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth won’t fault Chris Cuomo’s “mistake in legal nomenclature” and rejects the controversial sheriff’s bid to establish actual malice from “leftist” bias.

The nature of the news misinformation problem may be changing. As consumers become more skeptical about the national news they encounter online, impostor local sites that promote ideological agendas are becoming more common. These sites exploit the relatively high trust Americans express in local news outlets — a potential vulnerability in Americans’ defenses against untrustworthy information.

A number of Facebook’s recent decisions have fueled a criticism that continues to follow the company, including the decision not to fact-check political advertising and the inclusion of Breitbart News in the company’s new “trusted sources” News tab. These controversies were stoked even further by Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University last week, where he tried—mostly unsuccessfully—to portray Facebook as a defender of free speech. Discussing all this are Alex Stamos, former chief technology officer of Facebook, veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain, and Stanford researcher Kate Klonick.

None of the “amateurish” challengers to the Murdochs’ cash-cow cable channel has the resources to compete, leaving a door open for a well-funded conglomerate (say, ViacomCBS) to roll the dice.

Employees of NBC’s digital news division announced today that they intend to form a union representing about 150 workers, saying it would allow them to fight for better job protections as well as publicly criticize NBC News executives without fear of retaliation.

How do news organizations find their footing when the ground starts shifting? The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is providing a hands-on view into the process that’s unfolding as newsrooms at the Missouri School of Journalism begin exploring and launching over-the-top products and projects.

Local news is more trusted than national news, yes. But that’s largely because national news is not very trusted, especially by Republicans, according to a new study from the Knight Foundation and Gallup. And that trust could disappear. “A small reservoir of goodwill exists toward local news organizations because they are local, but this could quickly dry up if Americans perceive more political bias in coverage.”

Chris Berend, EVP of NBC News Digital, said in a memo today that his division is adding 70 jobs. The 20% boost in staffing is part of the company’s efforts to expand the NBC News NOW streaming service into a 24-hour platform of live programming as early as this winter. NBC Left Field, the company’s digital video studio founded two years ago, and its MACH science and tech vertical are being shuttered.