Media

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Farage reportedly met Cummings for ‘friendly chat about the general scene’

      by

      Nigel Farage has reportedly met Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s adviser turned nemesis, after the Vote Leave founder suggested voters should back Reform UK at the local elections.Cummings, who was once a sworn enemy of Farage during the EU referendum as he battled to keep control of the leave campaign, is reported to have met the Reform leader to discuss Whitehall changes, which allies said was the strongest sign yet that Farage was taking seriously the idea of becoming prime minister.Cummings and Farage were at odds for years in the run-up to the referendum and during Cummings’s time at No 10, with Farage calling him a “horrible, nasty little man”. Cummings’s Vote Leave won the official campaign designation during the referendum.According to the Sunday Times, the pair met recently for a “friendly chat about the general scene” including subjects such as US politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as well as “how No 10 and the Cabinet Office really work, about the catastrophe of the Tory party and about what Reform has to do to replace the Tories”. A Reform spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Cummings was said to be in advanced talks to launch his own new party – the Start-Up party – but in February he posted on X that he believed voters should now back Reform UK.Asked by one X user on Sunday who he would vote for at the next general election, Cummings wrote: “Dunno yet but obviously everyone should vote Reform this spring … No downsides, just upsides.”In a post on his Substack, Cummings claimed Britain needed a significant political realignment including a merger of the Conservatives with Reform. He wrote: “Shove out Kemi [Badenoch] ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform, tip in a third force of elite talent and mass energy so voters see an essentially new political force whose essence is a decisive break with 1992-2024 … break the coalition supporting [Keir] Starmer, take over No 10, do regime change.”Farage’s party is on course for a number of gains at the local elections in May, including potentially winning control of eight local councils, according to Electoral Calculus.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNevertheless, Reform has been in turmoil for the past fortnight due to a significant rift between Farage and Rupert Lowe, one of his former MPs who has been thrown out of the party in a battle over bullying allegations and referred to the police. Lowe had criticised Farage in a Daily Mail interview and since claimed he had been censored by the party on immigration issues. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      The ‘Iron Mountain’ hoax: how anti-Vietnam war satire sparked today’s conspiracy theories

      by

      We live in a ­blizzard of fake news, ­disinformation and ­conspiracy theories. It’s tempting to blame this on social media – which does indeed ­exacerbate the problem. And AI deepfakes promise to make the situation even worse. But at root this is not about technology: it’s about how humans think, as an astonishing case that long predates the internet reveals. This is an amazing story – about the perils of amazing stories.In November 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, a strange ­document was published in New York. Report from Iron Mountain was the work of a top-secret “­special study group” recruited by the Kennedy administration to scope out what would happen to the US if permanent global peace broke out. It warned the end of war, and of the fear of war, would wreck America’s economy, even its whole society. To replace the effects, extreme measures would be required – eugenics, fake alien scares, pollution, blood games. Even slavery. The report was so incendiary it had been suppressed, but one of the study group leaked it, determined that the public learn the truth. It caused a furore. The worried memos, demanding someone check if this document was real, went all the way up to President Johnson.View image in fullscreenIn reality, as the White House eventually realised, Report from Iron Mountain was a hoax. It was the brainchild of leftwing satirists: Victor Navasky, editor of a magazine called Monocle, his colleagues, and a fellow satirist, Leonard Lewin, who wrote it with the help of luminaries like the famous economist and former US ambassador to India, JK Galbraith. Their goal was to expose what they saw as the insanity driving the intervention in Vietnam, and the whole of the cold war. By presenting their fake report as a real leak, they aimed to make people ask if this insane document might be real – and what that said about the people running the US government.And it worked. To young Americans living under the shadow of conscription, Report seemed all too plausible. Officials whispered to journalists that some of their ­colleagues really did think like this. Once the hoax had its satirical impact, Lewin came clean. But his work was so convincing it began to take on a life of its own.In the late 1980s, Report from Iron Mountain was discovered by the extreme right, which was convinced it was real. It was republished by a company called the Noontide Press, part of a network of fringe organisations that were among America’s primary promoters of Holocaust denial. These ­people were convinced they had found the smoking gun, confirming their darkest suspicions about the government’s secret plots to start wars and control the ­public. A ­horrified Lewin embarked on a long legal battle to take back control of his work and its true, meaning.But meanwhile, the militia movement spreading across the US seized on Report from Iron Mountain, as fuel for its paranoid visions of imminent oppression at the hands of the ­one-world government and its black helicopters. And Lewin’s creation found its way to Hollywood. In JFK, Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie about the Kennedy assassination, the great revelation about why the president was assassinated hinges on a character repeating the hoax’s claims in the belief that they were disturbing truths.View image in fullscreenReport even spawned a secondary hoax: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. This ­purported to be the operations ­manual that helped the elite control its ­sheeple-civilians. This strange text was first popularised by the pioneering conspiracist Milton William Cooper, who ­published it in Behold a Pale Horse, his influential compendium of ­conspiracy theories. Cooper also included extracts from Report from Iron Mountain itself (and, horrifyingly, another hoax: that notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). Silent Weapons has often been cited by arch ­conspiracist Alex Jones and has been invoked by “Q”, the ostensible government insider revered by the QAnon movement.Lewin and his colleagues had contrived their hoax so expertly that they inadvertently created “evidence” for a host of conspiracy theories. It could be used to explain everything from why wars end to the real reasons behind lockdown, from environmental regulations and terrorist attacks to the fiery end of a cult in Waco, Texas.The reasoning at work here is revealing. If something in Report chimes with what is really happening in the world, the conspiracist’s logic runs, that cannot be a coincidence. Rather, it exposes the secret motives that caused that reality. The ­principle here – a ­consistent fallacy of ­conspiracy theory – is that “nothing is accidental”. One online ­analysis of Report from Iron Mountain in 2014 even decided the fact Lewin later wrote a novel was an attempt to ­retrospectively create a cover ­identity so he could pretend Report was fiction too.And yet the fate of this all-too-successful hoax also suggests what we might need to do to ­counter this kind of thinking. In a political ­climate roiled by conspiracy ­theories and disinformation, the tale of Report from Iron Mountain is a warning about the ­consequences of taking your eye off the line between compelling stories and what we know to be true.Phil Tinline is the author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy, which will be published by Head of Zeus on 27 March. More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Confirm or Deny: Graydon Carter Edition

      by

      A king of the glossy-magazine era sits for a lightning-round interview.Maureen Dowd: Annie Leibovitz took your passport photo.Graydon Carter: She took my passport photo.You were told to sod off by James Bond.Confirm! One year I invited all the men who played James Bond to the Oscar party. For one reason or another, all but one were either working or unavailable. We got George Lazenby, who had appeared in the pre-Sean Connery era in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” I spotted him at the bar by himself. I went over and introduced myself. He just looked straight ahead and then turned and in the sort of fragrant language not generally permitted in a high class newspaper, told me to buzz off.When you were at Time — and single — you wrote fun tidbits for the “People” page, and you had a romantic encounter with the young woman who wrote Newsweek’s version of the people page, called “Newsmakers.”No comment.The two funniest non-comedians you’ve ever met are George Clooney and Anderson Cooper.In both cases, they were so funny that I had to tell them to stop because I thought my trachea would break.When a New York Times push alert announced the news of your departure from Vanity Fair, multiple friends later told you that seeing your name pop up on their phone, they assumed it was because you died.Yes, and for some of them, it put a spring in their step.Anna Wintour should retire.Absolutely not. I think she can go on for decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Newsmax agrees to pay $40m to settle defamation suit over false election claims

      by

      The conservative news outlet Newsmax agreed to pay the voting equipment company Smartmatic $40m last year as part of a settlement in a defamation suit over Newsmax’s decision to broadcast false claims about the 2020 election, a new filing revealed.The parties did not reveal details of the settlement when it was reached in September, but Newsmax disclosed the settlement amount in a public 7 March financial filing. The news outlet said it had also offered Smartmatic the option to buy stock in the company and that it had paid $20m of the settlement amount so far.A Newsmax spokesperson declined to comment beyond the statement the company issued after the settlement last year.Smartmatic voting equipment was only used in one jurisdiction in the United States during the 2020 election. Nonetheless, allies of Donald Trump and other conservative outlets repeated false claims that the company hacked votes and sent them overseas.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, the far-right network One America News and Fox for defamation, claiming they broadcast false claims about the company after the 2020 election. It previously settled with One America News and the case against Fox is ongoing. In January, A New York appellate judge said the company’s $2.7bn suit against Fox could proceed.Fox agreed to pay Dominion voting systems, another voting equipment company, $787.5m to settle a defamation suit over election claims in 2023.All of the cases are being closely watched by first amendment scholars as tests of whether libel law could be an effective tool for curbing misinformation. In the case between Dominion and Fox, for example, the legal process made public internal Fox messages showing prominent hosts and key personnel were aware the information about the company was false. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump official defending Doge filmed fashion influencer videos from office

      by

      The chief spokesperson for the agency overseeing mass firings as Donald Trump and Elon Musk slash the federal workforce used her office to record fashion influencer videos even as thousands of workers were losing their jobs.McLaurine Pinover, communications director at the US office of personnel management (OPM), posted several Instagram videos during business hours in which she posed in different outfits, CNN reported.One video was posted on 13 February, the day OPM reportedly directed several agencies to lay off thousands of employees with probationary status, including about 20 people on Pinover’s own team.Pinover has issued numerous statements backing moves to fire federal workers, including describing a controversial directive for all workers to list five things they achieve each week as “a commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce”.CNN said Pinover did not respond to questions but said she deleted her Instagram account minutes after being approached for comment. Pinover’s LinkedIn page appeared to have been taken down, too.Videos published by CNN showed Pinover in her office, showing herself wearing various clothing outfits with hashtags including “#dcstyle” and “#dcinfluencer” and the song Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter.One post was made on Tuesday, the day the Department of Education announced it was cutting half its workforce, CNN said.Pinover may have benefited from affiliate links to buy clothes in her videos, CNN said, though it noted that she only had approximately 800 followers to her account.Former OPM staffers told CNN the videos were filmed in the office of the communications director, across the hall from an annex used by workers for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk’s vehicle for imposing cuts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne unnamed former staffer said: “I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office.’ She’s the spokesperson for the agency that is advocating for the firing based on performance and efficiency of the rest of the government workforce, and she’s using government property as a backdrop for her videos.”Jack Miller, Pinover’s predecessor as OPM communications director under Joe Biden, said: “Your number one job as a leader is to protect and support your people. So instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep your team, we’re posting fashion videos. It’s absurd.”Donald K Sherman, chief counsel for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN: “It is highly problematic that while dedicated civil servants who want to work for the government are being fired for all manner of dubious reasons, or are being forced out by this administration, that someone at the agency leading that attack on the civil service is using their government job for private gain.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms

      by

      The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.In addition to the watchlist, the Civicus Monitor classifies the state of civic space in countries using five ratings: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.Currently, the US has a “narrowed” rating, which it also had during the Biden administration, meaning that while citizens can exercise their civic freedom, such as rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression, occasional violations occur.For part of Trump’s first term, Tiwana said, the US had been categorized as “obstructed”, due to the administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests and restrictive state laws that were enacted limiting the rights of environmental justice protesters, and other actions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder Joe Biden, the classification went back to “narrowed”, Tiwana, said, but as of Monday, the US has been placed on the watchlist as the group says it sees “significant deterioration” in civic freedoms occurring.Tiwana noted that the US is again seemingly headed toward the “obstructed” category.While the Trump administration often say they support fundamental freedoms and individual rights, like free speech, Tiwana believes that the administration seem “to be wanting to support these only for people who they see as agreeing with them”.Historically, Tiwana said, the US has been “considered the beacon of democracy and defense of fundamental freedoms”.“It was an important pillar of US foreign policy, even though it was imperfect, both domestically and how the US promoted it abroad,” he added.But Tiwana believes that the recent actions and statements made by this US administration could empower authoritarian regimes around the world, undermine constitutional principles, and embolden those who “want to accumulate power and increase their wealth and their ability to stay in power for as long as possible”.Tiwana says that he and the organization want to draw attention to the fact that those in power in the US are, in his view, engaging in a “zero-sum politics game” that is eroding “constitutional principles and frankly, engaging in, anti American behavior”.“We urge the United States to uphold the rule of law and respect constitutional and international human rights norms,” said Tiwana. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats are reeling. Is Stephen A Smith the way back to the White House?

      by

      The View, one of the US’s most popular daytime television programmes, was a vital campaign stop last year for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This week, it played host to a cable sports channel personality who might be nurturing political ambitions of his own.Stephen A Smith was asked by co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin what he makes of hypothetical polls that show him among the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.“I make of it that citizens, particularly on the left, are desperate,” Smith said in characteristically forthright style. “And I mean it when I say it: I think I can beat them all.”Despite – or because of – his lack of political experience, Smith is emerging as an unlikely force in a Democratic party badly in need of critical friends, fresh ideas and blunt truth-telling. The idea of him running for the White House remains wildly speculative – but speaks volumes about a shift in the US media ecosystem and a blurring of the lines between culture, entertainment and politics.The 57-year-old, born Stephen Anthony Smith in the Bronx in New York, began his career in print journalism, writing for newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, then made his name as a broadcaster, especially on ESPN. Smith is now the co-host of First Take, where he shares provocative opinions on basketball and other topics.His fans include Kurt Bardella, a media relations consultant and Democratic strategist who watches First Take “religiously”. Bardella said: “He is out there with passion and charisma and he provokes emotion and conversation and debate. He has become the singular most influential person in all of sports.“We live in a time where our politics is shaped and informed by culture more than at any time in our history. There’s that old adage that politics is just culture downstream, and Stephen A is a good embodiment of that.”Smith’s star continues to rise. It emerged this week that he had agreed to a new ESPN contract worth at least $100m for five years. He will continue on First Take but reduce other sports-related obligations, increasing his opportunities for political commentary: in recent months he has appeared on Fox News, NewsNation and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.The Stephen A Smith Show, which streams on YouTube and iHeart, has featured interviews with Hakeem Jeffries, the House of Representatives Democratic minority leader; rightwing personality Candace Owens; and Andrew Cuomo, in his first interview since announcing his candidacy for New York mayorThe political chatter around Smith is also a symptom of the demoralisation in the leaderless Democratic party following last November’s defeat in elections for the White House, House and Senate. This week, for example, Democrats struggled to find a coherent response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.After nominating Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in past elections, some in the party hunger for a fighter in the mould of Trump, an outsider not beholden to the traditional political establishment. And witnessing the rise of podcasters such as Joe Rogan and an entire “Maga” media ecosystem, they crave a liberal alternative.In Smith, they see a bracing energy. He voted for Harris but has been outspoken in criticising Democrats for failing to connect with voters and for prioritising niche issues – which in his view includes the transgender community – and failing to address the concerns of a broader electorate.In January, appearing alongside the Democratic representative Ro Khanna on Real Time with Bill Maher, he offered a blistering diagnosis of why Democrats lost to Trump: “The man was impeached twice, he was convicted on 34 felony counts and the American people still said: ‘He’s closer to normal than what we see on the left.’”Smith added: “What voter can look at the Democrat party and say: ‘There’s a voice for us, somebody who speaks for us, that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights the fights that we want them fighting on our behalf’?”His gift for storytelling and communicating impresses Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee. Bardella said: “His style of speaking, the directness, the boldness, the bombastic at times kind of PT Barnum-esque quality that he brings to the conversation is exactly what Democrats are lacking and exactly what made Donald Trump the showman such an appealing character to begin with when he arrived on the stage.“Rather than just dismiss it or make fun of it or ignore it, Democrats would be wise to study what makes him so successful because there is nobody in the Democratic party that is as relevant a voice on a day-to-day basis as Stephen A Smith.”It was striking that a January poll by McLaughlin & Associates for the 2028 Democratic nomination decided to include him in a survey that put Kamala Harris at 33%, Pete Buttigieg at 9%, Gavin Newsom at 7%, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 6%, Josh Shapiro at 3%, Tim Walz at 3% and Smith at 2%.Still, many Democrats would think twice before gambling on an outsider such as Smith or the billionaire businessman Mark Cuban. Lack of experience could be a liability in the eyes of some voters. Smith’s controversial statements and “yelling” style could alienate certain segments of the electorate. The perception of Smith as a celebrity candidate could undermine his credibility.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said Smith’s eloquence and in-your-face style could be appealing to voters in this political moment: “But the question is, what does Stephen A Smith believe in at the end of the day? He’s been very vocal criticising the Democratic party. What positions does he hold? What does he believe in?“The fact is, if you’re going to run for a party’s nomination in America, there are about a half a dozen or so issues in which you need to be on the right side. Otherwise, you’re not going to go very far. Where is Stephen A Smith on abortion? Where is he on DEI? Where is he on quotas and affirmative action? Where is he on crime? Where is he on spending?“The list goes on. You just don’t know, so my advice to any Democrat looking at this is: before you become a Stephen A Smith supporter, give him a questionnaire and have him fill it out and see what the answers are.”Whether Smith, who has a recurring guest-acting role on the ABC soap opera General Hospital, would want to take on a gruelling election campaign is far from certain.He has expressed ambivalence on the topic but told the Daily Mail last month that “if the American people came to me and looked at me and said ‘Yo, man, we want you to run for office’, and I had a legitimate shot to win the presidency of the United States, I’m not gonna lie. I’ll think about that.”But on Friday, Smith’s agent, Mark Shapiro, sought to quell the rumours, insisting at a conference in Boston: “He will not run for president. He’s going to continue to entertain those conversations, but he will not run for president.”Still, the buzz reveals a bigger picture about Democratic soul-searching in the aftermath of election defeat. Trump proved effective at exploiting the new media ecology of podcasts, TikTok and other platforms in portraying the party as elitist, out of touch and obsessed with “woke” issues. Some Democrats are now recalibrating – for example, by removing gender pronouns from their social media accounts.David Litt, an author and former speechwriter for Barack Obama, said: “Democrats, for most of my lifetime, which is 38 years at this point, sort of assumed we are dominant in the culture, whether or not we’re dominant politically. One of the things we learned from this most recent election is, that may not be the case and either things are more even than we thought or, I would even argue, the right, at least during the election season, took an advantage in the culture.“It’s important that Democrats are saying our ‘political voices’ may not come from the world of politics, particularly at a moment when people are deeply sceptical of politicians. Who are some people who have ways of thinking and communicating that don’t sound like every politician out there? That search and that openness is going to end up being pretty useful and pretty important one way or the other.” More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Wants to Kill Carried Interest. Wall Street Will Fight to Keep It.

      by

      President Trump has been trying to eliminate the tax loophole, which benefits Wall Street, but Congressional Republicans may stand in the way.Nearly a month has passed since President Trump last spoke publicly of his desire to kill the carried interest loophole. (Yes, we know, some of you don’t consider it a “loophole.”) And yet the private equity industry, which stands to lose big if the president upends the tax break, is still bracing for a fight.This is the biggest challenge to the provision since it was nearly neutered three years ago under former President Joe Biden, Grady McGregor writes for DealBook.A reminder: the carried interest rule means that executives at hedge funds and P.E. and venture capital firms pay roughly 20 percent tax on their profits, a rate that’s so low it’s drawn criticism from Warren Buffett and from progressive senators like Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.One Washington lawyer described the lobbying effort to DealBook as “significant,” a sign of the escalating stakes.Consider what’s happened in the past month: The American Investment Council, the private equity lobbying group, is reportedly circulating memos on Capitol Hill reminding lawmakers that private equity is a jobs creator. Venture capitalists, seemingly omnipresent in Trump’s Washington, grumble that they have to keep returning to Congress to “educate lawmakers” about the rule’s benefits. So-called free market groups, meanwhile, have banded together to ask Congress to maintain the status quo.“They’ll fight tooth-and-nail on any sort of change,” said Jessica Millett, a tax partner at Hogan Lovells.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More