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      ‘A deranged fringe movement’: what is Maga communism, the online ideology platformed by Tucker Carlson?

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      In the last few years, a self-styled political movement that sounds like a contradiction in terms has gained ground online: “Maga communism”.Promoted by its two most prominent spokespeople, Haz Al-Din, 27, and Jackson Hinkle, 24, Maga communism comprises a grab bag of ideas that can seem lacking in coherence – ranging from a belief in the power of Donald Trump’s followers to wrest power from “global elites” to an emphasis on masculine “honor”, admiration for Vladimir Putin and support for Palestinian liberation.The two have been repeatedly kicked off social media platforms for spreading disinformation. Hinkle, for example, was booted from Instagram earlier this year – shortly after claiming in a series of posts that Ukraine was behind the terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow, despite Islamic State claiming responsibility for the act.Hinkle and Al-Din have been ridiculed by critics as pseudo-intellectual, cravenly opportunistic grifters who have carved out an intentionally provocative niche designed to siphon followers away from other highly online political communities.“If you look at their policies, like what they actually propose, it’s clear that this is a deranged fringe movement that doesn’t really have a great deal of articulation,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University and author of Against the Fascist Creep, which explored how rightwing movements co-opt the language of the left. “It seems ludicrous, but I would say it’s really a symptom of the erosion of rational political life.”Until recently, Al-Din and Hinkle’s reach seemed limited to corners of the internet largely populated by young men attracted to their messages on masculinity and US foreign policy. But with their inflammatory and often misleading posts about the Gaza war, and as they rail with increasing frequency against what they view as American imperialism, their footprint is growing.“Deranged” or not, Hinkle and Al-Din’s “movement” is attracting recognition in increasingly high places on the right. Hinkle’s defense of Putin’s foreign policy has earned him an invitation on to Tucker Carlson’s show and praise from Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Hinkle and Al-Din have also forged international alliances with the likes of the Russian ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, whom they met at a conference in Moscow earlier this year.The founder of Maga communism cultivates a militant aesthetic when he addresses his followers via livestream from his home.His beard is carefully coiffed, and he often wears an oversized black blazer and black collared shirt. Behind him, swords are mounted on the wall, “to symbolize the war I am waging to defend the message I believe is true amidst mountains of lies”, Al-Din, 27, who streams on Kick and YouTube under the name “Infrared”, said in a phone interview.Both Haz and Hinkle say they support Trump not out of admiration for the man, but out of the belief that his followers represent the most significant mobilization of the American working class in decades.They subscribe to social conservatism in a way that appeals to the growing numbers of gen Z males who believe feminism is harmful to men, and cast issues such as transgender rights, the climate crisis and racial justice as neoliberal distractions.“It’s not that we’re against women. We just perceive that the discourse, culture and the political sphere have seen a huge decline in the notion of honor,” Al-Din said. “One of the reasons for that is the decline in basic masculine virtues, the rise of a kind of effeminization, especially of men.” Hinkle has regularly made anti-trans comments on his own social media, making declarations such as: “We need to protect our youth from trans terrorists and propagandists.”“They’re firmly embedded in a corner of social media that is the most vitriolic, terminally online, troll culture,” said Reid Ross.View image in fullscreenHinkle and Al-Din’s links to communism are tenuous at best, but they may be opportunistically emphasizing the label to tap into shifting attitudes. Polling has indicated that members of gen Z, even gen Z Republican voters, are more open to socialist ideas compared with previous generations. In a video debunking Maga communism published last year, the Marxist economist Richard Wolff noted that there’s precedent for nationalist movements co-opting communist rhetoric, particularly during times of social upheaval and economic hardship.“If you’re a political movement and you want to get supporters at a time when socialism is attracting more and more interest, well, you might be tempted to grab hold at least of the name,” Wolff said, noting that this was a strategy most famously used by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power.“It’s provocative,” Hinkle said of his movement’s name, smirking, in a 2022 interview with the comedian Jimmy Dore. “But that’s why it’s trending on Twitter right now.”According to an infographic regularly recirculated by Hinkle, proposed Maga communist policies include “dismantling big tech”, banning “antifa street terrorism”, ending “woke academia” and subsidizing gyms in every community. They also propose exiting Nato; deporting the Obamas, Bushes and Clintons to the International Criminal Court; ending “open borders”; and “putting banking into the hands of the people”.Hinkle and Al-Din also claim they’re anti-imperialists and cling to the enduring myth of Trump as the more dovish candidate. Their band of online followers see themselves as pitted against “the unipolar world” and “western hegemony”, and they often support authoritarian nations that the US sees as its adversaries, such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Al-Din, for example, told the Guardian that he has a “profound” admiration for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in part due to his “resilience in defending the honor and history of Korean civilization”.Neither Hinkle nor Al-Din have typical Maga backgrounds, and they both take a tepid view of Trump, whom they praise as the figurehead of the Maga movement but not necessarily an enduring one.“We have a saying, as Maga communists, which is that when you go to McDonald’s, you don’t go for the clown, you go for the burger,” Al-Din said in an interview. “Trump is the mascot of the movement.”View image in fullscreenBefore Hinkle was a cigar-smoking Maga communist who supports fossil fuels, he was a denim-clad Bernie bro and an environmental activist. He founded a successful ocean clean-up club at his high school in San Clemente, California, organized a student walk-out to protest gun violence after the 2018 Parkland shooting, was invited to speak at a congressional briefing in Washington DC about decommissioning nuclear power plants, and took a knee at his graduation to protest racial injustice. “He’s the kind of guy that gives you hope about the future,” one environmental activist leader once told the Los Angeles Times about Hinkle.In 2018 and 2019, immediately after graduating high school, Hinkle ran (unsuccessfully) for San Clemente, California, city council, and campaigned against homelessness and corruption.By 2020, Hinkle was still entrenched in progressive politics, identifying as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. But he was also starting to flirt with various personalities considerably outside the progressive mainstream, getting a boost after interviewing the then Democratic presidential candidate Representative Tulsi Gabbard on his YouTube show, The Dive with Jackson Hinkle. (He was kicked off YouTube for spreading disinformation and now streams on the fringe platform Rumble.)Al-Din is the son of Lebanese Muslim immigrants and grew up near Dearborn, Michigan. When he was in college at Michigan State University, he says, he was a full-fledged Marxist. While he claims he’s never voted in a presidential election, he says he was probably most sympathetic toward Bernie Sanders.When Trump won, Al-Din says, he concluded that the left was “out of touch with actual working people”. Put off by what he calls the left’s association with “so-called alternative sexualities and fringe countercultural tendencies” and lack of patriotism, he started developing the set of ideas he called Maga communism.“We were just telling these leftists, these crazy-looking septum-piercing purple- haired leftists, that when you go up to working class Americans and tell them they have to hate their country, and they have to hate being American, you are aiding the enemy, you are not helping, you’re not helping fight imperialism,” said Al-Din.Despite Al-Din’s background, Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric didn’t bother him, he says. “The whole thing about the Muslim ban, I mean, I really couldn’t care less,” he said in reference to Trump’s 2017 executive orders barring travel to the US from majority Muslim countries. “I didn’t really find anything significant about that at all.”Hinkle and Al-Din’s paths didn’t cross until July 2021, when Hinkle was getting attention online for promoting conspiracy theories rejecting a report that the Syrian government had engaged in chemical weapon attacks. He was invited to appear on a show on the topic hosted by the leftwing streamer Vaush. (Vaush later published the clip with the title Debating the Slipperiest Conspiracy Theorist I Have Ever Met.) It attracted Al-Din’s attention, and the two began messaging.Later that year, Al-Din visited Hinkle in LA and pitched him on what he calls his take on Marxism-Leninism: Maga communism, which envisions harnessing the populist, nationalist fervor of Trump’s base in pursuit of a working-class revolution.The following year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offered the perfect opportunity for Hinkle and Haz to promote their new gospel. The conflict animated online armies on both the far left and far right, who expressed strong criticisms of Ukraine’s political system and voiced concerns about the expansion of Nato.“The media lied to you every day for two straight years about Covid,” Hinkle wrote on Twitter/X, days after Russia’s invasion. “Why would you believe anything they’re telling you about Russia & Ukraine?”Most recently, Maga communism has glommed onto the Palestinian cause – to the chagrin of much of the movement – which has also helped to amplify its reach.If Al-Din is the thought leader behind Maga communism, then Hinkle is its salesman. In the six months since 7 October, Hinkle has enjoyed a surge in visibility by pivoting into generating pro-Palestine content online. That’s included sharing gruesome images of dead children among rubble in Gaza, posting AI self-portraits in combat gear with the caption “FREE PALESTINE” and hawking coffee mugs with the words “Zionist Tears”, sold at $16.99 a pop. His followers on X leapt from less than 500,000 to more than 2.5 million in just six months, and he has a premium account, meaning he’s entitled to a share of ad revenue according to the level of engagement on his posts.Al-Din has a much smaller following on X – just shy of 90,000 – but these days, his posts often garner hundreds of thousands, even a million, views, significantly more than he was netting prior to 7 October. Al-Din told the Guardian he makes about $5,000 a month via streaming. Hinkle declined to say how much he made from his platforms; according to the New York Times, he made $550 last September via X.Al-Din and Hinkle’s position on the Israel-Gaza conflict makes them outliers in the broader Maga movement, which has largely rallied behind Israel. Trump and his allies have cast pro-Palestinian protests in the US as another manifestation of “wokeness”. Trump recently described protesting college students as “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers”.While some other young leaders on the far right, such as the white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes, oppose Israel for explicitly antisemitic reasons, Al-Din and Hinkle insist that their position on the conflict is grounded in their broader “anti-imperialist” stance, shared by more prominent conservatives such as Tucker Carlson, who has also criticized US support for Israel. Hinkle and Fuentes have been allies in the past; Hinkle and Al-Din have previously streamed on Fuentes’ platform Cozy.tv, and Hinkle said he had gotten dinner with Fuentes last September. They fell out shortly after following an argument about class politics and the country-folk artist Oliver Anthony’s viral song about the working class.But despite Hinkle and Al-Din’s high-profile support for Gaza, the pair were recently jeered at a pro-Palestine event at Emory University. The event was co-hosted by Cair (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and was to feature the political activist Norman Finkelstein. The Emory law student Grayson Walker, the showrunner for Al-Din’s Infrared show, was a co-organizer, and added Al-Din as a speaker at the last minute.In his bizarre speech, Al-Din berated members of the audience, saying that they were responsible for spreading “imperialist and Zionist propaganda and slander against my comrade Jackson Hinkle” and were “just as culpable in the crimes of the Zionists as those who give their dollars and money to them”. The audience booed him and shouted “shame on you”, after which Cair abruptly canceled the event and put out a statement.“Today, we unwittingly damaged the movement for Palestinian liberation by allowing a rogue actor to hijack an event intended to highlight the Palestinian genocide,” Cair said in a statement. “A student co-organizer commandeered this platform by inserting hateful and divisive guests into the program,” it continued, adding that the organizer, Walker, had “greenlighted a deeply problematic speech”. (Hinkle and Al-Din later claimed they’d been “canceled” by “the Zionists” and used a homophobic slur to refer to the pro-Palestinian students at Emory.)Al-Din and Hinkle see Israel as part of a “globalist” deep state network, while rejecting the notion that such terminology relies on antisemitic dog-whistles. They see Ukraine as part of that same network, as well as Nato, the European Union, and the Biden administration. “We are fighting to win over the hearts and minds of the Maga common man,” Al-Din told the Guardian. “Israel is just as much connected to the same multinational corporations and special interests that Maga despises.”Al-Din and Hinkle have been suspended or banned from a number of platforms for spreading disinformation, mainly about the Russia-Ukraine conflict or about the war in Gaza. A recent profile of Hinkle by the New York Times cited research indicating that a network of bots or inauthentic accounts may be responsible for amplifying some of his most incendiary posts. In January, Hinkle’s account on X was ranked third for posts flagged with “community notes”; his posts have been repeatedly flagged as disinformation by watchdogs.Last month, Hinkle posted a video that he claimed showed Israelis “panicking” as Iran’s missiles reached Israel. Online sleuths verified that the video was actually of pop star Louis Tomlinson’s fans near the Four Seasons hotel in Buenos Aires.Asked by the Guardian about charges that he spreads disinformation, Hinkle said he “rejected the question”.Despite Hinkle’s apparent penchant for sharing disinformation about contentious world events, he’s landed some high-profile media appearances in the last six months. He appeared on former the CNN host Chris Cuomo’s show and Alex Jones’ Infowars to pitch Maga communism. Jones, who often goes on red-faced rants about communism, appeared relatively open to what Hinkle had to say.“Most of the Maga movement understands that the resources, the land and the means of production of the United States of America should be in the hands of the Maga working class,” said Hinkle. Jones called the idea “very interesting”. Last month, Jones also changed his tune and began referring to Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide”.Hinkle and Al-Din have also continued to expand their international reach. In February, they attended a conference in Moscow hosted by a Bulgarian oligarch who has been placed under US sanctions. At the event, called “The International Movement of Russophiles”, Hinkle met Dugin, the ultranationalist philosopher, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. During the conference, Hinkle became the first American appointed to the Russophiles’ executive board. Weeks later, Dugin wrote approvingly of Hinkle, Al-Din and “the emergence of Maga communism” in a blog for Arktos, a far-right publishing house based in Budapest.View image in fullscreen“These individuals are allies of conservative Tucker Carlson but are also Marxists who support Trump and advocate the ‘Make America Great Again’ (Maga) slogan,” Dugin wrote. “Together, they are committed to dismantling liberal dominance.” Last year, Hinkle appeared on the Russian state broadcaster VGTRK and claimed “Joe Biden is controlled by a satanic cabal of DC deep-state leadership.”Reid Ross says Hinkle and Al-Din occupy an overlap in the left-right venn diagram that is probably rooted in an “anti-imperialist” ecosystem that has proliferated online in the last decade.Last year, Hinkle spoke at an event at the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC called “Rage Against the War Machine”, which was promoted by Tucker Carlson and hosted by the Libertarian party and the People’s party, which was briefly affiliated with Cornel West. The event drew together a curious amalgam of far-right and far-left personalities – including Matthew Heimbach, one of the organizers of white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and the former Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Participants rallied under the banner of pacifism; reports from the event suggested overall messaging supported Russia’s war on Ukraine.A Discord server – essentially a chat room – called “IGG MECHA-TANKIES”, linked to Al-Din’s show Infrared, has about 5,000 members and offers some insight into the movement’s internal dynamics. The general chat is awash with pseudo-intellectual posturing and armchair historical analysis. Members often feature obscure quotes by Bolshevik revolutionaries in their bios, Russian flags, or pictures of a young Kim Jong-un as their profile pictures.Joseph, who joined the Infrared community two years ago, described the appeal of Maga communism (he declined to share his last name due to privacy concerns). He’s 19, a resident of Kentucky, and works overnight shifts in a factory making air vents for luxury cars.“I was always sympathetic to Maga, but I’d also liked some of what Bernie Sanders had been saying around the time of his campaign,” Joseph said. But, he said, he found himself feeling alienated from leftist spaces because he considers himself socially conservative.The emphasis on hyper-masculinity in these kinds of ultra-nationalist or conspiracy-based movements, experts say, often draws in vulnerable men who may crave affirmation or a sense of belonging. “The thing about Haz [Al-Din] and his success as this great leader is that he really understands the cultish aspect of fascist leadership,” said Reid Ross. “Haz has an intensity that makes him seem like a huge believer.”Their support for Trump does not translate into loyalty to the GOP. Al-Din told the Guardian that his end goal was to “reclaim” the century-old American Communist party, whose numbers have dwindled to 5,000 and which he says has become co-opted by “liberals, federal agents and Democrats”.An animated propaganda video, made by one of Al-Din’s followers, projects a dystopia where the US government is persecuting known communists. Al-Din escapes from Washington DC with a cache of weapons stolen from antifascists, seeking refuge with midwestern farmers. The video ends with a communist uprising against the government, led by Al-Din, cast as revolutionary folk hero. More

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      in US Politics

      Newsmax accused of deleting evidence that it was spreading 2020 election lies

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      The chief executive of Newsmax deleted text messages and the company allowed key employees to delete emails as part of an effort to conceal evidence the outlet knew it was broadcasting falsehoods about the 2020 election, lawyers for the voting machine company Smartmatic said in an acerbic court filing last week obtained by the Guardian.The allegations were made as part of a motion for sanctions in an ongoing defamation case Smartmatic filed against Newsmax for making false and outlandish claims about the company after the last presidential election. The case is planned to go to trial in September in Delaware superior court.The motion, which contains significant redactions, says Newsmax’s chief executive, Christopher Ruddy, deleted text messages after the company was asked to preserve documents and communications as part of a lawsuit. Smartmatic also alleges that Newsmax allowed emails from Gary Kanofsky, its news director, who tried to warn other Newsmax staffers against broadcasting false claims about Smartmatic, to be deleted.Smartmatic attorneys also claim that Newsmax allowed messages from the editorial director, David Perel, to be deleted even though he warned Ruddy about the credibility of a source and was responsible for drafting Newsmax’s journalistic practices.Newsmax, which denies publishing libelous claims, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NBC News first reported the court filing.The messages are relevant to the case because Smartmatic needs to prove that Newsmax had “actual malice” and knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard to the truth and published them anyway.“Newsmax destroyed the text messages and emails of key executives responsible for its defamatory campaign against Smartmatic. This was not a mistake,” Smartmatic lawyers wrote in the court papers. “Newsmax’s cover-up worked. Critical documents, including text messages and emails going directly to Newsmax’s actual malice and motive, were permanently deleted.”Among the text messages allegedly deleted was one in which Ruddy refers to Sidney Powell, Trump’s lawyer who was one of the most prominent purveyors of false allegations of voter fraud after the 2020 election. While the content is redacted in the filing, Smartmatic described the message as Ruddy’s “unvarnished view of Ms Powell’s credibility” and “direct evidence of actual malice”.Ruddy claimed that the messages on his phone were set to automatically delete every 30 days, a setting lawyers said he did not change after Smartmatic instructed him to preserve communications. Despite that claim, Ruddy turned over an additional 1,106 text messages on 2 May, which Smartmatic lawyers say is evidence that his text messages did not really auto-delete during the period he claimed.The filing also describes Kanofsky, the news director, as “the closest thing Newsmax had to a whistleblower”. Starting in November 2020, Kanofsky allegedly sent emails to other Newsmax employees with a fact-check about Smartmatic and warning them about broadcasting false claims. Newsmax allegedly did not tell Kanofsky to preserve his emails and they were deleted. Smartmatic lawyers said when they pressed Newsmax on why they weren’t turning over Kanofsky’s emails, Newsmax attorneys revealed that Kanofsky had a practice of regularly deleting all of his work emails and saving them in his personal email.David Perel, the editorial director, also was not instructed to preserve emails, even though he sent relevant messages warning against publishing false claims. Smartmatic claimed. Perel was terminated in 2021 and Smartmatic said Newsmax wiped the messages on his company laptop.Lastly, Smartmatic claims that Newsmax tried to conceal the existence of a document outlining its journalistic and ethical practices. While the content of the guidelines is redacted in the filing, Smartmatic says Newsmax violated them by broadcasting false information.“Newsmax’s misconduct goes beyond falsely accusing Smartmatic of rigging the US election; it also attempted to conceal evidence of its actions and failed to follow its own journalistic standards,” J Erik Connolly, a lawyer for Smartmatic said in a statement.Smartmatic asked the superior court judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the case, to order the company to pay legal fees it spent obtaining the concealed messages. It also asked Davis to alert the future jury to the concealment and instruct them to make an “adverse inference” about Newsmax’s motives.The lawsuit is one of several defamation actions that have been filed against conservative media as part of an effort to hold them accountable for spreading lies. Smartmatic and the voting machine company Dominion also have ongoing defamation lawsuits against Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell.Smarmatic settled a libel suit against the far-right network OAN last month for undisclosed terms. Last year, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5m to settle a defamation suit the company filed against it for false election claims. More

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      in Elections

      Sony and Apollo Take Key Step in Bid for Paramount’s Assets

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      The two companies have expressed interest in acquiring the media conglomerate, but are backing away from their $26 billion all-cash offer.Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have taken a significant step forward in their effort to court Paramount, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday.The two companies have signed nondisclosure agreements with Paramount, allowing them to look at Paramount’s nonpublic financial information, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss active negotiations. Paramount previously shared materials with another suitor, the Hollywood studio Skydance.Early this month, Sony and Apollo sent Paramount a nonbinding expression of interest in acquiring the company for $26 billion. The two had been seeking to buy Paramount for its studio and then sell off other parts of its empire, which includes CBS, cable channels like MTV and the Paramount Plus streaming service.But Sony’s shareholders have fretted over the possible acquisition, given the potential cost of a bid for Paramount and the headwinds facing the subscription streaming business. Sony and Apollo are now contemplating a variety of approaches to acquire the company’s assets, but are backing away from their plan to make an all-cash, $26 billion offer for Paramount, two of the people said.Sony’s new vision for a deal could alter the dynamics of Paramount’s effort to sell itself or merge with another company. Paramount previously rebuffed Sony’s offer to buy just its studio, and Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has long sought a deal for the entire company.A person familiar with Ms. Redstone’s thinking has said that a breakup of the company is not a deal breaker, depending on the terms, but that she prefers to keep Paramount intact.Ms. Redstone has blessed a deal to sell her stake in National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, to Skydance, but Skydance’s bid for the entire company has faced significant pushback from Paramount’s common shareholders.Paramount let an exclusive negotiation window with Skydance lapse in recent weeks, but the two are still talking, and Skydance remains interested in a deal.The deal talks are happening at a tumultuous time for Paramount. The company’s chief executive, Bob Bakish, stepped down last month after more than a quarter-century at the company. He was replaced in the interim by three executives running an “office of the C.E.O.”: George Cheeks, the chief executive of CBS; Chris McCarthy, the chairman of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios; and Brian Robbins, the chief executive of Paramount Pictures. More

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      in Elections

      Comcast Plans Streaming Bundle With Netflix, Apple TV+

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      The bundle, called StreamSaver, is the latest joint effort from entertainment companies looking to woo price-weary customers.Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, is planning to offer its streaming service Peacock in a bundle with Netflix and Apple TV+, Brian Roberts, the company’s chief executive, said at an investor conference on Tuesday.Called StreamSaver, the bundle will be sold at a deep discount compared with subscribing to all three services separately, Mr. Roberts said. He didn’t specify a price for the service, which is expected to debut later this month.“We’ve been bundling video successfully and creatively for 60 years,” Mr. Roberts said. “This is the latest iteration of that. And I think this will be a pretty compelling package.”Over the past year, several entertainment companies have joined forces to entice customers who are weary of signing up and paying for numerous individual streaming services.Earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox and Disney announced that they were teaming up to offer a streaming service with games from the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. Last week, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery said that they would bundle their streaming services, selling users a package that included Disney+, Hulu and Max.Comcast has long offered its users a menu of streaming services on Xfinity, its package of services that includes cable television and broadband internet. For years, the company has offered services like Netflix and Apple TV+ as add-ons to its existing television bundle, acting as a vendor for those companies. This is the first time that Comcast has offered both services as part of a discounted bundle.Comcast, which has millions of broadband and cable television customers across the United States, has different incentives to bundle streaming services together than many of its competitors have. If Comcast can give its customers additional reasons to stick with the company, or convince them to pay for more features through Xfinity, the effort to bundle services will have been worth it.Many other internet providers have sold bundles that include streaming services. When Disney+ launched, Verizon offered a promotional bundle with that service. When the short-lived, short-form streaming service Quibi launched, T-Mobile offered to bundle its wireless offering with that service.Comcast has been willing to spend big to gain a foothold in the competitive video streaming business. Peacock, which launched in 2020, lost $2.7 billion last year, Comcast said in a filing, but paying subscribers increased to 31 million. The company has said that Peacock’s losses were narrowing as the service matured. More

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      Why Al Jazeera is the Go To News Source for Student Protesters

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      Nick Wilson has closely followed news on the war in Gaza since October. But Mr. Wilson, a Cornell student, is picky when it comes to his media diet: As a pro-Palestinian activist, he doesn’t trust major American outlets’ reporting on Israel’s campaign in Gaza.Instead, he turns to publications less familiar to some American audiences, like the Arab news network Al Jazeera.“Al Jazeera is the site that I go to to get an account of events that I think will be reliable,” he said.Many student protesters said in recent interviews that they were seeking on-the-ground coverage of the war in Gaza, and often, a staunchly pro-Palestinian perspective — and they are turning to alternative media for it. There’s a range of options: Jewish Currents, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and even independent Palestinian journalists on social media, as they seek information about what is happening in Gaza.Their preferences embody a broader shift for members of Generation Z, who are increasingly seeking out news from a wider array of sources and questioning legacy outlets in a fragmented media ecosystem.Israel’s recent ban on the local operations of Al Jazeera has only elevated the network’s status among many student protesters. They prize coverage from reporters on the ground, and Al Jazeera has a more extensive operation in Gaza than any other publication. Students also noted the sacrifices it has made to tell the story there. Two Al Jazeera journalists have died since the start of the war.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

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      Say More review: Jen Psaki on Biden, Trump and how to make your point

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      Jen Psaki left the Biden White House after 16 months as press secretary. Saturday Night Live never savaged her, though Kate McKinnon played her. By that and other measures, Psaki compares favorably to Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders, her predecessors from the years of Trump. A veteran of the Obama West Wing, before that a competitive collegiate swimmer, Psaki had the president’s ear and spoke with knowing authority.Her press briefings were not cauldrons of rancor. Her tussles with Peter Doocey, the Fox News White House correspondent, never neared the boiling point. They played nice.Unlike Karine Jean-Pierre, her successor, Psaki didn’t have to share the White House podium with John Kirby, spokesperson for the national security council and a retired rear admiral. Psaki was a force in her own right.Now a host at MSNBC, Psaki is out with her first book. It mixes political vignettes with tips on navigating life’s competing demands, including how to dodge – and throw – sharp elbows. As a political memoir, it does its share of score-settling. But, true to its subtitle, Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World, Psaki’s book is not a tell-all, terribly newsy or an audition for a slot in a second Biden administration, if there is one.To be expected, Psaki is critical of Donald Trump and his minions, but injects subtlety too. She wields a scalpel, lacerating Spicer and his former boss. She frames criticisms as career advice, not frontal assault.“Shouldn’t [Spicer] have rejected the job offer, if he were truly credible?” she asks of the Republican official who had first go at speaking for Trump, perhaps the most thankless task yet invented in politics.Great question. We all know the answer. As the anti-Trump operative Rick Wilson put it, everything Trump touches dies. Only Ivanka is safe and even then … who knows.“While Sean may not have been acting entirely on his own behalf when he was giving his press briefings,” Psaki writes, “he was the one who suffered as a result.”True. If Melissa McCarthy plays you in an SNL cold open, as she did Spicer, lampooning your loud parroting of your boss’s absurd lies … you’re screwed.Then again, Spicer was kind of lucky. Banished from the Trumpian kingdom early on, he never suffered a January 6-related indictment. Eventually, he expressed regret for beclowning himself over the inauguration in 2017.Back on Psaki’s own side of the aisle, Say More is no hagiography of Joe Biden. Psaki is aware of the president’s capacity for empathy but also mindful of his tendency to bring the story back to his own losses, most recently including that of Beau Biden, his late son who served in Iraq.In summer 2021, amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a suicide bomb at Kabul airport left 13 US soldiers and 170 Afghans dead. Three days later, American bodies arrived at Dover air force base in Delaware, Biden’s home state. The president and the first lady, Jill Biden, attended. Things did not work out as planned.Psaki conveys how Biden was stunned into silence when told that family members of dead Americans were complaining he had spent too much time talking about Beau, alleging he was insufficiently focused on the deaths of their own children.“I paused for the president to respond,” Psaki writes. “The silence that followed was a bit too long. I worried for a moment that our connection had been lost.”Biden finally responded, but did so “in a softer voice than usual”.“I thought I was helping them. Hearing about how other people went through loss always helps me,” Biden said.Again he paused: “Thanks for telling me. Anything else?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPsaki also tweaks Chuck Schumer, now Senate majority leader, and John Kerry, Barack Obama’s second secretary of state and until March a member of Biden’s administration as his climate envoy.Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act was unpopular, viewed by many as another welfare scheme. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, a stock market crash and the mortgage crisis, Obamacare cost the Democrats both chambers of Congress.“There were those … who suggested that we shouldn’t do anything other than the economy,” Obama later acknowledged to Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post.One of those “outsiders” was Schumer. The New Yorker grasped the political consequences of going all in on healthcare amid a meltdown in jobs and housing. Political prescience, however, isn’t always welcomed, let alone rewarded. Recalling how the White House rejected Schumer’s suggestion that Obama’s final State of the Union address contain a pitch for student loan relief, Psaki seems to delight in the outcome.“I was telling [Obama] he needed to decide whether he wanted this to be his State of the Union speech, or Senator Schumer’s,” she recalls. “I delivered my thoughts calmly. My argument tapped into my knowledge of how the media would cover the speech. The president eventually agreed. Sorry, Senator Schumer.”Psaki also recalls a gaffe made by Kerry in 2014. Responding to a question, he intimated that if conflict broke out between Japan and China, the US would use military force – a stance at odds with the stated American position.“That was a huge mistake,’” chided David Wade, a longtime Kerry aide. Kerry didn’t yell back. Instead, he gave Psaki and Wade the green light to contact the White House and distance itself from his comments. In that moment, Psaki learned that being effective in her job meant delivering quick feedback, at times.“Advising someone is not the same as appeasing them,” she writes.The Biden administration has been relatively leak-free. Nothing approaching Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or Team of Vipers by Cliff Sims, an early memoir by a Trump administration official, has appeared. Whether this matters come election day remains, of course, to be seen.
      Say More is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      in Elections

      Is It Good to Go Exclusive?

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      The exclusive period for Paramount’s potential merger with Skydance expired without a deal, highlighting the long-debated question of whether exclusivity is a waste of time.Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance has been the most tumultuous media deal in years. Now it has taken yet another turn after the exclusivity period for negotiations expired without an agreement in hand.A month ago, a special committee of Paramount’s board agreed to enter into exclusive talks with Skydance — a Hollywood studio run by the tech scion David Ellison — even as the private equity giant Apollo Global Management reached out with a $26 billion offer. Paramount shareholders grumbled that granting exclusivity was a mistake, and that the company should have engaged with Apollo instead.This week, the special committee told Skydance that it was letting the exclusivity period lapse. The end of exclusivity doesn’t alone kill the deal with Skydance. But it does allow Paramount to open up negotiations with Apollo and Sony Pictures Entertainment, which joined Apollo’s bid.The so far fruitless negotiations raise a question that deal makers have long debated: Why do companies like Paramount agree to exclusivity in the first place?Buyers often prefer exclusivity more than sellers. Exclusivity is a sign from the seller that it is committed to doing a deal and not just using a bid to drum up higher offers.Sellers generally prefer to negotiate without exclusivity because it limits their ability to shop around for a higher price. And since they’ve already signaled to a buyer they’re willing to make a deal, they’ve weakened their bargaining power.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

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      in US Politics

      ‘I’ve missed it since the day I left’: Dan Rather on life after CBS News

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      Dan Rather said his dismissal from CBS News nearly two decades earlier “of course … was the lowest point” of his legendary journalism career as he returned to his former employer’s airwaves for the first time Sunday.“I gave CBS News everything I had,” the 92-year-old newsman said. “They had smarter, better, more talented people, but they didn’t have anybody who worked harder than I did.”Rather’s remarks came during a contemplative interview on CBS Sunday Morning in advance of the release of a Netflix documentary about his life and work.He spent 44 years at CBS – including 24 as anchor of its evening news program – but lost his place there after a doomed 2004 investigation into the military record of George W Bush, who was in the middle of successfully running for a second term as president.Rather avoided official blame for the report that questioned Bush’s service in the national guard during the time of the Vietnam war. But he introduced the piece in his role as anchor and was inextricably linked to it.CBS later said it could not vouch for the authenticity of some of the records on which the investigation depended, though many who worked on the story maintain it was true.Nonetheless, Rather signed off on CBS’s airwaves as anchor for the last time on 9 March 2005. And he ultimately left the network after his contract expired a little more than a year later.According to the Associated Press, in the Netflix documentary debuting Wednesday, Rather believed he would survive the botched investigation into Bush’s military service and was shocked over his downfall at CBS.But in the film he says that he sobered up to reality when his wife, Jean, told him, “You got into a fight with the president of the United States during his re-election campaign. What did you think was going to happen?”Rather’s career in journalism continued after he left CBS, publishing investigations and conducting interviews for digital cable and satellite television network HDNet. He’s written books, commented on presidential politics and fostered a younger audience on social media.But he had not been back to CBS for years because of lingering ill will between him and the network’s former chief Leslie Moonves, who resigned in 2018 after several women accused him of sexual harassment, assault or abuse going back to the 1980s.He was finally back at CBS days prior to the debut of Rather, Netflix’s biographical documentary chronicling his reporting on John F Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam and Watergate through his anchor years and beyond, as the AP reported.The AP noted that the documentary addresses odder chapters of Rather’s run as a journalist, including his assault in New York City by someone saying, “What the frequency, Kenneth,” before then going onstage with REM when the band performed a song named after that phrase.“Without apology or explanation, I miss CBS,” Rather said in Sunday’s interview, which was filmed at his home in Texas. “I’ve missed it since the day I left there.”Rather said he has not lost the instinct that made him realize he wanted to be a reporter decades ago.“In the heart of every reporter worthy of their name, … there’s a message that news, real news, is what somebody somewhere – particularly somebody in power – doesn’t want you to know,” Rather said. That’s news.”He added: “I get up every morning, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I say, ‘Where’s the story?’”Asked if it mattered how big or small the audience was, Rather replied, “No.”
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More