Media

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In a pre-Dobbs world, the Washington Post deferred to a Supreme Court justice

THE SCOOP

In January 2021, the Washington Post’s Supreme Court reporter and his editors agreed: The upside-down American flag seen flying outside Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home was not, on its own, a story.

Earlier this month, that same story broke in The New York Times, which reported that Alito said his wife had raised the flag — a symbol adopted by supporters of former President Donald Trump who believed the election had been stolen from him — amid a neighborhood dispute.

Nine days after the flag scoop, a deadpan Post report acknowledged that the D.C. paper learned of the upside-down flag incident more than three years ago, but chose at the time not to report on it.

The decision was a matter of “consensus,” said Cameron Barr, the former senior managing editor, who said he takes responsibility for the decision not to run the story. The Post’s then-editor-in-chief, Martin Baron, told Semafor that he had been unaware of the story at the time.

“I agreed with [Supreme Court reporter] Bob Barnes and others that we should not do a single-slice story about the flag, because it seemed like the story was about Martha-Ann Alito and not her husband,” recalled Barr of the deliberations.

Instead, Barr said, he suggested a story on the bitter neighborhood dispute that Alito told them had prompted his wife to raise the flag. They would use the flag itself, he thought, as a detail in the story. But that story never took shape.

“In retrospect, I should have pushed harder for that story,” Barr said in a phone interview with Semafor Sunday.

We are running a corrected version of last week’s One Good Text, after a series of errors in which we misidentified Hans Schroeder as both his own spokesperson and as Mitt Romney biographer McKay Coppins.

AI companies freeze out partisan media

THE NEWS

The partisan publishers that thrived during the social media age — most of all, high-flying right-wing outlets like Breitbart News and the Daily Caller — are being shut out of the new AI boom.

Last week, OpenAI announced a five-year deal to license content from News Corp.’s outlets to train AI. It’s the latest in a series of deals with establishment outlets whose politics range from center-left to center-right, including the Associated Press, Politico and Business Insider owner Axel Springer, and the Financial Times.

But while some on the left groused that the News Corp. package includes the right-leaning tabloid New York Post, the true impact of the new marriage of AI and news appears to be the revenge of the establishment media. And fringier, more explicitly ideological outlets on the right have noticed that their businesses — already rocked by an industry-wide decline in web traffic — seem unlikely to get an AI bailout.

“It does concern me, but not surprise me, that these left wing tech companies are ignoring news outlets trusted by half of America and focusing exclusively on training AI models using left leaning news sources,” said Neil Patel, Daily Caller co-founder and publisher of the Daily Caller News Foundation, in an email. “The result will of course be shockingly biased AI systems having influence and even control over many aspects of life. The insanity that Google released is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s flat out scary.”

The Daily Caller isn’t alone. The Daily Wire, founded by the conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, hasn’t fielded any inquiries either, an executive there said.

They’re not just leaving out conservative news outlets. BuzzFeed has been working with OpenAI to develop content for its site using generative AI. But one person at the company told Semafor that’s where the relationship ends. The AI company has not attempted to do a content licensing deal for HuffPost, the prolific left-leaning news site owned by BuzzFeed.

✦ Marketing

Cannes faceoff: Michael Kassan is not passing up on opportunities to needle his former bosses at Cannes next month. A spokesperson for Kassan confirmed that the MediaLink founder will be hosting a cocktail party immediately before the annual iHeartMedia/MediaLink executive dinner — both of them at the iconic Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc.

⁛ News

Istanbul calling: Conspiratorial thinking isn’t limited to the American right. After President Joe Biden denounced what appeared to be a hidden Nazi message in a graphic asset within a Trump ad, CNN’s Jon Sarlin (a relative by blood of Semafor’s politics desk) tracked down the asset’s creator in Istanbul. He shared some wise words for this era: “Please calm down. This is just a template. And, also, I’m not a Nazi.”

⁋ Publishing

Apple+ musings: A Media Operator’s Jacob Donnelly was concerned by Max’s report last week on Apple News’ ascendance. “Apple has all of the leverage in this situation,” Donnelly writes. “My ultimate worry is publishers getting addicted to Apple, as they did with every other traffic source. The end goal should always be to have a direct relationship with the audience. Getting complacent because of short-term wins is how the long-term becomes very painful.”

Punching left: A new political news outlet that Axios dubbed a “conservative-leaning Punchbowl” plans to launch with a bang. The Washington Reporter, fronted by Spectator reporter and former Republican congressional candidate Matthew Foldi, has a number of high-profile interviews lined up for when it begins publishing on June 3, including chats with Republican heavy-hitters like former President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and House Oversight chair James Comer (R-Ky.), among others, we’re told.

The new media outlet, created by Republican political consultants Garrett Ventry and Brian Colas, is hoping to get congressional scoops filtered through a conservative lens. The founders believe they can build a subscription business aimed at readers working on the Hill, on K Street and on Wall Street.

Dining in: The New York Times has subtly shifted its food coverage to better reflect its domination of specific U.S. regions where it has a bigger presence, or better resources, than some local outlets. An observant Semafor Media reader recently noted that the Times in recent years has reduced the frequency of what used to be weekly restaurant reviews.

In an email to Semafor, Brian Gallagher, a senior editor on the food desk, said that while starred reviews are still a regular feature of the paper’s restaurant coverage, the paper has increasingly focused its resources on critic Pete Wells’ 100 Best Restaurants in New York City list, as well as its Where To Eat newsletter. Gallagher also noted that the paper has been rapidly expanding its national restaurant service features; the fourth annual installment of the Times’ National Restaurant List is coming in mid-September. The paper also recently began rolling out its 25 Best series, which counts down the best restaurants in eight cities with a large number of Times subscribers, with more to come this fall.

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