Media

The worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic feel like ancient history, but its effects linger — including what it did to citizens’ trust in the media. On this week’s Mixed Signals, Ben and Nayeema discuss the distrust that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic and delve into the role the media played. They talk to the man who became the center of media scrutiny at the peak of the crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and check in with Donald McNeil Jr., the health and science journalist whose insights became a staple on The Daily during the pandemic.

Catch up with the latest episode of Mixed Signals.

Journal still can’t confirm January story about UN agency for Palestinians

In January, The Wall Street Journal made an explosive claim: Quoting “intelligence reports,” the paper reported that not only had 12 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, taken part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but 10% of the relief agency’s 12,000 workers in Gaza had ties to militant groups.

The New York Times on Jan. 28 had published a detailed story about 12 workers who aided in the Oct. 7 attacks, followed by the Journal’s broader piece about UNRWA staff’s alleged links to Hamas — a one-two punch that had an immediate impact on the agency. The US promptly froze funds to UNRWA, as did more than a dozen countries including Germany and Britain, stalling a total of $450 million. It was a massive scandal that put the organization, the main conduit for aid to Gaza, on the defensive.

But months later, the paper’s top editor overseeing standards privately made an admission: The paper didn’t know — and still doesn’t know —whether the allegation, based on Israeli intelligence reports, was true.

“The fact that the Israeli claims haven’t been backed up by solid evidence doesn’t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back or that there is a correctable error here,” Elena Cherney, the chief news editor, wrote in an email earlier this year seen by Semafor.

That one of the paper’s biggest and most impactful stories about the war was based on information it could not verify is a startling acknowledgement, and calls into question the validity of the claims as reported in the Journal. The piece had major reverberations internally and raised serious concerns among some staff.

According to three people familiar with the situation, since the story was published earlier this year, reporters have tried and failed to corroborate the 10% claim at the center of the story. Journalists working on the Middle East coverage for the Journal have also since raised concerns about elements of the paper’s coverage of the war more broadly that some feel tip too heavily toward Israel.

“Our coverage of UNRWA is part of a long reporting effort on the war in Gaza that involves staffers across the newsroom,” a Journal spokesperson told Semafor. “Trying to get more information is what good reporters do, and we have the best in the business. We’ve reported on this topic thoroughly and comprehensively. We stand by our January story on Israel’s 10% claim, and we stand by the many stories that have followed.”

Ken Lemon is the current president of the National Association of Black Journalists and a reporter for WSOC.

⁛ News

Too soon: New York magazine summed it up well when it declared on Friday that “Everybody is Mad at Bloomberg News for Its Embargo-Breaking Gershkovich-Is-Free Scoop.” That was the sentiment I heard from folks at the Journal and in the White House after Bloomberg published a story at 7:41 a.m. on Aug. 1 touting its scoop that Gershkovich and others were to be freed from Russian custody in a complex prisoner swap.

The financial news publication had broken an embargo agreed upon by numerous major news organizations, many of which had begun to hear rumblings of a swap several days earlier but had agreed to hold off publication until it was clear that the prisoners were safely outside of Russia. As New York reported, a reporter at Bloomberg had agreed to the embargo before the story was published.

After the story was published, Journal editor Emma Tucker called several Bloomberg editors, including editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, and admonished the publication for getting it wrong, saying it could have jeopardized the entire swap. Bloomberg isn’t commenting on the situation, but one person familiar with the situation told Semafor that Bloomberg has initiated an internal review of the story’s early publication.

Thinking ahead: The debate over whether a future President Kamala Harris should keep or fire sitting Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan is playing out in the news media. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman pushed for Harris to get rid of Khan on CNN last month, and again in an op-ed in The New York Times on Saturday endorsing Harris, caveating his support for her by saying that the FTC under President Joe Biden “tried to constrain development of A.I., through antitrust actions and even novel interpretations for how to penalize developers based on a model’s potential for misuse, rather than actual instances, a dangerous precedent to set.”

What his op-ed did not mention is that Hoffman is the largest investor in artificial intelligence startup Inflection, which is currently under investigation by the FTC over a deal the company did with Microsoft (where Hoffman is also on the board). Semafor has learned that although this investigation was subsequently pointed out to the Times by a reader, the paper declined to amend its op-ed to note the probe because Hoffman told the Times he was previously unaware of the FTC’s ongoing probe. (Max’s View: What???)

Hoffman isn’t the only business leader whose criticism of Khan created a news cycle. During an interview with CNBC last month, IAC chair Barry Diller called Khan an anti-business “dope.” After CNN reported several days later that the FTC has multiple ongoing investigations into IAC subsidiaries, Diller said he “misspoke” about Khan and that his point was that she “overreaches in disrupting sensible business combinations.”

Fresh start? Last week, we wrote about how Kamala Harris repaired her relationship with the news media. But two weeks into her campaign, the vice president has barely spoken to the press, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by national media and Harris’ political opponents.

The Republican National Committee criticized her last week for her refusal to get off-script. Others in the media agreed: While she has answered some questions from reporters in informal settings, she has yet to sit for an interview or hold a press conference. In an email, senior Harris adviser Brian Fallon did not say specifically what the communications rollout would be, but noted that Harris has done more than 80 interviews this year and has said she’ll debate Trump, though he has yet to agree.

“In the brief time since President Biden stepped down, she has had to work to lock up the nomination, reorganize her campaign, and run a selection process for a running mate,” he said. “And I would also note she has been trying to get debates scheduled which provide a setting to be questioned by network television hosts and spontaneously discuss her views and defend her record.”

Speaking of: We’re still no closer to knowing whether a presidential debate between Trump and Harris will happen and who will broadcast it, though Trump seems to be dictating the process at this point.

But the former president’s refusal to participate in a debate with ABC News and Democrats’ reluctance to agree to hold a major televised contest on Fox News seems to have presented a potential upside for NBC News, which was left out of the presidential and vice presidential debate process when the Biden and Trump campaigns negotiated their plan a few months ago. Now, sources familiar with the discussions say NBC continues to make its case for hosting a debate behind-the-scenes, though it’s unclear if Trump will budge.

For now, all that seems clear is instead of a debate, we may get Harris on ABC alone on Sept. 10 and Trump on Fox alone sometime that month.

Time out: Time magazine appears to be subletting its office in the Salesforce building in Midtown. A person familiar with the situation told Semafor that Time is in the early stages of exploring options for its New York office.

Office politics: The Los Angeles Times continues to be locked in a standoff with its union over its return-to-office policy. In a note to staff this week, the company said that employees who do not adhere to the company’s recently implemented two-day-a-week in-person work policy could face discipline. “It is this company’s expectation that all employees follow the return to office directive. Failure to do so could result in discipline, including the progressive discipline that applies to Guild-represented employees as outlined in the CBA,” the company said in a memo. The union has argued that regardless of whether the paper believes the union’s resistance is justified, it needs to come to an agreement with unionized staff as part of ongoing contract negotiations.

Ratings bump: It’s been bleak times for many television news networks as viewers continue to migrate to streaming, threatening the future of major media companies built around cable revenue.

But the last few weeks showed that people are still tuning into television when it counts. The first week of the Olympics boosted viewership of NBC’s news programming, including giving a 25% increase to total viewership of The Today Show and a nearly 40% bump to NBC Nightly News among all viewers.

Meanwhile on cable, Fox News had its highest rated month of July in network history, buoyed by a series of historic events, including the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race, and the Republican National Convention. July was also Fox’s most-watched month since November 2020.

☊ Audio

In the Ring: Bill Simmons’ contract with Spotify is up early next year, and The Ringer founder has been having conversations with other companies about launching a new platform. After buying his network, Spotify elevated Simmons to head of podcast innovation and monetization, and while The Ringer has been left relatively untouched amid broader cuts by the Swedish audio giant, he has reportedly been frustrated by its corporate structure. Since he’s been there, Spotify’s podcast output has begun to look more like the model perfected by Simmons. Spotify’s new shows look a lot more like the always-on chat shows perfected by The Ringer, rather than the more expensive and elaborately produced shows created by other Spotify acquisitions like Gimlet.

Not a fan: Speaking of Spotify, it’s become a terrible place to listen to music, argues Kyle Chayka in the New Yorker. While streaming offers unlimited access to nearly all recorded music ever created, music listening has become algorithmically optimized into a bland listening experience, making music almost immediately disposable. “Music on the app is most easily consumed in a disorganized cascade; every song becomes audio ‘content’ separated from a musician’s larger body of work,” he writes. “In short, Spotify does not seem to care about your relationship to ‘your’ music anymore; for long-term users, this has felt like a slow-motion bait and switch.”

✦ Marketing

Beer money: Modelo has not only surpassed Bud Light as America’s No. 1-selling beer. It has also become the sector’s biggest buyer of TV ads, spending an estimated $65 million as of last month.

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