Mediagazer: In proposals to Ofcom, BBC seeks to cut the news shown on its children's channel from 85 to 35 hours per year, scrapping the 50-year-old afternoon news segment (Molly Blackall/The Guardian)

Raymond Zhong / New York Times:

Musical.ly founder Alex Zhu, who now heads TikTok, claims that TikTok doesn't share data with China or ByteDance and doesn't censor videos at China's behest — Alex Zhu, the head of the Chinese-owned viral video app, is trying to assuage Washington's fears. “I am quite optimistic,” he said.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, @alexstamos, @puiwingtam and @isaacstonefish, more at Techmeme »

Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:

Sources: ByteDance is in talks with record companies to launch a music streaming service as soon as December, initially in Brazil, India, and Indonesia — The Chinese company behind the popular video app TikTok is set to go head-to-head with the likes of Spotify and Apple in the music streaming market …

Discussion: CNN, Music Business Worldwide, Gizmodo, TechSpot, Music Industry Blog, 9to5Mac, Digital Trends and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:

AP poll finds that ~60% of Americans say they regularly see conflicting reports about the same facts from different sources, as people tune out from the news — Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin.

Discussion: @drvox, @will_bunch, @jakesnyt, @joshuahol, @katestarbird and @whatthebit

Jim Waterson / The Guardian:

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet says Trump puts journalists' “lives at risk” when he subjects them to personal attacks and calls them names — Dean Baquet decries abuse of journalists and defends not calling president racist — The executive editor of the New York Times …

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @derektmead, @bgrueskin, Mediaite, @adamgoldmannyt, @wphillips49, @laurawags, Washington Examiner, Breitbart, The Daily Beast and The Hill

Knight Foundation:

Gallup/Knight study: 86% of Americans believe people should have access to local news, but only 1 in 5 subscribe or donate to local news organizations — WASHINGTON, DC (Nov. 17, 2019) Most Americans - 86 percent - think people should have access to local news - even if they don't pay for it …

Discussion: Nieman Lab, American Press Institute, Talking Biz News, CNN, @fitzthereporter, @brianstelter and @jboren4507

Taylor Telford / Washington Post:

FedEx CEO Fred Smith blasts NYT article on its tax affairs, without identifying any specific errors, and challenges A.G. Sulzberger to debate him on tax policy — Fred Smith blasts the report — without identifying any specific errors — detailing how the shipper's tax bill went from $1.5 billion in 2017 to zero a year later

Discussion: New York Times, The Hill, CNN, Business Insider, CBS News, Telegraph and New York Post

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:

Interview with TV host and film producer Soledad O'Brien on her critiques of journalism in the Trump era, which she often shares to her 1.1M Twitter followers — For Soledad O'Brien, the presidency of Donald Trump has ripped the cover off a lot of things, including the fragility of American democracy …

Discussion: @laurajmg, @frankconniff, @brianstelter, @djrothkopf, Raw Story and WPIX 11 New York

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

AI-powered news aggregation app SmartNews raises $92M, including a $28M raise in August, at a valuation of $1.2B, bringing its total raised to $182M — Looks like there's still money to be made in news aggregation — at least according to the investors backing the news app SmartNews.

Discussion: @whatthebit and @simonowens, more at Techmeme »

Hadas Gold / CNN:

While impartiality rules prevent a UK television equivalent to Fox News, Boris Johnson's close ties with The Telegraph means he can always rely on its support — London (CNN Business)Whenever US President Donald Trump turns on Fox News, he'll usually see a stream of positive coverage.

Discussion: @lsenews

NPR:

A look at the role Spanish-language media plays in the Latino community and the issues it's facing, as the fourth Spanish-language publication closes this year — NPR's Michel Martin talks to journalism professor Graciela Mochkofsky about the current state of Spanish-language media in America …

Molly Blackall / The Guardian:

In proposals to Ofcom, BBC seeks to cut the news shown on its children's channel from 85 to 35 hours per year, scrapping the 50-year-old afternoon news segment — Resources to be redeployed at non-TV viewers after ratings for CBBC and CBeebies tumble — Children's news programme Newsround …

Kayleigh Barber / Digiday:

A look at BuzzFeed's Creators Program, which has 31 in-house and 5 external creators and has brokered 65 branded content campaigns in 2019, up ~2x from 2018 — Two years ago, a series of “Why I Left BuzzFeed” videos popped up on YouTube, with past employees complaining they were not allowed …