Top News:
Michael D. Shear / New York Times:
The host of The Source on Philadelphia's WURD Radio says questions she asked Biden on July 3 were provided by Biden aides, but she “never once felt pressured” — The host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia said officials provided her with a list of eight questions to choose from.
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Mediaite, Fox News, CNN, CBS News, The Wrap, @charlesarthur, @jonkarl, @jabeale, Mother Jones, Axios, @victorblackwell, New York Post, @alexthomp and @aghamilton29
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Alexandra Hutzler / ABC News:
Biden gives a rare one-on-one interview to ABC News, pushing back against questions about his fitness, after about a month of heavy media focus on his age
Biden gives a rare one-on-one interview to ABC News, pushing back against questions about his fitness, after about a month of heavy media focus on his age
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Scott Roxborough / The Hollywood Reporter:
Germany's government pledges to add a 30% film/TV production tax incentive, effective as early as January 2025; Australia raised its rebate to 30% on July 1 — German studios have been pushing for the incentive, which they say is necessary to remain competitive in attracting international productions.
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John Hanna / Associated Press:
Former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver agrees to accept $235,000 to settle part of her lawsuit over a police raid on the Kansas paper in August 2023 — A former reporter for a weekly Kansas newspaper has agreed to accept $235,000 to settle part of her federal lawsuit over a police raid …
Discussion:
New York Times, @apjdhanna and @apjdhanna
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
At the half-year mark, Hollywood media giants have had double-digit stock price declines, except Disney and Fox, and will likely stay underwater in 2024 — Disney and Fox Corp. buck the downtrend for showbiz shares at the midyear mark — As always, the numbers tell the tale.
Paul Vieira / Dow Jones Newswires:
Netflix, Disney, and other US streaming companies ask a Canadian court to block imposition of a fee of 5% of sales to help finance local news and other content — OTTAWA—Netflix, Walt Disney and other U.S. streaming companies have asked a Canadian court to stop plans by authorities to force …
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Media Play News, IndieWire, New York Post, MobileSyrup, @fagstein, @mgeist, @hertzbarry, @paulvieira, MEDIANAMA, CBC News, Cartt.ca, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Globe and Mail, CBC News and Bloomberg
Jef Feeley / Bloomberg:
Discovery investors reach a $125M settlement over claims that company insiders reaped improper benefits worth $1B+ in its $43B merger with WarnerMedia — - Settlement involves payment by Advance/Newhouse partnerships — Merger created one of world's largest entertainment companies
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Deadline
Bloomberg:
A look at the inaugural Esports World Cup, a multi-genre tournament in Riyadh funded by Saudi Arabia, featuring 1,500+ gamers and a record $60M+ prize pool — - Esports World Cup has record prize pool of $60 million — Crown Prince MBS wants to build esports capital in Riyadh
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CBC News, The Sun, BBC, The Sun, USA Today, CNN, VG247, Insider Gaming, DAZN, The UBJ, VSPN Tournaments Limited and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »
Li Yuan / New York Times:
How xenophobic content on Chinese social media, directed towards Japan, the US, Jews, and others, became the subject of a debate and spreads despite censorship — Violent attacks on foreigners have prompted a debate about extreme nationalism online in a country that heavily censors information the government bans.
Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
ElevenLabs launches Voice Isolator, a freemium AI tool for removing background noise from audio files for film, podcast, and interview post production — ElevenLabs, the AI voice startup known for its voice cloning, text-to-speech and speech-to-speech models, has just added another tool to its product portfolio: an AI Voice Isolator.
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Cryptopolitan, ElevenLabs, @elevenlabsio, @racheltobac, Maginative, @ammaar, @elevenlabsio and Hacker News
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Cloudflare launches a tool that aims to block bots from scraping websites for AI training data, available free for all its customers — Cloudflare, the publicly traded cloud service provider, has launched a new, free tool to prevent bots from scraping websites hosted on its platform for data to train AI models.
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Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
A look at Meta's struggles to attract influencers to Threads, due to the platform's focus on text and its lack of a clear purpose for users — Threads launched a year ago Friday but has a fraction of the users of Meta's other platforms. Content creators say they don't consider it important.
Daniel Tilles / Notes From Poland:
Polish state broadcaster deletes an article that said PM Donald Tusk made “misleading” accusations, supporting claims that Tusk hasn't depoliticized the outlet — Poland's state broadcaster, TVP, has deleted an article from its website that found Prime Minister Donald Tusk to have made …