Mediagazer: Trump's film tariffs may be economically flawed but politically strategic, targeting precariat Hollywood workers worried about cheap foreign productions and AI (Rana Foroohar/Financial Times)

11:25 PM ET, May 12, 2025

Top News:

Taylor Lorenz / User Mag:

Progressive streamer Hasan Piker says he was detained by US CBP and questioned about his journalistic activities and political beliefs; Piker is a US citizen — “They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently”

Jill Goldsmith / Deadline:

Fox announces Fox One, its new streaming service that includes news, business, and sports content, launching ahead of the 2025 NFL and college football seasons — Lachlan Murdoch said the new Fox streaming service he's been teasing for months will be called Fox One and will launch before the start of football season this fall.

Discussion: Variety, Variety, Fox Corporation, Newser, @jbflint, DNyuz, Engadget, Awful Announcing, @bristei, @jbflint, The Wrap, Motley Fool, Reuters, @richlightshed, TV Insider, The Desk, Adweek, CNBC, NBC News, @jacobfeldman4, Bloomberg and Advanced Television

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Fox Corp reports Q3 revenue up 27% YoY to $4.37B, ad revenue up 65% to $1.2B, driven by Super Bowl, Tubi, and news, and a $354M net income, vs $704M in Q3 2024

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, @jbflint, The Wrap, @jbflint, Media Play News, @whoadvertiseson.bsky.social, Reuters, The Times, TVNewsCheck, Deadline, Benzinga and Yahoo Finance

Maggie Harrison Dupré / Futurism:

Gannett is using AI to generate automated lottery result articles across local papers, often with vague bylines and affiliate links to lottery site Jackpocket — The media giant Gannett, the largest owner of American local newspapers and the publisher of USA Today, is using AI to churn …

Discussion: @athenae.bsky.social and @mharrisondupre.bsky.social

Clare Malone / New Yorker:

How WaPo is struggling during Trump's second term: Jeff Bezos aligning himself with Trump, staff remain skeptical of Will Lewis' vision for the paper, and more — How the paper that brought down Richard Nixon is struggling to survive the second term of Donald Trump.

Discussion: New York Post, @claremalone, @nickfield.bsky.social, DNyuz, @benmullin, @brianstelter.bsky.social, @gjabberbox.bsky.social, @claremalone.bsky.social, @tickedoff.bsky.social, @ethanscorey.bsky.social, GeekWire and @jfallows.bsky.social

Columbia Journalism Review:

Semafor Executive Editor Gina Chua, The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, NYT Editorial Director of AI Zach Seward, and others share how they are using AI — The rapid development of AI is already changing how journalists operate. Reporters, editors, executives, and others across …

Discussion: @sternbergh.bsky.social, @palewi.re, @palewire, @elizabethminkel.bsky.social, @chasingray.bsky.social, @adrianhon.bsky.social, @stephenkb.bsky.social, @joshsternberg.com, @pdpj.bsky.social, @bcmerchant.bsky.social, @suze.bsky.social, PRNEWS, @lukeoneil47.bsky.social, @semaforben, @mattdpearce.com, @hypervisible.bsky.social and Fox News

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:

Filing: Google considered letting publishers opt out of their content being used for AI grounding while still appearing in search results, but rejected the idea — Court documents reveal Google considered giving publishers AI opt-out and rejected the idea.

Discussion: @kint.bsky.social, @rasmuskleis.bsky.social, Angela Mills Wade on LinkedIn, Dominic Ponsford on LinkedIn and News/Media Alliance

Max Tani / Semafor:

G. Elliott Morris, the data journalist who took over 538 in 2023, launches Strength In Numbers, a paid Substack; his relationship with ABC deteriorated in 2024 — The Scoop — The former head of 538, shuttered last year by ABC News, is building a new media outlet aimed at recapturing …

Discussion: MediaPost, Strength In Numbers, @mediaevan.bsky.social, @maxwelltani and Strength In Numbers

Rana Foroohar / Financial Times:

Trump's film tariffs may be economically flawed but politically strategic, targeting precariat Hollywood workers worried about cheap foreign productions and AI — Trump's new film tariff proposal is bad economics but smart politics — Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Discussion: New York Times

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:

YouTube rolls out TV app changes widely, including a dedicated Shorts feed that lives at the top of the subscriptions page, after announcing them in April 2025 — After being announced recently, the YouTube app for TVs is widely rolling out a few changes including a dedicated Shorts feed …

Alisa Vasquez / Politico:

Politico announces The Playbook Podcast, a daily audio companion to its flagship newsletter, hosted by Jack Blanchard and new Chief Correspondent Dasha Burns — The Playbook Podcast hosted by Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns to launch on May 12 and The Conversation with Dasha Burns debuts on June 1

Discussion: Kyle Blaine on LinkedIn, @maxwelltani, @michaelsavage, @playbookdc, @hugobebb, @kyletblaine, @adamwren, Barrett Media and Status

Ben Smith / Semafor:

PR firms are engaging with journalists from authoritative outlets to influence how AI chatbots represent brands; one firm launched a service called PreBunk — THE SCOOP — As the sprawling public relations industry scrambles to figure out how to buffer its clients' brands and reputations through …

Discussion: @semaforben, @kevinliao_, Noah Greenberg on LinkedIn, @ashleymayer, @joshkraushaar, @alexmacgregor__, @mattzeitlin, @sallyshin and @klickhealth

Dade Hayes / Deadline:

With upfronts kicking off today, major media companies and streaming giants prepare to pitch ad buyers amid economic anxieties and Trump's tariff threats — The year has gotten off to a clamorous start for corporate America (not to mention the rest of us), with epic stock market gyrations …

Discussion: The Streamable, Wall Street Journal, Sports Business Journal, The Ankler, The Hollywood Reporter, @sherman4949, The Hollywood Reporter, @sherman4949, TVREV, @sherman4949, The Wrap, Ad Age, Bloomberg, TVNewsCheck, Awful Announcing, Sportico and Variety

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More News:

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Amazon says the ad tier of Prime Video now reaches 130M+ US customers and it plans AI-powered tools for advertisers on Amazon including contextual ad copy

Discussion: Adweek, Streaming Better, MediaPost, The Wrap, Cord Cutters News, @stream_scoop, Los Angeles Times, The Desk and Media Play News, more at Techmeme »

Andi Ortiz / The Wrap:
More than 600 actors and filmmakers sign an open letter to BBC demanding the release of a documentary, originally scheduled to air in January, about Gaza medics

Discussion: Le Monde, Middle East Monitor, Deadline and GB News

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
French film producer Pathé sells a 20% stake to logistics magnate Rodolphe Saadé and plans to focus on “internationally-oriented films and series”

Discussion: Variety and Deadline

Jake Kanter / Deadline:
YouTube suspends several fake movie trailer channels from its partner program after an investigation showed the scale of AI-generated fake movie trailers

Discussion: TVNewsCheck

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:
How OpenDNS, Cloudflare, and Google responded to EU court orders to block DNS resolution for pirate sites; OpenDNS left France and Belgium instead of complying

Earlier Picks:

Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
A look at the costs, incentives, benefits, and tradeoffs of filming in California as experienced by the show Fallout, which is shooting its second season in CA

Zach Schonfeld / The Guardian:
The line between documentaries and PR is blurring as streaming platforms opt for docs produced by the subjects themselves and shy away from controversy

Discussion: @weegee.bsky.social, Screen Rant, The Wrap and Spyglass

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Propagate Content acquires a majority stake in Parker, which represents dozens of influencers; sources: CAA Evolution is raising money to buy YouTube channels

Discussion: @lucas_shaw, @lucas_shaw, The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter

The Guardian:
Sources: the UK Foreign Office asks the BBC World Service to draw up a budget of up to £70M per year lower than the BBC management says it needs

Discussion: @piercepenniless.bsky.social, @katyataylor, @_felixsimon_, @rohyakobi, @emmaharding.bsky.social, @stephenkb.bsky.social, @davidhendy.bsky.social, @edwinhayward.com and @Wen@mastodon.scot

Scott Macfarlane / CBS News:
The Trump administration fired US Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter; her office had raised concerns about xAI using copyrighted content to train AI

Discussion: Copyright Lately, Rolling Stone, American Crisis, Law Dork, Publishing Perspectives, MSNBC, Committee on House …, TechCrunch, Breitbart, CMU, The Guardian, Engadget, DNyuz, Publishers Weekly, Plagiarism Today, Deadline, Jens Bammel on LinkedIn, Karim B. Boughida on LinkedIn, Techdirt, The Register, One America News Network, New York Post, Aaron Moss on LinkedIn, Ars Technica, Townhall, Wired, @alexpanetta.bsky.social, Fortune, Billboard, Daily Caller News Foundation, PC Gamer, Politico, Music Ally, UPI, Washington Examiner, Ssnakey's Fanboying Shack, Axios, Digital Music News, Washington Post, The Hill, The Ankler, @macfarlanenews, @kortizart, @repjoemorelle, @mrddmia, Associated Press, Fox News, Business Insider, @khshan.bsky.social, Kevin Erickson on LinkedIn, Music Business Worldwide, Susan Dodes on LinkedIn, The Verge, Courtney Radsch, PhD on LinkedIn, Cedar Boschan on LinkedIn, Drew Thurlow on LinkedIn, @mrsdeborahlynn.bsky.social, @leap44.bsky.social, @jedbrown@hachyderm.io, @lisalibrarian.bsky.social, @americalabs.org, Edward Lee on LinkedIn, Bloomberg and @justinhendrix.bsky.social

From Techmeme:

Joe Rivano Barros / Mission Local:
Waymo says it temporarily suspended its ride-hailing service in San Francisco during a citywide blackout, as downed traffic lights appeared to halt its vehicles

Mitchell Peters / Billboard:
Pirate activist group Anna's Archive says it scraped 86M music files and 256M rows of track metadata from Spotify, and releases them in ~300TB of torrent files

Sri Muppidi / The Information:
Source: OpenAI's share of revenue after the cost of running AI models for paying users has jumped to ~70% in October, up from ~52% at the end of 2024

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