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10:45 AM ET, December 18, 2025

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Shane O'Neill / Washington Post:
Q&A with Christopher Anderson, who photographed Trump's inner circle for VF: “My job is to ... draw on my experience as a journalist and photograph what I see”  —  Every line, spot, blemish and blood vessel was captured by Christopher Anderson's lens.  What was he thinking?
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
CBS News and The Free Press announce Things That Matter, a series of town halls and debates, starting in early 2026, with Sam Altman, J.D. Vance, and others  —  The news division is also planning a town hall with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore in the ‘Things That Matter’ series, with Bank of America lined up as a sponsor.
RELATED:
Axios:
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr tells a Senate committee the FCC “is not an independent agency”; the agency removed “independent agency” from its site as he testified  —  FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs “is not an independent agency, formally speaking.”
RELATED:
Steven Portnoy / ABC News:
Democratic Senate Commerce Committee members accused FCC Chairman Brendan Carr of making “mafia threats” and encroaching on broadcasters' First Amendment rights
John Rogers / Associated Press:
Peter Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who covered the Vietnam War for the AP and the first Gulf War for CNN, has died at 91  —  Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the world eyewitness accounts of war …
Katie Deighton / Wall Street Journal:
A study of 1,000+ marketing campaigns: host-read podcast ads on YouTube are up to 25% less effective at driving purchases than in audio-only podcasts  —  Ads that appear in video podcasts are alluring for visually-minded marketers but may perform worse on the whole than audio-only, according to a new study
RELATED:
Christopher Palmeri / Bloomberg:
Filing: Comcast's offer to merge NBCUniversal with WBD valued Comcast's media and theme-park assets at about $81B; Comcast's overall valuation is about $111B
Discussion: Semafor, The Motley Fool and MediaPost
Brian Stelter / CNN:
Senators Warren and Blumenthal call on AG Bondi to recuse herself from reviewing the WBD deal due to her prior employment with lobbying firm Ballard Partners
Lanre Bakare / The Guardian:
Members of UK performing arts union Equity vote overwhelmingly in favor of refusing to be scanned while on set to prevent their likeness being used by AI  —  Equity says vote signals strong opposition to AI use and readiness to disrupt productions unless protections are secured
Jesse Whittock / Deadline:
Disney+ and Gulf region streamers Shahid and OSN+ announce a bundle offer; all three apps are available through Shahid, owned by Saudi broadcaster MBC  —  The subscription plan, which launches today, will be offer across the GCC region and see all three apps made available through Shahid …
Mark Stenberg / Adweek:
Dow Jones hires ex-Bloomberg Media CEO M. Scott Havens as its first chief growth officer, overseeing subscription growth and other consumer revenue streams  —  Dow Jones has hired M. Scott Havens as its first chief growth officer and global head of consumer, a newly created role that underscores …
Discussion: Talking Biz News
Will Page / Pivotal Economics:
Analysis: music copyright's global value rose 5.2% YoY to a record $47.2B in 2024; the revenue split favored labels and artists at 62%, above songwriters' 38%  —  11-MINUTE READ  —  TL;DR  —  Music copyright was valued at $47.2bn in 2024, nearly doubling in a decade
Laura Cress / BBC:
Netflix wins rights to a FIFA soccer simulation game, developed by Delphi Interactive and set for release ahead of the 2026 World Cup, for free to Netflix users  —  Fifa will finally release its much-anticipated return to video games in 2026, several years after its acrimonious split with developer EA.
RELATED:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix signs a deal with Barstool Sports to stream video versions of three podcasts, initially in the US; full video episodes will be removed from YouTube
 
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 More News: 
Jennifer Schuessler / New York Times:
PEN America elects novelist Dinaw Mengestu as president, as the organization navigates free speech challenges across the US and criticism of its Gaza response
Discussion: PEN America
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube says it will no longer give data to US Billboard charts after January 16, arguing Billboard's ranking formula doesn't count ad-supported streams fairly
 Earlier Picks: 
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta is testing limiting Facebook professional accounts and Pages to posting just two links per month, unless they subscribe to $14.99+/month Meta Verified
Scott Feinberg / The Hollywood Reporter:
The Academy signs a multiyear deal that gives YouTube the exclusive global rights to the Oscars, beginning in 2029 and running through 2033, streaming for free
 

 
From Techmeme:

Anthropic:
Anthropic details the “Assistant Axis”, a pattern of neural activity in language models that governs their default identity and helpful behavior

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Cursor's recent experiment involved running hundreds of AI agents for nearly a week to build a web browser, writing 1M+ lines of code across 1,000 files

Kiran Stacey / The Guardian:
The UK launches a consultation on whether to ban under-16s from using social media, alongside restrictions on addictive app features like infinite scrolling
 
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