Check out Mini-Mediagazer for simple mobiles or Mediagazer Mobile for modern smartphones.
2:30 PM ET, February 8, 2025

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Thomas Germain / BBC:
An Adalytics report shows how ad systems run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others inadvertently placed ads on a website that hosts CSAM  —  Some of the biggest tech companies in the world served ads on a website featuring images of child abuse, helping to fund its operations.
RELATED:
James Hercher / AdExchanger:
Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal write to Amazon, Google, and others demanding fixes after a report said the companies facilitated ads on pages with CSAM  —  On Friday, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) sent co-written letters to Amazon, Google, Integral Ad Science …
Kipp Jones / Mediaite:
Memo: the Pentagon adds CNN, WaPo, The Hill, and The War Zone to its eviction list, replaced by Washington Examiner, The Free Press, Daily Caller, and Newsmax  —  The US Defense Department announced Friday night that it would double the number of news organizations that would be removed …
Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
Filing: five New York pension funds have sued Paramount Global, seeking a preliminary block on Paramount's Skydance merger and alleging breach of fiduciary duty  —  A Delaware court ruled that Paramount must produce records that could lay the groundwork for more lawsuits from investors challenging …
Discussion: Variety, The Desk and Bloomberg
Martyn Ziegler / The Times:
Sources: Netflix is expected to bid for the US broadcast rights to Formula 1 starting from the 2026 season; ESPN currently holds the rights under a $90M deal  —  Streaming platform looking to capitalise on success of Drive to Survive series in America with their first attempt to secure season-long mainstream sports rights
Dato Parulava / Politico:
The Georgian parliament plans to introduce a new bill to “define the standards of media objectivity and ethics” and ban foreign funding for media altogether  —  Georgian authorities are doubling down on media and civil society groups, putting forward a range of new restrictions apparently inspired …
Carolyn Giardina / Variety:
Sources: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is considering changing its Oscar submission requirements to make disclosing films' use of AI mandatory  —  The use of AI in best picture contender “The Brutalist” recently grabbed headlines and ignited controversy …
Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
Sources: Amazon MGM Studios plans to launch an international theatrical distribution arm; its foreign output deal with Warner Bros. stops at the end of 2025  —  The studio's current foreign theatrical output deal with Warner Bros. ends at the end of this year.
Discussion: The Wrap
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
President Trump amends his CBS lawsuit, alleging 60 Minutes' Kamala Harris interview unfairly diverted viewers from Truth Social, and ups damages claim to $20B  —  Donald Trump filed an amended lawsuit against CBS late Friday, adding a series of new claims over the network's edits in a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
WBD took $300M in gaming writedowns in 2024; current and former staff blame a lack of a strong, cohesive vision during former games chief David Haddad's tenure  —  Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery took $300 million in losses on gaming.  The near future is rife with additional challenges.
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Memo: ahead of its Skydance merger, Paramount Global pauses some major events in 2025, including MTV EMAs, to “reimagine and optimize” the events slate  —  “We look to reimagine and optimize our events slate going forward,” reads a staff memo obtained by THR.
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Mediagazer at 2:30 PM ET, February 8, 2025.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Who's Hiring in Media? 
 
 See Also: 
Mediagazer: site main
Mediagazer River: reverse chronological Mediagazer
Mediagazer Mobile: for phones
Mediagazer Leaderboard: Mediagazer's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Mediagazer RSS feed
Mediagazer on X
Mediagazer on Mastodon
 
 
 More News: 
Jessica Testa / New York Times:
A look at Emily Sundberg's business and culture newsletter, Feed Me, with ~60K subscribers including Matt Levine, Joe Weisenthal, and VC Kirsten Green
Hearst:
Hearst is rolling out AURA, its first-party ad targeting tool, to the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, after a US launch eight months ago
Ben Beaumont-Thomas / The Guardian:
Netflix will not release a nine-hour documentary about Prince after the company and the artist's estate came to a “mutual agreement”
 Earlier Picks: 
Matthew Kassel / Jewish Insider:
Sources: CNN's contract to expand in Qatar includes Qatar compensating CNN several million dollars a year; CNN: editorial content is “entirely independent”
Christopher Palmeri / Bloomberg:
A California state court issues a temporary restraining order stopping Sony from taking Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune distribution rights away from CBS
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Amazon reports Q4 ad revenue up 18% YoY to $17.29B, vs. $17.4B est., and subscription services revenue up 10% YoY to $11.51B
Axios:
Email: the White House orders the GSA to terminate “every single media contract” expensed by the agency and all contracts for Politico, BBC, E&E, and Bloomberg
 

 
From Techmeme:

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
DeepSeek releases MIT-licensed DeepSeek-V3-0324, the latest version of their enormous DeepSeek v3 model; the previous DeepSeek v3 version had a custom license

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Alibaba releases Qwen2.5-VL-32B, a 32B open model under Apache 2.0, claims better alignment with human preferences and math reasoning than earlier 2.5 VL models

Matthew Griffin / Bloomberg:
eToro files for an IPO, with plans to list on the Nasdaq, and reports 2024 revenue of $12.6B, about 96% of which was from cryptoassets, and net income of $192M

 
Sister Sites:

Techmeme
 Top news and commentary for technology's leaders, from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page