Category: media

Julie Cohen and Betsy West spent years making the documentary RBG. Cohen learned a lot: “When you think of power and toughness, you expect that you’re talking about a big, loud, forceful man and Justice Ginsburg was none of those things. … She was tiny, she had a soft voice, she was an introvert. And yet there was just no question that she had power and that power came both from the wattage that was her brain but also from her level of determination.” – Los Angeles Times

And it’s not, despite the hysteria of an orchestrated backlash, pedophilia. “What I found was a film about rage. That sudden, inchoate, unidentifiable female fury that rises in so many girls, often self-destructively, when they realize that certain rules are not about protecting them but controlling them.” – Los Angeles Times

“Eric Malmberg will no longer be a DJ on The Current,” said a statement from MPR President Duchesne Drew. “Our hosts have to be able to attract an audience that wants to listen to them and trusts them and over the last 36 hours those conditions have changed for Malmberg.” – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)

Marianne Combs claimed that MPR News’ legal team cleared her story, but the editors still refused to air it. “They described him as ‘a real creep,’ but worried that airing a story about his behavior would invite a lawsuit,” she said. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)

The cuts represent a loss of 18% of the NPR affiliate’s staff, reducing it to 127 full- and part-time employees. It comes less than two years after the station began moving into its $38-million media center on the campus of Santa Monica Community College. – Los Angeles Times

Two senior executives at the Washington, DC public radio station lost their jobs — general manager J.J. Yore had to resign, and former chief content officer Andi McDaniel had to give up the position she was about to start in, general manager at WBEZ in Chicago — after it came out that WAMU traffic reporter Martin Di Caro was kept on for over two years after violating the first of what would be two “final warnings” over wildly inappropriate behavior towards female colleagues and associates. Newly leaked documents show that Yore and other execs at the station tried to fire Di Caro and were overruled by the Human Resources department and General Counsel at the station’s license-holder, American University. – DCist

“Throughout the nation, one American town after another is struggling to figure out how to pay overtime for the city workers who disinfect public transit plus come up with funds so that schools can buy laptops for children learning remotely. Many officials have concluded that streamers should be contributing more for local government services and are shirking legal obligations by not doing so.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“The U.S. Commerce Department said it will issue an order Friday that will bar people in the United States from downloading Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok starting on September 20. Commerce officials said the ban … could be still rescinded … before it takes effect late Sunday as TikTok owner ByteDance races to clinch an agreement over the fate of its U.S. operations.” – Reuters

“TV broadcast has been our friend right through that whole period. It’s brought us together. … Let’s celebrate the role it’s had in our lives, as well as the people who made it, who are so extraordinarily talented.” – Washington Post

“Hundreds of millions around the world rely on closed captioning to be able to understand what they’re watching on TV. While the idea seems simple — just add words to relay the dialogue and describe any sounds — it took decades to mandate processes for making entertainment accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing community, as well as the elderly.” Here’s an overview of how that happened — and at how captioning happens today. – Quartz