#media-ownership

#media-ownership

The entertainment conglomerate, formed three years ago when Warner Media spun off from AT&T and merged with Discovery, Inc., announced plans this past summer to split back into two separate companies. Its functional studio and streaming arm, the source of the publicly traded company's value as a security, would thus be unshackled from its network TV business, which still generates a ton of cash but is a declining in value (as evinced by WBD's $9 billion write-down of its TV properties).

As the dust settles from the battle for the ownership of the Daily Telegraph, one man has been left standing: Lord Rothermere, whose family have been a mainstay of British newspapers for more than a century. This is a very British stitch-up, said Lionel Barber, the former editor of the Financial Times. Lord Rothermere has played a very astute poker hand, he's shown patience and he's the big winner.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

Here's another that aired Sunday night: correspondent Bill Whitaker reported on Trump's battles with elite universities over accusations of liberal bias and antisemitism. He has threatened to cut their federal funding for research. If Trump were to follow through on more of those threats, it could jeopardize research into potentially life-saving advances in medicine and severely limit scientific progress. Harvard scientist Don Ingber told Whitaker, "We are truly putting the brakes on scientific innovation in this country at a time when our ostensible adversary, China, is going faster and faster and faster."

The boss of the US private equity group bidding for the Daily Telegraph has been reported to the UK government for potentially breaching rules protecting the newspaper's editorial independence, after allegedly threatening to go to war with the title's newsroom. The Guardian understands that the independent directors of Telegraph Media Group (TMG) have alerted the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) about supposed comments made by RedBird Capital's Gerry Cardinale to the Telegraph's editor, Chris Evans.

1. Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is. 2. Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual. 3. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly - wherever it leads. 4. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world. 5. Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon. 6. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny. 7. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild is preparing to sell her 20 per cent interest in The Economist, paving the way for the most significant change in the 182-year-old publication's ownership since 2015. The British-American financier, 71, has appointed investment bank Lazard to oversee the process, which remains at an early stage. The stake, made up of voting shares, could fetch as much as £400 million based on current valuations of the premium media group.