Media
Kimmel heads back to late night
Jimmy Kimmel will be back on screens this Wednesday (Australian time) after a brief suspension that stirred debate about free speech and political pressure.
As James Hibberd and Alex Weprin detail in The Hollywood Reporter, Disney said the pause was to avoid “inflaming a tense situation” after Kimmel’s comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination which it labelled to be “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
Meanwhile…
Industry chatter suggests Kimmel’s suspension wasn’t just about politics.
That’s according to Deadline’s Dade Hayes, who writes that local station groups Nexstar and Sinclair actually pulled his show first, a move that caught many off guard – even inside the business.
At the heart of it all: money. Well, colour us shocked.
And…
Spare a thought for poor Aunty.
The national broadcaster’s been on the receiving end of a barrage of angry emails from Kimmel fans, who’ve mistaken the ABC in Australia for its American counterpart.
Sky pulls bacon stunt chat after backlash
Sky News Australia is reassessing its new Sunday night show Freya Fires Up after a controversial guest appearance drew swift criticism.
The segment featured ‘social media sensation’ Ryan Williams, who wore strips of bacon on his shirt and made Islamophobic remarks before being cut off.
ACA slams Optus boss over triple-0 outage
Host Ally Langdon has used A Current Affair to call out Optus CEO Stephen Rue, accusing him of going missing in action after the telco’s nationwide outage left triple-0 callers stranded.
As Alexandra Feiam, Duncan Evans, Emma Kirk, and Thomas Henry write in The Daily Telegraph, the show featured Adelaide couple Alice and Doug Costello, who called emergency services 25 times as Alice’s father suffered a stroke.
Dissecting the chaos around Charlie Kirk case
Crikey, writer Patrick Marlborough argues that the frenzy surrounding 22-year-old Tyler Robinson – now facing a possible death penalty for allegedly shooting Kirk – is less about hard facts and more about the desperate hunt for narrative.
What has emerged, Marlborough notes, is a portrait of someone whose politics may be paper-thin, stitched together by a few text messages rather than a grand belief system. The uncertainty itself, he suggests, is the only certainty.
Legal
Murdoch pushes to toss Trump’s $10b suit
The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp want Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation case dismissed, arguing their Epstein reporting was later validated by Congress.
Deadline’s Ted Johnson writes that their lawyers called the suit “an affront to the First Amendment” and warned it threatens press freedom by targeting stories Trump “does not like.”
They also questioned reputational damage, noting Trump’s past admissions about Epstein and his history of inflammatory public comments.
Alan Jones case takes more legal turns
The criminal proceedings against the former radio star continue to shift, with charges being reshaped almost as quickly as they arrive.
Last week alone saw nine new counts filed, taking the total to 44 alleged offences, before prosecutors later downgraded or dropped several of the most serious allegations.
As Steve Jackson writes in The Australian, the case has created headaches for Nine Radio, Jones’s old stomping ground, which has issued guidance to its hosts on how to handle coverage.
Social Media
TikTok deal puts algorithm under US control
TikTok’s future in the US looks tied to a new deal that will see its powerful recommendation algorithm copied, retrained and run using American user data.
As Liv McMahon and Graham Fraser detail in the BBC, the move is designed to satisfy security concerns that have long dogged the app’s Chinese parent, ByteDance.
Under the plan, Oracle will audit the system and oversee a new joint venture backed by US investors.
Technology
Nvidia bets $150b on OpenAI power push
The Australian Financial Review’s Ian King and Shirin Ghaffary report that Nvidia will invest up to $US100 billion ($150 billion) in OpenAI to fund massive new data centres powered by its chips, starting with a $US10 billion cash-for-equity injection.
The staged deal will support at least 10 gigawatts of computing capacity to train and run AI models like ChatGPT.
Investors cheered, sending Nvidia shares up 4 per cent and adding to its 36 per cent rise this year, while OpenAI holds firm at a $US500 billion valuation.