Business of Media
Kerry Stokes, Seven forced to hand over Roberts-Smith case emails
Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes and his commercial director Bruce McWilliam will be forced to hand over thousands of their emails exchanged with Ben Roberts-Smith’s legal team as Nine pursues Seven West Media for the costs of the disgraced soldier’s failed defamation action, reports Nine Publishing’s Max Mason.
Stokes’ private company Australian Capital Equity funded Roberts-Smith’s legal claims against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times via a loan agreement with the former SAS trooper.
The combined costs of the legal proceedings could top $35 million. Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation action in early June. Nine is seeking to force ACE and potentially Seven Network (Operations) Ltd, which Mr Roberts-Smith initially had a loan agreement with, to pay for its costs.
Nine is seeking to show ACE and Seven were key in the litigation and controlled the process. Nine made an application seeking documents and communications about the case between Roberts-Smith’s legal team, Stokes, McWilliam and ACE – which was resisted. However, on Monday, Justice Besanko largely dismissed Stokes, McWilliam and ACE’s attempts to have the subpoenas issued to them set aside.
The emails will need to be produced before the costs hearing, set down for early September. Within the cache will be more than 8600 emails exchanged between McWilliam and Roberts-Smith’s team.
Twitter threatens legal action against nonprofit that tracks hate speech
Elon Musk has over the last year threatened legal action against tech competitors, employees and people who use Twitter, which he owns. Now he is also taking aim at an organization that studies hate speech and misinformation on social media, report The New York Times’ Sheera Frenkel and Ryan Mac.
X Corp., the parent company of the social media company, sent a letter on July 20 to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that conducts research on social media, accusing the organization of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically,” and threatening to sue.
The letter cited research published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in June examining hate speech on Twitter, which Musk has renamed X.com. The research consisted of eight papers, including one that found that Twitter had taken no action against 99 percent of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts the center reported for “tweeting hate.” The letter called the research “false, misleading or both” and said the organization had used improper methodology.
The letter added that the center was funded by Twitter’s competitors or foreign governments “in support of an ulterior agenda.”
Hollywood’s fight: How much AI is too much?
Alan Ruck, the actor who played Connor Roy in HBO’s Succession, says he and a director friend tested out the generative-AI tool ChatGPT a few months ago over lunch, to see whether it could write a screenplay, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Toonkel and Amol Sharma.
They asked it to write a scene about Ruck as a soldier in basic training, a play on the actor’s role in the Broadway show Biloxi Blues.
“It was s—,” Ruck said. “It was every cliché and hackneyed idea you could imagine.”
The potential use of artificial intelligence in TV and movies has become a hot-button issue in the biggest Hollywood labor strike in 60 years. Ruck, like many writers and actors on the picket lines, is worried the technology will replace jobs and produce low-quality content.
Entertainment executives say bots won’t be penning scripts soon, calling such fears overblown. But big companies across Hollywood, including Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and NBCUniversal, are already using AI tools in other ways and are actively exploring new applications, from summarizing scripts to special-effects to promotional marketing, people familiar with the situation say.
News Brands
News Corp using AI to produce 3,000 Australian local news stories a week
News Corp Australia is producing 3,000 articles a week using generative artificial intelligence, executive chair Michael Miller has revealed, reports The Guardian’s Amanda Meade.
Miller told the World News Media Congress in Taipei that a team of four staff use the technology to generate thousands of local stories each week on weather, fuel prices and traffic conditions, according to a report in Mediaweek.
The unit, Data Local, is led by News Corp’s data journalism editor Peter Judd and many of the stories carry his byline.
The unit supplements the copy written by reporters for the companies’ 75 “hyper-local” mastheads across the country including in Penrith, Lismore, Fairfield, Bundaberg and Cairns.
Stories such as “Where to find the cheapest fuel in Penrith” are created using AI but overseen by journalists, according to a spokesperson from News Corp.
Entertainment
Movie industry really needs ‘Barbenheimer’ to stretch its legs
Hollywood’s most ingenious—and incongruous—bit of counter-programing at the box office has continued to pay off. But for the studios behind Barbie and Oppenheimer, that could set up a new dilemma, reports The Wall Street Journal’s
Dan Gallagher.
The two movies held up well in their second weekend in theaters. Barbie from Warner Bros. Discovery scored a domestic box office of $93 million, while Oppenheimer from Comcast’s Universal took in $46.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo. That was well above the disappointing $24.2 million debut of Walt Disney’s Haunted Mansion.
The continued popularity of the two movies that fueled the Barbenheimer social media craze made this past weekend the third largest for the entire year for the domestic box office, scoring above the total even for extended weekends for the Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Presidents Day holidays.
The weekend’s successful box office also suggests the two movies might have what is known in the industry as “legs.” The second-weekend take for Barbie was down 43% from its opening weekend, while Oppenheimer saw a drop of 44%. Those are solid numbers in an industry where many movies lose two-thirds of their audience during the second week. Of the big movies released so far this year, only the blockbuster The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Universal has fared better, dropping just 37% in its second weekend. Movies that scored an opening weekend take of more than $50 million domestically have averaged a second-weekend drop of 56%.
Television
Sonia Kruger on Hamish Blake dig: “I must give him another apology email”
Sonia Kruger has explained that after a long Logies day, from an 8am Sunday start, her brain was “scrambled” by the time she won the Gold at 11:30pm, reports TV Tonight.
“I had written something. It was in my bag so that didn’t help, so I kind of just had to wing it and my brain was so scrambled,” Kruger told KIIS FM.
She also referred to that joke in which she paraphrased manager Mark Klemens, who also represents Hamish Blake, saying he hoped that Blake will leave the agency so he could concentrate his efforts on her.
“I was making the joke about our agent, Hamish and I, and I think people took it seriously. It was an absolute joke and the agent found it funny, I hope Hamish did too. I must give him another apology email today,” she explained.
Sports Media
Seven apologises for skipping Welcome to Country at FIFA match
Seven has apologised for failing to broadcast the Welcome to Country at the FIFA Women’s World Cup match between the Australia v Ireland match last month, reports TV Tonight.
The Welcome to Country was delivered by Dharug Elder Aunty Julie Jones. Jannawi Dance Clan dancers performed alongside her.
It was broadcast in full by Optus Sport but was only fleetingly seen on Seven in wideshot or background while presenters spoke, and advertisements played out.
“The only opportunity for these children’s families to see them was that free to air broadcast,” Aunty Julie told NITV.
Aunty Julie said that she felt silenced and devastated.
“[Channel Seven] go to an ad and silence the voices and the storytelling of women that have been a part of the oldest living culture on the planet.”
Lewis Martin, Network Head of Sport told Media Watch, “We sincerely apologise for not broadcasting the cultural ceremony of the FIFA Women’s World Cup match between Australia and Ireland …
“There were valid reasons for it not being broadcast on the night, but we do apologise for the upset caused.”