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Deals are rarely smooth, and an anomaly with Discoverys share price dovetailed with the negotiations. Discoverys stock began to inexplicably rocket in February and March to $75 from $45 because of a convoluted trading scandal involving Archegos, a little-known private investment firm that bet big on Discovery and other companies via derivatives using billions in borrowed money.

With banks forced to buy shares to hedge their spiraling exposure to Archegos, Discoverys market value jumped nearly 60 percent, for no obvious reason to outsiders. But by May, the stock had returned to where it was during Mr. Zaslavs initial approach, and the two sides ultimately forged a deal that gave 71 percent of the new company to AT&T shareholders and 29 percent to Discovery.

Now, the trick was closing it before word could leak out.

One awkward conversation awaiting Mr. Stankey was with Jason Kilar, the former chief of Hulu tapped by AT&T, with great fanfare, just a year earlier to lead WarnerMedia. To mark the occasion of his first anniversary on the job, Mr. Kilar had agreed with AT&Ts blessing to be profiled by The Wall Street Journal. He invited a reporter in late April to interview him on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., unaware that across the country, his colleagues were feverishly working to close the deal.

At some point during the week of May 3, Mr. Stankey dropped the bomb: He informed Mr. Kilar that the company would soon change hands, and it was unclear what Mr. Kilars role might be. The 2,600-word Journal profile of Mr. Kilar, which included a quote from Mr. Stankey, was published on May 14, three days before the deal was announced.

Usually a cheerful presence on Twitter, Mr. Kilar didnt bother sharing the article with his 37,000 followers. By the weekend, Mr. Kilar had retained the entertainment power lawyer Allen Grubman to start negotiating his exit.

A little after 7 a.m. on Sunday, Mr. Zaslav boarded a corporate jet at a small airport on the East End of Long Island, not far from his home, to head to AT&Ts Dallas headquarters to put the finishing touches on the deal. But just over an hour into the flight, word got out through Bloombergs black-and-orange terminal screens: AT&T is in talks to combine content assets with Discovery.

Continued here:
Discovery and AT&T: How a Huge Media Deal Was Done - The New York Times

Dominic Cummings has laid bare the surreal chaos in Downing Street in March last year as the government grappled with the Covid pandemic, portraying the prime minister as obsessed with the media and making constant U-turns, like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other.

During an extraordinary evidence session to MPs at Westminster on Wednesday, Boris Johnsons former chief aide targeted the prime minister for personal criticism, accusing him of being unfit for the job.

He claimed that Johnson regretted the first lockdown and held out against imposing later restrictions, despite the advice of many people inside Downing Street, and that overall, tens of thousands of people died who didnt need to die.

Cummings told MPs the prime minister had repeatedly said in respect of the first lockdown, I should have been the mayor of Jaws and kept the beaches open, and confirmed reports that in October, Johnson said he would see bodies pile high rather than order a third lockdown.

The general situation in Downing Street was described as an out-of-control movie and, in particularly incendiary claims about Matt Hancock, Cummings said the health secretary had lied to the public and fellow ministers, arguing that amounted to criminal behaviour.

He said that in January and February 2020, as news of the pandemic emerged from Wuhan, ministers and senior officials fell victim to what he described as literally a classic historical example of groupthink in action.

He said the prime minister himself had repeatedly played down the seriousness of the disease, calling it a scare story and comparing it to swine flu. Cummings even claimed officials had deliberately kept Johnson out of emergency Cobra meetings.

Certainly, the view of various officials inside No 10 was if we have the PM chair Cobra meetings, and he just tells everyone, Dont worry about it, Im going to get [Englands chief medical officer] Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus, so everyone realises its nothing to be frightened of, that would not help, actually, serious planning.

He claimed that only in mid-March was an initial plan to pursue herd immunity, by allowing the virus to spread but delaying the peak of the outbreak, belatedly abandoned. Herd immunity was the whole logic of all the discussions in January and February and early March, Cummings told the committee.

In later evidence, Cummings said criticism for poor government communications was largely a factor of bad policy and blamed Johnson for this.

It doesnt matter if youve got great people doing communications if the prime minister changes his mind 10 times a day, and then calls up the media and contradicts his own policy, day after day after day, he said.

After the first lockdown, Cummings said, he and Johnson disagreed fundamentally about the response to Covid, with the prime minister wanting to reopen the economy, a stance Cummings called completely mad.

Many others inside No 10, as well as the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, sided with Cummings, he said, but the PM just wouldnt do what we advised.

He added: Nobody could find a way around the problem of the prime minister, just like a shopping trolley, smashing from one side of the aisle to the other.

He was especially damning about the prime ministers refusal to order a second lockdown in September in the face of firm scientific advice. Cummings said the cabinet was not consulted, and instead of learning the lessons of March, Johnson had continued to rail against the first lockdown.

He didnt think in July, or September, Thank goodness we did the first lockdown, it was obviously the right thing to do. His argument then was, we shouldnt have done the first lockdown and Im not going to make the same mistake again, he said.

Cummings called for the promised public inquiry into the handling of Covid to take place as soon as possible. He said: Tens of thousands of people died who didnt need to die. Theres absolutely no excuse for delaying that. A lot of the reasons for why that happened are still in place.

Discussing the initial response, Cummings described what he called a surreal day on 12 March 2020, as he tried to press the prime minister to change course.

Johnson was repeatedly distracted from Covid matters, Cummings claimed, including by security meetings about whether to join US bombing raids in the Middle East and his partner, Carrie Symonds, going completely crackers over a newspaper story about her dog, Dilyn.

On the evening of the following day, Cummings said the deputy cabinet secretary, Helen MacNamara, walked into the prime ministers office to say: Ive come through here to tell you all, I think we are absolutely fucked. I think this country is heading for disaster. I think were going to kill thousands of people.

He said No 10 had been told of the herd immunity approach and said: We dont even have a plan for burying the bodies.

Cummings was repeatedly dismissive of his former boss Johnson, whom he helped into Downing Street. Fundamentally, I regarded him as unfit for the job, and I was trying to create a structure around him to try and stop what I thought were extremely bad decisions, and push other things through against his wishes, he said.

Asked why he had not resigned when he believed the governments response was failing, Cummings said he had told the prime minister at the end of July that he would leave by 18 December.

He claimed to have told Johnson: This whole situation is chaos; this building is chaos. You know perfectly well that I can get great teams together and manage them, but you are more frightened of me having the power to stop the chaos than you are of the chaos and this is a completely unsustainable position to be in.

He said that, in response, the prime minister had laughingly agreed, saying: Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see whos in charge.

Originally posted here:
Dominic Cummings says Boris Johnson unfit for job of PM amid Covid crisis - The Guardian

As the battle against the coronavirus outbreak was emerging as a defining issue in President Joe Bidens young administration, the pandemic and its effects on society became a pervasive part of the media narrative about his first 60 days in office.

Indeed, nearly three-quarters of all news stories about the Biden administrations early days in office (72%) mentioned COVID-19 in some way, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. It was a major part of the reporting meaning at least half the story focused on it in 42% of all stories about the administration and a minor part of the reporting in another 30%.

The presence of COVID-19 in these stories cut across a wide range of distinct topic areas. Not surprisingly, virtually every health care story analyzed included the coronavirus in some way, with 97% featuring it as a major element of the reporting. The vast majority of stories about the economy (96%) also mentioned the virus, with 79% focusing on it in a major way.

This analysis of news coverage of COVID-19 in the early days of Joe Bidens presidency builds on an April 2021 Pew Research Center report, which examined the medias broader coverage of the new administration, as well as Americans perceptions of that coverage.

The analysis of media content in this study is based on a selection of weekday media coverage collected from Jan. 21 to March 21, 2021. Stories were collected from television, radio, digital and print outlets and coded by a team of nine coders trained specifically for this project.

Part of this analysis examines the extent to which COVID-19 was mentioned in each news story evaluated. This captures whether COVID-19 was a major part of the story (focused on in at least 50% of the story), a minor part of the story (at least one mention, but not focused on in at least 50% of the story) or not a part of the story.

For the survey component of this analysis, we surveyed 12,045 U.S. adults from March 8 to 14, 2021. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of the Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology here.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

This is the latest post in Pew Research Centers ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

COVID-19 was an element in 80% of stories about Bidens political skills and management and 64% of immigration stories, although on those two topics, it most often appeared in a minor way.

Despite the overall magnitude of COVID-19 coverage, there were some differences depending on the type of audience each outlet has. Outlets with right-leaning audiences were less likely to mention COVID-19 in a major way (29%) than outlets with left-leaning (45%) or mixed audiences (44%). Still, a majority of stories from all three outlet groups had at least some reference to the coronavirus. (Learn more about how Pew Research Center classified news outletaudiences by visiting Appendix A of the methodology of our recent study.)

Stories that had a major focus on COVID-19 were about as likely to carry positive as negative assessments of the Biden administration (26% vs. 25%), while nearly half (49%) had neither positive nor negative assessments. Stories that focused on COVID-19 in a minor way were more likely to put forth negative than positive assessments of the administration (36% vs. 22%), with 42% having neither a positive nor a negative assessment.

Among the stories that focused primarily on COVID-19, Biden or a member of his administration appeared as sources far more frequently than any other source type included in the study. Roughly eight-in-ten stories (83%) that mentioned COVID-19 in a major way cited the Biden administration (including statements and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Statements from experts and interest groups, such as medical professionals and health organizations, were the second most prominent source types, cited in about a third of the COVID-19 stories (32%). Political figures, including Democrats and Republicans in Congress, appeared as sources in roughly a quarter of stories that focused on COVID-19 in a major way (27% and 23%, respectively).

Another sign of the pervasiveness of COVID-19 in news coverage of the first 60 days of the Biden presidency is the publics awareness of the administrations efforts and initiatives related to the pandemic. In a survey administered from March 8 to 14, about three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) said they had heard a lot about the administrations $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Almost the same percentage of adults (74%) said they had heard a lot about the administrations efforts to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

Read more from the original source:
COVID-19 appeared in most early news coverage of Biden administration - Pew Research Center

I remember when the worst thing you had to worry about at work was a misdirected reply-to-all on an email.

Joann Lytle, a partner with the law firm McCarter & English in Philadelphia, knows things have changed and there are many ways for employees and businesses to get caught up in legal trouble these days using electronic communications and social media from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to LinkedIn and more.

Jennifer Reno, risk manager at the shopping network QVC, notes that businesses use social media to market, provide customer service, conduct research and even hire employees. It is popular because it can be low cost compared to other forms of marketing.

But both experts warn that if its not properly managed or insured, low-cost social media can lead to unexpected high costs. The potential for abuse by employees, as well as employers, is considerable.

Employees using their personal email or other accounts for business purposes with their employers permission raises issues.

Reno and Lytle discussed some of the risks, management strategies and insurance issues during the 2021 RIMS virtual annual conference in a session entitled, Social Media in the Workplace: Litigation Risks and Insurance Coverage.

Basically, the speed and ease of communication is going to lead people to make impulsive ill-considered comments. Theres a lack of privacy, lack of filter. This is a permanent record and obviously regulations and case law are still at the formative stage and are evolving every day, Reno said.

Employees can be especially prone to misuse social media. They can engage in discrimination, harassment, talking about their employer, disclosing proprietary information, security breaches, union organizing, Reno added, noting that youthful indiscretions have a way of following people throughout their careers.

Privacy rights violations are among the most common risks.

A Minnesota woman sued a health clinic after a clinic employee posted a photo of her and the fact she had tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease. The employer was off the hook because the webpage where the photo and comment were posted was a personal page of the employee, and not one controlled by the employer.

You can imagine there would be a different result if the employee had done it on company property from her own mobile device, Lytle commented. She said employers who allow employees to use their own devices at work without any restrictions might want to think about the risks of such situations.

Reno cited a case where a hospital employee was fired for posting her boyfriends ex-girlfriends medical history on Twitter. Another involved a nurse posting on a Facebook anti-vaccine group about a child who was admitted to the hospital with measles. The nurses name and place of employment were on her Facebook profile. Parents whose child was a patient of the hospital shared the post to the hospitals Facebook page and the nurse was fired for violating the health privacy law (HIPPA).

An employer may violate privacy rights by viewing an employees restricted site and providing information from that site to others. Reno said that 26 states have enacted laws to prevent employers from requesting or requiring passwords to any employees personal internet accounts

Employees using their personal email or other accounts for business purposes with their employers permission raises issues.

Lytle referred to a 2019 case in which an employer authorized an employees use of a private Dropbox account for work-related matters. That password-protected Dropbox account contained both work-related and personal folders. Some of the personal photos were of parties and the employees boyfriend that one might consider to be borderline explicit, Lytle said. The employers IT administrator accessed the username and password of the Dropbox account, found the photographs, and forwarded them to executives in the company. The employee was forced to resign and later sued. While the employer argued that the Dropbox folder with the personal photos was a work account, the court said the employers actions clearly intruded on the employees private affairs.

The result might have been different if there were any claims that the employee had stored the photographs or even viewed the photographs from Dropbox on a work computer, which could change the expectation of privacy. So these are ways and employer can really get into trouble depending on what their employees are doing and what conduct the employer takes in response, Lytle said.

Lytle offered one other case from California where a school principal came across derogatory comments about the school posted on MySpace by a former student and shared them with the local newspaper. The former student and her family were forced to move after they received death threats. They sued the newspaper, the principal and school district. But the court dismissed the suit saying that, No reasonable person would have any expectation of privacy after posting something like that on MySpace.

Managing the Risk

Reno stressed the importance of employers establishing a framework to manage social media risk, even before worrying about insurance. She advises employers to draft a social media use policy and distribute it to employees.

You really do need to know what your company, your employees, your management, are they doing on social media, she said. Also, what is the purpose of your social media marketing platform?

Reading the entire insurance policy is necessary to understand how any exclusions might apply.

She suggests at least an annual training program on the authorized use of social media, posting, disclosure and other issues.

Its also important to have a monitoring program. You want to trust everybody, but you cant trust every single person. You also want to know how your employees are using [social media] and how theyre putting forth your brands into social media, she explained.

The framework should also include a complaint resolution process.

We monitor our social media on a minute-by-minute basis and we use it to make sure that if customers do actually complain even in the smallest bit about the format of a broadcast, something that someone is wearing, or about a reporter, that information is actually transmitted to a myriad of departments, she explained. If it is something that needs to be addressed, theyll respond to the poster and then make sure that the poster receives some type of resolution.

In managing situations where a companys reputation might be damaged by derogatory comments, Reno suggests it is best to act as quickly as possible. The most important thing is to take full responsibility. Make no excuses, have an immediate response. There should not be a days delay; it should really be within hours, minutes if possible. But also I think its important to not get into an ongoing conversation with other posters. You really need to shut it down.

Reno said the risk management piece should be done before even considering insurance because then an insured can present the best face forward to underwriters. So youre not just presenting garbage to them, but youre really presenting a thoughtful approach to social media, she said.

Beware Exclusions

Lytle stressed the necessity of reading the entire policy such as a standard ISO commercial general liability policy, with coverage for personal and advertising injury liability, in order to understand how any exclusions might apply. One exclusion is for injury caused by or at the direction of the insured, with knowledge that the act would violate the rights of another and would inflict personal and advertising injury. The CGL policy also has an exclusion for injury arising out of electronic chatrooms or bulletin boards over which the insured has control.

Its also important to check whether the the organization or the individual is actually an insured under the policy, Lytle added.

Faced with CGL exclusions, insureds may turn to other coverages such as employment practices liability insurance. This might come into play where an employer fires an employee after checking out his or her pages, or decides between two applicants after scanning their social media and learning one is pregnant, or an employee alleging a hostile work environment after some employees engaged in text harassment or cyber bullying.

Each of these examples could lead to a lawsuit for wrongful termination, discrimination or creating a hostile work environment, Reno said.

Specialized media liability insurance, which is important to QVC because it is a broadcaster, covers for defamation, libel, slander, infringement, plagiarism, piracy, misappropriation, or invasion or interference with an individuals right to privacy, she added.

Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance

Here is the original post:
How to Manage Social Media Liability in the Workplace: RIMS - Insurance Journal

In an elegant apartment building in central Warsaw flying a red and white flag from its first floor balcony, a symbol of the Belarusian opposition, remnants of the anti-government media in Belarus are shrugging off a new wave of death threats.

Less than a year ago, Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old blogger and opponent of veteran President Alexander Lukashenko, was sitting in the same office helping live stream anti-government protests around 300 miles (480 km) to the east which he hoped would topple Lukashenko.

His former colleagues recall how they all worked 24/7, slept on mattresses, and believed that Lukashenko's days were numbered.

On Sunday, a plane carrying Protasevich flying over Belarus en route to nearby Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, with the help of a false bomb threat and a MiG-29 fighter jet. Protasevich was arrested and is in a Minsk jail.

Protasevich's former colleagues at Warsaw-based Nexta, an anti-Lukashenko news outlet which reaches its more than 1 million subscribers on the Telegram messaging app, are anxious.

Outside their office perched on collapsible chairs, two Polish policemen keep watch.

"...After the incident with Roman's plane, we began to receive hundreds, already more than a thousand different threats," Stsiapan Putsila, Nexta's founder, told Reuters in an interview.

"(Threats) that they will shoot us, that our office will be blown up. Of course, this is worrying," he said, sitting in a large gaming chair that he said was used by Protasevich.

Putsila said the threats came in the form of anonymous emails and private social media messages.

"We're used to it because they have been trying to strangle us. For some years we've been one of the Telegram channel/news outlets which is inconvenient for the regime which cannot be blocked," he said.

Putsila said he and his team took security measures which they could not discuss publicly. His staff had been followed, he said, and people had tried to break into the office.

Police in Warsaw did not reply to a written request about the threats Putsila said Nexta staff had received. Lukashenko's press service could not be reached for comment and a spokesman for the Belarusian Investigative Committee, which investigates major crimes, did not respond to written questions from Reuters.

Inside Belarus, what is left of the opposition-minded media says it is being squeezed too.

Earlier on Tuesday, the popular news website TUT.BY reported that four of its employees had gone missing.

The last message from one of its reporters, Alya Burkovskaya, said a man was trying to get into her apartment in the guise of an electrician. Another, Anastasia Prudnikova, was arrested shortly after returning from maternity leave. They were all later freed.

TUT.BY said security forces detained 14 other members of its staff, including Marina Zolotova, its editor-in-chief, last week and blocked access to its website, in a tax evasion case that TUT.BY says is fabricated.

The State Control Committee, to which the financial investigation department reports, said a criminal case against unnamed staff had been opened over suspected tax evasion.

TUT.BY has sought to sidestep the crackdown by continuing to post news on its Telegram messenger feed.

Branding them a menace to society, Lukashenko's government has stripped many news organisations of their accreditation. Opposition-leaning journalists say they have faced raids, arrest, imprisonment or been forced to relocate abroad.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists says 477 journalists were detained in 2020.

Lukashenko had tolerated some opposition-minded and foreign media until mass protests erupted following a presidential election last August that his opponents say was rigged to keep him in power.

Lukashenko denies electoral fraud. He has accused the media of doing everything to "destroy people's trust in the state" and the government has accused some journalists of helping to orchestrate protests.

The state news agency BelTA has published comments on its website in support of the government's measures against journalists. On May 18, it quoted political scientist Alexander Shpakovsky's comments accusing TUT.BY of spreading falsehoods.

Television footage has shown journalists covering protests being hauled into a police van. Police have at times accused journalists of coordinating protests and of inciting what they call mass riots.

Those who still dare to do such work wear an extra pair of underwear or socks in case they are detained, say some Belarusian journalists still working there.

The authorities say they are battling foreign-backed terrorists and plotters intent on revolution and regime change.

"There has never been such a peak in repressions against journalists ... and freedom of speech in general in the entire history of Belarus," said Barys Haretski, deputy head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

"Over the past year, we have recorded 62 acts of violence against journalists - these are beatings by security officials during detentions and in isolation wards, and three cases when security officials fired at journalists with rubber bullets," Haretski said.

A day after Protasevich's arrest, the government introduced new measures to regulate media activities, including a blanket ban on covering protests or publishing opinion polls without prior authorisation from the government.

"Lukashenko destroys the press because it is a mirror in which the monstrous essence of the regime is reflected," exiled opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Tuesday.

Kirill Voloshin, the TUT.BY co-founder, said none of its 250 employees had quit since the crackdown and advertisers had stayed loyal.

"Even if one person remains, he will work. Even if everyone is taken away, we are sure that others will come to the place of those who are taken away," he said.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The rest is here:
Death threats and arrests: Belarus opposition media struggles at home and abroad - Reuters