Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential.
The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, also found that the top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.
Researchers discovered that unusually high temperatures can hinder early childhood development. Children living in hotter conditions were less likely to reach key learning milestones, especially in reading and basic math skills. Those facing economic hardship or limited resources were hit the hardest. The study underscores how climate change may shape children’s learning long before they reach school age.
Donald Trump has had a problem with wind farms for decades. It seems that it all started with a wind farm that was being proposed offshore near a golf course of his in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He sued the Scottish government in 2006 regarding this. This is the kind of illogical, ... [continued]
By Waymo AI Team Autonomous driving is the ultimate challenge for AI in the physical world. At Waymo, we’re solving it by prioritizing demonstrably safe AI, where safety is central to how we engineer our models and AI ecosystem from the ground up. As a result, we’ve built an incredibly ... [continued]
Kia PV5 Cargo earns the top five-star rating in the 2025 Euro NCAP Commercial Van Safety assessment Strong performance across key categories, including Occupant Protection, Safety Assist/Crash Avoidance and Post-Crash Safety Standard ADAS technologies — including AEB, Lane Support System and Speed Assistance System — deliver high performance in demanding ... [continued]
Pulp and paper mills sit at the intersection of several decarbonization pressures. They burn large volumes of fossil gas in lime kilns and recovery boilers. They buy significant amounts of industrial oxygen for delignification and bleaching. They operate in communities where economic continuity matters at least as much as emissions ... [continued]
I just wrote about ONVO President Shen Fei torching the idea of extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs). He’s not a fan. However, he had something else much more interesting to say in the interview with The Paper, a Chinese media outlet. ONVO, like its parent NIO, offers battery swapping to owners ... [continued]
The space solar power industry is gathering steam, with Aetherflux among the US startups working on space-to-earth and orbiting data center applications.
The debate of the last 15 years rages on. Should automakers just focus on transitioning to fully electric vehicles as quickly as possible, or should they play in the half-electric, half-fossil fuel pool? The Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle was released in 2010, a decade and a half ago. It ... [continued]
Kenya’s electric motorcycle journey is a beautiful story characterized by tremendous innovation and sheer determination by a group of locally based companies working to address the real pain points of traditional ICE motorcycle users. This has resulted in the tens of companies that are now active in the Kenyan electric ... [continued]
The year is winding down and for some Australians that means thinking about Christmas or the beach. For others, it will mean considering how they will cope with the next heatwave or bushfire. Already, two states have been burning.
The least bold prediction for the summer is that temperature records will tumble. It’s what happens when temperatures are on average 1.5C hotter than a little over a century ago.
I try to publish interesting and useful stuff every day. And yet. And yet. Of the 17+ million views my photos on Flickr have had since 2004, the most-viewed, by far, is the scary one above*. Second-most is this one. Less dental, but just in-your-face (and mine).
*All those gold crowns and inlays were done by dental students John Berry (now retired in Durham), and Steve Herring (now in practice here in Fayetteville). Great guys, both. (Ask me someday to tell you about my experience accompanying Steve on his first solo flight as a small plane pilot.)
We’ve spent yearscalling out what a hypocrite Elon Musk is on free speech. But sometimes the universe Elon hands you a gift: three tweets in the span of a little over a week that demonstrate the entire con more clearly than any deep dive ever could. Let’s start with this one:
That’s Elon announcing that:
Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder
Which is, to be clear, an extreme anti-free speech position. It’s an extremely censorial stance.
Statements indicating a political opponent is a Nazi or coward are “odious and repugnant” and far too common in today’s political discourse. But they are not actionable defamation “because of the tremendous imprecision of the meaning and usage of such terms in the realm of political debate.” In other words, being called a Nazi or coward are not verifiable statements of fact that would support a defamation claim
So, already, we see that Elon is taking an anti-free speech stance with that tweet. Political hyperbole, even of the Nazi-calling variety, is protected speech. Always has been.
Now keep that tweet in mind as we head into the next one.
Because over the weekend… Elon Musk pretty clearly falsely called the EU Commission (which just fined him)… Nazis.
If you can’t see that, it’s Elon retweeting someone who posted an image of the EU flag being pulled back to reveal a Nazi flag. The original poster says “The Fourth Reich” and Elon’s quote tweet says: “Pretty much.”
So, let’s recap: falsely calling non-violent people Nazis is, according to Elon, “incitement to murder” and yet here he is… falsely calling non-violent people Nazis. Just a week after that original statement.
And then there’s the third act that ties it all together. I know he’s said this one before in similar forms, but this weekend he also claimed that the “Surefire way to figure out who the bad guys are is by looking who wants to restrict freedom of speech.”
So, uh, yeah. Just a week after Elon says that labeling a non-violent person a Nazi should be considered “incitement to murder” (an inherent attempt to suppress speech of critics), he claims that the easiest way to figure out who are “the bad guys” is to see who wants to suppress speech.
According to Elon’s own standard: he is the bad guy. He is saying that we should suppress speech of those who call him a Nazi. And therefore, he is a bad guy. By his own logic.
The pattern is obvious. Elon’s entire incoherent “free speech” framework collapses into a single, coherent principle: speech I like is protected, speech I don’t like should be punished. He wants the freedom to call the EU Commission Nazis. He wants to criminalize anyone who calls him one. He proclaims that those who restrict speech are “the bad guys” while simultaneously arguing that calling him a Nazi should be treated as incitement to murder—a severe restriction on speech. And when he or his allies do actual Nazi-like things? Well, you better not mention it, or you’re inciting violence.
This is what happens when someone who has never understood the actual principles of free speech tries to cosplay as a free speech absolutist. The mask doesn’t just slip—it falls off entirely, and all that’s left is the naked self-interest underneath.
The answer to the headline is Almost Everywhere Else.
The new wheres are uncountable, and their number and variety are growing.
The transition is from
the natural world where the contents of media were distributed by static sources built for the natural world’s natural constraints, to
the digital world, where content can be produced and distributed by anyone to anywhere on the Internet at costs that lean hard toward zero.
Think about the word station. That’s where we got our audio and video before the Internet came along. Some of that audio and video was distributed by or though stations over networks that were closed and private: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox. Both stations and networks were static and unmoving. The words “range” and “coverage” had meaning. Now they don’t. We are on the verge of ubiquitous connectivity that one can presume anywhere. (Just wait until every car comes with Starlink and you’ll have one you can keep in your backpack. The Starlink Mini is to the future what the iPod was to the iPhone.)
In the digital world, media choices have gone from static to dynamic, and from few to endless. And our appetite for what we call content is served across buffet tables that stretch past horizons in all directions. That some of it is only available by subscription does not diminish the plain fact that all the rest of it is free for the gobbling.
And the plethorization of fuck-all continues. Given where it can go in the long run, we’ve hardly started.
In the meantime, however, getting people interested in what we’ve got is only going to get harder. Not saying this is a bad thing. Just that it is a thing.
Hard evidence for the change is trends in visits to my photo collection over time. Softer evidence is a decline in listens and views to a podcast I hosted for several years, and to this and other blogs.
Let’s start with photos. I’ve been posting those here on Flickr since 2004. Almost all of them are Creative Commons licensed to encourage re-use. For a passive collection (it just sits there and grows), it has always had a lot of traffic. In a typical week my main site there would get 5,000 to 15,000 visits a day. For example, here’s a slice of 2014:
Now it looks like this:
I’ve more than quadrupled the cumulative number of visits while attracting a quarter of what I did eleven years ago.
One reason, of course, is AI. My photo collection is a huge library of photos that I’ve licensed to encourage re-use. But, thanks to AI, fewer people are using search to find useful images, while also using ChatGPT, CoPilot, Midjourney, Gemini and other robot AI artists to create whatever. Me too, though I’ve mostly stopped because I think by now people dismiss it on sight. I don’t want somebody arriving here to think “that looks like AI.”
But the bigger reason is that there is so much more stuff of all kinds available on the Internet.
I saw the same trend for the podcast I did on TWiTfrom 2020 to 2023. As I recall ,consumption dropped from about 15,000 per episode when I started to about half that by the end of my hosting on the show. I might blame myself, but I thought the show actually got better while I was there. The audience had simply moved on to other choices, of which there was an infinitude.
This blog is a more radical example. In the ’00s, when blogging was hot and authors were few, this blog’s predecessor got up to 50,000 readers per day. Maybe more. (I barely watched stats back then.) When I moved to this blog in ’07, it dropped to about 7,000 a day, and held steady for years after that. But as social media grew past huge, podcasting took off, and it became possible to watch video on rectangles of all sizes, readership fell to between a few dozen and a few hundred per day. That’s where it is now. But I’m not complaining. This is just life in the vast lane.
For public stats on declines in consumption of content from static sources, consider public radio. Shares for public radio stations have been going up in New York, Chicago, San Francisco (strong #1), Atlanta, Washington (often #1), Seattle (also #1), Philadelphia, Boston, Raleigh-Durham (strong #1) and many other places. In Santa Barbara, six public radio stations together total 24.2% of all listening. Yet public radio listening as a whole has been going down. See here, here, and here. Classical music radio too. (Most classical stations are also public, meaning noncommercial.) This means radio on the whole is declining faster than public radio, which is gaining a larger share of a smaller pie.
Remember that article on Albania and its 57% BEV share? Well, the good news just keeps on coming. Now it’s time to report that Ukraine reached 39% BEV share in November! Despite being a relatively small market (7,910 new light vehicles were registered in November) and the ongoing war, Ukraine ... [continued]
An advocacy piece published by WattTime and REsurety was brought to my attention because it reflects the tension building around the proposed revisions to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Scope 2 accounting rules. These rules are not American regulations. They are global and voluntary, governed by the World Resources Institute and ... [continued]
The Nissan LEAF was once the gold standard for the EV market and EV sales. Yes, that was the very early days, and it was very early adopters who were buying it, but there’s no doubt the LEAF is one of the most notable cars in the modern electric vehicle ... [continued]
The US electric heat pump startup Quilt has expanded from California into 16 US states, indicating a rising demand for energy efficient home HVAC systems despite this year's U-turn in federal energy policy.
Naturally, after the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicles was ended on September 30, there was going to be a significant drop-off in sales for a little while. Let’s have a look and see how much the sector has been hit, getting a peek into the market by looking ... [continued]
Se Habla Media is a Spanish-language, Latino-owned news outlet serving the Seattle area. Its main goal is to share important information with Latino and immigrant communities in western Washington. The project began after a local branch of a national Spanish-language news network closed, which left the region without reliable daily news in Spanish.
Veteran journalist Jaime Méndez and former Mexican Consulate community outreach specialist Diana Oliveros founded the newsroom. Both understand their audience’s needs well. Se Habla Media describes itself as “created by Latinos for Latinos” and covers key topics such as immigration, health, and the economy, consistently demonstrating a strong commitment to the community.
In this interview, “Five Questions with Se Habla Media,” Mendez and Oliveros discuss their editorial approach, how they fight misinformation, and how they balance difficult news with stories of resilience and hope.
Amaro: Based on your experience, which topics generate the most interest from your audience, reflecting their most urgent needs?
Méndez: Immigration is definitely the main issue. It dominates the conversation. There is fear, not just among people without documents but also among those with legal status. Everyone is paying attention to arrests, operations, raids, and agents. Other topics, like the economy, health, and education, are essential too, but many of them are now linked to immigration.
Oliveros: I would add something that surprises many people. Simple, everyday information gets a lot of attention. Things like daylight saving time changes or highway accidents and closures are basic needs that not everyone can solve easily. The Department of Transportation might announce these changes, but the information will be available only in English.
Méndez: We also have segments that highlight positive things in our community, like A lo que vinimos, which features immigrants who came here to work hard and succeed. These are people who now run restaurants or other businesses. These stories connect with our audience because they see themselves in them. Diana also produces Algo Para Ti, where we share information from organizations that offer services such as parent education programs and health resources for families with disabilities.
Amaro: Given the volume of sensitive information you receive — especially about immigration — what procedures and networks do you use to ensure accuracy and verification?
Méndez: It’s a challenge. We receive hundreds of messages about raids or warnings that “la migra is here.” We are very careful and never publish anything without verification.
Over time, we’ve learned what to look for. For example, if someone reports a checkpoint on Interstate 5, which is the main highway here, it’s almost always false because immigration agents usually don’t set up checkpoints there. When we get a serious complaint about a business or service, we check it directly by calling the lawyer, doctor, or the relevant source. If we can’t confirm it, even if it means losing a story, we don’t publish it. We are cautious because there is so much misinformation.
Oliveros: One of our most important tools is our network of contacts. When we hear about something that happened far away, we start calling people we know in that area. We also created a group outside of Se Habla Media to stay in touch with organizations across the state. We share updates and resources there, and those same organizations help us verify reports.
Méndez: Part of our work is educating our audience. I often tell people, “Record it.” You have the right to record if your rights are being violated; that’s your best defense. We also ask people not to say there’s a raid just because they saw a green vehicle pass by. Fighting misinformation is an everyday battle, and it’s central to our job.
Amaro: How do you structure your coverage to reflect the complexity of the Latino community while avoiding sensationalism or stereotypes common in other media?
Oliveros: We analyze and prioritize the information we think people really need. Many outlets, especially English-language ones, focus on drug trafficking or detentions when they cover Hispanic communities. But we know many other issues are more valuable and relevant. So, we often leave out those stereotypical stories.
Méndez: Unlike TV news, which often highlights the most shocking stories, we avoid sensationalism. When it comes to crime, we are very selective. We don’t start our newscast with who died last night or where there was a shooting. We only cover events that affect the Latino community or pose a real danger to everyone.
We focus on what matters and have an immediate or close impact on people’s lives. We always aim for balance: some hard news, some positive news, something interesting, and a little of everything.
Amaro: Considering that the Latino community has often been ignored or misrepresented by mainstream media, how have you built and maintained trust with your audience?
Méndez: We see ourselves as part of this community. Its struggles are our struggles. When you speak honestly, passionately, and with heart, and you are also a responsible journalist, people feel it. That’s why they listen: they know the person speaking is also experiencing these issues.
This isn’t something you build overnight. We earn it over time by sticking to our principles and staying responsible to our community. Our work is like a public service. People rely on us to tell them the news, and that carries tremendous responsibility.
It’s easy to lose your reputation quickly by making mistakes. Luckily, we rarely make them. But if we ever do, even a small one, we acknowledge it publicly and correct it. That also strengthens trust.
Oliveros: Consistency is key for us. Providing information reliably and consistently is essential to building trust over the years.
Amaro: What editorial strategy do you use to balance difficult news (such as crime or immigration) with stories that promote resilience, hope, and community usefulness?
Méndez: Our newscast is structured in segments. The first part is hard news, sometimes very difficult stories. But from the beginning, we designed our show to include many different elements, not just the tough ones.
Right after those stories, we include segments that bring optimism and practical help: Algo Para Ti, A lo que vinimos, and a “pet of the week” in partnership with a dog shelter. On Fridays, even if we cover sad news such as immigration arrests, we also air A lo que vinimos, which gives the week a more uplifting ending.
We also close Fridays with La Viernesada, a funny or absurd moment of the week. It’s a way to bring balance and give people a breather.
Oliveros: And it’s not just the newscast. We also have a sports program, a more casual podcast where we talk about lighter topics like health and binational couples, and an interview program that works like community outreach. We invite experts to share practical, tangible information on scholarships for undocumented youth, utility bill discounts, upcoming community events, and anything else that helps people improve their lives in real ways.
Why Community Media Like Se Habla Media Matters
The rise of community-centered outlets like Se Habla Media is crucial for filling the large information gap left by traditional newscasts. These outlets provide daily, reliable news in Spanish and serve as a public service, covering basic community needs that mainstream media often ignore or publish only in English.
Unlike media that only highlight immigration when it’s sensational or controversial, community outlets see immigration as central to their mission, connected to the safety, dignity, and civic power of their audiences. They consistently cover essential topics such as immigration, health, and education, and they move beyond stereotypes and crime-centered stories.
By offering practical information about community services, organizations, and everyday details like highway closures and time changes that others share only in English, they build trust and loyalty with their audience. People rely on them for information that directly affects daily life.
Jaime Méndez y Diana Oliveros, fundadores de Se Habla Media. Imagen cortesía de Diana Oliveros.
El periodismo de servicio es esencial para la comunidad inmigrante
Cinco preguntas con Se Habla Media
Se Habla Media es un medio de comunicación en español y de propiedad latina que trabaja en el área de Seattle, Washington. Su objetivo es cubrir una necesidad importante de información para la comunidad latina e inmigrante de la región. El proyecto comenzó después de que cerró la sucursal local de una cadena nacional de noticias en español, lo que dejó al oeste de Washington sin noticias diarias confiables en español. Jaime Méndez, un presentador con mucha experiencia en periodismo, y Diana Oliveros, quien trabajó en alcance comunitario en el Consulado Mexicano, fundaron el medio y conocen bien las necesidades de la comunidad. Se Habla Media se describe como “creado por latinos para latinos” y se dedica a temas importantes como migración, salud y economía, siempre con un compromiso fuerte hacia su comunidad. En esta entrevista, “5 Preguntas con Se Habla Media”, se explora su enfoque periodístico, cómo luchan contra las noticias falsas y cómo logran equilibrar la cobertura de temas difíciles con historias de resiliencia y esperanza.
Amaro: Según su experiencia, ¿cuáles son los temas informativos que generan mayor interés y clics dentro de su audiencia, reflejando sus necesidades más apremiantes?
Méndez: Hoy en día, sin ninguna duda, es el tema de la migración. Es el tema que reina, el temor que hay, no solamente las personas que no tienen documentos, sino que hasta gente con documentos está constantemente mirando qué está pasando con (el tema de) inmigración, los arrestos, con las operaciones, con las redadas, con los agentes. Los otros temas son temas que les importan a todos, como el de la economía, el de la salud, el de la educación, pero hoy en día muchos de esos temas tienen que ver de una manera u otra con el asunto de la inmigración.
Oliveros: Yo también diría que hay otro nivel de cosas que son muy importantes y que vemos que la gente busca mucho, y no son las que uno esperaría: información tan sencilla como el cambio de hora (horario de invierno y de verano), o accidentes y cierres en las autopistas. Es una necesidad a la que no todo el mundo tiene acceso para resolverla, porque el departamento de transporte la anuncia, pero está en inglés.
Méndez: Finalmente, tenemos unos segmentos que resaltan cosas buenas en nuestra comunidad, como “A lo que vinimos”; es de inmigrantes que a lo que vinieron, a trabajar, a salir adelante, a ser exitosos en un negocio. Ese segmento pega mucho porque la gente se ve reflejada en esa persona que llegó aquí y que ahora es dueña de un restaurante u otras historias de éxito. Ella (Oliveros) hace otro segmento, “Algo Para Ti”, donde le contamos a la gente de diferentes organizaciones que tienen servicios para la comunidad, como servicios de educación para padres que tienen hijos con algún tipo de discapacidad o cuestiones de salud.
Amaro: Dado el volumen de información y reportes sensibles, particularmente sobre migración, ¿cuáles son los procedimientos y redes que utilizan para garantizar la verificación y precisión de la información que difunden?
Méndez: Sí, es un reto porque nos llegan muchísimos, cientos de mensajes sobre las redadas o de que “aquí está la migra”. Nosotros nos cuidamos mucho de no pasar ningún tipo de noticia elaborada sin la verificación.
Con el tiempo, hemos aprendido a seguir ciertos criterios. Por ejemplo, si recibimos un reporte de un retén en la Interestatal 5, que es la carretera principal aquí, casi siempre es falso porque migración no suele hacer retenes en esa autopista. Cuando alguien nos trae una queja importante sobre un negocio o servicio, la verificamos directamente con la fuente, llamando al abogado o al doctor. Si no podemos confirmar la información, aunque nos cueste, no la publicamos hasta estar seguros de que es cierta. Somos muy cuidadosos porque hay mucha desinformación.
Oliveros: Una de las herramientas que más nos sirven es la red de contactos que tenemos. Cuando escuchamos de algo que acaba de suceder lejos, empezamos a llamar a nuestros contactos en esa zona. También creamos un grupo al margen de Se Habla Media para estar en comunicación con diferentes organizaciones en todo el estado, donde compartimos actualizaciones y recursos, y donde ellos mismos nos ayudan a verificar reportes.
Méndez: Parte de nuestro trabajo es la educación de nuestra audiencia. Yo hago envíos y le digo a la gente: “Graba”; ustedes tienen el derecho de grabar si sus derechos fueron violados; es la mejor defensa que pueden tener. También les decimos que eviten decir que hay una redada solo porque vieron pasar un carro de color verde. Luchar contra las falsas noticias es una lucha constante y diaria que es parte de nuestro trabajo.
Amaro: ¿De qué manera estructuran su cobertura para garantizar que refleje la complejidad de la comunidad latina, evitando caer en el sensacionalismo o en los estereotipos predominantes en otros medios?
Oliveros: Nosotros analizamos y priorizamos la información que creemos que la gente realmente necesita. Muchos medios, especialmente en inglés, suelen enfocarse en noticias de narcotráfico o detenciones cuando hablan de temas hispanos. Pero pensamos que hay muchos otros temas que son más útiles para nuestra comunidad, así que a menudo dejamos fuera esas noticias más estereotípicas.
Méndez: A diferencia de las noticias de televisión, que muchas veces buscan llamar la atención con lo más impactante, nosotros evitamos el sensacionalismo o el “amarillismo”.
Cuando se trata de noticias de crimen, somos muy selectivos. No empezamos el noticiero contando quién murió anoche o dónde hubo una balacera. Solo cubrimos estos hechos si afectan a la comunidad latina o si hay un peligro real para todos. Como tenemos poco tiempo y espacio, no lo usamos en historias que no son relevantes, como un apuñalamiento en un parque. Nos enfocamos en lo que realmente importa y tiene un impacto inmediato o cercano en nuestras vidas. Siempre buscamos un equilibrio en el noticiero, con noticias buenas, malas, interesantes y un poco de todo.
Amaro: Considerando que la comunidad latina a menudo ha sido ignorada o mal representada por los medios tradicionales, ¿cómo han logrado construir y mantener la confianza con su audiencia?
Méndez: Nosotros nos consideramos parte de esta comunidad; la problemática de la comunidad también es nuestra problemática. Yo te garantizo que cuando uno habla con honestidad, con pasión, con el corazón, además de con responsabilidad mediática, la gente lo sabe y lo siente. Eso hace que la gente diga que va a escuchar a esta persona porque esa persona me está contando algo que ella misma siente.
No es algo que podamos hacer de la noche a la mañana. Nosotros nos lo vamos ganando con el tiempo, manteniendo esa línea de responsabilidad con nuestra comunidad. Nuestro trabajo es, en cierto modo, como un servicio social porque estamos llenando muchos espacios. La gente se recarga en nosotros para que le contemos las noticias, lo cual implica una gran responsabilidad.
Es muy fácil y rápido perder la reputación por cometer errores. Por suerte, evitamos equivocarnos, pero si alguna vez cometemos un error, aunque sea pequeño, lo reconocemos y lo corregimos en público. Eso también ayuda a que la gente confíe en nosotros.
Oliveros: Para nosotros, una de las cosas más importantes es la constancia: ofrecer información de manera consistente y con un estándar de calidad constante es fundamental para desarrollar la confianza a lo largo de los años.
Amaro: ¿Cuál es la estrategia editorial que implementan para equilibrar la cobertura de noticias difíciles (como crimen o migración) con la difusión de historias que promuevan la resiliencia, la esperanza y la utilidad comunitaria?
Méndez: Nuestro noticiero tiene segmentos y la primera parte son las hard news (noticias fuertes), que a veces son difíciles. Nuestro noticiero fue diseñado intencionalmente desde el comienzo para tener diferentes aspectos, no solamente la noticia mala.
Inmediatamente después de las noticias difíciles, tenemos segmentos que inyectan optimismo y utilidad, como “Algo Para Ti”, “A lo que vinimos” y la “mascota de la semana” (en colaboración con un albergue de perritos para adopción). Por ejemplo, los viernes, aunque a veces cubrimos notas muy tristes (como arrestos migratorios), tenemos el segmento “A lo que vinimos”, que es todo lo contrario y nos ayuda a terminar la semana con un ánimo un poco más positivo.
Los viernes terminamos con “La Viernesada”, que es alguna cosa muy ridícula que pasó en la semana, con la idea de balancear las cosas y proporcionar un respiro.
Oliveros: Otra cosa muy importante es que no solo es el noticiero. También tenemos un programa de deportes, un podcast donde es una conversación mucho más casual y abordamos temas mucho más llevaderos como salud y parejas binacionales. Y una parte esencial de lo que hacemos es el programa de entrevistas, que es como community outreach, donde entrevistamos a expertos que están ofreciendo información práctica y tangible sobre becas para muchachos indocumentados, descuentos para el pago de utilidades o eventos, con la idea de ayudarles a mejorar sus vidas de una manera muy concreta.
Por qué son importantes los medios comunitarios como Se Habla Media
El surgimiento de medios comunitarios como Se Habla Media es clave para cubrir el gran vacío informativo que dejaron los noticieros tradicionales. Estos medios ofrecen noticias confiables en español todos los días y funcionan como un servicio social, cubriendo las necesidades básicas de las comunidades inmigrantes locales, que muchas veces han sido ignoradas o mal representadas por los grandes medios. A diferencia de otros medios que solo hablan de inmigración cuando hay algo sensacionalista o polémico, los medios comunitarios ven la inmigración como parte central de su misión, relacionada con la seguridad y el poder cívico de su audiencia.
Por eso, cubren de forma constante temas importantes como migración, salud y educación y van más allá de los estereotipos y el enfoque en el crimen. Al dar información práctica sobre servicios comunitarios, organizaciones o detalles importantes que otros medios solo publican en inglés, como cierres de autopistas o cambios de hora, estos medios logran una relación de confianza y lealtad con su audiencia, que depende de ellos para información que impacta su vida diaria.
Cite this article
Yaujar-Amaro, Claudia (2025, Dec. 9). Service journalism is essential for immigrant communities.Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/service-journalism-is-essential-for-immigrant-communities/
PRX Brings “Click Here” Hosted by Dina Temple-Raston to Public Radio, Exploring the Ways Technology is Changing Our World
The new weekly public radio program is available to stations nationwide beginning January 7
Pulitzer-winning public media organization PRX today announced Click Here hosted by former NPR correspondent Dina Temple-Raston will debut as a new one-hour weekly public radio program available to stations nationwide beginning January 7, 2026. Produced by the award-winning newsroom at Recorded Future News and distributed by PRX, Click Here pulls back the curtain on the most powerful force of our time: technology.
Each week, the Click Here team follows the breadcrumbs to the most surprising parts of the digital world, telling richly reported stories through the lens of curiosity, not code or jargon. Because the digital world isn’t really about tech — it’s about how technology is rewiring our lives, in ways both quiet and profound.
Click Here takes listeners to unexpected places, from the crypto mines of Kentucky to an AI-powered church in California, to the hideout of one of the FBI’s Most Wanted hackers, and the strangest corners of North Korea. The program also explores questions such as:
What happens when ER doctors start using AI to make life and death decisions?
When cars begin steering themselves, who’s to blame if something goes wrong?
How are people using technology to challenge power — everywhere from the streets of Tehran to the streets of LA?
Through a combination of deep reporting and rich narratives, Click Here makes the digital world accessible and engaging by delivering stories of power, peril, transformation, and hope. All to help people get their arms around the ways technology is changing our relationships, our jobs, our schools and politics — even the most intimate areas of our lives.
“Our stories are grounded in real people trying to navigate real systems,” said Temple-Raston. “And at the heart of it all, we think Click Here is really about power: who has it, who doesn’t, and how technology keeps shifting the ground under everyone’s feet — and those shifts matter, because they tell us a lot about who we are and where we’re headed.”
Host Dina Temple-Raston
“PRX is dedicated to elevating programs and stories that move the needle and help our audiences make sense of the complex world around them,” said Stephanie Kuo, VP of Content at PRX. “Click Here is an absolute pioneer in decoding how technology impacts us, and we’re thrilled to welcome them to public radio.”
Temple-Raston brings more than three decades of reporting experience to the show. She was a correspondent at NPR for nearly 20 years — first as the network’s longtime counter-terrorism correspondent and later as a member of NPR’s Investigations Unit. Previously, she reported for Bloomberg News, opening its office in Hong Kong and China before joining Bloomberg’s White House team. Temple-Raston is also the author of four books, including A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder, and A Small Town’s Struggle for Redemption.
Recent reporting from Click Here has been featured on multiple public radio news and public affairs programs, including collaborations with The World from PRX and GBHand a series with 1A from WAMU and NPR.
In addition to the new public radio show, PRX also brings the Click Herepodcast to listeners free on-demand. Listeners across the country have downloaded Click Here’s podcast episodes more than 2 million times in the past year. The production team includes Temple-Raston as well as Sean Powers (Georgia Public Broadcasting), Megan Detrie (Marketplace), Zach Hirsch (North Country Public Radio), Erika Gajda (Sony Music Entertainment), Lucas Reilly (Forgotten: The Women of Juarez), Karen Duffin (Planet Money), and Lu Olkowski (CBC).
Celebrating more than 20 years as a nonprofit public media company, PRX works in partnership with leading independent creators, organizations, and stations to bring meaningful audio storytelling into millions of listeners’ lives. PRX is one of the world’s top podcast publishers, public radio distributors, and audio producers, serving as an engine of innovation for public media and podcasting to help shape a vibrant future for creative and journalistic audio. Shows across PRX’s portfolio of broadcast productions, podcast partners, and its Radiotopia podcast network have received recognition from the Peabody Awards, the Tribeca Festival, the International Documentary Association, the National Magazine Awards, and the Pulitzer Prizes. Visit PRX.org for more.
PRX to Distribute WABE’s Public Health Program “Health Wanted” to Public Radio Stations Nationwide Beginning in January 2026
The weekly public radio show hosted by Laurel Bristow is a collaboration with Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health
WABE, Atlanta’s choice for NPR and PBS, today announced its weekly public health program Health Wantedwill be available to public radio stations nationwide through a partnership with Pulitzer-winning public media organization PRX.Health Wanted is hosted by Laurel Bristow, an accomplished infectious disease researcher and science communicator. The show brings listeners need-to-know public health headlines of the week while also breaking down the science behind trending topics.
Health Wanted will be available beginning January 2, 2026 to public radio stations across the United States. PRX serves as distributor and represents the show produced from WABE in the public radio marketplace. The program is a collaboration between WABE in Atlanta and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, where host Laurel Bristow leads social media science communication to strengthen trust in public health information.
“Sharing trustworthy information on public health is a vital role for public media. It’s an important time to fight disinformation, and we are so proud to partner with the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health to share trust-worthy, science-based information,” said Jennifer Dorian, CEO of WABE. “Listeners will appreciate Laurel Bristow’s entertaining style and excellent communication. We are thrilled that PRX is helping WABE bring this important program to public radio listeners across the country.”
“We’re excited to be working with WABE, a trusted partner in public media, to deliver such vital information across the country,” said Stephanie Kuo, VP of Content at PRX. “Audiences will appreciate Health Wanted’s well-researched episodes, spanning a wide range of public health issues — from COVID-19 to energy drinks — all delivered in a fresh and accessible way. There’s never been a better time to invest in public health education.”
Health Wantedfirstlaunched as a podcast and radio program in summer 2024 to convene critical health discussions impacting communities locally, nationally, and across the globe. Recent episodes have spanned timely and enlightening topics including preparing for respiratory viruses such as the flu or COVID, panic surrounding birth rates, workplace safety, how the U.S. food system shapes what we eat, the influence of prescription drug marketing, the surprising history of organ transplants, the importance of sleep, the science of living longer, and beyond. Bristow is also often joined by engaging medical experts, researchers, and peers in pursuit of better health.
In addition to the nationally-available public radio program, Health Wantedremains available free to listeners on-demand as a podcast and is formatted for video on YouTube.
Host Laurel Bristow
About Laurel Bristow
Laurel Bristow, MSc, is an infectious disease researcher and science communicator. Laurel leads social media science communication at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public health — focusing on promoting and strengthening trust in public health information. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Laurel turned her frontline COVID research work into social media science communication, which helped regularly bring accurate public health information to more than 400,000 people nationwide. The combination of her candor, clear explanations, and expertise in infectious diseases has turned Laurel into a trusted advisor.
About the Rollins School of Public Health
For more than 30 years, Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health has served as a leader in public health education, innovative research, and global collaborations. Ranked №2 by U.S. News & World Report, faculty and students regularly partner with organizations within Atlanta and around the world to promote health and prevent disease locally, nationally, and globally. Students gain real-world experience working alongside award-winning faculty and in collaboration with leading public health organizations through applied practice experiences, the Global Field Experience program, and Rollins Earn and Learn. Students can earn a master’s degree, doctoral degree, dual degree, or certificate at Rollins through six academic departments: epidemiology; environmental health; global health; health policy and management; biostatistics and bioinformatics; and behavioral, social, and health education sciences.
About WABE
WABE is Metro Atlanta’s official NPR and PBS affiliate, and the region’s source for original, independent, news and local journalism. For 78 years, we have delivered fact-based, inclusive content that informs, inspires, reflects, and empowers the millions who call the Greater Atlanta area home. WABE is 100% independent, non-profit, and committed to amplifying diverse voices in Atlanta. Our programs, podcasts, and events make Atlanta’s stories accessible and relevant across various platforms for our broad audience. WABE original and national NPR/PBS content is available on WABE 90.1FM, WABE.org, WABE TV (PBS-30), WABE-HD channels, and streaming on the WABE Mobile App, Hulu + Live, YouTube TV, and other major platforms. Go to wabe.org for additional information.
About PRX
Celebrating more than 20 years as a nonprofit public media company, PRX works in partnership with leading independent creators, organizations, and stations to bring meaningful audio storytelling into millions of listeners’ lives. PRX is one of the world’s top podcast publishers, public radio distributors, and audio producers, serving as an engine of innovation for public media and podcasting to help shape a vibrant future for creative and journalistic audio. Shows across PRX’s portfolio of broadcast productions, podcast partners, and its Radiotopia podcast network have received recognition from the Peabody Awards, the Tribeca Festival, the International Documentary Association, the National Magazine Awards, and the Pulitzer Prizes. Visit PRX.org for more.
Deforestation is both a global story and a local one — while 95% of deforestation occurs in the tropics, everyday products, such as beef, avocados, coffee, palm oil, paper, and even beauty products like collagen are produced on deforested land. Investigating these links helps your audience see the impacts in their daily lives, and brings a story that originates thousands of miles away closer to home.
Historically, agriculture has been the primary driver of deforestation, accounting for about 86% of global deforestation over the past decade. The climate impacts of this land-use change are vast: Removing forests both releases their stored carbon into the atmosphere and eliminates their capacity to store carbon in the future. While some reforestation programs have been successful, with many countries now gaining more forest than they’ve lost in the past decade, scientists say that halting deforestation of old-growth forests, which are even more productive than younger forests at storing carbon, is critical.
Recent US tariffs on China may “turbocharge deforestation” in the Amazon by driving up soybean production in Brazil, The Atlantic reports.
Climate change threatens more than just tropical rainforests, as pests, wildfires, and changing precipitation patterns put the world’s boreal forests at risk. Canada’s CBC News reports.
Nearly one-third of avocados consumed worldwide are grown in Michoacán, Mexico. Grist highlights how global culinary demands are driving deforestation in the country’s “Avocado Belt” and explores ways some producers are growing more ethical, eco-friendly fruits.
Wildfires are a growing threat to the world’s forests; in 2024, fire was the principal driver of tropical forest loss for the first time. DW reports how climate change fueled last year’s “fire pandemic” in Brazil.
In Colombia, ranchers are testing out “cow hotels” to reduce deforestation in South America, reports NPR. Clearing land for cattle is the single biggest driver of rainforest loss in the Amazon.
Blue Dot Living highlights how Indigenous groups are fighting to protect Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, one of the world’s largest temperate rainforests — and most significant carbon sinks.
If the EU holds firm on the 2035 target, the European auto industry has a real chance to be competitive global EV players. Next week the EU will make an announcement that will decide the fate of its car industry. The revision of the car CO2 law, and the 2035 electrification ... [continued]
Measures to keep ETS2 prices affordable. Weakening the car CO2 standards will only make the ETS2 more expensive. Here’s why: The Council and the European Parliament agreed to delay ETS2 by one year. Before the prospect of an ETS2 delay emerged, 2027 carbon price projections under the MSR reform ranged ... [continued]
The US offshore wind industry lives to fight another day, now that a federal judge has voided a key part of US President Donald Trump's offshore wind ban.
Reno, Nevada — Dragonfly Energy Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: DFLI) (“Dragonfly Energy” or the “Company”), an industry leader in energy storage and maker of Battle Born Batteries®, today announced that World Cat, the world’s largest producer of power catamarans, has expanded its integration of Battle Born® power systems across new models. Following the ... [continued]
Indianapolis, Indiana — A new ad in downtown Indianapolis reminds Hoosiers that their high utility bills are thanks to coal. According to a new report, Indiana is the state with the highest year-over-year electric bills, as bills have increased more than 16% in the last year, and Indiana’s energy prices have ... [continued]
Zoox, the robotaxi startup owned by Amazon, has expanded a bit recently, and it is ready to scale up enough that it has secured an EV battery supplier for more EV production. Starting in early 2026, Zoox will be receiving batteries from Panasonic Energy. It will be using 2170 cylindrical ... [continued]
From a computer-lined office in the Green Building on MIT’s campus, climate scientist Abigail Bodner monitors the world’s oceans, bringing a mathematician’s eye to gauging interactions between wind and wave.
“I am fascinated by the way mathematics can describe fluid motion,” says Bodner, a self-described “desk oceanographer” who is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. She holds an MIT Schwarzman College of Computing shared position with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which is housed jointly in the college and the School of Engineering.
Through her research into localized ocean turbulence and its impact on climate patterns, she seeks to improve larger-scale climate models, leading to better projections of long-term changes, such as sea-level rise, that are important to coastal communities.
Applying math and theory to natural phenomena
Bodner uses AI tools, satellite imagery, and data from idealized and more realistic simulations in her studies of complex ocean-atmosphere interactions.
“I was interested in math and earth sciences and ended up focusing on fluid dynamics, which combines the best of both worlds,” she said. “It’s a way we can explain natural phenomena with equations and physics. I got excited by the possibility of being able to see something and then write down this super complex mathematical form.
“More recently, I’ve started using computational tools, including different types of model simulations. AI is emerging in ocean observation products. It has been interesting to be able to combine computational tools and theory together with explaining natural phenomena and their impact.”
Bodner came to MIT in 2024, previously having been a Simons Junior Fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. She received her BS in geophysics and mathematics and MS in geophysics from Tel Aviv University, and her SM in applied mathematics and PhD in earth, environmental, and planetary sciences from Brown University.
She cofounded and directs an online summer program, Climatematch Academy, that has trained thousands of users from diverse backgrounds around the world to engage climate challenges using cutting-edge techniques.
“I am passionate about teaching and am especially motivated to teach computational tools for climate science,” said Bodner. “I believe it is critical that the future generation of scientists are properly trained to use the wealth of climate data and tools available on open-source platforms.”
Monitoring the interaction of ocean and atmosphere on a local scale
Her research focuses on the role of turbulence in the upper, or topmost, layer of the ocean, where the exchange of heat and energy with the atmosphere occurs, playing a significant role in global climate regulation.
“The ocean and the atmosphere communicate through that upper layer through turbulence,” she said. “It’s an interesting mathematical and physical problem, too small to capture from theories we’ve developed for large-scale ocean circulation, but too big to be captured in a tank or classroom experiment. Beyond the theoretical mathematical perspective, this hyperlocal phenomenon can impact the global climate.”
Global models are used in long-term projections of changes in sea surface temperatures, in rising sea levels, and in “what our climate system is going to be doing over the next hundred years,” she says. But the grid used in the global model doesn’t resolve a particular geographic locality such as Boston, which occupies a mere pixel or grid point in the model.
“Any kind of local effects we need to plan for over the next few decades are going to be informed by this coarse model,” she observes. “And then the question is, do we have the right information? Improving our understanding of what happens on a smaller scale, on the order of one kilometer or less, will better inform long-term projections on the larger scale.”
You want to see actual government censorship in action? And have it done by people claiming they’re doing it to stop censorship? Check out last week’s revelation (originally reported by Reuters) that the US State Department will now start denying H-1B visas for anyone who has anything to do with trust & safety, fact checking, content moderation, or mis- or disinformation research. The government is now punishing people for speech—specifically, punishing them for the false belief that their work constitutes censorship.
The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.
It’s like JD Vance’s “the rules were you weren’t going to fact check me” taken to a new level.
This policy censors non-censors for not doing the thing that the White House and MAGA folks are actively doing every day. MAGA knows content moderation is necessary—they’re super eager to have it applied when it’s speech they don’t like. As we’ve recently discussed, they’ve suddenly been demanding social media companies stop foreign influence campaigns and remove anything mean about Charlie Kirk. At the same time, the White House itself is engaged in a twisted version of what it claims is fact checking and demanding that media orgs hire MAGA-friendly censors.
The hypocrisy is the point. But it’s also blatantly unconstitutional. As Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to this news:
People who study misinformation and work on content-moderation teams aren’t engaged in ‘censorship’— they’re engaged in activities that the First Amendment was designed to protect. This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional.
Incoherent and unconstitutional is being too kind.
The real work that trust & safety professionals do makes this policy even more perverse. As trust & safety expert (and occasional Ctrl-Alt-Speech guest host) Alice Hunsberger told (the recently defunded) NPR:
“Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it,” she said. “Bad actors that target Americans come from all over the world and it’s so important to have people who understand different languages and cultures on trust and safety teams — having global workers at tech companies in [trust and safety] absolutely keeps Americans safer.”
So the administration is now barring entry to people whose work includes stopping child sexual abuse material and protecting Americans from foreign bad actors—all while claiming to oppose censorship and demanding platforms remove content about Charlie Kirk. The only way this makes sense is if you understand what the actual principle at work is: we get to control all speech, and anyone who might interfere with that control must be punished.
There are no fundamental values at work here beyond “we have power, and we’re going to abuse it to silence anyone who stands in our way.”
Was the plant-based meat substitute industry wrong to recommend its products as a climate solution? That’s what Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness insists, saying that the approach severely restricted the company’s potential customer base early on. The approach may have contributed to an inevitable pattern of steadily falling US faux ... [continued]
I speak from experience. MyTerms is a project run by Customer Commons, a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit. Prior to the change of government in the US., one could operate something with worldwide scope from here. Now we need to base most of our MyTerms work in the EU. That's actually a good thing, strategically, because Europe gives a much larger shit about privacy than the US generally (thank WWII and the Holocaust), and that's where most of the interest in MyTerms is spinning up. But it is a huge downer to hear from friends and co-workers elsewhere that one reason we need to make the move is that the US government is hostile to the EU and the rest of the world. (It doesn't matter that there are arguments against that assertion. Logic and reason may sit on the mental board of directors, but emotions cast the deciding votes. And this is an emotional matter now.)
The same internet that gives rise to the dystopian narrative has tools to prevent disaster
Don Marti is a strategist in web ecosystem and open source business issues. He is an invited expert for the Privacy Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium and has written or edited for several internet-related publications.
Big Tech’s ongoing project to crush independent journalism is a small part of a larger, more ambitious narrative, in which the market economy as we know it is replaced by, in effect, economic central planning enabled by “AI.” The so-called Torment Nexus, where, as Hugo-award-winning author Charles Stross writes, a few oligarchs control “state-level policy making on subjects like privacy protection, data mining, face recognition, and generative language models, on the basis of assumptions about how society should be organized,” is a dismal vision of the future.
But even as academics, journalists, and whistleblowers wear out their carpal tunnels documenting Big Tech’s multifarious villainy, the flow of money and customer data to the same companies continues. The book Careless People exposes Meta’s role in promoting genocide and government censorship, but the Careless People page on the publisher site has a Meta Pixel on it. In the previous column in this series, I covered Big Tech’s vision for the economy — a new system, rapidly being realized, where anyone who wants to sell anything sends money and personal data to a few centralized platforms, and gets transactions out — while most of the profits are captured by the platforms, and negative externalities like a mental health crisis and pervasive scams fall on everyone else.
Bringing existential threats down to mere problems
But, to look on the bright side for a minute, this is just an internet dystopia narrative. And the internet turns out to be remarkably good at beating those. We don’t eliminate them entirely, but we take them down from civilization-ending risks to merely ongoing problems that flare up into the occasional crisis. The common thread of any internet dystopia narrative is:
Powerful adversary with a goal of centralized control;
Some internet activity where rules favor centralization;
Consensus that centralization is inevitable.
The best-known dystopia stories have a catchy “chip” name. Cryptography backdoor dystopia started out with a U.S. government plan to use a key escrow system together with export controls, implemented on a “Clipper Chip” with a back door. Today, end-to-end encryption is built into so many essential processes that it would be impractical to roll back. Risks to confidential communications keep coming up — Chat Control in the EU is the latest, and worthy of attention — but it’s an issue to keep on top of and not the end of the internet. Another dystopia, Digital Rights Management (DRM) mandate, would have put a “Fritz chip” in all devices that could copy digital information, giving some DRM vendor or cartel control of everything. Today, DRM is still a lock-in problem for many products, and limits how much repair work an independent service can do for you, but it’s an issue that’s being debated one product or format at a time.
Marketers are understanding the risks
Maybe something inherent in the internet’s design causes a dystopia narrative to emerge every so often. The good news for the prospects of beating this one is that marketers are already seeing the risks I covered last time, and looking for alternatives. The Google/Meta duopoly, as growth stocks, must grow at a greater rate than the economy as a whole, which means, on average, taking a bigger piece of every transaction. “If Google and Facebook ads are the only way for you to reach customers you don’t have a viable business,” Nandini Jammi, a brand consultant and founder of the new firm LTR Partners, told me. “When you build your entire strategy around Facebook or Google ads, it’s like an anti-investment, it’s a dependency on these tools that distract you from building meaningful, sustainable brands.”
But the choice to break out of Big Tech value extraction can go in a high-tech direction too. Rick Bruner, CEO of the advertising measurement company Central Control, argues for ”high-quality, randomized controlled trials” to measure ad campaigns — a more trustworthy approach to measurement than throwing money and data at Google and Meta and taking their word for the results. He writes,
Statistical models, including synthetic users, artificial intelligence, machine learning, attribution, all manner of quasi-experiments and other observational methods are faster, more expensive and less transparent forms of correlation — not measurement of causation. They may be effective for audience targeting, but they are not for quantifying ROI.
As a result of one “rigorous” trial, Netflix eliminated paid search advertising — the kind of decision that can free up significant money for ad-supported news. That will take some work from the publisher side, since, Bruner suggests, “publishers seem unwilling to make the necessary targeting reforms to make them a viable experimental unit to fix the morass of digital advertising measurement.” Moving ad budgets to news is an opportunity for legit ad-supported media that can meet the needs of marketers who know more math than Big Tech wants them to.
Social media is another opportunity for improvement. “Social” doesn’t have to mean dumping people’s data into an ML black box and running the same boring AI slop ads as everyone else. Some of the most powerful social investments are in real-world events that result in content and impact online. In a flood of over-optimized, look-alike mobile game advertising, the game development firm Wargaming.net keeps up a sponsor relationship with The Tank Museum in Bovington, England — a place that most players won’t attend physically, but that acts as a sort of hall of fame for content creators who cover the vehicles players can operate in the games. Buying surveillance ads is renting eyeballs, but in the case of Wargaming, the game company, content creators, and museum have a feedback loop that builds reputation they get to keep. Direct-to-consumer brands are selling through Von Maur, a mall department store, to capture a similar effect.
Marketing decision-makers read the news like the rest of us, and can’t help hearing that Facebook makes 10% of their revenue from scams and ads for banned items, the FBI warns about the security risks of search ads to the end user, and new documents show that Meta buried evidence of the mental health harms they inflict on teenaged users. Marketers want to do the right thing, but as we have seen with previous dystopia threats, sometimes the people affected by a dystopia need a swift kick to get together and fight it. A final bright spot that may provide that swift kick is recent legal cases over the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Video Privacy Protection Act, and other privacy-related laws that may not have been written for the internet but create just enough legal risk for marketers to push them over the line to do the right thing. The good news is group cohesion. Breaking out of surveillance dystopia is good for business, the right thing to do for others, and — with the legal news to point to for justification — the safe, prudent course of action, too.
Next: News companies and organizations, when participating in policy debates, are missing out on opportunities to better represent their own interests, the national interest, and the interests of legitimate businesses. Instead they are acting as sock puppets for Big Tech and advocating for surveillance. How can the news business do better?
Cite this article
Marti, Don (2025, Dec. 8). Big Tech’s economic takeover can be beat.Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/big-techs-economic-takeover-can-be-beat/
Sun-dimming risks putting the planet’s thermostat under Donald Trump’s control. Better to adopt the precautionary principle with high-stakes science
It is fitting that this week’s UN environment talks are in Nairobi, with Africa shaping the global climate conversation. The continent’s diplomats are dealing with the vexed question of whether it is wise to try to cool the planet by dimming the sun’s rays. While not on the formal summit agenda, on the sidelines they are arguing that it’s time to stop promoting solar geoengineering technology as a solution to global heating. It’s hard to disagree.
African nations have acted because they don’t want their continent to become a test bed for unproven schemes to spray particles into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth for a small, uncertain cooling gain. They point to environmental, ethical and geopolitical risks. That’s why the continent is pushing for a global “non-use” agreement that would rule out public funding, outdoor experiments, patenting and official promotion of these technologies.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was “exactly aligned” with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter.
And he’s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for.
The EU hit X with a $140 million fine last week for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). But (despite what you may have heard) this isn’t some censorship overreach by Brussels bureaucrats. The violations—which have been known for over a year—have nothing to do with content moderation. Zero. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.
The fine is for three specific transparency failures: misleading users when Elon changed verification from actual verification to “pay $8 for a checkmark,” maintaining a broken ad repository, and refusing to share required data with researchers.
The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X’s holding company was due to theplatform’s misleading use of a blue check markto identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.
Again, let’s repeat: it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the way X handles content moderation or what speech it allows on its platform. As Daphne Keller explains:
Don’t let anyone — not even the United StatesSecretary of State— tell you that the European Commission’s€120 million enforcementagainst Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this fine is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law. Many of these requirements resemble existing US laws or proposals that have garnered bipartisan support.
There are three charges against X, which all stem from amulti-year investigationthat was launched in 2023. One is about verification — X’s blue checkmarks on user accounts — and two are about transparency. These charges have nothing to do with what content is on X, or what user speech the platform should or should not allow. There is plenty of EU political disapproval about those things, for sure. But the EU didn’t choose to pick a fight about them. Instead, it went after X for violating much more basic, straightforward provisions of the DSA. Those violations were flagrant enough that it would be weird if the EU hadn’t issued a fine.
Both Daphne and I have criticized attempts by EU officials to abuse the DSA in pursuit of censorship. I directly called it out when former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton clearly went way over the line last year, a move that quickly led to Breton losing his job. I’ve been highly critical of the DSA for years, so if this were actually an abuse of the law for censorship, I’d be first in line to call it out and side with Elon (I’ve done it in other circumstances as well).
But this is not that. This has nothing to do with “content moderation” or “censorship” in any way.
And yet, Elon Musk is running around pretending it is a free speech issue, and his once-again friends in the Trump administration are bolstering that false claim.
As Daphne pointed out, the EU could investigate certain aspects of X’s content moderation, and that could lead to serious questions about censorship and free speech. But they have not done so.
Honestly, this move is little different than the Trump FTC taking action against a Chinese company for violating COPPA. Which it has done. Did we see Chinese politicians lose their minds over that? Did we see the CEO of that company, Apitor Technology, call for dissolving the United States like Elon Musk is now calling for dissolving the EU? No. No, we did not.
But because the Elon Musks/JD Vances/Marco Rubios of the world can only think in terms of memes and culture wars, they know that if they just insist that this is about censorship, that the media will cover it that way, and the ignorant rabble on X will buy their version of the story.
All this is even more incredible because Elon Musk told the EU that he was entirely on board with the DSA while he was in the process of buying Twitter. Yes, the law he’s now claiming is censorship tyranny requiring the dissolution of an entire governmental body is the very same law he declared was “exactly aligned” with his vision for the platform.
At the time, we called out how the EU was clearly playing Musk, who seemed to have no clue what he was actually endorsing. It was obvious he hadn’t read or understood the DSA. But there he was, recording a video claiming perfect alignment with a regulatory framework he’s now treating as an existential threat to free speech.
So it’s pretty rich for him to whine about it now.
Of course, Musk isn’t just misrepresenting the fine. He’s responding with a series of escalating tantrums designed to feed his false censorship narrative. First, he called for abolishing the entire EU:
Then came the petty retaliation. First, he canceled the EU Commission’s X advertising account. X claimed it was because they “exploited” X’s ad platform by posting a link that appeared to be a video, but replies to that tweet suggested many, many people said that claimed “exploit” was not an exploit at all, but a tool that many others had used.
As the coiner of “The Streisand Effect,” I’d just like to point out that this is not what the Streisand Effect means at all.
Each move—calling to dissolve the EU, canceling ads, threatening individuals—is transparently designed to manufacture a free speech crisis where none exists. It’s performance art for an audience that won’t bother checking whether the fine is actually about censorship (it isn’t).
And he’ll likely keep escalating with the help of the Trump administration.
The DSA certainly has some issues, but this fine is not one of them. But that hasn’t stopped Elon Musk and his crew of political supporters from pretending that this is some huge attack on American free speech. It’s not. No more than the FTC’s fine against Apitor was an attack on China-based speech.
But, of course, most of the media will continue to pretend this is about free speech. They will frame it that way and for years into the future we’ll hear false stories—that the media and tons of other people will simply accept as true—that the EU fined X and Elon $140 million for not censoring people.
This is the template now. Violate fairly modest regulations, claim it’s censorship, get your political allies to amplify the lie, use it to de-legitimize any attempt at platform accountability for actively misleading users. It’s not about free speech. It never was. It’s about securing freedom from accountability while wielding the power of both private platforms and state resources to crush anyone who tries to impose it.
So yeah, anytime you hear someone claim the EU fined Musk for not censoring people, call it out. Because the truth matters, even when powerful people would prefer you didn’t notice they’re lying.
Stylebot is a tool that helps reach a digital generation right where they are — online
Stylebot is an app that offers a digital option for those of us trying to maintain standards and consistency in our work. For years, I’ve taught AP Style and had students whose work gets published at the Columbia Missourian, a community newspaper staffed by students at the Missouri School of Journalism. With a task of editing across the Missouri News Network’s five outlets (KBIA, KOMU 8, The Columbia Missourian, Vox Magazine and the Missouri Business Alert), the challenge of teaching AP Style has grown. Students struggle to memorize the rules and apply them to the different forms of writing from podcast scripts, radio episodes or news features.
For us, it has perhaps been compounded as we’ve relied more on the online stylebook and our expectation of students knowing what to look up in it. Stylebot has helped our news outlets maintain consistency in our work while we teach a new generation of editors and producers.
This example is a syndicated column I was editing and used as a demo for my class to show them how Stylebot works
Stylebot is trained on the most regularly used rules of AP Style — think about the stuff you’re using 90% of the time: titles, punctuation, capitalization, numerals.
The app is not based on generative AI, so no hallucination of rules or answers. It’s actually based on the USC Annenberg School’s stylebook and closely mirrors AP rules. Users can also upload their own custom stylebooks for an additional cost. For our small team, the cost works out to about $5.50 per month per user.
The app works in tools many journalists are already using, such as Slack, Teams, Google’s Chrome browser — and now Google Docs, which is how we’re using it in our newsrooms. We chose to use Google Docs because not all our newsrooms use the same content management system and this seemed like the best way to implement it across our five outlets.
A few months into our trial, we’ve found some success using Google Docs version of stylebot. It flags content for passive voice and marks a few things we might not have caught on a first read through a story. Students say they’re using it to double-check what they think they know from memory. One student said it could “save me from errors I might miss when I’m tired or rushing.”
The beauty of Stylebot is that it isn’t making any editorial decisions. It’s just telling us that there might be issues ahead. It’s up to editors to review what gets flagged or highlighted and then make the call. It also sends users back to stylebook entries for more guidance — so it’s like having a AP Style consultant right beside you as you read through content.
One thing that will surely keep editors in business as we grapple with the role of Artificial Intelligence in our industry is understanding context. AI — and even Stylebot — doesn’t quite get nuance, so humans have to act on the content. It suggested I change “passed on” to died in a story about how legislation passed on straight party-line votes.
This is an example of how Stylebot flags copy but doesn’t understand that passed on is correct in this context
Using Stylebot has sped up the work of doing an initial read on content to check for style, which means student editors can now do more substantive editing, looking for holes and issues with structure. We’ve got a way to go in integrating it more fully across all our platforms — but getting editors to start looking up AP Style questions has been worth it.
Laura Johnston is a professor of professional practice at the Missouri School of Journalism where she’s been teaching for 20 years. She currently teaches writing and editing and works as an editor at the Columbia Missourian.
Cite this article
Johnston, Laura (2025, Dec. 8). Teaching a new generation of journalists AP Style.Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/teaching-a-new-generation-of-journalists-ap-style/
At a time when the UK and other countries are finally taking bold steps for climate, Canada is preparing a new oil pipeline
Last week, the United Kingdom did something all too rare: it chose leadership by backing science and prioritizing public safety. The Labour government announced it would ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, strengthen a windfall tax and accelerate phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies.
These are not symbolic gestures. They are an acknowledgment that the global energy system is shifting and that mature economies must shift with it.
Tzeporah Berman is a Canadian environmental activist, campaigner and writer
