Media

1. NYT’s Gaza coverage
2. Chinese info wars
3. Culture shakeup
4. Russiagate ouroboros
5. Mixed Signals

The New York Times is acutely aware of managing its readers’ reaction to the crisis in Gaza, as Max scooped on Friday. New media figures are learning different lessons from a younger audience.

Take in particular the Nelk Boys, bro-ey pranksters whose recent dabbling in Trumpy politics led them to an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They asked him whether he prefers Burger King or McDonald’s.

The wave of backlash they’ve faced from their fans, and their pained reaction, offers a glimpse of a new intersection of global politics and media. Journalists sometimes wring our hands about “audience capture,” but YouTubers operate on a far deeper level of organic connection to their followers. And, as polling makes clear, the younger people who make up most of those followers, left and right, are increasingly pro-Palestinian.

Their apology tour continued Thursday when the Nelk Boys invited the Egyptian comic Bassem Youssef on to their YouTube show, where he chided them like a disappointed uncle. He lamented their “total lack of critical thinking” and told them: “You’re 30 years old, and you need to be aware of what’s happening in the world, and that your reach and your platforms mean something and it affects people.” One of the show’s co-founders, Kyle Forgeard, abjectly apologized for a move “we’ll always regret” and proceeded to cede the channel to Youssef for an hour of criticism of Israel’s war.

This is the bottom-up populist politics of new media, and I think the first rather than the last episode in an increasingly wild ride.

Also today: MSNBC’s new media rules and more Times turmoil. (Scoop count: 3)

Our media show, Mixed Signals, is growing fast. If you like this newsletter, check us out on your favorite podcast platform or YouTube.

NYT’s Gaza coverage under a microscope

As the target of protests from all sides, The New York Times tries to be careful when it comes to the words and images it uses in relation to Israel’s war in Gaza. And as the story of deepening hunger in the territory has rippled through the global media, the Times thought it was being careful with the photos it chose, too. Last week, the paper ran a shocking photo of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an 18-month-old child in Gaza suffering from malnutrition. The photo came after the paper internally debated, and nixed, a separate photograph of another malnourished child in Gaza whose mother said he had cerebral palsy.

After the Times story went live, however, pro-Israel groups and other critics pointed out that al-Mutawaq had “genetic and other disorders” that the Times’ story only briefly mentioned. The paper re-reported that part of the story and added a note about the child’s health history. But the episode comes at a turning point for Western media, Max writes: Foreign outlets shut out of Gaza “now appear nearly singularly focused on the widespread hunger in the war-torn zone.”

Info wars

It’s hot China summer in America’s booming new media. The hyperactive streamer IShowSpeed drew 9 million viewers with his rapturous visit to Shenzhen. A bit higher-brow, the celebrity academic Adam Tooze marveled from Yunnan Province at Chinese urban development.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is tearing down the US public diplomacy operation in the name of defeating censorship, Ben writes, with new details of shuttered programs aimed at contesting China’s global power. “We are losing this war badly,” says the top Democrat on the US House China special committee, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.

The acting undersecretary for public diplomacy, Darren Beattie, argued in an interview that opening up social media itself makes the case for America, and censorship is “a fundamental ideological concession to the superiority of the Chinese system.”

A culture desk shakeup

A shakeup of the New York Times culture section has promoted a fierce internal backlash — and it suggests the next generation of critics may have to excel in front of the camera, Max writes. Earlier this month, the Times announced that it was reassigning television critic Margaret Lyons, music critic Jon Pareles, theater critic Jesse Green, and classical music critic Zach Woolfe to other parts of the paper. The move was part of what Times culture editor Sia Michel said were broader cultural shifts driven by technology; she said in an internal memo that Times readers were “hungry for trusted guides to help them make sense of this complicated landscape, not only through traditional reviews but also with essays, new story forms, videos and experimentation with other platforms.”

In a letter sent Monday to the paper’s leadership and seen by Semafor, nearly 50 unionized culture staffers said they were “shocked and deeply concerned” by the reassignments, and a heated meeting between culture desk staffers and management followed. The changes — and the resulting dustup — suggest Times leaders believe the paper’s current critical authority could be limited in a world with shorter attention spans and a growing appetite for multimedia.

Dept. of Ouroboros

Devoted readers of Semafor Media will recall that I have an annoyingly unsatisfying position on the 2016-2020 Russia mess: that Trump was in retrospect treated unfairly, and that there wasn’t a grand Clinton-media conspiracy against him. But if you’d like to be transported back to that magical time, read the declassified annex to the 2023 Durham report, which Trump allies greeted last week as the “smoking gun” they’d been waiting for. The fascinating annex translates a Russian intelligence report and includes an email from an official at the Open Society Foundation apparently recounting a suggestive conversation with then-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz about a deep state conspiracy against Trump. The New York Post and others ran with this document.

You only have to read five pages on, however, to learn that the email comes in two slightly altered versions with different dates, and that bits of its text are pulled verbatim from other documents. “The Office’s best assessment” is that the versions of the email “were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking,” Special Counsel John Durham concluded.

Put aside the irony of translating a document produced through 2016 Russian pre-election hacking to prove the Russians weren’t meddling in the election, and you’re left with the right’s re-run of the 2017 Mueller chase, in which the smoking gun was always right behind the next door. The Post didn’t respond to an inquiry. Kyle Tharp finds this narrative may be too confusing even to cut through pro-Trump media. (Room for disagreement: my replies on X.) — Ben

Mixed Signals

Emily Maitlis got one of the biggest scoops in the Epstein story when she interviewed Prince Andrew about his involvement in 2019. She was then a longtime presenter for the BBC, but has since moved onto hosting one of the UK’s top podcasts, The News Agents. This week, Ben and Max bring on the British broadcaster-turned-podcaster to discuss how she approaches her new medium, whether it affects the kind of journalism she does, and if she could still land a Prince Andrew-level interview on a podcast. They also dive into the renewed media attention around Epstein, why the story continues to captivate people, and whether, six years after her historic interview, she believes Prince Andrew was guilty.

Erik Wemple is The Washington Post’s former media columnist, now at The New York Times.

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