Mr. Silberwasser, who is Latino, is one of a few executives of color on Mr. Zaslav’s management team. He joins Savalle Sims, the company’s general counsel, and Channing Dungey, the chairman of Warner Brothers Television Group, who are Black. Warner Bros. Discovery has taken steps to diversify its board of directors, and Mr. Silberwasser’s appointment makes him one of the most powerful Latino executives in the U.S. media industry.

Mr. Silberwasser will need to keep programming costs under control while the price of live sports rights soars. Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav has told Wall Street the company will be disciplined about its spending on content, but he also wants the company to continue to be a major player in the sports-media arena. Those two goals could be at odds.

One prominent example: The N.B.A. Warner Bros. Discovery pays an average of about $1.2 billion per year for the rights to show N.B.A. games nationally, part of a nine-year agreement signed in 2014. That agreement is up after the 2024-25 season, and the N.B.A. is expecting its fee to sharply increase during the next round of negotiations given the rising popularity of the N.B.A. globally, according to a person familiar with the agreement.

There is little doubt Warner Bros. Discovery will have to pay more to continue showing the N.B.A., which is a top draw for its cable channel TNT and sports website Bleacher Report. The N.F.L. nearly doubled its media revenue from rights agreements signed last year, and the N.H.L., Southeastern Conference and other sports leagues have seen huge increases in recently completed deals.

Mr. Silberwasser will be responsible for managing Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. sports portfolio and setting the company’s global sports strategy. The company’s international sports portfolio, including the Olympics, will be managed by Andrew Georgiou, the president and managing director of WBD Sports Europe. Lenny Daniels, the president of Turner Sports, and Patrick Crumb, the president of regional sports networks, will report to Mr. Silberwasser.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/business/media/warner-bros-discovery-luis-silberwasser.html

Mr. Paxton, a former state representative who cultivated the conservative grass roots of the Republican Party, was first elected attorney general in 2014. He promised to fight the Affordable Care Act and defend Texas’ voter identification law.

But he has spent nearly his entire time as attorney general stalked by accusations of misconduct, including a criminal indictment for securities fraud from 2015. The charges stem from accusations that Mr. Paxton failed to register as an investment adviser representative and misled investors by encouraging them to invest in a company but not telling them that the company would pay him. The case has yet to go to trial.

Last year, many of Mr. Paxton’s top aides, themselves staunch conservatives, turned whistle-blowers and accused him of bribery, abuse of power and other potential criminal acts in connection with an Austin real estate investor. Those accusations, made to the F.B.I., kicked off a federal inquiry that still hangs over Mr. Paxton’s head. He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

Even so, Mr. Paxton won the Republican primary last month, handily defeating the land commissioner, George P. Bush, a member of the political dynasty. He did so partly by playing the politics of Texas correctly, which has been his great talent.

Mr. Paxton joined Mr. Trump in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, going so far as to sue states where Mr. Trump had lost, accusing them of fraud. Mr. Paxton appeared with Mr. Trump in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, at a rally that drew thousands, some of whom went on to storm the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Paxton last year, helping to propel him past his scandals and through the Republican primary.

Mr. Paxton has echoed the former president in another way: by attacking tech companies. In 2020, Mr. Paxton’s office, joined by nine other states, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit argued that the internet giant had abused its control over the opaque system that delivers ads online.

After the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Paxton sent investigative demands not only to Twitter but also to Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, asking for details of content moderation practices.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/technology/texas-twitter-ken-paxton.html

Many of the hosts who left NPR in recent months come from racial or ethnic groups that are underrepresented in U.S. newsrooms. Ari Shapiro, a co-host of “All Things Considered,” wrote on Twitter that the network was “hemorrhaging hosts from marginalized backgrounds,” referring reporters to Isabel Lara, the network’s head of communications, for comment. Ms. Lara said hosts who had been brought in to replace those who left were from underrepresented backgrounds and had extensive public radio experience.

Ms. Summers, who is Black, said she thinks NPR has a good track record on promoting journalists from underrepresented backgrounds, pointing to Ms. Cornish’s decade-long stint hosting “All Things Considered” and her own career at NPR, where she has risen through the ranks. But she said every company in America, including NPR, had more work to do on that front.

“I always think that more can be done to recruit and retain and to cultivate women, people of color and people from marginalized communities,” Ms. Summers said. “That’s the work that we all need to be doing every single day.”

In recent years, NPR has repackaged popular shows such as “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” in digital formats like podcasts. Ms. Barnes said those efforts, along with the network’s push to diversify its staff, were part of an effort to make itself relevant to changing American audiences.

“You can’t do that without having a diverse staff that actually represents the whole of America,” Ms. Barnes said. “In addition, we know that the audiences of the future are on new and different platforms. And if we want to reach younger and more diverse audiences, we have to be there with them.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/business/media/npr-juana-summers-all-things-considered.html

And that would surely be just. With #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and other epochal changes roiling American life, the theater has finally begun to talk openly about its foundational and continuing inequities. Sometimes the talk is just lip service, to be sure, as toothless statements on company websites attest. But more than ever, practitioners and critics are asking difficult questions about how we make actors, how we make plays, how we make seasons, how we make money — in short, how we make theater.

It’s about time. For too long the industry has accepted all kinds of impropriety and unfairness as the supposedly inevitable cost of greatness. It has tolerated working conditions and wages that in some cases approach the Dickensian. For the sake of profit or what we glorify as the demands of art, it has laughed as bullies like the producer Scott Rudin terrorized their underlings, and has winked at the sexual misdeeds of men like Harvey Weinstein. In the process, the theater — like most other art forms but perhaps more intensely — has found a neat way to keep its doors largely shut to those who by reason of race, class or connection are not already part of the club.

Only recently has anyone been called to account, as a trickle of public allegations and cloudy repercussions have sidelined the playwright and artistic director Israel Horovitz, the director Gordon Edelstein, the casting director Justin Huff, the actor Kevin Spacey and the costume designer William Ivey Long. Actually, Long, who has denied accusations of sexual abuse by at least two former assistants, isn’t so sidelined; though he “parted ways” with the production of “Diana, the Musical” in 2020, his work on that show has nevertheless been nominated for a Tony Award at the ceremony honoring achievement in the theater on Sunday, June 12.

But maybe, in the wake of the existential crisis of Covid-19, when the ingrained practices of decades ground to a sudden halt, we are finally approaching an inflection point. What’s on the other side of that inflection is worth thinking about, including the potential benefits — and costs — of the fairer theatrical future many people are working hard to create. It’s a future in which pay transparency and equity, humane treatment of workers, respectful training of all kinds of students, diversity in employment as well as in product are crucial parts of the picture.

And in which sacred monsters aren’t.

Still, if we are approaching a Great Man Götterdämmerung — if those monsters, some of them superb at what they do, are finally beginning to face the music — we’d better look closely at the tune. What are we losing when we banish them? What are we losing if we don’t?

AS IT HAPPENS, the history of musicals is a good place to seek answers. In the way that musical theater incorporates and exaggerates all the qualities (and problems) of nonmusical theater, so too have the men we reflexively call the Broadway musical greats — the creators and directors and choreographers behind classics like “Oklahoma!,” “Gypsy,” “Chicago” and others — incorporated and exaggerated the traits of Strasberg and his ilk.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/theater/men-american-theater.html

Separately, in a decision that could affect more viewers, the Fox broadcast network will not direct its affiliates, which reach many millions more homes than Fox News, to show the hearing. They “will be offered” coverage of the hearing, Fox News Media said, but not mandated to take it, as is often the case with major events like a presidential address.

Given the highly polarized view that Americans have taken of the select committee’s work, it is unclear that Fox News’s usual viewers would tune in at all. They have punished the network in the past for coverage that did not toe the line. Its ratings fell sharply after Fox News became the first network in 2020 to call Arizona for President Biden, effectively declaring him the winner of the election, and then declined to promote the wildest claims of voter fraud. Newsmax, a conservative cable news channel that was more willing to broadcast questionable stories about fraud at the polls, saw its ratings surge temporarily.

Only after Mr. Biden was inaugurated, and Fox News anchors like Mr. Carlson began to cast events like Jan. 6 as a partisan smoke screen exploited by Democrats, did the network’s ratings rebound.

“The base isn’t clamoring to tune in, because they agree that Jan. 6 hearings are just a political stage show and that Jan. 6 has been blown out of proportion,” Ms. Hemmer of Columbia said.

During the Trump presidency and his two campaigns, Fox News was often caught between its audience and its notion of itself as an independent, conservative voice in media.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, conservatives pounced when they thought a Fox host like Megyn Kelly was unfairly critical of him. To this day, he complains that Fox treats him poorly because it doesn’t air his political rallies live and in full. He has gloated about the network’s ratings crash after the 2020 election, noting of Fox’s audience, “They don’t want to hear negativity toward me.”

With the decision to limit coverage of the Jan. 6 hearing this week, Fox News is sending a clear signal that it is siding with this audience.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/business/media/fox-jan-6-hearings.html

Since then, Mr. Zuckerberg has assumed more control over public messaging and policy decisions, which Ms. Sandberg used to handle. He also brought in hires with public policy expertise and promoted longtime executives who were loyal to his vision.

Three executives he promoted were Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Cox, who have been at the company for 16 years, and Mr. Olivan, who joined nearly 15 years ago. They were among Mr. Zuckerberg’s earliest recruits, and were instrumental in building the earliest versions of Facebook.

Mr. Olivan, 44, who is known internally as Javi, joined Facebook as head of international growth and rose steadily through the ranks. He is not a household name but oversaw Facebook’s rapid expansion and was closely involved with maintaining the company’s technical infrastructure.

Mr. Bosworth, 40, is seen as an enthusiastic and sometimes brash cheerleader for Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision. In January, he was promoted to be the next chief technology officer. He oversees the virtual and augmented reality labs, which make products like the Quest virtual reality headsets that are at the heart of Mr. Zuckerberg’s push for the metaverse. He and Mr. Zuckerberg are also close friends who vacation together.

Mr. Cox, 39, who became chief product officer in 2005, has often been described by employees as the heart of the company. He left Facebook in March 2019 but returned in June 2020, prompting speculation that Mr. Zuckerberg may have been signaling him as a successor.

During Mr. Cox’s absence, some of his teams were reassigned to report directly to Mr. Zuckerberg or other executives, said two senior Meta employees who have worked with Mr. Cox since his return. They said he had not assumed the type of expansive role he once had with thousands of engineers reporting to him.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/technology/meta-zuckerberg-successor-facebook.html

“I think this gives them a form of power,” he said of the people posting his photo, often under accounts intended to look as if they belong to news organizations. “Messing with somebody or making somebody feel bad, or saying that is just horrific that they’re so desensitized to, that gives them a feeling of belonging.”

But what happens next is the even more insidious danger, Ms. Phillips said: The joke is taken at face value by the sizable portion of people who are already primed to distrust society’s institutions.

“It just exacerbates all the conspiratorial stuff that we have swirling around and sets us on a dangerous course,” she said. “It further corrodes our ability to be grounded in the same empirical reality.”

Such pranks have a long historical precedent, researchers said. One man, a comedian, has been falsely named as the gunman in several mass killings, including a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in 2015.

“I don’t think you can find an event of significant magnitude where this doesn’t happen in the aftermath — it’s almost a reflex at this point,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. “Nowadays, people are promoting false-flag and crisis-actor theories 20 minutes after the event, and in very formulaic ways.”

Mr. Caulfield described the cycle as “almost factory production, happening like clockwork.”

In Mr. Jordan’s case, his photo resurfaces in social media posts from accounts that mimic news outlets and even copy their logos. A report last year that “Bernie” had been executed by Taliban soldiers in Kabul was posted on Twitter from @CNNAfghan, a fake account that Twitter suspended, and then amplified by @BBCAfghanNews, another suspended account, which cited “multiple reports” of the death.

“Bernie” has also been described as a victim of a tornado in Kentucky in 2021 and an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020. @FoxNewsUkraine, a fake account with 17 followers that has also been suspended, claimed this year that he was “a right-wing journalist” who had been killed in Mariupol, while @RussiaCnn, which has two followers, said he was a pilot who had been shot down while flying toward Russia.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/technology/jordie-jordan-gamer-photo-fake.html

“I think this gives them a form of power,” he said of the people posting his photo, often under accounts intended to look as if they belong to news organizations. “Messing with somebody or making somebody feel bad, or saying that is just horrific that they’re so desensitized to, that gives them a feeling of belonging.”

But what happens next is the even more insidious danger, Ms. Phillips said: The joke is taken at face value by the sizable portion of people who are already primed to distrust society’s institutions.

“It just exacerbates all the conspiratorial stuff that we have swirling around and sets us on a dangerous course,” she said. “It further corrodes our ability to be grounded in the same empirical reality.”

Such pranks have a long historical precedent, researchers said. One man, a comedian, has been falsely named as the gunman in several mass killings, including a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in 2015.

“I don’t think you can find an event of significant magnitude where this doesn’t happen in the aftermath — it’s almost a reflex at this point,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. “Nowadays, people are promoting false-flag and crisis-actor theories 20 minutes after the event, and in very formulaic ways.”

Mr. Caulfield described the cycle as “almost factory production, happening like clockwork.”

In Mr. Jordan’s case, his photo resurfaces in social media posts from accounts that mimic news outlets and even copy their logos. A report last year that “Bernie” had been executed by Taliban soldiers in Kabul was posted on Twitter from @CNNAfghan, a fake account that Twitter suspended, and then amplified by @BBCAfghanNews, another suspended account, which cited “multiple reports” of the death.

“Bernie” has also been described as a victim of a tornado in Kentucky in 2021 and an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020. @FoxNewsUkraine, a fake account with 17 followers that has also been suspended, claimed this year that he was “a right-wing journalist” who had been killed in Mariupol, while @RussiaCnn, which has two followers, said he was a pilot who had been shot down while flying toward Russia.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/technology/jordie-jordan-gamer-photo-fake.html

Mr. Chapman, a former college basketball player, started experimenting with crypto last year. He bought a Bored Ape for a few hundred dollars, and later traded it for the ape in astronaut gear because it evoked the space age history of Houston, his hometown. He started wearing a Bored Ape sweatshirt, and his mother-in-law bought him an ape-branded water bottle.

In September, Mr. Chapman listed his space ape on OpenSea, setting the price at 90 Ether. Three months later, he raised the price to 269 Ether, or about $1.1 million, in line with the skyrocketing value of other Bored Ape NFTs. He was planning to sell the NFT for enough that he could immediately buy another, less valuable space ape and pocket any profits from the trade.

In February, the ape sold for the original listing of 90 Ether, or roughly $300,000. Savvy traders had exploited a glitch that allowed them to activate out-of-date sales listings on OpenSea.

On Feb. 18, Mr. Finzer announced that OpenSea had updated its technology to prevent thieves from reactivating old listings. The company reimbursed some victims, asking them to sign nondisclosure agreements in exchange for payouts.

Mr. Chapman said OpenSea had initially offered him a refund of just the 2.5 percent fee it received when his space ape was sold. Last month, he said, OpenSea increased its offer to 15 Ether, or a little under $30,000 at today’s prices, after his lawyer wrote to the company. OpenSea declined to comment on his case.

Mr. Chapman is holding out for a bigger reimbursement. As the owner of a Bored Ape NFT, he would have been entitled to a large share of ApeCoin, a cryptocurrency that was launched in March. Ape NFT owners each received a chunk of coins worth more than $100,000 at the time.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/technology/nft-opensea-theft-fraud.html

CNN’s ubiquitous “Breaking News” banner is gone, now reserved for instances of truly urgent events. Snarky on-screen captions — “Angry Trump Turns Briefing Into Propaganda Session,” for instance — are discouraged. Political shows are trying to book more conservative voices, and producers have been urged to ignore Twitter backlash from the far right and the far left.

A month into his tenure as the new leader of CNN, Chris Licht is starting to leave his mark on the 24-hour news network he inherited in May from its prominent former president, Jeff Zucker. So far, the Licht Doctrine is a change from the Zucker days: less hype, more nuance and a redoubled effort to reach viewers of all stripes.

Running a network is a new challenge for Mr. Licht, a 50-year-old lifelong producer who has never led an organization as big as CNN. (His last employer, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” had a staff of about 200 people; CNN has roughly 4,000.) Some CNN journalists say they wonder if he can navigate a sprawling, unwieldy global news network past what has been a no good, very bad year.

In December, the anchor Chris Cuomo was fired for ethical lapses, prompting an investigation that ultimately led to Mr. Zucker’s ouster in February over an undisclosed relationship with a co-worker. Then, in April, the network’s new owners, Warner Bros. Discovery, shut down the streaming platform CNN+ weeks after its $300 million debut. On the same day, Mr. Licht announced the prospect of hundreds of layoffs in his first formal address to staff.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/business/media/cnn-chris-licht.html