logo
ENFRع
#

Latest news with #newspapers

House of Lords block attempt to limit foreign investment in British newspapers
House of Lords block attempt to limit foreign investment in British newspapers

Daily Mail​

time22-07-2025

  • Business
  • Daily Mail​

House of Lords block attempt to limit foreign investment in British newspapers

A bid to severely limit foreign state investment in UK newspapers was defeated by peers tonight. Paving the way for the takeover of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the House of Lords blocked an attempt to prevent passive shareholdings being raised to 15 per cent. It is the latest turn in a tumultuous two-year takeover process for the 170-year-old business. It comes after the previous Conservative government put a 5 per cent limit in place amid fears the Telegraph could be bought by RedBird IMI, a firm majority-owned by the UAE, in a £500million deal. But following a consultation, Labour proposed a higher cap to enable newspapers to access crucial finance. Tory Baroness Stowell said the 15 per cent cap supports the 'much bigger principle of Press freedom' and told the Lords: 'While we all care about protecting a free Press, upholding that principle will serve little purpose if our news industry can't survive – and their economic conditions are worsening.' Liberal Democrat peer Lord Fox had tabled a rare 'fatal motion' to block the proposals, despite approval by the Commons. But it was defeated by 267 votes to 155. RedBird Capital, the US junior partner in RedBird IMI, agreed a deal in May to buy a majority stake in the newspaper for £500 million. Abu-Dhabi's IMI will look to buy a minority stake as part of the consortium.

Telegraph sale poised to go ahead after Lords foreign ownership vote
Telegraph sale poised to go ahead after Lords foreign ownership vote

The Guardian

time22-07-2025

  • Business
  • The Guardian

Telegraph sale poised to go ahead after Lords foreign ownership vote

The sale of the Telegraph looks set to finally go through after government legislation to allow foreign states to own up to 15% in British newspapers survived a potentially fatal vote in the House of Lords. Gerry Cardinale's RedBird Capital is leading a consortium looking to buy the Telegraph for £500m, in a deal that would result in the United Arab Emirates retaining a stake of 15%. Ministers have been attempting to push through legislation to allow foreign states to own passive stakes of up to 15% in British newspapers, after the previous Conservative administration proposed a law in March last year that set the limit at zero. That cap meant the joint venture RedBird IMI, which bought the Telegraph Media Group in November 2023, would have to sell up as it is 75% funded by International Media Investments (IMI) – controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates. The US private equity company RedBird Capital, which contributed the other 25% of funding, has tabled a deal to buy the Telegraph under which IMI would retain a minority stake of up to 15%, although RedBird has said it can fully fund a deal in its own right. The government's foreign ownership bill would allow this purchase to go ahead but the plan was put at risk on Tuesday after Liberal Democrat peers attempted to block it via a rare 'fatal motion', the strongest opposition that can be taken in the House of Lords, which would force ministers to reintroduce the legislation. After an almost three-hour debate, peers voted to reject the fatal motion 267 to 155, meaning the 15% cap will pass into law. However, another statutory instrument will need to be introduced after the parliamentary recess in September to add a rule that will stop foreign investors from buying multiple 15% stakes in British newspapers. No final deal for the Telegraph has yet been signed, and a takeover will still face regulatory hurdles, including a public interest test that will be triggered by the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy. It will also be subject to a full investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion However, the government's win in the House of Lords is likely to prompt RedBird Capital to publicly announce its formal bid in the coming weeks. RedBird Capital – which holds various investments including a stake in the parent company of Liverpool football club and is seeking to jointly acquire the TV and film business Paramount – has said that if the deal goes ahead it would become the sole controlling investor of the Telegraph. It is also set to bring on British partners with small stakes, including the owner of the Daily Mail and Len Blavatnik, the owner of Warner Music and the sports and entertainment streaming service Dazn.

AI Lacks Full Capability To Replace Journalism
AI Lacks Full Capability To Replace Journalism

Forbes

time21-07-2025

  • General
  • Forbes

AI Lacks Full Capability To Replace Journalism

1st April 1970: Stacks of New York Times newspapers sit next to a man's newsstand on 42nd street in ... More Times Square, New York. (Photo by) Although there are lots of exciting new advances giving us unheard-of capabilities and resources with the output of large language models, there are some important casualties that we've recognized along the way. Near the top of the list, and maybe at the top of the list, is newspapers. These paper media were institutions through the last two centuries, and to anybody who cares, it's dispiriting to see what they're like now. Over the last decade or so, newsrooms kept getting slashed. But it's not just head count. Journalists also became less able to speak truth to power through a number of trends, some involving liability. This article from Politico says it vehemently, and in detail, talking about how writers end up in defensive stances and editors went from swashbuckling tigers to demure little cats. I think it's highly relevant that the author used the word 'swagger' a number of times to talk about the enormous change in tone, as well as content, over the years. 'Newspaper culture lost its conviction as it became aware of its own dimunition (sic),' Jack Shafer writes, under the scorching heading: Cultural Cache Wanes. 'Yesterday's journalists thought the world revolved around what their newspaper wrote. Today's journalists resign themselves to the fact that their copy simply doesn't matter as much.' Ouch. This is one of the more direct and frank pieces I could find on the details around how journalism has changed, and I think it should be mandatory reading for media undergrads. ChatGPT is Speechless Just for fun, I decided to ask GPT directly and simply: 'Why did newspapers die?' The model thought for a while. In fact, I thought it had frozen, and I had to restart the query, after which I looked at the little circle representing response latency, once again sitting there for at least a minute or so. That's unusual, and lacking CoT, I wondered what the LLM was doing. It finally spit out this: 'Newspapers declined primarily due to the rise of digital media, which fundamentally altered how people consume news. With internet accessibility, readers shifted to instant, free, and personalized content available online. Advertisers followed this migration, diverting revenue streams to platforms like Google and Facebook that offer targeted ads, undermining traditional newspapers' financial viability. Additionally, social media empowered direct engagement and rapid dissemination of information, challenging newspapers' slower publication cycles. Paywalls introduced to recapture revenue often discouraged readership, while cost-cutting measures reduced journalism quality, accelerating audience loss. The younger demographic, preferring multimedia formats over print, further eroded newspapers' subscriber base. Lastly, mobile technology enhanced convenience, allowing users to access news instantly and conveniently, making printed newspapers less attractive. Together, these technological shifts, changing reader habits, financial pressures, and competition from digital platforms led to newspapers' steady decline, marking the end of their dominance in the information landscape.' Social media, pay walls, mobile technology, digital processes – all of it came together to overwhelm these businesses that just didn't have the power to pivot in the right ways. Of course, the same goes for companies cranking out VHS cassettes, or film companies in the age of digital cameras. But newspapers are different somehow. It's not just a product – it's supposed to play a role, or arguably, several key roles, in our society. And that's not the whole story. Some of the more robust papers in older American cities were already on the ropes. But they hung on. Until AI became capable of actually writing that boilerplate copy that editors had been training their reporters to write. As David Brooks might say, they were then hoisted on their own petards. A Journalist's Story In a recent TED talk, a writer about his own experience with ChatGPT, and taking a trip back memory lane, looking at what's happened to newspapers. Decades ago, he explained, he was a young reporter covering news in Connecticut. He talks about a boat ride that he took with a source, looking at how land around a power plant would be vulnerable to development through deregulation and the sale of utility land parcels. At the time, he said, it was possible to pursue this story and try to let the public know what was happening. Fast forward to today, and we really don't have those capabilities anymore, at least not in the same ways. There's no one to ring the bell, to respond to the bat-signal, and the tools that journalists and editors and newsrooms have used are largely ineffective now. But in addition, Chesto recounts how in the digital age, ChatGPT doesn't understand the story as it's been archived for posterity. He notes that when ChatGPT did a search on that old story, it came up with the erroneous idea that the land was not supposed to be used for hydroelectric power generation, when in fact, the opposite was true. 'Theoretically, you could over-develop and still pump water out of the lake and make electricity out of it, but Google didn't understand any of that,' he added, explaining how the model also missed the context. It reminded me of some of an LLM's other misunderstandings: neural nets can typically render a frisbee or a ball, but have trouble figuring out how those items move in real time. The Biggest Factory in Massachusetts Unsatiated, Chesto added another anecdote about ChatGPT mistakes – something we often call 'hallucinations' or chalk up to the limited crunching of information related to a complex idea. In this case, he mentioned how one of his colleagues got a hot lead that Dell employed 10,000 people at a facility in the state of Massachusetts. Humans, he said, had to knock down that assertion, knowing that it was wrong. '(The reporter) was paying for this service to find out where the biggest factory was in Massachusetts, and the robots got that one wrong, too,' he said. So in a sense, the power of artificial intelligence has replaced manual, deliberate and painstaking journalism with collective digital searches that don't always return the right result. And that's where we're at. Again, we've gained a lot with AI – but we've lost a lot too. It's a big change. Unlike the cloud era and the big data era, AI is going to transform many aspects of our lives in big ways. We have to be ready to navigate this in the best way possible.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store