Borkowski Media Trends: Elon vs Disney | Biden's Blank & More...

PLUS: Gen AI in News Media & Rishi's Rocky Week

Elon’s proxy culture war vs Disney

Even for a company as accustomed to thrills as Disney, this week has been a rollercoaster.

It all began with the thunderous announcement that Gina Carano, known for her role in "The Mandalorian," is suing Disney and Lucasfilm over her controversial firing from the hit series. Carano alleged she was fired for voicing right-wing opinions on social media and is seeking a court order that would force Lucasfilm to recast her. The announcement threw another bomb into the culture wars, intensifying scrutiny on Disney amidst a general ‘anti-woke’ wave across the US. As expected, Musk quickly followed the dog whistle, offering to cover the legal fees of individuals like Carano facing “discrimination” on his social media platform. “Please let us know if you would like to join the lawsuit against Disney,” he wrote.

Keen not to let the ride stop there, Musk threw in another loop-the-loop by appearing at the Los Angeles premiere of Disney's latest hit - Lola. His appearance caught the intrigue of a showbiz reporter who stopped him to ask what he was doing on the red carpet. “I’m just, er, here with friends,” he said. “You know, thinking about companies to acquire.” This might have been taken as a jest, had Musk's date for the evening been anyone other than Nelson Peltz. Beyond his fame as David Beckham's brother-in-law, Peltz has become one of the leading voices of America's anti-woke movement. He heads a fund that is locked in a “proxy battle” in the boardroom of Disney, seeking to oust its chief Bob Iger and "restore the magic." 

By this point, it all looked like a pretty rough ride for poor Mickey Mouse. But a seasoned entertainer like Iger kept the ride rolling, throwing in one final corkscrew: a show-stopping earnings call. Across the course of a whirwind hour, Iger unveiled a star-studded lineup of announcements, from Nick Saban joining ESPN to the release of a Moana sequel and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour streaming film. In a masterclass of corporate communications, Iger pulled the train back on track so successfully that Disney stock jumped 10% - its best day in more than three years. 

Maybe Peltz needn’t be so worried about Iger's ability to keep the magic alive after all...

Biden Draws a Blank

The announcement of King Charles’ cancer diagnosis may have sent the UK’s media into a tailspin, but Thursday night’s release of Robert Hur’s special council investigation into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents has put the spotlight on how the health of one individual can have much darker political consequences. The report will have been painful reading for Biden’s re-election campaign team – despite not facing criminal charges, it concluded that the President did “willfully retain and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the White House as VP in 2017. Much more damaging are the assertions about the 81 year old’s memory, with headlines declaring that Biden had even forgotten when his son had died.

An unplanned press conference was swiftly called, an ill-advised knee jerk reaction by the President’s team to reclaim the narrative. Instead, the event saw Biden reach almost Trumpian levels of frustration in the face of journalist question. The temper tantrum included finger pointing, raised voices, and a damp squib of a comeback targeted at Fox News’s Peter Doocey – when Doocey questioned how bad Biden’s memory actually was, the President hollered back, “my memory is so bad I let you speak.” Further damage was done when Biden went on to speak about the conflict in Gaza, appearing to confuse Egypt and Mexico.

With another four years of Trump looming over Americans and the world, the Democrats are in desperate need of demonstrating that they have a steady hand on the tiller. Attempting to recreate the firebrand style of Donald Trump is only moving them in the opposite direction – the MAGA crowd may be immune to embarrassment, but liberal America will run scared. 

Gen AI creeping into the News

Ever since Gen AI emerged as a critical threat to news publishers - the emergence of ChatGPT and how grown up the service immediately felt compared to previous AI text generators- industry conversations on the future of media have ramped-up, as has industry concern.

Publishers widely acknowledge that programmers responsible for platforms like Bard and ChatGPT have scraped their content for model training without permission and don’t reference its origin. While there have been legal challenges to these large language models, some recent developments show a different approach from publishers prioritising “negotiation over litigation”.

As first reported in December, the German publisher of Business Insider and Politico, Axel Springer SE, partnered with OpenAI, granting access to its content and allowing ChatGPT to summarise its content library for a fee. And now News Corp is in the mix, reported to be in advanced negotiations with AI companies over access to content.

It’s an interesting twist as we’re used to hearing news that outlets like the New York Times, CNN and ABC are actively blocking OpenAI’s GPTBot web crawler from accessing content. But the decision to work with AI is an interesting turn of pace, accepting that AI is very much here to stay and it’s easier to swim with the tide than battle the current.

The fact that so many publishers are split on this issue emphasises the uncertainty of what’s to come in this domain. We know all too well the history of companies like Facebook stealing users’ data for unprecedented hordes of wealth, and it makes sense to opt for caution when generative AI is still in its infancy. But getting ahead of the curve and striking these deals could shape the future of AI and the media’s relationship for years to come.

Rishi’s Rocky Ride

The Poisoned Chalice that is the role of British Prime Minister continued to afflict Rishi Sunak this week. Two moments loaded the chambers of his political opponents, provided headline fodder for the media, and unleashed the full outrage-ridicule spectrum of the social media clickerati.

Firstly, Rishi accepted a £1000 bet cleverly offered by Piers Morgan, that the UK’s much criticised Rwanda policy would achieve lift off before the general election.

Given that the policy has been criticised by human rights groups as putting some of the world’s most vulnerable in danger and allowed even a fence-sitting Labour to show off its progressive credentials, and that Rishi is often attacked as an out-of-touch rich kid, the media and internet were instantly and gleefully festooned with accusations of insensitivity and unseriousness. The SNP even lodged a snarky question about a potential financial conflict of interest. The flippant moment effectively allowed the government’s enemies to hark back to the shenanigans of the Boris premiership.

The second blow-up was during PMQs when Rishi decided to barb about Labour being ‘unable to define a woman’ only to be informed that he was doing to in the presence of the mother of murdered transgender teenager Brianna Ghey. While Labour’s accusations of the Prime Minister lacking empathy were observed by some as opportunism and even hypocrisy, the glib moment compounded the attacks from earlier in the week.

Sunak inherited an uphill struggle when he took the top job, with the country toiling on several fronts and his predecessors having bequeathed a wealth of potential attack lines to his enemies. However, the infinitesimal margin for error this affords him certainly does not stretch to two own goals in a week if he hopes to win this year’s election.