A North Dakota judge has thrown out the riot charges against Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. The decision, Goodman said, “is a complete vindication of my right as a journalist to cover the attack on the protesters, and of the public’s right to know what is happening with the Dakota Access pipeline.”
The first of two defamation trials against Rolling Stone for their 2014 article about rape at the University of Virginia began yesterday. In a ruling last week, a judge decided that both the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s report on the story’s mistakes and an interview with Nicole Eramo, the campus administrator who dismissed the rape claims detailed in the article, will be admissible as evidence in the trial. Editor Jann Wenner says that the retracted article and the subsequent lawsuits haven’t damaged the company, financially or otherwise: “Our journalistic reputation is shining.” The magazine seems to be staying away from any possibly litigious articles at the moment: Beejoli Shah’s “Why Derrick Rose’s Rape Trial May Wreck NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s Legacy” was removed from the website on Friday, two days after it was posted, after adding two corrections at the behest of an NBA representative. Meanwhile, an upcoming article by Shah about the NBA has been killed.
The Swedish Academy has yet to make contact with Bob Dylan after awarding him the 2016 Nobel prize in literature, leading some to wonder: Will he attend the ceremonies? Permanent secretary Sara Danius told The Guardian that she has contacted the musician’s “closest collaborator,” and that she’s not concerned: “I think he will show up. . . . It will be a big party in any case and the honour belongs to him.”
The New York Public Library announced the finalists for the first Harriet Tubman Prize. Given jointly by the Lapidus and Schomburg Centers, the prize recognizes nonfiction books investigating slavery and will be awarded in December. Finalists include Patrick Rael’s Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1875, Aisha K. Finch’s Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844, and Calvin Schermerhorn’s The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860.
Disney’s chief executive Bob Iger has signed on to write a book with Random House. The untitled work will focus on leadership and the “strategies he has developed in his eleven years as CEO of Disney, the world’s largest media company.”
Tablet asks, “What will become of Jared Kushner” after his father-in-law’s presidential campaign is over? The answer might have something to do with the rumored Trump television network, which Kushner recently discussed with the head of a media-focused investment bank.
Even with Peter Thiel’s donation of $1.25 million, Trump can’t match the nearly $8 million donated by tech leaders to Clinton’s campaign. Journalists are also donating more to Clinton than to Trump. Even though many media companies bar journalists from donating to political campaigns, during the 2016 campaign they’ve donated nearly $400,000 to Clinton, and around $14,000 to Trump.
Tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, Angela Flournoy talks to Brit Bennett about her new book, The Mothers.
