Jack Benjamin

Jack Benjamin

@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Senior reporter and podcast host for The Media Leader, a trade publication focused on all things commercial media. Writer, journalist, American in London.

868 followers1.1K following2.3K posts

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

I don’t think NYT wants the GOP to win. I think NYT’s staff and ownership - Is aware they have a natural liberal bias - Wants to be perceived as “neutral” (however they might define it) - Therefore constantly overcompensates in ways that benefit Republicans

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

There are only two explanations for the NYT's habit of presenting GOP operatives and donors as true swing voters: 1. Their reporters and editors are somehow incapable of running a simple Google searches, showing just a staggering level of journalistic incompetence 2. They want to the GOP to win

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

@chaykak.bsky.social: “[Substack] may not save journalism as a whole, but it certainly helps prolong the careers of those willing to play the ‘game,’ as McKenzie put it, of cultivating their personal brands.” www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...

newyorker.comDid Substack Fix the Internet?A new book by Hamish McKenzie, the platform’s co-founder, argues that writers today are more empowered than ever. But online newsletters form their own kind of attention economy.

Jack Benjamin reposted

Eric Lipton NYT
@ericlipton.nytimes.com

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

nytimes.comHow Trump Gave the Worst Polluters a Free Pass (Gift Article)The president temporarily waived clean-air rules for industrial facilities that spew cancer-causing gases. Then his appointees worked to gut the regulations altogether.
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-w...

mcsweeneys.netI Will Pay Any Amount to Not Pay My Taxes“Seriously, I don’t care how much it costs. Take every dime I have. But know this: I would level my house to the ground before I paid slightly higher propert...
Politico@politico.com

Zuckerberg considered leaving CA over wealth tax, Meta says politi.co/3TPjyfF

politico.comZuckerberg considered leaving CA over wealth tax, Meta says politi.co/3TPjyfFZuckerberg considered leaving CA over wealth tax, Meta says politi.co/3TPjyfF

Jack Benjamin reposted

Matt Novak
@paleofuture.bsky.social

Replying to @paleofuture.bsky.social

The key difference between Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk is that Holmes cost many in the ruling class a lot of money and Musk is making many in the ruling class a lot of money.

Katie牛🏳️‍⚧️@kevincow.bsky.social

I was gonna say "how is it not illegal to promote your product with blatant lies like this" But then I remembered I just saw You Can See Everything, and like It very much is illegal So why is he not in jail like Holmes for his far more egregious and plentiful lies

Jack Benjamin reposted

Ezra Levin ❌👑
@ezralevin.bsky.social

A bad update: we're getting reports of pro-No Kings creators who have been suspended today as well. And we still lack backend access to the official No Kings account. Stay tuned, will report news when I have it.

Ezra Levin ❌👑@ezralevin.bsky.social

Full update from our team. We STILL do not have admin access to the account.

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Netflix went from trying to compete earnestly in prestige TV last decade to investing heavily in reality and documentary and really ceding territory back to HBO (and eventually Apple). Every new original since Ozark has struck me as just OK at best. A change was long overdue.

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social

Netflix content chief is out puck.news/netflix-chie...

puck.newsNetflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria Is OutThe streamer's creative leader will depart as it aims to fix its engagement woes. Peter Rice, the former Disney and Fox executive, will replace her.

Jack Benjamin reposted

Charlie Warzel
@cwarzel.bsky.social

genuinely think that chartbeat and real-time audience traffic insight dashboards are one of the worst things to happen to the media industry. it found out what people read and wanted and public trust has pretty much only sharply declined since then

This post is unavailable.

Jack Benjamin reposted

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Replying to @larryglickman.bsky.social

Violating the Hatch Act has become so normalized I can't remember the last time it was reported explicitly as its own story, let alone mentioned in context.

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

X has submitted its first quarterly report to Ofcom over addressing illegal content. Ofcom: "While there appear to have been improvements in how quickly X is reviewing this material, we have ongoing concerns around the effectiveness of X’s response to taking down illegal hate and terror content."

ofcom.org.ukOfcom update: Monitoring X’s response to hate and terror content, and Grok investigation latestX has submitted its first quarterly report to Ofcom on the action it has taken when suspected hate and terror content is reported to it by users.
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Elon Musk’s ownership of Starlink has been and continues to be a major security threat to Europe.

Christopher Miller@christopherjm.ft.com

NEW: Ukrainian troops were caught off guard by restrictions on Starlink satellite internet systems that disrupted frontline operations, as Kyiv received no advance warning from its partners of a Russian missile attack on its energy facilities for the second day running, Ukrainian officials tell me.

ft.comUkraine blindsided by Starlink restrictions and intelligence gaps during Russian attackMoscow ignores Donald Trump’s ‘energy ceasefire’ while Kyiv’s forces experience connectivity problems on Elon Musk’s satellite network

Jack Benjamin reposted

Eric Michael Garcia
@ericmgarcia.bsky.social

FIFA signed a more than seven-year lease at Trump Tower, worth about $4 million, according to two officials directly involved in the deal and documents reviewed by The New York Times. The suite mostly sits empty. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/w...

nytimes.comFIFA Pays Millions for Trump Tower Office Said to Be Rarely Used (Gift Article)The deal is another sign of how Gianni Infantino, the leader of soccer’s global governing body, has sought closer ties to President Trump.
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Anyone have a list of favorite indie publishers?

Manisha Krishnan@manishakrishnan.bsky.social

NEW: Staff at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette told @adamm0rgan.bsky.social AI is infiltrating their workplaces, from generating cover art and back cover copy, to publicity materials, to rejection emails, as execs tell junior staff to "champion" the tech. www.wired.com/story/book-p...

wired.comBook Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are RevoltingWorkers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

Jack Benjamin reposted

Sheera Frenkel
@sheeraf.bsky.social

I am old enough to remember when the White House gathered tech company executives in DC to figure out how to remove execution videos from the internet. www.buzzfeednews.com/article/shee...

buzzfeednews.comInside The Obama Administration’s Attempt To Bring Tech Companies Into The Fight Against ISISDozens of U.S. government officials, tech executives, and entertainment representatives gather in D.C., under a cloud of growing anti-Muslim sentiment and the spiralling fight between Apple and the FB...
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Looking forward to all those "Can data centers be repurposed into housing" thinkpieces if/when this bubble pops.

Jesse Felder@jessefelder.com

‘If AI doesn’t deliver on its promise then we face a double blow to growth: because AI didn’t expand our productive capacity as hoped, and because other investments which might have didn’t take place.’ www.ft.com/content/bf40...

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Remarkable to see such large growth in social media advertising when we've been reporting for years that there is a wide consensus among senior industry leaders that advertisers are already way overinvested in social media.

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Muse is constantly updating granular information about you — even if you don’t use Muse. All users giving permission to Muse to scrape personal data are in effect offering that permission on behalf of literally everyone else they are in contact with. Data privacy nightmare.

Michael Derby@michaelsderby.bsky.social

Facebook AI state of affairs: "The level of insight in the resulting dossiers makes social-media algorithms that study your likes and clicks look quaint. Muse is designed to infer users’ goals, including those you 'have not said out loud.'" Via Time

time.comMeta’s Muse AI Agent Is Building a Dossier On YouInternal instructions reviewed by TIME show the AI assistant mapping users and their contacts—including people who don’t use Muse—and sharing anonymized insights across its system.

Jack Benjamin reposted

Michael Derby
@michaelsderby.bsky.social

Facebook AI state of affairs: "The level of insight in the resulting dossiers makes social-media algorithms that study your likes and clicks look quaint. Muse is designed to infer users’ goals, including those you 'have not said out loud.'" Via Time

time.comMeta’s Muse AI Agent Is Building a Dossier On YouInternal instructions reviewed by TIME show the AI assistant mapping users and their contacts—including people who don’t use Muse—and sharing anonymized insights across its system.
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Per @deadline.com Manon Dave, the head of future world design in BBC's Media Tech unit, wants iPlayer to become a place where audience members say, “I want to iPlayer and chill.” iPlayer is developing an AI agent called Iggy to recommend and summarise iPlayer content. deadline.com/2026/10/bbc-...

deadline.comBBC Boss Matt Brittin Details Silicon Valley Revolution At BroadcasterIn a speech to staff, BBC director general Matt Brittin outlined a Sillicon Valley-isation of the BBC, calling on the corporation to "be more Elvis."
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Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

I'm sure all the 2,000 people being laid off from the BBC are super excited to hear those cost savings are being redirected to fund Iggy, which audiences have been loudly clamoring for.

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Per @deadline.com Manon Dave, the head of future world design in BBC's Media Tech unit, wants iPlayer to become a place where audience members say, “I want to iPlayer and chill.” iPlayer is developing an AI agent called Iggy to recommend and summarise iPlayer content. deadline.com/2026/10/bbc-...

deadline.comBBC Boss Matt Brittin Details Silicon Valley Revolution At BroadcasterIn a speech to staff, BBC director general Matt Brittin outlined a Sillicon Valley-isation of the BBC, calling on the corporation to "be more Elvis."
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

"Brittin said Dave — who at one point during his presentation referred to the director-general as 'my big homie' — had captured a 'pioneering mindset' that he wants to see more of at the BBC. Brittin added that the BBC plans to begin testing some of Dave’s ideas with audiences 'in the coming weeks.'

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

Ex-OpenAI safety lead: "We’re talking about a harm that’s much larger, for example, than a single nuclear power station melting down. And the internal controls and safety and redundancies are just nowhere near what the world expects for a nuclear power facility." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.David Robinson, who wrote OpenAI’s safety protocols, resigned last week over safety concerns.
Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

"Part of what was the fundamental cognitive dissonance for me was we keep publishing these warnings, but ultimately, we’re still training and deploying these dangerous models that we’re warning about."

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

"The idea that we can align to human values, as if there's one set of human values, when it’s a cacophony — and it’s beautiful, but it’s messy, and people believe lots of different things. We need wisdom to figure out how to even think about alignment that, in my view, Silicon Valley does not have."

Jack Benjamin
@jackcarterbenjamin.bsky.social

From August last year, per Deadline: "New Paramount CEO David Ellison said that he had 'no interest' in wading 'into the political spectrum' with CBS News, as he and other executives addressed the independence of the news division under the new company." deadline.com/2025/08/skyd...

deadline.comNew Paramount Execs Address CBS News Independence; Ombudsman Will Be “A Transparency Vehicle, Not An Oversight Vehicle”A new ombudsman Will Be "a transparency vehicle, not an oversight vehicle," Jeff Shell said
Brian Stelter@brianstelter.bsky.social

www.cnn.com/2026/10/06/m...

Jack Benjamin reposted

Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR)
@hcrichardson.bsky.social

The amount of money the administration is promising in order to buy votes is significantly less than the amount of money it is taking away in programs and services. And it's OUR money!

Reuters Legal@legal.reuters.com

The US Energy Department will announce $150 million in new funding for power lines in Alaska on Monday as Vice President JD Vance visits the state, where Republicans are fighting to hold a critical Senate seat in the November midterm elections.

reut.rsEXCLUSIVE: US to announce $150 million for Alaska power lines as Vance campaigns in Senate battlegroundThe US Energy Department will announce $150 ‌million in new funding for power lines in Alaska on Monday as Vice President JD Vance visits the state, where Republicans are fighting to hold a critical Senate seat in the November midterm elections.