Tell us what we want

In this edition of the CMT newsletter, we feature three stories that engage, in different ways, with the question of whether the purpose of media is to give people what they want. First, Monica Attard looks at Latvia’s decision to expel exiled Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin, who had resided in the country since 2014. His reporting, while strongly critical of the Putin regime, has engaged with Russian framing of the Ukraine war in a way not typically pursued by Western outlets.  

Next, Harry Craigie looks at Meta’s newly released agentic AI system Muse, which like many AI products, gives us plenty of what we want, but likely at the price of personal privacy. Finally, I look at the recently announced partnership between USA Today Co. and Palantir, whose reputation has the company’s reporters up in arms. USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed has spruiked the deal as enabling them to focus on ‘what’s resonating with consumers’, even if that means producing less news.  

Read the stories:

Deplatforming and deportation - Monica Attard

A'muse'ing - Harry Craigie

Embedded links - Michael Davis