News Corp CEO: Business Is Back With “Yoke of Woke Having Been Lifted”

Robert Thomson, who is CEO of the Murdoch-empire publications, said he believes there is a "tangible increase in business confidence here in the U.S. since the election."

By Caitlin Huston February 5, 2025 2:40pm

News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson praised what he sees as theimproved business conditions in the U.S. following the election, saying “the yoke of woke” has been lifted.

“We are seeinga tangible increase in business confidence here in the U.S. since the election,” Thomson said during his remarks to investors following second-quarter earnings. “The temporary turmoil of transactional tariffs aside, there is the confluence of economic optimism and a cultural awakening with the yoke of woke having been lifted. We believe these trends should lead to less superfluous, gratuitous regulation, greater capital formation, increased opportunities for all Americans and more candid, creative, compelling conversations. Hopefully, an era of censorship and self-censorship is receding into the distance.”

While Thomson said his comment was a general remark on business conditions, News Corp., which is owned by the Murdoch family and home to Dow Jones and publications including The Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Post, also reported a record revenue of $600 million at Dow Jones for the quarter, driven by improved circulation revenues, with digital circulation revenue growing at its fastest pace in two years.

It also saw higher professional information business revenues driven by its subscription products. News Corp expects year-over-year growth at Dow Jones to increase in the second half of the year. Digital-only subscriptions at The Wall Street Journal were up 7 percent year-over-year for the quarter, while total subscriptions were up 4 percent.

News Corp is one of many publishers to have signed a licensing agreement with AI platform OpenAI. Thomson continued to praise that collaboration while speaking out against Perplexity and newcomer DeepSeek. The company filed suit against Perplexity, an AI research and conversational search engine, in October, alleging that it is illegally using News Corp’s copyrighted work.

“We are pleased with our partnership with OpenAI, and hope that other companies in the segment take a similarly enlightened approach. Our legal action against the perplexing Perplexity is underway, and we look forward with relish to document discovery,“ Thomson said.

The News Corp chief added, “We firmly believe that this discovery process will be an important phase, not just for us, but for all who cherish the sanctity of IP. The sudden rise of DeepSeek is itself a solitary lesson for all AI players, if they are unable to host fresh, trusted news. Their version of AI will lack immediacy and relevance. Data centers and energy sources and newfangled chips may well be essential AI infrastructure, but ultimately, we believe content will be king in the world of AI.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/news-corp-ceo-business-yoke-of-woke-1236128108/

Has Brendan Carr Finally Figured Out How To Stop NPR?

Taxpayer-funded radio stations are barred from ‘airing commercials or other promotional announcements on behalf of for-profit entities’ 1/2

Chuck Ross February 5, 2025

National Public Radio on Monday ran a so-called "sponsor message" promoting pharma giant Procter & Gamble’s nerve-relief drug Nervive, "designed to reduce occasional nerve aches, weakness and discomfort." The message, effectively a commercial, is tied to one of hundreds of advertiser deals that are far more important to NPR than government funding. NPR brought in $100 million from corporate sponsors in 2023, compared to only $7 million in federal funding.

The thinly disguised commercials such as the "sponsor message" from Procter & Gamble—aimed straight at NPR’s rapidly aging audience with aching hands and feet—are now the focus of the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, who may have found the powerful news giant’s Achilles' heel. Carr has now launched an investigation into whether the news nonprofit’s "sponsor messages" have violated federal rules that prohibit taxpayer-funded radio stations from "airing commercials or other promotional announcements on behalf of for-profit entities."

NPR—whose $100 million sponsorship haul in 2023 came from around 450 corporate sponsors—has been criticized for decades by conservatives who object to an overtly liberal news outlet with enormous reach receiving taxpayer dollars.

"I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law," wrote Carr, a longtime commissioner of the FCC who is also backing similar probes of CBS, NBC, and ABC for allegations that their news coverage improperly favored Kamala Harris despite getting access to lucrative public airwaves. Regarding NPR, Carr took issue with providing the organization with taxpayer money, which, while dwarfed by sponsorship revenue, is believed to be essential to NPR’s operations. NPR airing advertisements for for-profit companies "would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars," Carr said.

Carr’s complaint is driven by persistent conservative complaints that hinge on NPR’s liberal bias. NPR news programs such as All Things Considered and Morning Edition, which each reach about 15 million listeners a week, have aired reliably liberal programming for more than 50 years (the network denies that its programming is biased). And in the years following the death of George Floyd, NPR, behind the scenes, became radicalized, according to a veteran NPR senior editor, Uri Berliner, who resigned under pressure after he published an explosive, first-hand account of NPR’s transformation into a "progressive silo." His public resignation led to the discovery of impassioned social media posts by NPR president Katherine Maher in which she condoned censorship of conservatives and defended violent looting during Black Lives Matter protests.

Maher last week defended NPR in response to Carr’s investigation, saying it "complies with federal regulations, including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters." She added, "We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR's adherence to these rules."

NPR receives taxpayer funding directly through the federal government and through donations from its member stations, which also receive taxpayer money.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which seeks to be a guide to Trump’s second term—though the president has disavowed it—calls for an end to all taxpayer funding for public broadcasting, calling such a move "good policy and good politics." During his first term, Trump repeatedly tried to cut funding for NPR, PBS, and other publicly funded, far-left institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In all these cases, Congress saved the funding. NPR’s supporters have, over the years, effectively appealed to Congress that some of the nonpartisan, local programming done by public broadcasting’s local radio and TV affiliates is worth the public expenditure and the headaches.

This time, however, could be different, and not just because of the new Trump administration’s determination to wield its power more effectively. Carr’s investigation, focusing its fire on NPR’s biggest source of revenue, is a tactic that Congress may find more difficult to undo.

https://freebeacon.com/media/has-brendan-carr-finally-figured-out-how-to-stop-npr/

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According to Carr, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, led by acting director Patrick Webre, will oversee the probe into the "sponsor messages." Should the FCC find NPR at fault, it "may result in negotiated settlements or enforcement actions that include monetary penalties and injunctive directives," according to the FCC website. If NPR persists in violating FCC rules, it could lead to repeated and escalating fines.

Republicans—who hold a trifecta in Washington, D.C.,—could cite any violations of regulations to justify cutting off taxpayer funds for NPR.

In the end, the fight over NPR's use of ads will likely result in a debate over the interpretations of the Communications Act, which sets rules for the content that publicly funded broadcasters can air.

NPR is allowed to run sponsor messages, but they are not allowed to be overly promotional or make "calls to action." Were one to invoke Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description of pornography, "I know it when I see it," NPR’s sponsor messages are clearly overt, promotional advertising whose scripts could just as easily be seen during commercial breaks on MSNBC, Sunday morning public affairs shows, or other upscale, left-leaning news programming.

Furthermore, according to NPR’s own interpretation of FCC regulations, its radio ads cannot make "health claims" or use "qualitative language" by describing "favorable qualities, benefits, and claims."

But the recent Procter & Gamble "sponsor message," which ran throughout the day Monday on NPR’s affiliates in San Francisco, New York City, and other major media markets, makes direct health claims, and certainly more direct health claims than most pharmaceutical advertisements on commercial radio and television which often—deliberately—make no health claims at all. Nervive, according to Procter & Gamble’s sponsor message, can "reduce occasional nerve aches, weakness, and discomfort" in hands or feet due to aging. This advertisement appears to blatantly violate both federal regulations and the outlet’s own internal recommendations about what it can broadcast.

And the Nervive "sponsor message" is far from alone in making direct, promotional claims. Most of the sponsor messages do.

An advertisement on KQED, the NPR affiliate in San Francisco, touted Celadyne, a federal defense contractor. The ad states Celadyne "offers solid-state storage solutions optimized for AI, with higher capacities, greater speed, and energy efficiency." Greater, presumably, than its competitors.

WBUR, the NPR Boston affiliate, promoted the hospital network Mass General Brigham, which "provid[es] leading cancer care with the most cancer specialists in New England."

"They’re one team, working together with new elaborations, new approaches, and advanced treatments like the region’s only proton therapy center."

NPR touts its advertisements as more effective than ads on a commercial radio station, something it proclaims to potential sponsors. The "sponsor messages" are a boon to its corporate sponsors’ bottom line, both because the advertisements are less cluttered and because of a "halo effect" that NPR listeners "attribute to the companies that sponsor us."

In sales pitches to potential advertisers, it touts a study it commissioned in 2018 that found NPR sponsor ads are "23% more memorable than traditional radio ads." That higher rate of "memory encoding," according to NPR, "has been shown to correlate with decision-making and purchase intent."

Carr’s investigation comes as NPR’s corporate sponsorships have declined significantly in recent years, alongside the many other news organizations seeing drops in advertising revenue. NPR’s corporate sponsorship revenues fell from $135 million in 2022 to $101 million in 2023, a fall it attributed to "poor economic conditions." Public broadcasting’s critics, from both the left and right, have asked if there’s a need for publicly funded news programming, considering the wide variety of news available online and via satellite, which can reach the remote areas outside the broadcast range of big, commercial radio stations that NPR’s programming was designed to penetrate.

https://freebeacon.com/media/has-brendan-carr-finally-figured-out-how-to-stop-npr/

Biden State Dept Privately Downplayed Use of 'Jihad' and 'Occupation' in UNRWA-Made Study Materials, Saying Only 'Some Other Audiences' View the Terms as 'Inappropriate'

The internal memos, obtained by the Free Beacon, aimed to combat criticism over the Biden admin's decision to resume UNRWA funding1/2

Adam Kredo February 6, 2025

When the Biden administration resumed funding to the United Nations relief agency for Gaza, it penned an internal memo aimed at defending UNRWA over its production of childhood "educational materials" that encourage violence and demonize Israel. Some of those materials included references to "jihad" and Israeli "occupation"—terms that the BidenState Department wrote are "in line with U.N. principles" and only "viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences."

The memo, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon througha records request from watchdog group Protect the Public Trust, came roughly two weeks after the Biden administration restored tens of millions of dollars in funding to UNRWAin April 2021 following a pause during President Donald Trump's first stint in the White House. Written by deputy assistant secretary Nancy Izzo Jackson for Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it addressed "examples of criticism" targeting UNRWA and laid out the State Department's "response."

The first section, titled, "Educational Materials," notes that UNRWA made "home-learning 'cards,' based on the Palestinian Authority's educational curriculum, to supplement textbooks sent home" during the COVID pandemic. Some of those cards, according to a January 2021 report from research firm Impact-se, included the "encouragement of violence" and accused Israel "of deliberately dumping radioactive and toxic waste in the West Bank."

UNRWA, the State Department wrote, had already removed or changed the content before the report's release. Shortly thereafter, however, Impact-se issued a follow-up report that identified additional "problematic cards," including "references to jihad in and violence in Arabic language lessons for grades 6 and 9," as well as references to "the Israeli occupation." UNRWA determined that those terms did not violate "U.N. principles," according to the State Department memo, which states that only "some other audiences" may object to them.

"UNRWA removed or updated four cards while retaining a dozen cards it deemed as in line with U.N. principles (e.g. use of 'jihad' in the Quran or the term 'occupation') but are viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences," the State Department said. (DOC)

The memo offers a fresh window into the Biden administration's decision to restore funding to UNRWA—one that shows the Biden State Department was well aware of the issues plaguing the embattled relief agency but opted to barrel forward with funds anyway. It came just two months before the State Department privately assessed that Hamas was likely to benefit from more than $360 million in additional aid.

Those private assessments did not square with the administration's public one. When announcing the funding restoration, Blinken said the assistance "serves important U.S. interests," including "Israeli-Palestinian understanding."

Behind closed doors, however, the State Department acknowledged concerns that UNRWA’s facilities are used by "terrorist groups" like Hamas. Its memo referenced the 2020 discovery of tunnels beneath an UNRWA school and facility but said it remained "unknown which entity is responsible" for them. (DOC)

Hamas, in the lead up to Oct. 7 and after it, relied heavily on a sophisticated tunnel system built beneath the Gaza Strip.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-state-dept-privately-downplayed-use-of-jihad-and-occupation-in-unrwa-made-study-materials-saying-only-some-other-audiences-view-the-terms-as-inappropriate/

>>22525847

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Many of these networks connected to UNRWA schools, which were also used as Hamas military outposts.

UNRWA, the State Department maintained in its memo, "has been very transparent with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and with the United States when any such incidents occur."

In a separate report prepared for Congress in 2021, the State Department documented "violations of UNRWA’s neutrality policies that are not consistent with the principle of neutrality." This included "slogans, graffiti, or other imagery on the inside or outside of UNRWA facilities." More than 247 infractions were reported from 2019 to 2020 alone, the report states.

The report also noted that, despite a "strict no-arms policy" at all UNRWA facilities, the agency had reported "armed incursions, armed incidents, unauthorized use of UNRWA installations, weapons, and tunnels.

"To address these concerns, the State Department proposed sending even more money to UNRWA so that it could train staff how to uphold the "principles of neutrality, tolerance, anti-discrimination, and human rights." (DOC)

Michael Chamberlain, Protect the Public’s Trust’s director, said the newly unearthed State Department documents highlight how the former administration "tried to sell a wholly unrealistic version of UNRWA to Congress."

==

"Even with all they knew, they shrugged and wrote the checks anyway,==" he told the Free Beacon. "All the post-Oct. 7 reports about UNRWA staff participating in terrorist attacks and terror groups storing war materiel in UNRWA facilities were not surprising to anyone paying attention—not even to the officials in charge of the decision to resume sending money to this organization."

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-state-dept-privately-downplayed-use-of-jihad-and-occupation-in-unrwa-made-study-materials-saying-only-some-other-audiences-view-the-terms-as-inappropriate/

>>22524790 Erica Roach, CFO of the Office of Personnel Management, is resigningpn

I'm pretty old in mid-life, and I have never seen such big teeth, like ever!

THANK THE LIVING AND IMMORTAL AND MERCIFUL GOD!

6 Feb, 2025 18:26

Zelensky ‘unsure’ Ukraine would survive without US aid

(FUCK YOU Zelenskythat Aid goes to your propaganda press, and NO you are not getting more)

The Ukrainian leader says Washington continues to send arms despite President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend foreign assistance

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has acknowledged that his country is unlikely to hold out against the Russian military if the US stops providing aid. The comments came after US President Donald Trump put most of Washington's foreign funding programs on hold.

The US has been Kiev’s main backer since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Last month, Trump claimed that Washington had spent $200 billion on shoring up Kiev. Zelensky retorted that only around $76 billion had actually been received.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Zelensky said “there’s no decrease in US aid as of today, and it hasn’t been put on hold, it continues.” He added that “we’re not talking about new [aid] packages.”

“As for what we could do without this assistance… I don’t even want to imagine what would happen,” the Ukrainian leader admitted.

“This would undoubtedly deal a blow to our capabilities to defend our land…I’m not sure we would hold out,” Zelensky concluded.Fuck You Again

Shortly after being sworn in last month, Trump signed an executive order suspending all US foreign development assistance programs for 90 days, with some exceptions, pending reviews to determine whether they serve Washington's interests.

The restrictions have led to the effective suspension of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funnels billions of dollars to causes deemed worthy by Washington.

Over the past weekend, USAID’s official website went offline and its X account disappeared, amid reports that the White House was considering merging it with the State Department.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine can’t exist without its Western sponsors.

“They won’t last a month if the money and ammunition run out,” he said, adding that “Ukraine practically has no sovereignty, in that sense.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that Western nations’ support for Kiev makes them “de facto a party to the conflict” – something both Washington and Brussels have denied.

https://www.rt.com/russia/612305-zelensky-ukraine-chances-without-us-aid/

6 Feb, 2025 18:03

Trump envoy responds to Zelensky’s nuclear weapons demand

The chances of Kiev getting nukes are “somewhere between slim and none,” Keith Kellogg has said

US President Donald Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, has brushed aside Kiev’s demand for nuclear weaponry, stating that it is “not going to happen.”

Kellogg made the remarks on Thursday while speaking to Fox News Digital. He was asked about the latest call by Vladimir Zelensky for “nuclear weapons” and “missile systems” from Kiev’s Western backers.

“The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none. Let’s be honest about it, we both know that’s not going to happen,” Kellogg said.

The idea of arming Ukraine with nukes goes against “common sense”and is not something the Trump administration would consider, Kellogg stated. “Remember, the president said we’re a government of common sense. When somebody says something like that, look at the outcome or the potential. That’s using your common sense,” he explained.

Zelensky, speaking to British journalist Piers Morgan earlier this week, said that Ukraine must either be fast-tracked into the US-led NATO bloc or given more weaponry to “stop Russia.”

“Give us back nuclear weapons, give us missile systems. Partners, help us finance a one-million army, deploy your troops to the areas of our country where we want to stabilize the situation,” he stated.

While the Ukrainian leader has raised the issue of nuclear weaponry before, including shortly ahead of the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, he has done so increasingly in recent months. Zelensky has expressed regret that his country surrendered its portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the USSR in exchange for security guarantees in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. In 1991, Ukraine possessed some 1,700 warheads, which however, remained under Moscow’s operational control.

Russia insists that Ukraine never possessed any nuclear weapons of its own, as the assets belonged to Moscow as the sole legal successor of the Soviet Union. The 1994 memorandum also envisioned Ukraine’s neutral status, which has been undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion and Kiev’s aspirations to join the US-led bloc, Russian officials maintain.

In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly stated that the any procurement of nuclear weaponry by Kievwas non-starter and would compel Moscow to use all available means to destroy it.

“What do you think – on the level of common sense – if the country with which we are essentially now engaged in military operations becomes a nuclear power, what should we do?In this case, use all – I want to emphasize this – precisely all the means of destruction at Russia’s disposal,” the president said. (Russian's interpretation of FAFO)

https://www.rt.com/news/612300-trump-envoy-zelensky-nukes/