AirTalk looks ahead to the future of the U.S. healthcare industry after news that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan are teaming up to create an independent health care company for their employees. We also speak with newly named editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times, Jim Kirk; how will Facebook’s new algorithm affect your newsfeed?; and more.
After house votes to release Nunes memo, the political and national security ramifications of making it public
Lawmakers in Washington D.C. are preparing for tonight’s State of the Union address from President Trump, but much of the attention is being sucked up by the so-called “Nunes memo,” a three and a half page classified document that is alleged to show FBI misconduct into the Russia investigation.
Monday night, the House Intelligence Committee voted to release the memo despite warnings from the Department of Justice that doing so would be “extraordinarily reckless.”
One of the reported contentions in the memo is that the so-called “Steele Dossier” was the basis of the FBI’s request to eavesdrop on a Trump campaign official. Republicans are highly critical of using what they call an unsubstantiated and politically motivated hit piece as the basis for a FISA warrant. But it’s the release of the memo itself that’s become its own controversy.
Additionally, in the wake of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s sudden resignation announcement on Monday, there is some speculation that a Sunday trip that FBI director Christopher Wray took to Capitol Hill, where he supposedly read the Nunes memo, may have been the impetus behind McCabe stepping down.
Guests:
Adam Schiff, U.S. Congressman (D-Burbank) representing California’s 28th district which stretches from West Hollywood through Eagle Rock, and from Echo Park to the Angeles National Forest
Sean T. Walsh, Republican political analyst and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco; he is a former adviser to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a former White House staffer for Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan join forces to disrupt health care. Here’s what that could look like
Three of America’s giants, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, from three different fields, tech, insurance and finance, respectively, are teaming up to create an independent health care company for their U.S. employees.
There’s not a lot of detail about the plan yet, only the broad strokes goal of utilizing technology to provide affordable health care to employees. This would be a long-term project, not subject to profit limits and incentives.
There’s been speculation about Amazon’s entry into the healthcare industry, in both drug distribution and web services.
Against the backdrop of potential Medicare and Affordable Care Act changes, we look at this new project by these influential companies and what it might mean for the future of healthcare.
Guests:
Avik Roy, president of The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a non-profit think tank; opinion editor at Forbes and former policy advisor to Marco Rubio, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney
Kavita Patel, M.D., fellow at the Brookings Institution; she’s also a practicing primary care physician at Johns Hopkins Medicine and was previously a director of policy for The White House under President Obama; she tweets
Fake fandom: The buying, selling of social media followers
Cultural influence has become the currency bar none of today’s internet economy, but how much of it is real?
A New York Times investigation published this weekend has pulled the curtain back on the black market in which social media followers are easily bought and sold.
Here to talk about the piece is one of the co-authors, Gabe Dance.
Guest:
Gabriel Dance, deputy investigations editor at the New York Times who is one of the co-authors behind the paper’s recent investigation into the illicit buying and selling of social media followers; he tweets
New LA Times editor-in-chief Jim Kirk speaks
The Los Angeles Times has tapped veteran newspaper editor Jim Kirk as its new editor-in-chief. The move spelled the end of a rocky four-month tenure for Kirk’s predecessor, Lewis D’Vorkin, who will become chief content officer at Tronc, the newspaper's parent company.
The L.A.Times has been embroiled in controversy the past month. The paper’s publisher, Ross Levinsohn, was put on unpaid leave amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Rumors are swirling that Tronc is creating a contributor contributor network comprised of non-employees as a way to thwart the unionization drive by L.A. Times newsroom staffers.
Jim Kirk joined Larry Mantle on AirTalk to talk about the surprise shakeup and future of the iconic newspaper.
Interview highlights
L.A. Times’ publisher Ross Levinsohn is on leave while an outside law firm investigates, which follows an NPR report alleging a frat house environment created in previous work settings. This included allegations of sexual harassment. Who are you reporting to while Levinsohn is gone?
Jim Kirk: I'm currently reporting [daily] to Tim Knight, who is president of [the Times'] parent company, Tronc, in Chicago.
Any word on when Levinsohn would return if the investigation clears him?
Kirk: The investigation is ongoing so obviously, it would be premature for me to comment on anything before it's finished.
One of the big concerns we've heard from Times staff members was about business editor Kimi Yoshino being escorted out of the building. There had been rumors, that perhaps management thought she had been talking to journalists at other news organizations about what was going on at the Times. What can you share about whether she'll be returning, and what went on with that incident?
Kirk: I just got a full briefing of that over the past couple of days and I'm not going to go into the details of a personnel issue. But I have been in contact with Kimi and both expressed my desire that she returns to our staff and continues running the business staff. Those discussions are ongoing.
What about concerns that news executives have been hired to create an independent newsroom as part of Tronc, which would report to the business side of the parent company? That newsroom would, through working so-called "verticals," or different specialty beats, provide content to all of the Tronc-owned newspapers including the Times. What can you tell us about that strategy and the staffing of that newsroom?
Kirk: There have been some misperceptions about what might be in the works in different parts of the company. As I told the staff, we do have a collection of 10 great news operations around the country, and the business model of just operating 10 separate local entities just doesn't work in this day and age.
And there has to be a way to leverage the scale and the audience across all those markets. That is the key to our success and financial success going forward. To the extent that we can develop products that provide more content outside of what we currently are doing, and that's key...is essential to our future. And I think that's where the development of some of these new products is going to focus on.
What is your response to concerns in the Times newsroom, that this independent newsroom might mean content that's tied to the business side of the paper? Meaning it’s without an editorial firewall, would have unpaid contributors such as what former editor-in-chief Lewis D'Vorkin cultivated at Forbes, and that in some way that dilutes either the Times' content or takes union positions from the Times newsroom?
Kirk: There will be no positions taken from the newsroom to staff a non-unionized newsroom. That is just not going to happen. In terms of content, I'm not privy to all of what is being developed on that side of the business. I think we'll hear some more details about that over the next few days, but I'm confident that what may or may not appear on local news sites across the company will be up to the standards of all of our collective entities.
Long-time L.A. Times reporter, editor and columnist Jim Newton was with us yesterday. According to Newton, some of the Times staffers felt that previously, as interim editor-in-chief, you pushed too hard against the unionizing effort there. Are you intending to appeal to those employees who might have been offended by the approach you took during the union organizing effort?
Kirk: My talk with the newsroom yesterday was the first thing I [discussed] to try to bring management and the newsroom together after what might be considered a little bit of aggressive back and forth, as both sides try to convey why they thought there should be a union, or why management thought there shouldn't be a union.
But now that we are heading toward a contract, the time has come to heal and come together, and we have to focus on the work, and that was my message. I think it was well-received, as far as I can tell, for the most part. It's true, we have to work together.
We can do that in a newsroom that is unionized. It's probably gonna take a long time, or at least a while before we get settled on a contract here, but we're gonna work hard to do that, and hopefully it will benefit both sides.
This story has been updated.
Guest:
Jim Kirk, newly named editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times; he tweets
As Facebook changes its algorithm, a deep dive on how that affects your newsfeed
Facebook plans to unveil a new algorithm where posts from friends and family will show up in its News Feed.
That means you’ll see less Tasty videos and other news from brands and publications. The idea is to promote more meaningful interactions between users. While people on Facebook may spend more time scrolling, they aren’t connecting the way they used to.
In an announcement on Monday, Facebook stated that it would “also prioritize local news so that you can see topics that have a direct impact on you and your community and discover what’s happening in your local area.” But the New York Times reported that in October, a new version of the News Feed was tested in Bolivia and showed that changes increased fake news traffic because it limited the nongovernmental news source audience. Facebook says this new version is not identical to the one tested in Bolivia in October.
So could the changes in Facebook’s News Feed breed fake news? And how much should social media dictate what news we see?
Guests:
Josh Constine, editor-at-large for TechCrunch who’s been following the story; he tweets
Sheera Frenkel, San Francisco-based cyber security correspondent for the New York Times; she wrote “In Some Countries, Facebook’s Fiddling Has Magnified Fake News”; she tweets
Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley Correspondent for The Washington Post; she’s been following the story; she tweets
Emojis and emoticons are showing up in court cases, and lawyers are all (☉_☉) about it
Lawyers are having a tough time arguing in court when emoticon and emojis are involved.
With the ambiguous nature of a martini glass or dancing horse come questions in sexual harassment, defamation and other cases.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, judges on a Michigan Court of Appeals came to the decision that “:P” was used to “denote a joke or sarcasm and could not be considered defamatory.” Another lawyer’s sexual harassment case in Santa Monica argued that a red-lipstick kiss emoji confirmed that a potential female employee approved of a producer’s sexual advances.
With the endless combinations of emojis and emoticons and their meanings, how are lawyers navigating this new landscape?
Guests:
Gabriella Ziccarelli, technology attorney at Blank Rome LLP in Washington D.C., where she addresses disruptive technologies including emojis and emoticons in court cases