This week…
Lisa LaFlamme is no longer CTV’s chief news anchor.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Free speech bastion Substack fires editor for editing a blog critical of of Substack
Tim Marchman for Vice:
In late July, the journalist Sam Thielman, who’d been working on contract as an editor for Substack, the newsletter company, was fired. As he would explain in a newsletter published earlier this week that described the firing as an act of retaliation, and as Substack would quickly acknowledge—”We f—ed up” is the way founder Hamish McKenzie put it—he not only hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t really done anything at all.
China censored a top health platform after it challenged traditional medicine
Viola Zhou for Rest of World:
Lizi, a 26-year-old office worker in Beijing, had been struggling to dispel the dangerous myths around health and medicine held by her parents. Construction workers in rural northeastern China, Lizi’s parents treated her childhood fever with chicken bile, a traditional Chinese medicine, and stuck a clove of garlic up her anus whenever she had diarrhea.
The only way to shake her parents’ beliefs, Lizi later realized, was to send them WeChat articles from Dingxiangyuan (or DXY, shorthand for “lilac garden” in Chinese), an influential health information provider widely trusted by China’s medical community. DXY’s social accounts, with followers totalling at least 30 million, address everyday health issues and fact-check popular myths with animations, pictures, and conversational writings. The posts were easy enough for her parents to understand, Lizi said. “They don’t believe what I say, but they believe those WeChat accounts,” she told Rest of World, speaking under a pseudonym so she could discuss sensitive issues freely.
[…]
But earlier this month, DXY’s accounts across multiple social platforms were abruptly suspended. Chinese censors regularly shutter online accounts for violations ranging from vulgarity to flaunting wealth to promoting cryptocurrency. In this case, regulators did not specify any reason for the suspension, but it came after the site hosted accounts that challenged traditional Chinese medicine, especially its use in combating Covid-19 — something the Chinese government is promoting.
A popular, award-winning TV news anchor is fired. Was it the hair?
Claire Parker for WaPo:
For years, until her unceremonious firing this week, Lisa LaFlamme was a fixture in living rooms across Canada.
The abrupt dismissal of one of the country’s most prominent television journalists — she has led Canada’s most watched nightly newscast since 2011, and this year won the Canadian Screen Award for best national news anchor— has drawn both a backlash and a national conversation about sexism and age discrimination in the media.
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading Ruin and Rising, the third book of the Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. Yes, it takes me this long to read fiction—if you were around, I wrote in The 86th Block that I got the books for Christmas in 2021.
I’m watching A League of Their Own.
Reviews, opinion pieces and other stray links:
The coworkers who fell in love when they shared a hotel room by Francesca Street for CNN.
Stop drinking, keep reading, look after your hearing: a neurologist’s tips for fighting memory loss and Alzheimer’s by Gaby Hinsliff for The Guardian.
The four phases of LHDN scam by Munira Mustaffa for Chasseur Group.
Chart of the week
According to the latest Nielsen report, streaming surpasses cable viewing for the first time in the US. About time.