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Fox News drops Hunter Biden series after lawsuit threat: NPR

April 30, 2024 by Admin

Fox has removed a series imagining a hypothetical criminal trial of the president's son Hunter Biden from its streaming network. This photo was taken of Biden at the U.S. Capitol in January.Kent Nishimura/Getty ImagesHide his caption

Toggle caption Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Fox has removed a series imagining a hypothetical criminal trial of the president's son Hunter Biden from its streaming network. This photo was taken of Biden at the U.S. Capitol in January.

Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Fox News has canceled a six-part series that presented a mock trial of virtual criminal charges against Hunter Biden after the president's son threatened to sue the network.

The series was first posted on the cable network's right-wing streaming service in October 2022, but was removed just one day after Biden's legal team issued a public threat. Biden said the network defamed him, among other accusations.

Fox News Media confirmed the decision Tuesday afternoon, saying, “We are reviewing the concerns that were just raised and have withdrawn them out of an abundance of caution.”

The media giant's move comes just hours after it issued a statement condemning Biden's accusations, saying his reporting was within his constitutional rights.

A year ago, Fox News settled a huge defamation lawsuit stemming from amplified false claims that election technology company Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the 2020 election in favor of President Biden. paid $787.5 million. The network is facing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from its second-largest voting power, a technology company, but the network has said it expects to prevail.

In 2020, Fox paid millions of dollars to the parents of murdered Democratic Party official Seth Rich. The network falsely claimed that Rich leaked thousands of emails from party leaders during the 2016 campaign. Official investigations, including the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee and the Mueller report, determined that the hack was carried out by agents of the Russian government.

Hunter Biden faces federal charges for tax and gun violations. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges, and the trial is scheduled to begin this summer.

On Monday, Biden's lawyers privately asked Fox to retract articles and pieces that amplified baseless claims that Biden helped collect millions of dollars in bribes from Ukrainian interests to the president. It was revealed that he was under pressure. The allegations were raised hundreds of times by Maria Bartiromo, Jesse Watters and other Fox Star outlets, according to figures from the liberal watchdog group Media Matters cited by Biden's lawyers.

The primary source of these claims about Hunter Biden is now facing federal charges for lying to the FBI about those very claims. The indictment states that the source, Alexander Smirnov, confirmed that “officers of Russian intelligence were involved” in disseminating the allegations.

Fox stood by its handling of previous allegations against Hunter Biden in its initial response to Biden's letter asking for the mock trial series to be removed and other parts to be amended.

“Hunter Biden's lawyers have belatedly chosen to publicly attack FOX News' constitutionally protected reporting regarding their client,” FOX News said in an email to NPR and other news outlets Tuesday morning. said in an emailed statement. “Mr. Biden is a public figure who is the subject of investigations by both the Justice Department and Congress, has been indicted by two different federal prosecutors' offices in California and Delaware, and has admitted to multiple counts of wrongdoing.”

The statement continued: “In accordance with the First Amendment, Fox News accurately reported these highly publicized events and the subsequent indictment of the FBI informant who was the source of certain allegations about Mr. Biden. ” he said.

U.S. law makes it difficult for people who are considered public figures to win defamation lawsuits. If Biden follows through on his threat to sue Fox News, he would have to show that the network either knew what it broadcast was false or acted with reckless disregard for facts it should have known. right.

Fox Nation's “The Trial of Hunter Biden” offered a fictionalized version of what the trial for the younger Biden would be like. Judge Joe Brown, the television personality who was overseeing the trial, warned viewers that what they were watching was not a real trial and that Hunter Biden had not been indicted.

Biden's lawyers include Mark Geragos, Brian Friedman and Tina Grandian, who have a reputation for aggressive tactics.

In a letter to Fox, Fox claimed it was engaging in “revenge porn” by airing scandalous material taken from Biden's infamous laptop. It included footage and images of Biden ingesting crack cocaine and having a ruckus with a prostitute.

They released a new statement late Tuesday afternoon, accusing Fox of continuing to mislead the public.

“Fox falsely says in a statement that Hunter Biden was the subject of a congressional investigation, which misrepresents the plain facts of his case and reinforces their attacks on Hunter.” deliberately avoids telling viewers that it is “based'' on a lying informant. ” Biden's legal team said. “We demand that Fox immediately retract and correct its statement today. This is the latest example of its relentless attacks on Hunter Biden with complete disregard for the truth.”

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Jessica Pratt's timeless folk music is evolving. slowly.

April 30, 2024 by Admin

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Jessica Pratt's new album, “Here in the Pitch,” features vintage drum beats, gently strummed guitars, and plenty of vibrant room tones reminiscent of the wood-paneled studios of 60 years ago. It starts with “Once-in-a-lifetime opportunities might have their tricks up my sleeve,” she sings on “Life Is,” a mesmerizing melody that rises and falls with ease. “The time has come, the time has come again.”

Pratt, 37, has released three albums since 2012 and has become known for seeming to bend time. “A friend of a friend was surprised to find out that Jessica is a contemporary artist,” Matt McDermott, Ms. Pratt's partner and co-creator, said by phone. “He was convinced that she was a lost press folk artist from the '60s or '70s.”

“The fact that she hangs around a lot of record stores and is so interested in the textures and atmospheres of old music means that her work seems somewhat anachronistic,” McDermott said with amusement. he added. “There are baby boomers who say, 'They don't make songs like they used to,' and Jessica's music actually claims they can do that.”

On a rainy March day in New York, Pratt strolls through the Queens Museum, where “Here in the Pitch,” which opens Friday, lurks underground in another city: Los Angeles, her home since 2013. He talked about how it has its roots in history.

“If you want to know metaphysically, it's the layers of human experience that may still be reverberating,” she said, thinking about the prehistoric ooze bubbling up beneath Wilshire Boulevard. “It's really the lens through which I view my reality every day, swimming through invisible layers of history and energy.”

Slender and blonde, Pratt wore a furry coat over a sexy black suit. Although she's stopped adorning her big eyes with industrial-strength liner, even her pratt natural look tempts the idea that she's somehow got one foot in the retro underworld. . In her conversations as well as her songs, she has something of an obsession with time, which she thinks may be a result of her compositional process. Everything feels so artistically labored that time flies by. ”

Pratt grew up in Redding, a small Northern California city with a complicated relationship to Christianity and conservative politics. Her family was relatively free-spirited. Her mother, who raised her, was an astrologer and she was into music. Pratt began writing songs as soon as she learned a few rudimentary chords, and she wrote impressionistic songs inspired by the Incredible String Band and Leonard Cohen on a thrift store nylon-string guitar. Ta.

After graduating from high school, she moved to San Francisco, where she first began performing her own songs. Tim Presley, a prolific California musician and artist, heard some of her recordings and founded a label to release her Pratt's eponymous 2012 debut. “Part of me was surprised that he was interested in it,” Pratt said. “But maybe that's just typical of me being very self-critical.”

Shortly before the record was released, as Pratt's seven-year relationship was falling apart, her mother died from a sudden illness. She barely stayed in San Francisco and packed her bags for Los Angeles. It was a difficult landing.

Pratt spent the first few months alone, living modestly on savings and a publishing contract while recording his next album, On Your Own Love Again, in his bedroom. Nearly a decade later, her smash single “Back, Baby” from her 2015 album still provides solace to the heartbroken. Pop singer Troye Sivan sampled the song on his 2023 album Something to Give Each Other, and said in an interview with the Guardian that Pratt's voice “could have been around forever.” “There is,” he said passionately. The album's double-tracked vocals and enveloping warmth illuminate melancholic solitude with a romantic glow. But in reality, Pratt's isolation was not good for his physical or mental health, and it became a vicious cycle.

By mid-2016, Pratt's health was failing and he was having trouble writing, so he decided to return to San Francisco. A whirlwind romance with McDermott, her former colleague at Amoeba Music, pulled her out of her stupor. She gave all of herself to her 2019 album Quiet Signs, which she reflected on saying: She says, “It has to do with the daily tragedy of trying to survive in your own mind. It feels very whispery and fantastical, and I don't necessarily relate to it now.”

“Quiet Signs” is filled with sparse guitars, rich textures, and tape hiss, and was Pratt's first time working in the studio. She was interested in expanding her modest but personal sound and approached the process with her open mind. “There was more of a conscious intention than just a pure urge to make music,” she said.

Eager to reunite with Al Carlson, with whom he had produced “Quiet Signs,'' Pratt created a new album influenced by the Beach Boys' “Pet Sounds'' and the music of '60s group the Walker Brothers. I started working on a song series. “I've always been very interested in the micro-era of '60s pop music, where the pieces had a snow globe feel,” she said.

Carlson said he noticed a change in Pratt's intentions. “'Quiet Signs' was trying to tap into the old world that she had created in her past in a slightly more forward-looking way,” he said in an interview. “She felt confident in exploring her new direction with this production, even if it meant leaving a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor.”

Pratt began writing “Here in the Pitch” in early 2020 amid heightened anxiety due to the pandemic, and read books about Charles Manson and other films like “No Country for Old.” Watching movies with complex antagonists further deepened my interest in themes of fear and power. Men. “I've always been interested in the dark side of things,'' she says with a slightly wry smile.

Although Pratt described himself as “a pretty anxious person,” he never seemed awkward and maintained a quiet reserve. Although she seemed open, she was elusive in hindsight. While we were at the museum, she used her cell phone to take a photo of a souvenir yo-yo from the 1964 World's Fair and one of her new songs, Elegant. She only took a photo with the same name as “World on a String” once.

“Here in the Pitch” follows like the sun creeping across the infamous Spahn Ranch. Early songs like “Life Is” and the bossa nova-tinged “Better Hate” have an uneasy mirth that borders on paranoia, before the album descends into an uneasy twilight with shadows of fear. The final song, “The Last Year,” is the curtain call, with a cautiously optimistic chorus: “I think we'll be okay/I think we'll be together/And the storyline will last forever.”

“Of all the songs on this record, this is probably the most personal,” Pratt said. “Lyrically and emotionally it’s very me.”

McDermott, who has played keys with Pratt since Quiet Signs and helped produce the new LP, said his dedication to his music has always come first. Although we were there for two months, she was rarely seen outside the studio. Our friends said, “We haven't seen Jessica yet.'' ”

The sessions, which took place over two years, for the first time included a cast of musicians beyond Pratt's inner circle, including percussionist Mauro Refosco and bassist Spencer Zahn. “Experimenting with sounds in the studio with instruments and players had never seemed appropriate to my music until this time,” Pratt said. “Even a small block made a big difference.”

Every new detail, however modest, took time to find its proper place within Pratt's increasingly widescreen vision. “I'm very specific about what I have to do, to the extent that it's probably difficult for people around me,” she said. “It's like striving for perfect imperfection; it's all instinct.”

“For better or worse, we are always sucking blood from the stones,” she added.

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A quick tour of pop music's caffeine addiction

April 30, 2024 by Admin

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Dear listeners

A few weeks ago, in my Friday Playlist feature, I recommended pop artist Sabrina Carpenter's hilarious new single and made a bold prediction: “Get ready to hear this song everywhere.” That prophecy came true sooner than I had imagined. Last week, “Espresso” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Carpenter's highest charting hit to date. More importantly, it has taken over the national psyche. Everywhere you go these days, you'll hear someone quoting the song's infectious hook, “That's my espresso,” or shouting, “What is 'my espresso'?” I can hardly do it without wondering.

That's a deep philosophical question. Maybe another time. Today, we're simply celebrating the absurd pleasures of espresso with a playlist of songs about caffeinated beverages.

Coffee has been a consistently evocative theme throughout the history of pop music, and this mix stretches back from 1940 to the present day. This reliable drink is perfect for romance of the sophisticated kind (as used in Otis Redding's swooning ballad “Cigarettes and Coffee”) or perhaps for the idle waiting for that romance to happen. Often used to describe time (see Peggy Lee's sensual take on the 1948 standard “Black Coffee”). On her 2023 album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Chapel Lawn attempts to use romance as a shield. Arguing the same way as her ex-lover. “Let's meet for coffee if you have some wine.'' / You'll say you want me, but you know it's a lie. ”

In “Espresso,” Carpenter uses the metaphor of caffeine to suggest how restless a man can be with it wrapped around his finger. Baby, I know. ” Also, importantly, she understands that “espresso” rhymes with “I think so.” That's what poetry is.

It's time for the percolator

lindsay

Please listen while reading.

1. Sabrina Carpenter: “Espresso”

Espresso, a breezy summer bop with a touch of quirky humour, begins to blare from a beachside boombox. Carpenter's wonderfully unpretentious vocals and the track's disco-inspired sheen keep the whole thing calming.