 |
|
|
|||||
Journalists who cover the Pentagon and the Trump administration are in a standoff about new rules that limit the access of the media to most areas within the Pentagon and appear to condition overall entry to the building on an agreement to restrictions in reporting.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team characterizes the changes as an effort to protect national security and the safety of those who work at the Pentagon, while many in the press see it as an effort to exert control and avoid embarrassing stories.Journalists who want to hold on to badges that permit access to the Pentagon were told on Sept. 19 they must sign a letter acknowledging the new rules by this Tuesday or the badge “will be revoked.” The new policy says that Defense Department information “must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if unclassified.” Classified material faces even tighter restrictions.That level of control immediately alarmed journalists and their advocates.“Asking independent journalists to submit to these kinds of restrictions is at stark odds with the constitutional protections of a free press in a democracy, and a continued attempt to throttle the public’s right to understand what their government is doing,” said Charles Stadtlander, spokesman for The New York Times. Dispute over what the new rules actually mean In a subsequent letter to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Hegseth aide Sean Parnell suggested that journalists misunderstood some of the new rules. He said, for example, that the restriction against releasing unclassified information is the policy that Pentagon officials must follow not something the journalists must abide by.“It should come as no surprise that the mainstream media is once again misrepresenting the Pentagon’s press procedures,” Parnell said in a post on X. “Let’s be absolutely clear: Journalists are not required to clear their stories with us. That claim is a lie.”However, the new policy says that journalists who encourage Pentagon officials to break the rules in other words, ask sources for information could be subject to losing their building access.While it appeared that Parnell sought to soften some of the hard edges of his policy in response to questions raised by the reporters’ committee, there’s still enough confusion to merit a meeting to clear things up, said Grayson Clary, a lawyer for RCFP. There’s some wariness among news organizations about what they would be agreeing to if they sign the letter, and it’s not clear how many people if any have done so.The new rules continue a tense relationship between the press and the Hegseth team, which had already evicted some news outlets from their regular workspaces in favor of friendlier outlets and limited the ability of reporters to roam around the Pentagon. Hegseth and Parnell seldom hold press briefings.Parnell did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press. To one editor, it’s all about control “It’s control, just 100% control,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. Goldberg, who is not stationed at the Pentagon, wrote the most embarrassing story of Hegseth’s tenure so far when he was inadvertently included in a Signal group chat where Hegseth and other national officials discussed an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen. The brouhaha became widely known as “Signalgate.”Pentagon leadership was also reportedly unhappy over a story that said Elon Musk was to get a briefing on military strategy for China, leading President Donald Trump to stop it, and other stories about initial assessments of damage in the military strike against Iran.No American reporter accredited to the Pentagon that he knows is interested in subverting national security or putting anyone in the military in harm’s way, Goldberg said.In his own case, Goldberg did not report on what he learned until after the attack was over. He said he contacted officials in the group chat to ask if there was anything he learned that was harmful to the country in any way. He did not include in his story the name of a CIA official mentioned in the messages who was technically still undercover, he said.“The only people in Signalgate who were putting American troops in harm’s way were the national leadership of the United States by discussing on a commercial messaging app the launch times of strikes on a hostile country,” he said.Access to officials in the Pentagon has been invaluable in helping reporters understand what is going on, said Dana Priest, a longtime national security reporter at The Washington Post who is now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. With the exception of a few areas, reporters are not permitted under the new rules to walk through the Pentagon without an official escort.Priest said the corridors of the Pentagon were like areas around Congress where reporters buttonhole politicians. Priest recalled staking out military officials waiting for them to come out of a bathroom.“They know the goal of the media is to get around the official gobbledygook and get out the truth,” Priest said. “They may not help you. But some of them want to help Americans know what is going on.”Experienced national security reporters know there are many ways to get information, including through other channels of government and people in the private sector. “The Pentagon is always very well versed in the advantages of controlling the story, so they always try to do that,” she said. “The reporters know that. They’ve known that for decades.” Is there any room for common ground between the Pentagon and reporters? Reporters who don’t follow the new rules won’t necessarily be expelled immediately, Parnell told the reporter’s committee. But access will be determined by Hegseth’s team.While reporters already stationed in the Pentagon were given until Sept. 30 to sign, they were allowed to request an additional five days for legal review.Although the Times, Washington Post and Atlantic all put out statements against the Pentagon’s plan, none of the publications would say what they have recommended that their reporters do perhaps an indication that they consider negotiations potentially fruitful.President Donald Trump hasn’t hesitated to fight the media when he thinks he’s been wronged, launching lawsuits against CBS News, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal and the Times. Yet he’s also frequently accessible to the press, more so than many of his predecessors, and there has been some uncertainty in the White House about the Pentagon’s policy.When a reporter asked, “should the Pentagon be in charge of deciding what reporters can report on?” the president replied, “No, I don’t think so. Listen, nothing stops reporters. You know that.”Goldberg noted that it’s more than just an issue for reporters. “The American people have a right to know what the world’s most powerful military does in their name and with their money,” he said. “That seems fairly obvious to me.” David Bader writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social David Bauder, AP Media Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Amazons new Echo Dot Max is a $99 ball. Its Echo Studio is a $199 ball. Its Echo Show is a tablet (starting at $179), attached to a ball. For its grand refresh of its Alexa-powered line of speakers and tablets, Amazon spent three years rethinking the foundations of its audio engineering to conquer the home theater market in the most spherical manner possible. Legitimatelythey sound really good, says our senior editor Liz Stinson, after a listening test. But from my own discussions with the design team, its clear that what Amazon has created are not just new voice assistants, or even mix-and-matachable speakers capable of creating a 3D soundscape for movies and music in your home. What these new Echo products are supposed to do is enable a more intuitive (and intimate, and surveillant) AI for home tomorrowone that doesnt just hear what you say, but senses what you do. The Echo Studio (left) and Echo Dot Max (right). [Photo: Amazon] The industrial design behind Amazon Echo This is not the first time that Amazon has snuck Alexa into a little speaker ball. Its existing Echo Dot is already exactly that. But the Dot’s sound quality is middling at best. If you wanted something that sounded better from Amazon, you had to buy a larger Echo Studio: a big cylinder. When Amazon talked to its own customers, people often said it was just too large for them to buy. And thats because our entire culture has been wooed by tiny Bluetooth speakers with good enough audio quality. If I can get acceptable sound out of a small device, that’s what I expect now, says Phil Hilmes, Director, Audio Technology at Amazon Lab126. Amazons goal was to make a more competitive wave of smaller Echos that still sounded superbeven if that meant they cost more. So they doubled down on space efficient spherical designs across the new Echo line. To a casual observer, nothing looks all that new. But once you actually remove the original Dots candy shell, its clear just how differently the new Echos are built compared to the old ones. The old Dot was basically a single driver (a sound emitter), wrapped in a block of plastic housing that kept it positioned inside the ball. The new Echo speakers get rid of this housing entirely. A single driver has been replaced with multiple that specialize in different frequency ranges. These drivers connect directly to the outer shell, which doubles as an exoskeleton. This design leaves lots of empty space inside the sphere for tweeters and subwoofers to float, blowing air out of the speaker to make sound. At the end of the day, when we want to get more sound, it’s all about how much air can we push out of this thing? says Hilmes. Echo Dot Max, interior view. [Photo: Amazon] The Echo Dot Max has two driversone tweeter for the highs, and a larger woofer for mids and lows. They aim right at you for maximum clarity. Amazon telegraphs what right at you looks like by placing a new, flat control panel on the front of each speaker. Amazon says the Dot Max is one of the smallest two-way speakers ever created. The larger Echo Studiopromising Dolby Atmos soundhas three drivers that handle highs and mids. It also features a 4-inch subwoofer for the bass. Echo Studio [Photo: Amazon] Subwoofers are large by nature; they push more air and have bigger diaphragms to make those low sounds. When Richard Little, senior manager of audio technology at Amazon, holds up the Studios subwoofera cone the size of a coffee mug complete with saucerI cannot imagine how it fits inside. In fact, it barely fits. It fires straight down into the base, and the entire bottom of the Studio has been perforated to allow air out. Meanwhile, those three other drivers can only squeeze in by being integrated right into the subwoofers own structure. Its basically a wad of sound structures. Clever geometry and some small plastic caps are all that keep this pile of drivers sounding clear rather than buzzy and cacophonous. Amazon is wrapping the Echos in a new, 3D-knit fabric that offers a more luxe texture but doesnt dampen sound. I actually think thats a missed opportunity. The black cannonball design is still jarring, even when wrapped in domestic-friendly textiles. So why not lean into the unique shape? The internal components are so interesting that Amazon could have created a clear speaker celebrating high-end audio with throwback vibes like Nothing has been capitalizing upon. We want to work our way [there], says Pete Kyriacou, VP of product at Amazon, who admits Amazon has considered the more head-on audiophile approach. And we want to earn that credibility through people listening to our devices. [Photo: Amazon] Everything else the Echos can do The new Dot Max and Studio configure themselves automatically to project sound inside any room, and the more you add, the more the speakers can position 3D audio in space. This is particularly exciting for the team as its planning that the Echo can be part of a come-as-you are home theater setup. One in front of your TV acts something like a soundbar. Another stuck on a shelf to the side widens the soundscapewith each speaker compensating the right frequencies to sound balanced. Stick one behind your couch, and audio flies in from behind your head for full surround sound with three speakers. The system supports up to five, and the better 3D audio positioning is only available with the Studio, as the Dot Max doesnt have Dolby Atmos support. Optimization is automatic and constant. In fact, one of the most important parts of the audio is an AI that analyzes frequencies every moment, and tunes the power draw up and down across each individual driver dynamically to milk the most possible sound at any given moment. (The team tells me that this AI system doubles bass output through software optimization alone.) But of course, while Amazon is focusing on audio quality, its vision for Alexa+ goes much deeper. The speakers will glow with a blue ring when you activate them, and as the conversation goes on, it dulls to something more akin to a smile than a circlea nod to the Amazon logo that glows less brightly in your face. We’re finding what’s the right way to keep that light ring on without being intrusive, says Kyriacou, noting that the smile gives this human aspect of what you’re talking to. [Photo: Amazon] Beyond music Inside all of the new Echo devices live various sensors, including Wi-Fi for mapping devices in space, ultrasonic proximity detection that knows where you are, vibration-reading accelerometers that feel the tremors of your touch (or perhaps footfalls?), microphones for your voice, and cameras inside the two Echo Show tabletop tablets that can see who you are. For the first time, Amazon is assembling all of these sensors into an AI platform it calls Omnisense. AI is incredibly powerful at discovering insights hiding in sensor data. And with Omnisense, Amazon will likely be able to detect subtleties in our habits that we cant even imagine. But in the immediate, Kyriacou says it will allow Amazon to start getting more proactive with Alexa. That means these devices will know who is in the room, learn their routines (are they cooking or winding down with a book), and offer the right response (turn up the music? dim the lights?) for these moments. The Echo Show will see you coming, and change its own UIperhaps from family photos to smart home notificationsas you move closer. This sort of specific, contextually aware understanding has been a holy grail of the quite flawed promise of the smart home, and Amazon is redoubling its efforts to own the space through its latest wave of meticulously developed Echos. No doubt, Amazon’s storefront and services will move ever closer to our daily routines through speakers that are capable of harvesting new troves of largely invisible data. And while its a crafty enough plan, I cant help but wonder if theres one significant flaw. To use the Echo Dot Max or Studio to watch movies, in particular, you need to be using a Fire TV. Amazon has a grand vision for taking over the smart home through your home theater, but its limiting its reach to the most ardent Amazon loyalists. Sure, Amazon has shipped more than 200 million Fire TV devices to date. But thats a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of TVs in use worldwide.
Category:
E-Commerce
Google’s YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit President Donald Trump brought after the video site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol following the election that resulted in him leaving the White House for four years.The settlement of the more than four-year-old case earmarks $22 million for Trump to contribute to the Trust for the National Mall and a construction of a White House ballroom, according to court documents filed Monday. The remaining $2.5 million will be paid to other parties involved in the case, including the writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.Alphabet, the parent of Google, is the third major technology company to settle a volley of lawsuits that Trump brought for what he alleged had unfairly muzzled him after his first term as president ended in January 2021. He filed similar cases Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Twitter before it was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trumps’ lawsuit over his 2021 suspension from Facebook and X agreed to settle the lawsuit that Trump brought against Twitter for $10 million. When the lawsuits against Meta. Twitter and YouTube were filed, legal experts predicted Trump had little chance of prevailing.After buying Twitter for $44.5 billion, Musk later became major contributor to Trump’s successful 2024 campaign that resulted in his re-election and then spent several months leading a cost-cutting effort that purged thousands of workers from the federal government payroll before the two had a bitter falling out. Both Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the tech leaders who lined up behind Trump during his second inauguration in January in a show of solidarity that was widely interpreted as a sign of the industry’s intention to work more closely with the president than during his first administration.ABC News, meanwhile, agreed to pay $15 million in December toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. And in July, Paramount decided to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit regarding editing at CBS’ storied “60 Minutes” news program.The settlement does not constitute an admission of liability, the filing says. Google confirmed the settlement but declined to comment beyond it.Google declined to comment on the reasons for the settlement., but Trump’s YouTube account has been restored since 2023. The settlement is will barely dent Alphabet, which has a market value of nearly $3 trillion an increase of about $600 billion, or 25%, since Trump’s return to the White House.The disclosure of the settlement came a week before a scheduled Oct. 6 court hearing to discuss the case with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers in Oakland, California. Barbara Ortutay and Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writers
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||