Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 11 November. Here’s our daily round-up of media news.

☀️ Good morning from Lisbon where tech types and publishers are rubbing shoulders as part of the Web Summit (a massive conference with around 50,000 attendees), Dominic Ponsford writes.

There’s lots of excitement here about tech revolutionising everything from payments to robotics. Publishing less so.

AI is providing incremental gains for publishers but nothing transformative that I have seen.

Some take homes from yesterday:

Le Monde is seeing 50 times the conversion rate to subscribers from readers coming via ChatGPT (as compared with Facebook).

I have heard three examples of Meta ‘shadow banning’ publisher content about particular topics on its platforms (eg the Ukraine war or Gaza). So secretly turning off the traffic spigots for certain types of content on Facebook and Instagram.

And quote of the day yesterday was from Lucy Blakiston, founder of excellently-titled New Zealand newsbrand ‘Shit You Should Care About’. Her advice to publishers was: “Don’t think ‘cringe’, embrace the ‘cringe’.”

💼 The BBC’s latest crisis continues with Donald Trump now threatening legal action over the Panorama edit of his 6 January speech unless he gets an apology, retraction and compensation by Friday, writes Charlotte Tobitt.

The legal threat repeatedly references Florida law - possibly leading to an unwelcome test that the BBC thought it wouldn’t have to face. In the UK, Trump would be past the one-year limit for libel action by now as the Panorama in question aired on 28 October last year.

I’d also note that just because Trump is threatening to take the BBC for “no less than” $1bn in damages doesn’t mean that’s what he’d get. That’s for a court to ultimately decide.

I was glad to see yesterday that despite her resignation, BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness is still defending the integrity of the newsroom as shots are being fired left, right and centre.

In direct response to comments from Trump, Turness said: “Our journalists aren’t corrupt and I will stand by their journalism.” She also said the BBC is “not institutionally biased”.

I certainly didn’t expect this to be the biggest scandal the BBC has faced in years when The Telegraph started its reporting of Michael Prescott’s memo last week. But that shows the inevitability of what happens now when Trump enters a story. And once this anti-BBC narrative becomes one of his hobby horses, he won’t let it go.

💷 Meanwhile Manchester Evening News publisher Reach has paid out £16,000 to the frontman of Bob Vylan after falsely stating he had performed Nazi salutes on stage.

Interestingly, that statement was included only in a quote from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and wasn’t echoed anywhere else in the reporting. So this should act as a reminder that repeating what someone else has said is no excuse - newsbrands have the power to give words a huge platform.

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And some more news stories for today:

Bauer Media has responded to “challenging market conditions” by closing one magazine in print and another altogether.

Media planning subscription service Foresight News has been subject to a management buyout, leaving Centaur Media with even fewer media brands after its strategic review this year.

And copyright gurus NLA Media Access have now launched a new potential revenue stream for publishers, enabling them to charge PRs on a per-article basis to find out how coverage of them and their clients did.

Most of the UK nationals are on board (plus many regionals) and they’ve set prices for their article data between £15 and £150.

🗞️News In Brief

A Yougov poll of 4,921 UK adults yesterday found 44% felt BBC director general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness were right to resign and just 7% said they were wrong to do so. About half (49%) were unsure (Yougov)

Music news website Stereogum has launched a metered paywall, telling readers: “Google’s pivot to AI search has cut our ad revenue by 70%. Prior to that, Facebook and X’s deprioritization of links hurt too, but I can’t downplay the brutal impact of AI Overview." (