Frustrated conservatives are sending Fox News a very clear message: they’ve had enough of the political games and disrespect and are packing their bags and leaving in droves. If you thought Tuesday’s ratings were bad for Fox – and they were – Wednesday’s were far worse.

After parting ways with Tucker, Fox News temporarily placed establishment flunkie Brian Kilmeade in Tucker’s former 8:00 pm time slot. That primetime spot is a coveted and offers huge lead-in potential Sean Hannity. Since Tucker’s departure, Fox has lost its lead-in viewers, causing Hannity’s numbers to fall dramatically. Wednesday’s numbers were an abysmal 1.3 million for Kilmeade and 1.7 million for Hannity.

Tucker typically attracted over 3 million viewers per show, and Hannity would usually draw almost 3 million viewers. Therefore, this decline in viewership is quite substantial.

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Tech giants aren’t just cutting thousands of jobs — they’re making them extinct

Big Tech is liking the look of its new leaner shape.

Companies from Meta to Microsoft to Salesforce have cut jobs in recent months, often in the pursuit of efficiency and increased profit margins. By some estimates, more than 250,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2022.

There have been many more roles that have gone unfilled as these industry giants slow down on hiring. Recent data from Indeed shows a more than 50% decline in software-development job postings compared to a year ago. 

As my colleague Hasan Chowdhury has written, that strategy is working financially, with Salesforce, Meta, and Microsoft recently reporting stronger-than-expected earning results. 

And now, thanks to the rise of AI, many of those jobs may be permanently lost, even as these companies get back to growth. 

In a recent note by Morgan Stanley analysts led by Brian Nowak, the bank said “AI based productivity drivers are coming.”

The note reads:

We have seen headcount reductions across the tech landscape. But part of this (in particular META, GOOGL, AMZN) has been a counter-measure to above-average hiring levels in ’21/’22. Looking ahead, we are most focused on how companies plan/speak to forward hiring growth. Forward hiring levels should arguably be smaller and more targeted due to rapidly-emerging AI productivity drivers.

The Morgan Stanley note referenced the potential for AI-assisted coding tools to make engineers more productive, citing a Microsoft exec who said using GitHub Copilot increased productivity by 55%. It also highlighted AI-based sales tools that could reduce the need for huge armies of salespeople. 

For more on how AI could impact software developers, I highly recommend this story from my colleague Aki Ito on “the end of coding as we know it.” 

To be clear, Morgan Stanley doesn’t suggest AI will necessarily take tech jobs. Instead, the the spread of AI-powered tools and workflows will slow or stop future growth in head count. In other words, jobs that were lost either won’t come back or will come back much more slowly. In the future, some tech-job openings may not even exist.

There are already hints of this. At Alphabet, for example, Google’s engineering head, Urs Hölzle, said in a March memo to technical-infrastructure teams that the company would use automation to “find more efficient ways of doing things.”

Insider’s Rosalie Chan reported at the time:

Additionally, the team aims to use automation to reduce the ratio of site-reliability engineers to software engineers to less than 5%. Site-reliability engineers manage the operations of Google’s systems and keep them running, while software engineers work on developing Google’s infrastructure and products.

Meta meanwhile has had a broad hiring freeze in place for the past six months. Chief financial officer Susan Li said on an earnings call this week that while the company expects to start hiring again once it has completed its layoffs in April and May, it’s “long-term focus is very much on efficiency.”

Asked by Nowak how that could impact workforce productivity, she said “it’s something we’re excited about and I think we will have more clarity on that as more tools begin getting developed to enhance employee productivity across the industry.”

This trend has significant implications for tech workers and those hoping to work in the industry. As Insider’s Ito has reported, tech workers and software engineers have often been thought of as impervious to the march of automation. 

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Noam Chomsky explains how US involvement in Ukraine and the expansion of NATO to Russia’s border created the War in Ukraine

ABC News Host Tells RFK Jr. He’s Too Critical of the CIA, Proceeds to Censor Him While Speaking About Vaccines

ABC Admits to censoring presidential candidate

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently sat down with ABC News host Linsey Davis to talk about his 2024 presidential run.

At the beginning of his ABC News appearance, Davis asked Kennedy, besides working as an environmental lawyer for three decades, “What do you feel qualifies you to have the highest position in the land?”

Kennedy responded, “I think I know more about how to fix regulatory agencies than any other politician in this country because I spent 40 years suing them.”

Davis asked, “How would you do that? You have been very critical of multiple government agencies from the CIA, EPA, DOT, CDC the FDA… How would you run those?”

RFK Jr. replied, “The problem is the people who rise to power in those agencies are usually the people who are in the tank with industry and are willing to carry water for industry.”

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ABC News cuts Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vaccine remarks out of interview

An ABC News host admitted the network edited statements Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made about the COVID-19 vaccine out of an exclusive interview it conducted with the longshot Democratic presidential candidate.

“We should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines,” anchor Linsey Davis said in a disclaimer when the interview aired Thursday. “We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview.”

“Data shows that the COVID-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease,” Davis added. “He also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism.

“Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks.”

Davis is the latest legacy media journalist to admit to editing interviews to flatter liberal viewers. Former NBC “Today” show host Katie Couric admitted to having withheld a segment of an interview with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg that featured the Supreme Court justice calling kneeling protests during the US national anthem “a terrible thing to do.”

Couric said she made the edits to “protect” the 83-year-old Ginsburg, who she believed was “elderly and probably didn’t understand the question,” according to her memoir “Going There.”

ABC’s segment on vaccines briefly featured Kennedy’s response to past comments he made on links between vaccines and autism, before cutting to questions about the candidate’s famous political family.

The 69-year-old son of former US Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) rose to prominence as an outspoken opponent of vaccination, to the occasional embarrassment of his fellow famous family members.

..

Kennedy Jr., who launched his campaign in April, told Davis during their interview that he was challenging Biden because the president’s leadership was at odds with longstanding Democratic priorities.383

“I don’t believe that we should be the party of war; I don’t believe that we should be the party of Wall Street; I don’t believe that we should let neocons dictate our foreign policy, and I don’t believe in censorship,” Kennedy said. “And those are all values that are traditional Democratic Party values that this White House has departed from.”

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