David Folkenflik

James Murdoch resigned Friday from the board of directors of News Corp., the publishing arm of his family's media empire, in a very public sign of dissent that typically plays out behind closed doors.

The rupture capped a period of intensifying criticism of the coverage and views offered by the news empire created by his father Rupert Murdoch. Those include News Corp.'s publications such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post and a sister Murdoch company, the Fox News Channel.

Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR's radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network's shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020.

Updated at 9:35 p.m. ET Monday

The revelation that Fox News prime-time star Tucker Carlson's top writer had posted racist, sexist and homophobic sentiments online for years under a pseudonym has led to renewed scrutiny of Carlson's own commentaries, which have inspired a series of advertising boycotts.

The writer, Blake Neff, resigned on Friday after questions raised by CNN's Oliver Darcy led to the posts becoming public.

Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the U.S. for the federal government's international broadcasters are at risk of expulsion as the agency determines whether to renew their work visas.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media confirmed to NPR that it is examining "case-by-case" whether to extend journalists' J-1 visas once they expire. Some of the journalists who face repatriation come from countries that are notably hostile to the U.S.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET

Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the U.S. for Voice of America, the federal government's international broadcaster, will not have their visas extended once they expire, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Those people — each with current or past ties to the agency — said the new CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack, signaled he will not approve the visa extensions.

Updated at 8:25 p.m. ET

The Fox News Channel has fired one of its leading news anchors, Ed Henry, following an outside investigation of "willful sexual misconduct in the workplace."

Details were not available.

Updated 5:29 PM ET

The Los Angeles Times is moving to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit filed by six Black, Hispanic and female journalists at the paper contending that the under-representation of people of color there is a result of longstanding discriminatory pay practices.

New U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack swept into office like a man on a mission last week, firing the top executives and advisory boards of federally funded international broadcasters which weekly reach 340 million people abroad. A new lawsuit alleges he broke federal law in doing so.

Two of the nation's top newspapers on Thursday evening separately reached the same decision: They had to address diversity and equity in their newsrooms and their coverage.

In separate memos to staff, each outlined initiatives to address an issue that has roiled their newsrooms, as it has many others and many other institutions throughout society.

President Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Michael Pack, showed up to work Wednesday for the first time after being approved by the U.S. Senate two weeks earlier.

His words to staff were affirming. His actions were anything but.

The Los Angeles Times' top editor is scrambling to placate journalists of color after years of often-unfulfilled promises by the paper to make grand progress in the diversity of the newsroom's ranks.

Some journalists have used terms such as "internal uprising" to describe their anger over racial inequity at the paper. Scores have participated in intense internal debates over the LA Times' coverage of recent protests and hiring practices, to the point that senior editors have weighed in, promising to listen and learn.

The executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette defended his paper in a fiery front-page essay Wednesday morning against charges that it had discriminated against a black reporter when it barred her from covering protests over racial justice.

The fight over racial justice that has sparked protests across the country is also upending some of the country's leading newsrooms.

I wasn't going to write this column because, fundamentally, who wants to spend their lives simply picking up the food fights instigated by others and because, hey, my boss reliably informs me I'm supposed to be filing my own stories for NPR.

Inside the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain, all eyes are focusing on Thursday's annual shareholder meeting. The hedge fund Alden Global Capital is expected to consolidate its control over the company and usher in even more severe cuts than the ones the company has put in place.

At a time of widespread layoffs and cutbacks throughout the local news business, a pair of philanthropists is seeking to promote more local coverage from public radio with a gift of $4.7 million for NPR collaborations in the Midwest and California.

The gift from Eric and Wendy Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Google and the head of the Schmidt Family Foundation, respectively, will launch the Midwest regional newsroom and boost the one in California with a focus on investigative reporting and coverage relevant to underserved communities.

The federal agency that regulates the U.S. television industry slapped the largest civil fine in its history on Sinclair Broadcast Group — a company with links to the Trump administration — as punishment for deceiving the government.

Sinclair agreed to the $48 million fine and entered into a consent decree to close three separate ongoing investigations by the Federal Communications Commission.

NBC News chairman Andrew Lack was forced out Monday as part of a broader reorganization. The surprise wasn't in the announcement of Lack's departure, but that it had taken so long.

In his more than five years in charge of NBC News, Lack had overseen more than his share of disasters. There was the fiasco in 2017 by NBC News not to broadcast Ronan Farrow's #MeToo report on Harvey Weinstein, or even to pursue it further.

Updated at 4:41 p.m. ET

Fox News personalities have been cheerleading protesters across the U.S. gathering in defiance of state lockdown orders. This week, the situation became so extreme that a top executive at the network tried to rein in his stars.

Michael Bloomberg's short-lived presidential bid reignited a long-simmering dispute over the widespread use of nondisclosure agreements at American corporations — especially at his own.

The Voice of America defended itself Friday against accusations by the Trump White House that the news service is uncritically relaying Chinese propaganda about that country's effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

"VOA too often speaks for America's adversaries—not its citizens," The White House charged in an official statement released Thursday. "Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing's propaganda." (Boldface reflects the original statement.)

How to describe President Trump's newest press secretary?

Kayleigh McEnany, just days shy of her 32nd birthday, already has acquired a bevy of classic establishment credentials. She holds degrees from Georgetown University's foreign service school and Harvard Law. She studied at Oxford. She served as a top spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee — which is to say the GOP — and for the president's re-election campaign.

NPR has named a distinguished media ethicist as its sixth public editor, appointing Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute to fill the newsroom watchdog role at a time when many other major news outlets have abandoned it.

"The public editor represents the public interest in our journalism and helps hold us accountable to maintaining our high standards of journalism," NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview. "And so [it's] really a critical position for us, particularly during this current [public health] crisis.

The email came in from the editor of a small newspaper in Seaside, Calif. And she wasn't the bearer of good news.

Instead, she offered a small data point in a larger and troubling dynamic: The pandemic threatening the nation's public health is swiftly jeopardizing the local journalism that keeps its citizens informed about what's happening in their own communities.