Media Beat: May 02, 2018

By David Farrell

Amazon adds 3K high-tech jobs in Vancouver

Amazon has announced plans to expand its Vancouver Tech Hub and create an additional 3,000 at the site of its future 416K square foot Development Centre in the wet coast city. The company reports it currently employs over 6K people in Canada. – Newswire

Yahoo! Rogers amends email terms of service after backlash

The U.S. company that is outsourced to provide Rogers customers with their e-mail accounts has removed a controversial new term of service that suggested users had obtained consent from all their friends and contacts to share their personal information.

However, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said Tuesday that his office continues to investigate other concerns raised over new terms of service recently sent to users of @rogers.com e-mail addresses. – Christine Dobby, Globe & Mail (subscription)

Vancouver’s Roundhouse still on the air

The Vancouver community-minded FM was supposed to go silent on May 1 after the station’s board-of-directors baulked at pumping money into the negative cash-flow operation but hark the herald angels sing! At a hastily convened meeting shortly before the janitor was set to padlock the doors, the cash flow kings had a change of heart, and so it’s business as usual, sort of. We don’t know what exactly is going on with the boys in the backroom, but we hear that there’s an ongoing conversation with an outside investor or investors. Stay tuned for the miracle on Alexander Street or tune-in online and listen for yourselves.

Canada’s cable titans under siege

Streaming services will surpass cable as the leading way Canadians watch TV within two years, a Convergence Research Group report says. However, the revenue gap between the two providers remains massive.

Apple to pay $38B in US taxes on foreign cash

Apple Inc on Wednesday said it will make about $38B in tax payments on its treasure chest of $252.3B in overseas cash and has plans to open a second campus as part of a 5-year, $30B U.S. investment plan.

Twitter adds a slew of new content providers

Twitter has taken wraps off plans for more than 30 new collaborations in the areas of entertainment, news, sports and gaming in 2018, part of its slew of announcements at its annual NewFronts presentation in New York. The new deals, along with renewals of existing contracts, ramps up the social media giant’s live and on-demand original programming, games and events content.

Disney, a Live Nation Concert Series partnership, Hearst Magazines, and news sites including Vice and BuzzFeed are included. – Deadline Hollywood

When fools rush in: It’s time legislative bodies upped their tech awareness

If the most recent Facebook-data dust-up has shown us anything, it is just that we cannot be legislated by technically inept. Technology is now a fundamental part of society now, and it impacts us on a daily basis. Whether it is Facebook or scooters in San Francisco, you can’t govern or write smart laws, if you don’t know anything about it. – Om Malik, The Spectator

Journalist without supporters

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that a "climate of hatred and animosity" towards journalists combined with growing attempts to control the media pose a "threat to democracies".

Its annual report said that reporters were the target of a growing wave of authoritarianism with leaders whipping up hostility against them.

The group accused the world's three superpowers — the US, China and Russia — of leading the charge against press freedom, with Trump regularly launching personal attacks on reporters and Beijing exporting its "media control model" to strangle dissent elsewhere in Asia. – DAWN