Netflix is working with Italian production company Fandango to adapt Elena Ferrante’s latest novel, The Lying Life of Adults, into a streaming series. In other adaptation news, Apple TV+ and Sofia Coppola are working on a limited series based on Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country.
Columbia Journalism Review’s MSNBC public editor Maria Bustillos questions the network’s choice to report on the use of remdesivir to treat COVID-19 without investigating the reasons behind its promotion. “It’s not unreasonable for Dr. Fauci and other scientific researchers to express optimism—to be what you might call statistically optimistic,” she writes. “But for MSNBC viewers who may face the question of whether or not to seek remdesivir treatment for their loved ones, or for themselves, the network must put considerably more emphasis on the limitations and the risks—not to mention the financial interests involved.”
ProPublica, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones are suing the Small Business Administration “over its refusal to release detailed information for loans provided through the $659 billion Paycheck Protection Program,” ProPublica announced.
Employees of People magazine’s digital group are unionizing with NewsGuild. The magazine’s print staff unionized in the 1970s.
The Providence Journal has decided to stop running editorials. Executive editor Alan Rosenberg says that modern editorials “undermine readers’ perception” of the paper’s objectivity. “Readers wonder: Can reporters really do their work without trying to reflect the views expressed in their employers’ name? Can they cast a skeptical eye on a politician their paper has endorsed, or a generous eye on one it has opposed?” he explains. “The answer is a definite ‘yes’ — but my email since I became executive editor shows that many just don’t buy it.”