Forward

Good luck

If I win the Mega Millions jackpot, I promise I'll keep sending out this newsletter. Well at least for a while.

I'm hitting send on this edition at 10:50 p.m. ET... The drawing is at 11 p.m... And I'm sure someone on this list is going to win. Right?

Around the media desk, we had a fun discussion about which media company (or companies) we would buy if one of us won the $1 billion jackpot. I have a magazine and a website in mind... but I don't want to give away my plan. Alex Koppelman, who edited this edition of the letter, says he will be saving the Village Voice with his winnings.

What would you do? Would you buy a distressed hometown newspaper? A digital startup? A local TV broadcaster? Big brands like Fox News and the NYT are out of reach... But there's a lot you could do... Or you could just start your own news operation...

My wonkery aside, this is one of the reasons why ginormous lottery jackpots gain so much media attention and airtime. Money talks, and this "obscene amount of money" fuels peoples' imaginations and fantasies and fears. Frankly these moments are also a chance to point out how "the lottery snares the poor..."

Ben Jacobs responds to Trump

Rep. Greg Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after body-slamming Guardian US reporter Ben Jacobs in May 2017. He apologized AFTER initially lying about the crime. So President Trump's praise of Gianforte on Thursday night -- praise for being a body-slamming "kind of guy" -- "amounts to the celebration of a crime by someone sworn to uphold our laws and an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has solemnly pledged to defend it," the White House Correspondents Association said on Friday. "We should never shrug at the president cheerleading for a violent act targeting a free and independent news media."

Jacobs, in his only interview about Trump's comments, told Anderson Cooper on Friday night that it's a strange experience to "call up and tell your family that the president is mocking you when you've been a victim of a crime."

Cooper noted that Tump called Gianforte a "tough cookie." Jacobs: "A tough cookie doesn't attack somebody out of nowhere, without provocation, for asking a question about health care policy."

Trump's "blank check"

In the interview with Cooper, Jacobs quickly pivoted away from his own experience, saying he's much more concerned with journalists like Jamal Khashoggi and others who have lost their lives. "The signal this sends about how the U.S. -- and how the president of the U.S. -- views journalists, when 44 journalists have been killed this year, is what's really the concern," Jacobs said.

Trump's rhetoric is "a blank check for governments that want to crack down on the free press in places that don't have a First Amendment," he added.

Cooper made a provocative point afterward: "It's entirely possible, I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the president might at one point say, 'Wow, MBS had a really strong reaction to Jamal Khashoggi. You know, it was a really powerful reaction...' There's no telling what this president actually thinks about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi."

That brings us to Friday night's news:

A Saudi Arabian admission in time for the American nightly news

I hesitate to use the words "news dump" in connection with the death of a brave journalist and writer. But that's what Saudi Arabia just tried to do: A Friday night news dump confirming Jamal Khashoggi's death. The Saudis admitted what the Turks alleged two weeks ago: That Khashoggi never made it out of the consulate alive on October 2.

What time did the Saudis make this important announcement? Saturday at 1 a.m. local time in Riyadh, Friday at 6 p.m. in Washington. CNN immediately went into breaking news mode. (Fox and MSNBC caught up a little while later.) The network nightly newscasts scrambled to rewrite their 6:30 p.m. intros. On CBS, Jeff Glor alluded to the "Friday night news dump" notion. Jeff Pegues called the admission a "stunning reversal for Saudi Arabia, which for days has been saying that Jamal Khashoggi left the consulate in Istanbul alive..."

--> CNN's John Berman tweeted: "The timing of the Saudi announcement is fascinating... and might tell us a lot about the intended audience. It's an AMERICAN Friday night news dump."

Details about the Saudi announcement

CNN's Sarah Sirgany, Clarissa Ward and Salma Abdelaziz have all the details here. "According to the Saudis' explanation, discussions between Khashoggi and those who met him on his arrival at the consulate led to an argument and physical altercation... Those responsible then tried to cover up the death, state TV said." Multiple Saudi officials have been dismissed...

Where's the body?

CNN's story notes that "none of the Saudi statements give any clue as to what happened to Khashoggi's remains." This question kept coming up on cable news all evening...

The W.H. doesn't seem skeptical at all

In a milquetoast statement, Sarah Sanders said the US "acknowledges the announcement from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" and will "closely follow the international investigations into this tragic incident."

Later in the evening, Trump called the Saudi announcement a "good first step" and said "I do" believe the Saudi explanation. But he also said "it's early" and "we haven't finished our review..."

Here's what Khashoggi's editor at the Post is saying

Karen Attiah says she's "freshly angry all over again." She tweeted out on Friday night, "Utter bullshit." Then she elaborated: "The stupidity of the Saudi explanation is mind boggling… Journalists and whistleblowers: Time to step up and find out the real truth of what happened..."

More reactions

-- Jim Sciutto tweeted: "Having met Kashoggi, the idea of the 59-year-old bespectacled intellectual engaging in a physical fight with several intelligence agents is beyond the imagination..."

-- Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Jordan on Chris Cuomo's show: "You'd have to believe in the Easter Bunny, to believe this story that they are concocting..."

-- Erica Orden tweeted an hour after the Saudi statement came out: "I am on a plane sitting on the tarmac. The couple behind me is reading each other the Khashoggi news out loud. Earlier I overheard an airport bartender talking about it. People are paying attention..."

The Post's latest editorial

"Let's be clear," the WaPo editorial board says: Saudi's Arabia's so-called investigation "does not exist."

The Post's editorial came out a few hours before the Saudi admission. It said "the attempt by the Saudi leader and his U.S. accomplices to cover up and excuse an act of pure evil cannot be allowed to succeed..."

Pro-Trump media reactions to the case

Tom Kludt emails: If you've followed the right over the last week, you might have noticed a steady refrain when it comes to the Khashoggi case: What happened to him was bad, the line goes, BUT. What follows the "but" varies -- Khashoggi had ties to radicals, his death is only generating an outcry because he was a journalist, the US can't compromise its relationship with Saudi Arabia -- but it all has the effect of downplaying the man's death.

The Daily Beast rounded up some choice examples from Fox News this week, but there have been plenty more. As WaPo's Steven Ginsberg put it on Twitter: "We're at the smear campaign stage of things."

Weekend reading

-- Nicole Gaouette's latest: "Saudis admit Khashoggi is dead. What are Trump's options?"

-- On CNN Friday morning, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro floated an outrageous conspiracy theory about Jared Kushner and the Saudi crown prince, leading anchor Poppy Harlow to push back. Later in the day, he sort of walked it back...

-- Louisa Loveluck and Ghalia al-Alwani's latest for the Post describes something I've been seeing in my Twitter mentions: "Saudi electronic army floods Twitter with insults and mistruths after Khashoggi's disappearance..."

-- Susan Glasser says the Khashoggi case is "the Trump Presidency distilled to its morally compromising, press-bashing, truth-denying essence..."

-- Robin Wright notes that in his death, Khashoggi "has galvanized global attention far more than he was able to do during his life. The horrific details of his murder and dismemberment have had an effect he would never have imagined..."

On this Sunday's "Reliable Sources"

I'll be joined by Carl Bernstein, Dara Lind, Max Boot, Charlotte Alter, Philip Bump, and Tim Dixon... And maybe a surprise or two... See you Sunday at 11 a.m. ET on CNN...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- "AT&T's pruning of WarnerMedia continues," Todd Spangler says: "Turner announced that it is killing off Super Deluxe, its digital studio division..." (Variety)

-- Friday was Caroll Spinney's last day performing as Big Bird on the set of "Sesame Street..." (NBC)

-- Bloomberg scoop machine Lucas Shaw is relocating to Hong Kong "for a few months," covering media, entertainment and tech across the Asia-Pacific..." (Twitter)

-- Oliver Darcy emails: Fringe far-right writer Jerome Corsi was interviewed by investigators about his interactions with Roger Stone and WikiLeaks in September, a source told WSJ... (WSJ)

Apple wants a retraction from Bloomberg

This is big: Tim Cook is calling on Bloomberg Businessweek to retract its story about Apple being a victim of alleged Chinese spy attack. The story in question is this would-be blockbuster, "The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies."

Apple denied Bloomberg's mostly-anonymously-sourced findings before the story ran on October 4, and continues to deny it now. Cook's comments -- in an interview with BuzzFeed News -- further ratchet up the pressure on Bloomberg.

"There is no truth in their story about Apple," Cook said. "They need to do that right thing and retract it." There's no indication that Bloomberg is going to do that... Read BF's story here...

Charlie Collier to FOX

Friday night's big surprise in the TV biz: Charlie Collier, the president and GM of AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios, is jumping to the new FOX. He will be CEO of entertainment, running the FOX network, starting November 1.

"Lachlan Murdoch looked outside for a leader of the soon-to-be independent Fox broadcasting network that will emerge after Disney's acquisition of key Fox assets," Deadline's Nellie Andreeva wrote. Gary Newman had been in negotiations to stay on -- and was widely thought to be the man to beat -- but now Newman "will be leaving after helping with the transition." AMC did not immediately name a replacement for Collier...

Nick Clegg to Facebook

Last week FOX reached into the political world for PR help, hiring Hope Hicks... Now Facebook is doing something similar... But hiring someone much more senior. Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is FB's new VP of global affairs and communications. "After almost twenty years in European and British politics, this is an exciting new adventure for me," Clegg wrote in a FB post about the move.

Departing PR boss Elliot Schrage "will stay on at the firm as an advisor," CNN's story says...

Clegg should read this

The NYT editorial board is right: "Hey, Facebook, Don't Make Journalists Do Your Work."

This editorial is in Saturday's paper. It's about how reporters and academics and amateur sleuths keep uncovering social media scams and smears and botnets, "acting as unpaid content moderators for these platforms..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

By Julia Waldow:

-- FB wants you to know it's trying hard: This blog post is part of a new series, "The Hunt for Fake News," about how it detects false news... And comes one day after this skeptical WSJ story... (Facebook)

-- Issie Lapowsky profiles Brain Amerige and "Facebook's stormy debate over 'political diversity" -- Amerige is a former Facebook employee who left the company last week "over disagreements about the company's platform-wide hate speech policy..." (WIRED)

-- Dozens of McClatchy papers are hiking subscription rates for certain longtime subscribers, especially those in higher-income areas, Rick Edmonds reports... One of his sources called this practice "reverse redlining..." (Poynter)

Russian trolls and American media

Donie O'Sullivan emails: A complaint filed on Friday against a Russian national for her alleged involvement with the famous St. Petersburg troll group gave us some insight into how they understand the U.S. media landscape. According to the DOJ, one member of the troll group advised in October 2017, "if you write posts in a liberal group… you must not use Breitbart titles. On the contrary, if you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post of BuzzFeed titles."

It should be noted that the same person is allegedly racist, writing according to the complaint, "Colored LGBT are sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work." The complaint included examples of briefing notes that were distributed as talking points among the troll group on a dozen or so news stories. "Accuse CNN of yet another lie," one note read. Read the full complaint here... the notes on news outlets begin on page 14...

Now, from a Russian troll to an American troll... 😉

Clinton excites Drudge like no other

Oliver Darcy emails: Nothing gets Matt Drudge more excited than Hillary Clinton. On Friday afternoon, the conservative Internet news tycoon bannered his page with a "HILLARY 2020" logo and asked, "ONE LAST RUN?!" Over on Twitter, Drudge tweeted a screen grab of his website and captioned it with the praying hands emoji. The Politico report he linked to quoted a former Clinton aide saying the odds she runs again are "not zero." Of course, Clinton herself has said she won't in fact be running...

Alex Jones circumventing Twitter ban?

One more from Darcy: Alex Jones has been banned from Twitter, but as The Daily Beast's Will Sommer points out, some accounts connected to him -- which have been posting InfoWars content -- are still live on the site. Sommer notes that "all three Twitter accounts are listed on the InfoWars site as official InfoWars social media, meaning they wouldn't be hard for Twitter to find." But despite that, the accounts remained up. According to Sommer, Twitter did not respond to his requests for comment...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

By Daniella Emanuel:

-- Rick Hutzell, the editor of the Capital Gazette, has been named the National Press Foundation's Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year. "Hutzell received the award for leading his newsroom through and beyond a mass shooting in the Capital Gazette offices..." (The Baltimore Sun)

-- The suspect in the murder of Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova told prosecutors on Friday that "he did not mean to kill her..." (The Independent)

"Candidates from both parties have learned what Mr. Trump and his digital campaign gurus figured out in 2016: Visceral anger travels further online than inspirational messages, and the way to get noticed on the internet is to be loud and provocative above all."

--Kevin Roose's latest NYT column on midterm candidates trying their best Trump impressions...

Meet Tim Dixon

Daniella Emanuel writes: Cable news depicts a divided country, with talking heads fighting from the left and right on deeply polarizing political issues. But according to a new study, the US is not as split as the media portrays. More in Common, an initiative dedicated to understanding political polarization, recently released the results of their project called "The Hidden Tribes of America."

Key finding: Yes, co-author Tim Dixon says, there's "profound polarization between what we call the wings, the more extreme voices, the very strident voices of the right and left." But most Americans are in the "exhausted majority." And they feel "left out of the conversation."

Dixon is the guest on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. Listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn...

The Cut's new podcast

The Cut celebrated the launch of its new podcast "The Cut on Tuesdays" on Friday night... Spotted downtown: Podcast host Molly Fischer, Stella Bugbee, Ben Sinclair, Alex Blumberg , Matt Lieber, Britney Luse, Jessica Pressler, Alex Steigrad, Chantal Fernandez, Oliver Darcy, Naomi Fry, Max Tani, Jazmine Hughes, Kevin Nguyen, Max Read, Maureen O'Connor and more...

Part two of "Making a Murderer"

Brian Lowry emails: "Making a Murderer" is back, and it remains fascinating, centering now on attorney Kathleen Zellner's efforts to get Steven Avery's conviction overturned. But a subscript to that is a media story about how the original documentary becoming a sensation influenced the entire process. As filmmaker Moira Demos told Indiewire's Michael Schneider in an interview with partner Laura Ricciardi, "we knew the story we were going to be documenting, the world, had changed since we had delivered Part 1. We knew there would be times where we were sitting down with a subject who would directly refer to 'Making A Murderer.'"

Stelter adds: Jamie and I just started watching the new season on Friday evening, and it's really striking how self-referential the first episode is -- how it HAS to be -- given the huge impact the first season had. We're hooked...

"Halloween" is here

Why horror films make a killing at the box office

Frank Pallotta emails: Michael Myers returned to theaters Thursday night with a $7.7 million opening night for "Halloween." The Universal film is set for a scary good $60 million opening and it's easy to figure out why… Terrifying people is good business for Hollywood. "Horror really is the easiest sell," Amy Nicholson, film critic and host of The Ringer's "Halloween Unmasked," told me.

In an age of on-demand streaming from the comfort of a living room, horror films also bring people back to the theater... Read on...

Here's a scary thought

Jason Blum's comment to Frank earlier this year: Horror is having a moment right now "because the world is a particularly scary place. It's nice to go somewhere to see something that's scary, that's not real. I think it's as simple as that."

For Friday's story, Nicholson made this point: "Michael Myers is, in a way, one of the original angry young men, who is just mad for reasons we can't comprehend. That's a story we've been talking about a lot lately in the news, why are some people just angry and how do we reach them? Michael Myers is a man you can't reach, and that's terrifying."

Two more Lowry reviews

Brian Lowry emails with two more viewing recommendations this weekend: "My Dinner With Herve" is a flawed, deeply personal look at "Fantasy Island" star Herve Villechaize, directed by former journalist Sacha Gervasi, based on his experience with the actor in the 1990s. It's distinguished by "Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage's performance in the central role. It will premiere on HBO on Saturday night.

Also, "Wanderlust," a Netflix series – produced with the BBC – that stars Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh as a middle-aged couple that seeks to escape the monotony of monogamy by sleeping with other people. It's one of those shows that seems to have a NYT Sunday Styles feature baked into it...

A Super Bowl question

Brian Lowry emails: With reports that Rihanna has passed on the Super Bowl halftime show, citing solidarity with the players and Colin Kaepernick, have we reached the point where that made-for-TV showcase has become more of a potential headache for stars than it's worth?

That's a wrap on today's newsletter... See you Sunday on TV... Email me feedback anytime!