Exec summary: Cardi B's shutdown commentary, Tribune Publishing's new CEO, HBO's "Brexit" film, and my interview with Report for America's co-founders... Scroll down to get caught up...
BuzzFeed's bombshell
"This is stunning," Don Lemon said on CNN. "Possibly historic," Lawrence O'Donnell said on MSNBC.
Both men were reacting to this BuzzFeed News story that hit at 10:11 p.m. ET: "President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."
CNN has not independently confirmed the report. Nor has any other news outlet that I've seen yet. But only one hour has passed. "If this is accurate," CNN's Sara Murray told Lemon, it is "an indication that the president was, in fact, trying to obstruct justice."
-- Ryan Lizza on "CNN Tonight:" "This is probably one of the most serious pieces of reporting in the two-plus years of this Russia investigation…"
-- Garrett Graff added: "This focuses on the lies to Congress, which is, I think, going to make it much harder for Congress to ignore this..." | |
Rudy's non-response
Rudy Giuliani – who just 24 hours ago shifted the "collusion" goalposts – said in response to the BuzzFeed story, "If you believe Cohen I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge."
I just heard Shannon Bream say on Fox that this statement counts as a denial from Rudy. But it is not.
And if BF's sources are right, this has nothing to do with "believing Cohen" or not. According to BuzzFeed, "the special counsel's office learned about Trump's directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents."
Murray made this point on CNN: "Cohen is a witness with a lot of problems." So Mueller and co. would "would have to have documents to back it up." Plus, she noted, "the president has the same kinds of credibility problems" that Cohen has…
Ben Smith's take
Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier shared the byline on Thursday night's story.
BuzzFeed News EIC Ben Smith told me: "Jason and Anthony have spent many months opening a totally original vein in the Trump story, and with this new scoop, their report last May on the negotiations over a Trump Tower Moscow looks more and more like the central story of the whole Russia investigation…"
IN OTHER NEWS...
Netflix's Q4 gains
Seth Fiegerman's recap of Thursday's earnings report: Netflix "added nearly nine million new paying subscribers during the final three months of 2018, beating its own expectations of 7.6 million new subscribers. The service now has 139 million subscribers globally. It expects to add another 8.9 million subscribers in the quarter that ends in March, the vast majority of which are expected to come from strong growth in its international markets." The company also shared some more viewership stats, but didn't say if the #'s had been vetted by a third party. Details here...
-- NYT's Edmund Lee tweeted: "Main takeaway from Netflix's earnings: huge charm offensive for Hollywood talent. Buying billboards along the Strip. Releasing films in theaters. And now, revealing viewership data, essential to making sure you're getting paid enough. The fight for talent is real."
A "higher content spend..."
From Fiegerman's story: "In an analyst interview," Netflix VP Spencer Wang "did not explicitly state a content budget for 2019, but signaled that there will be 'higher content spend' going forward..."
Moonves is going to fight
CBS wants to break from the Les Moonves era, but Moonves isn't making it easy. On Thursday the company confirmed in a SEC filing that Moonves plans to fight for his $120 million exit package. Time for "binding arbitration..." Here's my full story... | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Amen to Erik Wemple's latest: "Beware the permanent exclusive" (WaPo)
-- Who is David Haskell? Here's Michael Grynbaum's profile of the new NYMag editor... (NYT)
-- Research by these three UMD scholars "found that voters are not simply uninformed about President Trump's biographical background, but misinformed — and that misinformation has serious political consequences..." (Politico Mag)
-- Big narrative on Fox News on Thursday: The March for Life is on Friday, the Women's March is on Saturday, and "the media" is going to ignore the former while promoting the latter...
How "Report for America" can help
Report for America launched a little more than a year ago. Like the name suggests, it is a Teach for America-type project to place emerging journalists in newsrooms that could really use the help. It is backed by numerous philanthropies, plus a couple of tech companies. Google announced its support last year, and Facebook announced a $2 million grant earlier this week.
The Facebook $$ is one of the reasons why I wanted to interview co-founders Charles Sennott and Steve Waldman. I also wanted to help spread the word about the application process. Right now Report for America has 13 reporters in eight states. But the project is in growth mode: It is fielding "50 new reporting positions this year," according to its website.
So Waldman and Sennott sat down with me on Thursday, a few hours after the project announced its "2019 newsroom winners." Out of 130 applicants, roughly 35 newsrooms in 26 states and territories will be gaining a corps member in the coming months. The long-term goal is ambitious: 1,000 newsrooms in 2023.
"It's really disheartening, in some ways, to get to hear from these newsrooms," Waldman said, "because it really is as bad as we think." He was talking about the diminished state of local news, with "news deserts" all across the country, not just in rural areas. And it's not just geographic: Often what is lacking is specific beat coverage within communities.
"But the exciting thing," Waldman said, "is that these are all newsrooms that are really trying to be innovative."
This is what they're trying to do
Sennott said we should think about local journalism "as a binding agent for our democracy."
Just look at some of the newsrooms that are entering the program: Chalkbeat will gain an education reporter in Newark, Honolulu Civil Beat will have a reporter covering public health issues, the Malheur Enterprise will get a reporter covering "Latino issues in rural Oregon," the Sacramento Bee will gain more coverage of "Hmong, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Cambodian and Japanese communities," WCAI will have help with covering climate change... And those are just a few of the examples. I wish the arguments about "THE MEDIA" could focus more on beat reporting, and less on political fault lines...
Listen to our podcast conversation
Hear my full conversation with Sennott and Waldman on the weekly "Reliable Sources" podcast... Via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or Spotify...
Know someone who should join the corps?
The journalist application deadline is February 8...
Tribune CEO transition time
Via Bloomberg's trifecta of Nabila Ahmed, Kiel Porter, and Gerry Smith: "Tribune Publishing chairman and CEO Justin Dearborn is handing the reins to one of his lieutenants."
The company confirmed the changes after Bloomberg reported it on Thursday. The company's president, Tim Knight, will become CEO and join the board. "David Dreier, who's been a director of the company since 2016, will take over the chairman role."
DEAL TALK: Knight is a "former mergers and acquisitions lawyer," Bloomberg noted. In a statement, he said "we" at Tribune "believe there are attractive consolidation opportunities within the media industry that will enable us to accelerate our strategy..."
Jesse Angelo out at the NYPost
Jesse Angelo became a staff reporter at the NYPost in 1999 and "quickly moved up the ranks," the NYT's Jaclyn Peiser wrote. For the past seven years he has been publisher and CEO. Now Sean Giancola, The Post's chief revenue officer, is "taking his place."
A notable graf in Peiser's story: "As staff members learned of Mr. Angelo's departure, they speculated that a former Post editor in chief, Col Allan, was preparing to come out of retirement..."
The Forward ending its print edition
Two stories in a row from Peiser: "The Forward, the 121-year-old Jewish publication that started as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper for those who had fled persecution in Europe, announced on Thursday that it planned to stop publishing print editions this spring." Read the rest here...
A new trend of faked news outlets on Facebook
Donie O'Sullivan emails: On Thursday morning morning we learned that, according to Facebook, employees at the Russian news agency Sputnik were covertly running Facebook pages designed to look like independent news sites targeting Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The pages were promoting anti-NATO and anti-Western sentiment and some had been running for years, spending thousands of dollars on Facebook ads to target users.
This comes a few weeks after Facebook announced that it had found pages run by people linked to the Bangladesh government running pages designed to look like real news outlets – one page looked like the BBC. | | This points to a worrying trend of governments, and government-linked entities, posing as news outlets on social media...
The big picture
Donie adds: Everyone is tired of hearing about fake Facebook pages. But the extent of Russia's operation on FB is incredible. Covert pages with millions of followers operating across the world. Social media allows for info ops Cold War operatives could have only dreamed of...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale, "who exposed corruption in soccer" in Ghana, was killed by two gunmen" on Wednesday... (CNN)
-- Avi Asher-Schapiro's disturbing piece for CJR: "For local female journalists in US, rape threats, stalkers, harassment can come with the beat..." (CJR)
-- CNN's Laurie Segall contributed to TIME's cover package about tech and ethics... She asked "a few key thinkers about the challenges ahead..." (TIME)
-- There's been a last-minute change to the subtitle of Roger McNamee's book "Zucked," which comes out next month. Old: "The Education of an Unlikely Activist." New: "Waking Up to The Facebook Catastrophe."
Trump boxed in by right wing media as the shutdown drags on
| | Oliver Darcy emails his analysis for CNN.com: Trump has been painted into a corner -- and not by his political adversaries, but by his own allies in conservative media. Right-wing media organizations and personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter have given Trump little, if any, room to negotiate his way out of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. No wall, no deal.
Trump knows he can weather critical stories from outlets like NYT or WaPo because his most avid supporters do not trust mainstream news organizations or get their information from such places. But the people in his base watch and trust the Fox News prime time lineup; they listen to talk radio hosts like Limbaugh, and they read websites like the Drudge Report. If he were to back down from his border wall demands, he'd almost certainly face criticism in the right-wing media world, and be confronted with the possibility he could lose standing with his base...
>> Related sound bite: Juan Williams last night on Fox: "You should go listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, because they're running this government. And they have forced this president into a trap..."
Trump v. Pelosi, day #... who knows!?
I've read a lot of "takes" about Trump responding to Nancy Pelosi's reschedule-the-SOTU letter by scrapping her congressional delegation trip to Afghanistan. This piece really resonated with me.
"Trump's letter to Pelosi wasn't really petulance," WaPo's Philip Bump wrote. "It was of a piece with his consistent strategy from his first day as a candidate: Throwing punches at people his base hates." Owning the libs, indeed...
What if there is no bottom?
CNN analyst Josh Campbell tweeted Thursday: "We're all just unwitting passengers now in a perpetual race to find rock-bottom."
A humble proposal
Pelosi wanted to go to Afghanistan. Trump has yet to visit Afghanistan. Maybe, instead of neither person going, both of them should go? How about a State of the Union speech and a Democratic response from there? I know that Don and Nancy's Big Adventure isn't going to happen, but.....
Cohen rigged online polls for Trump
Darcy emails: Michael Cohen paid a small IT firm to ensure Trump did well in online polls from CNBC and the Drudge Report, WSJ reported Thursday. The online polls -- which were obviously unscientific -- were conducted in 2014 and 2015, but it does make you wonder if any of the unscientific online polls during the 2016 campaign were manipulated by anyone acting on behalf or in support of Trump -- or other candidates...
>> Remember, Trump frequently touted his victories in online polls. And in 2016, Fox hosts promoted such polls as supposed evidence Trump won debates. Hannity even did so after Fox's VP of polling said such polls didn't meet the network's standards...
Drudge joins #TheResistance? | | One more item from Darcy: For a little while on Thursday, it felt like the Drudge Report was pondering joining the resistance. Drudge bannered WSJ's story about Cohen paying to rig his poll, asking, "DID TRUMP BRIBE DRUDGE POLL?" On the top of the banner, he noted Cohen's claim of carrying out the scheme at the direction of Trump. Drudge then hyped Cohen's testimony.
But it wasn't just that. Drudge prominently featured The Atlantic's "IMPEACHMENT" cover and linked to the magazine's story on the issue. He gave attention to Rudy Giuliani's comments on collusion, and he highlighted the fact that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had beaten the Fox News lineup in ratings on Tuesday. It had me wondering: Is Trump losing the support of Matt Drudge?
>> Related: I wrote in 2017 about why Trump should worry about one day losing Drudge's support...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Scott Pelley "retracted two social media postings on Thursday that suggested there was an Egyptian warrant for his arrest as a result of his recent '60 Minutes' interview with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi." CBS says "Pelley's post was in error..." (NBC)
-- One of the takeaways from Ashley Feinberg's interview with Jack Dorsey: He "wouldn't confirm that President Trump would get banned from Twitter if he called on his followers to kill a journalist. The response was only one of Dorsey's several vague responses..." (Beast)
-- Recommended: This Q&A with CNN's S. Mitra Kalita about the past decade in journalism... (Poynter)
Viceland's plan for "Vice Live"
Katie Pellico emails: Variety dropped all the names involved in Viceland's much-hyped nightly variety show on Thursday... Sandy Honig, Zack Fox, Marie Fauston and Fat Tony will co-host "Vice Live," the two-hour show live from Vice's Williamsburg HQ lobby, complete with a bar and studio audience a la "WWHL."
Some Vice dotcom contributors like Dee Nasty, Eve Peyser, Lee Adams and Taji Ameen will also make appearances, in addition to "celebrity guests, music performances, host-driven segments, live remotes, and pre-taped content." The show will premiere February 25, four days after the reboot of Desus & Mero on Showtime...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Justin Freiman emails: BritBox says it has more than 500,000 streaming subcribers. BBC Studios and ITV launched the service in 2017 to bring their programming to North American audiences... (B&C)
-- Walmart is nixing its plan to launch a new streaming service to focus on Vudu, the streaming service it acquired in 2010. CNBC reports: "Walmart couldn't get comfortable with making a large investment in content, a business where it has no real experience..." (CNBC)
-- "Instagram has an influencer-hacking problem..." (VICE)
"Surviving R. Kelly" is resonating more because of #MeToo
Lisa Respers France writes: There was a moment at a press conference this week when Faith Rodgers was asked what she'd want to say to R. Kelly if he was watching. "Time's up," Rodgers said, without missing a beat.
More than a soundbite, her words were a testament as to why -- after decades of allegations and whisperings about Kelly -- people now seem to be listening to the women who say the singer abused them. Read on...
| | The day's big must-read
Amy Chozick and Brooks Barnes went deep on Paramount. Real deep. What went wrong? Can the studio -- now "a glorified rental property" -- be saved? If you haven't read their story yet, click here... And stay for the Barry Diller kicker...
HBO's "Brexit" wins "watch" vote
Brian Lowry emails: HBO obviously couldn't ask for a timelier movie than "Brexit," its latest collaboration with the BBC, but it also has one that's good enough to merit a strong "Watch" vote, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the strategist behind the "Leave" campaign. The project also connects the dots to the U.S. via Cambridge Analytica, the misleading tactics employed, and the simmering resentment into which the campaign tapped...
Lowry reviews "Glass"
Brian Lowry emails: "Glass" is a sequel 20 years in the making, a follow-up to "Unbreakable" connected by writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's more recent "Split." Based perhaps in part on my admiration for the first film and mild regard for the second, I came away with a "Glass"-half-full view of the modestly budgeted movie — a rare joint Universal-Disney endeavor — which should be a significant moneymaker for the studios. Read the full review here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- The Grammys announced its first round of performers for the February 10 show, among them Cardi B, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes, Janelle Monae, Post Malone and Kacey Musgraves... (Grammy.com)
-- Justin Freiman emails: The first trailer for the third chapter in the John Wick films has been released. "John Wick 3: Parabellum" has Keanu Reeves back as the title character along with a new dog... (YouTube)
-- By Lisa Respers France: Miley Cyrus used the viral egg that broke Kylie Jenner's Instagram record to shut down speculation she's pregnant...
"The hidden dangers of TV's true crime craze"
Brian Lowry emails: This is a good read from THR's Rebecca Keegan on the potential fallout associated with true-crime documentaries — specifically, the outrage directed at a Wisconsin sheriff's dept. officer featured in Netflix's "Making a Murderer," who has sued the service for defamation and claims to be living in a "constant state of vigilance" because of the threats he's received...
LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
Cardi B's shutdown commentary
Katie Pellico emails: Cardi B's "our country is in a hellhole right now" video is picking up steam. On Thursday night she Instagrammed a clip from Ari Melber's Thursday "Beat" in which former senator Robert Torricelli said of her video decrying the shutdown: "Well of course, I was just going to say the exact same thing."
She responded to those "saying I shouldn't talk politics" and cited the work of Shaun King and Tamika Mallory: "It won't kill ya to visit some IG pages of people that talk about what's going on in our community." This came hours after, in the words of BuzzFeed, "Democrats were laughably conflicted about whether to share" her original video...
| | That's a wrap. Send me your feedback anytime! It always makes the letter better. See you tomorrow...
| | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment