| | | | "Five months into Donald Trump's presidency, White House-media relations are hanging by a thread," Dylan Byers writes in this eye-opening look at the tensions.
He says the W.H. comms team is "overstretched and understaffed..." the team has "spent over a month unsuccessfully looking for new staff to help relieve some of the pressure..." but "so far, all that search has revealed is that the people the White House wants aren't interested in the job and the people who are interested in the job aren't wanted by the White House." | | Key graf from Dylan's story: "Amid this chaos, the White House press office has opted for an ad-hoc strategy intended to screw with the media -- the language used inside the White House is stronger -- and make them look ridiculous. It will go several days without a briefing; then, when media frustration over the lack of access reaches a fever pitch, it will hold a conventional briefing. The next day, it may hold the briefing off camera, starting the process over again." The result? A toxic relationship...
-- Another reason to read the full story: Dylan has behind-the-scenes details of David Martosko's meeting with Trump... | | A preview of Fox's Trump interview | | On Thursday, Trump talked with Fox's Ainsley Earhardt... his first interview in six weeks... it'll air on Friday's "Fox & Friends." In this clip that aired on Thursday's "Hannity," Earhardt and Trump discussed a major theme of Fox's recent coverage:
EARHARDT: "Robert Mueller, do you think he should recuse himself from the investigation? Because he is good friends with James Comey, he's hired some attorneys that were a part of Hillary Clinton's foundation, that had given money to Obama and Hillary Clinton's campaign. Should he recuse himself?"
TRUMP: "Well he is very, very good friends with Comey, which is very bothersome -- but he's also -- we're going to have to see, we're going to have to see in terms, look there has been no obstruction, there's been no collusion. There has been leaking by Comey. But there's been no collusion, no obstruction and virtually everybody agrees to that. So we'll have to see. I can say that the people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters." | | Facebook's new mission: bringing the word "closer together" | | Mark Zuckerberg's soul-searching has apparently led Facebook to overhaul its decade-old mission statement. Making the world "more open and connected" is out. Giving people "the power to build community and bring the world closer together" is in.
-- Laurie Segall's take: "It's an acknowledgment that the platform has also divided us in many ways. That we aren't necessarily better off... and Zuckerberg feels the weight of that."
Segall interviewed Zuckerberg on Wednesday for this CNN exclusive... Zuckerberg's first TV interview in years... pegged to Facebook's first-ever "Communities Summit" in Chicago. Read Heather Kelly's full recap here... | | | "I used to think that if we just work to give people a voice and help people connect, that that was going to make the world all better by itself. I think those are important things to do, we're still going to do them. But now I feel like we have a responsibility to do even more... Today, a lot of society is divided, right, and so it's pretty clear that just giving people a voice and connecting people isn't enough. We also have to do work to help bring people closer together. So that's what the new mission is all about. It's bringing the world closer together, so not just simply connecting, but also helping to close some of the gaps." | | | Laurie Segall emails: Zuckerberg doesn't love to appear in broadcast interviews -- I got the sense that shifting the focus of the company toward communities was important enough to him to play ball for this taping. While he sidestepped multiple Q's on the impact of misinformation, he did say we're more divided these days and need a diversity of perspectives. He kept going back to the idea of communities and building tools that will allow people to connect through Facebook groups (AI to recommend what groups we should be a part of). Larger picture is trying to put the humanity back in the equation... | | | How many of Facebook's problems can really be fixed by this new mission statement? Here's Heather Kelly's reality check... | | This week's "Reliable" pod: BTIG's Rich Greenfield | | | Facebook is one of the many companies that came up in this week's "Reliable" podcast. I talked with BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield about Apple, YouTube, Time Warner, Disney, Snapchat, Spotify, Amazon and more. The through-line: the "war for the bundle," mobile and who's going to "win the home screen." Download or stream the podcast here... and subscribe on iTunes... | | New stats about YouTube viewing time | | | "A question I get all the time is 'How many people actually watch YouTube?'" CEO Susan Wojcicki said at Vidcon on Thursday. She announced a couple new stats: "1.5 billion logged-in viewers visit YouTube every single month." And -- separately -- on average, "our viewers spend over an hour a day watching YouTube on mobile devices alone..." | | -- Dylan Byers broke this news via Twitter: "ABC's Michael Strahan has interview with unofficial North Korea ambassador Dennis Rodman..." it'll air Friday on "GMA..."
-- Sonia Saraiya with a blunt column about "NBC's Megyn Kelly problem:" she says Kelly has "alienated everyone..." (Variety)
-- This weekend on "Sunday Night:" Kelly interviews J.D. Vance...
-- MSNBC is going live til 9pm on the weekends... and Hugh Hewitt's time slot for his new half-hour show will be Saturdays at 8am, TVNewser reports... | | John Oliver sued by coal CEO claiming 'character assassination' | | | CNNMoney's Matt Egan writes: "John Oliver -- and a giant squirrel -- made the king of coal seriously angry. Robert Murray, the CEO of one of America's largest coal companies, has filed a defamation lawsuit" against Oliver... claiming the HBO host executed a "meticulously planned" and "ruthless character assassination" designed to boost TV ratings and hurt his mining company... | | HBO's response to the suit | | | "We have confidence in the staff of 'Last Week Tonight' and do not believe anything in the show this week violated Mr. Murray's or Murray Energy's rights," HBO said... | | Here's why Floyd Abrams thinks Oliver is on solid legal ground | | | I asked the First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams to weigh in. He responded with this: "Oliver was engaged in political commentary. No speech is more protected than that and the coal companies and executives face major challenges to prevail. That much of the commentary was expressed in humorous form does not diminish the legal protection. If anything, it simply makes clear that nothing Oliver said can be read too literally. That said, we do permit libel recoveries even for public figures such as thee plaintiffs if they can show that Oliver didn't believe what he was saying was substantively true or suspected it wasn't. That's difficult in all cases and perhaps especially here when the plaintiffs seem to take issue with an official study..." | | | Brian Lowry emails: Perhaps the most amazing thing about this suit is that Oliver basically dared him to do it. (He told viewers that Murray had threatened a lawsuit if he didn't "cease and desist.") But the lawsuit also serves as a kind of promo for "Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press," a Netflix documentary premiering Friday about billionaires seeking to hobble journalism, largely focused on the Hulk Hogan-Gawker case... | | Colbert is going on Russian TV | | Stephen Colbert is in Russia, as he revealed in a tweet on Thursday. Here's the additional info Frank Pallotta revealed in this story: Colbert is going to make an appearance on a late-night Russian talk show.
CBS says Colbert is in Russia "on assignment for a future broadcast" and won't say when he'll be back. But there's a new "Late Show" scheduled in NYC on Monday night... Read more... | | | The WSJ "is conducting a review of hundreds of articles by Jay Solomon, who was the paper's chief foreign affairs correspondent. He was fired on Wednesday after evidence emerged that he had possibly become entangled in the commercial dealings of an Iranian-born aviation titan who was a key source for some of his stories," NYT's Sydney Ember and Gardiner Harris report. "Karen Miller Pensiero, who oversees newsroom standards, is leading the review..." | | "This is a first for the Trump presidency: the first formal presidential retraction of a presidential untruth."
--The Atlantic's David Frum reacting to the "tapes" news... | | | As you surely know by now, Trump affirmed in a carefully-worded tweet on Thursday that he did not tape his conversations with James Comey. I said on CNN that this saga felt like an episode of "Veep..." | | "Live coverage banned..." | | | ...That's what the graphic said on CNN as the White House press briefing was about to begin on Thursday. The W.H. designated the Q&A as "off-camera" and, at first, prohibited broadcasting audio as well -- something it has done several times this month. Then the administration said TV and radio networks could air the audio, but only after the briefing was over. It was the latest in a series of evasive maneuvers by the Trump administration. Here's my full story... | | | CNN aired the audio-only briefing in its entirety right after it ended... | | | On "The Lead," Jake Tapper connected Trump's "tapes" admission and the W.H. briefing limitations, saying, "This is about more than just one weird claim of tapes. This is part and parcel of a White House trying to operate in something close to an accountability-free zone, where they don't have to go on TV live and defend aberrant behavior on Twitter or explain the false things that the president says at rallies before supporters," like this... Watch the video here... | | Will Friday's briefing be on or off camera? | | | No word from the W.H. yet... | | BTW, Preet is writing a book... | | | Due out in early 2019 per Politico: Preet Bharara "has reached a deal with Alfred A. Knopf to write a book about 'the search for justice,' the publisher announced Thursday..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Equating reporters to terrorists is a growing trend on social media -- and in the real world. Colin Campbell of The News & Observer pointed out that Dan Bishop, a NC state senator, has a new nickname for the paper: "Jihad Media."
-- Lucia Moses at Digiday wrote about what might happen if BuzzFeed were to IPO: "Wall Street is learning to appreciate innovation, but BuzzFeed would have to educate Wall Street on what being a modern media company means..."
-- From Craig Silverman at BuzzFeed, an update on the infamous Macedonian publishers who use Facebook to drive traffic to their sites, and are now getting their pages killed by Facebook trying to rid the platforms of spam. They are not happy about it...
-- Thought-provoking: Jeff Jarvis's proposal on Medium for the creation of "responsible, reliable, reasonable" conservative news orgs... | | How TV news fuels Islamophobia | | | An Phung emails: There was not a single month between 2015 and 2017 where the number of positive stories about Muslims outnumbered the negative ones, according to a new study that looked at the evening news programs at CBS, NBC and Fox. "War and terrorist activities were the major focus of news reports, with ISIS serving as protagonist 75 percent of the time, while positive coverage, such as human interest stories or those depicting Muslims as productive members of society, were overlooked," wrote the study's author Meighan Stone, who is the president of the Malala Fund. Other compelling numbers from the study: Only 3% of the voices in Muslim-centric stories came from actual Muslims, with Trump speaking on their behalf 21% of the time. More here... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- An Phung emails: Some good news about the news… There's been a spike in the number of Americans who are willing to pay for online news, from 9% to 15%, according to the Reuters Institute's 2017 Digital News Report...
-- Cornell Belcher is NBC/MSNBC's newest political contributor...
-- The Society of Environmental Journalists will hold its 2018 annual conference in Flint... at the University of Michigan-Flint... (SEJ) | | Bill Cosby to hold "town halls" on sexual assault | | | Megan Thomas emails: No, that's not an Onion headline. Cosby's publicity team told "Good Day Alabama" their client wants to get back to work... and is planning a series of town halls to educate young people about sexual assault law. "Laws are changing. The statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault are being extended," said spokeswoman Ebonee Benson. "A brush against the shoulder, anything at this point, can be considered sexual assault and it's a good thing to be educated about the laws." Here's CNN's story... | | Ron Howard steps in to direct Han Solo "Star Wars" film | | | Frank Pallotta emails: Han Solo, we have a director. Ron Howard will be stepping in to direct the upcoming Han Solo spinoff "Star Wars" film after the original directors stepped down two days ago, Disney's Lucasfilm said Thursday. Read more from Frank here... | | THE REALITY SHOW MUST GO ON? | | "Bachelor in Paradise" ready to resume filming | | | Chloe Melas emails: "Bachelor in Paradise" resumes filming this weekend. The contestants are packing their bags and flying back to Mexico in two waves -- some on Friday and others on Saturday, a source tells me. And yet another source says DeMario Jackson, one of the two contestants at the center of the scandal (who was allowed to return) has opted not to. I'm told the scandal will be addressed in some way during the season when it starts to air in August... | | Lowry reviews "The Big Sick" | | Brian Lowry emails: "The Big Sick" probably didn't intend to be quite so timely, but this autobiographical romantic comedy starring Silicon Valley's" Kumail Nanjiani is, among other things, about dealing with the healthcare system. Foremost, it's a look at the son of Pakistani immigrants, trying to resolve his commitment to his family and Muslim faith with his love for a woman who suddenly falls into a coma.
Read Lowry's full review here... | | | Megan Thomas emails: Ricky Gervais weighs in on Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher and internet "rubbish" in this worthwhile Vulture read. I loved this quote: "Reputation is still important, but not as much as character. Reputation is what strangers think of you, and character is what you are really like and what your friends think of you." | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- We didn't write about it, but the way Alyssa Milano shaded Ted Cruz on Twitter truly showed us "Who's the Boss!"
-- Four years after coming out, "Glee" star Charice Pempengco is now Jake Zyrus...
-- The news that "Downton Abbey" the movie is coming was a surprise to some of the cast... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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