| | | | The Trump presidency is a test. Institutions like the courts, the news media and the business community have all been tested. This weekend was the NFL's turn.
Scroll down for our complete coverage of the NFL news... But first... | | | THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATIONS | | Carl Bernstein said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" that he believed Russian operatives were "deadly effective" at using Facebook to spread anti-Clinton, pro-Trump propaganda last year.
Bernstein sought to put the current controversy over Facebook and Russian-linked ads in a broader context. "Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is looking at the conduct of President Donald Trump; members of his family, especially Jared Kushner; also his closest campaign aides," he said. Did Trumpworld know about the Russian attempts to help out? "If they knew that, why didn't they blow the whistle? Did they try to cover it up? Are they continuing to try to cover up that knowledge?"
Bernstein summed it up this way: "Did they know the Russians were trying to help Donald Trump? That's the big question." | | What did Facebook know, and when did it know it? | | The WashPost is out with a must-read story by Adam Entous, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg. The lead describes how President Obama tried to deliver a post-election day "wake-up call" to Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook's role spreading fake news. But the story is about much more than that. They reveal that "Facebook, without realizing it, had stumbled into the Russian operation as it was getting underway in June 2016." The key words: "Without realizing it." Facebook felt like the U.S. law enforcement and intel community wasn't very helpful on this matter, even after election day...
-- Ask yourself: What else happened in June 2016? | | An example of the Facebook effect | | | Some of the propagandistic ads from foreigners may have never mentioned Trump or Clinton at all. Case in point: "The Russians bought ads to keep front and center -- in Wisconsin and other states -- the issue of Black Lives Matter," Bernstein said on "Reliable..." | | Exclusive interview with Mark Warner | | On Sunday's show, I had an exclusive interview with Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, about FB, Russian-linked ads, etc. "We want to try to find a way," he said, "to make some of those ads and other information public." Congressional staffers are talking with Facebookers about how to make this happen. It's sensitive, given the inherent privacy concerns. Some key quotes from the interview:
-- "Every American wants to know that the political advertising they're seeing or viewing, whether it's on TV or on their iPhone, that they know, one, it's not coming from a foreign nation or foreign agents, and two, they ought to be able to see the content, even if it's not directly focused on them."
-- Regarding possible regulation: "I want to start with the lightest touch possible."
-- Why he thinks he'll gain GOP co-sponsors for his ad disclosure bill: "In 2016, the Russians tried to help Mr. Trump. But the Russians are not pro-Republican or pro-Democrat." | | Let's be honest, Facebook is just one piece of this gigantic puzzle | | | Warner acknowledged in the interview that the U.S. government failed to fully understand the Russian attack as it was happening. The intel community did not "fully connect all the dots, unfortunately, until after the election," he said. And as for Facebook, "we still don't know the total number of fake accounts. I don't think we know the full extent of Russian advertising..." | | Her first story for "60 Minutes" was about a focus group of Michigan voters. It was billed as Oprah taking the pulse of the nation. Here's the video...
>> It ended on an uplifting note: "Many members of our focus group have kept talking, both online and in person. Several attended a congressional town hall meeting together. And just last week, five people from our group went to a shooting range to try and understand each others' views on gun rights..."
Speaking of Oprah... | | Megyn Kelly takes over the 9am hour of the "Today" show on Monday morning. Do you think she'll succeed in the time slot? I'd say the conventional wisdom in the TV news biz is that she's going to have a very hard time.
Bill Carter writes: "For reasons perhaps only understood by the management of NBC News, the network seems intent on trying to turn Kelly, whose chief claim to fame was her frequently sharp and steely questioning of mostly political figures on her old Fox News prime time show, into a Oprah Winfrey-esque empathetic emblem of empowerment."
Carter points out that Kelly will be up against Kelly Ripa in many markets. "What Kelly most needs is time," he writes. "to find her bearings and a persona that works in the morning." But "time may be a tough ask, because her profile is so high." Read his full column for CNN here... | | | NBC News prez Noah Oppenheim quoted in this USA Today story: "She's really warm, she's really funny, she's incredibly quick on her feet, she's devoted to her family and husband [and] she's open about things that are going on in her personal life. This isn't about trying to shoehorn her into a format where she doesn't belong. This show is a natural expression of what she wanted to do from Day 1. I think the audience will sense that authenticity, even if it's a side of her they haven't seen before..." | | The fall TV season is here | | | Brian Lowry emails: Monday marks the official kickoff of the new TV season, beginning with the premiere of "The Big Bang Theory" spinoff "Young Sheldon," followed later in the week by "Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders," the "Will & Grace" revival and "Marvel's Inhumans." | | | IMHO Lowry missed the most important part of the TV week! He was focusing on series premieres... but lemme note this... "This Is Us" returns for its second season on Tuesday. cc: my wife | | CBS introduces "Star Trek: Discovery" | | "Star Trek: Discovery" premiered Sunday night on CBS before making the move to the CBS All Access streaming service.
-- Brian Lowry's quick take: The series is more interesting for its distribution model than its content, at least based on the somewhat clunky premiere on CBS, a cliffhanger shrewdly followed by the streaming debut of its second episode...
-- Related: If you missed it, here's Lowry's look at the company's strategy, plus the historic use of "Star Trek" to launch new franchises... | | Jordan Klepper's 11:30pm debut | | | Megan Thomas emails: Former "Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper launches his new 11:30pm show on Comedy Central Monday night. Klepper told VF that on "The Opposition" he'll play a version of the "buffoonish, painfully white dude" you got to know on "The Daily Show" with "20% more paranoia..." | | -- Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Sydney Ember and Michael M. Grynbaum examine the future of the magazine business, chock-full of important interviews... (NYT)
-- Also via Francesca: Margaret Sullivan's Monday column is about the state of free speech in America. "The civil rights and Vietnam protests changed America. Today, they might be illegal..." (WashPost)
-- And Jim Rutenberg's Monday column is about the politics of late night... (NYT) | | Media week ahead calendar | | Monday morning: Advertising Week begins in NYC...
Monday evening: CNN's health care debate...
Tuesday: Gretchen Carlson getting a jump start on her book tour, speaking with Emily Steel at an Ad Week event...
Thursday: Twitter reps will meet with Senate intelligence committee...
Saturday: The season premiere of "SNL..." | | "Never in modern times has there been an occupant of the Oval Office who seemed to reject so thoroughly the nostrum that a president's duty is to bring the country together. Relentlessly pugnacious, energized by a fight, unwilling to let any slight go unanswered, Mr. Trump has made himself America's apostle of anger, its deacon of divisiveness."
-- Peter Baker in Monday's NYT... | | President Trump has been criticizing the NFL -- specifically the football players who protest the national anthem -- for three days now. Some journos think he's trying to change the subject, since health care is on life support, his pick in the Alabama Senate race may well lose, and new revelations about Russia come out every day. I tried to address the "distraction" question on Sunday's show. Yes, we have to make sure other stories don't fall by the wayside. Particularly the disaster in Puerto Rico. But at the same time, Trump v. the NFL brings up big questions about patriotism, the right to protest, and what it means to be an American. This is as big as it gets...
-- My two cents: This is partly about the U.S. president lacking appreciation for First Amendment values. It's also partly about CEOs, athletes, entertainers trying to avoid being associated with him... | | "Is President Trump racist?" | | This weekend's controversy had an unmistakable racial element to it. At the top of Sunday's show, I reprised a question that we asked a few weeks ago: Is President Trump racist?
Related Q's: Is he making racist appeals to his supporters? If he's not racist, why do so many Americans believe that he is, and how is that going to affect the rest of his presidency?
-- A sigh that spoke volumes: When I said to guest Donte Stallworth, "Do you personally feel that his attack against the NFL is racist?," he let out a long sigh...
-- Trump speaking to reporters at the WH Sunday evening: "This has nothing to do with race." | | Live coverage of the anthems | | On Saturday, the NFL's TV partners told Frank Pallotta that they'd stick with the usual practice of not broadcasting the anthem live, while covering any protests as warranted on a tape-delayed basis. On Sunday, the plan changed. CBS and Fox showed all the anthems live. By the evening, NBC was promoting it as a feature of "Sunday Night Football" -- i.e. "stay tuned, the anthem is coming up" -- since so many viewers wanted to see what would happen. Some players kneeled, some stood with locked arms, some held up fists, some stayed in locker rooms... the headline was the solidarity among players and owners, even as some fans booed in the stands...
-- ESPN will also show the anthem live on "MNF." Here's our full story... | | "If Trump thought he could divide the NFL, he was wrong." | | | "All across the league, owners, coaches and players came together to decide what was best for them," an NFL source told me Sunday afternoon. "If Trump thought he could divide the NFL, he was wrong." | | NFL PR made a choice not to respond to every single Trump tweet this weekend. Instead, it dusted off the one-minute "unity" ad that it commissioned for the Super Bowl earlier this year, and aired it during "SNF."
"We think this is the single best response to demonstrate what we are about," an NFL spokesman said. "It stands in stark contrast to some who practice the politics of division..." | | Collinsworth urges Trump to apologize | | Mike Tirico called this "an NFL day the likes of which we've never seen before." On NBC's pre-game show, he asked Cris Collinsworth, "What would you say to the president about all this stuff?"
The answer: "I would say he should apologize. They're not SOB's. They're smart, thoughtful guys..." Later on in the broadcast, he encouraged Trump to invite some players to the White House... | | -- WSJ's Jason Gay: "We can all agree that 'Stick to Sports' is officially dead..."
-- How'd ESPN handle this complicated day of sports + politics? CNN's Ahiza Garcia wrote about that...
-- Armen Keteyian tweets: "I've been covering sports in one form or another for 45 years. I've never seen a day like today. The NFL stood strong. On a knee."
-- Megan Thomas emails: Excellent reminder: The New Yorker's David Remnick on "Recalling Muhammad Ali's Vietnam War resistance in the age of Trump"
-- WSJ editorial board's view: "Everybody loses in the Trump-NFL brawl over the national anthem..." | | Pro-Trump media goes on offense | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Trump's supporters in the media came out in full force this weekend. In the pro-Trump media universe, Trump was portrayed as a patriot taking the battle to wealthy, elitist athletes who were characterized as behaving in an un-American manner. "Don't give me this crap that you want to support reform and stand up against social injustice," snarled Judge Jeanine Pirro on her Fox News show. "Shame on you. Shame on all of you. And shame on you too, Roger Goodell, for not showing you love this country as much as the president does." | | "Turn off the NFL," pro-Trump group says | | | Hadas Gold emails: One of the outside groups with ties to the President, America First Policies, released a digital ad encouraging people to "Turn off the NFL." According to BuzzFeed the ad includes a photo with Trump, hand over his heart, and a #TakeAStandNotAKnee hashtag. As the Guardian's Ben Jacobs pointed out on Twitter, you have to wonder "what Rupert Murdoch, who pays $1.1 billion a year through 2022 to televise NFL games, makes of this..." | | Will Sunday's ratings be higher than usual? | | | We'll see in the coming days. The president is wrong when he says NFL #'s have "massively" declined (he said that Friday night) and "way down" (he tweeted that on Sunday). Ratings are down a bit, yes, but the games are remarkably strong, all things considered. The NFL remains the highest-rated programming on TV... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- BuzzFeed's Saeed Jones and Isaac Fitzgerald will premiere the first episode of their made-for-Twitter TV show, "#AM2DM," Monday at 10am ET... (Axios)
-- Country singer Luke Bryan will join Katy Perry in judging ABC's "American Idol" reboot... A third judge has yet to be confirmed... (Variety)
-- ICYMI: Twitter is first testing out a "lite" version for Android in the Philippines... Part of the app involves a "media-free mode..." (TechCrunch) | | Judging Jimmy Kimmel's impact | | Jimmy Kimmel put "a face to the story" of health care reform and drew national attention to the Graham-Cassidy bill debate, Bill Carter said on Sunday's show. And, BTW, Kimmel has a much larger platform "than most of us health policy reporters," Vox's Sarah Kliff added jokingly. Notably, she said that Kimmel's criticism of the bill was generally correct, even though he's a comedian...
--> Carter and I will be talking more about this on CNN's "New Day" Monday at 6:50am... | | Kimmel's "surprising change of tone" | | | Til last week, Kimmel was "America's mildest late-night host," TheWrap's Reid Nakamura writes. "Given the comedian's persona as a mischievous wise guy, the week of prolonged sincerity was a surprising change of tone -- one that's probably as unfamiliar to Kimmel himself as it was to his viewers." But it's precisely because he was "departing from his persona" that he had more impact... | | Congrats, Elise Jordan and Mike Hogan! | | | Oliver Darcy emails: MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan and Vanity Fair digital director Mike Hogan tied the knot on Friday in what was described to me as a small "bureaucratic-chic, 90-second ceremony" at the New York City Clerk's office in downtown Manhattan. Spotted on the scene were Mike's father Jack Hogan, WeWork director of public affairs Lauren Fritts, VF photographer Justin Bishop, and the couple's corgi Bobby Sneakers. Pic of the happily married couple here... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: I joined Mediaite columnist and conservative talk show host John Ziegler on his podcast Sunday afternoon. We talked about the various actors in the pro-Trump media and what the future holds for the conservative media universe. Take a listen and let me know what you think... | | Concert for Charlottesville and Pilgrimage Festival politically charged | | | "Two concerts held Sunday highlighted America's current political climate," Lisa Respers France writes... | | What is Mike Fleiss teasing? | | | On Sunday he tweeted: "I will be making a life-changing, historic announcement regarding #TheBachelor tomorrow!!!" The drama continues... | | | Email reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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