| | | | "Unity and equality" on "MNF" | | All day long, the Cowboys and the Cardinals talked about what to do during the anthem. Both teams wanted to make statements. But the plans weren't firmed up until about "20 minutes before the game," a league source tells me.
The entire Cowboys team -- including owner Jerry Jones -- walked out to the field and took a knee shortly BEFORE the National Anthem. This was the team's way of expressing support for "unity and equality" -- and separating it from the anthem. According to the source, there was talk during the day about both teams doing this -- what a scene that would've been -- but the Cardinals decided on a different approach. The entire team -- including owner Bill Bidwill -- stood and locked arms before and during the anthem.
The live coverage on ESPN had the feel of a climactic event after three straight days of NFL protest drama. I'm sure the league is relieved that there's no such thing as "Tuesday Night Football" right now. But the debate will rage on... Since President Trump tweeted the #StandForOurAnthem hashtag again Monday night... What do you think -- did he fall back on his NFL fight because Senator Susan Collins had announced her "no" vote on the GOP health care bill just 30 minutes earlier?
That's the thing -- all of Monday's big stories are sorta related. Here's what I mean... | | The president's tweets have consequences | | On Monday A.M. @realDonaldTrump retweeted a random MAGA account that invoked Pat Tillman's name and face to promote Trump's #StandForOurAnthem position. "Stop Using Pat Tillman," by Deadspin's Patrick Redford, explains why this is so disturbing.
On Monday night, Pat's widow Marie Tillman shared this statement with me. She has been sharply critical of the president in the past. She is hoping this statement reaches him.
"As a football player and soldier, Pat inspired countless Americans to unify," Tillman wrote. "It is my hope that his memory should always remind people that we must come together. Pat's service, along with that of every man and woman's service, should never be politicized in a way that divides us. We are too great of a country for that. Those that serve fight for the American ideals of freedom, justice and democracy. They and their families know the cost of that fight. I know the very personal costs in a way I feel acutely every day."
Tillman added: "The very action of self expression and the freedom to speak from one's heart — no matter those views — is what Pat and so many other Americans have given their lives for. Even if they didn't always agree with those views. It is my sincere hope that our leaders both understand and learn from the lessons of Pat's life and death, and also those of so many other brave Americans." | | CNN says Trump's latest complaint about the network is "false" | | Trump's Twitter feed has been driving days of news coverage. During "The Situation Room," he posted this: "@CNN is #FakeNews. Just reported COS (John Kelly) was opposed to my stance on NFL players disrespecting FLAG, ANTHEM, COUNTRY. Total lie!"
Trump was reacting to a scoop by CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Jeff Zeleny. They reported that Kelly "was unaware" Trump was going to bash the NFL at his rally, and he "was not pleased." But they did not report what Trump claimed -- that Kelly "was opposed to my stance."
--> CNN PR responded to Trump via Twitter: "False. CNN reporting COS unhappy w @POTUS's NFL war but "appalled" by players' lack of respect. Those are the facts." | | What a night in the cable news wars! | | "The Five" moved back to 5pm on Fox... then at 8pm MSNBC's Chris Hayes had Hillary Clinton... then at 9pm, CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash hosted a unique debate among four senators about the health care bill, while Sean Hannity had an interview with Steve Bannon...
-- I noticed some political journos praising CNN for getting Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Amy Klobuchar, and Bernie Sanders on the same stage. Dave Weigel tweeted: "As a whiny cable news scold, I think it completely owns when @CNN gives a night over to a real policy debate." If you missed it, here are the highlights...
Speaking of health care... | | | Jimmy Kimmel has even more to say about the health care battle. Here's his 8-minute monologue from Monday night's show... | | O'Reilly will be on Fox Tuesday night | | Did Rupert Murdoch sign off on this? I guess he did. Just a few months after the Murdochs forced Bill O'Reilly to leave his top-rated show, O'Reilly will be back on Fox News on Tuesday night... He's booked for an interview with Hannity... ostensibly to promote his new book...
-- The context: Hannity moved to his new 9pm time slot on Monday. He publicly expressed his determination to take the 25-54 demo crown from Rachel Maddow. So he's booking A-list guests all week long. Fox sent out a press release on Monday night listing O'Reilly on Tuesday, Paul Ryan on Wednesday and Rush Limbaugh on Thursday... | | Megyn Kelly's politics-free premiere | | Bright and early Monday morning, "Megyn Kelly Today" had its premiere, and TV critics found a lot to criticize, which is exactly what NBC expected would happen.
The harshest review probably came from the WashPost's Hank Stuever, who called it a "Bride of Frankenstein" morning show and said the hour "crawled by." Variety's Maureen Ryan said Kelly seemed "out of her element," with many "forced and contrived" moments and interactions.
Robert Lloyd of the LATimes was more sympathetic: "Hair needs to be let down, but Kelly's first hour gave no indication that this is a job she can't learn. It always takes time, and time alone will tell." | | Kelly says she's "done with politics." Is that even an option?! | | The most interesting part of the show, to me, was the very beginning, when Kelly introduced herself to the morning audience and said this: "We have the entire cast of 'Will and Grace' live, along with the show creator. And then we'll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I'm kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all feel it. It's everywhere, and it's just gotten so dark."
She's right about the darkness. Everybody's on edge. But is it possible for anyone to be "done" with politics? | | Brian Lowry was struck by this, too. He emails: If my Twitter feed is any indication, a lot of people haven't forgotten her polarizing tenure at Fox News, and in case they did, HBO's John Oliver aired a pointed reminder during his show on Sunday night, ridiculing a promo in which she says that she hopes her show will be 'a unifying force.'"
Here's Lowry's take on the debut show: "Kelly sought to turn on the charm, but the premiere left plenty of room to wonder whether she's miscast in this new role."
Let's check back in two weeks... | | Lester Holt in Puerto Rico for NBC, Bill Weir there for CNN | | There's widespread frustration that the crisis in Puerto Rico, whipped and flooded by Hurricane Maria, is not getting enough attention from the national news media. Lester Holt became the first nightly newsman to anchor from the island on Monday... he flew in with a National Guard unit... "There is devastation everywhere," he said on "NBC Nightly News." "It's like a curtain is slowly being lifted off this disaster..."
CNN anchor Bill Weir joined CNN's other crews on the island on Monday, and he filed a report from one of the hardest-hit areas. "It's really dire," he said... | | The importance of the media after Maria | | Alex Koppelman emails: Media outlets, reporters and bosses have for the past year been talking a big game about the relevance of journalism. Now's the time to prove it was more than just talk.
Those of us who watch these things know that the urgency with which the federal government comes to Puerto Rico's aid, and the duration of its commitment to making sure the problems are fixed, will depend at least in part on the amount of attention that the media gives the situation. And we know that this situation would be getting more attention if Puerto Rico were on the mainland.
It is hard to get reporters in and out of Puerto Rico right now, and hard for them to travel and to file once they are there, but newsrooms have to make sure their stories from the island get real prominence right now... | | The POTUS tweet many people were waiting for... | | Pretty much all day Sunday and Monday, POTUS was criticized for not tweeting anything about Puerto Rico. On Monday night, he did, and it stirred even more anger... Details here...
-- BuzzFeed's Adrian Carrasquillo tweets: "Puerto Rico official says 'no accident' Trump's 1st tweets on crisis came as PR gov @RicardoRossello described need for assistance on CNN..." | | New charges of presidential racism | | Overheard on CNN in the past couple of days: Marc Lamont Hill said "Trump is a white supremacist." Keith Boykin: "He's encouraging white supremacists." Cornell Brooks: "The president is engaging in racist behavior." Many other guests strongly disagree, but this view is being articulated more and more often in news/talk coverage.
Some critics are making the link between what they say is Trump's racism and his response to the Puerto Rico crisis. Brian Fallon tweeted Monday: "Trump's racist neglect of Puerto Rico is threatening lives. It is time to start caring about the crisis there." | | CJR: "It's time for reporters" to label Trump's words "racist" | | In some recent segments on CNN, I've thought it was appropriate to ask whether the president is racist. The Columbia Journalism Review says journalists shouldn't just be asking -- they should be labeling the president racist. EIC Kyle Pope tweeted: "A year ago, big media orgs like the NYT faced facts and called Trump a liar on the front page. It's time to use the word racist, too"
CJR writer Pete Vernon expanded on this on Monday: "Dancing around it with euphemisms like 'racially charged' does a disservice to the cause of reporting accurately in consideration of the full context of Trump's words." He concluded: "Opinion writers and columnists have long felt free to label Trump's words for what they are. Given the surfeit of evidence, of which his castigation of NFL players is only the latest piece, it's time for reporters to do the same." | | -- A tip of the hat to Politico's Michael Calderone, who took over the "Morning Media" newsletter this week... I like to think it's the perfect complement to this newsletter... You can sign up here...
-- First Politico, then Newsweek, now the NYT is writing about the use of private email accounts by Trump White House advisers... (NYT)
-- The Alaska Dispatch News has "laid off about a third of its newsroom staff over the last week..." This is a heartfelt tribute... (ADN)
-- Via WSJ DC bureau chief Paul Beckett's internal memo: Longtime NYTer Michael R. Gordon is joining the paper's national security team, and Julie Bykowicz is joining the paper to cover money and politics...
-- Gianno Caldwell has joined Fox News as a contributor... (TVNewser) | | "The Knight Foundation is doling out $2.55 million in new funding to support major projects at seven different organizations, ranging from the Duke University Reporter's Lab to Harvard's Shorenstein Center (where First Draft News will newly be based) to the Associated Press," Nieman Lab's Shan Wang reports. (FTR, Nieman is also a beneficiary of Knight!)
Wang writes: "Knight has also put together a large panel of familiar names from the media to academia to tackle declining public trust in the press and other democratic institutions, with an additional $2 million in support. The Knight Commission, as the foundation is calling it, will be run by the Walter Isaacson-led D.C. think tank the Aspen Institute; members include Frontline's Raney Aronson-Rath, BuzzFeed's Shani Hilton, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, Google's Richard Gingras, and Trump friend and interpreter NewsMax CEO Chris Ruddy." Here's the full list... | | Ratings, ratings everywhere! | | The 2016-2017 broadcast TV season is officially over, which means we're going to see a lot of celebratory ratings press releases and ads on Tuesday. NBC News got a jump start on Monday with this press release: "All Four NBC News Broadcasts Are #1 For The Second Straight Season." NBC is running an ad in Tuesday's NYT and some trade mags citing the wins... all based on 25-54 demo data... here's a sneak peek at the ad...
ABC, meanwhile, will be touting its total viewer win in the evening -- "World News Tonight" topped "NBC Nightly News" for the season among total viewers for the first time in 21 years. And CBS will be citing its growth versus the other two broadcasters. More TK... | | Rush missed some great games on Sunday... | | | Rush Limbaugh said on Monday that he actively chose not to watch any games on Sunday... He said "I don't want the NFL to become less than what it was. But it already is. You can't watch the NFL anymore and just watch football..." | | Frank's analysis of Sunday's ratings | | Frank Pallotta writes: Did Trump's criticism of the NFL protests hurt the league's ratings on Sunday? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. The early ratings numbers, which are incomplete and subject to a great deal of change, showed CBS' numbers up compared to the same week last year, while NBC and Fox's numbers were down.
In short: It's complicated. Better data will come in on Tuesday. But it's noteworthy that the #'s for the pregame shows were up sharply on Sunday... Read Frank's full story here... | | -- A memorable quote from Monday's briefing: A reporter asked, "Does the president have a problem with the First Amendment?," and Sarah Sanders said, "Not at all."
-- Former NFL player Donte Stallworth (who was 💯 on "Reliable Sources" on Sunday) is CNN's newest on-air contributor...
-- Don Lemon's essay at the top of "CNN Tonight:" Patriotism comes in many forms...
-- Conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace tweets: "NFL is making same mistake GOP often does. Believing it can tell its base who they are, rather than serving who their base really is..."
-- A point I tried to make on "New Day:" Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly knew when to change the subject and pivot to "culture war" stories. Trump does, too... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- From our own Kaya Yurieff: Joe Biden has a podcast where he shares the articles he's reading... (CNN Tech)
-- The LATimes now has more than 105,000 digital subscriptions, up 100% year-over-year... (The Street)
-- YouTube is introducing new ad targeting tools that will allow companies to "upload a number of different voiceovers, backgrounds, and copy," for which the automated system will produce "different versions of the video ad" to match different types of consumers... (TechCrunch)
-- NiemanLab profiles Old Town Media, founded by three ex-Politico execs. The company is a mix of a venture firm, a creative agency, a content studio and a recruitment firm for media businesses... (NiemanLab)
-- Meg Dalton says newsletters are the best tool for podcast discovery, and has suggestions... (CJR) | | Tuesday: Senate election in Alabama | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Breitbart has ramped up its coverage of the Alabama Senate race to an 11, but one prominent conservative news website has been noticeably silent: the Drudge Report. Earlier this morning I noticed that not one link on Matt Drudge's highly trafficked page pertained to the Tuesday race. And when I checked, I couldn't find any coverage from the last few days. Perhaps that's because Drudge prefers not to get involved in a race in which Trump supports establishment candidate Luther Strange, while the grassroots backs Judge Roy Moore... | | | I think Steve Kovach coined it via this BI column about the problems that come from living without cable TV: "I'm no longer a cord cutter. Now I'm a cord flopper. I love it! And even a new digital set-top box from Apple hasn't changed my mind..." | | Lowry reviews two promising new CBS comedies | | | Brian Lowry emails: CBS kicks off the season with two pretty promising comedies: "Young Sheldon," the network's "The Big Bang Theory" spinoff; and "Me, Myself & I," starring "SNL's" Bobby Moynihan. In a bit of a departure, both are single-camera shows, more "The Wonder Years" than "Two and a Half Men." Read the rest here... | | Cardi B dethrones Taylor Swift | | | Lisa Respers France emails: A bit of history was made on Monday: Cardi B dethroned Taylor Swift for the #1 position on Billboard's Hot 100. With her hit "Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)," Cardi B became the first female solo rap artist to hit #1 without an assist from other artists in 19 years. Lauryn Hill last did in in 1998. | | Networks enlisting military shows with "SEAL Team" and "The Brave" | | | Brian Lowry emails: The broadcast networks still see patriotism, and fighting terrorism, as fertile territory. Military dramas are one of the clear mini-trends of the new TV season, with NBC's "The Brave" and CBS' "SEAL Team" premiering this week, and CW's "Valor" due in early October. Based on the pilots none of them are particular standouts, with the NBC show probably enjoying the best chance of success simply because it follows "The Voice..." | | How Kylie is toying with her fans | | | Lisa Respers France emails: Kylie Jenner appeared to be having some fun with her fans as she posted the first photos since her baby news broke. In one, she even has her hand on her belly. Neither she nor her rapper boyfriend Travis Scott have spoken publicly about her reported pregnancy... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I 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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