| | | | Without the press, we wouldn't know | | On Thursday CNN's Jake Tapper exclusively reported that the Senate intel committee has demanded that Jared Kushner turn over any relevant comms from his private email server. How'd the senators find out about the server? From news accounts. And they were ticked off. In senate-ese, the committee scolded him for keeping the email server a secret.
Another story that has Congress fuming: HHS secretary Tom Price's many, many private jet flights. Price is now promising to reimburse the government for his seat on the flights, but not for all the other seats. How did the public find out about the expensive flights? Dogged reporting by Politico, followed up by other outlets.
This week I keep noticing examples of journalists exposing government impropriety and incompetence. The crisis in Puerto Rico is another example: News coverage has been calling attention to weaknesses in the relief effort... | | "Fake news," meet a "fake hospital" | | There's a lot of media news in this edition of the newsletter, but I'm a bit hung up on President Trump's fake hospital. What's that? Over and over and over again, Trump attributed the GOP health care bill's problems to an unnamed senator who had been hospitalized. He said it on Twitter, he said it to the press corps, and he said it to "Fox & Friends" interviewer Pete Hegseth.
In fact, he said it to Hegseth at least six times in an interview that was taped on Wednesday and shown on Thursday. One of the many examples: "On health care, we have the votes, we can't do it now because we have somebody in a hospital."
Hegseth let it slide, which is embarrassing for him. But there is no senator in the hospital, which is really embarrassing for Trump. Senator Thad Cochran had a procedure and he's recuperating at home, that's true, but he's not in the hospital, and he could come back to DC for a vote if needed.
So was Trump just lying to himself, or was he lying to all of us? Hmm. Chris Cillizza has been all over this for CNN. And it came up at the W.H. press briefing on Thursday. But I keep wondering: At any other time, in any other presidency, wouldn't this be a much bigger story? When any president is this far removed from the truth, shouldn't it be a BIG story? | | "Art of The Deal" ghostwriter says Trump's comments are "delusional" | | "The Art of the Deal" ghostwriter Tony Schwartz's explanation: Trump is delusional. "Delusional is, you say something you incontrovertibly know to be untrue." Schwartz, speaking on "AC360," said: "He says whatever he thinks serves him, and while he's saying it, he does believe it." Maggie Haberman added: "I think that's exactly it..."
-- More Schwartz: "Is Trump crazy like a fox or is he just crazy? I think the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests that he's just crazy..." | | | The Daily Beast's Asawin Suebsaeng spoke with a "senior Trump aide" who said the president was "just, you know, doing his thing." Hats off to Suebsaeng for this line: "Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about a fake hospital..." | | New pix for the morning shows: locked arms at the Packers game | | Thursday's Packers-Bears game was live on CBS, NFL Network and Amazon... and I'm curious to find out how many people watched on TV versus how many people streamed it through Amazon. The NFL will be eyeing the ratings for other reasons... given President Trump's ongoing attacks... and the ongoing protests.
In the stands Thursday night, some Packers fans "followed quarterback Aaron Rodgers' request and locked arms" during the National Anthem... "The Packers players, coaches and their fans standing with their arms intertwined was meant to be a moment of unity," CNN's Darran Simon reports... | | | Frank Pallotta previewed the Amazon stream here. So how'd it go? BTIG's Rich Greenfield said the overall quality was strong, but the long delay between the TV broadcast and the stream was a problem. At one point he tweeted: "Missed the fumble due to buffering on @AmazonVideo..." | | -- "The main problem with this White House is a truth issue," Glenn Thrush said at The Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum... (WashPost)
-- Speaking of Thrush: On Thursday The Daily Caller produced, posted, and then deleted a video with "clear anti-Semitic undertones." It showed Thrush "repeatedly saying the word 'chutzpah' as 'Hava Nagila' played in the background..." (The Daily Caller)
-- 21st Century Fox is launching three new channels in the Middle East, including the first Fox-branded channel to broadcast in Arabic... (CNN)
-- Reality check about the ratings for broadcast TV premiere week: On Wednesday night, "every -- that's every -- returning series was down from year-ago premieres by 10% to 50%. It's not particularly pretty..." (THR) | | This was Facebook's best day of press in a while... if only because the spotlight was on Twitter instead. Twitter reps met with the Senate and House intel committees and revealed that it "found and took action on roughly 200 accounts on its service after determining they were linked to Russia and sought to interfere in American politics." But this was just a followup to Facebook's own probe...
--> "It's likely that there's much more," Dylan Byers tweeted... "I cannot stress how little Facebook, Twitter have disclosed re Russian-linked accounts, ads vs. what's likely out there. Tip of the tip." Read more... | | "Inadequate," Mark Warner says | | | Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said Twitter's presentation to the committee was "deeply disappointing" and "frankly inadequate on almost every level." He asserted that the company does not understand "how serious this issue is." More TKTK... | | On Thursday evening, CNN's Donie O'Sullivan and Dylan Byers broke this news: "A social media campaign calling itself 'Blacktivist' and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days." Read the full story here...
-- A new study out of Oxford found that "fake news" was rife on Twitter in the run-up to the election...
-- Craig Silverman's latest: "Welcome To The Age Of Cheap Overseas Information" | | President Trump knocked the media for not treating the government's Puerto Rico relief efforts "fairly." Then he retweeted his daughter Ivanka and his buddy Bill. Ah, yes, Bill O'Reilly -- who was forced out of his job amid a sexual harassment scandal five months ago. The president, showing loyalty to an old friend, retweeted O'Reilly on Thursday night. The tweet was promoting O'Reilly's newest book...
-- More: Gabriel Sherman asked Gretchen Carlson about O'Reilly's recent visit to Hannity's show, and she said, "It's disappointing that somebody who was fired from Fox would be given a venue to come back on as a guest..."
-- BTW: Apparently O'Reilly won't be appearing on Michael Smerconish's CNN show, after all... | | Eye on 9pm: Hannity and Maddow TIE | | | Sean Hannity's 9pm show on Fox out-rated Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC on Monday and Tuesday... but on Wednesday the two shows tied in the key 25-54 demo, 626,000 each. Hannity still prevailed among total viewers... | | Here's an interesting comp... Hannity v. Kelly | | | I fully admit that this next ratings comparison is apples and oranges. But it's fun, and it's getting attention inside Fox and NBC. Hannity, who now inhabits the 9pm hour that Megyn Kelly helmed this time last year, is attracting a bigger audience than Kelly is drawing at 9am. On Mon/Tues/Wed, Hannity has had 3+ million viewers. Kelly's audience has been smaller, though of course it's a very different time of day. Wednesday's "Megyn Kelly Today" averaged 2.3 million viewers, down from 2.7 million on Tuesday. BUT she's still ahead in the 25-54 demo... she averaged 663k in the demo on Wednesday... | | -- Pamela Drucker Mann is Condé Nast's new chief revenue and marketing officer... overseeing ad sales efforts for all 22 brands... "She is the first woman to hold the position at Condé..." (AdWeek)
-- Do you know Fox Business Network chief Brian Jones? I don't... but I was impressed by this profile/Q&A with him... (THR)
-- CNN Digital had lots to celebrate in August: the monthly #'s showed the site topping its rivals in "audience, video, mobile, social, and millennial reach..." (CNN PR)
-- "Losing the part:" An incredible profile of Darrell Hammond, who was playing Trump on "SNL," until Alec Baldwin came along... (WashPost) | | New initiative in NYC: "Tech, Media & Democracy" | | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Announced on Thursday: "Tech, Media & Democracy" is a partnership between Columbia University, NYU, Cornell Tech, CUNY, The New School, and the NYC Media Lab. The group will host public lectures with the help of hosts like the NYT, CNN, BuzzFeed, and HuffPost. It will also bring together graduate students from different disciplines in what they call a "pan-university" course in the Spring of 2018, fostering research projects and the development of new tools for journalists. Vivian Schiller is a senior adviser to the initiative... she says "Our goal is to support independent media and a healthy media industry by deploying some of the brightest minds in the city on crafting solutions to today's unprecedented challenges..." | | | The Onion's top two editors, EIC Cole Bolto and executive editor Ben Berkley, are leaving the satirical outlet next month, and "Chad Nackers, the Onion's head writer who has been with the site for nearly two decades, will take over," Mic's Kelsey Sutton reports. She says "Bolton and Berkley's departures were partially due to disagreements about the direction the site was taking under the ownership of Univision..." | | WSJ ending its European and Asian print editions | | Hadas Gold emails: It's official: Friday is the last day of the Wall Street Journal's European print edition, and next Friday will be the final run of the Asian print edition. This ends more than two decades of separate European and Asian print editions for the WSJ. "In recent years, a steep drop in overseas sales and print advertising revenue, coupled with steady growth in digital subscriptions, made continuing the foreign editions no longer cost-effective," the Journal reported...
-- WSJ's Georgi Kantchev and Bill Power tweeted pictures of the first WSJ Europe issue, published in 1983... (Twitter, Twitter, WSJ) | | Norah O'Donnell interviews Steve Scalise | | | "CBS This Morning" co-host Norah O'Donnell interviewed Rep. Steve Scalise at rehab two weeks ago... again last week... and again on Thursday when he returned to a bipartisan standing ovation in the House. O'Donnell's story will air on "60 Minutes" this Sunday... | | "Since he's been president, Trump has retweeted or tweeted about 'Fox and Friends' 78 times -- once every three days..."
--The WashPost's Philip Bump crunched the #'s... | | | This had to be awkward for Sinclair, right? The station group's "chief political analyst" Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign adviser, was interviewed by the House intel committee re: Russia on Thursday... per Manu Raju, he took a back door so that "cameras wouldn't see him..." | | Russia warns U.S. to back off its media | | | This is the lead story on CNN.com right now. Hadas Gold emails: Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova issued a warning on Thursday that Russia would retaliate if U.S. authorities took action against their government-media outlets RT and Sputnk. Earlier this month, RT, the government-funded television network, said that the company that supplies production services for them was required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act due to the work it does for RT. "Russia is dedicated to all international statues and norms regarding the freedom of speech and proved that on many occasions," Zakharova said at her weekly briefing. "When it comes down to a fight with no rules, when the law is twisted and turned into an instrument for the destruction of a TV company, every step against a Russian media outlet will be met with a corresponding response. And whom this response will be aimed at, that is what Washington needs to figure out well. The clock is ticking." Read more... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Jon Allsop looks at Reuters' latest effort to measure what they call "The Trump Effect," through interactives, news and polls tracking the consequences of policies enacted by the administration... (CJR)
-- How hard is it to monetize the "pivot to video?" This pretty scary histogram illustrates the gap between video visualizations on a publisher's own site and on social platforms... (Digiday)
-- Snapchat is opening up its World Lenses AR feature to sponsored content from brands. Warner Bros. and Bud Light are the launch partners for the initiative... (TechCrunch)
-- The EU is not impressed with Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube's efforts to remove hate speech, and gave the companies six months to step up their game or face new regulations... (CNN)
-- NiemanLab looks at how we can preserve works of interactive journalism from years past, as the internet evolves and makes their tech infrastructure obsolete... (NiemanLab) | | | As Brian Lowry wrote in this appreciation, Hugh Hefner's impact on popular culture went well beyond "dirty" pictures and publications that had to be shipped in brown-paper wrappers. Tributes poured in after his death at the age of 91 on Wednesday. He has a complicated legacy, to be sure -- critics will remember him "as the silk-robed womanizer who founded Playboy magazine, a pleasure hunter who bedded hundreds of young women, divorced multiple times and persuaded sex symbols to pose nude for his publication. But," CNN's Ray Sanchez wrote, "others will celebrate the man known as 'Hef' as an American icon who promoted black artists, writers and athletes, tackled social issues like segregation and advocated for the LBGT community..." | | -- "Some of the most celebrated writers in American literature got their starts" in Playboy, as Aaron Smith documents here... (CNN)
-- Variety's Sonia Saraiya said "good riddance" to Hefner's sexual revolution: "What Hefner and Playboy were unwilling or unequipped to address was the fallout -- that those fantasies often came at the cost of women's bodies..." (Variety)
-- The NYT taped a "Last Word" interview with Hefner in 2008... and it was published on Thursday... (NYT) | | | For the record, part four | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- What a story: WNBC's Natalie Pasquarella gave birth to a baby boy on Wednesday after her water broke during a live newscast. "A true professional, she waited until the show was off the air before letting someone know the baby was coming..." (NBC New York)
-- Podcast/radio startup Anchor has received $10 million in Google Venture-led funding for its audio programming app... (TechCrunch)
-- Will anyone sign up for this? People mag's new digital rewards program, People Perks, offers deals at 1,000+ retailers, plus opportunities to win tickets to events like the Oscars red carpet... The program costs $5.99 per month, or $59.99 a year... (Digiday) | | Facebook is about to launch its news subscriptions initiative... but... | | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Ken Doctor reports that when it comes to joining Facebook's publisher subscription program, the NYT, WSJ and FT are sitting this round out. "Those three global publishing giants are among the digital subscription leaders, making their absence from the program high-profile," Doctor notes. But the WashPost is on board... | | | "Veep" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus revealed on Thursday that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Hollywood and fans have rallied around her, as Lisa Respers France reports here... | | Lowry reviews the new "Mark Felt" film | | | Brian Lowry emails: Amid a steady drip of White House leaks, "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House," could hardly seem timelier. But the movie, starring Liam Neeson in the title role, feels underdeveloped, and casts the Washington Post's Bob Woodward as a surprisingly peripheral character. Read Lowry's full review here... | | The "transactional" relationship between journalist and star | | Megan Thomas emails: Vanity Fair's November cover story on Kate McKinnon is written by Lili Anolik. The interview is interesting and Anolik's description of conducting celebrity "interrogations," as she calls them, is really funny:
"Encounters between movie stars and the journalists who cover them are edgy, deeply. They are, by their very nature, transactional: the journalist offers the star, usually with a new project or venture to promote, exposure; the star offers the journalist revelation, a couple of juicy details with which to titillate readers. Use and be used, give and take, a mutual hustle and the way of the world. Couldn't be clearer, right? Where things get murky is in the trappings. The interview is made to look like the opposite of what it is: a friendly social interaction. The star and I always meet at a restaurant—the garden terrace at the Chateau Marmont or the Clement at the Peninsula—almost always for lunch. There's conversation (one-sided, but still) and an attentive waiter and imported mineral water and a salad of wild arugula, locally grown, and it's easy to forget that our interests are at odds and that the relationship is, at heart, antagonistic." | | Another Kardashian/Jenner pregnancy | | | Lisa Respers France emails: Kim Kardashian West has confirmed she and husband Kanye West have a baby on the way. The couple will welcome their third child with the assistance of a surrogate. Naturally she used a promo clip from the new season of her family's reality show "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" to share the news... | | Spotify's newest personalized playlist | | | Julia Waldow emails this #TBT: Spotify's new personalized playlist, "Your Time Capsule," groups together nostalgic tunes from users' adolescence and early 20s... The playlist will only be available to those over the age of 16... (TechCrunch) | | | For the record, part five | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Steven Spielberg refuses to watch his on films, with the exception of this one...
-- Tom Cruise has shut down speculation he wore a fake butt in the film "Valkyrie." Yes, there was really speculation about this...
-- I talked with Allen Maldonado who may be one of the hardest working men in Hollywood. He's got jobs as a writer on the Starz hit comedy "Survivor's Remorse," a guest starring role on "Black-ish," an upcoming starring role in the TBS comedy "The Last O.G.," a production company, a record label, a T-shirt line and a foundation. He's now adding a new gig: his app "Everybody's Digital" launches on Oct. 3 and aims to be "the Netflix of short films..." | | | 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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