| | | | | Exec summary: The power of journalism on full display today. Scroll down for my tick-tock about the WashPost/CBS investigation that led Tom Marino to drop out of contention for drug czar... | | | Tuesday's theme is "better late than never." The first example: President Trump calling the families of the four U.S. service members killed in the ambush in Niger, 13 days after it happened. Sarah Sanders confirmed the calls on Tuesday afternoon. (Days of Q's from reporters may have had an effect.) As for what actually happened in Niger, CNN's Barbara Starr reported on Tuesday that the DOD is conducting an initial review of the mission. GOP senator Mike Rounds told Kate Bolduan on air, "We don't have the facts on this yet..." | | Ajit Pai belatedly supports the First Amendment | | FCC chair Ajit Pai was conspicuously silent in the six days after POTUS tweeted that licenses for TV networks airing "fake" news "must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked."
On Tuesday, at an event at George Mason, Pai made his first public remarks about Trump's threats. Media pressure might've been a factor on this one, too. Notice that he didn't use Trump's name once. But he did state the obvious: "I believe in the First Amendment. The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment. Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast." Here's my full story, co-bylined with Seth Fiegerman... | | Amazon belatedly takes action? | | Amazon Studios chief Roy Price resigned on Tuesday, five days after he was placed on a "leave of absence" after producer Isa Hackett publicly accused him of sexual harassment. But here's the thing. Hackett says this harassment happened in 2015. She told THR's Kim Masters last week that she reported it to Amazon right away. As Masters explained in this CJR piece, Masters had a very hard time getting any outlet to publish her story about the incident over the summer. Hackett was reluctant to speak out back then. But the big difference-maker here was the Harvey Weinstein scandal. There was no "leave of absence" for Price until Hackett detailed the allegations to Masters and THR published a story last Friday...
-- WSJ's Joe Flint tweeted: "Headline isn't: Roy Price out after sexual harassment accusation. It's Price out 2 years after accusations & days after accuser goes public..." | | Meanwhile, over at Amazon's rival, Netflix... | | "Reed Hastings, with a current net worth of about $2.3 billion, has been named to the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans for the first time," Variety's Todd Splanger writes. "His fortune is tied to Netflix stock, which has exploded over the past year..."
-- More: "In media and entertainment, billionaires on the Forbes 400 list this year include: Dish Network's Charlie Ergen ($15.8 billion); Advance Publications' Donald Newhouse ($12.3 billion); Rupert Murdoch ($12 billion); Cox Enterprises chairman Jim Kennedy ($12 billion); John Malone ($8.2 billion); David Geffen ($7.8 billion); Sumner Redstone ($5.1 billion); Charles Dolan ($5 billion); George Lucas ($5 billion); Ike Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment ($3.9 billion); Steven Spielberg ($3.6 billion); and Mark Cuban ($3.3 billion)..." | | Is this Trump's reaction to the Forbes 400 list? | | The new Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, showing Trump's fortune falling by $600 million to $3.1 billion in 2016, got a lot of media attention on Tuesday. "He dropped to #248 on the list, after coming in at #156 last year," CNNMoney's Chris Isidore wrote.
Maybe this is a complete coincidence, but "The Situation Room" talked about the list at 5:45pm, and at 5:51, @realDonaldTrump tweeted, "So much Fake News being put in dying magazines and newspapers. Only place worse may be @NBCNews, @CBSNews, @ABC and @CNN. Fiction writers!"
No word from the W.H. about whether this tweet was a response to Forbes... | | Trump's response to Darcy's story about talk radio... | | Oliver Darcy emails: Trump did a round of talk radio interviews Tuesday morning (as a White House official told us would happen yesterday), and he was asked by Mike Gallagher about my story on how he has largely ignored talk radio in his first nine months as president. Trump responded by insisting he has a great relationship with talk radio and saying the suggestion otherwise was "fake news."
The president then lashed out at CNN for our story: "They are really despicable people. Despicable people," he said. "They do a terrible job." | | -- Tal Kopan scoops: DHS press secretary David Lapan, a longtime colleague of W.H. chief of staff John Kelly, is leaving the Trump administration... (CNN)
-- Julia Horowitz emails: CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg all told me that they won't book investment adviser Marc Faber as a guest anymore. At issue: Faber's racist remarks in a recent letter to investors… (CNNMoney)
-- Maxwell Tani's look at Fox Business Network on its 10th anniversary includes this key quote from a former employee: "The question is, how much longer can you call it a business network?" Bingo... It's a political network... (BI)
-- National Review asks: "Who Chooses to Run a Twitter Poll About the Holocaust Death Toll?" Anthony Scaramucci's odd "Scaramucci Post" Twitter account, that's who. The apologies were profuse... (NRO)
-- Forget about the "Mooch," Claire McNear writes: "The Scaramucci Post is bad, silly, and—cue the pan flutes—absolutely not deserving of anyone's attention..." (The Ringer) | | "There are crooks everywhere you look..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman: Matthew Caruana Galizia, an investigative reporter and the son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, thinks his mother "was assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it, like many strong journalists."
-- New on Tuesday: The FBI said it is helping the Maltese government in its investigation...
-- In this CNNI report, Erin McLaughlin quoted Caruana Galizia's last haunting blog post: "There are crooks everywhere you look..." | | WashPost + "60 Minutes" = drug czar nominee is out | | "It's a stunning result," Jeff Leen, the WashPost's editor in charge of investigations, told me on Tuesday morning, minutes after the news that Rep. Tom Marino had withdrawn his name for consideration. Marino was in line to be the next U.S. drug czar until he was the centerpiece of a WashPost/"60 Minutes" investigation on Sunday.
"We put the facts out there and we let other people take care of the results," Leen said.
You'll recall that Trump said in a Q&A with reporters on Monday that he "did see the report" on "60 Minutes" about Marino. The investigation actually stemmed from a Post report in October 2016 that didn't get the attention Leen hoped it would. Here's my full story about how it all happened... | | | "60" exec producer Jeff Fager: "We're proud of the reporting and of the collaboration with the Washington Post. We all hope for stories with impact and this certainly qualifies as one with a powerful impact. It is an important story that we will continue reporting as it as it unfolds." The "CBS Evening News" led with the news on Tuesday... | | Leen made a great point... | | | I didn't include this quote in my story, but it really struck me: "One of the problems with investigative reporting in the age of Trump," Leen said, "is trying to break through the Trump layer. Some days it's all Trump all the time. You can do a good investigation, but if it's not about Trump, it gains no traction." The DEA v. drug companies story was slightly about Trump, because Marino was his pick to be drug czar, so that helped the story break through... | | Harvey is off the Weinstein Co. board | | | Right before Tuesday's board meeting of The Weinstein Company, TMZ said Harvey Weinstein was going to be fired from his board seat, just like he was fired from his co-chairman job nine days ago. Then, during the meeting, a source told a few of us that he actually "resigned," he wasn't fired. Either way, Weinstein is now off the board. His departure foreshadows further changes at the crippled movie and TV studio, including a possible sale. But the board had no comment about that after the meeting... So stay tuned.. Here's my latest story recapping the day's developments... | | Now Bob Weinstein is being accused of harassment by a female producer | | | Variety's Cynthia Littleton had been working on this for days, and on Tuesday afternoon it came out: Amanda Segel, an executive producer of the Weinstein Co. drama "The Mist," "has accused Bob Weinstein of sexual harassment during the production of the Spike TV series." According to the story, "the harassment began in the summer of 2016 and continued on and off for about three months until Segel's lawyer, David Fox of Myman Greenspan, informed TWC executives -- including COO David Glasser -- that she would leave the show if Bob Weinstein did not stop contacting her on personal matters." | | Bob's attorney says there's "no way in the world" he's guilty | | Bert Fields, who's representing Bob, responded an hour later: "Variety's story about Bob Weinstein is riddled with false and misleading assertions by Ms. Segel and we have the emails to prove it, but even if you believe what she says it contains not a hint of any inappropriate touching or even any request for such touching. There is no way in the world that Bob Weinstein is guilty of sexual harassment, and even if you believed what this person asserts there is no way it would amount to that."
Variety's response to that: "We stand by our story..." | | | Jake Tapper to Gretchen Carlson on Tuesday's "The Lead:" "Do you buy that the board of directors and his brother, that they had no idea that this was going on?" Carlson: "Absolutely not..." | | | Among those that heard the cries from the #MeToo campaign this weekend? The Academy. In a statement sent to members (and shared by Ashley Judd), president John Bailey called the "public testimonies by some of the filmdom's most recognized women regarding sexual intimidation, predation and physical force" a "turning point in the industry..." | | Tuesday's other developments | | -- Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg's comments are getting a lot of attention: "Let's be perfectly clear about one thing: Everybody-fucking-knew," he wrote on Facebook... Details in Sandra Gonzalez's story here...
-- Lisa Respers France emails: More and more women are sharing their own stories. Reese Witherspoon and America Ferrera have both revealed that they were sexually assaulted in the past...
-- Speaking with EW's James Hibberd, Alyssa Milano offers "3 things Hollywood needs to change after Weinstein..." | | -- Sandra Gonzalez emails: This is a great read by Molly Ringwald about Hollywood's "other Harvey Weinsteins." In it, she writes: "My hope is that Hollywood makes itself an example and decides to enact real change, change that would allow women of all ages and ethnicities the freedom to tell their stories -- to write them and direct them and trust that people care..."
-- I'd been wondering about this: Emily Smith says multiple TV networks are interested in signing Ronan Farrow now... | | Michelle Goldberg on the politics of the Weinstein scandal | | | Brian Lowry emails: Several NYT op-ed columnists have weighed in on the Weinstein scandal and its cultural implications, including Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat. But Michelle Goldberg gets to the politics of the conservative reaction to it, and specifically calls out Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. She notes: "Fox News is currently under federal investigation, in part for payoffs made to Ailes's victims..." | | -- Shoutout to Michael Barbaro: Ken Doctor's latest must-read is about the success of "The Daily" podcast at the NYT... (NiemanLab)
-- Fallout from Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece: "White House denies Trump joked about Pence being anti-gay." The mag has a strong response here... (Politico)
-- Politico broke this news: Special counsel investigators interviewed Sean Spicer on Monday... (CNN)
-- Will this amount to much? I'm skeptical, but I'd like to be proven wrong. "Snap and NBCUniversal are creating a Hollywood studio dedicated to the future of app-centric entertainment..." (Variety) | | | Seen on CNN during the president's presser with the Greek prime minister... Trump called on Fox's John Roberts first, so Roberts took the opportunity to ask about the "evil" comment and to see if Alexis Tsipras had changed his mind... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Daisuke Wakabayashi and Linda Qiu at the NYT report that Google has been serving fake news ads on fact-checking sites like PolitiFact... (NYT)
-- Craig Silverman reports that content ad network Outbrain is looking into whether Russian propagandists used its platform... (BuzzFeed)
-- Check out CJR's profile of Joseph Bernstein, the BuzzFeed reporter whose specialty beat is the alt-right... (CJR)
-- "Pluto TV, the startup aiming to build a Spotify-like free service for TV content," continues raking in money from investors in its latest round... (Variety) | | Kimmel as "the perfect foil for Trump" | | Fresh off Monday night's Jimmy Kimmel show at BAM, Slate's Willa Paskin writes that he's "the perfect foil for Donald Trump." But nowadays, she says, when he avoids politics and does "a regular show, it's a let-down..."
-- ICYMI: Here's Frank Pallotta's interview with Kimmel... | | Chip and Joanna Gaines speak | | | Lisa Respers France writes: You can stop worrying about whether Chip and Joanna Gaines are splitting up. The HGTV stars say the end of "Fixer Upper" was a precautionary step to preserving their their 14-year marriage. "For us the most important thing in the world is Jo and I's relationship followed very quickly by these four beautiful kids," Chip said on "Today" Tuesday morning. "We didn't want to push it, red line it for so long that we woke up and realized that we are at a point of no return." So the end of the show is an opportunity to "sort of step back and take a break..." | | "Solo: A Star Wars Story" | | | Frank Pallotta writes: The Han Solo "Star Wars" prequel film finally has a name, and it's a little on the nose. "Solo: A Star Wars Story" is the title of the upcoming origins story about Han Solo, the famous smuggler-turned-hero of the previous "Star Wars" films. Read more... | | Lowry's take on two new AT&T Audience Network shows | | | Brian Lowry emails: AT&T (which is soon to be CNN's owner, pending regulatory approval) continues to attempt to make inroads into the premium-programming business, with so-so results. Two new original comedies suggest the company still has lots to learn about the content game, with both feeling like the small-ball version of prestige cable fare: "Loudermilk" is about a recovering alcoholic, starring Ron Livingston; and "Hit the Road" features "Seinfeld" alum Jason Alexander as the patriarch of a performing family, with a sort-of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"-lite vibe. The pair premiere Tuesday night on AT&T Audience Network... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- I talked to Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who has a new role on the ABC drama "Ten Days in the Valley" playing a character he says is "layered." But Warner would really love to play an all-out villain someday...
-- Kevin James has explained what led to his TV wife's onscreen death on "Kevin Can Wait," and the addition of his former TV wife, Leah Remini, to the cast...
-- Here's the backstory on why the late singer Selena was the most recent Google Doodle... | | Listen/watch/read Sunday's "Reliable Sources" here | | | 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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