| | | | | Exec summary: Seth Rich's family sues Fox News... YouTube works with Wikipedia... NYPost harkens back to a famous Trump front page... Shane Smith becomes "exec chairman" of Vice... "The Voice" tops "Idol..." and Brian Lowry reviews the "This Is Us" season finale... | | 🚨 Wolf Blitzer: "An incredibly close race in PA's 18th congressional district..."
Dana Bash called it the "definition of a nail-biter."
"It's why we got into this business!" Jake Tapper said.
At the time I'm sending this out, 11:25pm ET, no one knows if Conor Lamb or Rick Saccone won Tuesday's special election. It's still too close to call. For the latest info, check CNN.com.
"This is down to the wire," Fox's Laura Ingraham said. "We're going to have to count every last vote," CNN's John King said. "America has no nails left," CNN's Mitra Kalita quipped on Twitter.
Here's what we DO know: President Trump won the district by 20 points in 2016. Trump said the other day that Saccone "should win easily." So the Dems' strength is the story. It's "a measurement of passion," Michael Smerconish said on CNN. "Passion wins tonight, however it turns out..."
--> Kasie Hunt on MSNBC: "This has laid the groundwork for Democrats to be able to run a playbook in the Trump era..." | | | "Reliable" regular Jeff Greenfield emails: "If the race was not so close, the analysts could 'call' it well before all the votes were counted. But the real story is the 20 point swing from '16 to '18. I also suspect that if Saccone wins, Trump will say he won it for him," while "if he loses, he was a weak candidate who would have lost by more if not for him..." | | | Brian Williams is anchoring on MSNBC from 11pm til 1am... Ed Henry is in for Shannon Bream on Fox's 11pm show... Don Lemon is anchoring late-night on CNN... | | The NYT "took down its infamous election night needle on Tuesday night after a key district decided not to release precinct results in the Pennsylvania House special election, throwing off how the needle makes predictions," The Hill reports...
But Nate Cohn and co. did provide this graphic... "Shift from 2016 Presidential Election..." Showing the district going more Democratic... | | On Monday, the NYT reported, "a White House spokesman berated a reporter for suggesting there was any kind of split" between Rex Tillerson and the W.H. On Tuesday, as you know by now, Tillerson was fired by tweet...
--> Via THR, here's how the late night shows reacted... | | These CNN headlines sum up Tuesday | | Stephen Collinson: "Tillerson ouster shows Trump is unleashed"
Gloria Borger: "Trump flexes muscles, follows his basic instinct"
Chris Cillizza: "Who's Donald Trump going to fire next?"
Tal Kopan: "Trump never filled his administration, now he's searching for replacements"
Dan Merica: "Trump reaches back to 2016 campaign to slam Clinton over Mars"
Greg Krieg: "Trump's new tagline: 'You were fired! A few hours ago'"
Meanwhile, there's this... Katelyn Polantz: "Paul Manafort faces 305 years" | | Imagine the W.H. as a Fortune 500 company... | | | Hadas Gold tweeted: "I'm just imagining how this much exec level turnover would be covered if the administration was say, a major company like GE, WalMart or Apple." My answer: Journalists would be describing a company in a deepening crisis... | | | Trump is assembling his team, Laura Ingraham said on Tuesday night, ignoring the fact that Trump also hired Tillerson, Cohn, etc etc. "I'm sure there's going to be a lot more changes to come," Ingraham said. "That's not chaos, that's called smart staffing... He's hitting his stride and he's getting a really strong team in place..." | | | Scroll down for some more Onion-related news... | | Seth Rich's family is suing Fox News | | ABC's Michael Del Moro with the scoop: The family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich is suing Fox News, Fox reporter Malia Zimmerman, and Ed Butowsky "over a story about Rich and allegations that he was involved in a conspiracy." The suit claims that last May's retracted story about Rich contained "false and fabricated facts" and "aided and abetted the intentional infliction of emotional distress..."
CNN's Oliver Darcy has obtained the suit... He'll have a story on CNN.com overnight... | | | The "national school walkout" is scheduled to take place Wednesday morning... 17 minutes, honoring the 17 victims in Parkland... | | Viacom networks going dark for 17 minutes | | | "At 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 14, all Viacom networks and platforms will suspend regularly scheduled programming for 17 minutes," the company says. In a tribute to the walkout, student activists will take over MTV's Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat accounts... MTV, VH1, Logo, Comedy Central will have orange (the color of gun violence prevention) logos until the March for Our Lives on March 24... and Viacom is "supporting efforts to reduce gun violence..." | | -- "Google users who subscribe to newspapers will find articles from those publications appearing higher in their search results, part of the tech giant's efforts to help media companies find and retain paying readers," Gerry Smith reports... (Bloomberg)
-- David Rhodes says "the only reason" Anderson Cooper's interview with Stormy Daniels "hasn't run is that there's still a lot of journalistic work to do..." (Variety)
-- HBO exec Francesca Orsi has apologized for saying that the network has been "short of raped" while negotiating deals for "Big Little Lies" season two... (CNN) | | Judge rules for AT&T on key part of Time Warner deal defense | | | The trial is slated to start next Monday. On Tuesday, the judge in the case "rejected a Justice Department motion to limit evidence AT&T can present in its defense," CNN's Jessica Schneider and Hadas Gold report. "As a result of the ruling, AT&T gets to keep one key element of its argument for the deal, after previously losing another significant fight over its planned defense." The evidence is about Turner's arbitration offer to distributors. Details here.... | | Which newsrooms will sign up for Watch? | | "Facebook is getting ready to launch a news section for its Watch platform and it's testing different video partnerships with roughly 10 publishers," Sara Fischer reports.
The big unanswered Q's: What are the economics? Will Facebook pay enough to make this worth it for newsrooms? We'll see which ones ultimately participate... | | Shane Smith becomes "executive chairman" | | Tom Kludt emails: Vice marked the end of an era Tuesday, making official what trickled out the day before: Shane Smith is stepping down as CEO to be replaced by Nancy Dubuc. He will move into the role of executive chairman. Smith said in an internal memo that "I have always said that I am good at two things, 1) creating content and 2) making deals, so that's what I'm going to do."
--> Via Dylan Byers: Smith convened an emergency board meeting on Monday to discuss the move and get approval... | | The end of the media IPO era? | | | Tom Kludt adds: The most telling part of Smith's statement came near the end, when he appeared to hedge on taking Vice public. He said "Vice needs a best-in-class management team to harness all of this growth and control our own destiny, where it be staying independent, strategically partnering with someone or going public." Hmmm -- Vice has eyed an IPO for years, part of what Smith used to describe as the company's plans for global domination. But after a massive revenue shortfall last year, investors are reportedly nervous -- and an IPO had all but been ruled out for this year. Now Smith seems to be casting doubt on whether it will happen at all. And remember, this comes on the heels of last week's reports that another darling of the media world, Univision, had nixed its own plans for an IPO. It's getting chilly out there... | | Musk's secret comedy project | | Did you know Elon Musk was interested in buying The Onion? He's a big fan of the brand... So now he has hired away "several former top staffers and writers of The Onion" to work on a "secret project financially backed by Musk." That's according to The Daily Beast's Maxwell Tani, who landed this great scoop on Tuesday...
-- Details: Former EIC Cole Bolton, exec editor Ben Berkley and four other Onion alums are involved... "A source familiar with the project emphasized that Musk would not have editorial oversight of the project..." But he did cheekily confirm his involvement, telling Tani, "It's pretty obvious that comedy is the next frontier after electric vehicles, space exploration, and brain-computer interfaces. Don't know how anyone's not seeing this." | | | Folio has all the details about Tuesday's Ellie Awards ceremony for the magazine industry. Don Lemon hosted the awards luncheon. There were 3 wins for New York mag and The New Yorker... 2 wins for GQ... and 1 win each for National Geographic, The Atlantic, TIME, The NYT Mag, Texas Monthly, Aperture, Cosmopolitan, Mic, San Francisco mag, SB Nation, SELF, T, W, and Zoetrope: All-Story... | | | Brian Lowry emails: The battle of the music-competition shows went to NBC on Monday, with "The Voice" (11.9 million viewers, with a 2.4 rating among adults 18-49) easily topping the second night of ABC's "American Idol" (8.4 million, 1.8 in the key demo). It was the NBC show's second-best rating in the past year... | | -- CNN was #1 in the demo on cable news on Sunday, propelled by "The Kennedys," "Pope" and "The Van Jones Show." Humblebrag: "Reliable Sources" ranked #1 in the demo at 11am for the third straight week...
-- CNBC is reviving "Deal or No Deal" with original host Howie Mandel... (THR)
-- Why the recent rash of stories about writers "unplugging" from the internet? Charlie Warzel has a theory. He says the batch "has an urgency and even a hint of desperation to it..." (BuzzFeed)
-- BuzzFeed internal memo: "Effective immediately Legal Editor Chris Geidner will join the national security team..." He will continue to double as Supreme Court correspondent... | | "YouTube will link directly to Wikipedia to fight conspiracy theories" | | | That's the headline on Wired after EIC Nicholas Thompson interviewed Susan Wojcicki on stage at SXSW. The announcement: "YouTube will now begin displaying links to fact-based content alongside conspiracy theory videos." Wojcicki says "people can still watch the videos, but then they have access to additional information..." | | | SPEAKING OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES... | | Defamation suit against InfoWars and other far-right figures | | Oliver Darcy emails: A State Department employee is suing InfoWars, Alex Jones, Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, Allen West, and others, alleging they falsely suggested he played a role in the Charlottesville terror attack as part of a supposed "deep state" conspiracy. Brennan Gilmore is seeking at least $75,000 in damages in U.S. District Court after being the subject of false stories that he said to led to a flood of death threats...
>> Darcy adds: Gilmore told me he hopes his suit helps "blunt the ability" of fringe websites to peddle conspiracy theories: "The primary motivation [of the lawsuit] was accountability and trying to confront what I consider to be an incredibly dangerous trend in our civil discourse, our democracy." Read more... | | RT may be facing a new battle, this time in the UK... | | Hadas Gold emails: OfCom, the UK media regulator, says it's prepared to take action against the Russian-owned channel RT if the UK government determines that Russia was behind the poisoning of a former double agent, Sergei Skripal. That action could include revoking RT's license. In response, the Russian foreign minister suggested that all British media would be banned from Russia if RT is kicked out of the UK.
Read Gold's full story here... | | Trump disses "fake news" in address to Marines | | AP's Jill Colvin tweeted: "A hangar full of Marines and other military personnel in uniform just burst into laughs and cheers when POTUS dissed the 'fake' news media."
LAT's Brian Bennett added: "It is unusual for a president to criticize the press in front of uniformed service members."
Pentagon official turned CNN analyst John Kirby responded: "It is not just unusual. It is abhorrent. And I'm truly sorry to see some of our service members take such heart in it. One of the things our men & women in uniform serve to protect is a free press."
CNN's Jim Acosta added: "The only member of the military to give us a hard time today was the Commander in Chief. Everybody else at Miramar was wonderful..." | | He's looking "strongly" at Kudlow | | Trump confirmed Tuesday that "I'm looking at Larry Kudlow very strongly" to replace Gary Cohn. So this Paul R. La Monica piece is helpful: "What Larry Kudlow thinks about trade, taxes, stocks and recessions..."
As I wrote yesterday, the Kudlow possibility shows that the Trump-TV feedback loop is stronger than ever... Here's another example... | | Bolton in the mix for national security adviser | | | Jim Sciutto, Pamela Brown, Jenna McLaughlin (in her first week at CNN!) and Kaitlan Collins all co-bylined this CNN report: "Trump signals wider senior staff shake-up soon." H.R. McMaster "appeared poised to soon depart following months of speculation about his standing, people familiar with the matter said." One of the replacements "under consideration" is Fox News contributor John Bolton... Read more... | | Maddow's "departure" board keeps expanding... | | Something that stood out to me about Saturday's cable news #'s: Trump's rally was really only a ratings booster for Fox News. The rally started around 7pm and went through part of the 8pm hour.
So compare the cablers at 6pm (pre-rally) to the cablers at 8pm (during and post-rally). MSNBC averaged 547,000 viewers at 6, 471,000 at 8. CNN averaged 584,000 at 6, 613,000 at 8. Fox averaged 1.1 million at 6, 2.3 million at 8. So all three channels carried the rally in its entirety, and Fox's audience more than doubled, while the others were flat or down...
-- Related: In her latest column, Margaret Sullivan argues against excessive "free TV time" for Trump... | | One America News commentator running for office | | | The latest in a trend: "Republican Morgan Murtaugh announced Tuesday her entrance into the race for California's 53rd congressional district," the Free Beacon reports. The district "leans heavily Democratic," and her campaign may not be viable, but her entrance is notable for this reason: Murtaugh is "currently an on-air political commentator for One America News Network," per her bio... | | Snapchat notification of the day? | | | For the record, part three | | | -- The James Comey book tour is coming together: An ABC prime time special on Sunday, April 15; Colbert on April 17; and on Tuesday, ABC said his "first daytime interview" will be on "The View" on April 18...
-- Recommended: Tim Alberta's new profile of Dave Ramsey, the "Financial Whisperer to Trump's America..." (Politico Mag) | | Press Forward launch event | | | Check out Kelly Wallace's recap of the launch event for Press Forward, "the new advocacy group devoted to changing newsroom culture after a wave of sexual harassment allegations rocked the news industry." Read more... | | Smith was paid more than Foy for "The Crown" | | Brian Lowry emails: The story that Matt Smith was paid more than Claire Foy for their roles in Netflix's "The Crown" got a good deal of traction, including the pledge that no one would be paid more than the queen going forward. But the explanation for why -- that Smith, thanks to his "Doctor Who" credentials, is a significantly bigger draw -- is, as the Royals might put it, balderdash...
--> "Going forward, no one gets paid more than the Queen," an exec said at the INTV Conference... | | "This Is Us" season finale... | | | NO SPOILERS! We always watch "This Is Us" on Hulu on Wednesdays. But Brian Lowry watched Tuesday's season finale, and he has thoughts... Click here for the review, which does contain spoilers... | | Who's benefiting from the streaming wars? | | | "Big Little Lies" stars Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, to name two. "Within 45 minutes on Monday night, there were separate announcements" that Witherspoon and Kidman "will serve as executive producers and stars of two new projects," the NYT's John Koblin writes... | | Lowry reviews Shonda's two new series for ABC | | | Brian Lowry emails: Watching Shonda Rhimes' two new series for ABC, "For the People" (which premiered Tuesday night) and "Station 19" (due next week), reinforced the perception that her move to Netflix is well timed for both sides. Rhimes can broaden her creative horizons, and ABC can break out of a Shondaland mold that is clearly beginning to yield diminishing returns... | | | Megan Thomas emails: I'm obsessed with Lena Waithe's "The Chi." If you haven't watched, the season one finale is next Sunday and the series is a binge-worthy investment. Exceptional cast, rich writing and beautifully directed. Lena's description of depicting black people out of breath (at this SXSW panel) says so much... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- He may not have been as big a star as his label mate The Notorious B.I.G., but rapper Craig Mack was the first artist to have a hit on Bad Boy Records. Mack died Monday at the age of 46. I talked with some of his friends and former colleagues...
-- Heather Locklear has been charged with five counts of battery connected to her arrest for alleged domestic abuse against her boyfriend...
-- Tiffany Haddish says she would host the Oscars... under one condition... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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