| | | | | OUR GUIDE TO THE WEEKEND: | | Saturday is all about the March | | | "Coverage of the March for Our Lives in Washington is going to feel like it is everywhere -- especially on TV. And the coverage matters, journalistically and culturally," the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik writes. "CNN and MSNBC have extensive, all-day coverage planned," with anchors in DC all day long, plus reporters at events across the country. Fox News says it will have correspondents in DC and NYC, but it'll be interesting to see how the coverage differs on Fox... | | Parkland's student journalists | | Guardian US staffers "invited student journalists from the Eagle Eye, the award-winning newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, to serve as our guest editors" for the march. The web site is "sending 11 students to the nation's capital as Guardian correspondents, contributing to our live coverage all day on Saturday." Read more here... I'll talk with Lois Beckett about this on Sunday's "Reliable Sources..."
--> Some of the student editors also spoke at the Newseum on Friday... Variety has the highlights here... | | Taylor Swift joins the celebs who are supporting the march | | | Megan Thomas emails: In an incredibly rare political statement, Taylor Swift shared her support for March for Our Lives in an Instagram post on Friday, writing: "I've made a donation to show my support for the students" and "to support gun reform..." | | Anderson Cooper and co. have been working on the Stormy Daniels story for two weeks. It will be a two-parter, meaning there's only one other story scheduled to run on Sunday's "60 Minutes."
But this is unusual: CBS has not released any previews of Cooper's interview with Daniels... Just a single ten-second tease of Cooper asking her a question. I guess the logic is: Everyone knows the interview is airing on Sunday, no need to promote it by sharing a preview clip! | | How high-rated will this interview be? | | Brian Lowry emails: The "lead-in" to the Stormy Daniels interview in much of the country will be NCAA tournament coverage. That's a lot more men tuning in than the network would normally attract on a Sunday afternoon with anything but NFL football, and the promos will be to -- paraphrasing here -- stick around and watch a porn star talk about the president...
--> Last week's "60" averaged 10 million viewers. How many viewers will this week's broadcast get? | | | "Sunday evening is going to be a very uncomfortable evening in the Trump household," Rick Wilson said on "AC360." But CNN's Kate Bennett reports that POTUS and FLOTUS will be in different states: The president is scheduled to fly home to DC late Sunday afternoon while Melania Trump will remain at Mar-a-Lago with Barron on a "pre-scheduled spring break..." | | The president hasn't publicly responded to the women who have been speaking out. The WSJ reported Friday night that "he has discussed with advisers whether he should publicly fight the allegations," but has so far heeded their advice to stay mum...
-- Cooper's Karen McDougal interview made "AC360" the #1 cable news show of the day in the 25-54 demo on Thursday...
-- Maggie Haberman on "AC360:" "The longer this goes on, I think the harder it's going to be for him to stay quiet." While the McDougal interview was "sad," she said, Daniels has been more "in the president's face," making a reaction from POTUS more likely... | | Avenatti is loving every minute of this | | | Here's the profile of Stormy Daniels' "lawyer and de facto media adviser" Michael Avenatti that you've been waiting for. VF's Joe Hagan writes that "Avenatti was born for this Trumpian media moment." And "Avenatti believes the story has only just begun." On Friday's "Situation Room," Avenatti told Wolf Blitzer that he has a disc containing evidence of the affair... | | Yes, Joe Hagan is now writing for VF | | | Hagan is one of Radhika Jones' new hires... He is a special correspondent for the magazine... "I'm VERY excited by her new Vanity Fair," he told me. "I officially start April 1 but wanted to get my toe in" with the Avenatti piece... | | -- In Saturday's WashPost: "Attorney says Roy Moore supporters offered him $10,000 to drop client who accused the Senate candidate of sexual impropriety." Breitbart factors in. This is a shocking story...
-- Elon Green's "behind the story" conversation with Olivia Nuzzi: "How she got Hope Hicks to talk"
-- Big new story by Jodi Kantor: "Women have spoken. Men have fallen. Corporations are nervous. But are American workplaces making real progress in curbing sexual harassment?" | | This Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | | The aforementioned David Zurawik, Olivia Nuzzi and Lois Beckett will join me, along with Jeffrey Toobin and Sarah Westwood... Plus, an exclusive interview with former Fox News host Eric Bolling, who seems to be angling for a W.H. job... See you Sunday at 11am ET on CNN... | | Congrats to David Zurawik! | | | He is this year's recipient of the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, presented by the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. The judges praised his "deep knowledge" and passion as an "advocate for news consumers..." | | -- CNN.com's main headline right now: "Trump bars most transgender people from the military." On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow said "this looks like a "late Friday night news dump..."
-- One week after his Friday night firing, Andrew McCabe has penned a piece for the WashPost. He says he found out when "a friend called to tell me that CNN was reporting that I had been fired..." (Post)
-- Speaking of McCabe, Floyd Abrams asks, "Why is the WSJ ignoring its own role in Andrew McCabe's firing?" (Mediaite) | | Facebook data debacle, one week later | | | FB stock was at $185 last Friday. Now it's at $159. Here are a few of the headlines from the past 24 hours... | | House and Senate committees ask Zuckerberg to testify | | | CNN's Daniella Diaz reports: "Bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee have requested that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before their committees." Details here... | | "A handful of marketers suspended advertising on Facebook as the company hustled to quell anxiety about its platform," the WSJ reported.
Those are the trees, but this is the forest: "No blue chip advertiser has announced a spending pause on Facebook as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal," BuzzFeed's Alex Kantrowitz says.
Kantrowitz's framing feels right to me: "Nothing is going to happen to Facebook..." | | Donie O'Sullivan emails: Greetings from London where the Cambridge Analytica fallout continues... Christopher Wylie told us how a super PAC run by Trump's latest appointee John Bolton benefited from Cambridge Analytica's services in 2014...
-- More: The Observer, which broke the story on Cambridge Analytica that got this all stated last weekend, is expected to focus on the company's role in Brexit this weekend, multiple people who have been interviewed by the newspaper have told us. They rolled out one story on Friday... but a lot more to come...
-- Also: The UK's data protection authority began searching Cambridge Analytica's office on Friday night... And Wylie will be appearing before Parliament here on Tuesday... | | We've been doing a "Reliable" podcast interview every week for the past year, and I think this is the best one yet. Pando founder Sarah Lacy is the guest, and Facebook is the topic. Listen here via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, or Stitcher...
-- Key quote: "I think the bigger fear, internally, more than the stock, more than any of that, is, 'Are we the bad guys?' Because people at Uber knew they were the bad guys and they were happy to revel in being the bad guys. People at Facebook thought they were the good guys." Read more via Julia Waldow's recap here... | | -- Lauren Goode is jumping from The Verge to WIRED... As a senior writer, "Goode will lead coverage of consumer products," and develop new video series...
-- OK then: "Newsweek is not for sale, company says, rebuffing Steve Bannon..." (Newsweek)
-- "Blumhouse Television is making a further push into documentary programming, partnering with Meredith-owned Time to produce two topical documentaries" about gun violence and schools... "Producers are currently out to networks..." (Deadline) | | | That's what Drudge is calling it. And that's what it was, right? President Trump started the day by threatening to veto the omnibus spending bill, but by midday he was signing it... | | | Trump surprised by the press corps by tweeting that he would hold a 1pm "news conference" about the bill. But he didn't. Instead, he delivered a "airing of grievances," as Jake Tapper put it. The press pool was able to shout a couple Q's at the end, but this wasn't a news conference at all. Nor was it a public "bill signing," as the W.H. said. Trump signed the bill in private. Tapper: "Dare I call it a 'fake news conference?'" | | $445 million for public broadcasting | | | Two years in a row, Trump's desire to do away with federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting got a lot of attention, including from me. Two years in a row, Congress went ahead and provided the expected $445 million allocation. And this year "funding will actually increase for arts programs," Billboard pointed out... | | Our exec producer in chief | | CNNMoney's Michael Tarson emails: As a TV producer, I'm fascinated by the Executive Producer in Chief. He's full of ideas, knows how to tease, can instantly draw viewers' attention and follows the unpredictable script that he writes himself. Friday's "I might veto" tweet was a perfect example. The morning was chewed up by "will he or won't he" conversations.
I know Maggie Haberman tweeted that one current advisor says Trump is beginning to think of the White House like Trump Organization -- but I would argue it's more "The Apprentice." He has TV crews ready 24/7, Twitter always ready to go, much of the press and the public still hanging on his words, and investors are also taking notice of the possibly negative economic consequences of what he says. (The Dow had its "worst week in more than two years" this week.) The audience for Trump's show is enormous and he knows it... | | Haass: "This is the most perilous moment in modern American history" | | Tarson adds: But while it's entertaining, there's also worries about what it might be doing to abroad and at home…like this dire warning via Twitter from Richard Haass:
"Trump is now set for war on 3 fronts: political vs Bob Mueller, economic vs China/others on trade, and actual vs. Iran and/or North Korea. This is the most perilous moment in modern American history -- and it has been largely brought about by ourselves, not by events." | | Pro-Trump media is fuming | | Oliver Darcy emails: Far-right media personalities fumed about Trump signing the spending bill. They were particularly peeved that the $1.3 trillion package did not include complete funding for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border. In a string of tweets, Ann Coulter skewered the President... After Trump said he would never sign a bill like this into law again, Coulter quipped, "Yeah, because you'll be impeached."
>> A headline on Breitbart said "RIP BORDER WALL 💀"
>> Jim Hoft, the founder of Gateway Pundit, declared the move to sign the package into law "WEAK!" Hoft even went on to suggest that he had muted the sound while watching Trump's bill signing, tweeting, "It was that bad." | | | In between Sean Hannity's media bashing segments, he said the GOP has "betrayed the people that voted for them." Banner: "REPUBLICANS BREAKING THEIR PROMISES." He mostly blamed Congress, but also said "I personally wish the President vetoed this bill, made them stay in Washington..." | | -- The AP: "White House staffers on edge as Trump eyes another shake-up"
-- WSJ: "Trump Relishes Off-Script Approach"
-- NYT: "After Another Week of Chaos, Trump Heads to Palm Beach. No One Knows What Comes Next."
-- Politico: "Trump aides are 'at their wits' end'" | | | Quoting from Saturday's NYT: "Trump left the White House for Florida on Friday after a head-spinning series of moves on national security, trade, the budget and his legal team that left the capital reeling, sent the stock market into another dive and left his own advisers nervous of what comes next. The decisions attested to a president riled up by cable news and increasingly unbound. Mr. Trump appeared heedless of his staff, unconcerned about Washington decorum, confident of his instincts and determined to set the agenda himself, even if that agenda looked like a White House in disarray..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- John Ziegler with the headline of the day: "This Would Have Been Quite a Week For Fox News… If Only a Democrat Were the President" (Mediaite)
-- "Conspiracy-minded conservatives fell for a political hoax" involving Broward County's Democratic sheriff, Scott Israel, Politico's Marc Caputo reports... (Politico) | | NBC marking MLK anniversary | | | NBC's two-hour documentary "Hope & Fury," about Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights movement and the media, will debut Saturday at 8pm on NBC... Reairing Sunday at 9pm on MSNBC... Andy Lack EPed the film... It's a part of the network's coverage marking the 50th anniversary of King's assassination. This hasn't been announced yet, but "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt" will be broadcast from outside the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on April 4, the day of the anniversary... | | "Even without the L.A. Times," Tronc still "controls a lot of important newspapers." So here's the question: "Will it sell them to Gannett, Murdoch, local individuals in each city -- or to yet another private equity firm looking to strip papers for parts?"
--Ken Doctor's latest... | | Wenner decries "witch hunt" | | Jann Wenner is doing interviews to promote the "Rolling Stone: Stories From the Edge" documentary. While speaking with the AP, he said the #MeToo movement shows a "real absence of due process." This quote is getting a lot of attention: "Honestly, I do believe it's a bit of a witch hunt. It's difficult to get due process because there's no real place to adjudicate it except in court, which takes forever."
The AP noted that "Wenner speaks from experience, after a former Rolling Stone employee came forward last year, claiming the media mogul sexually assaulted him in 1983..." | | "MeToo Hits the Academy? It's Complicated" | | | Megan Thomas emails: Rebecca Keegan's look at the sexual harassment allegations facing Academy president John Bailey is an insightful, dishy read... | | Lowry recommends HBO's "Barry" | | | Brian Lowry emails: HBO's "Barry" sounds like a "Get Shorty" knockoff, but it's surprisingly effective -- a strong showcase for Bill Hader (who also produced and directed) as a hit man who is suddenly bitten by the acting bug. Read more... | | "Trust" is beginning and "Billions" is back | | Brian Lowry emails: POTUS won't be the only billionaire providing fodder for TV viewers Sunday. In fact, two dramas devoted to the ruthless rich will air directly opposite each other: "Trust," a fact-based FX series about J. Paul Getty, covering similar terrain to the recent movie "All the Money in the World;" and the third-season premiere of "Billions," which picks up where last season's brilliant twist left off.
Read Lowry's full story here... | | Saving some fun news for last... | | | "The '90s-nostalgia fix we've been waiting for may soon happen," Chloe Melas reports. The Spice Girls "have signed off their likenesses to be used in an animated film, according to Variety. The singers would reportedly each possess a special 'girl power' in the film, obviously..." | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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