| | | | | Exec summary: President Trump may or may not have some pivotal meetings on Thursday. Plus, Univision intel, an interview with David Zaslav, The AP's new deal with Facebook, and "A Wrinkle In Time" reviews... | | "This is so manipulative." | | That's an anchor at a local TV station owned by Sinclair, teling me about the company's latest mandate, a promo campaign that sounds like pro-Trump propaganda.
Internal documents call the new initiative an "anchor delivered journalistic responsibility message." But the staffers who shared these documents with me say the promos are inappropriate -- yet another corporate infringement on local journalism.
"At my station, everyone was uncomfortable doing it," a local anchor said. Why? Because the promos decry "fake stories" and "biased" coverage -- echoing President Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about "fake news." Here's my full story... | | The local anchors are required to say they're "concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country." And that members of the media are "using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think.'"
"I felt like a POW recording a message," one of the anchors told me. But Sinclair SVP Scott Livingston says promos like this one "are very common in our industry." Read the script and tell me: Have you seen promos like this before? | | Remember yesterday's report that Univision had called off a long-planned initial public offering? That was just the beginning of the story. THR said investors were "disappointed" with CEO Randy Falco, but also said "there are no plans to replace him." That part was premature. The WSJ reported Wednesday evening that the Univision board "is considering replacing" Falco. Not too long after that, board chairman Haim Saban issued a statement.
"Recently Randy came to us and told us that he would like to retire at the end of 2018 when he will turn 65 years old and end an outstanding 8 year tenure as the CEO of Univision," Saban said. The board "reluctantly agreed to Randy's wishes."
The announcement raised eyebrows because the board took action just four months ago to renew Falco's contract through 2020... So clearly something has changed... | | | According to the WSJ's Shalini Ramachandran and Keach Hagey, Univision is also "undertaking a business review that could lead to severe cost cuts." The company declined to comment, but it sounds like layoffs are in the offing. The WSJ said that the plans "would be aimed at improving the company's performance and sprucing it up in advance of courting suitors for a potential sale." One way or another, Univision's private-equity backers are looking for an exit. Of course, this has been true for several years... Here's my full story... | | Here's what Falco told me | | I reached out to Falco on Wednesday night... He told me he raised the issue of retirement a few weeks ago... "I know it was only a few months after I signed a new two-year deal, but I felt that at age 65 I wanted to end my time as CEO earlier than planned."
Falco's #1 point: "Everything that we are facing at Univision is the same as every other traditional media company. I'm confident we can make the necessary changes to grow and compete in a market with the emergence of tech companies and the increasing consolidation of big media companies to meet the threat of tech companies..."
(Reminder: Univision is a CNN newsgathering partner...) | | Sitting down with David Zaslav | | Discovery CEO David Zaslav spent Wednesday morning at the Food Network's test kitchen in Chelsea Market. Food is one of the channels Discovery just acquired through the Scripps deal, so the newly combined companies held a live-streamed town hall inside one of the Food Network's studios.
Afterward, Zaslav sat down with me for an interview... Full story to come on Thursday... But we've already published the whole thing as our weekly podcast. You can check it out here via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn... | | -- This is a lively and insightful 538 chat: "Why Does Everyone Hate The Media?" Emphasis on the "why..." (538)
-- Some more interesting reading: "Why inaccurate political information spreads... And why partisanship makes it difficult for people to accept corrections," by Jonathan Ladd... (Medium)
-- The NYT's Farhad Manjoo spent two months just reading the news in print. He liked it. His advice: "For goodness' sake, please stop getting your news mainly from Twitter and Facebook. In the long run, you and everyone else will be better off..." (NYT) | | Tariffs event on Thursday? Or not? | | | "Confusion abounded late Wednesday in the West Wing over President Donald Trump's impending trade announcement rolling out tariffs on steel and aluminum imports," CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Boris Sanchez report. "White House aides had been told to prepare for a signing ceremony Thursday at 3:30 p.m. ET in the Roosevelt Room." But some sources now say it's cancelled. Others say it might still be happening. The official W.H. schedule doesn't show any tariff event on Thursday... But it does include this next event... | | | CNN's Dan Merica reports: "On Thursday, the President will host a meeting between representatives from the video game industry and those who think games have made kids more violent in recent years. The meeting marks a distinct pivot away from the gun control measures discussed by Trump and others in the immediate wake of the shooting." | | Who's attending the meeting | | | Entertainment Software Association CEO Mike Gallagher and Entertainment Software Rating Board president Patricia Vance have been invited, per Merica's story... ESA spokesman Dan Hewitt set the table by saying "video games are plainly not the issue" in a statement on Wednesday. "Entertainment is distributed and consumed globally, but the US has an exponentially higher level of gun violence than any other nation," Hewitt said... | | Hey, where's the W.H. gun control plan? | | | Sarah Sanders "said last month that the plan would be released by the end of last week, but sources have told CNN that no plan will be released at least until after Thursday's meeting..." | | Brian Williams on MSNBC: "Just to keep it fair, there is breaking news tonight from BOTH the NYT and the WashPost..."
The NYT had this scoop in the 6pm hour: "The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters..."
Then the WashPost had this scoop in the 8pm hour: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin..." | | | DOJ spokesman turned MSNBC talking head Matthew Miller tweeted: "One thread running through both the NYT and Post stories is the increasing unwillingness of people around Trump to cover up for him. How a conspiracy breaks apart..." | | | Mueller knows so, so much more than the rest of us. Sometimes I feel like we're viewing this investigation through a soda straw... Meaning we're only seeing little bits of it... | | "Someone is not telling the truth" | | Erin Burnett on CNN Wednesday night: "Someone is not telling the truth. It's either the President of the United States Donald Trump or porn star Stormy Daniels."
Burnett showed how Sarah Sanders mostly deferred Q's about Daniels' lawsuit to "the president's outside counsel."
"Here's the thing," Burnett said. If POTUS "tried to influence the election by paying hush money to a porn star -- so she would be quiet and not throw another horrible allegation about women on him four days before the election -- that is as important as it gets. And the American people deserve answers. It's time for the White House to stop trying to punt it to some outside counsel."
-- More: Anderson Cooper interviewed Daniels' attorney on "AC360..." | | Two leaders of Britain First sentenced to months in prison | | | Hadas Gold emails: Remember when President Trump caused an international uproar when he retweeted three anti-Muslim tweets (some of which turned out to not even portray Muslims) from a racist British group called Britain First? On Wednesday two leaders from the group, were sentenced to months in prison. Jayda Fransen and Paul Goldin were found guilty of "religiously aggravated harassment" for distributing leaflets and posting online videos during a gang-rape trial last year. Fransen and Golding denied the charges... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- In its biggest round of layoffs to date, Snap is cutting about 100 people from its engineering department... (Cheddar)
-- Quartz, mentioning Snap's first positive earnings report in February, frames the situation this way: "Even when things get better for Snap, they aren't that good..." (Quartz)
-- Cosmopolitan is joining its Hearst sister Seventeen in producing video shows for Musical.ly... (Digiday)
-- The New Yorker's Ian Crouch asks: "Is Martin Short the greatest talk-show guest of all time...?" (The New Yorker) | | AP + Facebook for midterms fact-checking | | | Hadas Gold emails: AP is expanding its collaboration with Facebook to help debunk "false and misleading" stories related to the midterm elections. AP's reporters in all 50 states "will fact-check national, state and local election-related stories on Facebook, supplying related AP news stories that debunk misinformation or validate a story as true, or provide additional background and context..." | | Yes, Facebook is paying the AP... | | | I bugged Facebook PR about this, and got an answer: "We are compensating the AP but as a matter of policy, we don't disclose the details of business arrangements..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- "Some advertising-technology companies have cut ties with Newsweek Media Group over concerns about allegedly fake website traffic..." (WSJ)
-- "A conspiracy theory has spread among Facebook and Instagram users: The company is tapping our microphones to target ads. It's not." So how DOES FB know so much? Joanna Stern's column helps explain it in layman's terms... (WSJ)
-- Just released: The theatrical trailer for "RBG." It'll be released in theaters on May 4 before coming to CNN... (YouTube) | | In last night's newsletter, I said Ben Fritz was at the LA Times. What was I thinking? He left the LAT for the WSJ years ago! My apologies to Ben.
P.S.: His book "The Big Picture" came out yesterday and is for sale here... | | Weinstein investigation update | | | Via Deadline: Robert Boyce, chief of detectives for the NYPD, says the department's investigation into Harvey Weinstein is going "very very well." Boyce said Wednesday that "we have a lot of information." He seemed to be pressuring Manhattan D.A. Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. -- saying "it's his case right now" -- adding "I would ask you to ask him... where it goes forward..." | | Fox ramping up promos for "O.J." special | | Brian Lowry emails: Judith Regan was fired by News Corp. -- and subsequently sued the company, settling a decade ago for an undisclosed sum -- over the aborted O.J. Simpson book and Fox TV special "If I Did It." So as IndieWire's Michael Schneider notes, it's something of a surprise to see her among the legal analysts enlisted to participate in "O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?," a two-hour special that Fox is cobbling together to throw against the premiere of "American Idol" on ABC.
Other experts featured will include former prosecutor Christopher Darden... Fox announced the list on Wednesday...
--> And on Thursday, the network will hold a screening and Q&A event with reporters, so expect more headlines then... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- Remember the viral short story "Cat Person" from The New Yorker? A24 just picked up a horror movie script by author Kristen Roupenian... (THR)
-- Mark Zuckerberg's charity is donating $30 million to launch "Reach Every Reader," "a five-year initiative to build a web-based screening tool that diagnoses reading problems before kids can even read, and to develop a set of home and school interventions that personalize literacy support for kids, parents, and teachers..." (Quartz)
-- The Daily Beast reports: Reddit, despite saying they would cooperate with the Russia investigation, has not provided any documents... (Daily Beast)
-- Poynter's Rick Edmonds makes the case for why Meredith should keep Time and other Time Inc. publications... (Poynter) | | "What's Next for Time's Up" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Kim Masters has a good piece in THR about transforming Time's Up from a hashtag into an ongoing entity. Favorite tidbit: Concern that CAA would use the meetings to poach clients... | | Lowry's "A Wrinkle In Time" review | | Brian Lowry emails: The good news for Disney is that it's already having a huge year box-office-wise thanks to "Black Panther." The not-so-good news is that Ava DuVernay's adaptation of the children's book "A Wrinkle in Time" -- featuring Oprah Winfrey -- is disappointing, at least in the eyes of many critics, including this one...
>> Read Lowry's full review here... | | Here's a more optimistic POV... | | | The NYT's A.O. Scott says the film "arrives in theaters buoyed by and burdened with expectations. It is the first $100 million movie directed by an African-American woman, and the diversity of its cast is both a welcome innovation and the declaration of a new norm. This is how movies should look from now on, which is to say how they should have looked all along. Fans of the book and admirers of Ms. DuVernay's work -- I include myself in both groups -- can breathe a sigh of relief, and some may also find that their breath has been taken away. Mine was, once or twice, though I would describe the overall experience as satisfaction rather than awe..." | | Spotted at the NYC screening of "Time" | | | The screening was hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine... Spotted: DuVernay, Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Storm Reid, Gayle King, Lucy Kaylin, Adam Glassman, Jayne Jamison, Al Roker, Deborah Roberts, Alysia Reiner, Ashley Graham, Colin Kapernick, John Dickerson, Norah O'Donnell, Ahmir Khalib Thomas, Rachael Ray, Trevor Noah, and many more... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Marvel's "Jessica Jones" returns for its second season on Wednesday. But after a promising debut, the show moves so slowly in the previewed episodes that it drops from the top tier of the company's Netflix series into the shallow end of that gene pool... | | | For the record, part five | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- He loved them, left them and then loved them again. "The Bachelor's" Arie Luyendyk Jr. is every dude who ever broke your heart...
-- Madonna, Kim Kardashian West and Cardi B were recently hanging out looking like BFFs. And this is why...
-- And here's a first look at "Luke Cage" Season 2... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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