| | | | | Well, there was a Friday news dump, but there wasn't a shocking firing or anything else that took over the news cycle. The WSJ reported that President Trump reached a "truce" with chief of staff John Kelly, "at least temporarily." | | | This led The Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last to comment: "I kind of like having the White House run like Survivor. Kelly got the Immunity Idol this time, but after tribal council, everyone is vulnerable again. Tune in next week!" | | -- The NYT's Friday evening lede: "No one was fired at the White House on Friday. At least not as of 8 p.m. Which was news..."
-- "Everything is up to the president. So every story is as hard as Jell-O," Gloria Borger told Brooke Baldwin on CNN...
-- As uncertainty reigns, "if you're worried about the stability of this White House and the stability of U.S. policy, get in line," Chuck Todd said on MSNBC... | | -- "The air of stability the White House tried to project" on Friday "felt more like a pause than a permanent shift," The AP says...
-- WashPost's Amber Phillips: "Trump is making one thing clear: He likes surrounding himself with people who like him..." | | Andrew McCabe hasn't been fired -- yet. But DOJ beat reporters are on alert for potential news about McCabe. In the meantime...
Oliver Darcy emails: Talk about a major oops. Fox News on Friday evening made a serious error when it published a FoxNews.com story that said McCabe had been fired from his position at the FBI, just days before he is set to retire. The story was obviously a draft. It contained placeholders for information not yet known. (I tweeted out a screen grab of the first few paragraphs here.) Some Fox fans started sharing the article on Twitter, celebrating the (false) news, and it stayed up for about 45 minutes before Fox deleted the link and admitted fault. The network declined to comment to me... | | Bill Shine, comms director? | | | CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak reported Friday night that POTUS is "slated to discuss the open position of communications director" with former Fox News co-president Bill Shine "in the coming days..." | | | Olivia Nuzzi's profile of outgoing W.H. comms director Hope Hicks. Nuzzi has been working on this for weeks, pre-dating Hicks' resignation. I hear it's the cover of next week's New York magazine... The piece will come out on NYMag.com on Sunday night... | | Shep versus Fox's opinion hosts | | Thursday: Shepard Smith was quoted saying that Fox's opinion side "don't really have rules" they need to follow. He said some of the shows are "there strictly to be entertaining."
Friday: Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham publicly responded via Twitter. "While Shep is a friend with political views I do not share, and great at breaking news, he is clueless about what we do every day. Hannity breaks news daily," Hannity wrote.
Geraldo Rivera backed Hannity up, saying Hannity has "become Best Sourced most effective journalist probing #RussiaGate..." I thought this was odd since Hannity proudly says he's not a journalist and claims "journalism is dead..." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, click here for Oliver Darcy's full story about the sniping... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Watching Fox's opinion hosts fire back at Shep Smith on Twitter underscored one of things that Roger Ailes brought to the network -- not just an ideological profile, but also his stewardship of the network's high-profile personalties. That didn't mean that they all got along, but it's hard to remember a time when they aired dirty laundry or publicly criticized each other... | | BREAKING: Cambridge Analytica suspended from FB | | | Facebook says "we are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook..." | | -- ICYMI: Anderson Cooper's interview with Stormy Daniels is set to air on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, March 25. Here's my story... (CNN)
-- O.J. Simpson gave his "first substantial interview in a decade" to The Buffalo News this week... He wanted the questions to be "limited to his playing career," but he ended up talking about "his time in prison, his life since his release, football, CTE and more..." (Buffalo News)
-- "Kroger is going to stop selling magazines about assault rifles..." (CNNMoney)
-- Why did Shane Smith move from CEO to exec chairman of Vice this week? Because new CEO Nancy Dubuc "has picked hits, acts like an adult, and is female -- which is precisely what Vice needs right now," Joe Pompeo reports... (VF) | | | I'm an NCAA basketball novice, but by some stroke of luck I'm doing OK in CNN's March Madness group of 30 anchors and correspondents. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is ranked 1st right now, while I'm tied for 2nd with Christine Romans, Don Nash and Erin Burnett. (I'm told by experts that this will not last!) Here's the CNN leaderboard... | | Want to be the NFL's CMO? | | The job is coming open... NFL marketing chief Dawn Hudson "said she plans to step down next month after over three years creating memorable ads like this year's 'Dirty Dancing' themed Super Bowl spot and helping the league navigate crises such as domestic abuse," the WSJ's Alexandra Bruell reported Friday morning.
Time for an internal and external search. The long and short of it: Frustrated owners and fans = Lots of changeover at NFL HQ... | | Academy prez under investigation | | Variety's Gene Maddaus broke this news on Friday: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is investigating allegations of sexual harassment against president John Bailey.
Via CNN's Sandra Gonzalez: Bailey "is currently facing three harassment claims, according to Variety... His accusers were not identified... Bailey did not respond to CNN's request for comment..." | | New story about Weinstein, the NYPD and the DA | | Don't miss Kathy Dobie's reporting for NYMag about the inner workings of the NYPD's case against Harvey Weinstein. It just came out on the web, and it'll be in next week's print mag.
The tension between the NYPD and District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. -- who still hasn't decided whether to issue an indictment -- is the through-line of the piece. Dobie says "the police became convinced that Vance's office was systematically working to derail the investigation..." | | Meet the members of Press Forward | | Lindsey Ellefson emails: Ten members of the new Press Forward initiative -- devoted to changing newsroom culture -- appeared on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning. They told Alisyn Camerota, who sits on the Press Forward board of advisors, about how the harassment they experienced changed the trajectory of their careers.
Quotes: "I was so scared to come forward..." "There is this momentum that was building..." "This isn't one network. This problem is system-wide..."
Of particular note: At the group's kickoff event Tuesday, board member Ted Koppel suggested female employees not wear a skirt so short as to be "provocative." Dianna Goldberg May told Camerota she found Koppel's comment "provocative" itself -- but "you can't just shut him down." She and Carolyn McGourty Supple agreed that inviting men into the conversation and working with them to show them why comments like that are "misguided" is an important step in moving forward... | | Facebook apologizes for child abuse search suggestions | | Donie O'Sullivan emails: It's possible that this was the result of a coordinated group of accounts repeatedly searching these phrases in order to trick the Facebook algorithm Thursday night. It demonstrates how the platform is open to manipulation.
Facebook staffers quickly remedied the problem and issued an apology, showing that the company can rapidly respond to problems on its platform. Some may ask: Why hasn't Facebook deployed a similarly rapid response to stop the spread of false news stories on its platform? The issues are, of course, fundamentally different -- the latter more nuanced and pushing Facebook toward a truth-arbiter role it definitely doesn't want... | | -- Great read by Olivia Solon: "'They'll squash you like a bug': how Silicon Valley keeps a lid on leakers" (The Guardian)
-- This clip from NowThis is off-the-charts viral. "Fox News used to hate the idea of talking to North Korea. But suddenly, when Trump does it..." (NowThis on Twitter)
-- "Fox News won't say whether Seth Rich conspiracy reporter" Malia Zimmerman, who's now being sued by the Rich family, "is working on stories," Erik Wemple reports... (WashPost)
-- This Sunday's "Family Guy" episode will air "completely uninterrupted" thanks to 60-second Playstation ads before and after the show... (AdWeek) | | | -- Felix Salmon on "the $10 billion opportunity at Reuters:" Blackstone's takeover of the Thomson Reuters financial terminal biz includes a $325 million annual payment for Reuters news for the next 30 years. Salmon says Reuters must use the $$$ to "embark on a reinvention which will allow it to maintain its size and scope when the money runs out in 2048..." | | -- Jessica Lessin's latest: "Subscriptions Are Taking Over News. What's Next?" She says successful publications will focus on "a) original content b) growth marketing and c) personalization. And there will be a lot to learn, and compete with, from tech companies..."
-- A pair of WSJ stories: Keach Hagey's look at Telemundo gaining ground against Univision, and Ben Mullin's piece about Univision's Fusion Media Group facing "potentially steep cuts..." | | | -- Austin without the crowds: Hundreds of keynotes and sessions from the past week of SXSW are streaming for free via SoundCloud... | | | -- On this week's "Reliable" pod, I talked with WSJ reporter Ben Fritz, author of the new book "The Big Picture," about the future of film... Listen via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn and other apps... | | | -- The New Yorker's Sarah Larson likes what she hears on Vox's new daily podcast "Today, Explained." I'm adding it to my queue... | | This Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | "Two lawsuits filed this week could change how the entire right-wing media approaches truth, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories," Will Sommer wrote in this week's Right Richter newsletter. On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I'll have an exclusive interview with Brennan Gilmore, who's suing Infowars, and Gilmore's attorney Andre Mendrala...Catch up on the lawsuit with Oliver's story.
Plus: Ben Shapiro, Alicia Menendez, Jeff Greenfield, and Rene Marsh. Join us Sunday at 11am ET on CNN... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- Shirin Ghaffary interviews author Claire Evans, whose new book talks about the women involved in starting the internet... (Recode)
-- The first Adult Swim Festival will be held in downtown LA this fall... (Deadline)
-- A new study by an anti-smoking group found that Netflix's original series "contain the highest number of smoking depictions -- by far -- among TV shows that are popular among young people..." (Variety) | | About those corrections... | | Tom Kludt emails: If President Trump hadn't tapped Gina Haspel to head the CIA, would two of the most respected news organizations in the country have issued humbling corrections this week? It's a fair question, given that both ProPublica and the NYT made fixes to stories about Haspel that were published more than a year ago. ProPublica won praise from journalists for its lengthy and candid explanation for the error. The same can't be said for the Times, which appended an "editors' note" -- not, you know, a "correction" -- to the bottom of its story.
--> Read Tom's full story here...
--> Related: What Erik Wemple wants to know: "How did these falsehoods hang around for so long?" Why didn't Haspel or anyone from the CIA push back?! | | | "Corporate America will be watching closely" when the trial starts next week, CNNMoney's David Goldman writes. "It's the first time in four decades that the Justice Department has sued to block a merger between companies in different lines of business." Read the rest here... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Facebook is bringing a "lite" version of its social media platform to countries including the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany... (CNNMoney)
-- John Paul Getty III's sister is taking legal action against the FX series "Trust" for allegedly portraying the Getty family as complicit in his 1973 kidnapping. Her attorney calls the show "a cruel and mean-spirited defamatory depiction" of the family and demands the show hand over episodes for review... (THR)
-- Almost 13 years after the publication of her notorious 2005 piece "The Man Date," former NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee addresses the backlash she faced from readers and explains how she wound up looking into intellectual property rules over the term... (NYT) | | Steele to be deposed in this suit against BuzzFeed | | CNN's Adam Levine emails: A British court has ruled that former British spy Christopher Steele can be deposed for a lawsuit filed in Florida by a Russian tech exec against BuzzFeed. Attorney Evan Fray-Witzer, whose client Aleksej Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed over the publication of the Steele dossier, confirmed the decision to CNN after it was reported on Friday. Fray-Witzer expects the deposition to happen in the next four to six weeks in the UK, though no date has been set.
"Steele has been fighting the idea of sitting for his deposition for months now. We have really actively pursuing his deposition. The reason we are pursuing it is because we know the things said in the dossier about our client are just not true," Fray-Witzer said Friday.
Fray-Witzer said his team had agreed not to ask for the identity of sources, after Steele had resisted out of concern sources of his information would be revealed.
-- Here's background on the Gubarev suit against BF...
-- Friday night statement from BF PR: "We fully expect the information contained in Mr. Steele's deposition to reaffirm our decision to publish the dossier, which was at the center of official investigations and circulating at the highest levels of government..." | | "Love, Simon" and "Instinct" mark progress for gay characters | | | Brian Lowry emails: The incremental gains for gay characters in mainstream entertainment come on two fronts this week, with the teen rom-com "Love, Simon" -- directed by TV producer Greg Berlanti -- and "Instinct," an otherwise-nondescript CBS crime procedural that stars Alan Cumming as a gay expert in psychopathology... Read the rest here... | | "It's hard to say no to Netflix" | | WSJ reporter/"The Big Picture" author Ben Fritz on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast: "I hear stories from people in Hollywood all the time. They go out pitching a film and, you know, they'll take it to Universal and Warner and they'll say, 'Okay, we'll buy it. We'll pay you your asking price.' And then Netflix says, 'We want it. We'll pay you double your asking price.' Done. And it's hard to say no to Netflix."
Read Julia Waldow's recap here... Or listen to the pod through Apple or other apps... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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