| | | | | Exec summary: There are lots of new developments in the Sinclair story... Scroll down for details... Plus, a revealing new Monmouth poll, an ESPN+ update, and a breakup announcement from Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum... | | Amazon's Trump-sized problem | | "If President Trump wants to punish Amazon for lousy Washington Post coverage, it's working," CNNMoney's Nathaniel Meyersohn wrote Monday. "Amazon stock sank 5% on Monday after Trump renewed his attacks on the company on Twitter."
COSTLY: Amazon "has lost $60 billion in market value since Axios reported last week that Trump wants to 'go after' Amazon."
SERIOUSLY?: Is this where we are? Is Trump's hostility toward the Post and/or Jeff Bezos really driving this?
SERIOUSLY: "Trump has told advisers he believes Bezos uses the paper as a political weapon," Gabriel Sherman reported Monday night. The title of his latest VF story: "Trump's War With Amazon Gets Personal" | | The view from the Post newsroom | | Key graf in Sydney Ember's Tuesday NYT story: "People close to the president have said critical articles in The Post often trigger his public musings about Amazon."
Ember interviewed Post editor Marty Baron, who said Trump's depiction of the Post as an Amazon lobbying arm is "completely made up." More: "Baron said The Post was not cowed by Mr. Trump's invectives. 'We cover him the way that we feel any president should be covered,' he said..." | | Baron has a point here... | | | If Bezos was meddling in the Post's coverage, "you can be sure that you would have heard about it by now," Baron said. He means: It would have leaked out... | | In a statement shared first with the LAT on Monday, Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy quashed talk about whether the ad boycott against Laura Ingraham will make her vacation permanent. "We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts," he said. "We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children."
The line about "intimidation efforts" is a reference to Media Matters... | | | Katie Pavlich was in for Sean Hannity on Monday night, and Jason Chaffetz was in for Ingraham. (Seems odd that both hosts were off. But I digress...) | | The ad boycott effort had an immediate effect | | | This all started when Ingraham mocked David Hogg on Twitter last week. TheWrap got ahold of Kantar data showing that The "Ingraham Angle" averaged 14 and a half minutes of ads up until the Hogg controversy. Then there was a sudden drop-off. On Thursday: 8 minutes, 45 seconds of ads. Friday: 7 minutes of ads... | | Bill O'Reilly, who lost his job at Fox this time last year, tweeted on Monday that the Ingraham ad boycott "is not some spontaneous uprising by companies. It is being directed by powerful, shadowy radical groups who want Laura Ingraham off the air."
Hogg's reaction on Monday night: "I don't have any shadowy figures behind me." Speaking with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, he said, "I'm just a kid that uses Twitter. If he sees me as powerful, that's okay. I don't see myself that way..." | | Sinclair Broadcast Group's controversial promos received national attention all day long on Monday. The company says it's just a "corporate news journalistic responsibility promotional campaign," but Deadspin's compilation of the promos stirred concern and disgust... Here's the latest:
-- Sinclair staffers are privately saying they're embarrassed by the promos and concerned about their own credibility as journalists... A few local anchors and reporters are even reacting publicly...
-- I'm aware of a Sinclair staffer who has resigned as a result of all this. Details to come...
-- Fox 47, a Sinclair station in Madison, Wisconsin, has decided not to air the promos. The station took a whack at management with this tweet on Monday evening... | | -- "Everyone is really embarrassed after watching the Deadspin video," an employee at one of the stations told me... Other employees say newsrooms have been buzzing about this controversy... In some cases, staffers have been urged not to talk to the press...
-- Some advocates who have been trying to sound the alarm about Sinclair for months/years sense that something has changed, all of a sudden, thanks to the viral video...
-- Opponents of the Sinclair-Tribune deal seized on the newfound attention to reiterate opposition to the deal...
-- A Democratic candidate in Kentucky, Amy McGrath, directed her campaign to "cease and pull all campaign advertising" on the local Sinclair station... Meanwhile, the DNC is circulating its own anti-Sinclair talking points...
-- The view from Fox News, per BuzzFeed's Steven Perlberg: "Look, we're not Sinclair..." | | Two statements came out of Sinclair on Monday: A lengthy, angry memo (which was sent to newsroom staffers and then leaked to me) and a two-paragraph public statement.
"The promos served no political agenda, and represented nothing more than an effort to differentiate our award-winning news programming from other, less reliable sources of information," the company said.
But that's not how people AT the company felt. This is the key point that's been overlooked in some of the coverage: The controversy erupted because insiders -- staffers at Sinclair-owned stations -- spoke up against the promos. They complained to their bosses and told reporters like yours truly that something fishy was going on. Here's my latest story... | | Trump is giving Sinclair a thumbs up | | On Monday morning, a few minutes after Bill Carter and I covered the Sinclair story on CNN, Trump sided with Sinclair in a very public way. He tweeted that it's "so funny to watch Fake News Networks" criticize Sinclair "for being biased." He said "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."
Mary Nam, one of the main anchors at Sinclair's powerhouse Seattle station KOMO, responded to the president's claim that the coverage is funny. "Actually, this isn't funny at all. None of it," she wrote on Twitter. "When media giants gobble up local news stations, there are repercussions." Nam also shared a critical column from The Salt Lake Tribune. (The paper's TV critic, Scott D. Pierce, wrote in the column that "Sinclair is using the trust built by its local station to advance its political agenda.")
Nam also brought up the pending Tribune deal in her response to the president on Monday. "Since you brought it up first this morning," she wrote, "will your admin green light the Tribune buyout?" | | | --> David Zurawik's take: "Trump tweets away what's left of Sinclair's credibility..." | | | -- NPR's David Folkenflik: "What Sinclair's engaging is negative campaigning in a sense. And it is different. It is not a journalistic impulse. It is an attempt to slam and denigrate other elements of the media..." | | | -- Politico's Jack Shafer: "The moral panic over Sinclair Broadcasting Group's stupid promo might make sense if its TV stations were beamed directly into our skulls, George Orwell style. I might join the liberal dither if Sinclair wiped out its competition on the dial. But as long as I can still change my local channel and avoid Sinclair's partisan hackery, where's the crisis?" | | -- The Nation's John Nichols: Sinclair execs "have a right to their conservative opinions. But media consolidation and one-size-fits-all content damages the discourse in communities nationwide..."
-- Commentary's Noah Rothman: "This is a mirror image of the condition conservatives lamented for decades..." | | -- The latest in the Karen McDougal case: "National Enquirer publisher seeks to dismiss lawsuit brought by ex-Playboy model who claims affair with Trump..." (WashPost)
-- POTUS "cherishes" Lou Dobbs so much "he puts him on speakerphone for Oval Office meetings..." (The Daily Beast)
-- Andrew McCabe's wife Jill breaks her silence: "I have spent countless hours trying to understand how the president and so many others can share such destructive lies about me...." (WashPost) | | Trump allies targeting Acosta again | | CNN's Jim Acosta tried to ask POTUS about DACA during a photo op at the Easter Egg Roll on Monday. Trump responded to one of his Q's by blaming the Democrats. Acosta followed up by asking him, "Didn't you kill DACA?" Trump ignored him. Cue The Daily Caller, which posted a story saying "Acosta yelled at Trump while he was coloring with children." Then Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale jumped in on Twitter. "Maybe it is time for Jim Acosta to get a suspension for breaking protocol," Parscale wrote. "He continues to embarrass himself and CNN. Pull his credentials for each incident."
Acosta responded: "Just doing my job.. which is protected by the First Amendment of The Constitution. You might want to give it a read."
Reporters and commentators quickly came to Acosta's defense, pointing out that he was just doing his job. Erick Erickson tweeted, "You people seem to have forgotten Sam Donaldson vs. Ronald Reagan. This is nothing..." | | Did you see this Monmouth poll? | | Most Americans believe that major outlets (TV networks and newspapers) report "fake news." But people have different definitions of the term, and it's been highly politicized. This new Monmouth poll data may leave you feeling motivated... or depressed...
--> From the poll: "Nearly half the American public (48%) trusts CNN more than Trump, compared with one-third (35%) who trust Trump more than CNN..."
--> Hey FB and Google: "Fully 69% of Americans say that these sites are not doing enough to stop the spread of fake news on their platforms..."
🔌: I'll be on CNN's "New Day" talking about this poll in the 6am hour on Tuesday... | | -- Nielsen #'s for the first quarter of 2018 will come out on Tuesday. In the morning show ratings race, the quarterly results will show "Today" beating "GMA" across the board (in the 25-54 demo and total viewers) for the second straight quarter...
-- DOJ officials "are looking into serious accusations about Live Nation's behavior in the marketplace..." (NYT) | | | ESPN+ is about to start showing off its ESPN+ streaming service to reporters and other stakeholders. But first: A launch date! The service will launch on April 12... CNN's Jill Disis has the details here... | | Condé denies Page Six story about Anna Wintour | | Three bylines -- Emily Smith, Ian Mohr and Oli Coleman -- on this earthquake of an item: "It is almost beyond the fashion world's wildest imagination, but the chatter coming out of Condé Nast and the publishing industry has reached a deafening crescendo -- Anna Wintour could be on her way out of Condé and Vogue as artistic director." The gossip column cites "a host of stunned sources" saying Wintour is exiting "this summer," after closing the September issue. "But Condé Nast strongly denies Wintour is going. A Condé corporate spokesperson told Page Six on Monday, 'We emphatically deny these rumors,' but declined to comment more specifically on Wintour's plans."
A spokesperson reiterated the denial to me Monday night...
--> The obvious Q: What would Wintour's next act be? | | "The third week of the trial between the Justice Department and AT&T-Time Warner kicked off on Monday with government lawyers going deep with Turner executives on past negotiations with distributors," Hadas Gold and Tom Kludt report.
More: The day was filled with testimony from Turner executive Coleman Breland, who was previously in charge of Turner's negotiations with distributors and now serves as the organization's president of content experiences. On the stand for hours, Breland provided testimony that could be construed as helpful to either side." Read the rest here... | | | Via Hadas and Tom's story: "The trial continues on Tuesday with testimony from Richard Warren, who took over for Breland as head of Turner's content distribution..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- If you haven't read/heard Ezra Klein's interview with Mark Zuckerberg yet, here it is... (Vox)
-- "The Golden Globes may be on the move as its longtime TV home NBC failed to close a new deal for the highly rated awards franchise within its exclusive negotiation window," Nellie Andreeva reports... (Deadline)
-- The CW renewed ten (!) shows on Monday, Sandra Gonzalez reports... (CNN) | | TV newsers at Geraldo's book party | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Sean Hannity hosted a party on Monday evening for the launch of Geraldo Rivera's new book "The Geraldo Show." Held a stone's throw from the Fox News building in midtown Manhattan, journalists and industry professionals chatted over wine and hor d'oeuvres. Spotted: Rivera and his family, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Greg Gutfeld, Melissa Francis, Bill Hemmer, S.E. Cupp, Bo Dietl, Juan Williams, Gilbert Gottfried, Rita Cosby, Jessica Tarlov, Porter Berry, Carly Shanahan, Michael Grynbaum, Sarah Ellison, Max Tani, Andrew Kirell, Jeremy Barr, Katie Glueck, Jon Levine, and many more... | | Remembering Steven Bochco | | | Brian Lowry emails: The outpouring of reminiscence and tributes to producer Steven Bochco continued Monday, with a virtual who's who of the TV industry weighing in regarding his impact. On a personal level, I fondly remember a trip years ago to the Big Island of Hawaii, when over dinner I was struck in the back of the head by a wine cork. When I turned around it was Bochco, with a big grin on his face, who owned a vacation home on the island... | | Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum are separating | | | Chloe Melas emails: Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum announced Monday that they are separating after nearly nine years of marriage. "We have lovingly chosen to separate as a couple," the pair wrote on Instagram. "We fell deeply in love so many years ago and have had a magical journey together. Absolutely nothing has changed about how much we love one another, but love is a beautiful adventure that is taking us on different paths for now." Read more... | | | Brian Lowry emails: It's easy to overlook in this age of abundance, but Sunday was a pretty spectacular night of television in its breadth and variety. Leading the way was NBC's presentation of "Jesus Christ Superstar," which delivered 9.4 million viewers — a solid rebound for the live-musical genre after Fox fell on its face with "A Christmas Story Live." Elsewhere, the night includedESPN's coverage of an NCAA women's basketball championship decided by a last-second shot, and original episodes of "Billions," "Homeland," "Silicon Valley," "Barry," "Last Week Tonight," and "The Walking Dead." That's a lot of good TV. | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | You can read the transcript on CNN.com... listen to the podcast via Apple, Stitcher or TuneIn... watch the video clips on CNN.com... or watch the full program on VOD or CNNgo... | | "Government by presidential pique" | | | The Q on this week's "Reliable Sources:" Is Trump using the government to settle personal scores? Amazon might be one example, AT&T-Time Warner might be another. "This is government by presidential pique rather than policy," Michael Isikoff told me. "The problem is, it undermines whatever legitimate policy goals the president might have in mind, because it comes off as him just attacking his enemies..." | | What it means to "soften the ground..." | | Former FBI supervisory special agent Josh Campbell, now a CNN analyst, says many of his former colleagues are "perplexed" by the pro-Trump media's posture against the Russia probe: "Here is the network that we watch, here is the party of 'law enforcement,' that's now attacking the FBI... And I think the conclusion was, kind of the consensus is, this is an attempt to soften the ground, to discredit Bob Mueller and his people and the men and women of the FBI, so that if something does come down the line and show some type of malfeasance, that they can look back and say, 'Ah-ha, we told you all along that these folks can't be trusted.'"
Here's the video of our conversation... | | I ran out of time for this on TV, but I wanted to ask journalist Noor Tagouri about what it's like to be a victim of misinformation. Photos of Tagouri were recently used to illustrate stories about a different Noor, Noor Salman, wife of the Pulse nightclub gunman.
In this web-only clip, Tagouri talks about how she responded -- and how some good might come out of the bad mix-ups... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment