| | | | Hey new subscribers! This is our nightly newsletter all about the media world... From newsrooms to boardrooms, from the press briefing room to the screening room, this is "the story behind the story."
In this edition: Facebook, O'Reilly, YouTube, the EPA, "Roseanne," AT&T, Kathie Lee and Hoda... But first, the scrutiny of Sinclair Broadcast Group is not letting up... | | Liberals ramping up pressure on Sinclair | | The liberal consumer watchdog group Allied Progress is making what it calls a "six-figure ad buy" to condemn Sinclair. "Tell the FCC to stop the Sinclair merger," the ad says. The group is trying to buy air time on four Sinclair-owned stations -- WJLA in DC, KDSM in Des Moines, KOMO in Seattle, and WBFF in Baltimore, right down the road from Sinclair HQ -- although it's unknown if Sinclair will accept the ad buy.
Either way, Allied Progress will announce the buy on Thursday. "We're running these ads to ensure Sinclair's local viewers know the company's politically motivated owners are forcing the anchors they trust to advance a partisan agenda that has nothing to do with news and everything to do with politics," the group's exec director Karl Frisch says...
--> ALSO: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pressed Sinclair for answers in a letter on Wednesday... | | This producer has resigned in protest | | | Justin Simmons was a morning show producer at KHGI, a Sinclair-owned station in Nebraska. But he resigned late last month. He told me the controversial media-bashing promos were the last straw. "This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers," he said. Here's the interview... | | "You cant be serious!" Sinclair chairman David Smith told the NYT's Sydney Ember in an email. Smith is waving away the current controversy, equating his "must runs" with late night talk shows... Here's Ember's full story...
--> Olivia Nuzzi's recent piece quoting Smith ridiculing print journalism prompted the Society of Professional Journalists to send him a disapproving letter. SPJ now says Smith has agreed to a meeting... | | An emailer asks: "Can you imagine being the Sinclair news anchor who has to toss to this today?" This is Boris Epshteyn's latest "must run" commentary segment, defending his position at Sinclair.
Many staffers at local stations resent having to run the former Trump campaign advisor's boosterish segments. Simmons pointed out that Epshteyn's videos barely get any traction on YouTube or FB... | | | --> David Folkenflik tweeted: "The problem isn't really that Sinclair's chief political analyst worked previously for Trump. It's that Epshteyn seemingly never deviates from a pro-Trump or pro-GOP line -- no independent 'analysis' to enlighten viewers. Just a line being hawked..." | | ALL of today's Facebook developments | | There were a lot. #1: Mark Zuckerberg will testify next Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning... He's in prep mode now... While Sheryl Sandberg is making the TV rounds...
📡 Sandberg will be on Bloomberg TV and the PBS "NewsHour" on Thursday + NPR and NBC's "Today" and Dana Perino's Fox News program on Friday... | | It was worse than we thought (it always is) | | | Julia Waldow emails: In a blog post on Wednesday afternoon, Facebook revealed that Cambridge Analytica may have obtained FB data from as many as 87 million people, 37 million more than previous estimates. As part of its wider "update on our plans to restrict data access on Facebook," the company said it will tell people if their information was shared with Cambridge Analytica and announced it will no longer let users enter another person's phone number or email address into the "search" bar to find their account on the platform. There are other changes too... CNNMoney's Heather Kelly has a recap of all the changes here... | | "We have a lot of work to do." Efforts to improve security on FB will be "never-ending," Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with reporters. He admitted to mistakes but said he knows what to do. Dylan Byers and Laurie Segall broke it down here...
--> BF's Alex Kantrowitz said on the call that Zuck should hold these calls every month...
--> FB stock is up 3% in after-hours trading... Probably because Zuck said "delete Facebook" chatter has had no "meaningful impact..." | | About that fact-checking effort... | | | Facebook started a fact-checking partnership with news outlets 16 months ago. How's it going? Well, it hasn't been easy. Mike Ananny has a new Tow Center report about this... Here's his summary for CJR... | | -- The disturbing bottom line about the YouTube shooter: "She didn't like how YouTube handled her videos, so she shot its employees, police say..."
-- YouTube "will be increasing the security we have at all of our offices worldwide," according to a Wednesday evening statement. Employees "have been encouraged to take time off of work" or work from home...
-- Abby Ohlheiser explains it all here: "The conspiracy-fueled anger at the center of the YouTube shooting..." | | -- "Amazon's response to President Donald Trump's tweets: Ignore him." (Politico)
-- Mark Gurman says Apple "is working on touchless gesture control" to "let iPhone users perform some tasks by moving their finger close to the screen without actually tapping it..." (Bloomberg)
-- Tensions are mounting in the CBS-Viacom merger talks; "Shari Redstone is unhappy with the wrangling," Meg James reports... (LAT)
-- Quartz celebrates: "We won our lawsuit against the US government over paywalled immigration data" (QZ) | | Harvey Weinstein's new PR person | | | Chloe Melas emails: Harvey Weinstein hired a new publicist -- Juda Engelmayer, founder of Herald PR in New York. He's a former SVP from boutique PR firm 5WPR. He told me that he and Weinstein hammered out a deal in "the past few days." It's unclear why Weinstein parted ways with Sitrick And Company... | | Terms of O'Reilly settlements revealed for first time | | | Tom Kludt emails: We've heard a lot about the various settlements that ultimately led to Bill O'Reilly's ouster from Fox News. But other than the eye-popping dollar figures, the specifics of the agreements have remained shrouded in secrecy. That all changed Wednesday, after a federal judge in New York denied O'Reilly's request for the agreements to be kept under seal in a defamation lawsuit that was filed against him last year by three women who had previously accused and settled with him over various forms of harassment. (Got all that?) | | Neil Mullin and Nancy Erika Smith, the attorneys representing the women, promptly entered the unredacted agreements into the court record. There were several extraordinary revelations. Here's one: The settlement agreement required Andrea Mackris and all other parties to her 2004 case to disclaim any evidence related to the case (e.g. recordings) "as counterfeit or forgeries" should the materials be made public. Or as Smith and Mullin put it in their separate filing: the agreement required Mackris "to lie -- even in legal proceedings or under oath -- if any evidence becomes public, by calling valid evidence 'counterfeit' or 'forgeries.'" Read more...
--> Check out Erik Wemple's take on the docs here... | | O'Reilly vows legal action | | | Statement from O'Reilly attorney Fred Newman: "As we have stated previously, the only reason Bill O'Reilly settled any cases was to protect his children... For the past 14 years, Mr. O'Reilly has always respected the agreed confidentiality of the settlement agreements, but now that the provision has been breached, Mr. O'Reilly will be taking all appropriate legal action to enforce the agreements." | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Congrats to Sarah Lacy on the launch of Chairman Mom, her new subscription-based platform for working mothers... (Pando)
-- The pivot to video continues? 86% of publishers surveyed at Digiday's Publishing Summit last month "indicated they plan to increase their videos output in the year ahead," an increase of two percentage points from October 2017... (Digiday)
-- MoviePass users rejoice! The app is ending its blackout of 10 popular AMC locations in L.A., NYC, Boston, etc... (Variety) | | Wednesday night's headline on CNN.com: "Trump orders National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border."
Details are scarce. The move seems rushed. So why now? What's going on? Here's what CNN's Erin Burnett and NYT's Patrick Healy said on "OutFront:"
BURNETT: "The president saw a segment on Fox News, then used the same word," caravan... "He got really riled up. And they used the word 'army' and then he used the word 'military,' and all of a sudden, here we go."
HEALY: "Right, and it's a manufactured crisis, what's going on at the border. We are at the lowest number of illegal immigrants being caught at the border since 1971."
BURNETT: "And net people are going home -- the flow is going the other way."
HEALY: "Either he is knowingly manufacturing a crisis just to create a big political message -- to solve his problem with Fox News and that Republican base who are so upset that he got nothing, practically nothing, on the border wall..." Or "he's making very basic, fundamental mistakes about what the military is and what the National Guard is..." | | Via the WP's Callum Borchers: "The White House won't admit that Trump gets ideas from Fox News"
(BTW, Borchers will be my guest on this week's "Reliable" podcast... Coming out Thursday evening...) | | | "Modern Family" E.P./Trump nemesis Danny Zuker tweeted Wednesday: "BREAKING: @realdonaldtrump sending National Guard to Mexican border to safeguard against people paying attention to Mueller investigation." | | -- CNN's exclusive about the special counsel following the money: "Mueller's team questioning Russian oligarchs"
-- NYT's latest on George Nader: "Witness in Mueller Inquiry Who Advises U.A.E. Ruler Also Has Ties to Russia"
-- WashPost's update from court: "U.S. judge appears dismissive of Manafort lawsuit challenging Mueller appointment" | | Ed Henry's sit-down with Scott Pruitt | | It has been a full week since President Trump ousted a top administration official. Will the streak last much longer? There's continued buzz that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is the next to go... Especially after a pair of developments on Wednesday...
>> Pruitt gave an interview to Fox's Ed Henry and had a hard time answering Henry's Q's about alleged ethics violations. Henry and Fox won praise from surprising corners, including Vox...
>> Then this happened at the daily briefing: "Asked if Trump was OK with Pruitt's actions, Sanders replied: 'The president's not. We're reviewing the situation.'"
>> Chris Cillizza's headline: "Scott Pruitt's time is rapidly running out"
>> JUST IN: "EPA ethics official says he didn't have all the facts on Pruitt's lease," Cristina Alesci reports... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Wednesday's must read: Lacey Rose's interview with "TV's first $300M man" Ryan Murphy... (THR)
-- Also: Murphy says he's not moving forward with a Monica Lewinsky season of "American Crime Story." He told Lewinsky, "Nobody should tell your story but you..." (THR)
-- Speaking of Lewinsky: Emily Heil found out that The History Channel has decided "not to move forward" on six-part drama about Bill Clinton's impeachment... (WashPost) | | Judge in AT&T trial makes his presence known | | "For most of the trial playing out over the Justice Department's lawsuit to stop AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, Judge Richard Leon has not posed many questions to witnesses. But on Wednesday, he was more vocal from the bench than in any previous day, asking three of the government's witnesses probing questions about negotiations between programmers and distributors," CNN's Jessica Schneider and Hadas Gold report.
>> Click here for all of Wednesday's updates... | | | Schneider and Gold say the lawyers "noticeably sped up their questioning Wednesday. "The final witness on the stand Wednesday, whose testimony will continue into Thursday, was Daniel York, chief content officer for DirecTV, which is owned by AT&T..." | | Ten years of "Kathie Lee & Hoda" | | | NBC toasted ten years of Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gilford's show with a party at the Rainbow Room Wednesday evening. They'll also be celebrating with a 10th anniversary show in front of a studio audience on Friday. Spotted: Savannah Guthrie, Carson Daly, Megyn Kelly, Craig Melvin, Sheinelle Jones, Dylan Dreyer, Willie Geist, Regis Philbin, Scott Wolf, Sara Haines, Jill Martin, Steve Burke, Jim Bell, Tammy Filler, Libby Leist, Jackie Levin, Tom Mazzarelli, and more... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- NYT journalists talk tech: The platforms they use to engage with readers, what tools they think could help them improve as reporters, and more... (NYT)
-- The creators of a startup called "Knowhere" "say that they believe AI can be used to write unbiased news..." (Motherboard)
-- Poynter's Daniel Funke writes about the progress made in automated fact-checking, as well as the obstacles the tech still faces...(Poynter)
-- "Google employees demand the company pull out of Pentagon AI project..." (The Verge) | | 2017 box office sees records while U.S staggers | | | Frank Pallotta emails: A report released by the MPAA Wednesday showed that the global box office in 2017 hit a record $40.6 billion -- a 5% uptick. The bad news is that the growth worldwide was stymied by declines back home, with the domestic box office dipping 2% and attendance dropping 6%. So where did all those eyeballs potentially go? Well, one culprit appears to be online video services, which saw overall subscriptions go up a whopping 21%... | | Lowry reviews "Chappaquiddick" | | Brian Lowry emails: Ted Kennedy's presidential aspirations essentially ended in 1969, when a single-car accident claimed the life of his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. But despite being embraced by some on the right for its subject matter, "Chappaquiddick" is a heavy-handed dramatization of that history, starring Jason Clarke as Kennedy and Ed Helms as his cousin/conscience, Joe Gargan. (As a footnote, the movie's release was delayed from November; Gargan died, at age 87, in December.)
Read Lowry's full review here... The film comes out on Friday... | | "Roseanne" dips but still dominates | | | Frank Pallotta writes: The second week of "Roseanne" was still the biggest thing on TV, with 15.2 million viewers, down from 18 million for last week's premiere. Despite the dip, the show helped lift ABC's total viewership in primetime by 84% compared to the same night last year. It also continued to be popular in heartland markets like Kansas City and Cincinnati. Read more... | | Not much of a "halo effect" | | Brian Lowry emails: Two weeks into "Roseanne's" return, two ratings trends appear to be holding: 1) the show's a big hit, even with its second-week decline; and 2) it's an appointment show, with viewers exhibiting scant interest in hanging around for the rest of ABC's lineup. Here are the numbers for Tuesday, in adults 18-49 and viewers (in millions):
Roseanne… 3.9… 15.2 million
The Middle… 2.2… 8.3 million
Black-ish… 1.5… 5.4 million
Splitting Up Together… 1.4… 4.8 million
For the People… 0.8… 2.8 million
That does reflect modest improvement for the ABC comedies — particularly "The Middle," a similarly themed show — but those viewers who show up for "Roseanne" are for the most part quickly tuning out right after... | | | For the record, part five | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- ICYMI: Cynthia Nixon talked politics with Wendy Williams in an episode that aired Wednesday, including the need for the Democratic Party to realize the value of black women...
-- Chip and Joanna Gaines had an emotional farewell for their hit HGTV show "Fixer Upper..."
-- "Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco says her ex ruined the word "marriage" for her -- but that's not stopping her from planning another trip down the aisle... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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