| | | | | Exec summary: Hello from UTA's pre-WHCD party in Georgetown. Saturday is a busy day: The dinner in DC, the president's rally in Michigan, "The Fourth Estate" premiere in NYC. Here's a preview... | | For a second straight year, President Trump is using the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner to wage his war on the media. It would be one thing if he skipped the dinner and stayed home... or, I don't know, hosted a community service event? But instead he is counter-programming the dinner by holding a campaign rally in Washington Township, Michigan. (Nice bit of advance work, finding a "Washington" location.)
This may not feel like "news" anymore because he did the same thing last year. But throughout the day on Friday, I was reminded by several DC journos that this is remarkably unusual. The last president to miss the dinner was Ronald Reagan in 1981 -- because he was recovering from an assassination attempt. Reagan still called in.
Trump obviously benefits from holding a rally instead. He's pouring salt in a wound. (His loyalists, of course, believe journalists are the pouring the salt.) It'll be interesting to see how extreme his anti-media rhetoric is -- and how much attention it receives. As one correspondent quipped to me, "He's going to mock us for celebrating ourselves while he's..." wait for it... "celebrating himself."
BOTTOM LINE: Sure, the dinner festivities can seem excessive. But honoring the W.H. press corps is a chance to honor the media's place in a democratic society... | | The difference this year... | | | Then-press secretary Sean Spicer was not at the dinner last year. But this year Trump pledged to "actively encourage members of the executive branch" to attend, according to WHCA president Margaret Talev's statement earlier this month. Sarah Sanders was out at parties on Friday night, and she'll be representing the admin at the dinner... | | Jared and Ivanka at David Bradley's | | Center of the action at David and Katherine Bradley's annual "welcome dinner" Friday night: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The couple even stayed for dessert. And: Kellyanne Conway, Wilbur Ross, James Mattis, Nancy Pelosi, Roy Blunt. Outgoing New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu spoke on stage with Jeffrey Goldberg and Adrienne Green after dinner. Email from a fellow attendee: "He's running right?"
Also spotted: Bob Cohn, Gloria Borger, Steve Clemons, John Dickerson, Olivier Knox, Emily Lenzner, Sara Just, Neil Cohen, Carol Joynt, Andrea Mitchell, Kevin Baron, Hilary Rosen, Megan Murphy, many more... | | More sightings from around town | | Sightings at the UTA party: WHCD headliner Michelle Wolf, Jay Sures, Anthony Scaramucci, Ryan Lizza, Olivia Nuzzi, David Chalian, Katie Hinman, Jim Acosta, Elizabeth Landers, Jeff Zeleny, Aidan McLaughlin, many more...
Hadas Gold's earlier sightings at the British embassy: Conway, Scaramucci, Spicer, Sanders, Harris Faulkner on the dance floor, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Dingell... | | On Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | I'll be joined by the aforementioned Margaret Talev and Anthony Scaramucci, plus Eliana Johnson, David Zurawik, Molly Ball, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta... Join us live Sunday at 11am ET on CNN... | | "The Fourth Estate" premiere in NYC | | The NYT traditionally skips the WHCD, so it's the perfect night for a premiere of Showtime's docuseries "The Fourth Estate" about the Times in the age of Trump. (One flaw though: Maggie Haberman, a key voice in the documentary, is in DC accepting an award at the WHCD.)
"The Fourth Estate" is the closing night film of the Tribeca Film Festival. Ann Curry will moderate a panel afterward. She will be joined by Dean Baquet, Elisabeth Bumiller, Mark Mazzetti, Julie Davis, Liz Garbus, and Jenny Carchman...
--> The rest of us will have to wait a month to see it: The docuseries will premiere on Showtime on May 27...
--> THR's headline: "The 'Failing' N.Y. Times Gets Starring Role in New Documentary" | | | MORE MEDIA NEWS TO MONITOR THIS WEEKEND... | | I hear Joy Reid will address the "hack" controversy on "AM Joy" Saturday morning. Not sure what she will say...
--> Vox's story can catch you up: "Joy Reid's troubles, from homophobic blogs to hacking claims, explained..." | | Brokaw on "my new life as an accused predator" | | Tom Brokaw told me he did not intend for this "rough draft" of a letter to be widely read. But it was published on Friday -- an extraordinary defense of his character and a repudiation of the sexual harassment allegations made by former NBC colleague Linda Vester. He described Vester's statements to the press as a "drive by shooting" and called her a "character assassin" with a "grudge against NBC News."
Brokaw clearly feels his reputation is being besmirched. And he believes he is the real victim. Here's my full story... | | Response from Vester's attorney | | | Ari Wilkenfeld said via email: "My client has watched as a number of brave women have come forward to report extreme forms of sexual harassment at NBC. She has also observed that the Company's response does not appear to be aimed at producing a safer and more equitable workplace for women. She felt it her duty to add her own story, not only to lend support to the other women who have already complained, but to demonstrate that this problem is not a new one, and that NBC needs to prioritize actually listening to and protecting their employees who have been victimized." | | NBC staffers supporting Brokaw | | | "Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell, Maria Shriver and Kelly O'Donnell and more than 60 other women have voiced their support for Tom Brokaw" via an open letter, Variety's Cynthia Littleton reports... | | NBC News chair Andy Lack told staffers in a Friday afternoon note that "we take allegations such as these very seriously, and act on them quickly and decisively when the facts dictate." The unavoidable takeaway: Right now the facts don't dictate action in the case of Brokaw.
Lack also said in his memo that NBC's internal investigation -- "a review" -- is "nearing its conclusion." NBCU general counsel Kim Harris and "a team of legal and HR leaders" are in charge of it. "Kim has advised us that the review is nearing its conclusion, and we will have findings and further steps to share with you as soon as next week," Lack wrote... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Recommended: Alexios Mantzarlis lays out 11 "different things we're actually concerned about when lamenting the parlous state of the online information ecosystem..." Hate speech, low digital literacy, and state-sponsored propaganda make the list... (Poynter)
-- In light of the news about Amazon Prime's price hike, Seth Fiegerman explains how Bezos's company made the service "indispensable..." (CNNMoney) | | The lead story on CNN.com right now... | | "Give Trump some credit for Korean thaw" is the headline on Stephen Collinson's latest. The subhed: "The President's strategy has been surprisingly coherent for an administration in a whirl of chaos..."
--> The Q for media critics: Is Trump receiving "enough" credit? | | "Mass firings" at RedState | | Why did Salem Media dismiss so many of RedState's writers on Friday? Erick Erickson, the site's longtime editor who left in 2015, said it was a mass firing... "Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem's direction."
By "Salem's direction," he means pro-Trump. Multiple sources told me that they believed conservative critics of Trump were the writers targeted for removal. "Insufficiently partisan" was the phrase one writer used in a RedState group chat.
But if it was about politics, it was also about money. Here's how a source explained it to me: "Those who had been under a contract with a higher per-click rate were mostly all tossed, only keeping those who were pro-Trump even if their traffic was comparable. Of those who make less under their contracts, they mostly tossed those who had been openly critical of the president," the source said. "It seems to have been a cost saving measure, but the deciding factor between any two people seems to have been who liked the president and who didn't." Read my full story here... | | | Former RedState writer Ben Howe tweeted: "There are still writers at RedState that are critical of Trump, y'all. The consistency is not in who they kept. The consistency is in who they let go." | | Politico Mag's annual Media issue is here | | I look forward to it every year around WHCD weekend. Some of this year's highlights: "The New Conservative Media Establishment" and "The Puzzle of Sarah Huckabee Sanders."
-- And: Ben Schreckinger reports on the failure of Milo Yiannopoulos' business following the death of a cryptocurrency billionaire -- someone he was counting on for "significant financial backing..." | | -- At Friday's joint presser, Trump called on "reporters from Fox Business and the Christian Broadcasting Network..." (Twitter)
-- "Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge tried to calm investors Friday as stock in the second largest cable operator in the country continued to spiral downward, telling analysts that he still sees growth in the business despite the turmoil created by over-the-top competitors..." (Multichannel)
-- Jill Disis tweeted: "More newspaper cuts in Denver ... this time at The Denver Post's marijuana news website, The Cannabist..." (Twitter) | | | SUMMER MOVIE SEASON IS STARTING EARLY... | | How big will "Infinity War" be? | | | Frank Pallotta emails: "Avengers: Infinity War" nabbed $39M Thursday night, which is the fourth biggest Thursday night ever. Now, the Disney blockbuster is looking at a possible $225M, according to studio projections. That would make it second biggest of all-time, but we'll see if it has what it takes to take down "Star Wars..." | | Brian Lowry emails: The huge opening for "Avengers: Infinity War" -- and Disney's equally buoyant prospects for the summer -- offer a good reminder of the battle plan that CEO Bob Iger put in place with his acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm in terms of exploiting content. It's also noteworthy to remember how those deals were, to varying degrees, second guessed at the time...
--> ICYMI: Here's Lowry's "Infinity War" review... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- The Cannes Film Festival is launching a sexual harassment hotline in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal... (THR)
-- Facebook announced in a blog post on Friday that it will be "eliminating the platform fee on all fundraisers for personal causes..." (Gizmodo)
-- "Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark," a book that haunted my dreams in elementary school, is coming to the big screen as a feature film. Guillermo del Toro adapted the screenplay... (Deadline)
-- Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes' pay jumped by 50% in 2017... (BloombergTech) | | 🎧 Check out this week's "Reliable" pod 🎧 | | Did the press corps learn the wrong lessons from the presidential election? There was so much coverage of "economic anxiety" both before and after election day. But Diana C. Mutz's new research finds that "status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote." The key factor: Threats to "white Americans' sense of dominant group status."
So on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast, I talked with Mutz about the differences between media narratives and social science findings. Here's Julia Waldow's recap. Listen to our conversation via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... | | "Homeland" wraps its seventh season this Sunday | | | Brian Lowry emails with a Sunday TV update: "Homeland" wraps up its seventh season, with its fictional president on the verge of being removed from office... | | "Golden" storyline on "The Good Fight" | | | More from Lowry: Meanwhile, the log line for CBS All Access' "The Good Fight" -- which has been exulting in the creative latitude that streaming provides -- pretty much speaks for itself: "A Russian student asks Diane to protect her from deportation, claiming she was one of the women filmed with President Trump in the alleged 'Golden Shower' tape." | | | For the record, part four | | | -- Chloe Melas emails: I spoke with Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz about playing lovers in their new movie "Disobedience," which is in theaters now...
-- Lisa Respers France emails: Mamma Mia! ABBA has announced they are offering up new music...
-- One more from Lisa: "Jersey Shore" star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino is heading down the aisle. He recently announced he's engaged to his college sweetheart, the woman who has stood beside him as he battled a prescription medication addiction and now faces prison for tax evasion...
And on THAT hopeful note, have a great weekend! | | | Email your feedback and thoughts to brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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