| | | | | Exec summary: Thomas McInerney will not be invited back on Fox's shows. Plus: Trump's ratings fixation, an AT&T update, John Skipper's new job, Anna Wintour's support for Georgina Chapman, and the "Big Bang" season finale... | | A day that began with President Trump welcoming home three Americans who'd been detained in North Korea ended with... This headline in the NYT: "Kirstjen Nielsen, Chief of Homeland Security, Almost Resigned After Trump Tirade."
Michael D. Shear and Nicole Perlroth reported that Trump "berated her on Wednesday in front of the entire cabinet for what he said was her failure to adequately secure the nation's borders." It sounds to me like he's been watching too much Fox News...
--> For the record: A DHS spokesman denied that she had drafted a resignation letter... | | Ryan Lizza, reacting to the NYT report, said Trump sounded "unhinged..." Lizza told Don Lemon, "He doesn't understand how to be president, Don. He doesn't understand how to move the levers of power. I think that's one of the most surprising things about this presidency -- He really hasn't learned the job. He has more confidence in the job, but he hasn't figured it out yet."
Lizza added: The theme of Thursday's stories "is that things continue to become more and more chaotic in this White House. You know, Melania Trump launched this 'Be Best' campaign recently. I think at this point we would all settle for 'Be Better.'" | | | Chris Cillizza's headline: "Ratings aren't everything. They're the only thing." He was reacting to this Trump remark from Thursday morning's welcome-home event at Joint Base Andrews: "I think you probably broke the all time in history television rating for three o'clock in the morning..." | | Trump went there again on Thursday evening at a campaign rally in Indiana. The context for this exchange: He was talking about the impending opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem...
TRUMP: "I said, when is it going to be open? They said, 'Anywhere from five to ten years.' So I said, 'Unless they give me an extension for the presidency...'"
[[ CHEERS and APPLAUSE from the crowd ]]
"--which I don't think the fake news media would be too happy about."
[[ JEERING and BOOS ]]
"Wait, wait, wait wait wait -- actually, they WOULD be happy. Because when I'm not here, their ratings are going to sink. So they'll probably be very happy..."
[[ More CHEERS ]] | | "It's time to wrap it up" | | | That's the quote of the day... courtesy VP Mike Pence... he said it's time to "wrap up" the Mueller probe for the good of the country... Of course, this comment triggered a whole day's worth of blowback... | | Air Force veteran and former Fox News military analyst Thomas McInerney used to espouse the "birther" conspiracy theory. On Thursday he brought up another baseless claim -- that John McCain helped the enemy in Vietnam. PolitiFact looked into this ten years ago and deemed it a "pants on fire" lie.
But when McInerney said it on Thursday morning on Fox Business -- while attempting to justify the use of torture methods -- there was no push-back or reaction from host Charles Payne. "Sir, thank you very much," Payne said a few seconds afterward. The outrageous comment quickly spread across social media, thanks in large part to liberal critics of Fox. Within hours, Payne issued an apology, asserting that he didn't hear what McInerney said because a producer was talking in his ear at the same time. Payne apologized via Twitter and on TV. But I haven't been able to reach McInerney, and haven't seen him issue a response... | | Fox says he won't be back | | | McInerney's contributor deal with Fox ended last year. A Fox spokeswoman tells me he will no longer be invited on Fox Business or Fox News as a guest... | | My suggestion for McInerney | | | As I said on "AC360," McCain's friends sadly don't think they have much time left with him. Hopefully they're wrong, but they are cherishing each and every day. McCain has a book coming out on May 22 and an HBO documentary on May 28. McInerney should read, watch, and learn... | | On Friday's "The View..." | | | I'm told Meghan McCain will respond to McInerney and W.H. aide Kelly Sadler's gross "he's dying anyway" comment on Friday morning's "The View..." | | 🎧 Byers, Gold, Darcy on this week's "Reliable" podcast | | | This is a fun one: There's been so much media news this week, I asked Oliver Darcy, Hadas Gold and Dylan Byers to analyze all of it on a special roundtable edition of the "Reliable Sources" podcast. Among the topics: AT&T's payments to Michael Cohen, the war over Fox, net neutrality, NBC's harassment report, and Trump's threat about media credentials. Tune in via Apple Podcasts... Or Stitcher... Or TuneIn! | | -- Recommended: Carol Morello's brand new piece, "My journey to North Korea with the secretary of state..." (WashPost)
-- Shan Wang reports: "Medium abruptly cancels the membership programs of its 21 remaining subscription publisher partners..." (NiemanLab)
-- "Aaron Sorkin's upcoming Broadway adaptation of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' will see the light of day" later this year, Jill Disis writes. "A pair of dueling lawsuits had threatened the future of the play..." (CNNMoney) | | Michael Avenatti's information about AT&T's payments to Michael Cohen was just a slice of the whole pie. Avenatti said he was aware of four months of payments to Cohen totaling $200,000. But AT&T had Cohen under contract for virtually all of 2017 for $50,000 a month. A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to me that AT&T paid Cohen $600,000 for the year...
--> Hey, do you think Avenatti KNEW about the higher total, but wanted this drip-drip-drip to happen, extending the news cycle? Hmm... | | And that's not all we learned on Thursday.
Hadas Gold emails: A team of WashPost reporters got its hands on internal documents breaking down exactly what Cohen was supposed to do for AT&T. As we expected, one of his key tasks was advising AT&T about the Time Warner deal, which was seeking government approval.
The contract specifically said Cohen was not doing any lobbying work, affirming what AT&T has previously said. And our reporting on Thursday bears that out -- Cohen never talked to the FCC or Justice Department on behalf of AT&T. But over at Justice, one source familiar with DOJ's thinking said the antitrust team finds it "ironic" that AT&T was paying Cohen in what they believe was an effort to politically influence the department's decision -- while at the same time AT&T was suggesting the department's decision to sue was being influenced by politics. Full story here... | | Cohen was Trump's "fixer" and real estate deal-maker. So what did he know about antitrust law and telecom industry regulation?
Don Lemon's reaction on "CNN Tonight:" "Alright, then what did they think they were getting for $600,000?" Here's what his other guests said:
John Dean: "We don't have all the facts... but it doesn't smell good... and it certainly suggests some kind of shakedown..."
Laura Coates: "We really are seeing the underbelly of what it means to 'pay for play' in D.C..." | | Brian Lowry emails: Given the pro-business, deregulatory bent of the new administration, it's hard to escape the impression that the president is using mergers -- first, AT&T and Time Warner; now, potentially, Comcast's bid for the Fox assets -- as a means of punishing his perceived "enemies." That dynamic creates some unlikely allies, but what's harder to square is how those who favor market solutions justify blocking or placing conditions on acquisitions, based on antitrust grounds that appear to be applied in arbitrary or punitive fashion...
--> Joe Flint, meanwhile, has a smart WSJ piece about how the proposed mergers are casting a cloud over the development process, in as much as key players (Fox, Warner Bros.) aren't 100% certain who their corporate bosses -- and thus their priorities are going to be... | | "During the first 15 months of Trump's presidency," Dan Balz has been visiting local politicos and average voters in "Trump's midwest." The result is now live on the WashPost web site. Balz calls it "a story of how attitudes toward the president have changed gradually over time, told through the voices of a selection of people in a unique ecosystem of Trump Nation."
"In this region," he writes, "the Trump presidency is viewed as both reassuring and exhausting, a welcome poke in the eye at elites and the Washington power structure coupled with endless and often self-inflicted distractions." Definitely check it out here... | | How Russian trolls weaponized America's partisan media | | Donie O'Sullivan emails: I've gone through most of the 3,000 Russian Facebook ads Congress released on Thursday. 😳 And what's interesting is how the Russians co-opted different parts of American media in targeting their messages. One ad for a fake anti-immigration page called "Secured Borders" was targeted at Facebook users whose interests included Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, Sean Hannity... and Jesus! (among others).
On the other side, the trolls occasionally used videos produced by NowThis, a left-leaning short-form video outlet, to boost their fake pages targeting liberals. No suggestion, of course, that any of these US outlets knew they were being used in this way... | | -- Former ESPN boss John Skipper is now the exec chairman of Perform Group, the parent company of Sporting News. In an interview, he told the site, "I was anxious to get back in and doing something that mattered..." (Sporting News)
-- ABC News has promoted Colby Smith to the role of SVP for content and partnerships... (Deadline) | | | -- Check out THR's "showrunner summit:" 12 boldface names "sound off on political storylines, sex scenes and pay parity..." (THR) | | "Junot DÃaz Steps Down as Pulitzer Chairman Amid Review of Misconduct Allegations" | | | That's the NYT's headline. "The Pulitzer Prize Board has authorized an independent review of allegations of misconduct against one of its members, Junot DÃaz," prize administrator Dana Canedy said Thursday. "Mr. DÃaz said he welcomed the review and would cooperate fully with it." DÃaz will remain on the board, but he's relinquishing his "incoming chairman" role. "Eugene Robinson, the board's immediate past chairman, has resumed the chairmanship on a short-term, interim basis," Canedy said... | | Weinstein attorney: "He said, she said" | | Chloe Melas emails: Weinstein's NYC attorney, Ben Braffman, gave an interview to the BBC saying that the allegations against his client are "really a case of he said, she said."
It's more like a case of "he said, she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said..." But here's the exact quote:
"Many of these allegations are twenty years old. There's no forensic evidence. None of these people reported anything to police at the time. So this is really a case of 'he said, she said.'"
--> Braffman also called it one of the "strangest" cases he's ever taken on. When asked how Weinstein is doing these days, he said, "He's lonely and he's angry..." | | | More from Melas: Weinstein's estranged wife, Georgina Chapman, is breaking her silence via an interview with Vogue. It's in the June issue. She told Jonathan Van Meter that it took her two days to process all of the reports, and that her primary concern is their two children... | | | "I am firmly convinced that Georgina had no idea about her husband's behavior; blaming her for any of it, as too many have in our gladiatorial digital age, is wrong," Anna Wintour says in Vogue's June editor's letter. "I believe that one should not hold a person responsible for the actions of his or her partner. What Georgina should be receiving is our compassion and understanding." She says Chapman is "still in turmoil" but "intent on doing her best for the children she loves so much, and ready for life as an independent woman..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- Craig S. Smith reveals that there's a command humans CAN'T hear, but Alexa and Siri CAN hear: "A group of students from University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University showed in 2016 that they could hide commands in white noise played over loudspeakers and through YouTube videos to get smart devices to turn on airplane mode or open a website..." (NYT)
-- Brian Steinberg reports on media buyers' distress over NBCUniversal's hiked pricing for ad slots...(Variety)
-- David Skok interviewed Google's news chief, Richard Gingras, about the company's role in journalism. "We need to rethink journalism at every dimension," Gingras says... (NiemanLab) | | "Brooklyn Nine Nine" cancelled | | | "Fox's 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' has been canceled by the network as it clears room on its schedule for a crop of new shows for the fall TV season," CNN's Sandra Gonzalez writes. | | Fans are furious -- they cared deeply about "Brooklyn" -- and some are hoping Netflix or another outlet will give the show a second life. To that end, Universal Television has "fielded a number of incoming calls from other outlets," including Hulu, Netflix, TBS, and NBC," THR reports...
"The Mick" and "The Last Man on Earth" were also canceled on Thursday... | | "The Last Man on Earth" is dead | | | I just have to take a moment to mourn "The Last Man on Earth." It's my favorite show on Fox, despite its flaws, which I could drone on and on about. A post-apocalyptic sitcom? Amazing. There's nothing else like it on TV. Thank you, Fox and Will Forte, for even trying it... | | -- To keep up with all the cancellations and orders, check out Deadline's "panic" page...
-- Megan Thomas emails: ICYMI: Emily Nussbaum's remarkable New Yorker profile of Ryan Murphy is now online... | | On the "Big Bang" season finale... | | | Brian Lowry emails: "The Big Bang Theory's" 11th-season finale is pretty much the definition of a "very special episode" -- with the planned wedding of Sheldon and Amy -- but in this case, the guest-star-studded half-hour actually lived up to that billing. And it's a reminder that if next season is indeed the last, it's going to leave a sizable void in CBS' lineup... More... | | Netflix has even more original programming than you think | | | More from Brian Lowry: Today in fun facts: Indiewire added up all of Netflix's original programming this year so far, and found that to watch it all would require more than 27 days... | | Lowry reviews "Breaking In" | | | One more from Lowry: "Breaking In" flips the customary dad-saves-the-world formula into a Mother's Day movie, with Gabrielle Union as the mom defending her kids from some conveniently inept home invaders... | | Spotify de-lists R Kelly's music | | Spotify is removing R Kelly's music "from all its playlists and algorithmic recommendations, such as Discover Weekly. His songs will remain on Spotify, but the service will no longer promote them to its 70 million subscribers," CNN's Brandon Griggs writes.
Spotify's rationale: "When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful, it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator."
The response from R Kelly's camp: "Spotify is adopting a new 'Hate Content & Hateful Conduct' policy. R Kelly never has been accused of hate, and the lyrics he writes express love and desire. Mr. Kelly for 30 years has sung songs about his love and passion for women. He is innocent of the false and hurtful accusations in the ongoing smear campaign against him, waged by enemies seeking a payoff. He never has been convicted of a crime, nor does he have any pending criminal charges against him." | | | Email your feedback and thoughts to brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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