| | | | | Exec summary: Quiet Friday night? No way. Rudy Giuliani made it interesting. Either Rudy just accidentally told the truth about the government's AT&T lawsuit -- contradicting the Trump White House and DOJ -- or he just mangled the facts and made his client look bad again. Either way, it's a mess... Scroll down for details... | | | YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST... | | Ronan is ready to talk about NBC | | Ronan Farrow's first book, "War on Peace," just came out last month. He's already at work on a second book, and this one is about his Harvey Weinstein investigation. Farrow has previously sidestepped Q's about his NBC relationship. But now he is going to tell his side of the story.
Why did NBC table his Weinstein investigation? Why did the network let him walk out the door and take it to The New Yorker? His answers, I'm told, will contradict the network's explanation. Here's my full story-about-the-story... | | The book is titled "Catch and Kill" | | The book deal was announced on Friday. Little, Brown publisher Reagan Arthur hinted at what Farrow is going to reveal in the book, saying, "Some of the most astonishing disclosures about what he uncovered are still to come."
Farrow dropped a hint too... Here's his statement: "It's been important to me to keep the spotlight focused on the survivors of sexual violence who risked so much to speak to me and other reporters whose work I admire. I've also always said that the questions about the behind-the-scenes mechanics that suppressed these revelations are legitimate -- and that, when enough time had passed, and once I had marshaled the evidence needed to tell this story, I would find a way to do so. 'Catch and Kill' is that story." No release date yet... | | It went from "bad" on Tuesday to "worse" on Wednesday and Thursday... And on Friday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson took responsibility for what he called a "big mistake."
"AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake," he wrote to employees. "To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is, our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment."
Stephenson said Bob Quinn, the exec in charge of AT&T's legislative affairs operation in DC, "will be retiring." Translation: He's taking the fall. Here's the latest from me and Hadas Gold... | | Cohen isn't the only Trump insider who pitched himself to AT&T... | | | As The Daily Beast first reported on Friday, a political consulting firm co-founded by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and campaign adviser Barry Bennett also approached AT&T and offered its services in early 2017. AT&T confirmed: "We agreed to meet with them. We met with them once, and decided not to use them..." | | What does this look like to you? | | We've learned a lot about the "swamp" this week. And the revelations keep coming: On Friday evening, the WSJ reported that Cohen also pitched himself to Ford Motor Co., "but was quickly rebuffed."
Regarding Cohen's pitches, MSNBC's Chris Hayes tweeted that there's an "interesting theme developing here: companies/industries Trump had explicitly talked tough about during the campaign (drug prices, cars being built in Mexico, ATT merger)..." | | Rudy says "the president denied the merger" | | AT&T was on the defensive all week. But then HuffPost published this interview with Trump's new lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Man, oh man.
Giuliani said "the president denied the merger," which flies in the face of everything the W.H. and the DOJ have said for months. All along, the government has said Trump was NOT involved in blocking the AT&T-Time Warner deal. Lawyers and P.R. people have tried to shut down all of the speculation about improper political interference. DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim denied it in a sworn affidavit. Now, all of a sudden, Giuliani says Trump was behind it?! | | What Rudy was trying to do | | | He was trying to defend the president against any suggestion that Cohen improperly influenced the administration. "Whatever lobbying was done didn't reach the president," Giuliani said. But then he went further, telling HuffPost's S.V. Date that "he did drain the swamp... The president denied the merger. They didn't get the result they wanted." | | Caveats: It is possible that Giuliani misspoke, or that he simply does not know what he's talking about. He was not working for Trump at the time the DOJ was reviewing the deal. Since he began representing Trump, he has had to change the story he has been telling in public about Stormy Daniels and what Trump knew or didn't know and when about the payment Cohen made to her. And he may simply have meant "the president" as a stand-in for "the administration."
So: Maybe he'll try to walk this back. But if he does, the questions about political interference have already been reignited, and he'll have further damaged his credibility in speaking for the president. Here's my full story... | | Four weekend TV recommendations | | Brian Lowry emails: There's a pretty eclectic trifecta of new offerings worth watching this weekend. Benedict Cumberbatch produces and stars in "Patrick Melrose," an exceedingly dark miniseries that looks like sure-fire Emmy bait -- at least in terms of a nod for its star -- on Showtime...
PBS' "Masterpiece," meanwhile, serves up a handsome new version of "Little Women," with a breakout turn by Maya Hawke -- the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman -- in the role of Jo...
Netflix has another buzzy true-crime series in the mode of "The Jinx," only with a female criminal mastermind at the heart of "Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist," based on the bizarre 2003 "pizza bomber heist" in Erie, PA...
Finally, another recommendation for HBO's "Barry," which closes a strong season with a first-rate finale Sunday... | | This Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | I sat down with Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show" set... He told me about the "5:30 curse" that newsrooms and comedy shows can both relate to... We'll be airing the interview on Sunday, and I'll be joined by Christiane Amanpour, Jason Rezaian, April Ryan, and Frank Sesno... Plus, the NYT's Nick Kristof, who recently wrote about the media's "Trump addiction..."
Join us Sunday at 11am ET on CNN! | | By Oliver Darcy:
-- Aidan McLaughlin caught Fox News host Pete Hegseth trashing the NYT for not covering an ISIS capture story that the NYT broke. Hegseth complained that the story wasn't in Friday's paper, but that's because it was in Thursday's paper... Ooof... (Mediaite)
-- A must-read from Ben Howe: He wishes conservative media outlets, well stocked with opinion writers, would "do some more damn reporting…" (The Daily Beast)
-- A reaction from the left: Alex Pareene argues "serious reporting is incompatible with the mission of the conservative movement..." (Splinter) | | $800 million for Katzenberg's NewTV | | Jeffrey Katzenberg "has secured about $800 million in financing for his video startup NewTV, which the company will use to fund high-end TV series that have YouTube-length episodes," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports. "A constellation of large media companies, including 21st Century Fox Inc. and Warner Bros., is supplying NewTV with about $200 million... NewTV has secured the rest of its financing from institutional investors."
-- Shaw notes: NewTV has yet to announce any shows...
-- You may recall Katzenberg was reportedly seeking $2 billion... | | Steele and Negandhi at 6pm | | | Announced on Friday: ESPN's Sage Steele and Kevin Negandhi will host the 6pm hour of "SportsCenter," which, as Jill Disis notes here, "has been without a permanent anchor since early March." The pair will start on Monday... | | Oprah's advice to graduates: "VOTE!" | | Want to watch Oprah Winfrey deliver USC Annenberg's commencement address? Here's the video on YouTube.
Toward the end, Winfrey alluded to the "Oprah 2020" chatter from earlier this year: "I hesitate to say this, because the rumors from my last big speech have finally died down" -- the crowd laughed and applauded -- "but here it is. VOTE! Vote. Vote. Pay attention to what the people who claim to represent you are doing and saying in your name and on your behalf. They represent you, and if they've not done right by you, if their policies are at odds with your core beliefs, then you have a responsibility to send them packing. If they go low -- thank you, Michelle Obama -- if they go low, we go to the polls." | | 🎧 Byers, Gold, Darcy on the pod | | | I asked Oliver Darcy, Hadas Gold and Dylan Byers to analyze all of the week's media news on a special roundtable edition of the "Reliable Sources" podcast. We connected from TV studios in NY, DC, LA: | | | Among the topics on the pod: The war over Fox, net neutrality, NBC's harassment report, and Trump's "head fake" threat about media credentials. Tune in via Apple Podcasts... Or Stitcher... Or TuneIn! And read Julia Waldow's recap here... | | -- Heads up: Olivia Nuzzi has a new article in the next issue of NYMag: "Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Like to Talk Before Bedtime..."
-- "I have no intention of having a career in television," Michael Avenatti tells Jeremy Barr... (THR)
-- Ben Mullin's latest: "A new heavyweight is preparing to enter the world of podcasting. Luminary Media LLC, a venture-backed company, has raised $40 million to join the rapidly expanding realm of podcasting and audio..." (WSJ)
-- Via David Klein: Reporters in Hawaii are questioning the government's control over hazard zones, saying the flow of info "has not always been smooth..." (Civil Beat) | | Did a reporter really say this to John Kelly? | | Oliver Darcy emails: Josh Dawsey flagged an interesting remark John Kelly made in his interview with NPR. Kelly said that after he took the job as chief of staff, "one of the reporters" told him, "Look you were our worst nightmare. This place was a clown show before you showed up...Now that you're here, there's order to the place. The leaks all but went away. So, sorry but you got to go."
Kelly didn't name the reporter who supposedly made this comment to him, leaving Dawsey to ask, "What reporter??" Maggie Haberman chimed in, "Color me deeply skeptical of this anecdote." She later noted, "This is a version of what Kelly often tells others in the White House, which is that one congressman or another tells him he's saving the country..." | | Speaking of the NPR interview... | | CNNMoney producer Michael Tarson emails: I noticed numerous journalists on air and on Twitter talking about how unusual it was that Kelly did an interview with NPR. I guess it's the state of things now: a top administration official gives a lengthy interview to a well-respected news outlet... and it's surprising...
To that point... | | Trump-Holt was one year ago today | | | This is the one-year anniversary of Lester Holt's now-famous sit-down with Trump... In the year since, Trump hasn't given interviews to NBC, ABC, CBS, or CNN... In recent months, even his appearances on Fox News have been limited... | | Check out this Maggie Haberman interview | | Julia Waldow emails: Slate's Isaac Chotiner spoke with Maggie Haberman for his latest "I Have to Ask" podcast. He asked how covering the Trump presidency has changed over the past year, and if there is anything she thinks she got wrong about who he is.
"This is who he is. This is all who he is," Haberman said. "This is always who he is. There's no difference. There's no difference for him in the White House to the campaign, and there's no difference from him in the campaign to Twitter voice, celebrity, reality show-star Donald Trump. No. I have not been surprised about anything he's done..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Facebook thanked Julia Angwin for her reporting on the company! "You've done a lot to uncover issues in our ads systems, which we've worked hard to fix," the company told her. "Wow, thanks @facebook," Angwin replied. "I've never been thanked before by a company that I've covered so aggressively. Maybe there is hope for civil public discourse in this world, after all..." (Twitter)
-- The Indian Country Today Media Network is back. The outlet, now owned by the National Congress of American Indians, went on hiatus last September to "consider alternative business models," Laura Hazard Owen writes... (Nieman Lab)
-- David E. Kelley gets the Lacey Rose profile treatment... (THR)
-- Getting sucked into a YouTube black hole? The app's new "Take a Break" feature lets you pause videos at certain intervals... (TechCrunch) | | | I can't keep up with all of the cancellations and renewals ahead of broadcast upfront week. Thankfully, Deadline, TheWrap and other sites have running lists of what's alive and what's dead... | | Ava DuVernay drama about officer-involved shooting coming to CBS | | "CBS will try its hand at issues-driven drama this fall with a new show from Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay and super-producer Greg Berlanti," Sandra Gonzalez reports.
The show, "The Red Line," is about "a white Chicago cop who mistakenly shoots and kills a black doctor. The series follows three families connected to the case and the story is told from each perspective, CBS said..."
--> Other CBS pickups on Friday: "Fam," a multi-cam comedy starring "Vampire Diaries" alum Nina Dobrev; "God Friended Me," another Berlanti drama; and a "Magnum P.I." reboot all got the greenlight... | | | "Fox is giving Tim Allen's 'Last Man Standing' a second chance at life," Sandra Gonzalez writes. "The network announced on Friday the mutli-cam comedy has been picked up for a new season, roughly one year after its cancellation by ABC caused an uproar among some, who alleged star Allen's conservative political views played a part in the network's decision to ax the series..." | | Intel from P&G's chief brand officer | | | Brian Lowry emails: It's easy to forget the upfronts are, ultimately, all about ad dollars, which makes this interview with P&G chief brand officer Marc Pritchard, by Variety's Brian Steinberg, timely. Among other things, he discusses transparency in regard to product placement, and how the marketing giant feels about the future of print advertising, where he's surprisingly bullish, saying, "I really like what a lot of the print companies are doing in terms of their digital footprints..." | | | Frank Pallotta emails: "Avengers: Infinity War" has conquered the world… except China. That might change this weekend. Hollywood will be watching to see if Iron Man and Captain America can compete with "Fate of the Furious," the biggest opening for a US film there, when it opens this weekend and what heights the superhero will go to next. If "Infinity War" does have a big weekend (which looks likely), the next feat for the film could be $2 billion – a feat no summer movie has ever achieved... | | | Email your feedback and thoughts to brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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