Exec summary: Scroll down for the latest from CBS, Fox, USA Today, Apple, Bloomberg, Netflix, Twitter, the NYT, the LAT, and more...
Sulzberger speaks | | | On Monday afternoon at CNN's day-long political forum, CITIZEN by CNN, I sat down with A.G. Sulzberger. This was one of his first interviews since he became publisher of the NYT in January. The full session is up on YouTube... And here are the takeaways:
-- Key quote: "To me, this is an all-hands-on-deck time" for journalism...
-- "An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It's an American ideal..."
-- I asked if the paper's mission has changed in the Trump age. "No," he said. But he agreed with my assertion that the Times should be a bulwark of democracy...
-- Too often, Sulzberger said, outlets like The Times do so much reporting but don't show the readers the work that went into a finished story. These old conventions "actually hide the answer to the question: 'Why should you believe us?'" So we should show our work, so to speak...
-- "Journalism in the abstract can be made into a menace. But the practical art of journalism is the art of digging and listening and the learning and empathy. It's hard to demonize that..."
-- The NYT has done survey work on the unifying traits of its audience base, and the top trait is "curiosity," he said...
-- Will the Times bring back the public editor column? Per his answer, it sure doesn't sound likely...
About his meeting with POTUS...
Sulzberger has no regrets about having an off-the-record meeting with President Trump over the summer, even though Trump later tweeted about it and (according to the Times) mischaracterized the meeting. Sulzberger said he wanted to hear Trump out, just as he'd listen to any prominent figure's concerns about the paper's coverage. And he wanted to raise his own concern -- about Trump's hateful anti-media "enemy of the people" talk.
"I'm not sure how many people had looked him in the eyes... and said 'I believe that your rhetoric isn't just divisive, it's not just irresponsible, it's potentially dangerous,'" Sulzberger said. In the future, "he certainly can't say that he wasn't warned..."
Ten million subscribers?
Right now The Times has 3.6 million subscriptions. So I asked Sulzberger how much growth he foresees. He said that 10 million is a number that gets thrown around internally...
But the Times and other brands need to keep making a market for paid journalism. The market is "fundamentally immature right now," Sulzberger said. He tipped his hat to Spotify and Netflix for helping get people more comfortable paying for digital content.
"We're trying to create a market for paid journalism," he told me. "And this is why I'm cheering on the growth of the WSJ, WaPo. I think all of us are in the same place, which is, we are trying to convince more people that it is worth paying money for quality journalism. What does that market look like? At the biggest level, it's curious, English-speaking people around the world..."
More headlines from the forum | | -- Van Jones had a very rare interview with Jared Kushner... When Jones asked about Jamal Khashoggi, Kushner said it "seems to be a terrible situation," but "we have to be able to work with our allies..."
-- In a session with Gloria Borger, former White House lawyer Ty Cobb said the Mueller probe is NOT a "witch hunt," contra his former boss...
-- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward sat together for a rare joint interview... Moderated by Jamie Gangel... They compared covering Nixon and Trump...
-- I chuckled at this Woodward line: "One of the joys of my life is I don't do Twitter..."
-- Nancy Pelosi told Dana Bash: If the midterm election were today, the Democrats "would handily win the House..."
-- Michael Calderone's summary of John King's session: "Anyone who tells you 15 days out what will happen on election night is lying..."
More highlights here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Very important story by Michael Gordon: The Army produced a study about the Iraq War, but it still hasn't been published... (WSJ)
-- All eyes on WikiLeaks: Robert Mueller's scrutiny of Roger Stone "includes investigating whether Stone had backchannels to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election..." (CNN)
-- Another headache for Silicon Valley? Donie O'Sullivan emails: Richard Blumenthal wrote to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit on Monday asking them about Psy Group. That's the firm that reportedly ran dark social media ops that are now on Mueller's radar. Watch this space, I bet we'll be hearing a lot more about these guys…
Trump's lying IS the story...
Whatever the Toronto Star is paying Daniel Dale, it's not enough. His live fact-checking of Trump's rallies and interviews keeps me glued to Twitter. Dale wrote Monday, "I've fact-checked every word Trump has uttered for two full years. This is one of his most dishonest weeks in political life. He's lying about so many different things at once, and in big ways -- not exaggerating or stretching, completely making stuff up."
Apologies for repeating myself, because I've said this several times in the past two years, but sometimes the lying IS the story. This is one of those times. Chris Cuomo led his 9 p.m. program on CNN with Trump's "strong and wrong" problem. (Dale was a guest!) Tuesday's WaPo story about the GOP stoking fear notes, high up, that "many of the president's assertions are false or clear distortions of the facts." Here's my related story...
On Page One of Tuesday's NYT:
The headline reads "Trump Escalates Use of Migrants As Election Ploy." The story says that Trump and other GOPers are "seeking to divide the electorate along racial lines" by delivering messages "plainly aimed at stoking cultural anxiety among white voters and even appealing to overt racism..."
Anatomy of a Trump tweet
Oliver Darcy emails: Another day, another instance in which Trump seizes on right-wing media reports and uses them as a basis to make a wild, unfounded claim. In Monday's episode, Trump warned in a tweet that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in" the caravan of migrants headed toward the United States.
The president offered no evidence. But for several days, right-wing media sources have been suggesting that ISIS and other terrorists and criminal groups could infiltrate the caravan and ultimately gain entry into the United States. Some of the stories stemmed from an October 11 article in a prominent Guatemala newspaper which quoted the Guatemalan president saying the country had captured nearly 100 people linked to terrorism, including ISIS. Judicial Watch picked up that story, then other right-wing media blogs, then Fox News, and then Trump. My full story here...
Shep debunks Trump's scare-mongering
"President Trump is calling caravan a national emergency, claiming criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in," Shep Smith said on Fox Monday afternoon. "Important note: Fox News knows of no evidence to suggest he's accurate, and POTUS has offered no evidence..."
Meantime, Obama says...
The crowd at this Nevada rally loved Barack Obama's implicit jab at Trump on Monday: "Unlike some I actually try to state facts. I believe in facts," he said, earning loud cheers. "I believe in a fact-based reality and a fact-based politics. I don't believe in just making stuff up."
Back to the rallies...
Worth noting: For the past few weeks, Fox News has been showing its regular talk shows instead of Trump's rallies... but on Monday night the network showed Trump's mega rally in Houston from start to finish...
| | THE JAMAL KHASHOGGI CASE
Here's the latest
-- CNN's exclusive reporting: Surveillance footage shows a Saudi "body double" in Khashoggi's clothes after he was killed, a Turkish source says...
-- Steven Mnuchin met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday amid the international outcry...
-- The Future Investment initiative kicks off on Tuesday, without any of the media partners who were previously slated to participate...
-- CIA Director Gina Haspel is traveling to Turkey for the Khashoggi investigation, a source tells CNN...
-- "We have people in Saudi Arabia and people in Turkey," Trump said Monday...
-- Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will make an announcement on the case on Tuesday...
The power of outrage
We're living in the "age of selective outrage," Gayle Tzemach Lemmon says in this CNN.com op-ed. While acknowledging that, she says Khashoggi's death is "a loss that is reverberating globally and reminding the world of what sustained attention can create: a revisiting of norms, a redoubling of effort and a girding of determination to do better and do more to protect the vulnerable." Read on...
Trump's interview with USA Today
POTUS gave an expansive interview to USA Today "in his office aboard Air Force One" on Monday... Here are two of David Jackson and Susan Page's stories from the interview...
-- Trump called the killing of Khashoggi "foolish and stupid," and/but said he still believed it was "a plot gone awry..."
-- Re: the migrant caravan: Trump "said the television footage that showed them straggling north was rebounding to the political benefit of Republicans in the midterms..."
-- BTW: During the interview, he was "occasionally watching himself on a wall-mounted TV tuned to Fox News..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Margaret Sullivan's latest: "The caravan is coming! And it's high time to calm the rising media frenzy." (WaPo)
-- "What happens when Facebook goes down? People read the news," according to this data analysis from Chartbeat... (NiemanLab)
-- One of Joshua Benton's takeaways from the data: "Most news-seeking is not driven by some civic desire for community information — it's a gimme-something-new itch that can be met by news stories, FB updates, or, well, a lot of things on people's phones..."
-- Ezra Klein and Jay Rosen's podcast conversation: "Is the media making American politics worse?" (Vox)
Security breach at Fox's DC station
This was a very scary situation at WTTG, the Fox-owned local station in DC, on Monday afternoon: A suspected intruder "was shot after kicking down the glass doors" at WTTG's building. A security guard shot the man once in the chest. The man is now in the hospital. Thankfully no one at the station was injured.
There's no official word on a motive yet. But the suspect "was known to both Fox executives and police, according to sources, and had leveled threats against both previously," according to WTTG's own story about the incident. It says that the man "has previously sent emails to employees of FOX 5" and "is suspected to have mental health issues." | |
How the station responded
WTTG went into breaking news mode with thorough coverage of the situation. As Avi Asher-Schapiro of CPJ noted on Twitter, "the team at Fox 5 is covering the incident w/incredible professionalism & poise." The station's general manager Patrick Paolini emailed staffers with an update on Monday afternoon and noted, "All of us here are working this as an on-going breaking news story, just like we would any other..."
Apple v. Bloomberg update
"Your move, Bloomberg," WaPo's Erik Wemple says.
His blog post about Bloomberg's "Big Hack" story is a must read. Apple, Amazon and other firms have denied the story in the strongest possible terms. Tim Cook has even called for a retraction. He sent Bloomberg more than 15 questions, and the news outlets declined to really answer. He says Bloomberg needs to do more...
-- Related: Motherboard EIC Jason Koebler added via Twitter: "Everyone we have talked to" believes the Bloomberg story "has significant holes or was outright fabricated. Bloomberg has to say or do something..."
The CBS CEO competition
Speaking with Julia Chatterley on CNNI on Monday, I said CBS Corp. interim CEO Joe Ianniello has to be seen as a strong candidate for the permanent CEO spot... Just look at the moves he's made in the past few weeks...
In this brand new VF piece, Joe Pompeo says it better than I could. "With David Nevins, a so-called content guy, installed in a chief creative role, it looks more logical for the board to settle on a numbers guy, like Ianniello, for the CEO gig. He also appears to be positioning the company for the very sort of corporate evolution that one imagines Shari Redstone and the board are advocating." Read on...
Netflix's next debt offering
Netflix "plans to take on $2 billion in new debt by offering unsecured bank notes," Jill Disis reports. "The money will be used for 'general corporate purposes.' Netflix says that could include content acquisitions and production costs, along with other investments."
-- CONTEXT: "It's the third time in a year that Netflix has raised debt this way... Netflix knows it will have to spend a lot of money if it wants to stay on top..." More here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- CNN P.R. whiz Richard Hudock is moving to NBC News, where he'll be a comms director, still based in DC... (Twitter)
-- Sue Horton was the op-ed editor of The Los Angeles Times in 2014... She's at Reuters now, but she is returning to the LAT, in the same op-ed role, effective in early December... (LAT)
-- Don't count "Fortnite" out, but this is something to keep an eye on: "Has Fortnite peaked? Twitch viewership is declining as we head into fall blockbuster game season..." (Thinknum)
Twitter bans more InfoWars accounts
Oliver Darcy emails: Twitter has permanently suspended 18 accounts affiliated with InfoWars, a company spokesperson told me Monday evening. The accounts were removed for attempting to help InfoWars and its founder Alex Jones circumvent the ban Twitter placed on them by posting material related to the media organization. When Twitter suspended Jones and InfoWars in September, the company said accounts that attempted to help Jones and InfoWars get around the ban would also be removed.
I'm told the suspensions occurred after "numerous violations and warnings." In addition to Monday's purges, the Twitter spokesperson said the company had previously suspended five other accounts that tried to help Jones and InfoWars get around Twitter's ban. Read the full story via Darcy and CNN Business reporter Rob McLean here...
| | By Megan Thomas:
-- I think both Jessica Yellin and Amy Schumer deserve points for being clever with Schumer's pregnancy announcement... Here's Sandra Gonzalez's full story.
-- Netflix is denying using race to target viewers. (via THR)
-- "Wonder Woman 1984" is getting pushed back to 2020... with a summer release date. (via Variety)
| | How to catch up on Sunday's show
Listen to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or watch the full episode via CNNgo or VOD...
The politics of fear
Trump and his media allies on Fox News claim that the Central American migrant caravan is causing a "crisis" at the US border. But the reality is that the migrants are weeks away, and may never reach the United States, Dara Lind said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."
A moment later, Max Boot let it rip -- he lit into the right-wing coverage, saying that "demagoguery," "racism" and "nativism" are fueling the pro-Trump narrative. We also discussed the power of the caravan pictures -- Boot urged the press to zoom in -- when you "actually talk to them as individuals, you understand these are people who are suffering and that we should be empathetic to," he said...
America not-so-divided?
Partisan TV shows and talk radio and social media feeds are popular... but they are poisonous. In this interview for Sunday's show, More in Common co-founder Tim Dixon told me that most Americans are NOT locked in the cold civil war that's taking place on cable newscasts and talk radio shows. Instead, 67% of Americans are part of what he calls the "exhausted majority." So what should the media do to represent those voices? Here's what Dixon said...
That's a wrap on today's newsletter... See you tomorrow... Email me feedback anytime!
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