EXEC SUMMARY: Hello from the Apple Store a couple blocks from Trump Tower. I had a MacBook emergency tonight! But I'm back online with a new computer... Here's the past 24 hours of media news and a look ahead to Wednesday's big television event...
Mueller in the hot seat
Is Wednesday the end of something -- a two plus year investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and Trump's furious reaction to that investigation? Or is it the start of something -- a new chapter in an impeachment battle and/or a sweeping probe into the origins of the probe?
Maybe we'll have a solid answer to that question by this time tomorrow.
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It's been a LONG time
Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed 796 days ago. Wednesday will be day 797.
Mueller handed in his report to the DOJ 123 days ago. Wednesday will be day 124.
In other words: The public has been waiting a long time -- I'd argue way TOO long -- for this day of congressional testimony.
What to expect
Session one, in the House Judiciary Committee, should start at 8:30am and last about three hours. Mueller will have an opening statement. Session two, with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is expected to start around 12 and last for two to two and a half hours. C-SPAN will be providing four camera angles for each hearing...
Where to watch
CNN: "New Day" starts at 5am with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman live from DC... then Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper lead day-long live coverage...
CBS: "High Stakes and History" is the title for the coverage. Norah O'Donnell will start anchoring at approximately 8:15...
ABC: A special report will start at 8:30, anchored by George Stephanopoulous, with David Muir reporting from the Capitol...
PBS: Day-long coverage, anchored by Judy Woodruff, begins at 8:30am...
NBC: A special report will start at 8:15am, led by Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd...
MSNBC: At 8:30 "Morning Joe" will hand off to Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace in NYC, joined by Ari Melber in DC...
Fox News: Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will anchor live coverage starting at 8:15am... As TVNewser noted here, "Fox News will also provide coverage of the hearings to Fox broadcasting stations..."
Washington Post: A live stream on the Post website, YouTube and Twitch starting at 8am, anchored by columnist Emily Heil, with numerous guests...
Here's how anchors are preparing
I asked new "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O'Donnell what she's doing to prep -- she replied, "Reading, reading, reading. I bought the bound version of the report on Amazon, and the abridged version by Thomas Patterson, and our special events team put together an excellent briefing book ahead of our coverage."
And here's how PBS "NewsHour" anchor Judy Woodruff is preparing: "I am going back through my files from our coverage of the original Mueller report and reading selected parts of that, as well as also re-reading parts of the report itself."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Trump trashed Fox again on Tuesday evening... This time complaining about Martha MacCallum's "softball" questions for Eric Swalwell... "Fox sure ain't what it used to be. Too bad!"
-- Then he added: "Oh well, we still have the great @SeanHannity who I hear has a really strong show tonight."
-- Josh Feldman writes: "Sean Hannity gave a 'tutorial' to Republicans on what to ask Robert Mueller tonight, and he threw out dozens and dozens of questions for them..." (Mediaite)
-- One of the banners on MSNBC's "Hardball:" "Mueller to face die-hard Trump supporters in Congress." Chris Matthews talked about "the show" GOP lawmakers will be "putting on for Fox..." (Mediaite)
-- Mark Joyella's headline combating recent B.S., sparked by MSNBC contributor Joyce White Vance, about Fox's coverage plans: "No, Fox News is not too 'scared' to carry Robert Mueller's live testimony..." (Forbes)
-- NYT's Peter Baker and Sheryl Gay Stolberg with the bottom line: "It could prove to be riveting television. The real question, however, is whether it changes anyone's mind in a highly polarized country." (NYT)
Why it matters
Hearing from Mueller is important, "even if it does nothing other than reiterate what's in his report," Margaret Sullivan writes. "And this new round of media coverage is important, too, if only because it can clarify and drive home what Mueller originally said."
Focus on substance, avoid the smoke
How should newsrooms approach hearing? Wednesday's Mueller biographer Garrett Graff told me: "The media needs to stay focused on the *substance* of the hearing, not the circus. The GOP is going to try to throw up as much mud and smoke as they can, but we know most of their pet theories (Chris Steele!) have already been debunked. The GOP's goal is to make this as muddy as possible. Don't help them. Don't let them distract."
How many people will tune in?
Dramatic day-long hearings that are shown on broadcast and cable generally reach a cumulative audience in the tens of millions. Not everyone watches the entire time, of course. And some people go out of their way to avoid the coverage. Anyone who's expecting "most" of the county, a majority of Americans, to stop what they're doing and watch... well, they're setting expectations way too high.
But hearings can and do draw a significant audience. About 16 million people tuned in for Michael Cohen's testimony earlier this year, according to Nielsen. And that total is the average audience for every minute of the hearing, so the hearing's overall "reach" was much higher...
Lowry's take
Brian Lowry emails: An unpopular thought: Mueller's live congressional testimony will be less significant, ultimately, than the hours of analysis and soundbites that will be devoted to its aftermath, playing and replaying the highlights. And because those key moments will be viewed largely through people's usual preferred outlets and ideological prisms, the potential to change minds or open eyes is more limited than some of the pregame coverage would suggest.
Elaina Plott comes to a similar conclusion — albeit from a different angle — in this article for The Atlantic, saying that Attorney General William Barr's spin was highly effective, and that Democrats will find it difficult to "make Mueller's words resonate when, in an era defined by the laws of entertainment, they may well have missed their moment."
Afterward...
Trump is scheduled to travel to West Virginia for an evening fundraising committee reception. There's a possibility he will speak to the press corps while leaving the White House...
135 days
Normally, on a weekday of historical import, a White House would want to hold a press briefing to tell its side of the story and answer all manner of questions. But not this White House. Wednesday will be day 135 without a formal on-camera press briefing.
--> Related: One month into her new job as W.H. press secretary and comms director, Stephanie Grisham "has not appeared on Fox News" or held a televised briefing or "taken reporters' questions in a gaggle from the White House driveway," Politico's Nancy Cook notes, in a piece titled "the president's silent spokesman."
--> Key graf: "As for those seemingly dead daily briefings? Several senior administration officials stressed the president — and he alone — decides if and when those will reappear, even occasionally."
IN OTHER NEWS...
Boris Johnson's turn
Gotta love this photo on the front page of Wednesday's NYT: | | The photo is fun, but the headline isn't: "Johnson to Succeed May As the Leader of Britain In a Time of Deep Crisis."
Justice Department launching broad antitrust review of Big Tech
Brent Kendall's Tuesday afternoon scoop for the WSJ: "The Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition, adding a new Washington threat for companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple."
The DOJ confirmed the review soon after the story hit. CNN's Brian Fung has details here.
My big question: How much of a political cloud will hover over this review? Trump's disdain for the tech companies is well known, just as his dislike for CNN was well known when the DOJ sued to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Tripp Mickle's latest: Apple's mobile apps "routinely appear first in search results ahead of competitors in its App Store, a powerful advantage that skirts some of the company's rules on such rankings." However "Apple says it doesn't give its own products an advantage over others on the App Store..." (WSJ)
-- Congress passed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund extension championed by Jon Stewart on Tuesday... Alisyn Camerota sat down with Stewart and John Feal after the vote, and the interview will air on Wednesday's "New Day..." (CNN)
-- Today in headlines that should get a lot of attention, but didn't: "Trump falsely tells auditorium full of teens the Constitution gives him 'the right to do whatever I want'" (WaPo)
-- Erik Wemple's latest: "Fox News helped radicalize domestic terrorist Cesar Sayoc, say his lawyers." And "another source of information for Sayoc was Trump's Twitter account." The government is seeking life in prison for Sayoc... (WaPo)
Snap's comeback
"Snapchat added 13 million daily users in the three months ending in June, ending a long period of lackluster growth and pushing the company's total audience above 200 million daily users for the first time," Clare Duffy reports for CNN Business. "The stronger-than-expected user growth, combined with a slowdown in losses during the quarter, helped drive up shares of Snapchat's parent company, Snap, about 11% in after-hours trading. It's now just short of its initial public offering price."
Spiegel says content is driving the growth
Per Duffy, the company "attributed user growth, which had stalled last year, to better quality exclusive content. "As a result of our investments in our content platform," Evan Spiegel said, "total daily time spent by Snapchatters watching Discover increased by over 60% year-over-year, while the number of daily viewers has grown by 35% year-over-year. This was driven by the additional content we added to our platform over the past year, as well as changes we made to our platform to prioritize depth of engagement." These are dream #'s...
>> Here are the prepared remarks from Tuesday's earnings call...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Phil Pan is joining the NYT masthead as weekend editor... Plus, Eleanor Dunn, Anushka Patil and Hannah Wise are joining The Times as social editors... (NYT PR)
-- Alison Kodjak is the AP's new DC investigations editor... (AP)
-- Lance Frank has been promoted to VP of comms at CBS News... (Variety)
Jodi Rudoren taking over The Forward
"The Forward, a 122-year-old Jewish publication, named a new leader of its newsroom on Tuesday, appointing Jodi Rudoren, a veteran editor and reporter at The New York Times, as editor in chief." Michael Grynbaum has the full story here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By An Phung:
-- The libel trial against Maria Ressa, the editor of Philippine news site Rappler, started on Tuesday… (The Guardian)
-- Maxwell Strachan produced an incredible deep dive into what went wrong at the millennial news site Mic, which was eventually bought up by Bustle Digital Group in a fire sale. Read this... (HuffPost)
-- Meantime, Bustle's buying spree continues with its purchase of geek culture site Inverse… (Digiday)
Dan Le Batard update
Dan Le Batard was back on ESPN radio Tuesday morning. He made a comment about just needing to "get through the next four days." On Monday he took the day off his radio show after a weekend of difficult conversations with ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro about the network's no-pure-politics policy, which he violated and condemned. "I'm a little scared, a little nervous, I'm walking a bit of a tightrope," Le Batard said on the air...
--> "I don't think this plays out in a great way for his future there," Bill Simmons said Monday... "He's not one of those guys who's going to be like, 'I'm not saying anything.' Especially, you have an election coming next year and I just don't see him backing off."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- What's it like for Puerto Rican journalists who are covering the street protests? Avi Asher-Schapiro spoke with broadcast reporter Jesús Rivera Martinez... (CPJ)
-- Craig Silverman's latest has some genuinely helpful tips: "Be it personal photos or false or inflammatory articles and memes, young people find themselves struggling to manage, and at times confront, the extremely online adults in their lives..." (BuzzFeed News)
-- ABC's David Muir: "I'm having a conversation with America in a very polarized time..." (WaPo)
Lowry reviews "The Great Hack"
Brian Lowry emails: "The Great Hack" explores the Cambridge Analytica scandal with the tone and urgency of a thriller, interviewing whistleblowers, journalists and professor David Carroll, who sued to learn just exactly what was done with his data. It's a sobering documentary, making its debut on Netflix and in select theaters, which should make even those most blasé about these issues think twice about reading the terms and conditions. Read on...
| | Ripped from the headlines
Three announcements from the Lifetime cable channel at the TCA Press Tour on Wednesday, via Variety's Joe Otterson:
-- "The Aftermath," from the producers of "Surviving R. Kelly," will be a four-part series featuring interviews with new survivors, psychologists, and experts on the Kelly case...
-- "Surviving Jeffrey Epstein" is "in development with Robert Friedman's Bungalow Media + Entertainment in association with Anne Sundberg and Ricki Stern." Christopher Mason "is also attached to the project..."
-- A film, provisionally titled "College Admissions Scandal," is in the works as well... "It will be produced by Varsity Films Inc., with Gail Katz and Howard Braunstein executive producing. Adam Salky will direct from a script by Stephen Tolkin..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
Frank Pallotta emails:
-- "Fast & Furious 9 stuntman Joe Watts is in an induced coma following a major accident during the shoot in the U.K. on Monday..." (THR)
-- Here's the lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival... (IndieWire)
-- And here's your first look of director Taika Waititi playing Adolf Hitler in satire, "Jojo Rabbit..." (THR)
What's next for "Booksmart"
Brian Lowry emails: After fighting what turned out to be an uphill battle to get people to see it in theaters, "Booksmart" -- director Olivia Wilde's widely praised teen comedy -- will become available on digital Aug. 20 and Blu-ray/DVD Sept. 3. The movie has grossed $22 million in the U.S...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
By Lisa Respers France:
-- "Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood" has Quentin Tarantino talking about retirement...
-- Hannah Brown let Luke Parker have it on "The Bachelorette: Men Tell All."
-- Bella Thorne says she's actually pansexual, not bisexual...
"Homecoming" will continue with...
THR's Lesley Goldberg reports: "Amazon has found a worthy replacement for Julia Roberts in the upcoming second season of Homecoming. Actress-singer Janelle Monáe will take over the leading role in the drama from exec producer Sam Esmail... Roberts only had a one-season deal for the series."
Taylor's next track | | Taylor Swift released "The Archer," the fifth track on "Lover," on Tuesday evening... The album drops on August 23... Here's the music video on Vevo...
>> Vice's headline: "We Regret to Inform You That the New Taylor Swift Song Is Really Good..."
>> Via Cosmo, "here's every single Easter Egg and theory" about the song...
| | | Thank you for reading! Send me your feedback... We'll be back tomorrow... | | | |
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