Forward

EXEC SUMMARY: Hello, this is Oliver Darcy in for Brian Stelter. Scroll down for the Open Society Foundations' demand for Fox's Suzanne Scott, some news from Facebook, Cenk Uygur's announcement, and info on the new Gannett. But first...

Will Hannity come up?

When Marie Yovanovitch, the former United States Ambassador to Ukraine, testified behind closed doors, she brought up Sean Hannity. Specifically, Yovanovitch said that there was an effort inside the State Department to get the Fox News host from criticizing her.

Yovanovitch explained that she was told that Mike Pompeo or "somebody around him" was "going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on Fox News to say, you know, 'What is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, telI me, and if not, stop.'"

"And I understand that that call was made," she said, adding that "for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down." Hannity has denied ever talking to Pompeo about Ukraine. And he said he "never talked to anyone in the State Department about this ambassador."

On Friday morning, Yovanovitch is set to testify publicly in the second day of impeachment hearings. Will Hannity's name pop up? It will be intriguing to see.

Hannity's warning

Hannity on Thursday addressed the possibility his name might surface during Friday's impeachment hearing. On his prime time show, Hannity said it was a "slanderous libelous lie" to say he "was ever conducting a smear campaign against" Yovanovitch. Hannity said, "I'll say it again people better stop lying about you, because I'm not going to take it. Stop spreading bogus rumors and smears about me."

Another Fox personality to be on lookout for

Yovanovitch was not just criticized by Hannity. A March report by John Solomon, a Fox contributor and former executive at The Hill newspaper, was the basis for many of the theories surrounding her.

Solomon interviewed General Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Ukraine prosecutor general, who claimed Yovanovitch gave him a "do-not-prosecute list." Lutsenko later admitted the list never existed. The State Department had also dismissed Lutsenko's claim as "an outright fabrication." That said, the conspiracy theories based off of that story have persisted. Keep an eye out for whether Solomon is mentioned at Friday's hearing.

Trump claims Republicans are telling him they want impeachment to be drawn out

Trump at his Thursday night rally in Louisiana claimed Republicans have told him that impeachment has been good for them politically, and that they'd like him to drag it out for a while. Per CNN's Daniel Dale, Trump said, "'Sir, our poll numbers are going through the roof, do you think we could keep this going?' I said, 'Do me a favor, let's get it ended.' They said, 'But let's keep it going, President, it's so great.'"

Trump (unsurprisingly) also floated misinformation at the rally. According to Dale, Trump said the Ukraine prosecutor was "going after his son." As Dale tweeted, "There's no evidence Hunter Biden was ever under investigation, and even the investigation into the owner of Burisma appeared to be inactive at the time of Joe Biden's pressure."

>> Dale's observation: "My personal experience with Trump's dishonesty escalation: in 2017, I could fact check all of his false claims for the week in a few hours on Sunday. In 2018, it started taking almost all of Sunday and some additional time. Now it requires two people...."

What we learned from the day one ratings

Brian Stelter emails: The truth is, it's impossible to estimate how many people watched or heard Wednesday's hearings across all platforms. But the Nielsen #'s give us some insight. It's better than nothing. Nielsen said that 13.8 million people were watching across 10 networks at every average minute of the hearing. The TV audience skewed older -- 10.6 million were ages 55+. I think younger viewers were more likely to stream the hearing and/or soak up the information like sponges.

>> Also of note: The two highest-rated channels during the hearings were the two mostly closely associated with political parties, Fox News and MSNBC.

>> On Wednesday night, Hannity had one of his highest-rated shows of the year, with 4.4 million total viewers. Here's my full story...

Philip Bump's analysis of cable coverage

Over at WaPo, Philip Bump had a good read Thursday on "what you learned about the impeachment hearing" depending on "what channel you watched." Bump wrote that he examined how often impeachment witnesses were mentioned on the three cable news networks. He said there was an "obvious outlier" in the group.

"Fox News was regularly much less likely to cover new revelations in the impeachment probe and less likely to mention the witnesses who offered that new information," wrote Bump. Bump's piece also included the chyrons Fox ran during prime time. It's safe to say, they are FAR DIFFERENT than the two other channels.

Baquet: "Picture Watergate with Fox News"

NYT exec editor Dean Baquet was in London on Thursday and touched on Trump and impeachment during a discussion. One notable moment, per our Hadas Gold who was at the event, from Baquet was his rhetorically asking of the audience to "picture Watergate with Fox News." Baquet noted that "it would've been a very different story."

Baquet at the event continued to also repeat that he does not "want to be part of the resistance." But he did say, noting Watergate was over two years long, "Overtime we win - we the free press .... by continuing to be independent, continuing to dig, continuing to report." Baquet also noted "what happened to Bill O'Reilly" who had been "seen as utterly invincible" by most people. "Truth won," Baquet said. "Truth beat Bill O'Reilly."

Meanwhile, on social media...

"America's first presidential impeachment process in the age of viral online politics began with out-of-context tweets, internet conspiracy theories and thousands of digital ads," Brian Fung and Donie O'Sullivan wrote in a story published Thursday. "As House Democrats asked detailed questions of two senior US diplomats on Wednesday, the barriers between digital life and the physical world began to break down, with occasionally surreal results."

>> Key line from the piece: "The internet — long viewed as a mirror simply reflecting the real world — is increasingly being used by powerful actors to shape the public's perception of reality..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Top headline on CNN.com: "Democrats find key word to describe Trump scandal: Bribery..." (CNN)

-- "YouTube and Facebook said they'd delete posts identifying the purported whistle-blower. It hasn't worked out so well..." (NYT)

-- Jack Shafer argues that "the press should name the whistleblower..." (Politico)

-- Media Matters is targeting Fox with a new campaign zeroing in on its carriage fees... (Multichannel News)

-- Dan Abrams hosted a debate between Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman and a Breitbart editor... (Mediaite)

-- McClatchy will eliminate Saturday print issues of all its newspapers by the end of 2020... (NYT)

-- Uh oh. Apple News+ has had difficulty adding subscribers since it signed up 200,000 in its first week of launch back in March... (CNBC)

-- Meanwhile... Apple is mulling whether to bundle its News+, AppleTV+, and Apple Music services to gain more subscribers... (Bloomberg)

-- Twitter will announce on Friday details about how it will ban political ads... (CNN Business)

Salem announces it will carry Bannon's "War Room"

Salem Radio Network announced Thursday that it will begin airing Steve Bannon's daily "War Room" show about impeachment. The show is hosted by Bannon, former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller, and right-wing commentator Raheem Kassam. "We are honored to join Salem, the largest conservative and populist radio network in the country," Bannon said.

Pelosi zings Sinclair reporter as "Mr. Republican talking points"

At her weekly press conference Thursday, Nancy Pelosi knocked Sinclair reporter James Rosen for asking a question about the anonymity of the whistleblower. "I wonder if you could explain to the American people, why the legal rights of the whistleblower should prevail in this political setting over those of President Trump, who should ordinarily enjoy a right to confront his accuser?" asked Rosen, a former Fox reporter.

The idea Trump should be able to "confront his accuser" has been a prominent talking point among Republican lawmakers and right-wing media hosts, despite it being rejected by legal experts. Pelosi hit back at Rosen, calling him "Mr. Republican talking points" and saying she would "vehemently" defend the whistleblower's rights to stay anonymous.

Latest on the California school shooting

All the cable news networks were offering analysis on Wednesday's first round of impeachment hearings on Thursday morning when news emerged from California that there had been another school shooting.

The shooter took out a handgun and shot five people before turning the gun on himself. A 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were killed during the rampage, which lasted 16 seconds from start to finish. The shooter is in grave condition. CNN has the latest here...

JUST IN:

Those banned from Facebook can't circumvent ban by running for office

If you've been banned from Facebook, you won't be able to circumvent the ban and create an account on the platform by simply running for political office. There had been some questions whether someone like the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who had been banned from the platform, would be allowed to return while running for public office. But a Facebook spokesperson told me Thursday night, "People who have been banned from our services aren't able to set up a new account even if they're running for office."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

By Brian Stelter:

-- It's always worth noting when the Bezos-owned WaPo scrutinizes the Bezos-run Amazon. The newest example: "How Amazon's quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes" by Jay Greene... (WaPo)

-- Fascinating story about "Hollywood futurist" Yves Bergquist: Before he "was a director at USC's Entertainment Technology Center and a key artificial-intelligence guru for major studios, he was Alexis Debat, a tarnished national security expert and ABC News consultant who fled D.C. in scandal..." (THR)

-- "Why Donald Trump Jr.'s bestselling book has a dagger beside it. Yes, a dagger:" Because the NYT found a significant # of "bulk purchases" of the book... (Literary Hub)

-- Correction: Yesterday I misspelled the title of Mitch Albom's new book "Finding Chika." Thanks to all of you who emailed me to flag the error!

Soros organization head and ADL call for Fox to ban Joe diGenova

The president of George Soros's philanthropic organization wrote a letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Thursday imploring her to ban Joe diGenova from the network. DiGenova, a regular Fox guest, employed an anti-Semitic trope during an appearance on Lou Dobbs' program Wednesday night, falsely stating that Soros "controls a very large part of the foreign service, part of the State Department and the activities of FBI agents overseas."

"This is beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous," Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard wrote. "It's patently untrue; it is not even possible. This is McCarthyite. On behalf of Mr. Soros ... I ask you what attorney Joseph Welch asked of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, in one of the darkest chapters in this country's history: 'At long last, have you left no sense of decency?'" Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt agreed, saying in a tweet that diGenova should not be welcome on the network.

No comment from Fox

I checked in twice on Thursday with Fox to see if the network had any comment. I never heard back. For what it is worth, when Judicial Watch's Chris Farrell made similar comments about Soros on Dobbs' show, a Fox spokesperson said he would no longer be booked...

Dobbs has his own history of anti-Soros rhetoric

I'd be remiss not to note that Dobbs himself has employed inflammatory rhetoric to attack Soros. In the past, Dobbs has referred to Soros as an "evil SOB" and "insidious." Dobbs has also peddled various conspiracy theories about Soros...

SPEAKING OF SOROS CONSPIRACY THEORIES...

Steve King deletes tweet falsely suggesting Soros' son was whistleblower

Iowa Congressman Steve King on Thursday posted photos of Soros' son in a now-deleted tweet, bizarrely suggesting the billionaire's son was the whistleblower. "Adam Schiff said, 'I do not know the identity of the whistleblower.' @RepAdamSchiff here are four strong clues," wrote King.

But as people pointed out, the person in the photos was Alexander Soros who could not be the whistleblower as he does not work in government. "This member of Congress is putting a target on somebody without doing a basic Google check," noted Axios reporter Jonathan Swan. King eventually deleted the tweet.

>> Of note: Despite King's claim being totally off base, and likely having the ability to incite harassment against an innocent person, a Twitter spox told me it did not violate any of their rules.

Calls grow for Stephen Miller to resign after emails show he privately promoted white nationalist media

Earlier this week, 2015 emails published by the SPLC -- and later obtained by CNN -- showed that Stephen Miller had privately promoted white nationalist and fringe media to editors of the far-right website Breitbart. On Thursday, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus called on him to resign.

"It's clearer than ever that Stephen Miller is a far-right white nationalist with a racist and xenophobic worldview," said the statement. "His beliefs are appalling, indefensible, and completely at odds with public service." Other Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also called for Miller's resignation.

>> Uh, what? WH spox Hogan Gidley responded to criticism of Miller on Thursday by suggesting the outrage was connected to Miller's Jewish faith: "He loves this country and hates bigotry in all forms," Gidley told NYT, "and it concerns me as to why so many on the left consistently attack Jewish members of this administration."

Young Turks host is running for Congress

Brian Stelter writes: "I will be running for Congress in California's 25th district," Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks announced on Thursday evening. "I'm going to fight to get you guys higher wages and to get you health care that your family needs."

Uygur is a creator and host of the popular online video network for progressives... And he put that network to use... Host Ana Kasparian took over his daily show The Conversation and interviewed him, and to her credit she asked him some tough questions, including about his past denial of the Armenian Genocide. He repeatedly plugged his campaign website and said donations were coming in at a rate of $1,000 a minute...

The New Gannett

Kerry Flynn emails: Gannett and New Media, parent company of GateHouse, shareholders approved the merger between the US newspaper giants. The deal has journalists and advocates for strong local media worried about the future. The companies said in August the merger would save about $275M to $300M annually by combining costs. But they haven't shared details on where they will make cuts.

>> Ken Doctor's report: "In any room of eight people at a current GateHouse or Gannett operation, one is likely to see her job gone in 2020. One in eight would add up to 3,450 of the combined companies' 27,600 jobs. Some observers expect that the final total to be higher than that."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- Anna Merlan's first feature for Vice's Motherboard: "Earthquake Conspiracy Theorists Are Wreaking Havoc During Emergencies..." (Vice)

-- NiemanLab shared the Salt Lake Tribune's request for nonprofit status, and the IRS' response. Christine Schmidt writes, "Attention, local newspaper owners: This is now a proven, IRS-approved path to convert your money-losing daily into a community nonprofit. Give it some thought..." (NiemanLab)

-- Eric Bolling, the former Fox host who now has a show at Sinclair, says the reach of local TV is "massive..." (Forbes)

-- Study shows what magazines might lose when they go digital... (Mediaite)

Be careful with Rev

Kerry Flynn emails: For any journalist who uses the transcription service Rev, a quick reminder: You're granting a third-party service and gig workers access to your reporting. Sarah Emerson of Medium's OneZero spoke with Rev workers who warned of data concerns and said they've transcribed conversations that include personal info and trade secrets. More in the story...

Fears over crackdown on free speech as Nigeria refuses to release prominent journalist

Bukola Adebayo reports for CNN: "A former presidential candidate and journalist is being held by Nigeria's security forces despite being twice granted bail, his lawyer told CNN. Omoyele Sowore is an investigative journalist and founder of the New York-based news site Sahara Reporters, who was arrested in August by the country's intelligence agency, the Department of State Services.

"He is charged with treason felony for organizing a Revolution Now protest, which the government said was an attempt to disrupt peace in the nation. He is also charged with cyberstalking President Muhammadu Buhari and money laundering. Sowore has pleaded not guilty to the charges. One week after meeting his bail conditions, the journalist is still being held, his lawyer Femi Falana said Wednesday." Read the rest of Adebayo's detailed report...

>> "DSS officials said in a statement sent to CNN that Sowore was yet to be released because the appropriate persons -- his sureties -- had not come to pick him up and those that have shown up are not his recognized sureties."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

By Lisa Repsers France:

-- Oscar-winning actress Mo'Nique has sued Netflix, alleging the streaming giant lowballed an offer for her to do a comedy special because she's a black woman...

-- Carrie Underwood fans are not happy with the CMAs after she failed to win entertainer of the year...

-- Pink is taking a break to focus on family...

-- Here's that "Last Christmas" twist explained...

Taylor Swift: I'm not being allowed to perform my music for AMAs

"Taylor Swift on Thursday claimed an ongoing dispute with her former music label has presented a new roadblock as she is being told she cannot perform many songs from her past at the upcoming American Music Awards or use it in a forthcoming Netflix documentary about her life, which has been in production for several years," CNN's Sandra Gonzalez reported Thursday, noting that the disclosure came "months after she spoke publicly about her displeasure with a deal that saw music manager Scooter Braun take control of her old catalog."

>> From Swift's statement: "I've been planning to perform a medley of my hits throughout the decade on the show. Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun have now said that I'm not allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I'm allowed to next year..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

By Frank Pallotta:

-- Ted Sarandos talked about the Disney+ launch at the Paley Center's IC Summit on Thursday... (THR)

-- "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" has been renewed for an eighth season at NBC... (Variety)

-- Netflix and Paramount have struck a deal to produce a new "Beverly Hills Cop" film starring Eddie Murphy... (Deadline)

Lowry's look at this weekend's new flicks

Brian Lowry writes: A split decision on two movies premiering this weekend, both based on true events: "Ford v. Ferrari" clicks on all cylinders, focusing on Ford's audacious attempt to unseat Ferrari as a racing-car champ in the 1960s, behind a pair of characters played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale. In the period and themes, it has a strong "The Right Stuff" vibe, and an old-school studio feel. Here's the full review...

>> By contrast, I wanted to like "The Report" more than I did. The Amazon-produced movie stars Adam Driver (in his second starring vehicle of the month) as Dan Jones, a Senate staffer working to expose the CIA's torture program, and the efforts to thwart its release. Read on...

>> Also recommended: "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer," a CNN Films production hitting theaters this weekend. It covers all the familiar ground about Trump, obviously, but has a more sobering message regarding the paper's influence on media, charting its influence through coverage of John Belushi, Gary Hart and O.J. Simpson. According to former editor Steve Coz, it was the Simpson trial, and Enquirer's role in it, which "caused the wheels of traditional journalism to fall off."

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

By Katie Pellico:

-- "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" is reshuffling its writing talent. Ariel Dumas will join Jay Katsir as head writer. Katsir will take on a supervising producer title, while supervising producer Opus Moreschi will take on more duties including long-term lead projects. All three writers have been with Colbert since "The Colbert Report..." (THR)

-- NYT's Ben Sisario explains how SmartStudy, a South Korean media company, is trying to turn Baby Shark "into a children's brand on the scale of Elmo..." (NYT)

-- After the dawn of Disney+ this week, Bilge Ebiri takes us back to the first "Disney Renaissance," and the 1991 "Beauty and the Beast" screening that "changed everything..." (Vulture)

Thanks for reading! Send me an email with your feedback/tips, or connect with me on Twitter. See you tomorrow!