| | | | | Kate O'Brian teaching this fall | | | I've been emailing with ABC News SVP turned Al Jazeera America president Kate O'Brian, whose last official day with Al Jaz was last Sunday. The shuttered cable news channel was nominated for ten Emmys last month -- a "nice way to go out," she said, "although deeply bittersweet." O'Brian's next step will be a semester at UNC Chapel Hill -- she'll be the Hearst Visiting Professor, teaching a journalism class for seniors... | | | Mark Mooney emails: The last journalists have left Fleet Street, the name synonymous with British journalism and all of its successes and flamboyant excesses, Reuters writes. The street, once the heart of London's newspaper industry, has been shedding journos for decades. The only ones left until Friday were a pair from the Scottish-based Sunday Post. But the Post closed its London operation today. The old newspaper haunts are now restaurants and bankers. The art deco building that was the headquarters for Daily Express is now Goldman Sachs' HQ... | | | Keep scrolling for more Olympics coverage... | | Media Matters spotted this: On Fox this afternoon, Heather Nauert asked Ben Carson about Peggy Noonan's critique of Trump, and Carson responded, "I say that the left, the progressives, are going to pull every trick in the book." Huh? Nauert jumped in: "Yeah, but Peggy Noonan is not on the left. She's not a progressive." Carson said, "I think she is a progressive." (hat tip: Oliver Darcy)
-- Noonan's column: "The Week They Decided Donald Trump Was Crazy" | | Bret Stephens, of Murdoch's WSJ, and Sean Hannity, of Murdoch's Fox News, found themselves in a Twitter war of words last night and today... After Stephens called Hannity the "dumbest anchor" on Fox... HuffPost can get you caught up here.
"I love kicking your ass," Hannity wrote to Stephens this afternoon. Breitbart says this fight represents "something very real that is happening in the GOP right now..." | | | Michael Morell leaves CBS, endorses Clinton | | Former CIA director Michael Morell dropped his Clinton endorsement/Trump condemnation via the NYT op-ed page this morning. It turns out he "dropped his gig as a CBS News analyst before going public," Hadas Gold reports.
CBS says "Mike shared his plans with the network and we agreed that he would end his relationship with CBS News prior to engaging in any political activity." Fran Townsend is the net's new senior national security analyst... | | Callum Borchers makes a great point: Thanks to Trump's repeated, widely publicized warnings about the election possibly being "rigged," the fear of "election tampering is now off the fringe and into the mainstream. That's a big win for Trump."
I said on CNN this morning that the "rigged" talk is preposterous -- just the latest evidence of Trump's conspiratorial tendencies. And I said I think we in the media have to be careful with how we cover this. But I was still talking about it... | | Per "Reliable" executive producer Jon Auerbach, Trump is not scheduled to appear on any of the Sunday shows. (Neither is Clinton.) This is noteworthy since Trump's interview on ABC's "This Week" made a lot of news last weekend, much of it detrimental to Trump. Is he going to continue to eschew non-Fox networks?
-- Tim Kaine is booked on "Meet the Press..." John Kasich is on "State of the Union..." | | | Dylan Byers emails: It went by so fast! Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the first GOP primary debate, when Trump went head-to-head with Megyn Kelly over his insulting remarks about women. That spat would launch a year's-worth of complaints from Trump about unfair treatment by the star Fox News host... | | | Trump shopping for TV ads in 17 states | | | National Journal's Adam Wollner scoops: "Trump is taking the initial steps towards airing his first TV ads of his general-election campaign... The Trump campaign's media buyer, Strategic Media Services, requested TV ad rates in 17 states..." Here are the states. | | | Look out for Clinton's Olympics ads | | | The Clinton campaign is not confirming this yet, but Bloomberg's John McCormick reports that the campaign "has placed at least $5.5 million on reservations on the NBC network, which owns Olympic broadcast rights, during the 17-day games." During the 2012 games in London, President Obama's campaign "spent an estimated $4.5 million on NBC," while Mitt Romney spent $2.8 million. Speaking of Rio... | | | Campaign pause due to the Olympics? | | | "Reliable" intern Julia Waldow flagged this comment from Fox's Chris Wallace: "We're post-convention," and "to a certain degree the campaign is going to kind of freeze in place for the next couple of weeks while people watch the Olympics and do something sensible instead of focusing on politics." That's been true in the past... But will it be true this year? Or will Trump keep people talking all August long? | | | NBC really is the Olympic network | | | Stats via Variety's Brian Steinberg: Between Friday, August 5 and Sunday, August 21, NBC "will show 260.5 hours of Olympics-related programming. On most days, NBC primetime programming will air from 8 p.m. to midnight ET/PT; daytime will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET/PT; and late night will air from 12:35 a.m. to 1:35 a.m. ET/PT. Replays will fill the slots between 1:35 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. ET/PT. Essentially, aside from 'Today,' 'NBC Nightly News' and some hours from local stations, NBC will feature Olympics events and features nearly around the clock." More... | | Brian Lowry emails: It's a pretty good bet NBC executives will be up bright and early Saturday, seeking reassurance that the Olympics are going to be every bit as big as anticipated. In the meantime, viewers will probably notice a relative absence of alternatives, with a number of other programs taking a break (such as rival late night fare, a la Stephen Colbert's "Late Show") against the games, figuring there's not much point in staying original for these two weeks.
Another thing to keep an eye on will be how NBC allocates its on-air promotion. The network has relatively few new shows premiering in the fall, so beyond pushing them, you'll probably see quite a bit reminding viewers of new times/days for returning series like "Blindspot" and "Chicago Med." And if that doesn't work, they can literally blame it on Rio... | | | Zellweger denies plastic surgery rumors in passionate essay | | | Sandra Gonzalez reports: Renee Zellweger, a target of the entertainment tabloids for months, "wants the media to focus on more important things than her physical appearance and rumors about plastic surgery." In a HuffPost blog post today, Zellweger wrote, "Not that it's anyone's business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes. This fact is of no true import to anyone at all, but that the possibility alone was discussed among respected journalists and became a public conversation is a disconcerting illustration of news/entertainment confusion and society's fixation on physicality." Read more... | | High expectations for "Suicide Squad" | | Frank Pallotta emails: The bad guys of "Suicide Squad" are looking to save the world this weekend -- and Warner Bros. as well. The film is the next in the studio's DC Extended Universe, its connected line of films based off of DC Comics. Following the underwhelming response to "Batman v Superman," the studio needs a hit, and the film is off to a good start with $20.5 million in preview showings. But a 27% Rotten Tomatoes score could ruin the fun. Read Frank's full story here...
Will "Suicide Squad" save the day or fall to the big bad movie critics?! Come back for our next letter on Sunday to find out! | | | What do you like about today's newsletter -- and what do you think we should improve? Email your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We'll be back tomorrow... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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