| | | | | We have an abbreviated newsletter for you tonight because, honestly, it's the last Friday in August, most media CEOs skipped town days ago, and most of my emails are being met by out of office messages. Have a great weekend! | | | Revealed: Fox's "oppo research" against Gabriel Sherman | | "To: Interested Parties."
"Re: Gabriel Sherman."
In 2012, two full years before Sherman published his book about Roger Ailes, a book-length memo made the rounds inside Fox News. After Ailes resigned, the memo made its way to my mailbox.
The document has all the markings of "opposition research" about a political enemy. It includes property records, voter registration information, a note that the researchers could find no criminal record for Sherman, plus an "Internet dredge" of notable tweets, blog comments about him, and an NYT write-up of his wedding. Here's my full story...
-- Sherman's reaction: "I don't take it personally. As I report in my book, Ailes was determined to control his story. This appears to be more evidence of that..."
-- Key point: "We always wondered why Ailes was so obsessed and paranoid about Gabe's book," a former Fox News reporter said. In the wake of the sexual harassment scandal, "maybe we know why..." | | | P.R. department denies involvement | | | So who wrote the memo for Ailes? That's unclear. Was it the Brian Lewis-era P.R. department? Or one of Ailes' consultants -- "friends of Roger" who conducted private investigations for him? Lewis, through his lawyer, declined to comment. His successor, Irena Briganti, who now runs P.R., said the department "was never involved in conducting or executing any opposition research against Gabe Sherman. It's been widely reported that there was a separate team not associated with PR which conducted extensive operations unbeknownst to anyone whose official job was to deal with the press." | | | Ailes wanted to know voter registration | | Ailes had a particular interest in knowing which of his perceived opponents were registered Democrats. Sherman wasn't the only person he sought out voter registration info for. When I shared part of the Sherman memo with a former Fox employee, she said she had seen other memos like it... And said the docs always contained voter registration info.
Here's my full story, with more details from the memo... | | | AP botches Clinton report and response | | | Dylan Byers reports: Hillary Clinton is surrounded by suggestions of controversy. Terms like "Clinton Foundation," "email server," and "Benghazi" hover around her like a faint smoke that hints at the existence of fire. But finding the fire -- the lie, the misdeed, the unethical act -- is proving to be rather difficult, as evidenced this week by an inaccurate tweet and arguably misleading story from the Associated Press that were quickly rebutted by the Clinton campaign and dismissed by many media outlets. Three days later, the AP is still standing by its story and has yet to correct its tweet, despite near unanimous agreement among other journalists that the tweet, at least, was false. Read the rest of Dylan's story here... | | | Moment of silence at WDBJ | | | This morning, one year to the day after the WDBJ shooting, the station held a moment of silence on the air to honor Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Staffers laid flowers at the memorial outside the building... | | | Concern about "one man bands" | | As I mentioned in this story about the anniversary, the station is under new management... There were layoffs earlier this summer... And most of the ten people who exited the station were videographers and other personnel who worked behind the camera.
Now there is increasing pressure to work as "one man bands," i.e. to do solo live shots, which is causing some discomfort in the newsroom. Veteran local reporter and firefighter Dave Statter responded: "It reduces situational awareness, and in turn safety..." | | -- James B. Stewart's must-read: "How Philippe Dauman Lost the Battle for Viacom" (NYT)
-- Just announced: AT&T and HBO have struck a new "multi-platform" carriage deal that will bring HBO and Cinemax to the forthcoming DirecTV Now streaming service... (Press release)
--Nielsen has updated its "TV Universe" estimate... Peter Kafka explains it all here... (Recode)
-- GWU's student-run media reporting web site MediaFile launches on Monday... I think we're going to be hearing a lot about this site... Ben Mullin has a preview... (Poynter) | | | Jorge Ramos on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | This afternoon Brent Bozell's Media Research Center called on Univision to remove Jorge Ramos from the anchor desk until after the election. While we all (Bozell included) know that's not going to happen, it highlights the conservative dissatisfaction with Ramos, the highest profile anchor on Spanish language TV. On Sunday's "Reliable" I'll ask Ramos about Bozell... Ramos's recent Time.com op-ed... Trump's shifting immigration position... Trump and Clinton's outreach to Univision... and more... | | | Along with Ramos, our guest lineup includes AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll, Romney campaign guru Stuart Stevens, MTV's Jamil Smith, author J.D. Vance, and pro-Trump commentator Scottie Nell Hughes... Join us Sunday at 11am ET! | | | Facebook removes "Trending" writers, replaces them with algorithm | | Heather Kelly reports: "Facebook is removing the troublesome humans responsible for manually writing news descriptions and headlines for its Trending box. The company is turning the job over to algorithms that automatically select topics and generate text."
-- More: Quartz says "Facebook has laid off the entire editorial staff on the Trending team," 15-18 workers "contracted through a third party..." | | "It's apparently no longer a question of whether to sell or not, but for how much," Ken Doctor reports. Gannett's third offer for Tronc has "Tronc moving forward with a counteroffer." Read more...
-- More via Crains: "A New York hedge fund, HG Vora Capital Management, has become the biggest shareholder in newspaper company Tronc and may get involved in talks to sell the company..." | | | Adding up Clinton's interviews | | Confession: I wanted to do this, but David Folkenflik beat me to it! He examined the Hillary Clinton campaign's assertion that she has given more than 300 interviews so far this year.
Folkenflik's review "suggests those claims by the campaign were at once true and somewhat misleading — some were conducted by unlikely questioners, and overall she favored local radio and national TV hits over granting interviews with national reporters covering her on the campaign trail and with print publications." Read Folkenflik's great story here... | | | "Trump broke the conservative media" | | | Oliver Darcy's opus is finally here. And it was worth the wait. Check out what Charlie Sykes and John Ziegler told him... | | | Audience for Clinton's Reno speech: the press? | | On the latest "Keeping it 1600" podcast, Jon Favreau suggested that Hillary Clinton's Reno speech was really aimed at the reporters in the back of the room and in NYC control rooms: "I don't know that it's for voters at all, I think it's for the press. I think it's to remind the press, 'these are all the things he said.'"
All of Trump's race-related controversies were covered intensively at the time, but "then we all sort of moved on," so the Clinton camp is trying to say, "no no no, we're not moving on from this," Favreau added.
Dan Pfeiffer concurred and warned, as he has before, that "the press is in danger of normalizing Trump..." | | | Discussing the debates on "Smerconish" | | | On this day next month, I can guarantee you that you'll be watching TV at 9pm. Guarantee. Why? Because September 26 is the first presidential debate. Frank Sesno and I will be on "Smerconish" tomorrow morning... 9am sharp... for a conversation about the candidates, the potential moderators, and the stakes... | | | "Always cracks me up when someone asks why the media doesn't cover this or that. YOU are on Social Media. YOU ARE THE MEDIA !"
--Mark Cuban on Twitter tonight... | | | "Southside With You" out this weekend | | Click here to watch Brian Lowry's review of the Obama first date movie "Southside With You." Lowry emails:
"Southside" is receiving moderately positive reviews, with most calling the somewhat fictionalized account sweet but slight and hagiographic. Still, it joins a fairly long if not particularly dense tradition of "Before they were President" movies and miniseries, from the JFK war story "PT 109" (the first movie about a sitting president) to the complementary FDR bios "Eleanor and Franklin" and "Warm Springs." So for those with some openings in their Netflix queues, here are five to watch... | | Frank Pallotta reports: On Sunday night MTV's Video Music Awards are coming home -- sort of. After three years away, the VMAs are back in NYC, from which the show has aired 15 times, including its inaugural broadcast in 1984. And in many ways, the VMAs with its fast-paced, chaotic, anything can happen feel is best suited for a New York state of mind. Rihanna will open the show at 9pm ET...
-- The show's EP Garrett English told Frank: "We always knew that the show needed to be in that room. For us and for artists and for music and culture aficionados, Madison Square Garden represents one of the greatest stages in the world and one of the most iconic venues in entertainment that exists..." | | | Britney Spears is everywhere | | | Chloe Melas emails: You might be thinking you're suddenly seeing Britney Spears all over the place lately -- and you're right. The 34-year-old pop star is making a comeback in a major way. Her new album, "Glory," dropped late Thursday night... Lifetime is reportedly doing a biopic on her life... She appeared on "Carpool Karaoke" this week... And she will take the MTV VMAs stage for the first time in 10 years on Sunday. Her PR/marketing strategy is working... | | | 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 Sunday... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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