| | | | | Facebook should not fall for hoaxes | | Facebook has a fake news problem. Full stop. The company says it is addressing the problem, but I'm not the only one who's skeptical about that.
Last night and into this morning, Facebook's "Trending" topics box included an item about Megyn Kelly that was just plain wrong. The "story" -- from fringe right-wing sites that detest Kelly -- said that Fox News was "kicking out" the anchorwoman, when in fact we know the network is trying to convince her to sign a new contract.
Facebook should be taking steps to stop this trash from stinking up the whole site. Instead, the site's algorithms treat it like a legitimate "trend..." | | | What happens when editors are removed | | Crucial context for this story: Facebook was accused of an anti-conservative bias this spring. After that dust-up, the company accelerated a move away from human editors and toward computer algorithms to produce the "trending" box. Last week, the company laid off the contractors who were handling "trending," per Quartz and other sources.
So how do the algorithms handle HOAX news sites? That's one question. Another Q: What about sites that portend to tell the truth, but are so untethered from reality that they are "fake news?"
As the WashPost documents here, "the trending 'news' article about Kelly is an Ending the Fed article that is basically just a block quote of a blog post from National Insider Politics, which itself was actually aggregated from a third conservative site, Conservative 101. All three sites use the same 'BREAKING' headline."
Sounds like something out of "Human Centipede..." | | Facebook issued multiple statements today apologizing for the "trending" Kelly story. Key quote: "We're working to make our detection of hoax and satirical stories quicker and more accurate."
I'm sympathetic about the problem. Hoax sites are a plague. There is no obvious cure. But that said, I believe Facebook has an obligation not to allow hoaxes and fake news stories to "trend." I'd like to see the company go further, and actively puncture users' filter bubbles, but stopping outright hoaxes would be a good start...
-- Unfortunately related: Zuckerberg in Rome today: "Facebook will not become a media company, Mark Zuckerberg said, telling students the firm would remain a technology platform..."
-- Nieman's Joseph Lichterman asks: "Do users even care that they're being fed stories from sites of ill repute?" | | | Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner separate | | Has the press ever met a sex -- or sexting -- scandal it didn't like? Today was just the latest in a long line... This time, triggered by the NYPost's scoop about Weiner sending a sexually suggestive photo while his son was in bed with him... | | | What NY1 and the Daily News said | | | Dylan Byers emails: Both NY1 and the New York Daily News moved to sever or suspend ties with Weiner today. A spokesperson for NY1 said Weiner, a frequent contributor to "Inside City Hall," was "on indefinite leave from the station." The Daily News, for which Weiner was an occasional columnist, said it would no longer run his columns... | | | "Weiner" doc on Showtime in October | | | Showtime is set to have the TV premiere of the "Weiner" documentary on October 22. (It is excellent and disturbing.) Today the network told Dylan that execs are in talks with the filmmakers "to possibly add a postscript." Meanwhile, the doc is still playing in one U.S. theater... IFC Center in the Village... When I walked by this evening, a couple passersby were taking photos of the film's title on the marquee... | | | Fox lawyers say Tantaros is an "opportunist" | | This afternoon lawyers for Fox News and four of the defendants in Andrea Tantaros' lawsuit filed a motion seeking to compel arbitration in the case. The document included a few quotable portions that amounted to Fox's first public defense against the suit. Tantaros "is not a victim; she is an opportunist," it says. The motion goes on to say that her suit "bears all the hallmarks of the 'wannabe': she claims now that she too was victimized by Roger Ailes, when, in fact, contrary to her pleading, she never complained of any such conduct in the course of an investigation months ago." Here's my full story about the motion...
-- More: Ailes' counsel weighed in separately; Paul Farhi has details here... | | | Tantaros lawyer says Fox execs should take a lie detector test | | The motion came a few hours after Tantaros' lawyer Judd Burstein sent out a press release proposing that Tantaros and the defendants in the case take lie detector tests.
In a statement to the NYT tonight, Burstein blasts the attempt to shift the case to behind-closed-doors arbitration. If Bill Shine "and his minions are innocent, why do they want this dispute to be resolved in the shadows?" He added "if I were the victim of false allegations, I would insist that my lawyer accept Ms. Tantaros's lie detector challenge."
Is a settlement the inevitable outcome of this ugly back-and-forth? | | | "GMA" with a live audience | | What's going to change when Michael Strahan joins "GMA" "full-time" on Sept. 6? A lot, according to Variety's Brian Steinberg, who has a must-read for morning show watchers. Key detail:
"Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos and Strahan are likely to open 'GMA' most mornings. News anchor Amy Robach could appear more frequently in the show's first hour, when a focus on news is more dominant, while co-anchor Lara Spencer could be featured during the program's second half, where producers hope to build a rapport between her, Strahan and the new live audience. The whole on-air crew will appear across the program..."
Other tidbits:
-- The 8:30 half hour will have a new set with room for about 100 studio audience members...
-- Strahan won't normally be on Monday's show, since he'll be flying back from his Sunday "NFL on Fox" coverage out west... | | | "Gene Wilder mastered the art of the comic nervous breakdown, the character that always seemed seconds away from a shrieking, totally manic fit." He died today at age 83. Read Brian Lowry's appreciation here... | | -- Margaret Sullivan says some form of "Trump TV" makes "all too much sense..." (WashPost)
-- Jim Rutenberg explains why this should "go down as the election year that the girls and boys on the bus were finally kicked off the bus..." (NYT)
-- Glenn Greenwald posits that Trump is so "dangerous" that some journalists are "afraid of doing their jobs and scrutinizing his opponent..." (Mediaite)
-- New trailer for Vice's daily HBO newscast touts itself as "journalism without the makeup..." (Twitter) | | | -- Matthew Ball's latest must-read at REDEF: "The End of Windowing (And What Comes Next") (REDEF) | | | Fox's Pat Caddell advising Steve Bannon? | | | The newest name attached to the Trump campaign: longtime pollster Pat Caddell. WashPost's Robert Costa reports that Steve Bannon reached out to Caddell, and that they met up over the weekend. I think this is notable because Caddell is 1) frequently quoted by Bannon's web site Breitbart News and 2) is a Fox News political analyst... | | Speaking of conservative media types taking over the Trump campaign... TPM's Josh Marshall thinks "everyone is understating" Roger Ailes' role as "perhaps the key advisor on Trump's campaign as we move into the fall."
Ailes has no formal connection to the campaign. But he's in frequent contact with Trump. Ailes is "truly a master at understanding how to intuit, build and cultivate themes which have shaped American conservatism over the last decade," Marshall writes... | | | There was no apology on "Morning Joe" this morning... Remember, Trump said MSNBC should apologize to Pastor Mark Burns... But there was some pretty savage trolling of Donald Trump on the show. Joe Scarborough repeatedly, intentionally called Trump "Amnesty Don..." and the nickname was trending by the time the show was over... | | 1:20pm scoop by BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski: "A robocall from white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke urges voters to vote for him for U.S. Senate in Louisiana and for Donald Trump for president."
3:30pm statement from the Trump campaign to Politico: "We have no knowledge of these calls or any related activities, but strongly condemn and disavow..." | | | If you've finished "The Night Of," I highly recommend this CNN commentator/defense attorney Danny Cevallos's op-ed about how the how the show "brilliantly captured the major themes and the culture of the criminal justice system." He points out a few inaccuracies but says "the most glaring overall truth of 'The Night Of' is this: There are few winners in the criminal justice system." Read the rest here... | | | More is not always better | | Brian Lowry emails his latest column: While I found the payoff significantly more satisfying than some similar examples of buzzed-about shows, it also struck me that this is really an instance where trying to do a second version, a la "True Detective," would be misguided. One of the things that distinguishes a network like HBO (or should) is that it doesn't have to slavishly replicate every success it conjures. And we've seen enough clunky second seasons to know not everything is meant to continue, even if the story completely reboots. Increasingly ambitious TV storytelling also means respecting the amount of life a title has in it.
So while "The Night Of" was great, eight is enough. Read more from Brian here... | | The 2016 VMAs "drew 6.5 million total viewers across MTV and 10 Viacom-owned sister networks," Variety's Daniel Holloway reports. "That's down 34% from last year's roadblock telecast across the same 11 channels."
Web video streams were way up, of course. WSJ's Jason Gay made a great point on Twitter: "The reviews of VMAs are uniformly bad, but does show continuity matter anymore? Seems having 2-3 social shared moments matters much more." Beyonce, Drake and Rihanna provided plenty of memes... | | -- Chloe Melas caught up with Amber Rose and Ashley Graham on the #VMAs red carpet last night...
-- Via Lisa France: Here's what's streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu in September...
-- This cracks me up: Justin Bieber says he only accidentally returned to Instagram...
-- Also via Lisa: The 2017 Pirelli calendar boasts 7 Academy Award winners as models. It's a star studded project... | | | 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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