| | | | If I had a dollar for every time I heard the name "Trump" in the Hamptons this weekend, I could buy a place out there.
This quip by a media CEO stuck with me: "He's already won the campaign for space in our heads."
There are three weeks til the first debate. Nine weeks til Election Day -- arguably THE defining day of the decade. Truth be told, every day between now and then is important. Journalists have an opportunity every day to either rise to the occasion or give readers/viewers new reasons to distrust the media. So buckle up... Make the most of every day... Here goes... | | | Trump says he "respects" debate moderators | | | Speaking of Trump: Over the summer he objected to the debate schedule, but "as of this moment," he is on board for all three debates. During a gaggle this afternoon, he also said he has no qualms with the moderators: "I like them. I respect the moderators. I do respect them." Here's my story... Scroll down for details... | | | Ailes hires Harder; sends threatening letter to NYMag and Sherman | | If you haven't read Gabriel Sherman's NYMag cover story about Roger Ailes yet, well, what are you waiting for? Click here to read it...
...Then read this: We found out today that Ailes and his wife Elizabeth Ailes have retained Charles Harder, the libel lawyer who's representing Hulk Hogan in his suit against Gawker and Melania Trump in her suit against The Daily Mail.
After Sherman's story was posted online on Friday, Harder sent a threatening letter to both Sherman and NYMag. A spokeswoman for the mag confirms: The letter asked "that we preserve documents related to the Ailes, for a possible defamation claim." There was nothing specific for the mag to respond to, however. "The letter sent by Harder was not informative as to the substance of their objections to the reporting. Sherman's work is and has been carefully reported."
Scroll down for much more on this... | | | Was that a press conference just now? | | This afternoon, on the first day Hillary Clinton traveled on the same plane as her traveling press pack, Clinton took Q's for 25 minutes… About a dozen in total. It was definitely Clinton's first "gaggle" since July. Was it also her first "press conference?" Some of the beat reporters say yes, they're counting it. And the Clinton campaign obviously agrees with this assessment. I'm assuming the Trump campaign and the RNC will not. The RNC has been sending out daily press releases about Clinton's decision not to hold a full-fledged presser since last December.
This afternoon's Q&A wasn't a formal, POTUS-style press conference. Bottom line: If Clinton keeps taking Q's regularly, the complaints from both the press corps and the GOP will fade... | | | Muir scores Clinton and Trump interviews on the same day | | | David Muir became the anchor of "World News Tonight" two years ago this week. So how's this for an anniversary surprise: He taped a joint interview with Clinton and Kaine today, and THEN taped separate interviews with Trump and Pence, all in Ohio… All airing Tuesday on "GMA" and "World…" | | | Media week ahead calendar | | It's the proverbial back to school week... So there's a lot on the calendar...
-- Tuesday: 7am: Michael Strahan joins the full-time cast of "GMA"
-- Tuesday evening: "Sully" premiere in NYC (in theaters Friday)
-- Tuesday: 11pm: Brian Williams' show starts on MSNBC
-- Wednesday: 1pm: Apple unveils new products
-- Wednesday: 3pm: Sony holds a Playstation launch event
-- Wednesday: 8pm: Trump and Clinton at IAVA's "Commander-in-Chief" forum, led by Matt Lauer, on NBC and MSNBC
-- Thursday: Toronto International Film Festival begins (Frank Pallotta will be there)
-- Thursday night: NFL season begins with Broncos-Panthers on NBC
-- Friday: 9pm: "Stand up to Cancer" telethon | | "Conspiracy thinking. Racism. These are things that are outside the norm of what we've accepted in American politics. And I think what the press is struggling with is, how do you not normalize him, but at the same time be fair and do your job as a journalist?"
--Jacob Weisberg on Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." Watch here... | | -- Facebook's News Feed turned 10 today. Here's Mark Zuckerberg's anniversary post... (Facebook)
-- At a Q&A with staffers last week, Jonah Peretti vowed that BuzzFeed "was not planning to sell its news division." In this NYT story by Sydney Ember, he acknowledges tension between the news and entertainment sides, but says the tension was inevitable... (NYT)
-- Ken Doctor calls this the "revenge of the legacy sector" --> "NYT and WashPost just edged out Buzzfeed and Huffpost for the most digital readers. It seems the digital news revolution may be kinder to incumbent media companies than we've thought..." (ironically? published at Politico) | | | Highlights from Sunday's show | | | Web sites spreading lies about voter fraud | | | I wrote this essay for Sunday's show, but we had to shelve it to make space for Friday's debate moderator news. I hope you'll check it out on CNN.com. It's about why some voters are so concerned about voting fraud… connecting the dots between their fears, misleading stories on fringe web sites, the proliferation of these stories on social media, and Trump's dangerous warnings about a "rigged election…" | | -- Margaret Sullivan might make you think differently about comments. Her column is titled "Everyone seems to hate online reader comments. Here's why I treasure them..." (WashPost)
-- I almost missed this fun Fernanda Santos read about the "the curse of a Phoenix weatherman" who has to find new ways to say "it's hot..." (NYT) | | | The moderators, announced Friday morning... | | Debate 1, 9/26: NBC's Lester Holt
Debate 2, town hall style, 10/9: CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC's Martha Raddatz
Debate 3, 10/19: "Fox News Sunday" moderator Chris Wallace
VP debate, 10/3: CBS's Elaine Quijano | | -- The five biggest broadcast nets and cablers are represented in the choices...
-- C-SPAN's Steve Scully will serve as backup moderator for all 4 debates...
-- Wallace is the first Fox News journalist to ever moderate a CPD debate...
-- Quijano is 42, "making her the youngest moderator since 1988 when Judy Woodruff was 41," per CBS...
-- And Quijano, who is Filipino-American, is the first Asian American to moderate...
-- The Advocate notes that Anderson Cooper is the "first out gay man to moderate a presidential debate..."
-- Half the town hall Q's will come from in-person participants while "the other half will be based on topics of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources..."
-- Remember: NO commercial breaks... | | Trump speaking with reporters today about his debate prep: "I think I'm doing the same thing" that worked for him during the primaries -- prepping, but not over-preparing. No one is playing Clinton in mock debates, because he is not holding mock debates...
He said he's looking forward to the sessions and knows candidates have "an obligation to the debates." But his comment about attending "as of this moment" raised reporter eyebrows. When asked "what could cause you to change your mind?," Trump looked out the window of the airplane and said, "hurricanes, natural disasters."
In a tweet, Clinton traveling press secretary Nick Merrill responded, "Presumably "natural disaster" refers to a poor performance by Trump, right?" | | | Quoting Dylan Byers' story from Friday: "The debates will not include a Latino moderator, and Univision isn't pleased." Randy Falco wrote a letter to the commission expressing "disappointment, and frankly disbelief..." | | | There's been a drumbeat about this all weekend long... | | Vox's Matthew Yglesias Friday morning: "Guess which candidate's foundation was caught in an illegal campaign funding scheme?" (Trump's)
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WashPost's Paul Waldman this afternoon: "Trump's history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?"
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Intense social media commentary about how the press is supposedly covering up Trump's scandals... | | After Clinton's coughing bout earlier today, Drudge is leading with this headline: "GETTING WORSE: CLINTON COUGH VIOLENTLY RETURNS // HEALTH STATUS UP IN THE AIR." I would call this wishful thinking on Drudge's part...
-- Hugh Hewitt tweets something more reasonable: "Anyone with allergies in broadcast --and I am one-- has sympathy for Hillary Clinton and coughing. I'm voting Trump but lay off the coughs" | | | A box inside a box of conspiracy theories | | I love viewer email. I really do. Most of the emails are insightful. But this one is the exception to the rule. It's titled "I GET IT. YOU'RE UNDER ORDERS." This emailer has concocted a new conspiracy theory in order to rationalize his conspiracy theory about Clinton: "You're under orders by CNN to never question Hillary's health. That answers why you can't talk about it."
If you can think of some response that would satisfy this viewer, please share it with me. Otherwise... It's in the junk folder... | | | Trump refuses to disavow birtherism | | ...Has been accurate every day of this year. "Trump refuses to say whether Obama born in U.S."
Trump's Saturday visit to a black church in Detroit triggered new questions from journalists about Trump's past belief in birtherism. Every time he's given a chance to disavow it, he turns down the chance. "I don't talk about it," he said again today. Trump gave the same excuse he gave me back in June: If he talks about it, that's all the media will write about. (Remember, he told me he'd "LOVE TO" discuss Obama's citizenship, if it weren't for that pesky press…) | | | Murdoch "didn't appreciate how toxic an environment it was..." | | | Back to Ailes and Sherman for a moment. The key takeaway from Sherman's cover story: The execs both above and below Ailes looked the other way while the Fox News chief engaged in "predatory" behavior. Rupert Murdoch "didn't appreciate how toxic an environment it was that Ailes created," a person close to the Murdochs told Sherman... | | | Media Matters considering legal action... Here's why | | The most headline-grabbing part of the story: Fox News "obtained the phone records of journalists, by legally questionable means." Citing "two sources with direct knowledge of the incident," Sherman says the channel's general counsel, Dianne Brandi, "hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cell-phone records of Joe Strupp," the veteran reporter who works for Media Matters.
Brandi, through a spokesperson, denied the allegation. Media Matters says it is pursuing all legal options... Here's my full story from Friday... | | | Other tidbits from Sherman's story | | — Ailes' longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza "became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive," and "seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts" for women Ailes wanted to meet...
— A former Fox producer told Sherman that "Laterza entered fake names into Ailes's datebook when women went into his office: 'If you got ahold of his ledger, you would not know who visited him.'"
— After the harassment scandal broke, before Ailes resigned, he "told executives that he was being persecuted by the liberal media and by the Murdoch sons. According to a high-level source inside the company, Ailes complained to 21st Century Fox general counsel Gerson Zweifach that James, whose wife had worked for the Clinton Foundation, was trying to get rid of him in order to help elect Hillary Clinton."
— "Four sources close to the family" say that Ailes' wife Elizabeth is "taking all of the revelations especially hard." Giuliani, "who officiated their wedding, told Murdoch she would likely divorce Ailes, according to two sources..." | | | Brian Stelter, Joke Thief! | | | Media editor Alex Koppelman emails: Sad news breaking about one of our own. Earlier today, I made a HILARIOUS joke in an email to Brian Stelter, the author of this newsletter, that involved word play related to the fact that it was Labor Day. Later, in an email to the rest of the people working on our Media and Entertainment beats, Stelter repeated the joke without proper credit, leaving those people wondering who had come up with such a brilliant witticism. An investigation is ongoing... | | | (Stelter: I can't think of a witty comeback. I've already labored too much on this holiday!) | | | What do you like about today's newsletter -- and what do you think we should improve? Email your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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