| | | | | TONS of media news today... So keep scrolling to get caught up... | | It's not just Donald Trump who is convinced that the media is working with the Clinton campaign to take him down. His wife Melania believes it too. Media bashing was a big part of her interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, her first interview in months, televised on Monday night.
"All the coverage is negative. All the coverage is fake. It's all a conspiracy against Donald Trump. Melania Trump checked every box," WashPost's Callum Borchers wrote right afterward.
There are two points I'd like to make:
-- This false media = Clinton, Clinton = media narrative, treated as fact by Trump and his allies, is a much more extreme media critique than what we've heard from presidential nominees in the past...
-- Donald has adopted the "Clinton News Network" nickname, his crowds chant "CNN sucks" every day, and yet Melania still chose to sat down with a CNN interviewer. (She also taped an interview with Fox's Ainsley Earhardt, airing Tuesday...) | | | Melania concerned about social media "negativity" | | | Cooper asked what Melania would want to focus on, as First Lady, and she said she'd like to help counter the "damaging" effects of social media: "We need to guide them and teach them about social media, because I see a lot of negativity on it, and we need to help them..." | | | Donald grants interviews to ABC and Fox | | | Before his Wisconsin rally on Monday night, Donald gave brief but revealing interviews to both ABC's Tom Llamas and Fox's Carl Cameron... | | Billy Bush signed the papers, and now he's no longer an NBC employee. His exit was announced on Monday evening. In a statement, he said, "I am deeply grateful for the conversations I've had with my daughters, and for all of the support from family, friends and colleagues. I look forward to what lies ahead." That's probably the only thing we'll hear from Bush until after the election...
-- How many millions of $$'s? It's unknown... All we know is that it's less than $10 million, since Bush's lawyer denied that figure. Here's my full story... | | Bush's exit deal does not include a noncompete clause, so he could conceivably join another network right away, a person familiar with the deal tells me. However, he's not in a hurry to line up another job. I don't know if there's a nondisclosure or non-disparagement clause...
-- Must-read: THR's Stephen Galloway says "Bush has paid the price, and it's a lesson everyone in the sometimes-smoggy world of entertainment journalism should heed..." | | | Who will take over at 9am? | | | NBC News is not announcing a replacement for Bush right away. Harry Connick Jr. filled in on Monday and will be back on Tuesday. Brian Lowry emails: The resolution of the Billy Bush situation would be more notable if it suggested any change of direction in the third hour of "Today," which it clearly doesn't. This was a decision ostensibly made because Bush was deemed commercially toxic to a show whose audience is predominantly female, not a blow on behalf of journalism... | | CNNMoney's Seth Fiegerman reports: Netflix added 3.6 million members in Q3, shattering its own expectations for growth and silencing skeptics on Wall Street. It now has more than 86 million subscribers. Netflix stock soared as much as 20% in after hours trading...
-- Seth's story includes this flashback: Three short months ago, Netflix stock tanked after the company added just 1.7 million new subscribers in Q2. The weakness was driven primarily by lackluster U.S. growth. At the time, Netflix partly blamed the shortfall on users overreacting to a modest price hike on customers who had been grandfathered into lower rates. But the shortfall and reaction to it was severe enough that Reed Hastings apologized to investors "for the volatility." "It's time for me to apologize for the volatility again," Hastings said on an investor call Monday. "This time it's in a good direction..." | | | Rich Greenfield tweets: "Legacy, linear TV execs should be afraid, very afraid of Netflix's increasing global expansion of bingeable ad-free TV..." | | | Important victory for Amy Goodman | | | Tom Kludt reports: "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman fought the law, and won. On Monday, a North Dakota judge found there wasn't probable cause to support a riot charge brought against Goodman related to her footage of protests over an oil pipeline in the state. A warrant had been issued for Goodman's arrest last month... Read more... | | | Rolling Stone trial begins | | | The first of two trials against Rolling Stone opened on Monday... Tom Kludt filed this curtain-raiser... Opening statements will start Tuesday at 8am... There are no cameras in the court... | | -- "Tonight Show" E.P. Gavin Purcell is heading to Vox... He'll be the head of video there... (THR)
-- Ashleigh Banfield's "Primetime Justice" premiered on HLN on Monday night... This was her intro to the audience... (HLN)
-- "The Rise of a New Media Baron and the Emerging Threat of News Deserts:" This is an important study about the losses of local papers... (UNC) | | If you haven't read Ryan Grim's HuffPost profile of Shep Smith yet, click here. It is fantastic for so many reasons. Smith recounts what Rupert Murdoch told him in their most recent meeting about the post-Ailes Fox: "He said, 'I'm a newsman. I want to be the best news organization in America.'" Smith said Murdoch "wants to hire a lot more journalists, he wants to build us a massive new newsroom, he wants to make more commitments to places like this [studio], to hire reporters to work on beats, just enlarge our news-gathering."
This is true, and Jack Abernethy and Bill Shine talked about it earlier this month — they're investing in FoxNews.com, including by hiring more real reporters, and building a new newsroom space. I don't think this means there will be any LESS opinion on Fox News, but the news side is getting a jolt of energy... | | | Shep Smith's sexuality is not a secret. Monday's headlines saying he is "coming out" felt somewhat unfair because of the implication that he's been in the closet up until now. He hasn't been. But he hasn't talked publicly about the subject, either. Grim acknowledged that: "Though Shep rarely talks about his sexuality, he is regularly, for instance, included in Out Magazine's Power 50 list." So Grim asked about Gawker's old stories -- specifically a 2014 story that alleged Smith was prevented from coming out by Roger Ailes. Smith said "that's not true. He was as nice as he could be to me. I loved him like a father." | | | Fox shifting its PR strategy | | | Tom Kludt emails: The surprise embedded in Grim's story is that Fox News allowed HuffPost to profile and interview one of its stars. And lest we forget, it was Grim who tussled with Fox's resident ambusher Jesse Watters at a party after the WCHA dinner in April. In a different era – one that wasn't all that long ago! – that would have been unthinkable. But Ailes' ouster appears to have ushered in a kinder, gentler era for the once-ruthless Fox News PR machine. "There has been a noticeable thawing of relations between Fox and the rest of the media in the post-Ailes era," Grim wrote. "That Fox invited HuffPost inside its headquarters at all is a sign that the thawing is real..." | | | Obama and O'Reilly on "The Late Show" on the same night | | Alas, the interviews were taped on separate dates... Frank Pallotta emails:
CBS sent out a sneak peek of Obama's appearance that has Colbert asking for a SNACK endorsement. The choice presented is between "an extra-fiber nutrient bar that's traveled to more than 100 countries" or a "shriveled tangerine covered in golden retriever hair filled with bile." I'll let you guess which one the President went with... | | | 21 days till Election Day | | | | Wikileaks fantasy v. reality | | Josh Barro tweets: "WikiLeaks" has become like "Benghazi" in that it's a buzzword thrown around by Clinton haters with no clear theory of what's so bad."
Here's a personal example. My name popped up in batch #10, released Monday morning. On the day Clinton announced her candidacy via a web video, I was tethered to a TV camera for much of the afternoon, so I emailed Clinton spox Nick Merrill to ask, "Any metrics for launch yet? Anything I can share on CNN?" Part one was a request for data about video views beyond what was visible on YouTube. Part two was my way of saying, "Don't ignore this email, it's urgent, I'm on TV in front of lots of people."
My email triggered an internal back-and-forth, and John Podesta was copied by a staffer, so Wikileaks got ahold of it. Some twitterers screen grabbed my message and said it confirms that I'm "working for Hillary." By that standard, I'm also working for Trump.
While my emails to both campaigns are run-of-the-mill reporting work, some folks want to believe there's a conspiracy at work. They'll cling on to any shred of email as evidence... | | | New chatter about "Trump TV" | | Matt Garrahan's and James Fontanella-Khan's scoop in the FT: Jared Kushner "informally approached" Aryeh Bourkoff "about the prospect of setting up a Trump television network after the presidential election."
The story instantly rekindled speculation about "Trump TV." But nothing is imminent. "These guys still think they have a chance," a friend of Kushner's told me on Monday, meaning: members of Trump's inner circle believe Trump has a real shot at the presidency, despite polling data saying otherwise, so they are focused on the campaign, not a network launch...
-- Important: John King on Monday's "Inside Politics:" "Top GOP sources" tell CNN that Steve Bannon "brags to friends about cultivating a list of some 25 million names and contacts gathered during the presidential run..." -- p.s.: Have you seen this "Trump News" web site yet? It's a parody... Produced by people who "happen to work at Blue State Digital..." | | | A flare to test potential investors? | | Dylan Byers emails: Has Trump's inner circle thought about launching a media company after the campaign? Certainly. Did Kushner talk to Bourkoff about Trump TV? Yes. But that's all that's happened so far, and the best way to read this news is as a flare to test potential investors. Because even Bourkoff has expressed "no interest in being in business with Trump," as a source close to him told Mike Allen.
Folks who think Trump TV is a foregone conclusion should remember two things: 1. Launching a media company is hard work, and not necessarily something Trump (or even Roger Ailes) has the stomach for anymore. 2. There's already a media company that plans to be the voice for the Trump contingent, and it's called Breitbart... | | Speaking of Breitbart: More from Dylan Byers: In the latest edition of The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza wrote about the rise of Steve Bannon and Breitbart -- something I reported on here last week.
This line from Lizza's piece really stood out: "Trump and Bannon have given up on trying to defeat Clinton. They seem more interested in creating a platform for a new ethno-nationalist politics that may bedevil the Republican Party—and the country—for a long time to come." | | | Overheard on cable news on Monday | | -- Joe Scarborough: "We" in the national media "look at this election through the lens of the 1%..." He was stressing the importance of understanding the view between the coasts...
-- Charles Krauthammer on "The O'Reilly Factor:" Trump "needs an act of God or an act of Putin" -- a/k/a a Clinton medical problem or a Wikileaks shocker...
— Judith Browne Davis on "All In with Chris Hayes:" "When all else fails, blame voter fraud… And make sure to blame it on brown people…"
-- Penn Jillette to Don Lemon: Some of the comments on the set of "The Apprentice" are "in line" with what was heard on the "Access Hollywood" tape... | | | +1 to this -- tweeted by writer and publisher Jason Pinter -- "I have tremendous respect for reporters covering BOTH campaigns who are subjected to hate, vitriol and fear. They keep our democracy going." | | | Celebs raise $$$ for Clinton on Broadway | | | Chloe Melas writes: Harvey Weinstein is pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton. The Hollywood exec hosted a fundraiser for Clinton on Monday night at the St. James Theatre. Richie Jackson and Jordan Roth produced the A-list extravaganza, which was live-streamed via Facebook Live... The Daily Mail has a recap here... | | | Colbert taking his gig to Showtime for Election Night | | | Frank Pallotta reports: Stephen Colbert will be taking on Election Day uncensored. He is heading to Showtime for an election night special titled "Stephen Colbert's Live Election Night - Democracy's Series Finale: Who's Going To Clean Up This S***" The one-hour special will air live on November 8 at 11pm ET and will look a lot like Colbert's CBS "Late Show." So what's the big difference? Well, to use a candidate's own words, Colbert will have the "shackles" taken off him -- since he won't have to deal with network censors... | | | Jeffrey Slonim, 1960-2016 | | Chloe Melas writes: My longtime colleague and friend Jeffrey Slonim has died. The veteran celebrity reporter took his own life last Thursday, leaving behind his wife and two children. Slonim, who graduated from Yale, had worked at almost every major magazine in town. His brother, the famous artist, Hunt Slonem, broke his silence on Monday and said there will be a memorial sometime next month. New York events won't be the same without him. Jeffrey, you were one of the greats. We will miss you.
-- Read more: WWD published this touching tribute... | | -- More from Frank: Will comic book icon Frank Miller's next comic book character be Donald Trump? (CNNMoney)
-- Chloe Melas writes: Randy Travis was inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame Sunday night. There wasn't a dry eye in the audience... (CNN)
-- Via Lisa France: "Beverly Hills 90210" star Luke Perry is 50 years old and on the cover of AARP magazine. Let that sink in... (CNN)
-- More from Lisa: Pamela Anderson took Julian Assange a vegan lunch this weekend... and before she knew it, she was at the center of some pretty major conspiracy theories... (CNN) | | | Frank interviews Seth Meyers | | Don't miss Frank Pallotta's sit-down with Seth Meyers:
So where do you think "Late Night" is going? Where would you like it to go once the election calms down?
I think when the show settles after the election, no matter the outcome, it'll be nice to not be in the intense day to day of a campaign that sort of churns up so much dust every day that it's hard to see through to other stories. Obviously, there's a lot going on outside of this election... It'll be nice to talk, I think, about more of those things. Things that are a little bit more apolitical that everybody can sort of agree on.
Getting back to more uplifting things like "Game of Thrones."
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