| | | | | Time to start counting down in HOURS, not DAYS... | | | Drudge's forecast: "Madness" | | | James Comey's Sunday afternoon surprise is dominating the news cycle right now. He sure has a knack for timing. Matt Drudge, love him or hate him, is a pretty plugged-in guy. He wrote afterward: "Comey's head-fake fake just made the hornets nest even crazier! 48 hours of madness upcoming!!" | | | Essay: Trump's extreme anti-media talk | | Donald Trump is lambasting the media all the way to the finish line. Yahoo's Holly Bailey tweets from his Sunday night rally: "Trump mocks media for not reporting that his crowd in Minneapolis was massive. That's not true."
Trump knows it's not true. But he has made media bashing a centerpiece of his entire campaign. So on "Reliable Sources" we examined his insults and conspiracy theories and concluded that, yes, this is the ugly "new normal," something journalists will have to reckon with, well beyond election day. Watch the essay here... | | | Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a Breitbart link on Sunday night and said: "Since media won't cover it, remember that the FBI continues to Investigate Clinton Foundation." I'm interested in all of this end-of-the-race media bashing because it sets Trump up to blame the media if he loses... | | | Clinton's "suspicious relationship with the press" | | "I think regardless of who is elected, there will be a very difficult relationship between the White House and the press corps," WashPost exec editor Marty Baron said on the program. He noted that "there hasn't been a warm relationship between the press and the Clinton campaign..." Hillary Clinton has had "a hostile and suspicious relationship with the press for a long period of time…" | | | Blizzard of misinformation | | This was a truly super super-panel. Michael Oreskes, Lynn Sweet, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Karen Tumulty dissected campaign trail falsehoods, "fake news," and Trump coverage. "We're just always playing catch-up with people who don't care about fact-based observation," Goldberg said. Sweet said she thinks the biggest media story of this campaign is "the total control that Twitter has over the messages, which then influences Facebook and everything else." Here's part one... And part two, about Bret Baier and the "indictment" claim...
-- More from the show: Did journalists "ditch legacy values" while covering this campaign? David Zurawik says yes. Dylan Byers has doubts. Both men discussed how Trump "changed journalism..."
-- Related: Jim Rutenberg's Monday NYT column: "The cure for fake journalism is an overwhelming dose of good journalism..." Scroll down for more thoughts about that... | | | Sizing up the "thriving ecosystem" designed to tear down media | | Brian Lowry emails this followup to the "Reliable Sources" conversation about regaining the trust of viewers/readers:
Looking past this campaign, what the traditional media does in terms of bolstering its credibility can't be divorced from the thriving ecosystem devoted to undermining it. Those forces exist primarily on the political right, but as Bernie Sanders' supporters demonstrated, on the left as well. And many of those critics -- take the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell as an example -- have built enterprises committed to second-guessing motives and criticizing mainstream media as their central mandate.
To be fair, there have been enough missteps throughout the campaign -- including CNN's relationships with Donna Brazile and Corey Lewandowski -- to provide grist for those voices. Yet even if the media behaved admirably at all times it wouldn't prevent these enterprises from attacking them or eliminate a culture where news consumption is increasingly siloed. That's not to say media people shouldn't do some soul-searching. But in terms of whether that will yield progress in how we're perceived, it can't be viewed or undertaken in a vacuum... | | | The view from "Keepin' It 1600" | | | As CNN's 100+ hours of nonstop live election coverage (!!) continue, Poppy Harlow is anchoring overnight... 1 to 3am ET Monday... And I'll be stopping by... Tweet at me if you're tuning in. | | | "Closing arguments" in print | | | Monday's USA Today features op-eds by both Clinton and Trump... | | | Fox's stunning new studio | | | Fox News Channel's spiffy new studio, with a price tag "in the high $20 millions," debuted on Sunday morning... A test run of sorts for election night. Adweek has all the details here... | | | Controversies involving two CNN commentators | | | The "Reliable Sources" panel analyzed Donna Brazile's resignation from CNN and Corey Lewandowski's cozy relationship with the Trump campaign. The takeaway: Partisan guests add value to panel discussions, but it's time for a re-evaluation. Mediaite's Josh Feldman has a recap here... | | | Fox's misleading "voter fraud" coverage | | "RUNNING RAMPANT" said the banner on the bottom of the screen during a Saturday "Fox & Friends" segment about "voter fraud" -- actually, about isolated instances of election improprieties. Fraud is not "running rampant."
The Nation writer Ari Berman, author of "Give Us The Ballot," says it's "extremely irresponsible for Fox News to be saying this." Data proves that "voter fraud is a very, very small problem in American elections," he said on Sunday's "Reliable." Voter suppression, on the other hand, is a "much bigger problem," he asserted. Watch our conversation here… This is going to be critical in the next few days... | | | How an anti-Trump stance damaged this radio host's career | | | Check out this great story by Politico's Hadas Gold: Salem Media's highest-profile anti-Trump host, Michael Medved, has a bit lower profile now, as Salem "quietly changed the time slot of one of its hosts in a major market and didn't include him on a national tour." Gold says his anti-Trump stance has "angered his syndicator, many local affiliates, and many of Salem's listeners. He's also damaged his career, making him one of Trump's few conservative critics to literally put his livelihood in jeopardy..." | | | No NYPost endorsement yet | | | Stuart Elliott tweets: "Anyone notice that NYPost hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate? Under Murdoch, has been 10000% Republican. Rupert conflicted on Trump?" Indeed... Michael Calderone noted it the other day... In his story about how the NY Observer is not endorsing in the general. "NY Post endorsed Romney on Oct 25, 2012 and hasn't said why no endorsement yet this time..." | | | ...Or has anyone else noticed how many end-of-the-campaign columns end with a reference to 2020? Usually referencing what Republicans and Democrats will learn from Trump's run? | | | At the end of Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I tried to involve the viewers at home:
"If you're frustrated by coverage of Clinton; if you're insulted by Trump's anti-media campaign; subscribe to a paper. Subscribe to a news website. Chip in a few bucks for reporting. Donate to a nonprofit news organization like ProPublica or PolitiFact. Or donate to a journalism school. Put in a few dollars, or maybe more if you have it, and help support the next generation of political reporters." | | | J school donors "motivated by the world we are in" | | My comment was inspired by Erik Linden, a viewer and former journalist who emailed saying, "I'm an alum of Columbia Journalism School and will be donating more to the school to support its efforts," due to the anti-media hostility this election year. "Wonder if it's a trend or not," he said.
So I asked Columbia J school dean Steve Coll, who said "We are doing well but it's hard to know about cause and effect. We have definitely had some unsolicited gifts where the donor seems motivated by the world we are in. All support welcome!" | | | "The American Comeback Story" | | | "SNL" has had enough of this election | | Frank Pallotta emails: In Saturday's cold open, Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon broke out of their Trump and Clinton characters to stop the mudslinging of 2016. The two instead took to Times Square to hug, dance, and embrace anyone they could find on 42nd Street. It was a nice moment for the variety show, which seemed like it (like you and I) have had just about enough of the vitriol of this election. Read/watch more...
-- Bill Carter tweets: "Even jokes can't relieve the anxiety. They went for straight appeal for return to sanity." | | | NYT's James Poniewozik says "it's undeniable that the race has blessed 'S.N.L.' with material. And cursed it. 'S.N.L.' faced near-impossible expectations..." | | "We can call out people all we want -- for truth, for lying -- we can do all of that and feel good as journalists. It won't make any difference unless we have built better connections to broader audiences."
--Michael Oreskes, NPR's head of news... | | | "On deadline, there's no gender" | | | "On deadline, there's no gender. You got to just get the job done," Lynn Sweet said on Sunday's "Reliable." But "gender inequity" persists at the management level in newsrooms. CNN's Alexandra King wrote about her remarks... Watch/read here... | | | Help shape our media reporting in the final three days of the campaign. What Q's do you have about election coverage? Email us: reliablesources@cnn.com | | | Three ways to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | Sleep whenever and wherever you can | | | NYT's Ashley Parker, balled up on the Trump press plane... Photo by WashPost's Jose DelReal... | | | ICYMI: Jack Shafer's must-read | | | "The 2016 election was a story about one human being's domination of the media," Jack Shafer writes. "Not since 9/11 has a single topic so colonized all of the media territories—print, television, and the Web—as thoroughly as Donald J. Trump did." Shafer's column is one of the best things I've read about Trump all year. Check it out... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email... And we'll be back tomorrow with another special edition... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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