| | | | | "Tuesday is the only poll that matters." "It's all gonna come down to turnout." "Florida, Florida, Florida." Alright, let's dispense with all the cliches. There's not much left to say. Time to vote. Here's what you need to know heading into election day... | | I wanted to survey the reporters who spent the most time on the trail with Donald Trump... Anonymously, so they could speak candidly... Here's what the 15 participants in the survey told me:
— "That all previous rules of American politics don't apply and that all the mores and cultural norms that guided us in the past are no more."
— "I learned that our country is bigger than I thought and there are many more perspectives than I thought. I saw firsthand parts of our country and communities in our country that I think many of us have overlooked."
— "I've encountered so much hate throughout this campaign that I didn't think existed anymore."
— "I learned to trust my instincts. To be fair but to call out inconsistencies when I see or hear them — which is near constant out here with Trump and his campaign."
— "One lesson: Get out of the prediction business. Reflect what is happening and provide context. Don't try to guess what is going to happen next." (Amen!) | | | "I'm surprised no one has been punched" | | | About half of the respondents said they felt personally threatened at one time or another during Trump's rallies. The other half said no. "Frankly, I'm surprised no one has been punched," one of the reporters told me. "We've all built a tolerance to it," another remarked. | | | My favorite comment from one of the anonymous Trump reporters: "Some weeks out here feel like a segment of 'Weekend Update's' old segment 'Really with Seth and Amy,' where you hear something and you're like 'Really?!'" | | | Campaign embeds, you are almost free! | | | NYT's Doug Mills captured this memorable photo on Monday. I'll share some thoughts from Clinton beat reporters in Tuesday's newsletter... | | | What Hannity wants you to know | | | Sean Hannity's opening monologue on Monday: "This is a winnable race for Donald Trump tomorrow. The path "is not easy, but it is possible..." | | | What tone will Drudge and Breitbart set? | | | Dylan Byers emails one of Tuesday's big questions: How will Drudge Report and the rest of the right wing media set the stage for tomorrow night? Look for Drudge, Breitbart and others to focus heavily on the slightest signs of voting irregularity, even if it's not necessarily accurate or indicative of larger trends. The point is to give Trump and the GOP something tangible to point to as evidence of a "rigged" election in the event that he loses... | | | Exit polls could be especially problematic this year thanks to the Trump factor, Dylan Byers reports. Sources at several networks say they'll be extremely cautious in assessing the data, because the response from Trump supporters might be extremely unpredictable. After all, Trump has been telling them to distrust the media for over a year. Read Dylan's full story here... | | | > Trump's Monday full of media bashing: He attacked the NYT for printing "lies..." He soaked up his crowd's numerous "CNN sucks" chants... He said the press is "so dishonest..." And took some digs at his traveling press pool for looking tired... | | | Trump and Clinton called into Jim Gray's "MNF" radio broadcast... Looks like Jon Stewart will be on Stephen Colbert's live "Late Show" Monday night... Kids picked Clinton in Nickelodeon's election... | | | As CNN's 100+ hours of nonstop live election coverage continue, I'll be joining Poppy Harlow, John Berman and Christine Romans overnight... Plus, Bill Carter and I will be on "New Day" bright and early... | | | "Media has portrayed this as much closer than it truly is..." | | | Has the media framed the race accurately in these final days? I asked McCain 2008/Kasich 2016 strategist John Weaver, who said no: "Secretary Clinton entered the weekend with some momentum and it has continued through today. For whatever reason, and I suspect it has to do with ratings and buying into Trump's alternative universe, media have tried to make this appear to be closer than it truly is..." | | | I guarantee this ad will make you smile | | | This was such a smart idea by Pedigree/its ad agency. CNNMoney's Jill Disis writes: "Dog lovers on each end of the political spectrum stop growling at each other in a new ad when confronted by the plight of a lost dog. The three-minute ad opens with footage of the contentious election... The spot segues into a social experiment featuring a woman shown taking a 'lost' golden retriever to Clinton and Trump rallies. For each event, she wears a shirt promoting the opposing nominee... Political differences are eventually cast aside as both Trump and Clinton supporters bond with the woman over their love of dogs." Read/watch here... | | | Monday's internal memo from NPR head of news Michael Oreskes to the troops: "Tuesday we will handle one of the most important stories any news organization deals with. The country, our country, will elect a new president... The country really is watching and depending on you..." | | | Trump made fact-checking great again | | This is the year of the fact-checker. PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan told me: "All of the media has embraced fact-checking because there was a story that really needed it." She's talking about Trump. When it comes to Trump, "the level of inaccuracy is startling."
-- Data point: WashPost's Glenn Kessler, who works on a "Pinocchio" scale, says "Trump earned significantly more four-Pinocchio ratings than Clinton" -- 59 versus 7, to be exact. "The numbers don't lie, and we frequently reminded readers of the differences..."
Will fact-checking remain front and center? I explored that in my story... Check it out here... | | -- Congratulations to Shanta Covington, Lee Alexander and Abby Brooks for running the NYC Marathon on Sunday! Here's Covington's marathon story: "I ran. It hurt. I still pushed forward. I crossed the finish line." Whew!
-- On Monday night a jury awarded $3 million to a University of Virginia administrator who won a defamation case against Rolling Stone mag... (CNNMoney)
-- A new Wikileaks revelation: The DNC "crafted questions and sent them to CNN with the hope they'd be used in interviews of Republican presidential candidates." CNN's response: "This is completely unremarkable. We have similar communications with Republicans..." (Mediaite)
-- Tucker Carlson's 7pm show on Fox News now has a name: "Tucker Carlson Tonight" will start on Nov. 14... | | | Okay, now back to the election... | | | This Clinton magazine cover is NOT proof of a "rigged" election | | Every day there are so many examples of "fake news," I have to be selective about which ones to cover. Here's a good one:
A commemorative edition of Newsweek is being cited as evidence that Clinton is stealing the election, and that the news media is in on it. Right wing blogs and Facebook forums lit up with the fake news on Monday after a woman tweeted out a picture of Newsweek's "Madam President" cover. Most of the sites ignored the obvious explanation: A Clinton cover and Donald Trump cover are both in the works. Some people would rather just believe the conspiracy theory. Here's my full story/debunking... | | Rallying voters in Ann Arbor, Obama brought up this "fake news" problem: "As long as it's on Facebook... As long as it's on social media, people start to believe it. It creates this dust cloud of nonsense."
-- Check this out: All day on Tuesday, BuzzFeed News says it will be "tracking and debunking the dubious rumors, memes, and misinformation that will emerge on election day..."
-- And I'll be discussing this issue on "The Diane Rehm Show" Tuesday morning... | | | Keep an eye on this on Tuesday... | | | 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… | | | Here's what you need to know | | | | You can stream CNN without a username/password | | Newspapers like the NYT and FT have lifted their pay walls. CNN is doing the same thing: streaming election night coverage without the need for a cable log-in between 4pm Tuesday and 4am Wednesday. Here is Meredith Artley's guide to watching and streaming the coverage... | | | What we've gotta remember | | The "hyper-polarization of America" did not begin with Clinton or Trump. "It has been building for years," Alexander George writes for Scientific American.
Unfortunately, "those on the other side no longer just disagree about the issues, they are bad people with dangerous ideas. This paves the way for efforts to delegitimize electoral outcomes and the leaders they produce by way of conspiracy theories and claims of fraud and rigging..." | | | Boldface media names of the election year | | | Brian Lowry emails: People are already taking inventory of which reporters and anchors' stock rose — MSNBC's Katy Tur, CNN's Brianna Keilar -- and fell (Matt Lauer) during the campaign. But Trump's media background drew in more unorthodox personalities as well, from a Bush (Billy) and Bee (Samantha) to Howard Stern. Read more here... | | | "Scorpion" dramatizes a rigged election | | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Monday's episode of "Scorpion" on CBS has the show's computer wiz heroes helping to crack the case of a rigged presidential election. I asked the exec producers if they worried at all about taking on this subject during an election plagued by accusations of fraud... They said their approach was to make the fictional election as little like the real one as possible... Read more... | | | John Oliver regrets urging Trump to run | | | Frank Pallotta emails: John Oliver has been one of the most outspoken voices against Trump this election, but just three years ago as guest host of "The Daily Show" the comedian egged on Trump to run. "Now, in my defense, I have no defense for that and was hoping to think of one before finishing this sentence, which oh s**t it's over," Oliver said Sunday night after showing a clip of Oliver telling Trump to "do it." It's a really funny juxtaposition, and come Tuesday night Oliver and his late night cohorts should have plenty more to say... | | | HIGHLIGHTS FROM SUNDAY'S "RELIABLE SOURCES" | | -- "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…"
-- Michael Oreskes, Lynn Sweet, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Karen Tumulty dissected campaign trail falsehoods, "fake news," and Trump coverage. 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..."
-- "Keepin' It 1600" co-hosts Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer said the race is tight but "stable" and "data is on the side of Democrats" right now... Watch the full chat here...
-- Did journalists "ditch legacy values" while covering this campaign? David Zurawik says yes. Dylan Byers has doubts. Both men discussed how Trump "changed journalism..." | | | "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... | | | Three ways to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | 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." | | | 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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