| | | | | Filing from the American Museum of Natural History... Site of Sunday night's "CNN Heroes..." Scroll down for details | | A question I asked on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" "Is this a national emergency? And are journalists afraid to say so because they're afraid they'll sound partisan?"
Consider: A U.S. intelligence community conclusion that Russia intervened to help the Republican nominee… Who won in the electoral college but lost by a historic margin in the popular vote… Who says he does not believe the intelligence assessment and actually questions the motives of the experts.
Maybe this is not a crisis. But this is a uniquely unsettled, unsettling time. Journalists should be talking about HOW to cover this; how to reflect the emotions and concerns of both Trump and Clinton voters; how to demand evidence and answers from government officials.
I'm a big weather nerd, but journalists should not be leading their newscasts with weather reports right now. (I'm looking at you, ABC and NBC.) | | | Lizza: Urgency is missing | | | I bounced this question off New Yorker correspondent/CNN commentator Ryan Lizza, who answered via text: This situation "is not being treated with the sense of urgency it deserves. Reporters are becoming inured to how abnormal all of this is or are afraid to point it out plainly because they think they are being partisan." | | Allow me to co-sign Jim Rutenberg's Monday NYT column. He cites Jake Tapper's persistence interviewing Mike Pence as a "shining example of stand-up journalism." TV news, Rutenberg says, "is going to have to do its part should Mr. Trump and his administration try to make policy based on false assertions." Tapper's nonpartisan comment to Rutenberg: "We're not supposed to be providing people in power with safe spaces."
Notably, Rutenberg also interviewed CNN prez Jeff Zucker: "Going forward into the Trump era, Mr. Zucker said, 'the key for us' will be 'to make sure that we hold the administration's feet to the fire, hold them accountable — not presuppose that anything is wrong or bad, but not be intimidated and not be afraid to call things out.'" Read... | | | A peek inside David Sanger's reporters notebook | | The weekend news cycle was clearly dominated by the WashPost and NYT stories featuring anonymous government sources alleging Russian meddling in the election.
Speaking with Fox's Chris Wallace, Trump alleged that Democrats "are putting it out" to re-litigate the election. On Sunday's show, NYT national security correspondent David Sanger defended his sourcing, responding this way: "Our sources are obviously spread out through all of the recipients and sometimes the generators of the intelligence. If you were just getting this from one party, you would be particularly suspicious." Scroll down for much more from my exclusive interview with Sanger... | | | "The goal of Russian media..." | | Ex-RT anchor Liz Wahl said on "Reliable" that the ultimate goal of Russian disinformation is to "undermine democracy, to undermine faith in our institutions, like the media." She argued that Americans "didn't really take it seriously" until now. Mediaite's Justin Baragona wrote up the comments here...
Clinton aides, like Marc Elias, have also been asserting that the press generally downplayed concerns about Russian actions. Over the weekend Elias said reporters who dismissed it should "publicly apologize to your readers." Wahl semi-agreed that "we missed the ball." As a counterpoint, Julia Ioffe said there was extensive reporting -- "Kremlin has a preferred candidate" -- but that it fell on deaf ears... Watch... | | | Bernstein says Trump is a more egregious liar than Nixon | | Carl Bernstein did not hold back: He said on Sunday's show that the President-elect "lives and thrives in a fact-free environment."
"No president, including Richard Nixon, has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact in the way this President-elect does," said the Watergate chronicler. "And it has something to do with the growing sense of authoritarianism he and his presidency are projecting." CNN's Alexandra King has a full story here... | | -- National Review's Jay Nordlinger: "Be clear: If a foreign intelligence operation had worked to elect the D, not the R, conservatives would talk of nothing else. Rightly."
-- ABC's Matthew Dowd: "Does Trump, his staff, and his fans now refer to facts and the truth as liberal propaganda?"
-- Economist DC bureau chief David Rennie: "Russian hacking is like a virus in the US body politic. But the usual bipartisan immune response is not kicking in." | | | Golden Globes on Monday morning | | | Entertainment editor Megan Thomas emails: Nominations for the 74th Golden Globe Awards will be announced Monday at 8:38am ET. The HFPA will be streaming all categories LIVE at GoldenGlobes.com... | | | Brian Lowry's preview of the Globes | | This year's awards could at least help frame the contours of this year's Oscar race, Brian Lowry writes. Here are six questions he has heading into Monday's noms:
-- Will "Moonlight" and "La La Land" shine?
-- Blockbusters blocked out?
-- Does the diversity wave start here?
-- Another international invasion?
-- Is "Silence" golden?
-- Can newcomers break through in TV?
Get the details here... | | -- Tina Brown described as "horrified yet transfixed by the incoming president..." (The Guardian)
-- Must read: NYT's James Poniewozik says "this is what Trump TV is." As Trump himself said Sunday: "Stay tuned!" (NYT)
-- The Atlantic is adding New Republic editor Franklin Foer to its ranks... He will write "big heave magazine stories" and may help generate story ideas... Michael Calderone has the full story here... (HuffPost)
-- I missed this the other day: About John Markoff's retirement from the NYT... (Backchannel)
-- Here are the winners of Sunday night's Critics Choice Awards... (Variety) | | | CNN Hero of the Year is... | | | Just announced on a live telecast: CNN's Hero of the Year is Jeison Aristizábal, 33, who battles cerebral palsy and helps children with disabilities in his native Colombia. Read all about him here. On the awards telecast's tenth anniversary, 2012 hero Pushpa Basnet was selected the CNN SuperHero. Spotted here are the museum: Idina Menzel, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, Octavia Spencer, Keegan-Michael Key, Kate Bolduan, Christine Romans, Ashleigh Banfield, Danielle Brooks, Diane Lane, John Berman, Alison Kosik, Erica Hill, Neil Patrick Harris, Edie Falco, Marnie the dog, and many more... | | | NY Observer editor Ken Kurson with the scoop! "Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has long been known to crave the reach and authority of the New York Times for his own media empire, has lured away star New York Times writer Joe Nocera," Kurson writes. He says -- and Nocera confirms -- that Bloomberg will announce the news on Monday. "Nocera is taking a senior position at Bloomberg Media... Nocera's gig is wide-ranging and will touch a variety of products within Bloomberg." Nocera tells Kurson: "I am excited to be getting back to what I do best — write about business." Remember, the NYT reassigned him to sports last year... | | | On Sunday's show, former NYT executive editor Jill Abramson said journalists should "blow the whistle" about patently false stories and "do thorough fact-checking." Despite record low levels of trust in media, she says "journalists still have to do their jobs." She also asserted that Trump's tweets are sometimes "fake news too," like his claim about millions of illegal votes, "an outright lie..." | | | Meet a fake news writer from Veles, Macedonia | | NBC's Alexander Smith and Vladimir Banic went to Veles, Macedonia to meet an 18-year-old who "earns thousands publishing lies." Dimitri "asked NBC News not to use his real name." Here are some of the insights:
-- "Dimitri says he's earned at least $60,000 in the past six months — far outstripping his parents' income..."
-- Before election day "the anti-Hillary posts were really good..."
-- "Nothing can beat Trump's supporters when it comes to social media engagement. So that's why we stick with Trump..."
-- "Dimitri estimates there are now 300 locals dabbling in fake news, with at least 50 making 'decent money,' and around a dozen making 'a lot.'" Basically, the best liars make the most money... | | | Trump's least favorite nightly newscast (tonight) | | | His Sunday night anti-media message: "Just watched @NBCNightlyNews - So biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point. Just can't get much worse, although @CNN is right up there!" | | | Sean Spicer talks First Amendment rights (for reporters and for Trump) | | | On Sunday's "Reliable," I said that Trump's anti-media messages have the effect of delegitimizing journalism among at least a portion of the American people. Whether he's doing it on purpose or whether he's just venting, the effect is the same. Of course, journalism is also suffering from self-inflicted wounds. But many of the other wounds are coming from the words and actions of Trump and other elected officials. I asked Sean Spicer about what to expect from a Trump administration, and Spicer said there is a recognition that "the media is a healthy part of our democracy." But "when a reporter reports something false or incomplete, we have equal right to go back and make sure the record's corrected..." Watch his full remarks here... | | When Margaret Sullivan told me she was profiling photographer Chris Arnade, I told her how I regretted not booking Arnade on TV before election day. Arnade, as she explains in Monday's WashPost, "saw the emotions" of Trump voters "up close" by driving thousands of miles and visiting communities across the country. Just to put it bluntly, Arnade "saw it coming" when other journalists didn't.
Quoting Sullivan: "Hillary Clinton, he said, 'represented the front row' — the smartest students in class, destined to enjoy the money and status that came with silver-spoon success. For what Arnade calls the 'back-row kids,' the frustration, anger and, yes, humiliation had become overwhelming. Trump zeroed in, Arnade said, on the one thing that mattered most: The system is rigged against them." Read more here... And check out Arnade on Twitter... | | | Wednesday is shaping up to be interesting: Tim Cook, Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg (not Mark Zuckerberg), Satya Nadella, and Brian Krzanich plan to attend Trump's meeting with tech CEOs, according to this CNNMoney team of reporters... | | | We've all been asking, and there's no definitive word yet. Per Kara Swisher, Jeff Bezos WAS invited, "and he is likely to attend." She notes that "Bezos' presence would be awkward, obviously, given how aggressive his Washington Post has been in its reporting on Trump and how many times the reality show star turned President-elect has attacked Amazon on a number of issues..." | | | Trump says WSJ "doesn't understand business" | | | Is this an example of Trump rejecting expertise? Discrediting a respected news outlet? Or just venting about editorials he hated reading? He commented to Chris Wallace: "I read the Wall Street Journal the other day. Honestly, their editorial board doesn't get it. I don't think they understand business. I don't think the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and I know some of them, they're really nice. I don't think they understand business. They don't understand what I'm saying..." | | | Highlights from Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | -- Sean Spicer, when asked if he ever looks at his phone and thinks, "I can't believe Trump just posted that on Twitter:" "Oh, look, I think there's never a boring day... But that's why he's so authentic..."
-- Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord: "What I see is basically a late 20th century media trying to struggle with a 21st century president..."
-- Poynter's Kelly McBride: Newsrooms rush to report that "he said something outrageous on Twitter, but we don't bring the context up as quickly as we should..." | | About the anonymously-sourced stories of Russian meddling: "When we write these stories, we're not telling you that we endorse their findings… What we're telling you is what conclusions THEY are telling the American leadership and presumably also telling President-elect Trump," NYT's David Sanger said on Sunday's show. When speaking with sources, Sanger said "we certainly are" pressing them to make more evidence PUBLIC. "As we learned in the Iraq experience, intelligence is never a black and white thing," he said, noting that we need to hear dissenting views as well as the official conclusions.
-- Of course, Sanger would love for these sources to go ON the record, but they can't. He talked more about that in the interview, here's the video...
-- As for the RNC's denials about being hacked at all, Sanger invoked Eric Holder's line about corporations: "There are two kinds of companies in America, those that were hacked that know it and those that were hacked and don't know it..." | | | "Threats to Journalism in the Age of Trump" was one of the unspoken themes at this weekend's Newsgeist conference in Phoenix. Government efforts to stem whistleblowing was a sub-theme. When I brought that up to Sanger, he said it's a real concern, but the flip side is that "if intelligence officials believe they're not being listened to by the executive branch, that might give them an additional reason to speak out." Watch the full segment here... | | | "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" had its premiere in Hollywood on Saturday night, and it was "a hit with the audience," THR's Ryan Parker says. He sums up the reactions here... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send 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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