| | | | | The story was fake. The gunshot was real. | | On Sunday night authorities said that the North Carolina man who drove to DC and allegedly walked into a popular restaurant brandishing a gun was motivated by a particularly ridiculous piece of fake news. "During a post-arrest interview," DC police said, "the suspect revealed that he came to the establishment to self-investigate #PizzaGate (a fictitious online conspiracy theory)." No one was injured, but the man did discharge one of his weapons before being apprehended. He had two other guns as well.
Per CNN's story, "the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, its owner, James Alefantis and some employees of the restaurant were threatened last month after fake news reports -- shortly before Election Day -- charged Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta were involved in a child sex operation at the restaurant. The fake stories continued to proliferate online as Alefantis kept denying the charges."
"This was our worst fear, that someone would read all this and come to the block with a gun. And today it happened," Matt Carr, the owner of a nearby business, told the WashPost... | | | What we all feel in our guts | | This was an isolated incident, yes. A one-off. But things like this are bound to keep happening. The Post story notes that the reporters "involved in this article were the target of online threats shortly after it posted."
And NEW conspiracy theories emerged right away. While detectives were still scouring the scene on Sunday afternoon, unhinged online commentators were already saying that the gun scare was a "false flag" operation and a "fake news" story... | | | Shoutout to Kauai's daily newspaper | | Take it from me, Mr. President-elect: you can uninstall Twitter from your phone for a week... take a total break from tweeting... and you'll actually be better off.
While I was offline in Hawaii last week, the news still got to me... Via Kauai's 104-year-old daily paper... and via a group of "Stand with Standing Rock" protesters on the side of the road in Hanalei.
Coming home this weekend and catching up on the week's news, including Donald Trump's tweets, it seems clear that he is running a permanent campaign... not against Hillary Clinton anymore, but against the media... against both news sources like CNN and entertainment shows like "SNL." That's where we led off Sunday's "Reliable Sources" on TV -- talking about the consequences of this campaign... | | | Treating journalists like enemies | | | Frank Sesno said he thinks "this is a scary thing," a PEOTUS who "believes people who are doing their jobs as adversaries are actually enemies," and is "enlisting the public to believe that as well." Salena Zito offered a different view, describing the "inside joke" between Trump and his base. "They look at this transaction between him and the media as part entertainment," she said. And she suggested a silver lining: "He also forces people to watch us," affirming the relevancy of CNN, NYT, "SNL," etc. by tweeting complaints... | | -- John Huey said Trump's techniques "smack of authoritarianism..."
-- Salena Zito described her interviews with Carrier plant employees about Trump's deal: "They thought someone finally sees them and hears them and puts value on their work..."
-- Frank Sesno explained why Trump forgoing a post-election press conference for 25+ days is not a "made-up press issue..."
-- Van Jones elaborated on his recent question: "Are we on the verge of another civil war? Is this how we do civil wars now, with tweets instead of bullets? Can we ever come back together?"
-- Amy Goodman said the Standing Rock protests should have received more media attention "all through this election season." (A few hours after this segment, authorities said the pipeline would be rerouted...) | | | "Kennedy Center Honors" inks new deal with CBS | | During Sunday night's "Kennedy Center Honors," CBS and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced an extension of one of the "longest broadcast partnerships in television history." The annual event debuted on CBS in 1978, and now it'll remain on the network through 2025 at least...
-- For your DVR planning purposes: This year's event will air on Dec. 27... | | | Media week ahead calendar | | -- Monday afternoon: BI's annual Ignition conference begins. Runs til Wednesday. Agenda here...
-- Tuesday: CNN's book about the election, "Unprecedented," hits bookstores. I read it over the weekend and it is outstanding...
-- Tuesday morning: Grammy nominations!
-- Tuesday night: Panel discussion at 92Y about the centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes...
-- Wednesday morning: Time announces its Person of the Year... "The Trump Voter?"
-- Wednesday morning: Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee holds a hearing on the AT&T/Time Warner deal...
-- Friday: "LaLa Land" arrives in theaters... | | -- Frederic Filloux's Monday must read: "Facebook's Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible With News Media" (Monday Note)
-- Jim Rutenberg's Monday joint is an interview with Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova, "an emissary from a dystopian political-media environment that seemed to be heading our way..." (NYT)
-- Smart project: "BuzzFeed News analyzed all the links Trump tweeted since he launched his presidential campaign to determine where the president-elect gets his news..." (BuzzFeed)
-- Troubling story about Canadian freelance photojournalist Ed Ou's detention at the U.S. border back in October... He's now talking about what happened... Read Daniel Victor's story here... (NYT) | | | "Westworld" season finale... | | | I'm still about five episodes behind... So no spoilers please... But HBO debuted the season finale of "Westworld" on Sunday night. CNN's Matt McFarland has this spoiler-free look at some of the issues "Westworld" is raising about our robotic future... | | Friday night, one day after Drudge's item about Megyn Kelly and CNN, she tweeted: "Many reporters are writing articles about me and my future at Fox. Don't believe a thing u hear unless it comes from me, period."
-- Related? Stephen Battaglio wrote this earlier on Friday: "TV news executives are not seeing a bidding war for Fox News star..." | | | Essay: Why Trump's lies are different | | On Sunday's "Reliable," I took stock of Trump's most recent misstatements, like his false claim about widespread illegal voting. My take: "When president-elect Trump lies so casually, so cynically, the news isn't so much the false thing he said. It's that he felt like he could just go ahead and say it -- go ahead and lie to you. That's the story."
This calls for more reporting -- and better understanding about why he has this tendency to buy into B.S. Here's video of the segment... And the followup with David Zurawik, who proposed, "Mob his lies with the truth..." | | | Ryan: "It doesn't matter to me" | | | Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" sit-down with Paul Ryan spun up half a dozen news stories and new angles. On the subject of Trump's false claim about illegal voting, I was struck by Ryan's remark that "I'm not really focused on these things." Pelley interrupted: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You have an opinion on whether millions of Americans voted illegally." Ryan: "I have no way of backing that up. I have no knowledge of such things." Pelley started to speak: "You don't believe that." Ryan continued: "But I don't -- it doesn't matter to me. He won the election." | | | Tapper: "Is that really presidential behavior?" | | | Jake Tapper pressed Kellyanne Conway about the illegal voting claim during this incredibly compelling conversation that was shown on Sunday's "SOTU." "Is that really presidential behavior?" She answered: "Well, he's the president-elect. So, that's -- that's presidential behavior, yes..." | | | Following up with Scottie Nell Hughes about facts | | Scottie Nell Hughes' comment on "The Diane Rehm Show" the other day -- "there's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts" -- spawned countless columns and condemnations. Over the weekend, coming in with fresh post-vacation ears, I asked her to elaborate... Here's her reply:
"I was actually trying to be very diplomatic in my answer to show the viewpoint of supporters of both campaigns. My comment was that if you were a Trump supporter, you believed the words his campaign was saying were fact. If you were a Clinton supporter, you believed the words her campaign were stating was fact. However, both sides did not believe nor acknowledge the other as fact. Just like in a court of law where both sides honestly believe they are right. When a prosecutor comes in he states his 'facts' of the case. The Defense Attorney does the same. It is up to the jury to decide what is the truth. Of course I believe there are facts in this world; what I was referencing, as I stated, was in regards to this campaign cycle. Facts to one side were seen as opinion or untrue to the other." | | In this piece for Brookings, Politico's Susan Glasser, who just made the move from DC to Jerusalem, expresses what a lot of journalists have been thinking about and talking about since November 8. "The media scandal of 2016 isn't so much about what reporters failed to tell the American public; it's about what they did report on, and the fact that it didn't seem to matter," she writes.
Glasser's blunt kicker: "So much terrific reporting and writing and digging over the years and … Trump? What happened to consequences? Reporting that matters? Sunlight, they used to tell us, was the best disinfectant for what ails our politics. But 2016 suggests a different outcome: We've achieved a lot more transparency in today's Washington — without the accountability that was supposed to come with it." | | | The weekend's best tweets | | -- CNN's Jonathan Wald: "Slow motion game of musical chairs for world leaders and the music is stopping. Amazing wave of change..."
-- NYT's Anand Giridharadas: It is a fully different way of life to be a journalist under Trump. We need to change what we read, how we think, grow our sense of history." His full tweetstorm is here...
-- Newsweek EIC Jim Impoco: "Fascinating watching conservative media learning to love (for now) economic nationalism, which liberals discarded to become more electable..."
-- NBC's Savannah Guthrie: "Not setting an alarm!! Yay." Guthrie began her "Today" show maternity leave on Friday... | | | Couric interviews Snowden | | | Katie Couric's interview with Edward Snowden will roll out on Yahoo (and ABC) on Monday. Producer Tony Maciulis writes on Facebook: "Greetings from Moscow! We have just filed our exclusive, sit down interview with Edward Snowden, his first since the election..." | | -- Liz Spayd sure has a knack for ticking people off with her public editor columns... (NYT)
-- Peter Thiel "dressed as" Hulk Hogan at the Mercer family's annual costume party on Saturday night, Bloomberg reports... (Bloomberg)
-- Worth the watch: Matt Negrin produced this "mockumentary" to mark the end of "With All Due Respect..." (Twitter)
-- "Designated Survivor" is getting another showrunner, again... (THR) | | | There's "SNL," and then there's a simultaneous show on Twitter | | Oh, to be backstage at "SNL" on Saturday night...
Trump and his "SNL" impersonator Alec Baldwin tweeted about each other during the broadcast. Trump's complaint that "the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse" was met by this reply by Baldwin twenty minutes later: "Release your tax returns and I'll stop." Frank Pallotta notes that "this is the third time since October that Trump has been critical of 'SNL' via his Twitter account..."
-- Programming note: Bill Carter and I will be talking about this on CNN's "New Day" around 6:50am Monday... | | | Is courtesy of Politico's Hadas Gold, who shared this picture from the Newseum, with a tweak: | | | 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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