| | | | | Welcome back! Hope you had a restful holiday season. This edition of the newsletter will catch you up on the past week's media news and this weekend's controversies. Scroll to the end to read New Year's Resolutions from the NYT's Carolyn Ryan, the AP's Kathleen Carroll and NPR's Michael Oreskes... and send your resolutions for the media to reliablesources@cnn.com. We'll print them throughout the week. | | | For the past couple of weeks I've been interviewing anchors, reporters, commentators, producers and bureau chiefs about election night. I wanted to really understand what happened hour-by-hour. The result is an oral history of the coverage that I hope you'll enjoy reading... I'll be previewing it on CNN's "New Day" around 6:45am Monday... And It'll be posted at CNNMoney.com/Media later in the morning... | | | Starting the year with a reality check | | John Avlon on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" The next four years "are going to be challenging. There are going to be attacks; there are going to be insults; perhaps a constitutional crisis or two..."
Clarissa Ward also on the show: "There's a deep antipathy toward mainstream media at the moment -- it's stronger than I have ever felt to be before. A lot of people view us as part of the problem... On Twitter now, I can't even tell you the barrage of abuse I get every time I appear on TV..."
Avlon: "I think we'll look back on" these years, the Trump years, "as the best time to be a journalist, not because it was easy, but because it was hard, and because our mission was clear..." | | | New year, new hope for Austin Tice's family | | Austin Tice's Christmas stocking was hanging on the mantle and his gifts were waiting under the tree again this year -- the fifth Christmas that Tice has been missing.
The American journalist disappeared in Syria in August 2012. But his parents Debra and Marc Tice remain optimistic that he will return home safely. "We have every reason to believe he's reasonably well," Marc told me in an interview on "Reliable Sources."
Debra said she views the Obama-to-Trump transition as "almost doubling the strength on our team." The Tices have started "reaching out" to the Trump transition team... Read more and watch the interview here... | | | Getting worse and worse in Turkey | | The NYT is shielding the identities of local reporters in Turkey. That's how bad it is now. The paper occasionally uses the anonymous "employee of The New York Times" shield in stories from Syria and Afghanistan, but only recently started to do it while covering Turkey. This is for the safety of reporters in the field.
Sunday's NYT story about the nightclub massacre in Istanbul contained two such bylines, one from Istanbul and one from Nevsehir Province.
Press freedoms in Turkey have been deteriorating for years. CPJ is keeping track of the jailings here. Over the weekend, the WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum was released after nearly three days in detention... Details... | | "The tragedy is not just the danger to the journalists, the tragedy is the things we don't know about these terrible situations. I think there's a lot we don't know about the war in Syria, and the main reason is, it's virtually impossible to cover it…"
--NPR head of news Michael Oreskes on Sunday's show... Video here... | | | Washington Post walks back story about hackers "penetrating" electric grid | | This Friday night headline on the WashPost web site was startling: "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont." The story read like a big scoop. But sources quickly told other news organizations that the grid wasn't "penetrated."
On Saturday, the Post backtracked in a big way. The headline now says "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say."
What's the difference? The Post's editor's note explains: "The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." | | | If you've been offline for the past week, this is what you missed | | George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died. NBC shut down @BreakingNews. WSJ previewed Snap's IPO road show. David Fahrenthold wrote about "my year of covering Trump." Jay Rosen wrote a two-part essay about "prospects for the American press under Trump." CNN's Brianna Keilar got married. Don Lemon got his ear pierced. Lauren Conrad announced that she is having a baby. Conservative "super-villain" Milo Yiannopoulos scored a book deal. Charter and NBCUniversal came close to a New Year's Day programming blackout, but then extended the negotiating deadline. "Fox & Friends" apologized for an inaccurate segment about food stamps.
And Trump wished everyone, including his "enemies," a Happy New Year. | | | Recommended reads to start 2017 | | If you haven't perused NiemanLab's "Predictions for 2017" yet, check it out...
And along the same lines, Poynter's series of essays about media lessons learned in 2016 has some excellent and forward-looking pieces.
As CNN's Mitra Kalita writes: "My main journalistic lesson of 2016 is to brace for massive upheaval and redefinition..."
WashPost's Chris Cillizza makes the same point in this column listing his three rules for the coming year. "Trump's ascension to the White House feels more like the beginning of something than the end of it to me..." | | -- A fun read by Mike Shields: "10 Media and Advertising Predictions That Didn't Come True in 2016" (WSJ)
-- Alex Weprin notes the all-time high cable news ratings of 2016... And wonders whether it'll end up being "the year of peak cable news..." (Politico)
-- The #3 channel on cable in 2016 was HGTV. Bloomberg's Gerry Smith writes about why, quoting a viewer who says, "HGTV is not something that's going to hurt me..." (Bloomberg) | | | -- Jeff McLane, the top Eagles beat reporter at the Philly Inquirer, was ejected from the Eagles press box on Sunday by a former Inquirer editor turned Eagles exec... Billy Penn's Dan Levy has a complete recap... (Billy Penn) | | | When to use the word "lie" | | | "I'd be careful about using the word 'lie,'" WSJ EIC Gerard Baker said on Sunday's "Meet the Press," expressing his view that is it imperative to look objective. This is about Trump, of course. The WSJ's top rival, the NYT, bluntly used the word "lie" on the front page back in September. On "Reliable," Carolyn Ryan recounted and defended that decision... While NPR's Michael Oreskes staked out a position closer to Baker's... Watch the back-and-forth here... | | | Scarborough's meeting at Mar a Lago | | Where do I begin? With this fact: Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were spotted at Trump's NYE party at Mar a Lago on Saturday night. NYT's Maggie Haberman mentioned their presence in a Sunday evening story, and things unraveled from there. Sopan Deb, who is moving from CBS to the NYT, tweeted that Scarborough "partied with Trump." Scarborough lashed out at Deb for lying and "pushing fake news." Deb later acknowledged that "attended" was more accurate than "partied." But the Twitter storm resurrected questions about Scarborough and Trump's relationship. What was he doing at the party?
Scarborough said he was there to meet with Trump -- not to celebrate the New Year -- to lobby for a TV interview. He said it was no different than what "all good reporters and news hosts try to do daily." On the phone with me on Sunday night, he reiterated this -- saying Trump chose the time and place of the meeting. (He said he and Brzezinski were surprised by the sea of tuxes.) He's trying to snag an in-depth interview around the inauguration.
But Scarborough's Twitter critics aren't buying the explanation. We'll definitely hear more about this on Monday... | | | Doocy goes golfing at Trump National | | | Joe Scarborough wasn't the only cable news morning host at a Trump property over the weekend. Fox's Steve Doocy was golfing at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter at the same time as PEOTUS Saturday, according to Dr. Eric Kaplan, who tweeted about being with both men. "Bumped into Steve Doocy on golf course," he wrote. Meanwhile, Doocy's son Peter Doocy was part of the PEOTUS press corps back at Mar a Lago... | | | Ditching the press pool again | | On the last day of the year, he did it again: "Donald Trump ditched his press pool Saturday to play golf, the latest example of his break with precedent regarding the media," CNN's Eugene Scott and Kevin Liptak report.
Trump spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham sounded like she knew how ticked off the press corps was: "He made a last-minute trip to Jupiter. We weren't aware and appreciate everyone's understanding. We are in the home stretch of this transition period and don't anticipate any additional situations like this between now and inauguration..." | | | "Like an addict craves their drug" | | | Sunday's aforementioned "Meet the Press" was a special hour about Trump and the media. Nicolle Wallace told Chuck Todd: "I don't think Trump NEEDS the press, but I think he WANTS them like an addict craves their drug." Indeed. Carolyn Ryan said something similar to me: "Even as he sort of attacks the NYT regularly, attacks our reporters, he also is quite fixated on the NYT..." | | | Steve Bannon tells Breitbart fans, "You've got to stay engaged" | | Interview-shy Steve Bannon gave interviews to Breitbart's Matt Boyle and the Daily Mail's David Martosko last week. Bannon had a message for the political junkies who supported Trump: "You've got to stay engaged... Let's hold people accountable and stay engaged. There will be a lot of exciting activity over the next couple of years," he told Boyle.
Tom Kludt notes that Bannon repeatedly said "we" while referring to Breitbart, the company he was overseeing until Trump hired him in August... | | | Another note from Tom: "In what may be a sign of the access Breitbart could enjoy, and the role it might be expected to play, over the next four years, Boyle scored another Trump-related exclusive earlier in the week with a behind-the-scenes look at the president-elect's inauguration plans. The resulting article neatly echoed the talking points that the Trump camp has used to push back against rumors that it is having trouble finding A-list talent to perform at the inauguration and related festivities..." | | On Sunday's show, John Avlon and I talked about how the term "fake news" -- originally meant to describe hoax web sites that are designed to deceive people -- has been distorted and redefined by partisans.
Avlon: "People are saying, 'You know what? Let's expand that definition to anything we disagree with.' So therefore we can't possibly say what's true and what's false because everything comes with a different perspective and bias and spin. That's incredibly dangerous. That approach, which is devaluing the idea of truth, the idea of facts, that's something sinister that we need to push back on, and we do it as journalists by insisting on a fact-based debate. And we do it without apology." Watch...
-- Related and great: Craig Silverman's latest: "Here Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook From 2016" | | Monday morning: Katie Couric begins a week-long stint co-hosting the "Today" show...
Tuesday: Pre-CES events get underway in Las Vegas...
Tuesday, 9am: Gretchen Carlson is filling in on the third hour of "Today" and teasing "announcements..."
Thursday: CES officially starts...
Sunday night: Golden Globe Awards | | | "The first pop feeding frenzy of the year" | | That's what Jon Pareles calls Mariah Carey's disastrous ABC performance and the drama that followed. What happened on stage? Carey's reps say her "ear piece was not working." Page Six hears that her team is blaming Dick Clark Productions. The company, which produces "Rockin' Eve," is not commenting.
Pareles writes: "Technical problems, temperament, nerves — or could it be some perverse genius calculation? One of a celebrity's main jobs is to draw attention, and this was a spectacle that drew comment worldwide — a grand diva moment that was noticed, and will be remembered, the way a perfect performance never would."
-- Semi-related: Here's the overnight ratings report for ABC, NBC and Fox's countdown shows... | | | What the top 10 box office performers of 2016 had in common | | Megan Thomas emails: "All those people who hit the theater over the holidays pushed North America's box office to a new record." For the full year, theaters sold about $11.37 billion in tickets, up 2% from 2015. BUT that's largely due to increased ticket prices.
This detail stood out to me: "Unlike in recent years, when films like 'American Sniper' and 'The Hangover' broke through, not one movie rooted in a real-life setting was among the top 10 box office performers," NYT's Brooks Barnes notes... | | | The Stelters' holiday movie report card | | **Trying on my amateur critics hat for a moment**
Of all the movies we saw between Christmas and New Year's, Jamie and I liked "Lion" the most. "Manchester By The Sea" the least. I think I liked "Jackie" and "La La Land" more than she did. (Variety's Owen Gleiberman says we should go see "La La Land" again because it's better the second time.) The awards season fare at the top of our list now: "Moonlight" and "Patriots Day..." | | | Golden Globes next Sunday! | | | On the afternoon after hosting "New Year's Rockin' Eve," Ryan Seacrest showed how he studies for the Golden Globes red carpet: | | At the end of Sunday's show, I asked the panel of newsroom leaders for 2017 resolutions. Their answers:
-- Until Sunday, Kathleen Carroll was the executive editor of The AP. Now, she said, she has some free time for sleep; red wine; and "the sites and publications and news organizations that I haven't been able to spend as much time consuming..."
-- NPR's Michael Oreskes talked about his plans to "devote a lot of time this year to rebuilding local journalism…"
-- Carolyn Ryan shared the NYT's institutional resolution: "Engaging with readers, wherever they are, in more conversation." | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. | |  | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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