| | | | It was hyped as a reality TV-style show, but in the end, President Trump's prime time announcement looked a lot like any other East Room event. Still, Trump played with the TV audience a bit, naming Neil Gorsuch and then asking "So was that a surprise? Was it?"
Brian Lowry emails: This is one of those days where it seems easy to get carried away with the Trump-presidency-as-reality-show analogy, what with the protracted "tune in at 8" build-up to see who survived the Supreme Court winnowing process. That said, the raucous applause from paid staff does bring to mind sweetened laughter on sitcoms -- a not-so-subtle cue telling the audience at home how they should respond... | | | The broadcast networks carried Trump's announcement live. Dylan Byers emails: The decision is an extremely important one -- as Trump said, it's among the most important decisions a president makes. It's also a decision that mattered to many voters in November. So perhaps every SCOTUS nomination warrants a prime time ceremony...? | | | GOP strategist Alex Conant, who was the Rubio campaign's comms director, tweets: "Very impressed w/ @PressSec strategy tonight. Great reveal event, followed by making East Room a spin room for ecstatic senators on live TV..." | | | Early in the day, CNN had the scoop that Gorsuch was in DC and Judge Thomas M. Hardiman was on the way there. Producer Noah Gray even nabbed video of Hardiman filling up his gas tank at a highway rest stop. Post-announcement, Pamela Brown and Ariane de Vogue reported that Gorsuch avoided the press in his Boulder, CO neighborhood on Monday by "sneaking out of a dirt road at the back of his house." Then he flew to DC. As for Hardiman, it turns out he drove to DC because he was on assignment for the court... | | Editor at HuffPost comments... | | | HuffPost's Igor Bobic tweets: "After hell of last week, feels almost refreshing to see everyone return to the partisan trenches over a quaint ol' SCOTUS fight." Tuesday night's cable news consensus was that Gorsuch will be confirmed, even if it takes a while... | | "Sanders versus Cruz" next week | | | "President Trump found out about our town hall meeting and thought he would upstage us," Nancy Pelosi quipped at the start of a CNN town hall on Tuesday night. CNNPolitics' Eric Bradner has highlights from the event here... Toward the end, Jake Tapper announced "a special debate night, Sanders versus Cruz, the future of Obamacare, that's next Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern..." Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate... | | Jerome Corsi joining Infowars. Next: W.H. credentials? | | Tom Kludt reports:
The fringe right-wing outlet Infowars has tapped one of the leading promoters of birtherism to helm its fledgling DC bureau. Jerome Corsi, author of the 2011 book "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President," said he's leaving WorldNetDaily, another conspiratorial publication, to join Infowars.
Corsi said on Tuesday's "The Alex Jones Show" that he believes he will receive credentials for W.H. press briefings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. "I expect to get cleared, perhaps tomorrow," Corsi said. A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment... | | Is Alex Jones really staffing up in D.C.? | | | More from Tom: Jones said he is assembling what he described as a "nucleus of a Washington bureau based around writers and investigative journalists." He called Corsi "a real thoroughbred of journalism," and said he wants to "build an operation with probably 10 people..." | | Fox News apologizes for erroneous Quebec terror tweet | | Dylan Byers reports:
On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office called on Fox News to "either retract or update" a "false and misleading" tweet that inaccurately identified the suspect in Sunday night's Quebec mosque terror attack as a man of Moroccan origin. That man turned out to be an innocent witness to the attack, not a suspect. Fox's tweet came under scrutiny because it continued to be re-shared well after the authorities ruled him out as a suspect.
Fox responded Tuesday night: "FoxNews.com initially corrected the misreported information with a tweet and an update to the story on Monday. The earlier tweets have now been deleted. We regret the error." | | Best practices around tweets? | | | This incident raises tough Q's for other news organizations. If you post something -- in this case, passing along reporting from elsewhere about a possible suspect in a crime -- and then it turns out not to be true, should you delete it? Leave it up with an update appended? I don't think there's an easy answer... | | | For the record, Trump edition | | | White House has "iced out" CNN? | | | "Administration officials including White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway haven't appeared" on CNN's programming "in recent weeks," leading to the impression that the White House has "iced out" the network, Politico's Hadas Gold reports. CNN declined to comment... | | January cable news #'s: up across the board | | | The inauguration and the intense first week of the Trump presidency gave Fox News, CNN and MSNBC a big boost... TVNewser has all the numbers here... Fox has now been #1 for "15 consecutive years," and CNN was a "strong #2..." | | Buying ads for an "audience of one" | | | "The surest way to reach the Oval Office isn't through the door. It's through the cable box," Derek Thompson writes at The Atlantic. He says some companies and political organizations are trying to reach an "audience of one" through targeted TV ad buys... | | | CNN's "The Lead:" "Don't follow the media's lead in calling it a 'ban.' Follow the lead of the White House..." NYT: "A far larger number of people were affected by President Trump's executive order on refugees than he initially said..." | | Kentucky newspaper publisher Jeff Jobe, Natalie Herbick of Fox 8 in Cleveland, conservative talk radio host Lars Larson of "The Lars Larson Show," and Kimberly Kalunian of WPRI in Providence, RI have been invited to ask Sean Spicer a question via Skype at Wednesday's briefing. Spicer announced the "Skype seat" participants on Tuesday.
Dylan Byers spoke with Jobe by phone about it... Jobe oversees six weekly community newspapers in South Central Kentucky... Jobe commented, "Don't you see that it's pretty cool that a guy from Kentucky is getting to do this?"
Jobe endorsed Trump, but said that's not a factor in his questioning... Read more... | | Jobe's frustration with the national media | | | Highlighting this portion of Dylan's story: "Jobe is frustrated with the way his communities have been portrayed in the national media. He says Kentucky Trump supporters are portrayed as bigoted hate mongers, when in fact all they want is what's good for America. 'The spin you see about all this hate mongering, we're not that, we don't do any of that,' he said. 'We're good people, we don't want to hurt anyone. This election has been described in a manner that is just unjust.'" | | "That's what an autocrat would use" | | Joe Scarborough reacted to the White House's firing of Sally Yates by reading between the lines of the statement saying she had "betrayed the Department of Justice."
"That's frightening. That's what an autocrat would use, whoever put that word in there," Scarborough said. On Monday I wrote this story about how the term keeps popping up in news coverage and commentary... | | -- The Daily Beast's Olivia Nuzzi is joining NYMag... CJR's Shelley Hepworth interviewed her about the move... (CJR)
-- "This week Kazuo Hirai, CEO at Sony Corp., will make his appearance at its Culver City, California based film and TV studio in hopes a more hands-on approach will turn around its fortunes..." (Bloomberg)
-- Keep an eye on this: "Comcast is making its Xfinity TV service available to subscribers with Roku set-top players via a new app, paving the way for customers of the nation's largest cable provider to watch live programming without the cost or hassle of a cable box..." (Bloomberg) | | Oprah Winfrey will contribute several stories to the coming season of "60 Minutes," CBS announced Tuesday morning. Her title will be "special contributor." This means she'll have several stories on the upcoming season of the newsmagazine. The first story will air sometime in the fall. CBS declined to comment on the length of Winfrey's contributor deal.
E.P. Jeff Fager told me it was "invigorating" discussing the partnership with Winfrey. "She's a wonderful person full of energy and ideas." Here's my full story... | | Changes to CNN's morning lineup | | | "Dave Briggs is joining CNN to co-host a revamped Early Start with (birthday girl) Christine Romans," TVNewser's Chris Ariens writes. "The new pairing, part of a larger CNN dayside overhaul, begins Feb. 23. Other changes: beginning next week, the 9-11 a.m. ET hours of CNN Newsroom, will be anchored by John Berman and Poppy Harlow, who will be moving off weekends. The 2-hour block is currently anchored by Carol Costello who announced yesterday she is moving to the West Coast where she will anchor a new show for HLN. Back at CNN, at 11 a.m., At This Hour will be solo anchored by Kate Bolduan." | | | Countdown to the Super Bowl | | | Budweiser's political Super Bowl ad | | | CNN's Alexandra Larkin writes: Budweiser's commercial for Sunday's game "departs from their normal content and instead tells the story of company co-founder, Adolphus Busch, as he emigrates from Germany to the United States... The advertisement comes as the nation witnesses widespread protests over Trump's controversial travel ban, but Budweiser insists that the coincidental timing is just that -- a coincidence...." | | "Complaining about the local paper is nothing new; in fact it's long been sport in most of America." But "today, with overworked and stretched staff and vastly shrunken news holes, we have entered a new, sinister era..."
--Kathleen McLaughlin writing for The Guardian... | | Now for a break from the day's news... | | A newspaper-delivering dog! | | | This 90-second YouTube video is guaranteed to make you smile. Jessica Lussenhop's tweet brought it to my attention: She says "daily newspaper subscriptions would go through the roof if they could offer Quincy as the delivery boy." Yes, this newspaper-delivering dog is adorable and quite good at his job... | | This year's GLAAD Media Award noms | | Sandra Gonzalez reports:
The GLAAD Media Awards nominations include plentiful amounts of praise for TV, but the same cannot be said for film. In fact, without "Moonlight" in the mix, one of this year's categories would look pretty paltry. With 156 nominees across 32 categories, only two films have made the cut in the outstanding film with a wide release category -- director Barry Jenkins' award season favorite and "Star Trek Beyond."
This is the first time in more than a decade this category has only included two nominees, "reflecting [a] need for more progress in that industry," GLAAD said... Read more...
-- On the TV side, ABC led the networks with six nominations for shows like "The Real O'Neals," "Grey's Anatomy," and "How to Get Away with Murder." HBO came in second with five nominations. Netflix received four... | | Jon Stewart back on "The Late Show" Tuesday night | | | This is Jon Stewart's first visit to Stephen Colbert's show since inauguration day... | | | BET making a statement with "Madiba" | | Brian Lowry emails: Coming on the heels of big ratings for its New Edition miniseries, BET follows that up with the centerpiece of its Black History Month offerings: "Madiba," a three-part miniseries starring Laurence Fishburne as Nelson Mandela. The premiere is on Wednesday night...
-- BaltSun's David Zurawik writes: "BET is making a big statement... showing it can do top-shelf scripted programming with top talent in front of and behind the camera. 'Madiba' is the kind of miniseries that can compete with almost anything on cable, network TV and streaming services this season..." | | HBO developing a movie based on the making of "The Godfather" | | Brian Lowry emails:
Now here's an offer HBO apparently couldn't refuse: A movie based on the making of "The Godfather." While still in development, per Variety, the film would go behind the scenes "from [Francis Ford] Coppola joining the project to the casting of Al Pacino and Marlon Brando to dealings with the real-life New York mafia."
Notably, former Variety editor Peter Bart (my old boss), who currently works for sister PMC site Deadline, will serve as a consultant. Bart was an executive at Paramount who, working for Robert Evans, helped shepherd along the adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. See you tomorrow! | |  | | 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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