| | | | | "Don't let him set the bar" | | "Whether you are spouting lies at random or whether you are reading lies from a TelePrompTer, they are still lies."
Hey, guess who Reza Aslan is talking about...
On the latest "Reliable Sources Livecast," our during-the-workweek CNN podcast, Aslan criticized the "fawning" commentary about President Trump's joint address and said it's part of a "disturbing trend."
"Sometimes," he said, "because this president has set the bar so low, that when he manages to simply not to embarrass himself and the country, we go out of our way to praise him, to talk about some 'pivot' that he is undergoing." Aslan's recommendation: "Don't let him set the bar."
I also asked Aslan about his WHCA dinner objections and his new CNN series "Believer." Listen to the podcast here... | | | Carney's comments at CJR conference | | Columbia Journalism Review held a "Covering Trump" conference on Friday. WashPost's Erik Wemple says the morning panel I was on "was a cross between Poynter.org and 'The Five.'" I mixed it up with Breitbart's new financial editor, John Carney... At one point, Carney asked the panelists, "Do you think you have enough people who understand and sympathize with Trump's worldview in your news organizations or do you think you are predominantly staffed by people who view Trump's point of view as not just wrong but probably also evil?"
NYT DC bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller shot back: "Do you have enough people in your organization who disagree with Trump's point of view?"
Carney had some important things to say. Read all about it here via Wemple's post... and a recap by CJR's David Uberti... | | And while I'm recapping conferences, there's this: James Murdoch said at the Enders Analysis conference on Thursday that the term "fake news" has been distorted by partisans. It's "been co-opted by a political class to denigrate things that they don't want to hear... That's around the world. That's a real worry." This is self-evident... But it's interesting to hear a Murdoch say it, since some personalities on Fox News have been pivotal in the redefining of "fake news..." | | | Arnold says "I won't be back" | | Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that he "loved every second of working with NBC and Mark Burnett," but he's not returning for a second season of "The New Celebrity Apprentice." He said "I would absolutely work with all of them again on a show that doesn't have this baggage." Hmmm. Meaning Trump's critiques? Weak ratings? An advertiser boycott?
Brian Lowry's view: Arnold's announcement has to be filed under "You can't fire me, I quit." The series had been fading even when Trump was still hosting. And if the back and forth between the two didn't gin up any curiosity, one suspects NBC will choose to rest the concept for a while, if not retire it for good...
(Thanks to Chris Boyette for the headline!) | | | Trump's local TV strategy | | HuffPost's Michael Calderone has an in-depth look at Monday's dinner with POTUS and "regional press:" There were 18 reporters from six TV companies -- Hearst, Scripps, Gray, Sinclair, Cox, Nexstar.
At the end of the event, "Sean Spicer told attendees that the administration invited them to honor the power of local television..." Read more... | | | From Drudge's home page to Trump's Twitter page | | Tom Kludt reports:
Trump's social media activity often provides a window into what he's watching and reading: A photo he shared Friday on Twitter might have offered some clues, too. Trump tweeted out a 14-year-old image of Senator Chuck Schumer with Vladimir Putin, calling Schumer a "hypocrite" for his accusations about the administration's ties to Russia. But the photo had already been making the rounds among right-wing outlets and commentators. When Trump shared the photo, the Drudge Report was giving the same image top billing on its widely read homepage. Drudge linked to a piece that was published Thursday by The Gateway Pundit.
Kludt notes that an editor at Infowars had also tweeted the image on Thursday... | | | Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | The guest list: Bill Plante, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Jason Miller, Charles Blow, MZ Hemingway, Kaitlan Collins, Sabrina Siddiqui, Katrina vanden Heuvel... Join us, Sunday, 11am ET, CNN! | | | Another programming note... | | | "SNL" is back this weekend | | | "SNL" returns with Octavia Spencer as guest host... | | -- Dan Primack's open letter to his former employer Time Inc.: "You're being greedy." He's calling out Time for its plan to award bonuses to "key management employees" if the company gets bought... (LinkedIn)
-- Sam Grobart is leaving Bloomberg to join CNN... He'll be the executive editor of CNNTech... (Twitter)
-- Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Susan Page, Hallie Jackson, Kristen Welker, Ashley Parker, Julie Pace, Sara Murray, April Ryan, Mara Liasson, Janet Rodriguez, and Margaret Brennan are quoted and photographed in this new Vogue feature about "the women of the press corps..." (Vogue) | | | NBCU invests $500 million into Snap | | CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin broke the news Friday morning: NBCUniversal "invested $500 million in Snap during its IPO as part of a strategic investment and partnership... The stock allocation by Snap to NBCUniversal appears to be the only one made to a new strategic investor, which would make NBCUniversal the only U.S. media company with a stake. Other companies could buy shares in the open market..." | | The WSJ's Shalini Ramachandran reports: NBCU CEO Steve Burke "found himself sending 'snaps' to business partners and meeting with executives younger than his children..." He met with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel about a year ago... Then "spent the next year courting Mr. Spiegel and Snap COO Imran Khan..." | | | Snap's second day on the NYSE | | CNNMoney's Seth Fiegerman with the day two story: Snap "jumped 20% in early trading Friday, rising above $29 a share. It ended the day at $27.09, up 11% for the day. At its high Friday, Snap's market value was hovering around $40 billion. The stock surge comes after Snap ended its first day of trading Thursday up 44% over its IPO price..." | | -- Facebook execs are "soliciting pitches for TV-like original programming in about half a dozen genres, including sports, science, pop culture, lifestyle, gaming and teens..." But not hard news... (WSJ)
-- Craziest media story of the day: "JetSmarter tries to extort journalists for positive coverage" (The Verge)
-- Megan Thomas highlights this "fascinating New Yorker review (and quite positive) of George W. Bush's new book, 'Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief's Tribute to America's Warriors'" (The New Yorker) | | "I'm just so struck by how everyone wants to talk Trump all the time. The other day my dentist called to remind me I was overdue for a cleaning, and then for 10 minutes peppered me with in-the-weeds questions. Do you think Bannon's up, or is Reince in control? What about the ninth circuit? Trump is a deeply animating force for the entire nation. There is endless fascination in a way I've never seen."
--Ashley Parker in the aforementioned Vogue feature... | | | Mark Halperin's new title | | "Mark Halperin is making his appearances on MSNBC and NBC News official, as he becomes the network's senior political analyst," TVNewser's Chris Ariens reports. Bloomberg ended "With All Due Respect" back in December.
-- More: "For NBC, he'll also appear regularly on the 'Today' show. This is a continuation of the NBC relationship with Halperin. He had the same senior political analyst role starting in 2010..." | | | "That is the real story..." | | Maggie Haberman in Saturday's NYT: "Trump, according to his advisers inside and outside of the White House, has felt besieged by what he regards as a mostly hostile bureaucracy, consisting in part of Democrats and people who opposed his election who are now undermining his presidency with leaks. He believes that they are behind the stories about confusion and dysfunction in his administration and, most of all, that they have made his relationship with Russia a recurring issue."
Hope Hicks' comment to Haberman: "That is the real story..." | | | "8 TV stars who can thank Trump for a ratings bump" | | This Vulture piece mentions Rachel Maddow, Samantha Bee, Jake Tapper, Tucker Carlson, and others... | | | What Conway says she meant by "alternative facts" | | Norah O'Donnell taped a pair of interviews with Kellyanne Conway for an interview on this weekend's "CBS Sunday Morning." O'Donnell pressed Conway on what she meant when she coined the term "alternative facts" on January 22. The answer:
"Well, it was alternative information and additional facts. And that got conflated. But, you know, respectfully, Norah, I see mistakes on TV every single day and people just brush them off. Everybody thinks it's just so funny that the wrong – the wrong movie was, you know, heralded as the winner of the Oscars." | | Megan Thomas emails: This is a good read about what's next for the Academy after this year's Oscars snafu... by Vanity Fair's Johana Desta...
Key dates:
March 13th: Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs is scheduled to speak at SXSW. (Her fourth and final term as the Academy's president comes to an end this summer.)
March 28th: The Academy Board of Governors will convene to discuss next steps post-Oscars fiasco.
May: Academy C.E.O. Dawn Hudson's contract comes up for renewal. | | Brian Lowry emails:
"Feud: Bette and Joan" is a deliciously juicy FX drama about Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and the making of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," but it isn't just an ode to old Hollywood. Ryan Murphy's latest limited series doubles as a still-relevant look at the lot older actresses have faced through the years.
Read Lowry's full review here... | | | Time travel times two in 'Time After Time,' 'Making History' | | More from Brian Lowry: Networks often develop similarly themed concepts, as if something's in the water. But the fact there were four new shows this season built around some variation of time travel or messing around with history might be some kind of a record. "Timeless" and "Frequency" premiered in the fall, and two more, the movie adaptation "Time After Time" and Fox comedy "Making History," both debut on Sunday. Read more... | | | For the record, part three | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. See you Sunday... | |  | | 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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