| | | | Good evening from 35,000 feet... flying home from SXSW... | | Anderson Cooper on Thursday's "AC360:" "Tonight, we know the president of the United States has no facts. No facts to back up his startling allegation that the former president of the United States, President Obama, wiretapped him in Trump Tower during the campaign."
In a revealing interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, President Trump cited news stories and a Bret Baier segment to justify those baseless tweets from nearly two weeks ago. At Thursday's W.H. briefing, Spicer also off "read a long list of media reports," Cooper noted. But those stories don't prove what Spicer claims they prove... | | I joined Katy Tur, Dan Rather, and Matthew Dowd for a Trump-and-media panel at SXSW Thursday afternoon... Rather called the Trump presidency the greatest "test" of the press in modern times... Tur referenced Trump's "fights with facts..." Dowd said Trump "breaks all the rules" but expects others to follow the rules... He asserted that politicos who lie should not be booked on TV programs... Tur pointed out there's a "difference between 'spin' and lies..." Austin Chronicle has a recap here... | | "It's amazing to watch the White House continue to argue that the Earth is flat."
--Jake Tapper after Thursday's W.H. briefing... watch the Spicer-Jim Acosta exchange here... | | | That time Hannity pulled a gun on a guest | | Dylan Byers emails his latest scoop:
Sean Hannity once pulled a gun on Juan Williams -- seriously. Last October, after ending one of his many spirited on-air arguments with the liberal contributor, Hannity pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Williams, according to three sources with knowledge of the incident. He even turned on the laser sight, causing a red dot to bob around on Williams' body.
Hannity was just showing off, the sources said, but the behavior clearly disturbed Williams and others on set. Hannity's colleagues brought the incident to the attention of Fox News execs... | | | Fox says it investigated the incident | | A Fox spokeswoman told Dylan that Hannity "has been trained in firearm safety since he was 11 years old and has a license to carry a gun in five states, including New York. The situation was thoroughly investigated and it was found that no one was put in any danger."
-- The bigger picture: Dylan writes that it "feels like Hannity is spoiling for a fight" with all of his critics... Read his story here... | | | Friendly reminder from the NRA | | NRA gun safety rule #1: "ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. This is the primary rule of gun safety." | | | The public media funding battle begins | | President Trump's budget proposes $0 for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We've seen this movie before... But Republicans have never succeeded in de-funding public media... Will this year be different?
PBS/NPR/CBP advocates have a playbook for these fights... And it was put into effect on Thursday when the W.H. budget outline came out... Here's my full story about what Patricia Harrison and other officials are saying...
-- Media Research Center's Dan Gainor tweets: "There are a ton of liberal billionaires who could fund @NPR and @PBS with change they find in their couches. Let them. #freemarket"
-- Department of Great Timing: Earlier this week, NPR said its ratings are at an "all-time high..." | | | Who benefits from public broadcasting | | -- Brian Lowry emails: PBS officials often note that part of their mandate is to program to under-served audiences, from preschoolers to seniors. While that's less true in an age of such abundance, it's a mischaracterization to suggest, as W.H. budget director Mick Mulvaney did, that public TV and radio caters exclusively to elites. It's the "single moms" he referenced, in fact, who potentially benefit most from educational children's fare... | | | Sunday on "Reliable Sources:" PBS CEO Paula Kerger | | Independent Journal Review (IJR) had a bad day. Reporter Joe Perticone quit because he "felt as though his credibility as a congressional reporter was damaged by the actions of other writers," Politico's Hadas Gold reports. The "final straw" was a conspiratorial post by another writer, Kyle Becker, which was retracted on Thursday afternoon. Read more... | | | McPike still hasn't filed any stories from Tillerson's trip... | | Meanwhile, IJR correspondent Erin McPike (formerly of CNN and RCP) has enviable access on Rex Tillerson's first trip to Asia. She was hand-picked by Tillerson's staff to have the sole press seat on the plane. But McPike still hasn't filed any stories. Why? Per a spokesman for the site, she's not filing spot stories, "she's writing a profile piece on Secretary Tillerson." Isn't she passing up a powerful opportunity? | | | C-SPAN pressing Gorsuch for Supreme Court cameras | | C-SPAN is getting ready for next week's Gorsuch confirmation hearings:
On Friday the public affairs network will start promoting this video, a mash-up of all the times sitting Supreme Court justices were asked in their confirmation hearings about allowing TV cameras at SCOTUS oral arguments. What will Gorsuch say if he's asked?
C-SPAN will also be releasing the results of a new poll on American attitudes about the Supreme Court, including a cameras in the court question... | | -- "A BBC team and a number of tourists have suffered minor injuries after being caught up in an incident on the erupting volcano Mount Etna in Sicily..." (BBC)
-- Chelsea Clinton is penning a children's book. Title: "She Persisted" (NYT)
-- "Politico is reassigning several of its media reporters to other beats as the publication shifts the tone of its media section to focus more on politics and less on industry news," BI's Oliver Darcy reports... (BI)
-- Tomi Lahren says Trump called to thank her for defending him on "Hannity..." (Washingtonian)
-- I missed this earlier: Alan Murray's successor as Fortune EIC is Clifton Leaf... Adam Lashinsky is the new exec editor, reporting to Leaf... Murray is now president of Fortune as well as Time Inc. chief content officer... (Adweek) | | | "NCAA Tournament scores despite college basketball's flaws" | | Brian Lowry emails: College basketball has been seriously damaged by the so-called "one and done" rule. But the NCAA tournament, which tipped off Thursday, nevertheless remains arguably the year's best sports event, especially from a media standpoint... Remember, CBS and Turner have the tournament rights through 2032... Read Lowry's full column here >>> | | | What happens to Us Weekly now? | | With National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. acquiring Us Weekly from Jann Wenner, there's concern that the magazine is going to change markedly... according to THR's Erik Hayden, editorial employees "are expected to reinterview for their jobs as early as Friday..."
-- More: Former editorial director Lara Cohen expressed the concern really well in this Medium post... she says the mag "fundamentally changed the entertainment machine..." | | Remembering the good old days of Us Weekly... former editor Janice Min published this "25 Things You Didn't Know" list on BuzzFeed...
1. The place used to mint money.
8. The protagonists of every story had to be female. No male point of view was allowed. Kiss of death? A solo male cover.
11. Early on, Joe Scarborough walked over to my table at Michael's to tell me he loved the magazine.
Keep scrolling for bonus #26, Min's shade at Us Weekly's former sibling, Rolling Stone... specifically at self-righteous editors who thought Us was beneath them...
26. We never ran a discredited story about a rape at the University of Virginia. | | | Nielsen is coming back online... | | After a multi-day outage, Nielsen began to provide backlogged ratings for Sunday/Monday/Tuesday on Thursday morning. Among many other things, we found out that "Reliable Sources" and Fox's "MediaBuzz" had an exact tie in the 25-54 demo. "Like kissing your sister..." | | | "This Is Us" record high! | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: After days of delayed ratings due to a Nielsen outage, some key figures came through on Thursday: NBC's "This Is Us" season finale scored new series highs in total viewers and the 18-49 demo, with 12.8 million viewers and a 3.4 rating. The episode was NBC's most-watched scripted show in this Tuesday night time slot in 10 years, according to the network...
-- More: The ratings news was a little less sunny for "The Bachelor." The show drew 8.4 million viewers, down 12% from last year for a new series low, reports TVLine... | | | The effect of Maddow's tease | | Rachel Maddow's Twitter tease about a Trump tax return + an on-screen countdown clock during the 8pm hour equaled huge ratings for her 9pm program on Tuesday. Here's how to quantify it: Maddow's lead-in, "All In With Chris Hayes," averaged 1.81 million viewers between 8 and 9pm. Maddow averaged 4.13 million between 9 and 10pm. Now that's a spike you don't see very often in cable news.
Per TVNewser, "this was the highest-rated program ever for Maddow..." | | -- "Martin Shkreli keeps buying up the personal domain names of journalists who write about him," Maxwell Tani reports... (BI)
-- Tony Maglio asks: Will Kelly Ripa ever pick a new co-host? "It took nearly 10 months to find Regis' successor — we're now past that point..." (TheWrap)
-- "Hulu is searching for a senior executive to oversee its programming," a "chief content officer," Tom Dotan reports... (The Information)
-- "Executives at Viacom and its Paramount Pictures studio are working overtime to keep their $1 billion co-financing deal with two Chinese firms on course..." (WSJ) | | "Donald Trump is learning a harsh lesson: In the White House, words matter," The AP's Julie Pace writes.
Key passage: "Trump is unaccustomed to being held accountable for his words. As a real estate mogul and reality TV star, he thrived on over-the-top claims and attention-getting hype... But that's not an option for the president of the United States..." | | Tucker Carlson asked Trump about reading, and the president answered, "Well, you know, I love to read. Actually, I'm looking at a book, I'm reading a book, I'm trying to get started. Every time I do about half a page, I get a phone call that there's some emergency, this or that..." He went on to say that he's reading a book about Andrew Jackson, but he doesn't have much time... | | | "SNL" going live coast to coast | | Beginning April 15, "SNL" will broadcast live across the country for the first time in the show's 42-year history, Frank Pallotta reports. The scheduling move will continue its coast-to-coast live shows through May 20...
-- Bob Greenblatt: This will ensure that "everyone is in on the joke at the same time..."
-- Hosting news: Melissa McCarthy, who has stood out this season for her portrayal of press secretary Sean Spicer, will host on May 13. | | | What if #BBCMan was BBCWoman? | | | Lowry reviews "Iron Fist" | | Brian Lowry emails: Marvel and Netflix have delivered their first clunker with "Iron Fist." But completists will likely still want to check out the series, since the character will be united with Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage as the Defenders... Read more here... | | | Netflix replacing stars with thumbs | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Netflix is replacing its star ratings with "thumbs-up" and "thumbs-down" indicators. According to Variety, Netflix realized stars were becoming "less relevant." They found that even if a user gave something a favorable star rating, it didn't mean that was the content they were watching most often. "We made ratings less important because the implicit signal of your behavior is more important," Netflix VP of product Tod Yellin said... | | | "Why women really make less in Hollywood..." | | Megan Thomas emails: Three female Hollywood leaders weigh in on gender pay disparity in a THR column by Gavin Palone: "Why women really make less in Hollywood (and how to fight back)"
(The women he spoke with chose to remain anonymous, but speak some interesting truth...) | | | For the record, part three | | | | Quote of the day, bonus edition | | | "Look, I love what I do, and I'm aware of how lucky I am, but -- how can I say this without sounding weird? I just really can't wait for people to forget about me."
--Selena Gomez in this interview with Vogue... Details via Chloe Melas... | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. 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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