| | | | Must see TV: James Comey and Mike Rogers will testify starting at 10am ET Monday at the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian meddling in the election.
The confirmation hearing for Neil Gorsuch gets underway at 11am... But opening statements will take several hours, so don't expect to hear much from the SCOTUS nominee until mid-afternoon... Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper will anchor the coverage on CNN... Bret Baier and Shannon Bream on Fox... | | George Stephanopoulos addressing the two-week-old Obama-wiretapped-me claim: "The president's charge is untrue. And he knows it's not true. At least he should."
On Sunday's "This Week," G.S. described the fallout this way: "Two of America's closest allies upset. The president's agenda overshadowed. The credibility of his spokespeople in tatters." And now, "a public showdown. The FBI director, before Congress, likely to defy the president and publicly testify that the president's claim is simply not true." | | | The effects of Trump's media diet | | WSJ columnist Bret Stephens on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" "I would say to Trump supporters, surely you can't be happy about a presidency that seems so consumed by these crises that are manufactured by the president's media diet. Maybe you elected the president to get something done, other than to have these kinds of weekly blowups..." | | | Trump critics are talking about this poll... | | Gallup's daily job approval poll has President Trump at a new low... 37% approval... which is notably lower than other recent approval ratings. Obama's all-time low was 38%... | | | Trump fans are talking about THIS poll... | | | Remembering Jimmy Breslin | | Jimmy Breslin died Sunday morning. He was 88. Breslin was often called the greatest newspaper columnist of his era. Some say he was the greatest of all time.
David Folkenflik on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" "He was contentious, he was combative, colorful. Occasionally, he was so provocative, he could be offensive. But he had a heart... He stuck up for the little guy, the working class guy, and he also believed firmly in the idea of social progress..." | | -- How to teach people to be reporters: The only lesson "you could give people is how to climb stairs, because there are no stories on the first floor. Anything you're looking for is four and five flights up."
-- The NYT's Michael Powell recalled Breslin saying "I write with my feet, not my head."
-- Via a 2002 interview, his approach as a reporter in a competitive media market: "I ain't gonna get nowhere if I'm with everybody else. They'll drown me. I better go out on my own. If I'm all alone in a place I feel safe."
-- Breslin's goal as a writer: "To please a reader: me."
-- "To be boring, he says, is more than a sin: 'That's a felony.' | | | "Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open" | | Breslin sat down with John Avlon for this 2013 interview on "Reliable Sources."
"It's a working life. That's what it is," Breslin said. Asked about the inspiration for his columns, Breslin said, "Just keep looking and stop freaking talking when you're out. Just go out and listen. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and keep moving..." | | CNN's Jill Disis writes: On Sunday, initial reports, including the NY Daily News' own, reported Breslin's age as 86. "There's a funny story to go with that," Breslin's physician, William Cole told CNN's Anne Woolsey, saying he had a copy of Breslin's birth certificate. "Apparently somewhere along the way he lied," Cole said, recalling a conversation with a former newspaper editor. "He wanted to be the youngest person at a certain paper. Usually it's the other way around..." | | | He was working on an "autobiographical novel" | | Per NYMag's Christopher Bonanos: "The 18th book — its subject unnamed (he wouldn't say more than 'let's see how it comes out') — was in the typewriter at his death." The NY Daily News says it is an "autobiographical novel" and that "his step-daughter Emily Eldridge said Breslin made her niece promise to finish it..." | | Jonathan Alter, who's co-producing a documentary for HBO about Breslin and Pete Hamill, quoted in Jim Rutenberg's Monday NYT column: "Every city had somebody who was at least a Breslin wannabe, so as a result of that we got a lot of gritty columns that spoke for the average person and connected, spoke to the community. And we've really lost that all over the country..." | | -- Peter Hasson posted this buzzworthy story on Saturday... saying that Tomi Lahren's contract at The Blaze is up in September, "although she could be out even sooner..." (The Daily Caller)
-- "Sean Spicer, meet Ron Ziegler..." (Politico Mag)
-- "A civil war between news and opinion has broken out at The New York Times." The spark: a Louise Mensch op-ed. Details via Steven Perlberg... (BuzzFeed) | | "People see things and they don't distinguish whether it's opinion or news... This is a much larger media literacy issue."
--HuffPost EIC Lydia Polgreen on Sunday's "Reliable..." | | | Meet one of Andrew Napolitano's sources | | Jill Disis writes: A blogger and former CIA analyst says he was a source for an uncorroborated claim made on Fox News about supposed spying at Trump Tower -- but he says he didn't mean to be. Larry Johnson outlined the complicated series of events on "Reliable Sources..." events that he says led Andrew Napolitano to make his explosive claim on Fox... a claim that Fox's news division has now disavowed. Read more here... | | | Trump's presidency is shaped by Fox News | | In this story for CNNMoney, I elaborated on the theme of Friday's newsletter: that Donald Trump's presidency is shaped by Fox News.
"It's hard to think of a similarly close relationship between a president and a single outlet," historian Jon Meacham told me. "Politicians have always had favored reporters to whom they leaked, but I really think you would have to go all the way back to the overtly partisan press of the 19th century to find a parallel." Read more... | | | Murdoch's "main objective" | | Talking about this on "CNN Newsroom" on Sunday night, anchor Ana Cabrera made a good point -- that little more than a year ago, we were talking about Trump publicly snubbing Fox by skipping one of the network's primary debates. She asked: What changed? Well, for one thing, Megyn Kelly is no longer at Fox. But that's not all. Harry Shearer (of "The Simpsons" fame) was watching, and he emailed afterward: "You left out one key point about Fox's flip flop re: Trump: Rupert's main objective is to be tight with whoever's in power. See, e.g., Tony Blair."
David Folkenflik made a similar point on Sunday's "Reliable." Watch the video of the "A block" here... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | With PBS and other parts of the public broadcasting system fighting to preserve their federal government funding, PBS CEO Paula Kerger joined me on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." She framed it as a "public-private partnership." If the president's budget is adopted and public broadcasting receives $0, some rural stations "would immediately go off the air," Kerger warned. Watch the full interview here...
-- The counterargument: MRC's Dan Gainor on CNN: With federal funding, "you don't get independence, you get propaganda... That's the B.S. We're just debating the letter of the day and that's P..." | | | Tillerson speaks... about why he's not speaking | | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson granted an interview to the sole reporter traveling on his plane, IJR's Erin McPike, amid Tillerson's first official trip to Asia. IJR quickly published the transcript of the entire interview. Tillerson said a lot... this quote jumped out... "I'm not a big media press access person. I personally don't need it... When we're ready to talk about what we're trying to do, I will be available."
Lydia Polgreen reacted on "Reliable:" "You're no longer the CEO of ExxonMobil. You now serve the public. And the public has the right to know what the secretary of state is up to. And that's the whole purpose of having a traveling press corps with the secretary of state. Big news happens on these trips..."
-- NYT's David Sanger: "Rex Tillerson's Hope for a Media-Free Bubble May Burst" | | | Monday morning on "New Day" | | Bill Carter and I will be talking about Tillerson, Fox, Breslin and more... On CNN's "New Day" at 6:50am Monday... 🌞 | | | Kellyanne on the cover of NYMag | | In this week's NYMag, Olivia Nuzzi makes the case that Kellyanne Conway is "the functional First Lady of the United States." Nuzzi says this cover story "was the most fun I've ever had profiling someone..."
-- Notable quote: When asked whether Conway would ever want Sean Spicer's press secretary job, she said, "Slit my wrists, bleed out, put cement shoes on, jump off the bridge, and then I'll take the job — are you kidding me?" | | The Atlantic EIC Jeffrey Goldberg on "Face the Nation:" "I come back to this general conversation about the way to the Trump administration does things. On matters of life and death, I'm not confident yet that these guys can handle a crisis." (Via Mediaite's Jon Levine) | | | A book "smuggled out" of North Korea | | It is believed to be "the first manuscript by a living dissident writer in North Korea that had been smuggled out..." A collection of seven short stories, "a fierce indictment of life in the totalitarian North..." It has "been translated into 18 languages and published in 20 countries," and now it's arriving in the United States. Read more about "The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea" via the NYT's Choe Sang-Hun... | | | BREAKING BOX OFFICE RECORDS... | | | 'Beauty and the Beast' nabs $350 million worldwide! | | A huge weekend at the box office -- Frank Pallotta reports:
"Beauty and the Beast," Disney's live action remake of its beloved 1991 animated film, made an estimated $350 million worldwide this weekend. Of that total, $170 million came at theaters in North America. The domestic total exceeded what people in the industry had expected, and it broke the record for the biggest box office opening in March. The record had been held by last year's opening of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." It's also the best opening weekend of 2017 so far...
-- "'Beauty and the Beast' is the latest example of Disney's perfectly executed strategy of going to their animation vaults, dusting off a classic and reinventing it as a modern live-action movie," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore...
-- More to come: Other live action remakes in development at Disney: "Dumbo," "The Lion King," "Aladdin," "Mulan" and "Pinocchio..." | | | Redford rallies support for the NEA | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Robert Redford wrote a letter in support of the National Endowment for the Arts. He recalls in it how it helped him start the Sundance Institute and says the proposed defunding of the NEA's budget would "gut our nation's long history of support for artists and arts programs and it would deprive all our citizens of the culture and diversity the humanities brings to our country."
"This is entirely the wrong approach at entirely the wrong time," he wrote. "We need to invite new voices to the table, we need to offer future generations a chance to create, and we need to celebrate our cultural heritage." You can read his full statement at the Sundance Institute's website... | | | Chuck Berry's forthcoming album | | Rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry's death on Saturday, at age 90, "came just weeks before the debut single off his first new studio album in nearly four decades was scheduled to go on sale," THR reports. "While studios often release tribute albums of classics or unused material after an artist dies, Berry's upcoming album featuring mostly original songs was announced in October. His last studio album, Rock It, was released in 1979..." | | | What Berry and Breslin shared | | Philly's Will Bunch gets the final word in this newsletter:
"The truth is that Berry and Breslin did have a kind of cosmic bond, because they both emerged from that uniquely American post-war era and celebrated its virtues and occasionally broadcast its rage. And in doing so they channeled the myth and the magic of the Great American Middle Class even as they were also creating it and then amplifying it as loud as the opening riff to 'Johnny B. Goode.' They also shared a relentless working-class ethic so that Breslin was still pounding a keyboard and Berry was bending his guitar strings almost up to the day they died. They both had maddening flaws, both lived incredibly full lives, and yet their loss still created a shroud of sadness -- and with good reason. Because their vision of an equal-opportunity America, where they saw the promise of falling barriers that is now being replaced with rising walls, is slipping away from us... just as they have." Read the rest of Bunch's column here... | | 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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