| | | | "Fake news until it's old news" | | "Fake media." "Fake news." "Total hoax." "Old news!" President Trump's Monday night tweetstorm revealed a whole lot about his mindset and his approach to bruising news coverage.
This tweet about Sally Yates' damning testimony stood out to me: "Yates made the fake media extremely unhappy today --- she said nothing but old news!" It's a classic deflection -- "nothing new here!" As one of my favorite tweeters, @nycsouthpaw, said: "It's fake news until it's old news." | | Trump's tweets kept the Yates news cycle going, but also provided a convenient counter-narrative for fans and pro-Trump commentators. The potential result every time: folks end up confused and unsure what's true.
-- Talking points in action: Trump tweeted at 6:41: "There is 'no evidence' of collusion w/ Russia and Trump." Jesse Watters on Fox at 9:20: "There is no evidence of any Trump collusion with Russia!" | | | Maddow: Did W.H. float this Afghan war news to distract from the hearing? | | Rachel Maddow on MSNBC Monday night: "As soon as this hearing ended today, the White House floated the news that they are considering basically re-declaring war in Afghanistan. Starting the war there all over again in its 16th year."
Maddow said this leak "had the practical effect of shoving the headlines on this hearing today down toward the bottom of the page, at least at the Washington Post. And THAT is as cynical as I have felt about anything else in politics in many years."
-- Is Maddow gauging the press strategy correctly? Or is she reading too much into it?
-- Here's what's going on, according to CNN's W.H. and Pentagon teams: "The final proposals for a planned troop increase in Afghanistan are expected to cross President Donald Trump's desk this week. US officials say the likely range for the US troop increase in Afghanistan is between 3,000 and 5,000 troops, but could be as low as 1,500..." | | | Sen. Richard Blumenthal on "Anderson Cooper 360:" Michael Flynn "might still be there, but for the Washington Post report that, in effect, shamed them into getting rid of him..." | | | Lester Holt interviewing POTUS on Thursday | | | Assuming nothing changes between now and Thursday, this will be the president's first TV interview since the health care vote in the House... He'll be sitting down with Lester Holt at the White House on Thursday afternoon for what NBC is calling an "exclusive, wide-ranging, one on one interview..." It'll air on Thursday's "Nightly" and Friday's "Today" show... | | This congressman is on Kimmel tonight | | I hear this is going to be a very newsy episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" -->
Jimmy Kimmel is back from paternity leave Monday night... and he'll be joined by Sen. Bill Cassidy, who joined the "Jimmy Kimmel test" during an interview with CNN's John Berman last week... | | | Spencer Ackerman joining The Daily Beast | | Spencer Ackerman, who turned heads when he left Guardian US last week, is moving over to The Daily Beast. He'll be senior national security correspondent for the news organization... covering homeland security, counterterrorism, intel and more... and reuniting with his former colleague Noah Schachtman, who's now the Beast's exec editor.
-- Ackerman says via email: "The Daily Beast is the place to do the kind of journalism that matters most right now..." | | | "Rural America isn't the only place local news is disappearing," CJR's David Uberti writes. CJR's latest edition is all about local news... check out this map of "America's growing news deserts..." graphic produced by Evan Applegate and Cynthia Hoffman... | | "NOTHING'S HAPPENING AT FOX NEWS" | | BBC reporter ambushes Rupert Murdoch | | The BBC's top-notch media editor Amol Rajan requested an interview with Rupert Murdoch... was turned down... so on Friday he waited outside Fox HQ in midtown Manhattan until Murdoch came outside to his town car. It was worth the wait... here's the exchange:
Rajan: "Are you worried about Ofcom?"
Murdoch: "No. You should be worried about the BBC yourselves."
Murdoch got in the car.
Rajan pressed on: "Do you have any concerns about what Ofcom might say about what's happening at Fox News?"
Murdoch shook his head no. "Nothing's happening at Fox News."
Murdoch rolled the car window up.
Rajan: "Nothing whatsoever?"
Murdoch rolled the window back down.
Murdoch: "It's getting record ratings and... Fox News is getting record ratings, and... so I'm not worried at all."
Rajan: And you don't think Ofcom is gonna consider what's happening at Fox News?"
Murdoch: "Nothing's happening at Fox News. Nothing, OK?"
Rajan: "You lost 3 of your top people. That's something, isn't it? These are sexual and racial harassment allegations."
Murdoch defended Bill Shine: "Not the third person at all. Nothing against him. And the other 2 were quite separate. So, goodbye." | | | This on-the-street interview is a reminder... | | | Rupert and his sons really haven't given any interviews about the Fox News situation in the ten months since Roger Ailes resigned... | | Murdoch biographer/NPR reporter David Folkenflik tweets:
"Rupert may think bleeding at Fox staunched by Shine's departure - as he did after forcing out O'Reilly last month - and Ailes last summer." But "there's Ofcom decision on Fox's Sky acquisition...federal inquiry... and all those lawsuits. Nothing happening at Fox News? Hardly the news judgement of Rupert Murdoch, tabloid proprietor -- unless it involves Murdoch's world." | | | Bloom and Walsh meet with Ofcom | | Charles Riley reports from London: Lisa Bloom and her client Wendy Walsh met Monday with officials from Ofcom to discuss allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation at Fox News.
Bloom told reporters: "We want the British regulator to understand the corporate governance failures at 21st Century Fox. We both very strongly believe that Fox should not be allowed to take full ownership of Sky." Ofcom's decision is expected by June 20... | | | Another Fox critic, lawyer Douglas Wigdor, will be meeting with Ofcom on Thursday. In a Monday afternoon announcement, Wigdor named two more plaintiffs in his race discrimination complaint against Fox. The network responded in a new statement: "Fox News terminated Judy Slater before a single lawsuit or any amended complaint was filed." | | | New ad sales boss at Fox News | | | "Marianne Gambelli, the former longtime head of ad sales for the NBC broadcast network, was named president of ad sales for Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network," Variety's Brian Steinberg reports. "She will start her new duties on May 22..." | | -- On CNNI, I discussed Facebook's latest whack at fake news: full-page ads with "tips for spotting false news" in four British papers ahead of the general election there... Video...
-- George Will, longtime ABC commentator, most recently with Fox News, is now joining MSNBC and NBC News as a contributor...
-- Nicolle Wallace's 4pm MSNBC show will be called "Deadline: White House," and it'll start Tuesday...
-- HLN's new tagline: "News That Hits Home." TVNewser has the promo...
-- Macroon, Mackron, Mackrone, Mackrin: Matt Negrin found a dozen TV anchors mispronouncing "Macron..." | | Sinclair agrees to buy Tribune Media | | | Announced Monday morning: Sinclair is paying $43.50 per share for Tribune Media... valuing the deal at $3.9 billion... and making Sinclair an even more powerful force in local TV. Here's my full story... | | | Sinclair's "penchant for conservative politics" | | "Will Sinclair take on Fox News after buying Tribune Media?" That's what the LATimes' Stephen Battaglio asks in this story. "In discussing the Tribune deal with investors Monday, Sinclair did not disclose any plans to enter the news business on a national scale, but the company's penchant for conservative politics has already drawn fire from critics..."
-- David Zurawik, in Sinclair's hometown, writes that the company "has a history of compromising its news operations with right-wing politics..."
-- The liberal group FAIR: "Trump Uses Power of FCC to Pay Back Friends at Sinclair Broadcasting" | | | Changes coming to WGN America... | | Brian Lowry emails: It was always a little unclear what Tribune's longterm goal was in offering original scripted series on WGN America, other than a long-shot desire to position itself as a competitor along the lines of FX or AMC. Not surprisingly, Sinclair clearly has no appetite to play in that arena, which leaves programs like "Underground" and "Salem" out of luck, and the former likely looking for a home elsewhere.
Sinclair's shift toward "lower-cost originals and acquired series," meanwhile, will create opportunities for reality-TV producers and more sales of network reruns. Whatever fills the void, it's one less buyer for scripted fare, and perhaps an acknowledgement that market is currently pretty well saturated... | | Wemple takes Tucker Carlson to task | | Recommended: This Erik Wemple column about slanted Fox News coverage of the Rockville case: "Tucker Carlson demagogued a rape case involving immigrants. Then they were cleared."
Wemple quotes from my essay on Sunday's show -- I said media types have a tendency to SHOUT the original allegation, we whisper the update, and we need to "get our levels right." Wemple says that "appeal, however, presumes that people want to get it right — never a given with Carlson..." | | | No comment from the FCC... | | | About John Oliver's latest. Melissah Yang emails: Oliver tackled net neutrality again amid threats of rollbacks and asked viewers to leave comments on the FCC's site via the URL GoFCCYourself.com. Contrary to reports that Oliver crashed the agency's site for the second time, the FCC said it was actually hit by a DDoS attack Sunday evening. The timing sure is interesting though... | | -- "Big-name brands are continuing their multi-million dollar advertising boycott of Google's YouTube," The Australian reports. The NYT has a look at the how the ad exodus is affecting YouTube stars...
-- Peter Kafka's latest: Facebook is giving "the go-ahead to publish native ads," part of the company's effort to win over video creators...
-- Marc Frons is the new CTO at News Corp... and Melody Hildebrandt is the new global chief info security officer at 21CF...
-- Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: In Madrid, readers of El Pais can get their paper delivered through Amazon Prime Now within two hours, Nieman Lab reports. Barcelona is up next... | | | Bill Clinton and James Patterson writing a book together! | | | Lisa France emails: How's this for a thriller: Bill Clinton and James Patterson are writing "The President Is Missing," a novel to be published jointly by Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Company in June 2018. Here's Lisa's full story... | | | Bob Barnett made it happen | | (Of course he did!)
NYT's Alexandra Alter has the backstory: "The project came about late last year when Robert B. Barnett, a lawyer at Williams & Connolly who represents both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Patterson, had the idea of pairing them up on a novel." First he approached Clinton "to see if he was interested..." Then he went to Patterson... and "Patterson wrote an extensive outline." Now they're a few chapters in... | | | "New novel asks: What if Hillary had never married Bill Clinton?" | | | "Curtis Sittenfeld, whose best-selling 2008 novel American Wife fictionalized the life of Laura Bush, is now turning her sharp eye to Hillary Clinton," USA Today's Jocelyn McClurg reports. The novel for Penguin Random House will imagine what would've happened if Hillary had never married Bill... | | Last night I wrote that "Where in the World is Kellyanne Conway?" was the cold open on "SNL." I must've still been half-asleep when I watched the show on Sunday morning! Thanks to those of you who wrote in to point out the error... The cold open was actually a "Morning Joe" spoof.
-- Related: "On Monday morning "Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski tried—and failed—to convincingly act like two people who did not know that they had been featured" on "SNL," VF's Laura Bradley writes... | | Richard Simmons is suing National Enquirer, Radar Online, America Media over sex change story | | | Richard Simmons "is bringing the first-ever defamation lawsuit over published reports of a sex change and framing it as a stand for dignity and the right to have a gender identity," THR's Eriq Gardner reports... | | Jennifer Morrison leaving "Once Upon a Time" | | Sandra Gonzalez emails with big-ish news in the TV world: Jennifer Morrison will not return for another season of "Once Upon a Time" if ABC decides to pick it up for a new season. She announced the news on instagram.
-- Sandra adds: The move is shocking but also got me thinking about how some other shows handled similar situations. Here's my look at some of the preferred on-screen exit strategies... | | | For the record, part three | | | Katy Perry: "This record is not about anyone else!" | | Megan Thomas emails: Just so we're clear, Katy Perry says her new album has nothing to do with Taylor Swift.
Perry to EW: "One thing to note is: You can't mistake kindness for weakness and don't come for me. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. And that't not to any one person and don't quote me that it is, because it's not. It's not about that. Honestly, when women come together and they decide to unite, this world is going to be a better place. Period end of story. But, let me say this: Everything has a reaction or a consequence so don't forget about that, okay, honey. [Laughs] We got to keep it real, honey. This record is not about anyone else! This record is about me being seen and heard so that I can see and hear everyone else! It's not even about me! It's about everything that I see out there that I digest. I think there's a healing in it for me and vulnerability. If people want to connect and be healed and feel vulnerable and feel empowered and strong, God bless and here it is." | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable" | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. | |  | | 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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