| | | | | BREAKING NEWS: A NEW LOCAL TV BEHEMOTH | | Sinclair on the verge of buying Tribune | | I'm setting an early alarm on Monday morning... expecting a pre-market press release from Sinclair... confirming its acquisition of Tribune Media. The deal is "still fluid," a source said Sunday night, but is on track to be announced Monday A.M. The biggest owner of local TV stations is set to get even bigger.
Reuters and Bloomberg broke the news at almost the exact same time on Sunday afternoon. It looks like Tribune will get about $44 per share... up from Friday's closing price of $40.29... depending on the exact price, the deal is worth somewhere between $3.8 billion and $4 billion... | | | Fox didn't bid! But Nexstar did | | | My sources say Sinclair beat out Nexstar in the auction process. 21st Century Fox and Blackstone Group explored a bid... partly to block Sinclair's move... but Fox ultimately didn't make a bid, the sources said. Here's my full story... | | | Trying to get caught up on Sinclair? | | Last week's Page One story in the NYT is a good place to start... "Sinclair is eager to broaden its reach..." The company has "used its 173 television stations to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda since the presidency of George W. Bush..."
-- Also check out Paul Farhi's WashPost story from last December: "How the nation's largest owner of TV stations helped Donald Trump's campaign" | | | What's Bill O'Reilly thinking right now? | | On this day, I'm reminded of a mid-April tweet from Jack Shafer: "Sinclair could build a whole new network around Bill O'Reilly."
You can be sure the thought has crossed O'Reilly's mind, too. Could Sinclair, with the addition of Tribune's portfolio, could try to launch a rival to Fox News? Via cable or over the airwaves? Where does Sinclair chairman David Smith want to be in five years? | | I asked Craig Aaron, the head of Free Press, an anti-consolidation nonprofit, for his thoughts about the deal. He replied:
"It's a scandal. Trump-favoring mega-chain gets rules changed -- and expects others to be erased -- so it can put its cookie-cutter newscasts in nearly 70 percent of local markets across the country. The Trump FCC has been gaming the rules so Sinclair can look smaller, and even then it still exceeds the national caps. It sure looks like a quid pro quo: friendly coverage and full employment for ex-Trump mouthpieces in exchange for a green light to get as big as Sinclair wants."
(I think Aaron is referring to this and this.)
Aaron added: "I feel terrible for the local journalists who will be forced to set aside their news judgment to air Trump administration talking points and reactionary commentaries from headquarters. This deal would have been DOA in any other admin, but the Trump FCC isn't just approving it; they're practically arranging it." | | | Don't forget about the rank and file... | | | Since Aaron invoked local journalists, lemme channel the views of the Sinclairites I know: Some staffers at Sinclair share management's right-wing views, but most rank and file anchors and reporters are just trying to report the news, free of political considerations... | | | Comcast and Charter's wireless pact | | | Dana Mattioli and Shalini Ramachandran's Sunday night scoop in the WSJ: "Comcast and Charter are striking a wireless partnership, people familiar with the matter said, as the cable giants look to get a piece of the cutthroat business. As part of the deal, Comcast and Charter have agreed not to make a material merger or acquisition in wireless without the other's consent for one year, one of the people said..." | | | Macron prevails in France | | | In the end, it wasn't even close... | | | "A 'fake news' crackdown" coming? | | | "Reliable Sources" P.A. Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Recode's Tony Romm anticipates that Macron's victory may bring "a 'fake news' crackdown." Romm quotes what Macron said on Thursday about the need to "regulate the Internet" because "today certain players are activists and have a very important role in the campaign." And he said that BEFORE the hack... | | | Major news outlets by and large respected the French restrictions "on campaigning, reporting and polling" in the final hours of the campaign, CNN's Steve Almasy notes. Some media observers, like Quartz's Kevin J. Delaney and Gideon Lichfeld, weighed in on the ethics of news coverage of stolen info -- they said "journalists shouldn't report on the contents of Macron's leaked documents, for democracy's sake." Meantime, alt-right media figures in the U.S. promoted the hack attack.... | | | Several high-profile news outlets, including BuzzFeed, were denied credentials for Marine Le Pen's election night HQ... Liberation says (translating from French here) "a dozen titles were banned from doing their job..." so Liberation, Le Monde and some other newsrooms decided not to attend the event, in solidarity with colleagues... | | | Media week ahead calendar | | Tuesday: Jeff Bewkes and Michael De Luca keynoting at Variety's E&T Summit in NYC...
Tuesday after the bell: News Corp. earnings...
Tuesday night: Stephen Colbert holds a quasi-"Daily Show" reunion on the "Late Show..."
Wednesday after the bell: Snapchat and 21st Century Fox earnings...
Sunday: Mother's Day! | | "Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a PR person who declined to identify herself said simply, 'This is not the story we want.'"
--The kicker to this WashPost story titled "In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 'investor visa' to wealthy Chinese" | | "RELIABLE SOURCES" HIGHLIGHTS | | Attorney says more suits against Fox are coming | | On Sunday's show, I said that 21st Century Fox believes it has cleaned house at Fox News, diversified the leadership ranks and reformed the HR office. But attorneys Lisa Bloom and Douglas Wigdor say more should be done... You can watch my interviews with them here...
Wigdor, who's representing 20 current and former Fox News staffers, said that "in the coming days, in the coming weeks, we will filing new actions and bringing forth new actions. That I can guarantee you."
I asked him: "Is this a vendetta against Fox News?" His answer: "No. I can tell you, I'm a lifelong Republican. So, I find that to be offensive. What I'm doing -- I'm advocating based on the rights of my clients, who want equality in the workplace..." | | | Lisa Bloom will meet with Ofcom on Monday | | | At the time I'm sending this out, Bloom and her client Wendy Walsh are in the air, flying to London for a meeting with Ofcom... a/k/a the British regulators who will decide whether the Murdochs are "fit and proper" to acquire the rest of Sky... Bloom told me "they have the right to know about this..." | | At the top of Sunday's show, I asked WSJ media reporter Joe Flint about whether it's awkward to cover Murdoch-related stories at a Murdoch-owned paper. I appreciated his answer: "It can be a little awkward." BUT "I do not have a Rupert Murdoch bat phone on my desk." And "no one at 21st Century Fox does the WSJ any favors, that I can tell you..."
-- Related: David Folkenflik and David Zurawik weighed in on the "special relationship" between Murdoch and President Trump... Watch the segment here... | | | Shouting first, whispering later | | | At the end of Sunday's show, I talked about one of the worst tendencies of media -- we shout the original allegation, we whisper the revision/the clarification/the correction. This week's example: the two immigrants charged with rape in Rockville, MD. The rape charges have been dropped... but the damage has been done... you can watch my three-minute essay here... | | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable" | | -- "NBC's telecast of the Kentucky Derby posted the second-best Derby overnight in 25 years..."
-- NYT public editor Liz Spayd writes about the belated hiring of a fact-checker at the paper...
-- Joseph Guinto profiles Tomi Lahren for Politico Mag... he says "Lahren is focused on getting a job..."
-- Via Fusion: Joyce Chen, a former Us Weekly writer, apologizes for helping Trump win the election...
-- Didja know? Monday marks the six month anniversary of the election... | | | BuzzFeed's Ben Smith had the scoop about this... he interviewed HuffPost EIC Lydia Polgreen for his podcast... and Polgreen revealed that ex-NY Daily News editor Jim Rich is joining the site as her new executive editor. Rich's Daily News was known for its viral front pages... and that's exactly what Polgreen wants now... viral "splashes" for the HuffPost, bold statements on the front page and social media that generate reader interest... PLUS prize-winning work... remember, Rich led the Daily News to its recent Pulitzer Prize... | | | Sulliview's Monday column | | | Rutenberg's Monday column | | | 👁 👁 Real news, made faker | | Media editor Alex Koppelman emails: Via Sean Hannity's Twitter feed, I noticed an interesting sub-species of fake news on Sunday. This story Hannity tweeted was something that really happened, Southwest Airlines pulling a woman off a plane -- not in the horrific way we've been hearing about lately, but because her son had been gravely injured and it wanted to notify her and get her home as quickly as possible.
The twist: The article was dated May 3, 2017, but the incident described took place two years ago. It's real news, but old news, repackaged as if new at a time when stories about airlines and their customers are traffic gold. (The last sentence of the article does say that the woman's son has recovered, suggesting that the news is at least a little old, but it doesn't say exactly how old, and by then the story's work is done anyway -- not many readers get to the end of an article, and a site like this one cares only that they then share it with friends. Plus, the site gave the game away: it ran almost the exact same article a year ago, which was still a year after the actual incident in question.)
No disrespect to Hannity just because he's the one who happened to share it, either. A quick Google search shows that a couple sites have actually written the "news" up now, and it's easy to see why: this sort of Chicken Soup for the News Soul stuff can grab you. Plus, it's a grey area, which is actually the more disturbing thing as you think about it: how thick is the line, really, between this and some of the mainstream media's content around, say, National Cheeseburger Day, or similar trending topics? | | In case you missed "Nightly News..." | | It looks like President Trump was watching. "NBC Nightly News" had a Sunday night story about Rexnord Corp. moving factory jobs to Mexico. Banner on screen: "FACTORY SHIPS JOBS TO MEXICO DESPITE TRUMP TWEET."
Rexnord wasn't mentioned anywhere else in the media over the weekend, so I can pretty confidently say that this wasn't a coincidence: Exactly 20 minutes after the segment, Trump sent out a new tweet that seemed to shift the blame to his predecessor: "Rexnord of Indiana made a deal during the Obama Administration to move to Mexico. Fired their employees. Tax product big that's sold in U.S." | | And in case you missed "SNL..." | | The cold open was a parody of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" with Kellyanne Conway in the Sandiego role, Frank Pallotta writes. Here's the video if you missed it...
-- Related: Where WAS Conway on Saturday night? She was on "Judge Jeanine" on Fox News. Conway was back at the studio Sunday morning for "Fox & Friends." But "SNL" has a point... Conway has been a lot less visible on non-Fox TV channels lately... | | Brian Lowry emails: Bill Maher delivered a rant on his HBO show in February about how journalists "lost trust because they became eyeball-chasing clickbait whores." That's harsh, but some coverage of the FCC "investigation" into Colbert would seem to fall under that heading.
A degree of naïveté about how the commission operates is understandable – it's pretty arcane – but that shouldn't excuse misleading headlines. And it's worth noting even outlets that knew better (including this one) were forced to represent on the story – if only to say that it really wasn't much of one – because of the amount of attention it was receiving elsewhere... | | "Guardians" is #2 box office opening of the year | | Frank Pallotta writes: Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot did it again. Marvel Studios' "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," the sequel to the 2014 hit, brought in an estimated $145 million in the U.S. this weekend. That makes it Marvel's fifteenth straight No. 1 opening at the domestic box office. Details:
-- Since opening overseas more than a week ago, the movie has nabbed about $428 million in total worldwide...
-- "Vol. 2" is Marvel Studios' fifth biggest opening ever...
-- "Vol. 2" was the second biggest North American opening of the year behind another Disney movie, "Beauty and the Beast..." | | MTV's Movie & TV Awards winners are... | | Chloe Melas emails: The MTV Movie & TV Awards aired on Sunday night... and this year's show had many firsts... it's the first time the show had had genderless categories and the first time MTV has included TV shows in the mix.
The two biggest awards of the night were Movie of the Year, which went to "Beauty and the Beast," and Show of the Year, which "Stranger Things" took home.
One of the most powerful moments of the night came when "Moonlight" co-stars Ashton Sanders and Jharrel Jerome won for Best Kiss. Sanders said during their speech: "This award is bigger than Jharrel and I. This represents more than a kiss, it represents those who feel like the others, the misfits, this represents us."
>> Chloe will have a full recap on CNN Entertainment's section overnight... | | Chloe interviews Debra Messing | | The GLAAD Media Awards were held in NYC on Saturday night, and Chloe Melas was there. She emails:
I caught up with Debra Messing at the awards... she told me that "Will & Grace" returning to NBC this fall is exactly what America needs, given the political climate... | | | 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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