| | | | | Here's what you need to know about Thursday's hearing... | | Tom Kludt emails: Think Watergate, Iran-Contra and the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. James Comey's testimony may already be in that pantheon – simply by virtue of the buzz it's generated. All the broadcast networks and cable news channels will air it live til... 1pm ET? Maybe longer. TVNewser has a complete list of the coverage plans...
As for President Trump, he has no events scheduled in the morning. He'll give a speech at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference around 12:30pm, while the hearing is still well underway. At 12pm, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is slated to hold an off-camera gaggle... | | "They really should declare a national holiday" | | | That's Sally Quinn quoted in Michael Grynbaum and Katie Rogers' NYT story: "They really should declare a national holiday, since no work is going to get done." | | | CNN's Sara Murray obtained a set of talking points that the RNC is sharing with Trump backers. One of the lines: "The Left and the media are using the Russia investigation as a means to obstruct the President's agenda. It is time to get back to the real issues." | | | In his latest for Vox, Ezra Klein sums up the Comey case but then says "I want to focus on the bigger, simpler picture. Donald Trump's presidency has thrown America into crisis." Former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer shared it on Twitter with this addition: "Everyone in D.C. knows this is true, but no Republicans have the courage to say it." | | With 30 seconds notice... | | Comey's opening statement was posted online at the end of the 1pm hour. CNN's Brooke Baldwin found herself anchoring a totally different newscast than she expected. I asked her how it went down, and she emailed:
"90 seconds until showtime -- as I'm swapping seats with Wolf -- I get handed a packet of papers. I pop in my ear piece and with 30 seconds until I'm live on air, my executive producer gets in my ear and says 'I'm blanking prompter. We just got Comey's opening statement. Tell the viewers that you're about to read them what they'll hear tomorrow, analyze it and... go.' And for the next 90 minutes of live, unscripted, commercial-free TV... we read and we reacted. It was the most compelling moment of TV I've found myself in the middle of in some time." | | Jeffrey Toobin tweeted this while on set with Brooke... | | | "Comey's statement establishes obstruction of justice by Trump. Period." | | Comey is owning... how many news cycles in a row? | | | Comey wanted this opening statement out almost 24 hours ahead of time. As a result, "these are the headlines tomorrow dominating as he goes into the hearing," CNN's David Chalian said. "Very often out of these big hearings, even with questioning going on that can be tough, it's the opening statement, that revealing of facts, that garners all the headlines the next day. Well, this is now happening a day before... Which means the questioning becomes all that more important tomorrow..." | | Proving Chalian's point... | | | Here's the striking front page of Thursday's LATimes: | | | Notice how Trump's pick for a new FBI director is below the fold... | | CNN corrects Tuesday night story about Comey | | "The biggest loser here is CNN," Greg Gutfeld claimed on Fox's "The Five" Wednesday night, pointing to CNN's correction on a story from Tuesday. Citing a source, Gloria Borger said Tuesday night that Comey "will say he never assured Donald Trump that he was not under investigation." Comey's opening statement says otherwise.
Unsurprisingly, pro-Trump outlets are emphasizing the error. For a time on Wednesday night the lead story on Breitbart said "Comey's testimony proves Trump right, CNN wrong."
CNN commentator Jason Miller brought up the incorrect info on Wednesday's "AC360." Anderson Cooper responded: "Those sources were wrong, and CNN has corrected that. But I will also point out that the vast majority -- basically Comey has confirmed just about everything else that we and others have been reporting now for weeks." | | Sarah Sanders is "not aware" | | Dylan Byers emails: Beating a dead horse, but again: This White House is not informing reporters. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave a nine-minute gaggle on Wednesday, and most of her answers began with "Don't know," "Not aware" or "Haven't had a chance to speak with the president."
You might call it a dereliction of duty, except there is no indication this White House press office feels any sense of duty to anyone other than Donald Trump... | | "Here are some things Sean Spicer hasn't talked to the president about" | | -- NYT/CNN's Maggie Haberman: "In Comey's prepared remarks, was there any mention of Trump expressing concern about Russia and email hacks?"
-- NBC's Bradd Jaffy: "Pretty sure that's the first time Pete Williams has ever said 'hookers' on 'NBC Nightly News'"
-- MSNBC's Christopher Hayes: "I think the institutional norms being transgressed here are *extremely* important but also probably quite abstract to lots (most?) voters."
-- MSNBC's Jesse Rodriguez: "Wait... 'covfefe' was just a week ago?" | | Has Trump changed American attitudes toward the news media "for the better" or "worse?" | | | Tom Kludt emails: The latest Quinnipiac poll found Trump's approval rating dipping to a new low at 34%. But how about this other nugget? More than half the country (52%) believes Trump has changed American attitudes towards the news media "for the worse." Twenty-two percent said he's changed attitudes "for the better," while 20% say he hasn't had an impact. | | Gianforte sends written apology to Jacobs and makes $50,000 contribution to CPJ | | Two weeks after the Montana body-slam, Greg Gianforte formally apologized to Ben Jacobs in a letter on Wednesday evening, writing "my physical response to your legitimate question was unprofessional, unacceptable and unlawful."
More: "I had no right to respond the way I did to your legitimate question about healthcare policy. You were doing your job." He said he's making a $50,000 contribution to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Jacobs responded in a statement: "I have accepted Mr. Gianforte's apology and his willingness to take responsibility for his actions and statements. I hope the constructive resolution of this incident reinforces for all the importance of respecting the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and encourages more civil and thoughtful discourse in our country." | | | HuffPost's Michael Calderone writes about the reported plans for GOP candidates in the midterms to try a media-bashing strategy: "Republican Politicians Seem Emboldened By Trump's Media-Bashing" | | -- Jonah Peretti talking with Bloomberg's Gerry Smith about BuzzFeed's video strategy: "In the long run, we'll have a really strong business. We're not going to chase TV too much, because it's coming toward us..."
-- An Phung emails this CJR piece: Maggie Haberman's Twitter game is strong, especially compared to her colleagues...
-- Tom Kludt emails: Erin Lee Carr is on the latest edition of the Longform podcast... | | Levien becomes COO of NYT | | Meredith Kopit Levien has been promoted to COO of The New York Times Company... and Kinsey Wilson's role has been eliminated... though he'll be staying on as an advisor.
NYT's Daniel Victor writes: Levien and the paper's CEO Mark Thompson "said the reorganization was intended to accelerate the pace of the company's digital businesses. They said a simplified structure would aim to free employees to make decisions more quickly..."
-- An insider emails: "People knew Kinsey was in trouble when he was asked to leave his office to make way for Rebecca Blumenstein. That office is next to Joe Kahn." | | FAR-RIGHT FED UP WITH BREITBART? | | Oliver Darcy emails: Breitbart is used to taking slings and arrows from the left, but this week it found itself under fire from a very different adversary: high-profile members of the far-right who have long been ideological allies. "I suspect we are seeing the end of Breitbart," far-right blogger Chuck Johnson said. "They cucked out," echoed "new right" internet personality Mike Cernovich. "They are leaving the island," added the Gateway Pundit's Lucian Wintrich.
The criticism came pouring in when Breitbart parted ways with a writer following incendiary remarks she made about Muslims in the aftermath of the London terror attack. Read more... | | "Now Breitbart is the establishment" | | Oliver adds: Here's an interesting perspective from John Ziegler, who told me the anger reflects "a textbook case of what happens when an anti-establishment institution becomes part of the establishment:"
"Inherently there are going to be people who think they sold out. They are kind of like a rock band that, once they became cool, sells out and does commercials. The alt-right doesn't do well as being part of the establishment. They want to be anti-establishment, but now Breitbart is the establishment."
-- Another great read: Paul Farhi's look inside Breitbart... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- "How Russian Propaganda Spread From a Parody Website to Fox News:" NYT's Neil MacFarquhar and Andrew Rossback with a fine work of internet forensics that shows how fake info propagates...
-- Axios reports that Google is launching a news literacy program aimed at schoolchildren... | | Sally Kohn is right about this | | "An informed democracy can't survive if people think their opinions are facts and the facts they don't like are just opinions. And an informed citizenry needs to know the difference," liberal CNN commentator Sally Kohn writes in this op-ed for USA Today.
I think she's right about this: "Every single time I go on television, I get a tweet or an email calling me 'the most biased reporter on CNN' or something to that effect. In fact, I get a lot of these comments. Often. Which suggests that we've done a bad job of explaining to the public that there is a difference between news and opinion and who on their screen is there for which purpose..." | | Podcast with Andy Borowitz coming tomorrow... | | | I taped an insightful conversation with The New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz today... it'll be coming to our "Reliable Sources" podcast feed tomorrow... | | Patty Jenkins not yet signed up for "Wonder Woman" sequel | | | Juicy story by THR's Borys Kit: "A $103.2 million domestic opening usually means a sequel is a no-brainer — but director Patty Jenkins has yet to sign on the dotted line for a Wonder Woman follow-up. While star Gal Gadot has an option in place for Wonder Woman 2 as part of her overall deal to appear in several DC movies, Warner Bros. executives enlisted Jenkins for just one film, a decision that could end up costing the studio millions of dollars if Jenkins' reps drive a hard bargain for her to return." Occasional reminder here that Warner Bros., like CNN, is owned by Time Warner... | | "The Mummy" getting buried by bad reviews | | | Frank Pallotta emails: "The Mummy" returns this weekend with Tom Cruise, but if critics had their way the film would have stayed buried forever. The review embargo lifted for the film on Wednesday, and currently it holds a... 27% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The NYT called it an "unholy mess" while Uproxx was straight up brutal writing in its review: "Watching 'The Mummy' is sort of like going to Vegas' newest casino, where you get to witness corporate America's most cynical vision of what the average wage-earning slob should do with his disposable income." Scary, indeed... | | What about the "cinematic universe?" | | | Brian Lowry emails: As Frank noted, "The Mummy" is being beaten up by critics (a parade I'll officially join when my review posts), but the movie is emblematic of a larger trend -- specifically, studios racing ahead of themselves, inspired by Marvel and "Star Wars," to launch film franchises built on an elaborate "cinematic universe," even before demonstrating there's demand for a first film. In this case, it's Universal's planned "Dark Universe," culled from its library of monsters like Frankenstein... | | Working the Hilton ballroom | | | Megan Thomas emails: Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj swapped WHCD stories on "The Late Show" Tuesday night. Colbert hosted a particularly fiery dinner with President Bush in 2006. Minhaj hosted this spring, which as we know President Trump skipped. Colbert said he cut jokes out of his act on the fly when he knew they wouldn't land. Minhaj's big surprise? The harsh reaction he got over a joke about USA Today... | | Another reason for frustration about Netflix's opaqueness | | Brian Lowry emails: Variety's Daniel Holloway looks at frustration in Hollywood about Netflix's recent high-profile cancellations, including "Sense8" and "The Get Down," because the service is so famously secretive about its metrics. The money quote comes from an anonymous TV literary agent: "It would be nice to know the metrics they use to make those decisions, but we're not going to know that."
Put another way, interested parties don't care who's watching as long as they keep getting paid. It's worth noting, too, that journalists are left in the dark, meaning we don't have user data to consider in framing coverage decisions... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Jerry Seinfeld's cringe-worthy Kesha encounter had us embarrassed for the singer...
-- Courtney Love says she raised daughter Frances Bean to be as normal as possible after the death of Kurt Cobain...
-- Leave it to New Yorkers to be unimpressed when the cast of "This Is Us" hit the streets of the city to ambush pedestrians...
-- Donald Glover is retiring his rapper/singer alter ego, Childish Gambino...
-- Get ready for Cher the musical! | | Constance Zimmer previews season three of "UnREAL" | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Some fresh TV scoop for those who love Lifetime's "UnREAL" -- Team Entertainment welcomed a guest of "UnREAL" charm today when Constance Zimmer stopped by to film for our upcoming series "As Told By Her," which highlights some outstanding women in TV. Among the topics? Season 3 of "UnREAL," which earlier this week fans learned will not premiere until 2018.
Luckily, if Zimmer is to be believed, the season will be well worth the wait. As has been reported, in Season 3, "UnREAL" will see super-producers Quinn (Zimmer) and Rachel (Shiri Applebee) overseeing a "Bachelorette"-type season of fictional show-within-the-show "Enchanted." And Zimmer teased that the so-called "suitress" will give the main characters a lot to contend with. "She's constantly keeping Quinn and Rachel on their toes, which gets them off kilter in a way that's so surprising," she said... | | Megan Thomas emails: My favorite quote from THR's Dramatic Actress Roundtable, featuring Oprah Winfrey, Nicole Kidman, Chrissy Metz, Jessica Lange, Elisabeth Moss and Reese Witherspoon:
"I started a production company five years ago because I was looking at maybe the worst script I've ever read in my entire life and it had two parts for women. I called my agents and said, 'This is such a terrible script.' They said, 'Well, seven women want it so … you're the only one who's not vying for the part.' And I thought, 'God, if this is what we've come to, I have to get busy.' Because you can either complain about a problem or you can be part of the solution."
--Reese Witherspoon | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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