| | | | Today's biggest story? Jump ball | | | Was it Jeff Sessions' testimony? Was it President Trump's private remark that the House health care bill is "mean?" Was it his decision to give defense secretary Jim Mattis "the authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan," per Reuters? Was it the surprisingly tight VA governor primary race between establishment GOP candidate Ed Gillespie and pro-Trump insurgent Corey Stewart? Or was the biggest story of the day something else entirely? | | Here's a thought experiment... | | A Tuesday morning tweet from POTUS: "The Fake News Media has never been so wrong or so dirty. Purposely incorrect stories and phony sources to meet their agenda of hate. Sad!"
Dartmouth poli sci professor Brendan Nyhan responds: "What would you think if you heard a foreign leader calling the media 'wrong,' 'dirty,' 'purposely incorrect' & having an 'agenda of hate'?" | | Multiple advertisers avoiding Megyn Kelly's show | | Multiple advertisers have told NBC that they don't want to be anywhere near Megyn Kelly's forthcoming interview with Alex Jones. NBC expects the advertiser flight to be temporary, however. "This comes with the territory," NBC News chairman Andy Lack told me Tuesday afternoon. "We kind of know, when we're doing controversial stories, that's going to happen. It doesn't stop us from doing controversial stories."
NBC won't reveal the # of advertisers that have distanced themselves from Kelly's "Sunday Night" show... most of them are on the local level, meaning companies that bought ads on NBC-owned stations... NBC expects there will be a full slate of nationally televised ads on Kelly's show this Sunday. As for the companies that have withdrawn, "they'll all be coming back, they've been clear about that," Lack said... Read more here... | | Alex Jones story still set to air on Father's Day | | Bottom line: The story about Jones is still set to air this weekend. Lack said "we're listening very carefully to folks," but Jones and what he represents is "an important story." Separately, speaking with me and the AP's David Bauder, Kelly acknowledged being surprised by the severity of the backlash to the interview...
--> Quoting Bauder's story: "To some critics, NBC's timing makes the decision worse -- airing on Father's Day an interview that has been publicly denounced by parents who lost young children at Sandy Hook. NBC said it was scheduled for competitive reasons, because Jones had been booked to appear on ABC's daytime show 'The View' next week." Jones has cancelled and will not be rescheduled there, "The View" says...
--> Speaking of competitors: Lack told me "'60 Minutes' was chasing" Jones too... | | Time Inc. is at it again, eliminating 300 positions through layoffs and buyouts, Dylan Byers reports. The move, which CEO Rich Battista described as "difficult but necessary," will reduce Time Inc's global staff by another 4%.
Dylan interviewed Battista, and this quote is one for the ages, a pure piece of corporate-speak: "We are taking a holistic approach to cost-structure reengineering for the whole company. In commencing that work, we are looking for ways to be more efficient as a company and ways to find more cost savings." | | Rolling Stone pays $1.65 million to frat that sued for defamation | | | A terrible chapter in the history of Rolling Stone is now complete. The magazine "is paying a University of Virginia fraternity $1.65 million to shut the door on its debunked story about campus rape. UVA's Phi Kappa Psi chapter said on Tuesday that it will settle its defamation claim," CNNMoney's Julia Horowitz reports. This was the final suit related to the discredited "Rape on Campus" story. The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross broke the news about the payout... | | Mark Bittman joining NYMag's Grub Street | | | Famed food columnist and author Mark Bittman is joining NYMag's Grub Street food/restaurant site. Adam Moss will make the announcement on Wednesday morning. Bittman, who was with the NYT for two decades, will offer up recipe videos once a week, cooking columns twice a month, and news columns on "food policy and politics" once a month. He'll also contribute features to NYMag occasionally. The idea: Grub Street is best known for its where-to-eat restaurant coverage, and Bittman expands the what-to-eat/how-to-eat coverage... | | NBA super-teams score super ratings for Finals | | | Frank Pallotta emails: Some would argue that super-teams like the NBA champion Steph Curry and Kevin Durant led Golden State Warriors are bad for the NBA. ABC would strongly disagree! The network saw another year of big ratings with the Warriors and LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Finals bringing in average audience of 20.4 million viewers. That number for the five-game series was the most-watched since 1998... | | -- Tim Russert died nine years ago Tuesday.
-- "On average, full-time female employees" at Dow Jones "make less than 85 percent of what their male counterparts earn," according to a new analysis by "the union that represents many journalists" at the WSJ... (Poynter)
-- "Words Still Matter:" Nicole Hemmer says "Trump is learning there are spaces where he can't say whatever he likes without consequence..." (US News)
-- Don't miss this delicious Variety cover story by Brian Steinberg, all about the cable news wars in the Trump era... (Variety)
-- And speaking of that... thank you, "Reliable Sources" viewers: the show was #1 in the key 25-54 demo in its time slot on Sunday. MSNBC was #2 and Fox was #3 in the demo... | | Senate bars reporters from filming in hallways, then reverses | | Dylan Byers reports: Reporters covering the U.S. Senate were told today that they could no longer film interviews with senators in the hallways outside their offices. This is an abrupt break with precedent that has set off alarm bells.
Hours later, however, amid heavy criticism from reporters and several senators, the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee appeared to suspend that decision while his committee reviewed the matter.
"As of now, the Rules Committee is simply examining what the rules are," a spokesperson for Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Committee, said. "While the Rules Committee is reviewing the rules, reporters should continue to operate as they were operating yesterday." Read more...
-- Great related piece: "Anxiety of the Capitol Hill Press Mob:" Slate's Jim Newell on "Why congressional reporters are bracing for a crackdown..." | | Marissa Mayer leaves Yahoo | | | CNNMoney's Paul La Monica reports: As of Tuesday, all of the websites owned by Yahoo are now officially part of Verizon. And Marissa Mayer is walking away from the company with a pretty sweet deal, nearly $260 million... | | -- Condé Nast is closing Style.com, "its first major experiment in online fashion retail, a mere nine months after its high-profile introduction..." (NYT)
-- "FX is shuffling around the seasons of 'American Crime Story,' moving the Versace-themed installment to Season 2, rather than Season 3." The Hurricane Katrina-themed installment will now be Season 3... (Variety)
-- Update to yesterday's item: Greg Gianforte's $50,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists has now come through, exec director Joel Simon tells me... | | Congrats to this year's Mirror Award winners | | The annual awards for media industry reporting were handed out in NYC Tuesday afternoon. The winners list:
John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting: Gabriel Sherman for his coverage of the Ailes scandal for NYMag
Best Profile: Sarah Esther Maslin," A light in the underworld," CJR
Best Single Article/Story: Soraya Chemaly and Catherine Buni, "The secret rules of the internet," The Verge
Best Commentary: Eric Alterman, "How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage," The Nation
Fred Dressler Leadership Award: Tom Brokaw
i-3 award: The New York Times | | Spotted at the Mirrors... | | | Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Dean Baquet, Katie Couric, Jenna Bush Hager, Gay Talese, Craig Silverman, Brian Steinberg, David Lieberman, Chris Licht, Peter Kafka, Maureen Huff, Justin Venech, Dorian Benkoil, Ken Auletta, Ali Zelenko, Claire Atkinson, James Wolcott, many more... | | "Trying to rile people up and turn them against an imagined enemy, which we are not..." | | The "Julius Caesar" dust-up dissipated on Tuesday... but I was struck by this quote in Michael Paulson's interview with Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater and the director of the controversial production.
"All of this stuff is not about my production of 'Julius Caesar,'" he said. "This is about the right-wing hate machine. Those thousands of people who are calling our corporate sponsors to complain about this — none of them have seen the show. They're not interested in seeing the show. They haven't read 'Julius Caesar.' They are being manipulated by 'Fox & Friends' and other news sources, which are deliberately, for their own gain, trying to rile people up and turn them against an imagined enemy, which we are not. You know by this point that my mentee and dear friend, Rob Melrose, did a production in 2012 with Obama as Caesar. That production played all over the country. Not one peep from anybody. So this is not about my play or my production of a play. This is really an example of what this kind of demagoguery does." | | | Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy defended himself on Tuesday as anonymous White House aides disputed his Monday night claim that Trump is considering possibly removing Robert Mueller. Here's my story all about Ruddy's unique status as an outsider "Friend of Trump" who shares his insider access. (Didja know he's now a paid contributor to "This Week" on ABC?) | | Tom Kludt emails: There have been two distinct reactions on the right to Chris Ruddy's claim about Mueller's fate. One was advanced by Laura Ingraham and the gang on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning, all of whom ridiculed the news media for reporting on Ruddy's scuttlebutt. It was "fake news" pushed by an "agenda-driven" media that is both "lazy" and "stupid," as Ingraham put it. Odd descriptors for a story predicated on the word of a close personal friend of Trump, but point taken. Later in the day, during Sessions' testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Lankford of Oklahoma picked up on the line, dismissing the "rumor" as something that came "from an unnamed source" – which also seems an odd way to describe Chris Ruddy's appearances on TV.
But while Ingraham and Lankford were eager to echo the administration's dismissal of Ruddy's claims, certain corners of conservative seemed to be laying the groundwork for Mueller's dismissal. In the last 24 hours, Hannity, Drudge and Breitbart have all raised questions about Mueller's investigation. So it seems like this might be fake news, until it isn't, in which case Mueller deserved it... | | Frank talks Trump with Seth Meyers | | | Frank sends this over: I went over to 30 Rock today for an interview with Mr. "Late Night" himself, Seth Meyers. We spoke about the impact of late night in the Trump era and the one person in politics he wants to interview more than anyone else (it's surprisingly not Trump). Look for the interview later this week! | | "Bachelor In Paradise" in limbo? | | Chloe Melas emails: I spoke to a source who was on the "Bachelor in Paradise" set who told their version of what exactly went down and how the cast is feeling now that the show has been suspended. "Overall everyone is really upset. People put their lives on hold, quit their jobs and are even losing jobs over this," the source said. "No one knows exactly what happened... and there's a lot of confusion and anger because some contestants feel like this is all being blown out of proportion."
Important to remember: There's a lot we still don't know.
Lisa France obtained a statement from host Chris Harrison which in part reads: "Warner Bros. is handling the details of that investigation. They're moving quickly to gather all the facts, and once that's done a clear concise decision can be made about where we go from here."
There's talk that perhaps the entire show will be cancelled for good... | | | For the record, part three | | | Via Lisa France:
-- Toss those bumper stickers: Oprah is definitely not running for president...
-- Supermodel Naomi Campbell has her own art of the deal. Here is how she says she got money from Donald Trump for her charity... | | | Sunday's "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at 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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