| | | | | Welcome to Reliable Sources, and congratulations on making it to Friday. This is Oliver Darcy in for Brian Stelter, who's taking baby Sunny to the beach. 🏖 | | Even more news from the Trump Tower meeting | | Friday morning started off with a big scoop from NBC News, followed by a scoop from the Associated Press, and another from CNN.
Here's a timeline of what happened...
>> NBC kicked things off when it reported that a former Soviet counterintelligence officer had been present at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
>> The AP followed up on the NBC News report, identifying the former Soviet counterintelligence officer as Rinat Akhmetshin, now a lobbyist. Akhmetshin said he had been the subject of a "smear campaign" which has sought to characterize him as having ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
>> CNN then moved the story forward again, reporting that the Trump Tower meeting included at least eight people. As the story noted, here are the people we know so far were in attendance; Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin, and publicist Rob Goldstone. But at least two others were in the room, a source told CNN... | | | What's going to break between now and Monday? What stories are the major papers prepping for Sunday? | | Sunday: Sekulow on all five networks | | | Brian Stelter emails: Jay Sekulow, the TV face of President Trump's legal team, was on "AC360" Friday night. And he's scheduled to be on all five of the big Sunday morning political talk shows. Here are the lineups (via the AP)... | | A Democratic plot? Pro-Trump media wants you to think so | | Was the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort the first evidence of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia -- or was she part of a sinister Democratic plot to entrap the Trump campaign? The latter is what the pro-Trump media wants you to believe, as I explain in my latest piece...
>> Members of the pro-Trump media this week have characterized the Russian lawyer as a leftist with ties to the Obama administration. The idea quickly drifted upward to some of the most influential figures in right-wing media, and then ultimately to President Trump himself, who referenced some of its underpinnings during a Thursday press conference in France.
>> This is important because, while the narrative appears to be untrue, it's part of a pattern. The pro-Trump media has employed a consistent strategy when responding to damaging reports about the President and his allies, one it will likely continue to use should more revelations concerning Russian interference in the election emerge. Instead of covering those revelations, pro-Trump media outlets often turn to entirely new stories or controversies.
>> "All that right-wing media needs to do is just throw out some things that appear to be substantive that have some stray facts," conservative media columnist John Ziegler told me. "They don't need a full theory. ... It's just poking holes and pretending the whole story is fake news. It's a classic trick really. It's a shame that's what the right-wing media has been reduced to." Read the full story here... | | The divide between the news operation and opinion programming at Fox News was on full display on Friday. Consider how anchor Shep Smith reacted to the latest revelations about the Trump Tower meeting, compared with Eric Bolling two hours later...
>> Here's Smith: "If there's nothing there––and that's what they tell us, there's nothing to this, and nothing came of it … if all of that, why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie? ... The deception ... is mind-boggling. And there are still people out there who believe we're making it up. And one day they're gonna realize we're not." Watch the clip via Mediaite...
>> And here's Bolling: "Instead of pointing the finger at Donald Trump Jr. and saying maybe he's colluding... with the Russians, maybe the Russians were colluding with Hillary Clinton to get information on Donald Trump." 🤔 🤔 🤔 Watch the video here, which almost certainly proves an alternate media universe exists... | | Should battle at Fox over Trump coverage worry White House? | | | That was the argument Mediaite's Colby Hall made in a piece this afternoon. Hall noted that while the network is home to a number of reliably pro-Trump voices, some of the network's news personalities have been quite critical of Trump as of late, particularly questioning the White House's credibility. Read Hall's piece here... | | | Speaking of Fox personalities... | | K-Hammer says Trump Jr. emails are evidence of 'collusion' | | Tom Kludt emails: Charles Krauthammer's latest column, in which he asserted that Donald Trump Jr.'s recently revealed meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer constituted "collusion," was widely shared by liberals and Democrats on Friday. That makes sense. After all, the piece gave the likes of Peter Daou and Paul Begala a chance to show that their claims aren't entirely partisan. See, here's an influential conservative who agrees with us!
>> More from Kludt: I increasingly find myself wondering how many conservatives really care what Krauthammer has to say at this point. Krauthammer has been one of the most consistent critics of President Trump on the right, which clearly puts the columnist -- long thought of as a conservative standard-bearer -- at odds with his ideological peers. Polls routinely show that Trump's approval ratings among Republicans are somewhere between 85-90%. Krauthammer was far from the only member of the conservative commentariat to oppose Trump during last year's presidential election. But many of those #NeverTrumpers have warmed up to the President. Maybe because they know what their audience wants... | | Sunday's "Reliable Sources" guest list | | | Brian emails from the beach: Carl Bernstein and his longtime WashPost colleague Len Downie, Jr. will join me... along with outgoing WHCA president Jeff Mason, Politico's Tara Palmeri, the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, and former Observer editor Ken Kurson... live on CNN, Sunday, 11am ET. What do you want to make sure we | | -- @whca: "Congratulations to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, elected today to be president of the White House Correspondents' Association in 2019-20."
-- @RyanJReilly: "We will be 1/8th way through Trump's 1st term next week..."
-- @DRUDGE: "Not one appearance of the word 'Trump' on today's DRUDGE REPORT. [So far]." That was posted at 11:02am Friday morning, but held true throughout the day and into the evening... | | AT&T considering splitting telecom, media units | | Dylan Byers emails: AT&T is considering splitting its telecom and media assets after acquiring Time Warner Inc., giving AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson oversight over two separate divisions.
>> The structure under consideration would put AT&T's DirectTV and telecom operations in one unit (likely under current AT&T chief strategy officer John Donovan) and the Time Warner media assets -- HBO, Warner Bros., CNN, etc. -- under another (perhaps led by AT&T veteran John Stankey).
>> AT&T spokesperson Larry Solomon emails: "No decisions on organizational structure or leadership have been finalized. Randall and Jeff are working through that. Randall will remain chairman and CEO of AT&T once the deal closes."
>> AT&T's $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner is still under antitrust review by the Justice Department... | | Fox-Sky deal delayed til 2018 | | Rupert Murdoch's recurring dream of owning Britain's biggest pay TV provider won't become reality until at least 2018, Charles Riley and Dylan Byers report...
>> "The planned $15 billion takeover of Sky by 21st Century Fox faces many more months of scrutiny by U.K. officials after Murdoch declined to offer new concessions to protect Sky's editorial independence, according to sources familiar with the matter."
>> "U.K. culture secretary Karen Bradley said last month that she would order an additional review of the deal unless Fox is able to assuage concerns that it would give the Murdoch family too much influence over British media."
>> What's really going on here? Dylan emails: "Don't misread this. Fox is still likely to get Sky. Sources with knowledge of the discussions tell me it's just that they'd rather go through an official 24-week review by Britain's Competition and Markets Authority than face the uncertainty of dealing with the culture secretary, a process that could go on indefinitely." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman
-- Digiday's Lucia Moses writes that publishers are falling out of love with Snapchat, and turning their attention to Instagram instead...
-- Over at the WashPost, a summary from the fourth annual Global Fact-Checking Summit, attended by around 190 fact-checkers from 54 countries around the world...
-- Facebook is testing an "Explore Feed" to help users discover posts from outside their own social network, TechCrunch reports...
-- The New Yorker poaches BuzzFeed's director of newsletters Dan Oshinsky to lead its own newsletter efforts, AdWeek reports... | | Trump has tweeted 113 times about the media since taking office | | BI's Andy Kiersz analyzed the 920 tweets Trump has sent out from his January inauguration to July 7. Some of his findings...
>> Trump has tweeted 113 times about the media. Fifty-seven of those tweets included use of the phrase "fake news."
>> Trump starts his day on Twitter. Approximately 41% of his tweets have been posted between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET.
>> Trump has tweeted 99 times about the investigation into Russian election meddling. Read more of Kiersz's findings here... | | "I'm declaring "drip, drip, drip" to be a Category 5 cliche at this point..."
--NYT's Mark Leibovich on Twitter... | | This week's Reliable Sources podcast | | Is the "bubble mentality" affecting the way we understand data?
FiveThirtyEight EIC Nate Silver talked with Brian about political data, contending that the polls are mostly fine, but members of the media and public misinterpret them... and could use a refresher in data literacy. Francesca has a recap here... Listen to the discussion via iTunes or other podcasting services... and subscribe via iTunes here... | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- She may have been up for a feeding but Beyoncé debuted a photo of her newborn twins Sir and Rumi in the wee hours of the morning, and the fans lost it...
-- The young stars of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" had fun addressing those dating rumors. But some noted that Tom Holland and Zendaya never actually came right out and denied it...
-- "Heroes" actor Thomas Dekker posted a letter about his sexuality after he said he was outed by another gay man... | | Lisa writes: Tyler Perry is adding to his house. Viacom announced on Friday it has signed a multi-year content partnership deal with the actor/writer/director/producer. The agreement includes television, film and short-form video created by Perry... His company will produce approximately 90 episodes annually of original series for BET and other Viacom networks through the partnership. Viacom will also have exclusive distribution rights to Perry's short-form video content, with Paramount Pictures being granted "first look" rights on any new feature film concepts created by Perry...
The NYT says it's "a blow to Oprah Winfrey's network." He'll continue producing projects with OWN and Lionsgate, but on a non-exclusive basis... | | Frank Pallotta emails: "Game of Thrones," which kicks off its seventh season Sunday, is popular for many reasons but it helps that "Thrones" has a lot in common with live sports... Here's how:
>> The TV industry is changing with more and more people choosing to forgo traditional viewing habits for on-demand and streaming options. Live sports is arguably the last dependable broadcast that requires viewers to watch as it happens to get the full experience (not to mention, all the ads).
>> But then there's "Thrones." The show in no way commands the audience that sports does, but that doesn't really matter. The culture around "Thrones" looks a lot like what we see around sporting events and for HBO it builds a communal event that is rare for today's TV world.
Read Frank's full story here... | | | 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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