| | | | | Happy Monday! Brian is on an Independence Day weekend road trip, so this is Oliver Darcy filling in. We'll be off Tuesday, back Wednesday... | | Jamie Horowitz abruptly out at Fox Sports | | Astonishing news from Murdoch-world today. Jamie Horowitz, who served as head of programming at Fox Sports, was abruptly ousted from the network. CNN's Ahiza Garcia and Brian Stelter have the story here...
>> A source familiar with the matter told Brian that Horowitz's departure came amid a sexual harassment probe. Since this involves a Fox property, the names of Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly came to mind right away, but Fox News and Fox Sports have very little in common except ownership...
>> "The swift dismissal of Mr. Horowitz — without a public lawsuit or public pressure — represents a significant departure from how 21st Century Fox has handled other cases," NYT's Emily Steel and Kevin Draper note... | | Horowitz is fighting back | | Fox Sports prez Eric Shanks hinted at trouble when he said in an internal memo about Horowitz's exit that "everyone at Fox Sports, no matter what role we play, or what business, function or show we contribute to — should act with respect and adhere to professional conduct at all times."
Horowitz's attorney, Patty Glaser, responded: "The way Jamie has been treated by Fox is appalling. At no point in his tenure was there any mention by his superiors or human resources of any misconduct or an inability to adhere to professional conduct. Jamie was hired by Fox to do a job; a job that until today he has performed in an exemplary fashion. Any slanderous accusations to the contrary will be vigorously defended."
Daniel Petrocelli of O'Melveny & Myers, representing Fox Sports, responded to that: "Mr. Horowitz's termination was fully warranted and his lawyer's accusations are ill-informed and misguided." | | This is the second time he is suddenly leaving a high-profile job... | | Brian emails from the road: I wonder what folks at the "Today" show are thinking? Horowitz only lasted 10 weeks there... there were no allegations of harassment... but staffers did recoil at his radical shakeup ideas.
He joined Fox Sports two years ago... and his "radical restructuring of the network caused widespread consternation among its employees," the NYT notes... | | Al Jazeera makes its own demand | | Al Jazeera is pushing back against demands from four Arab states that Qatar shutter the state-funded network. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt listed the closing of Al Jazeera as one of the 13 conditions Doha would have to meet in order to restore diplomatic relations and lift sanctions.
On Monday, journalists at the network released a video aimed at "those who demand Al Jazeera be shut down" with a demand of their own: "We demand journalists be able to do their jobs free from intimidation and threat." The video featured several of the network's most prominent journalists. CNN's Ivana Kottasova has the full story here...
-- Hashtag: #DemandPressFreedom... Al Jaz is hoping for solidarity from other news orgs... | | A new member of the CNN Media family! | | Congratulations to our entertainment reporter Chloe Melas, who had some breaking news overnight! She emails from the hospital:
I gave birth nearly three weeks early to a perfect little angel and future journalist :) My husband Brian Mazza and I are proud to welcome Leo DeSales Mazza, a name derived from the names of both our late grandfathers. He made his grand entrance July 3 at 1:02am weighing 7lbs 3oz, 21 inches long. He's perfect -- we didn't know it was possible to love someone this much.
Here's Leo! | | | Nothing will top that baby news... but now we're moving on to politics... | | Christie sarcastically called this a ''great bit of journalism..." | | "Andy Mills, a 6-foot-3-inch photographer for The Star-Ledger, dangled out of a Cessna 152 two-seater and aimed his long lens at what looked like just dots on the sand." One of those dots was NJ Gov. Chris Christie.
Mills' Sunday photos were a huge news story on Monday... "yet another self-inflicted indignity, exposed by the news media, for a governor who long dreamed of the dignified office of the presidency," the NYT's Nick Corasaniti writes... | | With each passing day, it becomes more evident that we live in a post-truth world. Today's example is brought to us courtesy of Donald Trump Jr. The president's son retweeted a story that falsely claimed CNN "suddenly" discovered the White House's gender pay gap now that Trump -- a Republican -- is in office.
"Really amazing that the wage gap concept was only discovered after January of this year. Right???" Trump Jr. tweeted. Of course, that statement has no relationship with the truth.
As Jake Tapper pointed out on Twitter, CNN covered the wage gap issue when Obama was in office. Andrew Kaczynski followed up with still images from 2014 segments of CNN covering the wage gap on-air. But despite his tweet being demonstrably false, Trump Jr. left it up on his Twitter account where it amassed thousands of shares. (He did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)
Tapper remarked that "it's almost as [if] these critics didn't want to spend 5 seconds on google" to fact check the claim. But as I told him in a reply, it's actually worse than mere laziness. If you do the Googling for these critics, and provide them evidence proving their claims wrong, they generally don't seem to care. They want to live and exist in universe where the facts fit into their worldview of how things are supposed to be. This goes to a point the WashPost's Greg Sargent made back in February: Trump and his allies in the media seem to be "trying to obliterate the possibility of shared agreement on reality itself." | | False talking point ricochets in pro-Trump media | | Some in Trump-land are pushing the misleading narrative that CNN took no issue with the photo Kathy Griffin took holding up a decapitated head resembling Trump. "CNN was ok with the decapitated head of Trump, but thinks this is over the top?!" Alex Jones asked in a tweet Sunday night, for instance.
But the fact is CNN was not OK with Griffin's photo. A CNN spokesperson called it "disgusting and offensive." Multiple anchors released statements sharing that sentiment. And CNN swiftly fired her from its New Year's Eve coverage. This talking point, pervasive in the pro-Trump media universe, is not tethered to reality. | | -- @ZekeJMiller: "It's been 138 days since last full @POTUS @realDonaldTrump press conference."
-- Breitbart's Matthew Boyle says Trump's allies are gearing up for a "long war" with the media...
-- John King takes a shot at Fox News: "There's another network he doesn't criticize where when they interview him they ask him, 'Sir, we're confused, are you excellent or are you extraordinary?'"
-- Trump tweets thanks to Fox News guest who defended him from the "hostile press..." | | Fallout from Trump's CNN body slam tweet | | Conway: Stop focusing on the tweets! | | Kellyanne Conway appeared on "Fox & Friends" and was asked about the tweet Trump posted depicting himself metaphorically body slamming CNN. She retreated to a familiar White House talking point: the media is too focused on Trump's tweets, not his agenda.
Conway's argument: "I know it's a heck of a lot easier to cover 140 characters here or there, or what the president may be saying about the media here or there, than it is to learn the finer points of how Medicaid is funded in this country and how that would or would not change under the Senate bill, how the childcare tax credit might affect your family. They don't cover these finer policy points."
-- Jeremy Diamond tweeted about this talking point last week when Sarah Huckabee Sanders made it from the White House podium: "In a nutshell: The media should ignore Trump tweets & set the positive narrative that Trump has refused to set himself."
-- Also: A key point from Business Insider's Max Tani on this: "Conway claimed that at least 75% of the president's tweets last month focused on substantive policy issues, though an Axios analysis of the president's tweets last month found that only three of 121 he posted himself were grounded in policy-based issues." | | White House mum on tweet's origins | | | From Dan Merica's piece: "President Donald Trump's top aides are staying silent about the possible anti-Semitic, racist and anti-Muslim origins of a video the President tweeted Sunday, declining to answer a series of CNN questions about the video and its self-proclaimed originator." But an anonymous W.H. official said, curtly, "the video was not pulled from Reddit." Read Merica's full story here... | | Interesting results from Drudge's poll | | | Matt Drudge has been running a poll since Saturday asking his audience, "Should President Trump use socials?" At the time of this writing, 575,000 of his readers have voted. The results? 78% want him to continue with his social media habits. But 22% want him to stop. That's nearly 1 in 4 Drudge Report readers who think the president should stop tweeting. It could be nothing, but it stood out to me as perhaps an early indicator Trump's fans want him to get to business delivering on his campaign promises instead of spending his time attacking the media... | | Is Trump proving how strong the system is? | | That was the crux of Max Boot's piece in Commentary Magazine. As he put it, "The president may rage against the media -- bizarrely, he accuses the mainstream press of being 'fake' even as he posts a doctored video from a professional wrestling match, the most artificial entertainment imaginable -- but his ability to do anything more than vent on social media is decidedly limited."
Boot continued: "Thanks, James Madison, for drafting the Bill of Rights and, in particular, the First Amendment that protects our most precious liberties. Trump has talked in the past about changing the libel laws, but that's not something he can do by executive fiat. It will take an act of Congress, and the odds of such legislation passing are scant even in a Republican-dominated legislature." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- BuzzFeed reports that Facebook is trying to challenge a court order that bars it from notifying users about search warrants for their account information by federal prosecutors...
-- It's the end of an era. The Wall Street Journal is closing down 8 of its blogs, including Law Blog, the oldest WSJ blog launched in 2006. Storytelling tools have changed, WSJ argues...
-- Poynter reports that distrust in the press is also growing stronger among local audiences...
| | Maria Menounos healing after surgery to remove a brain tumor | | ...And she's leaving the E! network | | Lisa Respers France reports: Maria Menounos is stepping down as co-anchor of E! News in the wake of surgery to remove a brain tumor... The announcement by E! came the same day Menounos revealed in a People magazine cover story that she recently underwent surgery for a golf ball-size meningioma brain tumor. Read more...
-- Menounos quote: "I just want to be still for a bit and see what I'm supposed to be in this world. For me, sharing this story is important on so many levels..." | | 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' comes home to Marvel | | | Brian Lowry emails: Marvel sold off rights to some of its most popular characters long before the company launched its wildly popular "cinematic universe" a decade ago. So the studio's deal with Sony to incorporate "Spider-Man: Homecoming" into that fold is a big deal, one that largely pays off in a fun, satisfying movie. Read Lowry's full review here... | | 'Twin Peaks' progress report | | | Another one from Lowry: When "Twin Peaks" premiered, I wrote about how it was an early example of what has recently become a surrealist wave of TV shows. Yet even that didn't anticipate just how out-there the Showtime series would be, which has produced a mini-flurry of "No, you don't have to understand it" pieces, including the Los Angeles Times' Robert Lloyd and Indiewire's Eric Kohn, the latter in a column almost comically headlined, "'Twin Peaks' Is More Satisfying If You Stop Trying to Figure Out What It Means." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Jay-Z's "4:44" is being hailed as one of his greatest projects ever. But based on what his producer had to say, it turns out the album is even more genius than we thought...
-- Never mind Adele, we'll find someone like you. When the superstar had to cancel her final two concerts, fans stepped up to #SingForAdele...
-- Rumer Willis is celebrating hitting the six month sobriety mark... | | | 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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