| | | | President Trump's anti-media attacks are a slow-acting poison, meant to hurt news organizations and help his floundering presidency. I've said it before, but it's newly relevant again now, since he called journalists "liars," "sick people," and "crooked" on Tuesday night.
The President -- the President! -- repeatedly portrayed America's news media as America's enemy: "I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that," he said.
He added: "You would think they want to make our country great again. And I honestly believe they don't." | | Trump's newsiest rally yet? | | | Trump made news on almost a dozen fronts on Tuesday night. Check the CNN homepage for a complete wrap-up. CNN and Fox News carried the 77-minute rally in full. MSNBC aired bits of it but decided not to carry the whole thing... | | "A total eclipse of the facts" | | | Don Lemon anchoring "CNN Tonight" after the rally: "Well -- what do you say to that?" "A total eclipse of the facts." "There was no sanity there." "If you watched that speech as an American, you had to be thinking, 'What in the world is going on?' This is the person we elected?" "Madness." "He is clearly trying to ignite a civil war in this country." Lemon is staying live til 2am ET... I'll be joining him in the 1am hour... | | Brian Lowry emails: At the risk of sounding cynical, the rambling nature of the speech and the protracted -- perhaps preemptive? -- assault on the media triggered two thoughts, above all else:
1) What revelation about the Russia investigation are we going to see tomorrow or the next day?
2) This performance won't do anything to quell speculation about the President's mental fitness and competency.
Beyond all the provocative and controversial flourishes, much of this felt like an aging rock band playing the hits, from the border wall to the "failing New York Times" to "drain the swamp." But he seemed to ratchet up the rhetoric on his enemies list, which has grown lengthier... | | "How much longer does the country have to -- to borrow a phrase -- endure this nightmare?"
--Former DNI James Clapper on "CNN Tonight..." | | | Let's back up and analyze what Trump actually said... | | | Trump's seething anger about the news media's coverage of his Charlottesville response came right to the surface at the rally. He said his words about Charlottesville were "perfect" but the "damned dishonest" media didn't hear him. "It's time to expose the crooked media deceptions and challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions," he said. "And yes, by the way, they are trying to take away our history and our heritage. You see that." He claimed that "the only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media." | | | Trump re-upped his past claims that journalists routinely make up sources and create stories out of whole cloth. (False.) I had to wonder: Was he reacting, in part, to the NYT's devastating story about his feud with Mitch McConnell? If you haven't read it yet, click here... The headline is "McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency..." CNN's Manu Raju and Jeremy Diamond have confirmed some of the key details... | | "The live red lights, they're turning those suckers off fast!" | | | This is another one of Trump's regular campaign rally lines. Ed Bark tweeted: "Contrary to what he told his media-despising acolytes at least twice, CNN has aired every damn second." (Including the crowd's chants of "CNN SUCKS.") | | | Notable moment: When Trump said "I hope they're showing how many people are in this room," CNN's control room immediately cut to this wide shot of the crowd, so that when Trump was saying "they won't, they don't even do that," his comment was being disproven... | | "They fired Jeffrey Lord. Poor Jeffrey." | | | Quick reminder: CNN severed ties with Jeffrey Lord after Lord tweeted a Nazi salute at a liberal activist... | | "Did anybody watch last night?" | | | The crowd cheered when POTUS asked if they tuned in to his prime time address about the Afghan war. Monday night's speech averaged 28 million viewers, an underwhelming # by both Trump's own standards and comparisons to past presidents. Here's my full story about the ratings... | | Trump omits "on many sides" | | At one point, when the President was relitigating Charlottesville, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell interrupted and said, "This is the president lying about the media." He pointed out that Trump omitted his highly controversial "on many sides" line while quoting other portions of his Charlottesville response. O'Donnell: "He is lying to this audience about what he said, and he is lying to this audience about what the media said about what he said..."
Don Lemon also said "lying" after the speech: Trump was "lying about what he said to the American people regarding Charlottesville, as if there is no videotape..." | | I thought this was a cynical but effective line... | | | Trump to his fans: "The media can attack me. But where I draw the line is when they attack you, which is what they do." | | Hey, does POTUS want to co-host "Reliable Sources" this weekend? | | | Obama White House comms director-turned-CNN contributor Jen Psaki tweeted at me during the rally: "The President of the United States wants your job badly..." | | This was some of the advice on Fox BEFORE the rally... | | | During the 5pm hour on Fox News, "Specialists" guest host Brian Kilmeade had a humble suggestion for the President: At the rally, "make it harder for MSNBC and CNN... Don't provide the fodder for them... Make them actually go into their archives..." | | Top tweets about the rally | | -- The Society of Professional Journalists: "Despite what President Trump says, journalists love the USA. We go to work each day to inform people about OUR country."
-- Jose A. DelReal: "Everyone is commenting on this speech as theater, like he's a candidate. How does it reinvigorate his stalled policy agenda?"
-- Ryan Lizza: "Trump fall agenda: Pardon Arpaio, shut down the government, kill the filibuster, save "our" history and heritage."
-- Salena Zito: "Sometimes I feel as tho I live in a parallel universe. Trump supporters love this speech. Loved last night too. Everyone else is at a loss." | | | One of Maggie Haberman's observations on Twitter as the rally went on: "This is the president. Not a candidate. He is reinforcing for the crowd they can only trust him, and blames the media for nearly all ails..." Here's her A1 story co-bylined with Mark Landler... | | Breitbart editor pledges to do 'dirty work' for Bannon | | Tuesday's must-read: "A self-described 'email prankster' seemingly fooled top editors at Breitbart over the weekend into believing he was Steve Bannon, the fired White House chief strategist who returned to the right-wing website as executive chairman on Friday."
In the emails, Breitbart EIC Alex Marlow pledged that he and several other top editors would do Bannon's 'dirty work' against White House aides. The emails were shared with CNN by the prankster... Read Jake Tapper and Oliver Darcy's full story here... | | ESPN's latest controversy | | By trying to avoid an embarrassing ordeal, ESPN has embarrassed itself. On Tuesday night, the network confirmed that it moved an Asian-American reporter, Robert Lee, off the UVA home opener football game, "simply because of the coincidence of his name."
The web site Outkick the Coverage broke the story on Tuesday. The site's headline invoked a popular conservative nickname for ESPN, "MSESPN," deriding the sports network as the sports equivalent of the liberal talk shows on MSNBC. The headline said "MSESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Named Robert Lee Off UVa Game To Avoid Offending Idiots."
ESPN's statement confirmed: "We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding... In that moment it felt right to all parties... It's a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue."
A source confirmed to CNN that Lee was abruptly switched to the Youngstown versus Pitt game... I'll have a full story on CNNMoney overnight...
-- From a knowledgeable emailer: "This was mostly about avoiding the memes and jokes, etc, that one could reasonably expect be delivered his way simply because of his name. Game assignments are switched all the time..."
-- This story lit up social media and Fox's prime time shows. Jamie Weinstein tweeted: "I get why ESPN made this decision. But ... it is insane." | | -- Big headline in the WSJ: "Verizon to Throttle Video Quality, Revamp Unlimited Data Plans" (WSJ)
-- "The good news" about Robert Murray's lawsuit against HBO and John Oliver "is that this case -- at least according to legal experts -- won't get far..." (Mashable)
-- Via Howard Cohen: MTV is ordering a new season of "Fear Factor..." (Variety)
-- Diane Stafford, business reporter and columnist at The Kansas City Star, took a buyout after working at the newspaper for 44 years... (KCUR) | | Hats off to the NYT's John Leland and Sarah Maslin Nir for this lead:
"Without it, if you are a New Yorker of a certain age, chances are you would have never found your first apartment. Never discovered your favorite punk band, spouted your first post-Structuralist literary jargon, bought that unfortunate futon sofa, discovered Sam Shepard or charted the perfidies of New York's elected officials. Never made your own hummus or known exactly what the performance artist Karen Finley did with yams that caused such an uproar over at the National Endowment for the Arts."
What's "it?" The Village Voice. The weekly NYC newspaper is giving up on print. "The exact date of the last print edition has not yet been finalized," per the NYT... | | Carl Cameron, a Fox News original, is retiring. New CNNer Hadas Gold obtained Cameron's internal memo:
"I will always be immensely grateful for the relationships, experiences, and many lessons over the last two decades... There were tough days on the road in the face of deadlines, the editorial process, flight delays, lousy food and worse weather. But we worked hard at getting the story out accurately and promptly. I'm proud of that and everyone who's shared in it." | | Facebook adding news outlet logos | | Julia Waldow emails: Facebook is trying to make it easier to distinguish between the sources of news content shared on its site. Publishing logos will now accompany stories displayed in the "Trending" and "Search" sections, although Facebook hopes to expand the logos to "all places where people consume news" on the platform. (Poynter)
-- From an emailer: "I want to bang my head against the wall when my dad says a story came from 'Facebook' -- not CNN or the NYT, but Facebook -- audiences need to be better educated" about news sources..." | | One more from Julia: The publishing platform Medium will now pay some writers based on how many "claps" -- the equivalent of a Facebook "like" -- their articles get.
Via The Verge: "So far, Medium has worked with specific authors and publishers to put their articles behind the site's paywall. As of today, it's going to start rolling out the option to more and more of the site's writers..."
-- Plus: Medium's old green "M" logo is being replaced with a new wordmark... | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails:
-- On the first anniversary of Gawker's closure, Michael J. Socolow wrote about what we are missing now that it's gone... (WashPost)
-- HuffPost's tablet-friendly redesign and new tabloid-like direction has prompted a 23% increase in homepage visitors year over year... (Digiday)
-- Quartz is going to unveil a number of Slack-based tools that will help newsrooms create their own bots... (NiemanLab) | | One day after the LATimes shakeup... | | Brian Lowry emails: New LATimes publisher Ross Levinsohn said a lot of the right things in a CNBC interview on Tuesday, including his desire to bolster the paper's entertainment coverage and emulate the NYT and WashPost by building its digital reach. It's also smart to split the editor and publisher roles, after Davan Maharaj wore both hats. But the story this century at the Times -- coming from someone who worked there from 1996 to 2003 -- has been one of feckless ownership and staff cuts, and the new team is going to face understandable skepticism among the staff that Tronc won't engage in more of the same...
-- Related: TheWrap's Matt Pressberg asks: "Can Ross Levinsohn Fix the Broken LA Times?" | | "L.A. Times Masthead Massacre Capped a Month of Newsroom Turmoil" | | | That's the headline on this Variety story by Gene Maddaus and Ricardo Lopez. They say "the ouster of four top editors at the L.A. Times on Monday was the result of a month of newsroom turmoil following the publication of an investigation into the former dean of the USC medical school," while noting that Maharaj's firing had been brewing for a while... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- BuzzFeed's "Tasty" and "Nifty" channels, for recipes and DIY videos, respectively, will make their Snapchat Discover debut next month... (AdWeek)
-- LinkedIn becomes the newest platform to embrace user-generated videos, allowing account holders to publish anything from product demonstrations to resumé clips... (TechCrunch)
-- Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will make his Netflix debut with an hour-long special titled "Jerry Before Seinfeld" on Sept. 19... (THR)
-- The Joker might be getting his own origin story on the big screen, with help from Hollywood heavyweight Martin Scorcese... (Variety) | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Seriously, there's a whole backstory with Taylor Swift and snakes as fans try to decipher what her slithering social media posts are all about...
-- Billy Joel donned a yellow Star of David at his concert to take a stand against Neo-Nazis...
-- Chrissy Teigen has opened up about her issues with alcohol... | | | Email reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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