| | | | | Happy Labor Day Weekend to you and yours. Hopefully you're reading this from somewhere warm and relaxing... | | The president's media diet is changing | | Lately POTUS has been wondering where his Breitbart articles have gone. That's according to the NYT... Check out these paragraphs from Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman's latest story about the President Trump-John Kelly dynamic:
"Mr. Kelly cannot stop Mr. Trump from binge-watching Fox News, which aides describe as the president's primary source of information gathering. But Mr. Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets. Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were."
-- Hmmm: So at the same time Breitbart is publishing more and more stories that are critical of Trump aides, the stories are not reaching the president's desk...? | | Mueller obtained draft of letter Trump wrote explaining Comey firing | | You just knew the final summer Friday of 2017 would include a big news surprise, right?
It hit at lunchtime: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter drafted by President Trump and a top political aide that offered an unvarnished view of Mr. Trump's thinking in the days before the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey," Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman reported on NYTimes.com shortly after noon.
Why it matters: Because "the circumstances and reasons for the firing are believed to be a significant element of Mr. Mueller's investigation, which includes whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey."
The WashPost, WSJ and other outlets have now matched much of the NYT's reporting... | | Remembering the "cover story" about Comey firing | | As the Post's story says, this newly-revealed letter "establishes Trump's thinking prior to the firing and contradicts initial statements from White House officials about why he dismissed his FBI director."
Here's Glenn Thrush speaking on "All In With Chris Hayes:" At the W.H. press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders "was asked, I think, specifically about the original cover story that Rosenstein had about Hillary Clinton." (That Comey had mishandled the Clinton server probe.) "And when you realize that the president and his entire team was telling this, essentially, casual lie about the reason for firing him -- when the president was sitting behind the scenes drafting a letter pointedly indicating it was the Russia investigation -- that, I think, is troublesome too. The fact that the cover story was so disingenuous. And by the way, that has just been totally lost in this entire story." | | | Ari Melber, on his 6pm MSNBC show, called the NYT reporting "BIG news developing right now in the Russia investigation -- news the Trump White House may hope that people miss while heading into the holiday weekend." Will it be missed? | | CNN's latest scoop: Keith Schiller on the way out | | | Trump's "longtime aide and current director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller has told people he intends to leave the White House," CNN's Dana Bash, Noah Gray and Jeremy Diamond reported Friday afternoon, citing three sources. His exit could come in late September or early October. W.H. press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the story was "not true..." and declined to comment further... while Schiller declined to comment... | | "Here are the Q's that Sarah Sanders actually answered" | | | Have you ever stopped and measured just how much, or how little, of the daily W.H. press briefing contains new, noteworthy information, as opposed to deflections and spin? On Friday, Philip Bump did. He writes: "Sanders was asked 39 questions in today's press briefing. By my count, she offered four real answers..." | | "The world is watching Trump's attacks on the press" | | POTUS kept his anti-media attacks to a minimum this week, though he did tweet on Wednesday, "After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY?" I'm still wondering which magazines he was reading. But anyway, up until this week Trump's summer was full of media criticism. So I'd like to highlight something that former American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder wrote for the latest edition of CNNPolitics' digital magazine STATE.
Rieder makes the point that Trump's "audacious and unrelenting campaign to delegitimize and demonize the press" is "denting the longtime international view of the U.S. as the uncompromising champion of freedom of the press." Read the whole thing here... | | Sunday's "Reliable Sources" guest list | | | We'll be live Sunday at 11am ET on CNN... with Errol Louis, Sarah Westwood, Alice Stewart, and Will Bunch... plus Harry Shearer (talking about Harvey, lessons from Katrina, and media coverage of storms)... and Clyde and Maggie Haberman... | | Newsletter schedule note... | | | I'm celebrating my birthday after the show on Sunday, so no newsletter on Sunday night... we'll be back on Monday evening... see you then! | | | Hear the full interview with the aforementioned Habermans via our "Reliable Sources" podcast... Here's the iTunes link... And our write-up of the interview... | | One week after landfall... | | | This three-pronged banner on "AC360" -- with Anderson Cooper anchoring from Houston -- succinctly described the ongoing difficulties in the wake of Hurricane Harvey: "Explosions at chemical plant; water system still down in Beaumont; West Houston running low on food/water." | | Ethical Q's about the coverage | | | Julia Waldow emails: Wall-to-wall media coverage in the aftermath of Harvey brings forth questions of reporter ethics and responsibility in the face of a natural disaster. Are reporters sympathizing enough with victims? Does showing the same footage over and over again actually do more harm than good? Is coverage too "intrusive?" Are victims being given enough time to analyze what has happened before being asked to share their stories? In a new piece for Poynter, Indira Lakshmanan says media involvement in Harvey is damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't: "The media has come in for a raft of criticism over how they're doing their jobs -- no matter how they do it..." | | Fresh examples of "fake news" stories | | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Craig Silverman reports that some arch-conservative pages on Facebook are spreading a false claim that Black Lives Matter blocked Harvey relief efforts. The "evidence?" Old and unrelated images from protests in other cities. Details here... | | By Francesca:
-- Lloyd Grove's latest: "After Mass Layoffs, Can Glenn Beck Still Save 'The Blaze'?" (The Daily Beast)
-- Janet Elder has a new role at the NYT -- she will build an operation to "seek philanthropic funding for ambitious journalism..." (NYT)
-- The WashPost is expanding its use of Heliograf, an in-house automated storytelling technology, to automate write-ups on high school football games in the DC-area... (WashPost)
-- Apple is considering housing its original video content production unit right in Hollywood... (FT) | | There have been a string of followups to Ken Vogel's scoop in the NYT about Google and the New America Foundation. (Including Vogel's own followup here.) On Friday evening the foundation's CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter published a Medium post that said, among things, she regrets calling Vogel's story "false." Related:
-- Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: Concerns over the power of Google (and Facebook) are cropping up across the media spectrum. Conservative commentators portray the companies as Silicon Valley elites that threaten free speech. Some of them echo liberal concerns about monopoly power. Other observers, in both media and academia, warn about the power imbalance between platforms and publishers...
-- Writing for Gizmodo, Kashmir Hill describes how Google's position of power towards publishers can influence editorial decisions...
-- TPM editor and publisher Josh Marshall argues that publishers are now "serfs on Google's farm..." | | "Roku is going public," CNNMoney's Danielle Wiener-Bronner reports. "The streaming device company on Friday filed for an initial public offering. It told the SEC it intends to sell up to $100 million in common stock." There's no specified date for the IPO...
-- Details: In the filing, the company said it has 15.1 million active accounts as of June 30 of this year and that Roku users streamed more than 6.7 billion hours on the platform in the six months ending on that date. Roku said that marks a 62% growth from the same period last year... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- HuffPost's "Listen to America" bus tour of 25 cities officially kicks off this month... the site's new head of strategy Hillary Frey is overseeing the "listening tour..." (NiemanLab)
-- IBM is using AI tools from Watson Media to analyze video and audio of the U.S. Open in real time... (AdWeek)
-- Acclaimed actor Shelley Berman, known for his "sit down" comedy and role as Larry David's father on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," has died at age 92... (THR) | | Recommended reads for the long weekend | | -- An essay by CNN's Eliott C. McLaughlin: "What August showed us about America."
-- Via Megan Thomas: A well-worth-the-read profile on Teen Vogue editor in chief Elaine Welteroth in the next issue of The New York Times Magazine...
-- Writing for Poynter, Mark Stencel revisits LAST Friday's news dump...
-- Matt Labash's remarkable Weekly Standard story about Antifa, the alt-right, free speech, and more: "A Beating in Berkeley." | | The Nation attaches editor's note to article about DNC hacking | | | WashPost's Erik Wemple writes: "After an extensive review, the Nation has issued an editor's note concerning an Aug. 9 article that raised questions regarding a consensus finding of the U.S. intelligence community that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was hacked by Russian actors seeking to tilt the playing field in the 2016 presidential election." Details here... | | "Inhumans" in Imax theaters, four weeks before airing on ABC | | Brian Lowry emails: Marvel is both experimenting and testing its power with fans by releasing its latest ABC series, "Inhumans," in Imax theaters this weekend in advance of its TV debut on September 29.
After a tepid reception at Comic-Con and at the TV Critics tour, the company might wind up highlighting that its network TV efforts have thus far lagged behind rival DC/Warner Bros... Read Lowry's full column here... | | Mystery announcement causing anxiety among "Bachelor" fans | | Sandra Gonzalez writes: The creator of ABC's "The Bachelor" is doing what the reality series does best by building suspense among the show's loyal viewers. Executive producer Mike Fleiss caused a stir within Bachelor Nation -- as the show's fan base is called -- by tweeting a series of cryptic messages alluding to an impending major announcement, the exact nature of which remains hazy. "Stand by for shocking news regarding #thebachelor," he wrote on Wednesday. Minutes later, Fleiss tweeted, "TV trivia... Has a broadcast network ever canceled its No. 1 show???" The comment spurred speculation of a cancellation. (An ABC spokesperson had no comment on that suggestion when reached on Friday by CNNMoney.) On Thursday, Fleiss continued to fan the flames, with two more tweets about a "shocking" announcement and news. None came...
>> One possibility could be ABC preparing to release some news on "The Bachelor Winter Games," a spin-off series that will coincide with the 2018 Winter Olympics, airing on NBC...
>> Also: ABC is expected to announce the identity of the next bachelor soon, as the current season of "Bachelor in Paradise" comes to a close... | | This has been an open secret for a while, but now it's official: "True Detective" Season 3 is definitely happening. Lisa Respers France breaks down the details: "Like with Season 1, which became a breakout hit, showrunner Nic Pizzolatto is the sole writer on Season 3. (Episode 4 is co-written with David Milch.)" Mahershala Ali will star in the new season...
-- Brian Lowry emails: The casting is a coup. But after the response to Season 2 -- and HBO's own postgame analysis about where it went wrong -- Pizzolatto should definitely approach this edition as if he has something to prove... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- "Lord of the Flies" is getting an all-girl remake, and the backlash against it on social media is pretty savage...
-- Grammy-award winning singer Sam Smith has announced he has new music coming... | | | 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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