| | | | "I am at a complete and utter loss for words looking at Irma's appearance on satellite imagery."
That's Taylor Trogdon, a senior scientist at the National Hurricane Center, reacting to the category five hurricane churning across the Atlantic.
Evacuations are getting underway in south Florida. So reporters are moving in... newsrooms are making plans for at least a week of nonstop coverage... and meteorologists are sounding the alarm. We're seeing lots of this... from Tuesday's "CBS Evening News..." spaghetti plots of various possible paths: | | | CNN's Tom Sater has also been using a graphics package to compare the European and the American model all evening long. The problem is that almost all of the models bring Irma into Florida, one way or another... | | | The hurricane center says Irma's core will pass "near or just north of Puerto Rico" on Wednesday evening. Leyla Santiago and George Howell are there for CNN... Linzie Janis is there for ABC... Morgan Radford for NBC... | | | The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo tweets: "In this season of storms, let's all take the time to thank 1) NOAA 2) NWS 3) NHC for showing how good govt functions..." | | And then there's Rush Limbaugh... | | Oliver Darcy emails: Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the media coverage of Hurricane Irma on his show Thursday. Limbaugh suggested that Irma was being hyped in the press to "advance this climate change agenda." (An odd assertion considering conservative media heavyweights like The Drudge Report and Sean Hannity were warning about the potential catastrophic damage Irma could cause.) Read a full transcript of his remarks here...
Limbaugh also made a bizarre suggestion that local media was playing up the monstrous storm so Florida residents purchase supplies from local stores. "There is a symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media, and it's related to money," he said. Limbaugh added that as "TV stations begin reporting this and the panic begins to increase" people go to "various stores to stock up." The conservative talk radio king concluded: "So the media benefits with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they're getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers." | | | Rush lives in south Florida. He should know better. And he should be ashamed. | | Back in the real world... | | | Irma could take a turn to the north and east, sparring Florida. It could. But it's prudent to prepare for a landfalling hurricane this weekend... | | Harvey telethon next week | | | Beyoncé, Oprah and other celebs are joining a star-studded Harvey benefit that will be televised next Tuesday, Lisa Respers France reports. ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox have all agreed to broadcast the one-hour special. Unfortunately, it might have to be a Harvey AND Irma relief telethon... | | | That's what Anderson Cooper called it on Tuesday night. President Trump's decision to end the DACA program -- while punting to Congress -- is definitely not the "art of the deal." Cooper: "The president himself seems to be trying to have it both ways -- saying he wants to be compassionate, but not leading from the front on an issue his base is not sympathetic to..." | | | Bob Iger: "The Dreamers impacted by this cruel and misguided decision make significant contributions to our economy and our country." Tim Cook: "Apple will fight for them to be treated as equals." Randall Stephenson, Bob Bakish, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and other CEOs signed a letter calling on Trump and Congress to preserve DACA or find a "permanent solution..." | | Univision and Telemundo, too | | America's two biggest Spanish language networks, Univision and Telemundo, both issued statements decrying the decision. "As media companies tend to hire younger workers — especially for lower-level positions — it's likely that both Univision and Telemundo would feel the impact if DACA-protected employees were forced to leave the U.S.," the LATimes' Stephen Battaglio noted...
-- Univision's Jorge Ramos on "AC360:" "I cannot think of a single American who will benefit from this decision..." | | Trevorrow out as "Star Wars" director | | Frank Pallotta emails: Colin Trevorrow is no longer directing the next chapter of the Skywalker saga, "Star Wars: Episode IX." The official line from Lucasfilm: "Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ." THR hears that "script issues" were at the core of the parting. Who will get the job now?
-- Context: The news about the 2019 film is the latest behind the scenes shakeup in the "Star Wars" galaxy... you'll recall that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were replaced in June by Ron Howard on next year's Han Solo film... | | -- "Another round of job cuts and structural changes are expected" at Condé Nast this week, Alexandra Steigrad reports... (WWD)
-- "It's been a dream of ours to bring 'Frontline' into audio," Raney Aronson says. The result: "Frontline Dispatch," a six-episode series debuting next week... (Variety) | | -- Those "Netflix is a joke" billboards in L.A. and NYC? They're part of a marketing campaign by Netflix... details TK... (Variety)
-- Give a warm welcome to Hadas Gold... Tuesday was her first official day with CNN... So you'll be seeing her name pop up in this newsletter more often...
-- Gold tweeted the new cover of Washington Life mag, featuring Steven Mnuchin's wife Louise Linton. Gold's caption: "When you apologize for and own your 'out of touch' instagram post and comment while posing in ball gowns for a magazine cover 🤷" | | CNN's investigative unit "reshaped" in the wake of retracted story | | Wednesday's NYT has a reconstruction of CNN's late June retraction of a story involving Anthony Scaramucci and Russia, including some new detail about what went awry. Three journalists from a new investigative unit subsequently resigned. "In the weeks since... the investigative team has been reshaped and redirected," Sydney Ember and Michael Grynbaum report.
Key graf: "At CNN, executives took some time to regroup." CNN prez Jeff Zucker "vowed that the network would not be cowed by the Trump administration. After a reassessment period, CNN asked the investigative unit to resume its work. Its ranks have been replenished: new journalists have been brought on from other parts of CNN, and there is a new team leader in place." The team has been told to "leave the Russia investigation story to CNN's staff in Washington," Ember and Grynbaum write. But the network's coverage of the Russia story never stopped, and the DC team has continued to break lots of stories about the probes... | | Speaking of Russia reporting... | | Last night I wrote that there's been a "steady drip-drip-drip of Russia news as Robert Mueller's investigation and two other probes continue apace." But there's three other probes, not two: Senate Intel, Senate Judiciary and House Intel. Here's Manu Raju and Evan Perez's latest on the "intensifying" investigations...
-- ICYMI: My essay from Sunday's show: The Russia-Trump story is not "over," despite the best efforts of pro-Trump media voices to talk about it in the past tense and pretend like it's a settled issue. Watch... | | Oliver Darcy emails: A freelance photographer sued Breitbart on Tuesday for copyright infringement. The photographer, Terray Sylvester, said in his lawsuit that the right-wing outfit used his work, which was posted to his social media accounts, on the website without his permission. You can read more about the lawsuit here. And here's a link to the complaint...
-- Related: The Daily Caller's Betsy Rothstein had a rather lively conversation with the lawyer representing Sylvester. She said it ended with him telling her to "f*** off" and hanging up the phone. Read Rothstein's story here... | | Bianna Golodryga joins CBS and CNN | | | "In a first-of-its-kind arrangement," Bianna Golodryga, "who previously served as a business anchor for Yahoo News and the anchor of ABC's weekend edition of 'Good Morning America,' will be working for CBS News and CNN simultaneously," HuffPost's Yashar Ali reports. "She signed multiyear deals with both networks late last week." She's a full-time correspondent for CBS, primarily for "CBS This Morning," and she's a contributor to CNN, regularly appearing on shows like "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead as she left her car after arriving home in Bangalore. She edited the local magazine Lankesh Patrike. The Times of India called her murder "the latest in line of violent attacks on journalists" in the country... (Times of India)
-- Monday, a photojournalist with the New Carlisle News in New Carlisle, Ohio, was shot by a Clark County deputy who mistook his camera set-up for a weapon. The photog is expected to recover... (New Carlisle News)
-- "The Danish inventor accused of killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his privately built submarine staunchly denied murdering the woman and called her death an accident, Danish national broadcaster DR reported..." (CNN) | | Press group tells NRA: "It is un-American to threaten journalists" | | A trade group that represents the NYT, the AP and other major publishers called out the NRA on Tuesday, accusing the gun rights group of crossing a line and threatening journalists. Digital Content Next's letter to NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch was spurred by her viral video attacking the Times as an "untrustworthy, dishonest rag." Loesch said her video -- declaring "we're coming for you" -- was a "shot across your proverbial bow." She later said it was about promoting fact-checking, not intimidation or violence.
But Digital Content Next said this Tuesday: "When you use such incendiary language as 'we're coming for you,' it is our right to suggest in the strongest terms that your behavior is blatantly irresponsible as it may incite violence against journalists. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would interpret this language as threatening and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst. Bottom line: It is un-American to threaten journalists." Here's my full story... | | -- Peter Baker's reality check: Trump is "still able to dominate the national conversation," but is "so far incapable of translating that into action..."
-- POTUS intends to announce the details of his $1 million donation to Harvey recovery on Wednesday. "Many good suggestions [for charities] came from people in this room," Sarah Sanders said at Tuesday's briefing. CNBC's Christina Wilkie surmised she meant that "Trump got many of his ideas from TV news he saw of disaster relief efforts, not from WH press corps specifically..."
-- David Clarke, apparently shut out of a W.H. job, has joined the pro-Trump super PAC as "senior advisor and spokesman." He was on Sean Hannity's show Tuesday night...
-- In this great new piece for Politico Mag, Virginia Heffernan says Twitter threads are "the compelling, incendiary literary form of the Trump era..." | | Tronc + NYDN, one day later | | Facebook putting the squeeze on YouTube... | | | "Facebook is offering major record labels and music publishers hundreds of millions of dollars so the users of its social network can legally include songs in videos they upload, according to people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw and Sarah Frier report. Shira Ovide calls this "the un-YouTube..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Woe is Verrit? Gizmodo's Tom McKay argues that the new progressive media platform endorsed by Hillary Clinton is not likely to succeed... (Gizmodo)
-- Important from Wendy Lu at CJR: a look at how newsrooms can better cover the disability beat... (CJR)
-- Fascinating from Richard Fausset: a review of the magazine scene in the South, including new magazines that cropped up in recent years like The Bitter Southerner an Scalawag... (NYT)
-- Via Digiday's Shareen Pathak: "Pitch deck: How Amazon is selling ad buyers on its growing advertising business" (Digiday)
-- Ryan Knutson's latest for the WSJ: "Verizon Wants to Build an Advertising Juggernaut. It Needs Your Data First" (WSJ) | | | In yesterday's week-ahead calendar, I listed NAHJ's annual conference. But NAHJ is actually part of a much larger conference, "Excellence in Journalism," combining four prominent journalism associations -- RTDNA, SPJ, NAJA and NAHJ. The conference does begin Thursday in Anaheim. My apologies for the omission. | | What went wrong for Hollywood this summer | | | Frank Pallotta emails his latest: Despite strong showings from "Wonder Woman" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," the 2017 summer season endured the worst box office haul since 1997, when adjusted for inflation. What went wrong? "In a nutshell: a lack of high-demand animated releases, too many under-cooked or aging franchises, and not enough breakout comedies hurt this summer," said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com... | | Frank adds: Studio types are experts at looking forward, not backward... A comeback could start as early as this weekend when the adaptation of Stephen King's "It" hits theaters... The horror film is projected to have a $70 million opening, and that would be a record for the month of September by roughly $20 million...
-- Don't call it a comeback, says TheWrap's Jeremy Fuster: "The rest of 2017 is already doomed..." | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Madonna has moved to Portugal. And she sounds pretty happy about the relocation...
-- John Legend once tried to break up with Chrissy Teigen... and she had the best response...
-- It's no longer Beyoncé's birthday, but Michelle Obama dressed as her friend was still thrilling the Internet on Tuesday... | | Four ways to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | 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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