| | | | Three cities, three probes | | Harvey Weinstein is now the subject of police investigations in three cities -- London, NYC and L.A. -- as more accusers come forward.
It's been exactly two weeks since the original NYT story hit. The LAPD said Thursday that it has "interviewed a potential sexual assault victim involving Harvey Weinstein in 2013." The LATimes broke the news and spoke with the alleged victim, who asked the paper for anonymity. A spokesperson for Weinstein told me, "We deny any allegations of nonconsensual sex, although obviously can't respond to anonymous allegations." Here's Sandra Gonzalez's full story... | | Stunning op-ed by Lupita Nyong'o | | If you haven't read this Lupita Nyong'o op-ed about her encounters with Weinstein yet, click here. The NYT published it on Thursday night. She says she wants to end the "conspiracy of silence."
"Though we may have endured powerlessness at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, by speaking up, speaking out and speaking together, we regain that power," she says. "And we hopefully ensure that this kind of rampant predatory behavior as an accepted feature of our industry dies here and now." | | Tarantino: "I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard" | | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Jodi Kantor's interview with Quentin Tarantino is a must-read. He admits he "knew enough to do more than I did," and is a perfect example of how people privy to these kinds of events/behavior often fail to put them in a larger context. From the story: "What I did was marginalize the incidents," he recalled, saying he wrote them off as mild misbehavior. "Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse..." | | -- If you missed it on Wednesday: Maureen Ryan's column about being sexually assaulted by a TV exec is an essential read. Speaking with Jim Warren, she says "the next huge series of scandals to break might be among PR professionals..."
-- Did former Variety editor Peter Bart cover for Weinstein, as this HuffPost story alleges? He says... surprise, surprise... no...
-- "Perhaps the most critical solution lies in partnership with the men," Megyn Kelly writes in this piece for Time. "The harassers must stop; we know this. But male titans of industry must stand up for decency..."
-- Sandra Gonzalez emails: After the #MeToo movement gained traction on social media, some men began using #IWilll and #ItWasMe on platforms like Facebook and Twitter... Alexandra Schwartz breaks down the implications of this "post-Weinstein megaphone" for the New Yorker... | | Weinstein Co. staffers speak | | No, not "everyone" knew about the extent of Weinstein's misconduct. That's what the staff of The Weinstein Company, wants people to know. In an open letter on Thursday, about 30 anonymous staffers said "we all knew that we were working for a man with an infamous temper," but "we did not know we were working for a serial sexual predator."
The staffers want the company to lift their non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, and allow them to speak openly, because "our former boss is in open violation of his contract with us -- the employees -- to create a safe place for us to work." Here's my full story... | | TV Academy board is meeting... | | | At the time I'm hitting send on this newsletter, the TV Academy is holding a board meeting... The organization may issue a statement about Weinstein... Sandra Gonzalez is staying up late in case there's news, and it'll be posted on our media page overnight... | | Directors Guild is next... | | | The DGA's board "has a long-scheduled quarterly board meeting this Saturday, October 21 in NYC and will be addressing the very serious issue of sexual harassment in the industry," the guild said Thursday... | | -- "Nickelodeon has fired the creator of its animated show 'The Loud House' after he was accused of sexual harassment," Sandra Gonzalez reports...
-- "Channing Tatum is stepping down from a film project he had in development with The Weinstein Co.," Chloe Melas reports. The project had to do "with sexual abuse and suicide..."
-- More from Chloe: Rose McGowan backed out of a planned film festival appearance due to the Weinstein scandal...
-- Notice how there are only male execs quoted in this WWD piece: "Advertising executives said they haven't personally witnessed sexual harassment on their sets..."
-- Coming Friday: My podcast interview with Kim Masters... | | Fox News apologizes for error-filled story | | "FAKER! Man admits he lied to Fox News about Navy SEAL service." That's the headline from the Navy Times. Earlier this month Fox's newscasts repeatedly aired a segment about a "decorated war hero" who "hopes to honor Trump with glass presidential seal." Fox reporters and anchors said they hoped Trump would see the segment. "But when Navy Times contacted" John Garofalo on Thursday, "Garofalo admitted he had lied and never served in Vietnam, never received a Purple Heart and was never a SEAL."
-- "Fox News not withdrawing that story has drove me nutty," a retired SEAL told the Navy Times...
-- On Thursday, Fox took down the segment video and published a correction. "We apologize to our viewers, especially veterans and servicemen and women," the network said... | | About that breathtaking briefing room moment... | | John Kelly's statement in the briefing room was, as Jeremy Diamond wrote here, "extraordinary and at times emotional." He said he would take questions, but asked, "Is anyone here a Gold Star parent or sibling? Does anyone here know a Gold Star parent or sibling?"
-- NPR's Steve Mullis tweeted: "This briefing seemed aimed at making press feel guilty for asking questions when fallen soldiers are involved." HuffPost's Elise Foley added: "With a specific message that reporters who haven't lost family in combat have no right to ask questions, or at least should feel guiltiest..."
-- Powerful words from Barbara Starr on CNN Thursday afternoon: "The press corps has the responsibility to always ask, ALWAYS ask, why troops are at risk..." | | Peggy Noonan's warning for Trump | | Sarah Palin "lost her place through antic statements, intellectual thinness and general strangeness. The same may well happen—or be happening—with Donald Trump," Peggy Noonan says in her latest column...
-- Overheard on MSNBC Thursday afternoon: "What happened to the old Republican Party? Not all of us can work at MSNBC," Nicolle Wallace said... | | Spotted at Bob Schieffer's book party | | Spotted at the NYC book party for Bob Schieffer's book "Overload" at The Monkey Bar Thursday night: David Rhodes, Vivian Schiller, Steve Capus, Christa Robinson, Kaylee Hartung, Lloyd Grove, John Avlon, Richard Leibner, Jim Murphy, Kevin Tedesco, Norah O'Donnell, Barry Levinson, Diane Sawyer, Caitlin Conant, Steve Kroft, Michael Grynbaum, David Bauder, Anthony Mason, Elaine Quijano, Mo Rocca, Mary Hager, Susan Zirinsky, Michael Barbaro, Chris Isham, Ryan Kadro, Brian Steinberg, Ryan Kadro, Vladimir Duthiers, and many more...
Schieffer's message to journos in the room: "Keep doing what you're doing. It's a noble thing..." | | -- Tribune shareholders voted to approve the Sinclair deal at a meeting on Thursday... One day after the FCC pressed pause on its review of the deal for two weeks... (Variety)
-- @TVNewsHQ tweets: "Baby Trump is set to make a first media appearance on... where else... @foxandfriends!" Ainsley Earhardt taped an at-home interview with Eric and Lara Trump, introing baby Luke, and it'll air on Friday...
-- Here's Eliana Plott on "how a former Pussycat Doll became a darling of the right." Kaya Jones has become a regular on Sean Hannity's show and on Infowars... (Washingtonian)
-- Todd Shields and Anousha Sakoui's latest: "Sinclair's Vision for a TV Network to Rival Fox Draws Critics on the Right" (Bloomberg)
-- Seattle Weekly is the latest weekly paper to undergo a "dramatic restructuring," David Kroman reports. "It will, for all purposes, no longer be an alt-weekly..." (Crosscut) | | Facebook beginning to test subscription promos for publishers | | Facebook will start testing its "subscribe to this news outlet!" feature in "the next few weeks," the company said Thursday. A "small group of publishers across the U.S. and Europe" will be involved. Among them: Hearst, Tronc, and the WashPost. But it won't work on Apple devices.
"The issue: Apple wants to take as much as 30 percent of any subscription revenue Facebook helps generate. Facebook wants all of the money to go to publishers," Recode's Peter Kafka writes. "People familiar with both companies say they've been discussing the impasse for months."
This is the "Apple tax" in action -- Apple is counting the subscriptions as in-app purchases. So the test will just be on Android for now... | | "While we encourage social engagement and sharing of our journalism, some staffers frankly are spending too much time tweeting and posting during the day..."
--A new WSJ memo about social media guidelines that says what a lot of other newsroom execs really think about the amount of time staffers spend on Twitter... | | Fox must love the idea of an NYC-L.A. World Series | | The Dodgers are going to the World Series!
Brian Lowry emails: Fox has to be salivating at the prospect of a New York-Los Angeles World Series, pitting the top two TV markets against each other -- which, as The Wrap noted, hasn't happened since 1981... | | Russia Today reluctant to register as a foreign agent | | Hadas Gold emails her latest: For weeks, Russia Today said that the DOJ had asked them to register as Foreign Agents by October 17. But according to DOJ's public filings RT has not done so, and RT told me they plan to fight it. "Our legal team has been doing everything possible for RT to avoid having to register under FARA and the dialogue is ongoing. On their advice we are not discussing further details at this time," the network's spokeswoman said Thursday.
Keep in mind -- registering under FARA doesn't prevent RT from broadcasting -- it just means they'd have to disclose their funding and relationship with a foreign government. But RT says the move is hypocritical... and that it will cause them to cease operating... | | Putin promises "tit-for-tat" | | More from Hadas: Vladimir Putin said Thursday he will take "tit-for-tat" measures against American media in Russia and would react "quite fast" if he sees any action limiting Russian media activities in the U.S...
-- What's next? RT and DOJ could continue the dialogue, FARA experts told me. DOJ could also start criminal and civil proceedings against RT, and RT can file an injunction to try and keep the government from proceeding. Convictions under FARA are rare – there have only been seven in fifty years... | | | That's how many times President Trump "has invoked the phrase 'fake news'" this year, according to PolitiFact. "Virtually every instance has been in response to critical news coverage..."` | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Mark Bergen and Brad Stone's Bloomberg Businessweek cover story: "Everyone's Mad at Google and Sundar Pichai Has to Fix It" (Bloomberg)
-- A story from the front lines of the propaganda wars: Students in Italy are learning to recognize fake news... (NYT)
-- A new study by Pew and Elon U. says experts are divided on whether online misinformation can be eradicated: 51% say things are unlikely to get better, 49% are more optimistic... (NiemanLab)
-- Strange bedfellows? Actually that's the point of this editorial partnership. Vogue and Vice are trying to appeal to advertisers with a new venture called "Project Vs..." (Variety) | | Introducing the "Honest Ads Act" | | On Thursday Senators Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar and John McCain introduced a bill that "would place new disclosure requirements on political advertisements in an effort to combat the kind of election meddling that Russia engaged in during the 2016 election campaign," CNN's Jeremy Herb and Donie O'Sullivan write... The lawmakers say they're trying to apply TV ad disclosures to online ads...
-- Related: Here are my earlier TV interviews about the bill with Warner and Klobuchar...
-- Nicholas Thompson tweeted this reality check: "We should regulate online political ads! But Russia's nefarious viral content was way more influential." He linked to this Wired story by Issie Lapowsky... | | FB, Google, Twitter are sending their top lawyers to testify about Russia | | | CNN's Drew Griffin reports: Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett and Google General Counsel Kent Walker have been tapped to testify at the November 1 hearings regarding Russia-linked use of social media to meddle in the election and beyond... | | Wintour: "Companies like Conde Nast must stand for values, they must lead" | | "People want the personal, the uncensored, and the real," Anna Wintour said at Adweek's 28th annual Brand Genius Gala on Wednesday night. "Since our country's current leadership is destabilizing our core beliefs, companies like Conde Nast must stand for values, they must lead. When we do, the response has been electric."
Wintour received the gala's Brand Visionary honor.... Also spotted: Bob Sauerberg, Zac Posen, Eva Chen, Lauren Santo Domingo, Susan Plagemann, James Cooper, Linda Boff, Pamela Drucker Mann, Linda Yaccarino... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Playboy's November/December issue is breaking new ground... Its tribute to late founder Hugh Hefner marks the first time a man has graced the cover, alone, without a female model present... (THR)
-- Facebook is testing out a function called Sets that lets you curate special collections of statuses, images, and videos to share with followers, friends, or family... TechCrunch's Josh Constine says the move is "stealing thunder from Pinterest's boards..." (TechCrunch)
-- Companies are turning toward a method called "sandwiching" to bypass an Instagram algorithm for post placement... (Digiday) | | Lowry reviews "Only the Brave" | | | Brian Lowry emails: From publishing to movies. "Only the Brave" has a timely ring to it — the true story focuses on the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of firefighters, amid a terrible outbreak of wildfires across the west — but also an interesting media hook to it. It's based on a GQ article, and produced in part by Conde Nast Entertainment, part of its efforts to expand its print brands into other forms of content. Read more... | | | More from Lowry: National Geographic, meanwhile, is responsible for "Jane," a gorgeous documentary about the life and career of primatologist Jane Goodall, which is receiving a theatrical run. Directed by Brett Morgen, it's culled in part from a treasure trove of lost footage that was found in a storage locker... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I 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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