| | | | Sometimes it's helpful to picture President Trump as a radio shock jock -- like his old pal Howard Stern -- a broadcaster who constantly has to out-do himself and has to come up with a new way to shock his audience.
He succeeded on Wednesday. His anti-media statements on Twitter and in the Oval Office are among the most disturbing of his presidency to date. His disregard for the free press is disappointing and, yes, shocking. He's not talking like the leader of a western democracy. He's talking like an autocrat. I recognize that he's just venting, but his words have power all around the world.
>> "The attack by Trump on the First Amendment today is likely the most un-American sentiment ever uttered by a POTUS. Can't think of another," GOP strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted.
>> I think he was egged on by Sean Hannity, who taped an interview with him on Wednesday afternoon. Lemme take you through the president's statements one by one... | | "Appearing to attack the First Amendment" | | Trump started and ended his day by tweeting about TV licenses. 8:09pm: "Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!" It was a follow-up to the morning missive that reflected his fury over NBC's scoop: "Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in Nuclear Arsenal, Surprising Military." 9:55am: "At what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!"
NBC stands by its reporting. On the "Nightly News," Kristen Welker called the A.M. tweet "extraordinary" because he's "appearing to attack the First Amendment." | | If you want a quick tutorial on how FCC licensing really works... | | | Oliver Darcy and I wrote that story for you. Here it is... | | "It is frankly disgusting..." | | In between those two tweets, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the NBC report was "fake," and "It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write, and people should look into it."
"Well," Jake Tapper said in response, "I have looked into it, and you might want to start looking into it too, Mr. President." He held up a U.S. Constitution. | | Important: During the Oval Office photo op, when a reporter followed up and asked Trump whether he believed there "should be limits on what the press should write," Trump said, "No. The press should speak more honestly." His words are poisonous but in this case his words are not matched by actions to actually curtail reporting.
But Wednesday night's tweet explicitly encourages people to challenge station licenses... | | | There is precedent for political allies of a president challenging local licenses. It happened under Richard Nixon in the 1970s, when a friend of Nixon's tried to take over a license held by the Washington Post. The Post's Aaron Blake wrote about this, check out his piece... | | Bold statement by Ben Sasse | | | Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted this: "Mr. President: Words spoken by the President of the United States matter. Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on January 20th to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment?" | | -- FCC chairman Ajit Pai did not comment, but some former FCC officials were quick to skewer the president... Details here...
-- Via the Committee to Protect Journalists: "Trump's assertion that @NBC's license could be challenged emboldens other gov'ts to embrace authoritarian tendencies..."
-- National Review's Jay Nordlinger tweeted: "If you can't act on your authoritarianism -- are you still an authoritarian, in your heart?" | | Trump's anti-media statements undermine Tillerson's State Department | | | With a WSJ journalist sentenced in absentia for spreading "terrorist propaganda" by writing about Turkey, the U.S. State Department issued a statement of concern on Wednesday. "We urge Turkey to respect and ensure freedom of expression," a State spokeswoman said. "Freedom of expression, including for speech and the media -- even speech which some find controversial or uncomfortable -- strengthens democracy and needs to be protected." | | Van Jones: "This is crazy. It's gotta stop." | | | When I was on "AC360" with Van Jones and Jason Miller, Jones also made the point about the U.S. advocating for press freedom around the world. Jones added: "Can you imagine if Barack Obama had said he was going to start snatching licenses? I mean, this would have been declared a constitutional crisis." His bottom line: "This is crazy. It's gotta stop... It's wrong for POTUS to attack the free press in our country, and we shouldn't stand for it, REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT." | | | Brian Lowry emails: Trump's recent comments about "equal time" and now TV station licenses would reflect an almost-comical lack of knowledge about how those provisions operate if they weren't so clearly intended to speak to people who are wholly uninformed about those regulations. As evidence, sift through last month's New York Daily News piece on FCC comments, in which people urged the commission to "punish" or "shut down" CNN (over which it has no authority) for its tough coverage of the president... | | Trump's partisan interviews | | | The president's slap at "partisan" network news raises an obvious question: Is he seeking out nonpartisan sources? Per CNN's Steve Brusk, three of the president's last four national TV interviews were with Fox News friends. (Pete Hegseth, Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity.) The fourth interview was with Sarah Sanders' father Mike Huckabee... | | Speaking of the Hannity interview... | | It aired on Wednesday night. Trump said the NFL should have suspended Colin Kaepernick for kneeling -- a POV that directly relates to his tweets about TV station licenses. He also criticized the Iran deal again. And he called Russia concerns "an excuse used by the Democrats" again. Etc.
-- Here's what the WashPost led with: "Trump said Wednesday that minorities 'want' and 'need' more police protection than other Americans, and blamed Democrats for a 'crazy' number of murders in Chicago and other large cities..."
-- Related: This new L.A. Times story says "Trump often calls Hannity after the Fox News host's nightly show..." | | "Weinstein Company Was Aware of Payoffs in 2015" | | | That's the headline on this brand new NYT story by Megan Twohey. It's on Page One of Thursday's paper. "Interviews and internal company records show that the company has been grappling with Mr. Weinstein's behavior for at least two years," she writes. Read the story here... | | -- The key Q remains the same: Who knew what when?
-- John Kiernan of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is conducting an investigation for The Weinstein Co. board...
-- Harvey Weinstein spoke with Page Six's Emily Smith and said "I am profoundly devastated. I have lost my wife and kids, whom I love more than anything else..."
-- Weinstein's friends are very concerned about his health/wellbeing...
-- Weinstein started his day in L.A. and had a public fight with his daughter that resulted in a 911 call from his daughter's home...
-- When I reached his spokeswoman on Wednesday night, she would not confirm his location, but she said he is heading to rehab...
-- On Tuesday TMZ reported that Weinstein was boarding a private jet to Europe for a rehab stint there. That obviously turned out to be untrue. Now TMZ says he's in Arizona for rehab, and the site has video from an airport, purportedly of his take-off...
-- I fear that all this talk about Weinstein diverts attention from the more important issues raised by the accusers... | | Source says NBC told Ronan Farrow to "stand down" | | Last year NBC News was scooped on one of the biggest stories of the year -- Donald Trump talking about groping women on NBC's "Access Hollywood" tape. WashPost published it first. Now NBC is under scrutiny for another missed opportunity. Why did NBC News prez Noah Oppenheim pass up the chance to publish Ronan Farrow's investigation into Weinstein?
Many media reporters are pursuing this issue. It's clear that something is amiss.
NBC's loss was The New Yorker's gain. As I wrote here, what happened inside NBC is a media world mystery. Different sources have different accounts of what happened -- but Farrow was definitely told to stop working on the story for NBC over the summer, and some people inside the network are deeply uncomfortable with what went down. One source described a "stand down order."
On Wednesday night, HuffPost's Yashar Ali and Lydia Polgreen added new details -- in August, they wrote, Farrow "was not allowed to use an NBC camera crew for an interview with a woman who said she was raped by Weinstein." So he hired a film crew with his own $$$... | | NBC's explanation doesn't add up | | The official explanation from Oppenheim is that "we didn't feel that we had all the elements that we needed to air it," so Farrow "took it to The New Yorker and did a ton more extraordinary work." But some staffers aren't buying that. I mean, Farrow had the NYPD sting tape, and NBC sat on it for months. Farrow also taped several on-camera interviews with accusers. Some of my sources are wondering why those sit-downs aren't being broadcast now...
-- Farrow sidestepped Q's about this when he was interviewed on CNN on Wednesday... He said he wanted to keep the focus on the accusers' stories...
-- Erik Wemple's take: "NBC president responds to Weinstein backlash with mumbo-jumbo" | | More reporting in the works? | | | "I'm still talking to a large number of these women," Farrow said on "The Lead," and "they continue to be committed to exposing a culture of silence around this..." | | -- Jim Rutenberg's must-read column with new quotes from Dean Baquet, Bruce Headlam and more: "Facing Down the Network That Protected Harvey Weinstein"
-- AP headline: "Steve Bannon had ties to Harvey Weinstein"
-- Lisa Respers France emails: Actress and model Cara Delevingne has added her voice to those women making allegations against Weinstein...
-- What about those jokes made at the Oscars and on TV shows?
-- Brian Lowry's latest: "Political point scoring muddies sexual-harassment coverage..." | | Fareed's scoop: Hillary's first on-camera comments about the scandal | | | Hillary Clinton told Fareed Zakaria that she was "sick" and "shocked" when she found out about the sexual assault allegations... "This was a different side of a person who I and many others had known in the past," she said... | | Let's not lose sight of the big story... | | | From an emailer who's frustrated by the focus on HRC: "It feels like we are missing the real human side of this. Every single woman I know has stories about being harassed by powerful men or colleagues. That part of the story is much more compelling than Dems giving money back... BTW: Trump said he wasn't surprised about Weinstein. What did he know?" | | What will the Academy do? | | The British Academy of Film and Television Arts suspended Weinstein's membership on Wednesday. Now what will the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences do? The board of governors will hold an emergency meeting on Saturday to "discuss the allegations against Weinstein and any actions warranted by the Academy..."
-- Just asking: Could the Academy possibly try to strip Weinstein of his Oscars? | | On Thursday I'm interviewing Jodi Kantor... | | | Have any questions for her? Email me... | | -- Megyn Kelly made a rare appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday... She talked with Andrea Mitchell and plugged her 9am show... One day after a spate of stories about her show's ratings challenges... (TVNewser)
-- America's World Cup 2018 failure is a blow to Fox Sports, too, Hadas Gold reports... (CNNMoney)
-- Facebook has unveiled its latest Oculus headset," a $199 standalone virtual reality device "that doesn't require a phone or computer..." (CNNMoney)
-- FB and Mark Zuckerberg have made "rare, but significant, communications blunders" over the past year, Seth Fiegerman writes... (CNNMoney)
-- Check this out: "A news story that's been labeled false by Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners sees its future impressions on the platform drop by 80%, according to new data..." (BuzzFeed) | | House Intel Committee to release Russia-linked Facebook ads | | | "The House intelligence committee will release copies of the election-related Facebook ads that were purchased by Russian-linked accounts, the committee leaders said Wednesday," CNN's Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb report. This will likely happen sometime after the public hearings on Nov. 1... | | | The committee's announcement came after a meeting with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. She had a series of meetings on Wednesday... House minority whip Steny Hoyer said he wanted her to share "what they knew and when they knew it..." Thursday at 9am, she'll give a live-streamed interview to Mike Allen... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Hope, a "chatbot" similar to Siri, attempts to answer the question "How can I help?" in the wake of a major political event or development... (Axios)
-- A bookmark/"save for later" tool is in the works at Twitter... (BuzzFeed)
-- Some of BuzzFeed's new ad strategies involve quizzes and GIF-like images... The latter is made possible through "BuzzCuts," which transforms TV/print ads into quick and snappy, mobile-friendly videos or visuals... (BI)
-- Taylor Swift is back in the headlines, this time for getting into the app business... And yes, "Taymojis" are a thing... (Variety)
-- Happy 11th birthday, "30 Rock!" THR takes us on a tour through the archives with its review of the first episode, released on 10/11/2006... (THR) | | Congrats, Nikole Hannah-Jones! | | | CNN VP S. Mitra Kalita emails: I think Nikole Hannah-Jones winning a MacArthur Genius Grant is wonderful. She's redefined investigative reporting and her work on school segregation is not just revelatory but has real impact on New York City moms making choices about their kids' schools... That's impact... | | "New Year's Eve Live with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen" | | | TVNewser's A.J. Katz writes: "CNN has named Kathy Griffin's replacement on the network's New Year's Eve broadcast. It's someone familiar to late-night audiences and to Anderson Cooper himself. Andy Cohen. The host and E.P. of Bravo's long-running late-night program 'Watch What Happens Live' will join his longtime friend on the broadcast live from Times Square in New York City..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- CJR looks at data from the Shorenstein Center to figure out why the press struggled with coverage of the Trump campaign. Tons of charts included... (CJR)
-- Hope Reese interviews Franklin Foer for NiemanLab. Foer wants journalism to save itself from the existential threat coming from tech companies... (NiemanLab)
-- Facebook-owned CrowdTangle launches a local news product... (CrowdTangle)
-- A long read on Ev Williams and how his latest attempt to save the media is being met with a healthy dose of skepticism... (BuzzFeed News) | | This week's "Reliable Sources" podcast | | | Starbucks exec chairman Howard Schultz and the company's "chief storyteller" Rajiv Chandrasekaran sat down with me to talk about the second season of the company's web video series "Upstanders..." and much more... You can hear the full podcast on iTunes... | | Lowry reviews "Dynasty" and "Mr. Robot" | | | Brian Lowry emails: It's hard to think of two more different shows than "Dynasty," CW's reboot of the 1980s drama, and "Mr. Robot," USA's twisted-hacker series, which returns for its third season, in a notably improved package from Season 2.0. But both debuted on Wednesday night, and in the early going contain references that directly place themselves in the context of the Trump era... | | | 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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