| | | | | Friday's NYT headline: "In Vulgar Terms, Trump Disparages Some Immigrants." CNN.com is more direct: "Trump decries immigrants from 'shithole countries' coming to US." Scroll down for full "shithole" coverage... But first... | | | Good luck, major newsrooms and other media companies that are dependent on Facebook traffic. FB's next News Feed change will "elevate posts that ignite conversations and meaningful interactions between friends while demoting the many videos, news stories and business posts that users consume passively," without commenting and sharing, CNN Tech's Seth Fiegerman and Laurie Segall report... | | Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with the NYT: "It's important to me that when Max and August" -- his children -- "grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world." So "meaningful interactions" is the new focus.
Another key Z quote: "If what we're here to do is help people build relationships, then we need to adjust." Thus, you'll see fewer publisher posts when you refresh... | | The stakes are higher now | | I remember Facebook announcing an algo change in June 2016 to prioritize friends' posts at the expense of publishers. So is this just more of the same? I asked Laurie Segall -- here's what she said:
"The announcement has more weight behind it. Internally it's a big deal. So much has changed in the past year: Revelations about Russian meddling, widespread questions about the platform, former execs coming out and talking about the addictive nature of the service they created. The stakes are higher, and Facebook is beginning a campaign to win back user trust. This is part 1 of Zuck's new years resolution..." | | Some publishers are panicking | | | Ahead of the official Facebook announcement, Digiday heard about the impending changes from publishing industry sources. Here's how the site illustrated its story: | | | Reporter Lucia Moses wrote: "The worry for publishers is that such an approach will have the unintended consequence of hurting high-quality content because a lot of legitimate news articles, while they may get read, tend not to get shared or commented on." My sense is that small and medium-sized publishers are more concerned than top-tier sites... | | | --> Mike Isaac tweeted: "This will mean a lot of things, but the first folks to feel this pain will almost certainly be publishers who rely on Facebook for distribution. I heard the word 'video' quite a few times as something on the death list, so good luck on that pivot to video..." | | | Laurie Segall emails: This is FB's war on what they're calling "passive scrolling" -- responding to criticism that we're less happy online and using the service differently because we don't interact, we just scroll and scroll and scroll... | | | --> From Facebook's director of research David Ginsberg: "It's an admission that what is going through the news feed has changed. There's been a lot of increase in public content that drives a lot of passive behavior. And that's not really what Facebook's been about..." | | The Oval Office meeting with lawmakers happened late Thursday morning. WashPost scoop machine Josh Dawsey, still a new arrival from Politico, received a tip about it from a source. He spent the rest of the day trying to confirm. Beat reporters get these kinds of tips all the time -- "Trump said this," "Trump said that" -- and some are dead ends. But sometimes the tips result in stunning stories. Like this one: "Trump attacks protections for immigrants from 'shithole' countries in Oval Office." It hit around 4:40pm. WashPost editors didn't hesitate about including the curse word in the headline...
--> Marty Baron to Washingtonian: "When the president says it, we'll use it verbatim. That's our policy. We discussed it, quickly, but there was no debate." | | | Trump will sign a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day proclamation at 11:30am Friday. Open to cameras. No W.H. press briefing is on the schedule... | | CNN and MSNBC explicitly quoting Trump | | CNN and MSNBC banners and web headlines freely used the word "shithole" all evening. Different hosts made different decisions about whether and how to repeat the word aloud. Fox News was much more conservative and spent a lot less time covering the breaking news.
Evening news watch: CBS said it "will not" repeat Trump's "racially charged" comment. ABC said it "cannot repeat" it. PBS went with "S-blank-hole countries." But NBC did say it. Lester Holt warned viewers, "Our report includes that expletive once, so that you can hear the complete quote for yourself." NYT's Michael Grynbaum wrote about the newsroom decisions here...
--> MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell tweeted: "TV news doesn't know how to cover a vulgar racist President who talks about 'shithole countries...'" | | Don Lemon says "the president of the United States is racist" | | | That was Don Lemon's first sentence on "CNN Tonight." He repeated it: "He is a racist." And he said "a lot of us already knew that." He said viewers should look up Adam Serwer's piece "The Nationalist's Delusion..." | | Was this day a turning point? | | | I'm not sure yet. But it might have been. Lemon was far from the only person who described Trump's remark as "racist." Rachel Maddow said he's an "openly racist president." Meanwhile, the top talking point on Fox was that "this doesn't move the needle at all" (Jesse Watters) and Trump supporters won't leave him (Joe Concha)... | | | Trump retweeted racist videos just a few weeks ago. That's one of the many reasons why it's fair to question his fitness for office. "AC360" showed this list of "racially charged comments:" | | Anderson Cooper's framing | | | "The president of the United States is tired of so many black people coming to this country. Tired of immigrants from Haiti and Africa being allowed in," Anderson Cooper said at the beginning of "AC360." He called Trump's sentiments "racist..." | | Tucker gives Trump a thumbs up | | Via Mediaite: Tucker Carlson's 8pm intro: "President Trump said something that almost every single person in America actually agrees with. An awful lot of immigrants come from this country from other places that aren't very nice. Those places are dangerous, they're dirty, they're corrupt, and they're poor, and that's the main reason those immigrants are trying to come here and you would too if you live there." (That's not what Trump said.)
Carlson added: "While saying this, Trump used an expletive, and that's not surprising either since he uses them all the time and was speaking privately. And yet for some reason, virtually everyone in Washington, New York, and L.A. considered this a major event..." | | -- Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night's show: "It really is unfathomable! You just can't believe that this is the guy running our country..."
-- Erick Erickson tweeted: "We live in a world where we shouldn't directly quote the President of the United States in front of our kids."
-- Paul Farhi tweeted: "One bit of collateral damage from the president's choice of adjectives today: 'Shithole' will be all over America's schoolyards tomorrow..."
-- Nick Kristof on MSNBC: "I think we owe an apology to the people of those countries..."
-- Trouble at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette? At 9:53pm, the paper tweeted, "Our publisher is requesting us to remove @realDonaldTrump's "vulgar language" from the lede in our @AP story about his vulgar language..." | | Friday's NYDN front page... | | Agree/disagree with this? | | | The Toronto Star's Trump-checker Daniel Dale tweeted: "Any meeting, speech, day or trip of Good Trump Behavior is inevitably followed by an eruption of Trumpiness. He cannot contain his true self - racist, angry, vengeful, whatever - for any length of time..." | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Drudge Report took Trump's comment out of context -- for a while the headline read "TRUMP BALKS AT 'SHITHOLE' IMMIGRATION DEAL" -- asserting that Trump was criticizing the deal, not the countries. Later, the site changed the headline to "S-STORM..." | | | That's when the NYT reported that Trump had said in an Oval Office meeting that all Haitian immigrants "have AIDS" and Nigerians who visit the U.S. would never "go back to their huts." Why did Thursday's racist remark get so much more attention? I see several reasons: The NYT story came out at the start of a holiday weekend; it recounted a meeting from last June with a smaller # of participants; and the White House expressly denied the quotes. This time, the meeting had a lot more participants, so other outlets matched the Post quickly... | | -- Thursday morning's FISA drama "underscored the pitfalls of the President's morning television tweet-alongs..." (CNN)
-- "The premise of your question is completely ridiculous." It was just another testy day in the W.H. briefing room... (WashPost)
-- "Trump lauded delivery of F-52s to Norway. The planes only exist in 'Call of Duty...'" (WashPost) | | 1.4 million hardcover copies have been ordered | | | Henry Holt released updated #'s on Thursday: The company says 1.4 million hardcover copies have been ordered. Via the press release: "The book is already in its eleventh printing in less than one week of publication, with more printings scheduled. A significant number of books will be arriving in stores by the end of the week." In effect, the company is saying to annoyed customers: "Thank you for your patience!" Here's my full story... | | | TRUMP'S FIRST INTERVIEW OF 2018 | | | Four reporters from the Murdoch-owned WSJ interviewed POTUS in the Oval Office Thursday morning. Here's the transcript. One of the many notable quotes: Trump said "we've got to increase our libel laws," but "I don't know that I'll be able to get it though," because "I don't know if Congress has the guts..." | | ...And spoke and spoke... | | It was a 45-minute-long interview. The transcript shows that Trump's aides repeatedly tried to wrap -- "You're late for your meeting..." "You really do have to go..." "Thank you, guys" -- but Trump kept talking and the reporters kept asking Q's.
This backs up the recent reporting about how Trump wants to be more accessible, but his aides are holding him back. I talked about that with Chris Cillizza on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast... Check out the new episode via iTunes... | | "Every month we'll do one of these" | | | "I do enjoy this, actually," Trump said to the reporters at one point. He added: "We'll do it -- every month we'll do one of these." He said he respects and loves WSJ EIC Gerard Baker... | | "This may be the only time where the country would benefit from a national security point of view if the president of the United States were watching cartoons in the morning instead of something else."
--Rep. Adam Schiff on "The Lead with Jake Tapper..." | | Ronan Farrow signs with HBO | | | "Ronan Farrow has finalized a three-year deal with HBO, the network confirmed Thursday, to commence later this year. Farrow will develop and front a series of investigative documentary specials for HBO. He also will produce topical pieces for HBO's other platforms," THR's Marisa Guthrie reports... | | Elaine Welteroth leaving Teen Vogue | | | "Elaine Welteroth is stepping down from Teen Vogue," Fashionista scooped Thursday afternoon. Condé Nast says "walked to Elaine about a number of different opportunities but ultimately she decided to go in a different direction." Per THR, Welteroth has signed with CAA... | | Janell Ross "on leave" from WashPost | | Tom Kludt emails: Just before Thanksgiving, WashPost reporter Janell Ross became the latest member of the mainstream media to draw accusations of bias from the conservative press. In truth, Ross made herself an easy target. On November 22, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Ross had sat on a panel in California hosted by the progressive advocacy group Democratic Alliance and attended by a number of liberal and Democratic big-wigs, including George Soros. Ross' panel focused on "getting the economic narrative right."
The story got picked up by Fox News, Breitbart and an assortment of other outlets on the right, but the controversy -- surfacing the same week as a major holiday -- mostly flew under the radar. Ross hasn't written for the Post since Nov. 29, a full week after the Free Beacon broke the story. On Thursday, sources at the Post helped me connect the dots: Ross has been put on leave, and she is not expected back. Read more... | | Keeping 👀 on the pro-Trump media universe | | Oliver Darcy emails: Despite this week's rapid-fire news cycle, the biggest story in the right-wing media on Thursday was something that got little-to-no play in the mainstream news. It wasn't related to FISA. It wasn't related to Steve Bannon. And it wasn't related to the Russia investigation. Instead, it was about a new video sting in which guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe targeted Twitter and accused the social media company of bias against conservatives.
Twitter disputed a central claim O'Keefe made in the video -- that it "shadow bans" users -- but that didn't stop it from dominating the right-wing media universe. It was the banner headline on Drudge for much of the day. Other sites, like Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit, played it up big. And pro-Trump social media personalities tweeted about it all day -- including even Fox News host Sean Hannity, who posted a link to the video on his personal account... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: For those curious, Fox News and CNN have both said they will not consider hiring Steve Bannon as a contributor; Newsmax told me they have no plans to do so; and MSNBC and OANN declined to comment when I reached out. | | -- Former Al Jazeera reporter Roxana Saberi is CBS's newest London-based correspondent... (TVNewser)
-- Ken Doctor's latest: "Can a new management team soothe the roiled Los Angeles Times newsroom?" (NiemanLab)
-- Turner's Kevin Reilly is on the cover of this week's Variety. Here's Cynthia Littleton's profile... (Variety)
-- At CES, Twitter tried to "sell the content biz on its video strategy..." (Variety)
-- Seth McFarlane on the Disney-Fox deal: "The Disney buyout doesn't alarm me. I only wished they'd bought Fox News..." (THR) | | Things that make you go "hmm..." | | One of Josh Dawsey's six stories on Thursday, co-bylined with Matt Zapotosky, was titled "Sessions tries to impress Trump with moves at Justice. It hasn't worked."
The story immediately made me think of the AT&T-Time Warner deal... given the DOJ's decision to drag AT&T into court on antitrust grounds. Democratic lawmakers and AT&T execs have expressed concerns that Trump's tweets and actions may be a factor in the suit... but the story didn't mention that... | | New WSJ story on U.S. vs. AT&T | | | Drew FitzGerald and Brent Kendall have this look at how both sides are preparing... "The trial is scheduled to start March 19, and people familiar with the matter say it appears unlikely the two sides will find a way to settle their differences and avoid the court battle..." | | James Franco disputes sexual misconduct allegations | | | Lisa Respers France emails: James Franco disputed sexual misconduct allegations just hours before the Los Angeles Times published a story in which five women accused him of wrongdoing... | | | BI's Carrie Wittmer writes: "Last week, Megan Ganz, a writer who used to work for 'Rick and Morty' co-creator Dan Harmon on NBC's 'Community,' called her former boss out on Twitter for sexually harassing her while she worked on the show. Now Harmon has apologized, and Ganz has accepted it, calling it a 'masterclass' in how to apologize." Read more... | | | Lisa Respers France emails: The gender gap for women in Hollywood is glaring, according to a new study titled "The Celluloid Ceiling." Researchers found that women made up just 18% of all the directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers who worked on the top 250 US films released last year... | | | For the record, part three | | | Julia Waldow emails:
-- After weeks of push from employees, Vox Media has agreed to recognize its editorial union, with an estimated 400 employees set to be represented by WGA East... (The Wrap)
-- Hearst's David Carey explains why he rejects "digital first" and predicts the fate of advertising-reliant web companies on a new episode of Recode Media... (Recode)
-- Google is phasing out its current Chrome parental controls in preparation for an updated system launching later this year... (CNN) | | Want to buy an ad on the Super Bowl broadcast? | | NBC says the game is mostly sold out -- it has "less than 10" spots left to sell, NBC Sports Group ad sales EVP Dan Lovinger said on a conference call on Thursday.
The average ad has gone for "more than $5 million for a 30-second spot..."
--> Overall, "NBC expects $1.4 billion in ad revenue from the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, the payoff for its huge investment in sports programming," Bloomberg's Gerry Smith reports... | | Lowry reviews "The Commuter" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Liam Neeson is one of the few modern actors who could pull off a movie like "The Commuter," a check-your-brain-at-the-station thriller that isn't exactly "Taken" on a train, but close enough... Click here for the full review... | | "Full Frontal" renewed for two more seasons | | | Frank Pallotta emails: Samantha Bee will be on TV for the next presidential election. TBS' "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" has been renewed for two new seasons, the channel said Thursday. Bee joins other late night hosts, like John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Bill Maher and Seth Meyers, who have been signed through the 2020 election. Read the full story here... | | 25th Amendment plot on "Madam Secretary" | | | Brian Lowry emails: For those looking for a little light TV viewing this weekend, CBS' "Madam Secretary" features a plot in which a bellicose president risks escalating an international crisis to the point of nuclear war, prompting his cabinet to consider invoking the 25th Amendment. While the episode's timing isn't wholly an accident -- although it was shot months ago -- producer Barbara Hall explained to me that the title, "Sound and Fury," actually is... | | | Brian Lowry emails: In the something's-gotta-give dept., the Directors Guild of America left out Steven Spielberg ("The Post") from its feature-film awards, but put together a pretty stellar field -- one notably more diverse than the all-male Golden Globes -- with Guillermo del Toro ("The Shape of Water"), Greta Gerwig ("Lady Bird"), Martin Mcdonough ("Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Christopher Nolan ("Dunkirk"), and Jordan Peele ("Get Out") up for this year's top prize. Peele was also nominated in the first-time director category... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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