| | | | | Exec summary: All eyes are on Chiang Rai, Thailand, after four boys were rescued on Sunday... The rest of the soccer team remains trapped inside a cave... This race against time has transfixed people around the world... CNN TV and CNN.com will have the latest updates on the mission. | | This is the special relationship | | No, not that one. I'm talking about the partnership between President Trump and Fox News. On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I tried to step way back and point out just how unusual it is, lest we all start to get used to it...
-- No president has ever endorsed a network to this degree before: Promoting it, telling people when and where to tune in, while trashing all of its rivals...
-- And no network has ever propped up a president quite like this before...
-- The back-scratching benefits both sides. Trump benefits from the friendly segments and softball Q's. Fox benefits from Trump's preferential treatment and constant promos...
-- The beating heart of this relationship is Sean Hannity, who reportedly golfed with Trump on Sunday. Hannity is an adviser, a booster, an attack dog, a friend. No TV host has ever had this kind of alliance with a US president...
-- And no president has never treated a TV channel like it's an intelligence agency the way Trump treats Fox...
My point: This is new. And weird. And we shouldn't get used to it. There's been almost a merger between a culture war TV station and a culture war president. In the essay, I asked, rhetorically, "What would Trump do without Fox?" | | One of my other Q's on Sunday's show: Would any other White House have ever hired former Fox News co-president Bill Shine?
Last week Shine became Trump's deputy chief of staff for communications. After the announcement, reporters surfaced some shocking and offensive material from his wife Darla's Twitter feed. She has shut down the Twitter account... But the archives remain... and the posts are startling.
As HuffPost described, Darla Shine has a long history of promoting anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. And as Mediaite reported, she posted years worth of racist tweets. See the awful comments for yourself here.
The Shines are staying silent about it. There was no comment from the W.H. over the weekend, despite repeated attempts... | | Another point from Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr. seem like a cute couple. But doesn't this new relationship radically affect her day job? How can any of her colleagues on "The Five" criticize Trump when the president's son's girlfriend is sitting right there at the table? Doesn't this complicate the entire network's coverage of the Trump family?
Here's the full video essay from Sunday's show... | | -- AT&T has hired former State Dept chief of staff Margaret Peterlin "to a senior government-affairs role after a shakeup reshaped the company's Washington office..." (WSJ)
-- NYT's scoop: Edmund Lee and John Koblin obtained the audio of new WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey's town hall with HBO employees. The takeaway: "HBO must get bigger and broader, says its new overseer." This story has lots of people talking... (NYT)
-- "Is it a TV show or a really long movie?" The question matters a lot to accounting rule makers... and the answer could "eventually help nudge earnings upward" at companies like Amazon and Fox, Michael Rapoport explains... (WSJ) | | Allen & Co.'s annual conference in Sun Valley will NOT include Charlie Rose... But it will include many other media bigwigs... According to the Idaho Mountain Express, private jet parking spots will "fill up" in "six or seven hours" on Tuesday. CNN's Dylan Byers will be on the lookout for any media/tech deals in the works...
Other calendar items: | | Media week ahead calendar | | -- Monday morning: Harvey Weinstein is due back in court for arraignment on additional charges...
-- Wednesday: "The Handmaids Tale" season two finale starts streaming on Hulu...
-- Thursday morning: Emmy nominations! | | Trump's prime time pick will be... ??? | | | Trump says he has not yet picked his Supreme Court nominee... That's as of Sunday evening, when he landed back in DC... But he HAS picked the time and place he'll announce the pick, whoever he or she is. The White House has formally requested airtime from the major networks Monday at 9pm ET... The networks are budgeting for a 20 minute long event at the White House... Akin to the unveiling of Neil Gorsuch last year... | | How to schedule around POTUS | | 🌹 ABC is airing "The Bachelorette" before and after the announcement. 🌹
CBS is scheduling a rerun of "NCIS: New Orleans" at 9pm, so it's easier to preempt the first 20 minutes. NBC is planning to start "American Ninja Warrior" at 8pm... Then pause for 20 minutes... then resume the rest of the show til 10:20. An abbreviated "Dateline NBC" will act as an accordion between 10:20 and 11.. | | There will be no vacations for NPR's Nina Totenberg in the next few months... Totenberg is gearing up for a Supreme battle...
On "Reliable Sources," she said Anthony Kennedy's retirement "gives conservatives -- and a brand of conservative that was unknown probably pretty much 25, 30 years ago -- it gives them a lock on the court." Watch the full segment here... | | Pay attention to this deadline... | | The government is facing a court-mandated Tuesday evening deadline to reunite separated parents with any children under 5 years old... unless a federal judge extends the deadline.
On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I spoke with three immigration reporters who have been covering this border story really closely -- the Houston Chronicle's Lomi Kriel, the Arizona Republic's Rafael Carranza and the Texas Tribune's Neena Satija. They are fighting for answers to basic questions about the children.
"It's really chaos," Satija said... Watch the segment here >>> | | | That's the job, Lomi Kriel said. And she said it really well. Kriel has been reporting on the separations since last November... Well before it received national attention... When I asked how she keeps her emotions out of it, she said that her job is to tell the stories of the families... | | -- "No comment!" This is a super-smart (and somewhat sad) story by the WashPost's Steven Pearlstein, documenting how big companies have become more and more press-averse over time... (WashPost)
-- "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical," unable "to find its sea legs, will close on Sept. 16 after less than a year on stage..." (NYT)
-- Netflix is phasing out user reviews... "In mid-August, people will no longer be able to read existing user reviews..." (CNET) | | Why @emptywheel went to the FBI | | Margaret Sullivan's Monday column is about blogger Marcy Wheeler's decision to go to the FBI and reveal one of her sources. If you missed Wheeler's explanation the other day, here it is.
Wheeler told Sullivan: "I believe this is one of those cases where it's important to hold a source accountable for his actions." Read on... | | This "Reliable" segment got lots of people talking... | | I've been getting LOTS of emails and tweets about this conversation with Vox's Ezra Klein. He says newsrooms need to rethink how Trump rallies are covered. We got into it on the "Reliable Sources" podcast... And some of the highlights aired on Sunday's show.
"There's nothing new here," Klein said. So what's the point? "When we let him decide what we cover... What are we crowding out?"
When I remarked that Trump -- through his VOLUME of comments at rallies -- generates dozens of stories, Klein interjected. "WE make these decisions," not Trump, he said.
A little while later, Klein said that the way Trump behaves "would make you worried if it was behavior that you saw in your spouse or your employee or your friend or your neighbor." Yes, I said, but that's why it must be covered! "I don't agree, not after it keeps giving -- not after it stops giving us valuable information," he said... | | Klein is back from book leave... | | And this is what he says it's like:
The Trumpy news cycle is like "having somebody shouting in your ear all the time." It's "like having Donald Trump follow you around on Twitter and on the news and everywhere, like, 'Look at this thing I did! Look at it!'" His point: "It's up to us to decide whether to look..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- In Monday's NYT, Sapna Maheshwari has the latest on the scuffle between Martin Sorrell and WPP... (NYT)
-- Megan Garber makes you rethink last week's meet-cute story on social media: "Two Strangers Met on a Plane -- and the Internet Ruined It" (The Atlantic) | | The WashPost's Saturday headline: "Twitter is sweeping out fake accounts like never before, putting user growth at risk."
Trump's Saturday morning tweet: "Twitter is getting rid of fake accounts at a record pace. Will that include the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, who constantly quote anonymous sources that, in my opinion, don't exist -- They will both be out of business in 7 years!"
I would just note... That the NYT was founded in 1851... And the WashPost, in 1877... | | This reporter caused Trump to pony up $48,000 more in taxes | | Questions by Jillian Jorgensen, the City Hall bureau chief of the NY Daily News, "prompted President Donald Trump to have to pay more taxes on his Trump Tower condo," Poynter's David Beard reports.
The exact amount: $48,834.62. But "Jorgensen wants to make it clear she's not cheering from the press box. 'I just look at the tax bills and ask the questions,' she said..." | | "Ant-Man" #1 for the weekend | | "Ant-Man and the Wasp" made $76 million "at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, a figure that landed on the low side for the Disney-Marvel cinematic universe but still towered over all other releases this weekend," NYT's Andrew R. Chow reports.
Remember, it's a sequel -- and the original "Ant-Man" opened to $57 million in 2015 -- so this weekend was an improvement.
"The fact that even Ant-Man, a fairly peripheral character in the Marvel universe, could front an instant box-office smash is a testament to the studio's lasting appeal," Chow writes. "The film also did well overseas, bringing in $161 million total."
BEST OF THE REST: "The First Purge" has made $31 million since opening on July 4... | | Marvel's biggest box office year ever | | | Frank Pallotta adds: "Marvel is closing out its first decade with its biggest box office year ever. 'Black Panther' and 'Avengers: Infinity War' have each made nearly $700 million in the United States. Their combined revenue has given a huge boost to the domestic box office and makes up nearly a quarter of the year's total, according to comScore." Check out Pallotta's interview with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige here... | | "Sharp Objects" debuts on HBO | | | Brian Lowry emails: Although the reviews have been largely favorable, HBO's "Sharp Objects" -- which premiered Sunday night -- struck me as a pretty pallid addition to the network's run of limited series with high-profile stars, in this case, Amy Adams in an adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel... | | This is Robin Wright's first interview... | | | ...Since the allegations against Kevin Spacey resulted in his exit from "House of Cards." Wright is now starting to promote the upcoming sixth and final season. NBC's Savannah Guthrie taped a sit-down with her, and it'll air on Monday's "Today" show... | | Hope you had a great weekend. Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts straight to me:
brian.stelter@turner.com
Thank you! | | | | | | |
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