| Exec summary: Right now I'm flying west... Wednesday will be my first time attending an Apple product unveiling... So in that spirit, let's reveal an upgraded nightly newsletter! This is a refresh... a new face... and I want to know what you think of it. Email me anytime. With a little luck, the email will no longer be truncated in Gmail! Now on with the news... "I'll deny ever saying this."
Every politics and business reporter knows this to be true: Some people have a tendency to lie on the record and tell the truth off the record.
In some cases the word "lie" is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. They spin, they fib, they pretend everything's hunky-dory when it's not. Then comes the ask. "Can we talk on deep background?" "Don't quote me." "You didn't get this from me." "I'll deny ever saying this." That's when the truth comes out. At least something closer to the truth. The colleague they were just complimenting? Yes, he's got problems. The rumors of a C-suite shakeup? Yes, it's imminent. The shocking story about West Wing incompetence? Yes, of course it's true, and it's even worse than you know.
This is the complicated reality of the reporting process. And it is playing out in the reactions to Bob Woodward's book "Fear." I'm wondering: How can reporters do a better job explaining this reality to viewers and readers? How can we peel back this curtain without burning sources? | | Here's the problem
I've been trying to say "confidential sources" instead of "anonymous." Because the sources are not anonymous to the reporters and editors who are doing the work. But no matter what word you use, reliance on unnamed sources is growing... While trust in media is shrinking.
On Tuesday's episode of The Daily podcast, Michael Schmidt asked Woodward if it's fair to say "we've seen anonymous sources used probably more than at any time in a previous administration." Woodward said "I think that's true." Why? "Well, because things are more hidden. Because it's the only way to get at the truth." Agreed. But telling the audience to "trust us" is not sufficient. Not even close.
W.H. pressuring former aides to push back on Woodward
"Fear," which officially came out on Tuesday, is exposing a broken White House. And the W.H. is responding by pressuring people to put out denials. That's what Gary Cohn and Rob Porter did on Tuesday... The two men issued half-hearted denials without refuting the specific details reported by Woodward... But here's the thing: A source close to the White House told CNN that the W.H. applied "a lot of pressure" on Cohn and Porter. The two men were told that the president was upset.
The W.H. is "pushing anyone who is remotely associated with the book to discredit the information," a separate source told CNN.
This reporting is key -- and I'm glad it is being conveyed to the audience -- because it shows what's really going on...
Who do you think he's talking about? 👇
Woodward speaking on The Daily: After "Fear" started leaking last week, "one key person who's in office called me and said: 'Everyone knows what you've said here is true. It's 1,000% correct.' And then this person has said some public things that contradict that."
"It's like reporting on smoke"
Re: my point about people lying on the record and truth-telling off, Jonathan Swan replied and said, "They also lie on background. A lot." Sometimes they even "lie off the record, hoping you'll smuggle it into your copy some day." Maggie Haberman chimed in and said it best: "It's like reporting on smoke." | | B&N says sales look "phenomenal"
On CNN's "New Day" Tuesday morning, I tried to convey what makes this book different from all the other Trump-related titles this year. Here's a data point: "Fear" sales "look phenomenal out of the gate," B&N senior director of merchandising Liz Harwell told me via email. "Even with a strong roster of bestselling political titles this year, Woodward's book is on pace to have the biggest first day sales of the bunch."
No. 4 book of the year on Amazon
This time yesterday, "Fear" was No. 6 on Amazon's best sellers of 2018 list. Since then, the book has jumped ahead of James Comey and Jordan Peterson. It is now No. 4. This means "Fear" has outsold all but three books so far this year, on Amazon, almost entirely thanks to pre-orders. Pretty incredible. So what are the three higher sellers? No. 3 is the motivational tome "Girl, Wash Your Face." No. 2 is the "Last Week Tonight" parody of the Pence bunny book. And No. 1 is... drumroll please... "Fire and Fury." Can Woodward top Michael Wolff?
"Fear" scares up big ratings for Colbert, too
Frank Pallotta emails: Monday's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," which included a Woodward interview, nabbed a 3.0 overnight rating for the CBS broadcast. It was the highest-rated episode for the show in nearly five months. Colbert devoted most of the show to an interview with the famed reporter...
--> WEDNESDAY: Woodward will be on Fox with Dana Perino and on CNN with Anderson Cooper... | |  | -- CNN moves: Poppy Harlow's 9/10am ET co-host John Berman moved to "New Day" earlier this year. Now Harlow has a new co-host: Jim Sciutto. His first day will be on Monday...
-- Sciutto will remain chief national security correspondent. But Alex Marquardt will now be on the beat as well: He's moving to DC and covering national security as senior national correspondent...
-- Apple's event starts at 1pm ET... We'll have live coverage on CNNMoney... This is my first time attending an Apple product launch, so I'll share my thoughts in tomorrow's letter...
-- Missed this yesterday: Apple has struck deals for "two family-focused movies." Anousha Sakoui says it "suggests that Apple is seeking Oscar-worthy films..." (Bloomberg) | | YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST...
The Atlantic's new cover: "Is Democracy Dying?" | | The Atlantic is rolling out this special issue on Wednesday and Thursday... The mag says "the editors have assembled some of the top voices on law, race, history, and the constitution, to look at the slow-motion crisis to democracy in America, and what can be done to right the ship." Among the contributors: Justice Stephen Breyer, Anne Applebaum, Ibram X. Kendi, Amy Chua, Yoni Appelbaum, and Jeffrey Rosen...
| | | | -- Another week, another closure: "The Missoula Independent, a 27-year-old local alternative weekly, was shut down by its parent company, Lee Enterprises, this morning..." (Montana Kaiman)
-- "Playboy will become a quarterly magazine in 2019 — cutting back from its current six-issues-a-year format..." (NYPost)
-- NH1's Paul Steinhauser was doing a Skype live shot on CBSN when a state trooper showed up... (Twitter)
-- Seven Trump-related documentaries are "flooding the movie marketplace." Chris Lee has a look at all of them... (Vulture)
| | "Florence the Furious"
That's the headline on The Drudge Report right now. Dozens of TV news crews are in the Carolinas covering the hurricane warnings ahead of Florence. CNN anchor John Berman will be joining them soon. So I asked Berman what he brings with him for these storms. What are the special items that a rookie wouldn't remember to bring? "KIND bars...and ziplock bags," he said. "The stuff you wear when the storm actually hits gets soaked and won't be any use after. So lots of extra tee shirts and socks."
News sites are dropping their pay walls
Big papers like the WashPost and local outlets like the Independent Mail in Anderson County, South Carolina, are dropping their pay walls for the duration of the storm...
"Tremendously big and tremendously wet"
That's one of the ways President Trump described the storm on Tuesday, which leads me to my next section...
| | "President Trump says we're totally prepared for the hurricane," Jake Tapper said on Tuesday. "Where have we heard that before?"
Trump bragging on camera about his admin's handling of Hurricane Maria recovery -- "Puerto Rico was an incredible unsung success" -- was perhaps even more shocking than his flippant tweets on the morning of the 9/11 anniversary ceremonies.
As Tapper said: "Is he not aware that the death toll in Puerto Rico has been updated to almost 3,000 innocent victims?"
He's the president.
I'm already getting emails from CNN viewers and/or readers of websites that critique CNN, blasting news anchors and reporters for "politicizing" Florence and using the storm to slam POTUS. My reaction: He's the president. He chooses the words he uses. He chooses what to tweet and when and why. If reporters don't follow up and put his words into context, then that's our failure...
--> WaPo's Ashley Parker tweeted: "At times, Trump seemed more like a Weather Channel aficionado" than "a commander-in-chief, readying for a crisis." Here's her story...
| | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Engadget has a new EIC, Dana Wollman... Here's her letter to readers... (Edgadget)
-- CrowdTangle is testing a feature that lets users report fake stories straight from Facebook... (Poynter)
-- "The Lead," a weekly newsletter for student journalists created by Taylor Blatchford, is set to debut next Tuesday... Sign up here... (Medium)
| | Today at CBS...
-- "In our own house, we must have transparency," Gayle King said on Tuesday's "CBS This Morning..."
-- Later in the day on "The Talk," the co-hosts supported King's call. Sheryl Underwood said "secrecy causes more questions..."
-- So what about the reports that CBS is going to keep the results of the Moonves probe secret? Variety's Cynthia Littleton has an update: The company DOES "have the right to publicly release details of its investigation..."
-- Per Variety, John Martin and Richard Parsons "have emerged as two top external candidates" for the permanent CBS CEO role...
-- Time's Up came out with a new letter to the CBS board with several specific recommendations...
-- Via The Information: "UBS became the latest Wall Street firm to downgrade CBS stock..."
-- Still no updates from CBS News about Jeff Fager...
The new Gawker.com now has a publisher
Tom Kludt emails: We still don't know exactly what the new Gawker.com will look like, but we know now at least when it will launch: "probably" in the first half of 2019, according to Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg, who bought the shuttered gossip site this summer for less than $1.5 million.
"We won't recreate Gawker exactly as it was, but we will build upon Gawker's legacy and triumphs — and learn from its missteps. In so doing, we aim to create something new, vibrant, highly relevant, and worth visiting daily," Goldberg said in a memo to Bustle staff on Tuesday.
He also announced that Amanda Hale, most recently of The Outline, will serve as the site's publisher. "Gawker will be completely distinct from our other properties and sit within a separate corporate subsidiary," Goldberg said. "That said, it will have access to our shared resources, technology, and business platform." More here...
The right fact-checks the left, and outrage erupts...
Oliver Darcy emails: Should Facebook allow partisan media outlets to participate in its fact-checking program? That debate erupted on social media Tuesday after The Weekly Standard fact-checked a Think Progress piece on Brett Kavanaugh that asserted the SCOTUS nominee "said he would kill Roe v. Wade last week."
The Weekly Standard explained that Kavanaugh never stated he would overturn the decision, but noted the Think Progress author "engaged in an argument to suggest how Kavanaugh might vote in a Roe v. Wade redo." The Weekly Standard's fact-check resulted in Facebook alerting others that "additional reporting" existed on the matter. While the fact-check was accurate, former Think Progress editor Judd Legum took issue with it in a viral thread of tweets. "Now because a hack at a right-wing magazine has decided he doesn't like this article, Facebook is telling every user who encounters it that it is 'false,'" Legum wrote.
Others defended The Weekly Standard, noting that the fact-check was fair. Weekly Standard EIC Steve Hayes told me that the Think Progress claim was "indisputably false" and added, "Our fact-check is accurate. We stand by it."
>> The bottom line: Facebook allowing media organizations with ideological bents to fact check other media organizations with ideological bents seems like it could be a recipe for disaster. One can easily see future scenarios where a liberal website fact-checks a conservative website and neither side can decide on what the truth of the matter is...
| | -- Another awful example of the GOP + Fox + Trump noise machine: "House Republican, without evidence, suggests new texts show misconduct of former FBI officials..." (CNN)
-- What's the impact of "the presence of cable news on television in shared public spaces?" Like the CNN Airport Network? Frank Waddell has some very interesting answers here... (NiemanLab)
-- Lucas Shaw's latest: "CBS undercuts Sinclair in the local-TV giant's battle with Hulu..." (Bloomberg)
"Reversing Roe" starts streaming on Thursday
Brian Lowry emails: Netflix couldn't be more timely with "Reversing Roe," a documentary charting the political history -- and especially the Republican Party's evolution -- on abortion rights, in the context of the current threat to Roe v. Wade.
But trying to condense more than 50 years of history into the film leads to some notable and unfortunate oversights, including relatively little attention to the role of conservative media and some of the legal criticism directed at the original opinion. Read on...
| | Lowry's Emmy Awards preview
Brian Lowry emails: For all the attention on the Oscars' flirtation with a "popular film" category as a response to low ratings, it's worth noting that the Emmys -- which take place next Monday -- are wrestling with the same problem: a frequent gap between the prestige shows that earn nominations and the popular ones that would give audiences a bigger rooting interest, potentially, in who wins. (Tellingly, a pre-Emmy poll last year found many people hadn't even heard of the streaming and cable nominees.)
Airing on NBC, the awards won't face "Sunday Night Football" this year, providing some hope of ratings improvement from the lows recorded the past two years.
Read Lowry's curtain-raiser here...
Soderbergh + Netflix
Via Deadline: "In an eye-catching deal, Netflix has bought global rights to Steven Soderbergh's sports-themed feature 'High Flying Bird,' marking the director's first collaboration with the streaming giant..."
| | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Nicki Minaj has fired back at Cardi B after their NYFW altercation...
-- Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon's kids are their doubles, and the internet loves it...
-- Lil Xan has defended his Mac Miller-inspired face tattoo...
-- Heidi Klum says Drake tried to date her, but she ignored his texts... | |
Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback... See you tomorrow... | | | |
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