Exec summary: Welcome to the weekend. Scroll down for our guide to the best new TV shows and movies... Plus Channing Dungey's exit from ABC and some brand new reporting about Tucker Carlson... But first...
CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi's killing
The Washington Post was the first with this news on Friday. Numerous other major news outlets, including CNN, confirmed it within hours.
"The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government's claims that he was not involved in the killing," the Post reported, citing "people familiar with the matter."
What will the fallout be?
-- WaPo's Karen Attiah, who was Khashoggi's editor, tweeted: "The truth shall prevail... May Jamal's soul find comfort..." She also said the Saudi ambassador to the US "needs to be formally expelled from Washington..."
-- CNN's Kaitlan Collins: "The White House has wanted to put this story behind them for weeks. But Gina Haspel met with POTUS upon her return from Turkey. He likely knows all of this. The question facing the White House now is do they hold MBS personally accountable?"
-- Former Obama NSC aide Ben Rhodes: "We are faced with the real possibility that Trump has had info from his own intel community that MBS was responsible for murdering a journalist who wrote for the Washington Post and lied about it / tried to help MBS get past it. Must be investigated."
CNN v. Trump: What now? | | On Friday morning CNN won round one of its federal lawsuit against President Trump. But it was only round one. And no one knows how many more rounds there will be.
"We want to just simply move forward and let CNN and Jim Acosta gather news and report it," lawyer Ted Boutrous told me after the ruling was read aloud in U.S. District Court in DC.
Boutrous said CNN would welcome a settlement of the lawsuit, now that Judge Timothy J. Kelly has sided with CNN and forced the government to return Acosta's press pass for the time being. In these situations, Boutrous said, "you look for a resolution that makes the most sense so everyone can get out of court and get back to their work. And that goes for the White House and for the journalists. So we're open to anything."
But Boutrous also said that the network is prepared for a long-term legal fight if need be. "We're ready to litigate as long as we have to, to protect these First Amendment rights, to ask the court to declare rules of the road going forward," he said. Much more here...
DOJ "disappointed"
The government has not formally said what its next step will be. But Trump downplayed the impact of the loss in court, telling Fox's Chris Wallace that "it's not a big deal." I beg to differ!
DOJ spokeswoman Kelly Laco said Friday evening: "We are disappointed with the district court's decision. The President has broad authority to regulate access to the White House, including to ensure fair and orderly White House events and press conferences. We look forward to continuing to defend the White House's lawful actions." So we'll see...
What will the W.H. do?
Trump is vowing to create "rules and regulations" for how White House reporters act. He says "you have to practice decorum" at the White House.
Yes, hearing Trump promote "decorum" prompted a lot of laughter on Friday... But we'll have to wait and see what "rules" the W.H. writes, if any... The West Wing might try to come up with a framework that would let Trump black-list reporters while satisfying the due process standard... Or maybe nothing will come of this...
Key facts | | -- As you can see in the above screen grab from the ruling, Kelly did not rule on the underlying case on Friday. But he granted CNN's request for a temporary restraining order on Fifth Amendment grounds...
-- And Kelly said he believes that CNN and Acosta are likely to prevail in the case overall...
-- Kelly criticized last week's blacklisting of Acosta as "shrouded in mystery," noting that the DOJ lawyer in the case couldn't even say who ordered the decision...
-- CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the ruling "strikes me as an extremely savvy and wise resolution of this case..."
Acosta is back at work
"Let's go back to work," Acosta said in brief comments outside the courthouse. Less than two hours later, he walked up to the usual gate on Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the W.H. grounds. Wolf Blitzer went to him for a live shot and a package on "The Situation Room" at 5pm...
The next deadline...
Per CNN's David Shortell, Judge Kelly has officially set the next deadline for the case: a joint status report due by 3pm Monday...
Powerful support from the nation's news media
The number of news outlets supporting CNN's case keeps growing and growing. There are 48 names on this newest statement, including huge brands like the AP and Yahoo and trade groups from across the country. I want you to see the full list -- on the statement circulated by law firm Ballard Spahr on Friday -- the signees said "we applaud Judge Kelly's careful application of the law to reject the White House's claim of unbridled authority over journalists' access to the White House. Our democracy depends on reporters having access to, and being able to question, government officials."
For the record, here are the signees: ABC News; American Society of News Editors; Associated Press Media Editors; Association of Alternative Newsmedia; Axios; Bloomberg L.P.; Boston Globe Media Partners; Business Insider; California News Publishers Assn.; CBS News; CQ Roll Call; E.W. Scripps Co.; First Look Media Works, Inc.; Gannett l USA TODAY NETWORK; GateHouse Media, LLC; Guardian US; HuffPost; Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley; Los Angeles Times Communications LLC; National Association of Black Journalists; National Association of Hispanic Journalists; National Press Club; National Press Club Journalism Institute; National Press Photographers Association; NBC News; New England Newspaper and Press Association; News Media Alliance; NPR; Online News Association; PBS NewsHour; Press Freedom Defense Fund; ProPublica; Religion News Service; Reporters Without Borders; Reuters; Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting; Shutterstock, Inc.; Student Press Law Center; The Associated Press; The Daily Beast; The Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia Press Association; The New Yorker; The NewsGuild-CWA; The Sentinel Newspapers; The Wall Street Journal; The Washington Post; Tribune Publishing Company; Tully Center for Free Speech; Yahoo News.
Pretty incredible.
| | | From my interview with Ted Boutrous:
"The courts are there to review what the other branches of government do. So the system worked exactly the way it's supposed to work."
This Sunday on "Reliable"
Along with Boutrous, I'll be joined by Sam Donaldson, Carl Bernstein, Chris Ruddy, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, and more... See you Sunday at 11 a.m. ET on CNN...
| | Counting the dead in CA
The latest update from CNN's Nicole Chavez and Steve Almasy: "The list of people who are unaccounted for after the Camp Fire in Northern California has 1,011 entries, Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea said Friday evening. The sheriff said the list is imperfect and will fluctuate in number because it is raw data that needs to be refined. The death toll from the fire is now 71 after eight sets of remains were found Friday..."
-- POTUS will be visiting the state on Saturday...
-- Copies of the Paradise Post newspaper are being delivered to evacuation centers...
-- The LA Times newsroom sent lunch to the Chico Enterprise-Record on Friday...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Annie Linskey is joining WaPo as a national political reporter, the first of seven new additions to the team... (WaPo)
-- An update on "NOVA" chief Paula Apsell's leave of absence: It was "related to complaints that Aspell violated WGBH's respectful workplace policy..." She has not commented... (WGBH)
-- Nominations are now being accepted for the 2019 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards...
Channing Dungey leaving ABC
"ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey is stepping down after less than three years overseeing the broadcast network's prime-time programming," the WSJ's Joe Flint reports. New management will be taking over the unit once the Disney-Fox deal closes.
"While I've loved every moment, and knew I could call ABC home for many years to come, I'm excited to tackle new challenges," Dungey said.
More from Flint's story: "Karey Burke, who currently is head of programming for Disney's cable channel, Freeform, will succeed Ms. Dungey..."
Tucker Carlson's confusing claim
Like many other members of the media, I condemned the Antifa protest at Tucker Carlson's home last week. No one's family should be threatened like that. I am not trying to diminish what happened outside his home, because it was unacceptable. But I do want to address one claim about the November 7 disturbance that has been contested.
Carlson told WaPo that "someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door." Liberal critics of Carlson have cast doubt on that claim by saying there was no evidence of damage to the door. They have called him a liar. So I asked the DC police, and a spokeswoman responded, "MPD did not observe any visible damage to the front door of the victim's house the night of the incident."
To be clear, it is still possible that the door was cracked. And there is no doubt that the overall incident was disturbing to the Carlsons. But when I asked Carlson for any comment about this, or any evidence of the crack, he decided to attack me and CNN instead of responding. Here's my full story...
Investigation is still open
As you may recall, DC police said last week that they are investigating the incident, given the defacing of private property that occurred. The latest word: "There is no further information to provide as this case remains under investigation. There have been no arrests made."
Another week without news from Mueller
Speculation about impending indictments by Robert Mueller reached a fever pitch this week... But there was no news. I have to note that some of the speculation was stirred up by a segment on Tuesday's "CBS This Morning." CBS News correspondent Paula Reid said confidently, "I've spoken with many sources with knowledge of the Special Counsel investigation, and we do expect new indictments to be coming as soon as today."
I believed her... and I feel foolish now. Maybe she'll follow up on her incorrect "expectation..."
Facebook's face-plant?
FB stock fell 3% on Friday amid the furor over the NYT expose. Several Democratic Senators sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking for answers on Friday. But it really remains to be seen if this round of outrage will translate to anything material. Forgive my skepticism...
Donie's latest
Donie O'Sullivan emails: When conservatives began alleging FB's human-curated "trending topics" section had a pro-liberal bias two years ago, the company shut down the feature entirely.
Apple News, the massively successful iOS app, is also curated by real people, and last summer Definers, a firm that worked for Facebook, tried to plant a story about a pro-liberal bias among Apple News staff.
Definers' research wasn't very compelling and FB told us they weren't behind it. There is a name of a company floating around that may have paid Definers to do this work on Apple, but it hasn't been confirmed. The dossier prepared by Definers and sent to a CNN employee gives an insight into how tech companies are facing new challenges as they begin hiring editorial staff... Read more...
Renee DiResta's insights | | Researcher Renee DiResta's reaction to the FB story: "To realize the extent to which they knew" about Russian meddling, "and how early they knew, that was deeply disturbing."
DiResta is my guest on this week's "Reliable" podcast. She said she's not advocating for the regulation of ideas, but "I am advocating for oversight. I think what we saw in that article... is that self-regulation with no oversight does not work." Listen to the conversation via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn... Or read Julia Waldow's recap here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
By Daniella Emanuel:
-- In the wake of Jonathan Gold's death, the LA Times has brought on restaurant critics Bill Addison and Patricia Escárcega... (NYT)
-- "Manhattan prosecutors filed charges Thursday against a California bible college in connection with an alleged wide-ranging scheme involving Newsweek's former parent company to defraud lenders out of tens of millions of dollars..." (WSJ)
-- NiemanLab took a deep dive into how individuals use WhatsApp and why it's so difficult to combat misinformation on the platform. "In India, citizens actively seem to be privileging breadth of information over depth..." (NiemanLab)
Trump is tweeting about the "caravan" again
The caravan of migrants traveling through Mexico toward the US border has received renewed attention from right-wing media in the past couple of days. So it's not surprising that Trump just posted his first post-midterms tweets about the topic...
How the "caravan" is like Ebola
In this column for CNN.com, I revisited Barack Obama's pre-midterms predictions about Trump and the caravan. "This is what happened in 2010, this is what happened in 2012, what happened in 2014," he said, "just over and over and over again, they'll just run these same stories and then after the election, suddenly they're not interested anymore." He brought up "death panels," Ebola and Hillary's emails. Here's his argument... See what you think...
--> Obama senior advisor Eric Schultz tweeted out my column and said, "This is one I wish the boss was not right about..."
George Conway speaks...
...And says the W.H. is a "dumpster fire"
Why did conservative lawyer and Kellyanne Conway's husband George Conway agree to go on the Yahoo News podcast "Skullduggery" ?! | | Erin Burnett posed that question to Yahoo News EIC Dan Klaidman on Friday. "I think it was an evolution," Klaidman said. "He started doing it fairly subtly at first, retweeting some people and then starting his own tweets, and then over time he got angrier and angrier and decided that it was time to speak out..."
--> BTW: Kellyanne changed her Twitter bio amid all the coverage... On Friday morning it said "The 'Kellyanne Conway' in 'Kellyanne Conway's Husband.'" As of Friday evening, it reads "Mom. Patriot. Catholic. Counselor."
The "P word"
Brian Lowry emails: A couple of notable columns by TV critics, one I agree with, the other not so much: The LAT's Lorraine Ali makes a pretty persuasive case that the media should use the "P word" – that is, propaganda – to describe Trump's disinformation efforts.
Meanwhile, THR's Tim Goodman suggests MSNBC and CNN are missing out by not transforming themselves into liberal versions of Fox News, which seems to suggest, basically, that two journalistic wrongs make a right – or at least, will generate bigger ratings. Both of those assertions are at best suspect, given the years Roger Ailes spent positioning Fox as the antidote to liberal media bias...
He found America's best burger...
An Phung emails: Kevin Alexander wrote this thoughtful piece about how his search for the best burger prompted his favorite joint to shut down. There are so many layers. At first blush, this is a story about compiling a list of America's best burgers through shoe-leather reporting, but it's also about the demands of clickbait stories and about how to celebrate a restaurant through journalism without destroying the business. As The New Yorker's Helen Rosner put it, "The ethical considerations of culture journalism go so far beyond swag and gifts." It's a must read...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Julia Waldow emails: Taylor Lorenz's latest eye-opener for the Atlantic: "How hackers are stealing high-profile Instagram accounts..." (The Atlantic)
-- AT&T "is gearing up for what could be a series of bloody battles with rival media giants, as it seeks to cut programming costs at its DirecTV satellite and streaming video division. The outcome could affect the shape of the TV industry for years to come..." (The Information)
-- Studios are expected to push for early home release in 2019, so we may have a battle brewing in Hollywood next year... (Variety)
William Goldman, 1931-2018
Brian Lowry emails: Screenwriter William Goldman, who died on Friday, was almost as famous for what he wrote and said about writing – the book "Adventures in the Screen Trade," the line "nobody knows anything" – as his much-admired screenplays, which include "All the President's Men," "The Princess Bride," "Marathon Man" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." It was also Goldman — not Deep Throat — who came up with the line "follow the money" in the first of those films, about as often-mangled a movie line as exists...
| | Lowry's weekend TV reviews
It's a big TV weekend. Alex Gibney's complementary documentaries "The Clinton Affair" – most notable for its extensive interview with Monica Lewinsky – and "Enemies: The President, Justice & the FBI," inspired by Tim Weiner's book, premiere Sunday on A&E and Showtime, respectively...
And "Dirty John," adapted from the LAT podcast and articles, is available online in advance of its linear debut on Bravo...
AND a trio of miniseries – HBO's "My Brilliant Friend," adapted from the best-seller; Showtime's "Escape at Dannemora," the prison-break story; and AMC's "The Little Drummer Girl," a six-part retelling of John le Carré's novel – offer a reminder why that genre is in the midst of a golden age...
"Green Book" in limited release this weekend
Brian Lowry emails: "Green Book" will draw comparisons to "Driving Miss Daisy," but the 1960s-era true story — about a brilliant African-American musician and the guy hired to serve as his driver on a concert tour of the Deep South — owes as much of a debt to "Hidden Figures," with Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali both award contenders in the lead roles. Read on... | | Endless summer at the box office
Frank Pallotta emails: Big films "Black Panther" and surprise hits like "A Quiet Place" have contributed to 2018's massive domestic box office haul, which is currently up roughly 10% over last year and about 5% ahead of 2016's record year. So why is Hollywood having such a hot year? Well, because it's been an endless summer at the cineplex all year long.
"Avengers: Infinity War" and "Venom" set records at the box office, and that's not surprising, but what is surprising is that the records fell in April and October -- months not known for blockbusters.
The final stretch of 2018 begins this weekend with "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald." The prequel, which takes place in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, nabbed $9.1 million Thursday night and is expected to bring in around $65 million domestically for Warner Bros... | |
So will it be a record year?
Frank Pallotta adds: There are still more potential hits to come as 2018 winds down: "Ralph Breaks the Internet" and "Creed II" come out next week, and "Aquaman" and "Mary Poppins Returns" premiere next month, so I think we'll definitely get to the $11.4 billion record number. And Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, agrees. "I don't see anything stopping the box office avalanche at this point," Bock told me.
That avalanche could slide into 2019, which may be another record year with films such as "Avengers 4," "The Lion King" and "Star Wars: Episode IX" all on the docket...
Disney is spending a ton on theme parks
Frank Pallotta emails: In an eye-popping piece, the NYT's Brooks Barnes reports that Disney is spending a whopping $24 billion on new attractions, hotels and ships over the next five years. "That's more than Disney paid for Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm combined," he writes.
The biggest of these immersive attractions is "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge." Brooks writes that the new land based on the galaxy far, far away will have a new ride that includes "roughly 50 animatronic stormtroopers" and a Millennium Falcon ride that responds to "200 cockpit controls..."
FilmStruck lives... kinda
One more item from Frank Pallotta: Here's some great news for all you cinephiles out there. The Criterion Collection, home to many classic and foreign films, will be launching its own streaming service in 2019. The service, which used to be a part of the streaming service FilmStruck, will also be a part of WarnerMedia's new service next year.
When it was announced that FilmStruck was shutting down, many fans (hi!) and big names in Hollywood went to bat for the film service. Now it seems that it will have a second life of sorts next year...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By Chloe Melas:
-- Amy Schumer had to be hospitalized for severe morning sickness...
-- Ariana Grande debuts a new look... and fans have strong opinions about it...
-- Celebrities react to the death of Diddy's ex, Kim Porter...
Your "SNL" host and musical guest this week are...
Frank Pallotta e-mails: I'm going to make a prediction. This week's episode of "SNL" is going to be one of the season's best. And that's because of the host: Steve Carell.
It'll be great to see the former "The Office" star return to his comedic roots after playing it straight on the big screen for the past couple of years. This is a point that "SNL" has been playing up in its promos for this weekend's episode.
Carell will be joined by musical guest Ella Mai... | |
Thanks for reading. Email me feedback anytime! See you Sunday... | | | |
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