Exec summary: Hello from Philly. This newsletter turned three years old on Friday. So happy birthday to... us! Thank you for your readership, tips, compliments, and corrections. You all make this worth writing.
Scroll down for midterm reads, weekend recs, movie reviews, and much more...
2018 MIDTERM ELECTIONS Less "fake news," but many more problems
Do you remember the run-up to Election Day 2016? Media reporters like yours truly were focused on "fake news" -- truly fake stuff -- made-up stories that were designed to deceive people. Profiteers and propagandists were going gangbusters on Facebook and Twitter. The most notorious example: "Pope endorses Trump." So I tried to sound the alarm on "Reliable Sources." Lots of us did.
After the election, the tech giants belatedly admitted that they had a real problem on their hands. They started to make changes. But then President-elect Trump seized the term "fake news" and redefined it to mean stories he didn't like. Almost any other president would have seen the dangers of viral misinformation and tried to be part of the solution... Instead of worsening the problem... but I digress.
Two years later, what's changed? Are midterm voters being fooled by made-up stories? My impression is that the specific "fake news" problem is less pronounced this election season. But the threats have morphed and multiplied.
Here's what I mean: I'm not seeing simplistic "Candidate X said Y" lies showing up in the newsfeed. Facebook has staffers and machines and fact-checking partnerships in place to curb that crap. Twitter has been taking action too. But experts say there are much more sophisticated misinformation campaigns underway than there were two years ago. The sites are struggling to keep up with all the state-sponsored attacks, bot networks, outbreaks of hate speech, etc. Whack-a-mole! Here's the state of play...
Bizarro conspiracy theories
"I think the jury is still out," Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network director, Alexios Mantzarlis, told me. But with that caveat in mind, he said "the full-on viral 'fake news' of yonder is playing a somewhat secondary role compared to (A) misinformation pushed by and for openly political purposes and (B) bizarro conspiracy theories emerging from messaging boards and getting amplified wittingly or unwittingly by folks on Facebook/Twitter."
Many of those bizarro theories have been about the Kavanaugh hearings and, more recently, the migrant "caravan." The NYT's Kevin Roose caught another viral "caravan" hoax on Friday. It wasn't taken down until he publicly pointed it out. This kind of B.S. isn't about the midterms, exactly, but it could affect the results since Trump is relying on immigration fears to fuel GOP turnout...
Some of the hoaxes are just harder to see
CNN's own Donie O'Sullivan pointed out to me that "a lot of the conversation has moved into closed Facebook groups." There are huge MAGA groups and huge Resistance groups... "Total ideological echo chambers," he said.
Tow Center's Jonathan Albright seconded this point. Facebook is "flooded with fake messages, astroturfing armies, Q garbage and anti-migrant posts," he told me. But it's "all buried in groups and subpages."
Albright spent all day Friday going down these rabbit holes. He said he thinks it's "10x worse than 2016, IMHO." He observed a "major effort underway to push messages out FROM groups into rest of platform. Groups are polluted with fake accounts and duplicate profiles..."
And it's been mainstreamed
"What we are seeing more than anything else is the way that so much fake news has rewired our discourse and reprogrammed (especially right wing) media," BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel pointed out to me.
Case in point, scary stories about the "caravan" have been a staple of Fox News shows. Warzel: "Hyperpartisan spin which was relegated to MAGA FB pages (which published a lot of fake news in '16 cycle) has really made its way into mainstream discourse," he said. "Look at the false flag stuff!"
Notes and quotes
-- Any conversation about this online pollution has to reckon with the president's role as the biggest polluter of them all. He's Mr. Misinformation...
-- Fareed Zakaria's latest column: "The Republican Party today has become a vast repository of conspiracy theories, fake news, false accusations and paranoid fantasies..."
-- The Intercept noticed that FB "allowed advertisers to target users interested in 'white genocide'" earlier this week... FB says it's fixed now...
-- And Twitter apologized after "kill all Jews" showed up as a trending topic in NYC on Friday... News stories about vandalism at a Brooklyn synagogue apparently triggered the "trend..."
Twitter shuts down a voter suppression effort
Donie O'Sullivan emails: We learned Friday evening that Twitter has taken down thousands of accounts, most posing as Democrats, that were discouraging people from voting. The accounts were removed by early October after the DCCC flagged them to the company.
Twitter seems confident that it was a domestic effort. Unfortunately the company hasn't shared any samples of the accounts so voters know what they looked like (but we're working on finding some 🙃). It'll be very interesting to watch over the next four days what new disinfo campaigns pop up and how the platforms deal with them...
FB's political ad problem
More from Donie: Two Democratic senators wrote to Mark Zuckerberg on Friday and asked him to get his act together about political ad disclaimers. All week long, news outlets have been pointing out various failings in FB's system. This is going to be an issue FB will need to clean up for 2020...
What are we missing now?
This is what Donie is wondering: "What will we learn about 4 or 8 or 12 months from now that the Russians or Iranians were doing before the 2018 midterms? Will there be something that the intel community, the platforms, and the media all missed? Are disinformation operatives in Tehran and Beijing and Moscow laughing at us right now getting all worked up about some ad disclaimers in Facebook? Have they innovated quicker than we can keep up?"
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Don't miss Peter Hamby's VF column: "Sorry, pundits, but you have no clue what will happen on Tuesday..." (VF)
-- "The much-beleaguered and always-in-demand election-night exit polls are getting a makeover for 2018," Steven Shepard reports... (Politico)
-- A must-read: What Ed Pilkington learned by attending a full week of Trump rallies. Key point: "To grasp what is going on in the world of Trump rallies, you have to accept how good he makes his people feel. They are buoyed by hope..." (Guardian)
-- WaPo's latest count: "Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days." Glenn Kessler says this work "has consumed the weekends and nights of The Fact Checker staff..." (WaPo)
-- THR's Jeremy Barr writes: "Immigration advocates are calling out 'Fox & Friends' co-host Ainsley Earhardt for saying incorrectly on Friday that 'as many as just 2%' of asylum-seeking immigrants show up for their court hearings after entering the U.S." According to DOJ data, about 90% of asylum-seekers show up. Trump has repeatedly misstated these #'s just like Earhardt did... (THR)
The midterm ad map
| | "For much of the nation, health care has been the central talking point" in midterm ads, Bloomberg News notes, and this graphic proves it: Green shows the regions where health care issues are mentioned most often. Bloomberg's Demetrios Pogkas and David Ingold analyzed more than 3 million election ads... Check out the results in detail here...
"Election Night" hub on Apple News
Julia Waldow emails: Apple News is rolling out an Election Night section to track real-time race results, in partnership with the AP. The app will also promote key stories by Axios, Politico, CNN, and others, TechCrunch reports...
"November Surprise"
That's what Ari Melber's MSNBC show called this Emily Jane Fox story about Michael Cohen alleging that Trump repeatedly used racist language in private...
--> Fox on Rachel Maddow's show: "This was something he did not want to hold in any longer, ahead of the election..."
"Make America Racist Again"
This was the banner atop the Khaleej Times, one of the main English-language papers in the UAE, on Friday: | |
This Sunday on "Reliable"
Patrick Gaspard, the head of Open Society Foundations, will join me to debunk the smears and conspiracy theories about George Soros... Plus Daniel Dale, Molly Ball, David Zurawik, Eliana Johnson, Harry Enten, Margie Omero, Marvin Kalb, and Nicole Carroll will join me live from CNN Election Headquarters in DC... See you Sunday at 11am ET!
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Best headline about Friday's parking spot dispute: "Alec Baldwin Arrested for Being Alec Baldwin" (Vice)
-- In Saturday's NYT, Edmund Lee has lots of intel about the CBS board's search for a permanent CEO. "Finding a new leader will be a more difficult prospect than usual," he says... (NYT)
-- BTW: The week came and went without an exit agreement for Megyn Kelly at NBC...
First Shabbat after the Pittsburgh attack
| | The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made a powerful statement on Friday by putting the first words of the Kaddish, the Jewish mourner's prayer, on its front page.
Staffers at "NBC Nightly News" were inspired by the front page, so they asked Cantor Azi Schwartz of the Park Avenue Synagogue to recite the Kaddish at the end of Friday's broadcast. Watch...
This week's "Reliable" pod is all about local news
| | Many Americans are living in "news deserts" with few or no local news outlets. As a result, there is less vetting of candidates and more confusion about what's even on the ballot. This problem gets worse every election season, so I invited researcher Penny Abernathy on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. She just completed a new report about these "deserts." Read our recap here... Or listen via Apple Podcasts or your favorite pod app...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Julia Waldow emails: Kara Swisher interviewed Elon Musk about Tesla, Twitter, and his tangling with the media. His regard for the press, Musk told Swisher, "has dropped quite dramatically." "Are you worried about unleashing a dangerous cycle that a lot of the press are worried about? Justifiably," Swisher asked. "I suggest the press take it to heart and do better," Musk responded... (Recode)
-- There's been another small round of layoffs at the Disney Digital Network... (Deadline)
-- "As of last week, about 30 people were out at Hearst Connecticut newsrooms due to layoffs and buyouts..." (Poynter)
| | Recommended weekend reads
-- Joe Pompeo's VF story about CNN in the age of Trump...
-- Noreen Malone's NYMag profile of Carly Zakin, Danielle Weisberg and the Skimm universe...
-- Scott Johnson's THR investigation: "How Hollywood's content boom is leading to more stuntperson injuries and deaths..."
-- Jonah Engel Bromwich's NYT piece: "Alas, the Blockchain Won't Save Journalism After All"
-- AJ Bauer and Anthony Nadler's smart Q&A for CJR: "Conservatives trust conservative media. Here's why."
Discovery orders "Border Live"
Here's a bit of news I broke on Friday morning: Discovery is introducing a six-part series live from the U.S.-Mexico border. The name: "Border Live." Lilia Luciano will report live from a different location along the border each week and Bill Weir will host the show from a studio in New York. Luciano and Weir told me the goal is an immersive broadcast. It'll premiere on December 5... For now, six episodes are set to air...
Weir, whose day job is at CNN, said border issues are "incredibly misunderstood," and the show is an opportunity to address that. Luciano's day job is at ABC10 in Sacramento. "We'll talk to immigrants, we'll talk to locals, we'll talk to law enforcement," Luciano told me, describing her goal as "bringing you there."
Maybe Trump should tune in
I asked the exec in charge of Discovery, Nancy Daniels, if she hopes the president will watch. Maybe he'd learn something? Daniels' response: "I run a network — I hope everyone will watch." | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By Daniella Emanuel:
-- An international press group is looking for answers in the case of murdered Slovakian reporter Jan Kuciak... (NYT)
-- Fresh data about newsroom diversity problems: A new Pew analysis shows that "newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall..." (Pew)
-- CNN's Ana Navarro will be co-hosting "The View" every Friday... (Variety)
-- Showtime is making "The Family Business: Trump and Taxes," its short film about the NYT's Trump tax probe, available for free online and on other platforms... (Deadline)
"How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?"
Sandra Gonzalez writes: "HBO sent some ice and fire President Trump's way after he tweeted an image of himself that appropriated the font style and catch phrase from 'Game of Thrones.'"
HBO's response: We "would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes."
And on Twitter, the network asked followers, "How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?"
Author George R.R. Martin also responded: "Fear cuts deeper than swords. Vote. Tuesday the 6th."
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FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- Forbes cut ties with contributing columnist and sports economics professor David Berri last week "after a dispute over his piece about WNBA player salaries." Of note: "The NBA voiced concerns with the piece to Forbes editors...." (WaPo)
-- An Instagram template app called Unfold is on track to bring in $2.6 million in revenue this year -- and now, it's launching a design agency specifically for Stories... (Fast Company)
-- Joe Flint's latest: "When do Hollywood liberals support a Republican? When Irving Azoff tells them to..." (WSJ)
-- Sunday night is Andrew Lincoln's final "Walking Dead" episode... (THR)
| | Lowry recommends "Shut Up and Dribble"
Brian Lowry emails: Although "Shut Up and Dribble" derives its title from Laura Ingraham's sneering rebuke, the three-part Showtime documentary -- produced by, among others, LeBron James -- documents a long history of activism by athletes, from the 1950s through the present. Perhaps foremost, the project, narrated by Jemele Hill, throws into stark relief the contrast between the chummy relationship athletes enjoyed with President Obama and the acrimony toward (and from) President Trump and his media allies. Read on...
Queen looks to rock the box office and Spotify
Frank Pallotta emails: The Queen biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" hits theaters this weekend, and the rock band's speaker-thumping music is likely to take over Spotify as well. This is because the 20th Century Fox film looks like it's going to be a hit (~$35 million is projected) and that means more people are going to listen to all of Freddie Mercury's "Galileo's" via streaming services. For example, "Straight Outta Compton," the 2015 biopic about N.W.A., boosted the streams of the group's songs nearly 200% after the film's $60 million opening weekend. Read on...
"Boy Erased" in theaters
Brian Lowry emails: "Boy Erased" opens in theaters this weekend. Featuring a trio of Australian stars (director Joel Edgerton, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman) along with Lucas Hedges, the film brings an understated but powerful and effective approach to Garrard Conley's memoir about his experience with gay-conversion therapy. More...
RELATED: Sandra Gonzalez interviewed Edgerton. Key quote: "As much as you want a movie to be relevant, we all hoped that the movie was irrelevant. But we're happy that it's relevant at a time when maybe we could use the movie -- like Garrard's book -- as a tool for advocacy and awareness and change."
Lorre on "CBS Sunday Morning"
Brian Lowry emails: Some conservatives were unhappy about "The Big Bang Theory" producer Chuck Lorre's latest anti-Trump vanity card -- which flashed by at the end of the Oct. 25 episode -- but Lorre subtly doubled down with a get-out-the-vote message on Thursday, writing, "Love like there's no tomorrow, vote like there is."
Lorre will be interviewed this weekend on "CBS Sunday Morning," discussing "Big Bang's" finale next year and the premiere later this month of his new Netflix show "The Kominsky Method," starring Michael Douglas...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Mike Pence joked that Georgia isn't Hollywood -- except it kind of is. So much so that it's often referred to as "the Hollywood of the South."
-- Pete Davidson joked about his split with Ariana Grande, and it appears she did not take too kindly to it.
-- Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino has married his longtime love, Lauren Pesce. Their wedding comes months before he's set to go to prison for tax evasion.
That's a wrap on today's newsletter... See you Sunday!
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