Hey there, this is Oliver Darcy filling in for Brian Stelter. I appreciate your feedback, so please do get in touch directly. You can send me an email or find me on Twitter. Now, onward to the news... Including McClatchy's response to the Devin Nunes lawsuit, Craig Newmark's next donation, and a first look at The Atlantic's next cover...
| | McClatchy says Nunes suit is a 'baseless attack'
"We should not overlook how awful this is," NiemanLab's Joshua Benton wrote. "A sitting member of Congress suing a news organization on clearly nonsense grounds to harass a free press."
That was on Monday, when Rep. Devin Nunes filed a $150 million lawsuit against the McClatchy newspaper chain. He claimed a story in his district's newspaper, The Fresno Bee, defamed him. Nunes gave the scoop about the suit to Fox News, which led its home page with the story, treating the suit like something really serious. Sean Hannity brought Nunes on and celebrated the suit. You could almost hear Hannity's viewers at home at home saying, "Yeah, sue the fake news!"
The reality is... very different. Nunes is getting ridiculed for his legal filings, first against Twitter, now against McClatchy. And the newspaper publisher isn't mincing words. McClatchy CEO Craig Forman sent a memo to the entire company on Tuesday reassuring staffers that "we will vigorously defend The Fresno Bee." And later in the day, in a detailed statement, the company said the suit "represents a baseless attack on local journalism and a free press," an unproductive distraction" and "a misuse of the judicial system."
Legal experts are mighty skeptical of this suit
McClatchy continued: "Nunes declined the opportunity to talk to reporters from The Fresno Bee last year about his investment in the Alpha Omega Winery, the subject of his claim. Hopefully, he will provide such answers during the litigation." The company also said Nunes filed suit in Virginia, but California is the more appropriate venue. Here's the full statement.
Fox's Judge Andrew Napolitano said he doesn't think Nunes has a case... Neither do other experts on the right and left.
We'll see what the courts say to Nunes. In the meantime, as CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti tweeted, "No one should cover his frivolous lawsuits without putting them in proper context."
BREAKING:
Warner Bros. says Trump-shared video violated its copyright
Brian Stelter emails: About that fan-made video promoting President Trump's re-election that was shared by POTUS on Tuesday? BuzzFeed's Adam B. Vary reported Tuesday night that "Warner Bros. Pictures is filing a copyright infringement complaint to have the video taken down because it uses part of the score from the studio's 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises."
A Warner spokesperson confirmed: "The use of Warner Bros.' score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized. We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed." (Reminder, Warner and CNN are both part of WarnerMedia.) | |
Headlines flood out of Capitol Hill
All eyes were on Capitol Hill Tuesday, with several major headlines emerging from both chambers. Over in the House, Attorney General Bill Barr pledged to deliver Robert Mueller's report to Congress within a week. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that agency lawyers consulted with (but did not take direction from) the White House on Trump's tax returns. And a hearing with representatives from social media companies on white nationalism descended into chaos at times. Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Bernie Sanders acknowledged to the NYT that he is a millionaire, and pledged to release his tax returns by Monday. Here are all the details...
Friday news dump looming?
While Barr said that he would deliver Mueller's report to Congress within days, the version he will provide lawmakers will be redacted -- and thus unlikely to satisfy Democrats who want the full version. As a result, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said Tuesday that he is prepared to "very quickly" issue a subpoena to the DOJ for the information. As Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju reported on CNN.com, "The fight is almost assuredly going to wind up in court."
>> So when will the delivery arrive? Politico Playbook asks: "Friday news dump? Sunday news dump? The Justice Department previously told reporters to expect the report sometime between Friday and next Tuesday..."
Other key takeaways | | If you didn't watch Barr's first hearing day, CNN's Chris Cillizza has the major takeaways here. "Barr wouldn't say whether the White House has seen or will see the report before its release... Barr wouldn't say Trump is wrong about obstruction..." More...
"The haters got their way"
That's how Issie Lapowsky of Wired summed up Tuesday's disappointing House Judiciary Committee hearing with reps from Google and Facebook. "At today's House hearing on hate crimes and white supremacy, the hatemongers got their way, minority groups were pitted against each other, and the tech giants that have allowed this hate to fester got off scot free," Lapowsky tweeted. Here's her full story...
Lapowsky has a point. As CNN's Donie O'Sullivan reported in his story, the panel also included "the father of two victims of an Islamophobic attack, invited by Democrats, and a prominent right-wing activist, Candace Owens of the conservative group Turning Point USA, invited by Republicans."
Coming just weeks after the New Zealand terror attack, the hearing could have been used to elicit new information and serve as a forum for honest conversation about white nationalism and how it is spread on social media. But that didn't seem to happen. As O'Sullivan wrote to me in an email, "Some Republicans and Democrats used their time to go after witnesses called by the opposing side."
The Owens distraction
And Owens used her allotted time to attack Democrats and the media. Her presence as a witness on a panel about extremism was, simply put, a bit mystifying. Owens, you'll recall, has a history of making inflammatory comments. She most recently generated headlines after being forced to clarify controversial remarks she made about Adolf Hitler. But she was invited by Republicans to offer her thoughts.
As NBC's Brandy Zadrozny tweeted, "It's so surreal seeing Candace Owens on this panel. Less than two years ago, she was complaining about 'Globalism' and George Soros, as a regular on InfoWars. Now she's an expert witness at a congressional hearing on extremism." WaPo's Dana Milbank has a recap of the Owens distraction here. He noted, "If Republicans were hoping to sabotage the Judiciary Committee's hearing, they got what they wanted."
The conversation got derailed online, too
Donie O'Sullivan emails: The hearing was streamed live on YouTube, but the company was forced to disable comments on the stream after it was flooded with racist and anti-Semitic comments. Quite an illustration of one of the issues at hand: Silicon Valley's ongoing struggle to stop the spread of hate across its platforms...
>> YouTube's statement: "Hate speech has no place on YouTube."
Sanders acknowledges his millionaire status to NYT
Bernie Sanders, under pressure to share his tax returns, made news in a NYT interview on Tuesday, acknowledging for the first time that he is a millionaire. Sanders told NYT that he "wrote a best-selling book" and said, "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire too." He says he'll release his tax returns by Monday.
Sanders talked more about his tax returns with CBS News, telling Ed O'Keefe that there are no "great revelations" in them. That interview aired in part on "CBS Evening News," with more of it airing Wednesday morning...
WEDNESDAY PLANNER:
-- 4pm: Discovery holds its annual upfront for advertisers...
-- 6pm: Tina Brown's Women in the World conference begins in NYC. Oprah Winfrey is delivering an evening keynote. Here's the agenda...
-- The Verify 2019 conference focusing on disinformation and cybersecurity kicks off in Sausalito. (I'll be there if you want to say hi!)
FIRST LOOK
The Atlantic's next cover
The Atlantic has a striking text-only cover for May's cover story by George Packer... It is an adaptation of his forthcoming book "Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century..." | | Peter Mendelsund, who joined the mag in February as creative director and who designed the cover, told Brian, "Sometimes a story is too wide-ranging, too capacious, too nuanced to be reducible to a single image. In such instances as these, a photograph or cover illustration only serves to narrow focus; that is, to diminish the work it is charged with amplifying. So why not leave well enough alone and let the prose do the heavy lifting? We opted to begin the piece on the cover of the magazine; to make the piece itself the cover. We've always loved a reading experience that begins at the point of purchase—without throat clearing; at the moment of first viewing—and would challenge anyone to scan this opening paragraph and not feel compelled to continue reading."
NCAA ratings up, but....
Brian Lowry emails: Virginia's overtime win marked solid improvement over last year, averaging 19.6 million viewers for CBS, but with the asterisk that last year's game was played on cable network TBS. Compared with 2017, when the championship game was on CBS, viewership was down about 14%, although overall tune-in for this year's tournament, shared by CBS and the Turner networks, was up 8% year to year.
>> Monday's top-rated market, not surprisingly, was Richmond, which posted a 31.3 rating...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- This can't be said often enough! Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy have an excellent story illustrating how "the Democratic electorate on Twitter is not the actual Democratic electorate..." (NYT)
-- Speaking of social media: Max Tani points out that Facebook has been "notably absent" from "the first big events of the 2020 presidential primary, a significant contrast from the strategy it employed just four years ago..." (Daily Beast)
-- The Associated Press says it will start fact-checking Spanish-language content on Facebook, becoming the first in the program to "focus on content consumed by Spanish speakers in the US..." (AP)
-- Tuesday's must-read for media biz junkies: "How Iger Broke Disney's Netflix Addiction" by Tom Dotan and Jessica Toonkel... (The Information)
Craig Newmark's next gift
Donie O'Sullivan emails: Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is donating more than $1 million to Global Cyber Alliance, a group that is developing a toolkit to help journalists from being hacked. Details here...
FIRST IN RELIABLE
NYT to launch privacy project
I'm told that NYT's offices are buzzing about a massive data-privacy project that will be launching from the opinion page later this week... The @PrivacyProject Twitter handle has already been secured for the project, and Charlie Warzel has begun soliciting sign ups for a "limited run" newsletter. A NYT spokesperson described the project to me as "an ambitious, on-going project on data privacy." Stay tuned...
"The Weekly" gets a trailer and premiere date
Mark your calendar for June 2. That's when NYT's "The Weekly" is set to premiere on FX. The news of the premiere date was coupled with the release of a 30-second teaser trailer on Tuesday. NYT assistant managing editor Sam Dolnick told me in a statement that "The Weekly" team "has been working for months with Times correspondents around the world to tell the newsroom's most ambitious stories" and that the paper "can't wait to share our stories with a TV audience."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- A new research paper finds that "when local newspapers shrink, fewer people bother to run for mayor..." (NiemanLab)
-- "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin will host a six-part docuseries called "The Whole Truth" on Investigation Discovery... (Variety)
-- Via Michael Grynbaum's Twitter feed: "Jeanine Pirro was suspended by Fox News last month for making anti-Muslim comments. Her ratings went up." Here's his new story about Pirro... (NYT)
-- NAB president Gordon Smith interviewed Yamiche Alcindor, Hallie Jackson, Steven Portnoy and Cecilia Vega at this year's conference... (NAB Show)
Fox continues to lobby DNC for a debate
Fox News is continuing its push to score a Democratic primary debate. After DNC chair Tom Perez said on a podcast that he was OK with Bernie Sanders doing a Monday town hall on Fox, and that he would not discourage Democrats in general from appearing on the network, Fox's DC managing editor Bill Sammon provided a statement to the S.F. Chronicle pushing for Perez to "reconsider" his decision.
>> Sammon: "We're pleased that the DNC agrees with Fox News that successful Democratic presidential candidates must engage directly with (Fox's) large and diverse audience through televised town halls and multiple guest appearances on our air. That logic extends to primary debates..."
Green New Deal mania
Getting a Democratic primary debate isn't the only thing Fox is obsessed with these days. According to the liberal group Media Matters, the network has devoted a TON of air time to discussing the Green New Deal. More airtime, in fact, than both CNN and MSNBC combined, Media Matters reported. The anti-Fox group said it was a "significant problem because Fox's coverage is so bad." Meaning, in their view, so negative and misleading...
Shep Smith separates "rhetoric from reality"
Meanwhile, Shep Smith's program continues to serve as a portal to reality for Fox viewers. On Tuesday, he devoted time to "separating rhetoric from reality when it comes to immigration in America." Smith fact-checked Trump's false claim that it was Obama who implemented the child separation policy at the border. You can watch that clip via Mediaite here...
Lara Logan working for Sinclair
Sinclair is hiring Lara Logan "for a three-month stint as a special correspondent focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border," THR's Jeremy Barr reported Tuesday.
The local station owner says it hopes this is the start of a longer arrangement. Logan told Barr that "I don't know if I'm going to even survive this" -- meaning, because she'll be criticized by Media Matters -- "Sinclair is not the devil that Media Matters and the propaganda makes it out to be," she said. Somehow I'm sure Logan will "survive" her new role...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Brian Steinberg reports about how the Trump news cycle has spurred "extra chatter" at SiriusXM with the company amassing "a collection of skilled opinion hosts and news anchors..." (Variety)
-- Motherboard obtained the 159-page deposition Alex Jones gave about "Pepe the Frog..." (Motherboard)
-- THR is out with an oral history of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his "enthusiasm for bipartisan media." It features Cindy Crawford, Robert De Niro, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, and others... (THR)
-- The gory anti-abortion film "Gosnell" will be screened at the White House on Friday... (Slate)
Congrats to this year's Peabody nominees!
The 60 nominees for the Peabody Awards were announced on Tuesday. In the announcement, the organization said that the nominees represented "the most compelling stories released in broadcasting and digital media during 2018." You can check out the full list here...
Nominees of note include NYT's "The Daily" and "The Caliphate" podcasts, CNN's Nima Elbagir, Rachel Maddow's "Bag Man" podcast, PBS's "The Facebook Dilemma..."
>> The winners will be announced in the coming weeks and celebrated at a May 18 ceremony hosted by Ronan Farrow... | |
Kantor and Twohey's title
Brian Stelter emails: Penguin Books is out with a first look at Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's forthcoming book:
The title is "She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement Hardcover," and the pub date is October 1... The book has an Amazon page now...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
Brian Stelter writes: I was off my game on Monday... I missed three key appointments! Better late than never:
-- Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation for the past 24 years, will hand the reins to D. D. Guttenplan in June. She will remain the mag's publisher... (NYT)
-- Refinery29 is promoting Amy Emmerich to president, North America, "which she'll add to her current role overseeing editorial, video, and branded content..." (Variety)
-- Nathaniel Brown, most recently of 21st Century Fox, is joining Discovery as the head of global comms... (THR)
The Athletic heads into the podcasting world
The Athletic's latest foray is into the podcasting world -- and the publication is putting big money behind it. On Tuesday, 20 podcasts were uploaded behind the company's pay wall. According to Axios' Sara Fischer, who first reported the news, the sports publication is pouring millions of dollars into its podcasting effort, hoping its army of reporters will differentiate it from the crowded field.
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- MSNBC's Katy Tur signed off for maternity leave on Tuesday. A network spokesperson says (also pregnant!) Kasie Hunt will be filling in for her in the immediate term...
-- Taking a page from Netflix? YouTube is now developing interactive shows in which users can choose their own adventures... (Bloomberg)
-- Mediaite has a (slightly) new look... (Mediaite)
"Reconstruction" connects postwar past to 21st century
Brian Lowry emails: PBS takes a deep contextual dive into U.S. history — and deftly connects it to the present — with "Reconstruction: America After the Civil War," a four-hour documentary that looks at a "misunderstood" period whose legacy in terms of race relations is still being felt today. It's hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., who has written a related book that's also being released this month.
Read Lowry's full review here...
| | By Lisa Respers France:
-- I talked to Marsai Martin, Issa Rae and Regina Hall, the stars of the film "Little." At 14, Martin has made history with the project as Hollywood's youngest executive producer and snagged a first look deal with Universal...
-- Nipsey Hussle's memorial will be held Thursday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be open to fans who snag one of the limited tickets to attend...
-- Alec Baldwin thinks he could beat Donald Trump for president...
-- The hit 90's film "Never Been Kissed" turned 20 on Tuesday...
Netflix eyes the Egyptian Theatre
Netflix could be the next owner of Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre. According to Deadline, the streaming company is in talks to buy the Hollywood Boulevard venue. If completed, it would be "the first brick and mortar movie theater acquisition for Netflix," Deadline noted. Sources told the site, however, that it would be inaccurate to think this signaled a larger move into the theater business...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
By Chloe Melas:
-- Chelsea Handler gets candid in her new memoir, which came out on Tuesday...
-- Lori Loughlin's 'When Calls The Heart' co-star is offering her a message of support...
-- The "Game of Thrones" promo machine is in gear: Here are new behind-the-scenes videos...
| | | Thank you for reading. Brian will be back tomorrow! | | | |
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