EXEC SUMMARY: Michael Wolff's defense, James Goldston's dinner with the president, Shari Redstone's plan for CBS and Viacom, another Vice shakeup, "must-endure TV," and more...
A TALE OF TWO BOOKS
What we can all learn from "Dignity"
So many stories in America today lead back to one word: Inequality. But how often and how well do national and local newsrooms cover this issue? How much are we missing when our coverage focuses on NYC, DC, LA and SF? That's what I found myself wondering as I read "Dignity," an outstanding new book by Wall Street trader turned author Chris Arnade. Through photos and stories about Arnade's travels to struggling and forgotten towns, "Dignity" persuasively makes the case that America "is split into two worlds." The book's subtitle is "Seeking Respect in Back Row America."
His thesis is that the "front row" of strivers, made up of politicians and bankers and lawyers and journalists, has set up a world that fails the "back row." People in the "back row," he told me, generally "don't have education beyond high school, and if they do it's generally community college, trade schools. They generally stay in their town. They generally live in communities that, to use a buzzword, are being 'forgotten,' left behind, distanced -- places that we tend not to talk about a lot."
Arnade quit his job and sought out these communities to learn about "the consequences of our actions." He brought along his camera. Although not a journalist by training, he produced the type of storytelling that we all need more of. Here's my interview with Arnade from Sunday's show...
Go to McDonald's
Matthew Walther, reviewing "Dignity" for The Week, says "one thing that Arnade's reporting has forever altered is my attitude toward McDonald's."
Chapter one of the book is titled "If you want to understand the country, visit McDonald's." Arnade describes how the fast food chain doubles as a community center. And he shows the value of ordering a coffee, sitting down and staying a while. Here's a peek at the chapter via Google Books... and the full book on Amazon...
One of the other books released on Tuesday is Michael Wolff's "Siege." Arnade wrote about the outsiders; Wolff wrote about and for the insiders...
Wolff says Trump era is getting "crazier and crazier" | | John Berman questioned Wolff about his sourcing and methods on Tuesday's "AC360." Here's the full segment. Wolff said "I'm trying to give a picture of what Trumpworld is," and called it a "crazy place." He defended his decision not to always call certain subjects -- like the White House and Fox News -- for comment by saying Trumpworld is full of liars.
When Berman asked what Wolff wants people to take away from "Siege," he said, "I think that it gets crazier and crazier. That Donald Trump is more isolated, more alone." He called it "the story of a meltdown. One of the greatest political meltdowns of all time."
On an unrelated note, this was the president's last tweet of the night on Tuesday: | |
Schiff says Trump's statements against CNN and WaPo are "unconstitutional"
On Tuesday Rep. Adam Schiff weighed in on Trump's tweets suggesting a boycott of AT&T to punish CNN for its news coverage. Schiff tweeted:
"Trump calls for a boycott of CNN's parent company, after trying to block their merger. He wanted to raise postal rates on Amazon because Bezos owns the Post. It's one thing to complain about the press. Using state power to censor them is another. In fact, it's unconstitutional."
"And certainly impeachable," Norman Ornstein added in a reply...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Start angling for a dinner party invite: Jeff Bezos is "finalizing the purchase of three units at 212 Fifth Avenue" in a deal "valued at around $80 million..." (WSJ)
-- "YouTube has at last formally responded to an explosive and controversial feud between Vox writer and video host Carlos Maza and conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder. The verdict: YouTube says Crowder did not violate any of its policies, and that Crowder's YouTube channel will stay up, despite his repeated homophobic slurs directed at Maza in videos posted to YouTube..." (The Verge)
-- Kaya Yurieff emails: "Influencers you don't follow will soon be on your Instagram feed. The company is rolling out 'branded content ads' which lets brands turn influencers' sponsored content posts into ads so a bigger (and more targeted) audience sees them." Full story here... (CNN)
-- Joe Biden's campaign amended its climate change plan after being called out for lifting language from liberal groups. The Daily Caller was the first to ID several of the instances... (CNN)
-- Happy one-year anniversary to "Cuomo Prime Time..." (Twitter)
| | The "parade of little lies"
Trump gave more oxygen to the anti-Trump protests in London when he dismissed reports about the protests as "fake news." It was this week's second instance of Trump saying, in effect, "who do you believe -- me or your own eyes?"
Trump "told a number of lies" at Tuesday's joint presser with British prime minister Theresa May, John Berman said on "AC360." Is it even news anymore when the president lies? "It is. Of course it is," he said. The "parade of little lies may be making it tough to take anything the president says seriously, especially those things we really need to take seriously," like Trump's tariff threats. Watch Berman's monologue here...
ABC News prez at Trump's table
ABC News president James Goldston and his wife Laura Trevelyan, a BBC anchor, dined with Trump and May on Tuesday evening. Goldston and Trevelyan, who both have dual UK-US citizenship, were invited to the dinner at Winfield House, the residence where Trump is staying while in London. Goldston was seated next to press secretary Sarah Sanders. Here's a photo via Getty: | | I asked ABC if Goldston had any comment, or if he'd be reporting on what was discussed, but I was told the dinner was off the record. So: Perfectly appropriate? Totally inappropriate? Or to put it another way: If you ran one of America's biggest newsrooms, would you say yes to the invite?
Piers and Trump again
Piers Morgan's sit-down with POTUS will air on his UK morning show on Wednesday, with clips available in time for the US morning shows... | | This is Morgan's third interview with Trump since inauguration day -- the most of any TV interviewer outside the United States. Of course, the two men have a chummy history.
When I asked Morgan about how he has snagged this series of sit-downs, he replied with characteristic thunder: "He trusts me to be fair, something that so few journalists seem prepared to be about President Trump."
Live coverage from Normandy
ABC's David Muir, NBC's Lester Holt, and CBS's Anthony Mason will be anchoring from Normandy, France on Wednesday and Thursday, leading their respective networks' coverage of the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The main ceremony will take place Thursday morning.
>> Fox's Martha MacCallum anchored her show from Normandy Tuesday night; will be there again Wednesday; and from Paris on Thursday...
>> MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell is also anchoring and reporting from Normandy...
>> This is Tom Brokaw's fifth assignment reporting from Normandy. He recently interviewed Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg about the importance of the event and their iconic film "Saving Private Ryan..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
By Oliver Darcy:
-- Jeremy Barr reports that pro-Trump social media personalities "Diamond & Silk" are working as "appreciated volunteers" on the Trump campaign. They are also Fox Nation hosts. So why doesn't Fox care like in the case of Sean Hannity? Because they are "contractors," not Fox employees... (THR)
-- Kevin Roose's eulogy to iTunes is a must-read. He says he's "come to think of iTunes as a core piece of what I call the Middle Internet — the period between the Wild West days of Napster and the hyper-centralized era of Facebook and YouTube..." (NYT)
-- Max Read wonders how long until employees at large tech companies who have access to user data start leaking it to journalists... (NY Mag)
China blocking Tiananmen anniversary coverage
An Phung emails: CNN's Beijing correspondent Matt Rivers said the "Chinese government has begun to block CNN's website in mainland China" on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. "The government here is near obsessive about limiting conversation on this topic," Rivers tweeted. Plainclothes police officers forced Rivers off the air when he was working on a TV segment near the square. Watch the entire exchange here.
-- More censorship on June 4: "Under pressure from China's government, financial information provider Refinitiv has removed from its Eikon terminal Reuters news stories related to the 30th anniversary of the bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square..." (Reuters)
Shari speaks
Shari Redstone spoke in a rare interview on stage at The Information's Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference on Tuesday. Wendy Pollack summed up Redstone's POV this way: "Viacom and CBS will need to get bigger even if the two do merge in order to better compete with tech giants."
Redstone cryptically said "we would want to look at something after that" -- after a theoretical merger -- "to ... develop more scale as we move forward."
Joanna Coles' next project
Some more news from The Information's event: "Former Hearst chief content officer Joanna Coles plans to launch a subscription content platform focused on women's networking opportunities." It will be "featured in a variety of mediums including text, video and audio." Details here...
Another shakeup at Vice
On Tuesday "Jonathan Smith, a Vice veteran who had been the editor in chief of Vice.com for the last three years, was let go, along with the site's managing editor, Rachel Schallom," the NYT's Marc Tracy reports. Erika Allen is the site's new executive managing editor. There is no plan to hire a new EIC.
Per Tracy, "the changes are part of Vice Media's effort to become profitable after a rocky period during which the company laid off 10% of its staff and placed several Vice sites under the Vice.com umbrella." But at the moment "the company is indeed expanding, having posted listings for roughly a dozen additional editorial jobs, including a features editorial director, an opinion editor and an 'authoritarianism reporter.'" Read on...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By An Phung:
-- Disturbing news down under: The Australian police raided the home of a journalist over an article that detailed "top-secret correspondence between government ministries over a plan to allow intelligence agencies to surveil Australian citizens..." (NYT)
-- Two journalists who were recently laid off, Laura Bassett and John Stanton, have teamed up to launch the Save Journalism Project, an "advocacy group to raise awareness about Big Tech's impact on the journalism industry..." (BuzzFeed News)
-- Bernie Sanders weighed in on BuzzFeed's failure to recognize the union that staffers formed after the recent round of layoffs... (Twitter)
Wall Street and Capitol Hill buzzing about the "bipartisan backlash" to Big Tech
"Washington, hopelessly divided on countless critical issues, has found a common enemy in Big Tech. That bipartisan backlash poses a threat to the epicenter of the decade-long bull market," Matt Egan of CNN Business reports.
Drudge led with a "BUST THE TRUST!" headline for much of the day: | |
House Judiciary to kick off tech probe with its first public hearing next week
CNN's Brian Fung reports: "The House Judiciary Committee's landmark investigation into big tech companies will begin with a public hearing next week on Silicon Valley's impact on local journalism, according to a Democratic aide. The hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. on June 11." Witnesses will include Gene Kimmelman, David Chavern, and Sally Hubbard...
How deepfakes could put disinformation on steroids
Donie O'Sullivan's latest: Next week the House Intelligence Committee will "examine the risks posed by deepfakes, AI technology that can create realistic-looking fake videos, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said Tuesday." Schiff made the news while speaking with CNN DC bureau chief Sam Feist. Details here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Spotify is beginning to test a "podcast playlist feature..." (HotPod)
-- The Bakersfield Californian, "one of the state's last major family-owned newspapers," is changing hands after 122 years. Julia Wick looked into the "mystery owners," and there's a Conrad Black connection... (LAT)
-- Former BuzzFeed reporter Blake Montgomery is joining The Daily Beast to cover tech and Silicon Valley... (Twitter)
-- Former ELLE exec editor Emma Rosenblum "has been named editor-in-chief of BDG's lifestyle brands, including Bustle, Elite Daily, The Zoe Report, and Romper..."
-- Reuters is hosting a Thursday evening event in NYC on the Progression of Pride and "how media coverage of the LGBTQ civil rights movement has evolved since the Stonewall uprising..." (Reuters)
-- On Monday Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an anti-SLAPP bill into law... "Colorado joins nearly 30 states that have adopted measures to curb what are called strategic lawsuits against public participation..." (Fox31 Denver)
Don't call it a streak, but...
Emma Boettcher won her second game of "Jeopardy!" on Tuesday night...
"Chernobyl" turns out to be a big hit for HBO
"HBO's Chernobyl has turned into an unlikely ratings hit," Vulture's Joe Adalian reports -- even more notable because it was scheduled on Mondays, part of the network's new strategy to expand beyond Sundays. "The network says its five-part miniseries, which wrapped Monday night, has to date attracted a cumulative audience of more than 6 million viewers across all HBO platforms. In a sign of strong word-of-mouth, the critically lauded series also saw its linear ratings tick up between each of its broadcasts last month, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the current TV environment. Once final streaming and on-demand numbers get tallied later this month, Chernobyl could even end up reaching roughly as many viewers as last year's Amy Adams–led Sharp Objects." Read on...
-- Andrew Wallenstein responded: "As the competitive field gets seriously crowded, there couldn't be a better time for HBO to demonstrate to the marketplace that its fastball still has zip..."
A record-high rating on IMDb
Now from the Nielsen ratings to the viewers' ratings. The Economist's G. Elliott Morris found this: "Chernobyl" is "the highest-rated television series of all time, according to crowd-sourced reviews on IMDb, a film and television rating site." | | The miniseries has a 9.7 out of 10 on the site. "By the same measure, other leading shows — including comparable historical drama series such as 'The Crown' and 'The People v. O. J. Simpson' (now called 'American Crime Story') — lag behind..."
-- David Simon tweeted: "Man, Chernobyl is one of those periodic booster shots that inoculate us from the morbid self-loathing that accompanies a career in television. What fine, careful work from HBO and all who labored on it."
"Must-Endure TV"
Megan Thomas emails: I thought this piece from Vanity Fair's Joy Press was really interesting. The title: "Chernobyl, When They See Us, and the Era of Must-Endure TV." Press says "bingeing these real-life miniseries means waking up to the nightmare of history..."
| | FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- The filming of a controlled explosion for "Bond 25" resulted in "a minor injury to a crew member outside the 007 stage as well as damage to the set of the super-spy flick..." (L.A. Times)
-- "Season-over-season growth like this would be remarkable at any time, it's virtually unheard of in television today," Sarah Barnett says, touting 87% viewership gains for "Killing Eve..." (Deadline)
-- "The Affair" will end after its fifth season, Showtime announced Tuesday... (TheWrap)
-- A Jurassic World animated series is stomping its way to Netflix... (THR)
Jussie Smollett definitely not returning to "Empire"
Lee Daniels shot down a Variety report on Tuesday and said in no uncertain terms that Jussie Smollett will not be back on the final season of "Empire." Daniels replied to a story that said "Empire" writers were prepping for Smollett to return in the back half of the forthcoming season. "This is not factual. Jussie will NOT be returning to Empire," Daniels tweeted...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
By Lisa Respers France:
-- "When They See Us" has sparked boycott calls against the Central Park 5 case prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who has become a celebrated mystery writer...
-- La La Anthony has joined the cast of "BH90210" and said she's "glad they are bringing some color" to the series...
-- "The Muppet Movie" is moving right along to theaters. It's returning to theaters in honor of the 40th anniversary...
ACLU credits Peter Chernin with "sounding the alarm"
Marianne Garvey emails: Peter Chernin -- who has launched a fund-raising campaign to battle the restrictive anti-abortion laws in Georgia and other states -- has two projects set to start shooting in Georgia, Fox's "Fear Street" trilogy and the Starz drama "P-Valley." Instead of boycotting the states and putting hundreds of people out of work, Chernin is circulating a letter asking Hollywood execs to donate to the ACLU.
Here's what ACLU exec director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement to CNN: "In recent months, seven states, emboldened by President Trump, have taken actions to ban abortion or push it out of reach. This is a top priority for us at ACLU: we've already challenged the bans in Kentucky, Ohio, and Alabama, and we are working breathlessly to ensure that abortion remains legal and accessible to everyone in every state. We need all the help we can muster to keep politicians out of one of the most private and important decisions one can make. Peter Chernin's leadership in Hollywood has been critical to sounding the alarm among industry leaders, who have an important role to play in protecting abortion rights across the country."
FOR THE RECORD, PART SEVEN
-- "Actress Busy Philipps testified before Congress at a hearing about abortion on Tuesday, squaring off briefly with Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert in the process..."
-- A "Punky Brewster" comeback? "Universal Content Productions is in development on a sequel to the 1980s sitcom that starred Soleil Moon Frye as a young girl in foster care," Sandra Gonzalez reports...
-- And last but not least: "Family Guy" is making fun of the college admission scandal with its Emmys For Your Consideration ad. Here it is: | | | Thanks for reading! Send me your feedback, tips, ideas here. See you tomorrow... | | | |
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