How to cover the ICE raids
President Trump continues to talk up the prospect of ICE raids. "It starts on Sunday, and they're going to take people out and they're going to bring them back to their countries," Trump told reporters on Friday.
Of course, as WaPo's Nick Miroff noted, "ICE officials have insisted for weeks they would not disclose sensitive law enforcement operations. By.blurting it out, again, Trump has blown any pretense of cover and will leave agents hard-pressed to show 'success.'" Indeed, a senior admin official told CNN's Jim Acosta there was some frustration inside DHS following Trump's comments on Friday... The official described the president's comments as "head-scratching" and said they could potentially jeopardize the operation that's already been postponed before.
But Trump's trumpeting of the raids is not head-scratching when viewed through a media prism. He wants the attention and law enforcement action and ensuing anger -- all for political reasons.
"Trump "governs through spectacle. What could be more spectacular than a massive nationwide raid against undocumented immigrants?" Matt Ford wrote for TNR on Friday. "Set aside the morality or ethics for a moment, as the president regularly does. Sunday's planned arrests of more than 2,000 families are a pitch-perfect sop to his base as he gears up for reelection. Cable news will buzz for days with footage of immigrants being apprehended and ICE agents banging on doors. It's the most expensive campaign ad in American history."
The impacts are being felt already: Undocumented immigrants are "bracing for the worst," CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet wrote... She quoted a migrant worker who's "been picking up extra work to fill in for colleagues who he says are too scared to leave home after hearing about the possibility of raids on TV."
All of this raises some obvious questions for the press...
"A campaign event" that "claims lives as collateral damage"
CJR's Kyle Pope wrote Friday: "This presents the same problem inherent in covering so many of Trump's provocations, from the standoffs with Iran and North Korea to the looming trade war with China: all of these challenges are real, and potentially epochal, yet all have been stoked and embellished to serve the political needs of a very insecure president. How do you cover a story that is playing out mainly so that Trump can win kudos from 'Fox & Friends,' while also taking seriously its complex, often dire, consequences?"
Pope added: "What makes this all so difficult for reporters is that Trump's actions can not be dismissed as media gambits; the drama unfolding merits urgent attention. Odds are that there will be even more pain as a result of Sunday's raids. Journalism's job must be to frame the immigration crackdown as a campaign event—not a policy response—that claims lives as collateral damage. Trump's manipulation of a crisis is the point. That is the heartbreaking story that needs to be told."
Mueller day delayed
The new date is July 24. Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff said in a joint statement that the hearings "had been pushed back at the former special counsel's request, and that Mueller had agreed to appear for an extended period..." CNN's Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb have more here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Tropical Storm Barry "is expected to grow into a hurricane by the time it makes landfall" Saturday... (CNN)
-- CNN's "New Day" is starting an hour early, 5am ET, for added storm coverage...
-- The Weather Channel says it is planning to carry "around-the-clock live coverage of Barry until at least 9pm on Sunday..."
-- The staff at Poynter is offering "advice and tips for journalists in the field" who are bracing for the storm... (Poynter)
Facebook facing $5 billion punishment
Emily Glazer's WSJ scoop landed at 3:54pm ET: "The Federal Trade Commission voted this week to approve a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook over a long-running probe into the tech giant's privacy missteps, according to people familiar with the matter."
WaPo's Tony Romm soon matched it. The deal "could result in unprecedented government oversight of the company," he noted.
Reactions: "While this settlement would mark by far the largest penalty against a tech company, far in excess of the $22.5 million the FTC fined Google in 2012, investors nonetheless appeared to breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn't bigger. Facebook stock ended Friday up nearly 2% after the Journal report was released," Seth Fiegerman's CNN Business story noted...
-- While the price tag IS huge, Scott Galloway framed it this way on Twitter: "the Facebook 'record' fine amounts to 6% of cash on hand, or 2 weeks of revenue..."
"Social media summit" aftermath...
Charlie Warzel's recap of Thursday's spectacle at the W.H.: "The president has an election to win. Thursday's summit was a public embrace of a group he thinks are powerful allies. The summit suggests that 2016's meme army was just proof of concept for an information war in 2020. Whatever is coming, we're not prepared."
This Sunday on "Reliable Sources"
IS the press prepared? We'll get into that and more with Renee DiResta, Robby Soave, Jane Coaston, Oliver Darcy, Samantha Vinograd, and Katie Rogers... Plus, highlights from my interview with Alex Harris, Mark Katches and Julie Anderson about the Florida Climate Reporting Network...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Journalist Manuel Duran, a Salvadoran citizen who fled to the U.S. in 2006, "has been released after spending 15 months in ICE detention..." (CNN)
-- Remember Kim Darroch? Quoting from Susan Glasser's latest for The New Yorker: "Washington in the Trump era can often feel like a sort of bumper-car ride of competing news cycles, devolving into a pileup of rival controversies, scandals, and social-media contretemps..." (New Yorker)
-- Tim Alberta is on Sunday's "Meet the Press..." The early leaks and excerpts have his book "American Carnage" at No. 4 on the Amazon best sellers list right now, ahead of book's Tuesday pub date...
-- Paul Ryan's candid comments to Alberta about POTUS -- "I'm telling you, he didn't know anything about government" -- caused Trump to unload on Ryan on Friday. "Maybe he gets paid for that, who knows," Trump mused. No, Alberta said... (AP)
| | Acosta's resignation and the power of dogged reporting
Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on Saturday. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who negotiated the 2008 plea deal with Epstein, resigned on Friday.
Former federal prosecutor/NBC analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted: "Let's all thank remarkable reporter" Julie Brown at the Miami Herald "for fighting for truth, justice & the rights of crime victims! It's undeniable that her dogged reporting resulted in the downfall of Labor Secretary Acosta & served as a catalyst for new criminal charges for Epstein."
--> Brown's latest on Friday evening: "Just days after the Miami Herald published a series about how accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein manipulated state and federal prosecutors to obtain a lenient plea bargain, Epstein wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to two potential accomplices involved in his sex case from a decade earlier, federal authorities announced in a court filing Friday.
CNN's graphic...
| | Oliver Darcy emails: With all the chaos that the Trump admin has introduced to the news cycle, it can sometimes be easy to miss the forest for the trees. Which is why graphics like this can be so important. Yes, Acosta's resignation is a big deal. And yes, it should be covered on its own merits.
But the BIG story is the pattern of disarray and dysfunction inside this administration. When viewers see just how many administration departures there have been, and when they hear statistics noting that Trump has lost 13 cabinet secretaries in the first two years compared to Obama's zero, the larger message is conveyed...
What this poll tells us about Dem voters' media preferences
The newest NBC/WSJ poll focusing on Democratic primary voters includes a couple of interesting Qs about media consumption. (PDF here.) Fully 51% of Dem primary voters said they watched/listened to all or some of the debates last month. Another 29% said they didn't watch the debates, but "paid close attention to news stories about them."
Another Q: "When it comes to staying up with the news, which of these news sources, if any, do you watch or consume regularly?" Multiple answers were accepted. 52% of Dem primary voters said they watch broadcast news regularly; 47% said CNN; 41% said MSNBC; and 18% said Fox News. Only 28% said they consume "progressive or liberal news outlets, blogs or websites" regularly...
TNR says "My Mayor Pete Problem" post was "inappropriate"
The New Republic was rightly roasted on Friday for publishing a piece by Dale Peck titled "My Mayor Pete Problem." Kurt Bardella summed up the reactions this way: "WTF is this garbage?"
In response to my Q's on Friday evening, editor Chris Lehmann said, "The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive." I asked what's being done about it, and didn't immediately hear back...
Fox responds to report detailing Tyrus' "lewd" texts to Brit McHenry
Oliver Darcy emails: Fox News responded on Friday to Yashar Ali's scoop in HuffPost about Fox Nation host Tyrus. You'll remember, Ali reported on Thursday night, citing four sources, that Tyrus had "sent lewd and inappropriate text messages" to his former co-host Britt McHenry. Included among them, according to Ali, were, "Just pull your boobs out now why don't you. Just grin and bare it" and "keep being negative and I'll send you another dick pic."
The network said (again) on Friday that the matter "was immediately and thoroughly investigated by an outside law firm that was charged with providing us with independent factual findings and recommendations for action based on all of the evidence." Fox's statement added, "We have consistently done this in other employee matters of this nature. All protocols were followed and the recommendations we received were appropriate and promptly implemented. We respect the confidentiality of our employees and their involvement in any HR process and therefore will not comment on the results of the investigation."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- The NYT says it is disappointed by Starbucks' decision to stop selling newspapers, but "we're confident that given our wide retail distribution, readers will have no trouble finding" the paper nearby... (CNN Business)
-- "Jon Stewart says the fight is not over for 9/11 first responders after the House of Representatives passed legislation Friday to extend funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund until 2090..." (CNN)
-- This 11-minute NYT video is delightful: "Bob Ross painted more than 1,000 landscapes for his television show — so why are they so hard to find? We solve one of the internet's favorite little mysteries." Additional text here... (NYT)
Pro-KKK editor sells his paper and retires
"The longtime owner and editor of a small Alabama newspaper that called for a revival of the Ku Klux Klan has sold the publication and retired, months after igniting a firestorm with the editorial," The AP's Jay Reeves reports. "Goodloe Sutton, 80, no longer has any role with The Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden, said Tommy Wells, the new owner and operator." More here...
Recommended reads for your weekend 👓
-- Matthew Ball is out with a REDEF Original about the streaming wars. He summed it up this way: "In sum, (1) None of it played out as expected; (2) No-one really ever tried to replicate Netflix; (3) How Apple, Amazon, Hulu, AT&T & Disney secretly have the same biz model; (4) Boo to niches." Read!
-- Jonah Weiner also has a big streaming wars piece in this weekend's NYT Mag...
-- Irin Carmon's profile of Shari Redstone is titled "Last Woman Standing:" She was "belittled by Viacom and CBS executives and insulted by her own father," and now she "sits atop a $30 billion media empire..."
-- Check out pod pro Nick Quah's "Midyear Check-In." He says he's "still processing the two big news events that have defined the year in podcasting so far: Spotify's massive buys into podcasting and Luminary's bungled roll-out..."
-- BTW, The Verge's Ashley Carman looked into Nielsen's plans to get into the "podcast data collection business..."
-- "For many queer writers, Pride Month presents a dilemma," Jake Pitre writes in CJR, because "some assignments reek of tokenism..."
-- Meet Matt Zurbo, the writer and adventurer with plans to tackle 365 children's books in as many days...
Over $100 million in annual profit for "Dateline?"
In Sunday's LA Times, Stephen Battaglio takes a look at the "thriving business" of "Dateline" -- the headline: "How Keith Morrison and 'Dateline' became true crime sex symbols."
-- The financials: "While NBC won't reveal financials for 'Dateline,' research firm Standard Media Index says the program took in $127.3 million in network and syndication ad revenue in 2018, up slightly from 2017. With each hour costing less than $400,000 to produce, by some estimates the program is generating over $100 million in annual profit."
-- And the fandom: "Morrison believes the cult following has extended his career, although he finds the idolatry a bit terrifying. 'I'm 72 years old and there are kids coming up to me saying, 'I loooove you,'' he said."
Google announces News tab redesign
| | Katie Pellico writes: Look out... Google has begun rolling out a new layout for News tab search results that, per the tweet announcement from Google News Initiative, will aim to make "publisher names more prominent" and arrange "articles more clearly to help you find the news you need."
>> Among the first complaints: Journalist Tom Angell tweeted back that the new "card" layout does away with "purple links to denote what we've already clicked," making it "much harder for researchers and journalists to scan news search results."
Questions for YouTube's chief product officer
Kaya Yurieff emails: I interviewed YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan, YouTube's No. 2 exec, at VidCon on Thursday. The story + video is up now. I talked with Mohan about YouTube's plans for children's content on the platform. YouTube has been accused of aiding pedophiles in finding clips of young girls and serving up recommendations for extremist content after users, including kids, watched innocent videos.
"Nothing is more important than making sure that children are protected on our platform," Mohan told me. "We're always going to err on the side of protecting children when it comes to any of these product or policy decisions on our platform."
But it doesn't sound like YouTube would go as far as moving all children's content to its more heavily moderated YouTube Kids app. "One of the fastest growing surfaces for where YouTube is consumed is actually in the living room on the television screen. That's often a place where families, parents and children will watch content together," Mohan said. "That's an experience that we want to continue to make available to families."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- The Association of Magazine Media "is shuttering its NYC headquarters and relocating to Washington, DC," Keith Kelly reports. Tom Harty: "We're doubling down on our government affairs. We need to be putting more resources against that..." (NYPost)
-- After a four-month search, Netflix has found its next CMO: Jackie Lee-Joe, the former chief marketing officer of BBC Studios..." (Variety)
| | Lowry recommends "The Farewell"
Brian Lowry emails: Awkwafina shows off her dramatic side in "The Farewell," a splendid independent production from writer-director Lulu Wang that professes to be "based on an actual lie" — that is, a family hiding a terminal diagnosis from an elderly woman, and concocting an elaborate excuse for everyone to go visit her before she dies. It's a standout offering in what's essentially a take-a-breather weekend at the box-office between the debuts of "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and "The Lion King..."
"Big Little Lies" turmoil
Brian Lowry emails: Indiewire's look at "Big Little Lies" season 2 — and the alleged wresting of creative control from director Andrea Arnold — quickly became the talk of the town on Friday. The lack of on-the-record confirmation complicates the story, but it's going to raise some uncomfortable questions for HBO and the program's stars/producers...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- R. Kelly back behind bars: He briefly appeared in a Chicago federal court on Friday. He will "remain in custody until next week after he was arrested on two new separate grand jury indictments alleging he abused girls and women for years," CNN's team reports... (CNN)
-- Poynter VP Kelly McBride: "'Stranger Things' nails the '80s — except for female journalists and small towns..." (Poynter)
-- HGTV's "Windy City Rehab" is moving ahead with its second season, "despite the City of Chicago suspending host Alison Victoria Gramenos — known on TV as Alison Victoria — from filing more work permits after numerous code violations," per Tony Maglio and Reid Nakamura... (TheWrap)
The rocky 2019 box office could soar in the next few months
Frank Pallotta emails: Hollywood is in a precarious position as it heads into the second half of 2019 with a sluggish box office that is down roughly 8.6% compared to this time last year. The second half COULD rebound in a big way thanks to franchise films mostly starring The Rock ("Hobbs & Shaw," "Jumanji: The Next Level"), intriguing Oscar bait ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," "Little Women"), and of course, Disney ("Frozen 2," "Star Wars").
--> Shawn Robbins: "It's important that the industry not have to rely on Disney to do the heavy lifting because what they've done for the past two years isn't likely to happen again in 2020. 'Avengers: Endgame' was a cinematic event, and cinematic events aren't guaranteed to happen every single year." Read on...
| | | Thank you for reading! Send me your feedback anytime. See you Sunday... | | | |
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