EXEC SUMMARY: Hello there, Reliable Sources family. This is Oliver Darcy, filling in for Brian Stelter, who is getting ready for baby No. 2. Stand by for news! In the meantime, email me your feedback or find me on Twitter. Now, to the news...
Tucker Carlson goes on vacation | | Facing mounting controversy for declaring the very real problem of white supremacy in America to be a "hoax," Tucker Carlson announced at the end of his Wednesday night Fox News show that he will be taking a vacation.
"By the way," he said, "I am taking several days off -- headed to the wilderness to fish with my son." Carlson added, "Politics is important, fishing with your son, sometimes more important. So I'm doing it."
Fox insists vacation had been in the works
I spoke to a Fox News spokesperson shortly after Carlson announced that he was heading out on vacation. The Fox spokesperson said the vacation had been in the works before Carlson had made his controversial remarks. The spokesperson added that Carlson will return back on the air from his vacation on August 19.
But there is a long history of Fox hosts going on vacation amid controversy
There is, of course, a long history of Fox hosts heading out on vacation as they become engulfed in controversy for inflammatory comments.
-- Laura Ingraham announced she was going on vacation in March 2018 after mocking Parkland survivor and gun control activist David Hogg...
-- Sean Hannity went on vacation in May 2017 after losing advertisers for promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy theory...
-- Jesse Watters headed out on vacation in April 2017 after making a comment widely criticized as lewd about Ivanka Trump...
-- Bill O'Reilly went -- and never returned from -- a vacation in April 2017 after NYT reported he had settled five sexual harassment allegations for millions of dollars...
Board stays silent
I reached out to Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Anne Dias Roland Hernandez, and Paul Ryan -- the people who make up the Fox Corporation board -- on Wednesday to see if they had any comments about the bold untruths Carlson conveyed to his audience Tuesday night. I did not get any comment back...
-- Fox spokesperson Hope Hicks did not provide a comment on behalf of either Rupert Murdoch or Lachlan Murdoch...
-- Roland Hernandez answered my call, but when I started to ask my question, abruptly hung up. He did not reply to a follow-up text message...
-- A representative for Paul Ryan referred me to Fox. Hicks did not provide me a comment on his behalf...
-- Anne Dias did not respond to requests for comment
-- And the seventh member of Fox's board, Jacques Nasser, could not be reached because I could not find a working telephone or email for him.
Meanwhile, Fox News itself stayed silent on Wednesday, not releasing any statements about the controversy...
Carlson tells critics: "Calm down"
Before announcing his vacation, Carlson addressed the controversy surrounding his remarks. "We want to take a second to pass on a sincere message to official Washington, and particularly to our colleagues on other cable news channels, and it's this: Please, for the sake of the nation, calm down," Carlson said.
Carlson then listed other problems facing America, such as a "fading middle class" and the national debt. Carlson added, "This is not a white supremacist country plotting the slaughter of its own people. It's a kind country full of decent people of all races who like all people everywhere make bad decisions from time to time. But they mean well and they generally try their best."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Susan Rice was asked about Carlson's comments by Wolf Blitzer during a "Situation Room" appearance. "He is a disgrace," she bluntly responded... (CNN)
-- Bad actors are spreading misinformation using messaging apps. Jane Lytvynenko explains how "disinformation spread across places the public couldn't see" following the El Paso and Dayton shootings... (BuzzFeed News)
-- Radio giant iHeartMedia is making six of its popular podcasts available in Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, French, and German... (NYT)
-- David Shing is departing Verizon Media... (AdWeek)
White House had "ideological blinders" on to threat of supremacist violence
Tucker Carlson isn't the only person who hasn't taken the threat of white nationalist terrorism seriously. Jake Tapper, citing sources, scooped on Wednesday that "White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats...a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy."
>> One senior source told Tapper: "The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on."
Trump attacks critics while visiting shooting sites
"TRUMP GRIPES ABOUT HIS CRITICS WHILE AT SCENE OF TRAGEDY." That's the not so surprising, but still unsettling, chyron on "CNN Tonight" as I'm writing this newsletter.
While visiting the victims of the Dayton and El Paso shooting, Trump blasted his critics. On Twitter, he (falsely) accused Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley of misrepresenting his visit to the Dayton hospital. And he concluded his trip by jabbing journalists, claiming the media tried to "disparage" him, but that it "just didn't work."
About that Dayton hospital visit...
White House social media director Dan Scavino claimed on Wednesday that Trump was "treated like a Rock Star" inside the Dayton hospital he visited. But, as WaPo's Ashley Parker noted, the press actually has "no idea if this is true" because reporters in the traveling press pool "were not allowed to witness anything."
Press secretary Stephanie Grisham told reporters that journalists were not permitted to accompany the president during his visit because it was not a "photo op." But then the White House posted photos of Trump visiting and posing with hospital staff and shooting victims on social media, and even blasted the photos out via email.
So I asked Grisham: If this wasn't a photo op, why did the White House blast out photos of the visit? She told me in an email that "having a group of 20 press people inside patient rooms or in hallways filled with working doctors and nurses was not feasible for the sake of a photo op, and could have been quite overwhelming for the patients, their families, and the staff." Grisham also noted to me that "it is not unusual for hospital visits to be closed to the press."
Grisham has a point. It's not unusual for these types of things to be closed to the press, and having the entire traveling pool follow Trump throughout the hospital would have been a distraction. That said, it seems to me that a good middle ground might have been for the White House to have arranged a brief pool spray as Trump visited hospital staff and first responders, and then left the visits with patients closed to the press.
Trump insults Shep Smith (again)
Trump, while aboard Air Force One flying from the mass shooting site at Dayton to the mass shooting site at El Paso, must have been watching Shepard Smith's show on Wednesday. Smith seems to get under Trump's skin more than any other Fox host. The president again slammed him on Twitter, saying that he found watching CNN to be "better" than watching Smith's program. Trump added that "actually whenever possible" he tunes into the far-right One America News Network.
>> Smith responded after a commercial break: "Good afternoon Mr. President. It's nice to have you with us."
"We have to be better on this. Because the problem is literally killing us"
CNN on Wednesday night hosted a special town hall hosted by Chris Cuomo, titled, "America Under Assault: The Guns Crisis." After hearing from experts and those who have experienced gun violence first-hand, Cuomo ended the program noting that any change that will take place will start from decisions made by everyday citizens.
Talking about Trump, Cuomo said, "He isn't going to solve the problem." Cuomo instead implored the audience to "demand your leaders do their damn jobs," noting "all major movements in this country start with you." And Cuomo concluded with strong remarks: "We have to be better on this. Because the problem is literally killing us."
Time's cover story
Time magazine will roll out a big package on gun violence Thursday morning. I'm told it will feature essays from Bill Clinton, Jon Meacham, Julissa Arce, David French, and more.
In a letter to readers, Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal writes that "doing nothing in the face of repeated mass murder in our society is indefensible." The cover story will be available here at 7 a.m. ET...
White House to host online extremism summit
The White House said on Wednesday that, following the El Paso and Dayton shootings, it will host a summit on online extremism. "The White House has invited internet and technology companies for a discussion on violent extremism online," White House spokesman Judd Deere said. "The staff-led meeting will take place Friday and include senior administration officials along with representatives of a range of companies."
A list of the participants wasn't immediately available, Kevin Liptak and Donie O'Sullivan reported for CNN's story. A source told them that tech companies expect the conversation to be partly centered on initiatives aimed at combatting online extremism. Trump is not expected to attend.
Anti-conservative bias executive order?
Meanwhile... Politico's Margaret McGill and Daniel Lippman reported Wednesday that the White House is "circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies." The story didn't contain details about the contents of the order, and some reporters were skeptical on how serious the draft was. NYT technology columnist Charlie Warzel wrote on Twitter, "feel like it's safe to ignore this until it's something more than a headline with no details."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- On Joe Rogan's podcast, Bernie Sanders criticized the current format for the Democratic debates as "demeaning"... (The Hill)
-- Dean Baquet discussed NYT's widely criticized front page headline with Lizzie O'Leary... (The Atlantic)
-- Politico reports that the Daily Mail has hired antitrust lobbyists. Why? Are they mulling a merger or acquisition as Politico wondered? The publication's spokesperson didn't respond to Politico's request for comment... (Politico)
USA Today evacuated after reports of man with weapon
The offices of USA Today, and its publisher Gannett, were evacuated on Wednesday after reports of a man with a weapon. But, thankfully, it all ended up being a "non-event," in the words of Fairfax County Police Chief Col. Edwin C. Roessler Jr.
Roessler said that police had received a phone call reporting an ex-employee had entered the building with a weapon. But, the police chief added, "We do not have any evidence that a crime occurred." Jessica Schneider, Jessica Estepa, and Brian Stelter have all the details in their story...
Paper's journalists covered evacuation in real-time
As the journalists at USA Today were busy evacuating their offices, they were also -- impressively -- busy reporting out the story on the security incident. Soon after word got out that police were responding to the Gannett building, USA Today posted a story online. The story, bylined by Tom Brook, Kevin Johnson, and Ryan Miller, was continuously updated in real-time throughout the day.
A scary scene
While everything turned out OK, it was still a frightening scene for journalists inside the building, whose nerves were likely on edge given the recent pair of deadly mass shootings.
USA Today's story described the scene like this: "Alarms sounded inside the building early Wednesday afternoon as police squad cars, firetrucks and ambulances converged on the scene. Law enforcement officers with rifles and body armor searched stairwells and a helicopter hovered overhead as they escorted hundreds of employees out of the building."
>> Reporter Taylor Maycan tweeted: "I never expected to be on the receiving end of a call from my parents — breathless, panicked + completely terrified — asking if I'm alive and OK. And I never want to be again."
De Blasio faces off with Sean Hannity
| | Bill de Blasio squared off with Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening, and the one thing that stood out the most to me: De Blasio seemed to be having a REALLY good time. Despite having strongly critiqued Rupert Murdoch's media empire in the past, de Blasio was often all smiles while debating Hannity on a variety of issues. As NYT's Michael Grynbaum observed, "De Blasio seems happier sparring with Hannity than he does at a typical Blue Room presser."
That's not to say that de Blasio didn't go after Fox while on the network. He did accuse the network of trying "too often" to "distort people" from the issues. "Too much of the time what Fox and NewsCorp do is try and take people's minds off the fact they are being screwed economically by the one percent," de Blasio said. But it was striking how much fun he seemed to have while on Fox.
WaPo's mammoth correction
You've probably never seen a correction quite like this one. On Wednesday, WaPo appended a massive correction to a July 23 story by freelancer Korsha Wilson about black families trying to hold onto farmland from their ancestors.
Washingtonian magazine editor Andrew Beaujon observed the correction was "gruesome," writing, "It's 579 words long, a little more than a fifth of the length of the revised article. It has 15 bullet points. In print, it's so long it has to jump from the first page of the Food section to the fourth."
Marty Baron: "We are embarrassed"
I asked a WaPo spokesperson for details on what happened. The spokesperson passed along a statement from executive editor Mary Baron. Baron said, "We are embarrassed by the widespread errors in this freelance article. We have published a detailed correction of each error and updated the story based on re-reporting by Post staff."
I pressed the WaPo spokesperson for more information about the errors. When did WaPo learn about them? How long did it take to fix? How did they occur in the first place? The spokesperson, however, told me it didn't have "more to share" beyond Baron's statement and what appeared in the correction.
Breitbart's audience dwindles 72%
When Trump was elected president, Breitbart hoped to grow into an established publication. Instead, Breitbart's relevance and traffic have plunged. The Wrap's Lindsey Ellefson, citing ComScore data, reported Wednesday that the far-right website's traffic has dropped about 72% since Trump took office in January 2017.
So what's caused the drop? Former spokesperson Kurt Bardella floated this theory: "Fox News programming during this time of Trump mirrors what Breitbart homepages looked like pre-Trump. Fox has gone full-tilt Breitbart and in the process made Breitbart irrelevant."
>> Related reading: I wrote about how Breitbart had lost signifiant influence back in January 2018...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- "The US government's creation of a database that resulted in reporters, attorneys, and advocates being questioned at the border is under a more expansive investigation than previously reported..." (BuzzFeed News)
-- CBS Digital executive VP Christy Tanner talks to Variety about CBSN... (Variety)
-- "Instagram's lax privacy practices let a trusted partner track millions of users' physical locations, secretly save their stories, and flout its rules..." (Business Insider)
-- ABC News remembers Peter Jennings, who died at 67 on August 7, 2005... (Twitter)
Pacific Standard to shut down
"Today is an extremely difficult day, the worst day -- and I'm heart-broken and devastated." That's how Pacific Standard Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Jackson broke the news on Twitter that the publication will be shut down. "We learned this morning, without any warning, that our primary funder is cutting off all charitable giving and that our board is shutting down @PacificStand, effective next Friday," Jackson explained.
Jackson said the publication, since its founding in 2008, has published 20,929 articles, and worked with 2,729 freelancers. "We reached tens of millions of people every year; produced podcasts and nearly 50 stunning print magazines; hosted events and panels and dinners to encourage industry collaboration; and partnered with dozens of others to promote and support their reporting efforts; and lots more," Jackson said. NiemanLab's Christine Schmidt has details here...
Governing magazine also announces it will soon close
"After 32 years, the magazine of record for state and local government will discontinue operations." In a post on their website, Governing magazine publisher Mark Flunkhouser, Zach Patton, and Elizabeth Daigneau announced with a "very heavy heart" that the publication will cease to exist after this fall.
"Governing has proven to be unsustainable as a business in today's media environment," they explained. "We will cease publication of the monthly print magazine after September, and we will be ramping down our web presence and the rest of our operations over the next few months." More info here...
"Journalism in Iran nears extinction"
That was the headline on Jason Rezaian's latest piece for WaPo. Rezaian wrote that "the Iranian political establishment is going to new lengths to silence journalistic voices in attempts to present a unified message of resistance to the world."
For instance, he reported, citing sources, that the country's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has inexplicably "stopped granting permits to journalists working for foreign media." Rezaian explained, "This is a familiar strategy employed by authoritarian regimes like Iran's, to intimidate and encourage self-censorship among foreign correspondents."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By An Phung:
-- NYT has amassed an all-time high of 4.7 million paid subscriptions for print and digital… (NYT)
-- Cosmopolitan's Andrea Stanley met with a top-secret investigator who has made it her mission to stop violent, large-scale attacks by infiltrating online hate groups. This is a must read…(Cosmo)
-- The Obamas are settling into their roles as Netflix producers…(THR)
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Emmy Awards will not have a host this year
"Taking a cue from the Oscars, this year's Emmy Awards will be host-less," Whitney Friedlander reported for CNN.com. "The September Primetime Emmy Awards will not have a master of ceremonies, said Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier on Wednesday. The decision was somewhat influenced by this year's Academy Awards, which went without an emcee for the first time since 1989."
"BH90210" brings meta and messy take to Fox revival
"After various reboots and revivals that seemed content simply to just recirculate the title, give 'BH90210' credit for trying something a little different," Brian Lowry writes in his review of the revival. "That doesn't mean this meta 'Let's get the gang together and put on a show!' exercise works entirely, but as a six-week 'event,' it's at least a modest commitment to see how much life there is in the old zip code."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Nicholas Cage granted a wild interview to NYT Magazine...
-- Disney Channel star Joshua Rush is "an out and proud bisexual man"...
-- Cameron Diaz isn't telling us what she's working on...
Disney+ raises the bar
Brian Lowry emails: A CNBC story with the headline "Analyst lays out six reasons why the new Disney streaming service will eat Netflix's lunch" strikes me as premature, to say the least. But the competitive price point that Disney is offering for the bundled Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ certainly raises the bar for the other studios trying to squeeze their way into the streaming game.
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