| | | | | Exec summary: The World Series is must-see TV... Hannity v. Boehner is heating up... Fox News is premiering two new shows... Facebook is prepping for Capitol Hill... NBC has booked a Mark Halperin accuser for an interview... and BuzzFeed published an allegation against Kevin Spacey... | | Calm before the Mueller storm? | | The banner on CNN as I type this: "First arrest in Mueller probe could come Monday." The network's scoop about the first charges in the Robert Mueller investigation drove the weekend's news cycles...and sent other news outlets scrambling to find out who's being arrested.
As of Sunday night, it's still a mystery... This feels like the calm before some kind of storm... As Trump supporters dread the news and Trump opponents fear that POTUS will fire Mueller...
-- Bakari Sellers tweeted: "Investigations are long. Tomorrow's indictments won't be sexy. Your only talking point should be to let this play out..." | | In the absence of information, @realDonaldTrump's tweets provided fodder for the morning shows. "DO SOMETHING!" he tweeted to his Republican colleagues, referencing various Democratic misdeeds that have been dominating right-wing news sources. It seems to me that Trump is taking his cues from Sean Hannity and other talk shows... Here's our segment about this from Sunday's "Reliable Sources..."
-- Bruce Bartlett's take: "It's a feedback loop of the blind leading the blind. I don't know what to do about it..." | | My essay from Sunday's "Reliable Sources" on CNN: Defending President Trump can be hard to do. So some of his allies in the media don't even bother to try. Instead, they change the subject. The #1 target: Hillary Clinton. This is a campaign of confusion. It is one of the most important things happening in American politics today. Watch the essay here...
-- More from Sunday's "Reliable:" The "issue here is not Hillary Clinton," Carl Bernstein said. "The issue is the Trump campaign, what the Russians did in our election, and so far the president of the United States seems utterly disinterested in whatever the truth of that matter is..." | | Cutting through Christie's spin | | | "The president is not under investigation," Gov. Chris Christie said on "Face the Nation." A CBS staffer tweeted out the comment by saying Christie "confirmed" this. But Christie had no way of knowing. CBS had to post a Twitter correction. On CNN's "State of the Union," Christie said the same thing, and Jake Tapper interjected: "How do you know?" Christie admitted that he didn't know. "I'm making that statement off of the public information that we have already been given..." | | A reminder from Politico's Jake Sherman on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:" "Republicans are going to come back to Washington, you know, Monday, Tuesday, and get swarmed by reporters to answer about the charges..."
-- Later on the show, I said Capitol Hill sometimes seems like the most interesting beat in America right now. CNN's Manu Raju told me some of the secrets of the beat... Video here...
-- CATCH UP ON THE SHOW: Listen to "Reliable" as a podcast, watch the video clips on CNN.com, or read the transcript here... | | Two satirical headlines... | | VF's deep dive into CNN and AT&T | | With AT&T awaiting approval for its acquisition of Time Warner, there's "anxiousness" inside CNN and other parts of the Time Warner business, Joe Pompeo reports in this brand-new Vanity Fair story. He says speculation about CNN president Jeff Zucker's future has been "approaching a fever pitch," given AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's apparent reluctance to express public support for Zucker. Is that because he doesn't want to tick off Trump while Trump's DOJ is reviewing the deal? "If you're Randall," an anonymous exec told Pompeo, "here's what you don't want to do, and everyone's telling you this: don't say something that can become a quote that [Trump] can take and create a problem for you with."
Notably, AT&T did express a new level of support for Zucker -- "a public thumbs-up" -- when Pompeo called for the story. John Stankey, the AT&T exec who is poised to take over Time Warner's portfolio, said: "We don't comment upon anyone's employment at a company we don't yet own. But, as it relates to CNN, it's clearly a great organization, they are having a great year, and Jeff Zucker is doing a terrific job." Read the rest here... | | What will be the new name? | | | Pompeo's story also includes this tidbit: "AT&T settled on a new name for the Time Warner portfolio a few weeks ago, but it's being held close to the vest." Any guesses? | | Speaking of Vanity Fair... | | As the search for a new VF editor continues, "several sources say there is no agreed set of objectives among Conde's editorial executives, senior management and the owning Newhouse family, with each offering starkly competing visions of leadership," The Guardian's Edward Helmore reports. He quotes a source saying "There is no one person who is clearly in command. It's an unwieldy committee trying to come to some agreement..."
-- Dylan Byers tweeted: "The more I hear about Condé Nast search for new Vantity Fair editor the more convinced I am they don't have a clear idea of what they want... To wit, names now being thrown around now range from Janice Min to Andrew Ross Sorkin to Radhika Jones.... etc etc... What's the goal here?" | | Tim Alberta's profile of John Boehner, based on 18 hours of on- the-record interviews with him, is a must-read for political junkies. Toward the end, Boehner says it was "modern-day media, and social media," not Barack Obama, "that kept pushing people further right and further left." He asserts that Mark Levin "went really crazy right" and dragged Sean Hannity "to the dark side" on the radio.
Boehner: "I had a conversation with Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, 'Listen, you're nuts.' We had this really blunt conversation. Things were better for a few months, and then it got back to being the same-old, same-old. Because I wasn't going to be a right-wing idiot."
Hannity's response via Twitter Sunday night: "John were you sober when you said this? That conversation never happened. I'm sorry you are bitter and u failed!" | | -- Ken Belson profiles NFL PR guru and "wartime general" Joe Lockhart... (NYT)
-- Mike Shields on how the Hallmark Channel is "owning Christmas..." Yes, the holiday movies have already started airing... (BI)
-- WashPost's Ed O'Keefe tweets: "JOURNALISM GETS RESULTS: Puerto Rico's utility cancels controversial contract with Montana firm..." (WashPost) | | Two new Fox News shows on Monday | | | Maybe this is good timing, with the impending Mueller news? Or maybe not. "The Ingraham Angle" will premiere Monday at 10pm... and "Fox News @ Night" with Shannon Bream will follow at 11pm... The new lineup ensures that Fox is live til midnight ET on weeknights, just like CNN and MSNBC... | | Two days of Google, Facebook, Twitter testimony | | A Senate subcommittee will hear from Twitter, Facebook and Google's lawyers on Tuesday afternoon... And then the same reps will testify at a Senate Intel Committee hearing on Wednesday morning...
-- So: Will we finally see the Russia-linked FB ads this week?
-- "Facebook owes Americans the truth" -- Donie O'Sullivan notes that this petition has 70,000+ signatures... | | Media week ahead calendar | | -- Tuesday: Happy Halloween!
-- Tuesday 8:20pm ET: World Series game 6...
-- Wednesday: See you at the Video Everywhere Summit in NYC...
-- Wednesday: NYT earnings before the bell, Facebook earnings after the bell...
-- Thursday after the bell: Apple earnings...
-- Sunday: NYC marathon... | | "Suddenly, he's Walter Cronkite" | | | That's the tagline on this week's cover of NYMag... | | I highly recommend reading the full Q&A. "There's definitely been a shift in my feeling about the country over the last year or so," Kimmel says. "I feel frustrated. I don't know — maybe a lot of it is media hysteria, but I go to bed worried and I wake up worried, and I honestly don't know if things are going to be okay. I worry that we're going to look back at Donald Trump almost fondly because someone worse will come after him."
Kimmel adds: "His election was shocking. It makes me question everything..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Margaret Sullivan's latest: in order to truly address the issue of sexual harassment in media, newsrooms need to address "the deep-seated gender inequality" they suffer from, which she says "is at the root of this mess..." (WashPost)
-- The Verge's first tech survey asked 1,520 people in the US how they feel about big tech companies. They went from being perceived as "friendly giants" to "insidious monopolies..." (The Verge)
-- FiveThirtyEight surveyed readers on the definitive ranking of Halloween candy... (FiveThirtyEight) | | NBC cutting ties with Mark Halperin? | | Over the weekend, Showtime said that if it brings back "The Circus," Mark Halperin will not be involved. His next book and the HBO miniseries based on the book have been scrapped, so the only remaining question mark is NBC, which said a few days ago that Halperin was out as a contributor "until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood."
"We're waiting to hear from NBC," Oliver Darcy said on Sunday's "Reliable." "We'll see if they do something this week..." | | Halperin accuser on "Megyn Kelly Today" | | | Megyn Kelly's 9am show is continuing its focus on the harassment issue. On Monday, she'll have the first TV interview with Eleanor McManus, who wrote this CNN.com op-ed about alleged harassment by Halperin... Corey Feldman is also booked on both "Today" and "Megyn Kelly Today..." | | The weekend's other developments | | -- Breaking on Sunday night: In this interview with BuzzFeed, Anthony Rapp, one of the stars of "Star Trek: Discovery," alleges that Kevin Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in 1986. Rapp was 14 at the time. Spacey did not respond to BF's repeated requests for comment...
-- Sunday night development via the NYT's Sydney Ember: "Hamilton Fish, publisher of The New Republic, is taking a leave of absence pending an investigation into recent complaints by women..." (Twitter)
-- ICYMI: Ronan Farrow's latest must-read came out Friday night... (TNY)
-- "Lionsgate executive Andrew Kramer's recent exit from the independent studio followed allegations that he harassed a subordinate," THR reported Sunday... Kramer previously worked at Weinstein Co... (THR)
-- Actor Tyler Cornell has filed a complaint about former APA agent Tyler Grasham with the LAPD... (THR)
-- Jodi Kantor tweets: "Just before our Weinstein investigation was published, his camp offered Rose McGowan a million bucks in hush money." She's linking to this Susan Dominus story... (NYT) | | Journalists playing catch-up? | | The past three and a half weeks' worth of sexual misconduct revelations have been remarkable. But it shouldn't have taken this long, Jessica Valenti said on Sunday's "Reliable." When I asked if this is a belated reaction, she said it's "extraordinarily belated."
While journalists are investigating allegations involving prominent men in various industries -- she said some women remain afraid -- "we've seen over and over again that women are retaliated against in the workplace." More... | | | "The women found each other on Twitter in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. They posted about how the Weinstein allegations dredged up memories of James Toback, a writer and director they accused of preying on women. They liked each other's tweets, replied to them, and reached out in direct messages. Soon, they formed a private group message to share their stories." Read Emanuella Grinberg and Janet DiGiacomo's story about the "sisterhood" that exposed Toback's alleged wrongdoing... | | -- If this is truly a watershed moment, "the victims will have second chances, too," Sarah Ellison says...
-- Dejà -vu? A good find from Bill Grueskin, who tweeted a 1976 WSJ article that said, "The wall of silence surrounding sexual harassment is gradually crumbling..."
-- In this piece, Ezra Klein reflects on how men like Halperin and Leon Wieseltier shaped America's political narrative. "We routinely underestimate what it means that our political system has been constructed and interpreted by men," including male pundits... | | Roger Stone banned by Twitter | | | This wouldn't be newsworthy, except that Roger Stone is a top ally of POTUS. Twitter zapped Stone's account on Saturday after he went on a threatening tirade against Don Lemon, Ana Navarro and other CNNers. He told Politico he intends to sue Twitter. We'll see about that... | | Wu: "How Twitter Killed the First Amendment" | | | Brian Lowry emails: The NYT ran an interesting op-ed over the weekend from law professor Tim Wu, basically asking whether the Twitter/social-media age requires changes in the way we think about the First Amendment. The money line: "No defensible free-speech tradition accepts harassment and threats as speech, treats foreign propaganda campaigns as legitimate debate or thinks that social-media bots ought to enjoy constitutional protection." What's lacking in the argument, seemingly, is any practical way to address that... | | Rave reviews for Tony Romo | | | Tony Romo is "the rare NFL broadcaster who has received both massive fan and industry praise," SI's Richard Deitsch writes. CBS producer Jim Rikhoff tells him "this has exceeded everyone's expectations... Tony has real natural ability doing this. Sure, I think we laid a good groundwork but he does some things that are so natural that you can't teach..." | | "60 Minutes," or 14 minutes? | | Why is Jeff Fager, the exec producer of "60 Minutes," so confident in the franchise's digital future? "Because our stories play so well on your mobile device," he told me in an interview. The typical story is 12 to 14 minutes -- suitable for viewing on a smartphone -- something that Don Hewitt could not have predicted when he launched the newsmag.
We ran a portion of the interview on Sunday's program... But you can listen to the entire interview via our "Reliable Sources" podcast... And Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman has a recap of the interview here... | | Q's about the "Ray Donovan" season finale? | | | Brian Lowry emails: If you watched Sunday night's season finale of "Ray Donovan," you likely have questions. Here's my postmortem with showrunner David Hollander that (hopefully) will answer most of the Q's... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
