| | | | | Exec summary: Scroll down for details about Ryan Lizza's new role... the NYT's fete for Arthur Sulzberger, Jr... and Brian Lowry's review of "Ocean's 8..." | | Former Senate staffer arrested in leak hunt | | NYT reporter's records were seized | | The NYT's Thursday evening headline: "Justice Dept. Seizes Times Reporter's Email and Phone Records in Leak Investigation."
The investigation was pursuing James A. Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee's former director of security. Per the NYT, FBI agents approached reporter Ali Watkins "about a previous three-year romantic relationship she had with Mr. Wolfe, saying they were investigating unauthorized leaks."
On Thursday night Wolfe was indicted "on charges of lying to FBI investigators about repeated contacts with three reporters," per CNN's Laura Jarrett. "He is also alleged to have lied to the FBI about 'providing two reporters with non-public information related to the matters occurring before the SSCI." | | Smith: "We are deeply troubled..." | | As the NYT notes, the seizure of Watkins' data "suggested that prosecutors under the Trump administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack Obama."
--> Smith previously worked at BuzzFeed. The site's EIC Ben Smith tweeted: "This story concerns a reporter's work @BuzzFeedNews. We are deeply troubled by what looks like a case of law enforcement interfering with a reporter's constitutional right to gather information about her own government..."
--> 🔌: I'll have the latest on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning... Much more to come on this story... | | Will Hannity snag a Trump interview in Singapore? | | With so many TV anchors and White House reporters relocating to Singapore for next week's summit, there's chatter about whether President Trump will give a high-profile interview while he's there. (He's mostly just been doing "Fox & Friends" lately.) The best guess I've heard: Trump will talk with Sean Hannity, who's hosting from Singapore next week. Fox News says it has nothing to announce re: a confirmed interview.
In the meantime, maybe we need a new word for something like this. Is it really an interview if you're chatting with your biggest supporter on TV -- someone who's an informal adviser to your White House, someone who's been called your "shadow chief of staff?" It's more like a chat among friends... Beneficial for the president, but less so for the public... | | At Thursday's joint presser... | | As Yahoo's Hunter Walker noted after the joint presser with Shinzo Abe, "The two media outlets chosen by Trump to ask questions at this event were Fox News and the Daily Caller."
Walter added: "This is why I continually point out these joint appearances are not the same as solo press conferences. The president hasn't had one of those in over a year."
--> BTW, did you see this? Abe "mistakenly retweeted Trump's attack on GOP senator..." | | There's a "purge" of Trump's comms team in the works. A source tells CNN that senior staffers "have made it clear nobody is safe no matter what" in the coming shuffle.
The team has already faced "weeks of uncertainty about the future," Sarah Westwood and Pamela Brown wrote in this Thursday story. "Trump has weighed in on the restructuring of an office he has increasingly rendered obsolete, a senior White House official said..." | | Ryan Lizza joining Esquire | | | Esquire magazine has scooped up Ryan Lizza. I hear Lizza is at work on his first piece for the publication now... and an Esquire spokesperson confirms that it will appear online in the next few weeks. His new title: chief political correspondent. He will be reporting for both the print mag and Esquire.com. Lizza will remain a CNN political analyst... | | -- Friday: The G7 summit in Canada... POTUS will be leaving early on Saturday...
-- Friday evening: The NBA Finals!
-- Saturday afternoon: Belmont Stakes on NBC
-- Sunday evening: The Tony Awards on CBS | | | THE 21ST CENTURY FOX SALE | | Hadas Gold emails: Wall Street media analyst Rich Greenfield threw around some bold predictions on Cheddar on Thursday regarding the sale of 21st Century Fox assets. So I called him up to talk more. He told me that he's talked to people inside Fox as well as major shareholders, and that Rupert Murdoch's messaging is that he's "open to any and all offers." Meaning: Call us, Comcast!
So far, the sale seems to be squarely in Disney's hands, though Comcast made a higher offer last winter, and is poised to make another offer. Greenfield said "Rupert has been quite clear with major shareholders that this is not something personal, like where he wants to sell to Disney because he has some romantic vision of selling to Disney -- it's not about stock versus cash to avoid taxes -- he appears fully on board for the highest offer."
Of course the 21CF board has a fiduciary responsibility to act in the interests of all shareholders, but Greenfield's analysis would suggest that Comcast has a better chance than perhaps some thought to wrestle those Fox assets out of Disney's hands. 21st Century Fox declined to comment...
--> TWEET OF THE DAY: "Comcast vs. Disney is more personal than most know. I imagine there will be some irrationality from Philly," Jason Hirschhorn wrote... | | -- A new analysis of CEOs who are actively on Twitter finds that Andrew Ross Sorkin, Kara Swisher and Maria Bartiromo are the most-followed journos among CEOs... (Rational360)
-- Quote of the day belongs to FLOTUS spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham: "I don't believe Mrs. Trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with Mr. Giuliani..." (CNN)
-- THE RIGHT TO KNOW: "A lawyer representing eight news organizations and an advocacy group asked the judge overseeing the review of items seized in the raid of President Trump's attorney to reject the president's request to keep certain filings under seal because the 'public's right of access here cannot be overstated...'" (CNN) | | | A big hire for the NYT's media team: Veteran journo Edmund Lee, most recently with Recode, is the paper's new corporate media reporter. He was slated to start later this month... But now he's starting on Monday due to Tuesday's expected ruling in US v. AT&T... | | ⏰ Countdown to the AT&T deal decision... | | | In media biz C-suites, it's on the tips of everyone's tongues: What will the judge decide in US v. AT&T? If AT&T prevails, how quickly will the deal close? If the government prevails, what will AT&T and Time Warner do next? The stage is set for a momentous ruling... | | Jill Disis emails: DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim talked with CNBC's Jim Cramer at The Deal conference in New York on Thursday. A couple highlights:
>> He didn't give much of an indication publicly about the DOJ's plan in the event AT&T prevails. "I think we will take a look, just like any other legal case. We'll see if there are appeals, and that could be an option for both sides..."
>> He sounded somewhat receptive to the pending deal Disney has with Fox: "They, I think, had good advice, and carved out surgically... a transaction that might be doable. And again, who knows where that transaction leads..." | | | "People have got to stop conflating their news and entertainment. The irony is that we've never, in our history, had such a selection [of outlets] available to us, and yet so few seem to exercise it. The media today is whatever you want it to be..." | | | --Michael Smerconish in this CJR Q&A about his new book... | | Three reactions to Time's new cover | | "KING ME:" The latest Time magazine cover features an illustration of President Donald Trump gazing at a reflection of himself in which he's dressed up as a monarch, complete with jeweled crown and fur cape," Jackie Wattles writes.
Alisyn Camerota's remark on CNN's "New Day:" "Time magazine is preaching to the choir. Not a single person in President Trump's base has read Time Magazine for a long time."
Dana Bash added: "But you know who DOES like Time mag? Donald Trump."
Later in the day on "The Five," Fox's Greg Gutfeld dismissed Time as nothing more than a "high school newspaper" nowadays. Per Mediaite, he came ready with jokes: "TIME is officially thinner than Joy Reid's explanations for her blog posts. TIME magazine is thinner than Brian Stelter's hairline. TIME magazine is thinner than CNN's lead over the Cartoon Network. Thinner than the plot for a porn movie." But apparently he still finds the magazine relevant enough to skewer... | | W.H. launches big $$$ ad campaign to combat opioid addiction | | Hadas Gold emails: The White House is teaming up with media and tech companies, including CNN parent company Turner, NBC, Vice, Amazon, Facebook and Google for an ad campaign to address the opioid crisis. It is being run in part by the Ad Council and the Truth Initiative.
>> In a call with reporters on Thursday, Kellyanne Conway and other W.H. aides said they will soon launch "four hyper-realistic ads that show true stories -- not fictionalized and not embellished -- true stories of four young adults who took extreme measures to get more prescription pills in order to feed their addiction." The media companies have donated the equivalent of $30 million in ad time for the effort. More here via CNN's Maegan Vazquez... | | This new AP story is all about how Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani is trying to speak for Robert Mueller -- using a media blitz to move "the goalposts of the investigation" and "making public declarations about the probe to color its perception among voters and lawmakers." He KNOWS Mueller will never correct him.
The AP's Jonathan Lemire demonstrated this with two wonderful back to back paragraphs:
1: "Mueller has shown no interest in combating the White House on cable or in print; seemingly, the most consistent line in a story about the probe is 'A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment for this article.'"
2: "A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment for this article."
👏👏👏👏 | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Au revoir, BuzzFeed France? BuzzFeed is folding its French operation -- and laying off at least a dozen staffers in the process, "an individual with knowledge of the situation" told TheWrap... "We are taking steps to reconsider our operation in France given the uncertain path to growth in the French market," a company spokesperson said."We have begun a consultation process with BuzzFeed France and will follow up when we have more information to share..." (TheWrap)
-- Read: Lydia Polgreen, Adrian Chen, Mary Norris and other big names in journalism reveal the steps, twists, and turns in their career paths... (CJR)
-- Eleven comedic actresses including Rachel Bloom, Ellie Kemper, and Jane Fonda give Craig Tomashoff the inside scoop on their most challenging scenes of the season... (THR) | | Celebrating Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. | | At The Modern on Thursday evening, the NYT toasted chairman of the board Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., who handed off the publisher reins to his son A.G. six months ago. The speakers: A.G., Dean Baquet, Gail Collins, and Senator Chuck Schumer. Maybe they'll have another one of these parties 30 years from now...
Spotted: Robert De Niro, Mark Thompson, Meredith Kopit Levien, Sam Dolnick, Radhika Jones, Lydia Polgreen, Barry Diller, Tina Brown, James Bennet, Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, David Perpich, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Sam Sifton, Carolyn Ryan, Monica Drake, Joe Kahn, Nick Kristof, Walter Isaacson, Adam Moss, Pamela Wasserstein, Jill Abramson, Max Frankel, Joe Lelyveld, Kara Smoke, Michael Calderone, Joe Pompeo, Gilbert Cruz, Michael Grynbaum, Karen List, PJ Joshi, Cynthia Collins, Phil Corbett, Jordan Cohen, Danielle Rhoades Ha, Eileen Murphy, many more... | | The new Daily Mail editor is... | | Hadas Gold emails: One day after the announcement that the long-time and very powerful, pro-Brexit Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre is stepping down, the company announced that Geordie Greig, the current editor of the Mail on Sunday (and an anti-Brexit person) will take up the top job. The news caused a lot of chatter in the U.K. as questions about whether the very pro-Brexit tone of the powerful tabloid will shift.
According to The Guardian: "A source with knowledge of the discussions told the Guardian that Greig's appointment was part of a process of 'detoxifying the Daily Mail' after Dacre's editorship..." | | "We are going to revisit all of this."
That's Roberto Quarta, the chairman of WPP, who is "pushing for an overhaul of the world's biggest advertising conglomerate now that Martin Sorrell, its architect, has left the firm," the WSJ's Nick Kostov reports.
Key graf: "Quarta said there would be 'no sacred cows' in deciding how to restructure the company. Mr. Quarta said he expects some minority stakes WPP holds in other firms to be sold in the second half of the year, and he didn't rule out merging some of the ad giant's flagship creative agencies, such as Young & Rubicam..." | | Greg Berlanti's mega-deal | | | Brian Lowry emails: Whatever dollar figure you see assigned to producer Greg Berlanti's mega-deal extending his ties with Warner Bros. Television, it's a tangible sign that Netflix's poaching of big names like Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes is upping the ante for the major studios when it comes to securing top talent... | | FX renews "Atlanta" for Season 3 | | | Season two of "Atlanta" wrapped up last month. A third season was a no-brainer, and on Thursday FX made it official, announcing the renewal... The show will return sometime in 2019, Sandra Gonzalez reports... | | | Chloe Melas emails: Reese Witherspoon confirmed Thursday that she will reprise her "Legally Blonde" character for a third installment of the franchise. The movie is slated for 2020... | | Netflix adds new chapters to a story 17 years in the making... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Netflix has acquired or revived a number of existing titles, but it's taken an unusual and clever step with The Staircase," adding three new chapters to the existing 10 hours of this unscripted true-crime series. In the process, it's created a pretty intoxicating binge -- in the vein of its "Making a Murderer" -- that extracts more bang for its bucks... | | Lowry reviews "Ocean's 8" | | | Brian Lowry emails: As a reboot of a remake, "Ocean's 8" won't win many points for originality. But this all-female spin on the heist caper is generally a lot of fun, and this Warner Bros. release should avoid the hysteria that rained down on the earlier "Ghostbusters" featuring women from irate fanboys... | | Feedback welcome!
Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts to brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thank you! | | | | | | |
