| | | | Exec summary: Hello from Newark airport... Just got back from CA... There's a LOT of news this evening/this morning, so scroll down for details about Apple's newest series order, Facebook's new newscasts, and this year's Livingston Award winners...
BTW: If your Gmail account cuts off this email, you're missing 2/3's of our content. It's an annoying Gmail quirk. Click "view entire message!" | | Ex-Fox analyst says Fox is a "destructive propaganda machine" | | He was a Fox News military analyst for many years. Now he's warning the public that Fox is doing a "great deal of damage." Col. Ralph Peters' Wednesday evening interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper was jaw-dropping.
This was his first TV interview since leaving Fox. In it, Peters doubled down on what he said in his resignation letter back in March. "For years, I was glad to be associated with Fox. It was a legitimate conservative and libertarian outlet, and a necessary one," he said. "But with the rise of Donald Trump, Fox did become a destructive propaganda machine, and I don't do propaganda for anyone."
Peters said he believes Putin has a "grip" on Trump. He said "the Mueller investigation is the most important of my lifetime," i.e. bigger than Watergate. And he said the Fox hosts who constantly attack Mueller are "doing it for ratings and profit" and "doing a great grave disservice to our country." | | Cooper asked: Do those aforementioned hosts "believe the stuff they are saying" about the FBI, "deep state," etc?
Peters: "I suspect Hannity really believes it. The others are smarter. They know what they're doing. It's bewildering to me. I mean, I wanted to just cry out and say, 'How can you do this?' How can you lie to our country? How can you knowingly attack our Constitution, the bedrock of our system of government, the bedrock of our country?"
BOTTOM LINE: Peters is saying what countless others feel about Fox News. Even some employees of the parent company feel this way! But it's extraordinary because he was an INSIDER...
FOX'S REACTION: The network says its original comment about his exit still stands... | | Bee is back -- here's what she said | | "You know, a lot of people were offended and angry that I used an epithet to describe the president's daughter and adviser last week," Samantha Bee said on her return to "Full Frontal" on Wednesday. "It is a word I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it. This time, I used it as an insult. I crossed the line. I regret it and I do apologize for that."
Bee also brought up her larger point about Trump's immigration policies: "I hate that I did something to contribute to the nightmare of 24-hour news cycles that we're all white-knuckling through. I should have known that a potty-mouthed insult would be inherently more interesting to them than juvenile immigration policy. I would do anything to help those kids. I hate that this distracted from them, so to them, I am also sorry..."
Her final line: "Civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry a little bit more about the niceness of our ACTIONS." Here's the transcript and Sandra Gonzalez's full story... | | THR: "Bee to Get More TBS Oversight" | | | TBS management will be more involved with Bee's show going forward. Citing sources, THR reports that "the plan is for management to work with the show to prevent another incident that could potentially scare advertisers and draw condemnation from both sides of the political aisle..." | | How the culture wars are fought | | Brian Lowry's view: Bee is just the latest comic to come under fire from conservatives, and as Jon Stewart recently argued pretty persuasively, that's part of a larger, concerted -- and thus far effective -- strategy when it comes to picking fights in the culture wars.
Key Stewart quote: He said conservatives consciously push a narrative in which they are the "real victims," adding, "It's a game, it's a strategy, and it's working." Read Lowry's full column here... | | -- Trump and Prime Minister Abe will hold a joint presser at 2pm...
-- The NYT will celebrate Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. at an evening event in NYC...
-- Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals! Will the Caps take it home? | | EPA spox calls reporter "a piece of trash" | | Oliver Darcy emails: On Wednesday the top spokesperson at the EPA lashed out at a reporter who phoned him asking for comment on a scoop she had about a top aide to Scott Pruitt resigning. The spokesman, Jahan Wilcox, was quoted as telling The Atlantic's Elaina Plott, "You're a piece of trash." I called and emailed Wilcox myself to ask for comment about what he told Plott. I did not hear back.
>> Some context: This is only the latest episode in the EPA's tense relationship with the press... Pruitt's scandals keep multiplying and worsening, yet Trump keeps supporting him... | | The Paul Dacre era at the Daily Mail is over | | | Via CNN's Richard Greene: "Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, one of London's most influential newspaper editors, is stepping down after 26 years in the job, he announced Wednesday. He will become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, which owns the Mail, he said." Hadas Gold has the full story here... | | -- Staff members at The New Yorker have formed a union, "citing a lack of job security and salary disparities as two of the chief motivating factors," Tom Kludt reports... (CNNMoney)
-- "On Wednesday, editorial, social and photo staff members at Fast Company also announced the formation of a union" with the WGA...
-- Deadline's headline: The "Today" show "hits motherlode as Bill Clinton keeps getting asked about botched interview..." (Deadline)
-- Savannah Guthrie said Wednesday that Clinton is "still making false allegations about that interview" with Craig Melvin... (Mediaite)
-- Per Joe Flint: The CBS annual meeting has been "rescheduled for August 10 in Pasadena..." (Twitter) | | Someone leaked this to the WashPost... | | | WOW: The WashPost got ahold of audio from Trump's visit to FEMA on Wednesday. This was the part that was NOT on camera. He strayed from the purpose of the briefing, the hurricane season, and talked about "his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party's fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un..." | | Where the president gets his info, chapter 502 | | Recommended reading from Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju: "From Reddit to Trump: How the President latched onto a conspiracy theory." It's a new Mueller-bashing theory that "appears to have no basis in reality."
I know folks have heard a version of this story several times by now... But it's still bonkers the way the president picks up and promotes information that originated in far-right-wing fever swamps... | | People (including CNN's Van Jones) had been lobbying for Alice Johnson's freedom for years. But it was a video by the millennials-minded website Mic that ultimately led to Wednesday's commutation.
"We told this story in October of last year and we didn't expect what happened next. It just caught fire," Jake Horowitz told CNN's Brooke Baldwin soon after the news broke. "Kim Kardashian West shared the story on social media, she was personally very moved to act, and has been involved behind the scenes since October. It's incredible." Within a week of West's Oval Office meeting with Trump, Johnson was free... | | -- NYT's Julie Davis tweeted: "Trump has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers, a la Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. Today, he commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving life for conspiracy to sell cocaine"`
-- Erick Erickson: "I am totally fine with the President granting clemency to that lady. I am aggravated that it takes celebrities to get any President's attention on these matters." | | Van Jones interviewing Kim | | | Per Variety's Brian Steinberg, West "will give an exclusive interview" to Jones about the Johnson commutation. Parts of it will air on "CNN Tonight" Thursday night, and the rest will air on "The Van Jones Show" on June 16... | | | Three more Trump stories you should know about | | | -- CNN.com's headline right now: "Top Republicans break with Trump, say FBI acted appropriately," debunking "Spygate..."
-- Chris Cuomo's big get on Wednesday: Sarah Sanders. He pressed her for five minutes about her false statement re: the infamous Trump Tower meeting...
-- Via Mediaite: "Sean Hannity raised eyebrows on Wednesday night by doling out advice to witnesses in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, based on how Hillary Clinton handled her email investigation: destroy your phones..." | | Trump seizes on "media" coverage of Melania | | Trump repeated many of the wildest theories about his wife's absence in a strange tweet on Wednesday, the same day Melania Trump made her first appearance in front of press cameras in almost a month.
While defending FLOTUS, a completely understandable thing to do, POTUS conflated Twitter speculation by some anti-Trump writers with the actions of the "media" writ large. He said the "media" was vicious after FLOTUS had a procedure at Walter Reed. "They reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!"
Of course, no one "reported" that. Some people, mostly non-journalists, engaged in inappropriate speculation on social media. But for the most part reporters just did their jobs...
>> The NYT's Katie Rogers pointed out that Trump has a history of using Twitter to "target women and effectively amplify rumors about their health, appearance and personal relationships." | | How the pro-Trump media is playing it: | | Oliver Darcy emails: The right-wing media machine was worked up on Wednesday, fawning outrage over coverage of Melania's recent absence from public view. The ironic thing was that a lot of the individuals attacking establishment news orgs for devoting some coverage to Melania's health -- there honestly wasn't that much coverage -- were the same people who were consumed with Hillary Clinton's health during the 2016 election. I'm sorry, but those who obsessed over Clinton's health should probably spare everyone the lectures about Melania's coverage and sit this one out. As Juan Williams pointed out on Fox News in regard to Trump's tweet attacking the media on the subject: "It seems to me like Donald Trump spread more conspiracy theories than anybody. I mean, wasn't he worried about Hillary's health?"
>> It's also worth noting: Many members of the right-wing media community who are upset about the establishment media's coverage of Melania's health did not seem to care when Matt Drudge was asking questions about her absence from the public spotlight. Remember when he had the "WHERE IS MELANIA?" headline at the top of his page? Where was the outrage from these critics then? | | "All politics is national because all media is national" | | | Julia Waldow emails: In this new piece for 538, Dan Hopkins breaks down how our changing media market affects consumers' desire for info about local and state politics... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Via Maxwell Tani and company: "How to get Trump to tweet about your book: Pester his aides, go on his favorite television shows, or beg him directly..." (The Daily Beast)
-- Max Willens checks in with the NYT's Reader Center a year after its launch, noting that while the 22-person team does interact with audiences, its editor believes "its job is not to replace the public editor..." (Digiday)
-- "NBC News has begun hiring producers and other staff for an online streaming network... NBC News Digital is expected to test some programs this summer..." (Variety)
-- ICYMI: Hour-long Instagrams? The app is preparing to launch a new long-form video feature, WSJ's Ben Mullin reports... (WSJ) | | Facebook's funding these new newscasts | | Facebook is paying CNN, Fox News, ABC, Univision, and several other news outlets to provide exclusive newscasts for its Watch video service.
The deals were announced on Wednesday... Dylan Byers spoke with Campbell Brown about it... She said "this is an investment in quality news on Facebook..."
-- Per Byers' PACIFIC newsletter, "the first slate of shows look as if they will be very similar to broadcast and cable." Anderson Cooper will host a show called "Full Circle" at 6:25pm weekdays...
-- Digiday's Q: "Will people watch?" | | | For the record, part three | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- Here's how the NYT is producing a new type of newsletter "personalized for each recipient..." (NiemanLab)
-- Al Jazeera's San Francisco office, where AJ+ is based, is shutting down. It will be moved to DC... (San Francisco Chronicle)
-- Farai Chideya had a lot to say on Twitter about The New York Times' coverage of Kate Spade's death...(Twitter)
-- "Arrested Development" creator Mitch Hurwitz opens up about the "on-set argument" between Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter... (Deadline) | | Congrats to this year's Livingston Award winners | | | The winners of the prestigious awards for journos under 35: Riham Feshir, Meg Martin and Tracy Mumford for local reporting, Ronan Farrow for national reporting, Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt for national reporting,& Christina Goldbaum for international, and Walt Mossberg for mentoring... | | Another warning sign for studio execs | | | Brian Lowry emails: Steven Zeitchik looked at recent box-office results from the perspective of second-weekend declines, and came up with a caution flag for Hollywood -- namely, that the weak performance of "Solo" should raise some broader alarms about the health of movie-going... | | Netflix ordered a third season of "13 Reasons Why" on Wednesday.
Per Deadline's Dawn C. Chmielewski, Reed Hastings defended the show's handling of subjects like suicide and violence when it came up at Netflix's annual shareholders meeting: "13 Reasons Why has been enormously popular and successful. It's engaging content... It is controversial. But nobody has to watch it." | | Apple orders "Little Voice" | | | "Sara Bareilles is taking her act to Apple," THR's Lesley Goldberg reports. "The Grammy- and Tony-nominated singer-songwriter is teaming with J.J. Abrams for a half-hour dramedy called Little Voice, which has landed at the tech giant with a 10-episode, straight-to-series order..." | | Kenya Barris on ABC's "Roseanne" decisions | | | Brian Lowry emails: At a Variety forum, "Black-ish" producer Kenya Barris offered some insight into the PR problems ABC would have faced if it hadn't canceled "Roseanne," saying he was ready to go public with his outrage about Roseanne Barr's comments when ABC axed the series. But he also said -- in regard to the network getting into business with her in the first place -- "You hired a monster, and then you asked why the monster was killing villagers..." | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Raise your Cosmo! Wednesday was the 20th anniversary of the hit series "Sex and the City..."
-- "Dance Moms" star Abby Lee Miller has had to undergo a second emergency surgery...
-- After much backlash, Variety has apologized for scheduling an event featuring TV writers with only one woman set to serve as a panelist... New plans are now in the works... | | Great interview with Kenan Thompson | | | Julia Waldow emails: In this interview with THR's Scott Feinberg, Kenan Thompson reflects on "SNL's" last two seasons, his status as the longest-tenured castmember, and whether he would leave the show. He says he doesn't "really" have any actual plans to step away: "I'm not overly excited about going back to auditioning..." | | Feedback welcome!
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