| | | | | Exec summary: Good luck on Friday the 13th. Scroll down for Trump's interview with The Sun, Facebook's problem with InfoWars, Netflix's milestone with Emmy nominations, our podcast with Michael Isikoff, and much more... | | Hadas Gold emails: AT&T took control of CNN and the rest of Time Warner (now renamed WarnerMedia) almost four weeks ago, but the Justice Department is not done yet. On Thursday the government filed a notice of appeal... which means the DOJ is trying to overturn last month's ruling by Judge Richard Leon.
Now the case will go to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel will hear the DOJ's case as to why they think Judge Leon erred.
Keep in mind the government's case was eviscerated by Judge Leon -- it was brutal. And Leon warned against an appeal, saying he does "not believe that the government has a likelihood of success on the merits of an appeal." But apparently DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim thinks he has a shot... | | "We are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances," AT&T said in a statement Thursday afternoon. "We are ready to defend the Court's decision at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals."
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told CNN's Dylan Byers in Sun Valley that he's "not worried..." | | It's another dose of uncertainty. WarnerMedia execs certainly knew this could be coming, and they've acted accordingly. The media company is basically operating as a standalone part of AT&T... There are several reasons why... One of them has to do with the possibility of the government winning on appeal...
NOW WHAT: The case will likely be "fast tracked..." But will still take months... | | The winner: Rupert Murdoch? | | Hadas Gold emails: Trump's regular confidant, hanging out in Sun Valley this week, was likely buoyed by Thursday's news. He's been the beneficiary of a bidding war between Disney's Bob Iger and Comcast's Brian Roberts for his 21st Century Fox assets. Iger and Roberts are ALSO competing for Sky.
All things considered, and even if he might be tempted by the prospect of a continued bidding war making his payday even bigger, Murdoch would like to go ahead with Iger's $71 billion bid. Now Roberts is further hobbled by the appeal of the AT&T decision. If Leon's ruling was a green light for Comcast, as it was portrayed at the time, the appeal is a yellow light.
The appeal also brings back a political question. The DOJ has long denied that politics played into the suit, but the contrast has always been striking. Trump promised to block the AT&T/Time Warner deal during the campaign, but congratulated Murdoch right after Disney announced its bid for Fox.
So let's ask: Did anyone from the Trump White House lean on the DOJ to follow through with an appeal? Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino reported on Wednesday that the Solicitor General was wary about bringing an appeal. What happened/what changed? | | Trump starts UK trip by talking to Murdoch's paper | | | How did Trump set the table for his already-controversial visit to the UK? By saying a series of shocking things to The Sun, Rupert Murdoch's powerful British tabloid. He even criticized British Prime Minister Theresa May on her approach to Brexit. The interview took place while Trump was still in Brussels. But it was published after he landed... In fact, right after his dinner with May... | | | Early Friday morning in the UK, Sarah Sanders attempted some cleanup... Saying "The President likes and respects Prime Minister May very much..." | | -- After The Sun interview came out, other UK papers "scrambled to update their front pages..." (WashPost)
-- Earlier in the day, Trump capped off the NATO summit with an "unscheduled news conference," and one of the big takeaways was his # of faulty talking points... (CNN)
-- Fox's Chris Wallace will have an exclusive interview with Vladimir Putin after the Trump/Putin meeting in Helsinki... (TVNewser) | | What should Facebook do with InfoWars? | | Oliver Darcy writes: I asked what I thought was a pretty basic question on Wednesday. I asked Facebook at a press event to explain how it can claim to be committed to fighting false news and misinformation on its platform, while simultaneously allowing InfoWars to operate a page with nearly one million followers.
Facebook officials struggled to answer the question then, and about 15 hours after my story was published, seemed to still have a hard time addressing it. The company used its official Twitter handle to tweet a statement at me, saying, "We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech. Instead, we demote individual posts etc. that are reported by FB users and rated as false by fact checkers. This means they lose around 80% of any future views. We also demote Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news."
FB summed up its POV this way: "We just don't think banning Pages for sharing conspiracy theories or false news is the right way to go." | | Darcy continues: The statement prompted immediate criticism. HuffPost's Ashley Feinberg tweeted, "do you think saying that the sandy hook massacre was a hoax is a valid opinion?" NYT's Kevin Roose tweeted, "some very fine pages on both sides."
Others presented similar questions, but I thought Politico's Jason Schwartz cut to the heart of the matter: "Facebook's inability to place InfoWars outside the usual right/left paradigm...is pretty remarkable. The site *objectively* publishes false information--not a matter of 'some consider it opinion or analysis.'"
>> Related reading: BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel had a smart story on the subject, saying it proved Facebook "isn't ready" to handle fake news. Key line: "Though Facebook's misinformation fight is a new initiative, the rationale behind its implementation is rooted in a decade-old philosophy of dodging notions of political bias and censorship at all costs." | | Does FB really know what InfoWars is? | | | In response to Facebook's Thursday Twitter statement, Tommy Vietor tweeted, "Alex Jones sending his minions to harass Sandy Hook families or promising civil war to sell supplements isn't analysis what the hell is wrong with you?" Facebook replied, "No-one is defending the harassment of victim's families online or offline – and we ban pages that repeatedly harass people per our standards." It's almost as if Facebook is unaware of what InfoWars is. The fringe outlet has repeatedly targeted victims and their families, ranging from Sandy Hook to the Parkland shooting... | | >> If Facebook is conceding some content is bad and worth hiding from some users, why show it to anyone at all? Why hide the bad content for some people, but allow others to see it?
>> Via Alex Koppelman: "How many people see content from the InfoWars page on an average day on your platform now? How many would see it if it weren't being demoted?"
>> Stepping back: Isn't Facebook trying to have it both ways? The company claims it won't outright ban a page, citing free speech, but it seems to be okay with effectively demoting a page into oblivion. That sounds like a ban without calling it a ban. So what about the whole free speech thing then? | | | Darcy adds: My Twitter mentions have been a dumpster fire all day. InfoWars and its allies have portrayed asking Facebook about its stance on InfoWars as a lobbying effort to get the fringe outlet banned and censored. The Drudge Report's faulty headline: "CNN LOBBIES FACEBOOK TO SHUT DOWN ALEX JONES!" Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted, "Seriously, if someone is going to lead the charge against fake news, shouldn't they be a lot more credible than CNN?" And, for his part, Alex Jones spent quite some time ranting on his program, at one point putting my picture on screen and saying, "Look at the smiling possum grin of a possum sitting on a nice big pile of dog crap that it wants to eat!" | | -- Facebook Watch "is struggling to win fans," Tom Dotan and Jessica Toonkel report... (The Information)
-- Tom Kludt reports: "Daniella Greenbaum, the Business Insider columnist whose piece defending Scarlett Johansson's upcoming role as a transgender man was removed from the website, said Thursday that she is resigning from her post..." (CNNMoney)
-- The FCC is beginning a "dramatic overhaul" to the children's TV programming rules that have been on the books for decades... (Deadline) | | Strzok drama dominates cable news | | I've Strzok out. I have little to add to the 12+ hours of House hearing coverage. Suffice to say: Sean Hannity's opinion hasn't changed. Hannity and co. have been demonizing FBI agent Peter Strzok for months. Thursday was Strzok's chance to respond -- well, when the lawmakers weren't bickering amongst themselves. Strzok refuted what he called the "conspiracy narrative being told about the Russia investigation," a clear reference to the pro-Trump media. But Hannity came away empowered. This is, he intoned Thursday night, "the single biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in American history." All hour long he demanded "justice."
From the POV of a channel surfer, changing channels means changing REALITIES. I find it's hard to zoom out far enough to see what's really going on. Politico's Matthew Nussbaum tried, with this tweet: "It is still remarkable to me that Russia carried out an attack on the United States and congressional Republicans are targeting the FBI for investigating that attack."
>> Elsewhere, the focus was on the insults, fighting and shouting at the hearing. On CNN, Don Lemon said, "If Russia intended to sow discord in this country, mission accomplished..." | | This week's "Reliable" podcast guest: Michael Isikoff | | This week's episode is a look ahead to the Trump-Putin meeting. My guest: "Russian Roulette" co-author Michael Isikoff.
We talked about the "mysteries" surrounding Trump's ties to Russia... The media's coverage of the Robert Mueller probe... And more. Listen via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Not one, but two movies about the Thai cave rescue are in the works. We'll see if either one ends up being produced... (WaPo)
-- Emily Kohlman emails: New, contradictory information in an interview published in a 2017 book, "The Blood of Emmett Till," written by historian Timothy Tyson, prompted officials to reopen the 1955 lynching case of Emmett Till in rural Mississippi… (WaPo)
-- Julia Waldow emails: The Daily Mail has "set the political agenda in Britain, its influence akin to that which Fox News exerts on Washington politicos," Tom Rachman writes. So what happens now that the publication's switching from a pro-Brexit editor to an anti-Brexit one? (The Atlantic)
-- David Klein emails: A recent Homeland Security photography warning sent a chilling sign to journalists, Jonathan Peters reports. And "it's not the first time. Since 9/11, DHS and other government agencies have occasionally characterized photography as suspicious..." (CJR) | | Bustle founder buys Gawker.com | | The last vestiges of Gawker.com "were sold on Thursday to Bryan Goldberg, the founder of Bustle and co-founder of Bleacher Report," Tom Kludt and Oliver Darcy report. The sale price: Less than $1.5 million.
His plan? "We have no immediate plans to re-launch Gawker," Goldberg wrote in a memo. "For now, things will stay as they are. I'm very excited about the possibilities for the future of Gawker. I will share more in the months ahead." Details here...
>> "Fun" fact: Hulk Hogan is "entitled to 45% of the proceeds from the sale of the Gawker site," per the WSJ... | | LA Times throwing a downtown HQ goodbye party | | Julia Waldow writes: At the time I'm writing this, the staff of the LA Times is throwing a party to bid farewell to its historic downtown HQ. I'm told more than 700 people RSVP'd to the event. Interestingly, data desk editor Ben Welsh has been commemorating the HQ for months -- and over the internet, no less. The day after the paper announced its move in mid-April, Welsh hopped on Twitter to take thousands of people on a virtual tour of the facilities. "I wanted to share the building's inspirations and eccentricities with others," he told me. (The LA Times has historically offered free, public, in-person tours.)
Welsh has been documenting cubicles, coffee machines, and other odds and ends like switchboards and elevator buttons. "What I'll miss the most is the connection to our heritage," he told me. "The building has served as the common ground for generations of journalists, struggling together in a time of great change, to invent the future while remaining anchored in the past." | | | Chase Cook's defiant tweet from two weeks ago -- "we are putting out a damn paper tomorrow," in the wake of the Capital Gazette attack -- is now emblazoned on a T-shirt. The Sun's online store is selling the tees... It says "a minimum of $10 per shirt sold will be donated to The Capital Gazette Families Fund to assist families, victims and survivors..." | | | For the record, part four | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- Pete Vernon looks into the clap-backs at Rep. Jim Jordan's #fakenews tweet, and how journalists have been explaining...well...journalism in response to it...(CJR)
-- ThinkProgress founder and EIC Judd Legum, is leaving the company to launch a political newsletter -- "Popular Information" -- with the belief that "there's something fundamentally broken about news delivery as a process..." (Wired)
-- After the Weinstein Co. completes its sale to Lantern Entertainment this week, "all but one of its members will step aside..." (Deadline)
-- Will Sommer says a crew member from the anti-abortion film "Roe v. Wade" stole his notebook and tore out the pages in an attempt to stop his coverage of the film... (The Daily Beast) | | MoviePass stock is 19 cents... but the boss says everything is fine | | Jill Disis writes: MoviePass, the popular subscription service, is trading at 19 cents a share — down 99% from a high of nearly $39 last October. But the boss says everything's fine. Here's my interview with Ted Farnsworth, the CEO of MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson, about the state of the company...
>> Farnsworth's favorite comparison? Netflix. He said his company wants to produce its own films, like Netflix does with shows and movies — that's why they bought Emmett Furla Oasis, the production company behind Mark Wahlberg's "Lone Survivor," in May... | | Kimmel deletes joke that was based on bogus info | | | Speaking of the FCC, Jimmy Kimmel fell for some bogus info about a proposed FCC rule that, he said, "would require U.S. citizens to pay $225 to make a complaint." His joke from Wednesday's show was deleted from his Twitter and YouTube pages on Thursday "following complaints about the segment's inaccuracy," The Daily Caller's Peter Hasson reports. Of course, Kimmel couldn't delete it from his show, seen by millions of people... | | Netflix's Emmy noms milestone | | Brian Lowry emails: Netflix scored a couple milestones on Thursday, breaking an HBO streak of garnering the most Emmy nominations that began at the start of the current century, and obviously becoming the first streaming service to claim that crown.
Netflix did so, moreover, by taking a page from HBO's awards playbook -- namely, competing in every area, from series to specials, documentaries to movies to unscripted TV. Read more...
-- Via Lisa Respers France, here's a complete recap of the noms...
-- CNN celebrated a record high 10 noms, including six for "Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown..."
-- Here's Scott Feinberg's first forecast of the race... | | Brian Lowry emails: HBO scored an Emmy nomination for Judd Apatow's documentary "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling," and could be looking at another next year for another deep dive into a comedy icon, "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind," an intensely personal look at the comic/actor, told largely in his own words.
CNN, meanwhile, revisits the issue of comics who were "gone too soon" in its follow-up to "The History of Comedy," which premieres this weekend... | | | "FX has ordered a second season of the critically-acclaimed drama series 'Pose,'" Variety reports... | | | For the record, part five | | | -- Lisa Respers France emails: There was major backlash over Forbes dubbing Kylie Jenner "self-made" given her wealthy and famous family...
-- Meantime, Forbes took a victory lap on Thursday. The Kylie cover story set a new record -- most page views ever for Forbes.com in a 24-hour period -- the mag told me the story was viewed 2+ million times...
-- One more from Lisa Respers France: Actress Lena Dunham was hailed last year for slimming down. Now she says she feels "joyous" being heavier...
-- And last but not least: Alaska's last two Blockbuster video stores are shutting down. "The closures will leave the Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, as the sole holdout in the U.S.," THR reports... | | Thanks for reading! Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts straight to me:
brian.stelter@turner.com
See you tomorrow. | | | | | | |
