| | | | | Welcome to the weekend! This is going to be a short edition because I suffered a real First World Problem on Friday. I boarded a flight home from S.F. planning to spend the five hours writing this letter... But then the flight attendants told us the WiFi was acting "funky." They meant it was completely busted. So blame the airline for my tardiness! | | Jack Dorsey has Q's. Does he have answers? | | "How do we earn peoples' trust?"
"How do we guide people back to healthy conversation?"
I wasn't the only person asking questions when I sat down with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Friday. He had questions too... And he said "we're ready to question everything," even basic functionalities of the site. But does he have answers?
We're going to roll out the interview on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" broadcast, and share the whole thing on our podcast... Until then, here's a preview...
| | What Dorsey wants to change | | In twelve years, "we've changed a lot. But we haven't changed the underlying fundamentals," Dorsey said from the tenth floor of Twitter HQ.
So that's what he is examining now. An example: He is thinking about how to help users follow topics and hashtags, not just people: "We are aware of some of the silos and how we're isolating people by only giving them crude tools to follow accounts. We need to broaden our thinking and get more back to an interest-based network."
Dorsey was candid about Twitter's problems. "We've seen abuse, we've seen trolling, we've seen harassment, we've seen misinformation." He said "we are taking a lot more action than we ever have in the past." But much of the action, he said, is invisible to users. There's lots to dig into... More to come Sunday on TV and CNNMoney...
| | "Why does Twitter move so slowly?" The Verge's Casey Newton asked this question in his newsletter on Thursday. He said "nothing defines Twitter so thoroughly as its bias toward inaction."
I brought up this issue with Dorsey... Hear his answer on Sunday...
| | Dorsey said he's been doing all this talking -- with Sean Hannity, with Lester Holt, with Tony Romm, with me, with others -- to show transparency and address concerns about Big Tech. While on my WiFi-less flight home, Fox's Tucker Carlson showed what Dorsey is up against.
"Coordinated censorship by big tech" was Carlson's lead story. It was one of his anti-elitist screeds. "Increasingly the people in charge use technology to silence criticism, mostly of them," Carlson said.
He quoted from Michael Krieger's essay "Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared." To hear Carlson and co. tell it, Twitter and its peers are quashing dissent on a daily basis...
| | | Jack Dorsey is just one of our headliners. I'll also be joined by Ralph Peters, Susan Glasser, Sabrina Siddiqui, and Carlos Lozada. See you Sunday at 11am ET on CNN! | | One other CNN programming note for fellow media junkies: David Axelrod sat down with Dean Baquet and Marty Baron for a joint interview (!!!) at the National Constitution Center in Philly. This "Axe Files" episode will air Saturday at 7pm ET.
Here's a preview clip of Baquet's comments about the harm Trump is doing... | | -- Elizabeth Williamson's NYT scoop: "Lawyers for the families of two Sandy Hook shooting victims are accusing the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars media business of intentionally destroying evidence relevant to the defamation cases against him, according to a motion filed on Friday in a Texas court..." (NYT)
-- Did you catch the back and forth between Rachel Maddow and the WSJ? She said the paper "sort of tried to bury" its exclusive interview with POTUS, and the paper fired back... Tom Kludt has the details here... (CNNMoney) | | Jake Tapper's lead at 4pm: President Trump is "going deeper into dangerous territory, today flat-out threatening to revoke more security clearances of potential witnesses in the Russia probe..."
| | Former CIA director turned NBC/MSNBC analyst John Brennan must have been traveling when the White House announced the revocation of his security clearance on Wednesday. He called into MSNBC a couple hours later, but he didn't appear on camera until Friday night, when he sat down in New York with Rachel Maddow. Here were the standout quotes:
-- Re: his security clearance being stripped: "A number of lawyers have reached out to say there is a very strong case here, not so much to reclaim mine, but to prevent this from happening in the future." So he is "thinking about" what to do...
-- These are "very frightening times," he said... Trump is trying to "frighten and intimidate..."
-- "I wish I didn't have to say these things." But "what really gets under my skin is Mr. Trump's lack of decency, integrity, honesty, and his lack of commitment to this country's well-being and security."
-- "I gave him a year. I said, maybe he is going to adapt and change. But it seemed like day after day, week after week, month after month, things just got worse."
-- "I don't consider what I'm doing political at all!"
-- "There is collusion in plain sight," he said, but he doesn't know if it rises to conspiracy or criminality...
-- "I don't want to use this term maybe, but he's drunk on power. He really is..." Here's CNN's recap of the interview...
| | A "distraction during unfavorable news cycles" | | Trump is likely to revoke security clearances of other current and former officials. A "senior White House official" told WaPo that Sarah Sanders and Bill Shine "have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles..."
| | Meanwhile, over on Fox... | | Jeanine Pirro, hosting Friday's "Hannity," said the episode was all about "Trump versus the deep state." Later in the hour: "Time to investigate the investigators." At 10? The banner was "Trump vs. the intel resistance." And Trump continued his new habit of live-tweeting Fox's prime time segments... The Mirror Maze is still very much in effect...
| | Kellyanne's "kind of weird" comment | | Unfortunately this kind of talk -- "the media covers Trump too much!" -- resonates with a big chunk of the country.
Kellyanne Conway to a pack of waiting journos at the W.H. on Friday: "Why is everybody so obsessed with the President of the United States that they can't even begin or finish a sentence without mentioning his name five times. It's kind of weird."
>> Philip Bump's retort on Twitter: "Standing outside the Super Bowl, the NFL spokesman asks sports reporters why they keep wanting to talk about football..." | | Don't forget about Omarosa | | Hey, even if you try to forget, she won't let you 😉
The AP popped this story on Friday: "It's not just audiotapes." She has "a stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation supporting the claims in her tell-all book about her time in the Trump W.H., a person with direct knowledge of the records told The AP." And she "has made clear that she plans to continue selectively releasing the pieces of evidence" if Trumpworld keeps attacking her credibility and challenging her claims...
-- On PBS the other day, O said she has a "treasure trove," a "multimedia backup" for her book...
-- Meanwhile: "Unhinged" slipped from #2 to #3 on Amazon's list on Friday, as the "Crazy Rich Asians" novel took second place.... | | -- David Uberti's latest: "Local news is facing something akin to climate change -- a complex, slow-moving disaster -- that deserves more attention than Trump..." (CJR)
-- Amy Brittain tweeted: The lawyer for the three women suing CBS News and Charlie Rose re: sexual harassment "is opposing Rose's request for a deadline extension." Why? Because, according to a filing, "Rose was spotted in NYC out dining with his former executive producer *the same day* he filed court papers claiming he needed an extension for health reasons..." (Twitter) | | Jake Tapper on Friday afternoon: "For a moment, if you can, try to pretend that we're in an era before this current one and just imagine the former campaign chairman for the president of the United States of America is on trial for various felonies. Now, imagine that the jury is in the middle of deliberations. It's an un-sequestered jury. And then imagine that the president, the leader of the free world, publicly calls the case unfair and a sad day for the nation, praises the defendant and leaves wide open the possibility of a pardon."
"I know many of us have become numb to it," Tapper said, "but there was a time when that kind of thing is considered inappropriate..."
| | Journos wait while jurors deliberate | | CNN interns Teresita Galarce Crain and Jamie Ehrlich shared this from the courthouse: Amid interns doing photo shoots and fetching dozens of coffees for their networks, crowds wait patiently -- or not so patiently -- out in the heat. This is day 14 of the Manafort trial, and journalists have had to get creative with ways to amuse themselves, while knowing a verdict could come at any time. The entertainment of the week has included a Friday afternoon wedding, card games, and the various dogs that have walked by.
At least 25 cameras are poised to catch the moment when the lawyers and Manafort's wife leave their shelter in the nearby Westin and head in to the courthouse to hear the jury's final decision. Until then, the courthouse square looks more like a tailgate as journalists lounge in lawn chairs and use their hotspots to watch Netflix... | | Reporters shut out of two Ocasio-Cortez town halls | | | Tom Kludt emails: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not exactly been press-shy since her primary upset earlier this summer. She's given numerous interviews, and has become a fixture on cable news and in the pages of national publications. But her campaign's decision to close a pair of recent town halls from the press was not well-received. "[Ocasio-Cortez] is in for a rough time on Capitol Hill – where reporters roam freely at all hours of the day and night – if this is her attitude toward the press," tweeted WaPo's Seung Min Kim... | | Kludt adds: Campaign spokesman Corbin Trent insists there's nothing to see here, saying it was "an outlier" to keep the press out of the events on Wednesday and Sunday. He told me on the phone that it was only done out of respect for the constituents. "We wanted to make sure the people in the room felt comfortable to voice their opinions, to say what they thought," Trent said, adding that the presence of cameras can make people "less comfortable." And he made sure to note that the events were livestreamed and, oh yeah, Ocasio-Cortez has done "a lot of interviews."
Fair enough, but after drawing some unflattering attention for it -- "Ocasio-Cortez bans press from covering campaign event," read the headline over at Fox News -- will the campaign continue to bar the media from those functions? "No," Trent told me. "Probably not." | | Daniella Emanuel writes: "President Trump's unrelenting attacks against the media and other institutions are going to have long-term consequences that will last beyond his presidency." Political scientist Brian Klaas says he's worried that the political culture in the US "will not return to normalcy any time soon."
Listen to my conversation with Klaas via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... Or read Emanuel's recap here... | | | ARETHA FRANKLIN, 1942-2018 | | | There's no date or time yet, but the location has been set for Aretha Franklin's funeral: Services "will be held at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit, communications director Kenya Hildreth tells CNN's Bill Kirkos..." | | Expect a tribute at the MTV VMAs | | | Megan Thomas emails: The MTV VMAs are Monday night at Radio City Music Hall. Cardi B will open the show, J-Lo will pick up the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and the Carters will be in the house. No word yet on an Aretha Franklin tribute, but seems like a safe bet for the typically unpredictable show. Oh, and no host has been announced... | | Tribute concert had been in the works for "months" | | | "Aretha Franklin's life and legacy will be honored with a tribute concert later this fall," Chloe Melas writes. "A source with knowledge of the situation tells CNN that music producer Clive Davis had been planning a concert in Franklin's honor for 'several months' before her death on Thursday. The tentatively titled 'Clive Davis Presents: A Tribute to Aretha Franklin' is set to take place November 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York." Melas adds: "Details on the lineup have yet to be announced. The event will be produced in partnership with Live Nation..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Those close to her say Aretha was surrounded by love in her final days...
-- LaJoyce Brookshire talked with me about what it was like to work with the "Queen of Soul," who was a demanding task master, but one who gave the excellence she expected as well...
-- Ariana Grande offered up an emotional tribute to Aretha on "The Tonight Show..." | | Lowry reviews the FINAL "Sharknado" | | | Brian Lowry emails: The "Sharknado" franchise comes to a merciful end on Sunday, with the sixth and final movie. Notably, the franchise took off organically, but in seeking to turn it into a synergistic moneymaker, NBCUniversal has essentially been guilty of over-fishing those waters, serving a stale buffet of warmed-over gags... | | Netflix cancels Michelle Wolf's show | | Michelle Wolf's Netflix talk show, "The Break," launched in May. It will not be coming back for a second season. Neither will "The Joel McHale Show," which started back in February.
"While it's not immediately clear why the shows won't be returning, it's likely the company decided the two series weren't generating enough viewership (or buzz) to merit the added expenditure," Vulture's Joe Adalian writes. He notes that Netflix has several other talk shows coming in the fall... | | What happened to "The Affair?" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Showtime's "The Affair" ends its fourth season Sunday under the shadow of controversy, with conflicting explanations for the exit of star Ruth Wilson. Series creator Sarah Treem said Wilson chose to leave, while the actress told Vulture she had "no say" in the matter. The show has already been renewed for a fifth and final season, but at this point it's unclear what exactly the network is renewing.. | | |
Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback... See you Sunday...
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