| | | | Driving the news cycle this weekend... | | Pamela Brown, Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz's big scoop hit at 8:29pm on "Anderson Cooper 360:"
"A federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter. The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are..." | | This was FoxNews.com's headline earlier in the day: "Mueller facing new Republican pressure to resign in Russia probe."
Fox News kept up its fixation on "Uranium One" and other Hillary Clinton-related stories on Friday night. An hour after CNN's scoop, BI's Maxwell Tani pointed out that CNN and MSNBC were both covering the news while Fox was covering "Clinton emails!"
-- CNN's Jake Tapper tweeted: "Boy it's almost as if some people knew this was coming so they tried to pour chum in the water to make it dank and murk..." | | -- The Daily Beast's Ben Collins tweeted: "In hindsight, four major pro-Trump media arms dredging up a Bannon Special from a two-year-old movie at the same exact time while the president screamed 'Russia is a hoax' this past week should've been an obvious tip this was coming..."
-- Vice's Alex Thompson: "Re: grand jury, I haven't seen liberals this sure of Trump's demise since Election Day..."
-- NBC's Kyle Griffin: "Reminder: Sanders just said yesterday that she was 'confident' Mueller's probe would be closed soon..."
-- Sean Hannity: "When will @HillaryClinton be indicted?"
-- Caitlin Huey-Burns: "What will tomorrow morning's POTUS Twitter feed bring?" | | Free Beacon hired Fusion GPS | | Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman's scoop: The Washington Free Beacon "was the first to hire" Fusion GPS for Trump oppo research. The relationship went from October 2015 til May 2016. In April 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC "also retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia." At that point, Christopher Steele got involved, leading to the creation of the "Steele dossier."
-- Free Beacon confirmed: "The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier," etc... But "we do not apologize for our methods..." Hiring third party firms to conduct research is "news-gathering..." | | New accusations against Mark Halperin | | Oliver Darcy's latest: Two days after CNN first reported that five women said "Game Change" co-author and journalist Mark Halperin sexually harassed or assaulted them during his time at ABC News, the number of accusers has grown to at least a dozen women, including four who are now sharing their accounts for the first time.
The new accusations from the four women include that Halperin masturbated in front of an ABC News employee in his office and that he violently threw another woman against a restaurant window before attempting to kiss her, and that after she rebuffed him he called her and told her she would never work in politics or media. The alleged incidents occurred while Halperin was in a position of significant authority at ABC News, while the women were young and had little power. | | Halperin denies that he masturbated in front of anyone, that he physically assaulted anyone, or that he threatened anyone in the way described in this story.
He issued a lengthy statement on Friday evening, apparently in anticipation of Darcy's latest. He said "I apologize sincerely to the women I mistreated" and described feeling "profound guilt." He said that for several years, around his departure from ABC News, he "had weekly counseling sessions to work on understanding the personal issues and attitudes that caused me to behave in such an inappropriate manner." He additionally said that his behavior had not continued after he left ABC News... | | Accuser says "it felt profoundly unfair" | | Former ABCer Lara Setrakian was one of the five women who was granted anonymity and included in Darcy's original story. On Friday she went on the record, both with CNN and in an op-ed for the Washington Post.
Setrakian told Darcy it hurt to see Halperin "rise and rise" without accountability. "It felt like the world was so stacked," she said. "It felt profoundly unfair to have feelings of anxiety as a woman in media while watching someone who was clearly misbehaving rise and rise in our industry with no apology, no thought as to how we felt before, no effort to apologize. No effort to reach out to us."
Setrakian said the incident changed her by making her "much more skeptical of people's intentions" and by making her "hyper-sensitive to the idea that my career will depend on who finds me sexually attractive." More... | | Oliver Darcy emails: One thing that I don't think should get lost: the truly heartbreaking consequences of Halperin's actions. One of the women in tonight's story told me the experience in his office contributed to her decision to leave journalism. When you read her words they hit you in the gut.
-- One thing to watch: Showtime said after our initial report it would "evaluate" its relationship with Halperin if the network goes forward with another season of "The Circus." MSNBC said Halperin was "leaving his role as a contributor until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood." What will they say now? | | Sunday on "Reliable Sources" | | | Darcy will join me... along with Jessica Valenti... plus Carl Bernstein, Bruce Bartlett, Jake Sherman, Manu Raju, and Jeff Fager... See you Sunday 11am ET on CNN... | | -- "Facebook has announced new plans to increase ad transparency and authentication requirements for advertisers," Dylan Byers reports... (CNN)
-- Derek Thompson: Google's global ad business "is now larger than that of Facebook, Alibaba, Baidu, Twitter, Amazon and Snap, combined..." (The Atlantic)
-- "Blurring the line between citizen and journalist at the NYT" -- Carlos Lozada's review of Linda Greenhouse's new book... (WashPost) | | "Weighing the Costs of Speaking Out About Harvey Weinstein" -- The New Yorker just published this new piece by Ronan Farrow -- Subhed: "Annabella Sciorra, Daryl Hannah, and other women explain their struggles with going public."
Sciorra alleged to Farrow that Weinstein "violently raped" her and then sexually harassed her repeatedly. "She had been struggling to speak about Weinstein for more than twenty years..."
-- ICYMI: Rose McGowan gave a "rousing speech" at the Women's Convention on Friday, Lisa Respers France reports... | | Weinstein's New York haunt: The Tribeca Grill | | Chloe Melas reports: When Harvey Weinstein allegedly propositioned actress Lupita Nyong'o to skip dinner and join him in a "private room upstairs," she said in a first-hand account in The New York Times that her meeting with him took place at one of New York's most iconic restaurants, Tribeca Grill.
The mogul routinely subjected servers to his tantrums and frequented the restaurant with young women who often disappeared with him for hours at a time before returning to their table to food that had grown cold, according to three former restaurant employees who witnessed the behavior. Those sources described to CNN a pattern of behavior that includes groping and pushing alcohol on women who didn't want to drink. Read more... | | Tom Kludt emails: Matt Taibbi has come under fire for what was published under his name at The eXile, the old English language Moscow tabloid he edited with Mark Ames about 20 years ago. In one particularly offending passage that made the rounds on social media Friday, written in a behind-the-scenes book about The eXile, Taibbi was quoted as saying it was "funny" to try to force women under the table to perform oral sex on him. Taibbi was confronted about these writings earlier this week by NPR's Robin Young at an event held at Harvard Book Store. He wrote about it afterwards, saying Young posed "some difficult questions" about his past.
"In particular she asked about a passage from the eXile book from 1999, in a chapter written by my former co-editor Mark Ames, in which he brags about harassing women in the newspaper office," Taibbi wrote. "The behavior he describes is reprehensible. It is also, like a lot of things in the eXile, fictional and not true -- I have never made advances or sexually suggestive comments to any co-worker in any office, here or in Russia." Some observers on Twitter responded to that by pointing out that the book was presented as a piece of non-fiction.
Rolling Stone is standing by Taibbi, issuing a statement that said he's "always been utterly professional in both his work and his behavior" during his time there. | | O'Reilly takes legal action | | | Tom Kludt emails his latest story: On Thursday, Bill O'Reilly said he "had to commence legal action" against a New Jersey man who had written a candid Facebook post about his ex-girlfriend's encounters with O'Reilly. On Friday, O'Reilly came a step closer to making good on that threat, issuing a summons to Michael Panter for "making defamatory and false statements in a publicly-available social media post." O'Reilly is seeking no less than $5 million, saying the post was intended to bring "public hatred, ridicule, disgrace, and permanent harm" to O'Reilly's "professional and personal reputations." Read more... | | Tom sends along: I spoke to Michael Panter, a former NJ politician, on Thursday. He told me he was prompted to write the post after seeing O'Reilly repeatedly tout his squeaky clean record with the human resources department at Fox. "When I read that, I picture Vladimir Putin defending his presidency by saying there have been no complaints to the KGB about him," Panter told me.
After O'Reilly's camp issued the summons, Panter told me he had nothing more to say. His post remains up, however... | | By Julia Waldow:
-- The Atlantic's Michelle Cottle details women's experiences, including her own, with Leon Wieseltier, in the wake of allegations of misconduct against the former New Republic literary editor... (The Atlantic)
--CAA is launching a start-up studio called Creative Labs, to be based in Vancouver... The company has received $12.5 million in funding and plans to focus on VR/AR, OTT, social, and more... (Deadline)
-- RT is pushing back after Twitter banned ads from the Russian media outlet on its platform... In the name of "full disclosure and transparency," RT has released what it says is Twitter's full ad proposal to the company during the 2016 campaign... (RT)
-- Concerned about security, privacy, or web blocks? Try out the NYT's new onion site... (Nieman Lab)
-- WhatsApp's new "delete for everyone" feature lets you wipe messages you didn't mean to send... (TechCrunch) | | New "Reliable Sources" podcast: What makes "60" tick | | Jeff Fager, the exec producer of "60 Minutes," is out with a new book about the history of the newsmag. So I sat down with him at CNN earlier this week for this week's podcast + an interview that will air on Sunday's "Reliable." You can hear the podcast through iTunes and other services...
-- Fager: The key is "60" is to "anticipate what the big stories are, so that we can spend months reporting them. It's not about this week's events, but digging down deep about something that is in the news." Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman has a recap of the interview here... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Check out Craig Silverman's latest on how a revived MySpace was actually one of the online venues for a vast ad scheme involving fraudulent video impressions... (BuzzFeed News)
-- BuzzFeed will create ads for gadget-makers in exchange for a cut on their sales. Makers can apply online and BuzzFeed is looking to start selling on Black Friday, and to introduce new gadgets every 3 months... (Recode)
-- Medium is luring premium publishers to its partner program by offering to pay them upfront. Other Medium partners are paid "per clap..." (NiemanLab)
-- There are persistent whispers that Facebook listens to you through your phone's mic to feed you targeted ads. But they say they don't. (The Outline) | | ICYMI: Yes, the NFL's ratings are down, but so is the rest of network TV | | Frank Pallotta writes: Critics have been quick to point out that the NFL's ratings are down, but the good news for the league? The NFL is down less than the rest of broadcast TV.
Through week seven, the NFL is down 5% from last year. That's troubling, but not TERRIBLE especially when you consider that ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are down an average 8% in prime time. Those numbers show that the NFL's sluggish viewership may be less a symptom of the league's problems and possibly about what's happening in the TV environment overall. However, it also shows that the NFL may no longer be immune to the changing world of TV... | | "Trump's war on the media, Halloween edition" | | | That's the headline on Chris Cillizza's newsletter Friday night. He highlighted some choice Trump quotes from the White House's Halloween festivities involving the children of reporters. POTUS: "I cannot believe the media produced such beautiful children. How the media did this, I don't know!" | | | Brian Lowry sends this along: On CNN's "New Day," analyst Jeffrey Toobin described the coverage of the Clinton/Russia uranium "scandal" as emblematic of "the symbiosis between the Trump White House and Fox News." | | -- Pre-Mueller news, CNN's shows focused on the ways the W.H. was using Clinton to distract from the Russia probes...
-- Related: "The Trump era doesn't have coherent principles or an ideology. It just have enemies. Which is why they prefer to have an alternate reality where Hillary is president," "Late Night's" Seth Meyers said Thursday night... | | "Stranger Things" is ready to turn your weekend upside down | | Frank Pallotta emails: Can a mild-mannered reporter give up nine straight hours of his life this weekend? We're about to find out.
Netflix's breakout hit "Stranger Things" returned to the streaming giant on Friday, ready for its cult of fans to binge its second season. The series is one of the biggest breakouts in the short history of streaming, but how it became a sensation was somewhat old school: Word of mouth. Last year no one saw "Stranger Things" coming, but due to the nostalgic joy of the show, it caught on.
There's a lesson here for streaming services that are throwing globs of money at trying to create the next hit. No matter how much you try to manufacture the next big thing, sometimes you just never know when the next small show that could will turn your world upside down.
-- The Ringer helps you enter the world of "Stranger Things" AKA America 1984...
-- Stephen Colbert combines Trump and "Stranger Things..."
-- ICYMI: Here's Brian Lowry's review of new season from earlier in the week... | | "Stranger Things" spoilers ahead | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Those with plans to binge watch "Stranger Things" Season 2 completely unspoiled should avoid the following link. If you don't mind some minor teases or are at least midway through watching the new season, you should read what the young stars had to say about the adorable pre-teen way they all bonded on set while filming the sophomore season. Spoiler: It involves math.
On a slightly related note: A show like "Stranger Things" -- an incredibly buzzy series that happens to come from on a streaming network -- presents a unique challenge to entertainment journalists. Do you assume your audience is taking it slow? Or do you race out your recaps of every episode and Season 2 post-mortems before the end of premiere day? I've seen multiple outlets take the latter approach. I'm not sure what the right answer is. I prefer a more measured approach. Call me old fashioned... | | | Iraq war and sobering aftermath come to movies, TV | | Brian Lowry emails: Are audiences ready to grapple with the Iraq war?
The conflict and its aftermath are coming to screens big and small over the next few weeks, including two nonfiction accounts: "Thank You For Your Service," "American Sniper" writer John Hall's film about soldiers struggling to adjust to life at home, opens this weekend; and "The Long Road Home" -- a National Geographic Channel miniseries based on a book by ABC's Martha Raddatz -- premieres on Nov. 7.
The real one to see, however, might be "Last Flag Flying," Richard Linklater's adaptation of Darryl Ponicsan's novel, which will get its own separate review later... | | Where Metacritic beats Rotten Tomatoes | | Lowry adds: The differential in scores for "Suburbicon," George Clooney's latest directing outing, underscores (pardon the expression) why Metacritic generally tends to be more nuanced than Rotten Tomatoes with films that receive a lot of mixed reaction.
That's because the assigning, weighting and balancing of 1-to-100 scores on each review gives a clearer picture of a movie like this than RT's fresh-or-splat formula. | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Were you "Ready For It?" Taylor Swift dropped a new video for that single and we are here to tell you all the ways the fans decoded it...
-- "The Crown" is reportedly getting a new queen as a different actress has been hired to play an older Queen Elizabeth on the hit Netflix drama... | | | 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. | | | | | |
