| | | | | What do you have in store this weekend? I'm going to a birthday party for one of Sunny's 1-year-old friends, touring a brewery, and catching up on "Billions." Plus: Sunday's "Reliable Sources!" And I need to find my tux for next week's WHCD. Here's our weekend media guide... | | Breaking: DOJ investigating wireless carriers | | Via CNNMoney's Seth Fiegerman and Hadas Gold: "The U.S. Justice Department is probing some of the leading wireless carriers and an industry group over possible coordination to make it harder for customers to switch carriers."
The NYT's Cecilia Kang broke this story on Friday. Kang indicates that a formal complaint by Apple helped get this investigation going... AT&T says "we are aware of the investigation" and Verizon says it's "much ado about nothing..." | | Live coverage of the Barbara Bush funeral | | | NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other channels will present live coverage of Saturday's funeral. The broadcast network coverage will begin at noon ET... | | Notable names on the Sunday shows | | | Emmanuel Macron on "Fox News Sunday," Kellyanne Conway on CNN's "State of the Union," DNC chair Tom Perez on "Meet the Press," Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif on "This Week..." | | On this Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." | | | The New Yorker editor David Remnick will join me... Along with John Avlon, Sarah Ellison, Edward Felsenthal, and Denver mayor Michael Hancock... If you're wondering why the mayor is booked, tune in Sunday at 11am ET... Til then, email me your ideas for the show... | | | "After a history-making set at Coachella last weekend, Beyoncé will once again take the stage this Saturday, but unlike last weekend, this performance will not be livestreamed," CNN's Sandra Gonzalez notes. YouTube only had the rights to stream the first weekend... | | Tapper profiled in Saturday's NYT | | CNN's Jake Tapper has been working on a novel for the past four years -- and now it's about to come out. "The Hellfire Club" will be released on Tuesday... It's a "political thriller set in 1954," a "meticulously researched work of historical fiction with a byzantine plot punctuated by explosive, Dan Brown-esque twists," Alexandra Alter writes in Saturday's NYT.
"In some ways, writing about 1954 was an interesting way to write about 2018," Tapper told her. "There are, independent of my book, echoes today of what happened in the fifties, in terms of lies, in terms of indecency, in terms of how much people are willing to stand up against lies and indecency today, not just politicians, but also in the press." Here's the full profile... | | Amy Chozick's memoir "Chasing Hillary," out Tuesday, is launching with a first excerpt in Sunday's NYT. But the adaptation is online already... And it's getting a lot of attention... Some of it very positive, some of it very critical. Chelsea Clinton challenged the very first sentence of the excerpt, a depiction of election night, which she says is untrue: "Things were already looking bad when Chelsea Clinton popped the Champagne." After Chelsea tweeted about it, the NYT added attribution to the sentence: "several people told me."
--> The excerpt also contains this striking quote from Hillary Clinton to Robby Mook later on election night: "I knew it. I knew this would happen to me. They were never going to let me be president."
--> Chozick says in her authors note that the book "is a work of nonfiction in that everything in it happened. But this is not a work of journalism, in that the recollections, conversations, and characters are based on my own impressions and memories." She says she hired "a professional fact-checker to review -- and scrutinize -- my version of events." | | | Speaking of books coming out on Tuesday... Ronan Farrow's new work "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence," which he researched and wrote while investigating Harvey Weinstein, is coming out then too. Farrow's first excerpt is on The New Yorker website... And he will have a preview of the book on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" this Sunday... | | | The HBO series has its season 2 premiere on Sunday night. I can't wait. The creators and stars spoke at a Tribeca screening on Thursday... Check out EW's recap here... It says "the scope of season 2 expands widely, going far behind the contours of the Westworld park to the inner workings of parent company, Delos, itself..." | | 🎧 Tariffs and layoffs on this week's "Reliable" podcast | | This is a complex and under-covered story: Some newspapers, including the Tampa Bay Times, say they're feeling the pinch from new tariffs on Canadian newsprint. All of a sudden it costs a lot more to print the daily paper. Paul Tash, the Tampa Bay Times CEO, is my guest on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast... He explained the situation and said he is shedding 50 jobs as a result of the tariffs... We also discussed the state of local journalism more broadly. Listen here via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn...
--> Jill Disis will have a full story about this on CNNMoney over the weekend... | | -- This Sunday's "Dateline NBC" special," "Silent No More," is the "first prime-time event" hosted by Savannah Guthrie... (The AP)
-- I missed this Joe Pompeo joint: He says Meredith has turned down David Pecker's offer for Time, Fortune, Money, and SI, but "a dozen or so parties" may still be in the running... (VF)
-- HLN anchor Erica Hill is "returning to CNN as lead fill-in anchor and national correspondent..." (TVNewser) | | FBI offering $1 million reward in Austin Tice case | | | -- Per ABC's James Gordon Meek and Conor Finnegan: "Intelligence gathered over the past 18 months suggests that American journalist Austin Tice is still alive almost six years after he went missing in Syria, ABC News has learned. The assessment comes as the FBI has, for the first time, announced a new reward for information leading to Tice's safe location, recovery, and return -- for $1 million..." | | This is so true... TOO true... | | "The James Comey book tour, at some collective psychological level, is another excuse for the country to indulge a hangover obsession with the 2016 presidential election," Erik Wemple wrote Friday. "There's the hacked emails, the federal investigations, the announcement of the re-opening of a certain federal investigation." --> Wemple's post is about the NYT's infamous October 31, 2016 story titled "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." Comey says the story was "just wrong," at least in part, but Dean Baquet told Wemple "I think it was NOT inaccurate based on what we knew at the time..." | | What will Comey say about this? | | | The Comey memos show that Comey laughed when Trump suggested he might have to jail journalists to send a message about unauthorized leaks. Oliver Darcy tried to contact Comey about this, but "neither a representative for Comey nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment." This will surely come up in one of Comey's next interviews... | | Brian Lowry emails: David Frum offers an astute take on one of the unintended consequences of creating a "closed conservative information system" -- namely, you end up making decisions based on faulty assumptions.
Slate reached a similar conclusion, linking the eagerness among some Republicans to release Comey's memos to a flawed report by Fox News... | | Lowry's parting note about "Comey-palooza" | | | Brian Lowry adds: One reason this week's interviews were less repetitive than they might have been is the steady drip of news throughout the week. In that regard, the GOP Congress and president gave Comey's tour oxygen by providing new allegations/statements to which he was asked to respond... | | -- Via Lisa Respers France: Natalie Portman has decided against traveling to Jerusalem to receive the Genesis Prize, citing "distressing" events in Israel... (CNN)
-- NBC News is touting its tech coverage. Here's Friday's memo to staff from Noah Oppenheim calling tech "increasingly one of the most crucial areas we cover..." (Talking Biz News) | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Kevin Williamson broke his silence on Friday after unceremoniously parting ways with The Atlantic. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, titled "When the Twitter Mob Came for Me," the conservative writer offered his take on the events that led to his ouster from the magazine. Read it here... | | One of these stories is not like the others | | Just a sampling of Friday's headlines:
-- The Guardian: "North Korea halts nuclear and missile tests ahead of planned Trump summit"
-- CNN: "Trump legal team brings fresh firepower to reset with Mueller"
-- WashPost: "Sessions told White House that Rosenstein's firing could prompt his departure, too"
-- NYT: "Michael Cohen has said he would take a bullet for Trump. Maybe not anymore."
-- WashPost: "Stormy Daniels's former lawyer said to be cooperating with federal probe of Michael Cohen" | | Tapes of Trump posing as "John Barron" | | "It really was an orchestrated, multi-year, deception."
Former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg, who received calls from Trump pretending to be P.R. rep John Barron, published a mind-blowing piece about Trump's lying on the WashPost website Friday morning, complete with audio tapes.
Greenberg says Trump posed as Barron to feed false info and crack the Forbes 400 list in the 1980s. He called it a "deception" in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett on Friday. Trump's intent was "to really create a false narrative and plant it in the media that he was worth far more money than he was," Greenberg said.
"Look, he was successful at that," Burnett responded... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- FB is reportedly working on a Messenger tool called "High School Networks..." It appears to be "a way for students to connect with their peers at the same school and/or taking the same classes," Matt Navarra writes... (TNW)
-- ICYMI: "What if the first human being on the lunar surface had been a woman?" The filmmakers of the new Netflix space documentary "Mercury 13," out Friday, tackle a question they find "still worth asking even decades after the last moon landing..." (Time) | | "New BuzzFeed Series Uses Social Media To Retell American History" | | Julia Waldow emails: BuzzFeed's taking a time machine back to 1968 through a new mobile documentary series created and directed by two Russian journalists, Fast Company reveals. The project revisits history through the lens of modern technology, using everything from text messages to Twitter to Instagram.
A promo on BuzzFeed's YouTube channel published on Friday says the project "lets you witness one of the wildest years in history the way you witness the news now. Spend some time in Eartha Kitt's text messages, see Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael) go live on Periscope with a speech criticizing Martin Luther King Jr., and watch Neil Armstrong's Instagram story as he takes his first steps on the moon." The first three episodes are slated to premiere Saturday... | | Avicii tributes pour in following Swedish DJ's death | | | Lisa Respers France and Sandra Gonzalez write: "Grammy nominated Swedish DJ Avicii died Friday, his publicist confirmed to CNN. He was 28... Avicii was one of the most successful touring DJs in the industry, working with artists including Madonna... He retired from performing in 2016 after a string of health issues, including acute pancreatitis..." | | "Infinity War" is coming. But will it beat "Star Wars?" | | | Frank Pallotta emails: We are a week out from one of the biggest events in Marvel Studios (and possibly movie) history: "Avengers: Infinity War." The question in Hollywood is whether it has a chance at the biggest opening in history, topping "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"? With something this big it's hard to tell, but Fandango told me that 1,000 showtimes on the site have already sold out. There are so many screenings that there's even a 3:05 a.m. showtime next Friday. More... | | | "Audiences may already be looking ahead to 'Avengers: Infinity War,' but this weekend could feature an interesting battle among the top three," Box Office Mojo's Brad Brevet reports. "While we're expecting A Quiet Place to return to the weekend's #1 spot, the race could be a little closer should Rampage hold on better than expected or if Amy Schumer's new comedy I Feel Pretty outperforms expectations. The weekend also sees the release of Fox Searchlight's Super Troopers 2 and Lionsgate's release of Traffik into a moderate number of locations..." | | "And Then I Go" explores the struggles of youth that can lead to school violence | | | Chloe Melas emails: Unfortunately this new film is quite timely. "And Then I Go" pulls back the curtain on the precursors to a school shooting. The movie is based on Jim Shepard's 2004 novel "Project X..." I spoke with director Vincent Grashaw about why he wanted to make this film... | | What did you think of the "Scandal" finale? | | | Brian Lowry emails: The "Scandal" finale exhibited a ratings uptick from where the show's been this season, drawing 5.4 million same-day viewers, per Nielsen, which, it should be noted, was barely enough to win its 10 p.m. time slot over "SWAT" and "Chicago Fire." As for the episode itself, it was appropriately crazy, marking an end to a show perhaps most notable for how shrewdly it pivoted to play to the social-media age... More... | | | Email your feedback and thoughts to brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
