Exec summary: Welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday! This is the final week of November. Here are some of the week's biggest stories...
Framing the border coverage
What's the lead story on Monday? Is it the plight of Central American migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States? Or an "invasion" at the southern border with Mexico? As always, it depends on the news sources you choose.
Since mid-October Fox News and President Trump's focus on the "caravan" has risen and fallen almost in tandem. For the better part of a week, Fox's pro-Trump talk shows have been on high alert for the impending arrival of the migrants. The network's banners have been practically screaming about it. See the graphic on "Judge Jeanine" Saturday night: "BATTLE FOR THE SOUTHERN BORDER."
But as is so often the case, these situations call for more reporting, less shouting. Case in point, CNN's Nick Watt was live from the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Sunday evening as officials from both the US and Mexico worked to disperse a group of migrants. The use of tear gas was top of mind -- as illustrated in this instantly iconic Reuters photo. | | At the time I'm hitting send, this photo is at the top of CNN.com. Hopefully someone will be able to interview this woman... and hopefully the "BATTLE" hype will be replaced by robust reporting in the days to come.
Here's an example:
Trump was watching CBS...
Superb timing by "60 Minutes:" Scott Pelley had a story on Sunday's program about family separations at the border. POTUS was evidently watching, because he tweeted soon afterward, calling it a "phony story" and labeling the newsmagazine "fake." Why? Because "we had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration."
But numerous reporters said Trump was full of it. (Some said he "lied," others said the tweet was "false.") The Houston Chronicle's Lomi Kriel, who was covering the breakups earlier than anybody, tweeted that Trump "had a blanket policy to separate parents & kids at the border, incl. kids as young as 18 months and some who were still breastfeeding." NBC's Jacob Soboroff, who was inside the camps, tweeted that Trump "is the only president to *ever* systematically separate migrant children from their parents as a stated deterrent policy."
Either POTUS doesn't understand his own policy, or he's misleading his followers on purpose...
A "channel" for Trump's fear-mongering?
Over the weekend, the NYT's Nick Kristof wrote about how newsrooms allowed themselves "to be manipulated by President Trump to heighten fears about the immigrant caravan."
Obviously, he wrote, "there were many journalists who pushed back on the president's narrative, but on the whole I'm afraid news organizations became a channel for carefully calculated fear-mongering about refugees."
I think that's a commonly held concern. But there's also a counterargument, expressed by WaPo's Karen Tumulty on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." She said newsrooms used the "caravan" to "dig deeper into the forces that put people on this treacherous path of migration..."
Two Americas, two different news worlds | | With the expectation of a new "caravan" news cycle, I started Sunday's show by talking about the two Americas living side by side -- one that's been hearing about dangerous immigrants, the other that's been hearing about the danger of manmade climate change. There's hardly any overlap between the two...
Pro-Trump talk shows ignored climate change report
Hundreds of scientists helped produce the climate assessment that came out on Friday afternoon. The government report countered Trump's climate claims... And it was mostly just ignored by pro-Trump shows and commentators. IMHO, that's a form of climate change denialism.
But outside the pro-Trump bubble, there was widespread coverage. The new report was played up high on news websites and nightly newscasts. There were followups on Saturday and Sunday. I was left wondering: Did this attempt at a "news dump" backfire?
Sorta, kinda. "It didn't get totally buried," Daily Beast EIC Noah Shachtman told me. "But I think it did kind of work. Look, anytime you put out news on a Friday afternoon during Black Friday, it's just not going to get the same kind of traffic that it does, the same kind of attention it does in the middle of a regular news week..."
Media week ahead calendar
This week: The holiday party season begins!
Tuesday: The Fox News streaming service Fox Nation comes online...
Tuesday: UK Parliament holding a hearing on misinformation...
Wednesday: National Christmas Tree lighting on the Ellipse...
Thursday: The NYT will hold its first-ever live announcement of its 10 Best Books of the year list...
Friday: G20 summit opens in Argentina...
Saturday: College football's conference championship weekend...
Sunday evening: Hanukkah begins... | |
All eyes on Mississippi
POTUS will hold two rallies for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Monday ahead of Tuesday's runoff election. Will it be enough to fend off Mike Espy? Politico says the race has Republicans "holding their breath."
On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I spoke with Lamar White Jr., whose work may have tipped the race. He's the publisher of the Bayou Brief, and he was the first to post an explosive video of Hyde-Smith talking about a "public hanging." He told me, "I still don't understand exactly what she meant by it. It's not a compliment..."
-- The bottom line, via former NYT exec editor Howell Raines, appearing on MSNBC: "If you say 'hanging' in Mississippi, you can only be talking about an instrument of racial suppression..."
-- Bill Kristol to Dana Bash on "SOTU:" Republicans "should be worried about the seat..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- In Monday's NYT, Amy Chozick profiles new Harvard Crimson editor Kristine E. Guillaume, "the third black president and first black woman to helm the organization since its founding in 1873..." (NYT)
-- Margaret Sullivan's Monday column: On the power of the follow-up question... And why it must be protected... (WaPo)
-- AT&T and other big television distributors are pledging to "refund customers who paid to watch a showdown between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson after AT&T shanked its webcast of the much-anticipated match..." (WSJ)
The death toll is still rising in CA...
I've been corresponding with Gina Lefebvre, a resident of Paradise who has been displaced along with thousands of others. "I think just the massive scale of the devastation on so many levels is important for people to know," she said. She has no idea where her two kids will be going to school now. And the housing crisis is acute. "It's a nightmare right now," she said.
On Sunday I asked her about sources of news. She said she's been following all the local outlets along with the SF Chronicle, the NYT and WaPo.
Here's the thing: The Camp Fire death toll is still rising -- it currently stands at 85 -- with 249 people still unaccounted for. So this disaster is arguably becoming a bigger story by the day. But it's no longer "breaking news," so coverage is fading...
That's why we need to highlight the local and national coverage that's still going on. Over the weekend, CNN's Ryan Young profiled the editors of the Chico Enterprise-Record and Paradise Post... Watch/read here...
Another Facebook scandal brewing
Donie O'Sullivan emails: Greetings from JFK, on my way to London to chase this wild Facebook story. I'll be joining Hadas Gold and our team there.
What the new story is about: Earlier this summer CNN, The Guardian, and other news orgs filed motions to unseal internal Facebook documents that are part of a little-known lawsuit against the company in California. It's a pretty wild tale, not least because Six4Three, the company behind the lawsuit, were the makers of "Pikini," a former Facebook app that let users find pictures of their friends wearing bikinis. (HuffPost called the app 'creepy' when it was released in 2013.) Six4Three had obtained the internal documents through court discovery.
Last month, the media's motions failed, Facebook got its way and the documents were not made public. But over the weekend it emerged that Damian Collins, an MP investigating Facebook in the United Kingdom, had got his hands on the internal docs -- and he might use his parliamentary privilege and release them.
Will Collins release the docs?
Collins says he's looking at the documents and considering what to do with them. On Tuesday, he is joining lawmakers from six other countries in London for what they are calling the inaugural "Grand Committee on Disinformation." The lawmakers had asked Mark Zuckerberg to attend, but he declined and the company is sending a VP instead.
Read O'Sullivan's full story here...
"Global trust crisis"
Tuesday's hearing "suggests that Facebook's public relations crisis in the U.S. is spilling over globally," Axios's Sara Fischer writes, dubbing this a "global trust crisis" for FB...
Joe and Mika Scarborough
Vanity Fair writer and MSNBC contributor Emily Jane Fox broke the news on Sunday: Joe and Mika tied the knot in a small ceremony at the National Archives on Saturday. It was the first time a wedding had been held there. US Rep. Elijah Cummings officiated! | | | The newly wedded couple will be off "Morning Joe" all week.. Per the VF story, Mika will be taking her husband's surname... | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Big new WaPo piece: "In the United States, right-wing violence is on the rise..." (WaPo)
-- And don't miss Patrick Kingsley and Benjamin Novak's story about Hungary's leading news site, Origo, which shows "how a free press can die..." (NYT)
Coming Tuesday: "Trump's Enemies"
That's the name of a new book by Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. The WaPo and NYPost had sneak peeks at the book on Saturday, and the NYT came out with more on Sunday. The authors were on "Fox News Sunday" too, but so far all the attention hasn't helped the book break into Amazon's best sellers list. Let's see if that changes later this week...
BIG PICTURE: In this White House, there's not just one "enemies list," there are *several,* I said on CNN Sunday night. This book is just one example...
Trump is proud of the damage he's done
POTUS gave Lewandowski and Bossie an interview (should that word be in quotes?) for the book. Among the choice quotes: "The greatest enemy of this country is Fake News. I really mean it. I think that one of the most important things that I've done, especially for the public, is explain that a lot of the news is indeed fake."
So he's proud of the damage he has done to media literacy, by claiming real news reports are fake and fake junk stories are real. My question: Are news outlets doing enough to repair the damage?
Remember the anonymous op-ed?
Trump does. Per Maggie Haberman's recap of the book: "In the interview, Trump also made clear that, despite claims from his most senior aides that they had barely focused on an anonymously written Op-Ed in The Times describing a chaotic and dysfunctional White House, some energy was put into figuring out who the author could have been. Ultimately, Mr. Trump suggested, the list of possibilities outmatched the cast of 'Murder on the Orient Express.'
Trump: "We have 3,000 people that fit that description. It's a lot. Senior administration officials, it's at least 1,000. And the way they worded it, we checked. That means it's not someone who would be known. This could mean that it's a person I've never met."
| | FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Speaking of books, Page Six says that longtime National Enquirer exec editor Barry Levine "is penning a book for Hachette about the president..." (Page Six)
-- Former Trump aide Cliff Sims, soon to be out with his own book, says Trump is "very cognizant of the power that he has to set the media narrative..." (Axios)
-- That's exactly what David Zurawik criticized on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." He said "Trump is still able to drive a lot of coverage..." (CNN)
Fox's new "villain"
It's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Case in point: On Friday, when the government's newest climate change report came out, Fox News spent more time talking about her shoes than climate change.
But the congresswoman-elect is using Twitter and Instagram to disarm her critics. Here's what she posted on Sunday in response to my observation about Fox: | | On "Reliable," Cenk Uygur and Olivia Nuzzi joined me to discuss her social media prowess. Uygur, who championed Ocasio-Cortez's candidacy, said "she uses social media as a jiu-jitsu to turn their attacks against them."
But Nuzzi pointed out that tweets and grams are no substitute for interviews with reporters. (And Ocasio-Cortez declined my request for an interview.) Here's the segment...
>> RELATED: Dean Obeidallah's opinion column for CNN.com: "Could it be that a young, brown Latina woman is the new 'villain' Fox News needs to keep viewers tuned in?"
Bill Shine's big bonus
CNBC was the first to get ahold of these financial disclosure forms. They show that WH comms chief Bill Shine was paid $8.4 million in severance when he was forced out of Fox News last year... And he is owed a total of $7 million in bonus payments this year and next year.
Daily Beast EIC Noah Shachtman's reaction on Sunday's show: "It's incredible." He asked viewers to imagine "the howls from the conservative media" if someone from CNN or the Beast had this conflict of interest. "But here, it appears to be business as usual," he said. He said this is about the "merging of a TV star and a TV network," complete with an "insane feedback loop" between Fox's talk shows and Trump's policy choices...
Clinton's critique
ICYMI over the holiday weekend, Hillary Clinton gave an interview to The Guardian and described how fascist and authoritarian leaders try to destroy a common fact base. "One of the ways you do that is by consistently attacking the press," Clinton said. Trump "doesn't attack Fox News, because they're like a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party now. So he attacks the press and the broadcast media that raise questions about him, that don't give him fidelity and loyalty."
>> Zurawik's reaction on Sunday's show: Clinton was "no friend of the press." But what's going on between Fox and Trump is "outrageous." Watch the segment here...
Catch up on "Reliable"
Listen to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn... Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or watch the full program via CNNgo or VOD...
ICIJ's new investigation has 58 media partners
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, "which previously produced the Panama and Paradise Papers investigations, partnered with more than 250 journalists in 36 countries" for this new probe of medical devices. The effort includes "the world's only publicly searchable global database of recalls and safety warnings."
There are a total of 58 newsroom partners for his new project. NBC News and The AP are the two US partners. NBC's first report, "Exporting Pain," is up now, and "NBC Nightly News" and "Today" will have new stories early this week...
>> Andy Lehren jumped from the NYT to NBC about a year ago, and he helped build this bridge to ICIJ...
>> Collaborative: ICIJ and its partners say they "welcome more information from whistleblowers, insiders and patients to help us continue our reporting and expand our data..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Check out Daniella Emanuel's story about StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and the new "One Small Step" initiative... (CNN)
-- Ratings for NBC's telecast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade were UP year over year... (Deadline)
-- And just for fun, here's a picture of me and Sunny watching the parade when the "Sesame Street" float showed up. She's pointing at Big Bird... | | "Ralph" No. 1 for the long weekend
Brooks Barnes' leads never disappoint. His latest for the NYT on the holiday box office:
"Thanksgiving movie audiences stuck with the equivalent of grandma's green beans almondine — the tried and true."
Disney's "Wreck-It Ralph" sequel "Ralph Breaks the Internet" was No. 1, "Creed II" was No. 2, and "original offerings, including a newfangled 'Robin Hood' and the political drama 'The Front Runner,' were scraped into the garbage disposal," he writes. Read the rest here...
Pallotta's top takeaway
"Ralph" took the top spot "with an estimated $84.5 million 5-day holiday weekend haul in the US. That's the second biggest Thanksgiving opening ever," Frank Pallotta writes. "The highest grossing 5-day opening for the holiday is 'Frozen,' which made $93.5 million in 2013." So this is "yet another big opening for Disney on Thanksgiving... The company holds the top-five all-time openings on the holiday..."
So how about that "Lion King" teaser trailer... | | Astonishing. The computer animated film looks absolutely photorealistic. Here's the trailer in case you missed it on Thursday...
Per Lisa Respers France's story, "the film will star Donald Glover as Simba, Beyoncé as Nala, and James Earl Jones, who is reprising his role as Mufasa. Elton John and Hans Zimmer are also returning to compose music for the movie," 25 years after the original...
"The Walking Dead" stumbles into midseason break amid losses
That's the headline on Brian Lowry's latest review. Warning: It contains spoilers! Read on here...
Thanks for reading. Email me feedback anytime! See you tomorrow...
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