Hello from CPJ's annual press freedom awards dinner... Scroll down for highlights... Plus the rest of the day's media world news...
Zuckerberg speaks | | Mark Zuckerberg is tired of the bad press about Facebook. He's especially ticked off about last week's NYT expose. And he spoke out about it in an exclusive interview with Laurie Segall on Tuesday.
Parts of the interview aired on "AC360" Tuesday night. Here is Seth Fiegerman's full recap. "Zuckerberg resisted growing calls for changes to Facebook's C-suite, reiterated Facebook's potential as a force for good, and pushed back at some of the unrelenting critical coverage of his company," Fiegerman writes.
-- Z's media critique: "A lot of the criticism around the biggest issues has been fair, but I do think that if we are going to be real, there is this bigger picture as well, which is that we have a different world view than some of the folks who are covering us..."
-- And he says Sheryl Sandberg isn't going anywhere...
Watching the FAANG stocks
"For the first time, all five FAANG stocks are in bear markets," MarketWatch's Tomi Kilgore writes. Apple was the last to arrive there on Tuesday. Google entered a bear market on Monday. Now there's lots of "death cross" talk and worries about the rest of the year...
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FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Ronald Klain tweeted: "So basically the Dow fell 550+ points today, and it's not one of the top two stories of the day. Great times..." (Twitter)
-- To Klain's point, these are some of the other stories soaking up attention: "Trump raised prosecuting Clinton with top White House, Justice officials..." "Trump answers Mueller's questions on Russian interference..." "Trump defends daughter Ivanka amid email scrutiny..."
-- "Google on Tuesday quietly said it had taken down additional accounts implicated in online foreign influence operations aimed at least in part at the US..." (Axios)
-- Glamour mag is going out of print, save for occasional specials. "That monthly schedule, for a Glamour audience, doesn't make sense anymore," editor Samantha Barry said... (NYT)
US president or Saudi PR person?
The headline on WashingtonPost.com right now: "For Trump, the bottom line on Saudi Arabia takes precedence over human rights." Anne Gearan says President Trump's declaration "that he won't hold Saudi rulers accountable for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi distilled the president's foreign policy approach to its transactional and personalized essence."
--> Bob Corker's reaction: "I never thought I'd see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia." Here's CNN's full story...
Ryan slams Trump's "surrender"
The Post's reaction is appropriately furious. Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan called it a "betrayal of long-established American values." Ryan said Trump "is correct in saying the world is a very dangerous place. His surrender to this state-ordered murder will only make it more so. An innocent man, brutally slain, deserves better, as does the cause of truth and justice and human rights."
Note that Trump's exclamatory statement didn't even mention Khashoggi's Post role... But it did include the Saudis' claim that the writer was an "enemy of the state," chilling language to see quoted in any US president's statement...
Karen Attiah's column
Karen Attiah was Khashoggi's editor at the Post. In this new column, she says "it is time for Congress to act and impose consequences for Saudi Arabia's dangerous behavior, from Yemen to its bloody repression of peaceful critics. For if we do not, Khashoggi's death will be a blood stain on America's moral conscience that neither time, nor Saudi hush money, will ever erase."
Inside the CPJ dinner...
The Khashoggi case was very much on the minds of the people at CPJ's press freedom awards dinner on Tuesday night.
Today we learned "our contracts and our money trump our principles," the evening's host, Bill Whitaker of CBS, said from the stage. He promoted the #JusticeForJamal hashtag.
There was an empty chair for Khashoggi at one of the tables. And his killing was brought up in the larger context of attacks around the world. I thought CPJ board chair Kathleen Carroll said it best: "The world is pretty scary right now... The forces of press repression seem to be getting louder and more powerful by the minute..."
This year's honorees
| | Read about the five award recipients — all women journalists — on the CPJ website.
If you caught last Sunday's "Reliable Sources," you already know one of the five... Keep scrolling for details...
"Are we less free and less brave?"
In his introduction, Whitaker mentioned a bit of good news: CNN and Jim Acosta's recent court victory against the Trump administration — an effort that CPJ and scores of other organizations supported.
There was applause in the hall for Acosta. But, Whitaker said, "such victories are rare." And the examples he went on to share — about journalists being doxxed, trolled, assaulted, censored, imprisoned, and murdered — showed how precious America's system is. And showed the need to protect what we have. The need to be a model for the world.
Meher Tatna, the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, raised concerns about journalists being chilled by anti-media attacks in the United States. She talked about her arrival as an immigrant and asked, "Are we less free and less brave? Are we still that same country that embraced me years ago?"
The time to fight is "NOW"
I was so inspired to see Maria Ressa accept the inaugural Gwen Ifill Award. Ressa is the founder and exec editor of Rappler, a pioneering news site that the Philippine government is trying to destroy. I spoke with her on last Sunday's show.
Ressa is about to fly home to Manila to face nonsensical tax fraud charges. She is being threatened with jail time. She criticized both the government, for targeting her, and Facebook, for allowing so many lies and smears to spread. On stage, Ressa connected the dots between Trump and Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte. "You have a president so much like ours whose attacks against the press and women give permission to autocrats like ours to unleash the dark side of humanity," she said.
Then she made six points... I'd like to print all of them...
One: "The time to fight for journalism, for our constitution, The Philippines and yours, is NOW."
Two: "Don't stay quiet when you are attacked."
Three: "We need to continue reporting without fear or favor."
Four: "We need to build global alliances."
Five: "We need to hold tech platforms to account... They need to protect the public interest and the public sphere where democracy happens."
Six: Prospective investors need to recognize that newsrooms are businesses. "I'm being attacked not just as a journalist but as the founder of a company that successfully and legally raised money to make our dream a reality," Ressa said, urging the business community to speak up.
Sponsors and sightings
CNN's parent AT&T, Google, HFPA, and the Knight Foundation were the underwriting sponsors of the evening. Other key donors included Reuters, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and the Facebook Journalism Project. At the end of the evening, after donations were solicited, CPJ exec director Joel Simon said that $2.2 million had been raised, "a new record for this event."
Also spotted: Robert Mahoney, Courtney Radsch, Jeff Zucker, Lydia Polgreen, Stephen J. Adler, Peter Lattman, Sarah Ellison, Amy Chozick, Jeffrey Toobin, Poppy Harlow, Andrew Morse, Amy Entelis, Allison Gollust, Michael Grynbaum, Catherine Rampell, Philip Bump, David Rohde, Marty Baron, Bob Woodward, Norm Pearlstine, James Risen, Margaret Sullivan, Indira Lakshmanan, Richard Roth, Cristina Alesci, Jose Zamora, Justin Dini, Josh Raffel, Steven Zeitchik, and many more...
Remembering the Capital Gazette shooting
Two survivors from the Capital Gazette shooting, reporters Selene San Felice and Rachael Pacella, were at the dinner. I've been keeping in touch with them through social media, but we had never met until now. They are remarkable reporters. | | CPJ's Kerry Paterson reminded me that the US, according to the group's data, is "the third deadliest country" for journalists in 2018 after Afghanistan and Syria.
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- David Faber's scoop: "Amazon is bidding for all of the 22 regional sports TV networks that Disney acquired from Twenty-First Century Fox. The e-commerce giant's bid includes the New York-based YES Network..."
-- CNN named two new political analysts on Tuesday: Lisa Lerer and Elaina Plott...
-- I can't believe I missed this yesterday: Jill Abramson is now writing a media column for NYMag. Her first piece: "The GOP Thinks #MeToo Is a Chance to Exploit the 'Biased' Press..."
Rams-Chiefs shoot out nabs epic ratings for ESPN
Frank Pallotta emails: If you need more evidence that big scoring equals big NFL ratings, look no further than this week's "Monday Night Football."
The Los Angeles Rams' 54 to 51 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, which is the most points scored in the history of MNF, brought in an 11.3 overnight rating. That's the best overnight rating for the ESPN telecast since 2014.
Monday night's ratings were also up 57% from last year. Overall, following week 10, the NFL's viewership is up about 3%. So remember when everyone said that the NFL was doomed because its ratings were falling? Yep, nope...
| | Megyn Kelly and NBC still negotiating
I thought this would be settled weeks ago, so I don't know what to think now. But on Tuesday Page Six and the WSJ both reported that the resolution could come next week. "Megyn Kelly is nearing a deal" with NBC News "to walk away with the full value left on her three-year, $69 million contract with the network," Joe Flint and Keach Hagey reported.
Both sides declined to comment...
Fourth weekly win for "Today"
"The weekly ratings are in, and for the 4th consecutive week, 'Today' was the No. 1 morning show across-the-board, a feat it hadn't accomplished since January," TVNewser's A.J. Katz writes.
"Today" has been winning in the 25-54 demo for three years, but lately it's been notching total viewer wins too...
One year since Charlie Rose was fired
The WaPo investigation about Charlie Rose came out one year ago today.
Amy Brittain, who co-wrote the story with Irin Carmon, tweeted, "I've had time to reflect, but I always go back to the women who made the life-altering decision to go on the record. Reah. Kyle. Megan."
--> Per TVNewser, Rose's former show "CBS This Morning" "remains down year-over-year." Last week "the newscast was -8% in total viewers and -10% in A25-54 viewers vs. the same week last year," which was Rose's final week on the show.
Special Thanksgiving edition of the "Reliable" podcast
We posted this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast early because it's perfectly timed for Thanksgiving.
My guest is Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, which specializes in getting people to talk with one another. In the past fifteen years, more than half a million people have recorded their stories with StoryCorps. Now the group is launching a new initiative to connect people across the political divide.
Isay's message -- about listening being a form of love -- is an uplifting thing to hear this week. Fights on cable news and Twitter are "just not who we are," he told me. "I am way less fearful and way more hopeful about people after having this experience."
Listen via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn...
| | Former Nixon W.H. counsel John Dean to John Berman on "AC360" Tuesday night:
"If I had to channel a little of Richard Nixon, I think he'd tell this President he's going too far. This is the sort of stuff of a banana republic. This is what an autocrat does… this is a level Richard Nixon never went to."
Lots of followup Q's...
Monday: The White House backs down, restores Jim Acosta's press pass, but claims new "rules" will be in effect at pressers. Followups will only be permitted at the "discretion" of the W.H. Reporters looked around and said: What is this? We don't agree to this!
Tuesday: Trump took questions, lots and lots of them, from the W.H. press pool. Acosta was there. He asked a Q... and a followup Q... and Trump answered both. Back to normal?
The takeaway: A Q&A on the South Lawn isn't the same as a presser. But Tuesday showed that Trump's treatment of the press varies by the hour/by the day. "Rules" are meaningless. Even if his aides want to impose order, Trump is all about disorder...
The lingering question: The next time he's in a foul mood and wants to pick a fight, will the W.H. try to suspend someone's press pass, citing the "rules?"
Trump teasing that he might attend the WHCA
I don't think we should take this very seriously... He might just be trolling... But on Tuesday night, POTUS tweeted a reaction to the WHCA's announcement that Ron Chernow will take the place of a comedian at next April's dinner:
"So-called comedian Michelle Wolf bombed so badly last year at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that this year, for the first time in decades, they will have an author instead of a comedian. Good first step in comeback of a dying evening and tradition! Maybe I will go?"
Obama's podcast with Axe
David Axelrod held a special live taping of "The Axe Files" with his former boss, Barack Obama, in Chicago on Tuesday... The podcast is up now...
Of note: This is one of a small # of interviews Obama has given since leaving the White House... Others have been with David Letterman, Prince Harry, "The Wilderness" podcast, and WBEZ... He hasn't done any news-of-the-day interviews with journalists... | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Hadas Gold emails: Italy is striking out against streaming platforms like Netflix. The country's culture minister, Alberto Bonisoli, said he planned to issue a decree on December 14 ensuring that Italian films be shown in movie theaters before they can be offered on digital platforms. This has come up in France too... (AFP)
The next "Documenting Hate"
Brian Lowry emails: "Frontline" follows up its earlier documentary "Documenting Hate: Charlottesville" with a look at the rise of neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups, probing, among other things, how many of those members are either active-duty or former military personnel. Again produced with ProPublica, "Documenting Hate: New American Nazis" opens with the mass killing at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, proceeding to investigate a subset of the neo-Nazi movement, Atomwaffen Division, the roots of its ideology and perhaps most unsettling, its recruitment efforts.
The hour premiered on Tuesday night... Here's the PBS website for it...
| | Today in ridiculously long movie titles...
Frank Pallotta emails: Margot Robbie posted a photo on Instagram Tuesday of a script for a new DC film called "Birds of Prey" in which she'll reprise her role as Harley Quinn. Robbie then added a long handwritten subtitle on the title page, which everyone thought was just for fun.
But no, THR reported that the addition is apparently the official title. So what's the title? Well, here goes **deep breath** "Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)." Hey, that'll be fun to fit in a tweet when it comes out in 2020!
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Frankie Muniz got engaged after a rough week in which he said goodbye to a beloved uncle and his cat flooded his Phoenix home. Seriously...
-- Surprise! Country music radio host Bobby Bones is the newest winner of "Dancing With the Stars..."
By Chloe Melas:
-- Sex and the City 3" planned to kill off Mr. Big...
-- The Bachelor" season 23 trailer is here... And it's all about Colton Underwood's virginity... | |
Thanks for reading. Email me feedback anytime! See you tomorrow...
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