Exec summary: Let's start in the entertainment world, since there's so much news out of Sundance and the SAGs... Scroll down for our media week ahead calendar, fresh takes on Trump and the Dems, AOC's response to a "Reliable Sources" segment, and much more...
So much to see at Sundance
Among the headlines from the Sundance Film Festival so far:
-- Amazon has paid $13 million for Mindy Kaling's "Late Night." It is "is one of the largest pacts in Sundance history," Variety notes... And "a statement deal for new Amazon chief Jennifer Salke, her first big film festival pact," per Deadline...
-- Via Kenneth Turan, this was Kaling's joke about the distribution deal: "I have spent a fortune on Amazon, so its nice to see them reciprocate..."
-- "Apollo 11," from CNN Films and Todd Douglas Miller, has lifted off... The reviews are stellar... IndieWire called the film "astonishing," with footage that "takes your breath away..."
-- Alex Gibney's film "The Inventor" had its premiere on Thursday night... It "examines the $9 billion Theranos scandal, and blames Silicon Valley..."
-- "Halston," produced by CNN Films, scored a theatrical distribution deal after its premiere on Saturday night... Details here via Variety...
-- Via TheWrap: "A24 has picked up the worldwide rights excluding China" to "The Farewell." Lulu Wang's film, starring Awkwafina, "evolved from a story" Wang told on "This American Life..."
-- TheWrap also has a list of every sale so far, including two films bought by HBO...
Hirschhorn's picks
I checked in with Sundance devotee and REDEF founder Jason Hirschhorn, who has been attending the festival for 15 straight years. Some of his picks so far: "The Inventor," "Where's My Roy Cohn," "The Farewell," "American Factory," "Apollo 11," "The Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary," and "Blinded by the Light..."
A few more Sundance notes
 -- Chris Wallace and Wolf Blitzer were on hand for the premiere of "Mike Wallace Is Here" by Avi Belkin. Blitzer tweeted: "It is powerful, emotional and so timely." THR's full story...
-- I can't wait to see "The Report," a "sober, and sobering, account of the Senate's investigation into the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques..." Read Vulture and IndieWire's reviews...
-- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn't make it to Park City for Sunday's premiere of "Knock Down the House..." Still, she made a virtual appearance: | | -- Claudia Puig, the president of the LA Film Critics Association, wrote: It's a "wonderfully inspiring doc that follows several women Congressional hopefuls," including Ocasio-Cortez...
SAG Awards: A surprise win for "Black Panther"
Chloe Melas emails: Wow! "Black Panther" took home the most coveted award of the night, outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture, at Sunday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards. This is an incredible moment for a film that took Hollywood by storm...
Rami Malek won for "Bohemian Rhapsody," a possible signal about next month's Oscars... Glenn Close won for "The Wife..." Emily Blunt took home her first SAG award, as supporting actress, for "A Quiet Place..." and Mahershala Ali took home the supporting actor award for "Green Book..."
>> Read Lisa Respers France's summary of the evening here...
The TV awards
"This Is Us" won outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series... "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" won the comedy award... Other winners included Sandra Oh, Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub, Jason Bateman, Patricia Arquette, and Darren Criss...
>> Here's the full list...
Arquette thanks Mueller
Here's how she ended her acceptance speech: "Thank you Robert Mueller and everyone working to make sure that we have sovereignty for the United States of America." More via Sandra Gonzalez here...
"Rent Live," but not fully live
Brian Lowry emails: Sunday night's "Rent" got a bad break -- literally -- when one of its key characters, Brennin Hunt, broke his foot, forcing Fox to broadcast Saturday's dress rehearsal, thus robbing the musical of its "Live!" designation. But given the various shortcomings, it's not clear it would have made enough of a difference to redeem a show that struggled to recover from an equally bad start. | | Read Lowry's full review here... For what it's worth, I almost turned off the show after 15 awkward minutes, but I thought it got much better in its second and third hours...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Jim Rutenberg's Monday column is about tabloid fictions about Jennifer Aniston... And it's about so much more... (NYT)
-- Margaret Sullivan's Monday column is about the dilemma many newspaper readers face: "Cancel in protest? Or stay with a local newspaper that's being strip-mined for profits?" (WaPo)
-- More than 400 BuzzFeed staffers have signed this open letter: "We demand BuzzFeed pay out earned paid time off to its recently laid-off employees..." (Medium)
-- Per Jeremy Barr, BF management responded by saying "we are open to re-evaluating this decision..." (Twitter)
Media week ahead calendar
Tuesday: Earnings reports from Apple and Verizon...
Wednesday: All eyes on Facebook earnings... AT&T and Microsoft report, too...
Thursday: Earnings reports from Samsung, Amazon, and Nintendo...
Saturday night: Laurie Segall's documentary about Facebook premieres on CNN...
Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday!
Two big books on Tuesday
Cliff Sims and Chris Christie, two ex-Trump insiders, come out with books on Tuesday... Portions of both books confirm all those anonymous-sourced stories about chaos and dysfunction in Trumpworld...
Christie's first interview about his book was on Sunday's "This Week..." He'll also be on the "Late Show" and "The View," among other shows... Maggie Haberman has fresh excerpts here...
Sims' first interview is on Monday's "GMA..." He'll also be on "Nightline," "New Day," "The View," the "Late Show," etc...
Brokaw's careless comments about Hispanics
Tom Brokaw said on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning that Hispanics should "work harder at assimilation" into American culture. By Sunday evening, he was trying to put out the fire he started... Rob McLean and I wrote about it here...
>> Brokaw's first of many tweets: "I feel terrible a part of my comments on Hispanics offended some members of that proud culture."
>> The National Association of Hispanic Journalists reprehended "both the commentary and apology..."
2020 WATCH
Howard Schultz's trying the coffee
He launched a book tour on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night. The NYT published his interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin around the same time. Sorkin: Schultz "said he planned to crisscross the country for the next three months as part of a book tour before deciding whether to formally enter the race." | | The backlash is already fierce. The Daily Beast says Schultz's 2020 flirtation is being "brutalized on Twitter." The headline on Caitlin Huey-Burns' piece for CBS says "Democrats to Howard Schultz: Don't do it."
The logic behind the Harris 2020 launch
Kamala Harris went on a book tour earlier this month, sitting down for several TV interviews to increase her visibility. Then she entered the 2020 race on MLK Day, when the news cycle was relatively quiet, resulting in lots of coverage. And she held her first official event in her hometown of Oakland, California, on Sunday afternoon.
The speech timing was a "smart move," NBC's Geoff Bennett tweeted. "It allows her to draw a large local crowd ... and with little else dominating the news today, MSNBC, CNN and Fox are all taking her speech live and in its entirety."
--> Nearly 200 reporters were credentialed for the Oakland event...
--> Rolling Stone DC bureau chief Andy Kroll: "Of the 2020 rollouts thus far, Harris' is the best. Hat's off to her campaign..."
What I noticed about her speech
She used the word "truth" 21 times by my count. "Fight for the truth," she said. And: "Let's speak some truth." And: "I will speak the truth." Politico's Christopher Cadelago said Harris "sounds like Jimmy Carter post-Watergate." Interesting parallel...
--> CNN will hold a town hall with Harris, moderated by Jake Tapper, Monday at 10 p.m. ET...
The most diverse Dem field, ever
"The 2020 Democratic presidential field is still developing, but it's already the most diverse in modern political history," Harry Enten wrote for CNN.com Sunday.
Of the eight candidates who are at least half in, "four are women (a record), one is an Asian man (Andrew Yang), one is a Hispanic man (Julián Castro) and one is a gay man (Pete Buttigieg). All told, seven of the eight Democratic candidates are non-white, women or identify as LGBT, or some combination of the three." Read on...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Sneak peek at this announcement from Facebook, coming Monday: "CrowdTangle will be opening up access to the research community to provide more transparency about what's happening on Facebook and Instagram as they work in the areas of misinformation and abuse of social media platforms..."
-- Read this by David Von Drehle: "Twitter is the crystal meth of newsrooms..." (WaPo)
-- Jeff Jarvis wrote this critique of the recent anti-Twitter commentaries from me, Farhad Manjoo, etc... Jack Dorsey plugged the piece on Sunday night... (Medium)
| | THE GOVERNMENT IS OPEN AGAIN... NOW WHAT?
The ultimate test of Trump's reality distortion field
The end of the shutdown is a big let-down for some of the president's biggest boosters in the media. I wrote about their reactions over the weekend. So will Trump be able to maintain his support while figures like Lou Dobbs and Ann Coulter are chastising him? That was our lead story on Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." I said I think this is the biggest test yet of Trump's "reality distortion field." For the past two years he's been able to claim that it's sunny when it's raining, sometimes literally. But will his techniques work now, on an issue so central to his campaign?
>> Trump relies on an "echo chamber," Jess McIntosh said... "Conservative media is totally split among this," Shelby Holliday pointed out...
>> Is Trump betting on the public's short-term memory? Oliver Darcy said Trump has "kicked the can down the road for three weeks." Watch the rest here...
Trump talks to WSJ
The weekend started with Ann Coulter labeling Trump the "biggest wimp" ever to be president... And it ended with Trump's response, via this interview with Peter Nicholas of the WSJ.
When asked about Coulter, Trump said, "I hear she's become very hostile. Maybe I didn't return her phone call or something."
Trump turns on... Fox?!
All weekend long, Trump tweeted positive quotes from Fox shows... But on Sunday night, he snapped at correspondents John Roberts and Gillian Turner: | | "Trump turning on Fox News feels like a pretty good read on his frustration level about how the end of the shutdown is being portrayed across the media landscape," The AP's Jonathan Lemire wrote...
Haberman's insight
About Trump's tweet: "In times of great stress and when things are beyond his control, POTUS tends to burrow down into something narrow and comparatively small that he feels like he can control, such as one-off news accounts or people making comments about him that he doesn't like..."
About that poll claim...
As for Trump's comment about his poll #'s -- "up 19% with Hispanics" -- I unpacked that claim on "Reliable Sources" earlier in the day. Pollster Ann Selzer explained that Trump was "cherry-picking" within one specific poll. Watch...
Trump insults laid-off reporters
POTUS, citing a New York Post story about the layoffs at BuzzFeed and HuffPost, said "fake news and bad journalism have caused a big downturn. Sadly, many others will follow. The people want the Truth!"
What's "sad" is his celebration of American job losses. I had already booked laid-off HuffPost reporter Laura Bassett on Sunday's show, so I asked her to react to Trump's insult. "I think he'll do anything at this point to kind of distract from his own lies," she said. "And I thought it was particularly rich that he used truth with a capital T in that tweet." Then Bassett addressed the real reasons for the industry's contraction...
It's about the lying
Josh Dawsey summed it up so well in this tweet: "They lied to the public for months before Donald Trump was elected — and then after he won. They lied to Congress as lawmakers sought to investigate Russia's attack on American democracy. And they lied to the FBI, even when they knew lying was a crime." Read his story, co-bylined with Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapotosky...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREEE
-- Emily Jane Fox's latest for VF: "Hope Hicks, West Wing alum, begins her second act on the West Coast..."
-- On "Reliable," Olivier Knox discussed the W.H. press briefing drought...
-- BTW, still no word on whether POTUS will sit down for a Super Bowl Sunday TV interview on CBS...
-- And still no word about a rescheduled State of the Union, either...
-- From Saturday: "A British magazine has issued an apology to first lady Melania Trump for an article it published last week which included several inaccuracies..."
AOC's reaction to our "Reliable Sources" segment
One minute, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is criticizing Fox News and challenging fact-checks. The next minute, she's defending journalism. I asked Charlotte Alter: "Is there something Trumpian, at all, about her journalism critiques?" Alter said it's "really important to make a distinction" between Trump's "enemy of the people" attacks and AOC's tweets: She's "walking this line by pointing out some of the biases that we DO have in the media, and also supporting the media as an institution, as an industry."
AOC's reply to me after the show: "I think we use social media very differently as well. He's got more of an 'man yells at cloud' thing going on 😉"
>> Watch the full segment, with Alter and Jess McIntosh and Laura Bassett's insights, here...
AOC blasts Big Tech after newsroom layoffs
Donie O'Sullivan emails: Ocasio-Cortez has a knack for amplifying issues through social media – now she is turning her focus on the companies themselves. Big Tech's "current monopoly trend is societally and economically unsustainable," she wrote Saturday. With increased scrutiny of the platforms, particularly Facebook, on everything from election interference and the radicalization of homegrown terrorists and mass-shooters, to data breaches – the future of Silicon Valley could become a major talking point in the 2020 race...
(Read O'Sullivan and Greg Kreig's full story here...) | |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Roger Stone is the embodiment of the "information war" age. Oliver Darcy said this on Sunday's show:
Journalists "have to be very careful not to allow bad faith actors to hijack the conversation and move the story away from what it really should be..."
Jail time: An 'occupational hazard' for journalists
| | As journalist Jason Rezaian sat in an Iranian prison for 544 days, Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists was one of the many people advocating for his release. Both men are out with new books, so we brought them together for this edition of the "Reliable" podcast, and aired a portion of the conversation on Sunday's show. For a fuller look at their accounts, listen to the pod and/or read Daniella Emanuel's recap here...
>> During the interview, both men wore FREE AUSTIN TICE pins -- Tice has been missing in Syria for six years -- and Rezaian pointed out that he used to be the subject of a pin himself...
How to catch up on Sunday's show
Listen to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or watch the entire show via CNNgo or VOD...
NYT: WhatsApp employees 'left or plan to' over Zuckerberg's call to combine message services
Katie Pellico writes: ICYMI: Mark Zuckerberg is facing criticism after announcing plans to integrate Facebook Messenger with WhatsApp and Instagram by next year. The apps will stay siloed, but allow their combined 2.6 billion users to message across platforms.
Sources tell NYT's Mike Isaac that "dozens of WhatsApp employees clashed with Mr. Zuckerberg... on internal message boards and during a contentious staff meeting in December," and some staffers "have left or plan to leave" over the decision.
On top of "antitrust, privacy and security" concerns, Zuckerberg is "breaking promises" he had made to stay paws off on acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram, whose founders have already left from the CEO's "weighing in."
— "CNBC spoke with several antitrust lawyers who all said that Facebook's move is unlikely to bring new antitrust action against the company..."
— Slate's April Glaser: "Why Facebook must be very careful..."
— Forbes offers alternatives like WhatsApp that "use end-to-end encryption to ensure your private messages remain that way."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Katie Pellico emails: Remember the Mandarin duck that brought reporters and birdwatchers to the "shores" of Central Park Pond? Well there's a new "Hot Duck" now, and he's goth and lives in an Australian sewage pond... (The Cut)
-- A great read: "He Wrote a Best-Seller as a Detective. Now He's Back in Police Headquarters — as a Writer..." (NYT)
| | Lowry reviews "I Am the Night"
Brian Lowry emails: TNT used the SAG Awards to tease its limited series "I Am the Night," a twist on the Black Dahlia case that nearly squanders its enticing premise and elements — including Chris Pine reunited with "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins — with florid execution and a weak finish...
The weekend box office was a repeat
"Glass" earned $19 million "during its second weekend in theaters, comfortably topping the North American box office against two relatively weak newcomers and a slew of holdovers," NYT's Gabe Cohn wrote Sunday. "The Upside" remained No. 2 and "Aquaman" remained No. 3...
What CBS is pitching during Super Bowl week
Brian Lowry emails: The Super Bowl is on Sunday, but the week will include plenty of advance teases of upcoming commercials, which has become a standard practice now, as advertisers try to maximize the bang for their super-bucks by turning their 30-second ads into mini-events. CBS, meanwhile, will use the game as a springboard to launch "The World's Best," hoping for another reality-TV franchise, after Fox and NBC used football to help launch "The Masked Singer" and "Titan Games," respectively, in January...
| | That's a wrap. Send me your feedback anytime -- I'm always trying to make this newsletter more useful for all of you. See you tomorrow!
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