Debate week begins
From right now through Thursday morning, almost all of CNN's broadcasts are originating from Detroit, the site of this week's two-night, two-part Democratic primary debate. | | This story by Brian Rokus explains why the debate stakes are so high: "New criteria will make it considerably harder to qualify for the next debate in September. And for much of the field of more than 20 candidates, the more difficult threshold will be impossible to clear, barring a game-changing moment."
For "maybe 12, 13 of these candidates, there's not going to be another shot after this. To some extent, not qualifying for the next debate is a death sentence," Robby Mook, who managed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, told Gloria Borger. More...
Bernie Sanders' campaign manager speaks out about media bias
You've probably seen headlines like this, via the AP, lately: "Bernie Sanders thinks media is unfair, so he created his own."
The Sanders campaign's media critiques have been getting a lot of attention, so I asked campaign manager Faiz Shakir to make his case on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." Shakir said TV news programs like to play "gotcha" games rather than focusing on policy decisions. And he said "there tends to be over-focus on personalities." We had a frank conversation... And kept it going after a commercial break... Watch part one and part two on CNN.com...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Sunday's biggest story in DC: Dan Coats stepping down, as Trump says John Ratcliffe will be nominated as next director of national intelligence... (CNN)
-- Kyle Cheney's latest: "More than a dozen Democrats have backed an impeachment inquiry against Trump since Mueller's testimony. Their numbers have eclipsed 100..." (Politico)
-- "Brazil's president renewed his attacks on journalist Glenn Greenwald on Saturday, raising the possibility of jail a few days after members of his party said the American's Brazil-based internet publication was 'aligned with criminal hackers' for reporting the contents of hacked phone conversations involving the current justice minister..." (AP)
-- Jake Tapper tweeted, "The very notion of a free press is being endangered for all journalists in Brazil - and elsewhere - by President Bolsonaro's threats to imprison @ggreenwald. Journalists have the right to report without threats of jail time, period." (Twitter)
| | Between now and November 2020...
Walking into work on Sunday morning, I wondered how much worse the president's appeals to racism and xenophobia will get between now and Election Day.
Then Julia Ioffe took the words right out of my head. She tweeted, "Is this going to be the pattern from now till November 2020? 'Amid Outcry, President Spends Weekend Tripling Down on Racist Tweets'?"
"Infested"
If this IS going to be the pattern, then we're going to need more anchors like Victor Blackwell. On Saturday the CNN anchor spoke out forcefully and personally about Trump's tweets denigrating the Maryland community where he grew up. If you haven't watched the segment, check it out here.
News reports that merely note Trump's tweets and then quote his critics are woefully insufficient right now. On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," I said that Trump's anti-Elijah Cummings and anti-Baltimore tweets were six things all at the same time:
-- The tweets were part of a pattern of racism displayed by Trump for several decades.
-- The tweets were factually inaccurate in several ways.
-- They are the result of Trump getting distorted information from his friends at Fox News, friends who are actually doing him a disservice.
-- The tweets are a petty response to Democratic oversight of the Trump admin by Democrats like Cummings.
-- They are a distraction from other important issues.
-- They illustrate how racist and ridiculous stereotyping of a part of the country is damaging to the country as a whole. And it must be covered that way, even if it's distracting.
Ignoring Trump's tweets is not an option, Baltimore Sun media critic and 7th district resident David Zurawik said on "Reliable." April Ryan agreed: His feed is "the official word of the leader of this nation." So...
Start with the facts
As a journalist and a Marylander, I propose that we cover these kinds of offensive tweets differently. Don't start with the hateful words. Don't start with "infested" and "very poor." Instead, start with facts -- like, where is Maryland's 7th congressional district? Show a map. Who lives there? What is the district known for? Show photos. Then turn to the president's words. Where did Trump get this information? Show the source. What provoked his tweets? Why now?
The answers
Trump is getting a distorted view of the country from what he sees on "Fox & Friends."
He was prompted to tweet that Cummings' entire district of 700,000+ people is a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" where "no human being would want to live" by a 6am hour segment on Saturday.
Co-host Jedediah Bila brought in a guest named Kimberly Klacik, who went to impoverished parts of West Baltimore and talked with residents and recorded videos of ruined rowhomes. For Fox, Klacik provided a ready-made segment -- she even supplied her own videos and photos. She portrayed Cummings as a hypocrite: "There is a crisis at the border, but there's also a crisis in Baltimore."
Yes, there are struggling, severely impoverished neighborhoods in Baltimore. But the takeaway from the segment was that Cummings' entire district was a disaster zone, which is a disgusting lie. Trump ran with it... And Klacik was thrilled.
Who is this "Republican strategist?"
Fox has been booking Klacik and calling her a "Republican strategist" since last year. But over the weekend I could find no evidence that she's ever been employed by a campaign. I sent her repeated questions about this, and she did not answer with any specifics. She said "you can call me, 'The woman that cared about Baltimore.'"
After my story was published, she tweeted that she has "worked on 2 campaigns," but didn't say which ones. She also tweeted that she ran for a local GOP position in Baltimore County last year and won. My original info indicated she had lost. We've corrected that in the story.
Klacik's LinkedIn profile says she's a political commentator "not contracted or employed by any network," which means she is not paid by Fox. Thanks to Saturday's segment, she is now on Trump's radar and Trump versus Cummings is now a national news story...
Putting the tweets in context
David Zurawik's view: The tweets should be put in context with quotes from residents, facts about the district, and "moral outrage..." Here's his Saturday column, and here's what he said on TV on Sunday...
Lowry's take
Brian Lowry emails: A quick thought on the Fox News-Trump feedback loop: If you think about it, Fox's act hasn't really changed. The network has long operated on a model designed to keep an older, like-minded audience watching for hours on end — from one opinion show to the next — by playing to their fears and stoking their anger. What's different now is that the septuagenarian viewer is in the White House, using his Twitter feed to essentially yell back at the TV. In that respect, Trump is amplifying Fox's excesses, spraying them out to an audience that would otherwise be mostly oblivious to them...
On the other hand, there's Chris Wallace...
This was the exchange of the day, from the "Fox News Sunday" moderator's interview with Mick Mulvaney. When Wallace pressed about the racial stereotyping embedded in Trump's tweets about Baltimore, Mulvaney said "you're spending too much time reading between the lines."
Wallace's response: "I'm not reading between the lines. I'm reading the lines." Mediaite has the clip...
| | About the rats...
I closed Sunday's "Reliable Sources" by reading from the Baltimore Sun's editorial condemning Trump. The piece was titled "Better to have a few rats than to be one."
If you haven't read it yet, click here.
The Washington Post's Hannah Knowles spoke with Sun editorial writer Peter Jensen, who "rushed to the office on his day off to write the piece... The people Trump insults often have 'no voice,' he said, and he felt an obligation to speak out on their behalf."
Sun visits and subscriptions are way up
Knowles reported: "The attention drove record traffic to the Sun's site over the weekend. Sun spokeswoman Renee Mutchnik told The Post on Sunday that Web traffic and new subscribers to baltimoresun.com were double what's typical on a Saturday. And subscription orders are on track to hit quadruple of what the paper receives on a normal Sunday."
"The 24/7 Fight Against Fox News"
Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt is out with a big new profile of Media Matters for America, the progressive group that monitors Fox and pressures advertisers to shun shows like "Tucker Carlson Tonight." A couple standout lines and quotes from staffers:
-- "We are reporting on commentary happening on national news outlets," says Matthew Gertz. "This is not some sort of sinister act. This is pretty basic."
-- "Never-Trump Republicans who spent years bashing Media Matters now admit to finding it useful. And once in a while, an unexpected source will use Media Matters info in culture-shaking ways, as when podcaster Joe Rogan cited its data to pin down Alex Jones on his Sandy Hook denialism." "You might disagree with our point of view," Lis Power says, "but you can't disagree with our data."
-- Media Matters president Angelo Carusone "hopes shareholders will sue Fox for breach of fiduciary duty, arguing its programming is so irresponsible it represents inadequate stewardship of the business."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- BTW: Trump's Baltimore tweets did not break Twitter's "dehumanizing language" rules, Donie O'Sullivan reports... (CNN)
-- Amanda Carpenter's comments on "Reliable:" Command of facts, context, and storytelling "is essential to stopping the gaslighting..." (Twitter)
-- Emily Bell's latest is for "British journalists faced with Boris Johnson:" What lessons "can the UK media learn from US reporting on Trump?" (Guardian)
How Mueller hearings reinforced America's media bunkers
One day of hearings was perceived in two very different ways. "It's a very, very depressing moment we're in," Susan Glasser said on Sunday's show, with many people viewing news coverage as "a partisan team sport." Andrew Marantz also weighed in... Watch the segment here...
What happened to the immigration raids touted by Trump?
Are news outlets doing enough to follow up on Trump's long-hyped ICE raids across the country? The raids resulted in the arrests of only 35 people. NYT immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson described what happened and noted that the story isn't over because "immigration enforcement happens every day..."
The latest from San Juan
The headline on Margaret Sullivan's latest column captured the story behind the story: "How one small news organization's investigative reporting took down Puerto Rico's governor."
On Sunday's "Reliable" I spoke with the Center for Investigative Journalism's executive director Carla Minet and reporter Luis Valentin Ortiz. Minet admitted the team is tired, and understandably so! The news keeps coming... A few hours after this segment, the woman who was next in line to be Puerto Rico's governor said she doesn't want the job...
Catch up on Sunday's show
Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or listen to the podcast version of the program via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcasting app...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Brian Steinberg spoke with CBS moderator Margaret Brennan about the evolution of "Face the Nation..." (Variety)
-- "Lester Holt, NBC News Anchor, Moonlights as a Rocker..." Holt received the Sunday Styles treatment over the weekend... (NYT)
-- Much respect to Holt for this kicker quote: "I'm at the top of my profession. There's nowhere else to go, but I don't want this to define who I am. If this job ever went away, I'm still me, I still have so much more to give, and doing this music thing is a symbol of that."
Media week ahead calendar
Monday: The CBS blackout in AT&T homes begins its second full week...
Monday: Trump will sign the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund bill...
Tuesday: Apple earnings after the closing bell...
Tuesday at 8pm: CNN's Democratic debate begins...
Wednesday at 8pm: Night two of the CNN debate...
Thursday: Verizon earnings before the bell...
Friday: "Hobbs & Shaw" — the "Fast & Furious" spinoff — opens in theaters...
A new part-owner of "Godzilla?"
Tom Barrack's investment company Colony Capital is "weighing the purchase of a minority stake in Legendary Entertainment, the film and TV company behind the 'Godzilla' franchise," Bloomberg's Liana Baker, Gillian Tan, and Anousha Sakoui reported Sunday.
Details: "Colony has held talks about buying the stake in the media company from Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin's Dalian Wanda Group... The investment could value the backer of 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' significantly lower than the $3.5 billion Wanda acquired it for in 2016." Read on...
Fortnite's first-ever solo world champion | | Here's what happened at the massive "Fortnite" sporting event in New York's Arthur Ashe tennis stadium over the weekend:
"Beating out other pros and famous streamers, Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf, 16, made a name for himself by dominating from the first round and ultimately taking home the $3 million grand prize for individual players. That's the largest-ever payout for a single player in an esports tournament," Shannon Liao reports for CNN Business...
Huge online audience
The live broadcast from Queens hit "2 million concurrent viewers" on Sunday afternoon "across Twitch and YouTube alone, along with Facebook, Mixer, and Twitter," per esports consultant Rod Breslau. After the event ended, he tweeted, "Fortnite is officially a tier 1 esport."
Further reading:
-- "Fans who tuned in to watch the Fortnite World Cup finals on Sunday received an added bonus: a tease of the game's upcoming 10th season," The Verge's Andrew Webster wrote...
-- Chris Stokel-Walker's piece for WIRED UK: "The unbelievable scale of Fortnite's $30 million World Cup"
| | Disney sets record for highest-grossing year for a studio with five months to spare
It's only July! Disney "has brought in an industry record $7.67 billion to date at the worldwide box office," Frank Pallotta wrote Sunday. "That passed the previous record, which was also set by Disney, when it made $7.61 billion at the global box office in 2016." More...
Quentin Tarantino's biggest opening
"Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time In Hollywood' exceeded expectations this weekend becoming the director's highest-grossing opening weekend ever," Frank Pallotta reports. The film "made an estimated $40.4 million between Friday and Sunday. It took the No. 2 spot at the domestic box office this weekend. Sony had projected the film would make roughly $30 million this weekend..."
--> Factoid: Tarantino's previous highest-grossing opening was "Inglourious Basterds," which opened to $38 million in 2009...
B grade for 'Hollywood'
Brian Lowry emails: The "B" CinemaScore grade for "Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood" – notably low for a service whose opening-weekend audiences are famously charitable – seems emblematic of an understandable disconnect between what's called "Film Twitter" and the wider audience. Perhaps not surprisingly, even a crowd that would flock to a Quentin Tarantino movie on its opening weekend was less enthusiastic about the movie's surprises and less enamored by its quirky historical flourishes than those steeped in that aspect of the business...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Megan Thomas emails: Meghan Markle is guest editing the September issue of British Vogue... But won't put herself on the cover... (THR)
-- "Court TV, which came back on the air in May, has set a 37-part docuseries looking back on the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial." Starting in January 2020, each episode will focus a "week of the 37-week trial..." (TheWrap)
Amazon Studios chief: "We're in the curated business"
Megan Thomas emails: Jennifer Salke spoke about Amazon's content approach at the TCA Press Tour on Saturday. The headline on Lauren Johnson's story for BI: "Amazon Studios chief says that it won't follow Netflix in sharing viewership data."
Per THR's Natalie Jarvey, Salke said: "We have a very unique business in the sense that our entire north star is to entertain and delight Prime customers all over the world, so there's a different strategy there. We will curate shows to bring to that global, diverse audience. We're not in the volume business. We're in the curated business."
--> Related: This story by The Information last week: "Inside Amazon's Struggles to Make its Mark in Hollywood"
OITNB's final season finds urgency and purpose in ICE plot
Megan Thomas emails: ICYMI, here is Brian Lowry's review of the final season of "Orange is the New Black." (I admit I stopped watching about two seasons ago, but fell into a crazy binge this weekend and watched the entire final season.) There's a wrenching ripped-from-the headlines ICE plot and closure for several of the show's key characters worth returning for...
Kim Kardashian West is making a documentary about prison reform
"The reality star turned criminal justice reform advocate is now working on a documentary about the subject, which will be released via Oxygen," Michelle Lou writes. Kardashian West visited a DC prison last week to film part of the two-hour film, titled "Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project..." Release date TBA...
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