EXEC SUMMARY: Hello from LAX... Brian Stelter here... I'm wrapping up a day trip to L.A. and about to fly back home. Huge shoutout to Oliver Darcy for filling in during my paternity leave. He'll be back tomorrow as I ease back into work mode. Alright, that's enough about us... Now on to the day's media and tech news...
The next debate
The next Democratic debate is shaping up to be a one-night event. That's what ABC wants. Aides to several top-tier campaigns told me they want the same thing. But there's some TV drama to this story. Just one poll could turn the debate into a two-parter.
The DNC's deadline to qualify for the debate is at the end of the day Wednesday. At least two polls are coming out on Wednesday. If Tom Steyer tops 2% in one more DNC-approved poll, he'll be the eleventh candidate to meet the criteria, and the debate will be split into two nights. And that's what has caused some grumbling among the top-tier campaigns. "Continuing to assign candidates by random draw for the fall debates makes no sense and is a disservice to primary voters," one of the aides said. "They want to see Biden-Warren-Sanders-Harris-Buttigieg. They've been the consistent top tier for months now." | | At the moment, it looks like the top-tier candidates are going to get their wish -- ten candidates will be on stage together on September 12. But if Steyer qualifies, there will be a second debate on Friday the 13th...
Five key facts
-- These ten candidates are in: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.
-- "There is a sense for us that one big event is better," a source at ABC said, a POV shared by others there.
-- The DNC has been nothing if not transparent about the rules: Everyone involved has known the criteria for months.
-- Contenders like Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Marianne Williamson, and John Delaney have no shot at the stage. BUT they could still qualify for October's debate. The criteria will be the same. So even if ABC ends up with a one-night debate in September, the days of two-part debates may not be over yet. Here's my full story...
-- Williamson's message to ABC: Despite failing to qualify for the debate, "this love train is on a roll..."
Look out for these polls
USA TODAY and Suffolk University have a poll coming out early Wednesday morning. And Quinnipiac will be out with a poll at 8 a.m. ET. Those are the only two incoming polls my sources know about... but maybe there will be a surprise...
-- CNN's Harry Enten tweeted: "Two nights of debates? I say yes. Here's why: I have no life." Love you, Harry!
MEANWHILE...
The unofficial start of a GOP primary?
"Can you believe it? I'm at 94% approval in the Republican Party, and have Three Stooges running against me."
With this tweet from President Trump, the race is on, eh? He's acknowledging the longshot bids by William Weld, Joe Walsh and Mark Sanford (who isn't officially running yet). As for his oft-repeated 94% claim, Daniel Dale has repeatedly corrected it... Trump is generally in the "mid-to-high 80s" among Republicans...
>> Meanwhile: John Kasich told CNN's John Berman that right now he doesn't "see the path" to running against Trump... Here's the video...
Trump: "GEEEEE"
The president wants us all to think that he doesn't know what Axios is. C'mon, man.
On Tuesday evening he tweeted his third denial of Jonathan Swan's scoop re: his past musings about nuking storms: "Axios (whatever that is) sat back and said GEEEEE, let's see, what can we make up today to embarrass the President? Then they said, 'why don't we say he wants to bomb a hurricane, that should do it!' The media in our Country is totally out of control!" As Maggie Haberman noted on Twitter in response, Trump "sat for a lengthy on-camera interview" with Swan last year, and Swan's hurricane story "relied on multiple sources."
Swan's answer
"I'm just surprised he didn't own it," Swan tweeted. "MAGA world was fully ready to support Storm Nukes!"
Whenever Trump does this -- when he fiercely denies doing something that his own staffers witnessed and talked about afterward -- I always wonder, how do the staffers feel? How do they tolerate his deceptions?
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Preparations for Tropical Storm Dorian led the evening newscasts on Tuesday night... Here's the latest... (CNN)
-- "An Iranian state news journalist fled from Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's press pool and applied for residency in Sweden last week, according to authorities..." (CNN)
-- Peter Hamby's reaction to the recent outrages over Joe Biden's screw-ups: "Trump wants to drop a nuclear bomb into a hurricane, immigrant children are dying in U.S. custody, and the Amazon rainforest is burning. With the stakes so high, why is the press still assigning so much news value to gaffes?" (VF)
-- Shep Smith reminding us all of a choice quote: "'Trade wars are good and easy to win.' So said President Trump. Today not so much. The markets have been down much of the afternoon..." (Mediaite)
Karem awaiting judge's decision
"A federal judge on Tuesday said he will rule late this week or early next on whether to block the White House from suspending Playboy correspondent and CNN political analyst Brian Karem's hard pass," CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Sam Fossum report.
These sketches from Tuesday's hearing are from Bill Hennessy: | | As it stands now, Karem's pass is suspended until September 14. Karem and his lawyer Ted Boutrous are seeking immediate relief from the court. US District Judge Rudolph Contreras will weigh in soon... In court on Tuesday, "he said parts of the legal decision he'll have to make in this suit are 'a closer call' compared to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's suit..." Here's why...
>> For more, read Erik Wemple's latest for WaPo...
Another Breitbart employee heads to Trump admin
Oliver Darcy emails: Breitbart is giving Fox News a run for its money in terms of how fast the revolving door between it and the Trump administration is spinning. The site's legal editor, Ken Klukowski, is heading to the Office of Management and Budget, the New York Post's Jon Levine reported Tuesday. Breitbart employees were informed of Klukowski's departure last week in a Slack message.
Beto campaign removes Breitbart staffer from event
Breitbart's Joel Pollak was, in Pollak's words, "ejected" from a Beto O'Rourke campaign event on Tuesday afternoon. This evening I received emails from several editors and news execs who said they're concerned about this incident.
CNN's Caroline Kenny was there -- she saw Pollak standing in the press area -- "about 10 minutes before the event started, a police officer walked in with an advance staffer and they asked him to come with them. He never came back in the room." Here is Pollak's account...
Quillette announces departure of Andy Ngo after undercover video posted
Oliver Darcy emails: Andy Ngo has split with Quillette, the publication's editor announced late Monday. Quillette editor Clair Lehmann wrote on Twitter that Ngo had "been off work" since July and that he was "now moving onto bigger & better projects."
But the news of Ngo's exit came after undercover video posted by the Portland Mercury showed Ngo stand idly by as a far-right group discussed plans for an attack. Just hours after the video was posted, Ngo removed Quillette from his Twitter bio. Shortly after, Lehmann announced he had left the site...
| | FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Nicholas Quah's latest: "Podcasters now have three plots of land to prospect for gold, where they used to have just one..." (Hot Pod via NiemanLab)
-- Mike Rothschild writes: "How Epoch Media Group's YouTube channel Edge of Wonder presents a scrubbed, sanitized version of QAnon -- and gets millions of views..." (Daily Dot)
-- MarÃa MartÃnez-Guzmán has been promoted to SVP and executive news director at Univision News, reporting to Daniel Coronell... (B&C)
-- Missed this news about CNN's parent company AT&T on Monday: AT&T's CEO of Communications John Donovan "will retire Oct. 1, leaving a sudden opening atop the company's core business... Analysts have considered Mr. Donovan and John Stankey, the head of AT&T's WarnerMedia division, among the top contenders to succeed" Randall Stephenson, who has run the company and chaired its board since 2007. Mr. Stephenson, 59, hasn't indicated plans to step down from the helm of the company any time soon..." (WSJ)
"We're also grateful to the press..."
The lead story on Page One of Wednesday's NYT: "EPSTEIN ACCUSERS SHARE THEIR FURY AT JUSTICE DENIED."
At the end of this unusual and cathartic proceeding on Tuesday, where some of Jeffrey Epstein's accusers publicly told their stories, Judge Richard M. Berman thanked the women deeply. And he added a thank-you for the news media as well: "Finally, we're also grateful to the press for their very diligent coverage of seemingly every detail of this case."
About Bret Stephens and bedbugs...
The title on David M. Perry's column says it all: "Bret Stephens launches a foolish Twitter war."
Yep. I don't want to waste much time on it. As you've probably heard, Stephens quit Twitter on Tuesday after being universally mocked for complaining about a GW professor's tweet calling him a "bedbug." The professor, Dave Karpf, wrote a column for Esquire about the episode. Let me just second what Brian Lowry wrote in via email: "It's a shame that he overshadowed a completely legitimate point — that Twitter and social media embolden people to say rude things through those platforms they wouldn't in person — by, well, everything else about the way he handled the matter..."
"GMA" tops "Today" in the demo for a second straight week
"For more than three years," Variety's Brian Steinberg writes, ABC's "GMA" has "typically commanded more viewers overall," while NBC's "Today" has been winning in the key demo of viewers 25 to 54. "Yet for the past two weeks, the dynamic has gone topsy-turvy: 'GMA' has won more viewers in that all-important category, while still maintaining its overall audience lead." One factor: "Today" co-host Hoda Kotb has been on maternity leave. Here's the full story...
TV anchor apologizes after comparing black co-host to a gorilla
"A morning TV anchor in Oklahoma apologized a day after likening her black cohost to a gorilla," Mallory Simon reported for CNN. "Alex Housden said a gorilla at the Oklahoma City Zoo 'kind of looks like you' to her colleague, Jason Hackett, at the end of a feature on KOCO-TV on Thursday."
Housden, in tears, said, "I said something yesterday that was inconsiderate, it was inappropriate, and I hurt people. And I want you to know, I understand how much I hurt you out there and how much I've hurt you. I love you so much, and you have been one of my best friends for the past year and a half. And I would never do anything on purpose to hurt you."
YouTube's four "Rs"
Susan Wojcicki released her quarterly letter to YouTube creators on Tuesday... and introduced four "Rs" that, she said, sum up the site's "approach toward responsibility." The R's are: Removing content that violates policies, raising up "authoritative voices," reducing "the spread of content that brushes right up against our policy line," and rewarding trusted creators.
SPEAKING OF THAT...
White nationalist channels un-tubed
Kaya Yurieff writes: YouTube has taken down several white nationalist channels, including James Allsup, Vdare TV and the American Identity Movement. In June, the company said it would ban supremacist content and remove videos that deny well-documented atrocities, like the Holocaust or Sandy Hook shooting. At the time, YouTube said it would be removing hundreds of thousands of videos that previously wouldn't have violated its rules.
Earlier this month, the ADL released a report which found at least 29 channels spouting anti-Semitic and white supremacist content. While some of the channels in the report have since been taken down, other prominent white supremacists including Richard Spencer and former KKK leader David Duke remain on the platform.
World's worst game of whack-a-mole
Yurieff adds: YouTube is *still* playing whack-a-mole with a Nazi account it previously removed several times. A channel belonging to Brian Ruhe, a self-proclaimed "real, genuine and sincere Nazi," was first taken down by YouTube in April 2018 in wake of a CNN investigation into ad placements on the platform.
While his account was removed a second time as part of YouTube's policy change in June, hours later Ruhe simply made a new account after he saw his had been deleted. YouTube later took it down again after I inquired about it. On July 28, Ruhe made yet another YouTube channel. In one video, he discussed with a guest "how to turn things around for the alt-right" and makes comments about "the Jewish agenda" being "to basically lie about the truth of race." After CNN reached out, YouTube removed the account. A spokesperson gave a vague explanation that all of its channels are subject to its policies and if a channel receives 3 strikes within a 90-day period, it will be terminated. Guess what! Ruhe is back on YouTube as of August 11. Exhausting...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Kerry Flynn:
-- Subscription-only sports site The Athletic will put some podcasts in front of its paywall, after releasing 40 new podcasts Tuesday and sharing plans to have 120 podcasts in total by end of year... (Axios)
-- Scott Nover wrote about the rise of niche publications covering Washington like ag-focused Hagstrom Report and environment-focused E&E News... (WaPo)
-- Maxwell Strachan, previously senior reporter at HuffPost, is joining Vice as a senior editor... (Twitter)
The Ringer getting into books
This seems smart to me: Bill Simmons' The Ringer "is partnering with Grand Central Publishing on a series of books from staff writers and contributors... The first book to emerge from the partnership will be staff writer Shea Serrano's Movies (and Other Things), scheduled for release on Oct. 8."
Also in the works from Ringer Books: "A gambling guide from Cousin Sal Iacono" and a "Jeopardy!" book by staff writer Claire McNear. THR's Katie Kilkenny has details here...
Inside Comscore's fallout
Kerry Flynn writes: Last week, media measurement company Comscore laid off 8% of its workforce (150 people), including several senior execs. On Tuesday, Digiday's Tim Peterson came out with a deep dive on the company's struggles internally with turnover and strategy shifts...
>> More: Comscore execs, including interim CEO Dale Fuller, spoke with Business Insider on Monday about its new strategy: "The reorganization allows us to get everyone focused, hold people accountable, drive the bottom line, and really start seeing the results. By the end of this year, we will be cashflow positive for the first time in the company's recent history."
Viewers should know when pols duck the press | | Hadas Gold emails from London: There's a battle brewing over press access across the pond. It's been simmering for some time, but came to a head last week at the Edinburgh TV Festival, a big conference with all the top British TV execs. Dorothy Byrne, head of news and current affair at Channel 4, gave the keynote speech. It was a barn stormer, calling out everyone from men who behave badly to challenging newsrooms to go deep on important stories. But she saved some of her fiercest ire for politicians, deeming Prime Minister Boris Johnson a "known liar" and a "coward" for avoiding big newsy interviews, comparing him to Vladimir Putin.
I got to ask Bryne about this and more in our on-stage Q&A chat after her speech, where she told me news outlets should be constantly reminding their viewers and readers that the country's leadership had refused to sit down with them.
A few days later, Channel 4's news editor Ben de Pear tweeted that the Prime Minister's office had invited them to the G7 in France for a sit-down interview. But after traveling to France, they were told the interview was canceled because of Byrne's speech, specifically comparing Johnson to Putin in his media tactics. The channel got some big support for Robert Peston, ITV's political editor, who tweeted "at a time of what Johnson calls a national emergency, he should not shy away from scrutiny by Ch4 or any serious news organisation..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Tencent shares slipped on this report: China's antitrust authority is investigating "exclusive licensing deals it forged with the world's biggest record labels..." (Bloomberg)
-- Fortnite maker Epic Games "wants to sell more games, and build a platform to do it," Jason M. Bailey reports, but "it faces the dominance of Steam, the primary destination for online game purchases..." (NYT)
-- Conan O'Brien taped a special episode in Greenland over the weekend... It will air on September 3... (Vulture)
-- "Steven Fabrizio, a top executive at the MPAA, has been fired following charges of second degree sexual abuse and blackmail." As far as I can tell, Fabrizio has not yet commented... (Variety)
| | Leslie Jones leaving "SNL," Kate McKinnon staying
Sandra Gonzalez and Whitney Friedlander write: "Leslie Jones is making her exit from Studio 8H. Jones, who made her on-camera debut on the series in 2014, is leaving the long-running sketch show, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Additionally, Kate McKinnon, who had been rumored to be considering an exit, is expected to stay on board for Season 45, the source said." No confirmation from NBC yet...
Lisa interviews Travolta
Lisa Respers France writes: John Travolta told me he's a huge fan of Pitbull. Yes, the Latino rapper/producer/entrepreneur who makes those infectious dance tunes. Fans and fandom are on Travolta's mind lately, given that his latest film "The Fanatic" delves into the dark side of it all. He talked with me about what drew him to his role, what makes a good celebrity and how he's planning on helping his "Grease" co-star Olivia Newton-John who is battling stage 4 cancer. Read on... | | -- Speaking of Travolta, his time at the MTV Video Music Awards Monday night proves he may want to stop presenting at awards shows...
"The Irishman" skips a wide release, hits Netflix on November 27
Frank Pallotta writes: Netflix's "The Irishman" reunites director Martin Scorsese with some of his favorite leading men, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, as well as Al Pacino. That's a cast theaters would love to showcase. But it won't stay in theaters alone for very long. Netflix announced Tuesday that "The Irishman" will hit independent theaters on November 1 and it will debut on Netflix on November 27. The move puts Netflix and theater owners at odds once again and opens the debate over how movies should be released in the age of streaming. That's a debate that's likely going to get even more complicated with Disney+ and HBO Max on the way..
Lowry's take
Brian Lowry writes: Netflix has an ambitious slate of movies lined up for the fall, with limited theatrical windows. But looking over the slate, it's hard not to wonder to what extent Netflix was reluctant to cut too heavily into the impact of these titles playing on its streaming platform with Nov. 12 — the day that Disney+ launches — no doubt circled on its calendar.
As for whether the stars/talent associated with these projects might see their awards chances hurt or undermined by Netflix's decision to forgo wide releases -- before anyone sheds any tears, as they say, remember that when you take the King's coin, you play by the King's rules...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid on the VMAs red carpet was a study in sisterhood all the way.
-- Carrie Underwood shared a sneak peek of her new "Sunday Night Football" theme song with Joan Jett.
Tweets that make you go 'hmmm...'
Vulture's Joe Adalian wrote this on Tuesday: "If he wanted to, Jon Stewart could make a ton of money by agreeing to come back next year just to do a daily (weekly?) show tied to the election. If I were launching a streaming service in 2020, I'd definitely pay top dollar for him."
Joe's right...
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