EXEC SUMMARY: Hey! NFL season is here. I'm sending this out at halftime in the Packers-Bears game. Scroll down for the latest on Dorian coverage... Plus everyone from Debra Messing to Sarah Sanders, James Poniezowik to James Mattis, Patty Jenkins to Margaret Atwood...
"Mastered by TV"
Why is President Trump obsessively tweeting about Alabama while Hurricane Dorian pelts the Carolinas?
Because he's obsessed with watching himself on television.
This is one of the keys to understanding the Trump years -- and one of the subjects of James Poniewozik's book "Audience of One." It will be on bookshelves next Tuesday. And I believe it will be one of the signature books of this crazy time. He describes how the medium of television has changed in ways that enabled Trump's election. And he assesses how TV has harmed Trump's time in the White House. He writes that "Trump was more often mastered by TV than he was the master of it."
This is exactly what's going on now. On Sunday Trump made a big mistake, three times a row, when he said Alabama could be "hit" by Dorian. On Monday he lashed out when ABC's Jonathan Karl pointed out the falsehood. He keeps insisting he was right -- even roping in White House officials to defend him -- and it's all due to the Trump-TV feedback loop.
Examples of this problem could literally fill a book:
>> On Thursday he called Fox's John Roberts into the Oval Office after Roberts corrected him on the air. Details below...
>> Earlier this week, CNN reported that Trump "had been irked that he was being blamed for the fallout" for VP Mike Pence's accommodations in Ireland, a subject of widespread news coverage.
>> Last week he lashed out at Fox News for having Democrats on the air.
>> Several of the summer's news cycles about Trump attacking "the squad," the city of Baltimore, etc were sparked by segments he watched on Fox. | | 👂 Listen to my podcast with Poniewozik
In "Audience of One," Poniewozik argues that Trump's ascension "happened because of TV. It happened through TV." On this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast, we talked about Trump's reality TV roots, the American antihero, "the gorilla channel" that wasn't, the "Reliable Sources" cameo in his book, and more. Check it out! Listen to the conversation via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...
NOW, BACK TO ALABAMA...
Don't get tied up in knots
Sharpie-gate is actually one of the most egregious errors of the Trump presidency -- because it involves a real-life emergency situation. Trumpworld's attempts at clean-up are nonsensical. When Trump said the risk to Alabama "just came up" and warned Alabama residents on Sunday, he was wrong. His own NWS said he was wrong. Now he's trotting out old models to say he was right, but he's still wrong.
His tweets are stoking confusion and causing exhaustion -- leaving people wondering what, if anything to believe -- so the news coverage should be really clear: He spread false info about a hurricane, and he's continuing to do so. Don't let Trump tie the public up in knots.
"Tripling down" is a sign of weakness, not strength
One of my media pet peeves is the phrase "doubling down." When we say Trump is doubling, tripling, quadrupling down, it can sound like a show of strength. But in this case it's a show of weakness.
Trump beckoned Roberts to the Oval Office
Jake Tapper's scoop: "John Roberts had just finished his 3pm live shot on Thursday" when Trump "beckoned him into the Oval Office. The President had one argument to make, according to an internal Fox email Roberts sent about the meeting provided to CNN. 'He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone,' Roberts wrote. 'He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm.'"
Roberts was on "Shepard Smith Reporting" talking about Trump's Alabama falsehoods at 3:46pm. Per Jeff Zeleny, Roberts walked into the Oval around 4:20. Zeleny added: "A W.H. aide familiar with the Oval Office meeting with Roberts said that Trump also voiced his displeasure" about Smith's "skeptical reporting about the Alabama map. The President summoned Roberts 'to hit back at Shepard Smith,' the W.H. aide said." Full story here...
--> I'll be talking more about this on "CNN Tonight with Don Lemon" later...
Big picture: He's getting worse
Thursday made me want to re-up my August 25 remarks from "Reliable Sources." I said, quite simply, he is getting worse. We can all see it. It's happening in public. But it's a very sensitive story to cover.
I was struck by the way Pete Buttigieg talked about the Alabama mess on CNN's "New Day." He called it pitiful and said "I feel sorry for the President." He was very critical, but also sympathetic -- almost talking about Trump like a troubled member of the family — the way people worry about a grandparent.
MSNBC's Chris Hayes brought up something similar on Thursday night: "If anyone did what the president is doing -- in your workplace, in your classroom, in your friend circle -- you would say, 'What the heck is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?''
Wanting to hear a counterargument, I flipped over to Fox... But there's been barely any talk about Alabama or any of Trump's self-inflicted wounds from Fox's right-wing talk show hosts.
Messing: "I truly hope his family gets him the help he needs"
Another subject of Trump tweets on Thursday: An NBC star. His comments may have been spurred by "Fox & Friends." He "amplified accusations of McCarthyism leveled at actress Debra Messing after the 'Will & Grace' star made a public plea for a list of Trump donors in Hollywood and disparaged black Trump voters," Politico's Caitlin Oprysko wrote.
Messing's apparent response to Trump's tweets was a link to Susan Glasser's recent column documenting "Trump's Wacky, Angry, and Extreme August." Messing wrote, "I truly hope his family gets him the help he needs. Sad."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- At the time I'm sending this, 10pm ET, Dorian's eyewall is very close to Cape Fear, NC. CNN.com has the latest updates here...
-- And here's the latest forecast track graphic from the National Hurricane Center. Those government forecasters are serving the public so well, even while being undermined by the president...
-- CJR's Amanda Darrach has a valuable look at "how Bahamians have covered Dorian..."
-- The Colbert Primary continues: Joe Biden on Wednesday, Pete Buttigieg on Thursday...
-- Speaking of Pete, he'll be on Power 105.1's "The Breakfast Club" at 7am Friday. The interview will be on YouTube shortly after...
John Lansing becomes CEO of NPR
NPR's David Folkenflik with his news outlet's news: "John Lansing, a veteran government broadcast and cable television executive, has been selected by NPR's corporate board to succeed its current chief, Jarl Mohn." Right now Lansing is the head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe, etc. He will "start in his new position in mid-October." Here's what Lansing told Folkenflik...
Behind bars: Important reporting by Lester Holt
NBC's Lester Holt spent two nights behind bars in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a/k/a Angola, for a special report on criminal justice reform. The special will air on Friday's "Dateline NBC." It will re-air on MSNBC on Sunday, "along with a Holt-moderated town hall meeting from inside another well-known prison, New York's Sing Sing," The AP's David Bauder reports... | |
Bloomberg Law's puzzling directive to reporters
Oliver Darcy emails: What is going on over at Bloomberg Law? After the Labor Department reinstated Leif Olson, an official who had been wrongly accused by the outlet of anti-Semitism, Bloomberg Law published a story about his return to the agency.
But a source told me on Thursday that reporters at Bloomberg Law were instructed not to tweet the new story out. The new story was also not promoted by Bloomberg Law's Twitter account. As many journalists pointed out on Twitter, Bloomberg Law continues to follow what can only be described as a textbook way NOT to handle an editorial failure.
Still no formal correction...
Darcy adds: The original Bloomberg Law article still remains up with no correction or apology to Olson. But, it was updated after Olson's Labor Department reinstatement to remove from the headline the incorrect description of his comments as "anti-Semitic." An editor's note said, "In light of the subsequent events, we removed 'Anti-Semitic' from the headline and clarified Olson's reference to those tropes." I checked in with Bloomberg Law on Thursday, but reps would not comment on the record...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Morgan Hertzan is Viceland's new EVP and GM. Deadline's Nellie Andreeva reports the hire is "part of Viceland's shift from entertainment to news programming and its integration with Vice News..." (Deadline)
-- YouTube launched a new landing page for fashion brands on the eve of New York Fashion Week. Katie Rosman has all the behind-the-scenes details about YouTube courting the style set... (NYT)
-- "Meredith Corp. suffered its worst stock decline since 1986 after the publisher and broadcaster delivered a disappointing forecast and acknowledged that its $1.8 billion acquisition of Time Inc. isn't delivering the payoff it wanted..." (Bloomberg)
-- Best read of the day: Charlotte Cowles' Q&A with Kara Swisher... (The Cut)
Now here's an idea...
Poynter's Rick Edmonds writes about "a novel idea for saving serious journalism: Give every adult American $50, via an income tax checkoff, to donate to a favorite news outlet." He says "this is not the work of the proverbial crackpot blogger in her pajamas but rather a white paper from a group of seven well-credentialed academics, led by Guy Rolnik of the Stigler Center of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business." Far-fetched? Probably. But "there is precedent for the scheme, cited by the ad hoc group as a model: For the last two local election cycles, Seattle has given citizens tax-funded vouchers to pass on as campaign contributions to a city candidate of their choice..."
The Atlantic's paywall is up
Kerry Flynn has the details: Non-subscribers will only get free access to five articles per month. The digital subscription is $49.99 per year while print and digital together is $59.99. For $100 per year, subscribers receive other benefits like ad-free web browsing and podcasts.
The Atlantic's EIC Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in the announcement, "More than 30 million people each month visit our website, read our print magazine, watch our documentaries, listen to our podcasts, and attend our live events. But our ambitions are still growing. Our aim is nothing less than to be a standard-bearer for truth in an age of disinformation."
Amazon's big error
Kerry Flynn writes: Amazon accidentally broke the embargo on Margaret Atwood's new book "The Testament," a sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale." The online-book-seller-turned-tech-behemoth shipped the book to Amazon customers who preordered it this week even though the release date is September 10.
Publishers Weekly reported how independent booksellers were quite annoyed with Amazon, categorizing it as just another hit Amazon has taken on their businesses. An Amazon spokesperson said it was a "technical error." More in my story here...
Speaking of "The Testaments..."
Here is Alexandra Alter's new interview with Atwood, who says the new novel "has more closure."
She points out that, from a political point of view, "the desired outcome of 'The Handmaid's Tale' would have been that it would fade into obscurity as a period piece, so that my dire warnings would not prove to be correct. That's not the turn that history has taken."
Atwood, 79, also rules out another book about Gilead, to make it a trilogy, saying "I'm too old." She's working on a collection of poems now...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- The rollout for "She Said:" Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey will be on the "Today" show on Monday and "The Late Show" on Tuesday...
-- Fox's Shannon Bream has the first TV interview with Neil Gorsuch ahead of his book launch next Tuesday. The interview will air Sunday at 8pm on Fox...
-- Azeen Ghorayshi has been promoted to science editor at BuzzFeed, where she's worked since 2015 (Twitter)
-- From the Factually newsletter team: "The U.S. Defense Department is going after disinformation. Here are 3 questions about what they're proposing..." (Poynter)
Mattis talking about Trump (without talking about Trump)
On Thursday's "The Lead," Jake Tapper posed some questions to James Mattis that brought Trump to mind right away. An example: "In the book you write, if you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate. You're a well-known bookworm. You have, I think, more than 7,000 books in your library. You go on to say in your book: any commander who claims he is 'too busy to read' is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way. So, as I don't need to tell you, this is a town, Washington, D.C., full of politicians who do not read books, who do not read at all. So, what would your message be to a politician who says, I don't have time to read. Every time I read half a page, I get a phone call that there's some emergency? What would you say to that politician?"
Mattis responded: "You've got to carve out time to take care of your own personal development." Here's the full answer.
And here's another Tapper Q: "One of the messages from your book... is how tribal politics and just American society has become. How people don't even talk to each other anymore. How Democrats and Republicans can't even work together anymore. There are politicians out there who their goal is to not bring people together. Their goal often seems to be to divide people. Whether it's based on race or whatever. What do you think of them?"
Mattis: "There is no team anywhere -- CNN couldn't run like that, the military couldn't run like that, a business couldn't run like that. It would be dysfunctional. It would fail. And our system was set up with three coequal branches of government. And just to make it a little more difficult, we made a bicameral legislature. And they all have to work together in order to make this work. What we're doing right now is we constantly are dividing..."
Sarah Sanders is writing a book
St. Martin's Press has acquired the rights to a book by Sarah Sanders. It is set to come out in the fall of 2020. An emailer writes: The surprise "isn't that she is writing a book, but that it isn't with Murdoch's HarperCollins or one of its imprints." St. Martins has published books by Stormy Daniels, Cliff Sims and Andrew McCabe in the past year. Sanders is also getting paid by Murdochworld though... Her Fox News contributor gig starts on Friday... | | About the climate crisis town hall...
CNN is being lauded for Wednesday's climate crisis town hall. Jamison Foser called it "serious and substantive" in a column for NBC. Vox said it was "the most substantive discussion of climate change policies ever broadcast on primetime television."
Of course, right-wing outlets are full of criticism of the Dem proposals and of CNN for providing the forum. The Daily Caller said the event was "not enough to propel the network past Fox News and MSNBC in the day's cable television ratings." That's strange framing, since these 2020 town halls are clearly not ratings ploys. Frankly I was heartened by the #'s -- there was more interest in the subject than I expected. Deadline's Ted Johnson got it right here: The town hall is "what happens when ratings aren't the point."
Steve Kroft on CNN and CBS this Sunday | | Steve Kroft is retiring from "60 Minutes" after "thirty years and 500 stories," as CBS put it in a press release on Thursday. His exit, announced a few months back, will be made official in a special retrospective hour of "60" this Sunday evening. Earlier in the day, Kroft will join me live on "Reliable Sources..." 11am ET on CNN...
"The Boris Brexit meltdown is the best show on TV"
Brian Lowry writes: The LAT's Mary McNamara has found a new British drama to watch, comparing Brexit to some of the other UK series available stateside in dubbing the ongoing tumult "the best binge in town..."
| | Netflix signs "Wonder Woman" director in overall TV series deal
"Patty Jenkins is heading to Netflix," Variety's Joe Otterson reports. Otterson says "the director, writer, and producer has signed a multi-year overall deal at the streaming service to produce new television series. According to sources, the deal is valued at $10 million over three years."
For background, the "Wonder Woman" director "made her feature directing and writing debut with the Academy Award-winning drama 'Monster.'" Jenkins said, "I'm so excited to embark on a great journey of making the new world of television with a company and group of people I admire as much as Ted, Cindy, Channing, Peter and the team at Netflix." Read on...
Lowry reviews "The Spy"
Brian Lowry writes: Sacha Baron Cohen takes a break from pranking politicians with "The Spy," showing off his serious side in this Netflix miniseries, based on the true story of an Israeli Mossad agent who infiltrated Syria in the 1960s -- and sustained the ruse for a remarkably long time...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By Lisa Respers France:
-- A few stars have expressed regret at having worked with Woody Allen in light of his daughter's allegations that he molested her as a child — something he has vehemently denied. But not Scarlett Johansson. She's appeared in a few of his films and now says she "would work" with him "anytime." Her comments did not go over well...
-- The Kevin Hart 911 call shows how serious his car accident this past weekend was. A woman reported to be his wife told the operator the comic was "not coherent at all" after the crash...
-- Beth and Duane "Dog" Chapman's new reality show has premiered and it's already emotional for viewers as one of the scenes featured the moment they learned her cancer returned. Beth Chapman died in June at the age of 51...
-- Britney Spears has a new look and, if her boyfriend has his way, maybe soon a new ring...
-- And finally my favorite story of the day: the actress who played "Cheryl" in the State Farm "She Shed" commercial has penned an essay about her life in the wake of its astounding success. Fans want the two characters featured to get their own television show or movie...
Julie Chen Moonves and "Big Brother" will be back
CBS announced on Thursday that "Big Brother" will be back for another season, and that Julie Chen Moonves will return as host. You'll recall that Chen started using her husband's name on air as he was being forced out of CBS last year...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Katie Pellico:
-- THR's Lesley Goldberg reports that the plans are off for Hulu's "Grisham Universe." Per sources, Hulu has "scrapped efforts to bring author John Grisham's 'The Rainmaker' and 'Rogue Lawyer' to television as part of an interconnected universe..." (THR)
-- ICYMI: A new study shows the number of women working behind and in front of the camera "hit a new high in 2018-2019." "However," the executive director of the center behind the study clarified, "men continue to direct the vast majority of programs..." (Variety)
-- Amazon "is deploying an array of release strategies for its Toronto-destined films," THR's Rebecca Keegan reports... (THR)
-- The Jeremy Renner app was shut down Wednesday. If you're among those wondering what the Jeremy Renner app was, look no further... (GQ)
-- An homage to the "random humor" of the internet in the aughts: Daisy Jones writes for Vice, "We wouldn't have TikTok without Newgrounds, Charlie the Unicorn, Salad Fingers and so much of what made online humour absurd and addictive..." (Vice)
LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST...
They won a Pulitzer for reporting on a synagogue massacre. Then, they gave their $15,000 prize to the congregation
CNN's Alisha Ebrahimji writes: "The staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize -- and with it, $15,000 -- for its coverage of the deadly mass shooting in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue. But the journalists didn't know what to do with the money." So "publisher John Robinson Block suggested donating it to Tree of Life so its members could repair the bullet-pocked building where 11 people were killed."
"We feel bound to you and your congregations -- by memory and duty," Keith Burris, the paper's exec editor said, in handing a check last week to Rabbi Jeffrey Myers and Samuel Schachner, the congregation's president. "And we offer you, in humility, our service -- as scribes and witnesses. We wish Tree of Life to have this gift ... as a sign of this bond and this service." Here is the paper's story about the donation...
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