EXEC SUMMARY: Hello from Laguna Beach, the site of WSJ Tech Live... Here's the latest on local news website trickery, Food Network Kitchen's launch, the "Rise of Skywalker" trailer rollout, and my brand new look at how ABC's Syria video screw-up happened...
Facebook's world | | Just how big is Facebook? So big that it's in the news for at least a dozen different reasons right now.
-- Donie O'Sullivan reports: Facebook has removed about 50 Instagram accounts that were posing as groups from all sides of the American political spectrum and primarily claimed to be run out of swing states. The accounts were linked to the Internet Research Agency.
-- FB also announced the removal of several networks of Iranian accounts, some of which targeted Americans.
-- Mark Zuckerberg told NBC's Lester Holt that Russia, Iran and China are using "more sophisticated tactics" and "trying to interfere in elections." But he said FB's detection systems are "much more advanced now than they have been in the past."
-- The scope of the problem, as summed up by Mike Isaac's NYT story: "Facebook has more than 35,000 people working on its security initiatives, with an annual budget well into the billions of dollars."
-- As for the newly discovered Russian-planted accounts, many were focused on attacking Joe Biden's campaign.
-- Biden shared a link to O'Sullivan's story, said "we cannot let 2016 repeat itself," and parlayed the FB news into a fund-raising call.
-- The Biden campaign continued to criticize FB for allowing politicians to lie in ads.
-- The company "stood by that decision today, but acted to label non-advertising content that has been rated false more prominently," The Verge's Casey Newton wrote.
-- For a reminder of the stakes, look to Bangladesh: "Four people were killed Sunday when Bangladesh police fired on a crowd after clashes erupted over a Facebook post that angered Muslims."
-- Back in the US political arena, Bloomberg's scoop: "Zuckerberg has privately recommended several potential hires to Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign."
-- On Wednesday, Zuckerberg is slated to testify before the House Financial Services Committee about Libra.
-- And FB is getting ready to roll out its News tab: On Monday, the company sent out invites to a Friday "fireside chat" in NYC between Zuckerberg and News Corp CEO Robert Thomson. The two companies have struck a deal.
And there's even more... Scroll down...
Donie's analysis of today's take-downs
Donie O'Sullivan writes: In some ways, now even getting caught is a win for the Russians. It adds to America's national paranoia. Every week I see people on social media accuse real Americans of being Russian trolls. When we learn the Russians are out there, posing as Americans, it adds more flame to the information wars. How are we supposed to trust anything when anything could be a Russian troll? The trolls will also get media attention -- which can overplay the effectiveness of their efforts -- which further adds to the paranoia.
To be clear, today's takedown was small-scale. The accounts appeared to be in the audience building stage. But it is the first 2020-related activity we've had confirmed to be linked to the notorious Russian group, and does point to intent...
Labeling "state-controlled media"
Hadas Gold emails about another one of Monday's announcements: Facebook will start labeling pages and posts from state-controlled media outlets. "I think it's really important that people can see for themselves when media is actually operating as an organ of the government and is being editorially controlled there," Zuckerberg told Holt.
Other platforms have taken similar approaches -- last year YouTube started labeling media that came from state-funded media. But Facebook says it's limiting its labels to state-controlled media -- and that there is an "intentional distinction" between publicly funded media and state-controlled media. If a state-funded entity can "demonstrate its independent editorial control" and "retains a public service mission" it won't be labeled by FB. So outlets like PBS and BBC will likely not get a label...
More $$$ for media literacy
Yet another one of FB's announcements was a commitment to "helping people better understand the information they see online," which will include "an initial investment of $2 million to support media literacy projects." This is new funding for the United States and there aren't many other details yet... A spokeswoman told me that more will be shared in the coming weeks...
>> FB is also adding "a new series of media literacy lessons" to its Digital Literacy Library for educators...
>> So one hand takes $$ from politicians for lie-filled ads while the other hand spends $$ on media literacy...
My bottom line Q
Is Facebook making it easier to know what's true, or harder? The political ad policy makes it harder. I discussed it on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" with Mo Elleithee, who hosted Zuckerberg's recent Georgetown speech, and former FB advisor Dipayan Ghosh.
Key quote from Ghosh: "Political campaigns in this country are [being] given a free pass to slice and dice the American population, target our marginalized communities with voter suppression and with all sorts of political lies, which is going to influence our election and potentially even the ultimate outcome of the election."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- "Islamic State militants have been posting short propaganda videos to TikTok, the social network known for lighthearted content popular with teenagers." The videos have now been removed... (WSJ)
-- Kate Storey's big behind the scenes story about Bryan Goldberg and Bustle: "Inside the Rise and Fall of Gawker 2.0" (Esquire)
-- "Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has canceled the publication of Naomi Wolf's book 'Outrages' in the United States, months after errors were uncovered during a radio interview..." (NYT)
TUESDAY PLANNER
-- Ambassador William 'Bill' Taylor, the US embassy in Ukraine's charge d'affaires and top US diplomat in the country, is due to be deposed. Details here...
-- "All the President's Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator," by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy, hits bookstores...
-- Susan Zirinsky will be honored at IWMF's Courage in Journalism Awards...
-- WSJ Tech Live continues in Laguna Beach and VF's New Establishment Summit begins in Beverly Hills...
Food Network Kitchen launches Tuesday | | Discovery's newest streaming service is going live on Tuesday. It offers live cooking classes plus lots of on-demand options... All integrated with Amazon and other online stores for easy ingredient ordering.
>> Discovery is also announcing this on Tuesday: "When customers purchase an annual subscription to Food Network Kitchen, Discovery will provide up to 100 meals to kids as part of its Turn Up: Fight Hunger initiative, a new campaign with No Kid Hungry that will provide one billion meals for kids living with hunger in the U.S. over the next five years."
>> I'll be interviewing Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Martha Stewart on stage at the VF New Establishment Summit on Tuesday morning...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Norah O'Donnell on the "CBS Evening News" Monday: "Trump made a startling acknowledgment today, saying that he believes impeachment in the House is all but a foregone conclusion..."
-- "Democrats see impeachment proceedings taking longer than some initially expected," Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb report... (CNN)
-- "Post Opinions columnist Dana Milbank is providing regular commentary on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump." The feature is called "Impeachment Diary..." (WaPo)
-- The LA Times editorial board is running a seven-part series titled "Beating Trump..." (LAT)
-- "After calling Mulvaney dumb and referring to his news conference [as] idiotic, Sean Hannity made a conciliatory call to Trump's top aide that several White House officials interpreted as an apology," Michael Bender reports... (WSJ)
Trump's latest anti-media threat
CNN's Allie Malloy writes: Trump told Hannity Monday during a rant on the media that the White House is "going to probably terminate" the NYT and WaPo. "The New York Times, which is a fake newspaper -- we don't even want it in the White House anymore. We're going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post. They're fake," Trump said without expanding on what he meant. So he's going to... cancel his W.H. subscriptions?
"Fox News Republicans"
This new PRRI poll data finds significant differences between "Fox News Republicans" and other Republicans who say Fox is NOT their primary news source. For example: "A majority (55%) of Republicans for whom Fox News is their primary news source say there is nothing Trump could do to lose their approval, compared to only 29% of Republicans who do not cite Fox News as their primary news source." Here's the full report in PDF form... The NYT has a recap here...
CNN corrects Trump with split-screen of Constitution | | Oliver Darcy emails: Trump rambled and raved on Monday during a pool spray ahead of a cabinet meeting, peddling misinformation and falsehoods on a host of issues. At one point, while speaking about the now-canceled plans to host the G7 summit at his Doral resort, Trump referred to the Emoluments Clause as "phony."
The brazen falsehood prompted CNN to put text from the US Constitution on screen. "It's come to this," NYT's Peter Baker tweeted, "A television network split-screens the president with the words of the Constitution."
"What's the rationale... for rushing to serve his schedule?"
Darcy adds: That was just ONE in a multitude of moments in which Trump peddled misinformation during the pool spray. Much of what the President said was totally detached from reality. Yet every cable news network carried his unfiltered remarks immediately when the video became available.
Given that there are limits to real-time fact-checks, it's worth asking: Why do the networks insist on playing Trump's raw remarks when the tape becomes available, allowing him to use their platforms to promote falsehoods? As Columbia Journalism School's Todd Gitlin told me earlier this year, "What's the rationale... for rushing to serve his schedule?"
ABC's Syria video screw-up: What went wrong
One week after making an egregious error on its evening and morning newscasts -- airing "slaughter in Syria" video that actually came from a gun range in Kentucky -- ABC News still hasn't explained how it happened.
So I tried to reconstruct the chain of events for this new CNN Business story. Long story short: A source provided the video to a local journalist, known as a "fixer," who was working for ABC on the ground in Syria. Staffers in NYC vetted the video, had a hard time confirming its authenticity, but decided to use it anyway. "Smart people made the wrong decisions," an exec told me.
"There will be consequences" internally, the exec said, but wouldn't discuss what actions are being taken. Here's my full story...
Calling out Boris Epshteyn
Boris Epshteyn frequently comes under criticism for his pro-Trump essays that Sinclair's local TV stations are required to run. But I've never seen this happen before: Sinclair's progressive commentator, Ameshia Cross, is calling out her conservative counterpart, saying Epshteyn is spreading "racist propaganda."
Cross was deeply disturbed by Epshteyn's Monday monologue linking illegal immigration to child rape.
"I accept views alternate of my own," she tweeted. "But what I don't accept is racist propaganda used to create a disturbing, hurtful & inaccurate depiction of an entire group of people. Undocumented immigrants aren't people we should fear. They aren't rapists. This rhetoric isn't helpful."
Shoutout to Jeffrey Toobin...
For this show of self-reflection. Oliver Darcy emails: Jeffrey Toobin says he regretted the focus he placed on Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 election. Appearing on "New Day" to discuss the government's conclusion there was no "deliberate mishandling" of classified material, Toobin said he "should have been talking about other issues" during the campaign.
"This is also a story about the news media, about how much time we spent on that, and that's something that I have felt a great deal of personal responsibility for," Toobin said. "I talked about the e-mails here at CNN, I wrote about it in The New Yorker, and I think I paid too much attention to them and I regret that." He added, "I hope a lesson is learned." Toobin also spoke about this with Politico's Michael Calderone later in the day...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- "Harper's Magazine has a new editor, effective next Monday: Christopher Beha..." (NYT)
-- Two WSJ stand-outs, Joe Palazzolo and Shalini Ramachandran, are joining the paper's Investigations team... (Talking Biz News)
-- "Netflix is borrowing another $2 billion... as the company continues to burn cash to fund its international expansion and programming investment..." (The Information)
-- The ESPN Daily podcast launched on Monday... (ESPN)
These websites look like your local paper, but...
| | A fascinating find via the Lansing State Journal's Carol Thompson: Dozens of new websites that "appear to be Michigan local news outlets," but are full of conservative political content.
Thompson says political scientist Matt Grossmann noticed the sites when he was "scrolling through his Facebook feed... Not recognizing the outlet, he clicked through to discover the vast network of related outlets 'made to sound like local newspapers.'" Grossmann's point: "The big issue is this extent to which they have gone to try to confuse about this being the site of a local newspaper."
NiemanLab's Christine Schmidt followed up with a warning for newsrooms. "Watch your URL," she wrote, "Local news outlets have to ward off more politically-funded local competitors ahead of 2020..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- "In a rare move for the journalism industry, The Markup lists salaries in its job descriptions," Elana Zak notes... (Twitter)
-- The Weather Channel is planning a November 7 special "that includes interviews with nine presidential candidates" on the topic of climate change. "The campaign's most prominent climate change skeptic — President Donald Trump — declined an invitation to participate..." (AP)
-- Per David Bauder's story, the channel chose to invite the top-ranking Dems in recent polls. Andrew Yang's camp came out Monday and said it is "disappointed" it was not asked to participate in the event given the fact it has "released an extensive and detailed plan to combat climate change..." (Twitter)
-- Legislators in New York "are proposing a first-in-the-nation bill to force cable companies to offer independent local news." It stems from Verizon's impending closure of Fios1 News... (NYT)
-- Andrew Nusca's latest: "Spotify Saved the Music Industry. Now What?" (Fortune)
"Frontline" film about Trump's immigration agenda premieres Tuesday
Recommended by Brian Lowry: Frontline's latest documentary from Michael Kirk, "Zero Tolerance," which premieres Tuesday and details how Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller found in Trump a conduit to pursue their immigration policies. More details here...
Lewinsky's new documentary for HBO Max
"Monica Lewinsky and MTV's Catfish developer-star Max Joseph are turning the tables on the 'public shaming epidemic' sweeping popular culture. The unlikely duo have partnered with production company Six West on a new feature documentary titled 15 Minutes of Shame, which HBO Max announced Monday it has acquired rights to distribute via its subscription screaming service next year," EW's Joey Nolfi reports...
| | 'Rise of Skywalker' trailer!
Frank Pallotta writes: The official trailer for "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" — Disney's latest film in the massively popular "Star Wars" franchise — debuted during halftime of ESPN's "Monday Night Football." The two-minute-long trailer took viewers through the many galaxies of the Star Wars universe while focusing on the battle between the light and dark sides of the Force represented in Daisy Ridley's Rey and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren. Pre-sale tickets are now on sale... Read/watch more...
And here's the new poster: | | FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- Coming this time next month: "The Feed," a ten-part series on Amazon Prime imagining a near-future world where "a high-tech implant connects our minds to 'The Feed.' Every interaction, emotion, and memory can be shared instantly." A new trailer is out... (YouTube)
-- In this week's New Yorker, Michael Schulman profiles the actor Adam Driver, whose range and intensity "have transformed him into one of Hollywood's most unconventional leading men..." (New Yorker)
-- "The premiere of 'Watchmen' on HBO Sunday night scored decent on-air numbers, drawing a bigger audience than any episode of Succession's second season. It also pulled the premium cabler's biggest digital audience for a series premiere in three years," Rick Porter reports... (THR)
"Daybreak" and "Looking for Alaska" unleash streaming teen troubles
Brian Lowry emails: Arguably no group has been more over-served in the age of peak TV than the teen demographic, with another flurry coming to streaming in rapid-fire succession. This week brings "Daybreak," as high-school kids running amok after a zombie apocalypse, following "Looking for Alaska," a Hulu limited series based on a young-adult novel; and "The Birch," a short-form horror franchise on Facebook Watch. Basically, because "Stranger Things" happened, a lot of stranger things are happening. Read on...
Lowry reviews "Catherine the Great"
Brian Lowry writes: Helen Mirren wears a crown again in "Catherine the Great," a British miniseries airing stateside on HBO, which finds some modern relevance via this 18th-century monarch in, as she puts it, "What lies they tell about women in power." Like Meryl Streep, Mirren bucks the trend of a dearth of meaty roles for actresses of a certain age, also starring in "The Good Liar," due in theaters next month.
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Kim and Kanye West renewed their vows and she said they are done having kids...
-- Speaking of Kanye, he returned to Twitter for a "Jesus Is King" announcement...
-- "Pretty Little Liars" star Shay Mitchell has welcomed her first child...
ICYMI...
Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources"
Watch the video clips on CNN.com, read the transcript, or listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...
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