EXEC SUMMARY: Scroll down for the latest on Tuesday's election results, Wednesday's big media world events, and much more... But let me start with something else altogether...
The enduring toll of 9/11
They covered the 9/11 attacks at ground zero. They breathed in the dust and debris. Now they have cancer. And they want other journalists to know that compensation and insurance is available for those who need it.
"As a journalist, the main motive is just to get the story, get those pictures, never thinking years later you're going to end up dying from it," said Bruce David Martin, a former news operation manager and photojournalist for WWOR-TV.
"We had a job to do," said Vincent Novak, an NBC veteran.
Both men spoke with me and Diane Kaye to spread the word that the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and the World Trade Center Health Program are available for members of the media who covered the terrorist attack. "I hesitated contacting the fund, because we weren't there to save lives," Novak said. "But the media did do a service, by showing the actuality of the events and that there were no more attacks. We helped the public to cope."
Attorney Michael Barasch said that his law firm alone "represents 53 journalists," including newspaper journalists, TV reporters, and photojournalists. "They were breathing the same toxic dust as the New York City firefighters and cops," he pointed out.
I interviewed all three men on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." Since then, I've heard from four individuals who covered 9/11 and who want to look into the resources. Hopefully the info will keep reaching more and more people. Here's our full story about Novak and Martin...
Election night in America
CNN.com's lead right now: "Democrat claims victory in Kentucky."
Meanwhile, over on FoxNews.com, the homepage headline is: "Kentucky's GOP governor, backed by Trump, says he's not conceding with race too close to call."
Key notes and quotes
-- AP's lead: "Virginia Democrats continued their winning streak under President Trump on Tuesday and took full control of the statehouse for the first time in more than two decades."
-- Jonathan Martin's big-picture headline: "Democrats win big in Virginia and hold slim lead in Kentucky governor's election"
-- David Gregory re: Kentucky: "Donald Trump was not on the ballot, but Trumpism was on the ballot..."
-- Donald Trump Jr. on Laura Ingraham's Fox show: "This has nothing to do with Trump..." | | FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Michael Calderone's latest: "Media outlets reject Rand Paul's demand that they identify Trump's whistleblower..." (Politico)
-- McClatchy is launching a subscription product called Impact2020, pulling together political reporting from its papers across the country, in the form of a newsletter, podcast, videos, articles, etc... (AdWeek)
-- Philip Bump's analysis of recent polls: "Republicans are less likely to say they've heard a lot about Ukraine, but even those who say they have are more likely to get a basic detail wrong..." (WaPo)
WEDNESDAY PLANNER
Web Summit continues in Lisbon... Microsoft prez Brad Smith will be interviewed on stage...
Jury selection continues in the Roger Stone trial...
Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, and Makan Delrahim will be on stage at Andrew Ross Sorkin's DealBook conference...
Trump will hold a nighttime rally in Monroe, Louisiana...
ABC News on the defensive
Vox's Jane Coaston reports: In a video obtained by a right-wing, pro-Trump activist group, ABC's Amy Robach "complains to a producer off-air that she had convinced one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, to speak on the record about her allegations" against Jeffrey Epstein "and others reportedly involved in Epstein's web of sex trafficking — including former President Bill Clinton, attorney Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew. But, she continues, ABC refused to run the story in order to keep access to the British royal family."
In the video, Robach clearly thinks she's just speaking privately to a colleague. What she is heard describing is roughly what NPR's David Folkenflik reported earlier this year -- that ABC interviewed Giuffre in 2015 but decided not to air the tape.
Folkenflik's story suggested that lawyers including Alan Dershowitz were involved in scuttling the planned segment. "At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we never stopped investigating the story," ABC said. The network re-upped that statement on Tuesday, and Robach put out her own statement too... She said she was "disappointed" her interview didn't air, but acknowledged that it "didn't meet our standards," and said that "in the years since no one ever told me or the team to stop reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, and we have continued to aggressively."
Nonetheless, Tuesday's video clip caused widespread outrage, particularly on the right, with many commenters using it to stoke hatred of the media writ large. Personally, the most troubling part to me is Epstein's usage of high-profile, high-priced lawyers to intimidate news outlets...
Folkenflik's follow-up story
"ABC News executives say their journalists were simply not able to corroborate the details of the reporting sufficiently for broadcast," Folkenflik wrote in this story on Tuesday. He has new details about the legal issues that were at play...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Margaret Sullivan's latest: "NBC needs a transparent, external investigation of its failure to air Ronan Farrow's #MeToo reporting..." (WaPo)
-- Eye on SiriusXM's video efforts: Kelly Flynn has been named SVP of video programming at SiriusXM, reporting to Scott Greenstein, per an internal memo...
-- Speaking of Sirius: The Progress channel has shifted around some shows, with "Signal Boost" airing from 7 til 9am ET and John Fugelsang from 9pm til midnight... (All Access)
-- "Hardball with Chris Matthews" is celebrating its 20th anniversary all this week... Some of his NBC colleagues sent along congrats on Tuesday... (MSNBC)
G/O Media's editorial director is out
Kerry Flynn writes: Paul Maidment, editorial director of G/O Media, resigned on Tuesday. His decision to pursue an "entrepreneurial opportunity" comes less than a week after all of Deadspin's editorial staff resigned in protest of a "stick to sports" mandate and the firing of their interim EIC. Since Deadspin was without writers, Maidment had been blogging for the site over the weekend, Mediaite reported. His takes weren't appreciated...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Eye on the Amazon best sellers list: The new "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" title is No. 1; Brian Kilmeade's latest is No. 2; "A Warning" by "Anonymous" is No. 3; and Donald Trump Jr.'s "Triggered" is No. 4... (Amazon)
-- The FCC "formally approved T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint on Tuesday..." (CNN)
-- Julianna Margulies and Corey Stoll are joining season five of "Billions" in recurring roles... (THR)
How will Steve Doocy explain this away?
Oliver Darcy emails: US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland revised his testimony on Monday to admit there was a quid pro quo that linked aid to Ukraine with Trump's requests for investigations tied to the 2016 election and Joe Biden. Which means Trump-sycophant Steve Doocy is in an awfully awkward position.
You'll recall, back on September 24, Doocy said, "If the president said, I'll give you the money, but you've got to investigate Joe Biden, that'd be off the rails wrong." That's precisely what Sondland now says happened. It will be fascinating to watch how the "Fox & Friends" host explains this one away...
Hannity critiques "really wrong" Fox poll
Oliver Darcy emails: Sean Hannity might want to sit down with Dana Blanton, head of Fox's widely respected polling unit, for a chat. On his radio show Monday, Hannity lamented Trump's poor performance in polls, saying, "I don't know what's up with the Fox poll." Hannity added, "I look at their poll, I'm like, OK, you're sampling -- oversampling Democrats by eight points. I'm like -- some outside company they hire, I'm like, OK, they need new methodology because it's really wrong." Yikes...
>> Context: Hannity and Blanton have clashed before. Back during the 2016 election, Hannity cited unscientific online polls positive for Trump, even after Blanton sent a memo to network producers that said such surveys "do not meet our editorial standards" and shouldn't be used on air.
Media Matters trolls FB by flying banner over Menlo Park HQ
| | Oliver Darcy emails: Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group, protested Facebook on Tuesday afternoon by flying a plane over its Menlo Park headquarters with a sign that read, "FACEBOOK 💚 RIGHT WING LIES." Media Matters cited the inclusion of Breitbart in Facebook's news tab, which has been defended by executives Mark Zuckerberg and Campbell Brown, as an example of the company's "right-wing appeasement."
A false social media video: a sign of things to come in UK campaign?
Donie O'Sullivan writes: Campaigning is only officially getting underway in the UK's historic general election on Wednesday – but already there is evidence of questionable social media tactics.
On Tuesday, Boris Johnson's Conservative party posted an edited video online that made it appear like a spokesperson from the rival Labour Party was faltering for words after a question from an interview with Piers Morgan. But... the spokesperson had actually immediately answered the question. The edited and unedited clips are here.
The video was posted to Facebook and Twitter, and although it doesn't appear to have run as an ad on Facebook, it would probably be accepted by the company seeing as FB is not fact-checking posts from politicians in the UK either – as Hadas Gold and I reported last week.
What this highlights: While we talk about the threat of foreign disinformation from places like Russia and Iran, domestic actors in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere are perfectly capable of producing some of their own... All the more reason for Facebook to fact-check, perhaps?
Quite a dinner...
Brian Fung writes: Here's our story going inside a private dinner that Mark Zuckerberg held with civil rights leaders. Over scallops and steak, Zuckerberg and other execs were pressed on Facebook's political speech policies. But a day later, one of the groups he met with slammed Facebook in an open letter and warned of possible lawsuits against the company under civil rights law...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- CNN's parent AT&T has agreed "to a $60 million settlement over allegations it misled more than 3.5 million customers by charging them for 'unlimited' data plans while reducing their data speeds when their usage exceeded a certain amount," CNN Business reporter Ahiza Garcia reports... (CNN)
-- The WSJ is launching "a weekly newsletter, 2020 Election+Business, which reports on business and finance issues relating to the 2020 election..." (Dow Jones)
Confusion instead of censorship
Authoritarians and populists are increasingly choosing to manipulate rather than censor. That's the takeaway from this new Freedom House study...
Key graf: "Many governments are finding that on social media, propaganda works better than censorship." Leaders "are exploiting both human nature and computer algorithms to conquer the ballot box, running roughshod over rules designed to ensure free and fair elections."
NBA goes DTC
Kerry Flynn writes: NBA released a direct-to-consumer version of NBA TV, its channel managed by the NBA and Turner Sports. The service provides access to more than 100 games and other programming, for $6.99 per month, details here...
| | "Frozen 2" heats up on Fandango
Frank Pallotta writes: Fandango announced on Tuesday that Disney is likely about to make even more money at the box office this year.
The online ticket seller said the first day pre-sales for "Frozen 2," which went on sale Monday, have "eclipsed those for all other animated films in the company's 19-year history." Queen Elsa doesn't mess around.
The Disney animated film opens on November 22, and songs from the Disney animated film will be getting stuck in your head on November 23...
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