EXEC SUMMARY: Buckle up, big week ahead. Lisa Page speaks with The Daily Beast, Mark Zuckerberg speaks with Gayle King, Report for America adds new positions across the country, and E.T. phones home for the first time in decades 👽...
Who will answer the NYT's call?
On Sunday the NYT editorial board asked: "Who Will Tell the Truth About the Free Press?"
Certainly not President Trump or his propaganda organs. His attacks against the media have become so frequent they're like background noise. "But others have been wise enough to dissent, however cautiously," the editorial board wrote, citing Senator Mitch McConnell's "rare if tepid defense of the media in August 2017. More recently, on November 18, the majority leader cited the NYT's reporting on the Xinjiang Papers, which exposed what he called an "Orwellian campaign to effectively erase a religious and ethnic minority in a region that is supposed to be legally distinct from the rest of China."
The editorial board reminded readers: "The capacity of news organizations to produce this kind of journalism — and to reach an audience that will listen — is contingent and fragile. Mr. Trump shows no sign of seeing this bigger picture, or, perhaps, of caring about it. So it falls to the rest of us, particularly leaders like Mr. McConnell, to tell the truth about a free press, to proclaim its value, in the United States and around the world."
Over to you, Mr. McConnell...
Case in point: What's happening in Malta right now
Hadas Gold writes: Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, says he will step down in January amid allegations that he shielded his inner circle from an investigation into the death of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in October 2017.
As the BBC reports here, "she was killed by a car bomb in 2017 as she investigated corruption among Malta's business and political elite. A businessman with alleged links to government officials was charged with complicity in the murder on Saturday."
And it goes deeper. "Caruana Galizia's family have said that they believe the Prime Minister wanted her dead," CNN's Sharon Braithwaite and Barbie Latza Nadeau report. "Muscat has denied all allegations of wrongdoing." Get caught up on the case here...
SNEAK PEEK
Report for America is about to get a lot bigger
Report for America draws inspiration from groups like AmeriCorps and Teach for America, and aims to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms by 2023. On Monday it is taking a big step in that direction... RFA is teasing "a huge announcement..." Including new positions in almost every state. I'll have more info tomorrow...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- In this moving piece, Emma Goldberg, a researcher for the NYT editorial board, remembers her Cambridge classmate Jack Merritt, who was murdered near London Bridge on Friday... (NYT)
-- New from WaPo editorial page editor Fred Hiatt: "China is harassing journalists reporting on Uighurs. They cannot be stifled." (WaPo)
-- "Joy Reid on Sunday issued an on-air apology and correction moments after her program mistakenly aired a photo of a notorious white supremacist during a segment on recently fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer..." (Beast)
-- Shoutout to Troy Bentley, an indispensable Atlanta member of our "Reliable Sources" production team, who's moving to MSNBC for a great opportunity on Andrea Mitchell's newscast. Her gain, our loss!
Impeachment month?
Trump could be impeached by the end of this month. "After a Thanksgiving vacation, Congress returns this week to a capital divided over impeachment," Nia-Malika Henderson said on CNN's "Inside Politics" Sunday morning. "Democrats have given themselves an unofficial Christmas deadline to vote on articles of impeachment. The Intelligence Committee is finishing work on its final report on the Ukraine scandal and plans to vote to approve it Tuesday night." Then the hearings will resume, this time over in the Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday morning. CNN's Impeachment Watch newsletter has a detailed look at the coming week here...
--> Sunday night's update: Neither Trump nor his attorneys will participate in Wednesday's hearing...
| | Week ahead calendar
Holiday party season is officially underway...
Monday: Trump arrives in London for the NATO summit...
Tuesday: Two notable book releases: "Free, Melania" by CNN's Kate Bennett and "Supreme Ambition" by WaPo's Ruth Marcus...
Thursday: Jake Tapper moderates a CNN town hall with Nancy Pelosi...
Friday: Season three of 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" starts streaming on Amazon...
Sunday night: Anderson Cooper and Kelly Ripa host "CNN Heroes" live from NYC...
New home for Norah O'Donnell
The "CBS Evening News" officially moves to DC on Monday... Norah O'Donnell will be anchoring from a brand new set at the CBS News bureau in the nation's capital... New EP Jay Shaylor will be based in DC, and the show will split staff between DC and NYC.
-- How CBS is positioning the move: "The only network evening news broadcast based in Washington, it will leverage its unique location in the nation's capital, while remaining focused on both national and international stories of interest to Americans..."
-- The obvious Q: Will the changes have any impact on the newscast's ratings?
Elon Musk heads to court for defamation trial over 'pedo guy' tweet
Kerry Flynn writes: I'm heading to Los Angeles to cover the defamation trial brought against Elon Musk by Vernon Unsworth, a British man who helped with the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooding Thai cave in July 2018. The trial begins on Tuesday. Here's the backstory via Jackie Wattles...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- "Without the privilege of national press, it is unfair to ask others to husband their resolve and to sacrifice resources any longer," Joe Sestak said in a Sunday evening email blast ending his 2020 campaign... (CNN)
-- Don't miss Stephen Battaglio's new look at the "deepening concern" among some veteran journalists and producers "that network TV news divisions are avoiding controversial enterprise stories that could pose financial risks from litigation and create aggravation for their corporate owners..." (LAT)
-- "Dwyane Wade calls out critics who mocked his son for wearing fake nails: 'Stupidity is a part of this world we live in.'" (Yahoo)
-- "Former prolific YouTuber and current college admissions scandal subject Olivia Jade, also known as Lori Loughlin's daughter, has posted" her first YouTube video in eight months..." (Jezebel)
-- 🔌: I'll be talking about both these stories on CNN's "New Day" in the 8am hour on Monday...
Wojcicki on "60 Minutes"
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki sat down with Lesley Stahl for this "60 Minutes" profile. Stahl's piece emphasized the vastness of YouTube and said Wojcicki is in charge of "nurturing the site's creativity, taming the hate and handling the chaos."
The first Q in Stahl's piece: "Do you let your children watch YouTube, including the young ones?" Wojcicki said "I allow my younger kids to use YouTube Kids, but I limit the amount of time that they're on it. I think too much of anything is not a good thing." That's what me and Jamie say, too, when two-year-old Sunny wants to keep watching Emma on YouTube... We use a five-minute timer...
A new stat from the "60" story
"Earlier this year," Stahl said, "YouTube started re-programming its algorithms in the U.S. to recommend questionable videos much less, and point users who search for that kind of material to authoritative sources, like news clips. With these changes, Wojcicki says they have cut down the amount of time Americans watch controversial content by 70%."
This is a new stat about YouTube's effort to, in its words, "limit recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation." In June, the company said watch time of "this type of content" was down 50%. Now, in December, "the result is a 70% average drop in watch time of this content coming from non-subscribed recommendations in the U.S.," per a YouTube spokeswoman...
Zuckerberg and Chan on "CBS This Morning" | | This is, per CBS, the "first joint TV interview" with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan -- and it is primarily about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative -- but Gayle King also asked about the political ad brouhaha:
KING: "The main thing, now, that people are talking about are the political ads. You don't want to take down political ads that people know are false, that they contain false information?"
ZUCKERBERG: "What I believe is that in a democracy, it's really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments. And, you know, I don't think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news."
Portions of the multi-part interview will air Monday and Tuesday on King's morning show...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- "Guardian Media Group appointed a new interim chief executive today in Anna Bateson, who has worked for the company since 2016. Recruiting for a permanent replacement continues..." (Press Gazette)
-- "Most of us don't know 95% of what Amazon is doing," Amy Webb says in Scott Shane's incredible look at Baltimore, showing how Amazon "may now reach into Americans' daily existence in more ways than any corporation in history..." (NYT)
-- ICYMI, read Monika Bauerlein: "Should Journalists Be Part of the Resistance?" (Mother Jones)
Newsweek fires reporter for... what, exactly?
An editor at Newsweek assigned Jessica Kwong to pre-write a story about Trump's Thanksgiving Day plans. When it was published on Thursday morning, before the president's trip to Afghanistan was announced publicly, the headline said "How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more."
That was inaccurate, obviously, and it was updated later in the day. Trump boosters targeted Newsweek for ridicule. Kwong said it was an "honest mistake."
The Washington Examiner broke the news of Kwong's firing on Saturday. But Newsweek's decision doesn't seem to make sense. How was Kwong supposed to know that Trump was on a top-secret flight to Afghanistan at the time her story was published? At the very least, shouldn't the blame be shared with the higher-ups? More to come on this...
Bad-faith acting 101
By Sunday morning, "Fox & Friends" was running an on-screen banner that said "MEDIA, DEMS BLAST TRUMP OVER VISIT TO AFGHANISTAN." The show devoted multiple segments to this non-scandal. Suffice to say, Fox is a much bigger part of the "MEDIA" than Newsweek at this point...
Lisa Page speaks
Molly Jong-Fast, an outspoken critic of Trump, landed the first interview with Lisa Page, the ex-FBI lawyer who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Peter Strzok. In Hannityland, Strzok and Page are boldface names, almost synonymous with "deep state." Trump has repeatedly attacked them both.
For this feature on The Daily Beast's website, Jong-Fast wrote that the "MAGA meat grinder" has clearly worn Page down, "not unlike the other women I've met who've been subjected to the president's abuse."
Page acknowledged having an affair with Strzok -- but "she's still married to her husband and they have two small children," Jong-Fast wrote. "Ultimately, she was just another public servant like Fiona Hill or Marie Yovanovitch. She was dragged into the spotlight, her text messages weaponized, and her life destroyed so that the Trump administration could have a brief distraction." Here's what Page has to say... She has also joined Twitter, BTW...
Where Trump is getting his legal advice
My lead on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" was about the pro-Trump players who are giving Trump all sorts of legal advice through the TV set. His favorite commentators, like Jeanine Pirro and Gregg Jarrett, are telling him the Democrats are just out to get him. His spokespeople, like Kayleigh McEnany, say the legal impeachment process is actually a coup. So Trump keeps hearing that he's not the mastermind of a shakedown, but rather, he's the victim of a takedown...
"We're having an asymmetrical argument"
Look, Chuck Todd said to David Brooks on Sunday's "Meet the Press" broadcast, "we're having an asymmetrical argument. Democrats are trying to have a conversation about what the president did. And Republicans are having a completely different conversation. As -- we couldn't even agree on the same set of facts."
And this asymmetry will only intensify as the House vote nears... right?
The impeachment ad wars
Todd pointed out that "Republican groups have spent nearly $7 million on ads against impeachment" since Nancy Pelosi "announced the inquiry in September -- compared to just over $2.8 million on pro-impeachment ads by Democratic groups, almost entirely money spent by Tom Steyer, and mostly in support of his own campaign." His point: "This is not a split decision, organically. The Republicans spent millions to get this split decision..."
"Selective perception"
Will the next round of impeachment hearings change any minds? Is America too divided, too polarized to be swayed by new evidence during the impeachment inquiry? I asked Columbia U psychology professor Peter T. Coleman. He said that minds can change -- and he pointed out that word-of-mouth conversations are especially powerful -- though hard to measure. | | I asked Coleman about "selective perception," which he defined this way: "If you have a strong attitude about something," you tend to "look for information that supports your bias; that's comforting; that feels right to you. And we tend to ignore or deny or discount info that is contradictory in some ways." Coleman said that's one of the reasons why we've "moved into these kind of tribal societies of very different experiences of realities, because we're only sort of processing half the story..."
More notes and quotes from Sunday's show
-- Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick said TV personalities who repeat what Trump wants to hear "are reinforcing his legal theory of the world..."
-- Lawyer Caroline Polisi noted that impeachment is a political, not legal question, "therefore the echo chamber really does have some value in this analysis..."
-- Are Trump and his allies leveraging political power for their own personal benefit? "It's been the defining question of the Trump presidency," author and "Trump, Inc." podcast host Andrea Bernstein told me...
-- The WSJ's Rebecca Davis O'Brien said "my beat is white-collar law enforcement, but it increasingly feels like a political beat..."
-- Angela Denker, a Lutheran pastor and journalist who recently wrote the book "Red State Christians," discussed the significance of Trump allies likening him to the "chosen one." Watch...
The power of a Photoshop
We used to talk about the power of a photo – now, it's about the power of a Photoshop. An image of "swole Trump," with his head on Sylvester Stallone's body, was promoted by protesters in Hong Kong within hours of Trump's tweet -- their way of thanking him for signing two pro-democracy bills. What an incredible display of the internet age... I talked about it with David Zurawik, video here...
Edsall's column explains so much...
Thomas B. Edsall's latest piece for the NYT opinion section, "Liberals Do Not Want to Destroy the Family," links William Barr's recent commentary to a "renewed drive by social conservatives to demonize liberal elites." He says Barr is "marketing apocalyptic hogwash because, for his boss to get re-elected, Trump's supporters must continue to believe that liberals and the Democratic Party are the embodiment of evil, determined to destroy the American way of life. Relentless pressure to maintain the urgency of that threat is crucial to Trump's political survival." Reading this made me think about the countless # of banners on Fox's pro-Trump talk shows that otherize and demonize Dems...
Bloomberg on Bloomberg...
On Sunday's "Reliable," I interviewed Bloomberg's former DC news director Kathy Kiely, who quit in 2016 over concerns about the company's coverage of Michael Bloomberg's political aspirations.
"We don't need another billionaire who thinks there should be a special set of rules just for him," Kiely told me. "If Mike Bloomberg really wants to distinguish himself from the man he says he wants to beat, he should say: 'Free the press. I can take it, Donald, even if you can't.'"
NOW FROM THE U.S. TO THE U.K....
Cynical and fake and foolish...
Hadas Gold emails: Read this insane account of an investigation into the political party the Liberal Democrats in the UK – and how party officials used legal threats and a fake email to try and get an investigation retracted. Pro tip: When faking an email to try and prove you had responded to comment, make sure it's dated for a time AFTER the journalist had sent in their first email seeking comment...
And in other UK news, Facebook removed a political advertisement by the Conservative Party in the UK after a request by the BBC. In the ad, BBC reporters are shown saying things like "pointless delay to Brexit" alongside a montage of protest footage and debates in Parliament, all set to dramatic music. But the reporters were actually quoting politicians like Boris Johnson. The BBC initially asked the Conservatives to take it down -- and when the party declined, the BBC went to Facebook, which took it down citing "a valid intellectual property claim..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- TheMaven era in action: "Sports Illustrated reports that Sports Illustrated disputes Sports Illustrated's report that USC has fired Clay Helton" (Awful Announcing)
-- Alex Sherman's new look at (overly?) confident cable biz execs: "5G broadband is an existential threat to the cable industry, but executives and investors aren't worried" (CNBC)
-- VC Fred Wilson in conversation with Lucia Moses, on the subject of the streaming wars: "The market is a lot bigger than anybody thinks and there will be a dozen big streaming businesses." His thoughts on audio, video, magazines and more here... (BI)
-- Brendan Ripp, a former EVP at Disney Advertising Sales, is joining Joe Marchese's new investment firm Attention Capital. "Ripp will lead revenue strategy..." (Adweek)
About Comcast's E.T. ad on Thanksgiving...
I wanted to hate this, but it was really well-done. Watch it on YouTube, where it has nearly 11 million views. The idea: "After 37 years, E.T. comes back to visit his friend, Elliott, for the holidays. During his stay, E.T. learns that Elliott now has a family of his own and that technology has completely changed on Earth since his last visit."
The ad was crafted by Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, Variety's Brian Steinberg reports. Comcast approached Steven Spielberg with the concept "and secured his permission for the effort... Spielberg was consulted throughout the process..." | | Are you watching "Watchmen" yet? You should be
Brian Lowry emails: Even after the opening flurry of episodes, "Watchmen's" master plan remained difficult to foresee. Yet over the last few hours, the HBO series has dizzyingly blended its new elements with the source material, with producer Damon Lindelof and his team having played the long game in spectacular fashion, proving that time really was on their side.
Steeped in fantasy, yet relevant, and faithful to the source material without being bound by it, with two chapters left after Sunday night's episode, the HBO drama is shaping up to be one of this TV season's most impressive accomplishments... | |
Did 'The Irishman' Take a Bite Out of the Thanksgiving Box Office?"
That's the question atop Brooks Barnes' weekend box office story for the NYT. The subheadline: "This year's holiday weekend saw a 16 percent decline in ticket sales. Blame the weather. Or Netflix."
Or both? So far, Netflix "has provided no viewership data for the euphorically reviewed mobster drama," he notes. But the chatter on social media "suggested it was a popular choice." One of the running jokes was about the length of the film... With folks saying that they'll finish it in a week or so...
"Frozen 2" wins the weekend
As for theatrical releases, no surprise here, "Frozen 2" set the record "for the highest-grossing weekend in Thanksgiving history," Frank Pallotta wrote. "It made $123.7 million domestically over the five day holiday weekend, breaking the record held by 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,' which made $109 million in 2013." Read on...
December = awards time
Brian Lowry writes: If you can't reach your favorite critic/entertainment journalist on the phone this week, it¹s because most of the major critics groups (if that's not an oxymoron) are cramming for their annual awards, sifting through screeners, unnecessary coffee-table books and other related mailings. The Golden Globes mark the de facto starting gun for the season when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announces its nominations on December 9. Meanwhile, I'm noticing that the usual year-end roundup/best-list stories are already starting to include some end-of-the-decade rankings, which is only going to add to the lunacy between now and New Year's...
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