| | | | HuffPost's Michael Calderone published a very important story Thursday evening: "There's growing concern that Trump's war with CNN could escalate beyond insults and Twitter posts, with sources close to the president musing about opening a new front aimed at CNN's parent company, Time Warner -- and Trump himself speculating about CNN President Jeff Zucker losing his job in a shake-up."
Calderone's story was sparked by a line in Michael Grynbaum's NYT story saying that W.H. advisors have discussed AT&T's pending acquisition of Time Warner as a "potential point of leverage" over CNN. Trump's Justice Department is reviewing the merger now, which makes this timely...
>> Philly Daily News columnist Will Bunch's reaction to the NYT story: "There's only one word to describe such a ploy: Nixonian." | | Deal expected to be approved soon -- but with a catch? | | Execs at the two companies believe the deal will be OKed... sooner rather than later... in fact, on Thursday morning, "sources close to the deal" told CNBC's David Faber that the merger "could close within 60 days," which is even "sooner than some people had thought."
But several news outlets, led by the New York Post, have suggested in recent days that Trump wants Zucker gone. The Daily Caller's W.H. correspondent Alex Pfeiffer is the latest: On Thursday morning he wrote that "the White House does not support the pending merger between CNN's parent company Time Warner and AT&T if Jeff Zucker remains president of the CNN, a source familiar with President Trump's thinking told The Daily Caller."
Note that sourcing -- a person "familiar with Trump's thinking."
As Calderone wrote, "The anonymous threats may turn out to be bluster. But the idea of a president abusing his power to financially punish companies over news coverage he doesn't like is nonetheless disturbing."
>> Related: WashPost's Philip Bump asked experts: "Would the Trump administration block a merger just to punish CNN?" | | This is what Trump has said on the record | | | On June 26 Trump tweeted that "fake News CNN is looking at big management changes." What was his source? Two days later he said at a private RNC fundraiser that he had heard Zucker is "going to resign at some point pretty soon." Where did he hear that? | | | Look, this is a CNN newsletter, and I'm writing about the president of CNN and the President of the United States. But I can safely say that this would be a big deal no matter which media company was involved... | | Note this exchange from "Squawk Box..." | | Quoting the aforementioned David Faber: "By the way, there's also a school of thought that says, frankly, if you're the president, you might be happier with CNN being owned by AT&T--"
Jim Cramer: "You mean the conservative top of AT&T?"
Faber: "I'm just saying that it's a different ownership... There's going to be changes when Time Warner is owned by AT&T. They got their playbook at AT&T, they integrate, they want to focus on costs. You just don't know. So there's that also, and that's not lost on the administration." | | So what's AT&T saying about all this? | | Calderone asked AT&T for comment, and the company did not respond.
>> Back in October, when the deal was announced, I asked AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson about how he would approach owning CNN. He said, "I think you can begin to destroy a brand like CNN if you begin to meddle in its independence." | | Brian Lowry emails: As some have noted, this type of thing isn't entirely new -- Richard Nixon threatened the Washington Post during Watergate. The difference today is that conglomerates like the ones that own CNN, MSNBC and ABC News (Time Warner, Comcast and Disney) are bigger and hold more varied portfolios, which can create additional points of vulnerability in terms of regulation or the lack thereof.
Speaking of Nixon, Watergate and the press... | | Guest on this week's "Reliable" pod: Frank Rich | | | Coincidentally, Frank Rich and I talked about Nixon's attempts to intimidate the owners of media companies on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. The new episode is available now via iTunes and other podcasting services. We also talked about his recent NYMag cover story on Trump and Nixon; his role behind the scenes on "Veep;" and the other HBO show he's working on... | | | "What's being directed at CNN right now is flat-out mob intimidation." That's MSNBC host Chris Hayes, reacting to Lloyd Grove's Daily Beast story, "High Anxiety at CNN Amid Attacks From Trump and His Trolls." Here are some of the day's other stories about the fallout from last week's resignations, Trump's anti-CNN attacks, and threats from Trump supporters... | | -- Gizmodo's J.K. Trotter examined the editing process for KFILE's controversial story about the creator of the anti-CNN smackdown video...
-- Former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno to THR's Jeremy Barr: "Sadly, I think news organizations in the United States need to think about security in ways we have never before considered..."
-- BTW: On Sunday's "Reliable Sources" I'll be joined by Ben Jacobs, who was body-slammed by Greg Gianforte in Montana... | | Gretchen Carlson sued Roger Ailes one year ago today... | | | And you know the rest of that story. | | Now, a new allegation of sex harassment inside Fox... | | Charles Payne suspended by Fox Biz | | Paul, Weiss -- the law firm tasked with investigating sexual harassment claims at 21st Century Fox last year -- has never stopped working on the matter. Now it is reviewing new allegations against Fox Business Network host Charles Payne.
Payne recently admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman who was previously a frequent guest on Fox News. "That relationship is now being reviewed" because the woman contacted Paul, Weiss last month "to report her allegations of sexual misconduct," Stephen Battaglio of the LATimes scooped Thursday...
Payne was on the air when the story broke. Right after his show ended, Fox Biz announced the suspension: "We take issues of this nature extremely seriously and have a zero tolerance policy for any professional misconduct. This matter is being thoroughly investigated and we are taking all of the appropriate steps to reach a resolution in a timely manner." | | Payne "categorically denies" any harassment | | Quoting from Battaglio's report: "The woman was never an employee of Fox News, but appeared as a guest across numerous Fox News and Fox Business Network programs with the hope of becoming a paid contributor. She has told her lawyer, who is preparing a legal complaint against Fox News and Payne, that she stayed in the relationship because she believed he would help her chances of landing a position at the network, according to the sources. Instead, the woman is alleging, after she ended the affair her appearances were drastically reduced, the sources say." Battaglio says the woman -- whom the paper is not naming -- "worked for CNN last year."
-- Payne's attorney said the anchor "categorically denies" any sex harassment. Fox declined to comment on the matter... | | -- An Phung emails: Univision is vowing to fight a defamation suit over a Deadspin story published last year about a sports betting media site. Charles Harder is the plaintiff's lawyer...
-- Greta Van Susteren says she will "entertain any job offers..." Including perhaps One America News Network...
-- Speaking of OANN -- I can't say enough good things about Marc Fisher's in-depth look at the "insurgent TV network" and internal dissent about its pro-Trump bent -- check it out here...
-- ICYMI, Joe Flint's WSJ story about TV networks renaming shows to avoid low-rated days is an instant classic... | | | On Thursday night's "TRMS," Rachel Maddow said somebody is shopping a "red hot" document related to Russia... perhaps in an attempt to trick a media outlet. "This is news," she said, because "why is someone shopping a forged document of this kind to news organizations covering the Trump-Russia affair?" | | THE PRESIDENT'S TRIP TO EUROPE | | Trump-Putin meeting: there will be pics | | | On Thursday night all the nightly newsers led with the raucous protests at the G20. Friday's news cycle is likely to be dominated by the Trump-Putin meeting... which is expected to take place around 9:30am ET... and there will be a photo op. CBS's Mark Knoller tweets: "Each word uttered by Trump and Putin will be scrutinized -- if they make any remarks." | | Making Putin look "much smarter than he is" | | | Megan Thomas emails: The New Yorker's Joshua Yaffa asked more than half a dozen Russian journalists to weigh in on U.S. media coverage of Putin and Trump -- "all of whom found themselves in some way bemused, frustrated, or disappointed in the way that the U.S. press has covered Putin and Russia—especially concerning the question of election interference." The coverage, according to one Russian journalist, has made "Putin seem to look much smarter than he is, as if he operates from some master plan," but "there is no plan—it's chaos." | | Other presidents boosted free press abroad; Trump bashes it | | Tom Kludt emails his latest story: When President Trump spoke in Poland Thursday morning, he might have used the opportunity to tout the virtues of a free press. It would have been a strong rebuke to the country's Law and Justice Party, which has muscled control from Polish public media since taking power. After all, countless past presidents used the foreign stage to rhapsodize about the First Amendment and the value of journalism. It's practically rote presidential rhetoric.
But Trump went a different way.
He reiterated his disdain for the likes of CNN and others. That's nothing new, of course; verbal attacks on the news media have become a defining element of Trump's presidency. But for some, the foreign setting made it unseemly.
"It used to be said that politics stopped at the water's edge. Obviously, not so with President Trump, who has no hesitation globalizing his war against the media," Marvin Kalb, a former network correspondent who is now a professor emeritus at Harvard, told me. Kalb noted that JFK, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush and Obama "all, when abroad, echoed Jefferson's belief that a free press was often more important for democracy than a government." Read Tom's full story here... | | | Tom Kludt adds: A W.H. official was hardly apologetic when I asked for comment on Trump's remarks: "This is a president who was elected by the American people for telling it like it is and he will do that no matter the setting, unlike many in the media and political circles who change their messaging based on the audience and venue. Furthermore, the media certainly has no problem attacking the President on the global stage." | | "What CNN and others -- I mean, I know there's -- NBC's equally as bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with 'The Apprentice,' but they forgot that."
--President Trump at Thursday morning's presser, rekindling his long-running complaint about NBC... | | One national security-related leak a day... | | | ...That's what the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found when it reviewed articles by more than a dozen news outlets between January and May. "Leaks are flowing at the rate of one a day." Per CNN's Laura Jarrett, committee chairman Ron Johnson's office published the findings and sent them to Attorney General Jeff Sessions... Johnson said he wanted to make the DOJ "aware of the results of this examination" and hoped it will prove "useful to the relevant investigative entities..." | | Oliver Darcy emails: - "SEE IT: First Lady of Poland appears to snub President Trump's attempted handshake in Warsaw," blared a headline from the New York Daily News.
- "Donald Trump gets owned in handshake diss from Poland's first lady," said Mashable's headline.
- "The First Lady of Poland Did Not Want to Shake Donald Trump's Hand," Vanity Fair chimed in on Twitter.
But what really happened in the incident all these headlines described? As Bradd Jaffy pointed out on Twitter, Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda appeared to have been looking at Melania Trump and inadvertently missed Donald Trump's gesture. She shook Donald Trump's hand immediately after shaking his wife's.
Was it an awkward moment? Perhaps. But it seems evident there was no "handshake diss," no intentional "snub." Any outlet is capable of making a mistake, no matter how careful, but the incident was emblematic of a larger pattern in media. News organizations sometimes rush to publish articles on topics trending on Twitter without pausing to report them out and check them for accuracy.
In this case, after the video had been viewed by those with more critical eyes, some of these news organizations changed their headlines to make them less sensational. Some inserted editor's notes into stories conceding that their original characterizations were incorrect. But often by the time the truth comes to light it's too late -- false narratives have already been born. | | By Howard Cohen:
-- Are machines replacing local journalists? Google is financing a robot journalism project in which computers will be writing up 30,000 stories on a monthly basis for local news organizations.
-- The BBC reports that some schools are issuing security warnings to students about Snapchat's new maps features.
-- Ed Sheeran insisted on Today that he hasn't "quit" twitter despite previously noting that he stopped reading tweets due to all the negativity.
-- NBC poached ABC's Phillip Mena to serve as a morning and weekend anchor.
-- America's Got Talent was seen by 12.4 million people last week - almost 5 million more than last week's second most-popular show, "World of Dance" | | Maine governor: "the sooner the print press goes away, the better society will be" | | Maine governor Paul LePage, sometimes called "Maine's Trump," suggested "he makes up stories to mislead reporters." According to the AP, his comments came on WGAN-AM on Thursday: "I just love to sit in my office and make up ways so they'll write these stupid stories because they are just so stupid, it's awful."
-- More: LePage "also characterized the Maine media as 'vile,' 'inaccurate' and 'useless.' He says 'the sooner the print press goes away, the better society will be.'" | | An early look at Sunday's "Reliable" | | | Along with Ben Jacobs, I'll be joined by John Avlon, Lynn Sweet, John Gizzi, Kirsten Powers, and Robert Leonard, the Iowa radio news director who wrote this NYT op-ed: "Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It" | | Mark Levin declined my interview requests... | | "Another Mark Levin Best-Seller Spiked," the conservative Media Research Center said in an email blast earlier this week. MRC claimed Levin has been "censored" by the establishment media, "with not a single interview granted" about the new book. (Levin has been on Fox multiple times touting the book.)
I saw this as an opportunity to re-up our months-old requests for Levin to come on "Reliable Sources." Surely, since MRC says he's been "censored," he'd jump at any chance at a non-Fox interview? But when I emailed him the offer on Thursday, he replied, "Are you kidding me? Buddy, I've zero respect for CNN or you. You're a propagandist."
Maybe MRC wants to re-think its "censorship" claim? | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Last week, the new "Reader Center" of the NYT invited the public to email questions to Dean Baquet. A selection of Baquet's answers is now online...
-- Digiday's Lucia Moses looks at the collaboration between publishers and Amazon as Echo gains popularity as a new platform for content experimentation...
-- Facebook, Twitter and Snap are all courting 21st Century Fox to obtain online rights to World Cup video highlights. The bidding war is fierce, with offers ranging in the "tens of millions of dollars," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports...
-- Missed this yesterday: The WashPost's Paul Farhi asks whether a trip around the world organized by the New York Times, with a price tag of $135,000 per person, should raise any ethical flags... | | 105 million payments of just $19.99... | | Liberty Interactive, the owner of QVC, already owns a minority stake in longtime rival Home Shopping Network. Now Liberty is paying $2.1 billion (in stock) for the remaining 61.8% of HSN.
"The deal is expected to be completed in the final three months of this year," CNNMoney's Chris Isidore and David Goldman report. "The two television shopping networks have been seeing their sales steadily decline in recent years with the rise of online shopping. But QVC still did $8.7 billion in sales last year, while HSN has revenue of $3.5 billion..." | | Ava DuVernay to do Central Park Five series for Netflix | | | "Ava DuVernay's exploration of America's criminal justice system will continue with a new project about the Central Park Five on Netflix," Sandra Gonzalez reports... | | Lowry reviews "The Defiant Ones" | | | Brian Lowry emails: HBO's "The Defiant Ones" begins with legendary producers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine selling Beats Electronics to Apple for $3 billion, and works backward from there. What emerges is a fascinating trip through modern music history, told in parallel fashion through their respective careers. Read Lowry's full column here... | | More on "Hawaii Five-0" exits | | | More from Sandra Gonzalez: The conversation about Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Parks' exits from "Hawaii Five-0" continues. Since Wednesday, both CBS and Peter Lenkov have released statements about the salary negotiations that led to the actors' departure. Lenkov claims the actors were offered "unprecedented" raises but still chose to leave. Here's our updated report... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- The controversy regarding two Asian-American actors leaving "Hawaii Five-0" highlights what I talked to "Iron Fist" actor Lewis Tan about -- the fact that beyond being cast as nerds and ninjas, it's been slow progress for Asian actors in Hollywood. And despite the success of shows like ABC's "Fresh Off The Boat" and stars like Aziz Ansari, Asian people are often the group left out of the diversity discussion when talk turns to #OscarsSoWhite. Read the full story...
-- Andrew Garfield has been getting some backlash after he said he prepared for his role as a gay man in a British production of "Angels in America" by watching Ru Paul's "Drag Race" with friends...
-- Gavin Russom of LCD Soundsystem has come out as transgender...
-- Race factored into Tupac and Madonna breaking up. In a letter now up for auction, the rapper told the pop star he couldn't be with her at least in part because she was white...
-- Now there will be a baby on board if they head for "The Hills." Former reality star Lauren Conrad and her musician-turned-attorney husband William Tell have welcomed their first child, a boy... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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