| | | | | Exec summary: Hope you had a great weekend! Scroll down for Vanity Fair intel, Glenn Beck's introspection, a "Black Panther" update and an Oscars week preview... | | Thursday: President Trump embraces the NRA. Friday: He goes off-script at CPAC; rallies the faithful; and reads "The Snake." Saturday: He live-tweets cable news and calls into Jeanine Pirro's Fox News show.
Do you see a pattern? This is campaign Trump. Phoners were frequent during the campaign, but Saturday night was Trump's first time calling into a TV show as president. He "bulldozed" Pirro, "seldom letting her ask a question," the WashPost's Callum Borchers observed. Of course, her questions were really more like prompts -- She didn't bother asking about Robert Mueller's probe, security clearance concerns, or other pressing issues.
As for CPAC, "these more free-wheeling speeches" are "obviously his preference, rather than giving the structured kind of remarks that are required of a president," Sarah Westwood said on "Reliable Sources." The president "really feeds off the energy of crowds..." | | I led Sunday's "Reliable Sources" with this "fantasyland" idea. Pirro's show is the perfect example. Trump called in, and Pirro told him everything he wanted to hear. She reinforced his fantastical view of his presidency. "Your approval rating is soaring," she said at one point, citing the straw poll of CPAC attendees that gave him 93% approval.
BACK ON EARTH: Trump's #'s were slightly up in January, but two new polls on Sunday showed him doing the opposite of "soaring." CNN's poll conducted by SSRS showed Trump at 35% approval, matching the low point of his presidency, and a new USA Today poll had him at 38%... | | The Dem memo is not "nothing" | | That's how Trump dismissed it on Saturday -- the Dem memo is "nothing" -- but the release of the memo actually revealed quite a bit. Even the redactions were interesting. To get caught up, here's a story by Marshall Cohen and Jeremy Herb showing how the GOP and Dem memos clash in key five areas...
--> What about that Saturday afternoon timing? Adam Schiff to Jake Tapper: "I'm not surprised, frankly, that the White House tried to bury this memo response as long as they could..." | | Even when Fox gets it right, Trump gets it wrong | | Trump was apparently watching Fox on a tape-delay for hours on Saturday... and some of his "mistweets" about the Dem memo were really striking. Here's just one of the examples...
At 7:56pm, Trump tweeted, "'Congressman Schiff omitted and distorted key facts' @FoxNews So, what else is new. He is a total phony!" Trump used quote marks, but in a way that would get you an "F" in English class. See, Schiff had put out a statement saying the GOP memo "omitted and distorted key facts." Fox read Schiff's statement aloud. So it appears that Trump reworked the quote to allege the OPPOSITE meaning -- pinning Schiff's words about the GOP onto Schiff himself. Did he innocently misunderstand what he heard? Or did he purposefully misquote Schiff? Either way, this is worrisome... | | A strategic leak to stop this FAA idea from taking off? | | Josh Barro tweeted: "This feels like one of those things that gets leaked by someone in the Admin who's trying to stop Trump from actually doing it."
Barro was talking about this Sunday night Jonathan Swan scoop on Axios: "Trump privately pushing personal pilot to run FAA..." | | Look out for the new cover of VF later this week... | | | Radhika Jones' first issue of Vanity Fair, the March issue, will be on newsstands this Thursday in L.A. and NYC... The cover will be published sometime between now and Thursday. Speaking of the mag... | | | Monica Lewinsky has a very newsy essay in the March issue... VF posted it online on Sunday... | | "Becoming" Michelle Obama | | | CNNPolitics' Devan Cole writes: "Former first lady Michelle Obama's highly anticipated memoir, 'Becoming,' will be released on Nov. 13, the book's publisher announced Sunday." The timing -- right on the heels of the midterms -- makes me wonder when Barack Obama's book will land. Both books are being published by Penguin Random House... And the publisher hasn't given any guidance about his release date... | | Olympic Games come to a close | | Brian Lowry emails: As the Olympics close, NBC has declared the Pyeongchang Games profitable. But as I noted last week, there are some caution flags, among them asking the audience to commit to 17 days of these spectacles in today's climate, which helps explain the fatigue that has crept into the last few days of ratings. As Ahiza Garcia reported, that makes the long-term future of Comcast's investment look riskier...
--> Read Ahiza's full story about the $12 billion investment here... | | Media week ahead calendar | | -- Monday: Mobile World Congress gets underway in Barcelona...
-- Tuesday: Discovery Communications and Live Nation earnings...
-- Thursday: AMC earnings...
-- Sunday: The Oscars! | | -- "John Oliver has emerged victorious from a legal fight with the subject of one of his segments." A judge has ruled against coal baron Robert Murray's suit against Oliver and HBO... (THR)
-- "An unraveling:" The WSJ is out with a deep dive into Newsweek's turmoil... (WSJ)
-- Last year the NYT teamed up with NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune for a reporting project. The result was in Sunday's NYT. Dean Baquet says "the big institutions like The New York Times can't just talk about the crisis of local journalism around the country -- I think we should do something..." (NYT) | | Reasons why the FL mass shooting is different | | Normally, 10 days after a mass shooting in America, the national news media would be on to the next story. But this time is clearly different. There are several reasons why:
-- The more we learn about law enforcement's failures, the more shocking it is...
-- The student activists are finding ways to stay in the news...
-- Sadly, viral conspiracy theories about the students are also an ongoing story... | | Interview with David Hogg | | MSD High student David Hogg, one of the "Never Again" organizers, was in NYC this weekend. When I asked him about the conspiracy theories ("crisis actor!") attacking his credibility, I was not expecting this answer:
"It's great. It's great advertising honestly," he said. While the conspiracy theorists are "showing how disgusting they are," he said, he feels sorry for them, "because they've lost faith in America and we certainly haven't."
But "that's OK," he added, "because we're going to outlive them." CNN's Alexandra King wrote more about the interview here... | | | -- WashPost's Paul Farhi tweeted during the segment: "If David Hogg is a 'crisis actor' (he isn't), he deserves an Oscar. Agree or disagree with him, he's articulate, passionate and informed. What were you doing at 17?" | | Hogg is the news director of the student TV station at MSD. He's thinking about majoring in journalism in college. He's 17, almost 70 years younger than Dan Rather, my other guest on Sunday's "Reliable" segment. So I asked Hogg if he had any Q's for Rather. He turned to Rather and asked: "Got any advice?"
"Writing is bedrock of the craft," Rather said. "If you want to do anything in journalism, learn to write and dedicate yourself to a lifetime of improving your writing. I can't guarantee you'll be famous and make a lot of money, but you can have a very satisfying career if you concentrate on writing." Here's the video of the full segment... | | Oprah's comments about the student activists | | Megan Thomas emails: Oprah Winfrey praised the student activists in Florida and again addressed Trump's "insecure" tweet about her in an interview with the AP over the weekend. Key quotes:
-- "These young people get to be literally warriors of the light. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to -- through their voices, through the March For Our Lives -- say 'We will not let this happen again. We are going to do what we can to banish the darkness.'"
-- "Nobody wants to be hate-tweeted, especially by the president. So it's not a comfortable thing I think for anybody on social media who's had somebody say something about you that you didn't feel was true. But I believe that you meet any kind of negativity in your life, that you meet it with light." | | | From Sunday's show: If we're having a national debate about guns and mental health, it should be about stopping ALL shootings -- school shootings, yes, but all other kinds too... | | Tapper challenges the sheriff | | This interview on "State of the Union" was nearly 30 minutes long -- and every minute was essential. Jake Tapper repeatedly pressed Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel about his agency's response to the massacre. CNN.com has a recap here... Plus the full transcript...
--> The Daily Beast's Andrew Desiderio tweeted: It was a "master class in accountability journalism..." | | | Politico's Rachael Bade on CBS's "Face the Nation:" "I would say that the likelihood of Congress passing gun control measures any time soon is probably about as likely as President Trump himself deleting his Twitter account..." | | Speaking of "Face the Nation:" | | | Sunday was Margaret Brennan's first day as moderator of "Face the Nation." At the end of the broadcast, she said, "I plan to carry on the tradition of civil conversations and tough but fair questions that you've come to expect each week here... Thanks to my CBS family for the warm welcome..." | | -- Margaret Sullivan's latest column: "Why is the NRA attacking the reality-based press? For the same reason Trump does..." (WashPost)
-- On "Reliable," I asked former RNC comms director Doug Heye: "How much activism are you seeing in the media coverage" post-Parkland? Heye: "Honestly, I see a ton of it." Here's his full answer... (Twitter)
-- Researcher Jonathan Albright "just found a 9,000-video network of YouTube conspiracy-related videos..." (BuzzFeed) | | "We are vastly two different countries," Glenn Beck told me on Sunday's "Reliable" at the end of an anguished week of angry debates about gun violence. He urged people to exit their echo chambers and hear alternate perspectives. "We can't read only the things that we agree with," he said. "We have to have conversations, calm conversations that make us uncomfortable. We have to have that."
In recent years Beck has tried to transform from a divider into a uniter... With mixed success... Judge for yourself, watch Sunday's segment and/or read my recap here... | | Constructive versus destructive criticism | | Later in the hour, we played some soundbites from CPAC and discussed why media bashing was a theme of the conservative conference. I asserted that the criticism has become much more "destructive" instead of "constructive." It's one thing to criticize screwed up and slanted stories in an attempt to make journalism better. But nowadays we're hearing more and more calls just to burn it all down.
--> "If you continually try to attack people whose job it is to hold power to account, what you're doing is creating an unaccountable environment," John Avlon said during the segment. Here's the video... | | How to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable" | | | Read the transcript on CNN.com, listen to the podcast through Apple Podcasts, watch the video clips on CNN.com, or watch the full show via CNNgo... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- The # of Facebook Live videos "produced by paid partners more than halved by the end of 2017 -- and in one case fell by as much as 94% -- as once guaranteed payments ended and Facebook deprioritized the product, new Tow Center research suggests..." (CJR)
-- Anne Helen Petersen on "the need to hire full-time Native journalists, who are often totally left out of discussions of newsroom diversity..." (TinyLetter)
-- Megan Thomas emails: Ava DuVernay cautions against prematurely celebrating Hollywood's diversity gains. "We sit on top of a broken system. Unless there is systemic change, we're just the sparkly stuff on top that makes people feel good..." (THR)
-- I missed this Brian Steinberg scoop on Friday: Macy's and Johnson & Johnson have signed on as major sponsors of ABC's "American Idol..." (Variety) | | | I love the way John Koblin unfurled this Monday NYT story about Hulu's position in the streaming space. He started with Lawrence Wright and the publication of Wright's book "The Looming Tower" over a decade ago... Now the TV adaptation is about to debut on Hulu... Read the rest here... | | | Heads up for Hollywood readers: "Street closures for the 90th Oscars celebration start Sunday and will intensify during the week," the LATimes notes... | | Variety's Ramin Setoodeh tweeted out these award season box office #'s:
"The Post:" $78.8 million
"The Shape Of Water:" $55.3 million
"The Darkest Hour:" $54.5 million
"Three Billboards:" $50.1 million
"Lady Bird:" $47.3 million
"I, Tonya:" $28.1 million
"Phantom Thread:" $18.7 million
"Call Me By Your Name:" $15.8 million | | "Black Panther" well on its way to $1 billion | | "Black Panther" was "the number one film in the U.S. for the second weekend in a row, bringing in an estimated $108 million at the box office," Frank Pallotta reports. Stats via his story:
-- "Black Panther" is the fourth film ever to cross $100 million in its second weekend, joining "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "Jurassic World," and "The Avengers..."
-- It is the second highest second weekend for a film, behind only "Force Awakens..."
-- "Black Panther" has also crossed the $700 million mark globally in just two weekends of release and will cross $400 million domestically on Sunday, its 10th day of release. The film has yet to open in China or Japan... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Even the rosiest forecasts about "Black Panther" couldn't have predicted what looks like a very real possibility now: That the latest Marvel title will outgross "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," which fell far short of "The Force Awakens." Disney, meanwhile, looks well on its way to another huge box-office year... | | "The Walking Dead" returns | | | Brian Lowry emails: No spoilers yet regarding tonight's return of "The Walking Dead," except to say that despite past complaints about the show, I liked it in a way I haven't in quite a while. A full review will post after the extra-long episode... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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