| | | | | Exec summary: There's news from Facebook, YouTube, C-SPAN, the New York Observer, Hearst, Charter, CNN, Showtime, the DOJ, MoviePass, and more... So here you go... | | Alex Jones has been digitally "deplatformed." Weeks of scrutiny about Infowars' presence on social networking sites has resulted in a domino effect: The hate news site, full of conspiracy gobbledygook, has been sanctioned by Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify in the past 24 hours.
The recent scrutiny was prompted by a question posed to Facebook by CNN's Oliver Darcy. He asked: If the company is so committed to stamping out misinfo, as it claims, why is Infowars still able to publish on Facebook? These are thorny issues... Open to debate... So here's what happened on Monday... | | Late Sunday, actually, Apple removed Jones' entire library of podcasts associated with InfoWars from iTunes and its podcast app. It LOOKS like this decision influenced the other companies. Early Monday, Facebook unpublished several pages associated with Jones and Infowars. YouTube removed the Alex Jones Channel for violating its community guidelines. And Spotify dropped Jones' podcasts.
FAANG references Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Two of the five took action against Infowars. Notably, the site's app is still available in Google's app store... And in Apple's store... | | The companies cited "hate speech" | | Oliver Darcy emails: It was striking that the tech giants cited violations of their hate speech policies, not Jones' penchant for disseminating false news and peddling conspiracy theories. Facebook even pointed this out in its statement: "While much of the discussion around InfoWars has been related to false news...none of the violations that spurred today's removals were related to this."
Read Charles Riley's full story here...
| | Until now, Facebook kept Jones' pages up and furiously defended itself, citing free speech concerns. Mark Zuckerberg even went on Kara Swisher's Recode podcast and explained why Jones and Infowars were not being sanctioned. So what happened? What changed?
"It was their own mythology about being neutral, coupled with the opacity of their algorithms and moderation practices, that enabled people like Jones -- and more than a few Republican members of Congress -- to baselessly accuse" companies like FB "of secret censorship in the first place," Wired's Issie Lapowsky says.
I think Emily Bell is right: "What Facebook demonstrates via the somewhat inevitable Infowars decision, is that editorial decisions do not scale, they are culturally specific and liable to change over time. Put that in your algorithm..."
| | Infowars is still up and running on Twitter and Periscope | | Oliver Darcy emails: Twitter remains Jones' only big portal to mainstream conversation. It was the only major social media company to take no action against Jones on Monday. A Twitter spokesperson told me that neither Infowars nor any accounts associated with it are currently in violation of Twitter or Periscope's rules...
| | Oliver Darcy adds: Has the free speech can of worms been opened? Throughout the day, my Twitter mentions have been flooded with concerns about what big tech's action against Jones and Infowars means for free speech on the web, since private companies control so much of the conversation. Defenders of Jones, and those who are simply concerned, have employed a slippery slope argument to warn that other outlets could be next.
Conservative media, in particular, has stirred its audience into a frenzy, suggesting that this could ultimately lead to their removal. As I told Richard Quest, this does lead to bigger questions, and it certainly will be interesting to see how it all plays out over the coming months and years. That said, I don't think we are going to be seeing big tech take action against Fox News or The Daily Caller any time soon...
| | Remember when then-candidate Donald Trump went on Infowars and praised Alex Jones? "Your reputation is amazing," Trump said in December 2015. "I will not let you down."
Shameful then, shameful now. On Monday, per HuffPost, Jones begged Trump "to help him get back on the social media platforms..." with "a monologue that alternately praised the president while claiming that the social media ban is part of a globalist conspiracy against him..."
| | Time to reconsider Megyn Kelly's interview? | | Megyn Kelly was widely criticized by the media-chattering classes for interviewing Alex Jones. It happened almost exactly a year ago. But... looking back now... maybe Kelly was right to expose what Jones was doing and draw attention to the problem? Just thinking out loud here...
| | Oliver Darcy asks:
-- Who ultimately made the decisions at these tech companies to take action? Did Tim Cook make the final call at Apple? Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook?
-- Apple and Google took action against Infowars and Jones, but both companies have allowed the Infowars app to remain in the App Store and Google store. What's the distinction?
-- Jones frequently streams content on Periscope, which is owned by Twitter. Is the company really confident that he hasn't violated any of their guidelines on the hours and hours of content uploaded?
-- What happens to Infowars and Jones now that they've been dropped by these tech platforms? Will they drift off into the oblivion or still manage to stay in the conversation and survive as a company?
Stelter here... Two more Q's I have:
-- Have any other media personalties violated the tech giants' usage policies as gratuitously as Jones has?
-- What will the history books say about this moment in time? | | How Jared Kushner secretly deleted Observer stories | | This happened back in 2012. But it was a secret until recently. "Jared Kushner personally ordered a software developer at his newspaper to remove stories that were critical of his friends and real estate peers," BuzzFeed's Steven Perlberg wrote Monday.
At the time, Kushner was the owner of the New York Observer. He went around the paper's editors "to mandate the removal of a handful of articles from the website, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News." Read on... | | A former Observer employee, Austin Smith, recently wrote about helping Kushner delete stories. The editor at the time, Elizabeth Spiers, said on Twitter that she found out "a few months ago." Her reaction: "I don't have enough choice expletives describe my feelings about that."
I asked Spiers: How did Kushner pull this off without the newsroom knowing? "When you publish some 50 odd stories a week, you don't notice two or three missing here and there weeks after fact," she said. "We also had a couple of site redesigns and site search was abysmal. So if you didn't immediately find something in search there were more likely (at the time) explanations..."
🔌: I'll be discussing this on HLN's "Morning Express" in the 7am hour Tuesday... | | -- BREAKING: And concerning: "The Broward County School Board on Monday asked a judge to hold the South Florida Sun Sentinel and two of its reporters in contempt of court over the publication of a report about the Parkland shooter's years within the school system..." (Sun Sentinel)
-- Eye on the Eye: I didn't see any significant developments on the CBS front on Monday...
-- Tuesday after the bell: Disney reports earnings...
-- Tuesday is also Special Election Night in America! Here's Harry Enten's analysis of the OH-12 race... | | Joanna Coles confirms she's leaving Hearst | | As the NYPost's Alexandra Steigrad first reported last week, chief content officer Joanna Coles is leaving Hearst... Coles confirmed the decision in a video on Monday...
--> WHY? The NYT's Jaclyn Peiser says that Hearst Magazine's selection of Troy Young as president "apparently alienated the company's other star executive..." In the video, Coles says "my route is being recalculated. It's time for a new adventure..." | | Why did this Fox News correspondent resign? | | "Fox News foreign correspondent Conor Powell has left the company after nine years with the network," TheWrap's Jon Levine reports.
Powell said on Facebook that "I have decided to resign from Fox News," and his friends "understand why." "An individual familiar with the matter told TheWrap that he was 'uncomfortable with the direction of the news organization in recent months. Fewer news shows. More opinion shows. Less resources for reporters to report.'" Fox declined to comment... | | A big story, but not on Charter's local cable news channels | | Earlier today I was thinking about how impressive it's been that CBS News keeps covering the harassment scandals within its walls. "CBS This Morning" noted Sunday's news about Jeff Fager on Monday morning.
Now, here's an example on the opposite end of the spectrum. Shane Goldmacher's headline in Tuesday's NYT: "Cuomo Attacked N.Y.'s Largest Cable Company. Its Channels Ignored the News."
This is about Charter's local cable news channels, including NY1, where my wife Jamie works. (She went to bed before the story came out, so we haven't talked about it.)
Charter is at loggerheads with New York state and Andrew Cuomo's administration. The cable company is now fighting to keep its footprint in the state. Last week, when NY1's Zach Fink asked Cuomo about something else, Cuomo pivoted to Charter and accused it of "fraud." Other news outlets covered Cuomo's comments, "but the confrontation — a classic of the local news genre — was nowhere to be found on the NY1's own 24/7 airwaves," Goldmacher pointed out. "Charter Spectrum and NY1 declined to answer any questions..." Read the rest here... | | -- President Trump dined with Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, plus Sen. Lindsey Graham, over the weekend, according to Graham... (CNN)
-- Per Politico Playbook, Connie Chung "is working on a memoir about her life and work in journalism..." (Politico)
-- Via Lara O'Reilly's awesome CMO Daily newsletter: Brian Wieser's latest analysis "shows the Facebook's share of time U.S. users spent on digital media is continuing to decline..." (WSJ)
-- Convenient: Laura Ingraham's phone interview with "Donny," i.e. Donald Trump Jr., was disconnected right after Ingraham asked about the contradictions surrounding the Trump Tower meeting. "Donny" later called back and said he "somehow got cut off..." (Contemptor) | | What would Neil Postman say today? | | | "Amusing ourselves to Trump" is the title of Ezra Klein's latest for Vox... Referencing Neil Postman's classic 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death..." Klein says Trump is showing "how the truth can be drowned under a sea of irrelevance, how easily the defense of the indefensible can go down if it is cast as entertainment." Read the rest here... | | Don Lemon's response to Trump | | Trump insulted Don Lemon and his guest LeBron James on Friday night. Monday was Lemon's first chance to respond on TV.
"Let me not mince words here: This president traffics in racism and is fueled by bullying," Lemon said. "He divides by race and tries to conquer decency by smearing and besmirching the truth and the people who fight to uphold it.."
Mediaite's Ken Meyer says it was a "scathing monologue..." | | Showtime announced this at the TCA press tour on Monday: LeBron James will executive-produce a three-part docuseries, "Shut Up and Dribble," about "the evolving role that athletes, particularly those in the NBA, play in the current political environment." The title, of course, comes courtesy of Laura Ingraham.
Sandra Gonzalez has the full story here... | | C-SPAN says it reported Friday's threat to the FBI | | Last night I wrote about the threat that was made against me on C-SPAN the other day. A caller claimed that Don Lemon and I had called all Trump supporters "racists." (We have not.) "They started the war. [If] I see them, I'm going to shoot them," the caller said. I discussed the threat on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."
C-SPAN received some inquiries from reporters... And on Monday, the network confirmed that it notified the FBI about the threat. "Specific threats of violence made on C-SPAN are reported to the appropriate authorities," the network said. "On Friday, C-SPAN reported the incident and all relevant information to the FBI." THR's Jeremy Barr has details here... | | "Kremlin Annex" protests continue to pick up steam | | | These nightly protests in Lafayette Park have been going on for a couple weeks... On Monday, Rosie O'Donnell and a bevy of Broadway actors joined in... She spoke on MSNBC beforehand and CNN afterward... | | | Variety's Ted Johnson shared this picture from the event... He said "a speaker here cited Trump's attacks on the press and urged everyone in the crowd to 'thank a reporter today...'" | | | "Every day he does something worse than the day before," O'Donnell told Chris Cuomo on Monday night. "I believe that Trump is loathed in America, that people are embarrassed and ashamed of who he is..." | | | Brian Lowry emails: Frank Rich's long look at the dour mood in America offers provocative framing about the current political climate, and contains a couple of noteworthy observations about media, including, "Nearly everything has turned to crap, it seems, except Peak TV (for those who can afford it)," and this about corporations in the digital age: "Unlike the preceding American Century, the largest corporations are not admired as sources of jobs, can-do-ism, and tangible goods that might enrich and empower all. They're seen instead as impenetrable black boxes where our most intimate personal secrets are bought and sold to further fatten a shadowy Ãœber-class of obscene wealth and privilege trading behind velvet ropes in elite cryptocurrencies." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Indira Lakshmanan is the new executive editor of the Pulitzer Center...
-- Jim Friedlich's piece for the Inquirer: "Gerry Lenfest's lasting legacy: Saving local journalism" (Philly.com)
-- David Usborne's new story for Esquire: "The Peacock Patriarchy," about NBC's leadership and how the network "covered the #MeToo moment..." (Esquire)
-- CBS News says "Face the Nation" EP Mary Hager will produce midterm election night coverage... In the past, Steve Capus handled most election nights...
-- A fascinating read from Elizabeth Cohen: How a surgeon falsely accused of wrongdoing is trying to "recover his name..." (CNN) | | Hadas Gold emails: The Justice Department laid out its roadmap for how it plans to appeal the AT&T/Time Warner case in an appellant brief filed on Monday. (Time Warner is now WarnerMedia, and it owns CNN.)
Government attorneys wrote that Judge Richard Leon, the one who eviscerated the government's attempt to block the merger in June, committed "fundamental errors of economic logic and reasoning" in his ruling. Leon "discarded the economics of bargaining" and both "misunderstood" and "failed to apply the foundational principle of corporate-wide profit maximization" when he found that the government failed to prove that the merger would substantially harm competition.
The DOJ also claimed that Leon "substantially constrained the government's presentation of evidence showing that the merged entity would have greater bargaining leverage" and that he excluded evidence of AT&T arguing in the past against the type of merger it was going into with Time Warner. Read the rest here... | | AT&T's response: "Appeals aren't 'do-overs'" | | "Appeals aren't 'do-overs.' After a long trial, Judge Leon weighed the evidence and rendered a comprehensive 172-page decision that systematically exposed each of the many holes in the government's case," said David McAtee, AT&T's general counsel. "There is nothing in DOJ's brief today that should disturb that decision."
WHAT'S NEXT: More briefs from both sides. We won't hear oral arguments until late October... | | MoviePass has a survival plan. Again. | | Jill Disis emails: MoviePass has yet another plan to turn its struggling business around. After saying last week that it would up its price to $15 per month, it is now reversing course and keeping its popular $10 price point. But you'll only be able to see three movies each month, instead of a movie every day.
Oy. Read Jill's full story here... | | TV's writers' rooms have a mother of a problem | | An Phung emails: Sandra Gonzalez talked to multiple TV writers for this important two-part report about women in Hollywood who grapple with being a new mom in the writers' room. "The culture and patterns of behavior that make it difficult — and, at times, downright humiliating — to be an expectant, new and working mother are not unique to the entertainment industry," Gonzalez wrote. "Women everywhere face challenges in their quest to concurrently pursue professional paths and grow their families. But as Hollywood continues to find its way through its reckoning with sexual harassment and gender discrimination, some female television writers who are mothers feel struggles they contend with have gotten lost in the conversation."
Read part one: "TV's writers' rooms have a mother of a problem"
And part two: "When it comes to making TV writers' rooms better for moms, these bosses know best" | | "Better Call Saul" is back | | Note to Jamie: We should really catch up on "Saul!"
Brian Lowry emails: AMC's "Better Call Saul" kicked off its fourth season on Monday night, operating on more tracks -- and thus richer terrain -- as it inches closer to the show that sired it, "Breaking Bad." On the downside, it was paired with a forgettable new drama, "Lodge 49..." | | The Emmy "wheel" spins on | | Brian Lowry emails: I had the exact same thought as THR editor Matthew Beloni, who noted that by renewing their wheel deal to broadcast the Emmy Awards on a rotating basis for eight more years, the four big broadcast networks have essentially committed to an event that has become a key marketing showcase for smaller platforms -- HBO, obviously, but now Netflix and other streamers, like Hulu.
Terms weren't disclosed, but the expiring agreement paid the Television Academy $8.25 million a year for the TV rights, representing a sizable contributor to its annual budget... | | "Homeland" will officially end next season | | | Claire Danes telegraphed this several months ago... And Showtime CEO David Nevins confirmed it at the TCA press tour... Season eight, the finale, "will premiere in June 2019," Variety notes... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Celebs and fans have been cheering Demi Lovato after she broke her silence about her apparent overdose...
-- Bye, bye, bye "Brady Bunch" house. Lance Bass said he is "heartbroken" he didn't get the iconic home which was used for the exterior shots of the popular series -- even though he says he was told he had the winning bid...
-- Supporters of "Crazy Rich Asians" have started a #GoldOpen movement to pack theaters and hopefully break a box office record for the film, which is the first major Hollywood production in 25 years to feature a predominantly Asian cast... | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | Trump's dehumanizing language | | Trump's media bashing on Sunday stood out because of how downright dehumanizing it was. He sounded like he was trying to strip away our legitimacy and indeed our humanity with words like "dangerous" and "sick." It's a "hate movement."
On the "A block" of "Reliable Sources," I asked Anthony Scaramucci and Joe Lockhart to respond. Scaramucci said he has told Trump about his concerns. "I don't like the WAR declaration," he said, "because it will lead to something that none of us really want." Read Jackie Wattles' full story here... | | "A conscious strategy of lying and attacking" | | On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Susan Glasser told me that the # of Trump's rallies and the # of his lies exist "very much in tandem."
"In my view, these misstatements and untruths are very much connected to his political identity," she said... "If you look at the categories where he lies the most in public, it's things like immigration, trade, Russia," and increasingly NATO. "So these are things that are connected. It's not just that he has policies that he's supporting. He's supporting those policies with a conscious strategy of lying and attacking." | | |
Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback... See you tomorrow...
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