Forward

EXEC SUMMARY: Hello there! Oliver Darcy here, filling in for Brian Stelter, who is hosting a World News Day event in Toronto. Before we get started, I'll just remind you that I always enjoy your feedback. Get in touch with an email or find me on Twitter.

'Epic' changes coming to CBS News

Brian Stelter emails: The new president of CBS News, Susan Zirinsky, is about to try something radical. "She's restructuring pretty much of all of the news division's talent across the board," a CBS staffer told me. "It's really pretty epic."

At this point it's the worst kept secret in TV, even though none of it has been officially announced yet. A Thursday afternoon story by Page Six spurred many news outlets to write new stories about what's ABOUT to be announced.

In short: Z is revamping "CBS This Morning" with Gayle King at the center, with the intention of moving King's co-anchor Norah O'Donnell to the evening news, replacing Jeff Glor. Several other anchors are expecting to take on new assignments. Some of them aren't quite sure what they'll be doing yet. Some don't know what their new start dates are. Zirinsky wants to announce the talent shuffle all at once. But because the plans have leaked out, the news division is holding its breath...

Inside the news division

Zirinsky's detractors say the drip-drip-drip of stories about the shakeup is hurting morale. But the detractors appear to be outnumbered by her supporters, who say she inherited a broken news division at the start of this year, and that she's working overtime to repair it. "I think her intention is pretty clear: She's trying to put people back in the places that suit them best," one of the staffers said.

Z is mostly declining to comment, but she did say one thing on Thursday. She responded to Page Six's headline -- "Gayle King pushes out Norah O'Donnell" -- by saying "this headline is offensive and 100 percent false."

O'Donnell's agent Jay Sures also fired back at the catfight-type claims in the Page Six story by saying: "In her 20-plus year career in news, she's become an unquestioned leader in her field... If she was a man, these kind of unsupported accusations would never be reported."

Glor guessing game

In the evenings, Z plans to replace Glor with O'Donnell and relocate the "Evening News" to DC. As a result, people working on the newscast are on edge. At Thursday's daily 2:30 planning meeting, an hour after the Page Six story hit, Glor thanked the staff for working under "extraordinary circumstances" and expressed his gratitude. He hasn't been told anything definite about his status yet, according to two sources.

Glor's agent Olivia Metzger told me, "Jeff has remained focused on making sure the 'Evening News' team stays unified and on elevating the reporting and sharing of the most important and meaningful news events and stories both here and across the world, in the great tradition of CBS News."

As for O'Donnell, she is under contract at the morning show through 2020, and she does not have a deal for the evening show yet, according to a source close to her. She'll be back on "CBS This Morning" on Friday...

Will it work?

John Dickerson is likely to be moved from the A.M. shift to a new reporting role at "60 Minutes." Weekend anchor Anthony Mason and correspondent Tony Dokoupil will join King on "CBS This Morning," three sources said. It's a lot: Installing two new anchors in the morning and a new one at night and moving others out. As one skeptical staffer said: "You can put someone new in the chair. You can move the newscast to DC. But is that what the viewer wants? It's been nothing but change here for two years." I think some of these changes were inevitable, however. Here's my full story...

Facebook purges extremists

Facebook bid farewell on Thursday to several high-profile extremists. The social media company announced that it was banning Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, InfoWars, Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, and Paul Nehlen -- all of whom Facebook deemed "dangerous." Jones and InfoWars had been banned from Facebook last year, but maintained a presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Thursday's action by Facebook meant they had been banned from Instagram as well.

The company's (questionable) statement

Facebook claimed in its statement on Thursday that it has "always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology." And while the company noted that "the process for evaluating potential violators is extensive," it's worth questioning their statement.

If Facebook has "always" prohibited such users, where has the company been over the past few years? As NYT's Charlie Warzel put it in a tweet: "'Always' is offensive here to the individuals who've had to spend countless hrs pointing out clear rule violations."

Why now?

The timing is interesting. Critics questioned why Facebook banned the accounts in one fell swoop on Thursday, instead of taking action against the accounts at the time they were determined to have been in violation of the company's rules.

The bans come as FB, which has a history of being slow to act on such matters and of only taking action after facing pressure from the public, has faced some renewed scrutiny for allowing individuals like Jones to have a platform on Instagram after being banned on Facebook. (See Taylor Lorenz's piece from March on how Instagram "is the Internet's new home for hate.") FB has also come under scrutiny from critics -- especially those on the right -- for allowing Farrakhan (who is notorious for his anti-Semitic remarks) to maintain an account.

So was Thursday's announcement designed to simply quell some of that pressure and generate a bit of positive publicity for the company? Some critics certainly thought so...

WaPo's correction

WaPo faced criticism on Thursday after it labeled Farrakhan as "far-right" in its story about the bans. Soon after social media backlash, the newspaper amended its story. It's correction said, "Louis Farrakhan is an extremist leader who has espoused anti-Semitic views. An earlier version of this story and headline incorrectly included him in a list of far-right leaders."

The correction prompted some discussion...

>> WaPo's Wesley Lowery: "1. It's perilous to force strict left/right labels and framing onto political extremists 2. Even an elementary understanding of Farrakhan's beliefs places him on the American political right 3. People assume the opposite cause he and his followers are black..."

>> National Review's Dan McLaughlin: Real talk: Louis Farrakhan and his movement are fundamentally right-wing in their worldview, BUT ALSO part of the American political Left & not the Right (both as broadly defined), courted & accepted for many years by Democratic politicians, not Republican ones. No spinning that.

Where do these extremists go now?

Instagram had become a refuge for extremists like Yiannopoulos and Loomer. Now that they no longer have that platform, it's going to be very difficult for them to disseminate their messages to a large audience. As The Daily Beast's Will Sommer tweeted, Thursday's action from Facebook was a "huge blow." So where do they go now? What do they do? It's really not clear...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Poynter has pulled a list it had posted of "unreliable" news sites after complaints led it to conduct a review which found "weaknesses in the methodology..." (Washington Examiner)

-- WaPo's Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes about how she is "often mistaken for other Asian American journalists..." (WaPo)

-- Another awkward moment between "The View" hosts: Meghan McCain quips to Sunny Hostin, "You don't need to look at me that way..." (Daily Beast)

-- Fox Business is holding a town hall on capitalism vs. socialism, moderated by Charles Payne... (Fox Biz)

Newhouse sells Times-Picayune

Big news in NOLA and beyond: "New Orleans Advocate owners Dathel and John Georges have purchased The Times-Picayune and its nola.com website from the Newhouse family's Advance Local Media," The Advocate's own story about the deal reported Thursday.

The details: "The Advocate will publish a seven-day, home-delivered newspaper in New Orleans using the brands and features of both publications. The new paper will debut in June." The T-P and Advocate websites will be combined. "In Baton Rouge, the paper will remain The Advocate, as will the website.

Inside Halperin's "calculated professional rehabilitation campaign"

You may have noticed over the last several weeks that Mark Halperin -- whose career collapsed after more than a dozen allegations of sexual harassment and assault were leveled against him in 2017 -- has attempted to wade back into his old gig as a political journalist. Halperin has resumed tweeting after a lengthy hiatus, appeared on Michael Smerconish's show to provide political commentary, and even launched a news blog called "Mark Halperin's Wide World of News."

On Thursday night, The Daily Beast's Maxwell Tani and Lloyd Grove published a dive into what they described as a "quiet yet calculated professional rehabilitation campaign." Tani and Grove reported that Halperin has been receiving help from MSNBC "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, and that Halperin called The Hill's top editor to ask about a possible job, but was rebuffed. A lot more details in their story here...

Fox News talks with Trump (again)

Fox News scored yet another interview with Trump on Thursday. By my count, that's the fourth interview Trump has granted the cable network in the last week. This one, however, to his credit was not with a Fox opinion personality.

Trump instead sat down with Fox's chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge, who questioned the president on whether former White House counsel Don McGahn will be permitted to testify in front of Congress. The interview made headlines, as Trump seemed to suggest that he could block the testimony. "They've testified for many hours, all of them," Trump told Herridge. "I would say, it's done."

>> Related: Mike Pence is speaking to Fox's Sandra Smith on Friday...

What Moore's withdrawal from Fed consideration says about journalism

Accountability journalism was on full display Thursday after Stephen Moore pulled out of consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve. Moore had been facing criticism, including from Republican senators, over previous remarks he had made about women. Those comments may have not seen the light of day, however, had it not been for journalists unearthing them.

But journalists, like CNN's KFILE team, were relentless. Andrew Kaczynski reported a number of stories about Moore's previous comments on women. NYT's Jim Tankersley also reported on some of Moore's years-old offensive remarks, and The Guardian's Jon Swaine reported Moore had underpaid alimony to his ex-wife for years. Together, the reporting had an impact, underscoring how consequential journalism can be.

The familiar cycle

So why was Moore nominated if he had such a lengthy history of offensive remarks? The Atlantic's David Graham summarized it neatly, writing, "Presumably the same way all the other previous candidates with few qualifications or a damaging paper trail did: They were on TV a lot, they had nice things to say about the president, and that was good enough for him. More than two years into his presidency, and despite a long record of failed or aborted nominations, Trump remains remarkably uninterested in vetting the people he wants to put in top posts."

Moore lashes out

Moore sees things a bit differently. Speaking on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto Thursday, Moore blamed what he called a "sleaze campaign" for derailing his candidacy. Moore continued to insist some of the controversial remarks highlighted were "meant to be jokes," and said he had been subject of a "character assassination."

The value of local journalism

Here's another instance showing the importance of accountability journalism -- this time out of Baltimore...

Pavni Mittal emails: The resignation of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh underscores the importance of local news reporting. The mayor, who had been on leave for a month, resigned on Thursday, amid an FBI investigation. The scandal was first broken by the Baltimore Sun in March, and the paper continued its persistent reporting. The reports revealed Pugh sold her children's books, the "Healthy Holly" series to entities including the University of Maryland Medical System for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

>> Related: David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun's media critic spoke about the Sun's investigation with Stelter on "Reliable" a few weeks ago...

Bennet recuses himself from 2020 coverage

James Bennett, NYT's editorial page director, recused himself on Thursday from 2020 election coverage after his brother, Sen. Michael Bennett, entered the presidential race. "He will not discuss, assign or edit any editorials, Op-Eds, columns or other Opinion pieces focused on candidates or major issues in the campaign," NYT said in a statement. NYT said the recusal will stand "as long as Sen. Bennet's campaign is active."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- A popular PragerU media personality was captured on video calling rape "hilarious..." (Mediaite)

-- CJR examines "how major storms alter the local news landscape.." (CJR)

-- "To help develop new shows" for WarnerMedia's streaming service, the company has hired Jennifer O'Connell away from Lionsgate, "and is finalizing the hiring of Suzanna Makkos, the former EVP of comedy programming at Fox..." (The Information)

New Zealand massacre videos still circulating on Facebook

Donie O'Sullivan emails: Seven weeks after the New Zealand terrorist attack, copies of the video the suspect streamed live on Facebook are still circulating on the platform, despite Facebook's attempts to stop it. The copies of the video that were identified by an expert and provided to CNN had been live on Facebook and Instagram since the week of the attack.

The discovery is indicative of the challenge tech companies face in combating the spread of white supremacist and other terror-related content on their platforms and raises questions about the effectiveness of Facebook's efforts to do so in particular. "If they're not able to get this video, what makes you think they will be able to go after 'fake news' and deepfakes which are inconsistent in their content," Eric Feinberg of the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center, who found the videos, told CNN.

>> Reminder from Donie: Facebook has no way of stopping the spread of this video on its messaging platform WhatsApp...

Google says it spends hundreds of millions on content moderation

In an April 24 letter made public Thursday, Google revealed that that each year it spends hundreds of millions of dollars reviewing content that may violate its terms of service. The company added that it manually reviewed 1 million+ suspected "terrorist videos" in the first months this year, finding 90,000 to be in violation of its policies...

Facebook's deal with the FTC

Citing two sources, NYT's Cecilia Kang reported Thursday that as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook "has agreed to create a privacy committee to protect its users' data, as well as an external assessor who would be appointed by the company and F.T.C." Per Kang, Facebook "will also appoint a head compliance officer — who could be its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg — to oversee privacy efforts..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- More Facebook news: The company is "recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system..." (WSJ)

-- Twitter is launching a new monthly video series "spotlighting female voices in journalism around the world..." (Refinery 29)

-- NYT's Nellie Bowles writes that Jack Dorsey "is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley..." (NYT)

-- Google VP Richard Gingras says the company has to "continue to evolve our capabilities" to fight misinformation "because we know the bad actors are getting more and more sophisticated..." (Toronto Star)

WSJ: Sinclair's deal for the RSNs is done

The WSJ's Joe Flint says this long-gestating deal is done: Sinclair "has struck a deal valued at more than $10 billion to acquire 21 regional sports networks" from Disney. A Friday announcement looks likely...

Tumblr up for sale

Verizon "is seeking a buyer for blogging website Tumblr," WSJ's Ben Mullin and Sarah Krouse scooped on Thursday. The sale process is ongoing "and may not result in any transaction..." It comes "as the wireless carrier tries to improve the fortunes of Verizon Media Group..."

...and Pornhub is "extremely interested" in buying it

So who might buy Tumblr? Perhaps Pornhub. The adult entertainment website's VP Corey Price told BuzzFeed's Ryan Broderick that it is "extremely interested in acquiring the platform." Price, who said he's "been dismayed" with measures to scrub Tumblr of erotica content, said if Pornhub were to purchase the site, it would restore it "to its former glory with NSFW content."

What boycott? Democratic hopefuls sign up for Fox town halls

Fox News might not be hosting any Democratic debates, but several of the party's presidential hopefuls are appearing on the network for town halls. Axios complied a handy list that details when each event will take place. Bernie Sanders held his town hall with Fox last month, but Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillibrand have events coming up. Axios noted that Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke are also willing to appear on the network...

Clintons dive into the podcasting world

Everyone's doing it -- including the Clintons. On Thursday, Bill and Chelsea Clinton got into the podcasting game, launching their own show titled, "Why Am I Telling You This." As CNN's Dan Merica notes, the title is "a nod to a phrase that the former president often uses to connect stories he tells in speeches."

World Press Freedom Day is on Friday

The UN and countless other groups use this day to celebrate "the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession."

-- The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will release its annual report about threats in the United States at 11 a.m. ET Friday...

-- CPJ's Joel Simon's column for CJR: "I am gratified when the people in the United States and around the world stand up for the rights of journalists they admire. But I worry too few are willing to stand up for the value of a free press more broadly..."

-- PEN America is holding events in Atlanta, Denver, Cincinnati, Chicago, Austin, and other cities on Friday...

-- NewsGuild members at Digital First Media and Gannett papers will be holding "Save Local News" rallies in Denver and Detroit to oppose Alden Global Capital's Gannett takeover bid...

-- An updated version of WaPo's Super Bowl ad, narrated by Tom Hanks, is running on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC on Friday... Here's the video...

-- Friday's "NBC Nightly News" will feature an interview with missing journalist Austin Tice's parents...

🎧 Randall Lane on this week's "Reliable" podcast

Brian Stelter emails: Forbes boss Randall Lane, who jump-started the One Free Press Coalition, joined me on this week's "Reliable" podcast. From Saudi Arabia to Colombia, Turkey to Tanzania, journalists face harassment, prosecution and violence for their work. "And we need to shine a light on it," Lane said. That's what the "10 Most Urgent" list tries to do. "We've already gotten notes from people from the list saying 'I feel so much better, I feel much safer knowing that the world is watching,'" he said.

Listen to our conversation through Apple or your preferred podcast app, or read Katie Pellico's recap here...

"Jeopardy!" contestant now holds 2nd longest winning streak

James Holzhauer, after 21 "Jeopardy!" wins, is now in second place for all-time consecutive victories on the show. And after winning on Thursday's episode, his total haul is now at $1,608,627. How far can he go? Ken Jennings won 74 straight games...

-- Thought the Battle of Winterfell was intense? Get ready for "GOT" episode 5. Emilia Clarke told fans it is even "bigger..."

-- Peter Mayhew, the "Star Wars" actor who played Chewbacca, has died at 74...

YouTube to stream its original shows for free

Thursday was NewFront week's single biggest event, the YouTube Brandcast. The biggest headline from Radio City: "YouTube Confirms It Will Stream Its Original Shows For Free, With Ads."

As Deadline's Dade Hayes reported Thursday, this is a "significant shift" of YouTube's original programming strategy." The original shows that were exclusive and ad-free for subscribers "will now get a run on the free, ad-supported side of the fence." Shows like "Cobra Kai," which will be back for a third season, will be available for anyone who can sit through a few ads.

>> YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl commented, "While every other media company is building a paywall, we are headed in the opposite direction and now have more opportunities than ever to partner with advertisers and share our critically- acclaimed originals with our global audience."

>> Here is YouTube's blog post with all of the BrandCast announcements...

'Long Shot' unevenly blends political satire and romantic comedy

Brian Lowry emails: This weekend's counter-programming to "Avengers: Endgame" (up to $452 million domestically through Wednesday, incidentally, but who's counting?) includes "Long Shot," a romantic comedy starring Charlize Theron as the secretary of state — who is running for president — and Seth Rogen as the former teenage friend with whom she becomes involved. It's a movie with strong parts but that ultimately feels at war with itself, seeking to mix broad, crude comedy with what's actually a pretty astute political satire.

Read Lowry's full review here...

"The Gilded Age" jumps to NBC

Lowry emails one more: In an interesting twist, "The Gilded Age," a 10-episode drama from "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes, will move from NBC — where it had been languishing — to HBO. The project essentially follows former NBC Entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt to his new home at WarnerMedia, which includes oversight of HBO. It's probably a more logical fit, but as THR's Lesley Goldberg notes, Greenblatt has brought projects with him before, including the musical "Smash," which definitely wasn't one, when he moved from Showtime to NBC...

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

Drake's record!

Chloe Melas writes: He may have started from the bottom, but Drake has officially become the most decorated artist when it comes to the Billboard Music Awards. Drake shattered the record for the most Billboard Music Awards wins on Wednesday night, bringing his overall total to 27 awards. The "In My Feelings" artist took home 12 during the ceremony, including top artist. Read all about it here...

Thank you for reading. Email me anytime. Brian will be back on Friday...