Forward

EXEC SUMMARY: Scroll down for the latest on Trump's 4th of July takeover, Wondery's new round of funding, Marianne Williamson's criticism of Vogue, Hollywood's high hopes for "Spider-Man," and much more...

Border battle back on the front page

Let's take stock of all of the reasons why the humanitarian crisis along the southern border is back at or near the top of newscasts, home pages and front pages.

One of the top reasons: Photos. The pictures of extreme overcrowding released on Tuesday are almost a month old, and came from an internal government watchdog. The photos plus the info in the OIG report plus protests in cities across the country helped catapult the story onto Tuesday's nightly newscasts.

As NPR's Steve Inskeep noted on Twitter, "the photos were produced by the US government investigating itself, which make the facts even harder to deny." The NYT is running some of the pictures on Wednesday's front page:

Wednesday's NY Daily News front page features one of the photos too, with the title "SHAMEFUL."

"What those photos show is heartbreaking... and it's happening in America right as we speak," Laura Coates said on "CNN Tonight" Tuesday night.

Thankfully the public was able to see. There's so much we DON'T see. Late Tuesday came word that US Border Patrol agents are searching for a missing 2-year-old in the Rio Grande River near Del Rio, TX. A mother reported her daughter was missing after crossing the border from Mexico...

Explaining the spike in news coverage

Among the many reasons why this subject is rising back to the top of the national news agenda: Experts say the situation is getting worse... Progressive activists are mounting protests... Lawyers are sharing disturbing accounts from the facilities... Democratic lawmakers are visiting the region and doing the same thing... Government officials are speaking out in defense of their agencies... Professors, politicians and pundits are debating whether the term "concentration camps" is appropriate... News outlets are devoting resources to the border and delivering scoops... And those same news outlets occasionally obtain photos that shock the conscience, like last week's image of the father and daughter who drowned while trying to cross the border.

Castro's videos

"Lawmakers' phones were confiscated by CBP" when they visited detention facilities earlier this week, but Rep. Joaquin Castro "managed to capture photos and videos on a recording device anyway," the WaPo notes. The images "served as a rare window into the Border Patrol stations and detention facilities that the Trump administration has made increasingly difficult to access."

Castro's explanation: "Our border patrol system is broken. And part of the reason it stays broken is because it's kept secret. The American people must see what is being carried out in their name."

Numerous Dem lawmakers appeared on TV on Tuesday to describe what they saw. Rep. Madeleine Dean spoke with Jake Tapper about the "inhumanity" of "children in a cage behind glass unable to speak to leaders of Congress."

Journalism shining a light

There are many examples... Here are just a few...

-- ProPublica's Monday report about "racist, sexist and hateful posts and comments in a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents" spawned followups on Tuesday, plus ProPublica's call for help from readers...

-- Yahoo obtained five "Significant Incident Reports" that relay "accounts provided by children about the treatment they have encountered while detained at various CBP facilities along the southwest border..."

-- The Houston Chronicle's Lomi Kriel has been one of the standout reporters on this beat for years... Here's her most recent story about one family: "Houston father Trump deported to El Salvador returns to U.S. for good..."

-- And these Reuters photos, taken from the air over a makeshift encampment in McAllen, Texas in May, are recirculating on social media...

Rush Limbaugh's repulsive comment: Maybe toilet water is a "step up" for migrants

Oliver Darcy emails: Conservative talk king Rush Limbaugh spent a considerable amount of time on Tuesday attacking Democrats and suggesting they are "lying" about the situation inside migrant facilities at the southern border. But perhaps his most repugnant comment came later, when he snarked about the migrants themselves.

As he dismissed claims about immigrants being forced to drink out of the water, Limbaugh quipped, "But my friends, based on what we're told about the circumstances where these people are fleeing, maybe toilet water is a step up for some of them, based on what the left is telling us their homelands are like." Even for Limbaugh, the comment was repulsive...

BREAKING

Counter-programming Mueller

The Trump 2020 campaign just announced the date and location for Trump's next campaign rally... It will be in Greenville, NC, on July 17... Surely not coincidentally the same day that Robert Mueller will be testifying on Capitol Hill. So Mueller will dominate the day, but Trump will get the last word at night...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- What's weirder: VP Mike Pence suddenly cancelling a trip to NH, or the administration's day-long failure to explain what happened? CNN's team says it "set off a furor in the West Wing..." (CNN)

-- Per the WaPo, "there was frustration among others in the vice president's office over how the decision was made and publicly explained, which left public speculation to fill the vacuum created by the lack of specifics provided..." (WaPo)

-- Andy Ngo speaking with John Berman on "New Day" Tuesday: "This country is very tuned to knowing and sensing when the right goes too far... I wonder if this country is also attuned to when the left can go too far..." (CNN)

-- Paul Farhi's latest is about a downward trend long in the making: "Whatever happened to Breitbart? The insurgent star of the right is in a long, slow fade..." (WaPo)

Update on the BBC's gender pay gap

Hadas Gold emails: In this annual report, the BBC is touting the "rapid change" to their gender pay gap, saying that in one year they have brought down the median gap from 7.6% to 6.7%.

When BBC first released figures for talent who were paid more than £150,000 (about $195,000), 75% were men, 25% were women. Now the BBC says they're on track to a closer split – 55 to 45. There are now three women in the top ten highest paid figures, compared to last year when there were none.

--> Context: Last year the BBC saw a series of controversies after a former editor at the network revealed she was paid less than men who had similar roles. In March the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission launched an investigation into whether BBC broke the law by paying women less than men for the same work...

--> An anonymous BBC staffer wrote this for The Telegraph: "The BBC pay gap may look like it's closing, but the odds are still stacked against women"

IJR lays off some staffers as it pivots to a non-profit

Oliver Darcy emails: The Independent Journal Review, the conservative news website that gained attention during the 2016 election for its viral videos of Republican candidates, has laid off four staffers as it transitions into a non-profit venture, Mediaite's Aidan McLaughlin reported on Tuesday.

IJR President Camden Stuebe told Mediaite that as the website works toward "elevating trusted voices on all sides" it has "realized the best way to do that" would be to convert to a non-profit. I sent an email to IJR founder Alex Skatell for more details, but did not hear back...

>> Some context: IJR lost significant steam after the 2016 election. It has struggled with an identity crisis, seen its traffic and relevance decline, lost top talent, and laid off staffers...

Losing another local paper

The Houston Chronicle's Mike Glenn reported this on Tuesday: "The Katy Times newspaper in Katy, Texas is closing its doors. According to sources, employers were notified of the decision today with July 25 set as the last day of operation." The paper has not yet confirmed the impending closure...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- "Facebook has been fined more than $2 million in Germany for inaccurately reporting the amount of illegal content on its platform," Hadas Gold reports... (CNN)

-- Wondery has raised $10 million in Series B funding, Nick Quah reports. "The new money is meant to fuel the Los Angeles-based podcast studio's expansion into international markets, dive into daily podcast production, and further grow its show portfolio..." (Hot Pod)

-- The power of Jenna Bush Hager's book club: Her newest pick, Linda Holmes' novel "Evvie Drake Starts Over," surged to No. 1 on Amazon's best seller list... (NBC)

-- Locast "makes over-the-air programming available on smartphones and other devices." Drew FitzGerald has the latest on the venture here... (WSJ)

Missing Marianne

As I noted in last night's newsletter, Marianne Williamson was the odd one out in this Vogue story and portrait session of the women running for president. On Tuesday, in response to questions from CNN and other outlets, Vogue said "we're in no way discrediting Marianne Williamson and all she's accomplished. For the photo, Vogue wanted to highlight the five female lawmakers who bring a collective 40 years of political experience to this race."

Williamson isn't buying it. On "OutFront," she told Kate Bolduan, "I just saw it online like everybody else... nobody talked to me." And on Instagram, she said "the issue is ethical responsibility on the part of the media. The framers of the Constitution did not make Vogue magazine the gatekeepers of America's political process, here to determine who and who is not to be considered a serious political candidate..."

Trump's 4th of July takeover

Zachary B. Wolf's analysis for CNN: "The reality TV president wasn't made for PBS and the Fourth of July will prove it yet again. Where usually there's a Smithsonian-sponsored festival celebrating foreign cultures and a concert broadcast on PBS for Independence Day, this year there will be fighter jets, tanks and a Trump rally -- plus protests and politics." Read on...

>> WaPo's Tuesday night scoop: The National Park Service has diverted "$2.5 million in fees for Trump's July Fourth extravaganza." Now DC residents are playing tank-spotting...

>> Anderson Cooper: "If you can link yourself to the most important national celebration, why wouldn't you? Sure, you risk making it about yourself, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for this President..."

>> Will the Trump show be shown live on cable? C-SPAN will carry the event... and Fox News will show portions of it... But that might be it. Politico's Michael Calderone has details here...

Social media summit or right-wing grievance session?

Oliver Darcy emails: The White House is holding a social media summit next week, and WaPo's Tony Romm has an early look at who has been invited to attend. Romm reported Tuesday morning that the White House has invited individuals associated with right-wing organizations, including Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and representatives from PragerU, the Media Research Center, and the Heritage Foundation.

The summit comes two months after the White House created a tool for people to report instances of perceived social media bias. As Romm noted, it's unclear whether anyone from Big Tech will participate in the White House event, leaving one to wonder: Given the current list of attendees, coupled with Trump's repeated and often unfounded claims of bias from Big Tech, will this just be a right-wing grievance session? Stay tuned to this one...

Speaking of allegations of anti-conservative bias...

Darcy adds: Politico's Christiano Lima pointed out Tuesday that Facebook is "dragging its feet" releasing the results of its audit into allegations of anti-conservative bias. Lima noted that a Facebook spokesperson previously said the report would be made available in early 2019, but we are now in July, and it still has not been released...

Trump "spooked" by general on Fox?

Oliver Darcy emails: It might not have just been Tucker Carlson who persuaded Trump out of striking Iran. Politico's Eliana Johnson reported on Tuesday, citing two sources, that Trump had been "spooked" by commentary on Fox from retired Army General Jack Keane. Johnson noted that Keane had appeared on Fox on June 20 and reminded viewers of Iran Air Flight 655, which was shot down by the US Navy when the flight was accidentally mistook it for a military plane.

Following the segment, Trump "made repeated comments about the tragedy on the evening of the 20th, leading aides to believe that Keane's brief history lesson exacerbated Trump's pre-existing doubts about carrying out the strike," Johnson reported. If true, the incident again underscores the unprecedented influence Fox has on this president...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

By Oliver Darcy:

-- How long does Amazon Alexa keep your data? The company provided a US Senator "answers you might now want to hear..." (CNET)

-- A new WSJ investigation finds that Facebook and YouTube are "overrun with bogus cancer treatment claims..." (WSJ)

-- Cloudflare blamed a "bad software deploy" for a major outage on Tuesday that affected major websites across the web... (TechCrunch)

-- Speaking of the outage, an irony alert: The Cloudflare blackout even briefly took down DownDetector... (The Verge)

"AT&T Considers Selling Regional Sports Networks to Slash Debt"

That's the headline from Bloomberg... The news agency says AT&T is "weighing a sale of its regional sports networks as part of a plan to cut as much as $8 billion in debt by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter." The four regional networks "could fetch close to $1 billion..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- You've heard politicians call for a "national conversation" on various issues. McKay Coppins writes about how it has become a technique to sidestep questions and AVOID a conversation... (The Atlantic)

-- There are 10 new openings at WaPo in the investigative field, ranging from reporters to editors to researchers... (WaPo PR)

-- Bloomberg's Shannon Pettypiece ‏is joining NBC News Digital as senior W.H. reporter... (Twitter)

Fighting over "The Loudest Voice" #'s

Showtime's miniseries about Fox News and Roger Ailes debuted to 651,000 total viewers on Sunday night — and that's counting its 10 p.m. linear TV debut, some reruns, and streaming/on-demand tune-in," TheWrap's Tony Maglio reports. "Per Nielsen, the first airing at 10 o'clock Sunday drew just 299,000 viewers. Sunday replays added 152,000 more viewers, and streaming/on-demand tacked on an additional 200,000 viewers."

But overnight ratings for these sorts of shows are just the beginning. A spokeswoman for Showtime told news outlets that the "Loudest Voice" #'s are "in line with other recent limited series premiering on the network," and the network expects to top one million viewers "within a few days..."

--> Brian Lowry emails: The #'s reflect how a massive amount of media coverage doesn't always translate into eyeballs, especially with what amounts to an inside-baseball project. Showtime PR, meanwhile, intimated that Fox News was spinning the numbers, which, assuming that's true, sounds just like the kind of thing their old boss would have done under the circumstances...

Can 'Spider-Man' save the summer box office?

Frank Pallotta emails: That's the question that Hollywood is asking heading into the holiday weekend. "Spider-Man: Far From Home," is projected to make $125 million at the domestic box office over its six day opening, according to Sony, which co-produced the superhero film with Marvel Studios.

Sony is likely low-balling a bit here, but can you blame them? The summer, especially June, has been a rough one with multiple sequels like "Men In Black International" and "Dark Phoenix" under performing expectations.

But Spidey may be here to save the day thanks to an "Avengers: Endgame" bump. "The direct lead-in and fallout from 'Endgame's emotional conclusion is a massive benefit," said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice.com. "Spider-Man's appeal reaches a wide variety of moviegoers, and fans are excited to see where his story goes during life after the Avengers."

Netflix's talk show problem

Super-smart story by the NYT's John Koblin here... He explores all the reasons why Netflix's talk shows haven't caught on... Including the timeliness issue.

It's "a challenge for us as an on-demand service," Brandon Riegg, Netflix's VP of nonfiction series and comedy specials, acknowledged in a statement. "Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj" and "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman" are faring better... Riegg "noted that neither host depended on mining the day's headlines..." But "another Netflix talk show that ignores current events — the decidedly casual interview program hosted by Norm Macdonald — has not met expectations, however." Read on...

Missing "Chelsea"

Not only was Chelsea Handler's show cancelled (back in 2017), but some of the episodes are not even available on the streaming service anymore! Per Koblin, "Netflix has removed 66 'Chelsea' episodes. It is the only instance of the company's having scrubbed content that it owned and created, according to a Netflix spokeswoman." Evidently they were removed in an attempt to get people to sample the episodes that WERE available before season two started.

As James Poniewozik remarked on Twitter, "I don't know how many people were looking for old episodes of 'Chelsea,' but this is still crazy. What, are they going to run out of Internet?"

Speaking of talk shows on Netflix...

Jerry Seinfeld calls out copycats

Marianne Garvey emails: Jerry Seinfeld is taking credit for influencing anyone who's doing a show on wheels. In the trailer for the new season of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," the "Seinfeld" creator names shows that have been "influenced" by his streaming show. He takes aim at "Carpool Karaoke," the spoof series "Alec Baldwin's Love Ride," the British show "Comedians Watching Football with Friends," "Funny Uber Rides" and "Clergy in Cars Getting Coffee," which features a rotating cast of guest priests and bishops talking religion...

Comedian Tig Notaro really is under a rock

Marianne Garvey emails: I interviewed comedian Tig Notaro, who hosts "Under a Rock With Tig Notaro" on Funny or Die, and she's just as delightful and absurd as you'd expect. She talked about not knowing who Al Pacino, Ariana Grande, and Anne Hathaway are...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- Not even the Avengers can rescue movie theaters, Tara Lachapelle writes, observing that "Disney's streak of blockbusters hasn't yet reversed a tough year for the box office and cinema chains such as AMC Entertainment..." (Bloomberg)

-- More from Variety: Inside the summer box office "meltdown..." (Variety)

-- Chloe Melas reports: A source tells me that Scooter Braun reached out to Taylor Swift on Monday amid the music catalog dispute, but she never returned his call... (CNN)

-- On a happier note: "Pharrell Williams guarantees internships to 114 Harlem High School graduates..." (THR)

The mood at Pride Rock

Disney has released new photos of "The Lion King" cast "in front of a simple black background as they stare down their computer-animated characters," Kendall Trammell writes. Here is Beyoncé versus Nala -->

From Star Wars to (revisionist) Shakespeare

Brian Lowry emails: It's a safe bet that Daisy Ridley will star in one of the year's biggest movies (I.e. "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), but her latest movie, the revisionist version of "Hamlet," "Ophelia," became available on demand on Tuesday, after making its debut in just 11 theaters. It's an example of how actors in these massive franchises navigate between blockbusters and smaller, more personal films, as well as the nagging questions about how well the public will accept various performers beyond those roles. Read on...

Who will play Elvis in the Baz Luhrmann biopic?

Marianne Garvey emails: "Baby Driver" star Ansel Elgort; Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who appeared in "Avengers: Age of Ultron;" and "Whiplash" star Miles Teller all tested for the director last week, according to a THR report. Producers for the Warner Bros. project are also looking at Harry Styles and Austin Butler, who has a role in Quentin Tarantino's new film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." (Reminder: CNN and Warner Bros. are both part of WarnerMedia.)

The 10 highest-grossing movies may surprise you

Frank Pallotta emails: Ahead of this Sunday's premiere of "The Movies" on CNN, I put together the list of the highest-grossing films of all time and what they say about us as a culture. No, not that list. This list. Yes, the list ranks the biggest films after inflation. That list includes everything from "Jaws" to "The Sound of Music" to "Gone with the Wind."

Yes, we live in an era when the next hit film is as likely to arrive on a streaming service as it is on a movie theater screen. But the calculation of which movies get the biggest audience still matters because Hollywood is a business -- and if a film can bring in massive amounts of revenue, it has the power to shift the culture at large.

That's why the list of the highest-grossing films at the US box office is so telling -- as long as you're looking at the right rankings...

Thank you for reading! Email me feedback anytime. See you tomorrow...