It's a busy Monday morning of media news. Scroll down for the latest on Meta, Jerome Powell, Grok, Dan Bongino, PBS, and more. Plus: Reuters' annual media trends report... |
Paramount is taking its pursuit of CNN's parent Warner Bros. Discovery to Delaware Chancery Court. This morning David Ellison's team "filed a lawsuit seeking more information from WBD," CNBC's Lillian Rizzo reports.
One of the questions is on the table is about how WBD has valued CNN and the other cable channels that are set to become a new publicly traded company, Discovery Global, later this year.
Ellison's new letter criticizes WBD for a "lack of transparency" and says 'it just doesn't add up – much like the math on how WBD continues to favor taking less than our $30 per share all-cash offer for its shareholders."
Ellison also confirmed that "his company will nominate a slate of directors at WBD’s next annual meeting who, if confirmed, will choose to engage with Paramount's offer over Netflix's," TheWrap's Adam Chitwood reports.
A WBD spokesperson had no immediate response, but an escalation in the form of a lawsuit has been expected for some time.
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Trump posts anti-Netflix link |
Over the weekend Trump "weighed in on the upcoming sale of Warner Bros. to Netflix with a message of disapproval," TheWrap's Loree Seitz reported yesterday. Trump "reposted a One America News Network article titled 'Stop the Netflix Cultural Takeover' on Truth Social."
The month-old opinion piece called Netflix a "woke media monopoly." Trump's repost "may have made David Ellison's day," Deadline's Dominic Patten remarked.
>> Also new this morning: Reeves Wiedeman is out with a new profile of the Paramount boss for Vulture.
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Fed chair is 'taking his case to the people' |
The Drudge Report's red banner right now reads "TRUMP UNLEASHES CRIMINAL PROBE ON FED CHAIRMAN."
President Trump, naturally, denied any involvement with it in a brief phone call with NBC's Garrett Haake last night. But as soon as the NYT broke the news about the criminal investigation, the prosecution was widely criticized, including by some in Trump's own party.
Notably, not only did Fed chairman
Jerome Powell respond in a matter of minutes when the NYT story landed, but he did so on camera, providing crucial video for all the inevitable TV news coverage. Powell's statement framed the matter very clearly: "He said the investigation was a direct result from his ongoing struggle with the administration over interest rates."
CNBC's homepage reflects the resulting market turmoil:
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CNN's headline is about the "Sell America" trade returning to Wall Street. And the WSJ's banner is, "For Years, Powell Avoided Fighting Trump. That's Over."
"I've never seen a central bank release an evening video so directly taking on a head of state," economist Justin Wolfers tweeted. "In this case, the medium is the message: Powell is taking his case to the people."
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Meta names former Trump advisor as president |
Dina Powell McCormick, the Goldman Sachs partner turned deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first term, is joining Mark Zuckerberg as president and vice chair of Meta.
"Powell McCormick, who spent decades cultivating relationships with sovereign wealth funds at Goldman Sachs, is expected to focus on securing strategic partnerships and overseeing Meta's $600 billion infrastructure buildout over the next decade," the NYPost's Lydia Moynihan reports.
>> Trump immediately celebrated in a Truth Social post: "A great choice by Mark Z!!! She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction!"
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'The biggest free-speech story in the world' |
Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said it bluntly on X on Sunday: "A tyrannical theocracy has shut down the internet for an entire country so the world can't see the brutal tactics it plans to use to crush a free Iran. In my view, this is the biggest free-speech story in the world right now."
The comms blackout in Iran has now entered its fifth day. "The nationwide shutdown has made it difficult to understand the full extent of what is unfolding on the ground, including the full scale of casualties," CNN's live blog notes. This story by The Guardian describes how "strikingly sophisticated" the internet blackout has been: It's been "unprecedented in its extent but also selective, allowing some government communications."
>> The BBC's coverage also includes a reminder that "the BBC and most other international news organizations are unable to report from inside Iran." Reporters Without Borders has more o "journalists isolated and information stifled
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"Elon Musk's Grok has been blocked by Indonesia and Malaysia, the first countries to do so after the AI tool’s 'digital undressing' function flooded the internet with photos of women and minors in suggestive and obscene manipulated images." CNN's Lex Harvey reports on the "world first" here.
>> More: Earlier today, the UK's communications services regulator, Ofcom, "opened a formal investigation into X to determine whether it has complied with its duties to protect people in Britain from illegal content..."
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'The Dan Bongino Show' is back |
Liam Reilly writes: The titular host said this morning that his show will resume streaming via a new deal with the Peter Thiel-backed right-wing video sharing platform Rumble starting Feb. 2. His two-hour show will be live at 10 a.m. ET and will be distributed as a podcast. Bongino has been teasing his imminent return ever since departing the FBI...
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Five political notes + quotes |
>> Zachary Basu put it perfectly yesterday: "Trump is a master of flooding the zone. Now in the second year of his second presidency, his strategy is more focused on domination than distraction." (Axios)
>> A new must-read by Jim Rutenberg: "How the MAGA Plan to Control TV Triggered a Free-Speech Fight." (NYT Mag gift link)
>> The Smithsonian has scrubbed details about Trump's impeachments from an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. (CNN)
>> On Sunday's extended edition of "SOTU," Jake Tapper pressed Kristi Noem on the ICE shooting fallout. "Noem insists that media is being untruthful even as CNN catches her changing her story," John Bowden wrote. (The Independent)
>> The AP’s David Bauder looked at how technologies and attitudes have changed in the half-decade between George Floyd and Renee Nicole Good: "5 years between Minneapolis videos, and confusion has increased." (AP)
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Recapping the Globes on 'See-B-S' |
Nikki Glaser won rave reviews for his second year as Golden Globes host, though maybe not at Ellison's table. "The award for most editing goes to CBS News," she quipped. "CBS News: America's newest place to see BS news." That joke "had to have drawn blood," Variety's Brian Steinberg wrote. "A joke aimed at the news division tied to the broadcaster of the show? With WBD CEO David Zaslav on screen during the monologue?"
Later in the evening, the Globes turned into "a Warner Bros. party," as THR's Steven Zeitchik put it, with big wins for "The Pitt," "One Battle After Another" and "Sinners," to name a few. Check out Alli Rosenbloom and Dan Heching's takeaway piece for CNN here...
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'PBS News Weekend' signs off |
"Finally tonight, some news about us," John Yang said at the end of Sunday's "PBS News Weekend." He explained that PBS (well, really WETA, the member station in DC) had cancelled the show "due to the loss of federal funding for public media" and highlighted the staff that made the newscast, many of whom are now out of work. WETA is filling the time slot with two discussion-oriented programs: "Horizons," about science/tech/health, and "Compass Points," about foreign affairs. Here's the sign-off video...
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👀 Reuters' annual media trends report |
"Publishers expect traffic from search engines to decline by more than 40% over the next three years — not quite 'Google Zero' but a substantial impact none the less," Nic Newman writes in a new Reuters Institute journalism and media trends report, out this morning.
The report, based on a survey of 280 digital leaders from 51 countries and territories, finds that "subscription and membership remain the biggest revenue focus." Off-platform, "YouTube will be the main focus for publishers this year." And in response to AI disruptions, "publishers say it will be important to focus on more original investigations and on the ground reporting," as well as "contextual analysis and explanation" and "human stories," i.e., the work that can't be done as easily by robots. Read on...
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>> Google "has removed some of its artificial intelligence health summaries after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading information," Andrew Gregory reports. (Guardian)
>> New reporting by CNN's Clare Duffy: "This teen was targeted by deepfake nudes. She hopes new training course will help future victims." (CNN)
>> Google "is introducing new personalized advertising into its AI shopping tools," Cristina Criddle scoops. (FT)
>> X is suing 18 major music publishers and their trade association, "alleging they conspired to block competition and force the social media platform to purchase licenses for musical works at inflated rates." (Reuters)
>> In this week's issue of The New Yorker: Sam Knight explores "how WhatsApp took over the global conversation." (New Yorker)
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ICYMI over the weekend... |
>> Tucker Carlson was spotted at Friday's WH event with Trump and oil executives. Carlson said he lunched with Trump, and the president invited him to tag along afterward. (X)
>> Laura Wagner and Scott Nover assessed the "new tone" Tony Dokoupil is setting for the "CBS Evening News." (WaPo)
>> While CBS remained far back in third place at 6:30, the "NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas" touted some key 25-54 demo wins over ABC and David Muir. (Newscast Studio)
>> Bari Weiss still intends to run the "Inside CECOT" segment she forced "60 Minutes" to postpone, Alyssa Ray reported, citing a source. (TheWrap)
>> “For the second consecutive year," sales of print books actually ticked up last year! (Publishers Weekly)
>> RIP Bob Weir, "a songwriting powerhouse for the Grateful Dead — and the chief custodian of their legacy," writes Alexis Petridis. (Guardian)
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Looking on the bright side |
I leave you today with this optimistic take from NYT columnist Ross Douthat:
"It may seem hard to believe when you’re inside the social media cascade, but American society actually stabilized meaningfully across 2025. The homicide and crime rates dropped, finally erasing the surge that began with the George Floyd protests in 2020. Life expectancy began to rise again. Overdose deaths dropped. The suicide rate continued to decline from its 2022 peak. Young people even showed some signs of retreating from the tunnel of a social-media-mediated existence."
Douthat credited this Noah Smith list of "happy tidings," and said, "None of this means that America is suddenly in excellent shape. But the convergence of forces that drove us mad in 2020 — technological, pharmacological, epidemiological — has relaxed its grip a little bit. Health is a long way off, but stability is possible; the gyre does not always need to widen." Read the rest here...
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