Last night's mid-air collision over the Potomac River was the deadliest aviation disaster in the U.S. in 24 years. Here are some observations about the overnight news coverage, followed by our usual daily media digest...
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images |
Watching the planes lined up to land at Reagan National Airport was usually a highlight of Ari Schulman's drive home from work. On Wednesday night he said he noticed "an especially long, regal line of planes." Then he saw AA 5342 about to land. "It looked normal" at first, but the second time he looked over, the plane "was banked all the way to the right," and he could see its underside.
"It was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it," he told Abby Phillip during CNN's wall-to-wall coverage of the breaking news. "It looked like a Roman candle, if you ever hold one of those on the Fourth of July, but it was much, much bigger than that."
Schulman, editor of The New Atlantis journal, couldn't see anything else, so he made a U-turn, looking for signs of impact, and there were none. He started to wonder if he had hallucinated. He U-turned again. Then he saw "the line of jewels lined up for the airport was almost all gone — the planes had diverted."
Schulman searched X and saw a tweet about a "possible helicopter vs. plane incident," so he wrote up what he saw. I believe his thread was the first eyewitness account of the tragedy.
Last night I told Schulman it sounded like his journalistic instincts kicked in. "I honestly don't know for sure what I was thinking," he replied, "other than not understanding why there was no fireball or visible crash, and wanting to know what was going on."
Before trying to get some sleep, Schulman questioned why the helicopter was flying near the normal landing path of a commercial jet. That's a question investigators will be pursuing... Here are CNN's latest updates...
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Newsrooms were alerted to a "small plane" crash shortly after 9pm ET. Police scanners, FlightAware trackers and law enforcement sources soon indicated that it was actually a passenger jet.
A critical snippet of video made the rounds on social media almost immediately: Video from the EarthCam at the Kennedy Center showing the moment of impact. The clip signaled that this was not a "crash," it was a midair collision...
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>> Pete Muntean made all the difference on CNN last night. The correspondent is also a private pilot, and he brought an expert's POV to the coverage, at one point even using hand gestures to explain how the jet and helicopter could have collided.
>> News crews arrived on the banks of the Potomac within minutes. Unfortunately an NBC4 Washington reporter relayed word of four "survivors" being pulled from the water, which potentially misled some of the victims' families. Other news outlets were careful not to run with that report.
>> Last night Laura Coates co-anchored CNN's live coverage from the vicinity of the collision. This morning Kasie Hunt did the same. On CBS, Tony Dokoupil was live from Virginia. NBC's Lester Holt and Tom Llamas will anchor their respective newscasts from DC tonight.
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Figure skating community is grieving |
Covering this collision involves reporters on the aviation beat, the military beat – and sports, too. Some of the passengers had been returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan, one of CNN's longtime analysts, said on air that it looks like "coaches, young skaters, family members" were on board – "and it could be quite a large number." Here's how ESPN is covering the news...
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Alternative facts are back |
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images |
The first press briefing of President Trump's first term was marred by crowd-size-gate. This time around, it's "condoms in Gaza."
More than 36 hours later, reporters are still trying to get to the bottom of Karoline Leavitt's shocking claim. And that underlines a problem with "alternative facts:" They can be awfully hard to pin down/prove/disprove.
After Tuesday's press briefing, Daniel Dale and a team of CNN colleagues contacted all sorts of sources; found no evidence of the claim; and identified "five big reasons to be skeptical" of the claim.
On Wednesday Trump repeated an even more dramatic version of the claim – that "we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas." Despite all the red flags, the "condoms in Gaza" claim has hardened into fact on Fox News and across the MAGA media universe...
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'Not an auspicious debut' |
The AP and the Washington Post published "there's no evidence" type fact-checks yesterday. The Post's Glenn Kessler said Leavitt called the alleged spending "preposterous," when her statement was actually preposterous.
The significance, of course, is that this happened during her first briefing, when she said "I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day." So who told her about the "$50 million," and why did she repeat it? "Leavitt earns Four Pinocchios," Kessler wrote. "Not an auspicious debut."
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Before the mid-air collision, the new Defense Secretary called into his close friend Will Cain's 4pm show, then visited Jesse Watters' 8pm show. Pete Hegseth told Watters "absolutely we can" prepare Guantanamo Bay for 30,000 migrant detainees. The appearance sure sounded like it was for an "audience of one..."
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TheRighting's latest traffic report |
Howard Polskin is publishing his monthly analysis of right-wing and other news websites later today. You can get a sneak peek here. In December, "for the second month in a row, all 21 news websites analyzed by TheRighting during this four-year period experienced steep audience declines," he says. Breitbart, to pick just one, is down 94% (!) compared with the post-election period in 2020. More here...
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Comcast reported quarterly earnings this morning, and its investor conference call is underway now...
Senate confirmation hearings for RFK Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard are all sure to make news later this morning...
The FireAid benefit concert starts tonight at 6pm PT. It will be live-streamed "pretty much everywhere you would watch TV," from Max to Twitch, Hulu to Pluto, Apple to YouTube...
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>> The White House press shop told The Daily Wire that it received over 7,400 requests to sit in the "new media seat" after just one day. (Daily Wire)
>> "A declassified World War II-era government guide to 'simple sabotage' is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet," Jason Koebler writes. (404 Media)
>> On this week's NYT best seller list, "Melania" is back at #1 on the hardcover list, while "Hillbilly Elegy" is back at #1 on the combined print and ebook nonfiction list... (NYT)
>> Substack says it plans to expand its Substack Defender program, "which includes a fund that offers legal support to independent writers who face intimidation and opposition from the subjects of their stories." (Substack Reads)
>> One year after merging, Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting are "turning outward with a consultancy called CIR Media Services to help newsrooms manage their finances and operations." (CJR)
>> Katrice Hardy is the new CEO of The Marshall Project. (Marshall Project)
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First came ABC's settlement, and now comes Meta: Mark Zuckerberg's company is poised to pay "roughly $25 million to resolve a 2021 lawsuit Trump brought after the company suspended his accounts." At the time, Facebook said the action had to be taken because Trump fomented "a violent insurrection designed to thwart the peaceful transition of power."
Yesterday the WSJ broke the news that Trump has signed a settlement agreement that requires Meta to pay out roughly $25 million, "$22 million of which will go to a fund for Trump's forthcoming presidential library," CNN's Kaitlan Collins wrote. You'll recall that ABC did the same last month...
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Zuck promotes 'community notes' |
On Meta's earnings call last night, Zuck said "this is going to be a big year for redefining our relationships with governments." He also talked about Meta's fact-checking changes, acknowledging that "people don't want to see misinformation, but you need to build an effective system that gives people more context." He tipped his hat to X's community notes, saying "I'm not afraid to admit when someone does something that's better than us," and predicting that Facebook's version "is just going to be more effective than the system we had before."
>> CFO Susan Li said advertisers haven't been spooked by the company's MAGA makeover: We "haven't seen any noticeable impact from our content policy changes on advertiser spend, so we're continuing to see strong advertiser demand."
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>> "OpenAI is probing whether DeepSeek used its models to train new chatbot." (WSJ)
>> Joanna Stern highlights the irony of OpenAI's outrage given the ChatGPT-maker stands accused of stealing copyrighted content from creators around the world. (WSJ)
>> NewsGuard put the R1 model through its paces and found that DeepSeek "achieved only 17% accuracy in delivering news and information." (Reuters)
>> A new study from Common Sense shows that most teenagers no longer trust Big Tech — with more than one-third reporting "they've been misled by fake content online." (Common Sense)
>> Instagram is adding "additional metrics that allow creators to see what content resonates better with their audiences." (TechCrunch)
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>> Alex Weprin's latest: "Joe Scarborough Wants to Talk About More Than Just Politics." (THR)
>> Bill Carter says Jimmy Fallon delivered a "Trump-free monologue" earlier this week. He asks: "Is it too soon to wonder if The Tonight Show is tip-toeing toward becoming a bit of a safe haven for the MAGA crowd?" (LateNighter)
>> Speaking of Fallon, Robin Pogrebin filed this fun story about the host making his Broadway debut... (NYT)
>> Monica Lewinsky is launching a podcast with Wondery. (THR)
>> Taylor Lorenz reports that Candace Owens is trying to build a "sprawling multi-platform women-focused media brand." (User Mag)
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'Next on Netflix' headlines |
Netflix shared tons of news at its "living sizzle reel" media day in L.A. yesterday. The embargo just lifted, so lots of stories are hitting. Among the many tidbits:
>> "Squid Game" season three will launch on June 27...
>> "Everybody's Live with John Mulaney" will start March 12...
>> A reboot of "Little House on the Prairie," "the ’70s drama that has enjoyed a stunning resurgence on Peacock recently," is in the works...
>> And here is the streamer's full 2025 film slate...
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>> Disney+ "has signed a landmark agreement to invest 25% of its annual sales generated in France to finance French and European series and films." (Variety)
>> "Hollywood may have found its new normal: 25% fewer TV shows," Lucia Moses writes. (Business Insider)
>> "Amazon's Prime Video entered into a multiyear theatrical output agreement with Lionsgate," Todd Spangler reports. (Variety)
>> And last but not least, check out Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in Hellmann's "When Harry Met Sally" Super Bowl ad. (YouTube)
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