TGIT! Here's the latest on the Los Angeles Times, TIME, Tucker Carlson, TKO Group, Apple Intelligence, Rupert Murdoch, "Conclave," Justin Timberlake, and more... |
Let's begin today with two stories about editing...
In an environment of low-to-no trust in institutions, even routine editing decisions are ripe for exploitation and conspiratorial renderings. That's what happened to CBS News this month. Donald Trump and his allies have accused "60 Minutes" of manipulating its recent interview with Kamala Harris and covering up for the VP. Her answer about America's influence with Israel was "grossly incompetent," Trump said the other day. "They removed the entire answer and put another answer in there."
That's not true. Last night, I broke the news that CBS News lawyers are rebuffing Trump's latest legal threat and telling the former president that his demands for the unedited interview transcript are based on a "faulty premise."
Media critics, including yours truly, have argued that CBS screwed up by airing two different parts of Harris's answer on different days. The editing decision definitely sowed distrust. But CBS, in its response to Trump's legal counsel, cited case law that defends editing and news judgments. "Editing is a necessity for all broadcasters," Gayle C. Sproul wrote.
The network basically blew off Trump's threat to sue. From its point of view, caving to Trump's demands to see the unedited interview transcript would break with precedent, suggesting that a powerful politician can bully a news organization into doing whatever he wants. It's also hypocritical, and here's why...
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Monday's "Fox & Friends" segments about Trump's visit to a barbershop in the Bronx resembled a campaign ad for Trump's reelection. That's no surprise, given the Fox morning show's political bent. The visit was part of co-host Lawrence Jones' ongoing barbershop interview series. But the version of the visit shown on TV was, to borrow a hairstyle metaphor, a crop cut.
I reviewed more complete video of the barbershop visit that was uploaded to Instagram and compared it to the segments that were shown on "Fox & Friends." Fox edited out many of Trump’s rambling comments and false claims.
In the Instagram video, participants had to repeatedly follow up when Trump meandered away from the original point of their questions. But through Fox's edit, he appeared to be on point. With the help of our ace editor Jon Passantino, Liam Reilly and I just published this full story about the Fox omissions and edits...
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You probably watched last night's CNN town hall with Kamala Harris – but did you stay up for the post-event debrief with five of the attendees? This discussion in the 11pm hour moderated by John King was one of the best moments of the night. The five town hall participants were thoughtful, respectful and nuanced. The attendees all nodded as undecided voter Pam Thistle urged Harris and Trump to "stop trashing each other," adding "we don't want to hear it." At the end, King found that two attendees were swayed by Harris. "Two net votes for Harris in this group, no net votes for Trump, and three people we've got to keep in touch with for 12 very interesting days ahead," he concluded. Watch the segment here.
>> Thought bubble: Will Harris agree to another town hall between now and election day?
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"How the election will be protected" |
This week's cover of TIME is a reassuring message to Americans: "Your Vote Is Safe." In the story, Barton Gellman revisits his 2020 article for The Atlantic titled "The Election That Could Break America," and says that "now, four years later, I have fewer doubts about the resilience of our core exercise in democracy." He interviewed state, local, and federal election officials, intelligence analysts, and expert observers, and came away feeling confident: "The system, according to everyone I asked, will hold up against Trump’s efforts to break it." Read on...
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Tucker's "spanking" tirade |
Tucker Carlson took the stage Wednesday at a Turning Point Action rally in Georgia and warmed up the crowd for Trump by underscoring the former president's themes of retribution. “He’s pissed!” Carlson told the crowd. "Dad is pissed. … And when dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.'"
The crowd "went wild" for this idea of "spanking" the media and Democrats, CNN's Alayna Treene reported from the scene. Later, she said, when Trump came on stage, the crowd screamed "Daddy's home" and "Daddy Don." The Washington Post's Hannah Knowles wrote about Carlson's "spanking" talk here...
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Mariel Garza, the Los Angeles Times' editorials editor, resigned yesterday after Patrick Soon-Shiong, the newspaper's billionaire owner, blocked the outlet’s decision to endorse Harris. This has further strained Soon-Shiong's already tense relationship with Times staff during a year marked by newsroom cuts and turmoil. In a statement, the L.A. Times Guild said it is especially concerned "that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse."
>> Earlier this week, Frank Shyong wrote about why he "accepted a buyout and left my job as a columnist at the L.A. Times after 13 years," citing "bad leadership."
>> Overnight Oliver Darcy reported that there is chatter inside the Washington Post about its editorial board's lack of a presidential endorsement. (Status)
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Yesterday's news: "The Justice Department warned Elon Musk's America PAC in recent days that his $1 million sweepstakes to registered voters in swing states may violate federal law."
This morning's update: The super PAC "didn't announce a winner for their 'daily' $1 million giveaway to registered swing state voters on Wednesday," Marshall Cohen reports.
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Musk and Murdoch's meeting |
A notable detail in Theodore Schleifer's new NYT story about Musk's extraordinary campaigning for Trump: "On Monday evening, Mr. Musk abandoned his political team’s makeshift war room in a Pittsburgh hotel to travel to New York City for a dinner with [Rupert] Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, and other business leaders to discuss the state of the race, according to a person with knowledge of the meal."
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Political media notes and quotes |
>> The lead story on Page One of today's NYT is about election lies: "The torrent of half-truths, lies and fabrications, both foreign and homegrown, has exceeded anything that came before," Steven Lee Myers reports. (NYT)
>> "As some key battleground states celebrated record early voter turnout last week, a rash of misinformation began to spread through new digital tools launched by election conspiracy theorists," Curt Devine and Daniel Medina report. (CNN)
>> "Polling by right-leaning firms has exploded this cycle," Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky write. "Maybe they want to be accurate — or maybe they’re trying to create a sense of momentum for Donald Trump." (TNR)
>> Nicole Shanahan offered to pay a Washington Post reporter "half a million dollars to be a whistleblower" to expose people Shanahan claimed "were spreading false information about her," a Post team reports. (Wash Post)
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News deserts and budding oases |
"Newspapers in the United States closed at the rate of more than two per week during 2023, but a burst of activity among digital entrepreneurs illustrated some tiny shoots of growth in what has become a desert-like climate for local news," The AP's David Bauder reports.
Here's the key bit of data: "A total of 127 newspapers closed last year, while the 81 digital sites gained was the most in any year since the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University began measuring that activity in 2018, and possibly the most ever." Medill's Tim Franklin says "it shows that there are some entrepreneurs and innovators out there." Yes – so many!
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"The celebration is about to begin," Pat Kiernan said on air just now, teasing NY1's coverage of today's ticker tape parade in NYC for the New York Liberty. The parade begins at 10am ET. Sunday night's fifth and final game of the WNBA Finals between the Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx was the "most-viewed WNBA finals game in 25 years across all networks," ESPN says.
>> Overall, "viewership across the entire WNBA Finals series more than doubled compared to last year, a continuation of the growing popularity of the WNBA and women’s sports more broadly," CNBC's Jake Piazza reports. And there's still lots of "room to run for the WNBA," he adds...
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>> New this morning: "TKO Group, the company that owns WWE and UFC, is expanding into sports-adjacent properties by acquiring three businesses for $3.25 billion" from Endeavor. (CNBC)
>> Dow Jones is "expanding the Wall Street Journal's flagship Tech Live event to Qatar next year as a part of a broader effort to build its business in the region," Sara Fischer reports. (Axios)
>> "Bloomberg Media says it has added 200,000 subscriptions in the last four months as part of a growth plan that also saw it launch a new, magazine-style weekend offering last week," Bron Maher writes. (Press Gazette)
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>> "Google is making SynthID Text, its technology that lets developers watermark and detect text written by generative AI models, generally available," Kyle Wiggers reports. (TechCrunch)
>> Yahoo and McAfee are partnering to use “deepfake-image detection technology to identify pictures and photos that may have been generated by A.I. and potentially altered in a meaningful way,” Brian Steinberg reports. (Variety)
>> Apple has released "a beta version of a slew of Apple Intelligence features, including its long-awaited ChatGPT integration," Kif Leswing reports. (CNBC)
>> "Anthropic said its AI model, called Claude, could now perform computing tasks including filling out forms, planning an outing and building a website," Dan Milmo reports. (The Guardian)
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>> "Conclave," the Edward Berger-directed papal flic with an A-list cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow, is pulling in impressive reviews, including a 93% Tomatometer score. (RT)
>> "Justin Timberlake has postponed six of his Forget Tomorrow World Tour concerts so he can recover from bronchitis and laryngitis," Nardine Saad writes. (LAT)
>> Following up on our "Severance" mention yesterday: Here's the teaser trailer for season two of the Apple TV+ series. It starts streaming on January 17. (YouTube)
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