Happy Friday 🙌 My "doomscrolling" query prompted so many replies (thank you!) that I need another day to sort through them all. In the meantime, scroll down for the latest on "F1," President Trump, Anna Wintour, Tucker Carlson, and much more... |
"Independent journalism doesn't come easily," Bill Moyers once said. "Unless you're willing to drive the people you're working with nuts, going over every last detail to get it right, and then take hit after hit accusing you of bias, there's no use even trying it. You have to love it, and I do."
And journalism loved him back. Moyers died yesterday at age 91 after a long illness. His wife of nearly 71 years, Judith Davidson Moyers, who doubled as his producing partner, was by his side.
Through five decades on the air, Moyers "reached the heights of excellence in journalism," former CNN president Tom Johnson told me, noting that many compared Moyers to "the Edward R. Murrow of those times."
Moyers produced a body of award-winning work that most journalists can only dream about, and his career can and should serve as a model for younger generations.
Time and time again — whether at PBS, commercial networks or his own digital media platforms — Moyers carved out space and time for sober, serious discussions and documentaries. He "explored issues ranging from poverty, violence, income inequality and racial bigotry to the role of money in politics, threats to the Constitution and climate change," the NYT's Janny Scott writes. He interviewed "poets, philosophers and educators, often on the subject of values and ideas."
"We must fight," Moyers wrote in his 2004 memoir, for media to serve democracy; for substance to win over spectacle; for marginalized voices to be heard in the media.
Last year the nonagenarian reported and narrated the Frontline documentary "Two American Families," which, if you haven't seen it, is a "master work." And last night, just a matter of hours after Moyers died, the project won Outstanding Social Issue Documentary at the News & Documentary Emmys in NYC.
I believe it was the 36th Emmy of his extraordinary career, though that may be an undercount. Moyers was a reliable reader of this newsletter, and I wish I could email him right now to fact-check. May his memory be a blessing.
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Moyers also urged Americans to fight for publicly funded media. "Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!" he once wrote.
"Not only was Bill a journalist of the highest caliber, he played an essential role in the creation of PBS as a trusted aide to President Johnson" in the 1960s, PBS CEO Paula Kerger noted in her remembrance. "He fought for excellence and honesty in our public discourse, and was always willing to take on the most important issues of the day with curiosity and compassion."
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☝️ Not a title from 2025, though it could be.
Moyers contributed to CNN for a time, most notably during the Persian Gulf War, when the aforementioned Tom Johnson commissioned a Sunday morning program called "The Press Goes to War." Johnson lined up Moyers as the host. Rick Davis produced the program (which morphed into "Reliable Sources") and was in awe working with Moyers. "He was a pro's pro," Davis told me, and "his probing questions and his way of challenging what the government was putting out as its story taught us all so much," especially because Moyers had been "on the other side," working with President Johnson during the Vietnam War.
Moyers returned to the subject in 2007 with a hard-hitting PBS examination of the media's "complicity" in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when, he said, "our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war." The report has aged well, as they say.
That brings us to today's news-about-the-news...
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President Trump has ratcheted up his rhetorical battle over recent US airstrikes in Iran by having an attorney send legal letters to CNN and The New York Times demanding retractions of accurate reports. A CNN rep confirmed that the network responded to the letter by rejecting the claims in it. The NYT publicized its response, which said in part, "No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so."
>> As I noted here, Trump has a long history of litigation in his business career, and an even longer history of threatening to sue and not following through.
>> What's next: Several admin officials have vowed to conduct leak investigations, and Trump said yesterday that any leakers "should be prosecuted."
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NYT's 'right to know' response |
"The American public has a right to know whether the attack on Iran — funded by taxpayer dollars and of enormous consequence to every citizen — was a success," the NYT's lead newsroom lawyer, David E. McCraw, wrote in his response to Trump's attorney yesterday. "We rely on our intelligence services to provide the kind of impartial assessment that we all need in a democracy to judge our country’s foreign policy and the quality of our leaders' decisions."
Therefore, he wrote, "it would be irresponsible for a news organization to suppress that information and deny the public the right to hear it. And it would be even more irresponsible for a president to use the threat of libel litigation to try to silence a publication that dared to report that the trained, professional, and patriotic intelligence experts employed by the U.S. government thought that the President may have gotten it wrong in his initial remarks to the country."
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>> Abby Phillip's reaction to Pete Hegseth's press conference behavior: "When the state tells you what you should report, say and do, that's a slippery slope to the autocratic governing that Donald Trump claims to be against. But that's what's happening..."
>> Anderson Cooper summed it all up by showing "what Pete Hegseth said we said and what we actually said."
>> Fox mostly ignored Hegseth's tirade against Jennifer Griffin, though Brit Hume used an afternoon appearance to praise her and call Hegseth's attack "unfair."
>> Fox says Trump is sitting down with Maria Bartiromo for an interview that will air on her show this Sunday.
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"After nearly four decades as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour is stepping down and seeking a replacement," CNN's Jacqui Palumbo and Oscar Holland report. She is keeping her bigger job, as Condé Nast's global chief content officer, according to Vogue.
>> "While Wintour will be seeking the head of editorial content — a plum role in fashion journalism — she indicated that she is not going anywhere and this will give her more time to work on her global role," WWD reports.
>> "She's basically managing it in a way that she is picking her successor," Wintour biographer Amy Odell told Breaker, adding, "I think she is really getting to set up how she wants Vogue to live on when she finally does leave Conde Nast."
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Seven powerful weekend reads |
>> Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson write that "AI is starting to wear down democracy." This is how: "Content generated by artificial intelligence has become a factor in elections around the world. Most of it is bad, misleading voters and discrediting the democratic process." (NYT)
>> Ella Chakarian writes about "AI addiction" support groups, where people go to "try to stop talking to chatbots." (404 Media)
>> "The End of Publishing as We Know It:" Alex Reisner depicts the rise of chatbots and other generative-AI tools as "an existential threat to the media, and to the livelihood of journalists everywhere." (The Atlantic)
>> Decca Muldowney says fanfiction writers are standing up to AI "one scrape at a time." (The Verge)
>> Eric Levitz asks: "Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?" (Vox)
>> David Bauder speaks with some old media "refugees" about the Substack-era "promise of working for themselves." (AP)
>> Tricia Romano profiles TikToker Aaron Parnas, who has "taken off with his endless to-the-point news summaries." (Rolling Stone)
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>> "In a surprise move, Disney and the cable giant Charter have inked a new deal that expands their landmark 2023 carriage agreement to bring Hulu to Spectrum TV customers, while returning eight linear cable channels that had been pulled from its lineup." (THR)
>> Audacy is closing its Pineapple Street podcast studio and "largely exiting the business of producing shows for outside parties." (Bloomberg)
>> TikTok and Instagram are plotting TV apps following YouTube’s success, Kaya Yurieff and Kalley Huang report. (The Information)
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Tucker's MAGA battle bump |
Liam Reilly writes: Tucker Carlson's podcast surged up the charts last week, buoyed by his confrontational (and viral) interview with Sen. Ted Cruz as well as his feud with MAGA media hawks like Mark Levin. "The Tucker Carlson Show" jumped to #5 on YouTube's weekly podcast rankings — a significant leap from #18 last month. The show also landed at #2 among all Spotify podcasts. Details here...
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Weekend box office preview |
Apple's "F1" is eyeing first place at the box office this weekend, "with the potential to cross $50 million" domestically "if sales maintain their momentum through the weekend," according to Boxoffice Pro. Plus, "F1 will thrive overseas, where the sport is revered." Universal and Blumhouse's "M3GAN 2.0" is looking to nab the #2 spot during its opening weekend.
But back to "F1" for a miute; Ben Fritz and Joe Flint have a fantastic longread for the WSJ about the significance of the film for Apple...
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Five more great weekend reads |
>> Joseph Bernstein wants to know where all the "novel-reading men" have gone. (NYT)
>> Meet "Breaking and Entering:" Megan Graham explains why "the ad world is obsessed with industry news videos from two 27-year-old guys." (WSJ)
>> Kayla Cobb and Tess Patton argue that a half-a-trillion-dollar creator economy is "just the beginning." (TheWrap)
>> Fran Hoepfner reflects on the fun metadata in the Times' latest "100 Best Movies" as defined by Hollywood's A-list. (Vulture)
>> Emily Yahr introduces us to Ashley Gorley, who "spent years trying to crack the code behind a hit song" and has now co-written 83 #1 radio hits and counting. "What's Gorley’s secret? Perhaps it helps that he avoids social media and even computers in general," she writes, "leaving his mind blissfully less cluttered than most of ours and possibly more open to the creative process." (WaPo)
And on that note, I wish you a clutter-free weekend!
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