Good morning! Here's the latest on Pete Hegseth, Radio Free Asia, Graydon Carter, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, "Adolescence," and more...
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The revelation that Trump aides endangered national security by chatting about a military strike in a Signal chat that included a journalist is embarrassing for everyone involved – which is why it's a big test of MAGA media's power to deny, dismiss and deflect.
The president's favorite media outlets are mostly downplaying the story and deriding the reporter who was invited to the group chat, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. On X, Elon Musk and his acolytes are cracking jokes about the scandal. And some pro-Trump outlets are trying to ignore it altogether.
It's all reminiscent of Trump's first term, when real news stories were rejected by right-wing opinion outlets time and time again. And as we learned back then, the president's media consumption has a huge impact on the personnel and policy decisions he makes.
So far, the advice he's getting from his Fox friends is to weather the storm.
Fox News, which is expert at counter-programming, led today's "Fox & Friends" with a segment on deportations instead of the war plans leak. When the show reported on the leak later in the hour, Steve Doocy took a somewhat hard line, saying "what was revealed was classified and top secret." Guest host Kayleigh McEnany said it was "an obvious mistake," but then heaped doubt on Goldberg's depiction of events, saying "he is not a credible reporter." (He is.) Lawrence Jones said "literally my only question" is how Goldberg got on the chain. All in all, it was very gentle treatment of a glaring security breach.
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Many pro-Trump media figures are taking their cues from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who sounded like he reverted to his former role as Fox host when he blasted Goldberg as a "discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes."
Hegseth invoked "hoaxes" falsely but strategically. I suspect he was appealing personally to Trump. Every time Trump wants to disarm a damaging story, he calls it a "hoax." The word is a signal to Trump fans to tune out the story altogether. After all, there's no reason to pay attention to a "hoax," right?
Some on the right saw right through the rhetorical trick. "Oh for God's sake," Fox vet Brit Hume wrote on X, "the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message."
Hegseth's insistence that "nobody was texting war plans" was also refuted by Goldberg, who told CNN's Kaitlan Collins last night, "That's a lie. He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans."
Goldberg acted patriotically (and protected himself legally) by choosing not to publish those specific texts. But Hegseth's denial was a lifeline to MAGA media commentators who are now able to say there is a dispute over the facts.
Many of the deflections are downright dishonest. Sean Hannity seethed about "media hysteria" last night. Jesse Watters went with "WE'VE ALL TEXTED THE WRONG PERSON BEFORE." The Watters segment prompted Issac Saul, who runs Tangle News, to say "it's really hard to do any kind of political analysis without constantly grappling with the fact that our two political tribes are just living in completely and utterly different information ecosystems."
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'We don't care what the media says' 🤔 |
A Trump adviser told Axios reporter Marc Caputo overnight, "We don't care what the media says. We can easily handle what would kill any other administration. This will blow over." Maybe, but let's reality-check that assertion: The president deeply cares about what the media says.
Plus, as Politico's Jack Blanchard wrote this morning, "as a story, Signalgate is more than just a serious breach of national security. It's colorful, it's visual, it's easy to understand and it raises the most dangerous charge of all for any government — one of rank incompetence."
Not to mention hypocrisy. Many of the Trump officials in the chat "made public comments in the past" attacking Hillary Clinton "for allegedly being sloppy with sensitive government information," KFILE points out. Now there are questions "about whether they violated the Espionage Act, which makes it illegal to mishandle national defense information." Just a few days ago the Defense Department and the Justice Department both announced investigations into national security leaks...
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The view from The Atlantic |
Goldberg's report remains the #1 most-read piece on The Atlantic's website this morning. Rival publishers are envious about the certain traffic and subscriber gains.
Of course, Trump will continue to act like The Atlantic is going out of business, but as Oliver Darcy wrote over at Status, publishing the war leaks story "proves how strong the outlet currently is. That type of muscular journalism requires skill, strong leadership, and the backing of a courageous publisher."
Goldberg says he is unperturbed about possible retaliation from the Trump admin.
In a Q&A with his colleague David A. Graham, he said, "Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs."
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VOA rallies to defend itself |
Liam Reilly writes: Standing in the rain in lower Manhattan yesterday, reps for the Voice of America and several unions spoke about their pending lawsuit against Kari Lake, Victor Morales, and the US Agency for Global Media. A district judge will hear arguments in the case Friday morning.
VOA's sidelined chief national correspondent Steve Herman, seen speaking above, said "the long-term consequences of silencing VOA will reverberate globally, eroding the influence and moral authority of the United States."
Andrew Celli, an attorney representing the VOA reporters, said the sudden shutdown of the service is "an outrage" – "journalists are today being told not to report, not to write, not to give their opinions, and that is not America."
>> Related: Serge Schmemann's NYT piece on what VOA's work meant to millions of listeners and readers is a must-read.
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While US Agency for Global Media senior adviser Kari Lake blasted "frivolous lawsuits" and "lawfare" in a chat with Steve Bannon yesterday, the agency coughed up some money for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "just ahead of a scheduled court hearing on the issue," the broadcaster reports. USAGM says it is paying what it owes RFE/RL for the first half of March while it defends the termination order that took effect March 15. A judge is now considering the broadcaster's broader arguments. And I hear Radio Free Asia may be filing its own suit later today...
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Former Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita has "filed a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Beast over its reporting on how much he was paid by the campaign," the NYT's Katie Robertson and David Enrich write.
LaCivita had been threatening this suit for a while. His lawyer Mark Geragos says The Beast published "lies" to "get clicks and push their political agenda." The Beast says the suit is "a transparent attempt to intimidate The Beast and silence the independent press," adding, "The Beast will defend itself vigorously and looks forward to following the money to confirm where every penny flowed in LaCivita's L.L.C."
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Today's new nonfiction releases |
Happy book pub day to Graydon Carter, whose memoir "When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines" is hitting store shelves today. Carter joined Anderson Cooper on "360" last night.
Plus: NYT reporters Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater are coming out with "Mad House," a rollicking good read about Congress's lower chamber, and Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow is out with "Hate Won't Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It."
Also new today: "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America" by Elie Mystal, "How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before" by Tamsen Fadal, and "Yoko," a biography by David Sheff.
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>> The NYT "denounced 'intimidation tactics' by President Donald Trump against its reporters." (AP)
>> The Supreme Court "refused to revive a defamation lawsuit filed by casino tycoon Steve Wynn" yesterday, thereby passing up a chance to revisit New York Times Company v. Sullivan, for now. (Bloomberg)
>> Welcome back to CNN, Amanda Wills! She "departed the cable news brand in 2022 for the WSJ after a six-year run" and "has rejoined CNN as chief content officer." (THR)
>> NBCUniversal "will seek around $7 million for a 30-second commercial" for next year's Super Bowl, Brian Steinberg reports. (Variety)
>> These two Q&As with Gawker founder Nick Denton are well worth reading. (VF, NYMag)
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Hossam Shabat's last article |
On Sunday night Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist living in northern Gaza and working for Al Jazeera, filed a dispatch to Drop Site News, a liberal Substack publication. On Monday morning he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli military said it targeted Shabat and alleged that he was a "sniper terrorist from the Beit Hanoun Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization" who "cynically posed" as a journalist. But both Al Jazeera and Drop Site are defending him. "Hossam was a tremendous young journalist who exhibited remarkable courage and tenacity," Drop Site News said in a statement. His editor,
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, has published Shabat's final dispatch, which was "translated through tears."
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'No Other Land' co-director assaulted |
"The Palestinian co-director of Oscar-winning film 'No Other Land' Hamdan Ballal was beaten up by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and taken away by Israeli soldiers," CNN's team reports, citing colleagues and witnesses. "Yuval Abraham, another co-director of the film, who is Israeli, said Ballal had sustained injuries to his head and abdomen and had not been heard from since." Read on...
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The power of 'Adolescence' |
"Every so often, a TV drama comes along that has the power to change things," Observer columnist Martha Gill writes. Right now that drama is "Adolescence." The four-part series about the online radicalization of a teenage murderer is the #1 show on Netflix. As soon as I finished watching on Sunday, I devoured half a dozen followup stories, including these:
>> By The Independent's Chloe Combi: "I got 100 young people to watch Adolescence with me – what they said might surprise you."
>> In "Adolescence," The New Yorker's Doreen St. Félix wrote, "the internet is not represented through spliced-in screens but, rather, as an emanating evil—a vapor—warping the world of naïve mothers and fathers."
>> CNN's Harmeet Kaur spoke with series co-creator Jack Thorne about "what he hopes parents take away from the show."
>> "Last week, Keir Starmer told the Commons he had been watching the series with his family and that it portrayed an 'emerging and growing problem' that needed to be tackled," Gill noted.
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Tech and Hollywood highlights |
>> A made-up audio clip of JD Vance badmouthing Elon Musk "is just the tip of the AI iceberg," Emanuel Maiberg warns. (404 Media)
>> New this morning: "EU antitrust regulators are set to close their year-long investigation into Apple's browser options on iPhones after the company made changes to comply with the requirements set out in landmark rules." (Reuters)
>> Endeavor has closed its deal "to go private with private-equity firm Silver Lake. With the move, Endeavor is changing its name to WME Group, reflecting its refocusing on the representation business." Todd Spangler has all the details here. (Variety)
>> Live Nation has settled a proposed class-action antitrust lawsuit for $20 million, Winston Cho reports. (THR)
>> Kendrick Lamar and Sza's "Luther" topped Billboard's Hot 100 for a fifth total and consecutive week. (Billboard)
>> Brian Lowry offers insightful commentary about how "Severance" "speaks to the current moment of distrust of corporations and technology. (TheWrap)
>> HBO's "The White Lotus" just keeps growing: It topped 4.2 million viewers with its latest episode. (Variety)
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