TGIF. Here's the latest on the AP, Peter Doocy, CNN, Austin Tice, Jubilee, "Emilia Pérez," Mel Gibson, Bob Iger, and more...
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Oliver Contreras/Sipa USA |
Fox viewers could hear the enthusiasm in Laura Ingraham's voice last night: "Can you believe this is only Day Four of Trump 2.0?"
And New Yorker readers can discern the weariness in the first two words of Susan Glasser's newest column: "Exhausted yet?"
"Eight years after the first Trump Inauguration, we know the drill," Glasser wrote. "He loves to drown us in outrage. The overwhelming volume is the point — too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can't focus. It can't fight back. The distractions are just too damn distracting."
With 45 now back in office as 47, journalists are getting back on Trump Time (conveniently, Trump has licensed his name to a watchmaker) and going back to some of the debates that defined his first term. Should his remarks be shown live? Yes, sometimes. Should his deceitful claims be debunked by reporters? Yes. Should he dictate what's considered "news" at any given moment? No. The biggest news story right now isn't Trump per se, it's Trump's impacts on ordinary people in the U.S. and beyond.
"After a four-year hiatus, we are once again compelled to go spelunking into the deeper caverns of Donald Trump's brain," NYT columnist David Brooks wrote yesterday. Columnists are back to "what did he say" versus "what did he mean" conjecture. Television news producers are back to blowing up show rundowns at the last minute. Day four "feels like month four," Puck's Tara Palmeri quipped.
Trump may be going back to his old playbook, but media outlets need a new one to cover this presidency: Newsrooms are leaner than they were four years ago, and audiences are tuned out. The key for journalists: Focus on what Trump's policies mean for readers and viewers – not on the shock value of what he says.
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'The TV producer president' |
Every day this week has proven NYT TV critic James Poniewozik right. On Monday he wrote that for Trump, an act "performed silently may as well not have happened." In his conception of politics, "the deliverable is not just the executive order;the deliverable is him signing the order, with lights and music and live cameras," and getting all the credit for it as a result of the TV show.
Yesterday Times reporter Shawn McCreesh vividly described this dynamic – Trump back with the White House press pool, back "in control of his own show" – in this piece. He quoted Fox's Peter Doocy calling Trump "the TV producer president..."
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"We have saved free speech in America," Trump told Davos attendees yesterday, lambasting mis/disinformation as the "favorite words of censors." Christiane Amanpour asked Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb to parse what Trump said.
"This is a war on facts," Cobb responded. "When people are saying 'misinformation' and 'disinformation,' this is not a kind of subjective evaluation, this is an evaluation that's made on the basis of facts, whether or not something is provably or demonstrably true or demonstrably untrue." But when you believe truth is "subject to your own whims and what you think, then it's easy to say that calling something misinformation and disinformation is 'censorship.'"
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Final confirmation vote for Hegseth today |
This pair of headlines on the CNN homepage tell the story pretty concisely: "Pete Hegseth paid $50,000 to a woman alleging 2017 sexual assault" and "Hegseth's nomination narrowly overcame a Democratic-led filibuster, advancing toward a final confirmation vote tonight." Fox continues to champion its ex-host's nomination...
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AP reverts Denali to Mount McKinley |
"The Associated Press says it will recognize President Donald Trump's plans to change the name of Alaska's Mount Denali to Mount McKinley — but will stop short of switching from calling the Gulf of Mexico by that name," Politico's Ali Bianco reports.
Mount McKinley is straightforward because Trump has "the authority to change federal geographical names within the country," the AP's style guidance states. But the Gulf of Mexico is more complicated because it also borders Mexico (obviously) so the AP "will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen."
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>> Trump's PR strategy at work: Fox's Bill Melugin went on an "exclusive ride-along with elite ICE officers" as they conducted immigration raids in Boston. (Fox)
>> And this morning press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced via a post on X that "deportation flights have begun" using military aircraft. (X)
>> Norah O'Donnell signed off the "CBS Evening News" yesterday after more than five years in the chair. (CBS)
>> If you watch one thing today... Let it be this Clarissa Ward report on "AC360." Ward returned to Syria with Debra Tice, the mother of missing journalist Austin Tice, to search for clues about his disappearance. (CNN)
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CNN confirmed plans for a revised U.S. TV schedule yesterday after rolling out a new round of layoffs and several big digital investments.
"Under the new weekday lineup, Wolf Blitzer's 'Situation Room' moves to 10am to 12pm and will now include Pamela Brown as co-anchor, replacing Jim Acosta's hour," Hadas Gold wrote. Audie Cornish "will now anchor a new 6am show, while Kasie Hunt moves to 4pm. Rahel Solomon will also anchor a new show starting at 5am."
>> Acosta is still anchoring at 10am for the time being, and a CNN rep said the network is "in active discussions with Jim about a new time slot and will have more information to share soon."
>> In other CNN news, the network "has hired Andrew Roy from CBS News to take a top role as London bureau chief and general manager of Europe, Middle East and Asia coverage," Deadline's Ted Johnson reported.
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>> In case you missed it, check out Ezra Klein's column on "the online vibes-machine" and "the cultural momentum of Trumpism." He observes that "what Democrats have is an attention problem, not a media problem." (NYT)
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John Herrman's latest: "Big Tech is in a devil's bargain with Donald Trump." (NYMag)
>> "Podcasters including Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Logan Paul are mobilizing America's men to lean right." Bloomberg's team analyzed 2,000+ videos to show how. (Bloomberg)
>> Makena Kelly compiled a list of "MAGA influencers you should know about," including meme page producers and Substack bloggers. (WIRED)
>> Last weekend's brief TikTok blackout led some users to reconsider their obsession with the app. (Wash Post)
>> "Hollywood production budgets were already strained," and the recent fires "could make matters worse," Meg James reports. (LA Times)
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You've probably come across video clips of debates like this one ☝️ produced by Jubilee Media. An excellent new article by The Atlantic's Spencer Kornhaber – "America Is Divided. It Makes for Tremendous Content" – goes inside Jubilee's "booming" business. The company "has built a huge young following by turning difficult discussions into shareable content," he writes.
Jubilee's critics contend "that the company is simply manufacturing ragebait and platforming dangerous ideas in order to pull eyeballs." Yet Jubilee's success "suggests why deplatforming—the strategy of blocking bigots and liars from public stages—has proved ineffective," Kornhaber observes. His article is full of insights, and it left me wondering if a major media company will swoop in to acquire Jubilee and its DNA...
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>> Charlotte Klein's latest is about "The New Yorker's anxious 100th birthday celebration..." (NYMag)
>> While journalists may "favor the serious and the certain," they must "learn to embrace some difficult new topics," and one in particular, stupidity, Sacha Biazzo writes. (CJR)
>> "Prince Harry claims court victories," Brian Melley writes, "but is he winning the larger war with the British media?" (AP)
>> Jason Koebler makes the case for a decentralized social media, which he argues is “the only alternative to the tech oligarchy.” (404 Media)
>> "If you're looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans in the world are struggling to create tests that A.I. systems can’t pass," Kevin Roose writes. (NYT)
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Oscar nominations takeaways |
Here are a few:
>> "Netflix is undoubtedly celebrating after Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language musical 'Emilia Pérez' secured 13 nominations — the most ever for a non-English language film," Variety's Clayton Davis wrote. Maybe Netflix has "finally found its best picture winner..."
>> The embrace of "Emilia Pérez" reflects "the increasing internationalization of the Academy," THR's Scott Feinberg noted.
>> Academy voters are making room "for more idiosyncratic films like last year's 'Poor Things' and this year's 'The Substance,'" which picked up five nods yesterday, NPR's Glen Weldon wrote.
>> CNN's Lisa Respers France noted some of the snubs and surprises here...
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Two noms for 'The Apprentice' |
"A Trump movie that Trump hates is going to get a lot more attention, courtesy of the Oscars," Business Insider's Peter Kafka noted. He was referring to "The Apprentice," which landed a best actor nomination for Sebastian Stan and best supporting actor nod for Jeremy Strong. "The Academy is standing up for great art at a time when the culture seems to be chilled by the new political climate," screenwriter Gabriel Sherman told Kafka...
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>> "Indie movie leaders are looking to the Sundance Film Festival with a mix of renewed purpose and cautious optimism about the independent film market." (TheWrap)
>> Promos for "Flight Risk," out today, are coy about the fact that the movie was directed by Mel Gibson. (NYT)
>> Disney CEO Bob Iger's annual compensation "rose to $41.1 million in 2024, a 30% increase from the $31.6 million he received a year earlier." (WSJ)
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