Hey, happy Saturday. There's more than enough media news for a special weekend edition. Here's the latest on Joe Rogan, Kash Patel, The Atlantic, Dianna Russini, Bill Maher, QVC, and more... |
Court freezes Nexstar's takeover of Tegna |
The Trump administration gave Nexstar and Tegna the green light to merge last month. But a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general sued to stop the merger. And now a federal judge has flashed the red light, halting the deal because it is "presumed likely to violate antitrust laws."
Last night's ruling by US District Judge Troy Nunley throws Nexstar's takeover plans into doubt. It's a big win for the state AGs. It is also, as the WSJ's Joe Flint wrote, "a rebuke of the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department."
Time and time again, we're seeing a divide between the feds and the states over antitrust policy and consumer protection. We wrote about this just the other day regarding Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Democratic state AGs like Rob Bonta of California and Letitia James of New York argue that the feds are MIA, so the states have to pick up the slack — even though the states have far fewer resources to bring cases.
Bonta said last night, "The federal government may have thrown in the towel, but we'll keep fighting for consumers, for workers, for affordability, and for our local news." Now the state-level case – along with a similar lawsuit lodged by DirecTV — moves toward trial. Here's my full story...
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A 'huge blow' to Trump's TV consolidation push |
Nexstar's takeover of Tegna has been politically charged, of course, with Nexstar personally appealing to President Trump to win approval of the deal.
Nexstar went ahead and announced the deal was done as soon as the feds gave the go-ahead, even though the states had filed suit to block the deal. It turns out that the egg wasn't fully scrambled yet, though, and Nunley's rulings — first a temporary restraining order, and now a preliminary injunction — have the effect of stopping all the proverbial meal prep.
Antitrust lawyer Lee Hepner, who works at the American Economic Liberties Project, called it a "huge blow to Trump's consolidation of local broadcast TV."
On X, he pointed out that the California AG's office also made progress in its antitrust case against Amazon earlier this week. "Three days, three victories," Hepner wrote: "Live Nation, Amazon, Nexstar-Tegna."
>> Democrats like Matt Platkin, the former attorney general of New Jersey, reacted to the ruling by expressing hope that the state AGs would bring a case against Paramount's pending acquisition of (CNN's parent) Warner Bros. Discovery next...
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Another legal review is underway |
Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, who was cut out of the Nexstar-Tegna approval process, applauded the judge's ruling and said it would bring "much-needed scrutiny to a deeply flawed approval process."
And "this is not the only challenge to this unlawful merger," Gomez noted this afternoon. "The D.C. Circuit is still weighing whether the FCC violated federal law by waiving the 39 percent national ownership cap. Accountability is coming from multiple directions. Our fight to protect consumers is far from over."
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Trump's surprise guest in the Oval today: Joe Rogan |
Joe Rogan keeps triggering news cycles with his criticism of "some of the president’s policies, including his handling of the Iran war," but today he was by Trump's side in the Oval Office for the signing of an exec order "aimed at encouraging expanded research into psychedelic drugs," CNN's Alejandra Jaramillo reports.
Rogan "said his outreach to the president helped spark the policy move."
The signing photo op was also notable because Trump spent a long time fielding questions from the press pool, but when CBS News reporter Olivia Rinaldi tried to ask the president "about two vessels in the Strait of Hormuz who were allegedly fired upon by Iranian guns," Trump said "out" and wrapped the session. Here's the video plus Rinaldi's tweet...
Now, speaking of Rogan...
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Measuring the top news 'influencers' in America |
Yesterday, I was part of a University of Mississippi symposium on restoring trust in the news media. To set the table, the Jordan Center for Journalism Innovation and Advocacy commissioned Ipsos to ask people across the country about who and what they trust for info. And this was the main finding: "Online platforms and personalities, especially those on the right, have overtaken television and traditional print outlets as regular news sources."
When people were asked to name news influencers, Trump's name came up most often. Excluding politicians from the results, "Joe Rogan is in the top spot, followed by Fox News personalities Greg Gutfeld and Sean Hannity, then commentators Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson."
In other words, right-wing figures were dominant overall. Among respondents who said they voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, the top non-politician influencers were Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
This makes a lot of sense; all of the top names are celebrities who entertain and excite their audiences, and they all engage in meaning-making, helping listeners make sense of the news world swirling around them...
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Kash Patel threatens to sue The Atlantic |
Sarah Fitzpatrick's investigative story, "The FBI Director Is MIA," is #1 on The Atlantic's website right now. Fitzpatrick reports that Patel "has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences," as Kaitlan Collins said last night, noting that "CNN has not corroborated the instances that are detailed in The Atlantic's piece."
Patel threatened to sue The Atlantic both before and again after publication. He is quoted in the piece saying, "I'll see you in court—bring your checkbook."
Fitzpatrick responded on MS NOW last night: "I stand by every word of this reporting. We have excellent attorneys."
>> CNN's Andrew Kaczynski noted on X that "Patel is being represented by the same attorney who filed Mark Robinson's frivolous lawsuit against CNN." Robinson later dropped that suit.
>> Patel posted this defiant message "to the fake news" just now:
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>> Michael Calderone writes about the "dilemma" facing journalists at the White House Correspondents' Dinner next week: "Toasting the First Amendment as Trump tramples over it." (TheWrap)
>> Mark Jacob lists some of Trump's attacks against the press and argues the dinner should be canceled altogether. (Stop the Presses)
>> Tiffany Hsu shows how "hundreds of fake pro-Trump avatars" have flooded social media sites "in an apparent bid to hook conservative voters." (NYT)
>> Paula Mejía writes about TMZ "basking in the Schadenfreude of catching politicians asleep on the job." (New Yorker)
>> What's up with all the vodcasts? Well, there are good reasons for the podcast world's video push, but David Marcelis says some people "who listen to podcasts are suddenly feeling left out." (WSJ)
>> Dan Brooks examines "the spread of '-coded.'" (NYT)
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New reporting about Dianna Russini |
Yesterday, around the same time the NYPost's Page Six published a positive story about Dianna Russini mounting "a daring rescue of an elderly man and his dog from an overturned Jeep," Ben Strauss published a detailed story for ESPN about the sudden end to Russini's career at The Athletic.
Strauss reported that Page Six approached Russini at home to ask about her relationship with Mike Vrabel on Easter Sunday. The photos "threatened to become a public relations disaster." But "according to multiple people familiar with internal deliberations at the Post, the outlet was open to changing the tone of the story or possibly not running it if Russini and Vrabel could provide compelling evidence to back up their statements that they had each been on a trip with friends."
Evidence to support that account was "never provided," either to the Post or to Russini's bosses at The Athletic, Strauss wrote here...
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Everything is a conspiracy now... |
Well, this would be enough to make me pull my own hair out, if I had any hair left: "In recent weeks, as criticism of President Donald Trump from his own supporters has reached a fever pitch, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president's biggest supporters are now claiming, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 and is covering it up," David Gilbert reports for WIRED...
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'Hungary election results bring hope for media freedom' |
That's the headline in the latest edition of WaPo's Press Freedom Desk newsletter. Liam Scott notes Peter Magyar's vow to "protect press freedom in the country" once Viktor Orbán leaves office.
Radio France Internationale talked with Eva Bognar of the Central European University's Democracy Institute in Budapest, who said Orban-controlled outlets in Hungary currently deliver a lot of "disinformation" and "Russian propaganda."
Magyar's party manifesto contained a pledge to "set up a proper public media," and now they have to deliver. "There's a chance," Bognar said, "that public service media and the media in general would just serve a different government," without actually restoring independence and mending the social fabric...
>> Related: "Hungarian state news staff push for editorial freedom as Magyar vows shake‑up," Krisztina Than reports for Reuters... |
7️⃣ more great weekend reads |
>> "No, Geese is not a psy-op": Wren Graves rebuts WIRED's "misleading" take on the digital marketing behind the Brooklyn band's meteoric rise. (Consequence)
>> Maggie Harrison Dupré reports that "a prominent PR firm is running a fake news site that's plagiarizing original journalism at incredible scale." (Futurism)
>> Taylor Lorenz shows how "influencers are replacing themselves with AI clones." (Vanity Fair)
>> Matt Solomon explains "why so many comics hate on 'Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen,'" the show replacing Stephen Colbert on CBS, at least temporarily. (LateNighter)
>> Lucas Manfredi reports that "consumer spending on video has plateaued and subscribers are reevaluating what they really need." (TheWrap)
>> Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman report on the "shocking secrets of Madison Square Garden's surveillance machine." (WIRED)
>> Kasia Pilat asks and answers: "Why is everyone wicked obsessed with this Boston Globe reporter?" (NYT)
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>> I missed this one the other day: "Television shopping network QVC Group filed for bankruptcy Thursday as part of a plan to cut more than $5 billion of debt, as declining viewership and a shift to online retail weighed on sales and squeezed margins." (Bloomberg)
>> After announcing that Self is folding, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said at the Semafor World Economy event that "the company does not expect to close down any additional magazine brands this year." (Semafor)
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The NYT's Motoko Rich, one of the reporters traveling on the papal plane with Leo, filed a dispatch about what it's like to interact with the Pope during the trip. He "greets each journalist personally," and "on the flight to Turkey, the pope revealed that he had solved The Times's Wordle puzzle in three guesses that morning," Rich wrote...
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The takeaway from CinemaCon |
Sharon Waxman's takeaway from this year's CinemaCon presentations: "The business of going to a movie theater — buying a ticket and sitting with strangers in a dark room — has come back with the passion of religion. Even Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos showed up for goodness sake."
Waxman says "the pivot is remarkable" given the prevailing narratives since Covid around the rise of streaming and the decline of theatrical. "But nothing ever stays the same, does it?"
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Bill Maher's serious message |
Bill Maher's final "New Rule" last night was: "When the people who are making AI are scared of AI, it's time to shut the whole thing down until we can figure out what the hell is going on."
Here's the full ten-minute clip. He wrote on X that "I thought about doing this without any jokes, something I've never done here in 23 years, to impress upon people how much different I feel this issue is from any I have ever covered..."
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