Hey, happy Sunday. So much news has landed since Friday's edition: The Pentagon is turning the screws on Stars & Stripes. CNN is pushing back on "political threats" and "insults." NBC is ending "Access Hollywood." The New York Times is out with a big new story about Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. And there's more. But first... |
The FCC threat from Mar-a-Lago |
FCC chair Brendan Carr's latest warning to local TV station license-holders didn't come out of nowhere. It came out of Mar-a-Lago.
Carr was at the president's Palm Beach resort on Saturday and was seen talking with Trump there, a club-goer confirmed to CNN.
This provides some crucial context for Carr's midday X post, which appalled free speech advocates and First Amendment scholars.
In the post, Carr threatened the licenses of local broadcasters over news coverage he deemed to be "fake." He attached one of Trump's Truth Social messages railing against "terrible reporting" about the Iran war.
So not only was Carr repeating Trump's talking points, he was tweeting from Trump's club. He visits Mar-a-Lago every month or so during the winter months, recognizing (as many others in Trump's orbit have) that it's an ideal way to get face time with the president.
The timing of this weekend's visit left me wondering if Carr's team cooked up the media-centric meme graphic that Trump posted on Saturday morning. The meme celebrated Trump "reshaping the media," including several changes Carr spearheaded, such as Paramount's agreement to hire a CBS ombudsman.
Carr flew back north this morning, which I can confirm because I was on the same flight out of Fort Lauderdale.
No, he didn't give me a detailed readout of his talk with POTUS. He no-commented me about the origins of the meme graphic. But... I think he enjoyed the eruption that followed his post.
Critics said Carr's threat was "authoritarian" and "unconstitutional." The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), which represents local TV news executives and personnel across the country, called him a "bully with a briefcase."
Others said he just wanted to make some noise — perhaps to placate the president.
"More than anything," The Guardian's Jeremy Barr commented overnight, "Brendan Carr is a master at gaming the media and generating copious amounts of headlines about his threats without the proper context." So let's get into that...
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Why Carr's threats ring hollow |
Carr wrote: "Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."
In reality, the FCC has not denied a license renewal in decades, and the entire system seems set up to favor license-holders. Any government action against a licensee would prompt a protracted legal battle, especially in the current media-bashing climate, because a station would likely cite Trump's retributive streak and mount a First Amendment case.
"Carr's threats are hollow," public interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman told me last night. "He poses no genuine danger to any broadcasters' licenses based on his unhappiness with their content."
But that doesn't mean he and his fellow Republican commissioners won't try. I suspect that they will try at some point.
When I tweeted a quote from Schwartzman yesterday, noting that "TV licenses don’t even come up for renewal until late 2028," Carr responded to me, saying, "The Communications Act authorizes the FCC to call in licenses for early renewal."
Doing so would trigger a hearing process, with many opportunities for stations to beat back the Trump administration's pressure.
"Contested broadcast renewal and revocation cases must first go to an FCC judge for a hearing that can take months or even a year or two, after which an appeal must go to the full membership of the FCC," Schwartzman explained. "Only then does the case even get to court, where the Communications Act gives licensees broad protection."
But station owners have to be willing to defend themselves. And that's not always a given.
I know some station executives who shrug off the administration's threats, believing it's all just bluster. But I also know that stations and their parent companies are uniquely vulnerable to government pressure when mergers are on the line.
And we've all seen in the past year how some owners have acquiesced and made Trump-friendly moves in an effort to win FCC approval of pending deals. That's why CBS has an ombudsman now.
We've also seen big station owners like Nexstar court Carr while awaiting permission to buy rivals. Perhaps that's why the National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group that represents TV station owners, hasn't commented on Carr's latest threat.
"To the extent that there is a problem," Schwartzman told me, "it is the result of the cowardice of broadcasters and their trade association being more interested in regulatory relief rather than defending their First Amendment rights."
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Two notable new reactions: |
While I was landing at Newark, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson was on Fox News, where Jacqui Heinrich asked him, "Do you think it's the role of the government to police that kind of coverage?" Johnson said no: "I'm a big supporter of the First Amendment. I do not like the heavy hand of government, no matter who's wielding it, so nah, I'd rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible."
And just now, the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, Anna Gomez, responded to Carr's threat with this tweet: "The FCC can issue threats all day long, but it is powerless to carry them out. Such threats violate the First Amendment and will go nowhere. Broadcasters should continue covering the news, fiercely and independently, without fear of government pressure."
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IMHO, stories about this topic should state high up that TV stations are not at serious risk of being banned from the airwaves because of Carr's crusade, but that his comments still carry weight since he represents the US government and advances Trump's policy agenda. (He had a "45-47" hat with him at the airport today.)
"Even if Carr doesn't have authority to do what he's threatening, these threats matter greatly," CNN's Aaron Blake argued in an X post this morning.
"He's recruiting MAGA to a more restrictive view of the First Amendment, at least for MAGA's perceived foes," Blake wrote. "It's impacting the Overton window."
I'm going to find a place to add that point to our CNN.com analysis piece right now, maybe next to the paragraph that says this:
If media companies are pressured into submission and self-censorship, Carr will achieve some of what Trump wants without explicit government action.
Many liberal critics of the press say that's already happened to some degree. But RTDNA, the association that represents TV newsroom types, said its membership won't be deterred: "They've faced far worse and kept reporting. They'll keep reporting now."
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Speaking of undeterred... |
The Trump White House and its MAGA media allies continue to assail CNN's war reporting. One White House attack on Friday was titled "CNN Is Lying to Undermine Operation Epic Fury’s Crushing Success." Pete Hegseth shared the blog post and called it a "fact," conflating fact and opinion.
Undeterred, CNN CEO Mark Thompson issued a statement Friday night that couldn't have been clearer:
"We stand by our journalism. Politicians have an obvious motive for claiming that journalism which raises questions about their decisions is false. At CNN our only interest is in telling the truth to our audiences in the U.S. and around the world and no amount of political threats or insults is going to change that."
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☎️ Calling reporters while complaining about coverage |
In between his Truth Social complaints about war reporting, Trump keeps picking up the phone for reporters. Yesterday, he spoke with NBC's Kristen Welker and claimed that "Iran wants to make a deal, and I don't want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet."
The Atlantic's Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker are out with an excellent new piece about Trump's cell phone number being DC's "hottest commodity." They note, re: Trump's rapid-fire phone calls with reporters, "few of these interviews have led to a lasting impact on the nation’s understanding of the war..."
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Combat 'as social media content' |
The White House's war-as-video-game memes just keep coming. "Packaging live combat as social media content — scoring real kills in real time, and broadcasting it to an audience of millions — is a first in the history of American warfare," Zachary Basu writes for Axios. He says the game-type images "are the most visible expression of a broader phenomenon — a country that has built an entire ecosystem around the consumption of war as content."
>> Meanwhile, Mike Florio points out that the NFL, which usually "aggressively enforces its rights to game footage," has stayed silent about the use of copyrighted content in White House war videos. But some former players are speaking out, WaPo's Robert Klemko reports.
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Pentagon outlines intended changes to Stars & Stripes |
The Defense Department has outlined "a sweeping 'modernization' effort for Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper," according to an eight-page memo reviewed by WaPo's Scott Nover and Liam Scott. The paper's ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, "who is charged by Congress with defending the outlet’s editorial independence," told them the memo threatens that independence, "and it does so at the detriment of the troops who rely on the newspaper for complete coverage and continued accurate coverage that is not propaganda."
>> Check out Stars & Stripes' own reporting about the impending changes here.
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TikTok investors are paying the Trump admin $10 billion 🤯 |
This was Miriam Gottfried and Amrith Ramkumar's gobsmacking Friday night exclusive for the WSJ: "The Trump administration is set to receive a roughly $10 billion fee from investors in the recently completed deal to take control of TikTok's U.S. business."
The Trump-approved investors have already paid the Treasury Department "about $2.5 billion," and several additional payments are forthcoming, which is "nearly unprecedented."
>> Axios reporter Dan Primack, who has been all over the TikTok story, tweeted that the fee is "kinda insane. The entire enterprise value was only around $14 billion. So this would be a 71% 'banker's' fee." |
3️⃣ more big stories about the media biz |
>> A big rights negotiation between the NFL and CBS is now underway, and Alex Sherman reports that Paramount may end up paying "an extra $1 billion or more." (CNBC)
>> Another sign that the first-run syndication TV era is ending: NBCUniversal is "ending production of 'Access Hollywood,' 'Access Live,' 'Karamo' and 'The Steve Wilkos Show' in a major strategic shift for the company," Alex Weprin reports. (THR)
>> Speaking of NBCU, "Peacock is debuting a suite of new products geared toward mobile users, emphasizing the vertical nature of smartphones in a bid to grow engagement with its streaming platform." Among the products: "An AI-generated avatar of Andy Cohen." (THR)
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The deepest look inside the WaPo upheaval yet... |
Ben Mullin, Erik Wemple and Katie Robertson have tons of new detail from inside The Washington Post in this story on Page One of today's New York Times. They say owner Jeff Bezos "has told many people at the paper that his goal is the same as always: for The Post to pay for itself."
The huge cuts last month were spurred by a Bezos-led strategy to "reduce the newsroom's budget by half and double the productivity of those who remained, all while protecting some core parts of The Post's coverage, like investigative journalism."
Some of the other key details:
>> Exec editor Matt Murray told Will Lewis he planned to resign last November, when the cuts were in the works and Murray "felt sidelined in the preparations." Bezos called and talked him into staying "and gave him a major role in the layoff plan."
>> The week of the wrenching layoffs, "more than 60,000 readers canceled their digital subscriptions," according to an internal document reviewed by the NYT.
>> Bezos, by all accounts, wants data-driven decision-making. But when David Shipley, the opinion editor at the time, warned Bezos that scrapping candidate endorsements and "changing the editorial ideology could turn off some subscribers," Bezos responded, "I don't care," according to a person with knowledge of the exchange.
>> At a recent meeting with Post journalists, "Bezos reassured the group that he was committed to its future, and said he had spurned seven offers to sell The Post." |
"The time has come to crown some Oscar winners," CNN's Dan Heching writes. "The 98th Academy Awards are set to roll out Sunday in the heart of Hollywood, with funnyman Conan O'Brien on tap to host the proceedings for the second year in a row." You can stream CNN and Variety's red carpet show, led by Elizabeth Wagmeister and Ramin Setoodeh, starting at 4 p.m. ET.
>> "Two Oscar-nominated Iranian films will have a moment on the global stage" tonight, CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Sandra Gonzalez report here.
>> There are a number of good stories about prediction markets "bringing big money into the awards show experience," as John Jurgensen's version for the WSJ says.
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The politics of being alive |
I thought this Atlantic piece by Jake Pitre was really well argued: "Hollywood Isn't Directly Attacking Trump. It's Doing Something More Interesting."
Rather than heavy-handed sermons, films and shows are exploring "how being alive feels during a tumultuous period," Pitre writes. "They capture the atmosphere, the mood, the ambient existence of everyday people who are living through a transformative time in history, whether or not they recognize that they are doing so."
...Which is why I predict "One Battle After Another" will win the Oscar for Best Picture tonight. (It's a film "people will remember forever," WBD CEO David Zaslav said at a Hollywood gathering the other night.)
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'Today is not a normal Oscars' |
Today, we'll give the last word to the Committee for the First Amendment, which represents 3,000+ members of the entertainment industry, and released a statement earlier today. Here's the message in full:
"Today is not a normal Oscars.
Yesterday, the sitting Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr, threatened that TV broadcasters must 'course correct' their coverage of the Iran war or 'they will lose their licenses.'
FCC Carr's threat to punish reporting on the war that the Trump administration doesn't like came just one day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth openly called for CNN to be taken over by Paramount — and just one hour after the president posted an image outlining his plan to 'reshape the media' by defunding public news, firing late-night hosts and news anchors, and waging war on media companies.
Make no mistake about it: These are direct attacks on the First Amendment and part of a deliberate march toward authoritarianism. In that world, journalists are punished for telling the truth, media companies are expected to fall in line, and dissent is treated as a threat.
But that future is not inevitable.
Do not obey in advance. Speak loudly, stand with journalists, and defend the very freedoms that make moments like today possible.
None of this is normal — and we must act accordingly, together."
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