Happy Friday. Here's the latest on "The Daily," Elon Musk, Stars & Stripes, CBS News, Mother Jones, Ted Sarandos, Lucasfilm, and much more... |
Sometimes it's helpful to hear how the political turmoil in the US looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Enter Cameron Barr, the former managing editor of The Washington Post, who worked in the highest echelons of American journalism for decades and now lives in the north of England, running investigations for Mill Media. What he sees happening is a smothering of journalism.
Barr wrote on LinkedIn yesterday about the FBI seizure of his former Post colleague Hannah Natanson's devices, saying "the roar of shock and outrage is entirely warranted."
Then he wrote: "This is what it means to practice journalism under an authoritarian regime. Reporters' homes are searched and their devices are seized by the state. The owners of media companies are co-opted, their journalists forced out or pressured into silence. Law enforcement officers inflict violence against journalists doing their jobs. News organizations are told to sign absurd loyalty oaths. Officials whose job it is to communicate with the public and its surrogates — reporters — use their podiums to bully and intimidate."
Keep scrolling for a few follow-ups about some of the specific incidents he cited...
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Signs of distress in Minneapolis |
Minneapolis is "becoming a critical testing ground for Trump’s strongman project," Stephen Collinson writes in this new CNN analysis. He says "the sight of masked, armed men in camouflage piling out of cars, tackling people on the streets and demanding citizenship papers evokes authoritarian imagery that feels distinctly un-American."
This morning's St. Paul Pioneer Press includes a photo of an upside-down American flag, a sign of distress:
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Pioneer Press via Freedom Forum |
I hear that "60 Minutes" is "crashing," in TV parlance, a piece about Minneapolis and ICE for this Sunday's broadcast... |
Turmoil at Stars & Stripes |
The Trump admin is exerting political pressure on Stars & Stripes, the independent military newspaper that informs US servicemembers worldwide.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell's Thursday statement about impending changes at the paper came as a shock to staffers, who hadn't heard directly about any revamp yet, and who now fear that the news outlet’s independence and credibility is at risk.
Parnell's vague comments — reiterated in a story that the Pentagon placed with the right-wing Daily Wire website — drew swift criticism from several Democratic lawmakers and First Amendment advocates.
"The Pentagon is trying to turn this independent newsroom into a mouthpiece for the administration’s political messaging," said Tim Richardson of PEN America. "This action tramples both the First Amendment and the congressional mandate that the publication remain editorially independent." Here's my full story...
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Latest updates on the FBI action against the Post |
Prosecutors say "the longtime government contractor whose activity prompted the controversial search of a Washington Post reporter's home acknowledged he mishandled classified information," CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Devan Cole report, citing a court hearing transcript. Here are all the details.
>> On the topic of the Post, the aforementioned Cameron Barr noted who's staying "silent" about the FBI search: Post owner Jeff Bezos. "It's not just the chest-thumping overreach of the Trump administration that will crush American freedoms," Barr wrote, "it's the silence of its enablers."
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CNN's main homepage headline right now: "Majority of Americans think Trump's first year back in office is a failure." The new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds that "public opinion on nearly every aspect of President Donald Trump's first year back in the White House is negative," CNN's team reports.
>> One media-industry nugget: The pollsters asked about specific examples of Trump flexing his power, and when Trump's changes to cultural institutions like the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center came up, a whopping 62% said Trump has gone too far on that front.
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'The Daily' expands to Sundays |
The NYT's flagship podcast "The Daily" is currently just Monday through Friday. But it should actually be daily... right? Well, starting this weekend, the podcast will add Sunday episodes. Per an internal memo, Michael Barbaro, Natalie Kitroeff and Rachel Abrams "will move beyond the front page to explore the stories that define our culture, explore our health, and illuminate how we live..."
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The 'internal bleeding' controversy |
A CBS News report based on two anonymous "US officials" appears to be the latest point of contention within the network. According to the story, reported by Nicole Spanga and Jennifer Jacobs, the officials said ICE agent Jonathan Ross "suffered internal bleeding to the torso" after fatally shooting Renee Nicole Good.
The Guardian's Jeremy Barr writes that the report, which was first posted to X on Wednesday without an article, was met internally with skepticism, including from the network's SVP David Reiter, who wrote in an email, "I'm no doctor, but internal bleeding is a very broad term and can range in severity." One staffer told Barr: "There was big internal dissension... It was viewed as a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by [the Trump administration] to someone who'd carry it online."
>> Over at Too Much TV, Rick Ellis reports that Spanga and Jacobs "wanted to wait on publication until they could get more details and confirmation, but that higher-ups at the news division pushed to publish the story."
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Mother Jones sues Bureau of Prisons |
For what? Ghislaine Maxwell's records. David Corn's question: "Why was Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer transferred to a cushy prison?" Corn says his FOIA request for records has been ignored, so the Reporters Committee has filed a federal lawsuit in DC on behalf of Mother Jones "to compel the BOP to provide the relevant records." Corn wrote more about it here...
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The hostile bid's grand tour... |
Paramount leaders "held talks in recent days with French President Emmanuel Macron amid a European charm offensive to garner support for its $108.4 billion hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery," Bloomberg reported. David Ellison personally met with UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy, Deadline added.
>> Meanwhile, the Delaware Chancery Court rejected Paramount's request to expedite its lawsuit against the WBD yesterday. WBD (CNN's parent) said the judge saw "right through" Paramount's "unserious attempt to distract."
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Sarandos talks about Trump |
Liam Reilly writes: Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos attempted to assuage concerns over the company's Warner Bros. deal in a new interview with the NYT's Nicole Sperling.
Sarandos said he's spoken with Trump "a couple times since the election," and "what I've come to understand is he sees this as an important industry. It's an industry he likes a lot, so he'll take a keen interest... in the context of protecting jobs and protecting the industry."
>> As for Trump recently reposting an OANN article titled "Stop the Netflix Cultural Takeover," the exec said, "I don't know why he would have done that... I don't want to overread it, either."
>> John Oliver said on Trevor Noah's podcast that "Last Week Tonight" is "not going to change" regardless of who acquires HBO.
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The media's coldest dateline |
The world's media have flocked to Greenland "as Trump turns the Arctic island into a geopolitical hot spot," The AP's Emma Burrows reports from Nuuk, the capital.
"Scores of journalists have arrived," she says, "from outlets including The AP, Reuters, CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera as well as from Scandinavian countries and Japan." Along Nuuk's shopping street, "journalists stand every few meters, approaching locals for their thoughts, doing live broadcasts or recording stand-ups. Local politicians and community leaders say they are overwhelmed with interview requests..."
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>> Katie Pavlich, whose NewsNation show launches next Monday, will interview Trump on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of his second swearing-in. (TheWrap)
>> Former Washington Post Opinion editor David Shipley is joining the NYT as an editor at large. (NYT)
>> "Politico editor John Harris announced he's becoming chairman" and will "begin the search this year for a new Politico editor-in-chief." (X)
>> Variety's Tatiana Siegel has "quit the trade publication to join Rupert Murdoch's California Post," where she'll write for its Page Six. (TheWrap)
>> Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith joined The Atlantic as a managing director overseeing events. (The Atlantic)
>> Bloomberg White House beat veteran Jeff Mason is jumping to Reuters. (TBN)
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Musk ex sues over 'undressing' pics |
"Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sued Musk's xAI on Wednesday, alleging that the company’s AI chatbot Grok generated sexually explicit deepfake images of her without her consent," CNN's Samantha Delouya reports. The lawsuit claims that "Grok generated and distributed 'countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content' of her at users’ requests, even after she publicly informed Grok that she 'did not consent' to being digitally undressed." The Musk-owned AI company had no comment. Full story here...
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More of today's tech talk |
>> "After X announced that it had disabled, in some locations, a controversial Grok tool that allows users to digitally undress photos of real people, the tool remains functional on the stand-alone Grok app," WaPo's Karla Adam, Faiz Siddiqui, and Tatum Hunter report.
>> Google "is increasingly prioritizing AI summaries, X posts and YouTube videos on its Discover mobile aggregation platform." Dom Ponsford says this change "could be devastating for publishers who rely heavily on Discover for referral traffic." (Press Gazette)
>> "Social media companies have collectively deactivated nearly five million accounts belonging to Australian teenagers just a month after a world-first ban on under‑16s took effect, the country's internet regulator said, a sign the measure has had a swift and sweeping impact." (Reuters)
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The WSJ's lead about Kathleen Kennedy stepping down as Lucasfilm president: "The Star Wars empire is getting new leadership for only the second time since its launch nearly 50 years ago, as Disney opens a new chapter for one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and scrutinized franchises." Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni will become president, with Lynwen Brennan as co-president. Puck's Matthew Belloni assessed Kennedy's legacy in this typically must-read column.
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