Super Bowl weekend is here! I'm heading to New Orleans and will send out a pregame edition from there on Sunday. But for now, let's get to Friday's news...
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Yesterday I wrote about President Trump's unreality and all the unusual challenges for the press that flow from his "firehose of falsehood."
Today I want to amplify a different take about Trump and see how it applies to the media environment. Earlier this week on his Marginal Revolution blog Tyler Cowen wrote about "Trumpian policy as cultural policy."
Trump, according to a new Gallup poll, "assumes office at a time of persistently low satisfaction with the U.S., overall, and with many specific aspects of the country."
So let's imagine "you hold a vision where the (partial) decline of America largely is about culture," Cowen wrote. "How might you fix the culture of America? You want to tell everyone that America comes first. That America should be more masculine and less soft. That we need to build. That we should 'own the libs.'"
If that's the intended message, then "every time the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think is the right direction, just do it," he wrote. "Do it in the view that the cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in import. Simply pass or announce or promise such policies. Do not worry about any other constraints. You don't even have to do them! They don't even all have to be legal! (Illegal might provoke more discussion.) They don't all have to persist!"
The executive orders and lawsuits and photo ops and Truth Social posts are all "investments in changing the culture," Cowen asserted. Flooding the zone with these cultural fights is "how you have an impact in an internet-intensive, attention-at-a-premium world."
I wasn't the only one who noticed Cowen's essay; The Free Press republished it on Thursday, calling it a "unified theory of Trump's hyperactive start."
The cultural impact is apparent every day. Here's one example from yesterday: "NCAA officially bans trans athletes from women's sports 1 day after Trump signs executive order."
Trump is also inserting himself into the culture – including by attending the Super Bowl this weekend and the Daytona 500 next week...
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Musk on the cover of TIME |
This morning TIME is releasing a new cover story by Simon Shuster and Brian Bennett about "Elon Musk's war on Washington." I'm sure Musk will post a meme reaction to the cover later today... |
'We were promised transparency' |
Media figures like Joe Rogan are cheering for Trump and Musk's slash-and-burn cuts without really knowing the details (because no one knows the details yet). But they sure like the way it sounds and feels.
Mark Cuban made a great point last night: Musk and co. preach transparency but they're being opaque about what they're actually doing at federal agencies.
"I absolutely want to see DOGE reduce wasteful spending," Cuban wrote. "But I want the process to be transparent. I don't want to have to guess which media reports are accurate or not."
"We were promised transparency," he added, so "we should see everything."
Musk purports to be an open book because he tweets constantly, but many of his tweets are misleading, to put it mildly. DOGE is tweeting about some of the group's work, but overall the effort is shrouded in secrecy. They say they're cancelling wasteful contracts. Which ones? They say they're pressing agencies to repeal needless policies. Which ones?
This lack of transparency is true across the federal government right now. Take last night's reports that almost the entire USAID workforce is being forced out. CNN cited "multiple USAID sources" since the agency and the White House aren't commenting.
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Liam Reilly writes: Responding to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about Politico being secretly bankrolled by USAID, Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Politico's parent Axel Springer, says "it's not subsidies, it's capitalism." Government agencies pay for Politico Pro and other products because "they need the service," he told Fareed Zakaria in an interview that will air this weekend.
Politico is very much playing defense right now. A note to readers about the recent right-wing lies is running at the top of its newsletters. But the financial damage has been done, at least for now. Axios says "the White House has directed the General Services Administration to terminate 'every single media contract' expensed by the agency," which, if completed, means lots of government workers will be losing access to premium news and intel.
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What a Paramount settlement would mean |
Los Angeles Times media reporter Stephen Battaglio says this Jake Tapper segment is a must-watch – "the most cogent and powerful explanation of why Paramount Global should not settle Trump's lawsuit over 60 Minutes."
"For Paramount to settle this suit would be hoisting a white flag of surrender," Tapper said. "It would be the network of Edward R. Murrow, at the behest of its owners, saying, we will not speak truth to power. We will acquiesce to power at the expense of truth."
Tapper quoted a CBS News source who said Paramount chair Shari Redstone "is not concerned about her legacy/democracy or the work we do. It's only about the deal [with Skydance]. Her pocketbook."
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Reps for the parties involved continue to decline to comment.
>> Writing in THR, Steven Zeitchik says "the heads of media companies" are "the last line of resistance to the Trump juggernaut" and finds they're in a tough spot, "caught between a workforce and creative partners who run a deep shade of blue and a sometimes vindictive West Wing occupant whose favor they may someday need (and whose punishment they rightfully fear)."
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CNN alum Barbara Starr, who covered the U.S. military with distinction for decades, says the expelling of major media outlets from the Pentagon is "a blow to the general public." The Pentagon calls it a "rotation program," giving workspace to new outlets, but "it's hard not to interpret the decision as anything other than a form of targeted retribution against publications that the Trump administration doesn’t like," she writes in CJR...
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Study: 'News influencers' favored Trump |
"What were audiences hearing from news influencers in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election?" That's what Pew explores in this new study, looking broadly at online content creators who post about current events. "Twice as many posts from news influencers about Harris were critical than were supportive," Pew found, while creators were more evenly split about Trump. More here...
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>> Andrea Mitchell will sign off her MSNBC program today. She will remain NBC's chief Washington correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent. (People)
>> "Meta has hired Henry Rodgers, the veteran chief national correspondent at The Daily Caller," to work on public policy. (TheWrap)
>> First-rate tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge is launching a newsletter called Spitfire News. (Spitfire)
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>> Charlotte Klein documents "the explosive success of The Bulwark." (NYMag)
>> Alexandra Alter profiles Rebecca Yarros, author of the "fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years," "Onyx Storm." (NYT)
>> Claire Landsbaum and Anna Silman write: "Under its new owners, The Daily Beast is finally turning a profit. Has it lost its soul in the process?" (Business Insider)
>> Tech billionaire Matthew Prince has a dream of an internet utopia where "there are no paywalls or intrusive belly fat ads required to keep media companies afloat" predicated on a three-step plan that will save media publishers and creators from content-scraping A.I. Could it actually work? Alyson Shontell explores it here. (Fortune)
>> Sixty-second mini dramas, which made $6.9 billion in ad sales and viewer spending in China last year, are coming to the U.S., Sohee Kim reports. (Bloomberg)
>> Amanda Perelli writes that early-day YouTubers are "cashing in on the podcast boom by creating a new identity, audience, and brand." (Business Insider)
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>> After tech earnings season, "you can forget the notion" that DeepSeek's success "in developing a competitive AI model on the cheap would prompt U.S. firms to pull back on AI investments," Martin Peers writes. (The Information)
>> Andrew Deck tested DeepSeek to see how its chatbot cites news publishers across its three settings. (NiemanLab)
>> "A spoof Russian news report" saying DeepSeek "was based on a secret Soviet code has found its way onto state TV, reflecting nostalgia in Russian society for a lost age of technological supremacy." (Reuters)
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Netflix distancing itself from Karla Sofía Gascón |
Elizabeth Wagmeister writes: Amid an escalating controversy over her past offensive tweets, Netflix is distancing itself from "Emilia Pérez" star Karla Sofía Gascón. The streaming service, trying to salvage the film's overall Oscar chances, is no longer in direct communication with her, a source familiar with the campaign told CNN. The source added that Netflix is hopeful Gascón's scandal won't bleed over to the film’s other nominated categories, particularly supporting actress nominee Zoe Saldaña, who won the Golden Globe for "Emilia Pérez" last month.
>> This weekend will be key in the Oscar race for all nominees, with the Critics Choice Awards, Producers Guild Awards and Directors Guild Awards all taking place...
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Now she says she'll stop talking |
Wagmeister adds: Last night Gascón took to Instagram yet again — this time to say she will stop speaking out about her social media controversy. Her latest apology post came after the film’s director Jacques Audiard said in an interview with Deadline that he was disavowing Gascón for hurting the film's team Oscar chances by constantly putting the spotlight on her own scandal. "I decided, for the film, for Jacques, for the cast, for the incredible crew who deserves it, for the beautiful adventure we all had together, to let the work talk for itself, hoping my silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, a beautiful ode to love and difference," Gascón wrote Thursday night.
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>> "The Super Bowl, traditionally one of the worst times of the year at the box office, could potentially see the best overall result since Covid for a No. 1 movie and the overall marketplace this week with Universal/DreamWorks Animation's 'Dog Man' hanging in for a high teens to possible $20 million second weekend," Anthony D'Alessandro writes. (Deadline)
>> An L.A. Superior Court judge "granted CBS a temporary restraining order" blocking Sony Pictures Television from assuming distribution of "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune," Rick Porter reports. (THR)
>> "A new documentary that goes behind the accidental death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of 'Rust'" is coming out next month on Hulu. (Variety)
>> The first-round lineup of "SNL" guests for the show's 50th-anniversary special is a long list of A-listers. (THR)
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