Good morning! Here's the latest on "Anora," Conan O'Brien, "The Situation Room," The New Yorker, Sean Hannity, Alexis Ohanian, CoinDesk, and much more... |
Early efforts are underway to turn the Voice of America into the Voice of Trump.
One of the news outlet's chief correspondents, Steve Herman, has been benched and subjected to an HR investigation just weeks after one of President Trump's allies publicly attacked him. Another correspondent, White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, has been abruptly moved to a new beat.
The changes – as yet unexplained to the newsroom – are "having a chilling effect on the entire institution," a VOA staffer said.
Voice of America is the biggest broadcaster within the US Agency for Global Media, which also runs networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. USAGM, like other federal agencies, is under a microscope right now. And some staffers perceive that managers are trying to appease the new administration. Four sources told CNN on condition of anonymity that multiple Trump-related stories have been watered down in recent months.
The NYT's David Enrich and Minho Kim described some of the "blowback" in this Friday story, and NPR's David Folkenflik wrote about the concerns about "political meddling" in this Saturday story.
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VOA's mission in the Trump era |
USAGM's networks have historically used U.S. government funding to produce award-winning journalism. Its mission statement, codified in law, is to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy."
But the Trump administration has different expectations. Trump has appointed conservative media critic Brent Bozell III to run USAGM and has identified Kari Lake to run VOA. Bozell's Senate confirmation hearing is months away, and he can't push Lake through until later, so in the meantime Lake has been installed as a "senior adviser."
The reasons why Lake makes sense to Trump – she's a local TV anchor turned media-basher, election denier and MAGA promoter – are the same reasons why she stirs dread in the VOA newsroom. For example: Will Lake object to stories that accurately describe Trump (and her own) history of lying about election results?
"There is a lot of fear" about looming shakeups, said a longtime staffer who believes VOA is overly bureaucratic and in need of reorganizing, but doesn't want it to devolve into "Trump TV." Lake says it won't. But there was a telling line in the memo about her "senior adviser" role last week: It said "Kari's experience in journalism and broadcasting will be invaluable as we continue our mission to clearly and effectively present the policies of the Trump Administration around the world."
As I mentioned up above, that is not the assignment that Congress gave USAGM.
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Gilbert Flores/Penske Media/Getty Images
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>> So how did "Anora" take home five trophies last night, including best picture? This column by THR's Scott Feinberg is an excellent behind-the-scenes look at how Neon pulled it off. I learned a lot.
>> "Anora" director Sean Baker "is now the second person ever to win four Oscars in one night, with the first being Walt Disney," CNN's Sandra Gonzalez wrote.
>> This morning's New York Post leads with a photo of Mikey Madison and the headline "A Star Is Born."
>> "An energetic and very funny Conan O'Brien was Oscar's biggest winner," LateNighter's Bill Carter wrote.
>> The New Yorker celebrated the win for "I'm Not a Robot," its film that won best live action short.
>> "No Other Land" winning best documentary was both "a landmark and a rebuke," the NYT's Marc Tracy wrote, since no distributor would pick up the film in the United States.
>> "Despite an increasingly fraught political moment, Hollywood played it safe tonight," CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister wrote, citing a dearth of political references.
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Praising the 'communal experience' |
Seconding what Sean Baker said while accepting the Oscar for best director: "During the pandemic, we lost 1,000 screens in the U.S. And we continue to lose them regularly. If we don't reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture. This is my battle cry."
I noticed some movie theater operators posting on social media thanking Baker for praising the "communal experience" of theaters. Hopefully Conan's
CinemaStreams concept will catch on 😉
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A new TV home for the Oscars? |
"The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has begun the hunt for the Academy Awards' next TV home," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports. Disney's ABC has the rights through 2028. While negotiations haven't commenced, "the Academy has spoken informally with new potential partners, including Netflix, and is interested in talking to others as well..."
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CNN's schedule changes take effect today |
Maybe you already noticed! Audie Cornish debuted in her new 6 a.m. Eastern time slot this morning. Also new today: The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown" airs from 10 a.m. until noon; "The Arena with Kasie Hunt" premieres at 4; and Jake Tapper's "The Lead moves to the 5 and 6 p.m. hours. (Next week Rahel Solomon starts at 5 a.m., completing the new weekday schedule.) |
Sean Hannity will interview VP JD Vance on tonight's edition of "Hannity." Fox says "this will be Vance's first interview since the Oval Office blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky." Speaking of that... |
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The Trump-Zelensky meltdown was so significant that polls and podcasts had to add notes that they were conducted before the meeting. Today the fallout "is still widening," as CNN's top home page headline says right now.
"Trump described what happened on Friday as 'great television' and Russian television agrees," NBC's Keir Simmons reported from Moscow on MSNBC this morning. Simmons said "those scenes have been playing on Russian TV all weekend." For more from Moscow, check out CNN correspondent Matthew Chance's new analysis here.
And for a different take about the domestic reaction, read Batya Ungar-Sargon's piece for The Free Press. "To hear the media tell it, President Trump embarrassed himself and the country," she says. "Yet as with so many other events, the media narrative is entirely divorced from what the majority of Americans think."
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Bezos elaborates on 'free markets' |
When Jeff Bezos announced his new "personal liberties and free markets" approach to the Washington Post's opinion section (and dined with Trump the very same day), hundreds of X users pilloried him. On Sunday Bezos decided to reply to some. Responding to a user who said "so you're going fascist too Jeff? Bend the knee," Bezos said "there is nothing fascist about personal liberties and free markets. Replying an anti-capitalist crusader, Bezos said "we do NOT have free markets today and have not for some time. There is far too much interference in free markets in the form of corporate subsidies and special interest tax breaks etc." It's fun and weird to see Bezos mixing it up with anonymous critics on X, but hey, it's worked for Elon Musk...
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Another 75,000+ cancellations |
On Friday NPR's David Folkenflik reported that more than 75,000 digital subscribers have cancelled on the Post since Bezos announced his opinion section overhaul. The Post has been wooing replacements for all the folks who cancelled last fall over the Kamala Harris nonendorsement. Now the hole is even deeper. Key quote: "There is broad consensus inside the Post that without Bezos' decisions, the paper would be up hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers from where it was before the election. Instead, the numbers NPR has been able to obtain indicate a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers."
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>> Truly nutty stuff: "CNN vehemently rejected a conspiracy theory that has taken hold on the right — which suggests that the network somehow had advance knowledge" of the attempt on Trump's life, Joe DePaolo reports. (Mediaite)
>> Gannett fired Palm Beach Post editorial page editor Tony Doris "after he decided to publish a cartoon about the war in Gaza." What critics called "antisemitic," Doris called "antiwar," Ben Mullin reports. (NYT)
>> Richard Tofel said "the lesson here isn’t really about the cartoon or the war. It is that private equity funded Gannett is simply no longer willing to face down community challenges in order to preserve editorial independence." (Bluesky)
>> The NYT's David Leonhardt is becoming the Opinion's section editorial director and will "work to carve out a new vision for the editorial board." (NYT)
>> Incredible impact from MJ Lee's reporting: "USAID reinstates contracts for Georgia company that helps feed malnourished kids after Elon Musk responds to CNN reporting." (CNN)
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Journalists continue to find mistake after mistake in DOGE's "receipts." As the NYT notes here, "the repeated errors have raised questions about the quality and veracity of the information that the Musk team is putting out, including whether it is being misled by other departments." Ultimately it is a "competence" issue. So many Americans want government waste eliminated, but they also don't want to be hoodwinked. (Meantime, Musk complained to Joe Rogan that "it's only Fox News that's talking about the positive things that DOGE has found.")
>> DOGE "laid off a team whose purpose was to make the government more efficient." (The Atlantic)
>> Now Mark Cuban is offering to fund "invest and/or help" those workers from the GSA's 18F unit. (TechCrunch)
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>> New this morning: Frank McCourt says Alexis Ohanian has joined his bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations "as a strategic adviser specializing in social media." (Reuters)
>> Meanwhile, the UK's data protection watchdog is the latest to launch a probe into TikTok and its impact on children. (The Guardian)
>> "It was not our intention to be a propaganda machine:" The creators of the "Trump Gaza" video say it was meant to be satirical, and they don't know how it reached Trump and his Truth Social account. (NBC)
>> Maggie Harrison Dupré says Pinterest, "the web's de facto mood board," is "engulfed in a torrent of uncanny AI-generated slop." (Futurism)
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The top story in Crypto... |
...Is, of course, how Trump sparked "a $300+ billion rally in the global crypto market yesterday with two social media posts." Axios reporter Brady Dale summed it up here.
This morning's edition of CoinDesk's excellent Crypto Daybook Americas newsletter opened this way: "The flip-flopping nature of the crypto market is on full display as the sentiment on social media has changed from 'it's so over' to 'we are so back' in just 24 hours, thanks to President Donald Trump naming BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA as candidates for the long-promised strategic crypto reserve..."
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>> Disney and Marvel's "Captain America: Brave New World" took in a disappointing $15 million in its third weekend, bringing its domestic total to $163.7 million. Focus Features' "Last Breath" nabbed No. 2. (Boxoffice Pro)
>> "The family of pop star Liam Payne have criticized the media for causing 'indescribable, lasting damage' through its coverage of his death." (BBC)
>> George Miller is considering another "Mad Max" movie. (Deadline)
>> And ICYMI: Here's the "SNL" rendition of the disastrous Trump-Zelensky sit-down, with Mike Myers making a cameo as Musk. (YouTube)
>> Musk wasn't laughing: He replied to someone criticizing the "SNL" sketch and said "humor fails when it lies." (X)
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