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Tuesday, October 21, 2025 |
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Just before we were about to hit "send" this morning, CNN's parent company broke some news. So let's start there: |
'Multiple parties' circling WBD |
It's been obvious for a while, and now it's official: Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale. WBD CEO David Zaslav says the media company has received unsolicited interest from "multiple parties," which indicates that Paramount Skydance is not the only suitor.
So WBD's board of directors has started a "review of strategic alternatives," which could result in a sale of the entire company, a continuation of the current plan to split the company into two, or some other outcome.
Under the preexisting breakup plan, one side, Warner Bros., would house the HBO Max streaming service and the movie studio, and the other side, Discovery Global, would house CNN and other channels. One intriguing possibility mentioned in the press release is "an alternative separation structure that would enable a merger of Warner Bros. and spin-off of Discovery Global to our shareholders." So could Paramount CEO David Ellison wind up with the movie studio, for instance, but not CNN?
Lots of questions, few answers right now. There is no immediate confirmation about which other "parties" are eyeing the for-sale sign, though CNBC is reporting that both Comcast and Netflix are interested in the streaming/studio side of the house. "Now this will become a public story, if you will," David Faber said on air.
Shares in WBD are up about 10% on investor enthusiasm about a potential deal. Here's my initial CNN.com story...
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"Evaluating potential interest, conducting due diligence, and assessing next steps will take time, likely over a period of weeks and months," Zaslav said in a memo to WBD staffers a few minutes ago. "There's no set timeline for final decisions, and the Board and leadership team will take the time required to review all options thoughtfully and in the best interests of the company." For now, the breakup is still set to take effect in mid-2026... |
These three eye-popping stories all have a couple of things in common:
– Lawfare's Anna Bower lucked into a great scoop when interim US attorney Lindsey Halligan texted her about the Letitia James case. The Signal messages reveal a lot. "She approached me. She invited my questions," Bower wrote. "She even encouraged me to stop chasing other reporters' stories and focus on my own." And yet when Bower drafted a story about their chat, Halligan laughably tried to claim that "everything I ever sent you is off record," while simultaneously saying "you're not a journalist." Huh?
– HuffPost's S.V. Dáte messaged Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asking who picked Budapest, Hungary, as the site of the next meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin. Leavitt replied to his serious inquiry with the words "your mom," sparking a days-long news cycle. The original question remains unaddressed.
– Politico's Daniel Lippman obtained racist and hateful text messages allegedly sent by Paul Ingrassia, Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel. One of the texts said, "I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it." Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Ingrassia is "not going to pass" through the confirmation process.
The point is not to "think twice before you text." It's to think twice before you express indecency or ignorance in any format.
Bower's story about Halligan was a big segment on "The Source with Kaitlan Collins" last night and "Morning Joe" this morning. Lippman's exclusive about Ingrassia is the most-read piece on Politico's website this morning. Yes, as Axios CEO Jim VandeHei said on "Joe," "the country is almost numb to nonsense." But these stories still do break through.
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Why leak? Here's one reason |
A lawyer for Ingrassia invoked "the age of AI" to suggest that the texts might be doctored or out of context. But Lippman interviewed "two people in the chat" and viewed the text chain in its entirety. This part stood out to me: One of the sources said he came forward because he wants "the government to be staffed with experienced people who are taken seriously."
>> Semafor's Josh Billinson commented, "'Maybe it's AI!' is going to quickly become the new 'I was hacked' when people get caught like this..."
>> You can read the lawyer's multiple responses in CNN's story.
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An extraordinary exchange |
Bower's story about texting with Halligan is just plain outstanding. Read it now if you haven't already. When Halligan saw her tweets, found her # and said "you are reporting things that are simply not true," Bower replied, "Ok, I'm all ears. What am I getting wrong?" But Halligan never really explained.
Bower was ultimately baffled by the outreach. It felt "so out of the ordinary and so unusual" that it was newsworthy, she told Collins last night. Halligan knows that "even the most minor misstep" will be picked apart by defense counsel, Bower said, "and yet, here she is, on the record, messaging with a reporter about an ongoing prosecution."
>> BTW, Halligan studied broadcast journalism in college, so she must know that a source can't retroactively claim messages were "off" the record...
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Trump's new weapon of choice |
New from the NYT this morning: "How Trump Is Using Fake Imagery to Attack Enemies and Rouse Supporters." Stuart A. Thompson reviewed the president's Truth Social account and found that "Trump has posted AI-generated images or videos at least 62 times" since late 2022. Read more about this "potent new part of modern political propaganda" here...
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Tonight NBC "tips off its first NBA broadcast in 23 years," Anthony Crupi writes for Sportico, as the Oklahoma City Thunder square off against the Houston Rockets and the Golden State Warriors face the Los Angeles Lakers. The network is leaning into "the nostalgia angle" while trying to "thread the needle:" NBA on NBC analyst Reggie Miller says the crew's challenge "is to merge the old with the new." The LAT's Stephen Battaglio has more here...
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Netflix reports earnings after the 🔔 |
With Netflix reporting earnings after the bell today, Harshita Mary Varghese and Kritika Lamba write for Reuters that the company "faces a crucial test:" proving "that its costly investments into advertising and video gaming can support the growth that made the streaming pioneer a Wall Street darling."
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Posthumously publishing 'Nobody's Girl' |
Before Virginia Roberts Giuffre died by suicide in April, she had completed the manuscript for her memoir, "Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice." The prominent Jeffrey Epstein accuser told Amy Wallace, who had been working on the book with her for years, that it needed to come out no matter what.
"She basically just said, in the case of my passing, I need and want this book to be published – not just for me, but for all survivors," Wallace said on NPR's "Morning Edition."
"Nobody's Girl" is out today, and CNN's Christian Edwards has some of the headlines from the memoir here...
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More of today's new nonfiction releases |
Julia Ioffe is getting incredible reviews for her first book, "Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy."
Karine Jean-Pierre is getting lambasted for "Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines."
Jeff Pearlman is going on tour with his latest, "Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur."
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Important new #s about news deserts |
The Medill Local News Initiative is out with this year's edition of the State of Local News report, finding that 213 counties are now "news deserts," with "zero locally-based news sources," and 1,524 counties are down to just a single local source left, usually a weekly paper. "Taken together, that means that one in seven Americans, almost 50 million people, live with limited or no access to local news," the researchers write.
>> Digital-only local sources are growing, but "don't come close to replacing the number of newspapers and journalism jobs being lost." Here's all the data...
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For solutions... look to this small town? |
NYT reporter Steven Kurutz went up to Maine to meet the NY and DC transplants who took big pay cuts to run the Midcoast Villager, a weekly newspaper that now "reads — and looks — better than a lot of fading city papers," and has found clever ways to bring in revenue while serving readers.
For one thing, the paper runs a cafe beneath its office. The Villager also recently hosted a writers' retreat for which "participants paid $2,600 for a weekend of harbor walks, yoga and writing workshops led by the author Lyz Lenz," as well as "a live storytelling evening at the Camden Opera House." And the paper's owner also operates a local inn...
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Shorenstein's new indie media initiative |
Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is setting up a new initiative focused on independent media, with Julia Angwin as the founding director. Shorenstein says it will conduct and host research; map the new info terrain; and hold events to better understand "diverse set of content creators - from Substackers to YouTubers - who increasingly provide civic information to the public."
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Political media notes & quotes |
>> Samantha Cole called out news organizations that "won't describe Trump’s AI video for what it is." Cole's chosen description: "The president pooping on America." (404 Media)
>> By the way, that video featured the Kenny Loggins song "Danger Zone," and Loggins objected. (Variety)
>> Zohran Mamdani's "flood-the-zone media strategy looks like a winning one," Michael Calderone writes. (TheWrap)
>> Speaking of Mamdani, he spoke with Katie Drummond "about building a social media machine" for WIRED's Big Interview feature. (WIRED)
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>> Following up on yesterday: "The AWS outage shows that when the internet breaks, we’re more vulnerable than ever." (CNN)
>> Meta said this morning that it has "disrupted 8 million accounts associated with scams since the start of 2025." (Engadget)
>> X is starting "a marketplace for inactive handles that will allow Premium subscribers to request and purchase usernames." (TechCrunch)
>> Elon Musk has postponed his launch of Grokipedia v0.1, saying that “we need to do more work to purge out the propaganda.” (X)
>> Britain's Channel 4 aired a news special titled "Will AI Take My Job?" and revealed at the end that the anchor "was entirely AI-generated." (Variety)
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Altman highlights progress with Hollywood |
OpenAI "appears to have calmed fears around Sora 2, winning over SAG-AFTRA, CAA, UTA and actor Bryan Cranston with new guardrails on the platform to protect actors' voices and likenesses," Gene Maddaus reports for Variety.
The talent agencies and OpenAI put out a joint statement yesterday, complete with a quote from Sam Altman, suggesting that Altman's "damage control" is having its intended effect, at least to some degree...
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Disney's Kimmelgate streaming slump |
Disney+ and Hulu cancellations "jumped in September" after Jimmy Kimmel was briefly suspended, according to data from Antenna that was shared first with the WSJ's Isabella Simonetti. Cancellation rates roughly doubled, according to the third-party analytics firm.
>> Semafor's Max Tani says this is reminiscent of the WaPo subscriber exodus last year: "Giving a win to Trump is meaningfully damaging to business when enough of the current paying audience leans left."
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>> Kimmel's back-to-work monologue has been dethroned: The "Tonight Show" performance of "Golden" (from "KPop Demon Hunters") has become "YouTube's most-viewed late-night clip of the season so far." (LateNighter)
>> Taylor Swift has eight of the top ten songs on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. (Billboard)
>> Nielsen's Gauge stats for September are out: "NFL Pushes Broadcast Networks to Eight-Month High" (THR)
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