TGIF! We're compiling some of this week's most insightful stories and columns for a weekend reads edition. If there's one you'd recommend, share it via email. Now to today's news from CBS, NPR, Cloudflare, Anthropic, and more... |
The 'un-Trumping' of Kennedy |
Now that a judge has affirmed the law and said that President Trump has to come off the Kennedy Center, he is washing his hands of the arts institution.
His name will apparently be erased within the next week. But as the "un-Trumping of the Kennedy Center" takes effect, let's not lose sight of the damage that's been done, from the exodus of artists to the out-of-work stagehands.
"For all the stigma and turmoil that President Trump has brought onto the Kennedy Center, the people who are most harmed are the people who work there — including the National Symphony Orchestra, the very existence of which is imperiled by the callousness and confusion surrounding the president’s attempted takeover," Variety's Jem Aswad wrote this week, sharing an op-ed by Ben Folds, who was an artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra until last year.
Right now, the orchestra doesn't even know if it has a home, Folds wrote, and "there's currently no plan or solution in sight to save the organization."
Observing that "the removal of Trump's name takes up all the oxygen," he urged journalists to cover the tangible impacts. The NYT has a detailed new story about the orchestra's woes here...
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Speaking of Trump and the arts... |
"We don't want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep, we've told them all to stay home. All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played," Trump wrote on Truth Social last night, seemingly confirming that the June 24 semiquincentennial concert in DC will now be a Trump rally with special guests like Lee Greenwood.
>> Veteran DC reporter Tom Sherwood reacted on X, "A politicized 250th? Just like the Trump military parade last year. It's all about Trump..."
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4️⃣ more Trump/media notes |
>> Trump's legal team "has refused to hand over financial information requested by BBC lawyers in his $10 billion defamation case against the broadcaster," Daniel Thomas and Ella Lee report. (FT)
>> Trump is taping an interview today with Kristen Welker for this Sunday's "Meet the Press." Expect a clip in time for the "Nightly News." (NBC)
>> Earlier this week, he sat down with Miranda Devine and told a "series of obvious lies" that "went unchallenged," Daniel Dale found. (CNN)
>> Brendan Carr went on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" and said the FCC has no plans to probe bias at CBS relating to the "60 Minutes" mess. Jeff Storobinsky shared the full interview, which also hit on Disney, DEI, and more. (CNN)
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No news is good news for CBS as it seeks to lower temp |
"The Nick Bilton charm offensive is fully underway," the NYT's Ben Mullin wrote. Bilton's memo to staff yesterday praised the three remaining correspondents and sought to reassure them that he shares their values and vision. He also wrote that "it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: We will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on those stories."
Matching reassuring words with actions, Bilton also said Maria Gavrilovic, who worked closely with Scott Pelley for years, has been named senior producer.
There's still no official word on whether Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim will return for Season 59. My understanding is that Whitaker and Wertheim are currently under contract, and as for Stahl, CAA head Bryan Lourd "has quietly begun advising" her about next steps, Puck's Matt Belloni scooped overnight.
And the New York Post's Alexandra Steigrad and Charles Gasparino reported that Stahl was out on assignment taping a story for "60" in recent days. I continue to believe that the trio will stay put, but anything is possible.
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'Will Ellison intervene?' |
Bilton's memo contained numerous written commitments to the team. If you haven't read it yet, I posted the text on X.
But will people trust him and, by extension, Bari Weiss? "This is one of those New York media scandals that has metastasized to L.A. and could start impacting talent relations throughout the company," Belloni wrote. His column was titled: "At What Point Will Ellison Intervene at CBS News?"
Every few hours, there's a new headline like this: "Morley Safer of 60 Minutes was my father. He would be disgusted by what Bari Weiss is doing to CBS."
But Weiss has her defenders, too. "An intellectually honest fourth estate is an indispensable safeguard of a healthy republic. Accordingly, it is imperative that Weiss succeed in her quest to refashion CBS News into a genuinely fair and balanced network," conservative pundit Josh Hammer argues in this Newsweek op-ed...
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Where that viral Joe Rogan rumor came from |
After Scott Pelley was fired from "60 Minutes," a bizarre rumor started making the rounds: That CBS was considering Joe Rogan for a role on the newsmagazine. (As if he'd even want to be considered!)
A CBS spokesperson flatly denied it yesterday. But the virality was fueled by an irresponsible Wednesday article from the Austin American-Statesman, a Hearst-owned newspaper, headlined "Could Joe Rogan replace Anderson Cooper on '60 Minutes'? Here's what we know."
That story was pure aggregation of a rumor published nearly three months ago by an unreliable source, Radar Online, that claimed the "blockbuster" idea was "setting off panic and power plays up and down network corridors." It's not.
So what was the American-Statesman thinking? What kind of journalism is it producing? Olivia Messer, whose Austin-based outlet The Barbed Wire just had to shut down after running out of money, answered: "It's the kind that happens when one conglomerate buys all the largest papers in the entire state and invests heavily in aggregation-based trending news coverage because it's less expensive than original reporting and relies on earlier career journalists."
>> As for the virality of the claim, Variety's Brian Steinberg nailed it: "The very idea of Joe Rogan getting a spot in the talent lineup at 60 Minutes is silly. But the fact that reporters are calling CBS News for comment on it is not, and a signal of how the show's brand can be weakened by public spectacle..."
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Paramount slams 'clumsy' merger challenge |
"Paramount has asked a California court to toss out a lawsuit seeking to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, calling it a 'misguided' and 'clumsy' attempt to 'politicize antitrust law,'" TheWrap's Lucas Manfredi reports. "This clumsy attempt to politicize antitrust litigation, untethered to any established antitrust principles or law, has no place in this courthouse and must be rejected," the company wrote in a Wednesday filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
"A hearing for the case has been scheduled for July 16," Manfredi notes. Read more on that here…
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'NJ cop accused of stealing reporter's camera' |
State prosecutors in New Jersey "are accusing a police sergeant of stealing a photojournalist's camera while the photographer was being treated at a hospital for injuries suffered at a protest near Delaney Hall," Sophie Nieto-Munoz reports for New Jersey Monitor.
>> The US Press Freedom Tracker has been following other incidents relating to the anti-ICE protests outside Delaney Hall in Newark. In one case, photojournalist said his camera lens was destroyed when he was struck by a baton...
>> "What we are seeing with increasing frequency is not simply isolated incidents involving individual journalists," Mickey H. Osterreicher of the National Press Photographers Association emailed this morning. "The larger concern is the growing disconnect between the constitutional protections recognized by courts and the reality journalists often face on the ground. Rights are only meaningful when government officials respect and enforce them."
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'This story is going to get you a gun in your face' |
NPR's Bobby Allyn published a first-person account last night alleging he was threatened by George Santos over the ex-congressman's suspicious Kalshi trades. Allyn said he got a call from a blocked number one day after reporting that the DOJ and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating Santos for insider trading.
"This story is going to get you a gun in your face," Allyn alleges Santos said via the blocked number. When the tech reporter asked him to clarify, Santos allegedly replied, "You know what I mean." Here's the rest of the account...
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Update on that story about YouTube and publisher paywalls |
Yesterday, we linked to Bron Maher's report that "YouTube is working on integrating its platform with publisher paywalls, a move that could fundamentally reshape the news industry’s relationship" with the platform. A YouTube exec said on stage at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress that "we have product and engineers working on it," creating quite a buzz in the media industry.
But YouTube "has walked back" the executive's comment, Maher now reports. The company says this: "At the moment, there are no plans to launch a paywall integration with news publishers." At the moment...
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Google's VIP search profiles |
Google "now lets big creators and publishers in the US claim dedicated profiles in Search to highlight things like videos, articles, and their other profiles online," though the feature "won't be available to most people or organizations," The Verge's Jay Peters reports...
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>> "Website traffic from AI agents and bots has eclipsed its human-generated counterpart for the first time, according to Cloudflare, an earlier-than-expected milestone that speaks to AI's rapid advance and impact." (NBC)
>> Anthropic warns that the AI industry "needs to build a 'brake pedal,' or companies risk losing control of their creations." Co-founder Jack Clark talked about this on "AC360" last night. (CNN)
>> On Page One of today's WSJ: "Apple hopes for AI dominance by fixing its maligned chatbot." (WSJ)
>> Meta is "introducing a new AI creator assistant on Facebook that will give creators personalized recommendations based on their content style, performance, community, and goals." (TechCrunch)
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>> Thomas Pauken II, "who worked as an editor and commentator for state-run media in China," has pleaded guilty "to working as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government in the U.S.," Josh Gerstein reports. (POLITICO)
>> "Victoria Derbyshire, one of the BBC's most prominent news presenters, was the subject of a workplace conduct investigation over her interactions with multiple colleagues," Jake Kanter writes. (Deadline)
>> Barack Obama "is providing commentary for a new Malcolm Gladwell podcast about America's Reconstruction Era." (THR)
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Weekend box office preview |
"Backrooms" is expected to rake in another $30 million plus this weekend, Deadline's Anthony D'Alessandro reports. The new "Scary Movie" has a lock on No. 1, but "Backrooms" could remain No. 2, upsetting "Masters of the Universe," he adds.
Meantime, there's another YouTube-to-big-screen sensation opening this weekend: "The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act."
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