Happy Saturday. Here are some of the great reads that we've been saving up this week. Plus, the latest from "60 Minutes," NBC, James Murdoch, UFC, "Scary Movie," and more... |
Trump's media pressure machine |
This week's "battle royale" over "60 Minutes" is "part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News," NPR's David Folkenflik wrote. "And given CBS's acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment."
So let's talk about control. The Wall Street Journal published an outstanding story this week about the president's involvement in media industry wheeling and dealing. It was posted online the same hour that Scott Pelley was fired, so maybe you missed it. There are many revealing passages in the story, titled "Inside Trump’s Takeover of the American Regulatory Machine," including:
>> The FTC's review of Omnicom acquiring Interpublic "to create the world’s largest advertising business" was "once considered a run-of-the-mill review left to FTC staff," but the agency's chairman Andrew Ferguson met with Trump about it last August, and Trump called up his friend, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, "who had been lobbying the president to block it," so that Ferguson could hear Ruddy's complaints. Ferguson ultimately "allowed the deal to close" while attaching a condition meant to stop ad boycotts of conservatives.
>> Trump "was regularly briefed" on the FCC and DOJ review of Nexstar-Tegna, which was greenlit in March, only to be blocked by state attorneys general.
>> FCC chair Brendan Carr "regularly briefs Trump and top White House aides about his decisions before making them, and often asks White House press officials for guidance on announcements, administration officials said."
>> And/but Carr's extraordinary challenge to ABC's station licenses "surprised some in the White House, which had been negotiating with Disney to air its 'Patriot Games' youth sports competition on ESPN as part of celebrations for America’s 250th birthday this year." (No such telecast has been announced yet.)
>> "At an April White House event for donors that Carr attended, Trump bragged that his FCC chair was doing a good job of controlling the news media and 'holding them accountable,' repeatedly singling out the chairman in the room."
There is so much more rich detail in the four-bylined story by Josh Dawsey, Dana Mattioli, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Jessica Toonkel. Check it out here...
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Paramount's looming fight with state AGs |
The president's opinions about Paramount and the pending Warner Bros. Discovery deal are well documented, if not entirely consistent.
His Justice Department "is likely to reach a decision on the deal soon," Reuters reported yesterday, citing a source familiar with the matter.
The newsier part of Jody Godoy's story was this: "California, New York and other U.S. states are preparing a lawsuit to block" the deal, and it's "expected to be filed in the coming weeks."
As we've written before, many insiders believe a state-level lawsuit is all but inevitable. Antitrust "gladiator" Jeffrey Kessler, who is preparing to defend Paramount at any eventual trial, previewed his arguments in this insightful Q&A with Puck's Eriq Gardner.
Gardner asked if there are antitrust implications in combining CBS and CNN. Kessler's answer: That "doesn't really pass the smell test." Gardner followed up: "What about editorial independence at CNN? Should that factor?"
"That's a value people can hold. It's not an antitrust issue," Kessler said. "Antitrust focuses on whether concentration eliminates competition — not on social policy questions about editorial direction. What I can say is that the company has made a public commitment that CNN will keep its editorial independence and that no changes to its operations are planned. Someone else will have to adjudicate those broader concerns. They're outside the scope of what I'm here to litigate."
Back to Paramount in a moment, but first...
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Testy interview with Trump? |
Before Trump headed to Bedminster for the weekend, he taped an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker, and it sounds like it was dramatic.
Gabe Gutierrez said on "Nightly News" that "Kristen and the Meet the Press team conducted it here in Wisconsin inside a barn at the request of the White House." (Trump was there campaigning for Republicans and hearing from a roundtable of farmers.)
"There were multiple interruptions when rain repeatedly was hitting the metal roof of the barn," Gutierrez reported. "Following those challenges, as well as a back and forth about election integrity where the president disagreed with the questions, President Trump ended the interview, about 50 minutes after it began."
NBC has released a clip of Welker asking Trump why Iran hasn't "made a deal with you yet." The network says "the full video interview and transcript" will be published online alongside the "Meet the Press" broadcast on Sunday...
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One week til the UFC comes to Trump's lawn |
"UFC Freedom 250," the UFC fight card at the White House, is coming up next Sunday, June 14, in what THR calls a "$60 million made-for-TV White House gambit."
TKO president Mark Shapiro has said the company will lose money staging the fight, but "we see this once-in-a-lifetime stage as a strategic investment to drive subscriber acquisition at Paramount+, massive audience sampling for the UFC overall, and Super Bowl-like earned media across the globe."
With the sampling comes well-deserved scrutiny, too. This Sunday night's episode of "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper" is about the decades-long relationship between Trump and the UFC. Sara Sidner sat down with Dana White for the special report. This article by Sidner, Steve Contorno, and Elise Zeiger is an excellent preview: "Young men are leaving Trump. Can a UFC fight at the White House get them back in the ring?"
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'We want to stay and fight' |
Yesterday's emphasis was on Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim deciding to stay at "60 Minutes." But the other half of their commitment was to "fight."
"We have been grieving because this whole mess has wounded and damaged the broadcast," they wrote in a joint statement. "We want to stay and fight, try to repair and preserve our reputation."
The trio conveyed that remaining at the show is not in any way an "endorsement of the existing power structure." But they did add words of praise for new executive producer Nick Bilton, who fought like hell this week to convince them to stay on board.
Bilton has come in for a lot of scrutiny, but he gets some serious credit for this détente. Of course, the coming weeks/months will be the real test.
Stahl told the WSJ that "interference" has been distressing, and that she has heard Bari Weiss "complaining about us, and that's been harmful" too.
"We are at the moment trusting Nick," Stahl said, "and he has told us he'll work to preserve our independence, and that he's not taking orders from the corporation. If that is the way things go, we'll stay. But if it’s not the way things go, we're gonna leave."
Stahl's comments and the trio's statement indicate that they will speak up if they sense Paramount meddling with the program...
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The statement behind the '60' trio's statement |
Puck's Dylan Byers reported last night that the final version of the statement "presented a much milder, more diplomatic message than the one that the three correspondents had originally drafted. That initial draft reads like a full-throated rejection of the leadership, accusing them of using 'chilling' and 'callous' tactics to silence internal opposition — adjectives that were removed from the final letter."
>> The Guardian's Jeremy Barr conveyed the same thing from a "60" insider that I've been hearing as well: Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim stayed "so as not to abandon their producers and staff, many of whom simply can't afford to quit. It's an act of self-sacrifice, really, and of generosity. And they're voting for the survival of '60 Minutes.'"
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>> Donie O'Sullivan interviews some young Nick Fuentes fans and hears their "jokes" defense. He explores how Fuentes and the manosphere "exploit young men's urge to rebel — and why it's different from transgressive movements of the past." (CNN)
>> The aforementioned Eriq Gardner says Disney "is ready to clobber" Brendan Carr: The FCC chair has "an unusually weak hand. And Disney's lawyers have figured out exactly how to exploit it." (Puck)
>> Daniel Strauss says "top editors and chief executives across the media world are gawking, gossiping, and shaking their heads at what they see as elemental incompetence" at CBS News. This is Vulture's most-read story today. (Vulture)
>> Jim Rutenberg interviews James Murdoch, who "says acquiring New York magazine and Vox has nothing to do with his father. But in some ways, it's a tribute." (NYT Mag)
>> Savannah Sobrevilla finds that "at the Substack House, media is still fun." (GQ)
>> Isabella Kwai says LinkedIn is being transformed by influencers — and might be entering "its post-cringe era." (NYT)
>> Marlow Stern explores "why YouTubers are turning Hollywood upside down." (Variety)
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