Oliver Darcy here. Scroll down for Saturday's A1s, a look behind the scenes of the arrest of the CNN crew, Twitter's unprecedented position, Facebook's inaction, Taylor Swift's fury, weekend reads, and more. But first...
America in crisis
What do you write on a day like this? How can the day be neatly summed up in a string of sentences and paragraphs? How can the pain, agony, frustration, and fear felt by so many across the country be properly conveyed? Is it even possible?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure how one conveys the emotions felt by a country that has watched, yet again, an unarmed black man die in police custody. How one conveys what it feels like to see major American cities set ablaze, or protesters clashing with Secret Service outside the White House. How one conveys a President of the United States who, instead of offering words aimed at consoling a nation, chooses to instead pour gasoline on the fire and turn the temperature up.
Imagine if you transported a recording of the news from Friday, May 29, 2020, back in time. Imagine showing people the state of America: With unrest spreading across the country, with a pandemic claiming the lives of more than 100,000 Americans, with 40 million out of work. Imagine explaining to people that a CNN crew was arrested live on-air for covering a protest, despite doing nothing wrong. Or that Twitter had to actually apply a warning label on the tweets from the President and White House for glorifying violence.
What would we think if we saw the events unfolding in America unfold in another country? "This country has been slowly unraveling for two decades; the acceleration in real time is terrifying to behold," tweeted Tim Alberta. It's hard to disagree.
Hayes' point
“The person with the country's most important job is the worst person imaginable for this moment," Chris Hayes argued on his program. "It just feels like today, and over the last 48 hours, that something is breaking in front of us. Or even more correctly, that things that have been broken for a very, very long time are somehow getting more broken."
Attacks on the press
The day started with an affront to the free press. And it ended with more astonishing attacks on the press. In Louisville, an officer fired what appeared to be pepper balls on a WAVE 3 News reporter, the outlet reported. The incident was caught live on-air. "Who are they aiming that at?" the anchor asked. "At us," the reporter replied. In Colorado, a Denver7 News crew reported being hit with paintballs and tear gas.
And in Atlanta, the CNN Center was swarmed by demonstrators who vandalized the entrance and destroyed police vehicles outside. The demonstrators eventually broke the windows to the CNN Center's entrance and engaged in a tense standoff with police. The stunning scenes were broadcast live on CNN. Correspondent Nick Valencia reported from behind police lines inside the center. "S**t!" exclaimed Valencia at one moment, after what appeared to be a firecracker was fired inside. Police eventually dispersed the crowd with teargas. ![]() Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms addressed the incident in a press conference. "You have defaced the CNN building," she said. "Ted Turner started CNN in Atlanta 40 years ago because he believed in who we are as a city. There was a black reporter who was arrested on camera this morning who works for CNN. They are telling our stories. And you are disgracing their building."
>> White House's reaction: Trump responded by retweeting a right-wing commentator who wrote, "In an ironic twist of fate, CNN HQ is being attacked by the very riots they promoted as noble & just. Oops..."
Saturday A1s ![]() FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE -- The Drudge Report's banner headline: "AMERICA PLUNGES INTO CRISIS...."
-- Chris Cuomo noted during CNN's coverage: "We're in a time where these people who are out there have masks on, to protect themselves from a virus, at the same time they're protesting that the police don't protect them from others in society. It is just a bizarre reality that we are living through together..."
-- And Don Lemon replied, "Listen, I'm sure people wish that there was some sort of mask or something that would protect them from this other virus: that's racism. And perhaps they think the protests, in whatever form they are choosing to engage, whether it's peaceful or whether it's violent, they are hoping, in some way, that that's going to protect them..."
-- NBC DC reporter Shomari Stone at the White House protest: "You have folks out here who want the White House to show leadership, to show sympathy, to understand the issue of race relations, to understand the killing of unarmed black people by law enforcement in America. They feel that President Trump is not showing enough leadership..."
-- Julie Pace reports that many Republicans are staying silent about the President's behavior: "Several contacted by The Associated Press either did not respond to questions about whether Trump was appropriately meeting this moment of cascading national crises or would not speak about the matter on the record..." (AP)
-- Read Karen Attiah's column: "If we talked about what is happening in Minneapolis the same way we talk about events in a foreign country, here’s how the Western media would cover it..." (WaPo)
-- David Brooks writes, "If we had a real leader..." (NYT)
-- ProPublica's Alec MacGillis: "I don't know if this is how 1968 felt. I wasn't there. But here is how it seems similar: there's too much happening at once. It always boggled the mind: how could you have war and assassinations and riots and election at same time? Well, just swap in pandemic and econ collapse...." (Twitter)
-- Adam Serwer's point: "Whether you support the protests or oppose them, one question you should honestly grapple with is whether there’s an arrest of the officer who killed Floyd without them...." (Twitter) A taste of the rhetoric on Fox
Later in the night, Laura Ingraham ignited outrage by booking Mark Fuhrman on her program for analysis. And Lou Dobbs, another one of the President's favorite hosts, decried what he described as a "failure" of the community's leadership: "I don’t know where the black churches are, I don’t know where the black teachers and leaders are."
>> That's not to say it was all like this: Geraldo Rivera unloaded on Trump: "What is this, 6th grade?!" Trump's sham press conference CNN crew arrested: Behind the scenes
Brian Stelter writes: This image of CNN's Omar Jimenez being handcuffed by Minnesota State Police is instantly iconic: ![]() And the video, shown live on CNN, has been seen tens of millions of times already.
When Jimenez, Bill Kirkos and Leonel Mendez were taken into custody shortly after 6am ET, 5am local time, the CNN machine cranked into action immediately. Since it occurred on live TV, CNN's lawyers, led by David Vigilante, had all the information they needed to press for the crew's release. Mendez was able to stay in touch with CNN HQ for part of the time while in custody, and his camera continued to transmit live pictures the entire time, thanks to cellular phone TV technology called LiveU.
CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker spoke with governor Tim Walz shortly after 7am ET, and the journalists were released about 12 minutes later. Walz recounted the call later in the day: "I appreciate his understanding in a situation that he was rightfully incredibly angry, and that falls squarely on me. That apology has been issued. And I think going forward to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"The most important call"
Speaking with Wolf Blitzer, Jimenez said he spoke with Zucker right after he was released from police custody. "He told me that he made the most important call of my life for me," Jimenez said. "I assumed it was to the governor. He said, 'No ... [it] was to your mother.' He called my mother to let her know I was okay and I really did appreciate that."
Show of solidarity
Stelter adds: Rival TV networks, press freedom groups and labor unions stood shoulder to shoulder and defended the CNN crew on Friday. The Committee to Protect Journalists called the episode "simply outrageous." Here's my full story, "Arresting reporters at a protest is an affront to the First Amendment..."
>> From Poynter's Al Tompkins: "23 guidelines for journalists to safely cover protests this weekend..."
"A view of American disintegration"
This WaPo essay by Phillip Kennicott is worth your time. Kennicott wrote about the CNN crew's confrontation with police and how the camera on the ground captured "a view of American disintegration." He explained, "As the CNN crew member was being led away, someone picked up his camera and carried it a few yards before setting it down again. The machine was still recording, and inadvertently and passively it captured another vision, common to people across the world."
"Its eye bounced along above the pavement," Kennicott wrote, "as if connected to a body that was offering no resistance, that was being carried off limp and compliant by armed thugs in state uniforms. And then it just lay on the ground, seemingly broken and spent, but still conscious, still looking out at the boots of the cops a few feet away."
"Staged" trend highlights social media "rot"
"The word 'staged' is trending because of a conspiracy theory by people who have absolutely no idea how the world works believe that the detainment of CNN reporters was staged," NBC's Ben Collins tweeted. The rot that social media companies have caused and abetted in people's sense of reality is profound."
"Black Journalists Are Exhausted"
You should read this by Patrice Peck, creator of the newsletter "Coronavirus News for Black Folks." Peck wrote, "It's an especially peculiar time to be a black journalist. The pandemic has laid bare many of the same racial inequities that generations of black journalists have been covering since 1827 when the Freedom’s Journal birthed the black press. While this pandemic is unique, the waves of trauma crashing down on my community are not." Here's the full NYT op-ed... Twitter's unprecedented position ![]() The decision "capped off a rocky week in which Twitter's decision to place warning labels on two Trump tweets set off a presidential firestorm that culminated in an executive order that seeks to punish the entire social media industry," Brian Fung and Seth Fiegerman reported for CNN. "Twitter now finds itself in an unprecedented position. For years it was Trump's favored platform; now Twitter is locked in a war with the president simply for choosing to enforce its policies. Seemingly every tweet on the platform ... are being scrutinized anew. Republicans are coming after it. Rivals are throwing it under the bus or staying silent."
Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday that the company would do nothing with Trump's message, which was cross-posted from Twitter onto Facebook and Instagram where they racked up hundreds of thousands of interactions. "I know many people are upset that we've left the President's posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies," Zuckerberg wrote.
Zuckerberg added, "Although the post had a troubling historical reference, we decided to leave it up because the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force." Zuckerberg, who published his post after remaining silent on the matter for 18 hours, said, "Unlike Twitter, we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician."
Related: Mike Isaac and Cecilia Kang write about how Facebook and Twitter have "similar policies." But, "Facebook is more permissive when the user is President Trump..." What to watch this weekend
-- SpaceX will on Saturday at 3:22pm ET make its second attempt to send astronauts into space after a launch was scrubbed earlier in the week due to weather...
-- Two big specials from CNN on Sunday: "WE REMEMBER: A National Memorial Honoring Victims of Covid-19" at 12pm ET, anchored by Jake Tapper; and "I CAN'T BREATHE: Black Men Living and Dying in America" at 8pm ET, anchored by Don Lemon... This Sunday on "Reliable Sources"
Brian Stelter writes: I'll be joined by "Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe" author Roger McNamee and Yael Eisenstat, the former Global Head of Elections Integrity for Political Advertising at FB... plus Omar Jimenez, Jane Coaston, David Zurawik, David Frum, and Jeff Mason... Live at 11am ET Sunday on CNN... FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO -- Sarah Scire reports on the work of Unicorn Riot, a nonprofit media organization that is covering the Minneapolis protests... (Nieman Lab)
-- The Society of Professional Journalists offered reporters some tips: "Show compassion for those who may be affected by coverage. Weigh consequences of reporting personal info. Balance public's need for info against potential harm or discomfort..." (SPJ)
-- In other news, newly released documents show that Michael Flynn told the Russian ambassador not to escalate on sanctions... (CNN)
-- Marshall Cohen tweeted, "These transcripts CONFIRM pretty much everything Mueller accused Flynn of doing, and they DEBUNK much of what Trump has said about Flynn. The transcripts corroborate Flynn's guilty plea and further prove that he lied to the FBI about his Russian calls..." (Twitter)
-- David Roth writes: "Through the Obamagate..." (CJR)
-- "Troll farms from Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook..." (NBC News) Taylor Swift blasts Trump
>> WaPo's Eugene Scott reacted: "Had you told me a decade ago that in 2020 Taylor Swift would be accusing Donald Trump on Twitter of stoking white supremacy while Kanye West was somewhere, possibly in a MAGA hat, being completely silent on the issue, I would have said: "God bless you, but a prophet you are not!" CNN's media team on this week's Reliable podcast 🎤
Our New York-based media reporters last met up for a podcast chat at the end of February... in person... and since then, everything has changed. Brian Stelter and producer Katie Pellico patched us together from home for a new pod about what's happened on our beats in the past three months, and what might happen this summer. Check out the episode via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, or Spotify... Weekend reads
By Katie Pellico:
-- CNN's Bianna Golodryga tweeted, "Everything that’s happened THIS WEEK ALONE backs up this line from George Packer: 'The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.'" Here's that piece from Packer in the June issue of The Atlantic... (The Atlantic)
-- Bakari Sellers writes, "This is not the America I want to pass down to my children..." (CNN Opinion)
-- Still not clear on the significance of Section 230? Casey Newton details "everything you need to know..." (The Verge) Andy Lack says goodbye FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE By Kerry Flynn:
-- Lucia Moses reports Microsoft News laid off dozens of editorial workers as it moves to an AI-driven system... (BI)
-- Lauren Johnson reports The Athletic laid off its six-person programming team due to clashes with management... (BI)
-- Lindsey Ellefson reports Playboy laid off 25 staffers, including most of its editorial team, on Thursday... (The Wrap)
-- Lucinda Southern reports how Bloomberg Media has changed its events business with virtual events... (Digiday)
-- BuzzFeed News union and management agreed on a workshare program to cut costs. Employees in the union will have their pay and hours cut by 20% and qualify for partial unemployment. LATimes union implemented the program, whereas Vice union advocate for it but management refused... (Daily Beast)
-- Staffers at Hearst, who announced their intention to unionize in November, officially have a date for their election. On June 12, the NLRB will mail ballots to more than 500 staffers... (Twitter) Forbes v. Kylie Jenner
Amid all the tragic news, Kylie Jenner duked it out with Forbes after the outlet published a story about her "web of lies" and how she is "no longer a billionaire." Reporters Chase Peterson-Withorn and Madeline Berg wrote, "Similar to Donald Trump’s decades-long obsession with his net worth, the unusual lengths to which the Jenners have been willing to go—including inviting Forbes into their mansions and CPA’s offices, and even creating tax returns that were likely forged—reveals just how desperate some of the ultra-rich are to look even richer.
Jenner responded on Twitter: "what am i even waking up to. i thought this was a reputable site.. all i see are a number of inaccurate statements and unproven assumptions lol. i’ve never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. period." After receiving criticism for focusing on the story versus the dire problems facing the nation, Jenner tweeted, "i am blessed beyond my years, i have a beautiful daughter, and a successful business and i’m doing perfectly fine." Jenner also posted on Instagram about Floyd's death... ![]() 'Space Force' casts Steve Carell in a broad satire that never achieves liftoff "Quiz" has the right answer for ITV's 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' scandal
Lowry emails: The “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” cheating scandal in the U.K. broke right after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and thus didn’t receive nearly as much coverage as they might have in the U.S. “Quiz,” a three-part miniseries airing on AMC, remedies that situation, with “Succession’s” Matthew Macfadyen as the “coughing major” at the center of the case. Final answer: It’s well worth watching. ![]() Thank you for reading... Email me your feedback... And, most of all, stay safe this weekend.
Share this newsletter:
You are receiving this message because you subscribed to CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter.
® © 2020 Cable News Network, Inc.
Our mailing address is: |