Brian Stelter here with the latest on Sean Hannity, Sidney Powell, Bon Appétit, Quibi, Entertainment Weekly, Facebook, Felicity Huffman, and more...
Covering Covid winter
The days are getting shorter. The lines for Covid-19 testing are getting longer. The case counts are getting scarier and the warnings from public health experts are getting more and more dire.
At the same time, the prospects for publicly available vaccines are looking better and better. So how should the news media balance the bleak Covid winter with the hopeful news about all the help that's on the way? I asked several experts on Monday and came away with valuable insights.
"Realism is important," University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Zeynep Tufekci told me. "The good news is really good, but that doesn't take away from the challenges we still face and the tough winter ahead with surging cases across the nation, overloaded hospitals and overworked health-care workers. So I think it's a matter of being realistic on both counts, the good and the bad."
Tufekci has authored several acclaimed pieces about the pandemic this year. Her latest, on Monday, was about the "pandemic heroes who gave us the gift of time and gift of information," helping companies to develop vaccines in record time. Speaking of the vaccines...
The 2021 "split screen"
"If 2020 was one long episode of misery, 2021 will be a split screen," Juliette Kayyem said. Kayyem is a homeland security expert, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a CNN analyst. She said "reporters must continue to expose the tragedy of this pandemic and our government's response, but also capture the glimmering light -- that will be brighter over the months as this distribution rolls across the US, delivering a vaccine in waves -- that will get us to normalish."
Kayyem also made the point that "medical stories -- of patients and doctors and the health apparatus -- are so personal, intimate. Supply chain logistics are not." So the story is changing: "We are now pivoting to a story whose success is measured in bulk; it will be messy, and big, and bulky, and rolling over a long time period. These stories are only interesting when something goes wrong: a missed delivery, a power outage that impacts freezing capacity, a person getting a vaccine who shouldn't yet or one who can't. So, it's worth taking a step back and assessing just how much is getting done -- measured in its totality."
While the vaccines are rolling out, millions of Americans will still be getting sick. "We have to make it through the next two months," said emergency physician and Brown University professor Dr. Megan Ranney, a relatively new addition to CNN's group of medical analysts. "We have to keep hammering home the message that this is a real disease, and there are real things that we can do to prevent the spread."
"You as the media," Ranney said on the phone, "are our best chance of giving a comprehensible and consistent public health message, since our federal government continues to fall down on the job and many state governments continue to fall down on the job."
"The road ahead is bound to be tortuous"
"Covid-19 has never been a one-dimensional story," STAT News co-founder and executive editor Rick Berke pointed out. "For many months, we've seen gradual scientific progress on vaccines and therapeutics even as we've witnessed human tragedy at a breathtaking scale. Journalists have faithfully covered both the hope and the despair."
"In that respect," Berke wrote in an email, "news organizations have a responsibility this winter to keep doing what they have since the start of this crisis — cover all elements of the story. Find ways to tell compelling human stories so that the public doesn't lose sight of the incredible toll Covid-19 is taking on the country. And find ways to reflect the promise of vaccines, while rigorously reporting on their rollout. These vaccines are real lights at the end of the tunnel, but they are not panaceas. There are pressing questions about the vaccines themselves, such as how long they will provide immunity, as well as about how they will be distributed and who will get them first."
Berke raised some key questions -- ones that news outlets need to keep addressing. Readers and viewers need answers to basic inquiries about the vaccines. "The road ahead is bound to be tortuous," he said, "and it's one journalists need to follow."
Another day of record hospitalizations
This just in from CNN Health's Ben Tinker: "A record 96,039 people in the United States are currently hospitalized with Covid-19, according to data published Monday evening by The COVID Tracking Project. This is the third straight day of new record numbers, following a slight dip reported on Friday. The states with the most people currently hospitalized with Covid-19 are Texas, California, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania."
Read CNN's latest overview story here...
But "we can see the shoreline"
There's just an awful amount of infection rippling through the United States. The NYT's in-house expert, Donald G. McNeil Jr., is out with a new story titled "The Long Darkness Before Dawn," noting that "the number of deaths is rising and seems on track to easily surpass the 2,200-a-day average in the spring, when the pandemic was concentrated in the New York metropolitan area." McNeil says "our failure to protect ourselves has caught up to us."
But his story also describes his "hopeful" view of 2021, thanks to the vaccines on the horizon. Kayyem sounded similarly hopeful -- she told me she was born cautious, but is feeling truly optimistic right now. "As reporters and analysts, I think we can allow ourselves to be," she said. "It's like with sea sickness; the misery seems easier if we can see the shoreline. We can see it." She has even booked a vacation -- for this coming August.
The need for leadership
On Monday CNN's Stephen Collinson wrote about a "leaderless America" slipping deep into the Covid winter. President Trump's negligence is only part of the story. Some governors have also been in hiding.
I noted on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" that Florida governor Ron DeSantis was refusing to hold press briefings and relying on video messages about Covid-19 instead. On Monday, for what it's worth, he DID hold a Covid briefing for the first time in four weeks. The first question was posed by a reporter who asked, "Where have you been?" CNN's research found that 14 other governors have only held a single Covid-19 press briefing apiece in the month of November. A majority of the governors are Republicans. These men and women need to be front and center right now!
We'll never know...
I was struck by something that Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said to Bret Baier on "Fox News Sunday." There are "many different things that we could have done differently," Adams said. "This virus has been challenging. I wish that again this hadn't been superimposed on top of an election. I wish that we had been able to come together as a nation and really talk about the science instead of the politics, and that's on all sides, that's all around." The "all sides" comment is a cop-out, but he's right about the terrible timing of this tragedy. We'll never know how different it could have been...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- On Monday evening Fox broke the news that Dr. Scott Atlas has resigned from the Trump admin. Atlas went on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" one hour later... (Fox)
-- "Scott Atlas was the purest example of the Trump-Fox feedback loop in action: An unqualified ideologue launched to power because the president liked his Fox hits," Matt Gertz of Media Matters wrote... (Twitter)
-- A "source close to the task force" told CNN that his departure was welcome news, "as his discredited theories will no longer have a seat at the table..." (CNN)
-- When news breaks at 7am ET, and it's the lead story in the next day's newspaper, you know it's really big. Case in point, Monday morning's filing by Moderna. Tuesday's biggest headline on Page One of WaPo is "Moderna follows Pfizer in seeking vaccine approval..." (WaPo)
-- Meantime, big parts of the country are slowly shutting back down. Jon Passantino's headline for CNN.com: "Los Angeles County -- the biggest county in the US -- is now under a stay-at-home order..." (CNN)
The powerful role of radio
Among other things, this story by CNN's Nicole Chavez is about the power of broadcast:
"When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit the United States, the hosts of Radio Indígena" -- 94.1 FM in Oxnard, California -- "were among the first people who could explain Covid-19 to indigenous Mexican farmworkers in Ventura County, thanks to their ability to switch between Spanish, Mixteco and other indigenous languages. As the months passed, they took to debunking coronavirus misinformation." Read on...
Biden's next public event
On Tuesday Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold a 12:30pm press event to "introduce their nominees and appointees to key economic policy posts."
Three POV's about Biden and the press:
-- David Remnick in this week's New Yorker: "As President, Joe Biden cannot battle the debasement of a reality principle in American life by executive order. But support for press freedoms ought to be a central element of his domestic and foreign policies."
-- "Simply returning to pre-Trump standards isn't nearly enough," Dan Froomkin wrote earlier this month. The public needs "as much direct access to the internal operations as possible." He wrote that "simply showing that the government is functioning again will go a long way."
-- Olivia Nuzzi tweeted Monday, "The most important thing about the new administration’s communications team isn’t the gender of the staff, but whether the staff is accessible to and transparent with the press. As we’ve seen repeatedly in the briefing room in the last four years, women in government lie, too."
From Philly to London?
"Diplomatic officials from the United Kingdom believe that Comcast executive David L. Cohen is the frontrunner to be the United States’ next ambassador to the U.K.," Politico's Alex Thompson reported Monday, "despite a report over the weekend that Cindy McCain" is in line for the posting. "A friend of Cohen’s, meanwhile, said he has expressed his interest in the ambassadorship or being the Secretary of Commerce." Flashback: Cohen hosted key fundraisers for Biden in 2019 "when some pundits were writing Biden off..."
TUESDAY PLANNER
The next edition of "CITIZEN BY CNN presents: What Next, America?" is at 10am ET...
New book releases include Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham's "Black Futures..."
Tuesday's Ravens and Steelers game has been rescheduled, once again... Now it is slated for Wednesday at 3:40pm on NBC...
Another day without seeing Trump
He held no public events on Monday, and he has none scheduled on Tuesday either.
Tripling down on untruth
Trumpworld's fantasies about stealing the election are growing more and more grotesque. And they're being encouraged by the likes of Fox News. Sidney Powell was on both Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity's shows on Monday evening. On her Twitter feed, meanwhile, Powell was sharing undemocratic and unhinged ideas, including a follower's call for "the Insurrection Act" and "military tribunals."
Dobbs was frantically trying to speak to Trump through the TV, according to Mediaite's Josh Feldman, who described Dobbs as "completely digging in" on Trump's conspiracy claims. At one point Dobbs said this is "much bigger" than mere fraud, then urged Trump to take "drastic action" because of "the crimes that have been committed against him and against the American people."
My impression: Trump's Sunday morning call to Maria Bartiromo activated allies like Dobbs to triple down on election denialism -- under the guise of "election integrity" of course. Hannity, fresh from vacation, devoted practically his entire hour to this stuff. He said "I think we can take a few weeks to investigate election irregularities," even though a few weeks have already passed.
Here's the thing: Even the Fox shows that exude skepticism about Trump's "rigged" campaign are still leaning heavily into the lies! Martha MacCallum, for instance, pointed out that states keep certifying Biden's victory -- but her guest was Lara Trump, who kept spouting delusions about Trump being the true winner. "I still think that the president will get four more years in office," Lara Trump said. "I think it will be the next four years. Because this thing is far from over." She also said things like "we do think the result in Georgia is going to change." Was she lying to millions of viewers, lying to herself, or both?
Hannity: Trump needs to 'pardon his whole family and himself'
Oliver Darcy writes: "Sean Hannity on his Monday radio show said he believes Trump 'needs to pardon his whole family and himself' while heading 'out the door,' contending liberals 'want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity.' Hannity said Trump 'should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to' and asked Sidney Powell whether his pardon power was absolute. Powell said she wasn't sure Trump could pardon himself, but then went to La La Land by saying it wouldn't be necessary because the supposed voter fraud she would reveal would win him four more years in office. Hannity repeated his advice to Trump on TV Monday night..."
Bartiromo laments that news orgs have "taken a side"
Oliver Darcy writes: "Fresh off her propagandistic chat with Trump, Maria Bartiromo spoke Monday with The Daily Caller and had the nerve to complain about bias in the press. Without a hint of irony, Bartiromo claimed that CNN, NYT, and other mainstream news outlets are 'not news.' She said they have 'taken a side.' It was almost like she had a freudian slip and was describing her own conduct." Here are some of Monday's columns and comments about Bartiromo:
>> Erik Wemple declared that the phoner with Trump "will be remembered as one of the Trump era’s foremost abdications of professional duty..."
>> Joe DePaolo wondered how in good conscience Fox could continue branding Bartiromo as a member of its "straight news" division...
>> Philip Bump wrote that the interview "was an excellent demonstration of the extent to which Fox News, Fox Business and fringier cable-news outlets serve to legitimize even the most ridiculous claims made by Trump..."
McConnell's complicity
On Monday night the WaPo editorial board said Trump's rant on Fox was one of the "most dangerous" of his entire presidency, and "Republicans can’t ignore it."
Which brings me to this: While entering and exiting the Senate chamber on Monday, Mitch McConnell ignored reporters' questions on whether he considers Biden the president-elect. Per CNN's Manu Raju, "McConnell typically ignores questions in the halls, but occasionally engages. He's been mostly quiet amid Trump's baseless claims that the election was rigged." McConnell could call into any television network at any time and tell the truth...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Breaking: WaPo reports that those desperate Trump fundraising emails are paying off: Trump's political operation "has raised more than $150 million since Election Day," per "people with knowledge of the contributions..." (WaPo)
-- Margaret Sullivan offers a "radical idea" about how Fox News can "reinvent itself for the post-Trump era:" Hire some more reporters! "Go ahead and lean right, Fox News," she says, but "do it with an emphasis on reporting and strictly within the realm of truth..." (WaPo)
-- Sullivan asked for my POV while writing her column. My response: "Fox and its audience would benefit if the Murdochs invested in news. But I fear that the audience would reject the improvements..."
-- Amanda Carpenter writes that "media parasites" have "taken control" of the GOP... (Bulwark)
-- In a blistering Monday editorial, National Review's editorial board called out Trump's "disgraceful" conduct... (NRO)
-- "After 14 great years at Politico, I’ll be leaving in mid-December," beloved reporter John Bresnahan announced Monday night... (Twitter)
Appalling rhetoric from a Trump lawyer
Oliver Darcy writes: "Appearing on Howie Carr's talk radio show, part of which is simulcast on Newsmax TV, Trump campaign attorney Joe diGenova said Monday that Chris Krebs should be executed for his comments affirming the security of the election. 'Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity [for Trump]. That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,' diGenova said, as was first reported by Tim Miller. Carr responded with a light chuckle and switched topics. I asked Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy if he had any comment, but didn't hear back..."
Heilemann to write 2020 book – solo
Oliver Darcy writes: "John Heilemann, who previously co-wrote the hit 'Game Change' books with the now-disgraced Mark Halperin, is writing a book on the 2020 race solo. The book, announced Monday by Simon & Schuster, could also become a TV movie or miniseries: 'Screen rights have been acquired by Showtime,' the AP noted..."
Correction
Last night I wrote Joseph Wells when I meant Joseph Welch. What an "indecent" error! Thank you to everyone who wrote in about it. I've decided that my "punishment" will be rewatching "Good Night, and Good Luck."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Kerry Flynn:
-- Noel Bowler photographed newsrooms around the world as part of a book project titled "Above the Fold" via Kickstarter... (The Guardian)
-- "BuzzFeed's HuffPost acquisition can help the combined company’s ad sales pitch," Tim Peterson reports... (Digiday)
-- Ryan Barwick reports why auto brands such as Hyundai, Cadillac and Ford are investing more in podcast and audio advertising... (Adweek)
-- Eyebrow-raising: Entertainment Week EIC J.D. Heyman is leaving the magazine, effective immediately. Katie Robertson broke the news on Monday night and said the reason for his departure "was not disclosed..." (NYT)
Meet Dawn Davis
Kerry Flynn writes: For CNN Business' 2020 Risk Takers list, I profiled Dawn Davis, the new editor in chief of Bon Appétit. There have been many media moves this year, but Davis' jump from Simon & Schuster to Condé Nast really struck me since she not only decided to take over a scandal-plagued brand but switched industries after 25 years. S&S CEO Jonathan Karp told me he expected Davis to stay at the publishing house for the rest of her career. So what led her to the new role? Find out in my story...
SNEAK PEEK
Bon Appétit's next cover
Flynn adds: Bon Appétit's Holiday issue launches Tuesday. It's guest edited by award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson, who I interviewed for the Davis profile. Not only has he been serving as a brand advisor to Bon Appétit since August but he's been a longtime friend of Davis. The issue includes a poem by Nikki Giovanni and stories from chefs on how they have navigated the pandemic...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- The Trump-era FCC chair Ajit Pai confirmed on Monday that he will step down on January 20, in line with Biden's inauguration... (CNBC)
-- Per John Hendel, "Senate Republicans are plowing ahead to try to confirm one final Trump FCC nominee, Republican Nathan Simington, before the end of the year. That would leave the commission with a 2-2 split, possibly stymieing efforts by the Biden-era to drive through any divisive policies, such as restoring net neutrality rules, in his FCC's initial months..." (Politico)
-- Disney "is airing an NFL wild-card game in January on five of its TV networks, including its female-focused Freeform channel, as part of an effort to broaden football viewership..." (Bloomberg)
"Facebook gears up to woo the Biden administration"
That was the headline of an LA Times article last week... and on Monday there were two new examples, or so it seemed. Facebook VP for global affairs Nick Clegg penned a piece for WaPo, invoking the incoming Biden admin, and saying that "American leadership could save what is left of the global Internet." And Mark Zuckerberg also had a message for the Biden team on Monday: He praised Ron Klain while interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- John D. McKinnon reports: "Federal and state antitrust authorities prepare to file new lawsuits against Facebook and Google, people familiar with the matter said..." (WSJ)
-- "Right now, everyone from Senate leaders to the makers of Netflix's popular 'Social Dilemma' is promoting the idea that Facebook is addictive," Scott Rosenberg writes. On the other hand, "human beings have raised fears about the addictive nature of every new media technology since the 18th century brought us the novel, yet the species has always seemed to recover its balance once the initial infatuation wears off..." (Axios)
-- Want to understand Parler? Here is one newbie's experience. Bryan C. Parker noticed that the hashtag for #cutedogs had a "measly 28 posts" while the QAnon slogan #wwg1wga had 355,223 posts... (SFGate)
Quibi's journey ends
Frank Pallotta writes: "The short, strange trip of Quibi is formally coming to end. When the beleaguered short-form video service folded in October, it said that it would 'wind down' on or around December 1, which is Tuesday. A Quibi rep confirmed to me that the company is 'winding down and will be in operation with a very small team until a later date,' but the content 'will no longer be available on or after December 1.' Many eulogies have been written for Quibi, so I’ll follow in the app's footsteps and keep it short... Quibi, we hardly knew ye."
Disney+ cracks a Netflix-dominated top 10 list
"The return of Disney+'s 'The Mandalorian' notched the streaming service's highest ranking on Nielsen's Top 10 streaming programs, landing at No. 3 for its second season premiere weekend," TheWrap's Tim Baysinger writes. "However, Netflix still had the other nine slots, with 'The Queen's Gambit' reigning over the list in its first full week since its Oct. 23 premiere. NBC comedy 'The Office' landed at No. 2, while Christmas movie 'Holidate' debuted at No. 5." Note, this data is nearly a month old, but it was just released on Monday...
Play ball
Brian Lowry writes: "After serving a brief sentence for her role in the college admissions cheating scandal, Felicity Huffman has been cast in a comedy pilot for ABC. Deadline described the project – about a Triple-A baseball team – as Huffman 'returning to acting' after having been 'heavily courted for TV series and pilots.' She previously starred on the network's 'Desperate Housewives' and 'American Crime...'"
The award for youngest exec producer goes to...
"'Black-ish' star Marsai Martin, who's 16, has set a record for the youngest Hollywood executive producer," CNN's Giulia Heyward and Saeed Ahmed wrote Monday. Martin "has broken a Guinness World Record as the youngest Hollywood executive producer to work on a major production." What's more, "she technically broke the record in 2019, as a result of her work on the film 'Little,'" when she was 14. Read on...
LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
Pet of the day!
While WSJ reporter Joe Flint was trying to watch Sunday's "Reliable Sources," his feline friend Jitters was watching him:
Thank you for reading! Send me your feedback anytime. Oliver will be running this show tomorrow...
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