View this email in your browser

Received this email from a friend? Subscribe here.

Andrew Ross Sorkin woke up early Monday morning, long before the crack of dawn, after managing to sneak in a handful of hours of sleep.

The New York Times columnist had been up late into the night working on his DealBook newsletter. And now he needed to rise for a special edition of "Squawk Box," the CNBC program he has co-hosted since 2011.

The special 5am edition of "Squawk" had been tasked with covering the continuing fallout stemming from the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a massive financial news story that has drawn some eerie comparisons to the beginnings of the 2008 financial disaster. 

It is a story Sorkin described covering as "a balancing act, a little bit like walking a tight rope." On one hand, he told me, journalists must avoid sparking panic and causing a catastrophic run on the banks. But, on the other hand, journalists also owe it to their audiences to deliver them a clear-eyed assessment of the state of affairs.

"Our job as journalists is to tell the public what is happening — and if you believe in transparency, we should all want that," Sorkin told me. "The downside of transparency in real-time is sometimes news that may not be positive can pile on itself in a way. And so I think it is really just about trying to contextualize what we're seeing."

"You don't want to cause a run on a bank," Sorkin added, "but then at the same time, if everyone is running and they have reason to run, I think it's important that the public understands what's happening."

The approach to delivering the news and covering the implosion of SVB that Sorkin described stands in stark contrast to some of the commentary saturating the internet and at other media outlets.

Over the weekend, some venture capital influencers amplified fear and suggested the entire U.S. banking system was on the verge of collapse. The investor Jason Calacanis, who hosts a podcast and commands a Twitter audience of nearly 700,000 followers, tweeted, "YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED RIGHT NOW." On the right-wing talk channel Fox News Monday morning, "Fox & Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt suggested Americans needed "to go to our banks and take our money out." 

Unprecedented in its sheer speed and volume, SVB's collapse is "fascinating," Sorkin said, causing a meltdown only now possible in the "true age of social media, as well as what might be described as digital banking."

"The ability for information to spread rapidly, both good information and bad, and for people to act on that information and then going to a bank app and transferring funds from one place to another, makes the responsibility [for journalists] even greater," Sorkin said. 

Sorkin said banking is ultimately a "confidence game," explaining that it is "genuinely about whether people have confidence in leaving their money in a particular institution." And in this current environment where social media influencers and other irresponsible voices thrive, Sorkin said it "inherently makes things less stable."

"You have a lot of people who are on social media who don't necessarily feel the same responsibilities to contextualize the news in the same way I might try," Sorkin said. He suggested that in the case of SVB, there may have been "a little smoke in the corner of the theater" that could have been addressed before a fire burst out and prompted danger.

"If you scream 'fire,' everyone runs out of the theater," Sorkin said. "Could the smoke have been put out before everyone ran out of the theater? Maybe."

———  BELOW THE FOLD  ———

Oscars On the Rise: The Oscars telecast grew its total audience 12% from last year, delivering 18.7 million average viewers. That marks the second consecutive year that the show has increased viewership, which is nothing to sneeze at in this era of linear television decline. However, those numbers still pale in comparison to the audience the Oscars once commanded. Just a decade ago, the show drew roughly 40 million viewers. The numbers started dwindling in 2015 (falling from 43.7 million viewers to 37.3 million) and ultimately bottomed out at a mere 10.4 million viewers in 2021. This year's ratings were almost certainly boosted by including blockbusters such as "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Avatar: The Way of Water" in the best picture category, and possibly The Slap. Of course, the big question: Can the Academy continue the trend and grow the audience next year? We'll have to wait to find out.

BuzzFeed's Bummer : Shares in BuzzFeed are down more than 10% in after-hours trading after the company posted its Q4 earnings and offered a dire outlook for 2023. The digital media company reported $134.6 million in revenue in Q4 (down 8% from 2022) with an overall loss of $106.2 million. The company forecast Q1 2023 revenue to be somewhere between $61 million and $67 million, which The Wrap's Lucas Manfredi noted would represent a decline of "more than 30% year over year and more than 50% quarter over quarter." In other words, not good. Read Manfredi full story.

► CEO Jonah Peretti: "There's no denying that 2022 was a tough year for digital media. The challenges we faced in Q4 are also impacting us in Q1 2023, and it is clear we have more work to do to realize the full potential of our combined brand portfolio."

Off the Sidelines: The BBC on Monday announced that it would reinstate sports anchor Gary Lineker after his suspension prompted an internal mutiny and fierce public backlash. "Gary is a valued part of the BBC and I know how much the BBC means to Gary, and I look forward to him presenting our coverage this coming weekend," the BBC Director General Tim Davie said in a statement. Lineker said he looks "forward to getting back on air" after the BBC's flagship soccer program, "Match of the Day," aired without commentary this past weekend. The entire incident was sparked by a tweet in which Lineker compared the UK's immigration plan to 1930s Germany, which the BBC deemed to be in violation of its social media rules governing impartiality. In announcing his return, Davie said the BBC will conduct a review of its social media guidelines. CNN's Ben Church has the details.

► Kudos to the BBC for aggressively covering itself over the last several days. Here's a live blog the outlet has continued updating with the latest. 

► Related read: The BBC "is engulfed in an impartiality storm of its own making," Rob Picheta writes, noting that "as it so often does during moments of crisis," the outlet "managed to anger almost everyone across the political spectrum during a days-long fit of self-flagellation."

Advertising on Fox's Air: Prominent advertising executive Lou Paskalis believes it is now a risk for companies to continue marketing their products on Fox News. Paskalis over the weekend published a post in which he said the Dominion revelations "present a moral hazard for advertisers" and recommended they cease sending money into the right-wing talk channel's pockets. "There are errors of omission and errors of commission," Paskalis told me Monday, indicating that Fox committed the latter. Paskalis said that it's not enough to simply pull ads from the prime time bloc and move it to the dayside. "I think that's a bit of a head fake the industry at large has accepted," he said, "but the testimony and discovery in Dominion has blown that away."

► A spokesperson for Fox News told me Monday night that no advertisers have dropped the channel in the wake of the recent Dominion revelations. The spokesperson also pointed me to a statement that accused Dominion of using "distortions and misinformation" to "smear Fox News."

Meta's Move: More layoffs are about to hit Meta. The WaPo's Naomi Nix reported Monday that the anticipated round of job cuts are poised to begin this week. Nix reported, via a source, that the cuts "will be focused primarily on Meta’s recruiting division, followed by technical workers in April and employees in nontechnical roles in May." Read the full story here.

HBO's Home Run: The season finale of "The Last Of Us" summoned 8.2 million viewers to HBO on Sunday night, the premium television channel said. HBO touted the viewership number, noting it has been "growing consistently throughout the season against enhanced Sunday night competition." Indeed, the finale number was almost double the audience the show's premiere drew (4.7 million). CNN's Brian Lowry has more on the ratings numbers.

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino. Have feedback? Send us an email here. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.