Will Lewis faces more scrutiny over his role as a one-time Rupert Murdoch lieutenant, two more Al Jazeera journalists are killed in Gaza, cuts hit Disney Entertainment Television, Joe Rogan predicts Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump, Meta shares surge on another strong earnings report, Google tackles deepfakes in search, HBO is confronted with another "House of the Dragon" leak, and so much more. But first, the A1.

The Donald Dumpster Fire

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Donald Trump on Wednesday took the stage before a divided National Association of Black Journalists conference. And, within moments of the event getting underway, it was clear where the event was headed.

Trump unleashed a barrage of vicious attacks on Kamala Harris, absurdly questioning her Black identity (she is indeed Black). He once again expressed sympathy for the January 6 insurrectionists, implying their innocence (despite numerous convictions). He boasted that he had been "the best president for the Black population" since Abraham Lincoln (seriously?). And he repeatedly targeted one of the moderators, ABC News' Rachel Scott, calling her "nasty" for her no-holds-barred line of questioning (a refrain he reserves for women).

But while some of Trump’s comments were new, their deeper significance is questionable. Trump making a racist remark is hardly surprising; his history is littered with such instances, including fanning the flames of the birther movement and hosting a known white nationalist and Holocaust denier at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. His desire to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists is well known, as is his tendency to compare himself to Lincoln. And his hostility toward Black journalists asking tough questions is also nothing new.

So, what exactly did the American public gain from watching Trump spew a relentless stream of lies and insults onstage as the NABJ audience jeered and gasped at the reprehensible behavior of the former president? Was there anything it did not already know?

To be clear, there is value in exposing Trump’s offensive behavior to the public. But there are also more effective ways to do so that allow interviewers to maintain control of the platform, which is largely why Trump's invitation to appear on a panel at the event sparked division inside the NABJ the moment it was announced. 

That was not the case on Wednesday at the NABJ conference. Despite the sharp questions from Scott and Semafor's Kadia Goba, Trump was able to overwhelm them with his trademark bluster, plus a helpful assist from sympathetic Fox News host Harris Faulkner. Had Trump instead been confined to a one-on-one interview with Scott, he would have had far more difficulty dodging her tough — but fair — questions.

Trump thrives on insults, lies, shocking rhetoric, and conflict. This is how he has previously dominated news cycles. However, after the 2016 election, many in the press realized that treating his shock-jock antics as news was not the best approach. If it were, then every television outlet would be broadcasting his rallies live and letting him phone into news programs at will.

But news executives have largely concluded — and rightly so — that handing a known liar a megaphone is not the best way to cover him. Yet, that is effectively what the NABJ chose to do on Wednesday. And while the headlines it elicited will command attention for the next several days, it's worth thinking hard about whether anything new of real value was extracted from the off-the-rails event.

Harris summarized it succinctly at a campaign event a few hours after Trump's appearance when she said, "It was the same old show." The question before news organizations is whether they should be airing it.

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The Brown-Lewis Showdown: Will Lewis is facing a fresh allegation of wrongdoing — this time from former U.K. PM Gordon Brown, who wrote a piece in The Guardian alleging the former Rupert Murdoch lieutenant turned WaPo publisher tried to falsely implicate him in a crime. "Blazoned across the top of every edition of the Washington Post is the statement, 'Democracy dies in darkness,'" Brown wrote. "But what if the publisher himself is a master of the dark arts?" In his piece, Brown pushed back against a claim advanced years ago by Lewis that asserted Murdoch's U.K. publishing arm needed to delete millions of emails to prevent the then-MP from orchestrating a plot to steal some of them. "None of this was anything other than a complete fabrication," Brown wrote. 

Brown added that he had recently communicated his side of the story to the Metropolitan Police and that officials had indicated they would look into it. The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh reviewed a letter police sent Brown in early May, which said the issues raised were "complex and will take time to consider against investigations that have already taken place." On Wednesday, the authorities stressed that a criminal probe had not yet been opened. "There is no criminal investigation at this time," a Metropolitan Police representative told my colleague Hadas Gold. "We have responded to Mr Brown to acknowledge receipt of his letter. Its contents continues to be assessed and we will be writing again to update him on the likely timescales involved in that work." Lewis, of course, has denied all wronging in relation to the phone-hacking affair. But the questions surrounding it, having been resurfaced by Prince Harry's lawsuit, continue to plague him.

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Going After Google: The right-wing war on Big Tech has not abated, despite Elon Musk controlling X and Mark Zuckerberg gushing over "badass" Donald Trump. In recent days, MAGA Media personalities have started targeting Google, claiming that the search giant's results are biased against Trump. The Associated Press published a thorough fact-check pouring cold water on the claims, which were mostly focused on the fact that its autocomplete feature would not generate predictions related to the Trump assassination. Google explained that its search engine does not autocomplete results related to political violence, but of course that did not quell the attacks, given they're being lobbed by dishonest actors. On Wednesday, Musk fanned the flames of Google bias, complaining that a search result for "Trump rally" delivered a live-updates page from NBC News covering both Kamala Harris and Trump's activities. It goes without saying that Musk's bias complaint is absurd and ironic given how he has operated his own platform.

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More Meta Magic: Mark Zuckerberg's stellar year continues to get better. Meta shares jumped more than 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company beat analyst expectations on both revenue and profit in its Q2 earnings report. Meta also provided better-than-expected Q3 guidance, telling investors it is expecting revenue between $38.5 to $41 billion, versus the $39.1 billion expected. Meta's stock has surged more than 37% year to date. CNBC's Jonathan Vanian has more here.

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House of the Leaks: For the second year in a row, unreleased footage from HBO's "House of the Dragon" has leaked online. In a statement, HBO confirmed that clips from the acclaimed series had been posted on the internet, blaming the "unintentional release" on an "international third-party distributor." Indeed, the clips posted appeared to have been recorded with a secondary device. HBO said that it is "aggressively monitoring and removing clips from the internet," encouraging fans to properly watch the episode Sunday. Left unsaid was whether it was probing how this leak occurred for the second consecutive season. But one can safely assume that the company is most certainly looking into the matter. THR's James Hibberd has more.