Good morning! We're publishing a little bit late due to some technical gremlins. Here's the latest on Kamala Harris, Maria Ressa, Mark Zuckerberg, Spotify, Alex Jones, David Enrich, and more...
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Today, for the first time in the talk show's history, "The View" will welcome a sitting president to the table in a live appearance. President Joe Biden, in New York City for the UN General Assembly, will field questions at 11am ET. It is both a huge booking coup and a massive logistical challenge for executive producer Brian Teta, who has positioned the daytime show as an essential stop for politicians.
"The View is never dull, but hosting the leader of the free world for an exclusive live interview is a different level of excitement," Teta told me overnight. "We’re going to have all six hosts on the show together at the table," for the first time since the show moved to Hudson Square, "and as usual, they all have very different things they want to talk about," he said.
Teta also pointed out that the studio audience for today's episode "was booked long before we made the Biden announcement, so they are getting a tremendous surprise."
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Ruhle interviewing Harris today |
CNN had the first joint interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz four weeks ago. Now MSNBC has the first one-on-one interview with Harris. This morning, MSNBC announced that 11pm host and NBC senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle is sitting down with Harris in Pittsburgh, where the VP is holding an economy-focused campaign event. The interview will air tonight at 7pm ET "during a special two-hour edition of All In with Chris Hayes," the network says.
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The UN General Assembly will continue in NYC... Helene will strengthen into a hurricane as the storm barrels toward Florida's Big Bend... Meta will hold its annual developer conference... |
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Update on Thompson and Ressa's initiative |
The International Fund for Public Interest Media, which was launched in 2021 by Mark Thompson (now the CEO of CNN) and Maria Ressa, is unveiling "an ambitious plan to raise $150 million by mid-2025 to bolster independent media in low and mid-income countries globally over the next three years," Sara Fischer reports for Axios.
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TheRighting is releasing its latest look at right-wing news site traffic later today. Here are two takeaways from Howard Polskin's summary:
>> Fox News continues to have exponentially more unique visitors than any other right-wing site – about 85 million in August, versus 5.5 million for Newsmax.
>> Truth Social "had the second-highest number of unique visitors in its history, almost shattering last month’s record-breaking performance." But the totals are still meager: About 5.6 million unique visitors in August. Speaking of...
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"An unwell elderly man posting AI slop" |
Trump's "Truths" rarely garner much mainstream attention – but The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel says they should. "If you, like me, have had the experience of seeing friends or loved ones radicalized online or lost to a sea of Facebook memes and propaganda, then scrolling through Trump’s Truth Social posts will provoke a familiar feeling," he writes.
On the platform, "it's not (just) that Trump seems unpresidential — it's that he seems like an unwell elderly man posting AI slop for an audience of bots on Facebook. Imagine that... you were looking at the feed of a relative. What would you say or do?"
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Trump's McDonald's fixation |
Why is Trump fixated on Harris's old McDonald's job — and insistent that she never really worked there at all? "It's almost become an obsession on the campaign trail," CNN's Kaitlan Collins said last night. I joined Collins on set (and brought a Happy Meal and fries) to explain the context. In short: The Washington Free Beacon sowed doubt about Harris's college job several weeks ago and Trump is now running with it. My analysis: Trump tries to assert that everyone is full of B.S. to wave away the smell of his own. Here's the video of our segment.
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When good news isn't deemed 'newsworthy' |
The FBI's violent crime report, published Monday, showed the steepest annual decline in murders in decades, yet has been almost entirely ignored by the right-wing media that consistently, continually stoke fear about crime. Jon Passantino and Liam Reilly have details here. |
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NYT business investigations editor David Enrich, the author of multiple best sellers, is unveiling his next project, "Murder the Truth," slated for release next March. HarperCollins says the book is about powerful people "weaponizing the legal system to intimidate and punish journalists and others who dare criticize them." This book could not be more timely...
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Zuckerberg is *not* done with politics |
I understand why the NYT titled this story "Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics." He certainly wants to be out of the political fray. His preference, the article says, is to "wash his hands of it all." But the real story is that it's impossible for tech and media moguls to stay out of the fray. Attempting to do so... is just another form of politics. The word "appeasement" comes to mind.
The Times notes that Zuckerberg spoke to Trump in "one-on-one telephone calls twice over the summer... a move that some have characterized as an attempt to repair a long-strained relationship between the two men." He has has "yet to forge a relationship" with Harris.
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Comcast's controversial donation |
Comcast, which has been a "backer of reproductive rights," just made a donation to Ron DeSantis's anti-abortion PAC, stoking controversy in Florida and beyond. "Unlike other corporations that have been on both sides of the abortion issue, Comcast also oversees a major news division," writes The Bulwark's Marc Caputo, who used to work for that division, NBC News.
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>> "Fox News anchor Bret Baier said on Tuesday that he believes" Harris "is willing to participate in a debate on his network," and that Trump is the "hold-up," The Daily Caller's Jason Cohen reports.
>> Anthony Scaramucci says: "I thought it was a ruse that he didn't want to debate by President Harris, but it appears that he's actually lost his fighting spirit."
>> In this new Quinnipiac poll, 64% of likely voters "say they would like to see a second debate."
>> TV town halls instead of debates? Univision has scheduled town hall events with Trump (on Oct. 8 in Miami) and Harris (Oct. 10 in Las Vegas).
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>> "Alex Jones' Infowars show is likely to be shut down within a few months, after a federal bankruptcy judge ruled Tuesday that plans to sell off the assets of Jones’ media company, Free Speech Systems, can move forward." (NPR)
>> Post-bankruptcy, Vice is coming back as... a print magazine. (Adweek)
>> The NYT is making its audio subscription "available for purchase through Apple Podcasts and Spotify." (Axios)
>> CBS News vet Jeff Glor "is exiting the network along with three other veteran correspondents in the most recent round of layoffs at parent company Paramount Global." (LA Times)
>> "U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that Moscow was behind a fake San Francisco TV channel that spread outright lies about a supposed hit-and-run incident involving Kamala Harris," Will Neal reports. (Daily Beast)
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>> At Meta Connect today and tomorrow, the company is expected to announce that it has "secured deals with actors including Judi Dench, Kristen Bell and John Cena to give voice to its Meta AI chatbot." (Reuters)
>> "Spotify is expanding an AI feature that creates customized playlists from your text descriptions." (The Verge)
>> "As congressional efforts to enact federal privacy protections have stagnated, more than a dozen-and-a-half states have passed their own laws to restrict data practices," Cristiano Lima-Strong writes, adding that "almost all of those measures lack basic guardrails against discriminatory uses of personal data, leaving some of the most vulnerable U.S. users unprotected." (Wash Post)
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>> "The man behind the publication of a memoir purported to be from Sean Combs’ ex-partner Kim Porter tells Rolling Stone that he can't guarantee the book's authenticity after he claims to have received a flash drive containing the book from two 'music industry' sources but insists that he ‘believes it to be true,'" Cheyenne Roundtree writes. (Rolling Stone)
>> Steve Pond reports on the controversies stemming from the Golden Globes' "new ways to drive revenue this year." (The Wrap)
>> Puck has announced a very different type of awards season event: "Stories of the Season." (Puck)
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