Welcome to Wednesday! Here's the latest on the PRESS Act, Alex Jones, Kylie Kelce, Bari Weiss, Scott Jennings, Christopher Nolan, "A Complete Unknown," and more... |
Hadas Gold has our lead story about a late-night twist out of Texas:
"A bankruptcy judge has blocked The Onion's winning bid for Alex Jones' Infowars conspiracy platform, citing concerns with the auction process which he says left money on the table."
Judge Christopher Lopez, a bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Texas, said, "I'm going to not approve the sale to the purchaser. I think there’s a great lack of clarity here." He said the court-appointed trustee's "well intended" process "simply did not maximize value in any way based upon the record before me." Lopez acknowledged all the emotion surrounding the case, but told the court he did not care who won the auction – only that it was held with clarity and would extract the highest possible value. Gold's story explains it all here...
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Now what? It's murky. The decision prolongs "a messy tug of war between two high-profile suitors," the NYT's Ben Mullin and Elizabeth Williamson wrote overnight. NPR's Tovia Smith noted that "Lopez said he wants the trustee to sell Infowars in a way that will bring in more money — but how to do that, he said, is up to the trustee. And the judge wants to hear the plan in 30 days."
In the meantime, Jones is celebrating The Onion's setback, and hyping himself as a First Amendment hero.
Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion, said in a statement that they are "deeply disappointed" in the decision, but "will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured."
"We will also continue to seek a path towards purchasing Infowars in the coming weeks," he said. "It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case."
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GOP senator blocks PRESS Act |
The PRESS Act had its moment on the Senate floor yesterday – until Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it.
The bipartisan bill, which passed the GOP-controlled House earlier this year, would prevent the government from forcing journalists to reveal their sources and limit the seizure of their data without their knowledge. But Cotton reportedly held it up in committee. Yesterday evening, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon went to the floor and asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill – but Cotton objected, as expected, thereby blocking it. You'll recall that Trump called on Republicans to "kill this bill" last month.
Bottom line: Schumer has other priorities right now, and the bill is unlikely to win 60 votes, so it's probably not going anywhere this year. Clare Foran and I have the full story here...
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Political media notes and quotes |
>> Andrew Ferguson is Trump's pick for Federal Trade Commission chair, replacing Lina Khan and signaling an easing of the agency's antitrust enforcement. (CNN)
>> Asked by CNN's Manu Raju about Pete Hegseth's nomination, Sen. Lindsey Graham said "right now, he's in pretty good shape... he's much better off this week than he was last week." (X)
>> Annie Karni says the debate over Hegseth "has revealed a gender divide in the Senate, where a tiny group of Republican women have emerged as some of the only skeptics." (NYT)
>> Newsmax instructed staff to "lay off" Hegseth "after a segment bashing the pick sparked the ire of Trump himself," Diana Falzone reports. (Mediaite)
>> "Meet the Press" and its exclusive Trump interview averaged 2.9 million viewers on Sunday, its "largest total viewer audience in over a year," NBC said. (TVNewser)
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Big new hires at The Free Press |
Here's how Bari Weiss describes her right-leaning startup The Free Press: "We have earned the trust of our audience in a moment where what's been described as a crisis of trust in the old media, is actually a crisis in trustworthiness."
Sara Fischer reports for Axios that the startup "has hired former Wall Street Journal editor-turned-banker Dennis K. Berman as its first publisher and president” and has added "Hearst and Bloomberg product veteran Daniel Hallac as its first chief growth officer..."
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YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST... |
'Reimagining' the LAT's opinion section |
Liam Reilly writes: Though the Los Angeles Times is staying tight-lipped about what its reimagined Editorial Board will look like, owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong tells CNN that "full-time staff positions on the board [are] currently under review as part of this restructuring." The board's new operations will be clarified by the end of January, he said.
Soon-Shiong also confirmed that Scott Jennings "has accepted a position on the board and will continue contributing to the Opinion section while maintaining his current responsibilities," including at CNN. Jennings will be a contributor, we're told, and not as a member of the Times' staff. More to come in January...
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>> Prince Harry is attempting to turn his case against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers "into a 'public inquiry' to seek accountability for others who have already settled claims," Caroline Davies reports... (The Guardian)
>> Paul Krugman's decision to leave The NYT came after "behind-the-scenes friction" between him and the paper's management, Oliver Darcy reports. (Status)
>> Citing 404 Media's recent reporting, a bipartisan group of members of Congress are "asking Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies why they can’t get their deepfake problem under control..." (404 Media)
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Rupert's greatest setback ever? |
Rupert Murdoch's attempt to carry out a "coup against his own heirs" — a bid that was rejected this week by a Nevada court — "is perhaps the greatest setback in the 93-year-old mogul's career," the famed author and journalist Clive Irving wrote for Vanity Fair yesterday. Irving made the point that Murdoch's move is about money as well as power and politics: "James, Elisabeth, and Prudence are as exercised about minimizing the tax impact of the succession as they are about who gets to decide the future of the Murdoch empire, including Fox News..."
>> Rich Greenfield asks: "What would it cost Lachlan to buy out his siblings?"
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Right-wing shot and chaser |
Sunday: "Fox is talking to potential acquisition targets in political media, particularly on the right," Semafor's Ben Smith wrote in an item titled "Murdoch shops for podcasts." Among the assets mentioned: Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire.
Tuesday: The Daily Wire "is looking to possibly partner with a larger company or raise a significant round of capital next year to meet its growth ambitions," the aforementioned Sara Fischer reported.
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The debut of Kylie Kelce's new podcast, Not Gonna Lie, "has unseated Joe Rogan's The Joe Rogan Experience from its long-held perch atop the most-listened charts on both Apple and Spotify," VF's Kase Wickman writes.
I suspect Rogan will be back in first place soon, but for now, this ranking reinforces the Kelce family's cultural dominance. ("If everyone's going to be talking about me and my family, you might as well hear it from me," she says in the show trailer.) Her husband Jason and brother-in-law Travis host the popular "New Heights" podcast...
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Liam Reilly tuned in for all the sessions this week. Here are a few of the takeaways from Tuesday:
>> Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight had the streamer pushing "every ISP in the world, right to the limits of their own capacity — we were stressing the limits of the internet itself that night." The fight, he said, stirred "unprecedented demand..."
>> HarperCollins chief exec Brian Murray said the News Corp-owned publishing house is "playing with" A.I. He cited an experiment with "a book sitting on top of a large language model," letting readers "converse with an author," plus translation, text-to-speech, marketing, and other capabilities. But he also warned of A.I.-related risks, including "an explosion of low-quality content..."
>> New York Times Company CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said the NYT is "incredibly excited about the potential for the tech to make our journalism far more accessible to people," noting its "mountain of really high-quality intellectual property" and "deliberate" strategy...
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Shares of SiriusXM fell more than 12% yesterday "after the company issued a 2025 revenue forecast that fell short of Wall Street estimates," Bloomberg's Rob Golum reported. To turn it around, the company's "new strategic vision... includes a greater focus on cost efficiencies and on its car subscription business," and less on its streaming app, THR's
Caitlin Huston reports. This suburban dad 🙋♂️ uses SiriusXM every day, but the company could do a lot to make its in-car service more valuable... |
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>> A difficult but important read: The suicide of a Minnesota man offers "a case study into how a sadistic online group has used the messaging app Discord to find and torment vulnerable people." (Wash Post)
>> Now that Sora has been publicly released, Scott Rosenberg says "we're about to witness an at-scale experiment in what it means for people to create and consume large quantities of video content that is photorealistic but fake." (Axios)
>> The European Union's digital regulator "is looking into Google's advertising practices under an online content law that bans companies from using minors' data for targeted advertising," Edith Hancock reports. (WSJ)
>> "Instagram is officially rolling out 'trial reels' to give creators a way to test out new content by publishing videos that don’t appear to their followers." (TechCrunch)
>> “YouTube is experimenting with multiplayer mini-games under its collection of lightweight, free games dubbed 'Playables.'" (TechCrunch)
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Elizabeth Wagmeister reports: "An anonymous John Doe sat down with CNN on Tuesday to share, for the first time, what he described as the traumatic toll the alleged abuse he endured by Sean 'Diddy' Combs has taken on his life." Doe is the first civil accuser of Combs to publicly speak to the media in an interview. He alleges that he was drugged and sodomized by the embattled music mogul in 2007, and says the "full gravity of it lives with me to this day." Combs' reps declined to comment on the allegations on Tuesday. But his lawyers have said in the past that "Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone—adult or minor, man or woman." Read/watch Wagmeister's full story here...
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Celebrating 'Interstellar' again |
Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection |
The power of “Interstellar” to almost immediately sell out theaters 10 years after its theatrical release "shows our industry once again that audiences truly understand the difference between a communal, big screen theatrical experience that they crave even on films that they've had the opportunities to see in the home," Christopher Nolan told the AP's Lindsey Bahr. Here's her full story. I'm hoping to see it in IMAX, but tickets are hard to come by...
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>> J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot struck "a more modest production pact" with Warner Bros. "that sources say will cover film and TV," Tatiana Siegel reports. (Variety)
>> "Dune: Part Two" wasn’t nominated for the Golden Globes' box office achievement award "because the studio and filmmakers chose not to submit it," a voting member said. (Variety)
>> The first reviews of "A Complete Unknown" are out and critics are mostly praising Timothée Chalamet performance in the Bob Dylan biopic. (THR)
>> "The apparent end of Sony's Marvel spinoff franchise represents one of Hollywood's most ambitious — and costly — attempts to build a shared cinematic universe without its central character," Umberto Gonzalez writes. (TheWrap)
>> RIP: The Amazing Kreskin has died at 89. (THR)
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