Happy Valentine's Day! 💕 I wanted to lead today with this weekend's "SNL" 50th anniversary celebration. But this other story is more pressing...
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Let's go back in time together. The Associated Press – which is currently being singled out by the Trump White House and barred from performing some of its press pool duties – is so foundational to White House coverage that it helped create the pool in the first place.
As this AP explainer helpfully notes, "the first known instance of a so-called pool reporter inside the White House was in 1881 after President James A. Garfield was shot. As the chief executive lay in bed, AP reporter Franklin Trusdell sat outside his sick room, listening to him breathe and sharing updates with other correspondents."
What is the president doing? What is he saying? Is he even breathing? That's what the press pool documents – for the rest of the press corps and ultimately for the public. The AP, a cooperative that transmits news to thousands of clients, has been in the pool "since its inception more than a century ago."
That's the crucial context for this week's standoff between The AP and the Trump White House over the "Gulf of America" label. The AP didn't go looking for this fight. It's just trying to cover the news for a global audience. But for three days in a row, the wire service's reporters have been barred from presidential events.
As I noted on CNN this morning, other news outlets are taking similar positions vis a vis the Gulf, so the White House may punish others in the future. NiemanLab's Joshua Benton has a great piece about what Reuters, The New York Times and other news orgs are doing...
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Many readers have asked me what other news outlets are doing to support The AP. Some have suggested a mass boycott is in order. Consider the possibility, however, that the Trump White House wants this fight. Wants journalists to act like opponents instead of observers. If the entire press pool skipped a Trump photo op in solidarity with The AP, wouldn't the White House welcome Breitbart and One America News to take their places?
My sense is that The AP's editors and their peers at other media institutions are having backchannel conversations about what to do. "We have to be strategic," one top editor told me, and keep covering the White House without just accepting how The AP is being treated.
The White House Correspondents Association's board also met last night about next steps. In a new statement, the group's president, Eugene Daniels, said "this is a textbook violation of not only the First Amendment, but the president's own executive order on freedom of speech and ending federal censorship."
The AP, meanwhile, is moving ahead with a potential legal challenge. As one staffer remarked, "it's hard to come up with a clearer case of viewpoint discrimination." The AP, this staffer said, would argue that "motive has already been established" through Karoline Leavitt's comments to Kaitlan Collins at the press briefing on Wednesday.
>> The next "test," so to speak, will come later today. when The AP is slated to travel on Air Force One with the rest of the pool when Trump flies to Mar-a-Lago...
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Erasing 'trans,' rewriting history |
Federal agencies are rewriting not just language, but history, to comply with Trump's executive orders. "The National Park Service has removed references to transgender and queer people on its web page for the Stonewall National Monument," CNN's Elizabeth Wolfe reports. Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, said the government is "erasing the history of the LGBTQ rights movement by erasing trans folks."
Some of the webpages now have glaring mistakes. This page describes activist Sylvia Rivera and says "at a young age Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights." Gay "and rights?" Originally the page said "Sylvia began fighting for gay and transgender rights." But Trump's recent decrees are causing "transgender" to be deleted.
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Understanding Trump's 'visual language' |
New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik writes that the videos coming out of Trump’s made-for-TV administration "speak a visual language that decades of police procedurals and action shows, from 'Dragnet' through today, have taught a TV audience to read," depicting agents "showing force and cleaning up the streets" – and winning every time. Check out his excellent column here...
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Political media notes and quotes |
>> Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center "has prompted an outcry in the cultural community, with several artists resigning their posts," Javier C. Hernández and Robin Pogrebin report. (NYT)
>> The WSJ has revealing new reporting about Melania Trump's big-money documentary deal with Amazon. (WSJ)
>> David Gilbert writes that when the DOGE website finally came online, "it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musk's own X." (WIRED)
>> And the DOGE site "has been defaced," Jess Weatherbed writes, "because anyone can edit it." Whoops. (The Verge)
>> Rahm Emanuel, who was most recently U.S. ambassador to Japan, is joining CNN as senior political and global affairs commentator. (THR)
>> "Ben Terris is leaving The Post to become New York magazine's Washington correspondent, replacing Olivia Nuzzi," Ben Mullin scooped. (X)
>> This morning The Hill launched a new newsletter, Whole Hog Politics, by Chris Stirewalt. (The Hill)
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TikTok is back in App Stores |
Apple and Google have restored TikTok to app stores "following promises by President Donald Trump to save the app and an executive action delaying the enactment of a ban on the wildly popular social media platform," CNN's Ramishah Maruf and Clare Duffy report. TikTok is already back to #1 on Apple's top apps chart – presumably due to people who bought new phones in the past few weeks and weren't able to install it until now. More here...
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Earlier today Pope Francis was hospitalized for bronchitis treatment and checks, and as it so happened, CNN had some first-hand knowledge about his health. The Pope held audiences at the Vatican earlier in the day, including with Mark Thompson, the CEO of CNN. Quoting from CNN.com's report: CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb, "who saw Francis at the beginning of that meeting, said the pope was mentally alert but struggling to speak for extended periods due to breathing difficulties."
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It's "SNL" anniversary weekend! And "in typical SNL fashion, it looks like Sunday's big SNL50 Anniversary Special is still very much a chaotic work in progress," Puck's Matthew Belloni wrote overnight.
The weekend begins with "SNL50: The Homecoming Concert" tonight on Peacock. Tomorrow night the concert will re-air on NBC in primetime, and then the original 1975 episode of "SNL" (see above) will be rebroadcast. Sunday night is the main event: a three-hour "SNL50" telecast full of alumni appearances starts at 8 p.m., following a one-hour red carpet show hosted by Willie Geist and Leslie Jones. NPR has a viewers guide here, and don't miss Maureen Dowd's new column about Lorne Michaels.
>> Also new this weekend: The much-anticipated third season of "Yellowjackets" premieres today... And season three of "The White Lotus" debuts on Sunday...
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>> Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg are the envy of every other media reporter right now. The pair obtained more than 3,000 pages of documents about Rupert Murdoch's succession drama. Start reading now if you haven't already... (NYT)
>> Big Tech is battling over "the box." What does that mean? Let John Herrman explain. (NYMag)
>> Boone Ashworth profiled John Mills, the creator behind Watch Duty, the app that millions trusted as wildfires raged across California. (WIRED)
>> Charlotte Klein asked: "Who Wants to Co-Host The Daily?" (NYMag)
>> "Who's Watching What on TV? Who's to Say?" John Koblin went deep on the messy state of audience measurement. (NYT)
>> Timothy Bella's new feature: "Anthony Mackie is finally starring in an Anthony Mackie movie." (Wash Post)
>> The aforementioned Matthew Belloni interviewed Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria, who said she's looking into how to vet the social media history of its talent in the wake of the "Emilia Pérez" meltdown. (The Town)
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>> A group of major publishers — including The Atlantic, Politico, and Vox — are suing AI startup Cohere "for copyright and trademark infringement, escalating the news industry’s legal battle over the technology," Alexandra Bruell reports. (WSJ)
>> Google's Gemini AI chatbot "can now tailor answers based on the contents of previous conversations." (TechCrunch)
>> Meta is opening up its Facebook Marketplace to rivals in an "EU antitrust clash." (Bloomberg)
>> Roku shares are soaring this morning after the company "overdelivered" in Q4. (Variety)
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>> "ESPN is getting out of the F1 business," John Ourand scoops. (Puck)
>> "NBC has hired Carmelo Anthony to serve as one of the network's top studio analysts when it begins broadcasting NBA games next season," Andrew Marchand writes. (NYT)
>> "NFL RedZone" host Scott Hanson's contract has expired, and he is "in talks with NBC Sports about a wide-ranging job that could include Olympics and NFL coverage," Michael McCarthy reports. (Front Office Sports)
>> The Reliance-Disney joint venture in India "will no longer offer completely free streaming for IPL cricket matches and will adopt a hybrid model where subscription kicks in after content consumption reaches a threshold," Aditya Kalra reports. (Reuters)
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>> Boxoffice predicts a big weekend for "Captain America: Brave New World" despite the mixed reviews the movie has received. I'm taking the kiddos to see the weekend's other big new release, "Paddington in Peru," after school today... (Boxoffice Pro)
>> The world premiere of Bong Joon-ho's upcoming film "Mickey 17" "left Londoners starstruck,” per Georg Szalai... (THR)
>> Amazon's Prime Video renewed "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" for a third season. (Variety)
>> And for now there's no blackout of Paramount programming on YouTube TV: The two sides "have reached a short-term extension" while they haggle. (Variety)
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