TGIF! Here's the latest on Audacy, Elissa Slotkin, Paramount Global, Lady Gaga, Neon, "Mickey 17," and much more... |
This morning I can't pick just one story to lead with. Instead, here are five you should know about:
>> The Associated Press was recently "rotated" out of its Pentagon workspace, but that's not stopping the newswire from landing big stories. Tara Copp, Lolita C. Baldor and Kevin Vineys published this exclusive last night: "References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content." The AP has published the database for all to see.
>> "The silence grows louder every day," former NYT DC bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller writes: Some Trump critics are muzzling themselves because they are "intimidated by online attacks from the president, concerned about harm to their businesses or worried about the safety of their families." Steven Levitsky calls it "a sign that we've crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism."
>> Why hasn't Dan Bongino started in his new role as FBI deputy director? Well, for one thing, he still has "contractual obligations to advertisers" to fulfill, Dan Friedman reports for Mother Jones. So Bongino is hosting his daily podcast for another week, and that entails "hyping antigovernment paranoia and hawking prepper products." Friedman describes the ads here...
>> "Trump Is Breaking the Fourth Wall:" The Atlantic's Megan Garber makes the case that the "show" of Trump's first term "was mere prologue," and the second term is truly his "reality-TV presidency." Garber says "reality shows establish, and then are beholden to, their own rules. They are stridently insular. They are thoroughly self-rationalizing. That is the fun—and the danger. They will do whatever they want, because they can." Read on...
>> Douglas Murray's newest column for The Free Press is titled "how MAGA lost its way on Ukraine," but it's about more than that: "Perhaps the MAGA right will manage to wade their way out of the memes," he writes. "Or perhaps they will find out the hard way that most of the American public may dislike woke, but they dislike dictators, too — and that it is possible to keep both these dislikes inside one head, and movement, at the same time." More here...
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>> The WSJ editorial board finds a new way to needle Trump every day. Today the board says "it's doubtful Mr. Trump even has the power to impose these tariffs, and we hope his afflatus gets a legal challenge." (WSJ)
>> Yesterday Trump said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace "should be forced to resign" because he didn't like what they said after his address to Congress. (Mediaite)
>> "Tucker Carlson's jailhouse interview with Sam Bankman-Fried came as a surprise to everyone — including the crypto scammer's crisis manager." Now the PR rep, Mark Botnick, has resigned, Jacob Shamsian reports. (Business Insider)
>> Gavin Newsom kicked off his new podcast "with a bang," Charlie Mahtesian writes. With Charlie Kirk as his first guest, Newsom is "claiming a distinctive space" in the Democratic party. Christopher Cadelago says Newsom is "always thinking about how he can be a better media maestro." (Politico)
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Today: SXSW begins in Austin.
This afternoon: Trump speaks at his "White House Crypto Summit."
Saturday: Lady Gaga is both the host and musical guest on "SNL."
Sunday: We have to "spring forward" and lose an hour.
Sunday night: Season two of "United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper" premieres at 9 p.m., followed by "Twitter: Breaking The Bird" at 10.
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Stephen A. Smith's big raise |
Paras Griffin/Getty Images |
"Stephen A. Smith has agreed to a new contract with ESPN worth at least $100 million for five years," The Athletic's Andrew Marchand scooped yesterday. Smith was previously making about $12 million a year, so ESPN is nearly doubling his salary and giving him more flexibility.
"Smith will remain a fixture on 'First Take,' his daily morning flagship show on ESPN, but will be less omnipresent on the rest of the network," Marchand wrote, citing sources. The top takeaway: "The freedom figures to allow Smith to make even more appearances on other platforms to talk politics."
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Slotkin coming to 'The View' |
Fresh off her well-reviewed Democratic response to Trump's congressional address, Sen. Elissa Slotkin will be live in studio on "The View" next Tuesday. It will be Slotkin's first time on the program... |
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'An affront to the First Amendment' |
"Without a settlement in sight, Paramount Global is looking to dismiss President Trump's lawsuit against its CBS News unit from a federal court in Texas, which has become a hot spot for legal battles advancing conservative legal causes," THR's Winston Cho wrote yesterday. Paramount's filing says "this lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact..."
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'Not the enemy. Quite the opposite' |
The RTDNA Foundation celebrated this year's First Amendment Award recipients last night in DC. The honorees were The AP (for its "Gulf" fight), Trey Yingst of Fox News, Steve Inskeep of NPR, Omar Jimenez of CNN, Rachel Scott of ABC News, Lesley Stahl of CBS News, Karen DeWitt of the New York Public News Network, and attorney Charles D. Tobin of Ballard Spahr.
Notable: In his acceptance speech, Yingst said "journalists are not the enemy of the people. Let me say that again. Journalists are not the enemy of the people. Quite the opposite. Journalists are the voice of the people."
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Following the MAGA media money |
"As the White House handpicks members of the press pool, questions for the president amount to fluffy valentines," Lawrence Douglas recently wrote for The Guardian. Some of those "valentines" have come from Brian Glenn, a reporter at the small pro-Trump outlet called Real America's Voice, who keeps gaining press pool access.
His former employer, Right Side Broadcasting Network, "took $92,000 in ‘broadcast’ fees" from Trump campaign arms while he worked there, HuffPost's S.V. Date reports. Glenn described the fees as “production” costs, but "taking such payments would be considered a serious ethical breach among reputable news outlets," Date points out...
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>> "You asked, we answered:" The NYT's "trust team" has pulled together a fantastic feature about the publication's coverage of the president, addressing readers' most frequent complaints and curiosities. (NYT)
>> "At the Voice of America, the Trump administration is moving swiftly to assert its vision," David Bauder writes. (AP)
>> One of the ironies of the Washington Post's troubles "is that so many beleaguered employees fought for" Jeff Bezos's attention "for so long that they may not have realized what it entailed," Dylan Byers writes. Now he's being attentive – and disruptive. (Puck)
>> Good question: Would Patrick Soon-Shiong sell the Los Angeles Times? Better question: "Would anyone buy it?" Sharon Waxman explores both possibilities here. (TheWrap)
>> Spend some time with David Wallace-Wells' deep look at "how Covid remade America." (NYT)
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>> Audacy has begun "another significant round of layoffs... as high as 300 companywide." Local outlets from Boston to Kansas City are reporting on DJs and other hosts being axed. (Barrett Media)
>> Five Democratic senators are pressing the DOJ "to investigate whether Elon Musk is leveraging his influence in the Trump administration to bully advertisers into returning to X." (WSJ)
>> ☝️ It's worthwhile to note when Democrats do this, but equally important to note that such requests will fall on deaf ears. Similarly: "Democrats introduce bill to defang Carr’s aggressive FCC." (Semafor)
>> This has been one of the biggest student press stories of the past year: Prosecutors in California "are not going to pursue a criminal case against Dilan Gohill, the Stanford student journalist who was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian campus protest and occupation of the university president's office last June," Bill Grueskin reports. (CJR)
>> Scott Matthews will be MSNBC's senior VP of newsgathering as the channel builds out its own newsrooms apart from NBC News. (Wash Post)
>> Public media supporters held a rally outside NPR HQ yesterday. (WJLA)
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Will app store age verification make a difference? |
This week Utah "became the first state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify users' ages and get parental consent for minors to download apps to their devices," The AP's Hannah Schoenbaum reports. "Similar bills have been introduced in at least 12 other states in the latest fight over children's online safety..."
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>> John Herrman says AI has a marketing problem. (NYMag)
>> A new report by TollBit, a content licensing platform, shows "just how badly OpenAI and Perplexity are screwing over publishers." (Forbes)
>> As YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary, Todd Spangler surveys the state of the "video colossus" through the eyes of CEO Neal Mohan. (Variety)
>> Annie Aguiar writes about the rush "to turn scripture into scripts." (NYT)
>> Shira Ovide breaks down why streaming platforms still struggle with live events like the Oscars. (Wash Post)
>> Brent Lang and Tatiana Siegel have a great read about "how Neon pulled off the 'Anora' Oscar win." (Variety)
>> Benjamin Svetkey argues that streaming platforms are "making us all cinema-illiterate" by not including Hollywood's Golden Age in their libraries. (THR)
>> Sandra Gonzalez writes about the brilliance of the "big, blonde blob" in "The White Lotus." (CNN)
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>> Bong Joon-ho's "Mickey 17" for Warner Bros. is expected to lead the domestic box office this weekend. (Boxoffice Pro)
>> "Blake Lively's lawyer warned a judge Thursday that without a strict confidentiality order in her suit against 'It Ends With Us' co-star Justin Baldoni, private information could easily leak to the press." (Variety)
>> "Netflix is back in business with Jake Paul's Most Valuable Promotions, setting its second ever live boxing special for July 11 at Madison Square Garden." (THR)
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Cultural critic Virginia Heffernan penned a trenchant new piece about what it's like to live life "beside the deep well of badness" that is the incessant news cycle.
At the end, she offered some practical and touching advice: "Please watch The Pitt on HBO. I don't want to say too much about it, but it's the one about the crowded emergency room in Pittsburgh." She says it "shows, in these days of sadism, a response to pain that is neither to inflict it nor to endure it. But to treat it. To cool off the infections, open up the airways, split the bone, ease the suffering, and pitch in to heal the person right in front of you."
I'm going to start streaming the show today. Hope you have a weekend filled with goodness!
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