Happy St. Patrick's Day. Here's the latest on "Snow White," TikTok, Karoline Leavitt, Conan O'Brien, the Kennedy Center, Village Roadshow, Lady Gaga, and more...
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A Voice of America studio in New York City. (Brian Stelter) |
Radio Free Europe streamed war coverage into Russia when the Kremlin banned its citizens from calling the invasion of Ukraine a "war." Radio Free Asia bravely exposed China's mass detention of the Uyghurs. The Open Technology Fund helped fund the creation of the Signal app.
All three American government-funded outfits are in jeopardy now that the Trump administration has terminated all of the grant programs at the US Agency for Global Media, or USAGM.
The head-spinning dismantling of USAGM started on Saturday morning. Voice of America hasn't published any new stories since. As I first reported on Saturday afternoon, some VOA channels have replaced newscasts with music to fill the airtime. And on Sunday night, some of the employees who were told to stop working one day earlier were officially fired, effective March 31.
Ostap Yarysh, who was a top journalist at VOA's Ukrainian service until recently, wrote: "It's unbelievable how something that has been the voice of American democracy and has endured 83 years of broadcasting — through WW2, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a new imperialist war in Europe — can be silenced on a regular Saturday."
Is there any recourse? That's the question now. Thousands of employees and contractors are now trying to figure out what's next. The American Foreign Service Mission said that "unilaterally stripping a congressionally established agency of its core functions amounts to an affront to the constitutional balance of powers."
American broadcasting initiatives around the world have historically won bipartisan support. "Congress must act," the Committee to Protect Journalists said over the weekend. But Republicans have mostly let Trump's wrecking ball swing for the past two months, and only a few GOP lawmakers spoke up in support of VOA over the weekend.
Radio Free Asia CEO Bay Fang said "we plan to challenge this short-sighted order and pursue whatever means necessary to continue our work and protect our courageous journalists." In Europe, there is already some talk about finding EU financing for RFE/RL.
But we'll see if that amounts to anything. For now, the U.S. funding has been cut off, in what Fang called "a reward to dictators and despots." Here's my latest story about the impacts...
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"For years, the Chinese government and its propaganda apparatus have relentlessly attacked VOA and RFA for their critical coverage of China, particularly on human rights and religious freedom," CNN's Nectar Gan reported overnight. So Chinese nationalists and state media can hardly contain their schadenfreude right now. "One nationalist influencer called the dismantling "truly gratifying" while "a state-media editorial hailed the demise of what it called the 'lie factory.'" Read on...
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No one at VOA thinks the enterprise is perfect. Even deposed VOA director Michael Abramowitz said it "needs thoughtful reform." But the Trump loyalist who implemented his shutdown order, Kari Lake, said the agency is "not salvageable." The White House sent out a press release accusing VOA of "radical propaganda."
According to the Washington Post, Lake "had big plans to transform the outlet." But Trump directed her to gut the agency instead, and now Lake says she is staying in DC "only as much time as needed here in the swamp to help President Trump accomplish those goals."
Sidelined employees are still wondering if Lake and her deputies will try to turn the gutted networks into an overtly partisan, pro-Trump media apparatus.
Meantime, Liam Scott, who covered the press freedom beat for VOA, pointed out that 10 journalists from US-funded broadcasters are currently "imprisoned around the world for doing their jobs." He wrote on X Sunday afternoon, "I hope they will not be forgotten." Later in the day, Scott posted another update: He has been fired.
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Images of MAGA 'strength' |
On Sunday Trump aides touted video clips of migrants being deported and transferred to El Salvadorian custody, a legally dubious decision that was temporarily blocked by a federal judge. It was a made-for-TV and made-for-social portrayal of a popular Trump policy in action.
The deportation video, "set to dramatic music," was published by the El Salvadorian president on X, then widely promoted by the likes of Karoline Leavitt. "The American people voted for this," she said. Responding to the court order blocking the deportations, Leavitt called one of the deportees a "terrorist," noting that the Venezuelan gang he is allegedly a member of was labeled a foreign terror organization by the Biden administration.
But critics of the imagery said the Trump administration's media portrayal of the events was inhumane. Dartmouth political science professor Brendan Nyhan called the video a piece of "truly fascist propaganda." "On Tyranny" author Timothy Snyder said the "fascist video" was partly the point of the deportation, adding, "the cameras are all set up in advance." Meantime, Trump officials are trying to paint critics of the operation as pro-criminal...
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'Whitewashing American history' |
"The Trump presidency is, as much as anything, a project of purging and erasing large parts of America, of people, ideas, capacities, and knowledge," Don Moynihan writes in this pointed post on his Substack.
>> Arlington National Cemetery's website "has scrubbed dozens of pages on gravesites and educational materials that include histories of prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members buried in the cemetery, along with educational material on dozens of Medal of Honor recipients and maps of prominent gravesites," Matt White reported for Task & Purpose.
>> Related: The New Yorker's Julian Lucas wrote about "the data hoarders resisting Trump's purge."
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Trump calls reporting 'illegal' |
This happened on Friday but it has to be noted here: Speaking in front of prosecutors and other Justice Department staffers, Trump said legally operating news outlets do things that are "totally illegal," and said "I just hope you can all watch for it." He also called CNN and MSNBC "political arms of the Democrat Party." CNN's Liam Reilly has the full story here.
Trump's comments were meandering and confusing, but "if you read this as just bluster, you're not paying attention," CNN's Jim Sciutto remarked afterward. Trump handpicked people to run DOJ "that will not say no to him," attorney and Temple University law professor Donte Mills said on "NewsNight" Friday. "So, if he says, 'here's what I think should be illegal, go find a way to make it illegal and to punish these people,' it's going to happen."
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👀 Trump praises Bezos in new interview |
I haven't seen anyone else pick up on this yet: In an interview for Sharyl Attkisson's Sunday morning show on Sinclair, Trump said the media hasn't changed in his second term, "but what has changed is I think Facebook and Google and a lot of them have become, I think–"
Trump didn't finish the sentence, but he claimed Google, Instagram and "everybody" was against him the first time around, so he clearly senses that Big Tech has tried to warm up to him this time.
Then he invoked Jeff Bezos without any prompting: "I've gotten to know him, and I think he's trying to do a real job. Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with the Washington Post, and that wasn't happening before." |
Trumpworld notes and quotes |
>> A question I raised on "CNN News Central" this morning: Will Trump face much media criticism for celebrating his golf championship while dozens of Americans died in storms over the weekend? Imagine how Fox News would have framed that if Joe Biden were still president.
>> Trump, who is seeking "more sway in picking Kennedy Center honorees," will be speaking at a meeting of the board this afternoon. CBS says "organizers have arranged for the meeting to be held onstage at the venue's opera house."
>> NBC asked 1,000 registered voters about the news media's coverage of Trump. 46% (almost perfectly overlapping with his 47% approval rating) said the media has been too critical of Trump, 25% said it's been too supportive, and 24% said it's been dealing with Trump the right way.
>> Speaking of polls: Americans' favorable view of the Democratic Party has fallen to 29%, the lowest ever recorded in CNN's polling dating back more than 30 years.
>> 🔌 I'll be discussing ~all of this~ on today's edition of the fantastic daily radio show 1A, live on WAMU at 10 a.m. ET and on stations across the country. (1A)
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'60 Minutes' for the win again |
During the aforementioned interview with Sharyl Attkisson, Trump made multiple false statements about "60 Minutes" and his lawsuit against CBS – for example, claiming the Kamala Harris interview happened "one day before the election," when it was actually one month before. Attkisson (very gently) asked about the perception that he is shaking down media owners by filing lawsuits and striking settlement deals. He dodged the question and said "they really lied about me." Referring to CBS and the prospect of a settlement, Trump said "They admit that they're guilty. So we'll see what happens." Then he looked down, chuckled to himself, and said "they have problems." The exchange is around the 15-minute mark here on YouTube.
Anyway, that's just preamble to tell you about this "60 Minutes" segment that left viewers in tears last night. The title of the Scott Pelley report is "what musicians did after an executive order on DEI led to the cancellation of U.S. Marine Band collaboration."
I'll let Pelley and company explain the rest – the 13-minute video is worth watching in full.
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'The Vince Show' starts today |
"As Dan Bongino departs the company to serve as FBI Deputy Director, Cumulus Media is adding Vince Coglianese to bolster its syndicated conservative talk roster," Radio Ink reports. Coglianese has been hosting on WMAL in DC for years, and is also editorial director of The Daily Caller. He'll host "The Vince Show" in Bongino's old midday time slot and helm a daily podcast that is produced by Bongino's production company...
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Tonight: The iHeartRadio Music Awards air live on Fox and on iHeart stations.
Tuesday: New releases include "Revenge" by Alex Isenstadt.
Thursday: The first round of March Madness!
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>> NYT columnist David French says "the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech," and "don't fool yourself into thinking it will stop at Columbia." (NYT)
>> This is an excellent Ray Sanchez story: "Trump crackdown on student protesters sends shock waves across US universities." (CNN)
>> "For the first time in the 140-year history of the Gridiron Club Dinner, those gathered did not offer the traditional toast to the sitting U.S. president," Adam Wren reports. "Instead, leading members of the Washington press corps paid tribute to the First Amendment." (Politico)
>> Oracle "is accelerating talks with the White House on a deal to run TikTok, though significant concerns remain about what role the app’s Chinese founders will play in its ongoing U.S. operation." (Politico)
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>> Today in the UK Ofcom will "begin enforcing the new rules designed to protect internet users from illegal content and harmful activity online," Daniel Thomas reports. (FT)
>> "Apple's upcoming iPhone 17 'Air' will foreshadow a move to slimmer models without charging ports," Mark Gurman reports. (Bloomberg)
>> OpenAI and Musk "have agreed to fast-track a trial over OpenAI's for-profit shift, the latest turn in a grudge match between the world's richest person and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman playing out publicly in court." (Reuters)
>> "People are using Google's new AI model to remove watermarks from images," including from photos published by Getty. (TechCrunch)
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A 'painfully slow' weekend for theaters |
"Jack Quaid's action-comedy 'Novocaine' topped a painfully slow weekend at the box office with $8.7 million," Variety's Rebecca Rubin writes.
Just how slow was it? "Despite five new nationwide releases, this weekend was among the year's lowest grossing to date with $52 million across all films." So far this year revenues "are 5% behind 2024 and nearly 38% behind 2019, according to Comscore..."
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Just announced: Conan O'Brien has agreed to host the Oscars again next year. "On the heels of a critically acclaimed 2025 ceremony that attracted the highest ratings for an Oscars telecast in five years, executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan and producers Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney will also be back," THR's Scott Feinberg reports. More here...
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Entertainment odds and ends |
>> This just in: "One of Hollywood’s biggest financiers," Village Roadshow, "has just filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy," per Eriq Gardner. (X)
>> Disney's live-action "Snow White" premiered in L.A. on Saturday with no snags — and no press on the red carpet. (THR)
>> "First reactions are trickling in, calling it a dazzling hit for the House of Mouse." (Variety)
>> Lady Gaga's latest album, "Mayhem," debuted in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart. (Billboard)
>> Rejoice, football fans: "Ted Lasso" has been picked up for a fourth season! (AP)
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To all those who answered Friday's prompt about remembering the start of the pandemic five years ago: Thank you! I am working on compiling the replies today.
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by David Goldman and produced with Liam Reilly. Please email us your feedback and tips here.
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