Welcome to Wednesday! Some exciting news to share: Andrew Kirell is joining the Reliable Sources team next month as CNN's senior media editor. Andrew knows this world inside and out: He was a senior editor at The Daily Beast for nine years, and before that, he was editor-in-chief of Mediaite. Earlier in his career he worked in production at Fox Business and ABC News. And most recently, he has been an editor at NBC News and Vanity Fair. (Fun fact: he is also a musician.) Welcome aboard, Andrew! And now to the news...
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President Trump and his aides insist that none of the war plans texts seen by Jeffrey Goldberg contained classified information. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says "nobody's texting war plans" at all.
So Goldberg reconsidered his original decision to hold back Hegseth's texts specifying the targeting of Houthis in Yemen. And moments ago The Atlantic published those exchanges. Check it out here.
The idea, I'm told, is that the public can judge the contents and whether it was appropriate for Hegseth to be sending the details via Signal. Start reading... Then come back and read the rest of this newsletter!
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On the MAGA right, the scandal this week is not the amateurish disclosure of battle plans in a way that might have endangered national security, no, the real scandal is that someone close to Trump dared to interact with Goldberg.
Seriously – I have lost count of the number of times Goldberg has been disparaged as a "Trump hater" on Fox. All of the chatter in pro-Trump media is about whether some mysterious aide somehow added Goldberg to the Signal chat to hurt the president. Some MAGA media figures are even imagining that Goldberg snuck into the chat. (Which sounds impossible.) The conspiracy theories are "approaching O.J. Simpson searching for the real killer territory," as one observer wryly remarked to me this morning.
Mike Waltz, in a challenging interview with Laura Ingraham last night, repeatedly said he doesn't know Goldberg. I asked Goldberg if that's true, and the editor said he is declining to comment about his history with Waltz.
And what about the careless handling of possibly classified information? That's being met with a shrug from many (not all) right-wing media outlets...
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>> Trump is "not happy with how the story is playing out on television; it's the rare negative story that has broken through, at least somewhat, even on conservative-leaning outlets," Jon Lemire writes. But "the last thing he wants to do is give you guys [in the media] a scalp," an official told Lemire. (The Atlantic)
>> Goldberg's scoop has easily become the top news story of the year globally,” Sara Fischer reports, citing NewsWhip data.
>> "The scandal will also be in how they brush it aside." (The Bulwark)
>> Unfamiliar with Signal? Lisa Eadicicco has a useful explainer. (CNN)
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Pivotal public media hearing today |
For Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other House Republicans, today's DOGE subcommittee hearing is about tarnishing PBS and NPR with accusations of bias and targeting them for defunding.
For the broadcasters, today is about defending their existence – and maybe, just maybe, educating people about how public media actually works.
What will win the day? National political noise or local media impact?
The hearing, titled "Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable," starts at 10 a.m. Eastern. NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger will both be testifying. You can stream it on YouTube. I'll be watching because it's a great opportunity to assess the state of public media.
President Trump said yesterday that PBS and NPR are a "waste of money" and claimed "he would love to" defund them. And yet the funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump earlier this month included $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that disburses funds to 1,500 local radio and TV stations. A lot of people don't know this, but Congress budgets money for CPB two years in advance, so the recent bill means CPB is funded through 2027.
Ergo, you might conclude that today's hearing is a theatrical waste of time. But I don't think so, and neither do the stations...
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From North Country Public Radio in upstate New York, to New Mexico PBS in Albuquerque, to Hawaiʻi Public Radio in Honolulu, publicly supported stations are using the right's political attacks to galvanize grassroots support and raise money.
This is a "a critical moment for KQED," an email from the SF radio station said yesterday. DOGE has "set its sights on public media," an article from Rocky Mountain PBS explained. "Our future is in peril," a letter from WBUR in Boston exclaimed.
WBUR CEO Margaret Low wrote that the political threats – including the FCC chair's probe of PBS and NPR sponsorship practices – compound the "business model challenges that just about every news organization faces." It's fundraising drive season, so her letter understandably urged supporters to donate.
The letters and Q&As have had common themes: Explaining how taxpayer money trickles down to broadcasters and emphasizing the local benefits. I particularly liked this message from Hawaiʻi Public Radio CEO Meredith Artley, the former editor in chief of CNN Digital. In it, Artley wrote that her news and classical music stations are "94% community supported," with the remaining 6% coming from CPB.
If the federal funds were diminished, the Hawaii stations would survive, but "there would likely be damage to the nationwide system that provides programming and infrastructure that HPR and many other stations rely on," she wrote.
That's the key point: It's a system. And smaller stations tend to need more help from the system. At KTOO Public Media in Alaska, for example, fully 30% of the budget comes from CPB. "This federal funding is essential in ensuring that Juneau's only local-owned newsroom can continue to deliver you the news from our community," the station said.
Stations large and small are highlighting their local responsibilities. "Whatever happens in Washington, DC—WQED is not going anywhere," Jason Jedlinski, CEO of Pittsburgh's PBS station, wrote on LinkedIn. His post listed recent features (segments about a local farm, a reading club, and so on) that, quite frankly, few other media outlets would spend time on.
As Artley told me, NPR and PBS affiliates have been operating a "what is essentially the direct-to-consumer business model" for decades, a skill that many other media outlets are freshly developing. "We have to keep making the case that what we do is worth supporting," she said. That's what it's all about: Showing up in communities. Proving the value of public stations. To that point, here's a recent event Hawaiʻi Public Radio held in Waimea:
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Liberty Peralta/Hawai'i Public Radio |
At today's hearing, Republican lawmakers will bash national news controversies while the witnesses will pivot to the types of local impacts I have outlined here.
"PBS is practicing answers with lawyers" and "NPR executives are preparing to monitor the fallout," the NYT's Ben Mullin writes in today's paper. "Everything is at stake," Kerger told him. Maher previewed her testimony on the "Rapid Response" podcast...
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"What should government fund? I mean, that's the existential question for all of these things," Franz Joachim, general manager of New Mexico PBS, said recently. "What should government fund?"
Discussions about PBS/NPR funding are predictably polarized, with one side trying to protect the existing funding and the other side trying to strip it away. But what if we started from scratch?
The local news ecosystem is in ruins. The national news media is under intense stress. Many people don't see themselves represented in any form of media. Would we have a more functional democracy if we had more public media? Or would, say, ten times the funding just result in ten times the complaints?
"Media universe cartographer" Evan Shapiro, one of the smartest thinkers in the industry, recently observed that "America funds public media 35X less per capita than the Happiest Place on Earth, Finland," and "three times less than the average of the planet's genuine democracies." He argued that "American Democracy is broken because of its LACK OF PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA." Here is his provocative argument...
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Judge to Trump: Don't touch that dial |
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has handed the embattled broadcasters at the U.S. Agency for Global Media a lifeline.
Yesterday Lamberth granted Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's request for a temporary restraining order, thereby stopping the Trump admin from terminating the network's grant for the time being. Lamberth's order means RFE/RL is likely to succeed on the merits of its broader case – and that may bode well for Radio Free Asia and the other networks that are trying to stay on the air despite Trump's order. Here's my full story...
>> Reaction from RFE/RL CEO Steve Capus: Lamberth's "thoughtful and airtight ruling" is about preventing the Trump admin "from ignoring the will of Congress," and it "sends a strong message to our journalists around the world: Their mission as designed by Congress is a worthy and valuable one and should continue."
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"The Trump White House shut out the AP," but "they keep showing up anyway," the Washington Post's Jeremy Barr reports ahead of Thursday's key hearing in the legal case over the ban. Great detail: The newswire's White House reporters "continue to RSVP to presidential events and show up like the rest of the press corps, only to be turned away every time..."
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>> "A prosecutor in Istanbul has remanded eight journalists in custody, reversing a decision to release them after they were arrested for covering Turkey’s largest anti-government protests in years." (The Guardian)
>> The Oscar-winning Palestinian director of "No Other Land" has been released from Israeli detention after being assaulted. (CNN)
>> Bret Baier will interview Elon Musk and some DOGE staffers on Thursday. "This will be Elon's fourth interview on Fox/Fox Business since January," Hadas Gold notes. (X)
>> Warner Bros. Discovery is seeking a new ad-sales chief for CNN. (Variety)
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Megyn Kelly's expansion plan |
Megyn Kelly is expanding her podcast biz by launching MK Media, a network that "will work with creators and journalists in the news and entertainment space,” Alex Weprin reports. The venture's first three shows will be helmed by Mark Halperin, Maureen Callahan, and Link Lauren, with others to come.
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"Despite a mostly chalk bracket so far, men’s March Madness is drawing its best TV ratings in more than three decades," David Rumsey writes for FOS. "Through the first two rounds, the NCAA tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers per game across CBS, TNT, TBS, and truTV, marking the highest average audience through the round of 32 since 1993, according to Nielsen ratings."
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>> Maybe Napster will never die: The brand has been "acquired by 3D technology company Infinite Reality for $207 million." (CNBC)
>> A new TikTok ad campaign is framing the app "as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses." (NYT)
>> "Fewer Americans now support" the looming TikTok ban, according to new Pew data. (Pew)
>> Interesting: London-based AI start-up Synthesia "is offering company stock to the human actors it uses to generate digital 'avatars' of people, in a radical move for the AI industry that rethinks how workers are compensated for helping to train the cutting-edge technology," Melissa Heikkilä reports. (FT)
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George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck," currently in previews on Broadway, has "shattered the weekly box office record for a play," grossing $3,305,240 for just seven preview performances," Deadline's Greg Evans reports. The previous record was just set a couple of weeks ago by "Othello."
Since I mentioned how much I loved "Good Night, and Good Luck" the other day, here's my tip for New Yorkers who want to score reasonably priced tickets: Wait until an hour before showtime and check sites like TodayTix and StubHub. Over the weekend I snagged a pair of tickets that suddenly dropped in price by more than half (presumably because the reseller wanted to make sure they sold at all)...
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Entertainment odds and ends |
>> The UK competition watchdog says Ticketmaster "may have broken consumer protection law in the way it sold more than 900,000 tickets for Oasis's reunion tour last year." (The Guardian)
>> Streamers have a YouTube problem, with new data from Nielsen showing that the video-sharing platform “accounted for 11.6% of all TV use in the country in Nielsen‘s rankings of media distributors for the February period,” Rick Porter reports, noting the percentage marks “an all-time high for YouTube and the second time it has placed atop the distributor rankings.” (THR)
>> "The voice of ‘White Lotus’ star Walton Goggins is the lullaby we didn’t know we needed," Dan Heching writes. (CNN)
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