Happy Friday! Hope you have some fun holiday weekend plans. Reliable will be off on Monday, back on Tuesday. Let's get to it... |
The rise of the protest frogs |
Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images |
As the Department of Homeland Security floods social media with "propaganda" videos, and pro-Trump commentators flock to Portland and Chicago in search of a "rebellion," local residents are responding with... chicken suits and clever jokes.
Last night on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel tossed to a "special report" from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, "reporting from war-torn Chicago." Pritzker, wearing body armor, played a TV reporter in the video clip. "We've seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them," the governor quipped.
While Kimmel's show was airing, a real reporter for The Oregonian was recording a video outside the ICE facility that has long been a magnet for protests in Portland. The topic: "Protest frogs are multiplying." The video showcased how Portlanders are wearing inflatable costumes to mock what one of the frog cosplayers called "insane government overreach."
The dress-up "dismantles their narrative a little bit," Jack Dickinson, a.k.a. the "Portland Chicken," told Willamette Week. "It becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it's, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit."
Pritzker and Dickinson have something in common: They're using the tools at their disposal — smart phone cameras, social media apps and satire — to turn "war" rhetoric into a punchline. "The Daily Show" did it too, with this clip labeled "REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised."
Conservative journalist Andy Ngo pushed back overnight by claiming the costumes in Portland "serve the function of masking the violent extremism to make the direct action appear like a family-friendly gathering on camera, and to whitewash the past ultraviolence."
So, as always, it comes down to which videos and posts people choose to believe.
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Performers at pseudo-events |
"But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side's comparative calm is the other's 'hellscape' — as the White House described Portland on Wednesday — and the narrative that the Trump administration has wanted has been supplied by a coterie of right-wing influencers elevated by Mr. Trump himself," the NYT's Anna Griffin and Aaron West wrote in a new piece this morning.
Trump's anti-Antifa roundtable is just one example. "Right-wing podcasters, writers and pundits are flocking to Democratic deep-blue cities to document the scene for their massive audiences but also, in some cases such as Portland, to spar with left-wing demonstrators," NBC's David Ingram and Jo Yurcaba reported.
I always think it's helpful to think of pseudo-events like these anti-ICE protests as stages, because then you can observe the performers accordingly. Take this quote, for example: Local TV reporter-turned-MAGA poster Jonathan Choe told NBC, "This is now a full-blown information war that we're in, so being on the front lines is more important than ever..."
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Judge lays out protections for Chicago journos covering protests |
The First Amendment lawsuit by Chicago journalists, unions, and activists has had the intended effect: "A judge in Illinois has temporarily blocked federal agents from using certain types of force and crowd-control measures against protesters," CNN's Laura Sharman and Caroll Alvarado report.
The judge "laid out specific protections for journalists covering the protests, blocking federal agents from arresting members of the press unless there is 'probable cause to believe that the individual has committed a crime.'"
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Earlier this week, the WSJ reported what some people suspected at the time: President Trump's Sept. 20 Truth Social post to "Pam" was, indeed, supposed to be a direct message to his attorney general. Trump "was surprised to learn it was public." Trump's message urged legal action against James Comey, Adam Schiff, and "Leticia," misspelling Letitia James' name.
"Less than 20 days later, the US attorney Trump installed to replace one who resisted that has indicted 2 of the 3," CNN's Aaron Blake wrote yesterday after James was charged. Schiff's reaction to Manu Raju: "We will not be intimidated..."
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C-SPAN's 'Ceasefire' starts tonight |
C-SPAN's new show "Ceasefire" premieres tonight at 7 and 10 p.m. ET. "The show is hosted by Dasha Burns of Politico — a younger moderator than many viewers might expect — and will in its first week bring on former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and former Chicago mayor and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel," Brian Steinberg writes. In a separate conversation, Sean Spicer "will hold forth" with Faiz Shakir.
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>> Sohrab Ahmari, a veteran of conservative media outlets, warns that "much of right-wing media now resembles star-child radio: a vast chamber of oft-malignant fantasies, where even once-reasonable minds go to get euthanized." (UnHerd)
>> Charlotte Klein explores "why reporters may miss Eric Adams" when his mayoral term is over. (NYMag)
>> Alex Volonte finds that "watchdog journalism's future may lie in the work of independent reporters like Pablo Torre." (NiemanLab)
>> From DOGE to... this? Kate Conger says Elon Musk "is bringing sexy AI chatbots to the mainstream." (NYT)
>> Rachel Janfaza says there is no simple answer to this Q: "What's the difference between a journalist and a content creator?" (The Up and Up)
>> Dan Levin looks critically at Benny Johnson's rise, or rather, reinvention: "MAGA slams 'fake news' but embraces 'The Benny Show's' misinformation." (Straight Arrow News)
>> Rebecca Jennings writes about the viral "debate" shows where, through "clip-farming," everyone can pretend to win the argument. (Vulture)
>> Kara Alaimo scrutinizes the surge of "digital masculinity" content aimed at teen boys. (CNN)
>> Sam Eagan says "leftist gym influencers have taken notice" of right-wing "manosphere" content, and some are "even being paid thousands of dollars to counter it." (WIRED)
>> Vidya Krishnan highlights "India's powerful turn to lawfare to stifle the press." (Nieman Reports)
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"This is the glass cliff to end all glass cliffs," The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto writes in a biting "memo" to new CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, who started work on Monday.
That might have been the harshest piece about Weiss this week, and there were many to choose from. Defector's Patrick Redford blasted "Weissian anti-writing" and said The Free Press "only punches down and to the left, never at those who hold real power." The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait argued that Weiss "continues to cover America as if it's still the summer of 2020," even though the key story now is "an authoritarian presidency that threatens to crush the very values of free speech and open discourse that Weiss pledged to uphold."
By week's end, Reason's Robby Soave concluded that "Bari Weiss is powerful, establishment media is not." Puck's Dylan Byers reported that some people inside CBS are encouraged, not depressed, about her arrival. He argued that "the existential threat to CBS News isn’t Bari, but rather the complacency that made her ascent possible."
>> Historian Michael Socolow argued that Bari's "greatest challenge" is "not the Murrow-Cronkite Legacy. It's not the newsrooms and bureaus filled with journalists more experienced than her. It's not the scale of the operation. It's David Muir's incredible dominance" over at ABC. Here's his assessment.
>> As for Substack, The Free Press sale "is a tenuous victory," AdWeek's Mark Stenberg asserted: "If the publisher leaves the platform, it could puncture a key thesis and take a chunk of revenue with it."
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>> The Los Angeles Times Media Group is moving forward with a private share offering (and a planned IPO next year) as Patrick Soon-Shiong looks "to raise up to $500 million." (LAT)
>> At Bloomberg Screentime yesterday, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison "declined to comment specifically on a possible bid for Warner Bros. Discovery but did offer a sense of his 'mind-set' in any deal." (Deadline)
>> To defend against a Paramount takeover, David Zaslav "will need to prove that splitting up WBD will be more valuable for shareholders than selling everything to the Ellisons. According to analysts, he's got a good case," William Cohan writes. (Puck)
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Alex Jones begs SCOTUS for help |
John Fritze reports: Alex Jones is urging SCOTUS to step into his long-running legal feud with the families of Sandy Hook victims and block them from collecting the $1.4 billion he owes for defamation. Jones previously appealed the court last month, but in a new filing yesterday he said his InfoWars platform averages "30 million" daily listeners, and unless the high court intervenes, "these viewers/listeners will not have just been deprived of a valued source of information, the risk is they will have been greatly deceived and damaged by operation of media source InfoWars by their ideological opposites." That's a reference to the possibility that The Onion could take over InfoWars via the Sandy Hook families...
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This explains the Dominion settlements... |
Dominion Voting Systems "is being sold and rebranded as Liberty Vote effective immediately," CNN's Alayna Treene and Marshall Cohen report.
The new owner asked Dominion to settle several defamation lawsuits that were still lingering from the 2020 election, Alex Isenstadt writes for Axios. So that explains why, "in recent weeks, Dominion has reached undisclosed settlements with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and One America News Network."
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Banned YouTubers invited to return |
Clare Duffy writes: YouTube is now offering previously banned users the opportunity to create new accounts and potentially re-publish some videos that may have contributed to their termination but no longer violate YouTube's rules.
How it works: Previously banned users will see an option to request a new account when they sign into their old pages. YouTube reviewers will consider the user's past conduct and behavior on third-party platforms.
Bottom line: Because YouTube’s Community Guidelines have changed, videos that might have contributed to a user’s previous banning — for example, with false claims about Covid-19 or the 2020 election — may now be permitted. Read on...
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A dangerous rebrand of 'deepfakes' |
Videos made with Sora 2 are all over the place, leading NPR's Bobby Allyn to ask digital safety experts about the consequences. OpenAI, he writes, "has essentially rebranded deepfakes as a light-hearted plaything and recommendation engines are loving it. As the videos race across millions of peoples' feeds, perceptions are being quickly reshaped about the truth, and soon, perhaps the basic norms of being online." Read on...
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Catching up on cover stories |
>> Jessica Bennett delivers shock after shock in "Wendy Williams wants out." (NYMag)
>> Matt Donnelly catches up with Jason Blum as Blumhouse turns 15. (Variety)
>> Peter Kiefer figures out "how Kevin Costner lost the plot." (THR)
>> Frances Hedges interviews Jennifer Aniston, who says of social media, "I'm sure the guys who came up with it thought it was a great idea and, yeah, congratulations on your billions, but it has taken down a huge portion of humanity." (Harper's Bazaar UK)
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The rise of athlete-owned media |
"Athlete-owned media is more than a trend; it's an economic and cultural shift. By creating content and owning their own platforms, athletes are deciding which stories get told, expanding representation and bringing fans closer than ever," USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center says. The center is out with a new report, "Owning the Narrative," about this topic...
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>> "Black people rallying around Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl stands in stark contrast to their feelings about the election," Lisa Respers France and Isabel Rosales write. (CNN)
>> Allison Morrow says Taylor Swift's new album "is her novelty Oreo play." (CNN)
>> John McWhorter says "these are the 10 old TV series every kid needs to watch." Great list! (NYT)
>> Last but not least: People often invoke the term "legacy media" in a snarky way, so I appreciated this observation by Erin Burnett, on the occasion of her 14th anniversary at CNN: "Legacy isn’t a bad word. A legacy means being there when people need you — having that reputation for fact-checking and gravity. That’s something to be proud of." (Forbes)
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