Happy Monday! Here's the latest on "60 Minutes," Tucker Carlson, YouTube TV, Kash Patel, Bluesky, "Ridiculousness," and much more... |
This morning, people are talking about President Trump's answers more than Norah O'Donnell's questions in the "60 Minutes" interview — and Bari Weiss, Tom Cibrowski and new "60 Minutes" boss Tanya Simon will count that as a win.
Much of the post-interview media commentary is about the editing, since Trump infamously sued CBS over the editing of that Kamala Harris interview last year.
"Maybe I should file a complaint with the FCC against the Trump White House for editing his unhinged '60 Minutes' interview," using "the exact same language Trump lodged against Vice President Harris," Senate minority leader
Chuck Schumer remarked on X early this morning.
The editing was by CBS, not by the White House, of course. About 28 minutes of the 90-minute interview aired on TV. Most of the rest was posted on YouTube. And the complete transcript was published on CBSNews.com.
The transcript contains at least a dozen follow-up story possibilities, from Trump saying "I'm not a Nazi" to O'Donnell dodging his loaded question about DC crime. However, the newsiest portions made the broadcast, which is why programs edit in the first place.
O’Donnell sought to make the most of her time with Trump, pressing him on cost-of-living increases, foreign policy challenges, the government shutdown and other topics. Trump's response to O'Donnell's question about his pardon of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao — "I don't know who he is" — is ricocheting around social media.
Here's my overnight analysis for CNN.com. Let's dig into a few specifics...
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Can 'sanewashing' be avoided? |
In-depth interviews with Trump are few and far between, so Sunday night's broadcast reprised a decade-old debate among media insiders about how to handle Trump interviews. O'Donnell largely employed the let-him-talk approach, only interjecting at key moments. "Her interview style wasn't disrespectful, but it was fair and, more importantly, direct and tough," Poynter's Tom Jones wrote.
O'Donnell asked pointed questions and generated lots of news. "IMO, O'Donnell did better job than most on TV, of persistently trying to lasso Trump back toward realm of fact. And not smiling at his 'witticisms,'" James Fallows wrote on Bluesky. But others disagreed: "Norah let Trump lie and lie with barely any pushback or provision of corrective facts,"
Joy Reid complained.
Some critics called it another instance of "sanewashing," a term that gained traction last year. HuffPost's S.V. Date wrote on X: "For those who watched what aired on 60 Minutes, you got a sanitized, sane-washed Donald Trump. If you want to hear what he's REALLY like, I urge you — read the full transcript, watch the full video."
Rick Ellis of All Your Screens painstakingly compared the TV broadcast to the raw transcript and flagged all the differences here. The portions CBS trimmed for time "seemed more rant-filled and often confusing," Ellis wrote.
For example, Trump brought up (and bashed) Joe Biden 40-plus times during the interview, even though Trump has been in office for almost a year. Only 6 of those mentions made the TV broadcast.
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Trump paints Weiss as an ally |
This part didn't make TV either: Toward the end of the interview, Trump brought up the Paramount payoff that Stephen Colbert likened to a "big fat bribe" (just before his show was cancelled) last summer. He misstated the timeline of the Harris interview, claiming it "was election-changing, two nights before the election,” when, in fact, it aired one month before election day. (CNN's Daniel Dale is working on a longer fact-check about Trump's falsehoods in the interview.)
All of that was a precursor to the really interesting part: Trump's flattery of David Ellison and Bari Weiss. "The young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great — from what I know," he said. "I don't know her, but I hear she’s a great person."
He continued, "I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it's the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press."
>> On "CNN This Morning," Audie Cornish said "it showed he sensed he was sitting down with a friendly news organization. That was the tone that he seemed to convey. Not them, but him."
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Record disapproval # for Trump |
Trump's power grabs and propaganda videos sometimes disguise the fact that he remains remarkably unpopular. Take a look at CNN's homepage headline right now: "Trump's approval rating hits new low for second term."
In this new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, "his disapproval rating, at 63%, is numerically the highest of either term, one point above the previous high of 62% as he was leaving office in January 2021." |
ICYMI: Trump WH limits press access |
This had the feel of a Friday night news dump — "Trump administration restricts reporters' access to White House press secretary's office" — so I want to bring it up again at the start of this new workweek.
Veteran media reporter Paul Farhi framed the matter this way: "White House bans White press from, yes, White House press offices." Obama confidant Eric Schultz, a former deputy WH press secretary, responded and said there hasn't been sufficient attention or outcry about it. "Reporters flipped out more when Obama golfed with Tiger Woods and we didn't offer a pool spray," Schultz remarked...
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'The new right's new antisemites' |
👆 That's the title of this new WSJ editorial, which begins, "An old political poison is growing on the new right, led by podcasters and internet opportunists who are preoccupied with the Jews."
"It is spreading wider and faster than we thought," the editors say, "and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation."
>> Further reading: Eli Lake of The Free Press says the Heritage clash "is a sign of things to come..."
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Racist AI slop is everywhere |
In yesterday's special weekend edition, we highlighted how Fox News got "duped by an AI-generated video" that played into racial prejudices.
And it's not just Fox. Racist AI-generated videos are all over the place. The Root wrote about them almost a week ago. According to Vox, "creators are gaining views by posting rage bait posing as people receiving food assistance living a life of luxury on the government's dime... Part of a long history of Americans stereotyping SNAP recipients as lazy and entitled." Read on...
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>> This is a wild one: "Kash Patel slams 'clickbait haters' after backlash to alleged FBI jet travel." (Forbes)
>> David Bauder's latest: "East Wing ballroom donations by corporate owners create awkward moments for news outlets." (AP)
>> Sam Sifton took the helm of The Morning, the NYT's biggest newsletter, over the weekend. (NYT)
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25+ million viewers for Game 7 ⚾ |
h"The dramatic finish to the World Series drew baseball’s largest TV audience in eight years," THR's Rick Porter reports. Game 7 on Fox "averaged 25.45 million viewers in preliminary Nielsen ratings," plus another half a million via Fox Deportes and Fox Sports streaming. Final ratings will be released on Tuesday and are expected to be even higher...
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Disney's still dark on YouTube TV |
The blackout started on Friday and stretched through the weekend. Barring a deal later today, YouTube TV subscribers will not be able to watch the Cardinals versus the Cowboys on "Monday Night Football" unless they have an antenna to access ABC, a friend's ESPN password, or some other hookup.
"Consumers are upset," and "there's no sign of progress," Pro Football Talk boss Mike Florio wrote yesterday...
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This week's media earnings calendar |
Tuesday: Spotify and Thomson Reuters report quarterly earnings before the bell.
Wednesday: NYT Co. releases earnings.
Thursday: Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN's parent) reports earnings before the bell.
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>> Lawyers for YouTube's parent "recently alleged that the Biden administration tried to 'influence' the company," but "interviews with employees don't appear to support their claim," Makena Kelly reports. (WIRED)
>> Google "says it has removed Gemma from its AI Studio after a U.S. senator accused the AI model of fabricating accusations of sexual misconduct against her," Anthony Ha reports. (TechCrunch)
>> Bluesky, "which on Friday announced a new milestone of 40 million users," will soon "start testing 'dislikes' as a way to improve personalization on its main Discover feed and others," Sarah Perez reports. (TechCrunch)
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Weak weekend box office report |
It was "the lowest-grossing Halloween weekend in 31 years," excluding 2020, THR's Pamela McClintock writes. The reasons are understandable: World Series-sized competition on TV and no huge new releases in theaters. (I enjoyed seeing the "KPop Demon Hunters" singalong edition with my kids, though!)
>> "Regretting You" and "Black Phone 2" both earned about $8 million over the weekend.
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End of the 'Ridiculousness' era |
"Ridiculousness" has been "canceled at MTV after 14 years and 46 seasons," Variety's Ethan Shanfeld wrote Friday. "The comedy clip series, hosted by Rob Dyrdek, will continue into 2026 with previously shot first-run episodes, but no new episodes will be produced moving forward."
The cancellation signals that MTV will stop relying so heavily on "endless reruns of the comedy clip show," as the NYT's John Koblin put it in this assessment of MTV's "Ridiculousness" era...
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Hollywood notes and quotes |
>> "Box-office duds are becoming streaming hits," so "movie studios are rethinking how to get the most value out of their films in the streaming age," Lucas Shaw writes. (Bloomberg)
>> “Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ spends its first month atop the Billboard 200 chart, as it racks up its fourth straight week at No. 1,” Keith Caulfield reports. (Billboard)
>> And last but not least, on Page One of today's NYT, Michael Paulson reports on "a 'bittersweet' curtain call for understudy slips." (NYT)
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