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Thursday, November 20, 2025 |
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Good morning! Here's the latest on Brendan Carr, CNN, Fox News, Jimmy Kimmel, Adam O'Neal, Ian Mohr, Letterboxd, and more... |
The Committee to Protect Journalists' annual gala in New York City spotlights reporters in harm's way, usually thousands of miles from the United States. But at this year's fundraiser, taking place tonight in midtown, the state of press freedom in the US will also be "top of mind," CPJ president Jodie Ginsberg says.
"Every year people say to us, 'We're reminded how lucky we are here in America,'" Ginsberg said, and as a regular attendee at the gala, I can confirm that's true. Some of tonight's honorees are not able to attend in person because they are behind bars.
"We are honoring five journalists from around the world who are doing incredible work in unimaginably different, difficult circumstances, while also making it very clear that the threats are now extremely close to home," Ginsberg told me yesterday.
She said President Trump's dismissive comments about Jamal Khashoggi earlier this week "encapsulate" the dangers. "This is a new low," she wrote in an op-ed.
Tonight, Ginsberg told me, "the big thing that I'll be saying to people is, you know, we need to have backbones in this moment. We need to stand up to those people who want to attack press freedom and attack journalists. It's going to require us not just to celebrate the courage of others, but to be courageous ourselves."
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Trump going after ABC News... |
Trump's recent insults toward female reporters (including "quiet, piggy" last Friday, and his treatment of Mary Bruce on Tuesday) have really broken through with the public. Trump still has the capacity to shock — and maybe more importantly, ordinary viewers and readers still have the capacity to be shocked.
Yesterday, the White House "ratcheted up its attack on ABC News," Reuters reported here, one day after Trump called it a "crappy company" and said he wanted the FCC to revoke ABC's licenses. Using your taxpayer dollars, the WH generated a list of grievances against ABC and absurdly claimed the news division has decided to "wage war" against Trump and his voters. Clearly, Bruce's sharp questions really got under someone's skin.
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"The only non-political figures Trump targets as often — if not more often — than White House reporters are late-night TV hosts," Bill Carter wrote for LateNighter.
As if to prove the point, at 12:49 a.m. Eastern, Trump's Truth Social account posted a question and a demand: "Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air? Why do the TV Syndicates put up with it? Also, totally biased coverage. Get the bum off the air!!!"
Kimmel's ratings are better than Trump thinks. But that's beside the point. The point is that Trump wants to drive a wedge between Kimmel and local stations. By "TV Syndicates," I think Trump means local station owners like Nexstar and Sinclair, both of which need Trump's FCC chair, Brendan Carr, to approve pending deals. And you remember how Nexstar and Sinclair reacted to the administration's Kimmel-related pressures in September. That brings us to Carr's latest moves...
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Carr tries to turn criticism into policy |
Yesterday, Carr "announced a review of the relationships between broadcast networks and their affiliates, calling into question contractual restrictions that penalize stations for pre-empting shows and those that prevent them from airing rival programming," Deadline's Ted Johnson wrote. This review reflects "Carr's belief that networks have gained too much leverage at the expense of local stations."
As Paul Farhi wrote on X, "what's striking here" is "how willing he is to turn Trump's media criticism into an official policy action. See his role in the Jimmy Kimmel/ABC issue." Here's another new example...
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Looking to aid Trump's BBC lawsuit? |
The BBC has been clear about the bad edit to its October 2024 documentary about Trump's reelection bid: The BBC "did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels."
But Carr has gone ahead and written to the heads of PBS and NPR anyway, citing their partnerships with the BBC, asking whether the bad edit aired in the US. "Media lawyers said that Carr's letter was intended to establish legal grounds for Trump's lawsuit" against the BBC, "which has yet to be formally filed," the FT's Daniel Thomas wrote.
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BTW, here's what Kimmel said... |
What prompted Trump's late-night post about ABC's funnyman? Maybe it was Kimmel's monologue about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Now that Trump has reversed course and signed the bill compelling the DOJ to release the materials, "We are one step closer to answering the question, what did the president know and how old were these women when he knew it," Kimmel quipped, per The Daily Beast. The full monologue is on YouTube...
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First-round bids for WBD due today |
Today is the reported deadline for suitors eyeing Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN's parent) to submit their first-round, non-binding bids for all or part of the media giant.
Paramount "is currently the only company pursuing a full buyout of WBD, which it believes gives it an advantage over other bidders," Sara Fischer wrote for Axios.
Indeed, David Ellison's team is winning the PR battle: The WSJ's Heard on the Street columnist Dan Gallagher argued yesterday that Paramount is "the only logical winner in the three-horse race for Warner." But every bidding war is ultimately about money and power, not PR. For background, check out this NYT piece about "who will win Hollywood's big prize." A few related items:
>> "Netflix has told Warner Bros it would keep putting its movies in theaters" if it acquires WBD's studio and streaming assets, Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports.
>> THR's headline: "Senators ask DOJ for 'non-biased' review of any deal for WBD amid 'cloud of political favoritism and corruption.'"
>> Flashback to my story from last month: Ellison has "the Trump card," an adviser remarked, arguing that Paramount is the only buyer who will pass muster with Trump admin regulators. But European regulators would be involved, too...
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When the "for sale" sign went up on WBD last month, CNN journalists quietly wondered if a Paramount takeover would affect CNN's editorial independence, especially the rigorous day-in, day-out coverage of all things Trump. The worries were largely speculative, though some of us have seen this movie before. Now, a new report by The Guardian makes it more specific and explicit.
"Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance" to win WBD, and "and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount," Hugo Lowell reported this morning, citing sources.
Lowell doesn't name the official, but says they "engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe."
Was it stray chatter or a serious conversation? Impossible to know. But this report intensifies what is already an awkward situation. Even the mere perception of corporate meddling can do damage — a lesson that CNN staffers internalized a few years ago.
As always, journalists just want to do their jobs, free of partisan interference. So let's keep on going...
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Fox poll: 'Trump's core supporters turn on him...' |
The Fox News home page calls this a "POLL SHOCK." I'm not sure it's a shock to people who regularly check the polls, but it's true that Fox's latest national survey is full of difficult data points for the president. The headline: "Trump's core supporters turn on him as Americans feel unprecedented economic pain."
The poll finds Trump at 58% disapproval, a record high in Fox's polling. Of note: The network's polling unit is well-respected, except by Trump and his loyalists, who have attacked the pollsters many times in the past and likely will again...
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"New York City's incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, hasn't taken office yet. But he’s already the new avatar of evil for conservative media figures," The AP's David Bauder writes.
>> Mamdani was on MS NOW's "All In With Chris Hayes" last night for his first national interview since winning the election. The mayor-elect addressed the fears that have been fanned about his mayoralty and mentioned the AI slop about him that he constantly gets sent by family and friends...
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O'Neal talks 'libertarian' opinion page |
Adam O'Neal, the Washington Post’s Opinion editor, says he's building a "small L libertarian…classical liberal" section and believes a "big tent" will build a "stronger audience" for the Post.
Right now, WaPo's audience "is overwhelmingly left-leaning," O'Neal told Reason’s Nick Gillespie in this podcast chat. "We value those subscribers," he said, and "we're not trying to push them away and make this a MAGA project." But O'Neal clearly wants to appeal to a different audience that doesn't currently trust or read the Post.
Reaching people who are "kind of turned off by news" or just get bits and pieces via social media "is a huge opportunity for us," he said. And for the rest of the news industry, too. But it is, he wisely added, a "long process" that takes years...
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>> "In one of the first official actions as the new owners of The Dallas Morning News, Hearst will lay off 26 people," including the paper's entire copy desk. (WFAA)
>> Lachlan Cartwright is out with a deep dive inside "Rupert Murdoch's last hurrah," the California Post, reporting that Page Six editor Ian Mohr will move to L.A. to lead California's own Page Six. (VF)
>> Andrew Deck followed up on the strange situation at the Suncoast Searchlight, where all four reporters at the nonprofit news outlet asked its board "to investigate their editor's AI use." (NiemanLab)
>> MLB "officially announced a new three-year media rights agreement with NBC, Netflix and ESPN on Wednesday, foreshadowing the league’s more significant TV deal to come in 2028." (CNBC)
>> TikTok "is launching a new setting that lets users choose how much AI-generated content they want to see in their For You feed." (TechCrunch)
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"After weeks of weekend overall grosses below $100 million, theaters are about to get the end-of-year boom period they have been salivating for," TheWrap's Jeremy Fuster writes. Universal's "Wicked: For Good" opens this afternoon, and tracking is "putting it at a $150 million opening weekend — at least." |
Letterboxd launching film rental service |
Liam Reilly writes: Letterboxd is getting into the film rental business, announcing it'll launch the Letterboxd Video Store in December. The film-focused social platform likened the service to "walking into your local video store and seeing the 'employee picks' shelf — and those employees are countless Letterboxd members across the globe."
It’s an interesting move, playing directly into the scrolling fatigue many people experience on the streamers. However, whether users will repeatedly pay for rentals, which can quickly become more expensive than subscriptions, remains to be seen…
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>> "Several months after exiting Paramount," former co-CEO Chris McCarthy is expected to "reunite with Taylor Sheridan at NBCUniversal." (TheWrap)
>> "A federal judge in New York denied Disney's request to block Sling TV's short-term passes, which give viewers the ability to stream live content for as little as one day." (The Verge)
>> These sound helpful! Amazon is "launching Video Recaps on Prime Video, which Amazon says provide 'comprehensive season recaps' to bring viewers up to speed on select shows." (Variety)
>> The big three music companies — UMG, Sony and Warner — have struck licensing deals with Klay, a new music AI platform. (Music Business Worldwide)
>> Big Parm's Got Talent: "The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has revealed that United Talent Agency has signed the governing body for ‘the king of cheeses' to get the supermarket staple placement in films, TV shows and streaming projects around the globe." (THR)
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