| | | | | Exec summary: I count four big stories on the media beat in the past twelve hours: James Comey's book launch, the Pulitzers, Netflix's earnings, and the Sean Hannity shocker. Let's start there... | | Robby Mook on "AC360:" President Trump "has the midas touch but it's for legal problems. His campaign is enmeshed in this, the White House is enmeshed and now the right wing media is getting pulled into this..."
As the LAT's Chris Megerian tweeted, "It's startling how so many pieces of Donald Trump's universe are colliding in court today. The sex allegations, the Russia investigation, the conservative media world -- all the pieces seem to be somehow connected..." | | There were audible gasps in the courtroom on Monday when it was revealed that Sean Hannity was the mystery third client that Michael Cohen was trying to keep secret. Michael Avenatti said it was like "a bomb went off."
As Oliver Darcy noted in his story here, Hannity was just about to start his afternoon radio show when the news broke. Hannity scrambled to respond... First on the air, then with tweets, then with text messages to reporters. On TV Monday evening, he said "Cohen never represented me in any legal matter." He said they chatted sometimes, and his questions "focused almost exclusively on real estate." If that's true, then why did Cohen's lawyer ID him as a client in federal court?
--> On "AC360," Avenatti quipped, "At least now we know why Fox News hasn't been covering our case for six weeks." (Fox has been covering it, but, markedly less than other networks...) | | With Hannity's high ratings come huge headaches for Fox News. Especially right now. Here are some of the Q's that Fox is not yet answering:
-- Did Hannity disclose his Cohen connection to his bosses? When?
-- On the air Monday night, Hannity said "my discussions" with Cohen "never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions." Does Fox management agree?
-- In any case, why didn't he disclose it to his viewers, just to be on the safe side? Alan Dershowitz chastised Hannity for this ON Hannity's show Monday night...
-- For that matter, why isn't Hannity more upfront about all the times he speaks and meets with the president?
-- Who oversees Hannity's on-air content and off-air connections? Is there a head of standards involved? Hannity seems to have an unusual, even shocking amount of autonomy.
-- Will Fox take disciplinary action against Hannity?
-- Admittedly I haven't asked Fox PR this one, but it's rattling around in my mind: Are the Murdochs really comfortable with all of this? Paging James Murdoch... | | Did the Cohen raid swoop up any sensitive documents or recordings involving Hannity?
"There is something there," Avenatti added on MSNBC's "The Last Word," asserting that Cohen "just doesn't volunteer the name Sean Hannity as a client unless there is a document that they want to deep six or keep confidential. It doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen..." | | Hannity and Cohen: Trump's protectors | | My analysis piece is (humblebrag!) leading the CNN home page right now. I wrote that Monday's disclosure demonstrates just how tight-knit the pro-Trump media world is. Not only does Hannity advise Trump, not only does Trump promote Hannity's show, not only does Hannity attack Trump's critics -- Hannity and Trump even share a lawyer. Cohen is one kind of Trump protector, Hannity is another kind.
Hannity's detractors pounced right away. Simon Maloy of the anti-Fox group Media Matters tweeted: "Pause for a moment to reflect upon what one Sean Hannity might do with news that an MSNBC personality had hidden a relationship with a Clinton attorney under criminal investigation." | | Hannity tries to have it both ways | | | Here's the thing: Fox sometimes asserts that Hannity plays by different rules. He has an opinion show, not a newscast. And Hannity proudly says he's NOT a journalist. In fact, he likes to say journalism is "dead." He's an entertainer at heart! But the logo on screen still says NEWS. He calls his show "real news" and cites anonymous sources. When it's convenient for him, Hannity calls himself an "opinion journalist." So he blurs the lines all the time... | | A two-fer: Tucker defends Hannity and demeans the Russia probe | | | "Sean Hannity is a talk show host. He's not under investigation by anyone for anything. Who he hires as a lawyer, and why, is nobody's business," Tucker Carlson said Monday evening. "No judge has a right to violate his privacy or anybody else's. Those used to be the rules -- but the rules have changed." This next part, I think, was Carlson's real message: The point of the Russia probe "is not to find collusion. There was no collusion, everybody knows that, everyone's always known that. The point is and was to hurt Trump and anybody close to Trump. And by the way it's working..." | | | Via MSNBC's Ari Melber: "Things we've learned about Michael Cohen in the 11 days since Trump said 'Ask Michael Cohen:' He's under criminal investigation; The Feds think he has criminal evidence; He barely practices law but does 'other things' for Trump; He represents Sean Hannity." | | NEXT: Stormy on "The View" | | | This will be Stormy Daniels' first live interview... On "The View" at 11am ET... alongside the aforementioned Avenatti... | | "Eye-popping" Netflix earnings | | Stop me if you've heard this one before: Netflix outperformed expectations, gained a huge # of new subscribers, and enjoyed an after-hours surge in its stock price.
Yes, that's the story again this quarter -- Netflix "added 7.4 million subscribers in the first three months of 2018, up 50% from the same quarter a year earlier," per CNNMoney's Seth Fiegerman.
--> GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives called the results "eye popping" in an investor note. "It shows the company's aggressive international expansion strategy is bearing fruit and putting major fuel in the company's growth engine for the rest of 2018 and beyond..." | | "The business has grown faster than we expected" | | | More from Fiegerman's story: On a conference call with analysts, Netflix execs "admitted to being surprised by the company's current level of success." CFO David Wells: "We've outperformed the business in a way we didn't predict. The business has grown faster than we expected." | | "We're not looking to expand into news" | | | Notable quote from Ted Sarandos on the earnings call: "Our move into news has been misreported over and over again. We're not looking to expand into news beyond the work that we're doing in long-form and short-form documentary. Topical interview shows, absolutely, but keep in mind, those are entertainment..." | | | CNBC's Michelle Castillo highlighted this quote from Reed Hastings: "We'll spend over $10 billion on content and marketing" this year and $1.3 billion on technology. "So, I mean, just objectively, we're much more of a media company in that way than pure tech. Of course, we want to be great at both. But, again, we're really pretty different from the pure tech companies..." | | -- Dan Primack's scoop: "SoftBank is among several possible buyers for newspaper publisher Tronc..." (Axios)
-- Ken Doctor's latest: A "publishing obit" for Michael Ferro... (NiemanLab)
-- The NYT has an important update on the pilot effort of "Report for America, a nonprofit organization modeled after AmeriCorps: It aims to install 1,000 journalists in understaffed newsrooms by 2022..." (NYT)
-- Joe Adalian's late-night check-up: "Stephen Colbert's lead over Jimmy Fallon is bigger than ever..." (Vulture) | | | This was the scene at The Press Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa, CA. The paper received the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of wildfires in the state last fall. | | | We have the full list of winners on CNNMoney. The New York Times and The New Yorker shared the public service prize for "explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators." Other newsrooms celebrating on Monday afternoon: The WashPost, Cincinnati Enquirer, AZ Republic, Reuters, GQ, Alabama Media Group, NYMag, Des Moines Register, and The Daily Progress in Charlottesville... | | | Re: the public service prize, the WashPost's Steven Zeitchik tweeted: "Harvey Weinstein has always been obsessed with awards, so there's something especially poetic about the greatest prize in American journalism going to the talented and brave people who unmasked him..." | | "My deepest thanks to the sources..." | | The NYT's Emily Steel, one of the public service prizewinners for her Bill O'Reilly reporting, said this in her speech in the newsroom:
"Most important, my deepest thanks to the sources who picked up the phone when we called, opened the door when we knocked and decided to go on the record after I showed up at a Pilates class. Thank you for trusting us with your stories. Thank you for sharing experiences and documents and nuggets of information that allowed us to follow the facts and report a story that became bigger than any one of us. I am astounded by your bravery. This award is for you." Here's her full speech (PDF)... | | AT&T calls on more expert witnesses to undermine DOJ's case | | Hadas Gold emails: We heard from two experts on Monday, both brought by AT&T to try and rebut the government's experts who argued that the merger with Time Warner would raise prices and harm consumers. AT&T's experts, two professors, went into the nitty gritty behind the government's experts' methodology, trying to tear apart how they did their studies. It was a very dense day. Things should get more exciting this week, as we're expecting Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes as soon as Tuesday, and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson later this week...
Read Gold, Tom Kludt and Sarah Mucha's full story here... | | -- Washington Examiner W.H. correspondent (and recent "Reliable Sources" guest!) Sarah Westwood is joining CNN... (TVNewser)
-- From a tipster: Taylor Swaak, former Newsweek education reporter who quit as part of the mass staff exodus last month, has been hired as a reporter by the non-profit education newsroom The74Million.org...
-- If you love "Billions," you might love Alison Wilmore's look at how the series "has become TV's sharpest critique of toxic masculinity..." (BuzzFeed) | | Comey book (finally!) in bookstores | | | James Comey will begin his book launch day on "GMA." It's first first "live interview," part of the package that also included Sunday's prime time special on ABC... Also on Tuesday, NPR will air pre-taped interviews with Comey on "Morning Edition" and "Fresh Air..." And Comey will sit down with Stephen Colbert for a two-parter airing Tuesday night. Colbert's team produced a mock promo to one-up ABC's promo... | | Preview of the "Morning Edition" interview | | In the "Morning Edition" interview, Steve Inskeep and Carrie Johnson asked about Trump's recent tweets, one of which referenced Comey and "jail." Comey's response:
"The president of the United States just tweeted that a private citizen should be jailed. And I think the reaction of most of us was, 'meh, it's another one of those things.' This is not normal. This is not ok. There is a danger that we will become numb to it and we will stop noticing the threats to our norms." | | About 10 million viewers for ABC's special | | The overnights showed 9.8 million viewers for ABC's Comey special... It'll rise somewhat with DVR and VOD viewership...
Brian Lowry emails: The comparisons between the Stormy and Comey interviews ratings-wise were inevitable, but it's apples to oranges. Beyond the porn actress/former FBI director disparity, the differences range from the time slot ("60 Minutes" at 7 p.m., after NCAA basketball vs. a special 10 p.m. berth after "American Idol") to the competition (for ABC/Comey, the Academy of Country Music Awards, which drew almost 2 million more viewers in the same hour)...
BOTTOM LINE: ABC was pleased with the #'s... Way above a typical Sunday 10pm #... | | Since January, each book at the top of the NYT hardcover best-seller list has had one thing in common: President Trump. First it was "Fire and Fury," then "Russian Roulette," then Jennifer Palmieri's "Dear Madam President." Now Comey's book is sure to hit #1.
On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Palmieri half-joked, "I'm just grateful that I got my week before he comes in to crush my dreams again." | | As I noted here, Trump's impact on book sales is multidimensional. While he is drawing extra attention to certain books, agents and publishing execs worry that he is also hurting sales of non-political titles. This has also been a recurring concern among authors: Constant news coverage of all things Trump is taking away attention from other topics and thus other books.
Here's my full story about Trump's impacts on book sales... | | "By writing a book and flogging it on the networks, Comey deserves our hard-boiled scrutiny. By passing judgment on others, least of all President Trump, he invites ours..."
--Jack Shafer's reaction to the Comey book tour... | | Lowry recommends HBO's "I Am Evidence" | | | Brian Lowry emails: HBO's "I Am Evidence" -- a strong advocacy documentary about the problem of unprocessed rape kits, and how that varies based on the city and socioeconomic factors -- is going to make people angry, given that letting the kits languish allows serial offenders to attack others. And it's intended to. Read more... | | Next up from "Frontline:" "McCain" | | | Brian Lowry also recommends this: Last week, "Frontline" aired "Trump's Takeover," a beyond-timely documentary in light of Paul Ryan's announcement that he wouldn't seek reelection. This Tuesday brings a related piece from the same production team, "McCain," that not only serves as a strong biography of John McCain, but charts how his presidential run contributed to the current political moment... | | | On the same day we learned that McCain has suffered another health setback, HBO announced a documentary in the making about his life and career. Producer and director Peter Kunhardt has had exclusive access to McCain and his family. Here's the press release... No word about a premiere date yet... | | Khloé Kardashian reveals daughter's name: True! | | | Sandra Gonzalez writes: "Welcome, to the Kardashian clan, True. Just days after giving birth, Khloé Kardashian has revealed she has named her daughter True Thompson. Kardashian's boyfriend and the father of her child is Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player Tristan Thompson." More... | | How to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | What Dershowitz is telling the president | | | "I'm not here to defend" President Trump, attorney Alan Dershowitz told me. "I'm here to defend civil liberties and due process." Watch the full segment here... | | Trump's "shelters from the storm" | | Pro-Trump media personalities like Hannity and outlets like Breitbart are Trump's "shelters from the storm..." Defending and protecting the president... BUT it's worth noting that many of these commentators criticized his decision to strike Syria on Friday. Alex Jones even cried. On "Reliable," I said I think it's a very good thing that we're hearing skeptics and critics of Syria intervention on TV. We didn't hear enough of it on TV in 2002/2003.
"Well, you are hearing some of this criticism actually from the president himself, who has said at the same time that he is engaging and sending missiles into Syria that we should be pulling out," my guest Bruce Bartlett said. "So, he is trying to have both sides." Watch the full segment here... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
