To:
Jackson, Ryan[jackson.ryan@epa.gov]
From: Morning Media
Sent: Mon 10/23/2017 9:40:17 AM
Subject: Morning Media: The art of the dodge - Bannon, Breitbart lines blur - Millennials pay for old
media - Can Newseum survive? - BuzzFeed goes Hollywood
By Michael Calderone | 10/23/2017 05:38 AM EDT
PRESIDENT TRUMP FINALLY FOUND A NEWS MEDIA POLL HE LIKES. For the
second time in five days, the president tweeted Sunday the results of a POLITICO/Moming
Consult poll indicating that 46 percent of voters believe the bogus claim that the news media
fabricates stories about him. Not only aren't reporters making up stories (as I wrc
rsday ),
but they also regularly give the White House and federal agencies the opportunity to respond to
legitimate questions prior to publication -- and are rebuffed.
-- Sunday's New York Times provided a good case study in how the Trump administration will dismiss an entire line of inquiry rather than address specific points of concern before the news is out (and can even be dubbed "fake"). Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eric Lipton tried for months to get the EPA to respond to dozens of questions for his Sunday front page story on an industry insider-tumed-top-EPA-official helping to rewrite environmental rules that benefit chemical companies. Lipton said he "did want to hear their views" and "was disappointed" to only get the following terse response.
-- "No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told him in an email. "The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country."
-- A similar situation played out in the pages of The Times Magazine, with contributor Jason Zengerle describing having "provided a detailed list of questions" to the White House about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's relationship with Trump. The response he received: "The president has assembled the most talented Cabinet in history and everyone continues to be dedicated towards advancing the president's America First agenda. Anything to the contrary is simply false and comes from unnamed sources who are either out of the loop or unwilling to turn the country around."
Good morning and welcome to Morning Media. I'm not going to dismiss your good faith questions, so hit me up at mcalderone@politico.com and @mlcalderone. Daniel Lippman contributed to the newsletter. Archives. Subscribe.
TUNE-IN: Sgt. La David Johnson's wife speaks exclusively today on ABC's "Good Morning America." And O'Reilly accuser Juliet Huddy sits down with NBC's Megyn Kelly for an exclusive interview at 9 a.m.
STOP BY: I'll be moderating a Politico panel at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at Union Station Columbus Club on "The Media and Polarization: Golden Age or End of an Era? The panelists are Rick Edmonds, Media Business Analyst, Poynter Institute; Amy Mitchell, Director of
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Journalism Research, Pew Research Center: Amanda Terkel, Washington Bureau Chief, HuffPost; and Neil Patel, publisher of The Daily Caller. RSVP here and also let me know if you have questions you'd like to hear.
LINE BLURS BETWEEN BANNON'S PLANS AND BREITBART: USA Today's Eliza Collins looks at how Bannon's electoral goals and Breitbart's coverage converge. Specifically, she describes a meeting at the "Breitbart Embassy" involving former Congressman Michael Grimm, aide Michael Caputo, Bannon and Washington editor Matt Boyle.
"Caputo said Boyle was behaving in the meeting as a reporter who had been invited to observe rather than participate," she wrote. But Boyle got more involved as it progressed, Caputo recalled: "It seemed to me like he gained interest and he said, 'Look, this is something that fits into our editorial direction. How can we work together?"'
FOX STAFFERS 'DREADING' WORKING FOR LAURA INGRAHAM, The Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng report: "According to numerous sources, Ingraham has been, occasionally, a verbally abusive boss, who will not hesitate to scream at employees if something goes awry. Two former employees of her radio show recounted to The Daily Beast separate instances of Ingraham hurling objects at staff members in displeasure."
-- Fox News knocked the Daily Beast story as "a transparent, predictable and sexist attack from a left-wing website run by a CNN political analyst whose mandate it is to troll Fox News for traffic purposes on a daily basis" and questioned Sam Stein, the site's political editor an MSNBC contributor, editing it.
BILL O'REILLY SETTLED $32 MILLION HARASSMENT CLAIM: The Times' Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt, whose revelations about O'Reilly's secret settlements to women in April led to the Fox New star's downfall, with another shocker this past weekend: Longtime network analyst Lis Weihl alleged "repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her."
-- And yet the Murdochs, who knew about the January settlement, and were claiming at the time to be cleaning up Fox News following the ouster of Roger Ailes, gave O'Reilly a new contract the following month. This latest story could further complicate parent company 21st Century Fox's $15 billion takeover of Sky broadcasting in the U.K. given that regulators take into consideration whether the Murdochs' management is "fit and proper."
Sound Bites:
"Nobody pays $32M for false allegations - nobody." [Gretchen Carlson]
"Wondering how many ppi won't even see today's NYT O'Reilly report because they only watch Fox News, listen to talk radio, read Breitbart." [Oliver Darcy]
"White privilege is Bill O'Reilly getting re-signed after paying $32M while Colin Kaepemick, who protested for justice, remains jobless." [Toure]
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SCOTTIE NELL HUGHES SAYS SHE'S BEEN SHUNNED BY CONSERVATIVE MEDIA since alleging in a lawsuit that she was raped by Fox Business host Charles Payne, who was suspended but returned to the air after a network investigation. "Hughes, on the other hand, claims that she has been blackballed - not only from Fox but other media outlets," writes The Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan. "That happened, she alleges, after she ended the relationship and word of her complaint came to Fox's attention; tabloid stories and leaked emails hurt her reputation and vastly limited her opportunities even before she filed suit. Now a oncepromising career, she says, is in ruins."
FACT-CHECKERS MAKE THEIR CASE IN RED STATES: The Washington Post's Paul Farhi hit the last stop on PolitiFact's tour to explain what they do. "In Charleston, [West Virginia] the library crowd - generally older, largely white - seems to want to know what's wrong with America's politics and the media that covers it," Farhi writes. "There are questions about 'fake news,' the influence of billionaire donors on campaign rhetoric, the overuse of anonymous sources in news stories, and about whether, just maybe, it might be time to start licensing journalists to separate the pros from the poseurs."
-- That final suggestion may see practical, but giving the government the power to determine who can question public officials would be a threat to the free press.
MEANWHILE, AUTHOR MARTIN AMIS LEFT NEW YORK to visit a Trump rally for a new Esquire piece up today. "The audience in Youngstown was human; but the humans had surrendered their individuality to the crowd," he wrote. "So it is hard to say what kind of animal they had reduced themselves to. A millipedal hydra, perhaps - and the size of a leviathan. And at the direction of its tamer, this colossal beast performed its party tricks, its chants, its boos and hisses, its cheers and whoop."
"YOUNG SUBSCRIBERS FLOCK TO OLD MEDIA," by POLITICO'S Jason Schwartz: "Millennials are subscribing to legacy news publications in record numbers - and at a growth rate, data suggests, far outpacing any other age group. Since November's election, the New Yorker, for instance, has seen its number of new millennial subscribers more than double from over the same period a year earlier. According to the magazine's figures, it has 106 percent more new subscribers in the 18-34 age range and 129 percent more from 25-34."
BUZZFEED GOES HOLLYWOOD: The Times' Sydney Ember reports: "BuzzFeed started its motion picture arm in 2014. Initially, the division specialized in creating clickable video content, racking up an estimated three billion views a month. But over the last year BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has expanded its purview. These days [motion pictures head Matthew] Henick and his team of 42 people concentrate their energies on mining BuzzFeed articles, lists and video shorts for ideas that may be spun into feature-length movies or television series."
CAN THE NEWSEUM SURVIVE? The Times Sopan Deb reports: "The Newseum has run up deficits every year since it opened a grand new home in 2008. Though it attracts a respectable number of visitors (820,000 expected this year) who pay top dollar ($24.95 for adults) in a city filled with free museums, the institution is simply not taking in enough money to cover its bills.
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It still owes roughly $300 million on its new building, and the interest rates on the loans spiked last year."
JIMMY CARTER, MEDIA CRITIC: The 93-year-old former president, who would still like help broker peace with North Korea, weighed in on press coverage with The Times' Maureen Dowd: "I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I've known about. I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation."
SARAH SANDERS SEEMS TO AGREE: The White House press secretary spoke to Bush press secretary Dana Perino on Fox News Sunday: "I do think there is a heightened tension certainly between this administration and the press. ... I think you can see that in the coverage. I mean I've been around press and working politics my entire life, and I've never experienced the level of kind of hostility that I think we see day to day."
MONTANA REPUBLICAN ADVOCATES VIOLENCE AGAINST JOURNALIST: Karen Marshall, vice-president of programs for Gallatin County Republican Women, said she would have shot Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, who was assaulted by Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte for asking him a question. Marshall made the comment on the Voice of Montana radio program, according to The Guardian.
- - The Gianforte incident was one of several physical attacks on journalists in May and occurred as Republican politicians seemed increasingly emboldened to bash the press and "joke" about violence, as I wrote at the time.
EX-POLITICO REPORTER DANIEL LIBIT is living in Chicago, but his sights are set on New Mexico. The Times' Marc Tracy writes on Libit's aggressive coverage of the University of New Mexico's athletic program: "To read his work was to see a gleeful spirit of muckraking, a fondness for 10,000-word posts and a penchant for grandstanding about his legal battles (he has filed two lawsuits seeking records)."
- - "I freely grant the strangeness of what I'm doing," Libit, 34, said in an interview last month in the apartment he shares with his wife overlooking the Chicago River. "I'm in Chicago, and I'm writing about a team that people shouldn't nationally care about."
EXTRAS:
-- Right-wing blogger and filmmaker Mike Cemovich has published some names from the "Sh-- ty Media Men" list of anonymous allegations.
-- Newsweek's Alexander Nazaryan rips James O'Keefe's investigation into the New York Times.
-- Watch: Brian Stelter shows how the Trump White House responds to media scrutiny.
-- The Ringer's Bryan Curtis writes on Jemele Hill's return today to ESPN's airwaves.
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-- NBA writers weigh in on covering a new season.
KICKER:
"Jann is the spirit of [Rolling Stone], but what they will be buying is not the spirit. They're going to be buying the brand. On some level that's kind of sad, and I hope that Jann does find somebody who's willing to keep up the spirit that he started. But it's hard for me to imagine who that would be and why they would bother to do that because it's always been about Jann's social calendar. It's about his world. His worldview, his cosmology, and you can't buy that."- Jann Wenner biographer Joe Hagan on the iconic magazine up for sale.
To view online'. http://www.politico.com/media/tipsheets/morning-media/2017/10/23/the-art-of-the-dodge001363
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