To:
Jackson, Ryan[jackson.ryan@epa.gov]
From: Morning Media
Sent: Tue 9/26/2017 9:50:51 AM
Subject: Morning Media: Steve Bannon Stumps In Alabama - O'Reilly Visiting Fox - Snapchat Political
Premiere - Evening News Battle - WSJ Nabs Two
By Michael Calderone | 09/26/2017 05:49 AM EDT
STEVE BANNON AT HOME IN ALABAMA: The Breitbart chief better known for his work behind the scenes took to the stage Monday night in support of Judge Roy Moore, the conservative media favorite in today's Senate runoff election.
- - For weeks, Breitbart has blasted Moore's Republican challenger, Senator Luther Strange. And Bannon personally told Alabama voters Monday that they could not only stick it to the Republican establishment by picking Moore, but also the "fake news industry."
- - Alabama "gets to show the entire world - not just the nation - you get to show the BBC, the NHK in Japan, CCTV in China, The Guardian newspaper from England, the Times of London, all of them, New York Times, The Washington Post, the entire fake news industry," Bannon said. "You get to show them that this populist, nationalist, conservative movement is on the rise and Judge Roy Moore represents your values."
-- Breitbart has walked a fine line in framing its support for Moore as a rebuke of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the establishment, but not as an attack on President Trump, who also backed Strange.
- - Bannon later told Fox News host Sean Hannity, in his first cable interview since leaving the White House, that there needs to be a review to determine how Trump "got the wrong information" that led to his endorsement of Strange. In other words: Trump was misled into picking someone who doesn't best reflect the populist, nationalist that helped elect him and shouldn't be blamed for it.
- - "We're not here to defy President Trump," Bannon said. "We're here to praise and honor him."
Good morning and welcome to Morning Media. I survived writing a media and politics newsletter only to realize I had to do it again. And here it is! Thanks for all the feedback and keep it coming at (mcalderone@politico.com) or @mlcalderone. Morning Media is edited by Alex Weprin (@alexweprin\ with contributions from Jason Schwartz (@JasonSchwartz) Archives. Subscribe.
BILL O'REILLY RETURNS TO FOX NEWS: Well, for an interview at least. The former king of cable news will appear as a guest on "Hannity" tonight as part of his book tour. The show also has several more big bookings for the first week in its new 9 p.m. timeslot. House Speaker Paul Ryan will appear Wednesday, with Rush Limbaugh on Thursday.
SNAPCHAT'S PETER HAMBY says it's a misconception that young people only care about
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student loans and Bernie Sanders. "They care about war. They care about taxes. They care about health care, DACA. Things matter," Hamby told me. "And more to the point, if you combine millennials and Gen Z, that's the largest group in this country."
-- Hamby says his Snapchat political show, "Good Luck America," which kicks off its third season today, is reaching that highly sought demographic, with 75% of its viewers 25 and under. An average 6 million viewers is tuning in for each episode. And though you can get a feel for the show online, it's really designed for Snapchat: full-screen vertical video, quick pacing, on-screen text, and distills weighty issues in 3 to 5 minutes.
-- In the latest episode, Hamby visits his hometown of Richmond to see how the city is tackling the debate over Confederate monuments. He talks to political leaders, like Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, along with members of the community holding differing views. A former CNN political reporter, Hamby said it's freeing not to have to be tethered to the political news cycle. He can continue tackling stories, like Southern city grappling with its past, even as the national media moves on from Charlottesville.
-- "Most of the people are disconnected from the Washington noise machine that you and I live in every day." Hamby says of his viewers. But, he said, "they genuinely care about politics and policy and are looking for credible, authoritative content they can trust."
-- Senator Kamala Harris, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will be among Hamby's guests this season.
DAVID MUIR MILESTONE: The "World News Tonight" anchor scored ABC's first season win in total viewers in 21 years, a period stretching back to the Peter Jennings era. Muir, who landed President Trump's first interview after inauguration, as well as sitdowns with Pope Francis, former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, averaged more than 8 million viewers each night. ABC News is expected to announce the win today.
-- But NBC News got ahead of its network competitor on Monday and trumpeted several wins of its own, including "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt taking the top spot in the key 25 54 year old demographic for the 2016-2017 season. Holt also had a big year, which included moderating the first presidential debate. In fact, if you open your New York Times today (as well as a handful of other outlets) you will see a full-page ad trumpeting the news organization's ratings.
NEWSROOMS GRAPPLE WITH 'RACIST': CJR's Peter Vernon suggests outlets are being too timid in not labeling the president's words and actions as "racist." NPR's Michael Oreskes, however, defends his outlet's framing of events.
-- "We treat 'racist' as we would other conclusory labels. We use action words, instead,"
Oreskes told CJR. "As we have said many times, it's not our job to tell people what to think. It's our job to give them the information they need to make informed decisions."
SARAH PALIN WANTS SUIT AGAINST THE NEW YORK TIMES REOPENED: It
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seems like a longshot given that a judge last month dismissed the defamation suit, which stemmed from a June editorial. Here's Palin's motion for reconsideration, (h/t POLITICO'S Josh Gerstein)
THE NFL PROTESTS HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD FOR BREITBART: Editor-in-chief Alex Marlow explained to POLITICO'S Jason Schwartz why the protest story, which transcends sports, race, politics and culture, is such a big draw. "A lot of people know Andrew Breitbart for his quote, politics is downstream from culture, so the cultural issues that fold in the politics tend to be utterly explosive in terms of the interest level from our readers," Marlow said.
REVOLVING DOOR:
J.J. Gould has been named editor of The New Republic. He previously edited The Atlantic's site. Eric Bates, who joined in April 2016, becomes editor-at-large.
Fox News has signed Gianno Caldwell as a political analyst covering political, financial, and cultural issues.
The Wall Street Journal has nabbed Michael Gordon, who recently took a buyout from the New York Times after three decades with the paper. He'll join the paper's national security team in mid-November and plans to both report and write a column.
The Journal also hired Julie Bykowicz, who'll begin covering money and politics in the Washington bureau. She was previously covered similar issues for The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.
ONE MORE TO COME? I've heard Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Lichtblau has recently had talks with The Journal, though it's still unclear whether he'll land at the paper. Lichtblau, a veteran of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, joined CNN in April. He left the network in June along with two other high-profile two journalists following a retracted article.
T-O-N-I-G-H-T: Journalists battle members of Congress at the National Press Club's annual spelling bee. ESPN's Clinton Yates and The Washington Post's Kelsey Snell are hosting the 7 p.m. event and POLITICO'S own Seung Min Kim (and one-time writer of this very newsletter, CNN's Hadas Gold) are among the journalists competing. The Congressional side includes Rep. Don Beyer (VA), Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (OR), and Rep. Ted Deutch (FL).
SOUND BITES:
-- "2017: As Puerto Rico was rotting in the heat without power, air conditioning or telecommunications, the president tweeted about football." [Matt Pearce]
-- "The president fell for an adversary's fake missile launch and it's like the sixth-biggest story of the day." [Daniel Dale]
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-- "Megyn Kelly did not talk about the NFL/anthem controversy today...if she was still hosting her Fox News show what would she have said?" [Yashar Ali]
MEGYN KELLY DEBUT PANNED: I wrote yesterday how the former Fox News star is trying to rebrand as a cheerful, non-political morning show host. It didn't work for several critics, according to POLITICO'S Jason Schwartz.
-- The Washington Post's Hank Stuever was particularly cutting: "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find.... She interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself."
STEVE BANNON SOUGHT FACEBOOK MOLE: BuzzFeed's Joseph Bernstein scoops on Bannon wanting dirt on the social media giant's hiring policy. "The secret attempt to find bias in Facebook's hiring process reflects longstanding conservative fears that Facebook and the other tech giants are run by liberals who suppress right-wing views both internally and on their dominant platforms," he writes.
MORE FACEBOOK 2016 REVELATIONS: The Washington Post reports that Russians bought ads on the social network to "exploit divisions over Black Lives Matters and Muslims."
REMEMBERING BEN BRADLEE: HBO announced the Dec. 4 debut of a new documentary on legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. "The Newspaperman" will include "previously unseen home movies, photographs, archival footage and interviews with a who's who of American journalism," including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Sally Quinn, David Maraniss, David Remnick, Jim Lehrer, Tina Brown and Tom Brokaw.
EXTRAS:
-- C-SPAN was denied the opportunity to televise appeals court arguments to be heard today on LGBT rights, POLITICO'S Josh Gerstein reports.
-- Business Insider goes behind the scenes of Fox & Friends, aka "the most powerful TV show in America."
-- Glenn Thrush's abrupt exit from our feeds prompts the question, "Can a White House correspondent do his job without Twitter?
-- The Sunday shows barely mentioned the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.
-- Former Politico NY leaders discuss Old Town Media, their new venture to help publishers develop ideas and grow.
-- Joe Biden gets in the news curation game.
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KICKER:
"For the first six months, you were learning how strange this all is...My then-colleague Ashley Parker, we did a briefing for the D.C. bureau just after the election, to tell them what to prepare for and people thought I was kidding. '[Trump] will point to this table and say it's a sofa,' just sort of along those lines," New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman recalling to Recode's Kara Swisher how she explained the president-elect to colleagues.
To view online'. http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-media/2017/09/26/steve-bannon-stumps-in-alabamaoreilly-visiting-fox-snapchat-political-premiere-evening-news-battle-wsj-nabs-two-222468
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