Are Media Mishaps Opening the Door for Trump to Sling More Mud at the Press?

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TOP STORY

MEDIA FLUBS OPEN DOOR FOR TRUMP

The midterms are rapidly approaching as the president continues an assault on press freedoms in the United States, two factors that increasingly appear poised to combine and combust.

Now is a crucial time for those reporting on the White House and the people who live and work there. Media mishaps and mistakes from the last week have shone a light on where some of the industry’s heaviest hitters, including MS NOW, ABC News, and CBS News, are giving the Trump administration an opening to discredit their reporting.

THREE TAKES

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — On Wednesday MS NOW received a tip that FBI Director Kash Patel was headed to Russia and reported the news live on the air. The problem, of course, was that Patel was actually in Virginia, something that was easy to quickly verify. FBI officials pounced on the opportunity to mock the network “all across social media,” Stelter pointed out. Though the incident raises questions about who provided MS NOW the information in the first place, the more pressing question is why didn’t the network properly vet it before allowing Ken Dilanian to share it in the first place?

Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — ABC News has “had a week they’d rather forget,” Cartwright wrote in his latest edition of Breaker. That’s included “a federal court fight with the FCC to issuing corrections on two different editorial screw-ups.” On Monday the network was forced to apologize to Aaron Parnas after falsely attributing a quote; last week ABC removed a story about Donald Trump, Jr., “with no explanation.” The network’s attorney Beth Wilkinson attributed the blunders to stress from the ABC-FCC lawsuit and told the judge in the case, “Our editorial decisions are being affected right now. We are watching everything that we do.” But insiders told The Breaker “the recent errors on inexperienced staff who lack the editorial oversight they previously would have benefited from” and Cartwright observed that the lack of “oversight is likely a byproduct of a newsroom that has had to endure round after round of staff cuts.”

The Desk, Matthew Keys — The $20 million defamation lawsuit filed against CBS News by a Maryland teen centers on a June 21 report in which the network “incorrectly suggested that the teenager was among those accused of damaging the landmark.” The network retracted the report in an Aug. 16 Evening News broadcast, in which anchor Jericka Duncan said, “We never should have published this story.” The 15-year-old in question “accuses CBS of defamation and invasion of privacy through false-light publicity.” He also claims he was detained after riding an electric dirt bike at the National Mall and soon released. Though “the original broadcast showed the teenager from behind,” his face was later shown on the CBS website and its social media channels.

TAKEAWAY: Mistakes happen and are part of any job. But the stakes are particularly high right now, as the president’s media ban is still playing out in court and he launches near daily attacks on networks and news organizations via Truth Social. The White House and the FBI wasted no time spiking the football on ABC and MS NOW after their gaffes — as the blunders have given the Trump administration the opening they’ve been seeking to get their base riled up against the media. There’s enormous pressure on network leaders and the people who work for them, but collapsing as a result will only result in more mistakes, which open the door to more personal and legal assaults. If anything, these cases show that a little more money spent up front beefing up journalistic operations could actually end up not only helping media organizations preserve their credibility, it could also potentially save them cash in the long run by keeping them out of court.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP Status, Natalie Korach — Meta’s decision to ban ads from ByteDance “stunned the tech industry” last week, Korach reported today. Status has since learned “that not everyone at Meta got the memo, with many learning of the policy change after Bloomberg first reported the news.” TikTok was also “blindsided.” Mark Zuckerberg’s decision apparently came down to this: “ByteDance’s advertising on Meta platforms had focused on acquiring new users, with Meta questioning why it would allow a competitor to market directly to its users on Facebook and Instagram to lure them away.” But there’s more to the story, Korach added. As she put it, “the timing has fueled another explanation to some observers—payback.” Zuckerberg has pushed others, such as YouTube, to “adopt comparable protections for minors, even taking out full-page ads in national newspapers urging them to join the agreement,” and that effort “has largely fallen flat thus far.”

ANALYSIS The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger — The president “seems to fall hopelessly” under the spell of Vladimir Putin anytime the pair speak, Kristol and Egger asserted today, something that’s been on display since Trump and Putin spoke nearly a week ago. It seems Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The Financial Times today the country is “done” and that, “The block [on attacking refineries] is out.” That update comes after days of having “endured these impossible conditions, biting his tongue and agreeing in principle to abide by Trump’s demand for an energy ceasefire even as Russia was plainly ignoring it.”

ANALYSIS  CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — Grad student journalist Cat Murphy stood her ground when confronted by an irate Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) Wednesday night. Harris “freaked out and falsely accused” Murphy of “illegally recording him” following a campaign event. Murphy ended up speaking to Jake Tapper on The Lead, during which the latter “noted that most journalists reach retirement without such a confrontation with an elected official.” Stelter had a blistering take: “Let’s just call it what it is: loser behavior,” he wrote. “We’re liable to see even more of it ast he midterms approach.”

ANALYSIS Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Sean Keeley — The Portland Trail Blazers and the Miami Marlins are both testing out new broadcast announcers this week after a series of “strange” events. Portland recently hired and fired Braiden Bell based on tweets he wrote when he was 15, and the new hiring of radio host Travis Demers — who was actually part of sweeping cuts within the Trail Blazers organization this summer — will work on a “trial basis.” Part of the problem appears to be that team owner Tom Dundon is focused primarily on cutting costs (beat reporter Sean Highkin has extensive reporting on the team and Dundon for interested parties). The Marlins also really fired their broadcast team and their former radio announcer Jack McMullen will take over. For Miami, it seems social media played a role: “Sure enough, some of the broadcasting talent that’s out didn’t have much of a social media presence, while many who remain boast big followings or stronger connections to the franchise,” Keeley pointed out.

ANALYSIS The Federalist, Elle Purnell — Comedian Shane Gillis caused an uproar Saturday when he made several crass comments about the athletic wear some women wear to the gym. In response, “women took to the internet to post pictures of themselves in revealing athletic wear and also to insist that they absolutely do not want any male attention at all,” Purnell wrote. But she isn’t buying it. “I suspect plenty have also convinced themselves that they aren’t dressing and posting for male attention so much as they’re doing it just to prove that no one can tell them not to,” Purnell offered. “It’s the Lululemon set’s version of a homeless guy dropping a deuce in the park to prove that he can do what he wants and no one is going to stop him.” To combat this, we need to bring back more public shaming, Purnell concluded. “Ideally, public shame is self-policing. If you know you’ll get kicked out or get dirty looks for your inappropriate behavior, you’re more likely to avoid it altogether. Unfortunately, this only works when the threat of facing public shame is credible.”

ANALYSIS Page Six Hollywood, Ian Mohr — The 1,000 people who lost jobs at Netflix yesterday did not include film chairman Dan Lin, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe, Mohr wrote. And the firing of his vice president Doug Belgrad, will “only further expose the main criticism of Lin — that his relationships with the talent community are strained,” Mohr continued. But Lin does have a few things on his side: sources told Mohr that Lin “passed on the Tom Cruise disaster Digger, which is expected to result in many millions in losses for Warner Bros” and “avoided Maggie Gyllenhaal’s pricey flop The Bride.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

ADWEEK Daily, Brittaney Kiefer — Oft-discussed and -downloaded prediction market platform Polymarket tapped Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (you know: The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) to head up two national commercials three weeks ahead of Election Day. The ad push is part of Polymarket’s first U.S. political campaign as it seeks to court a broader mainstream audience. QUOTE  “In Bigelow’s first ad, a campaign worker becomes a whistleblower after making a scandalous late-night discovery about her congressman, while in another, a bachelorette party turns sour when the group is confronted with the soaring cost of living.”

CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — A new coalition of Hollywood producers and talent representatives called the American Entertainment Alliance is pushing for federal legislation requiring major streaming services—think Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and Skydance—to allocate 50% of their original production budgets to indie producers. QUOTE  “What is this all about? Well, in an age of consolidation, talent agencies and producers want to restore the ‘glory days of indie TV[.]’”

CJR’s The Media Today, Jules Roscoe — AI data procurement startup Handshake is approaching reporters and newsrooms directly to license reporting archives, interview transcripts, draft revisions, and editor markups. Take a moment just to consider that. Roscoe took more than a moment, opting to go meet a rep for the company to figure out what’s going on. Turns out Handshake is paying creators for background documentation to train large language models on the iterative workflow and professional judgment calls behind finished reporting. Go read the full dispatch. QUOTE  “Ethically, I could see no reason to take the deal. The journalism industry has been running toward AI—at journalists’ expense, it would seem—and I don’t like the idea of contributing to technology that is constantly working to replace me. But as a journalist, I couldn’t resist the temptation of finding out more. I scheduled the meeting for that Friday morning.”

Status, Natalie Korach — Shareholders for both Fox Corporation and Roku voted to approve Fox’s $22 billion acquisition of the streaming hardware and software platform. The transaction formally unites Fox’s broadcast and sports programming with Roku’s distribution hardware ecosystem. We’ve chatted before about how well this positions Fox to meet consumers anywhere they’re at, but this is just another step forward in the process.

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — The Washington Post announced plans to close a printing plant in Virginia, resulting in 118 employee layoffs as the publication shifts its physical printing operations. The plant has been around nearly five decades.

OTHER COOL STUFF

Page Six Hollywood — Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua made a surprise appearance at a 25th anniversary screening of Training Day in Century City, answering questions for half an hour. Why doesn’t anything like this ever happen to us?

CNN’s Reliable Sources — ESPN is launching “ESPN JV,” a new streaming channel just for kids that features interactive challenges along with appearances by both top sports stars and classic Disney characters.

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

Morning Brew, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Holly Van Leuven, Abby Rubenstein — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments “about how a law requiring the protection of customer video-viewing habits applies now” yesterday, and the results “may impact how companies can target you with ads online.” The Video Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1988. The plaintiff in the new case is “claiming its restrictions mean Paramount shouldn’t have sold his streaming data to Facebook to create targeted ads.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Sean Keeley — Today’s offering from Awful Announcing is packed full of compelling media stories from the world of sports reporting. We highlighted the curious case of broadcaster changes in Portland and Miami above, and the latest on the Joe Buck vs. Troy Aikman ESPN contract dispute that’s “causing friction” between the two “longtime partners” is worth taking a gander at. The recent expansion of the newsletter’s team has only broadened their efforts, and even non-sports minds might be interested in what Awful Announcing is putting out there.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.