Brian Stelter here at 9:47pm ET on Sunday, July 17. Scroll down for our preview of this week's news about Netflix, Twitter, Comic-Con, and more. But first... A "total breakdown" |
Seeing is believing. That's why newly obtained body cam video from the law enforcement response in Uvalde, Texas is so important to see. Sunday's preliminary report by a state House committee probe conveyed the hard-to-believe reality: That a cascade of failures and "egregious poor decision making" caused painfully long delays in stopping the shooter at Robb Elementary on May 24. Then came the new video, given first to CNN by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, "despite instructions from the office of District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee." CNN's Shimon Prokupecz and Matthew J. Friedman watched "hours of the body camera footage, including revealing new views from Uvalde Police Sgt. Daniel Coronado, who was one of the first on scene at 11:35 a.m. local time, and UPD Officer Justin Mendoza." Watch Prokupecz's six-minute report here. It brought the chaotic police response outlined in the report into striking, gut-wrenching focus. Prokupecz said the mayor decided to share the footage for transparency's sake. After all, the evidence has been in the hands of officials for nearly two months. >> CNN's story noted that "the families of the dead and injured were offered opportunities to see the videos..." >> On "Reliable Sources," Nicole Carroll discussed the Austin American-Statesman's earlier publication of hallway video: "You can read [about] that in a story but when you see it, you can feel it. And that's a different experience of the information." Carroll said "our priority is for the truth, for the families and the public..." Notes from Sunday's coverage -- The San Antonio Express-News homepage sums up the report's findings this way: A "total breakdown across the board..." -- This quote from the Texas Tribune's story was widely shared on Twitter: "In total, 376 law enforcement officers — a force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo — descended upon the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene that lasted for more than an hour. The group was devoid of clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman, the report says..." -- 376 law enforcement officers? That's "nearly 20 cops for every person killed," KVUE's Christina Ginn commented... -- CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem said "the lack of any command structure" in Uvalde stands out most, "but in the end, the ability of an 18-year-old to buy a military grade weapon that kills so quickly, so horrifically, is the original sin..." -- "A lot of the families, what they're asking for is for tougher gun laws," CNN's Rosa Flores said at a Sunday afternoon press conference. "Will you support tougher gun laws in Texas?" Texas House committee chair Dustin Burrows dodged, saying "today is not that day" and that he will answer some other time... -- The House committee's report described the shooter's use of social media: "Some users might have reported the behavior to the social media platforms, the report indicates, but the platforms 'appear to have not done anything in response...'" More to come? In this newsletter we have been noting that news outlets are fighting for the full public record in Uvalde – the footage, 911 calls, police radio transmissions, and more. Sunday's disclosures were "significant," as Prokupecz tweeted at the end of the day. "There is still more information that we need to get our hands on and I think it's going to come..." |
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"This uniquely American problem" Adam Charlton, an expat from the UK who has lived and worked in Georgia for years, and is the outgoing executive producer of "CNN Newsroom With Pamela Brown," penned a must-read piece for CNN.com titled "The fear of gun violence is ending my American dream." "Death and suffering are a large part of my profession," Charlton writes. "In my 16 years at CNN, I've honed the ability to compartmentalize and process later. The worst of the world is being siphoned into our eyeballs, all day every day, so you learn to be dispassionate. But when kids are involved, you have to wipe me off the floor." Charlton describes how his friends and family members reacted to the Uvalde massacre and says "the tragedy of modern America is that it is mired in a civil war. Two political tribes, talking past one another, which has supercharged a now violent culture fueled by the idolization of guns." He poignantly describes his love for the US, but concludes, "It is impossible for us to live with this uniquely American problem any longer. It's time to go home." On a personal note, Adam has been an exceptional colleague, and I know I speak for many when I say I will miss him in the control room... |
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-- Sunday's mass shooting breaking news: "The gunman and three other people are dead after a shooting inside Greenwood Park Mall on Sunday evening..." (IndyStar) -- A man was arrested for "allegedly firing a gun inside an uptown Charlotte comedy club Saturday night." No one was hurt, comedian Craig Robinson's performance was scrapped... (WSOC) -- "To understand the impact gun deaths are having on the US," Connor Donevan says, "you need to know about the deaths that don't make the headlines..." (NPR) -- What Uvalde underscores: Natasha Alford says America is "waking up" to the need for skepticism about initial police accounts of events... (CNN) -- Lest we forget: "12 times law enforcement misrepresented key details of the Robb Elementary School shooting..." (Grid) |
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"Nightly News" tries something different NBC News called it "One Night in America:" Four correspondents spent Saturday night in four American cities for an in-depth look at America's gun violence epidemic. And the resulting reports took up 13 minutes of Sunday's "Weekend Nightly News" – a rather unusual move for a broadcast that's about 21 minutes long without commercials. Weekend anchor Kate Snow reported from Chicago, Gabe Gutierrez from Baltimore, Gadi Schwartz from Houston, and Jesse Kirsch from Philly. "While we tend to focus on mass shootings, far more Americans are killed in smaller incidents," Snow noted in her introduction... |
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COMING UP THIS WEEK... Tuesday: Netflix's moment of truth The company's second-quarter earnings report is "shaping up to be one of the most consequential moments in the 25-year history of the company," as CNN's Frank Pallotta and Nicole Goodkind wrote here. "There will be hell to pay if they report a number that is significantly higher than the 2 million loss being thrown around," says Andrew Hare, SVP of research at Magid. But that's what "many in the industry expect," the NYT's Nicole Sperling wrote. Sperling's new story is about the streamer's big bet on "The Gray Man..." |
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| Tuesday: First hearing in Twitter v. Musk "A judge will hear arguments on Tuesday for Twitter's request for a September trial in its lawsuit seeking to hold Elon Musk, the world's richest person, to his $44 billion deal for the social media platform," Reuters reports. "Kathaleen McCormick, the chancellor of Delaware's Court of Chancery, set a 90-minute hearing beginning at 11am ET in Wilmington." >> The Chancery Court "is built for speed," Scott Galloway told Michael Smerconish on CNN Saturday morning. "They don't even have opening arguments, they don't have a jury. I think they will compel him to close. I then think it goes to a settlement because both the Twitter board and Mr. Musk will say, you don't want me to own this, we don't want you to own it, and they will come to a settlement. But I think the settlement is going to be legendary here." Scroll down for more... |
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Wednesday: Comic-Con returns BRIAN LOWRY WRITES: Rising Covid cases offer a more practical reason beyond cosplay to mask up at this year's Comic-Con, which kicks off with Wednesday's "preview day" in San Diego. The convention formally starts on Thursday and runs through the weekend. Although big movies, like Warner Bros.'s "Black Adam" and "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" will take center stage, it looks like an unusually big year for streaming with fantasy/sci-fi projects like "The Lord of the Rings" (Amazon) and "The Sandman" (Netflix) set to hold panels, along with HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel "House of the Dragon..." |
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Thursday: 1/6 committee's "summer season finale" ☝️ That's how Bill Carter described it on Sunday's "Reliable." Thursday's hearing will be in prime time, which still carries special weight, even in a 24/7 always-on age, Carter said. This series of hearings also began with a prime time session, which Fox News snubbed in favor of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity's talk shows. The same thing will likely happen on Thursday, though Fox is not commenting. >> Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who will lead Thursday's hearing alongside Rep. Elaine Luria, said on "Face the Nation" that the hearing -- focusing on what Donald Trump did during the riot -- "is going to open people's eyes in a big way..." >> On "SOTU," Luria told Dana Bash that the committee will go "minute by minute" through Trump's inaction... |
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Also coming up this week... Tuesday: Primary elections in Maryland... Tuesday: New books include Lis Smith's "Any Given Tuesday" and Matthew Ball's "The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything..." Tuesday evening: The MLB All-Star Game... Thursday: AT&T reports Q2 earnings before the bell and Snap reports after the close... Thursday: "The Last Movie Stars," Ethan Hawke's docuseries about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, premieres on HBO Max... Friday: "Nope," Jordan Peele's latest film, this time with an alien-invasion theme, invades theaters... Friday: The Rolling Loud music festival begins in Miami... |
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-- Former WH Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman on "Face the Nation:" The risks of heading into a recession are "much greater than they normally are... but the idea that a recession is a foregone conclusion or even over 50% chance, I don't see that..." (CBS) -- Jim Cramer will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday as his show "Mad Money" relocates to the trading floor... (CNBC) -- NBC's daily Snapchat show "Stay Tuned," now also on TikTok, will be marking five years all week long... |
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CNN's Sunday night TV special report about Steve Bannon was accompanied by this in-depth and interactive story by Rob Kuznia, Bob Ortega and Audrey Ash about Bannon's playbook. They describe how Bannon is using his podcast to boost the profiles of election-denying politicians and elevate a new crop of Trump Republicans into power. Check it out... >> The Bannon trial is set to start Monday morning in DC... |
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Stark new polling about Biden and Trump Sunday's new Fox News poll showed that "only about 3 voters in 10 want Biden to run for president again in 2024, while nearly 4 in 10 want Trump to run again." The recent NYT/Siena poll contained similar findings. As the Boston Globe's James Pindell wrote, "Americans appear to be saying the last thing they want is a rematch" in 2024, "despite the fact that a rematch appears to be the most probable scenario..." Harwood: "Biden's age isn't the problem" When I turned on Maria Bartiromo's Fox show on Sunday morning, I heard her wildly speculating that Biden family members or aides could be "feeding him drugs to allow him to function." Bartiromo had the support of her producers, since the show put up a graphic titled "WHO'S RUNNING THE WHITE HOUSE?" with Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Brian Deese and Jill Biden's faces. If Fox's WH team had reporting to share on this, I would take it seriously, but Bartiromo offered none. >> Voters do have good reason to care about Biden's fitness for office, John Harwood wrote for CNN.com on Sunday. "But a cursory glance at political conditions in other countries makes plain that, at least for now, Biden's physical condition does not explain his political condition." Here's what Harwood means: "French President Emmanuel Macron (44) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (50) rank among the fittest, most vibrant heads of state in the world. Recent measures of their popularity match Biden's standing in the most recent CNN average of major national polls: 39% approve, 58% disapprove." Read on... >> FLOTUS created lots of headlines with this comment at a DNC fund-raiser on Nantucket over the weekend: POTUS "had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment..."
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About Tucker's trip to Iowa "Tucker Carlson's appearance in Iowa on Friday looked like a presidential run, walked like a presidential run and quacked like a presidential run but was most certainly not a presidential run, at least as far as anyone knows," The Guardian's David Smith wrote after attending the event in Des Moines. Carlson positioned himself as a trustworthy guide to the 2024 game. He predicted a "fight on both sides" (since he said Biden is not going to run again) and warned voters that "you need to be really wary of candidates who care what The New York Times think." Smith has more here... |
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FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE |
-- The takeaway from a sweeping new AP survey: "No major problems with ballot drop boxes in 2020..." (AP) -- Hailey Fuchs' scoop: "To help Saudi Arabia repair its image, Edelman advised a mix of celebrities, music festivals and Comedy Central..." (Politico) -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is learning to navigate "the expectations that come with fame," Michelle L. Price writes... (AP) -- Ruy Teixeira, a veteran of liberal think tanks, talked with Abby Phillip about why he is moving to the conservative AEI... (CNN) |
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Covering the new reality of abortion in America Covering abortion as a political story is relatively easy. Covering abortion as a medical story is more difficult, but it's essential. As Jill Filipovic wrote, "you're hearing one story about one child in Ohio, but you're not hearing the overwhelming majority of stories that are similar to hers, that are happening right now. These are not vanishingly rare cases." But they mostly occur out of the media glare. The Ohio case is different because Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana OB-GYN, told a reporter about her 10-year-old patient. Bernard was going to write a guest essay for the NYT with her colleague Dr. Tracey Wilkinson, but after Bernard came under national news scrutiny, Wilkinson wrote it by herself. Wilkinson then joined me on "Reliable Sources" to describe the "chilling effect" that abortion bans are having. "We need to be focusing on the entire landscape of abortion access," she said. "This is not just one person's story. Many people can relate to this story." Wilkinson's point: "It's really, really important for us to center this conversation on overall health care access and not on specific patients." Watch part one and part two... >> Jezebel EIC Laura Bassett wrote Sunday: "When Roe was overturned, I expected horrifying stories to trickle out over the next year or so. I never expected them to shoot out like a firehose over 3 weeks. If you haven't been paying close attention, here's a roundup of what's happened so far..." >> CNN's Ramishah Maruf wrote more about this topic here... |
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Fox apologizes for 9/11 memorial misstep File this under what-were-they-thinking: Fox Sports "superimposed the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox logos onto the memorial pools at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center site" during "Baseball Night in America," Deadline's Bruce Haring reports. On Sunday the network apologized: "During last night's telecast, we used poor judgment on the use of a graphic. We sincerely apologize and regret the decision." |
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FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR |
-- NPR is launching a "Disinformation Reporting team," with tech correspondent Shannon Bond along with Lisa Hagen, Huo Jingnan and Brett Neely... (NPR) -- Right-wing critics of NPR ridiculed the announcement... (Fox) -- Tyler Kingkade "spent the weekend at the Moms For Liberty national summit" and filed a perceptive story about the right's activism at the local level... (NBC) -- Adam Lashinsky is out with a profile of Substack PR chief and new Activision board member Lulu Cheng Meservey... (The Information) -- Monica Chin says tech journalism has an "accessibility problem..." (The Verge) |
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This weekend's Elon Musk stories At least three stood out to me: -- Rob Copeland's report is the most read story on the WSJ website right now: "Musk's inner circle rocked by fight over his $230 Billion fortune..." -- Ashley Fetters Maloy and Nitasha Tiku's WaPo feature about Musk as a pop-culture figure: He's a "unique combination of influential executive, oddball celebrity and polarizing provocateur..." -- LA Times reporter Brian Contreras assesses: "There are no guarantees, even in the face of binding contracts, federal regulations and historical precedents, when it comes to the world's richest man..." | |
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Weekend box office recap BY FRANK PALLOTTA: "Where the Crawdads Sing" sang a lovely box office tune this weekend with an estimated $17 million, per Sony. That's a solid result and exceeded the film's modest $10M expectations. "Thor: Love and Thunder" remained in first place and made $46 million domestically, but that was a 68% drop from last weekend — the worst second weekend drop for any Marvel Studios film. The second weekend drop is particularly bad considering that Marvel went up against hardly any competition this weekend. (Sorry, "Crawdads.") People had an option to go see a Marvel movie in its second weekend and chose to not to. It's as simple as that... |
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Keeping the pandemic in the theatrical conversation BY BRIAN LOWRY: Reading Peter S. Goodman's NYT piece about the pandemic's lingering influence across the global economy, I couldn't help but think we probably don't discuss that enough in the context of the media industry and content consumption trends as well. That ranges from the steep decline for "Thor" – illustrating how movies tend to be more front-loaded now, the "Top Gun" exception notwithstanding – to Eric Kohn's column in Indiewire. Kohn wrote about the oversized role that Disney increasingly plays in the specialty film business, thanks to the importance of its streaming service Hulu's output deals that are "critical to sustaining arthouse distributors" and creating a platform for smaller movies. It's also worth keeping an eye on outliers that buck those trends, such as the better-than-expected performance by "Where the Crawdads Sing," a movie that surely had "streaming" written all over it but managed to stand out in theaters... >> "Maverick" is "nearing the domestic box office's all-time top 10," Variety reports... |
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FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE |
-- "Kanye West will no longer be performing at the Rolling Loud music festival" next weekend. "The rapper's headlining set would be replaced with a performance by Kid Cudi..." (Variety) -- "Sylvester Stallone condemned 'Rocky' producer Irwin Winkler for withholding ownership of the franchise in an Instagram post Sunday, calling for a 'fair gesture' from Winkler..." (TheWrap) -- "The Kate Bush renaissance, fueled by Netflix's 'Stranger Things 4,' continues to flourish: The official video for the artist's synth-pop classic 'Running Up That Hill' has just surpassed 100 million views on YouTube..." (Variety) -- Bryan Cranston was hit by a line drive during an All-Star Celebrity Softball Game at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night. He "later felt well enough to play on the field..." (THR) |
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JLo and Ben married in Vegas Chloe Melas and Amir Vera write: "Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have officially tied the knot, a source close to Lopez tells CNN. The couple wed Saturday, during an 'intimate ceremony in Las Vegas,' the source said." They note "the Bennifer love saga is one that's been more than 20 years in the making..." |
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LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST... Pets of the day! Happily retired Dennis Wharton, the former Variety reporter and NAB spokesman, shares this photo of "our 2 favorite troublemakers: Carmen and Dudley..." |
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Thank you for reading! Feel free to email us anytime. See you tomorrow... |
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