Thursday, November 3, 2022

Friday is almost here! Twitter's bloodshed begins, Shep Smith is leaving CNBC, Semafor has a new DC editor, WBD whiffs on earnings, the trouble with Rumble, Meta's big tumble, Netflix's new ad-plan debuts with a catch, and more. But first the A1.

THE A1

Fox's Conspicuous Omission

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It is as if Kari Lake never worked at Fox 10.

The Phoenix TV station, owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation, has chosen to effectively forget its more than two decades-long history with the rabble-rousing, election lie-supporting, media-attacking Arizona gubernatorial candidate.

Recent on-air coverage of her campaign that I have reviewed makes no mention that Lake was a longtime anchor at the station. And recent online coverage has ignored that fact too. It was only eons ago, when Lake first declared her candidacy, did Fox 10 mention she had worked at the station.

But Lake's 22-year history at Fox 10 is a crucial part of her story. She used the mighty platform at one of the highest-rated stations in the state to become a household name. Much like how former President Donald Trump leveraged his celebrity as a television star to win the White House, Lake harnessed the influence the institution bestowed upon her to launch what very well could end up becoming a successful bid for the state's highest office.

Fox 10's lack of disclosure about its deeply connected history with Lake is a glaring omission from the local channel that has not gone unnoticed. A spokesperson for Katie Hobbs, Lake's opponent in the race, told me that their camp has certainly observed this conspicuous lack of disclosure. The Hobbs spokesperson added that while the Hobbs campaign believes Fox 10's day-to-day coverage has mostly been even, the broader themes pushed during the race have been unfair to their candidate.

Of course, it's not uncommon for political campaigns to be critical of media coverage. But the perception of bias is precisely why it would be prudent for the station to be overly transparent about its previous relationship with Lake when covering the campaign. The station should also inform its audience about the steps it has taken to make sure both candidates are being treated equally.

Especially when John Hook, the Fox 1o anchor who delivered the news alongside Lake for years, spends much of his time on Twitter questioning — and often attacking — climate science, renewable energy, gun safety laws, Covid vaccine data, and other issues that sound as though they were ripped straight from a Fox News primetime script.

More broadly speaking, in an age when media trust is hitting new lows, it is important — necessary — for news organizations to be transparent and direct with their audiences. A vacuum of information is an environment in which mistrust thrives and confidence sinks.

In a single-sentence statement, a Fox 10 spokesperson only told me, "Fox 10 KSAZ-TV is very satisfied with our political coverage leading up to the election and stands by its newsgathering and editorial practices." In other words, the station is more than comfortable eliding over the fact that the state's next governor could be a right-wing hardliner it helped mainstream and popularize.

Bill Grueskin, a renowned professor at Columbia Journalism School, argued that the station could be handling the situation better — and it would not be hard. "Anytime a news organization is writing about a former employee — especially one who had such a high-profile role as Lake's, and one who is running for such an important job as governor — it has an obligation to disclose its relationship," Grueskin said, adding, "It's a simple thing to do."

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/Glenn Chapman/AFP/Getty Images

Developing: Bloody Friday: Layoffs are set to hit Elon Musk's Twitter Friday morning, according to an ominous all-staff memo sent to employees Thursday evening. The note told employees that they will receive an email by 12pm ET that informs them of their employment status. "If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email," the email said. "If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email." The email added that "to help ensure the safety" of employees and Twitter's systems, the company's offices "will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended." The email concluded acknowledging that it will be "an incredibly challenging experience to go through" for the workforce.

🔎 Zooming in: The news comes as employees have been in the absolute dark about what is happening inside the company, as WaPo's Will Oremus reported Thursday. Instead of clear communication, employees are left reading tea leaves, snooping on public calendars and Slack groups for intel about what may be in store for their future.

IN THE TWITTERVERSE

Mike Isaac and Ryan Mac have a big story outlining some of Musk's plans for the future of Twitter, which includes potentially paywalling video, charging users for the ability to DM high-profile users, and more. (NYT)
Musk has "directed Twitter Inc's teams to find over $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings by cutting cloud services and extra server space," Sheila Dang, Paresh Dave, and Katie Paul report. (Reuters)
General Mills, Mondelez, Pfizer, and Audi are joining the growing list of advertisers pausing campaigns on Twitter. (WSJ)
Meta executive Nick Clegg to Musk: "Welcome to the club." (WSJ)
Paul Farhi looks at the "verifiable angst" of the "blue checks." (WaPo)
Fox News hosts aren't buying Musk's blue check plan (pun slightly intended here). "I think it's embarrassing to pay," Kat Timpf said. "I do too," replied Dana Perino. (Twitter)
Katie Notopoulos offers another view: "But what if…this actually isn't such a bad idea at all?" (BuzzFeed)
Decentralized social network Mastodon is seeing a surge of interest, gaining 230,000 users in wake of Musk's Twitter takeover. (TechCrunch)

THE BUSINESS

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WBD Whiffs: Shares in Warner Bros. Discovery (which I should note is the parent of CNN) are down nearly 6% in after-hours trading after the media giant missed on Q3 earnings, reporting $9.82 billion in revenue versus the $10.36 billion Wall Street expected. That's due in part to the weakened advertising market stemming from economic uncertainty. WBD also isn't seeing the same benefits of midterm spending in the same way companies like Fox Corp. are, since most election ads are purchased on local stations.

On the streaming front, WBD said it added 2.8 million subscribers in the quarter, bringing the company's total to nearly 95 million subscribers globally, slightly above analyst expectations. CEO David Zaslav announced the combined HBO Max-Discovery+ super-streamer will now debut earlier than expected, in the spring. And he indicated that when it does, WBD will raise the subscription price. CNBC's Lillian Rizzo has more here.

✂️ Cuts, cuts, cuts: Zaslav indicated more cuts are on the way, saying that while "difficult decisions" must be made, the company views the cost-cutting exercise as a "meaningful opportunity" to "look inside each of our businesses" and assess the state-of-play.

Paper Pains: Gannett, the biggest newspaper chain in the country, reported a Q3 loss of $54 million on Thursday. And while CEO Mike Reed said there are some bright spots (paid digital subscriptions have surpassed 2 million), Poynter's Rick Edmonds argued that the company's "move to become more of a digital company still faces a fundamental problem." The issue? "Revenues from the print side of the operation are falling by a lot more than those on the digital side are growing." More from Edmonds here.

Shepard Out to Pasture: Changes are coming to CNBC. New network boss KC Sullivan wrote in a memo to employees Thursday that the channel will undergo a "strategic realignment" following a business review of the outlet he completed after taking over from longtime head Mark Hoffman. The first big change? Axing Shepard Smith. Sullivan said that Smith's show will end later this month. As a result, Smith will exit the network and CNBC will try to find a home for the 20-some staffers who worked on the program. Sullivan explained that he believes CNBC must "must prioritize and focus on our core strengths of business news and personal finance." To that end, a business-oriented show will replace Smith in early 2023. Here's my full story.

❓Where's Shep? Noticeably missing from Thursday's announcement was any statement from Smith himself. He was also off on Thursday and won't return to air until next week, I'm told.

IN THE INDUSTRY

Jim Scuitto returned to CNN's air on Thursday, anchoring the morning edition of "Newsroom" after completing what sources told me was a 30-day suspension.
"Two Fox journalists were killed in Ukraine. A widow still searches for answers": An important story from Jeremy Barr. (WaPo)
Brian Steinberg writes about Fox Weather's aspirations. (Variety)

MEDIA MOVES

First in Reliable: Jordan Weissmann is heading to Semafor as its new Washington editor. He joins from Slate where he was the outlet's lead economics and public policy writer.
First in Reliable: Heather Tal Murphy is returning to Slate as a biz/tech writer where she will write about how technology is shaping the world around us.
Snap has named Ajit Mohan as its Asia-Pacific president. Mohan joins from Meta. (Bloomberg)
Twitch has hired Laura Lee, a YouTube and NBCU alum, as its chief content officer. (Variety)
ABC Signature has named Sydnee Rimes to SVP of series. (Deadline)

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

Mercurial Meta's Milestone: This is not the type of news Mark Zuckerberg wants to end the year reading: "Facebook parent company Meta is now the worst performer in the S&P 500 this year," a headline on CNBC blared Thursday. The news, which came on Thursday, is the result of the company's shares having fallen a staggering 73% over the past year as the company grapples with a deteriorating digital advertising market, Apple's strangling privacy measures, and Wall Street's lack of confidence in Zuckerberg spending so big on the Metaverse.

TOO MANY TABS

Another crazy headline from Thursday: "Apple is now worth more than Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta combined." (Yahoo!)
The office shrinking continues: Meta has backed out of a plan to fill a new 589,000 square-foot office space in downtown Austin. (Real Deal)
And more cutting in the Amazon: Amazon is pressing pause on corporate hiring and expects to keep the policy in place for months. (CNN)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Trouble With Rumble: Newsguard on Thursday published research examining the content promoted to users on Rumble, the video-sharing site home to many right-wing media personalities. The study found that Rumble, which is backed by Peter Thiel and other deep-pocketed conservatives, "frequently pushes videos from untrustworthy sources that traffic in election misinformation." In fact, "When NewsGuard conducted a series of Rumble searches related to the 2022 midterm elections, nearly half of the search results — 47.5 percent, or 95 out of 200 — came from sources rated Red by NewsGuard for being untrustworthy." More from Newsguard here.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

More bad news for the far-right media organization OAN. The channel has been dropped by another carrier, Frontier. (MMFA)
Misinformation about abortion is "surging in Spanish," Maria Godoy reports. (NPR)
Huh? Joy Reid bizarrely claims that Republicans aren't talking about the economy in "common tongue" have "taught people the word inflation." (Mediaite)
"When I am the voice of decency, we have a problem": Jimmy Kimmel talks with Jake Tapper about why he has called out celebrities for being irresponsible with their platforms. (CNN)

CURTAIN CALL

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Netflix's New Plan: The moment that Reed Hastings had been adamant would never arrive has, well, arrived. Netflix's $6.99 ad-supported plan got off the ground on Thursday, offering an alternative for those who don't want to shell out for an ad-free experience. But not everyone can get in on the lower-priced plan yet. The ad-supported tier, however, is not available at launch on Apple TV. And notably, the streamer's lite version doesn't come with access to its full library of content. Shows such as "House of Cards" and "Arrested Development" are not currently included with the plan.

OFF STAGE

Sling TV has raised its prices by $5 a month. (THR)
After Leslie Jordan's death, "Call Me Kat" viewership has spiked 28%, according to Nielsen. (Variety)
"Dahmer" is spending its third week atop the streaming list, generating 2.35 billion minutes watched in the U.S. (THR)
Get ready for more "Home Town." HGTV has ordered 20 more episodes of the hit show which will return for season six on December 4. (Deadline)
Kevin Spacey will make his first speaking appearance in five years when he accepts an award in January 2023. (Variety)

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino. Have feedback? Send us an email here. We will be back in your inbox tomorrow.