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Tuesday, February 7, 2023

President Biden's SOTU address is about to begin. In the meantime, scroll down for what to expect from Disney's earnings report, specifics from Microsoft's big AI event, why the Anti-Defamation League is calling out Joe Rogan, what Gov. Ron DeSantis said about suing the news media, and more. But first, the A1.

THE A1

Why SOTU Matters

CNN Photo Illustration/Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The State of the Union still matters.

Perhaps that might seem like a contentious statement to make in the age of Netflix and TikTok, with ratings on the decline across the board for programs and events that still air on linear television.

But the State of the Union platform is still important and should not be dismissed. While President Joe Biden might not make any remarks that astonish the political class when he greets Congress at 9pm ET, the speech will reach many Americans who do not normally tune into the news and follow the day-to-day happenings of Washington.

In fact, it is often the largest audience that a president will speak to in any given year. Last year, for instance, more than 38 million people tuned into Biden's speech. For context, 12.4 million people watched the Grammy Awards on Sunday.

It is also an opportunity for the president to speak uninterrupted to the American people. It's rare for news and broadcast networks to carry a raw speech from the president — or anyone, for that matter — continuously for such a lengthy period of time.

Biden, like other presidents, can use that to his advantage. He can tout his accomplishments, use the bully pulpit to put the heat on Republicans, and, perhaps most importantly, connect with the audience on a deeper level.

Even if most of the country doesn't watch the actual speech, it's likely they'll encounter parts of it elsewhere. It's like avoiding discussion of the Super Bowl the day after the game airs. Tuning it out in totality, even for those who do not tune in, is challenging. The address will be covered and chewed over on cable news, written about in countless stories across the web, and key moments will be spliced up into clips that are shared across social media.

Some of the speech will be used, without question, against Biden. Right-wing outlets and personalities will weaponize moments from the address and use them as fodder to attack the administration. The speech has yet to occur but I can already tell you how it will play out on Fox News (hint: they won't like it).

But, generally speaking, the overall thrust of coverage after a State of the Union address tends to be in the administration's favor, given that it is a rehearsed speech crafted and delivered uninterrupted to the American people by the president. It might not move legislation, but it does still have impact.

THE SIDEBAR

Biden plans to address social media and online data privacy during his speech. (CNBC)
SOTU guests include Paul Pelosi, Tyre Nichols' parents, U2 star Bono, Monterey Park shooting hero Brandon Tsay, and more. (CNN)
The traditional pre-SOTU lunch with Biden was attended by Norah O'Donnell, Savannah Guthrie, Jonathan Capehart, Jake Tapper, David Muir, Amna Nawaz, and others, Semafor's Maxwell Tani reports. (Twitter)
Not even Kevin McCarthy treats Fox News in the same way he treats the news media. The Republican House Speaker held an off-the-record pre-SOTU event with the right-wing talk channel, and then held a second separate event with the press. (Punchbowl)
McCarthy also warned the GOP to behave during the address, reminding them that "mics are hot" and "cameras are on," Melanie Zanona and Manu Raju report. (CNN)
For the first time ever, NPR is offering a bilingual broadcast of the SOTU address. (Washingtonian)

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The House's Hunter Hearing: House Republicans are moving forward with their Hunter Biden-Twitter narrative, facts be damned. Despite no evidence to date showing that the government instructed Twitter to "censor" the New York Post's Hunter Biden story in 2020, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing — the committee's first — on the matter. It will feature former executives Vijaya Gadde, James Baker, and Yoel Roth. "In the runup to the 2020 presidential election, Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor reporting about the Biden family's shady business scheme," chair James Comer said in a statement.

But, as CNN previously reported, none of the released "Twitter Files" have shown this. "In fact, the opposite view emerges from sworn testimony by an FBI agent at the center of the controversy," CNN's Evan Perez, Donie O'Sullivan, and Brian Fung reported. "And in interviews with CNN, half a dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all deny any such directive was given." Rolling Stone's Ryan Bort has a good walkup to the hearing here.

THE BUSINESS

CNN Photo Illustration/Jerod Harris/Getty Images

Disney on Deck: Wednesday will bring Disney's earnings after the bell and all eyes are on Bob Iger, in what will be his first earnings report since he returned as the company's chief executive. The NYT's Brooks Barnes noted that Iger has led Disney's earnings calls 58 times before, but this particular report "will require him to give a performance for the ages." Wall Street will be eager to hear the Disney chief outline his vision leading the company into the future, particularly as the media sector navigates economic and industry turbulence, but also after Iger said restructuring will soon take place. "We anticipate Disney is likely to introduce structural changes as well as cost cuts," Bank of America analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich said. CNN's Chris Isidore has more here.

► Iger is also battling activist investor Nelson Peltz. Variety's Tatiana Siegel and Jennifer Maas have a good primer here breaking down Peltz's frustrations with the company.

And the Award Goes To: The 2023 duPont-Columbia Awards ceremony was held Monday night, with CNN and PBS leading the pack with two of the prestigious prizes. Norah O'Donnell, who co-hosted with Amna Nawaz, opened the night up by recognizing "the courage" and "doggedness" each of the honorees displayed. PBS won for a piece on arctic sinkholes and its in-depth coverage of Ukraine and Afghanistan, while CNN won for breaking news from Ukraine and its documentary "Navalny." Accepting CNN's award, Clarissa Ward thanked Ukrainian colleagues for showing the "grace and the grit and the determination to keep coming to work, to keep risking their lives, to keep helping us to tell these stories" amid chaos. The duPont-Columbia Awards also honored five local TV stations, HBO Documentary Films, ABC News/Hulu, "This American Life," Audible, Gimlet Media/Spotify, and The WaPo. THR's Carly Thomas has a full recap here.

IN THE INDUSTRY

Don't miss this special from Alex Sherman and Lillian Rizzo. The duo interviewed a number of prominent media insiders — including Barry Diller, Ann Sarnoff, Kevin Mayer, Jeff Zucker, Kathleen Finch, Richard Plepler, and others — who offered their predictions on what the future of linear television will look like in three years. (CNBC)
A group of news organizations are fighting to learn the names of those who backed bail for Sam Bankman-Fried. (Yahoo! Finance)
The NFL has struck a 10-year deal with DAZN Group to distribute games internationally. (WSJ)
The Athletic's chief commercial officer, Sebastian Tomich, talks to Digiday about how the outlet is looking to reach profitability. (Digiday)

MEDIA MOVES

The Associated Press hired Chad Day from The WSJ as its chief elections analyst. (AP)
The NYT appointed Doug Schorzman as its next Asia editor. (NYT)
CNN announced correspondent Larry Madowo will host "African Voices Changemakers." (CNN)
POLITICO hired Daniella Diaz from CNN. (Twitter)
The WaPo hired Big Tech veteran Chris Dehghanpoor for its rapid response investigations team. (WaPo)
Netflix poached Peter Dodd from Warner Bros. as a director on the film team. (Deadline)

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

Ba-Da Bing: Microsoft's Bing is about to be infused with AI tech from ChatGPT creator OpenAI. At a Tuesday event, the company announced that the search engine, as well as its Edge web browser, will feature generative AI, giving users the ability to chat with a bot that will aim to answer real-life questions. The event comes, of course, one day after Google announced it will roll out its own AI to users. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented, we are entering "a new paradigm for search" where "a race" is underway to quickly implement these new technologies to achieve dominance.

► Meanwhile, over at Menlo Park: The NYT's Cade Metz and Mike Isaac report on how Meta "tries not to be left out" of the AI boom: "It has long had technology to rival chatbots like ChatGPT, but can't afford to back artificial intelligence that can spread misinformation and toxic content."

Doom at Zoom: More bad news for the tech sector. Zoom on Tuesday said it will slash 15% of its workforce, totaling about 1,300 employees, as the company struggles post-pandemic and remote work winds down for many. The company's CEO, Eric Yuan, told employees that he is "accountable for these mistakes" and that he will cut his 2023 salary by 98% and forego his annual bonus. CNN's Catherine Thorbecke has more here.

TOO MANY TABS

Meta is "asking many of its managers and directors to transition to individual contributor jobs or leave the company as it tries to become more efficient," Sarah Frier and Kurt Wagner report. (Bloomberg)
The Senate Intelligence Committee want answers from Meta on whether user data was accessed by China and Russia. (CNN)
An interesting story from Drew Harwell who examined how TikTok handled the Chinese spy balloon. His conclusion? "Many of the most popular TikTok videos around the episode haven't looked like Chinese propaganda at all." (WaPo)
TikTok is obliterating YouTube, Meta, and others in an annual study looking at which apps young people spend their time on. (TechCrunch)
Google will start in the coming months blurring pornographic and violent images in search results by default. (The Verge)
Snapchat is losing Ben Schwerin, its longtime head of content and partnerships. (Variety)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

Joe's Jewish Backlash: Joe Rogan is facing criticism again — this time for pushing the antisemitic trope that Jewish people are "into money." During a recent episode of his Spotify podcast, Rogan said, "The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That's like saying Italians aren't into pizza. It's f**king stupid." Anti-Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt on Tuesday called the comments "disturbing" at a time of "rising anti-Jewish violence" that Rogan "would use his immense platform to spew antisemitic tropes about Jews and money."

🤫 Mum is the word: I reached out to Spotify on Tuesday for comment, but so far, the company is choosing to stay silent.

DeSantis and Defamation: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday fired an opening shot in a new front against the media industry, putting on notice the longstanding legal protections that news outlets have relied on for more than half a century," CNN's Steve Contorno reported. "Speaking in a room staged to look like a television studio, DeSantis suggested it should be easier to sue news outlets for libel and signaled a willingness to turn Florida into a battleground for a showdown over the future of the First Amendment." The attitude, of course, is nothing new in the GOP. Donald Trump also trafficked in similar anti-media rhetoric and calls to make it easier to sue the press have saturated right-wing media for many years. The Tampa Bay Times' Emily Mahoney and Kirby Wilson have more here.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

Speaking of... The Southern Poverty Law Center released more of Alex Jones' private texts on Tuesday, this time focusing on messages illuminating his relationship with Joe Rogan. (SPLC)
Judd Legum writes about how Charles Koch "manipulates the media" by announcing he is "reorienting his political strategy away from far-right Republicans, including Donald Trump — with no discernible change in his actual political activity." (Popular Info)
Sam Smith and Kim Petras' performance at the Grammy's is still riling up the right. Daily Wire host Michael Knowles claimed it's "odd" that "depictions of demons" are "always trans." (MMFA)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Fox

Censored in China: It seems that Disney has complied with the Chinese censors. THR's Etan Vlessing reported that the entertainment giant "has apparently removed an episode of 'The Simpsons' from its local Disney+ streaming service in Hong Kong over a joke that mentioned Chinese labor camps." Disney has not commented on the matter and a spokesperson did not respond when I reached out on Tuesday. CNN's Michelle Toh has more.

In The Hot Seat: AMC Theatres' decision to charge more money for premium seats, and less for those located in areas such as the dreaded front row, is stirring some debate. Actor Elijah Wood tweeted his criticism, saying that it would "essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income." THR's Pamela McClintock looks at the debate here.

OFF STAGE

The MTV Movie and TV Awards will reunite to take place on one night, May 7. (Variety)
Lacey Rose and Katie Kilkenny go "inside the implosion of Justin Roiland's animation empire." (THR)
The first reactions to "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" are in — and they're largely positive. (Variety)
Stephen Colbert's "Tooning Out the News" has had its season three extended. (Deadline)
A "La La Land" broadway musical is being developed. (Deadline)
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" has hit the China box office, debuting in third place. (Variety)

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