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Tuesday, October 24, 2023

The WGA West breaks its silence on the Israel-Hamas war, the death toll among journalists in the region continues to climb, Pew finds Americans have been tuning out the news, a small town Tennessee paper declares "enough is enough" after vandalism, Big Tech earnings paint a (mostly) positive sign, SAG-AFTRA and studios meet again, Taylor Swift powers the NFL to more record ratings, and so much more. But first, the A1.

THE A1

Trapped by the Truth

CNN Photo Illustration/John Bazemore/Pool/Reuters

It's raining "guilty" pleas in Trump-world.

Jenna Ellis, the Salem Media host who served as one of Donald Trump's 2020 campaign attorneys, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements in the Georgia election subversion case. Her plea deal, the third in the last week, followed those from notorious election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell and fake electors artist Kenneth Chesebro.

The rapid succession of guilty pleas not only marks a big blow to Trump, but also to the right-wing media apparatus that championed and disseminated his election lies to the masses. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, both Ellis and Powell toured across MAGA Media, becoming heroes to Trump's fans as they sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the election.

Now they're confessing to the public that they were wrong all along. In a tearful statement read aloud in court on Tuesday, Ellis admitted that she failed to actually understand the facts of the 2020 election and said she looked back on her actions contesting the results "with deep remorse."

"If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges," Ellis said, shedding tears.

If only such a damning admission received more coverage in the media spaces in which she had spread her corrosive lies. Matt Gertz of the progressive watchdog Media Matters pointed out that Ellis' plea deal received a mere three minutes of coverage on Fox News through 3pm ET Tuesday. Fox News, which repeatedly hosted Ellis in the wake of the 2020 election, suddenly became disinterested in the former Trump lawyer.

The result is that a good portion of the channel's audience, made up of legions of viewers who willfully seclude themselves in right-wing media safe spaces, will likely miss the consequential news. They will instead only remember the lies that she helped push into the GOP's collective consciousness. That's a shame.

Nevertheless, Trump's allies are learning that the fact-free alternate universe of right-wing media where they shot to stardom stands in stark contrast to the facts-only world of the legal system.

Fox News paid a historic $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year for airing and repeating some of the same corrosive lies that are now prompting guilty pleas in a Fulton County courtroom. Despite talking a big game about their legal prospects out of court, Fox's attorneys struggled to make their case before a judge and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch ultimately moved to settle the blockbuster defamation lawsuit at the eleventh hour to avoid an embarrassing — and potentially even more costly — trial.

As it settled the case, the right-wing network said in a public statement that it "acknowledge[s] the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false," effectively admitting that it broadcast blatantly untrue assertions about the election.

Alas, in the post-fact world where lies and outlandish conspiracy theories are tossed around in media echo chambers, the courts have become the one final institution where misleading claims finally meet the truth. On Tuesday, Ellis ran straight into that wall, marking yet another Trump ally who has succumbed to the rigid nature of the law.

The question is, how long can Trump himself outrun the truth?

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

WGA Weighs In on War: Under increasing scrutiny, the Writers Guild of America West weighed in Tuesday on Hamas' terror attack earlier this month against Israel, calling it "an abomination." The Guild, which acknowledged that its silence "caused pain within our membership that we did not intend," said it initially did not offer a statement because it felt the issue was "outside the purview of a U.S. labor union representing writers to comment on it." Facing criticism from its ranks, the Guild decided to change course, condemning the attack while also saying, "We deeply mourn the deaths of innocent Palestinians ensnared in the violence in Gaza. We feel for all our members who have been affected, directly and indirectly." The NYT's Nicole Sperling has more here.

ISRAEL AT WAR

At least 24 journalists have now been killed since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. (CPJ)
"When journalists are killed in Gaza, more lives are at stake," argues LZ Granderson. (LAT)
U.S. news anchors continue to shuffle in and out of the region. Currently on the ground are CNN's Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, and Jake Tapper; CBS News' Tony Dokoupil; and Fox News' Trace Gallagher.
CNN producer Ibrahim Dahman, who lives in Gaza, filmed a must-watch video diary about life in the war torn strip. (CNN)
CBS News producer Marwan Al Ghoul, who also lives in Gaza, spoke out about the conditions in the Palestinian territory: "I am concerned for my family, this makes me sometimes angry, and sometimes I feel like I need to cry." (CBS News)
Diana Falzone speaks with a photojournalist in Gaza who has snapped absolutely horrifying images from the region. (Mediaite)
Charlotte Klein goes "inside The New York Times debate over its Gaza hospital bombing coverage." (Vanity Fair)
Asked for comment Tuesday about freelancer Soliman Hijjy, who has a history making disturbing remarks about Adolf Hitler and Hamas' attacks on social media, a spokesperson for The New York Times would only tell me, "Unfortunately, due to variety of issues including safety concerns, we're currently limited in what we can say about this matter."
David Folkenflik on the tricky waters news organizations are navigating: "The stakes cannot be higher. The sources can prove unreliable. Concrete facts are often scant. And yet readers reward publications that push out information instantaneously." (NPR)
"Israel wants to shutter Al Jazeera," Jon Allsop writes. "Will it stop there?" (CJR)
Graphic video and photo content coming out of the wars between Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas have ushered in a "brutal voyeurism" that has, in turn, catalyzed a metamorphosis of modern warfare, Drew Harwell writes. (WaPo)
Google disabled live traffic reports for Maps and Waze in both Israel and Gaza. (CNBC)
Donie O'Sullivan and Eyad Kourdi report that "cyber activists appeared to have targeted the service to post anti-Israel messages." (CNN)
Aaron Sorkin dropped CAA after the agency's now-former film co-chief Maha Dakhil's comments on Israel: "She's just wrong." (THR)

THE INDUSTRY

CNN Photo Illustration/simonkr/E+/Getty Images

Tuning Out the News: Interest in the news has fallen considerably among Americans in recent years. That's according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. "In 2016, 51% of U.S. adults said they followed the news all or most of the time. But that share fell to 38% in 2022, the most recent time we asked this question," the firm said Tuesday. Pew added that "the recent decline in Americans' attention to the news has occurred across demographic lines, including education, gender, race, ethnicity and political party affiliation." Read all the findings here.

THE FOURTH ESTATE

Unionized members of Gannett-owned "Reviewed" accused the media giant of using generative A.I. to write reviews. Gannett insisted the reviews were written by third-party freelancers, but acknowledged they did not "meet our editorial standards," Adam Kovac reported. (Messenger)
Canadian broadcasters asked the government to include Apple in its Online News Act that directs Big Tech companies like Google and Meta to pay news publishers for featuring their work. (National Post)
Marisa Kabas spoke to a dozen female staffers for an in-depth story on Rolling Stone's office culture "under the leadership of co-founder Jann Wenner." (The Handbasket)

IN THE MARKET

Verizon hemorrhaged 79,000 TV subscribers in Q3, though it added 72,000 broadband subscribers. (THR)

MEDIA MOVES

The Associated Press named Matthew Brown a race and politics reporter. (AP)
NBC News hired Priya Sridhar as an Atlanta-based correspondent. (AdWeek)
Fox News hired Danamarie McNicholl as a Miami-based correspondent. (NextTV)
NBC tapped A.D. Miles head writer for the "Tonight Show" after Mason Steinberg's exit announcement. (THR)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/Nicole Hester/The Tennessean/USA Today Network

Targeted in Tennessee: A small-town Tennessee newspaper is defending itself after coming under attack for aggressively covering a far-right mayoral candidate. "All we have done is report the truth," Derby Jones, publisher of the Williamson Herald, wrote in an editorial Tuesday, saying "enough is enough" after the outlet's offices were vandalized. The Herald had reported that a white supremacist group attended MAGA candidate Gabrielle Hanson's forum earlier this month. "Since then, this group has gone after local journalists using threats of violence and neo-Nazi doxing, especially against our reporter," Jones wrote.

"Hanson's followers are harassing journalists and others in the community when they don't like what we say or write. The Williamson Herald stands by every story we report on. We are being called leftist and biased but there is not one report that we posted that was not the truth." Read the full editorial.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

Jeremy Barr profiles Jesse Watters, who he says "smirked his way to the top." (WaPo)
Tucker Carlson's media company has signed its first advertising deal, worth at least $1 million, Brian Schwartz reports. (CNBC)
InfoWars host Owen Shroyer told Alex Jones he was imminently reporting to prison after being sentenced to 60 days in the U.S. Capitol riot case.
Justin Horowitz documents how Rumble chief executive Chris Pavlovski "has repeatedly interacted with and praised far-right and antisemitic figures." (MMFA)
Tom Emmer, facing furious backlash from hardliners in right-wing media, became the latest Republican Tuesday to be unable to secure enough votes to become House Speaker. (CNN)
How Jake Tapper, reporting from Israel, covered yet another Speaker nominee dropping out of the race: "I'm covering life and death issues, serious tragedies, serious momentous occurrences here in Israel and of course in Gaza ... We have to interrupt this for one moment to cover the complete and utter clown car that is the House Republicans' Speaker's race."

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Evan Vucci/AP

Alphabet's Mixed Bag: Shares in Alphabet plunged more than 6% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the Big Tech titan disappointed analysts with its cloud business, though it posted strong results elsewhere. The company's advertising business banked $59.6 billion in revenue, up from $54.5 billion during the same quarter last year. Advertisements on YouTube made up $7.9 billion, up 12% from last year. Chief executive Sundar Pichai boasted that Shorts now has 70 billion daily views, showing robust growth from just earlier this year. And he said that the company has "heard positive feedback from our partners at the NFL" over the reliability of Sunday Ticket streams. CNBC's Jennifer Elias has more here.

TOO MANY TABS

Snap shares seesawed in after-hours trading after the company reported revenue rose 5%, but also warned that the digital advertising market remains unpredictable and could be hindered by the war in the Middle East. (NYT)
Spotify shares ended Tuesday up more than 10%, after the music streamer hit 574 monthly active users and marked its first quarterly profit since 2021, posting $34 million in operating income. (Axios)
"Big tech companies are continuing a turnaround from last year, as Alphabet, Microsoft and Snap kicked off earnings season with strong sales results for the quarter ended in September," Clare Duffy and Catherine Thorbecke sum up. (CNN)
Apple "will redesign its TV app in a step toward consolidating the company's various video offerings later this year," Mark Gurman reports, adding that it is "part of its efforts to become a bigger player in the streaming world." (Bloomberg)
A group of 41 states slapped Meta with a lawsuit, alleging that Instagram and Facebook are addictive and harm children's mental health. (WaPo)
Meta has seen an increase in so-called power users on its Threads app, Salvador Rodriguez and Meghan Bobrowsky report. (WSJ)
Meanwhile, X alternative Pebble is shutting down. (TechCrunch)
Have you noticed that X posts no longer unfurl in Slack? You're not alone. "Slack has retired its integration with X ... because of X's API changes introduced earlier this year," Jay Peters reports. (The Verge)
"No wonder Elon Musk is attacking Wikipedia": Dave Lee writes about how the online encyclopedia has "represented the very best of what the internet has to offer — unlike X." (Bloomberg)
Demis Hassabis, the chief executive for Google's A.I. unit in Britain, warned that the world should weigh the risks of A.I. as it does those of the climate crisis. (The Guardian)
"Influencer content is spreading from social media to e-commerce and beyond through ad tech," Garett Sloane writes. (AdAge)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Siegfried Nacion/STAR MAX/IPx /AP

Tinseltown Tries Another Take: The actors and studio executives resumed negotiations on Tuesday, after having suspended talks earlier this month. At the time of this newsletter's publication, it is unclear how the talks have gone. During the last negotiating session, the differences between the two sides were still vast. SAG-AFTRA said over the weekend, as the strike surpassed the 100-day mark, that the studios had asked them to sit down again this week. Have they made amends after their falling out? Did they make any progress Tuesday and inch any closer to a deal? And, will they continue negotiating this week? We will see.

HOLLYWOOD HELL

While some actors appreciate George Clooney's proposal of covering SAG-AFTRA union dues, others think it's eerily akin to union-busting, Sharon Knolle writes. (TheWrap)
The eighth iteration of Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" franchise has been pushed back by a year. (AP)

OFF STAGE

"NFL on CBS" delivered historic ratings, netting nearly 24.4 million average viewers as Taylor Swift cheered on Travis Kelce. (Variety)
The Musée Grévin said it fixed the life-sized wax figure of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson that had drawn backlash for being white-washed. (BBC)
Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer" marks the 10th time she has put out a No. 1 song. (Pitchfork)
Green Day announced they will release a new album, "Saviors," and shared the video to a new song, titled "The American Dream Is Killing Me." (Pitchfork/YouTube)
Michelle Obama will narrate the audiobook version of "Where the Wild Things Are." (AP)
Netflix dropped the trailer for "Leave the World Behind," an apocalyptic thriller starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts — that's also EP'ed by Barack and Michelle Obama. (YouTube)
Halle Berry will star in Tara Miele's upcoming psychological thriller, "The Process" — which Berry will also help produce. (Deadline)
Daniel Radcliffe will executive produce HBO's upcoming original documentary, "David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived," which tells the story of his stunt-double for all eight movies who was tragically paralyzed during an on-set accident. (Variety)
Rob Riggle said he'd host "The Daily Show" in "a heartbeat." (Vulture)
RIP: Steven Weisberg, the editor behind films like "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Men in Black II," died at 68. (THR)

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino and produced with the assistance of Liam Reilly. Have feedback? Send us an email here. You can follow us on Instagram and Threads. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.