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Wednesday, December 13, 2023

CNN hosts a questionable Vivek Ramaswamy town hall, the House GOP opens an impeachment inquiry into President Biden after right-wing media pressure, Axel Springer signs a deal with OpenAI, Threads prepares to launch in the E.U., James Murdoch chooses to stay silent on Elon Musk, Stephen Colbert trolls Tucker Carlson, "Barbie" snags a record-breaking Critics Choice Awards nominations, and so much more. But first, the A1.

THE A1

The Media's Unhappy Holidays

CNN Photo Illustration/Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images

It's a painful holiday season for news organizations.

In recent weeks, Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, Vox Media, and others have made painful cuts to their workforces. Meanwhile, the storied science and technology magazine Popular Science, ceased its print edition. And publications such as BusinessWeek and The Nation reduced production, becoming monthly magazines.

Taken together, media companies have shed thousands of staffers in recent weeks amid what should be the most wonderful time of the year. According to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, news outlets have cut nearly 2,700 jobs this year, the highest number of job cuts in the industry since 2020, the tumultuous year upended by the global Covid-19 pandemic.

While the U.S. economy continues to show its resilience, the unwelcome terminations come amid a particularly arduous business climate for publishers, which have continued to see steep drop offs in social media traffic — once the lifeblood of digital media publications — a relentlessly challenging advertising market, and shifting audience habits.

The cuts also come at a poor time, given the state of the information environment and threats to U.S. democracy. At a time when anti-democratic candidates are looking to seize power in election contests from coast to coast, newsrooms are seeing their reach and staffing shrink, if they're not going belly up entirely.

That lack of accountability means dishonest figures seeking higher office will face less scrutiny and leave the electorate less informed. Look no further than the now-expelled member of Congress, George Santos, for a glimpse into a future in which candidates are not thoroughly vetted by the press before being elected.

Margaret Sullivan, a columnist at The Guardian who previously wrote about media for The WaPo and The NYT, shared worry about the larger consequences the deeper cuts into the news business will have on the country. Sullivan said that it is not only "heartbreaking to see the loss of these jobs," but stressed that they do broader "damage to society."

"The loss of journalists contributes to the exponential growth of news deserts in large swaths of the nation — and that's disastrous when misinformation is rampant," Sullivan told me. "Democracy needs an informed electorate in order to function and that is tragically dwindling in many regions."

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CNN Photo Illustration/Micah Green/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Validating Vivek: CNN will present a town hall on Wednesday evening with Vivek Ramaswamy, helping to legitimize the dishonest GOP presidential hopeful who has spewed dangerous lies and injected poison into the national discourse at every chance. Last week, at the NewsNation debate — the latest of the four televised showdowns Ramaswamy has taken part in — he floated the false notion that the January 6 insurrection was an "inside job," gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory by falsely asserting it is nothing more than "a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform," and fanned the flames of election denialism by saying the 2020 contest was "stolen." The notion that the infotainer, who CNN has reported "struggles for relevance" as he polls in the low single digits and remains exceedingly unlikely to be the Republican Party's nominee, deserves an hour-long national platform to sell his personal brand and insidious talking points to the masses taxes the imagination.

CNN's own journalists and commentators roundly criticized Ramaswamy after watching him unleash the firehose of lies at last week's debate. Anderson Cooper said he delivered a "soliloquy of conspiracy theories." Pamela Brown pointed out he has a "history of pedaling disinformation." Abby Phillip underscored the danger of his lies, pointing out that people "have actually killed in the name of" the Great Replacement theory. Van Jones said his rhetoric is "one step away from Nazi propaganda." Kaitlan Collins noted he insidiously uses a "reasonable tone" to sell sinister lies to people "who aren't paying close attention" and might think what he is saying "maybe is legitimate." And CNN's conservative commentators also roundly criticized him, with Alyssa Farah Griffin describing his rhetoric as "damaging to the country" and David Urban bluntly saying that he promoted every conspiracy theory "but the kitchen sink" at the debate.

Of course, at the CNN town hall, moderated by Phillip, Ramaswamy will not be allowed to spread his lies unchecked. Phillip is a talented journalist who will attempt to keep him within the bounds of reality. But just as CNN has not given notorious conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who is polling higher than Ramaswamy) a town hall, the question is: Why would any major news network help to validate such a preposterous figure by putting him on stage and allowing him to infect the public with his conspiracy campaign? Some might say that it's important for Ramaswamy's rhetoric to be interrogated by the press instead of allowing it to spread unchecked in the darkness. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, these people might say. That might be, but if that is the aim, there are other ways to expose his dishonesty to the public, such as a taped interview. It's hard to see how a town hall is the best format to accomplish that goal. Instead, handing Ramaswamy a microphone and putting him on a stage affixed with CNN's iconic branding to answer audience questions helps validate him and provides oxygen to the menacing wildfire of delusions he has pushed into the public discourse.

Asked for comment, a CNN spokesperson defended the network hosting the event with Ramaswamy, who is the only GOP candidate who has been present at the debates and not participated in a CNN town hall. "We are a month away from the Iowa caucuses and Mr. Ramaswamy is a significant candidate for the GOP nomination, having made every debate stage thus far," the network spokesperson said. "The Iowa voters have questions for him before casting their ballots. We will always work to hold every candidate accountable and provide voters with the information necessary to make informed decisions going into an election."

Inflaming an Impeachment: The Republicans have done it. After months of pressure and encouragement from the dishonest right-wing media machine, the House GOP on Wednesday voted to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite a lack of clear evidence implicating the president in a crime. But those pesky facts don't count for much in MAGA Media. Instead, the launch of the probe was celebrated. Fox News' Greg Gutfeld, for instance, gleefully said he is "here for" an "impeachment-palooza." And other prominent figures heaped praise on the GOP, which will now be under mounting pressure to actually impeach Biden.

🔎 Zooming in: It's important to remember that an impeachment inquiry into Biden very likely does not happen without organizations like Fox News rewarding members of Congress for initiating this action. Dishonest politicians like James Comer and Jim Jordan will be celebrated in those corners of the media, giving them more reason to continue on their hunt against Biden.

THE INDUSTRY

THE FOURTH ESTATE

Axel Springer — which publishes POLITICO and Business Insider, among other outlets — signed a years-long licensing deal with OpenAI under which the A.I. company will pay the global news publishing giant to use its content. (CNN)
"What are Gayle King and Charles Barkley doing on CNN?" wonders Jeremy Barr, who spoke to CNN's senior vice president of content strategy Ryan Kadro for his story. "Anybody who knows anything about television knows that these things take time," Kadro told Barr. (WaPo)
Isaac Chotiner spoke with Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, about why the Israel-Hamas war has been so deadly for journalists. "Gaza is a very small strip of land, in which it's been extremely difficult for civilians to find places of safety," Ginsberg said. "On top of that, journalists are trying to report on that war, which makes it particularly unsafe." (New Yorker)

IN THE MARKET

The WWE settled an antitrust lawsuit with Major League Wrestling. Details of the settlement were not made public. (THR)
Netflix's head of gaming, Mike Verdu, spoke to Stephen Totilo about the streamer's video game ambitions and strategy: "We're not going to do a giant marketing campaign to say, 'Games are on Netflix.'" (Axios)

MEDIA MOVES

Fox News Media promoted Jason Klarman to chief digital and marketing officer of Fox News; Lauren Petterson to president of Fox Nation; Porter Berry to president of Fox News Digital; Jay Wallace to oversee Fox Business Network; and Megan Albano to executive vice president of morning programming and program development at Fox News Media. Gavin Hadden has also been tapped to serve as the senior vice president of Fox Nation. (Fox News)
Variety hired Alex Ritman as London bureau chief. (Variety)
The NYT re-hired Randy Lemmerman as a senior staff editor in the Washington bureau and promoted Jon Galinsky to assistant managing editor. (NYT/NYT)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/Mike Blake/Reuters

A Muted Murdoch: James Murdoch has not been shy about criticizing the damage his father's media empire has wrought upon the world through its dissemination of corrosive lies. But Murdoch, a Tesla board member who is known to communicate with Elon Musk, has been entirely silent as the unhinged billionaire has engaged in similar behavior. In the last year, Musk has promoted deranged conspiracy theories, smeared the press, launched ugly attacks on the Anti-Defamation League, and welcomed back to the platform extremists like Alex Jones, among other things. But Murdoch has not, to my knowledge, denounced any of Musk's behavior. Which seems quite odd. I reached out to Murdoch's spokesperson this week to see if he has anything at all to say about the damage Musk is doing to the public discourse, but didn't hear back. So much for speaking truth to power.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

Elon Musk is planning to launch his own university in Austin, Sophie Alexander and Dana Hull report. (Bloomberg)
Helena Hind and Jane Lee report on how Fox News "buried the story of a Texas woman prevented from getting an emergency abortion." (MMFA)
That didn't last too long! Kid Rock disclosed that he is done boycotting Bud Light. (CNN)
Stephen Colbert trolled Tucker Carlson by purchasing a URL using the name of his new "network." (HuffPost)

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Carlos Barria/Reuters

Time for E.U. Threads: Threads is heading to the European Union. The Meta-run answer to Elon Musk's deteriorating X is set to officially launch in the European bloc on Thursday, allowing for the greatest influx of users since the platform launched in the U.S. earlier this summer. The delay, caused over regulatory issues centered around personal user data, is set to give Threads a boom at a time that Musk has chased away users and advertisers from the social media platform once known as Twitter. The Verge's Jess Weatherbed has more.

► Attention European users: When the app launches in your country, you can follow us here!

TOO MANY TABS

Mark Zuckerberg also announced: "Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol. Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I'm pretty optimistic about this." (Threads)
Threads is also letting users bury fact-checked posts down in their feed. (The Verge)
While politics are rampant across TikTok, politicians are curiously absent from the platform, Sapna Maheshwari observes. (NYT)
"Have we reached peak TikTok?" David Ingram asks. (NBC News)
The White House this week held its first-ever A.I. council meeting. (The Hill)
Apple said it will no longer provide authorities with data harvested from users' push notifications unless a warrant is presented. (TechCrunch)
Discord has banned misgendering in an update to the platform's conduct policy. (TechCrunch)
Instagram is also letting users set video statuses. (The Verge)
Amazon shifting its focus back onto books, seeking to compete with Goodreads by launching its own discovery service, titled "Your Books." (TechCrunch)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Warner Bros. Pictures

Let's Go Barbie: We live in a "Barbie" world. The Warner Bros. Pictures film snagged a record-breaking 18 nominations on Wednesday for the Critics Choice Awards. Behind the Greta Gerwig film was "Oppenheimer" and "Poor Things," which earned 13 nominations each. The awards ceremony is set to air Sunday, January 14, on The CW. Deadline's Pete Hammond has more here.

OFF STAGE

Michelle Sterioff, a Swiftie and the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, has moved to voluntarily dismiss her complaint. (Billboard)
Anthony Anderson will host this year's Emmys ceremony, which was delayed by the dual Hollywood strikes. (AP)
"Wonka," which is currently boasting an 84% Rotten Tomatoes score, is eyeing a $75-million global opening. (Deadline)
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will star in Benny Safdie's A24 film "The Smashing Machine" about MMA fighter Mark Kerr. (THR)
Netflix announced the lineup for its 2024 "Netflix is a Joke Fest" comedy special. (LAT)
Netflix scored Ryan Reynolds' upcoming heist comedy. (TheWrap)
Zack Snyder said he's glad Disney passed on "Rebel Moon." (BBC)
Speaking of which, Netflix said it's working on video game versions of both "Rebel Moon" and "Squid Game." (TheWrap)
George Clooney said there's currently a "great" script for another "Ocean's" film. (TheWrap)
Hipgnosis Songs Fund, a music streaming fund that owns the rights to a wide array of musicians — from Beyoncé to Neil Young — has sold 20,000 "non-core" songs for $23.1 million. (The Guardian)
The trailer for Universal's "Kung Fu Panda 4" is out. (YouTube)

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. You can follow us on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.