CNN puts White House on notice
The White House keeps excluding CNN from President Trump’s trips on Air Force One, disrupting a decades-old tradition of pooled TV coverage.
Now an attorney for CNN is warning that the network will take additional legal action if the White House continues to prevent its news crews from covering the president.
“These efforts to retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage are mistaken, counterproductive, and unlawful,” Ted Boutrous, outside counsel for CNN, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.
White House counsel Will Scharf was copied on the letter. Boutrous set a deadline — Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern — for the administration to “confirm in writing” that the White House has put a stop to the practice.
“If these actions persist,” he wrote, “CNN will have no choice but to return to the court to defend its rights, and it is prepared to fight as long as is necessary to secure them.”
The DOJ has not responded to my request for comment so far this morning.
This demand letter from Boutrous, which we’re reporting on for the first time, is the latest extension of the legal fight that began when Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico a month ago. A federal judge has sided with the banned news outlets twice, and access to the White House has been restored.
But Trump has sought other ways to single out journalists, and blocking CNN from traveling on Air Force One is one of those ways.
The admin appears to be relying on an ongoing court case involving The Associated Press. An appeals court panel ruled last year that “restricted presidential spaces” like Air Force One and the Oval Office “are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.”
But that ruling was “non-binding and non-precedential,” Boutrous pointed out in his letter, so it is not binding on other cases.
And those “restricted presidential spaces” are the primary places “where the president interacts with the press by briefing reporters and answering questions,” he wrote, with the data to back it up: In Trump 2.0, the president has fielded more than 4,700 questions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and on the tarmac. By contrast, he has fielded just about 150 questions in the White House press briefing room.
Bottom line: “Those spaces belong not to any particular president or administration but to all Americans, and CNN and other members of the press serve as surrogates for the public when covering the White House.” Read on…
“BBC News told staff on Tuesday that the division will close more than 100 roles over the coming months, saving £5.5 million ($7.4M),” Deadline’s Jake Kanter reported just now.
Incoming BBC News director Rachel Jupp said the cuts are “necessary, but they are not sufficient to meet our funding reduction,” signaling that further cutbacks are likely.
“Netflix, America’s dominant streaming service, has hit a wall.” That’s the headline of this WSJ curtain-raiser for Netflix’s Q3 earnings report.
“Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos had complained internally for months that Americans were spending less time watching Netflix and that the service was short on new hit shows,” the WSJ’s Ben Fritz, Jessica Toonkel and Joe Flint report, citing sources. “He also has told colleagues that he wants the company, which has experimented with everything from videogames to podcasts, to strengthen its core TV and movie offerings.”
So Sarandos has ousted chief content officer Bela Bajaria and film boss Dan Lin, along with many others. But Netflix’s issues run deeper as it competes with YouTube, TikTok and everything else on the internet.
The WSJ team writes that Netflix’s “engagement slump has resurfaced an old debate at the company: Were subscribers not watching more because of the programming from Los Angeles? Or because of the recommendation algorithm overseen by engineers in Northern California?”
Surely I’m not the only person who knows there’s a ton to watch on Netflix, but doesn’t know how to surface it all.
Relatedly, Deadline quotes a Netflix vet saying “streaming has become basic cable. They can change [and] shuffle as many executives as they want, and it still won’t make a difference.”
>> Rich Greenfield says he has one big question for execs during the 4:45 p.m. Eastern investor call: “Why Bela and not Ted?”
Amid all the angst about Netflix, Vulture’s Joe Adalian says “screw the narrative.”
“Netflix is making billions,” he wrote in this chat yesterday. “It has a low churn rate, or lower than others. It makes hit shows, albeit, yes, not as many sexy, awards bait shows as some might want.”
I tend to agree with the assessment he shared: “As an agent told me, this whole change is about stock price and Ted needing someone to take the hit. That someone was Bela. I will not argue she didn’t make mistakes or that all of her cheeseburgers were cooked to perfection. But this wasn’t really about a record of creative failure. It’s about Netflix needing to justify itself to its Wall Street masters and make sense of its massive content spend.”
How’s this for a contrast: Newt Gingrich is out today with “America’s Golden Age: Trumpism and an Era of Limitless Possibilities” while the co-founders of MeidasTouch are out with “WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy.”
Also new in stores today: Lawrence Wright’s “latest master class in narrative nonfiction,” titled “Redemption: Faith, Justice, and Sisterhood on Death Row,” and Paris Marx’s “Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires.”
T-minus two weeks until midterm election day, and many Americans are already voting. CNN.com is in daily live-coverage mode here.
This video dispatch by David Wright stood out to me: In the ten states with Senate seats CNN rates as most likely to flip, “a review of AdImpact data for the final two weeks of the midterms shows more than $300 million pouring into races.”
Trump cried “fake news” yesterday, then quickly backtracked upon learning the reporter questioning him was from The Daily Wire.
Mary Margaret Olohan began asking about French President Emmanuel Macron “blaming the Iran war and you essentially for the rioting in France.” Trump quickly cut her off, pointing at her and saying “that’s fake news.”
Then came his familiar question: “Who are you with?”
“No, sir,” Olohan said. “Mary Margaret with The Daily Wire.”
Trump broke into a smile: “Oh, The Daily Wire is good,” he said of the right-wing outlet. “Sorry. The Daily Wire’s good.” Watch the exchange here.
Speaking of right-wing outlets, The Daily Caller has been posting the national average price of diesel almost daily — seemingly taking digs at Trump’s Iran war without directly naming the president. Yesterday, the target became clearer.
Alongside a screenshot of Trump’s bizarre Truth Social screed about wanting to rename New Mexico “New America,” the Caller wrote on X: “BTW, the national average price of diesel hit an all-time high just last month, and the Iran conflict reportedly costs the average American household $2,000.”
“Worried donors, artists and their family members have been calling and emailing the Kennedy Center for months,” asking how artwork will be protected during Trump’s planned renovations, CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty and Chelsea Bailey report in this in-depth story for CNN subscribers. They’re “fearing the worst — from artwork becoming collateral damage during construction to being accidentally thrown away.”
A sad sign of the times: Some of the donor sources told CNN they “feared speaking out publicly while the artwork they care about is still inside the center.” Officials claim the artwork will be “fully safeguarded,” with some pieces temporarily relocated if necessary.
A CNN legend is leaving the network next year: Christiane Amanpour announced yesterday that she will conclude her CNN International show in May and depart in June.
“Christiane has thought carefully about this decision,” CNN chairman Mark Thompson wrote in a memo, noting that they’d been discussing it for “months” — meaning it predated Skydance’s recent takeover of CNN.
“Like so many CNNers who will hear the news today, I’m very sorry to see her go, but I’ve come to accept that this is the right time for her, both personally and professionally,” he wrote.
Amanpour, 68, said in a statement that she “looks forward to interesting new projects down the line, and will always be rooting for CNN and maintaining its history of independent journalism. Remember: always be truthful, not neutral.”
There will be much more to say about Amanpour later, but for now: Thank you, Christiane.
Jon Stewart will remain a weekly host of “The Daily Show” through the 2028 presidential election, resolving the uncertainty around his contract, which was slated to expire this December.
As Liam Reilly and I wrote here, the new deal means one of TV’s most prominent Trump critics will stay for the rest of Trump’s term. It’s also, notably, one of the newly enlarged Skydance’s first major programming announcements.
“Among other things, this is a reminder that ‘the Ellisons are turning all their programming into pro-Trump propaganda’ is not correct,” Peter Kafka wrote on X, noting “South Park” as another example.
“The timing of Stewart’s deal is notable beyond Comedy Central,” Jed Rosenzweig wrote at LateNighter. “Jimmy Kimmel, who shares manager James Dixon with Stewart, is currently negotiating with ABC on a new contract that would keep ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on the air beyond the expiration of Kimmel’s current deal in May 2027. Kimmel is also believed to be seeking a multi-year extension that would carry his show through the 2028 election.”
Stewart opened last night’s “Daily Show” monologue with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke about his contract. But at the very end of the show, Stewart more openly celebrated the deal: “We told you a while back that we were going to do everything in our power to continue to be on the air through this next presidential election, and I am truly happy to announce that it has come to pass.” The audience erupted in applause.
“We are very appreciative to the dancer in the sky… sky dancer,” Stewart joked, referring to Skydance, before thanking viewers and his staff. “We couldn’t be happier, and we are delighted to keep this damn thing going…”
Laurene Powell Jobs “paid $250 million to acquire a stake in Skydance,” Variety’s Todd Spangler reports. Powell Jobs, who was named a board member on October 5, “acquired 20.83 million shares of Skydance Corp. for $12 each, for a total of $250 million,” according to Spangler, who notes the billionaire “indirectly owns those shares, which are held in a trust…”
>> Jay-Z, “the chief decision-maker on who plays the Super Bowl halftime show, has finally picked the artist who will take the stage in L.A. in February: himself,” Dave Brooks scooped overnight. (Puck)
>> Walter Isaacson is launching a new podcast “to examine the builders of AI.” (THR)
>> Bloomberg has poached Bobby Allyn from NPR to “help lead coverage of the prediction market industry.” (X)
>> Ann Hornaday, the Washington Post’s longtime chief film critic, died Sunday at 66. The Post’s Matt Schudel eulogized a journalist who “championed the craft of filmmaking and helped readers understand the enduring magic and occasional disappointment of movies.” (WaPo)
If you’ve seen “You Can See Everything,” you will definitely want to read Alex Barasch’s profile of co-director Lance Oppenheim for Vulture. I didn’t realize that he premiered “Primetime” at the Venice Film Festival less than 24 hours before revealing “You Can See Everything” at Telluride.
“It didn’t help that he had microdosed LSD in Italy and was still feeling the effects when he landed in Colorado,” Barasch writes. Here’s the full interview…
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.