Media stories hit the multiplex

For those of us who devour movies about media, tech and their impacts on society, this season is a feast. “Primetime” has had people talking for weeks. “The Social Reckoning” is out today. Heck, even “Verity” is about an author and her ghostwriter.

Alex Gibney’s “Musk” is also out in North American theaters today. “Depending on your state of mind, a nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk might sound exciting or excruciating,” NYT reviewer Alissa Wilkinson commented.

“The leadup to the film’s release has seen some controversy after Musk used several insults to describe Gibney — ‘an idiot’ was among the mildest ones — and threatened a defamation lawsuit,” Steve Inskeep noted on today’s “Morning Edition.”

So far that lawsuit hasn’t materialized, but the threat certainly made the documentary more newsworthy. “All Americans should probably watch this film like their life depends on it,” Sheelah Kolhatkar wrote for The New Yorker today.

The “Musk” release moved up a week, which got it out of the way of “You Can See Everything,” Nathan Fielder’s documentary/puzzle about Elizabeth Holmes. Alamo Drafthouse is reporting very strong preorder sales for that one.

Critics are mixed on Aaron Sorkin’s sort-of-sequel to “The Social Network.” The movie is currently averaging 59% on Rotten Tomatoes and 53 on Metacritic, far lower than 97% Certified Fresh and 95 scored by Sorkin’s first Facebook feature.

TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek says the new film is “an old-school shoe-leather journalism thriller,” with Jeremy Allen White playing Jeff Horwitz, the WSJ reporter who won the trust of whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison.

“Sorkin’s point seems to be that even in the digital age, there aren’t really any new ways to be a thorough, ethical journalist — all the old rules still apply,” Zacharek wrote.

But as for the film itself, Variety’s Guy Lodge concluded that the follow-up “is missing more than just David Fincher,” while Vulture’s Alison Willmore wrote that “’Artificial’ is a better ‘Social Network’ sequel than ‘The Social Reckoning.’”

“Artificial,” Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman biopic, comes out in December, around the same time as Danny Boyle’s “Ink,” about Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb…

The connective thread here? Figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Musk and Holmes are “villains in a new, on-screen front in the backlash over Silicon Valley’s power,” Politico’s Daniel Miller and Tyler Katzenberger wrote here.

Trump once threatened Zuck with “life in prison.” But now, the Meta CEO’s political reset with President Trump is paying off.

CNN’s Clare Duffy, Adam Cancryn and Hadas Gold went deep here on how he’s used his ties to Trump “to help stymie the creation of an AI regulatory agency proposed by Meta’s rivals.” The White House also helped get him “off the hook for testifying in a planned Senate committee hearing earlier this year.”

As one person familiar with the dynamics told CNN, Zuckerberg is a “political chameleon” who is “a survivor in terms of his relationships in DC…”

The president is telling Minnesotans to “fight back” because the state is being “taken over by Somali Immigrants.”

The Department of Homeland Security is defending the shooting of a man from the Dominican Republic in the Bronx.

And the Pentagon is saying it will “livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.”

It’s notable that Pete Hegseth initially teased this public execution plan during an appearance with Jack Posobiec on the far-right Real America’s Voice.

It’s also, as WaPo’s Drew Harwell pointed out, “hard to overstate how much Hegseth’s execution stream mirrors the U.S. military’s traditional description of ISIS propaganda: broadcast killings designed to send a message, strike fear and create a social media spectacle.”

Violence is the throughline of those three stories, and so is fear.

Trump said of Minnesota yesterday, “there is violence, murder, and mayhem all over the state.” (If you want to understand what’s really going on, read the Star Tribune.)

One of the banners on Fox News last night said, “MINNESOTA TODAY, YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD NEXT.”

Here’s something we haven’t seen in a while: Live TV coverage of a landfalling hurricane.

Hurricane Isaias, now a Category 3 storm, will come ashore tonight near the Florida–Alabama border, and correspondents are fanned out along the Gulf.

The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, ABC’s Stephanie Ramos and CNN’s Rafael Romo are in Pensacola Beach, to name a few… CNN’s Isabel Rosales is in Gulf Shores, Alabama… and Fox’s Haley Meier is in Mobile with the “FOX Weather Beast” storm-tracking truck.

“It will be the first time a hurricane has struck any US coastline in two years,” CNN’s live updates page notes. In fact, “if Isaias makes landfall before midnight — as it’s currently forecast to — it will be exactly two years between hurricane hits.”

ABC News still hasn’t explained why it published and then deleted a report about the Trump sons’ investment ties to defense companies.

ABC “just totally nuked it. No note, no explanation, no comment,” Andrew Kaczynski tweeted an hour ago. “It had been shared by tons of top lawmakers and Democratic officials.”

The story’s deletion followed public pushback from a rep for 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. As of this morning, the original URL returns a 404 error, with no correction or editor’s note. One of the companies named in the piece was told it was “published prematurely,” I hear…

That’s Politico’s headline about yesterday’s hearing. As CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Jeremy Herb wrote here, Judge Timothy Kelly “signaled skepticism” about the Justice Department’s defense of Trump’s media ban and repeatedly told the DOJ attorney “that he was bound by DC Circuit precedent — including the precedent that the administration was objecting to.”

The judge “did not announce his decision on the media outlet’s request for a long-term order,” the pair wrote, but did extend his temporary restraining order for a few more days. Kelly indicated his next ruling “will come Tuesday or sooner.”

PBS News is launching “Press Pass” to stabilize its finances following last year’s clawback of federal funds. For $8 per month, or $96 per year, supporters “will receive a new political newsletter, Inside the White House with Liz Landers, as well as interruption-free podcasts and select virtual events,” the news org says.

In short, it’s a new way to win over donations “while keeping its core journalism accessible for all and not placed behind any paywalls…”

Deadline helpfully summed it all up with this teaser headline: “Zaslav Cashes In; TCM To Film Group; Par Global Content Chief Out; Shares Up.”

David Zaslav scored a “massive merger stock windfall” of “just over $600 million as he handed over his WBD shares to Paramount at $31 each,” Jill Goldsmith wrote.

New owner David Ellison visited Hudson Yards and toured CNN’s New York offices yesterday. The org chart keeps filling in: Yesterday JB Perrette named top execs across content licensing (David Decker), advertising (Jay Askinasi) and distribution (Ray Hopkins). The departures keep coming, too: WBD international chief Gerhard Zeiler made his exit official this morning. He’s pursuing a political post in his native Austria.

And about Turner Classic Movies: It’ll be housed within Skydance Motion Picture Group, led by Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.

Netflix “is about to lay off a bunch of people, part of a restructuring that will impact about 5% of employees and could be announced as early as next week,” Puck’s Matt Belloni reported overnight.

A 5% cut would amount to some 850 jobs, Belloni wrote, noting that while “steep,” the cuts are “in line with reductions at other major media and tech companies lately.” Netflix declined to comment.

Can you take my posts ‘Higher’?

Instagram users have noticed that the app keeps suggesting Creed’s 1999 hit “Higher” as “the perfect soundtrack to whatever they post.” So CNN’s T.M. Brown asked about it. At first, he said, Meta was skeptical that there was a problem. Maybe the users were just imagining things? But then Brown received a follow-up message.

“We looked into this and found that this song is being recommended to more people than intended,” a spokesperson said. Now an engineering team is working to resolve the matter. Read Brown’s excellent full story here…

>> “Operatives in Iran used OpenAI models and fake personas to help plant news articles critical of the US war against Iran in multiple US media outlets,” Sean Lyngaas reports. (CNN)

>> Another news org sues OpenAI: USA Today Co. filed in federal court yesterday “for allegedly infringing their copyrights by using their content to train its large language models.” (Reuters)

>> 🤯 Quartz is relying on “a single, hugely prolific journalist heavily aided by AI to produce nearly all its daily website reporting,” Rob Waugh reports, with at least 52 stories published under that reporter’s byline in one day. (Press Gazette)

Cool or cringe? Fox News says it is launching a three-part Fox Nation docuseries using AI to reanimate Harry Houdini.

Fox is playing up the AI angle, calling this its first long-form production “to rely entirely on AI-generated imagery.” Per Rick Porter’s THR story, the production company “licensed archival footage and some 400 photographs to serve as source material for the series.”

Six worthwhile reads as we head into the weekend:

>> The “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed 10 years ago this week. Parker Molloy looks back on the one moment Republicans turned on Trump — and how quickly they fell back in line. (TPA)

>> “How to destroy a reputation in Hollywood”: Debra Kamin examines five women’s lawsuits alleging an online smear machine powered by a high-powered lawyer, a publicist and a digital strategist. (NYT)

>> Does “brain rot” belong to anybody? Kari Paul says that while US copyright law “only applies to human-made creations… AI characters like Tung Tung Tung Sahur are challenging that.” (The Guardian)

>> “Amid a sea of AI writing slop, a new stamp for ‘organic literature’ will help readers to pick out books authored by real, corn-fed, free-range humans,” Joel Khalili writes. (WIRED)

>> What happened to the internet we actually enjoyed? Elizabeth Nolan Brown argues that the government killed it with “meddling, bullying, and soft, or even overt, censorship.” (Reason)

>> And if you were extremely online in that late 2010s golden era, you’ll probably enjoy David Mack’s profile of Jesse Farrar and his “one tweet that defined a decade of Trump.” (CNN)

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.