Obama’s library takes the stage
Today’s opening ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center is a media spectacle fit for a former president, with A-list performers like Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder, and all the other former presidents on hand. The dedication ceremony in Chicago begins at 11 a.m. CT. CNN, C-SPAN and other channels are planning special coverage.
This is “more than a decade in the making,” CNN’s Sara Sidner said from her anchor position at the center. Jeff Zeleny told Sidner that the Obamas want the center “to be about more than just his candidacy and his presidency, but sort of a lesson of history” and a reminder for future generations “about what leadership can do.”
Obama expressed some of that in a sit-down interview with Michele Norris for MS NOW. The center is meant to embrace “complexity,” he said: “I think when you understand the complexities of America and the contradictions of America, I don’t think it makes you love it less, I think it makes you love it more.”
“And I think it also makes you more resilient,” he said. “Because then, during periods like we’re in right now — where for a lot of folks it’s crazy and you feel despair and anger — that perspective allows you to then say, ‘Okay, we’ve gone through crazy periods like this before. We’ve gone through mean periods before.’ It fortifies you to say, ‘Yes, this has been part of the journey that we’re on,’ and there’s no reason to suggest that we can’t get through this one.”
The former president has only taped a couple of TV interviews about the center, but he has appeared on several podcasts and YouTube shows in recent months, modeling the behavior that he wants to see from other Democrats. More than 100 creators and influencers were given tours of the center in the lead-up to today’s ceremony.
“We have intentionally broadened the president’s reach beyond traditional media — including working with creators, appearing on podcasts, and engaging on new platforms — to connect with audiences in unexpected places,” Obama senior advisor Eric Schultz told me. “This has been President Obama’s media strategy since the beginning, knowing that effective communications in today’s environment means engaging audiences in venues they already use and trust.”
>> CNN’s Jacqui Palumbo has a first look inside the presidential center here…
CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports that Obama told his alums last night that “he didn’t believe in nostalgia and didn’t intend to wallow in it.”
But it’s impossible to read about the center’s opening without thinking back to the Obama era — which was also the beginning of the social media era. Instagram didn’t even exist until 2010, Obama photographer Pete Souza pointed out to Zeleny on CNN earlier this morning.
To conjure up some memories of those years, I searched my inbox for 2016 editions of the Reliable Sources newsletter, and the first one that popped up with Obama’s name was… about then-candidate Donald Trump telling me in a phone interview that he would “love to” keep pushing his lies about Obama’s birthplace.
But “I don’t talk about it” anymore, Trump said in 2016, “because once I talk about it, that’s all they want to write about.” Yes, the future president — whose lies about Obama helped him win over GOP voters — bragged to me about his message discipline.
It’s no wonder that Trump was not invited to today’s event.
“In an era where DEI has been completely, not just DEI, when Black American history has been carved out of the halls of the federal government with, like, a butcher knife, them doing this library on Juneteenth week is on purpose and is significant,” CNN’s Audie Cornish observed… “It feels like the Obamas are doing something very purposeful. They’re creating an alternative historical celebration for people who feel like part of their history is forgotten.”
New York’s ticker-tape parade for the Knicks is underway at the tip of lower Manhattan, with wall-to-wall coverage on all the city’s local TV stations and extensive coverage nationally on channels like CNN and ESPN2 as well. Almost every reporter at the parade is wearing Knicks gear. My better half, a morning anchor at NY1, just drank a second coffee, expecting to be on the air with coverage of Zohran Mamdani’s keys to the city ceremony through the afternoon. 😀
So many people have converged downtown that it’s actually presenting some technical challenges for the TV crews, especially those that are sending in live signals via cellular, using the same jam-packed networks as all the fans. If a live shot suddenly seems blurry to you, that might be why! Everyone is competing for precious cell phone tower bandwidth.
>> The designated viewing areas filled up many hours ahead of time. Check out CNN’s live updates here.
>> Some of the locals, like ABC7 Eyewitness News and NBC 4 New York, are having their special reports picked up by their parent company’s streaming services. The city has an official stream as well.
>> Ahead of the spectacle, New York mag’s Michael Calderone sat down with Pablo Torre to discuss the city’s elation around sports, from the Knicks to the World Cup.
“Superfan Ben Stiller has confirmed he is making a multi-part documentary series about the history of the New York Knicks and their historic championship win last weekend, in partnership with the NBA, HBO and A24,” Variety’s Pat Saperstein writes. Stiller shared the plans on the “Roommates” podcast yesterday. “It’s going to be over the next year that we’ll be working on it,” he said…
The former anchorman’s next act begins today on Netflix. “We’re Back with Brian Williams” is a weekly video podcast, aka what we all used to call a TV talk show. “And we’re back, I’m Brian Williams — it’s been a minute, this is what we’re doing now,” Williams quips at the top of his inaugural 43-minute episode.
His first guest is Tom Hanks, who reflects on how the entertainment industry has changed. “Anybody can be entertained for seven-and-a-half hours a day by watching 45-second videos, one right after another… The artistic challenge for the likes of you and me is, all right, are we going to make something that is so damn good that people are not going to want to only see it on their phone until they see it in some other venue first? That will happen, provided” — Hanks pauses and poignantly looks into the camera — “artists and storytellers keep doing it. The problem there is the money provided for us to do that is now completely altered.” Here’s the full episode…
The New York Times just announced internally that “Hard Fork” podcast co-hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are leaving “to pursue their own new venture.”
Roose is a full-time tech columnist at the NYT, while Newton’s day job is running Platformer. Their “Hard Fork” episodes will continue through the end of August. “It’s bittersweet to leave The Times,” Roose said. “I love this place, and will always be grateful that it took a chance on two reporters who wanted to start a weird little tech podcast.”
It became much more than that; witness this month’s live event in SF. The NYT is keeping the brand going: “We will begin a search for the next hosts immediately,” Sam Dolnick and Pui-Wing Tam said in an internal memo. “We have big ambitions for this next chapter of the show, which has become a cornerstone of our technology and business coverage.”
The White House has added an 11 a.m. press briefing by VP JD Vance to today’s schedule — the latest sign that the administration is scrambling to sell its Iran deal amid mounting backlash from Trump’s more hawkish MAGA media allies.
>> If the deal is so “flawed,” per his own allies, why is Trump agreeing to it? Because “he’s getting what he wants,” writes CNN’s Stephen Collinson: A way to avoid an “economic catastrophe” that could further sink his approval ratings.
John Berman on “CNN This Morning” today: “Breaking overnight, the Department of the Interior suggesting, kind of, that they’re at war now with the algae in the Reflecting Pool, saying they’re treating it like the Iranian Navy. I’m not making that up. This is what the Department of the Interior said.”
Personally, I miss the days when I didn’t think about the Reflecting Pool at all. Now it’s become “the latest political Rorschach test,” as Matt Viser wrote for The Atlantic here.
“The cloudiness of the pool has triggered a predictable descent into polarizing politics: Some Trump supporters have claimed that the water isn’t actually green, and others have suggested there’s some outside force trying to undermine the pool renovation — and, by extension, Trump himself.” He’s not making that up, either…
China’s Administration for Market Regulation has cleared the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger in that country, imposing “no conditions,” Semafor’s Rohan Goswami reports.
“Now, eyes on California AG,” he added.
Sensor Tower data shows that the White House’s UFC fight night, which was shown exclusively on Paramount+, quadrupled downloads of the Paramount app compared with the previous 30-day average. SBJ’s Adam Stern reports that “daily active users on the platform on Sunday jumped by 17% from the prior day and 34% from the prior 30 days.”
The data “suggests” that the event was a hit, “but it was far from the Super Bowl-level success some claimed,” Awful Announcing’s Manny Soloway writes…
Trump “has settled his lawsuit accusing his niece Mary Trump of improperly leaking information to the New York Times for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 probe into his finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes,” Reuters’ Jonathan Stempel reports.
“No terms were disclosed,” he adds, and “a dismissal would be with prejudice, meaning the U.S. president could not sue again.” Attorneys for both Trumps did not respond to requests for comment.
The BBC will eliminate 550 roles and cut spending by £80 million as part of the “first phase” of new director-general Matt Brittin’s savings plan, the BBC’s Alex Kleiderman reported yesterday. The job cuts, expected by next April, will include 200 roles at BBC News. Other proposed cuts include “ending Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight,’ and reducing the number of permanent presenters on ‘Today’ from five to four from September, with a single anchor on Saturdays,” Kleiderman reports…
>> New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, who is close to Trump, says the leak of Situation Room meetings to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan “demands a criminal probe.” (NYPost)
>> Meanwhile, the Post’s Steven Nelson has a leak from Haberman and Swan’s book! “Regime Change” recounts a dinner between Trump and Jeff Bezos in December 2024, where Bezos said people at The Washington Post are “terrible.” He was “focusing his ire at the business side of the publication.” (NYPost)
>> “Robinhood’s branded newsroom, Sherwood News, plans to wind down its website” amid layoffs at the company. “Sherwood will live on as a brand but instead distribute its reporting via newsletters” and through the Robinhood app. (WSJ’S CMO Daily newsletter)
>> Britain’s competition watchdog has ordered Google “to provide greater transparency on how its search rankings work, part of new rules aimed at securing a ‘fairer deal’ for businesses and addressing concerns over the U.S. tech giant’s dominance in the sector.” (Reuters)
>> “Toy Story 5” “should send the box office to infinity… and beyond,” Rebecca Rubin writes. The Pixar flick “is targeting a debut of $145 million to $150 million” in North America this weekend. I caught an advance screening of the film and thought it was almost perfect. (Variety)
>> A writer on CBS’s “Matlock” has sued the network, a showrunner and two exec producers, accusing them of “directing disparaging sexual and racist comments at him and other Black cast and crew members,” Winston Cho reports. A CBS Studios rep said “a thorough investigation” was “unable to find support for his allegations.” (THR)
>> UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report for 2025 found that in streaming movies, “women and people of color lost ground relative to their male and white counterparts when it comes to directors, writers, lead roles and overall cast,” Jeremy Fuster writes. (TheWrap)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.