What's at stake in the BBC spat
At least half a dozen major media companies have stared down legal threats from President Trump this year. Some have chosen to fight, others have opted to fold. The BBC is signaling that it will fight.
Thursday’s response from the British broadcaster to Trump — a personal apology letter paired with an argument that the president doesn’t have a serious case — brought some clarity to the situation.
The BBC’s legal team observed that the offending documentary “was not distributed in the US, that the edit was not made to mislead viewers, rather to ‘shorten a long speech,’ and that the 12-second clip was not meant to be considered in isolation,” CNN’s team reports. “The documentary also did not cause Trump any harm, the letter argues, as he was re-elected as US President shortly after the clip aired in the UK.”
Trump and his lawyers have not yet said whether they’ll proceed with a lawsuit.
Joel Simon, founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative, has been writing about the BBC’s efforts to expand in the US. His latest piece for CJR is titled “How Donald Trump Blew Up the BBC.”
“I think this is a fight about stopping Trump from deploying his pattern of intimidation, bluster and threats against an organization that plays a huge role in setting the global media agenda,” Simon told me last night. “It would be tremendously dangerous if he won that battle.”
It is also, he said, “a fight about the ability of the British public to determine what kind of media it wants, and what kind of BBC, without Trump mucking it up. It’s a fight about the future of public media as an institution at a time when the concept has been under fierce attack in the US. So much is at stake.”
For more, check out my analysis piece for CNN.com…
Another misleading edit claim |
Shortly before the BBC outlined its strategy going forward, The Telegraph put out a new report that asserted the BBC’s “Newsnight” program “also doctored footage of a Donald Trump speech and ignored concerns that were raised about it.” A Trump legal team rep responded by saying it is “now clear that BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation.” As with “Panorama,” though, no one seemed to notice the edit at the time, making it rather hard to claim damages… >> Speaking of the Telegraph, this news just broke: “US investment group RedBird Capital has abandoned its proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph, The Independent understands, throwing the future of the newspaper into question.” |
One more thing to keep in mind |
As soon as the BBC received the legal threat from Trump on Monday, speculation arose about a possible payout. But just to be crystal clear, there has been no such settlement or secret side deal, a senior BBC source told me. And if such a payout were ever to occur, it would be publicly disclosed. The BBC, after all, is primarily funded through license fees paid by British taxpayers. And the NYT’s Mark Landler notes that “there has been rising public opposition in Britain to the idea that the BBC would use funds from license fees paid by viewers to settle litigation by Mr. Trump…” |
Trump’s ‘out of character’ behavior |
As House Speaker Mike Johnson shifts his strategy on a Jeffrey Epstein files vote, Trump is laying low. As CNN’s Alayna Treene noted this morning on air, “We saw him in two events recently” and “he did not take questions, which is very out of character for him.” He has no public events scheduled today or this weekend… >> Americans “seem to have very little confidence and trust in what the administration is doing or saying about all of this,” writes CNN’s Aaron Blake. “And Trump’s conduct just keeps giving them reason to be suspicious.” >> Further reading: Poynter’s Tom Jones writes that news outlets are “treading carefully on the Trump–Epstein story,” but continuing to press for info. |
“Journalist Michael Wolff acknowledged on Thursday that newly released emails in which he gives advice to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on media strategy were ‘embarrassing,’ but he defended his journalistic methods as tactics to get close to a rarified source,” Michael Calderone reports over at TheWrap. The key quote/excuse from Wolff: “As my mother would say, you get more with a little honey.” Wolff also described himself as being built differently than journalists “working within a prescribed set of rules” in newsrooms. That’s certainly true. The NYT’s Erik Wemple wrote more about that here… |
My personal Michael Wolff story |
I experienced Wolff’s source-greasing firsthand in February 2017, a few weeks after Trump’s first inauguration. I booked him on CNN to discuss his recent THR column that claimed “the media keeps losing to Trump” and called out my coverage as an example. On the Sunday morning show, Wolff let it rip, just like I expected — he called me “quite a ridiculous figure,” said many journalists are “having a nervous breakdown” over Trump, and said The New York Times front page “looks like it’s 1938 in Germany every day.” At one point, I asked Wolff, “Are you just sucking up to get access to the White House?” He didn’t say no, but he said the access is worthwhile. Anyway, the TV segment got a lot of pickup, and it reached the president, who called the next day “to compliment him,” as Jennifer Jacobs later reported. The two men had a long chat, and Wolff told Trump “that he wanted to write a book on the president’s first 100 days in office.” Presto — Wolff was in the West Wing the next day. The result was “Fire and Fury,” Wolff’s huge best-seller, which portrayed Trump as ignorant and incompetent. But that CNN segment with me? That was Wolff doling out “a little honey,” and Trump was the bear. Flash forward eight years, and Wolff is one of Trump’s most outspoken critics, and he’s currently suing Melania Trump… |
Ingraham’s interview has staying power |
Trump taped with Laura Ingraham on Monday, and folks are still talking about the interview (and airing clips from it) today. Witness this new WaPo story by Hannah Knowles about Trump facing “heat” from his base: “MAGA leaders erupted this week over” Trump’s assertion that the US “needs foreign workers because it does not have enough ‘talented people,’ questioning the president’s commitment to the ‘America First’ politics he popularized.” That’s the most-read political story on the Post’s website this morning… |
Farewell, NBC: The cable news channel MSNBC will retire its 29-year-old name on Saturday morning and turn into MS NOW. Its channel number won’t change, and neither will its identity or mission, channel execs say. But it’s still a nostalgic moment for those (like yours truly!) who have been watching the channel since 1996 and remember when the MS stood for Microsoft. >> The AP’s David Bauder has more on the rebranding here. “Left on its own,” he writes, “MS NOW is embracing the ethos of a startup, suggesting it will be better positioned to experiment without ties to the more corporate NBC News…” >> Here’s a preview of the new MS NOW studio for all my fellow CableNewsers: |
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One week ‘til WBD bids are due |
The “initial deadline to submit nonbinding first-round bids” for all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN’s parent) “is Nov. 20,” the WSJ’s Joe Flint and Lauren Thomas reported last night, citing sources. WBD “is holding the auction process in the hopes of having it completed by the end of the year,” and Paramount, Comcast and Netflix are all “preparing bids.” Paramount still wants it all, while the other suitors are interested “in the Warner Bros. movie and television studios and the HBO Max streaming service,” not the cable assets. >> Appearing on CNBC yesterday, John Malone said, “We have three or four aggressive bidders…” |
YouTube’s own late-night show |
Last night, at an ad sales event in NYC, “YouTube announced its ‘first late-night show,’ coming this spring,” Jessica Testa reports. The show, titled “Outside Tonight,” will come from Julian Shapiro-Barnum, who currently helms “Recess Therapy,” a popular web series in which he interviews kids playing outdoors in NYC. YouTube says it’ll be a “first of its kind late night weekly series built for the digital age,” set “in public parks and on street corners,” with “star studded interviews, audience driven games, live music, and nonstop comedy.” The show was one of several episodic shows that YouTube pitched to sponsors… |
Netflix shifts its gaming strategy |
Netflix “is shifting its video game strategy to focus more on popular games you already know, such as Pictionary and Boggle,” the NYT’s Nicole Sperling reports. “People won’t have to download an app for each game, unlike previous games from Netflix. The games are available directly through the Netflix app and playable on your television. A smartphone will act as a controller.” Hey, it makes more sense than the mobile games effort that Netflix introduced a few years ago. Sperling has more on the strategy shift here… |
Carr rebuffs former FCC chairs |
As we noted yesterday, FCC chair Brendan Carr is not going to repeal the “news distortion” policy that gives him power. A bipartisan group of former chairs urged him to do so in a letter earlier this week. He responded on X yesterday and said “it is quite rich for the exact same people that pressured prior FCCs to censor conservatives *through the news distortion policy* to now object to the agency’s even-handed application of the law.” |
>> Isabel Vincent reports that Hanan Elatr-Khashoggi, widow of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is planning to “upstage” Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with Trump next week. (NY Post) >> “Beijing’s High Court rejected an appeal” by “veteran Chinese state media journalist Dong Yuyu to overturn a seven-year jail term for espionage.” (Reuters) >> British journalist Sami Hamdi, now back in the UK, “says ICE detention was ‘attack on freedoms’ after 18-day ordeal in US.” (CNN) >> On a much lighter note, Joe Coscarelli has an incredibly fun scroll through “what the look of your favorite podcast is trying to tell you.” (NYT) |
Anthropic’s ‘evenhandedness’ eval |
Anthropic “is releasing an open source method to evaluate the political ‘evenhandedness’ of AI chatbots,” a move that comes “amid a complicated battle over how chatbots answer political questions,” Ina Fried reports for Axios. >> Naturally, VP JD Vance told Sean Hannity yesterday that he prefers Grok because it’s “the least woke.” Both men said, “I’m a Grok guy.” |
More of today’s tech talk |
>> TikTok is “launching ‘bulletin board,’ a new feature that lets brands and creators share public, one-to-many messages to their followers.” Aisha Malik says it is “essentially TikTok’s own version of Instagram’s broadcast channels feature that launched in 2023.” (TechCrunch) >> Spotify “is launching a new AI feature for audiobooks that summarizes what you’ve already heard without needing to rewind.” (The Verge) >> Beehiiv has announced “a massive expansion to its platform,” including “offering real-time analytics and AI website creation.” (TechCrunch) |
‘Running Man’ vs ‘Predator’ this weekend |
“Paramount’s $110 million redo of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ‘The Running Man,’ this time starring Glen Powell, is targeting a No. 1 win at the box office this weekend, with around $20 million,” Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro reports. But, he notes, “it’s facing the heat carried by the second weekend of 20th Century Studios’ ‘Predator: Badlands,’ which looks to settle at around $16 million.” |