Happy Monday! Here's the latest on the Minnesota Star Tribune, WhatsApp, ABC, Vice Media, "GMA," The Economist, "The Mortician," Cannes, and more... |
With a big emphasis on the asterisk. Voice of America's Persian-language operations are back up and running as the US government tries to beam information into Iran amid the widening conflict between Israel and Iran.
Dozens of VOA staffers were suddenly called back to work on Friday, including all of those who had previously worked on Farsi language programming for Iran. Other journalists who are still on paid leave, having been sidelined by Trump's mid-March termination order, said the U-turn is evidence that all the networks should be brought back online.
As I wrote in this new CNN.com piece, VOA and another US-funded network that's been targeted for termination, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, are promoting their Persian programming in part to persuade the Trump to keep the proverbial lights on.
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In a memo obtained by CNN's Jake Tapper, Radio Free Europe editor in chief Nicola Natasha Careem told the network's board that "Iranians flocked to us for reliable news" on Friday, as its Persian language branch, Radio Farda, reached listeners and readers "despite every conceivable attempt to silence us."
Careem called out Trump's overseer of US-funded broadcasters, Kari Lake, by name: "If Kari Lake (or the Iranian regime) had their way, millions of Iranians would have been left in an information vacuum or at the mercy of state propaganda and rampant rumor yesterday. Instead, in one day, Farda's content was consumed in the millions – exceeding the audience of any messaging that the U.S. government itself could push out via official channels. Moments like this are why RFE/RL exists."
Here's more detail from the memo. RFE/RL remains locked in a legal battle with the US government over the monthly grant money that keeps the network on the air. Now, back to VOA...
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Over the weekend Lake confirmed to Fox News that VOA's "Persian news service is rising to the occasion" to cover the conflict. She noted that all the staffers who came back to work had been on paid administrative leave.
VOA director Michael Abramowitz, who has been sidelined like the rest of the staff, said in a weekend memo that he doesn't know what the Trump admin "has in mind" for the future, but he credited the rank-and-file with getting Iran content online and on the air quickly. "However," he wrote, "let's be clear that the scope and breadth of VOA coverage for Iran is not comparable to what it used to be. VOA Persia is about a third of the size it was before all of Voice of America was silenced."
Nicholas Burns, the former US ambassador and senior State Department official who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, wrote on X that "the cavalier destruction of Voice of America has hurt us in China and now in Iran." He called it "unilateral disarmament" and "deeply unwise." Maverick GOP Rep. Don Bacon also weighed in supporting VOA.
But will any of this current attention actually change the administration's approach to US broadcasting?
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10 years since the escalator ride |
It's been exactly ten years since Trump stepped to the microphones at Trump Tower and upended presidential politics. And it feels like we're all still on this golden escalator ride together. This morning's Politico Playbook led with an excellent look back at the "surreal" press event. Also check out Aaron Blake's new CNN piece on "the 10 biggest ways Trump has changed our politics, 10 years later..."
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'Is this who we are now?' |
"After one of the darkest days in state history, Minnesotans wonder: Is this who we are now?" That's one of the top headlines on the Minnesota Star Tribune's website this morning.
"The assassination of our beloved Rep. Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark, struck at the very core of who we are and who we believe ourselves to be," Hortman's friend and former colleague Abou B. Amara told me overnight.
Now that the suspected assassin has been arrested, "our healing, as a state, can only begin with a public trial, where the public can understand every detail, and every moment that led to the taking of one of our greatest public leaders," he said, arguing that the prosecution should be publicly televised.
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'This CANNOT be the norm' |
As Gov. Tim Walz said at a late-night presser, "This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences. Now's the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country. And each and every one of us can do it. Talk to a neighbor rather than arguing. Debate an issue. Shake hands. Find common ground."
And yet, as the Minnesota Reformer reported here, "right-wing influencers coughed out disinformation" about the shootings and the suspect while the manhunt was still underway. Those influencers included Elon Musk and a sitting US senator.
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Free speech stress tests are becoming a theme of this newsletter. Saturday's Army parade and "No Kings" protests capped a week of stress, and if you think of it as a free speech test, pretty much everyone passed. Dust-ups in L.A. and Portland were the exception to the rule; the protests were jubilant and, in some cities, jam-packed, leading to widespread media coverage (and this captivating CNN photo gallery) of the "No Kings" movement.
Coverage of the miitary parade varied depending on where you looked. Fox News "gushed over the parade" with a three-hour special telecast. CNN and MSNBC dipped in and out of the parade while juggling other big stories. The broadcast networks relegated it to their digital streaming channels. NYT TV critic James Poniewozik says "the brassy Trumpy production was a surreal viewing experience," here's why.
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"An LAPD officer went absolutely ballistic on an ABC News reporter covering protests in Los Angeles Saturday night — accusing him of making aggressive contact with an officer," Mediaite's Joe DePaolo reports. The exchange was seen live on ABC News Live and soon made the rounds on social media.
>> Important: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 60 media outlets, including CNN, sent a letter to federal, state, and local officials on Friday asking them to ensure that authorities uphold the rights of journalists to report on law enforcement activity without reprisal.
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Ad industry execs — and many adjacent influencers and entertainers — are in the south of France this week for Cannes Lions festival. Historically it's been a place "where real-world problems could be blurred out by the sun," but not this time, Digiday's editors write: "Too much is bearing down on it all at once — geopolitical turmoil, economic uncertainty, AI panic, agency shakeups, the creator economy’s growing pains." Agencies and marketers are grappling with multiple tectonic shifts all happening at once," BI's Lara O'Reilly adds.
>> Just announced: Meta is adding ads to WhatsApp via the Updates tab. The company says "the personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn't changing" and won't be subject to ad targeting. CNBC's Jonathan Vanian has more here.
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Also coming up this week... |
Tonight: Game 5 of the NBA Finals on ABC.
Tuesday: The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism publishes its annual digital news report.
Tuesday night: Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals on TNT/Max.
Thursday: The Juneteenth holiday.
(Add items to our media-week-ahead calendar by emailing us anytime!)
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Hackers take aim at Post journalists |
There is no clear info yet about the possible culprits behind a cyberattack targeting Washington Post journalists. CNN's Sean Lyngaas and I have been looking into the matter, which is the subject of an ongoing investigation at the Post.
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the hack news, said "reporters covering national security and economic policy were among the employees affected by the breach." As Lyngaas noted here, "the Journal itself was the subject of a multi-year hacking campaign by suspected Chinese hackers, which the paper discovered in 2022. That espionage effort targeted journalists reporting on China-related issues."
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'Active settlement discussions' |
In a court filing on Friday, Trump's legal team "requested a deadline extension in his $20 billion legal battle with CBS, citing their engagement in 'active settlement discussions, including continued mediation' with the network," TheWrap's Lucas Manfredi reports. The team wants to push this summer's pending deadlines back two weeks each.
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Could the BBC charge US readers? |
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