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Monday, September 8, 2025 |
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Happy Monday! Here's the latest on CBS, "The View," Meta, Howard Stern, Brian Glenn, Anthropic, Sabrina Carpenter, and many more... |
Journalists at CBS News have big questions about why parent company Paramount suddenly changed the rules for the Sunday morning show "Face the Nation." And they have big questions about how the changes will be implemented.
"FTN" will no longer trim or otherwise edit taped interviews. It will only air interviews that are live or "live-to-tape," which means taped ahead of time but not trimmed in any way.
On its face, this is a pro-transparency move that might earn trust from the audience. But CBS is actually at risk of losing trust because of the obvious motivation for the move. It's another example of CBS trying to appease the Trump administration.
The backstory: The news division initially defended itself against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's claim that the network "shamefully edited" her "FTN" interview.
The key part that was trimmed ("for time," CBS said) was about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Noem's objection to the editing "really amounts to a declaration that she is entitled to have her vile smears of Abrego Garcia air undisturbed, no matter how viciously dishonest," TNR's Greg Sargent wrote at the time.
But by the end of the week, the Paramount C-suite effectively sided with Noem. "Ongoing public pressure from the Trump administration" was a factor, the NYT reported, citing sources. CBS CEO George Cheeks consulted with news division president Tom Cibrowski and concluded that "the network needed to take steps to ensure that a similar situation would not reoccur." The NYT said the move "was endorsed by David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount."
The backlash: The new policy favors public officials who employ the "firehose of falsehood" approach. Moderator Margaret Brennan can and will still fact-check guests. But take it from me, a former Sunday host: It's even harder than it looks.
Most TV news is live. But pretapes sometimes make more sense. As longtime media reporter Kevin Goldman wrote this morning in a column for Katie Couric's website, "Perhaps the most important role of a reporter is to distill an interview, selecting the quotes that best and most accurately reflect what our subjects said. To abandon that principle is to step onto yet another ill-advised slippery slope for CBS News. And where does it end?" So much of the power of "CBS Sunday Morning" and "60 Minutes" is in the editing.
The aforementioned Greg Sargent's reaction: "CBS News' new surrender to Trump is an open invitation to Trumpers to lie on their network."
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The inevitable CBS culture clash |
CBS News staffers are waiting for final word about Ellison acquiring The Free Press and adding Bari Weiss to the news division in some capacity. In the meantime, here's a handy illustration of the culture clash that's coming: Both Weiss and CBS senior correspondent Norah O'Donnell interviewed Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the justice's new book, and you can compare/contrast them via the Free Press and CBS websites.
The Weiss sit-down with Barrett was on stage in front of a paying audience — reflective of a live-event media business model that CBS might covet — while the O'Donnell interview was rolled out on "Sunday Morning." A 55-minute extended version was posted on YouTube.
Cristian Farias, who wrote about the Weiss/Barrett event for VF, said, "Weiss ran through a mixture of softballs ('Tell us why you love the Constitution') to more ripped-from-the-headlines missives." Barrett said on stage that she's a "huge fan" of The Free Press. Needless to say, there was no equivalent moment in her CBS interview!
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Howard Stern returned to work... |
...and punked his listeners this morning by having Andy Cohen pretend to take over his longtime SiriusXM radio show. But Stern, who is currently renegotiating his contract, then returned to the air after a late-summer break and said the deal talks have been "fantastic." Stern didn't address his future beyond that. Jordan Valinsky has the details here.
>> D'oh: Several news outlets fell for the prank in the 7 a.m. hour, including The AP, which popped a story titled "Howard Stern walks away from SiriusXM after two decades" before revising and correcting it.
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All six co-hosts of "The View" are back for the new season of the country's #1 daytime talk show. There has been buzz about the show's direction ever since last May's Daily Beast story, titled "Disney CEO Told Hosts of 'The View' to Tone Down Trump-Bashing." After today's back-to-work episode, Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be the featured guest on tomorrow's show, a booking tied to the justice's newest children's book. (BTW, Sotomayor will also appear Tuesday night on Stephen Colbert's show; it's notable that two justices are on book tours at the same time.)
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Happy birthday, 'Squawk Box' |
This morning, "Squawk Box" kicked off a week-long celebration of its 30th anniversary on CNBC. The network says Joe Kernen, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin will tee up "memorable moments, candid clips, and appearances from some of the most influential voices in business and politics..." |
The Toronto International Film Festival continues through Sunday.
Tonight: "Monday Night Football" returns on ESPN and ABC.
Tuesday: Apple holds its "Awe Dropping" iPhone event.
Thursday: The WNBA's regular season finale.
Sunday night: The Emmys!
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Jeers and cheers at the US Open |
Trump rarely places himself in settings where he might be heckled or booed, so the jeering at the US Open was notable. But he received some cheers, too, and thankfully, none of it detracted from the on-court action. (The long security lines did hinder lots of fans, however.)
I wrote about the US Tennis Association's request — not order — that broadcasters avoid showing Trump-related protests here. ESPN/ABC did repeatedly show Trump on TV. "Refusing to bow to authoritarian demands is important, regardless of whether they come from the White House or a sports governing body," Nancy Armour wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today...
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Brian Glenn's question gets results |
"Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms," MAGA media personality Brian Glenn said during an Oval Office Q&A session on Friday. Glenn claimed the peace vigil has "morphed into more of an anti-American, sometimes anti-Trump at many times," prompting Trump to say, "Take it down." And over the weekend, that's exactly what happened. The volunteer who manned the vigil for years says Glenn "spread misinformation" to get the tent taken down...
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Trump's 'Chipocalypse Now' moment |
The Chicago Sun-Times' headline this morning: "ICE ARRESTS 3 HERE WITH MORE 'ACTION' VOWED BY WHITE HOUSE." Over the weekend Trump posted a truly shocking AI-generated meme warning that Chicago "will find out why it's called the Department of WAR" alongside fiery imagery of the city and an "Apocalypse Now" movie reference. Then Trump erupted when NBC's Yamiche Alcindor asked him about the post: "Are you trying to go to war with Chicago?" While mockingly calling her "darling," Trump told Alcindor to "be quiet, listen," and derided her as "second-rate."
>> New polling shows that most Americans oppose Trump's use of the National Guard for crime prevention.
>> I'm getting ready for a CNN live shot about this: "Grisly Charlotte stabbing video fuels MAGA's crime message," Marc Caputo reports for Axios.
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>> New this morning: Through a document disclosure to Congress, two current and two former employees "allege that Meta suppressed research that might have illuminated potential safety risks to children and teens on the company's virtual reality devices and apps." Meta says the research efforts are being mischaracterized. (WaPo)
>> Disinfo watch: Steven Lee Myers says Russia "has begun a campaign to sway the parliamentary election in Moldova in what could become a new model of election interference online." (NYT)
>> Scott Nover dug up a lot more about "Margaux Blanchard:" He says it "appears to be one dubious element of a broader scheme to peddle bogus AI-generated articles to a number of publications." (WaPo)
>> "Do media organizations even want cultural criticism?" Charlotte Klein asks amid the backdrop of dwindling critic positions. (NYMag)
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The first AI settlement (of many?) |
Anthropic "has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors" who said the company used their books "to train its AI chatbot Claude without permission." Reuters says last Friday's proposed deal "marks the first settlement in a string of lawsuits against tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over their use of copyrighted material." M.G. Siegler writes that Anthropic may have just "set a floor price on AI training infringement..."
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>> Reuters News "withdrew a four-minute video containing an exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussing the possibility that humans can live to 150 years old, after China state TV demanded its removal and withdrew the legal permission to use it." (Reuters)
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