Media Buzz

Stormy Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper looks to be the newsmagazine’s best since Steve Kroft’s interview with Barack and Michelle Obama in November of 2008, shortly after he was elected president, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

New York Times: “Instances of female teachers sexually abusing male students are rare. But stories on the subject have lately taken up a lot of space at FoxNews.com.”

“Through the first half of 2017, the site posted fewer than 20 stories on women accused of sex offenses. The new focus started on June 30, when FoxNews.com published an article on ‘the apparently increasing frequency of female teachers having sex with their young male students.’ Over the next six months the site posted some 98 articles on instances of sexual abuse allegedly committed by women, most of them teachers.”

Barack Obama “is in advanced negotiations with Netflix to produce a series of high-profile shows that will provide him a global platform after his departure from the White House,” the New York Times reports.

“Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service, which has nearly 118 million subscribers around the world. The number of episodes and the formats for the shows have not been decided.”

“Just days before heading to a West Wing job, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was secretly engaged in talks to sell his struggling news organization, the New York Observer, to Clinton megadonor and Univision chair Haim Saban and Hillary Clinton ally David Brock — a progressive media figure with aspirations to turn the news outlet into ‘the Breitbart of the left,'” BuzzFeed News reports.

CNN: “‘This is so manipulative.’ That’s an anchor at a local TV station owned by Sinclair, describing the company’s latest mandate, a promotional campaign that sounds like pro-Trump propaganda. Internal documents call the new initiative an ‘anchor delivered journalistic responsibility message.’ But the staffers who shared the documents with CNN say the promos are inappropriate — yet another corporate infringement on local journalism.”

The final contenders to buy FiveThirtyEight from ESPN include ABC News, The Athletic website and The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The sale process, which has stretched for months, is expected to conclude in the coming weeks… Potential buyers have been told it is losing about $6 million annually on revenue of about $3 million.”

Sean Hannity opened his show tonight with a segment on… Hillary Clinton.

“Margaret Brennan, the senior foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, will be the next moderator of Face the Nation, the network’s prestige Sunday morning public affairs show and one of the most influential venues in American politics,” the New York Times reports.

New York Times: “On Tuesday, Fox News is set to announce Fox Nation, a stand-alone subscription service available without a cable package. The streaming service, expected to start by the end of the year, would focus primarily on right-leaning commentary, with original shows and cameos by popular personalities like Sean Hannity.”

Said Fox executive John Finley: “Fox Nation is designed to appeal to the Fox superfan. These are the folks who watch Fox News every night for hours at a time, the dedicated audience that really wants more of what we have to offer.”

BuzzFeed is suing the DNC over its refusal to release information about how Russians hacked into its servers during the 2016 election, Vanity Fair reports.

The website, which published the Steele dossier alleging connections between President Trump and Russia, believes that the information would help it fend off a libel suit filed by Russian billionaire Aleksej Gubarev, who is named in the dossier. But the DNC says releasing information might make it vulnerable to more hacking.

“The nation’s largest TV station owner is gearing up to fight for deregulation, and it wants some of its own newsroom managers to join the effort,” the Washington Post reports.

“Sinclair Broadcast Group is asking its executives — including the news directors at its many stations — to contribute to its political action committee, a move that journalism ethics experts say is highly unusual and troubling.”