Daily Beast: “A decision on the future of the famed politics, economics, and sports analysis website is set to be made by the summer when Nate Silver’s contract is up, multiple people with knowledge of the situation told us.”
Politico: “Americano Media, which launched in March, is embarking on an aggressive expansion plan to shape center-right Hispanic opinion during the upcoming election cycle.”
“The network has hired more than 80 Latino journalists and producers, are expanding their radio presence to television, and by the end of the year will have studios in Miami, Las Vegas and D.C. with reporters covering the White House, Congress and embedding in 2024 presidential campaigns.”
BBC chairman Richard Sharp “helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks before the then prime minister recommended him for the role,” the Times of London reports.
“A late addition to the 2023 Sundance Film Festival lineup will be Doug Liman’s documentary debut, Justice, which dives into the 2018 hearings and government investigation into now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh,” the Hollywood Reporter reports.
“Dominion Voting Systems is scheduled to depose Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch on Thursday ahead of an expected April trial over allegations that Fox News amplified false claims that the voting-machine company manipulated the 2020 presidential election results against Donald Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “In an intriguing show of détente, the Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks — including CNN, a regular Republican boogeyman — to consider sponsoring debates, an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested presidential primary.”
“The debates would probably begin this summer, and Republicans are casting a wide net: Party officials are also in talks with executives from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, along with more-niche networks like Newsmax and NewsNation… Political debates are highly prized in the TV news industry and the networks are expected to present proposals next month.”
Washington Post: “Less than 48 hours after CBS News first broke the story Monday evening, some conservatives were quick to insist that ‘the media’ was somehow downplaying it.”
“In reality, every network was covering the news that President Biden’s attorneys had voluntarily handed over classified documents on Nov. 2, the same day they discovered them found improperly stored in his private office.”
“It quickly set off a competitive scramble.”
As always, I enjoyed talking to Julie Mason this morning about the week in politics.
House Republicans disallowed the use of C-SPAN cameras in the House chamber. The network will resume using the feed from government-operated cameras.
The lack of regulations on the cameras showing the House floor last week was “a good thing,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said Sunday, leaving himself open to the possibility of continuing to allow C-SPAN to document proceedings, Politico reports,
Said Roy: “Let me go look into the ins and outs of all of that. But I think it is — what the American people were able to see unfold on the floor was a good thing for our democracy and our republic, right?”
Washington Post: “The typical live stream from the U.S. House is focused on the dais and the desks from which members of each party address the chamber. But this week brought an unusual amount of drama as the American public watched lawmakers struggle to select a new speaker.”
Donald Trump offered a “media availability” at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s eve and not a single cable news outlet — including Fox News and Newsmax — covered it, the HuffPost reports.
However, fringe conservative media outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network posted a video of Trump speaking for just minutes to what sounded like a very few reporters outside.
It turns out that the North Shore Leader, a local Long Island newspaper, did raise questions about Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) before the election, the Washington Post reports:
“It was the stuff national headlines are supposed to be built on: A hyperlocal outlet like the Leader does the leg work, regional papers verify and amplify the story, and before long an emerging political scandal is being broadcast coast-to-coast. But that system, which has atrophied for decades amid the destruction of news economies, appears to have failed completely this time.”
“An increasingly sour relationship between former President Trump, Fox News and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that has been building for months has come to a head in the weeks following the midterm elections,” The Hill reports.
“It is a rift that is being watched closely in political and media circles given the power of Fox News and other media entities owned by Murdoch in potentially shaping the race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.”
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and media mogul, is interested in acquiring either Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones or The Washington Post, Axios reports.
“An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees,” Forbes reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”
“The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News. Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite.”
“ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news outlet, will return the $1.6 million in funds it received from Sam Bankman-Fried’s family foundation,” Axios reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.