“X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times,” Semafor reports.
“Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC.”
“Fox News has fired veteran executive John Finley after determining that he violated the company’s conduct standards,” the Washington Post reports.
“Finley, who helped develop many of the network’s biggest shows and had once been Sean Hannity’s executive producer, was put on leave from his role as executive vice president of development in recent weeks while an investigation was conducted by an outside law firm. He was fired by the network Friday based on the firm’s findings.”
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld made an off-color joke about “hooking up” with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) Thursday night, prompting recriminations from at least one of his co-hosts, the Daily Beast reports.
Former New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, who rescued the company from its financial nadir and morphed it into a best-in-class digital media behemoth, will become the next chairman and CEO of CNN, Puck reports.
Coming this fall: Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post by Martin Baron.
Ben Smith: “The book is well-told, insightful, and worth reading — if a little heavy on score-settling. It opens with the account of a previously unreported meeting between Trump and Bezos, attended by Baron despite his qualms. It also includes Baron’s experience of the newsroom’s generational conflict — including his near-resignation over staffers’ treatment of another top editor.”
Joe Perticone: “The debate turned out not to be an attempt to reverse course at Fox so much as it was just a routine continuation of the network’s standard operating procedure. Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum moderated by spreading false narratives, enabling demagoguery, and going all in on anecdotal culture-war fodder under the guise of real kitchen-table issues.”
“To gauge the seriousness of the debate, just look at how it started and ended: The opening question was about the song ‘Rich Men North of Richmond.’ The last question was about aliens and UFOs. And everything in between just showed the blurriness of the supposed line between Fox’s supposed ‘straight news’ talent and its opinion hosts.”
“During the 2016 race for the White House, then-candidate Donald Trump was responsible for making the Republican primary debates must-watch television events,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“But even without Trump onstage, Fox News was able to attract the largest cable TV audience for a non-sports program so far this year with its Wednesday showdown between the candidates for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.”
“An average of 12.8 million viewers watched the event telecast from Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee… The TV audience was larger than what any Republican presidential primary debate drew during the 2012 campaign season, four years before Trump emerged as the main attraction. It also surpassed audience of 12.5 million for Fox News’ January 2016 primary debate held in Iowa, which Trump skipped as well.”
President Biden’s reelection campaign has purchased airtime on Fox News and plans to run its first national television advertisement of the 2024 cycle during the time slot directly before Wednesday’s 9 p.m. ET debate, Semafor reports.
Fox prohibited candidates from purchasing ads during the actual debate.
Vivek Ramaswamy called CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins a “petulant teenager” after an interview where she pressed him about topics including his recent comments on 9/11.
MSNBC has seen a boost in primetime ratings this summer, thanks in large part to its coverage of the slew of indictments against Donald Trump, Axios reports.
Axios: “Fox restricted campaign credentials for the post-debate ‘spin room‘ — where aides tout their candidates and rip their foes — to candidates who are participating in the debate.”
“Trump’s aides and surrogates had indicated they would be in the spin room despite their candidate’s absence — but now they’ll only be able to enter if they are guests of media organizations.”
“Tucker Carlson’s interview with Donald Trump is shaping up as a well-timed branding exercise for the new company the former Fox News host is launching,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Carlson taped an interview with Trump several days ago and plans to stream it on X, formerly known as Twitter, without ads, people familiar with the situation said. Its release is expected to coincide with Wednesday’s first Republican presidential debate on Fox News.”
“If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he should pay to do it,” Semafor reports.
“That was the message that network chief Chris Ruddy delivered to the Republican presidential candidate during a private call earlier this summer, according to two people to whom the candidate described the conversation. Ramaswamy had complained that the right-leaning network was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright.”
“Ruddy also suggested a solution, Ramaswamy told associates: buy more television ads on the network.”
Playbook: “While we often point out that making the debate stage is the most important hurdle for any Republican aspirant running in the primaries, hosting a presidential primary debate is enormously important to television networks. But for the Murdoch empire, beset by upstart rivals, it is existential.”
“Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump are the two most important sources of information for Republican voters, and in the last eight years they have waged war for supremacy. Sometimes they use each other (Trump gets airtime, Fox gets ratings), sometimes they are closely aligned (as in a general election against the Democrats), and sometimes they are openly hostile to one another (during primary season in 2015-2016 and again today when Fox and other Murdoch entities search for an alternative to Trump).”
“As with other power centers of the modern GOP that have not fully embraced MAGA, such as the Senate Republican leadership, Trump is again attacking Fox News with the same fury — and weird specificity — that he usually reserves for political rivals.”
Playbook: “Speaking of the debate, we have some news this morning that will cheer debate watching canine lovers across America. At its debates in the 2016 cycle, Fox News used a chime to signal that time has expired that sounded like a doorbell.”
“Apparently, the bell was confusing to dog owners, as these tweets can attest.”
“Well, dog owners, Fox News has heard you and they have retired the 2016 doorbell sound.”
Donald Trump is upset that Fox News continues to use photos of him that make him look fat and orange.
Write Trump on Truth Social: “Why doesn’t Fox and Friends show all of the Polls where I am beating Biden, by a lot. They just won’t do it! Also, they purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again… And then they want me to debate!”
“Law enforcement officers in Kansas raided the home and office of a newspaper owner, prompting a sharp rebuke from a press freedom group and raising constitutional questions far beyond the small city in the state,” CNN reports.
“Fox Corporation’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, is departing, the company announced on Friday, in a major shake-up at the company after the landmark $787.5 million settlement it paid to Dominion Voting Systems in April,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Dinh, a former official in the George W. Bush White House who amassed considerable power inside Fox, will stay on through the rest of the year.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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