Welcome back after Memorial Day weekend. We’ll be quick today and get you straight into the news and related readings, and hope you settle in for a strong week. Here goes:
Quick hits
KILLED: Two reporters were killed when a falling tree crushed their van while they were covering stormy weather in Polk County, North Carolina. WYFF of Greenville, South Carolina, identified the victims as an anchor-reporter, Mike McCormick, and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer for its station, an NBC affiliate.
LAUGHED AT: When Trump tweeted that The New York Times made up a U.S. source on Korea, and used his fabrication as an example of "fake news," 250 reporters noted they were also at the briefing or on the call with the “real source” — a White House official. “It was surreal," Margaret Talev, a Bloomberg correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents' Association, told Politico’s Michael Calderone. The real-life official Trump claimed was fictitious? That was National Security Council aide Matthew Pottinger, who wasn’t identified by name initially at the White House’s insistence. The question: Didn't anyone at the White House tell Trump — or did he know and didn't care that he was making up a false accusation, hoping that his "base" would believe it even if he was creating "fake news?"
'DIABOLICAL BRILLIANCE': That's historian Jon Meacham talking about how Trump's gaslighting of America is having the desired effect: Americans, facing his incessant tear-down of media, government and legal institutions during a legitimate investigation of Trump-era corruption and Russian connections, are becoming more suspicious and less trustworthy of democratic institutions. How many people will believe Trump's made-up conspiracies? That's at the center of the examination by The New York Times' Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman. A nugget: For months, Trump rejected a conspiracy about the "deep state" as being too way-out for him to use. Then polling suggested that a chunk of his base believed the baseless charge, so he began using it to try to discredit special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
BOOED: Birthday boy Rudy Giuliani, whose main job for Trump appears to be disparaging Mueller, a Marine vet and Vietnam war hero, got a real Bronx cheer at Yankee Stadium on Memorial Day. It was bad, reports the New York Daily News.
SANCTIMONIOUS NFL DODGED DRAFT IN VIETNAM: Another group that bowed to Trump came in for new criticism on the holiday to honor slain vets. The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins reported that the NFL, now seeking to portray itself as patriotic, systematically worked the system to keep its players from being called up to fight for America in Vietnam. "In 1967, with half a million troops sweating and bleeding in Vietnam, the league kept all but two of its players out of the draft," Jenkins wrote.
HEY, ELON: Why don’t you help reinvent economics of local news if you want to do something regarding media, by Margaret Sullivan for The Washington Post.
TRUMP’S PAL: How TMZ founder worked with Trump to knock down the “Access: Hollywood” disclosures, via Lachlan Cartwright of The Daily Beast.
SNOOPING ON YOU: That’s the job Alexa was designed for, says Nicholas Lezard for the Guardian.
A NOTE FROM MITT: Beaten up, challenged, pegged as the enemy — that’s not the way the 2012 GOP presidential candidate views reporters. From NBC News’s Garrett Haake:
What we’re reading
48TH REPUBLICAN QUITS CONGRESS: Rep. Thomas Garrett of Virginia cites alcoholism in deciding not to run in November. The decision follows reports he and wife abused staff, making them shop, clean and scrape up their dog's poop.
IN FRANCE, HERO GETS CITIZENSHIP: A Malian migrant who scaled four stories to save a dangling child is also getting a job with Paris’ fire department, the French president said Monday. The story was cited as a contrast with the Trump administration’s tough stand on migrants, particularly of color, but France has tightened its immigration rules, too.
‘WE HAVE A VOICE’: A high school banned a valedictorian and a student body president from delivering their messages of solidarity with Parkland students and those seeking to take down Confederate statues. Instead, they delivered their speeches outside, with a bullhorn. "Rather than allowing opposition to silence us, we must utilize it as empowerment," said valedictorian Christian Bales.
On Poynter.org
- Why is your newsroom so hard to contact? By Kristen Hare.
- ‘The Fourth Estate’ humanizes NYT reporting. Will that help? By David Beard.
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And have a good Tuesday.
