For today’s newsletter, interesting stories, media links and tidbits for your weekend review, starting with an inspirational story from Fox News.
- Benjamin Hall, the Fox News correspondent who was badly injured while covering the war in Ukraine, made his first TV appearance Thursday in nearly a year. He told “Fox & Friends,” “I’ve got one leg, I’ve got no feet, I see through one eye, one workable hand. I was burned all over, and I feel strong. I feel more confident than I ever have. I think that you learn a lot going through things like this, and I was surrounded by so many wonderful people — that’s why I’m here today, and I look forward to everything that comes ahead.” Hall was injured in a March 22 attack that killed Fox News photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova. Fox News’ Brian Flood has more about Hall’s TV appearance and recovery.
- One more item on Hall. He has a book coming out in March called “Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission To Make It Home.” He read an excerpt on air during his “Fox & Friends” appearance. It was from the moment he was injured in Russia’s attack on Ukraine: “If I had the slightest iota of consciousness, it was a distant sense of shock waves and the feeling that every part of my body — bones, organs, sinew, my soul — had been knocked out of me, I was all but dead but improbably, out of this crippling nothingness, a figure came through, and I heard a familiar voice, as real as anything I’d ever known. ‘Daddy, you’ve got to get out of the car.” He said he saw the vision of his three daughters. He said, “I opened my eyes and managed to crawl out of the car. If it weren’t for them bringing me back, there is no way I would be here today.”
- Donald Trump has reacted to Meta announcing it will reinstate his Facebook and Instagram accounts. On his Truth Social, Trump wrote, “FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!”
- Speaking of Trump and Facebook, The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel writes, “Trump and Facebook’s Mutual Decay.” In his piece, Warzel writes, “Giving Trump this megaphone back for his 2024 campaign is particularly thorny: The former president has offered zero evidence that he changed during his social-media exile. He may still use Facebook and Instagram to lie for reasons big and small, as well as to whip up partisan resentment and even violence, should it suit his needs. If anything, his posts on his own network, Truth Social, seem to suggest a man whose online engagement has become more erratic, angry, and conspiratorial; one report shows that he has amplified QAnon-promoting accounts more than 400 times since launching the platform. And yet there is something underwhelming — stale, even — about the news. The story of Trump’s deplatforming feels cryogenically frozen, a 2020 narrative that seems to have lost part of its relevance now that it’s thawed out.”
- The Wall Street Journal’s Berber Jin and Alexander Saeedy with “Elon Musk Explores Raising Up to $3 Billion to Help Pay Off Twitter Debt.”
- Following this week’s layoffs at The Washington Post, The New Yorker’s Clare Malone writes, “What happened to The Washington Post?” Much of the interesting article delves into Post publisher Fred Ryan, his role at the Post and his relationship with staffers. Malone writes, “What will readers find at The Washington Post in five or ten years that they can’t find anywhere else? Ryan’s strengths do not lie in the creative side of the media business, according to those who have worked with him, and it’s not entirely clear who’s left in his brain trust as he endeavors to figure that out. … One person who knows Ryan noted that, after a lifetime of attending to the power, Ryan is finally getting a chance to be the man in charge.”
- My Poynter colleague Al Tompkins with “Video of Memphis police’s ‘excessive force’ against Tyre Nichols is coming. What should news outlets show?” The video is due out today and authorities are already bracing for the public’s reaction.
- Nieman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen with “@nytimes is now on TikTok.”
- More New York Times news. The news outlet is ending, for now, its “Virus Briefing” newsletter about COVID-19. The farewell (for now) piece, written by Jonathan Wolfe, is a must-read. Wolfe writes, “The acute phase of the pandemic has faded in much of the world, and many of us have tried to pick up the pieces and move on. We promise to return to your inbox if the pandemic takes a sharp turn. But, for now, this is goodbye. Without a doubt, what I will miss most about these last three years is hearing from all of you. We’ve received tens of thousands of responses to our questions about your pandemic lives. You’ve shared heart-wrenching stories of illness and death as well as thoughts on a changing world and silver linings.”
- For Politico, Jeff Greenfield with “A Warning to the Media about the Next Presidential Race.”
- The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Daniels with “It’s not just the Oscars that fail Black women. It’s the entire awards ecosystem.”
- Variety’s Tatiana Siegel with “‘I’m Not a Victim’: Pamela Anderson Opens Up About Money, Abuse and the ‘A——-’ Behind ‘Pam & Tommy.’”
- Exciting news of the day: HBO’s “Succession” — my vote for the best TV show ever — returns for season four on March 26. Here’s a preview clip.
- The New York Times’ Andrew Keh with “He Was Compared to Tiger Woods. So Why Did He Walk Away From Golf?” I love this line by Keh: “Kim was supposed to be the next Tiger Woods. Instead he became the sports world’s J.D. Salinger.”
- In an excerpt from her book, Lisa Guerrero writes about her time as a “Monday Night Football” sideline reporter. Published by Sports Illustrated, it’s “‘Monday Night Football’ Was Her Dream Job. What She Found Was Loneliness, Depression and Devastation.”
- A couple of staff moves at CNN. Nick Paton Walsh is being promoted to chief international security correspondent and Richard Greene is moving from CNN London to Jerusalem to become Jerusalem bureau chief.
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