It has been quite a while since we’ve seen a media dustup like this.
Back on June 2, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote a lengthy and much-talked-about profile of then-CNN CEO Chris Licht. Less than a week later, Licht was out at CNN. The article itself didn’t get Licht fired, but it certainly appeared to have hastened his departure.
Then this week, Variety’s Tatiana Siegel wrote this story: “Inside the Battle for CNN: Jeff Zucker, David Zaslav, Chris Licht and 18 Months of Crazy Backstabbing.”
Both stories contained plenty of interesting anecdotes and behind-the-scenes drama.
But almost immediately, there was pushback to the Variety story. I mentioned this briefly in Wednesday’s newsletter, but here’s more.
The Variety story painted former CNN boss Jeff Zucker as still upset over his CNN ouster and obsessed with buying the network.
Risa Heller, a spokesperson for Zucker, told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that the Variety story was a “total joke.” She said, “There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to a high standard of truth and facts in journalism, but those days are clearly over. It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false. On numerous occasions, we made it clear to the reporter and her editors that they were planning to publish countless anecdotes and alleged incidents that never happened. They did so anyway.”
Then, Wednesday afternoon, TheWrap’s Natalie Korach reported, “Zucker has requested a retraction for a Variety report that characterized him as desperate to acquire the network.”
Korach added, “According to sources familiar, Zucker’s team denied the allegations made in the report multiple times prior to its publication, but Variety chose to move forward with the article. Zucker’s team had reached out to Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh in protest of the article, which they insisted contained massive falsehoods. When that did not meet a response, they attempted to appeal to Variety’s other co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton, who has a long-standing relationship with Zucker. Littleton referred his team back to Setoodeh, who said that they would have to take up their grievances with Siegel herself.”
Zucker’s reaction, perhaps, was not surprising.
But what happened next was a surprise, as journalists pushed back on Variety’s story.
The story took shots at the reporting done by Alberta and Puck’s Dylan Byers, who has covered CNN extensively. The Variety story leaned heavily into the idea that Byers had a conflict of interest when it came to Zucker (Byers once worked for Zucker at CNN) and that he was particularly hard on Licht.
Siegel’s story also questioned Alberta’s reporting for his blockbuster Atlantic profile.
Siegel wrote in her story, “Much of the initial reaction to the piece focused on how much access Licht granted and how unfiltered he was. But those familiar with the Atlantic backstory say Alberta had just four meetings with Licht. … Those same sources say liberties were taken with the Atlantic piece, including that key off-the-record details and quotes were used on the record. On-the-record interviews that were neutral or painted Licht positively were not used. Licht’s trainer, Joe Maysonet, who was present for some of the Atlantic conversations, tells Variety that Licht’s comments were taken out of context multiple times.”
Alberta fired back on Twitter not long after the Variety story was posted online Tuesday. In a lengthy Twitter thread, Alberta tagged Siegel and listed 10 items defending his story, including the number of times he met with Licht and that no off-the-record quotes were used.
His 10th item was: “Credulously laundering false background claims without seeking specific responses… is not journalism.”
He closed with, “Other than that, well done.”
Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg gave a lengthy statement to Darcy, including, “The charges leveled by Tatiana Siegel in Variety against The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta are completely false. Siegel was informed by The Atlantic that the charges were completely false, but she nevertheless decided to smear Alberta. Siegel’s report is based on false assumptions and false information, and she provides no evidence to support her claims and characterizations. When Siegel reached out to our spokespeople, she was asked for specific examples of the alleged journalistic liberties taken by Alberta, but she did not provide any, apart from the false anecdote about Alberta’s conversation with Chris Licht at his gym. We provided her with a specific refutation of that false charge.”
Goldberg also noted that no one associated with the Atlantic story ever asked for a correction or raised any concerns for a piece that was published nearly two months ago.
“This,” Goldberg wrote, “is because Alberta’s article is entirely accurate, and the quotations in the article were all collected under clear guidelines.”
Alberta put out another tweet Wednesday, writing, “If @Variety had real editorial standards this piece never, ever would have published. A retraction is probably in order, but I doubt they have the stomach for it.”
Meanwhile, Puck editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told Darcy, “Dylan Byers singlehandedly elevated the CNN story into the popular culture through his extraordinary and relentless reporting, which was always fair and unbiased and based, frankly, on virtually innumerable sources. Any assertions to the contrary are absurd.”
In a column Wednesday night, Byers said he originally wrestled with whether or not to write about the Variety story, but decided to do so because everyone in the media was talking about it. He wrote that from the opening sentence “the story seemed problematic and riddled with factual inaccuracies.”
Byers goes into detail about parts of the Variety article, particularly about Zucker’s supposed interest in buying CNN.
Byers goes on to write, “As CNN’s Oliver Darcy recently noted, the veracity of the Variety story quickly came under ‘heightened scrutiny’ from journalists, executives, television agents, and others across the industry for whom it simply does not pass the smell test. But perhaps more curious was the way in which Variety’s editors have chosen to address — or rather, not address — the pushback.”
A Variety spokesperson told CNN and TheWrap, “Variety stands by our investigative story about CNN written by one of the best journalists in the business.”
What makes this story so puzzling is that everyone involved is respected in the business: Alberta, Byers and Siegel. But the feverish and widespread pushback to Siegel’s story has been quite eye-opening.
Pay up or else
How’s Elon Musk’s switch from “Twitter” to “X” going? Chaotic. That’s how Wall Street Journal reporters Talal Ansari, Meghan Bobrowsky and Alyssa Lukpat described it in their latest piece: “Elon Musk’s X Rebrand Cues Complications—and Porn Jokes.”
A bigger issue might be the severe drop in advertising revenue. Musk himself has tweeted that ad revenue has dropped 50%, and another Wall Street Journal article this week included an eyebrow-raising passage.
The Journal’s Suzanne Vranica and Patience Haggin wrote, “X also warned advertisers that beginning Aug. 7, brands’ accounts will lose their verification — a gold check mark that indicates their account truly represents their brand — if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 on ads in the previous 30 days or $6,000 on ads in the previous 180 days, according to the email. Verification on the social media platform is important to many companies because they fear bad actors could impersonate and misrepresent their brand as some Twitter users did in the early weeks of Musk’s ownership. In one notorious example, an account posed as Eli Lilly and tweeted that the company would make insulin free. Twitter subsequently said it improved safeguards against impersonation.”
Hmm, spend at least so much or lose your verification?
Veteran journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted, “So blackmail. He’s a genius.”
The story also reports Twitter, or X, is offering various discounts to advertisers, including 50% off any new bookings of those ads until July 31.
Carlson claims lawsuit led to Fox News firing
There’s a biography about Tucker Carlson coming out next week and, in it, he claims he was fired from Fox News as a condition of the network’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly got an early copy of the book in which Carlson makes his claims to biographer Chadwick Moore.
Carlson says, “They agreed to take me off the air, my show off the air, as a condition of the Dominion settlement. They had to settle this; Rupert (Murdoch, the 92-year-old Fox News owner) couldn’t testify. I think that deal was made minutes before the trial started. I mean, I know it was.”
Dominion had sued Fox News for defamation, claiming the network had guests on air who put forth lies that Dominion’s voting machines flipped the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and that Fox News knew the claims were not true. Ultimately, Fox News agreed to settle the case and paid Dominion $787.5 million.
Less than a week later, Carlson was fired.
Immediately, lines were drawn between the settlement and Carlson’s firing. Fox News did not give a reason for the firing but said at the time (and repeated since) that it was “categorically false” that it was a condition of the settlement with Dominion.
Dominion, too, has denied the claims, saying, “As the Fox principals who negotiated the settlement well know, Dominion made no demands about Tucker Carlson’s employment orally or in writing. Any claims otherwise are categorically false and a thinly veiled effort to further damage Dominion. Fox should take every effort to stop these lies immediately.”
Carlson also says in the biography that when he got the call saying he was being taken off the air by Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, he thought she was calling him for something positive.
“I was first confused, and then shocked,” Carlson told Moore. “It was just, ‘We’re taking you off the air.’ No explanation why, and they’ve let me guess ever since. That’s literally all I know. I asked if I violated my contract. They said, no, I’m not fired, I’m still under contract.”
Solid reporting
NBC News correspondent Courtney Kuba, reporting from West Africa. (Courtesy: NBC News)
I want to point out some excellent broadcast journalism. NBC News correspondent Courtney Kube went to West Africa for a rare look inside into how U.S. special forces are training local troops to fight against terrorist organizations in the region.
Lieutenant Colonel Ian McConnell, the special ops commander in the region, tells Kube: “There’s always going to be a danger in an uncertain environment. But the way in which we’re operating with this remote advise assist really does remove U.S. forces from being on the objective, which decreases the imminent risk where enemy actions are happening at the point of capture.”
This is the kind of excellent reporting that should be highlighted instead of some of the various shenanigans that go on in Washington, D.C., and pass for breaking news many days.
You can watch the report here. And here is an interview with Kube.
Media tidbits
- Philip Rucker has been named national editor of The Washington Post. Rucker will start his new job in September and oversee 150 journalists, who, according to the Post announcement, “deliver agenda-setting news, investigative and feature coverage of the country on a wide range of topics, including national politics, the federal government, national security, criminal justice, immigration, race, health and science.” Rucker spent years as a reporter at the Post, including four years as White House bureau chief. He has been on two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes. He has been deputy national editor since January 2022.
- For The New York Times, Joseph Bernstein on the Today News Africa reporter best known for disrupting White House press conferences in “Why Won’t Simon Ateba Stop Shouting?”
- Jeff Cercone, a contributing writer for Poynter’s PolitiFact, with “Joy Reid isn’t hawking diet gummies on CNN. ‘I’ve been deepfaked, the MSNBC host says.”
- Margaret Sullivan’s latest column for Guardian US: “A strong whiff of desperation surrounds threats to impeach Biden.”
Hot type
- For ProPublica, Jeff Ernsthausen with “How the Ultrawealthy Use Private Foundations to Bank Millions in Tax Deductions While Giving the Public Little in Return.”
- This list will keep you busy: Time Magazine movie critic Stephanie Zacharek with “The 100 best movies of the past 10 decades.” As with any movie list, you’ll argue, “Wait, (your favorite film here) didn’t make the list?!?!” But it’s still a fun list.
- Speaking of lists, the legendary Mick Jagger turned 80 on Wednesday. The Guardian’s Michael Hann with “Symphony for the devil: Mick Jagger’s 80 greatest moments, on his 80th birthday.”
More resources for journalists
- Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.
- Sign up for Beat Academy (Now-Oct. 19) (Webinar series) — You’ll get tips, sources, inspiration and ideas to cover emerging newsroom beats. Enroll now.
- Executive Leadership Summit (Oct. 2023) (Seminar) — Apply by Aug. 14.
- Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color (Nov. 15-18) (Seminar) — Apply by Sept. 15.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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