TGIF! Here's the latest on President Trump's NYT lawsuit, Indiana University's censorship, Smartmatic's indictment, and much more. Plus: Sora, Joe Rogan, "The Age of Disclosure," and tiny microphones... |
President Trump wrote in "The Art of the Deal" that "good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells."
Rather than give tomorrow's "No Kings" protests "no publicity at all," Trump and his allies have been denigrating the events in advance, with House Speaker Mike Johnson shockingly saying, "I encourage you to watch — we call it the 'Hate America Rally' — that'll happen Saturday," and Trump strangely saying, "I hear very few people are gonna be there."
In reality, "millions are gearing up for round two," following the first "No Kings" day back in June, CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas writes. More than 2,500 demonstrations — "about 450 more than were planned in June" — are scheduled for Saturday. Let's see if news outlets replay those dismissive Trump and Johnson soundbites in between the videos of crowds waving American flags.
"I did not pay for this publicity," Ezra Levin, one of the "No Kings" organizers, quipped to CNN's Dana Bash yesterday.
"We are living rent-free in all their heads," he said. "I welcome it." He repurposed an old line about protests, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win," to say, "We're one step from winning. They're not ignoring us. They're not laughing at us. They're worried about peaceful, broad-based protests all around the country. And that's true of any authoritarian regime anywhere."
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Bursting the 'bubble of inevitability' |
"I love the No Kings thing because its very existence proves it's not necessary," Greg Gutfeld remarked on Fox yesterday. "If this was a king-led country, you wouldn't be able to have your No Kings protests."
That's not how democratic backsliding works. Anyway, I thought Levin made a really interesting point to Bash about the purpose of protest. One main goal, he said, is to burst the "bubble of inevitability" around Trump's authoritarian moves.
"Our enemy here is not Trump," he said, "our enemy is fatalism and nihilism and cynicism. The sense that we are just victims of world events and there's nothing we can do. By showing up in historic numbers, we burst that bubble. We show that we're not afraid. That we can indeed exercise our First Amendment rights. That's goal one." He said goal two is to plug participants into an ongoing movement.
And Levin didn't say this, but the pictures are clearly part of the point. Seeing millions of people protesting “can reveal a lot to people who aren’t plugged in," organizer Hunter Dunn told USA Today's BrieAnna J. Frank.
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Trump lawyers re-file NYT lawsuit |
Trump's defamation lawsuit against the NYT and Penguin Random House is back. The complaint is now 40 pages long, just as the judge who threw out the original 85-page filing said it should be.
"As we said when this was first filed and again after the judge's ruling to strike it: This lawsuit has no merit. Nothing has changed today," the NYT says. "This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate P.R. attention, but The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics."
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Sora hits pause on MLK slop |
Early users of OpenAI's Sora 2 may have noticed numerous user-generated videos depicting MLK Jr. saying crude or inappropriate things. That's going to stop. "OpenAI announced that it has 'paused' users' ability to generate videos of Martin Luther King Jr. on its artificial intelligence video tool Sora, following backlash over 'disrespectful depictions,'" CNN's Jordan Valinsky reports this morning.
>> In a statement, OpenAI says it "thanks Dr. Bernice A. King for reaching out on behalf of King, Inc., and John Hope Bryant and the AI Ethics Council for creating space for conversations like this..."
>> "AI videos of dead celebrities are horrifying many of their families," WaPo's Tatum Hunter and Drew Harwell reported earlier this week...
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Scoops from outside the Pentagon |
Note the word sources in this CNN headline: "Some survivors after US strikes another suspected drug boat in the Caribbean, sources say."
News outlets are breaking news about the military on an hourly basis despite this week's confiscation of Pentagon press passes. As Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News said, Pete Hegseth "may come to regret forcing them to work away from the Pentagon."
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Here's who has accepted Hegseth's rules |
WaPo's Scott Nover has the scoop on the media figures who did sign the Pentagon paperwork: Right-wing outlets The Federalist, Epoch Times and OAN; Turkish newspaper Akşam; three people from the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, along with two Turkish freelancers; an Afghan freelancer; and "three lesser-known operations, AWPS News, the India Globe and a blog called USA Journal Korea."
>> "A journalist from News Corp's The Australian was one of the 15 who agreed to the Pentagon’s restrictive press rules... The outlet has now quickly backtracked," the NYT's Katie Robertson adds.
>> Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell says he will "make an announcement soon regarding the next generation of the Pentagon press corps."
>> Don't miss Susan Glasser's latest New Yorker column: "The Pentagon's ban on real journalism looks to be a preview of where the White House is headed."
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Marshall Cohen reports: The DOJ on Thursday indicted Smartmatic, the voting technology company, in an existing criminal case against its current and former executives. The company is accused of money laundering and bribery in connection with election contracts in the Philippines in 2016.
The news could be catastrophic for Smartmatic, weakening its hand in pending 2020 election-related defamation lawsuits against Fox News, US attorney Jeanine Pirro, ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Smartmatic denies wrongdoing and says it believes the federal prosecutors who filed the charges were "misled and politically influenced by powerful interests." (Notably, the underlying case began under the Biden-era Justice Department.)
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Indiana University has really stepped in it.
School administrators recently meddled with the Indiana Daily Student newspaper by urging the student media director, Jim Rodenbush, to remove any hard news from the print editions. Rodenbush refused — pointing out that the paper is run by the students, not him — and he was fired on Tuesday. Then the university went even further and "ordered the publication to cease printing," Indianapolis Star reporter (and IU alum) Cate Charron reports here.
So on Thursday, the student editors released a digital edition of the paper featuring a front page that said "CENSORED," with full coverage of the controversy. The editors don't buy the university's claims that this is all about improving the publication's finances and preparing students "for digital-first careers."
"This is about a breach of editorial independence," the editors said. Many students, alumni and press freedom groups agree.
Speaking of student press leadership...
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'Chilling effect on student voices' |
Earlier this week, a coalition of 55 student newsrooms and organizations, led by the Student Press Law Center, filed an amicus brief in The Stanford Daily's lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio's use of immigration law provisions "to revoke international students' visas and deport them for constitutionally protected speech." The filing highlights "the widespread chilling effect on student voices caused by recent immigration enforcement actions..."
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>> David Brooks says "America needs a mass movement — now." (The Atlantic)
>> Ashley Carman points out that "Charlie Kirk's podcast keeps growing." (Bloomberg)
>> Sharon Waxman asks, "What happened to Saudi blood money?" (TheWrap)
>> Jessica Roy explains what's with all the tiny microphones. (NYT)
>> Alex Weprin's THR cover story features YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, "his $100 billion vision for YouTube's future, and "the disruption it's left in its wake." (THR)
>> Mitch Therieau says Taylor Swift "is our biggest cinematic universe," but the magic is fading as "her marketing is beginning to overtake the music." (NYT Mag)
>> Michael Sebastian sits down with Marc Maron for "What I've Learned," which is now expanding into video form. (Esquire)
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