From the Beast’s media desk |
Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
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TAPPER’S COVID SNAFU: Some staffers on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper are seething about the host’s conduct following a COVID diagnosis earlier this month. Tapper tested positive for the virus while at the network’s D.C. bureau on Monday, May 9, just prior to taping his 4 p.m. ET show, but according to two people familiar with the situation, he did not go home immediately, incensing some colleagues. By Tuesday, Tapper was replaced on-air with Dana Bash anchoring his show while he recovered at home. On Wednesday, however, he returned to the show from what appeared to be his home studio. “This happened in the same week that the country was mourning the millionth death due to COVID, which Jake covered on his show,” one pissed-off staffer told Confider. Tapper, who is known to slide into reporters’ DMs to lash out at them for their coverage of him and CNN—and can be quite robust in his “feedback,” according to two people on the receiving end of his missives—was so freaked the story would leak that he had The Most Trusted Name in News’ enormous PR team working overtime to run interference on media outlets that called to ask for comment. Although some of Tapper’s colleagues were irate that he remained in the building even after testing positive, CNN maintains that he followed protocol. “Testing is voluntary to enter our offices. It is mandatory to enter the studios. He tested shortly before his show,” a network spokesperson told Confider. “When he was notified of the positive result, he asked CNN execs what to do and then followed it to the letter—he double-masked and isolated, did the show solo in a flash studio (single-person enclosed room) and went home immediately after.” The flack added: “Everyone on The Lead team was notified during their pre-show call that day. Jake had only been in direct contact with a few others, who were also notified.”
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THE WIZARD OF OZ NO MORE: Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who has had prime ministers and presidents in his pocket for most of his life, took a beating this weekend when conservative Aussie PM Scott Morrison was convincingly voted out of office. “Sco Mo,” as he’s known down under, was trounced by Labor leader Anthony Albanese despite a major campaign from Murdoch’s stable of newspapers and Sky News to help Morrison hang on to his job. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Brisbane’s The Courier Mail published an incessant barrage of stories intended to embarrass and trip up the Labor leader in the weeks leading up to the vote. Murdoch insiders told Confider they are now bracing for “payback” from Albanese and his party with the likelihood that access will be cut and “drops” (exclusives handed out to reporters) will go to rival newspapers owned by Nine (publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) and the publicly owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Aussie election may suggest a sundown on Murdoch’s international power: The ever-shaky UK PM Boris Johnson is now the only head of state in power to whom the media mogul has a direct line. As former Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a vocal Murdoch critic, tweeted on Sunday: “The Murdoch monopoly, especially their pathetic propaganda outlet, ‘The Australian’, campaigned viciously against a Labor Govt. Thanks to you, the people, they failed—and were exposed as a Liberal Party protection racket and a cancer on democracy.” A spokesperson for News Corp Australia didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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KELLYANNE’S MEDIA MISSIVE: Over the weekend we exclusively reported that in Kellyanne Conway’s new memoir, the former Trump senior adviser recalls that Donald Trump toyed with quitting the 2016 race amid fallout over his infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape. Elsewhere in Here’s the Deal, which Confider obtained in advance of its Tuesday publish, Conway takes a series of deeply personal swings at Taylor Lorenz over the former New York Times scribe’s coverage of Kellyanne’s teenage daughter Claudia Conway, who took to TikTok in 2020 to lambast her mother’s politics. In a chapter recounting the media frenzy around her daughter’s social-media posts, Conway rages against “Miss Taylor Lorenz, who has blue blood and thin skin.” She writes: “Raised among the privileged in Greenwich, Connecticut, the unmarried and childless Lorenz spent most days trolling other people’s kids on social media, occasionally slandering them, and often adding nothing to a conversation that rose to the level of the Times’s motto, ‘All the news that’s fit to print.’” The ex-Trump campaign manager also takes aim at former Styles editor Choire Sicha for his work in “enabling this evil reporter” in covering her then-15-year-old daughter’s TikTok content. Elsewhere in the book, Conway makes a single mention of Trump-era antagonist Maggie Haberman, a senior Times reporter who has beefed with Lorenz (now at WaPo), but reserves any comment on her work. Neither Lorenz nor The Washington Post returned Confider’s request for comment.
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JUST DON’T, DINESH: Far-right provocateur Dinesh D’Souza seems to have—at least for the time being—fully nuked his relationship with Fox News. Over the past two weeks, D’Souza has raged against Fox and rival Newsmax for snubbing his election-denying film, 2,000 Mules, which has been shredded by fact-checkers and news outlets over its “gaping holes” and provably false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. D’Souza took specific aim at Tucker Carlson for allegedly suppressing mentions of his batty flick, going as far as sharing a series of supposed text messages—which he characterized as “highly abusive”—from the Fox host’s executive producer Justin Wells. Apparently throwing bombs at Fox‘s prized primetime host, a right-wing media kingmaker, may have been unwise: After having appeared on longtime friend Laura Ingraham’s nightly Fox News show at least 15 times this year, D’Souza has all but disappeared. His final appearance on Fox airwaves came on April 27, when he beamed into Larry Kudlow’s FBN show to promote the film and get a hearty endorsement from the former Trump economic adviser. Aside from D’Souza attacking the network’s crown jewel, it’s not too hard to figure out why he’s been silenced: Just like Newsmax, Fox is currently being sued by voting software firms for peddling false claims that their voting machines flipped the election for Joe Biden. And while D’Souza’s doc has predictably received praise from some of Trump’s most loyal acolytes, some key MAGA media figures have distanced themselves from the film’s most outlandish claims. Neither Fox News nor D’Souza responded to requests for comment.
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POD PROSECUTIONS: Last year, federal prosecutors in several states unveiled a wave of murder-for-hire cases that court papers indicated were sparked by tips from a team of investigative journalists monitoring the dark web. The documents provided scant detail about the media operation that had tracked vengeful men and women sending instructions and Bitcoin to “hitmen” lurking in shadowy corners of the internet. Several filings said the reporters were from the BBC, but that turns out not to be true. Buried in a recent tranche of documents reviewed by Confider was an affidavit that reveals the hot U.K.-based podcasting company Novel is behind the probe that spawned the prosecutions. Novel founder Sean Glynn declined to comment, but the material his team uncovered should make for gripping listening. The defendants include a Spokane, Washington, doctor who allegedly wanted a hitman to kidnap his estranged wife and get pictures of her injecting herself with heroin to be used as blackmail; a Wisconsin mother-of-two who tried to settle a custody dispute with a hired assassin and is now serving six years in prison; and a Beverly Hills man charged with trying to rub out a woman who jilted him after a brief fling.
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IN PLAIN SIGHT: CNN host Don Lemon walking with an unidentified man and three dogs in the West Village on Sunday… Media power ladies Tammy Haddad, Lisa Dallos, and Vicky Ward lunching at separate tables on Thursday at, yup, you guessed it, Michael’s… Liev Schreiber in the audience for Axios reporter Jonathan Swan’s Monday afternoon Davos interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who noticed the star actor in the crowd and shouted him out… Politico star Ryan Lizza and Washington Post stalwart Dave Weigel (rocking a white blazer) at the Grid News launch party last Tuesday on the roof of the Hall of States Building in D.C.
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WE HEAR WHISPERS: The world’s most likable pop star Harry Styles made fans wait upwards of four hours in the searing heat this weekend in SoHo just to purchase merchandise from his Harry’s House album collection, including a $75 hoodie and a $45 hat. Confider enjoyed the album but did not partake in the merch madness. |
More from the Beast’s Media Desk |
—It’s no secret that Joe Rogan’s mega-successful podcast is rife with pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Last week, however, listeners got a glimpse of Rogan coming to grips with his own B.S. in real time as he learned that his rant about Aussie pols looking to ban people growing their own food was completely false. Watch the full clip here.
—Fox News will almost surely face no consequences for having long pushed variations of the racist “Great Replacement” theory, but they were briefly forced to answer for it last week when Democratic strategist Kristal Knight called out the network while on its air. Of course, host Harris Faulkner was simply aghast at Knight’s claim and dismissed it in the most Fox News way possible. Watch the full clip here.
—Saturday Night Live is about to undergo yet another identity shift, with four key players having said their goodbyes this past weekend. Much of the media frenzy focused on Pete Davidson, and tabloid fave and Kim Kardashian’s beau, but as our colleague Allegra Frank writes, the biggest loss for SNL will be the “effortlessly funny” Aidy Bryant. Read the full story here.
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—It’s May 2022 and The New York Times appears to have just now first discovered that former CBS News reporter Lara Logan has morphed into an icon of the anti-vaccine, election-denying far right. It’s a transformation that has been written about extensively over the past few years.
—Look, we’re all absolutely tired of Dinesh D’Souza and his latest fact-free diatribe of a movie, but if you must be fully read-in on his lies, look no further than Washington Post’s Philip Bump’s exhaustive deep dives, including a truly impressive debate with D’Souza himself.
—Take a break from our hellish world and read Thomas Boswell’s beautiful Washington Post obit for the late Roger Angell. Just one legendary sports writer appreciating another—a wonderful thing. We’re all better for having read it. |
**WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?**
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As if right-wing media wasn’t already aping QAnon with all of its rhetoric about “groomers” while fearmongering about LGBTQ rights, Newsmax decided to add some good ol’ fashioned Satanic panic into the mix last week. In a breathless rant about the upcoming Netflix animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park, disgraced ex-Fox News star Eric Bolling (of alleged “dick pic” fame) warned viewers about the “trans cartoon” and its use of “devil imagery, human offerings, and demonic possession.” Noting the show’s creators said they want the fantasy show—which features a trans male teen character—to be a “beacon to young queer people,” Bolling groused that they’re “trying to make our point for us” before insisting there’s a “dark conspiracy to convert children behind parents’ backs.”
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