From the Beast’s media desk

EXCLUSIVE — THE ABC ‘REIGN OF ERROR’: Another week, another trove of juicy stories from inside ABC News President Kim Godwin’s “reign of error,” as one network source described it. The embattled news boss has been shopping around a book about leadership, Confider has learned, just days after a bloody round of layoffs that targeted staffers she felt were insufficiently loyal to her, multiple sources told us. Godwin, who joined ABC promising to clean up the culture, has told friends that writing a book is on her bucket list and that she has spoken to at least one publisher about it, according to two people familiar with the matter. One irritated ABC News executive quipped to Confider: “If Kim is writing a book on leadership, it’ll be the size of a pamphlet.” ABC insiders who spoke with Confider laid some of the blame for the handling of last month’s bloodbath layoffs on Godwin’s right-hand man Jose Andino, who has the curiously verbose title of “Vice President—Office of the President and Process Management.” Andino is an HR exec who followed Godwin from CBS to ABC, and he is said to have been instrumental in helping her compile a list of all HR grievances against former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky, whose job Godwin was gunning for at the time. Andino has left fellow ABC News execs astounded with a series of gaffes. For example, when it was announced Bob Iger would return to run Disney, Andino asked several colleagues why the news division would be of any concern to the iconic CEO who began his career at ABC nearly 50 years ago and rose to oversee every aspect of the company’s television business, including news. Andino was described to Confider by multiple colleagues as a “gossip girl” who seems highly interested in rumor-mongering and carrying out personal vendettas. And according to two people familiar with the matter, he played a significant role in advising Godwin on who to pink-slip during the firings. Meanwhile, Godwin has further incensed staffers with several eyebrow-raising remarks: While discussing the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, two sources said, Godwin questioned whether ABC should cover the story because it was about another media company; and after one of the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, Godwin allegedly asked several ABC journalists to “tell me what Trump did that’s actually illegal?” A rep for ABC News emailed Confider: “This is absolutely untrue.”

EXCLUSIVE — CNN MEETS THE ANTI-‘WOKE’: CNN CEO Chris Licht met with longshot GOP 2024 hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy last month and discussed issues surrounding free speech, cancel culture, and “wokeism,” two people familiar with the meeting told Confider. The March meetup, which took place in NYC just days ahead of a Ramaswamy appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, came at the request of the Woke Inc. author as he ramps up his campaign to be president, built around a “national identity that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance.” As Confider’s favorite industry schmoozer, Licht has made no secret of his efforts to court conservatives as he reshapes CNN. Elsewhere, Confider has learned, CNN is looking to shake up its daily Inside Politics show by likely replacing anchor John King with CNN’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash, who currently co-anchors State of the Union with Jake Tapper. The swap would be doubly notable as King and Bash were previously married and share a son together. A rep for CNN declined to comment.

EXCLUSIVE — TIME(S) OUT: A New York Times executive stepped in it last week when she seemed to encourage a Slack room full of LGBTQ staffers not to raise workplace concerns in the channel dedicated to… raising employee concerns. “I just wanted to share a note about discussing or reporting about your workplace experience to ensure everyone knows about our resources,” wrote Natalia Villalobos, the Times’ vice president of inclusion, strategy, and execution, in an April 3 post to TimesOut, the paper’s LGBTQ-focused employee resources group. The HR exec directed employees to several HR-approved methods of expressing concerns: an “ask-the-company” Slack channel, a one-on-one with a manager, or the ever-helpful recourse of going directly to HR reps. “Going forward, I want to encourage folxs here to raise concerns or issues via the places above ^^^^ rather than in this ERG channel,” she wrote. Suffice to say the post rankled staffers in the Slack channel—especially as the paper deals with continued fallout over its handling of internal and external criticism of its trans coverage. Several Times employees directly replied to Villalobos to question what prompted her post’s timing and how her suggestions could make LGTBQ staffers feel unsafe at the paper. “I can’t help but feel lately like I’m expected to just shut up and deal with the negativity because it might make some of my coworkers feel uncomfortable if I speak up,” one Times staffer wrote in the messages reviewed by Confider. “It feels completely surreal and disrespectful to get corporate swag branded with a pride flag at the same time as we’re being instructed not to publicly discuss our experiences as queer people in the workplace,” wrote another staffer in a comment that was pinned to the channel’s page. Villalobos addressed the concerns a day later, acknowledging the optics of corporate HR pushing more HR-approved routes of voicing concerns over a room dedicated for such conversations. “My post was meant to support the community by offering channels for reporting workplace concerns like discrimination and harassment so that they are received by HR and other partners who can help address them efficiently,” she wrote. “It was not meant to reduce sharing, eliminate community support, or tamp down community building.” Villalobos also promised to host office hours upon her return from a personal leave to hear out the employees’ concerns. Left unclear was what prompted her initial message in the first place, but it came just three days before Times contributors sent a letter directly to the paper’s publisher admonishing the paper’s response to past open letters about its reporting on trans issues. The Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE — FILL THE MESSENGER: Media mogul Jimmy Finkelstein’s new venture The Messenger has continued its hiring spree ahead of its May launch, Confider has learned. Hyping the new site as a WaPo-Daily Mail hybrid, Finkelstein promises to have over 500 journalists on the payroll within a year, all while projecting massive traffic and revenues exceeding $100 million next year. Late last month, The Messenger was able to gather a few dozen new staffers—and an existing infrastructure—when it absorbed the faltering start-up Grid News. Since then, Finkelstein, who has long hoped to attract prominent journalists and editors to the site, has inked a number of veteran reporters, Confider has learned. Among them, former LA Times congressional reporter Nolan McCaskill, ex-CNN political reporter Dan Merica, and former USA Today White House reporter Rebecca Morin. Additionally, The Messenger is bringing over People crime reporters Steve Helling and Elaine Aradillas, both of whom have TV experience. Dan Wakeford, who runs The Messenger’s newsroom, was previously People’s editor-in-chief. Several key management slots have also been filled, with The Messenger bringing on Time’s editorial director of news Michael Zennie, ex-Insider politics editor Darren Samuelsohn, former TV Guide EIC Noelene Clark, and The Hill opinion editor Frank Craig, among others. A rep for The Messenger did not respond to a request for comment.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com or call/text us 551 655 2343.

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MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

—If you missed the Matt Taibbi meltdown last week, then you are in for a treat. Less than 24 hours after refusing to criticize Elon Musk’s hypocritical Twitter censorship, “Twitter Files” reporter Taibbi very publicly quit the social-media site because Musk had made it “unusable.” During a contentious interview with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, Taibbi declared, “I like Elon Musk,” adding that he didn’t “particularly want to” chastise the edgelord billionaire because he “is good for Twitter.” But then Taibbi bailed on Twitter the next day over Musk’s decision to block Substack—which is where much of Taibbi’s Twitter Files were published. More here and here.

—Speaking of Musk: Between rebranding Twitter HQ to “Titter” and auto-replying to media questions with fecal emojis, the Chief Twit appears to be fully realizing his 10-year-old self. Juvenile antics aside, the sentient poop emoji of a billionaire, as our colleague Anthony Fisher described him, is also a raving hypocrite and a failure. Read the scathing column here.

RECENT READS

—The Fox News descent from a nasty and distorted version of “Fair & Balanced” to outright lying in order to preserve its audience can be traced all the way back to Rupert Murdoch‘s 1970s entry into the U.S. media market, The New York Times Magazine observed in a fascinating deep-dive. Read here.

—New York magazine took a look at how Murdoch’s latest British import, Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker, has managed her new gig while dealing with a heartbreaking task: Rescuing top reporter Evan Gershkovich from Russian imprisonment. Read more here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

The right-wing outrage-industrial complex has found itself triggered—literally—over transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s marketing partnerships with Bud Light and Nike. Earlier this month, while promoting Bud Light’s March Madness giveaway, Mulvaney revealed that Anheuser-Busch sent her a commemorative can to celebrate her one-year anniversary of being out as a trans woman. Of course, this sent Trump-boosting country rocker Kid Rock over the edge, prompting him to performatively fire off a few rounds into some cases of Bud Light while cussing out the beer maker. Other conservative celebrities and talking heads soon followed suit, vowing to boycott “woke” Bud Light for “denigrating masculinity.” In doing so, some boneheads ended up unwittingly promoting other Anheuser-Busch products instead. And then after Mulvaney unveiled a collaboration with Nike to promote their sports bras and leggings, the anti-trans ragefest only grew louder (and more ironic). In the past week, Fox News and Newsmax have mentioned Mulvaney at least 75 times—and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to slow down anytime soon.

Confider will be back next week with more saucy scooplets. In the meantime,  subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips  here or call/text us  551 655 2343.

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