Hey, good morning. Zohran Mamdani and his short-form videos prevailed in the NYC primary, Bernie Sanders sat down with Joe Rogan, and Wonder Project struck a deal with Amazon. Plus: The latest on Substack, Kari Lake, Radhika Jones, Anthropic, "Elio," and more. But first... |
U.S. Air Force/Handout/Reuters |
When President Trump posted a "Bomb Iran" parody song yesterday, with file footage of B-2 stealth fighter jet flights, it reminded me of what he hasn't shared: Any video of Saturday's actual bombing raid.
News outlets have asked for the government's video recordings of the air strikes in Iran. But so far the only footage released by the Pentagon shows the bombers taking off before the mission and landing afterward.
Trump, more than any US president before him, appreciates the power of television and the concept that seeing is believing. But according to military experts, there are logical reasons for the Trump admin to hold back the bombing videos.
For one thing, Trump has been signaling de-escalation in the days since the attack, and showing off videos of the bunker-busting bombs would be a televisual form of escalation.
Nevertheless, the dearth of bombing video has been noticed by members of the Pentagon press corps and by hosts at the president's favorite network, Fox News. "We thought they'd ship us the video by Monday," a Fox insider remarked to me on condition of anonymity.
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Trump is telling, not showing |
The US said it dropped fourteen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Fordow — a compelling and perhaps frightening strike to see up close. Trump immediately conveyed with words, not images, that the attack had been a success, stating in a prime time address that Iran's nuclear enrichment sites had been "completely and totally obliterated."
But as you surely heard yesterday, thanks to CNN's exclusive reporting, Trump's claims have been thrown into doubt by an early US intel assessment that suggested the strikes did not destroy the core components of Iran's nuclear program. The NYT, AP and other outlets matched CNN's reporting in quick succession. The dispute makes the possibility of video evidence all the more intriguing.
When Israel conducted its own attacks inside Iran earlier in the month, the Israeli Air Force released videos of successful airstrikes, and the spy agency Mossad shared rare footage of its operatives smuggling weapons into Iran to carry out strikes. But as for Saturday's US strikes, no reliable ground-level videos have surfaced from inside Iran, and no Pentagon recordings have been released, so news networks and websites have relied on satellite imagery showing Fordow before and after.
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'CNN stands by our thorough reporting' |
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt used words like "fake" and "wrong" in a statement that acknowledged the existence of the intel assessment. The NYT, AP and other outlets matched CNN's reporting in quick succession, as CNN noted in a statement yesterday: "CNN stands by our thorough reporting on an early intelligence assessment of the recent strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, which has since been confirmed by other news organizations. The White House has acknowledged the existence of the assessment, and their statement is included in our story."
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Andrew Cuomo's "tightly controlled" interview-averse campaign "was no match" for Zohran Mamdani's "accessibility and media savvy," Pat Kiernan said on New York's own NY1 this morning.
Mamdani's (still unofficial) victory was a "political earthquake," as CNN.com's big headline says. And it has lots of politicos talking about his winning media style as well as substance. "Mamdani smartly embraced a go everywhere media strategy," Lis Smith wrote. He excelled with short-form viral videos, which are "now one of the chief mediums of American politics — and may be as important as TV for some electorates," Robinson Meyer wrote. "Short-form video is where persuasion and name ID happen now." CNN's David Wright has more on this here...
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Valuing 'outsider' voices |
TV news tends to favor insider perspectives, Rick Ellis wrote in his Too Much TV newsletter overnight. But Mamdani's win is a reminder, in case one was needed, that "outsider" POVs need to be represented in political coverage. "If you are focusing your coverage on conventional wisdom that turns out to be wrong," Ellis wrote, "your network can often feel out of touch..."
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Kari Lake testifies on the Hill |
The House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing is titled "Spies, Lies, and Mismanagement: Examining the U.S. Agency for Global Media's Downfall," so that's what to expect starting at 10am ET today. Politico has a preview here. And the "Save VOA" advocacy group has already published a fact-check of Lake's prepared remarks, which it says are full of "lies and misinformation."
>> PBS will be live-streaming the hearing on YouTube...
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Read this before the VOA hearing |
"America's rivals celebrated as the Trump administration set out to dismantle its global influence and information infrastructure, including the media outlets that had helped market the United States as the world's moral and cultural authority," the NYT's Tiffany Hsu writes.
And she means "celebrated" literally: In the months since Lake put Trump's cuts into effect, "China, Russia and other U.S. rivals have moved to commandeer the communications space abandoned by the Americans. They have pumped more money into their own global media endeavors, expanded social outreach programs abroad and cranked up the volume when publicizing popular cultural exports." Read the rest here.
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On Substack, liberals are finding their answer to Elon Musk's X, Kyle Tharp writes in this new report for his Chaotic Era newsletter. He says "Substack's growing influence — and its authors' unmistakable lean to the left — is clearest on the company's 'bestsellers' list, which ranks publications by paid subscriber count. Of the 100 top-selling titles in the U.S. Politics category, 81 are left-leaning or progressive." Of course, Substack would say anyone of any political persuasion is free to set up an account – and X would say the same...
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When you hit a (pay) wall |
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that "few Americans pay for news when they encounter paywalls."
Overall, just 17% of respondents said they have "directly paid or given money to a news source by subscribing, donating or becoming a member" in the past twelve months. Among the 83% who haven't paid up, "the most common reason they cite is that they can find plenty of other news articles for free." Only 10% said the main reason was "it's too expensive." Check out the findings here.
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>> In departing Vanity Fair editor Radhika Jones' final letter to readers, she calls magazines "the ultimate collective endeavor." (VF)
>> On a visit to Joe Rogan's show, Sen. Bernie Sanders argued that Trump's lawsuits against media outlets are "clearly" causing "intimidation." (Mediaite)
>> David Ellison has "quietly courted Bari Weiss for a possible role at CBS News," Oliver Darcy scoops. (Status)
>> The Trump admin "has terminated millions worth of funding for Springer Nature, a German-owned scientific publishing giant that has long received payments for subscriptions from NIH and other agencies." (Axios)
>> "The Premier Lacrosse League has landed a five-year media-rights renewal with ESPN, and the network will also be taking a small equity stake in the league." (SBJ)
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The Tucker '24 run that never was |
Tucker Carlson claims that, mere weeks after Lachlan Murdoch fired him in 2023, the Murdochs then encouraged him to run for president in the GOP primary against Trump. "In May of 2023, they asked me to run for president against Trump and said they would back me," Carlson told fellow ex-Fox host Clayton Morris, citing this alleged entreaty as evidence of how much the Murdochs "hate" Trump. "I would never get elected anyway," Carlson remarked. "Plus, I like Trump." But he doesn't like Fox, and this sensational claim is the latest proof of that...
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First-of-its-kind win for AI firm |
A federal judge "has determined that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI tools on copyrighted works, arguing that the behavior is shielded by the 'fair use' doctrine, which allows for unauthorized use of copyrighted materials under certain conditions," WIRED's Kate Knibbs reports. However, the same judge also ruled that authors "could take Anthropic to trial over pirating their works," so there's much more to come...
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