The Media Front: Murdochs Head West
For those of us who lived through New York’s tabloid wars, when the Post and Daily News were at each other’s throats, Monday’s launch of the Murdoch-backed California Post feels like a throwback.
The news business has changed dramatically since 2006. Bravo briefly mined New York’s ink-stained slugfest in “Tabloid Wars.” “Real Housewives,” which also launched that year, proved far more durable in the reality-show pantheon.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the Murdoch special sauce of populist politics, scandal and sports, along with a swashbuckling swagger when it comes to taking on an entrenched media power — in this case, the Los Angeles Times. The California Post has been raiding the Times newsroom even as it shrugs off the paper as a threat.
As Editor-in-chief Nick Papps quipped to TheWrap’s Corbin Bolies: “Do I lay awake at night worrying about the L.A. Times or other media outlets? No.” (Check out Bolies’ full report, complete with a visit to the newsroom on the old Fox lot in Century City.)
Lately, another family dynasty, the Ellisons, have been grabbing headlines as they amass media power — Paramount, TikTok and, potentially, Warner Bros. Discovery — all while developing a cozy relationship with the Trump White House.
But the Murdoch family is again coming under the microscope, as Gabriel Sherman, author of the definitive biography of Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes, is out on Feb. 3 with “Bonfire of the Murdochs,” which chronicles the family split that established Lachlan Murdoch as successor to 94-year-old patriarch Rupert Murdoch.
And this Tuesday comes Jason Zengerle’s “Hated by All the Right People,” tracing Tucker Carlson’s rise from the more high-minded, Murdoch-backed Weekly Standard to Fox News stardom — and his post-Fox reinvention alongside Trump.
I caught up with Zengerle, who mentioned two ways Carlson has stayed relevant “without the built-in audience of Fox.”
“He’s gotten more and more outrageous, I think, because that’s a way to get attention,” he said. “And then he’s attached himself at the hip to Trump because that makes him relevant and it makes people pay attention to him.”
Attention — from tabloids to TV to TikTok — remains the name of the game.
Michael Calderone
Media Editor
michael.calderone@thewrap.com
The California Post Looks to Disrupt
Corbin Bolies reports from Century City:
On an 80-degree day in January, I found myself strolling down a brownstone-dotted New York street — at least it appeared that way.
The street, modeled after late 19th-century Lower Manhattan, was built in 1967 for the film adaptation of “Hello, Dolly!” and refurbished during Hollywod’s 2023 strikes, a fitting set for productions seeking Big Apple flavor. Or, in this case, an upstart newspaper aiming to take the “DNA of the New York Post” and filter it through “a California lens,” as California Post Editor-in-chief Nick Papps put it to me.
“We’ll have the wit of the New York Post headlines, which is really important to it,” Papps said in his office suite on the Fox lot, the walls littered with framed California-themed New York Post covers. There’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson and Paris Hilton — a reflection of the paper’s long-running preoccupations with politics, sports, scandal and celebrity. Papps was dressed in a button-down shirt with his sleeves rolled up, jeans and, ironically, New York-branded socks.
While the California Post newsroom may have the feel of a quirky start-up, it’s the latest extension of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire and a test of whether a sibling to the New York Post, the pugnacious tabloid known for pillorying the city’s liberal elite, will find an audience in Democratic-led L.A.
There’s no shortage of characters — or villains, depending on your politics – for the California Post to zero in on, including embattled L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Newsom, a vocal Trump antagonist and likely 2028 Democratic contender. An adversarial, populist approach may appeal to disaffected liberals and conservatives alike.
Check out the full piece on the California Post’s L.A. invasion
What the video shows
The ICE killing of 37-year-old intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti — who was pinned to the ground during a confrontation on Saturday with federal agents — was captured on video from multiple angles, contradicting Trump administration claims that he was trying to attack officers. Footage shows Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when agents approached and subdued him.
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a Saturday press conference. “How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die, or get badly hurt, for this operation to end?”
It’s the second time this month that video has directly challenged the government’s framing of events, following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three. In videos capturing both shootings, ICE agents do not appear to be in any immediate danger.
While social-media videos have driven public awareness of the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Star Tribune has gone beyond viral clips with deeper reporting.
“Our goal is to add reporting to figure out what really happened in any particular episode, to go beyond the video that’s firing around Instagram,” Minnesota Star Tribune editor and senior vice president Kathleen Hennessey told Semafor this weekend
“You cannot be an informed person and just sort of scroll through social media, it’s distorting and it doesn’t add clarity,” she added, noting that journalism helps “shed some light and bring true understanding.”
I highly recommend checking out the Star Tribune’s site for the latest updates from Minneapolis, and more from TheWrap below:
Stephen Miller’s Viral Minneapolis Shooting Tweet Debunked by Community Note
Minneapolis TV Reporter Pepper Sprayed While Covering 2nd Deadly Shooting by ICE Agents | Video
Press freedom watch: Don Lemon, Washington Post
The Washington Post scored a legal victory Wednesday when a federal judge ordered the government not to view materials seized from the home of reporter Hannah Natanson as part of a leak investigation into a former Pentagon contractor.
In taking action in court, the Post said:
“The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials. We have asked the court to order the immediate return of all seized materials and prevent their use. Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”
The government was asked to respond to the Post’s court filing by Jan. 28, with oral arguments set for Feb. 6.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, a federal judge on Thursday refused to approve federal charges against journalist Don Lemon in connection with his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Lemon, praised the decision and said it confirmed “the nature of Don’s First Amendment protected work this weekend in Minnesota as a reporter.”
“It was no different than what he has done for more than 30 years, reporting and covering newsworthy events on the ground and engaging in constitutionally protected activity as a journalist,” Lowell said.
Lowell said if the department still tried to pursue charges, it would mark “a stunning and troubling effort to silence and punish a journalist for doing his job.”
Late-night fight
Donald Trump hasn’t been shy in bashing talk shows, whether daytime (“The View”) or late night (Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert), bristling at jokes and jabs. The president enjoys attention, but not so much scrutiny, whether from journalists or TV hosts.
Now, as Lucas Manfredi reports, “The Federal Communications Commission has issued new guidance warning that late night and daytime talk shows will not be exempt from the equal opportunities requirements put in place by Congress.”
Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, called the move “an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
“The First Amendment does not yield to government intimidation,” she said. “Broadcasters should not feel pressured to water down, sanitize, or avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation.”
Kimmel, who was briefly taken off the air last year, warned Wednesday that his show “might need your help again.”
Nevertheless, late-night hosts were out in force this week, skewering Trump’s Greenland push and proposed “Board of Peace.”
Also on TheWrap
After abruptly pulling a “60 Minutes” report on Venezuelan deportees facing torturous conditions in a notorious El Salvador mega-prison, CBS News Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told staff that the story, which had already been legally vetted and widely promoted, “was not ready,” and that “we need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera.”
The Jan. 18 segment was apparently ready in Weiss’ eyes as U.S. viewers were able to watch Sharyn Alfonsi’s powerful report, which included first-person accounts of men swept up this past year in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. What “60 Minutes” viewers didn’t get to see were any Trump officials appearing on camera.
Read my full piece on the segment and controversy here.
Unsurprisingly, airing the segment on episode against an NFL playoff game on NBC rather than in an episode following an NFL game on CBS — as would’ve been the case if it had been broadcast last month – wasn’t good for ratings.
Elsewhere:
Washington Post Cancels On-Site Winter Olympics Coverage Ahead of Expected Layoffs
Substack Launches TV App for Apple and Google TVs
Business Insider Chief Revenue Officer and Global Head of Sales Step Down
TikTok Seals Deal to Operate in US, Ending 6-Year Legal Battle
White House Confirms Photo of Arrested Protester Crying Was Doctored: ‘The Memes Will Continue’
What I’m reading
“Inside Bari Weiss’s Hostile Takeover of CBS News” (Clare Malone, The New Yorker)
“ICE Is Turning Real Conflict Into Viral Content” (Charlie Warzel, the Atlantic)
“A Year Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.” (Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser, the New York Times Magazine)
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