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Cormac McCarthy, among America’s greatest authors, dies at 89 | CNN

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CNN
—

Cormac McCarthy, long considered one of America’s greatest writers for his violent and bleak depictions of the United States and its borderlands in novels like “Blood Meridian,” “The Road” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died on Tuesday, according to his Penguin Random House publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He was 89.

McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Knopf said.

Over a nearly 60-year career, McCarthy – hailed by the late literary critic Howard Bloom as the “true heir” of Herman Melville and William Faulkner – wrote a dozen novels, many of them critically celebrated if not commercial hits, though he would eventually achieve both. For years, he wrote while living on grants, most notably the MacArthur “genius grant,” which he was awarded in 1981.

Despite accolades, McCarthy remained relatively obscure for much of his career; as recently as 1992, 27 years after his first book was published, the New York Times Book Review said he “may be the best unknown novelist in America.”

Both before and since, McCarthy was seen and portrayed in the media as reclusive, eschewing the kind of book tours, signings, interviews and lectures other renowned writers would see as professional obligations. But McCarthy famously abhorred talking about his books, which principally featured male characters and profuse violence, as well as sparse punctuation.

Still, he was a “writer’s writer,” the Times reported, with a cult following and a reputation “far out of proportion to his name recognition or sales.”

“I never had any doubts about my abilities,” McCarthy told the Times in one of his few interviews. “I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”

That obscurity changed with “All the Pretty Horses,” the first installment of his “Border Trilogy,” which became a bestseller and won the 1992 National Book Award, at last marrying the critical acclaim he’d enjoyed with mainstream success.

His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road,” which followed a father and son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America, further catapulted McCarthy to popularity, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey selecting the novel for her book club. McCarthy, in turn, granted Oprah his first and only television interview.

“The Road” was also one of several of McCarthy’s books adapted for film, most notably the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of “No Country for Old Men,” which won four Academy Awards, including best picture.

The author was born Charles McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island. His family moved when he was still young to Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority. His was a relatively comfortable childhood, one that played out on a plot of wooded land in a large white house with maids.

“We were considered rich,” he told the Times, “because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks.”

For all his later literary achievements, McCarthy was not a voracious reader in his childhood or adolescence. It wasn’t until he served in the US Air Force after dropping out of the University of Tennessee that McCarthy began reading extensively, in his barracks while stationed in Alaska, he told the Times.

He would later move to Chicago, where he finished his first novel and in 1961 married his first wife, Lee Holleman, with whom he had a son. They soon divorced.

That novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965, after shepherding by the famous Random House editor Albert Erskine, who also edited Faulkner. Erskine, who died in 1993, would go on to edit McCarthy for two decades despite the fact, Erskine admitted to the Times, that McCarthy’s books never sold.

“Outer Dark” followed in 1968 and “Child of God” in 1973, after a stint in Ibiza and McCarthy’s subsequent return to Tennessee with his second wife, Annie DeLisle. But still, they lived in “total poverty,” DeLisle once said, “bathing in the lake.”

“Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books,” DeLisle told the New York Times. “And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.”

But McCarthy didn’t become a writer to make money, instead “maybe simply, because I can do it,” he told the Maryville-Alcoa Times, a Tennessee newspaper, in 1971. “There are a lot of easier ways to make money. I could sell tickets to people and let them watch while I was run over by a truck.”

His next novel, “Suttree,” was published in 1979. McCarthy was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship two years later, giving him financial security to focus on writing. McCarthy left DeLisle and used the money to abscond to the Southwest, where he spent the next several years steeped in research for “Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West,” published in 1985.

The historically based novel – widely regarded as McCarthy’s masterpiece – follows a brutal gang of scalp hunters as they journey across the Southwest, massacring Apache and members of the Mexican Army.

“All the Pretty Horses” was published in 1992 and was followed over years by “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain,” which together comprise “The Border Trilogy” – in all a more idyllic ode to the region that recounted the adventures of two young cowboys.

“No Country for Old Men” in 2005 received a less positive critical reception than McCarthy’s earlier novels, though its standing improved with time. The book, which the author began as a screenplay, did well as a movie under the direction of Joel and Ethan Coen, with the talents of Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, as well as Javier Bardem as the fearsome but unforgettable killer Anton Chigurh, a role that won Bardem Academy Award for best supporting actor.

McCarthy’s attention turned away from the American West for 2006’s “The Road.” The book, dedicated to his then-young son – he had by then divorced and remarried again – was conceived on a trip to El Paso, Texas, he told Winfrey, as he looked out the hotel window one night.

“I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and everything being laid waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy,” he said, and wrote a couple pages. Revisiting the idea several years later, he realized those pages were the beginning of a book about a man and his son traveling through that ashen landscape while staving off the threat of cannibals.

The book wrote itself, he said, in a few weeks’ time.

The ensuing years were quiet ones, with little in the way of new material. By this time, McCarthy was spending much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, an independent research group of mostly scientists where he eventually became a lifetime trustee.

McCarthy, whose interest in the sciences was well-documented, enjoyed the company of the physicists, biologists and geologists at the institute, and it was there he was often seen writing on his Olivetti typewriter, working on his next novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris,” released just six weeks apart in 2022.

The books dealt with the same story from different perspectives and featured a female main character as McCarthy’s dearth of well-developed women protagonists in his writing had long been a point of criticism. After being married three times, he told Oprah, “I don’t pretend to understand women.”

But he alluded to the twin novels and their story’s female protagonist in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, saying, “I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try.”

As for the lavish amounts of violence in his work, McCarthy told Vanity Fair in 2005 he didn’t know what resonated with him about that theme, only that he felt death was the principal motif at the heart of all our lives.

“Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us,” he said. “It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.”

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June 13, 2023
Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

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Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

New York
CNN
—

The attacks on the rule of law have begun.

Moments after news broke on Thursday that disgraced former President Donald Trump had been indicted on federal charges, Fox News and the rest of the MAGA Media universe revved up into attack mode, denigrating the U.S. justice system and characterizing it as prejudiced against conservatives.

The assault on the American justice system was swift and savage.

On Fox, the historic legal action was portrayed as President Joe Biden weaponizing the Justice Department to target his political opponent.

“BIDEN ADMIN INDICTS A PRESIDENTIAL RIVAL,” one on-screen banner read.

“Yes, it is a dark day in America,” Sean Hannity declared. “We have said it often. There is no equal justice, there is no equal application of our laws. There is one set of rules for Democrats and another set of rules for Donald Trump and conservatives and anybody especially in his orbit.”

Despite the indictment not being made public, Hannity went on to tell his audience that the “system of justice” in the U.S. has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble.”

Throughout the night, Fox welcomed guests who echoed the Trump talking points and disparaged the justice system.

In effect, Fox News is once again platforming those who are leading vicious and irresponsible attacks on the country’s criminal justice system.

The defense of Trump, of course, was not just limited to Fox News.

Across the right-wing media ecosystem, the narrative that a sinister deep-state was unfairly targeting Trump to knock him out of the 2024 presidential contest was pervasive.

“PEAK WITCH HUNT,” the homepage banner on the right-wing Breitbart blared, adding “POLITICAL PERSECUTION INTENSIFIES.”

Elsewhere, on the far-right Gateway Pundit blog, more than a half-dozen stories were published Thursday night defending Trump.

The coverage harkened back to the years after the 2016 election, when Trump aimed to discredit and destroy institutions such as the FBI for investigating him.

News organizations covered the story by delivering fact-based reporting and analysis, while propaganda outfits such as Fox News disseminated hyperbolic commentary to their audiences.

Thursday night’s coverage did serve as a good reminder that outlets like Fox News can quickly fall under Trump’s hypnosis and snap into MAGA mouthpiece mode.

While Rupert Murdoch might personally hold great contempt for Trump, documents revealed as part of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit showed that he is terrified that airing critical coverage of Trump will result in his supporters abandoning the channel.

And at the end of the day, that is what motivates such outlets. Their business models are not designed to provide fact-based news to audiences.

And that means giving voice to dangerous, dishonest commentary — despite knowing, after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the real-world violence that it has the potential to incite.

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June 8, 2023
India and China are kicking out each others’ journalists in the latest strain on ties | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
—

India and China are fast heading toward having few or no accredited journalists on the ground in each others’ country – the latest sign of fraying relations between the world’s two most populous nations.

New Delhi on Friday called on Chinese authorities to “facilitate the continued presence” of Indian journalists working and reporting in the country and said the two sides “remain in touch” on the issue.

Three of the four journalists from major Indian publications based in China this year have had their credentials revoked by Beijing since April, a person within India’s media with first-hand knowledge told CNN.

Meanwhile, Beijing last week said there was only one remaining Chinese reporter in India due to the country’s “unfair and discriminatory treatment” of its reporters, and that reporter’s visa had yet to be renewed.

“The Chinese side has no choice but to take appropriate counter-measures,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular briefing when asked about a Wall Street Journal report, which first reported on the recent ejections of journalists from both sides.

The situation is the latest flashpoint in the fractious relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors, which has deteriorated in recent years amid rising nationalism in both countries and volatility at their contested border.

The reduction of journalists – which includes both those from China’s government-run state media and major Indian outlets – is likely to further degrade those ties and each countries’ insight into the other’s political and social circumstances, at a time when there is little room for misunderstandings.

Tensions between the two have remained heightened after a long-standing territorial dispute erupted into a deadly clash in Aksai Chin-Ladakh in 2020. India’s defense minister in April accused China of violating existing border agreements and “eroding the entire basis” of bilateral relations.

It’s also not the first time that journalists have been caught in geopolitical cross-hairs in recent years.

China accused the US of “political crackdown” in 2020 after Washington cut the number of Chinese nationals allowed to work in Chinese state media bureaus in the US, citing a “surveillance, harassment, and intimidation” of foreign reporters in China and a need to “level” the playing field.

Beijing hit back by expelling journalists from several major US newspapers. Both sides also imposed visa limitations on each others’ media organizations.

The number of foreign reporters in China has dwindled in recent years, following the American newspaper expulsions, Beijing’s intimidation of reporters with Australian outlets, and long delays in visa approvals within an increasingly restrictive and hostile media environment for foreign reporters.

On Sunday, Xinhua published a first-person account from Hu Xiaoming, the state agency’s New Delhi bureau chief since 2017, describing the “torment” of Chinese reporters’ “visa hassle” in India.

“The Indian government’s brutal treatment has put enormous psychological pressure on Chinese journalists in India,” wrote Hu, who said the Indian government rejected his visa renewal in March on the grounds that he had stayed in the country too long.

Due to India’s visa policy, Xinhua’s New Delhi branch “now has only one journalist working with a valid visa,” the article said.

A spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Friday declined to comment on the number of Chinese journalists in the country when asked in a regular briefing.

“All foreign journalists, including Chinese journalists, have been pursuing journalist activities in India, without any limitations or difficulties in reporting,” spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.

Bagchi did not confirm that any Indian reporters had lost accreditation in China, but said such reporters had faced difficulties doing their jobs there.

The Hindu newspaper in April ran an article saying China’s Foreign Ministry had decided to “freeze” the visa of its Beijing correspondent Ananth Krishnan, as well as that of a second journalist, Anshuman Mishra of Indian public broadcaster Prasar Barahti.

When asked about the measures at that time, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said Beijing was responding to “unfair” treatment of its reporters in recent years, including requiring the Xinhua reporter to leave in March. That situation followed another in 2021, when a reporter for state-run CGTN with a valid visa was told to leave, the official said.

Beijing has not said if there are other Chinese reporters with valid India visas currently outside India

China maintains tight control of its state media, which it views as a vehicle to spread its propaganda messaging overseas.

A Western correspondent who is among many waiting for a visa into China said the situation facing Indian reporters was “in keeping with a pattern we’ve seen in the past few years of connecting the approval of journalist visas in China to the granting of visas for state media reporters in other countries, and to bilateral relations more broadly.”

India, on the other hand, has come under increasing scrutiny for what some observers see as shrinking press freedoms and censorship.

Earlier this year, Indian authorities raided BBC newsrooms in New Delhi and Mumbai, citing allegations of tax evasion, weeks after the country banned a documentary from the British broadcaster that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago.

The latest situation with both countries’ reporters “boils down to the complete erosion of trust between both governments,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a fellow for China studies at the Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru.

Because Chinese reporters are working for state media outlets, New Delhi is also likely looking at them as “state actors,” according to Kewalramani.

If New Delhi was not approving their reporter visas, as Beijing claimed, this could be an example of India’s strategy to “impose costs” on China that do not involve military escalation, but can still put pressure on Beijing to return to the status quo along the border, he said.

Since the 2020 clash there, India has taken several steps to push back against China, including banning social media platform TikTok and other well-known Chinese apps, saying they pose a “threat to sovereignty and integrity,” while also moving to block Chinese telecoms giants Huawei and ZTE from supplying its 5G network.

Amid concerns in New Delhi of China as an increasingly powerful regional force, the Indian government has also bolstered its relationship with the United States, including via the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad – a grouping of Japan, US, India and Australia widely seen as a counterweight to an increasingly assertive China.

China last month boycotted a Group of 20 (G20) tourism meeting hosted by India in the Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, citing its opposition “to holding any kind of G20 meetings in disputed territory.” India and Pakistan both claim the disputed Kashmir region in its entirety.

A regional bloc that has provided a forum for China and India to meet – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – will meet this summer, but virtually, according to an announcement from this year’s host India, ruling out what would have been the next expected opportunity for an in-person, face to face between Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

When it comes to the journalists’ on-the-ground presence, fewer Indian reporters in China will be a blow to more nuanced understanding of the country in India – and could also have a negative impact on Beijing, Kewalramani said.

“For the longest time, Beijing has been telling the Indian government and Indian people to have an independent view of China (separate from) looking through the Western prism,” he said.

“If you are going to deny our reporters access to the country, how do we develop that independent perspective?”

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June 6, 2023
Prince Harry gives tense testimony in historic courtroom battle against British media | CNN Business

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London
CNN
—

Prince Harry has become the first senior British royal to give evidence on a witness stand in 132 years, as his bitter fight against the UK’s tabloid press came to a head in tense courtroom showdown on Tuesday.

Harry is suing a big British newspaper group, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), alleging the publisher’s journalists hacked his phone and used other illicit means to gather information about his life between 1996 and 2009.

Follow live updates from the courtroom here.

As the landmark hearing got underway at the High Court in London, Prince Harry answered questions in a measured, almost hushed tone. He appeared nervous at first, and was at one point asked to raise his voice.

He faced forensic and detailed questioning from MGN’s lawyer, Andrew Green who probed him on the specifics of his claims and occasionally left him scrambling to recall sections of his written statement or find pieces of evidence.

But the Duke of Sussex brought to court an overriding argument that he has previously made on television programs and in podcast interviews: that the media’s intrusion and tactics caused him significant distress and wrecked some of his closest relationships.

And he increasingly asserted himself as the testimony wore on, clashing at times with the publisher’s lawyer as they dissected reams of press coverage and legalese.

“Some editors and journalists do have blood on their hands” for the distress caused to him, Harry told the court at one point – and “perhaps, inadvertently death,” he added, in reference to his mother Princess Diana.

Here’s what we learned as Harry began giving evidence on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s courtroom session touched on dozens of snippets from Harry’s youth, repeated aloud in court as the prince and MGN’s lawyer parsed over the fine details of several news articles.

Harry’s diagnosis with the “kissing disease,” also known as mono; his teenage trips to the pub; his broken thumb and a back injury sustained in a game of polo; his gap year afternoons on the beach; and Princess Diana’s trips to collect him from school – all were all the subject of stories entered into evidence, and each was dissected by Green and the duke.

Overall, the prince alleges that about 140 articles published in titles belonging to Mirror Group contained information gathered using unlawful methods, and 33 of those articles have been selected to be considered at the trial.

In the courtroom on Tuesday, Harry said that “every single article has caused me distress.”

“All of these articles played an important role – a destructive role – in my growing up,” Harry said. The newspapers in question were on constantly display “in every single palace, unfortunately,” while he was growing up. At school, fellow students and others would read the articles, he said. Harry described the level of coverage as “incredibly invasive.”

Green began by attempting to establish whether Harry remembered reading the articles in question at the time of publication. When the duke conceded he could not always recall, Green pressed him on how he could realistically argue they could have affected him so strongly. It was a theme to which Green would often return.

In a written statement entered into the court record on Tuesday, Harry expressed concern that his conversations with family and friends may have been intercepted. He noted that he and his brother, Prince William, “naturally discussed personal aspects of our lives as we trusted each other with the private information we shared.”

He said private information about his life was raised on voicemails left on the phones of his father Charles and his mother Diana.

Harry said that he would discuss “private and sensitive matters regarding our family and personal lives” on voicemails left on the phone of the then Kate Middleton, now the Princess of Wales, he said. The Duke listed a number of other friends with whom he had been in contact, including the late TV presenter Caroline Flack, in his witness statement.

He said he recalled “unusual mobile activity” relating to his voicemails that he dismissed at the time, but now alleges was caused by phone hacking.

“I remember on multiple occasions hearing a voicemail for the first time that wasn’t ‘new’,” he wrote. “I would simply put it down to perhaps a technical glitch, as mobile phones were still relatively new back then, or even just having too many drinks the night before (and having forgotten that I’d listened to it).”

Also in his written statement, Harry argued that the press actively tried to ruin his relationships. “I always felt as if the tabloids wanted me to be single, as I was much more interesting to them and sold more newspapers,” Harry wrote.

“Whilst they would, of course, report on my successes in life, it seemed to me that they took far greater pleasure in knocking me down, time and time again,” he added.

Harry claimed that papers would go about that task by putting “strain” on his relationships and creating distrust between him and his partners. He spoke regularly about one of his former girlfriends, Chelsy Davy, alleging journalists would find out about flight details to photograph her at airports, and would book rooms in the same hotels as the couple when they were on vacation.

The duke evidently believes that continues to be the case since his marriage to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. “This twisted objective is still pursued to this day even though I’m now married,” he wrote.

The atmosphere in court was occasionally tense. “Are we not, Prince Harry, in the realms of total speculation,” Green asked Harry at one point on Tuesday, after an exchange over a story about the teen prince breaking his thumb. Green had quizzed the duke about which specific illicit means of newsgathering Harry was alleging.

“I’m not the one who wrote the article,” Harry replied.

“No, but you’re the one who’s bringing the claim,” Green said.

Earlier in the morning, when discussing Harry’s use of a landline phone to talk to his mother from school, Harry suggested that either that phone or Diana’s could have been hacked.

“That’s just speculation you’ve come up with now,” Green said in response.

The exchanges between Harry and Green ultimately settled into a predictable pattern; when a new article was brought up, Green would press Harry on how he could know that the information was obtained illegally, and not through typical means.

Harry would often respond that he couldn’t fathom how information would have made its way into newspapers without illicit involvement. And he would repeatedly assert that the journalists who wrote the stories, not the subject of the stories, should answer questions about their sourcing.

There were times during the back-and-forth between Harry and Green when the prince appeared uncomfortable or unaware of the minutiae of his case.

Harry at one point joked that he was being put through a “workout” by having to repeatedly reach for bundles of evidence, stacked in folders beside him.

Green offered to arrange for someone to help the prince navigate the evidence, and Harry would often reply “if you say so,” when Green sought to establish details of the articles the prince’s team entered into evidence.

After a brief mid-morning recess, the judge asked Harry to raise his voice to ensure he could be heard throughout the courtroom, telling the duke that a number of observers in the courtroom had struggled to hear him.

The questioning was far more intense and detailed than anything Harry has experienced in the many television and podcast interviews he has given on the topic of press intrusion.

And Green sought to poke a number of holes in Harry’s argument, including that Harry was initially unaware of several specific stories, or that details in those stories could not have come through phone hacking as they had already been reported by other outlets.

In a lengthy witness statement and over the course of an hours-long testimony, the Duke of Sussex touched on a number of topics. They included:

The British government: Harry criticized the current Conservative government in his written testimony, in particular for what he described as an overly close relationship with the media.

“On a national level as, at the moment, our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government – both of which I believe are at rock bottom,” Harry wrote.

He added that Rishi Sunak’s government “clearly have no appetite” for press regulation, “because their friends in the press said so.”

Piers Morgan: The British broadcaster was the editor of The Mirror from 1995 to 2004, and has been intensely critical of the duke and his wife, Meghan, in recent years. “The thought of Piers Morgan and his band of journalists earwigging into my mother’s private and sensitive messages … makes me feel physically sick,” Harry wrote in his evidence.

He claimed that, in response to his lawsuit, “myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation from Piers Morgan,” suggesting that Morgan has taken the stance “in the hope that I will back down.”

Morgan has been unapologetic about his criticism of the pair, calling them “repulsive narcissistic hypocrites” in one December tweet.

The Queen’s concerns: Harry said he had recently learned that Queen Elizabeth II had a member of her staff secretly fly to Australia in 2003, and stay in a house down the road from where Harry was staying on his gap year.

“She was concerned about the extent of the coverage of my trip and wanted someone I knew to be nearby, in case I needed support,” Harry wrote.

At the time Harry had been photographed on the beach with friends – photos that Harry claims must have been obtained illicitly, because he did not understand how any journalists would know he was there.

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June 6, 2023
Embattled CNN chief apologizes to staff after embarrassing profile, vows to ‘fight like hell’ to win back trust | CNN Business

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Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

CNN
—

Chris Licht started CNN’s daily network editorial meeting on Monday by directly addressing the elephant in the room.

“I want to say that I’ve spent the weekend doing a lot of thinking,” Licht told staffers, many of whom had dialed into the meeting specifically to hear from their embattled chief executive.

Employees had not heard from Licht since The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta on Friday published a blistering 15,000-word profile on him. The embarrassing piece, which reverberated all weekend throughout the media industry, called into serious question Licht’s judgment, his ability to lead the network’s staff, and his overall professional capabilities as CNN’s top executive.

In a somber tone, Licht on Monday apologized to employees for having distracted from the work of the newsroom, which has broken a string of recent stories related to the probes into Donald Trump. He said that he “should not be in the news, unless it is taking arrows” for the network. And he said that he did not recognize the person portrayed in portions of The Atlantic article.

Most notably, Licht, who described the experience as “tremendously humbling,” vowed to push on. He said that he would “fight like hell” to win over the trust of the 3,500-person news organization he leads.

Whether Licht can actually win over his army of journalists, however, is far from certain — especially now that he is attempting to reset relations more than a year into his tenure, having alienated much of the employee base and squandered the good will he had when he took the helm of the network.

In the wake of The Atlantic’s explosive story, I’ve spoken with dozens of staffers across the company. There are a wide range of emotions coursing through the halls of CNN. Some staffers are frustrated. Others are angry. Many are sad about the awful state of affairs that has taken hold of an organization they love.

There is one near-universal sentiment, however, that has been communicated to me: Licht has lost the room.

Licht’s Monday remarks, according to the people I’ve spoken with, struck the right tone. He did appear humbled. Staffers could hear the raw emotion in his voice as he spoke. And he invited feedback and offered self-reflection in a way that represented a marked departure from how he has governed in the past.

But Licht, notably, did not apologize for having disparaged CNN’s previous journalism, an omission in his remarks that did not go unnoticed by staffers, particularly the network’s health unit which has been infuriated by the attacks he leveled against the outlet’s Covid-19 coverage. And, overall, the comments did little to move the needle. “Too little, too late,” more than one employee said, summarizing the widespread attitude from staffers that I spoke with.

In the eyes of so many at CNN, there isn’t anything Licht can do at this point to win over their support. They’ve hit the wall with him. As one anchor texted me, in reference to Licht’s announcement on Monday that he will relocate his office to a newsroom floor at Hudson Yards: “We don’t want his office relocated to the 18th floor, we want it relocated out of the building.”

Over the last 72 hours, top anchors and correspondents have reached out to David Leavy, CNN’s newly installed chief operating officer and, more importantly, the trusted lieutenant of Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav, to offer their candid thoughts about Licht’s leadership. Suffice to say, in these conversations, CNN journalists have not been shy in criticizing Licht.

Zaslav, I’m told, understands the dire state of affairs at his news network. He wouldn’t have dispatched his top lieutenant before the publication of The Atlantic piece if he did not believe there was a problem. And the publication of the magazine’s article added gasoline to the raging fire. “[Zaslav] had the same reaction that everyone else did to that article,” a person familiar with the WBD chief’s thinking told me. A second person familiar with Zaslav’s thinking said the WBD boss was not happy about The Atlantic story and that he is not blind to what is transpiring at CNN.

Whether CNN’s corporate ownership will force a change remains to be seen. Several media executives that I have spoken with in recent days have all said that it is hard to see how Zaslav doesn’t do something. WBD put out a generic statement expressing lukewarm support for Licht’s leadership on Friday, though that was before Leavy heard from much of the staff.

In the immediate future, I’m told, Leavy is counseling Licht and CNN leadership’s primary goal is to stabilize the ship. Licht spent much of Monday having one-on-one conversations with top talent and executives. Beyond repairing relationships with staff, the hope is to get Licht out of the news and to refocus the attention on CNN’s newsroom.

That attitude was reflected by Licht in his Monday remarks to employees. “Only the journalism matters,” Licht said. “And I will not be distracted from that North Star.”

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June 5, 2023
Glitches, echoes and ‘melting the servers’ crash DeSantis’ campaign launch on Twitter | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
—

Twitter’s livestream event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis crashed and was delayed on Wednesday as hundreds of thousands of users logged on to hear DeSantis announce his bid for the White House.

Sound from the livestream event — which was held on Twitter Spaces and hosted by owner Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks — cut in and out in the first minutes after starting.

“We’ve got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers,” Sacks said at one point.

More than 500,000 Twitter users joined the event, which was ultimately ended and then restarted, delaying DeSantis’ announcement by nearly half an hour. When the event was relaunched using Sacks’ account, only around 250,000 users ultimately listened in.

Twitter has faced a variety of outages and technical issues since Musk took over the platform late last year. Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk laid off large numbers of technical and other staff and reduced Twitter’s server capacity in an effort to cut costs.

In recent months, Twitter has faced multiple service outages that affected the ability of thousands of users to access the site, to view images and to read tweets on their timelines. Users have also previously reported issues with the app’s two-factor authentication tool, seeing replies listed above a tweet rather than below it and seeing old tweets show up repeatedly in their feed or mentions.

Musk and Sacks admitted on Wednesday that the limited capacity of Twitter’s servers played into the issues it faced getting the DeSantis event underway. “I think you broke the internet there,” Sacks said when the event was relaunched.

The pair added that Musk’s following of more than 140 million users may have also contributed to the issue. “I think it crashed because when you multiply a half-million people in a room by an account with over 100 million followers, which is Elon’s account, I think that creates just a scalability level that was unprecedented,” Sacks said.

Attempting to spin the launch issue in a positive direction, Sacks said: “You know you’re breaking new ground when there’s bugs and scaling issues.”

Twitter’s Spaces product was not necessarily built to host events with hundreds of thousands of listeners. Most other Spaces have — at most — several hundred listeners at a time. Spaces was described as a “prototype” and “janky” tool by a former Twitter employee familiar with its development.

“Spaces was largely a prototype, not a finished product,” the former employee told CNN. “It’s a beta test that never ended.”

They added that Spaces relies on a mix of Twitter’s technical infrastructure and Amazon Web Services servers, “things that aren’t intended to handle Twitter-scale traffic.”

Twitter acquired the video streaming platform Periscope in 2015. The former employee said Twitter Spaces had been built on Periscope’s existing infrastructure and not integrated with Twitter properly — which likely contributed to Wednesday’s technical problems.

After restarting, the event ran for close to an hour. Sacks acknowledged the glitch again at the end, saying, “It’s not how you started, it’s how you finish and we finished strong.”

–CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.

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May 24, 2023
DeSantis to open presidential bid by out-Trumping Trump | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter on Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party and an accelerating conservative media revolution.

Florida’s governor will finally jump into the race by throwing down a gauntlet to ex-President Donald Trump with a launch strategy that frames him as the true anti-establishment rebel in the race who is willing to crush the conventions of traditional presidential politics.

His choice of venue on Twitter Spaces – the site’s audio platform – also exemplifies the Trump-era GOP’s transformation into a party that rewards gesture politics and whose activists respond to the unmoderated social media jungle while disdaining traditional standards of conduct and governance.

But while Twitter’s attractiveness to conservative voters under Musk, who has 141 million followers, means DeSantis may be making a shrewd move in a GOP primary, he could further damage an already questionable reputation among more moderate voters he’d need in a general election by appearing on an increasingly polarizing platform.

That’s because Twitter, which once offered a platform for democratic movements in the Arab Spring, has been transformed by its new owner into a febrile circus of untamed free speech, conspiracy theories and unverifiable information. Only this week, a fake image of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral, causing a blip on the stock market in a potential preview of a presidential campaign likely to be plagued by misinformation and AI-generated falsehoods. Musk has, meanwhile, shown a willingness to ignite his own Twitter infernos, so his increasingly prominent role suggests the 2024 presidential race could be just as turbulent as the 2016 and 2020 editions, which were marked by Trump’s extreme rhetoric and voter fraud accusations.

Another mind-bending twist to election season came on Tuesday with the former president’s virtual court appearance in a case arising out of a hush money payment to a former adult film star in which he has already pleaded not guilty. Judge Juan Merchan set a trial date for March 25, 2024 – in the middle of primary season. The timetable raises the prospect that Trump could use the trial as a stage to drive home his claim that he’s a victim of political persecution. But it also creates a risk for Trump that he could be criminally convicted while he’s still fighting for the GOP nomination – an extraordinary and unprecedented scenario.

By choosing Twitter to make his own splash, DeSantis appears to be targeting a dramatic moment that could restore a sense of momentum to GOP primary aspirations that were soaring six months ago but that have been undermined by his own missteps and Trump’s recent political rebound.

In embracing Musk, DeSantis is associating himself with a hero of conservatives who have long claimed they are being censored on social media. He’s taking a swipe at Trump, who was banned from tweeting by the company’s previous ownership and has so far preferred the home ground of his own platform, Truth Social, even after Musk restored his account. Trump’s 2016 campaign and entire presidency unfolded in a torrent of stream of consciousness tweets that he used to great effect – even if he left his nation stressed and exhausted.

DeSantis is taking an ostentatious jab at traditional media, which is reviled by many conservatives, by showing he is ready to bypass regular conventions of presidential campaigns. His launch will also create a sharp contrast with Trump’s own rambling, and even boring, campaign opening speech at Mar-a-Lago in November, which lacked any sense of political dynamism.

The Florida governor will also show how far the GOP has traveled from its roots as a bastion of tradition and the extent to which the internet and the fragmentation of the media into partisan blocks has changed presidential campaigns. In 1979, for instance, Ronald Reagan announced his presidential bid with a grandfatherly speech from a cozy study that looked like the inside of a country club. George W. Bush set off on the road to the White House 20 years later from a farm in Iowa. Now the best way to reach the most GOP voters is online.

By breaking the mold of presidential announcements, DeSantis is borrowing from Trump’s unconventional playbook. One lesson of the 45th president’s riotous political career is that anything calculated to offend liberals and mainstream media commentators is often wildly popular with grassroots GOP primary voters.

DeSantis is already running to the right of Trump by targeting what he calls “woke” measures on diversity, equity and inclusion and staking out conservative positions on social issues. Now, he’s also seeking to steal Trump’s reputation as the great disruptor.

The DeSantis announcement will also help enshrine an emerging power shift in conservative media. His choice of Twitter recognizes the importance of the social network to right-wing voters under Musk and may quicken the shift away from Fox News as the most dynamic platform for the new champions of the conservative movement. It comes after the top-rated Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he’d relaunch his show on Twitter after being ousted from Rupert Murdoch’s primetime line-up after the firm paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit linked to its promotion of election lies and misinformation after the 2020 election.

With his appearance, DeSantis is driving home his argument that social media networks have sought to oppress the speech of conservatives – a popular viewpoint on the right. In his autobiography “The Courage to be Free,” DeSantis slammed companies like Facebook and Twitter, under its previous owners, which he said made “censorship decisions that always seem to err on the side of leftist orthodoxy, they distort the American political system because so much political speech now takes place on these supposedly open platforms.”

Still, DeSantis is unlikely to turn his back on Fox, which has offered him plentiful air time – a possible sign the Murdoch family is beginning to tire of the ex-president.

The DeSantis launch strategy will not come without risks. The untamed environment of Twitter and his association with Musk threaten to undermine the case DeSantis has been implicitly making to Republican voters – that he can offer a more stable and disciplined style of leadership than that shown by Trump in his tempestuous White House term.

And by avoiding the kind of big, staged political announcement in front of a large crowd, DeSantis risks emboldening Trump’s mocking critique that the Florida governor is draining support by the day, following polls that show him falling further behind the former president, albeit ahead of candidates like South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

The virtual announcement could also fuel claims by Trump that his one-time protégé, whom he now accuses of betrayal for running for president, lacks the political skills to compete on a less controlled stage. A pro-Trump super PAC mocked DeSantis ahead of his online announcement, calling it “one of the most out-of-touch campaign launches in modern history.”

“The only thing less relatable than a niche campaign launch on Twitter, is DeSantis’ after party at the uber elite Four Seasons resort in Miami,” MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC, said in a statement Tuesday.

People familiar with the DeSantis campaign blueprint, however, indicated the Florida governor would soon launch a relentless blitz of campaign appearances in key swing states, intended to contrast his energy with that of his older rivals, Trump and President Joe Biden.

Trump’s team and his allies are planning an aggressive operation to try to drown out the DeSantis launch on Wednesday. MAGA Inc. is already slamming the Florida governor for his early support of the Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic as it seeks to undermine his credibility among conservatives who balked at government health advice.

But this is yet another sign of how head-spinning the Republican primary could get. After all, it was Trump who once claimed all the credit for developing the vaccine during his presidency. Now his supporters are condemning DeSantis for trying to save lives with it.

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May 23, 2023
Jason Sudeikis says he changed his Ted Lasso character because of Donald Trump | CNN

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CNN
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Ted Lasso is a nicer character because of Donald Trump.

That’s according to star and creator Jason Sudeikis, who plays the loveable, folksy coach on the Apple TV+ series.

In an interview with The Guardian’s The Observer, Sudeikis said he was having dinner with his then romantic partner Olivia Wilde in 2015 when he “wondered if he could revisit a character called Ted Lasso that he had created for a comedy skit two years earlier.”

Lasso, according to Sudekis, was originally “belligerent.” Growing political tensions at the time inspired him to develop the character in a new direction.

“It was the culture we were living in,” Sudeikis said. “I’m not terribly active online and it even affected me. Then you have Donald Trump coming down the escalator. I was like, ‘OK, this is silly,’ and then what he unlocked in people… I hated how people weren’t listening to one another. Things became very binary and I don’t think that’s the way the world works. And, as a new parent – we had our son Otis in 2014 – it was like, ‘Boy, I don’t want to add to this.’ Yeah, I just didn’t want to portray it.”

As a result, the character became the warm, affable, positive quote machine viewers first came to love at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

Sudeikis and some of the other members of the “Ted Lasso” cast recently visited President Joe Biden at the White House in March for a discussion about mental health.

While there, the star called the character he plays “wish-fulfilment.”

“You know, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’” Sudeikis told The Observer, paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi. “Well, how about, ‘Write the change you want to see in the world’? Part of the joy of getting to do this neat job I’ve got to do is the wish-fulfilment. Not just getting to play the characters, but also, what do you want to put out there into the world?”

The third season of “Ted Lasso” is currently streaming on Apple TV+. The show is produced by Warner Bros. Television, which like CNN is part of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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May 15, 2023
Mysterious rumblings were recorded in Earth’s stratosphere | CNN

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CNN
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Giant solar balloons were sent 70,000 feet up in the air to record sounds of Earth’s stratosphere — and the microphones picked up some unexpected sounds.

The stratosphere is the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere, and its lower level contains the ozone layer that absorbs and scatters the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, according to NASA. The thin, dry air of the stratosphere is where jet aircraft and weather balloons reach their maximum altitude, and the relatively calm atmospheric layer is rarely disturbed by turbulence.

Daniel Bowman, principal scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, was inspired in graduate school to explore the soundscape of the stratosphere after being introduced to the low-frequency sounds that are generated by volcanoes. Known as infrasound, the phenomenon is inaudible to the human ear.

Bowman and his friends had previously flown cameras on weather balloons “to take pictures of the black sky above and the Earth far below” and successfully built their own solar balloon.

He proposed attaching infrasound recorders to balloons to record the sounds of volcanoes. But then he and his adviser Jonathan Lees of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “realized that no one had tried to put microphones on stratospheric balloons for half a century, so we pivoted to exploring what this new platform could do,” Bowman said. Lees is a professor of Earth, marine and environmental sciences who researches seismology and volcanology.

The balloons can take sensors twice as high as commercial jets can fly.

“On our solar balloons, we have recorded surface and buried chemical explosions, thunder, ocean waves colliding, propeller aircraft, city sounds, suborbital rocket launches, earthquakes, and maybe even freight trains and jet aircraft,” Bowman said via email. “We’ve also recorded sounds whose origin is unclear.”

The findings were shared Thursday at the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago.

A recording shared by Bowman from a NASA balloon that circled Antarctica contains infrasound of colliding ocean waves, which sounds like continual sighing. But other crackles and rustling have unknown origins.

Listen to the sounds of the stratosphere

Solar balloons captured a multitude of sounds in the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere, including colliding ocean waves — as well as sounds with unidentified origins.

Source: Daniel Bowman/Sandia National Laboratories

In the stratosphere, “there are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” Bowman said.

Bowman and his collaborators have conducted research using NASA balloons and other flight providers, but they decided to build their own balloons, each spanning about 19.7 to 23 feet (6 to 7 meters) across.

The supplies can be found at hardware and pyrotechnic supply stores, and the balloons can be assembled on a basketball court.

“Each balloon is made of painter’s plastic, shipping tape, and charcoal dust,” Bowman said via email. “They cost about $50 to make and a team of two can build one in about 3.5 hours. One simply brings it out to a field on a sunny day and fills it up with air, and it will carry a pound of payload to about 70,000 ft.”

The charcoal dust is used inside the balloons to darken them, and when the sun shines on the dark balloons, the air inside them warms up and becomes buoyant. The inexpensive and easy DIY design means the researchers can release multiple balloons to collect as much data as possible.

“Really, a group of high schoolers with access to the school gym could build a solar balloon, and there’s even a cellphone app called RedVox that can record infrasound,” Bowman said.

Bowman estimated that he launched several dozen solar balloons to collect infrasound recordings between 2016 and April of this year. Microbarometers, originally designed to monitor volcanoes, were attached to the balloons to record low-frequency sounds.

The researchers tracked their balloons using GPS, since they can travel for hundreds of miles and land in inconvenient locations.

The longest flight so far was 44 days aboard a NASA helium balloon, which recorded 19 days worth of data before the batteries on the microphone died. Meanwhile, solar balloon flights tend to last about 14 hours during the summer and land once the sun sets.

The advantage of the high altitude reached by the balloons means that noise levels are lower and the detection range is increased — and the whole Earth is accessible. But the balloons also present challenges for researchers. The stratosphere is a harsh environment with wild temperature fluctuations between heat and cold.

“Solar balloons are a bit sluggish, and we’ve wrecked a few on bushes when trying to launch them,” Bowman said. “We’ve had to hike down into canyons and across mountains to get our payloads. Once, our Oklahoma State colleagues actually had a balloon land in a field, spend the night, and launch itself back in the air to fly another whole day!”

Lessons learned from multiple balloon flights have somewhat eased the process, but now the greatest challenge for researchers is identifying the signals recorded during the flights.

“There are many flights with signals whose origin we do not understand,” Bowman said. “They are almost certainly mundane, maybe a patch of turbulence, a distant severe storm, or some sort of human object like a freight train — but it’s hard to tell what is going on sometimes due to the lack of data up there.”

Sarah Albert, a geophysicist at Sandia National Laboratories, has investigated a “sound channel” — a conduit that carries sounds across great distances through the atmosphere — located at the altitudes Bowman studies. Her recordings have captured rocket launches and other unidentified rumblings.

“It may be that sound gets trapped in the channel and echoes around until it’s completely garbled,” Bowman said. “But whether it is near and fairly quiet (like a patch of turbulence) or distant and loud (like a faraway storm) is not clear yet.”

Bowman and Albert will continue to investigate the aerial sound channel and try to determine where the stratosphere’s rumbles are originating — and why some flights record them while others don’t.

Bowman is eager to understand the soundscape of the stratosphere and unlock key features, like variability across seasons and locations.

It’s possible that helium-filled versions of these balloons could one day be used to explore other planets like Venus, carrying scientific instruments above or within the planet’s clouds for a few days as a test flight for larger, more complex missions.

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May 11, 2023
Lachlan Murdoch: No change in strategy at Fox News | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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Despite a turbulent and expensive few weeks, Fox News isn’t changing course.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said there will be no change in strategy at the company’s top rated cable news network, despite the firing of its top rated anchor Tucker Carlson and a massive $787.5 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems that resulted in the company swinging to a loss in the just completed period.

“There is no change to our programming strategy at Fox News,” Murdoch said in response to an analyst who asked about Carlson’s ouster during the investor call Tuesday to discuss its financial results.

Murdoch described Fox News as “obviously a successful” and suggested Carlson’s firing was a tweaking of its strategy, not a departure from it.

“As always, we are adjusting our programming and lineup and that is what we continue to do,” Murdoch said.

His comments came after the company reported a $50 million net loss for the just completed quarter, compared to $290 million in profit a year earlier.

The reason was a $719 million charge including the cost of the Dominion settlement, other legal settlements related to its news division and other legal costs, including attorney fees, which was partly offset by equity earnings of it affiliates and a change in the market value of some of its investments.

The earnings statement didn’t mention Dominion Voting Systems, although it does refer to charges related to legal settlement costs at Fox News Media. On the company’s call with investors Murdoch referred to the settlement with Dominion as in the best interest of the company and its shareholders, given rulings by the Delaware court that he said limited its defense. He said going to trial could have led to two to three years of appeals.

“We’re proud of our Fox News team, the exceptional quality of their journalism and their stewardship of the Fox News brand,” he said. “So as we look ahead, we are confident in the strength of the Fox brands and the strength of our balance sheet.”

And he again defended the company’s post-election coverage of the false conspiracy theories made against Dominion, even though internal communications among Fox anchors made public during the discovery process showed many of them didn’t believe the claims being made.

“We always acted as a news organization reporting on the newsworthy events of the day,” Murdoch told investors Tuesday. “Now we have been and remain confident in the merits of our position that the first amendment protects a news organization’s reporting and allegations being made by a sitting president of the United States. However, the Delaware court severely limited our defenses and trial through pre-trial rulings.”

Fox did not have to apologize or admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement in Dominion’s defamation suit against it, although its statement did say it acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

Fox still faces a lawsuit from another voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Murdoch told investors that case is “fundamentally different” from the Dominion case and that Fox will have greater defenses available to it than in the Delaware court hearing the Dominion case. He predicted that case won’t go to trial until 2025.

The Dominion settlement was reached on April 18, but it was still reported in Fox’s fiscal third quarter, which concluded March 31. Excluding the legal costs and other special items reported Tuesday, it was a pretty good financial quarter for Fox.

It reported adjusted earnings of $494 million, or 94 cents a share, up from $459 million a year earlier. That was better than the 87 cents a share forecast by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. The company was helped by the profits and revenue gain it received from airing this year’s Super Bowl.

Revenue at the company rose 18% to $4.1 billion, slightly higher than analysts’ forecasts. Most of that gain was due to a 43% surge in advertising revenue, helped greatly by $650 million in Super Bowl ads. Fox did not broadcast the Super Bowl in 2022.

Fox had plenty of money available to pay the settlement. It said it had $4.1 billion in cash and cash equivalent on hand as of March 30, about three weeks before the settlement was reached. It also announced it repurchased $1.8 billion of its shares in the nine months ending March 31, as part of a $7 billion share repurchase plan. So far, Fox has repurchased $4.4 billion worth of shares as part of its plan.

Murdoch said Fox is better positioned than many other media companies to ride out the delays and lost revenue that could take place from a prolonged strike by the Writers Guild of America. Some programming, such as late night shows, have already gone dark due to the strike that started last week, and production on other shows has been halted.

But Murdoch said the fact that Fox has more of its revenue and profit coming from sports and news, which are not affected by the strike, puts it in a better position.

“Our healthy balance of scripted and unscripted content on the network puts us in a tremendous position,” he said.

The hit from the settlement was well known by investors ahead of the report. But even with the better than expected results, Fox

(FOX) shares were up only about 1% in trading at the market open following the report.

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May 9, 2023
Jennifer Coolidge shows support for writers’ strike in MTV Movie & TV Awards acceptance speech | CNN

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CNN
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Jennifer Coolidge loves two things: popcorn and screenwriters.

Coolidge made this clear in a pre-recorded speech shown during Sunday’s MTV Movie & TV Awards broadcast, where the “White Lotus” star accepted a special Comedic Genius award.

After commenting on the irony that the golden popcorn statuette is that of her favorite food (she was later seen snacking on some real popcorn while accepting another award for best frightened performance), Coolidge showed some love to the members of the Writers Guild of America, who are currently on strike.

“Almost all great comedy starts with great writers and I just think that as a proud member of SAG (the Screen Actors Guild), I stand here before you tonight side by side with my sisters and brothers from the WGA that are fighting right now, fighting for the rights of artists everywhere,” Coolidge said.

She went to quote William Shakespeare, saying, “the play is the thing.”

“I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think it’s EVERYTHING,” she concluded, before breaking out in a dance while “Jump Around” by House of Pain played in the background.

Joseph Quinn, who won best breakthrough performance for his role of Eddie Munson in Season 4 of “Stranger Things,” also referenced the ongoing strike, saying in his pre-recorded speech, “being a writer is a hard job, and it deserves respect.”

Pedro Pascal gave a shout-out to writers as well, while accepting the best show award for “The Last of Us” on behalf of showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. “We’re standing in solidarity with the WGA that is fighting very hard for fair wages,” he said.

Members of the WGA began picketing on May 2 after the guild and the major studios and streamers failed to reach a deal on a new contract. The strike has already affected numerous productions, including the MTV Movie & TV Awards itself.

Drew Barrymore stepped down from her hosting duties to support the writers, and a pre-taped broadcast aired instead of what was supposed to be a live show after the WGA West announced plans to picket outside the Los Angeles event venue. Pre-recorded bits featuring Barrymore and pre-taped speeches by winners were aired, with clips of past MTV Movie & TV Award moments filling the space in between award handouts.

Other productions impacted by the strike include all of the network late night shows, which went dark on Tuesday as the strike began, along with “Saturday Night Live,” which canceled this weekend’s show that would’ve seen alum Pete Davidson returning as host.

Netflix’s “Stranger Things” also announced on Saturday that they’ve halted production on Season 5 due to the strike, further delaying the highly anticipated final season.

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May 7, 2023
‘Silo’ explores a dystopian world where residents can’t go outside (but viewers might want to) | CNN

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CNN
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“Silo” is an unfortunately apt name for a series that feels as if it’s slowly spinning in circles, set in another dystopian future where the lingering remnants of humankind grapple with how they got there and what they do next. Apple TV+ has taken some big sci-fi bets (see “Foundation”), but despite its provocative themes this series inspires a little too much curiosity about when and how to find the exit.

“We do not know who built the silo” and “We do not know when it will be safe to go outside” are part of the mantra repeated by those living in this confined space, who only know that the domicile was built more than 100 years earlier and that it’s likely certain death if they’re forced to “clean,” or venture outside into what appears to be a forbidding wasteland.

Based on the book series by Hugh Howey, the series inspires comparisons to cinematic visions of a world where those in authority aren’t sharing everything with its populace, from “Soylent Green” (was that really a half-century ago?) to “Snowpiercer,” another series (after the movie) boxed in by the parameters of its premise.

Adapted by producer Graham Yost (“Justified”), “Silo” boasts an impressive cast, and exhibits a willingness to introduce and then shed major characters.

At its core is Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), a technical genius who keeps the silo’s life-support systems functioning, who begins asking probing and uncomfortable questions after a personal loss involving a mysterious death.

Her investigation doesn’t sit well with the bureaucratic figures running the place (Tim Robbins and Common key among them), who clearly know more than they’re sharing with the population in an effort to keep the silo’s residents docile and manageable. That includes rules about who gets to procreate in an effort to sustain and protect this society’s limited resources.

While the 10-episode season begins with a fair amount of momentum, featuring Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo at the outset, forward progress pretty quickly slows to a crawl. That does foster suspense about what’s actually outside, but it doesn’t do a whole lot to propel the audience through this season, much less stoke excitement for another.

Building this sort of elaborate world takes some time, and the inherent warnings about authoritarianism and blindly trusting the government give the series a certain real-world resonance. (As a footnote, the dystopian backdrop has a close cousin in “Black Knight,” a South Korean series premiering on Netflix in May, so there’s a lot of that going around.)

The inherent mystery here, however, feels stretched to the point of strained, exacerbated by characters that don’t consistently pop. When Common’s smooth-talking security enforcer ominously says, “We all work for the good of the silo,” for viewers who actually do have the option of going outside, it’s reason to consider how well a plodding exercise like “Silo” really works for the good of us.

“Silo” premieres May 5 on Apple TV+. (Disclosure: Lowry’s wife works for a unit of Apple.)

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May 5, 2023
Biden calls for release of wrongfully detained Americans abroad during White House Correspondents Dinner | CNN Politics

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CNN
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President Joe Biden called for the release of detained journalists and citizens abroad at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, before poking fun at everything from his age to Elon Musk.

“Let me start on a serious note,” Biden said, “members of our administration are here to send a message to the country and, quite frankly, to the world. The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.”

The audience at the Washington Hilton represented a “who’s who” of officials within the Biden administration, with some top White House officials seated at the dais. First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff were all in attendance Saturday evening. The event also boasted a number of high-profile celebrity guests like Chrissy Teigen and John Legend.

Beyond one-liners, the president’s remarks were calibrated to his reelection campaign priorities and the topical issues he often discusses at the podium – such as the economy and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

But Biden took special care to address the issue of wrongfully detained Americans abroad.

Saturday’s dinner took place about a month after the arrest of American citizen Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent based in Moscow. The United States has designated him as wrongfully detained by Russia.

“Tonight, our message is this: Journalism is not a crime,” Biden said Saturday.

Earlier this week, the US issued new sanctions on groups in Russia and Iran accused of taking Americans hostage as the Biden administration works to prevent more captive-taking and potentially secure the release of citizens currently being detained.

This year’s dinner also comes amid a media industry reckoning. The state of the economy, fears of a recession and dried up investment capital have played a large part in what’s driven the dramatic industry changes over the last several months. But other struggles, like high-profile legal issues and ratings woes, have also been apparent.

Typically, presidential speechwriters work through remarks for a few weeks. Last year, at his first correspondents dinner since becoming president, Biden told his team he envisioned an address that went beyond just a series of one-liners, wisecracks and gags – a tactic he employed again Saturday night.

Still, the dinner gave Biden a rare chance to flex his comedic muscles in front of entertainers and members of the media, an opportunity he used to make jokes about his predecessor’s recent scandals.

Biden joked he was offered $10 to keep his speech under ten minutes. “That’s a switch, a president being offered hush money,” he quipped in reference to Trump’s indictment in an alleged hush money scheme.

In just the last two weeks, the media industry has been hit by multiple high-profile terminations, layoffs and the complete shut down of a news organization.

Host Tucker Carlson and Fox News severed ties. Anchor Don Lemon and CNN parted ways. Comcast announced NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell was leaving company after an outside investigation “into a complaint of inappropriate conduct.” Vice Media announced layoffs and the cancellation of its acclaimed program “Vice News Tonight.” BuzzFeed News shut down.

In pictures: The history of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

The event raises funds for the White House Correspondents’ Association scholarship fund and offers a rare opportunity for journalists and politicians to rub elbows – but also features remarks from a comedian often tasked with walking a fine line between gentle ribbing and legitimate criticism.

This year’s dinner headliner was “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood Jr., who took aim at both parties and the media as he criticized politics in Washington.

As Biden stepped away from the podium to make room for Wood, the comedian quipped: “Real quick, Mr. President. I think you left some of your classified documents up here,” in reference to the classified documents found in Biden’s Delaware home.

Wood also joked about Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, the oustings of Carlson and Lemon, the ethics scandal around Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Trump, who he dubbed the “king of scandals.”

“Keeping up with Trump scandals is like watching Star Wars movies,” he said. “You got to watch the third one to understand the first one, then you got – you can’t miss the second one because it’s got Easter eggs for the fifth one.”

In 2018, comedian Michelle Wolf drew fire after she delivered a brutal monologue taking the Trump administration to task for its positions on abortion, press access and coverage of the beleaguered White House.

This year’s dinner comes weeks after Biden signed legislation to end the national emergency for Covid-19. Attendees were still required to submit proof of a negative Covid test before the event.

Last year’s dinner was the first time the gala had been held since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden was the first president to address the dinner’s attendees in six years, after former President Donald Trump famously boycotted the event throughout his tenure in office.

Biden last year used the appearance to loudly affirm his belief in a free press – a bold contrast to a predecessor who labeled reporters the “enemy of the people.”

This story has been updated with additional information Saturday.

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April 29, 2023
Wrexham: An intoxicating tale of Hollywood glamor and sporting romance | CNN

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CNN
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“It’s an underdog story,” says Gene Warman, an Ohio native sitting in a bar with his son in a city neither had heard of this time last year. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

Warman and his 22-year-old son Andrew are on a four-day trip from the US to watch their new-found love, Wrexham AFC. They flew into London the previous day and embarked on a four-hour, 183-mile drive to the northeast of Wales. Jetlag cannot be countenanced on a sacred trip such as this.

In an often brutal and bleak world, the recent resurgence of Wrexham, the city as well as the soccer club, lifts the soul. Tourists smile when asked for their thoughts on this small industrial city near the English-Welsh border, brought to the world’s attention by the soccer club’s owners, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Locals have always loved talking about their club, the beating heart of this working-class community, but now there’s a confidence and, crucially, optimism, when doing so.

In loaning the club their money – over £3 million ($3.7 million) according to the club’s accounts – and the offshoots of their fame, Reynolds and McElhenney have brought hope to a city and its people. The future is exciting when you’re no longer fighting for survival.

Grey clouds cocoon the city on the eve of the biggest match in the club’s recent history. The nearby mountains contributing to the rain threat that never materializes. It is not an April day for the outdoors, but a perfect one for what has arguably become the most well-known pub in Wales, the No. 1 stop on the Wrexham tourist trail.

The Warmans have yet to venture into the center of the city, instead heading first to the Turf, a pub where the club was founded.

Those who have watched “Welcome to Wrexham,” the TV documentary which follows the owners’ 2021 takeover and first season in charge, need no explanation as to why this pub a few steps away from the main entrance of the stadium is a must-see for visitors.

From the first episode, landlord Wayne Jones and his customers are held as an example of how Wrexham AFC is woven into the fabric of people’s lives.

The pub looks much like it does on television: the food van in the parking lot, the painted red-brick wall with fans’ signatures, framed football shirts and other soccer memorabilia hanging from walls and pictures of Reynolds and McElhenney dotted around.

What has changed, as is the case for a lot of businesses in the city, is that there are more customers than ever. Trade has, Jones says, “practically doubled” since the documentary was first aired. A city that was struggling economically, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, is now, he says, thriving.

“I dread to think where we would’ve been had Ryan and Rob not come in,” says Jones, a man who has become accustomed to interviews, this being his fourth of a day that has just become afternoon.

The Turf is full of life, locals mixing with tourists who want to drink at the pub they know from the show. Jones, a season ticket holder, says he scoffed at warnings from McElhenney to prepare for tourists once the documentary was aired. “As much as I love this town, we are just a small industrial town in northeast Wales,” he says. “But they’ve nailed it.”

Standing at the bar, sipping beers bought for them by a regular, are Los Angeles-based businessmen Rajat Bhattacharya and Arun Mahtani. The pair have tickets to watch Liverpool play the next day and felt they had to visit Wrexham. At a table a few meters away are husband and wife Thania and Jeff LaMirand from Washington, making Wrexham part of a short trip to Europe which will also encompass a few days in Madrid, Spain. There are no longer run-of-the-mill days at the Turf.

Jones says on a quiet day about 20 to 30 tourists visit the pub. “It’s every day, without fail,” he says, breaking out into a disbelieving smile.

“It’s a bit bonkers that we’re getting people from Colorado and Texas. There are five chaps just walked in now from Alabama. There’s a guy on the plane over from Alabama.

“The people that I’ve spoken to have said they fell in love with the documentary.

“The majority of them said they fell in love with the community, and it’s quite clever from Robert and Ryan because they could have just made another pure football documentary … But they focused on the town and Rob said to me, ‘I knew that if I could get Americans to see the town, they could relate to the people and then they’d want to be a part of it.’ And that’s exactly what’s happened.”

Wales was conquered by England in the 13th century, but the two countries would not be united politically until the 16th century.

It is a long, sometimes bloody history; 200 years of English invasions and Welsh revolts before the country was completely conquered and, though peaceful for hundreds of years, the relationship between the two neighbors is still complicated. They are different countries sharing common laws, friends for the most part despite cultural differences, yet like for many a once conquered nation, the past is not forgotten.

For north Walians, there is an added twist. Not only have they often felt a shadow looming over them from the bigger, more powerful neighbor to the east, but a disconnect with compatriots in the south, too.

There is a sense that the focus has always been on the south, almost everything is there: the capital city (Cardiff), the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament), the national stadium, the country’s two biggest cities and, in fact, most of the population. And there is no major highway from Cardiff to north Wales, just a winding trunk highway – an often-beautiful route, but not a quick one.

But now, there’s Wrexham with a story that, in hindsight, feels as if it was just waiting for Hollywood. The oldest soccer club in Wales, the third-oldest professional club in the world, saved from the brink by its fans; the club that was once in the higher echelons of the English football league system before it tumbled into the fifth tier of the English game, its fortunes taking a downturn both on and off the pitch. Then came Reynolds and McElhenney, with money, a plan and stardust.

“The searchlight has changed,” says Elen-Mai Nefydd, head of Welsh medium academic development at the city’s university, named after the medieval Welsh nationalist leader Owain Glyndwr.

“There hadn’t been much interest in us, to the point where lots of people who live in Wrexham in the past would have preferred to say, ‘I live in northeast Wales, not far from Chester’ … to the point where people would almost bypass the name.”

Nefydd talks of there being an “energy” among the locality, mainly thanks to the soccer club, but also because of the city status given to Wrexham in 2022, plans to redevelop the city center and the “Wrexham Gateway project,” which aims to regenerate an area of the city that includes building a new stand at the club’s Racecourse Ground, which will increase the stadium’s capacity to over 15,000.

“There’s a proudness around saying now that you’re from Wrexham and that’s a huge shift, isn’t it, to be in a position where you’ve almost masked where you’re from to being proud of where you live and work,” she says.

A Welsh speaker, Nefydd talks passionately about the language, which is spoken by nearly 30% of the population, according to the 2022 Annual Population Survey (APS), which is around 900,600 people.

Throughout the documentary, soccer terminology is explained in English, American English and Welsh. One episode solely focuses on Wales’ history, all of which, says Nefydd, has “highlighted the importance of the language” and contributed to an “exceptional” confidence in the country for its language and culture.

“What Rob and Ryan have done is they’ve opened people’s eyes to the fact that we are not a dying language,” she says. “We’re a language that’s alive. People socialize in Welsh, they are educated in Welsh, we work in Welsh. If it takes two Hollywood stars to do that, then fantastic.”

Mark Griffiths is an English teacher and for nearly 40 years has been commentating on Wrexham games in his spare time. His voice can be heard on matchdays via the club’s website, and features in the podcast, ‘Final Whistle,’ and the local radio station, Calon FM.

For years, Griffiths has been overseeing the hashtag ‘Ask Wrexham’ ‘#askwxm’ on Twitter to generate interaction with listeners. For the most part, the same diehard 20 fans would take part, he says, and on matchdays there would be no questions at all because everyone would be at the match. But now, times have changed.

“The hashtag is completely out of control,” the 54-year-old says, explaining that he struggles to answer all the questions he receives even after introducing a one-hour weekly podcast specifically for that purpose.

It will come as no surprise to read that Griffiths has featured in “Welcome to Wrexham.” In 18 episodes, the show has managed to get viewers “hooked” on the city, he says, describing the show as McElhenney’s “hymn to the working class.”

“There was a concern … ‘Will we be made to look stupid?’ You know, the big-time guys coming in from civilization and pat the cave dwellers on their heads and save them and we all look like fools, and they haven’t,” he says.

Griffiths was a member of the Wrexham Supporters’ Trust which helped raise money to stop the club from going out of business. He was one of the 98.4% who overwhelmingly voted in favor of the American-Canadian takeover.

When Reynolds and McEllhenney put forward their proposal to the trust, Griffiths says they talked about having stewardship of the club, rather than ownership. They used, he says, “the right language.”

“I’m very cynical,” says Griffiths. “I like the idea of fan ownership. I like the idea that we don’t end up at the whim of one or two wealthy people. But this is that rare occasion that they are just clearly in it for the right reasons.

“I feel strongly about fans being the only people you can trust with a club, but these guys are for real. They’re amazing.”

In the shadow of the Racecourse Ground is the city’s university campus and, every Friday evening, its sports center is bustling. Spirits are high tonight and laughter fills the air; coaches are yelling orders, sometimes they tease when a challenge doesn’t go quite to plan. Three coaches scoot around the perimeters of the court, chasing balls which go out of bounds, as the players, who are all in electric wheelchairs, move around at quite some speed.

These are weekly sessions which have been made possible because of investment from the club.

Kerry Evans, Wrexham AFC’s disability liaison officer, is on the sidelines every week, overseeing a junior and adult team. When the powerchair teams were formed last August, Evans had intended to play, but there is too much to organize, she says; always a call to make, or a ringing phone to pick up, questions to answer, plans to be made.

The owners were, Evans says, “very prominent” in setting up powerchair football in the city and it has, she says, transformed lives.

“We’ve got players that come that say it’s what gets them up on a Friday,” she says.

Evans jokes she is the club’s go-to person for media interviews because, she says, her role is wholly positive. She became a full-time employee at the club last March but prior to that had been volunteering for about six-and-a-half years, doing what she does now, which is making the stadium more accessible and welcoming for people with disabilities.

Wrexham is the first club in Wales to fund a powerchair team, says Evans. Playing on an indoor court, a team consists of four players – a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder and an attacker – and they compete using a larger ball than your typical soccer ball, while goalposts are two upright posts six meters apart.

Caio Jones is a 22-year-old wheelchair user from Bangor, a city in the northwest of the country, about 69 miles from Wrexham, or a 70-minute journey one way. He is one of a few in the group who is ready to play competitively from next season.

For 12 months, Evans investigated the feasibility of bringing powerchair to Wrexham before making a proposal to the club’s board. Once approved, the club’s community trust coaches had to be trained, and chairs needed to be purchased. New, each chair – which have bumpers at the front to allow players to travel with the ball – costs about $5,000 to $7,500, says Evans.

“Rob and Ryan offered brand new chairs, which I did turn down in the beginning … I felt we really needed to prove that this was going to take off and be a thing,” she says. “We’re now struggling to keep up with the level of demand with the chairs that we need. It’s grown and grown.”

It is quite the change from the early 2000s when there were fears the club would be evicted from its stadium, or nearly 12 years ago when the Racecourse Ground and training facilities were sold to the university and fans raised more than £100,000 (almost $162,000 at August 2011’s exchange rate) in a day to save the club.

“I was around when fans were bringing in deeds to their houses to keep our club alive … without those people many years ago, we wouldn’t have a club now to even be discussed with Hollywood owners,” says Evans.

No one speaks negatively about Reynolds and McElhenney because their investment has made a difference; to the women’s team which was promoted this season to the Welsh first division, to the fans in wheelchairs who can now go to some away games thanks to a wheelchair accessible bus the club provides, to families of children with autism who have a quiet zone in the stadium available to them on matchdays.

“Wrexham football club would not have survived Covid due to the fan ownership,” says Evans. “Reading about people losing their business all across the UK [because of the impact of the pandemic] and Wrexham suddenly had this hope and excitement about it.

“We were one of the luckiest towns, as it was then, to come out of Covid with so much to look forward to, and both owners brought that to our town.”

Finally. Forty-four games into the season, and today is the day Wrexham could get promoted. No club has been stuck in the National League for longer. Fifteen often dreary years in the fifth tier; some nearly-there seasons, some never-come-close seasons.

Five times Wrexham has qualified for the playoffs since 2011 but each occasion ended in failure, which explains why seeds of doubt are hard for some to rid. But Wrexham should beat its opponent Boreham Wood at home, which would secure automatic promotion and the league title.

“Being an old-school Wrexham fan, I can’t get too carried away, I’ve seen a lot of disappointments over the years,” says Rob Clarke, the owner of mad4movies and another who features in the documentary.

Clarke’s DVD shop is in the city’s market hall. About 10 stalls are in business – selling dog food, sweets, plastic flowers and such – while the rest are empty. There is a sadness to a silent shopping quarter on a Saturday afternoon. Not everywhere in the city can thrive.

Clarke says he could make more money in another line of work, but over the last 17 years in business, his shop has become a hub for anyone wanting to talk about Wrexham AFC, and there’s nothing he loves doing more than that. “Usually put the world to rights on a Monday morning after the weekend results,” he says.

The documentary was first aired last year, and Clarke is still struggling to come to terms with its impact. “It’s crazy,” he says with a shake of the head and a smile.

“I’ve had people taking pictures of this place … Not even I take a picture of this place!” he says. “People are coming from all over, the American fans coming in and they’ve bought the DVDs. They know they can’t play them over there because it’s a different format, but they want a souvenir or something.”

Magic can happen under floodlights. A pitch becomes a stage, providing vivid color to a dark night. Bright lights, big emotions. The atmosphere crackles.

Wrexham is leading 3-1, the silence that greeted Boreham Wood’s first-minute goal long since replaced by over 10,000 delirious, singing fans. One delivers his farewell soliloquy to what he calls this “awful, awful, league,” with a few expletives thrown in for punctuation.

Five minutes into stoppage time and fans are rising to their feet, increasing the decibels, preparing for the full-time roar. And then the whistle blows.

Thousands pour onto the pitch, even though they were warned not to before kick-off. The heart rules during an intoxicating hit to the senses such as this. Players disappear in the red mist of flares; some are carried on the shoulders of fans, and joyful chaos ensues.

The pitch is now a metaphorical therapy couch, years of frustration and disappointment released and replaced with ecstasy.

Cameras capture McElhenney crying in the stands. Reynolds embraces his friend, a moment captured by Paul Rudd, the star of Marvel’s “Ant-Man” franchise, another Hollywood A-lister visiting the city. McElhenney would later say he “blacked out” during that moment.

The pair later joined the team on the pitch, jumping as if they were on pogo sticks when the trophy was lifted. Promotion to League Two achieved and done in style – over 100 points accumulated in a season for the first time in the club’s history, an unbeaten campaign at home, more than 100 goals scored and a record number of points collected in a single National League season.

And for the first time since 1988, four Welsh clubs will now play in England’s football league, with these clubs competing in the English system by virtue of the Welsh football league system having not been created when they were founded.

An end of a chapter, but not the story.

In its 158-year existence, the club has experienced nothing quite like these last two years. An unprecedented 24,000 of this season’s shirts sold by last December, turnover soaring, global sales accounting for 80% of merchandise sold. A (now former) National League team with a worldwide following. And not a negative to report, other than the £2.91 million ($3.61m) in losses for the year to June 2022, Reynolds and McElhenney’s first full season in charge.

Wrexham’s owners have charmed the city and its inhabitants and, in turn, the earthiness of the city’s people and their passion for the club has captivated, seduced almost, the rest of the world.

Celebrity combined with sporting romance is a heady mix. Season Two and League Two lie ahead.

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April 28, 2023
Biden rolls out red carpet for South Korea’s Yoon with state visit and new cooperation against North Korea’s nuclear threat | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden welcomes South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol to the White House for the full pomp and circumstance and hospitality of an official state visit – a high-stakes meeting amid ongoing provocations from North Korea, China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region and a recent leak of Pentagon documents.

The leaders are set to announce a key new agreement strengthening extended deterrence – a US policy that uses the full range of military capabilities to defend its allies – with new commitments alongside South Korea in response to nuclear threats from North Korea.

And more broadly, the visit signals the importance with which the US views its relationships with allies in the Indo-Pacific, this trip coming one week before Biden hosts Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and weeks before Biden is expected to travel to the region himself.

Biden and Yoon will unveil the “Washington Declaration” on Wednesday at the White House, senior administration officials told reporters, a set of new steps to boost US-South Korean cooperation on military training, information sharing and strategic asset movements in the face of a recent spate of missile launches from North Korea.

It is intended to send a clear message: “What the United States and the ROK plan to do at every level is strengthen our practices, our deployments, our capabilities, to ensure the deterrent message is absolutely unquestioned and to also make clear that if we are tested in any way that we will be prepared to respond collectively and in an overwhelming way,” a senior administration official said.

The product of a monthslong discussion between officials from both countries, the declaration will announce that the US “(intends) to take steps to make our deterrence more visible through the regular deployment of strategic assets, including a US nuclear ballistic submarine visit to South Korea, which has not happened since the early 1980s,” the official said. Officials made clear that such assets will not be stationed permanently, and there is “no plan” to deploy any tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula.

The US and Korea will also “strengthen our training, our exercises and simulation activities to improve the US-ROK alliance’s approach to deterring and defending” against North Korean threats, per the official.

It also creates the “US-ROK Nuclear Consultative Group,” which the official said will convene regularly to consult on nuclear and strategic planning issues, with the hope that it will give allies “additional insight in how we think about planning for major contingencies.” That group is modeled after US engagement with European allies during the height of the Cold War, the official said.

After a year in which North Korea fired a record number of nuclear missile tests, South Korea’s President Yoon earlier this year spoke about possibly deploying US tactical missiles on the Korean peninsula or even developing the country’s own set of nuclear weapons.

While he dialed back his remarks, those are both scenarios the Biden administration wanted deeply to avoid, and White House officials spent recent months looking for ways to reassure South Korea by bolstering the alliance, including considering a plan to incorporate nuclear exercises into the war planning the two nations already do together, according to two senior Biden administration officials.

“We need to have tabletop exercises that go through a variety of scenarios, including possibly nuclear weapons,” a senior official told CNN earlier this month.

“The South Koreans don’t have experience in using nuclear weapons. This is why we need to do tabletop exercises with them. The Koreans need to be educated in what it means to use nuclear weapons, the targeting, and the effects,” said David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, adding that there will be no change to the US having control on the targeting. “The hope is that this will satisfy them and improve readiness.”

The hope, the officials said, was that this offer – along with sustained engagement to develop other ideas to implement – will provide the alternative that the South Koreans need.

Beyond the declaration, Biden and Yoon are expected to celebrate 70 years of the US-South Korea alliance, highlighting close economic ties between the nations, pointing to cooperation on issues like climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, and looking toward ways to continue supporting Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, plus a new dialogue on cyber cooperation. They are also expected to announce a new student exchange program focused on STEM “that will significantly increase the number of students going in both directions,” a second senior official said.

And Biden is expected to celebrate Yoon’s “determination and courage” to improve the strained relationship between Japan and South Korea, an area that has been “of deep interest” to Biden, who has twice met with both countries’ leaders in a trilateral setting, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told White House reporters earlier this week. A stronger alliance between those two countries is strategically important to the US as it looks for ways to counter China’s rising influence.

Recent online leaks of Pentagon documents involving South Korea also loom over the visit. One of the leaked documents describes, in remarkable detail, a conversation between two senior South Korean national security officials about concerns by the country’s National Security Council over a US request for ammunition.

The officials worried that supplying the ammunition, which the US would then send to Ukraine, would violate South Korea’s policy of not supplying lethal aid to countries at war. According to the document, one of the officials then suggested a way of getting around the policy without actually changing it – by selling the ammunition to Poland. The document sparked controversy in Seoul.

The leaks “caused the press to push him (Yoon) more on this. And we’re hearing more and more about how he feels about the issue,” Dr. Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a recent briefing.

Cha continued, “Korea has one of the largest, if not the largest, stockpile of munitions of any country in the world. And they also have tremendous production capacity in terms of munitions. And if there’s one thing that Ukraine needs in this war and that NATO allies who are supporting Ukraine need in this war, it’s munitions. So I would say to watch this space,” adding that it is unlikely that an announcement will be made during this state visit.

And the White House emphatically stated Tuesday that US commitment to its security partnership with South Korea is “ironclad” despite those leaks, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declining to say whether it would be a topic of discussion between Biden and Yoon.

More broadly, Russia’s war in Ukraine is expected to be a key topic of discussion, with both leaders expected to continue to promote the importance of democracy, and a fulsome conversation expected on “what comes next for Korea’s support for Ukraine,” a third official said.

“Ultimately, there’s no country that has probably a better sense of the importance of the international community standing together to support a country that’s completely invaded than the ROK,” the second senior official said.

Wednesday’s events mark just the second state visit of the Biden presidency (Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte in December 2022).

The visit began informally Tuesday as the Bidens welcomed Yoon and his wife, Mrs. Kim Keon Hee, for an evening trip to the Korean War Memorial.

The South Korean guests will be formally received with an official arrival ceremony Wednesday morning on the South Lawn ahead of a bilateral meeting with the presidents and their staffs, followed by a joint press conference. And there will be full pageantry and glamour in the evening as the White House rolls out the red carpet for the leaders, their spouses and key dignitaries at the black-tie state dinner.

The elaborate dinner is the result of weeks of careful diplomatic preparations, with each detail meticulously planned by a team of White House chefs, social staff, and protocol experts. Ties between the countries will be front and center in the décor and on the menu, with guests set to dine under towering cherry blossom branches on food prepared by Korean American celebrity chef Edward Lee. The menu includes crab cakes with a gochujang vinaigrette, braised beef short ribs, and a deconstructed banana split with lemon bar ice cream and a doenjang caramel. Entertainment will be provided by a trio of Broadway stars.

Yoon is also scheduled to join Vice President Kamala Harris for lunch, and toured NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland with her Tuesday, where the leaders committed to increase cooperation on space exploration. And he is set to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday.

A senior administration official noted that some of the “last remaining veterans of the Korean War from both Korea and the United States” will join in Wednesday’s proceedings.

The visit is also an opportunity to reinforce the Biden-Yoon friendship. Sullivan said the leaders have “developed a rapport” that has seen four engagements to date, including Biden’s trip to Seoul in May 2022 just days after Yoon took office, as well as on the sidelines of summits in Spain, New York and Cambodia.

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April 26, 2023
Netflix is winding down its DVD business after 25 years | CNN Business

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Netflix is officially winding down the business that helped make it a household name.

This fall, the streaming giant will officially say goodbye to its DVD rental service and all of the red envelopes that made it possible.

“On September 29th, 2023, we will send out the last red envelope,” the company tweeted Tuesday. “It has been a true pleasure and honor to deliver movie nights to our wonderful members for 25 years.”

“Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members, but as the DVD business continues to shrink, that’s going to become increasingly difficult,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Making 2023 our Final Season allows us to maintain our quality of service through the last day and go out on a high note.”

The company reported a miss for its second-quarter earnings after market close on Tuesday. Shares fell by around 6%.

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April 18, 2023
Michelle Yeoh set to return as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in new ‘Star Trek’ movie | CNN

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Live long and prosper, Michelle Yeoh.

After winning a best actress Oscar for her role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” last month, Yeoh is preparing to step back into the Star Trek universe to reprise her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in the new “Star Trek: Section 31” movie.

Yeoh was first introduced as the character in 2017, when the Emmy-winning “Star Trek: Discovery” TV series debuted on Paramount+.

Paramount+ and CBS Studios announced the news on Tuesday. Yeoh will also serve as an executive producer on the project.

Yeoh said in a press release that she is “beyond thrilled” to reprise her role in the “Section 31” movie, which she says “has been near and dear to my heart since I began the journey of playing Philippa all the way back when this new golden age of ‘Star Trek’ launched.”

“To see her finally get her moment is a dream come true in a year that’s shown me the incredible power of never giving up on your dreams. We can’t wait to share what’s in store for you, and until then: live long and prosper (unless Emperor Georgiou decrees otherwise),” she continued.

It truly has been a year of dreams coming true for Yeoh, who made history as the first woman of Asian descent to win an Oscar in the best actress category in March. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” took home seven Oscars that night, including Yeoh’s big win and the top prize for best picture.

“Section 31” will showcase Yeoh’s character as she joins a secret division of Starfleet and is “tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets and faces the sins of her past,” according to an official synopsis.

“Star Trek: Section 31” will begin production later this year.

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April 18, 2023
Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

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The governor of Oklahoma is calling on four McCurtain County officials to resign after they allegedly participated in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist remarks about lynching Black people and talking about killing journalists.

The McCurtain Gazette-News over the weekend published the audio it said was recorded following a Board of Commissioners meeting on March 6.

The paper said the audio of the meeting was legally obtained, but the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it was illegally recorded and is investigating. The sheriff’s office also said it believes the recording had been altered.

“I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place,” the statement said.

The governor called for the immediate resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. He also said he would ask the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.

McCurtain County is in southeastern Oklahoma, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City.

The recording was made hours after Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners, alleging they had defamed him and violated his civil rights, the newspaper reported.

In the recording, Manning spoke of needing to go near the newspaper’s office and expressed concern about what would happen if she ran into Willingham, the Oklahoman reported, citing additional reporting from the Gazette-News.

According to the Oklahoman report, Jennings said, “Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” and Manning replied: “Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his a**, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”

Jennings replied that his father was once upset by something the newspaper published and “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette-News.

“I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said. Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.

“I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion. “Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.

In other parts of the recording, officials expressed disappointment that Black people could no longer be lynched, according to the paper.

CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the recording or confirm who said what. CNN has reached out to all four county officials for comment.

The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association voted Tuesday to suspend the membership of Clardy, Manning and Hendrix, the group’s executive director told CNN.

Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, the paper’s publisher, have been advised to temporarily leave town, CNN affiliate KJRH reported.

“For nearly a year, they have suffered intimidation, ridicule and harassment based solely on their efforts to report the news for McCurtain County,” Kilpatrick Townsend, the law firm representing the Willingham family, told CNN in a statement.

The McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations” of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, which makes it “illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties.” It also said the recording has yet to be “duly authenticated or validated.”

“Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered. The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated,” the statement said.

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received an audio recording and is investigating, Communications Director Phil Bacharach said.

The FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it was involved in the investigation, with spokesperson Kayla McCleery saying it is agency policy not to comment.

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April 18, 2023
‘Love is Blind’ live reunion delayed as Netflix pleads for patience | CNN Business

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Netflix’s highly anticipated live reunion Sunday for the season 4 cast of its reality dating show “Love is Blind” has been delayed, leaving fans waiting for over an hour.

Eventually, Netflix opted to tape it for streaming at a later time.

“To everyone who stayed up late, woke up early, gave up their Sunday afternoon… we are incredibly sorry that the Love is Blind Live Reunion did not turn out as we had planned,” Netflix tweeted in a statement. “We’re filming it now and we’ll have it on Netflix as soon as humanly possible. Again, thank you and sorry.”

The second live show in Netflix’s history was expected to start at 8 p.m. ET Sunday. A couple minutes after its scheduled start time, Netflix tweeted: “Love is … late. #LoveIsBlindLIVE will be on in 15 minutes!”

A few minutes later, the streaming service promised the show “will be worth the wait….” When Netflix subscribers tried to access the stream, they were met with a screen that said, “It’s almost time! The live event will start soon.”

The company isn’t used to airing live events like many of its streaming competitors. The only live show to air on Netflix came on March 4 when it live-streamed “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage,” a standup special from the comedian. That streamed without a hitch.

Netflix’s rivals have found success with live streaming. Amazon Prime started airing Thursday Night Football last year. Apple TV+ partners with Major League Baseball for select games. And other competitors have gotten into the live space, as well.

But Netflix has been notoriously resistant – not because of technological hurdles, but because the company has repeatedly said live broadcast rights, particularly for sports, come at a high cost. Still, Netflix had a rough 2022, losing subscribers as consumer behavior shifted. The company started experimenting with live broadcasts as the media landscape continues to shift.

As the world waited for the reunion episode, hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey, the silly and biting social media posts started to roll in.

Among the angry fans was New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom Netflix retweeted.

Someone call Lucia the seamstress to fix this. I believe in her

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 17, 2023

Blockbuster, the bankrupt former video store, tweeted: “Remember renting vhs’ from us. You could start it on time no problem… This is what we get.”

The “Love is Blind” series features couples that propose before seeing one another. It helped the company solidify its reality TV chops when it started streaming three years ago, at a time when traditional network and broadcast television were essentially the only places to get a reality fix.

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April 16, 2023
‘Yellowjackets’ leans hard into ’90s music nostalgia, and we’re here for it | CNN

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CNN
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Of the many dark gifts Showtime’s eerie hit series “Yellowjackets” serves up for us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.

The show – which bounces between a troupe of teen soccer players trapped in the 1990s Canadian wilderness after a plane crash and the survivors’ corresponding adult selves in the present day – embraces nostalgia, incorporating long-cherished tunes from the tail end of last century, with staples from Tori Amos, early Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack, Veruca Salt and much more.

In Sunday’s episode of “Yellowjackets,” alt-rock queen Alanis Morissette will debut a version of the show’s theme song, “No Return,” and has already released it as a single.

One of the most unexpected and successful uses of throwback music came in the first episode of Season 2 last month, when Warren Kole’s Jeff had a moment to himself in the car after an intense tryst with wife Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) – during which he rocks out hard to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” (sure, the track actually came out in 2000, but that doesn’t take away from its retro vibe).

In an interview with CNN, the show’s music supervisor, Nora Fielder, explained that the Papa Roach song selection was scripted, and “served as a perfect physical outlet for Warren whose anxious feelings were riding high while sitting alone in his garage.”

Other standout moments in the script, however, are hers to interpret, and Fielder relishes the opportunity to match those moments with the right songs from the period.

“I re-immerse myself into the show’s era and spirit of the times as I start to build my playlists for the show,” she said. “The main thing I try to keep in mind is to just stay true to the story and let it tell me what it might need musically.”

Case in point, from the same episode – the placement of Amos’s signature track “Cornflake Girl,” off her groundbreaking 1994 sophomore album “Under the Pink.”

The song – which appropriately has the lyric “Things are getting kind of gross” just as teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is about to ingest something unthinkable – “came to mind pretty quickly as a possibility” to Fielder.

“I felt that Amos’s lyrics could serve as a befitting launchpad for the first episode’s ending – not only as a reflection of Young Shauna’s state of mind,” she noted, “but also as a reflection of the past and present moods and mentalities lived out by the other ‘Yellowjackets’ characters in Season 2.”

Fielder’s work is challenging, in the sense that there is often an ideal wish-list selection for a song during a certain moment in each script, which then might change either due to something technical or because the needs of the scene evolve during production, as a result of many elements, including the actors’ performances.

“Everyone on the team always wants the best song-select possible to enhance the story,” she said. “When we get to post (production), the common question that comes up among us during the collaboration process is simply, ‘Do we think we can beat this?’”

During that collaborative process, Fielder says she doesn’t “believe there is an exact roadmap into how to merge songs with any given scene or story.”

“I always say, ‘Let the picture tell you what it needs.’ (Kind of like the Wilderness I guess?)”

Another moment that feels perfectly melded to the music playing is the now-infamous ‘last supper’ scene from last week’s second episode, which boasts Radiohead’s “Climbing By The Walls” from their mindblowing 1995 album “OK Computer” on the soundtrack.

“The song seems to refer to those unspeakable monsters that can live in one’s head,” Fielder noted, referencing the strange collective hallucinations the group undergoes while cannibalizing one of their own. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to hauntingly accent (that) scene, a.k.a. ‘the feast.’”

To drive home just how important music is to the specific ambient feel of “Yellowjackets,” one need look no further than the super creepy Season 2 trailer for the show, which features Florence + The Machine’s exceptional and haunting rendition of No Doubt’s timeless 1995 hit, “Just A Girl.”

“I’m such a huge fan of ‘Yellowjackets’ and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for show,” band frontwoman Florence Welch said in a statement shared with CNN.

“We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone who’s first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani, it was a dream job.”

Of her collaboration with “Yellowjackets,” Morrisette, too, felt inspired by the show.

“I see parallels between ‘Yellowjackets’ and my perspective while songwriting: the sheer intensity, that going for the jugular with no fear around going for the profane,” Morissette said in a statement. “I’ve strived my entire career to support the empowerment of women and sensitives, and see the world through the female lens, and what’s so wonderful about this show is that each character is allowed to be dynamic and complex as opposed to oversimplified, reduced versions of women. I feel honoured to be a part of the legacy of ‘Yellowjackets.’”

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April 14, 2023