President Donald Trump had an opportunity on Tuesday morning to dial back his apocalyptic threat to wipe out a “whole civilization” if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz — but instead, he doubled down.

“8 p.m. is happening,” Trump told Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who recounted his conversation with the president. Baier said negotiations could change the course, but otherwise Iran will endure an attack like it’s never before seen. 

Even after a decade of Trump’s incendiary rhetoric — and just two days after he warned Iran to “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” — his Truth Social post Tuesday was striking in its bleak yet perfunctory tone: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” 

Alongside the potentially catastrophic nature of the threat is a countdown clock that turns a global crisis into appointment viewing, the latest example of the president’s reality TV approach to leadership — taken to a grim extreme. Trump followed up his Sunday threat to bomb bridges and power plants — attacks on civilian infrastructure that could be considered war crimes— with a separate post announcing, “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

As Bulwark managing editor Sam Stein noted, “When you’re getting [a] breaking news alert that the president is threatening to end a civilization tonight (tune in, tonight to see if he follows through!) you’re really through the looking glass.”

Trump’s grave warning to a country of more than 90 million quickly raised alarms on social media and cable news, as Democratic lawmakers and a wide array of political commentators, including former allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, condemned the threat, with some calling for Trump to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Host Piers Morgan said Trump’s threat was “madness” and a “pre-admission of genocide.” 

The ultimatum made for strange political bedfellows: Figures on the right like Alex Jones said Trump “sounds like an unhinged super villain,” while “Pod Save America” co-host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau framed the threat as “genocidal language from a deranged person who should be removed from office.” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Congress to return from its break to  “end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III.”

Trump has pushed global crises to extremes, only to extend deadlines or pull back. (He’s been mocked before with the acronym TACO, or “Trump always chickens out,” which happened so consistently the term evolved out of a Wall Street trading strategy). Some commentators on Tuesday suggested the threat was characteristically Trumpian bluster, a hardball negotiating tactic to push Iran toward a deal. Still, news outlets can’t ignore a president making an unprecedented threat, and journalists and anchors framed the threat in stark terms.

On MS NOW, “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire said Trump may be bluffing, “but even just issuing that threat from the Oval Office is a remarkable escalation, and something we have never before seen from any president of the United States.”

“This is the rhetoric we associate with people like Vladimir Putin, with people like Kim Jong Un, with the monsters of history, and yet we have heard it now from the sitting president,” Lemire said. The New York Times’s Peter Baker said Trump was “using the language of war crimes in a way that no other American president, certainly in our lifetime, ever has.”

The administration’s messaging throughout the five-plus-week war has been anything but conventional, starting with Trump announcing in late February the U.S. and Israeli strikes in a Truth Social video from Mar-a-Lago at 2:30 a.m. ET.

Trump has spoken by phone to dozens of journalists, at times offering differing rationales for the military operation, while on Monday he threatened to jail a journalist over an alleged leak (without specifying who or what media company). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken opportunity to bash the media at news briefings, though the Pentagon also went for a stretch of more than 10 days without holding one.

But on Tuesday, the line of questioning on cable news reached uncharted territory. While debates over military conflict have played out for decades on television, CNN anchor John Berman’s question to Republican Congressman Mike Lawler was without precedent: “If there is no deal by eight o’clock tonight, do you support making a whole civilization die?” Lawler said he didn’t, while broadly expressing support for the administration’s war in Iran. 

Another CNN veteran, Christiane Amanpour, wrote on X that “never in all my years” of reporting on “America at war have I heard anything like this: an American president threatens to destroy a ‘whole civilization’ and says it’ll take 100 years to rebuild.” 

“The fate of tens of millions of humans, right now on a knife’s edge, because if nothing changes in the next four hours, and Donald Trump follows through on the things he said out loud, his public threat, we may all soon be witness to a military assault so generationally and intentionally brutal that war crimes are not just possible, but they become U.S. policy,” MS Now host Nicolle Wallace said at the start of her 4 p.m. ET program.

“But that is only if you take Donald Trump at his word,” she said. “It’s risky.”

Some pundits dismissed the coverage as overheated, insisting that Trump is playing hardball with Iran.

“Donald Trump has been a national politician for a decade. Anyone still reacting to the guy’s negotiating tactics and hyperbole with this sort of hysteria ten years in should be disqualified from political commentary,” wrote Jeremy Boreing, a conservative host and co-founder of The Daily Wire. “If he nukes Tehran at 8pm, I’ll admit I’m the crazy one.”

Let’s hope Boreing is right. And a deal or delay could still come. But for now, the world will left be tuning in at 8 p.m. ET to see whether the threat becomes reality — or if the president once again ignites a media frenzy, only to pull back from the brink.

The post Trump’s Iran Ultimatum Turns Apocalyptic Threat Into Prime-Time Spectacle | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

On Thursday, OpenAI acquired TBPN — the “Technology Business Programming Network”— in a deal the Financial Times pegged in the “low hundreds of millions.”

It was a dizzying move that initially felt like a delayed April Fool’s joke. Why would the AI juggernaut behind ChatGPT get into the media business by buying a podcast? 

OpenAI’s motivation isn’t primarily journalistic: Hays and Coogan riff on the news, but would be the first to admit they’re not reporters. It’s not to gain political clout; the hosts actively avoid politics, unlike some founders who’ve entered the media space. And it isn’t to capitalize on TBPN’s growing $30 million advertising business, since that’s being shut down as part of the deal.

What the young hosts bring is palpable enthusiasm for the tech world, and a strong connection with viewers — qualities that can serve OpenAI given gloomy public perceptions of AI. “They’re fun, they’re not sensationalist,” OpenAI chief Sam Altman told Axios. “They go into real levels of technical depth, and it resonates with people.”

OpenAI is essentially buying TBPN for the vibes. By bringing the show under its communications and marketing arm, rather than folding it into a more traditional media division, OpenAI is signaling that product is only part of the equation – success in AI also depends on perception. The timing is striking ahead of OpenAI’s planned IPO in late 2026. 

“The standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, wrote in a memo, noting TBPN’s “amazing comms and marketing instincts.”

In recent years, entrepreneurs and venture-capital firms have built their own media ecosystem, in part out of frustration with media coverage of Silicon Valley and as a way to boost their own narrative. 

Coogan and Hayes, who both hail from the tech world, are part of this trend: the former co-founded Soylent with investment from Altman, the latter co-founded start-up fundraiser Party Round. Not surprisingly, TBPN has provided a welcoming platform for industry heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Alex Karp,  Marc Andreessen and Altman. 

OpenAI has promised editorial independence to TBPN, and will not interfere with topics and guests. There’s little risk that TBPN — which boisterously covered the AI talent arms race last year the way ESPN covers a draft — is going to unearth unflattering information about OpenAI or its competitors. Reporting isn’t part of the show’s DNA. 

“We were never in the scoop industry,” Coogan said on Thursday’s show. “People were kind of asking, is this journalism? Is this commentary? We’ve always been like, hey, we like to talk to a lot of people, have a conversation, bring in people.” 

Even when companies offer exclusives, Hays said they’d suggest taking such scoops to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Bloomberg. “Then come contextualize it with us,” Coogan added. “Let us dig in and understand more about the strategy.”

The TBPN hosts has some gripes with journalists — “Sometimes they’ll have good intentions but they’ll miss the true story,” Hayes told Vanity Fair — but they aren’t harsh critics of the mainstream media like Andreessen, or, say, Elon Musk. They’ve sat for profiles this past year in VF, the New Yorker and the Times, telling a reporter from the latter: “We can’t do what we do without you guys.” 

In the New Yorker piece, Hays pointed to AI companies failing to better to tell their story. “We get that a lot of people hate AI. If I’m the average person in America, and I see a really terrible video generated by AI, and I hear that these companies are trying to take my job…” he said, trailing off. 

“We’ve had people on the show, and we think it’s honestly hilarious that they’re just saying this out loud,” Hays added. “They’ll say, ‘This is a big opportunity because we’re displacing labor.’ I’m, like, how can you say that? Say it better. Paint me a better vision for this technology.”

By acquiring TBPN, OpenAI is banking on the “Technology Brothers” to help the public better understand — and ideally embrace — the transformative products its building. 

DC media shake-up

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, has “a lot of affection” for the Washington Post, where he started his career, and believes “it’s important to have strong national newspapers.”

Then he added: “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists, I’m more than happy to give them a home.”

Goldberg spoke to TheWrap as the Atlantic poached four reporters from the Washington Post, including Matt Viser, the paper’s White House bureau chief, and as NOTUS — a site launched by Politico co-founder and former owner Robert Allbritton — added at least a half-dozen Post alums.

I took a deep look at the talent scramble in the capital. Check it out here: Washington Post Upheaval Redraws the DC Media Map | Analysis

TMZ ambushes Congress

While Washington media companies duke it out over talent, an unlikely outlet is making waves on the Hill: TMZ

Disgusted with members of Congress taking a spring break before hammering out a deal to end the partial government shutdown, executive producer Harvey Levin put out a call for viewers to help reveal what lawmakers are up to — and did they ever. 

TMZ obtained shots of Sen. Lindsey Graham roaming through Disney World, holding a bubble wand, images that quickly went viral. 

But TMZ posted pictures of numerous lawmakers, including Rep. Seth Magaziner partying with some “Real Housewives,” Rep. Robert Garcia at a Las Vegas casino, a congressional delegation touring Edinburgh Castle and Rep. Jared Moskowitz keeping time at his son’s basketball game — more heartwarming image than tabloid gotcha.

“I don’t mind what TMZ is doing here,” wrote Garcia, who said he was visiting his father. “Like I said a few days ago, Speaker Mike Johnson should have never sent us all home.”

TMZ has tried to make inroads in Washington before, but Levin’s latest effort, tapping into populist, anti-establishment disgust with government, has truly resonated. “People are really, really outraged,” Levin said on Thursday on X, adding: “Maybe they’re hearing your anger. Maybe not.”

Shaming lawmakers has also given way to booking them, with Rep. Jim McGovern appearing that day on “TMZ Live” to talk about his efforts to make a deal — and to jab at Graham’s Disney vacation. It’s also led to access, as Levin said TMZ is hearing from congressional offices saying they’d like to work with them.

“We’re going to have a full-time presence in Washington D.C.,” said Levin, because “it feels like the time is right.”

NYT AI controversy

How newsrooms incorporate AI is one of the most hotly debated topics in media circles, and journalists are grappling with how to best use the technology — with examples of misuse serving as cautionary tales.

Ars Technica fired a senior reporter last month after retracting a story that included AI-generated quotes, and now the New York Times has cut ties with a freelance writer, Alex Preston, after he inadvertently incorporated elements of a Guardian review while using AI to assist with his work, as Corbin Bolies reports.

“For staff journalists and freelance writers alike, reliance on A.I. and inclusion of unattributed work by another writer is a serious violation of The Times’s integrity and fundamental journalistic standards,” the paper said. 

Check out Bolies’ piece here: New York Times Cuts Ties With Book Review Writer Over AI Use | Exclusive

AGs hold the line

Lucas Manfredi reports how state attorneys general “may represent the last line of defense” in this moment of accelerating consolidation in local television and Hollywood. 

 “The federal government is retreating from its traditional role, abdicating its responsibility to enforce antitrust law and seemingly picking winners and losers,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told TheWrap.

Check out Manfredi’s full piece: State AGs Are Pushing Back Against Media Consolidation. Is It Too Late?

Also on TheWrap

Bari Weiss Expected to Shake Up ‘60 Minutes’

MS NOW Posts Double-Digit Growth as Rebecca Kutler Hits One-Year Mark | Exclusive

CBS News 24/7 Union Reaches Contract Deal With Network

Fox News Hits 1.5 Billion YouTube Views in 2026’s First Quarter | Exclusive

WSJ Digital Subscriptions Grow 30% in 3 Years Under Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker

Versant Interested in Vox Media’s Podcast Business

On my radar

“Can a Journalist Be a Celebrity Anymore?” (Jonah Bromwich, The New York Times)

“New Media Energy” (People vs Algorithms)

“Inside the Meltdown of a Right-Wing Publisher” (Will Sommer, The Bulwark)

“Joanna Stern on quitting the Wall Street Journal and building a media business with AI” (Mixed Signals, Semafor)

The Most Powerful People in the World Are Obsessed With Media Again (Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter)

After newsroom cuts, The Washington Post turns to creator-led video deals (Sara Guaglione, Digiday)

“The Profession That Does Not Exist (A Baffler symposium)

The post The Media Front: Why OpenAI Bought Tech Talk Show TBPN appeared first on TheWrap.

Then he added: “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists, I’m more than happy to give them a home.”

Goldberg spoke to TheWrap as the Atlantic poached four reporters from the Washington Post, including Matt Viser, the paper’s White House bureau chief, and as NOTUS — a site launched by Politico co-founder and former owner Robert Allbritton — added at least a half-dozen Post alums.

Allbritton has “money, drive, desire and experience,” Goldberg said. “If I were the Washington Post, I’d really watch out.”

Since the Post slashed its newsroom in February, resulting in more than 300 journalists exiting, local and national competitors have hired recently laid-off reporters and editors, as well as others who survived the newsroom culling but are looking to leave. Reverberations from the Post’s upheaval can be felt at national publications, like the New York Times, local sites such as City Cast and the Baltimore Banner, and the sports obsessed Athletic and ESPN — which have together added a dozen Post alums. 

The Washington talent scramble is playing out amid a relentless news cycle, with President Donald Trump conducting a war abroad and waging political and legal battles at home — including against the media itself. Journalists have been flexing their unusual access to the president, dialing him directly on Iran. But whereas Trump’s first term felt like endless jockeying between the Times and Post for scoops, the second has provided opportunities for a broad array of outlets — big and small — as well as independent journalists to command attention.

One publication looking to capitalize in the second term is NOTUS, whose founder Allbritton saw an “opportunity” to expand in response to the Post’s retrenchment. He and Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve — another Politico alum — have their sights set on their old stomping grounds, recently hiring defense reporter Joe Gould and national political reporter Elena Schneider, who expressed her excitement Monday to join “a newsroom with a clear, exciting vision.” 

The poaching comes as Politico on Sunday named Jonathan Greenberger as its new editor-in-chief, succeeding co-founder John Harris. Greenberger told staff in a memo that Politico “will invest — significantly, and immediately — in our world-class journalistic talent,” and reiterated that push in a Tuesday town hall, urging staff to alert him to hiring needs, according to sources. 

The Post, even if diminished, has continued to stand out in coverage of Trump’s use of executive power, federal cuts, proposed renovations to the Kennedy Center and White House ballroom and military operations in Iran, including reporting Monday on the Pentagon preparing for ground operations. And despite gutting its Metro desk, the Post appears to still have the biggest local news staff in the city — for now.

City Cast DC, one of a network of local podcasts and sites owned by Graham Family Holdings — the family that previously owned the Post — has also sensed an opportunity to move into the Post’s turf, adding three reporters and editors from the paper.

“When the Post imploded,” City Cast CEO David Plotz told TheWrap, the company saw an opportunity “to really serve DC and to grab a lot of the territory that the Post has abandoned.”

“We will not be the largest local newsroom yet,” Plotz said. “But our goal is to become the largest local newsroom.”

NOTUS grows

Allbritton has taken on the Post before.

In 2006, he co-founded Politico along with then-Post journalists Harris and Jim VandeHei, who later left to launch Axios with Mike Allen. 

The print publication and ambitious digital play were new terrain for Allbritton, a banking and communications scion who at the time owned a number of TV stations, including local outlets WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8. But Allbritton was following in a family tradition: His father, the late Joe Allbritton, once owned the Washington Star, a Post rival that folded in the early 1980s. 

In recent years, Allbritton scaled back his media holdings, selling the company’s TV stations to Sinclair in 2014 for nearly $1 billion, and then offloading Politico to German media conglomerate Axel Springer for another reported $1 billion. He committed to spending $20 million in 2023 to launch the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute, which aimed to produce non-partisan coverage of government and politics and train aspiring journalists.

The institute and its news site, NOTUS — which stands for News of the United States — weren’t seen as an attempt to take on Politico. Indeed, Semafor reported at the time that Allbritton “agreed to some restrictions about his own next business moves as part of the deal (primarily not turning around and starting a Politico competitor).”

Ambitions clearly grew, evident in a NOTUS memo last month to rebrand and build the “next great Washington newsroom,” which would cover “government, politics, policy, local news and D.C. sports with the power of the Washington Post of the 1970s, the punch of Politico in the 2010s and the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 2026.”

NOTUS declined interview requests for Allbritton and Grieve. 

Washington journalists familiar with NOTUS’ pitch to prospective hires boiled it down to: You’ll make more money; you won’t be forced to churn out copy but will instead focus on stories you really want to do; and you’ll work for a local owner committed to journalism and the city, rather than a large corporate entity. (Breaker reported Tuesday that NOTUS is also eyeing Times journalists and part of that pitch is that reporters’ bylines can get lost in that stacked newsroom.)

Even as NOTUS employees took to X this week to introduce themselves, their beats and promote open roles, there’s still uncertainty among Washington journalists about how exactly the site will compete on government and national political stories as well as local news and sports. (“It does seem like a black box,” said one journalist.)

The more skeptical view among journalists is that NOTUS’ hiring binge echoes The Messenger, an ambitious media venture that quickly fizzled out. (Some Allbritton-backed outlets have had relatively short lives: both local Washington site TBD and the tech-focused Protocol were shuttered within three years.) Still, others see Allbritton as a capable steward, given his 15 years at Politico and his personal fortune to provide the outlet runway as its business model matures.

NOTUS currently has around 45 staffers and hopes to grow to around 90-95. (Politico, by comparison, has around 300 newsroom staffers, according to a spokesperson.)

The newsroom expansion presents a test for Allbritton to demonstrate he can build a successful media brand without Harris and VandeHei, and perhaps pick up where his father left off decades back with the Star.

“I find myself in this really odd position,” Allbritton told Chuck Todd last week in a Noosphere interview. “I’m sort of mourning the loss of my old friend the Washington Post.”

Allbritton said he was “really sad” about the Post, but thought, “Somebody’s got to do something about this.”

Atlantic dives in the talent pool

Veteran media critic Jack Shafer captured on Tuesday how much the D.C. media landscape is shifting.

Goldberg noted that the Post “has been a deep pool of talent” — one his magazine has tapped before. The Atlantic has hired roughly 30 Post journalists over the last couple years, including Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Shane Harris and Sally Jenkins.

In addition to Viser, the latest round includes technology reporter Will Oremus and culture reporters Kelsey Ables and Janay Kingsberry. The Atlantic now boasts more than 200 newsroom staffers.

Last month, Post owner Jeff Bezos reaffirmed his commitment to the Post during a lunch at his Kalorama home with a few dozen Post reporters and editors. Some staffers are staying put, like managing editor Peter Spiegel, who was in contention for the top job at Politico.

But the four journalists heading to the Atlantic — along with several to NOTUS, including chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein, congressional reporter Kadia Goba and columnist Dana Milbank — had survived the Post cuts, signaling that talent retention remains an issue.

The Post, Goldberg said, has done its “level best to make some of the country’s best journalists want to get the hell out of Dodge.” Meanwhile, he said the Atlantic’s “ambitions are growing, and it just so happens that our period of growth and profitability coincides with a period of mismanagement at the Washington Post.”

The Atlantic also has a billionaire owner with roots in the tech world, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective and wife of late Apple chief Steve Jobs. Goldberg emphasized that Powell Jobs is not “subsidizing the Atlantic” and that she demands the magazine make a profit — though she allows that profit to be reinvested in the magazine.

“This is how we grow and we get to hire more journalists, make more journalism,” he added. “The more journalism we make, the more readers we attract.”

Graham Family looks local

City Cast’s Plotz, who grew up in Washington D.C., said he practically “learned to read from the Washington Post sports section.”

Watching the Post scale back has been “painful,” he said, especially as he works with members of the Graham family, who for decades put “passion and care” into the paper. 

Plotz said it’s “insulting” for the Post to focus more on over-serving audiences in tech and politics than maintaining its “connection to the human beings who inhabit here, work here, play here, raise children here, go to sports here.”

He considers City Cast to be “one small piece of trying to remedy that.” He also applauded Axios DC and the 51st for their ongoing coverage of local matters.

City Cast has hired three Post alums: City Hall reporter Michael Brice-Saddler, reporter Emma Uber and managing editor Yu Vongkiatkajorn. The site also hired Michael Schaffer, a veteran of the Washingtonian, Washington City Paper and Politico, as executive editor. 

Plotz said City Cast DC will focus on local politics, business development, transportation and cultural life — and notably not sports, which he considers well-served by competitors.

The Graham family, which sold the Post to Bezos in 2013, still owns publications like Foreign Policy and Slate, where Plotz was once top editor, and has invested in Atlas Obscura, where he was previously CEO. Plotz said that City Cast’s DC expansion is rooted in seeing opportunities in advertising and potentially subscriptions as the outlet builds its audience.

“Local media is a good business when done right,” he said, “and there’s an opportunity for new models.”

The capital has already seen its once-dominant player, the Washington Post, cede ground to Politico, Axios and Punchbowl News — and is now competing for turf with upstarts backed by families deeply tied to the city.

The D.C. media map is being redrawn as a consequential presidency tests the press corps’ power like never before.

The post Washington Post Upheaval Redraws the DC Media Map | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

Todd was speaking hypothetically about morning-show bookings, but also candidly about the inherent tensions journalists face inside large news organizations, where access and internal politics are part of the equation.

“When you’re at a network and you are collaborating with multiple shows, you are a cog — part of a larger ecosystem,” he said. If you want to “just sort of strut your stuff,” he added, “that can hurt everybody.”

Todd was no mere cog during his nearly two decades at the network, having held several high-profile roles: “Meet the Press” moderator, chief White House correspondent, chief political analyst and host of MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.”

Now he’s on his own.

I spoke with Todd and other TV news stars who’ve gone independent, including former CNNers Jim Acosta and Chris Cillizza, as CNN faces scrutiny for importing elements of creator culture (big microphones, more casual dress) into the cable channel. 

The prevailing opinion was that the move came across as contrived. And at a time when trust in media has reached historic lows — just 28% per Gallup — the stakes are especially high.

“Authenticity is the name of the game in the media world now,” Cillizza said. “Being authentic means people trust you. And people who trust you will follow you wherever you go — and maybe even pay for your content.”

It’s a dizzying moment in media. Faces long recognizable to TV viewers — Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly, Don Lemon — are now part of the insurgency of independent operators.

“They are trying to look like us,” Morgan, a former CNN host, said of current CNN hosts Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper, in conversation with Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, on her show. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, framed Todd and Acosta leaving TV news at CPAC on Friday as victories in the president’s crusade “fake news.”

It’s not like current cable hosts aren’t also active in the podcast space; Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki, Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels all have shows, which sometimes cross over into linear broadcasting

For instance, Wallace’s “The Best People” is posted on YouTube, as expected, but has also aired on the cable channel. In addition, MS NOW partnered last month with Crooked Media, bringing highlights from its podcasts into weekend programming, and its parent company, Versant, is in talks to acquire Vox Media’s podcast network. 

The line between independent and institutional is already blurring. As Corbin Bolies reports, journalists with strong followings are striking out on their own while still leveraging large media outlets for reach and resources. 

Tech journalist Joanna Stern, for one, recently left The Wall Street Journal to launch a Beehiiv-backed newsletter, “New Things,” while later partnering with NBC News. “We want people who can bring expertise, credibility and audience and, of course, alignment with our standards,” NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein told TheWrap. 

And Todd, since going independent, has dipped a toe back into television. He and Cillizza did a “ManningCast”-style broadcast during last month’s “State of the Union” on YouTube, though in partnership with C-SPAN, which provided the feed. 

“This is always what we should have been doing on regular television, but we thought it was rude or we thought it wasn’t right,” Todd said. “Essentially, we broke our version of the fourth wall.”

CBS News’ struggle

Bolies breaks down CBS News’ ratings, as its marquee morning show and evening newscast continue to struggle under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss

“CBS Evening News” is on pace for its lowest ratings since October in both total viewers and the 25-54 age demographic, while “CBS Mornings” is also on track to hit its lowest total-viewer numbers since October after a steady decline throughout the year’s first quarter.

Check out all the numbers: “The New CBS News Drives New Ratings Lows | Charts”

CNN’s podcast play

CNN adopting the visual trappings of the creator economy — and the white hot trend of video podcasting — comes as it seeks to boost its digital and streaming offerings, such as CNN All Access amid linear TV decline. The cable stalwart is also grappling with an aging audience and the challenge of maintaining viewers outside of peak moments.

But trying to imitate a vibe that is wholly different from its core identity in a naked bid to appeal to wider audiences only invites criticism and misses the point of how these independent journalists built their followings. Several TV news stars now working independently told TheWrap that legacy networks should seek ways to innovate, but not at the expense of diluting their core brand.

“People really depend on CNN to be CNN,” Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor, told TheWrap. “Don’t lose sight of that.”

My full piece: CNN’s Podcast Play Captures Cable News at an Awkward Crossroads | Analysis

The news media hybrid

Bolies writes how NBC News’ arrangement with newly independent tech reporter Joanna Stern speaks to a new model for journalists exploring alternative career paths in a changing media landscape, one that may provide editorial independence with institutional support.

“They’ve got to decide what level of risk they want to take, and with some people, having that side deal helps,” veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, who has deals with both Vox Media and CNN, tells TheWrap.

“They might do it for marketing reasons. They might do it for extra money reasons. They might do it for safety reasons, and so everyone’s got to sort of pick and choose how much they want to do by themselves and how much they want just a little bit of help.”

Check out Bolies’ sharp look at an emerging trend: The New Hybrid Journalist: Independent Operators, Big Media Reach

New York Times, Pentagon back in court

A federal judge ordered the New York Times and the Defense Department to return to a Washington D.C. courtroom on Monday for a hearing on the paper’s motion to compel the Pentagon to comply with last week’s ruling that its press policy is unconstitutional. 

The Pentagon said in court papers Friday that it is complying with last week’s order, and accused the Times of mischaracterizing its revised press policy. The arguments scheduled for Monday are the latest in a months-long legal battle over press access to the Pentagon.

Catch up on what the Times, Pentagon and the Pentagon Press Association are arguing ahead of Monday’s oral arguments. 

Big tech legal reckoning

A pair of landmark verdicts against Meta — and YouTube — last week could have major ramifications for the tech industry, consumers and in the world of politics.  

Legal and tech experts told TheWrap that the jury verdicts are likely to affect similar cases moving through the courts, and potentially force design and policy changes to social media. Outside of the U.S., countries have already taken steps to curtail the influence of social media on children.

“This is going to be a bonanza for plaintiff lawyers, as they can point to this verdict as precedent that the platform design can be blamed for negative outcomes,” a consumer tech analyst told TheWrap.

My piece with Kayla Cobb: Social Media’s Legal Reckoning Has Begun: ‘We Are in a New World’ | Analysis

Also on TheWrap

Savannah Guthrie Sets ‘Today’ Return for April: ‘My Joy Will Be My Protest’ | Video

Brendan Carr Boasts Trump Is ‘Winning’ Against ‘Fake News Media,’ Cites Colbert Exit and CNN Ownership Shift | Video

Versant Interested in Vox Media’s Podcast Business

‘Morning Joe’ Anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Renew MS NOW Deal

Bill Maher Says He Respects Trump’s Attempt to Block His Kennedy Center Honor: ‘Keep the Game Going, Baby’ | Video

Judge Pauses Nexstar-Tegna Merger Over DirecTV Lawsuit

Axios CEO Pitches AI ‘Moonshot’ as Company Reshapes Newsroom

BBC Plans to Cut Costs 10% as ‘Financial Pressures’ Persist

Bob Woodward to Reveal ‘Forever Sources’ in Memoir ‘Secrets’

What I’m Reading

“An AI Upheaval Is Coming for Media. This Journalist Is Already All In.” (Isabella Simonetti, The Wall Street Journal)

“Meet the Tech Reporters Using AI to Help Write and Edit Their Stories” (Maxwell Zeff, Wired)

“My take on the $6M jury verdict against Meta and YouTube in the social media addiction trial” (Meghann Cuniff, Legal Affairs and Trials)

“The Influencer Infestation of Our Politics” (Lauren Egan, The Bulwark) 

“OFF THE RECORD (prologue)” (Edmund Lee, Cleverly Painted Mules) 

The post The Media Front: Access, Authenticity and the Hybrid Journalist Era appeared first on TheWrap.

But in striking a podcaster pose, the network drew its share of mockery, along with accusations of inauthenticity — the kiss of death in today’s YouTube-driven media world. Perhaps no one was more punishing than former cable news stars who’ve gone independent and now speak with the zeal of the converted.

“They are trying to look like us,” former CNN host Piers Morgan said in a Monday conversation with ex-Fox News star Megyn Kelly. “We are unencumbered spirits,” Morgan added. “They cannot say the same. They are still living the old, mainstream media television rules.”

Kelly chalked up the CNN move as a “desperate ploy to save their ratings” and, like Morgan, emphasized her freedom as an independent operator. “It’s worth it for living free. I live free,” she said. “No one controls me.”

CNN adopting the visual trappings of the creator economy — and the white hot trend of video podcasting — comes as it seeks to boost its digital and streaming offerings, such as CNN All Access, amid linear TV decline. The cable stalwart is also grappling with an aging audience and the challenge of maintaining viewers outside of peak moments.

For instance, CNN topped 1 million total viewers in primetime, along with 238,000 in the age 25–54 demo, during the final week of February, as the U.S. and Israel struck Iran and demonstrated, once again, its strength in covering international conflicts. Its primetime numbers fell back to 820,000 and 149,000 just a couple weeks later.

But trying to imitate a vibe that is wholly different from its core identity in a naked bid to appeal to wider audiences only invites criticism and misses the point of how these independent journalists built their followings. Several TV news stars now working independently told TheWrap that legacy networks should seek ways to innovate, but not at the expense of diluting their core brand.

“People really depend on CNN to be CNN,” Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor, told TheWrap. “Don’t lose sight of that.”

Compounding the pressure on the industry headwinds CNN already faces is the prospect of David Ellison’s Paramount taking over CNN-parent Warner Bros. Discovery. The upcoming merger has stoked fears of significant cuts — with the network likely to merge some operations with CBS — and political interference, even as Ellison has promised editorial independence.

The aesthetics of CNN’s mini-makeover are both retro — Cooper’s rumpled, newsman-in-front-of-a-microphone style evokes the legendary Edward R. Murrow, or more recently, late CNN host Larry King — and modern, nodding to the now-familiar look of a YouTube host speaking into a desk microphone.

Tapper, meanwhile, took viewers into his office, decorated with a stunning display of memorabilia from losing presidential campaigns, breaking the fourth wall in a way more familiar on YouTube than network television. Even Morgan acknowledged that Tapper’s display was “mesmerizing.”

Taken together, the on-air innovations reflect a scrambled media moment in which podcasts have increasingly added video components, essentially becoming television, while television is borrowing from the podcast playbook.

“Why do podcasters have a simplified background? Because that’s all we can afford to do,” Chuck Todd said in an interview with TheWrap.

Todd, who spent nearly two decades at NBC and MSNBC, is among a parade of TV news personalities who have gone independent in recent years, along with Acosta, Don Lemon, Mehdi Hasan, Joy Reid, Katie Couric, Terry Moran and Chris Cillizza. Earlier this month, correspondent Scott MacFarlane left CBS News to report on his own channels and has teamed up with popular progressive platform MeidasTouch. 

While “CNN should be experimenting,” Todd told TheWrap, the podcast makeover felt consultant-driven to him, as if “some TV executive says, what if we make it look like YouTube?”

Todd stressed that switching up the set design isn’t going to change audience perceptions of mainstream TV news — as corporate-controlled — versus independent journalists, who gain credibility from not being “owned and operated by anybody.”

“It’s not the fact that they do it at their house or they do it in a makeshift studio, or they have these Zoom conversations. That isn’t the differentiator,” said Todd. “The differentiator is [no] one’s scripting them. No one’s telling them what to say, telling them how they should say it. Nobody else is helping to shape the reporting.” 

Cillizza, a CNN veteran who does a weekly video chat with Todd, along with broadcasts during the “State of the Union” and election nights, said in an email that “the fact that CNN thinks putting mics in front of its anchors and maybe changing up the set is how they are going to find new audiences or improve ratings reveals a concerning lack of understanding of audience.”

“It’s not the desk the anchor sits behind or whether he or she has a microphone in front of their face,” Cillizza added, but “how trusted is that person” and “how good is the content they are making.”

Both Todd and Cillizza suggested TV news networks take a page from sports media, pointing out how ESPN licensed Pat McAfee’s popular YouTube show, which now airs three hours on the network. Cillizza also noted MS NOW’s partnership with Crooked Media, though he believes networks could be doing far more on this front.  

“I think that’s what cable news (and broadcast news) needs to do,” he said. “Bring in independent creators who have proven they can build and retain audience — and maybe audience you don’t currently have. Give them a bunch of leeway to do things the way they have succeeded in doing them.”

To that point, Cillizza suggested networks avoid trying to turn an independent creator into a more traditional anchor. “Authenticity is the name of the game in the media world now,” he said. 

“You can’t be all things to all people,” said Acosta, noting his “preference would be for CNN to keep on being CNN.”

There’s nothing wrong with experimenting — and easy jabs on X may be the price of mixing things up once in a while. But CNN’s challenge remains in balancing its well-earned reputation in global newsgathering with seeking new ways to reach audiences that doesn’t feel contrived, or worse, inauthentic.

The post CNN’s Podcast Play Captures Cable News at an Awkward Crossroads | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

A couple months later, Dokoupil’s ratings have dipped below four million —  less than half of David Muir’s ABC viewership — as the legacy of Cronkite, and Edward R. Murrow recedes ever further in the rearview. 

Weiss and network president Tom Cibrowski announced Friday that CBS News Radio — a broadcasting pioneer launched nearly a century ago — would be shuttered, part of a 6% reduction of the 1,100-person newsroom. “A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service,” the pair wrote. 

Many news organizations are facing economic headwinds and executives are forced to make tough choices. Weiss said in a January town hall that her goal is to “make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century,” and news radio — one of the most significant innovations of the 20th century — apparently isn’t part of that vision. (Though, presumably, audio journalism would be in some fashion.)

Paramount CEO David Ellison, who acquired Weiss’ Free Press in October for $150 million and appointed her CBS News editor-in-chief, has said he wants the network — and eventually CNN — to appeal to the “70% of Americans who are in the middle,” from center-left to center-right. CBS News Radio arguably fit that bill, providing straight, nonpartisan news to 700 affiliate stations around the country. 

“Of all the newsroom cuts, this is by far one of the worst,” David Cruz, deputy politics editor of Newsday and president of the New York Press Club, wrote on X. “So many good journalists work in radio, carrying out the art of weaving storytelling with fact-based news.”

As Weiss nears six months at the helm, it’s still unclear how exactly CBS News aims to reach this potential mass audience — and without alienating existing viewers of programs like ratings standout “60 Minutes” in the process. 

Weiss, a right-leaning political commentator with no TV news background, has made several controversial moves in her tenure, notably shelving a “60 Minutes” segment just hours before broadcast, prompting accusations of political interference and questions about her inexperience. After a media firestorm, CBS ultimately aired the piece largely unchanged.

One of Weiss’ big innovations was to bring in a slate of contributors across politics, tech and wellness. Weeks later, upon revelations that one of them, longevity expert Peter Attia, exchanged chummy emails with Jeffrey Epstein, it was expected the network would cut ties. Instead, as TheWrap reported, Weiss tried to keep Attia and the network declined to comment for weeks – until Attia eventually left. 

At the same time, Dokoupil’s on-air framing — including his both-sides treatment of the Jan. 6 attack — has signaled a more Trump-friendly tone. Conservative viewers already have other choices, such as Fox News, which may help explain why the new approach has yet to translate into ratings gains. Weiss’ sitdown with conservative activist Erika Kirk also didn’t move the needle ratings-wise. 

Weiss’ social media presence at times has blurred the line between network executive and political pundit. Earlier this month, Weiss posted a fire emoji alongside a clip of Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad blasting New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, appearing to cosign her critique.

Taken together, such decisions provide an early sense of how Weiss is steering CBS News — and the challenges ahead for a network determined to reach that 70% of Americans in the middle. 

To borrow from Murrow, good night and good luck. 

CBS News Layoffs

Corbin Bolies reports on CBS News cutting 6% of staff, cutbacks that include shutting down CBS News Radio in May. 

“We understand how difficult this news is for our staff and their colleagues, who have worked side by side with us to cover some of the most significant stories of our time,” editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski told staffers, attributing the “necessary” cuts to shifting radio programming strategies and “challenging economic realities.”

The Writers Guild of America, which represents CBS News Radio staffers through its East and West divisions, said the layoffs represented “the recklessness and greed” of CBS News bosses and referenced Paramount’s quest to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns cable outlet CNN.

Read Bolies’ report here: CBS News Lays Off 6% of Staff, Cuts Radio Division

Media Blame Game

For Pete Hegseth, the questions at a press conference are almost beside the point. “Yes, there are reporters in front of me,” he said at a Thursday press conference. “But they are not our audience today. It’s you, the good, decent, patriotic American people.”

It’s a press-bashing routine that has become commonplace in recent weeks at the Pentagon, but Hegseth’s broadsides are part of a broader war on the media that is only escalating as the administration grapples with weak polls and fissures in the MAGA media world over the conflict. The attacks on the press are sure to connect with Trump diehards, who overwhelmingly support the war, but it’s hard to see them moving the needle with Americans skeptical of the president’s handling of the conflict so far.

“The more Hegseth talks trash, the less relevant he becomes,” Thomas Ricks, a veteran military journalist and historian, told TheWrap. “From where I sit, it looks to me like he is not really part of running the war, and is more a cheerleader for it. But standing on the sidelines shouting may be all he is capable of doing.”

Read my full piece: Team Trump Steps Up Attacks on Media as Iran War Deepens | Analysis

Pentagon press policy ruled unconstitutional

A federal judge ruled Friday in favor of the New York Times in its lawsuit against the Defense Department, finding that the Pentagon’s press policy enacted last fall violates the First and Fifth Amendments.

Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the court will vacate the challenged provisions of the policy, and that the defendants — which include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell — cannot enforce them “to deny, suspend, revoke or not renew” Times reporter and plaintiff Julian Barnes’s press badge.

“The New York Times welcomes today’s ruling, which enforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for The Times, said in a statement to TheWrap. “Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”

“We disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal,” Parnell wrote on X.

My piece on the this major win for the press: Judge Rules Pentagon’s Press Policy Violates First and 5th Amendments in Victory for New York Times

And earlier on the case: New York Times Case Against the Pentagon Heads to Court as Iran War Escalates | Analysis

Erin Burnett on covering Iran war

Corbin Bolies caught up with CNN’s Erin Burnett at Hudson Yards for her first show back after anchoring the past couple weeks in Tel Aviv covering the war in Iran.

“It was hard to leave this time,” she said, struggling to find the words. “When you’re in the midst of something, there’s an adrenaline, there’s a feeling of, you’re committed, you’re a part of seeing something and watching something and then coming out of it is — it’s a very unmoored feeling.”

Bolies and Burnett discussed government criticism of CNN’s war coverage, along with rumors that her job could be in jeopardy when Paramount CEO David Ellison takes control of CNN by acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery

Check out the revealing interview here: CNN’s Erin Burnett: Why Her On-the-Ground Iran War Reporting Made It ‘Hard to Leave’

MS NOW Revamps Lineup

MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler is making sweeping changes to daytime, primetime and weekend programming effective this June: “Morning Joe” returns to three hours daily, and Chris Hayes resumes hosting Mondays.

Plus: Stephanie Ruhle will host mornings from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and Alicia Menendez from noon to 2 p.m.; Luke Russert joins “The Weeknight” crew, and Ali Velshi will host “The 11th Hour.”

For more on what to expect from MS NOW’s lineup shake-up, check out Bolies’ piece: MS NOW Overhauls Lineup With New Shows for Stephanie Ruhle, Ali Velshi and Alicia Menendez

An to get a better sense of Kutler’s strategy for the network, see Bolies’ December piece: Inside Rebecca Kutler’s Ambitious MS NOW Experiment

Will the courts stop Trump’s Kennedy Center overhaul?

President Donald Trump kicked off a Kennedy Center board meeting at the White House by accusing past management of letting the institution “go to hell.” The cultural institution, he said, was in “very bad condition,” “a disaster,” “abysmal” and “on the verge of collapse” — all while offering programming that was “very woke and out of touch with reality.”

It was a brutal assessment of the Kennedy Center — and a convenient one. By asserting that the Kennedy Center was “failing,” Trump can more easily justify his heavy-handed reshaping of it, including the extraordinary decision to close it for two years for renovations — a move that has elicited a lawsuit from Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio board member.

“It’s unlawful,” Beatty told reporters after the meeting. “There was no due process of going through anything with the United States Congress, which by law they must do.”

Read the rest here: Trump Plows Ahead With Kennedy Center Overhaul as Lawsuit Looms

Also on TheWrap

LA Times Projects News Business to Break Even in 2026

Nexstar Closes $6.2 Billion Tegna Merger With FCC Approval

California, New York and 6 More States Sue to Block $6.2 Billion Nexstar-Tegna Merger

Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank, Several Reporters Join NOTUS as It Expands in DC

ProPublica’s Unionized Staff Vote to Authorize Strike: ‘We Are Ready to Walk Off the Job’

Axios Lays Off 11 Newsroom Staffers

What I’m Reading

​Rarely does a single article immediately reorient our understanding of history. But since the New York Times published a shocking investigative piece on Wednesday  — “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years” —  there has been a swift rethinking of Chavez’ legacy and how he has been honored across government and university campuses.

Times reporters Manny Fernandez and Sarah Hurtes first got a tip about Chavez’s past in 2021, and have been investigating elements of the story ever since. 

Elsewhere in media, tech and politics:  

“Inside the White House plan to sell the Iran War online” (Eli Stokols, Ben Johansen, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary, Politico)  

“Maybe Turning War Into a Casino Was a Bad Idea? (Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic) 

“How Will Lewis Lost the Washington Post” (Paul Farhi, Washingtonian)

“Can Jonah Peretti Save BuzzFeed From Extinction?” (Ben Mullin, The New York Times)

The post Bari Weiss Reshapes CBS News: A Rocky 6 Months of Layoffs, Gaffes and Ratings Dips appeared first on TheWrap.

“I stand here today, speaking to you, the American people, not through filters, not through reporters, not through cable news spin,” Hegseth said Thursday at a Pentagon press conference on “Operation Epic Fury,” an opportunity to provide updates on military operations in Iran and to take questions.

“Yes, there are reporters in front of me,” he added, looking at the camera. “But they are not our audience today. It’s you, the good, decent, patriotic American people.”

The former Fox News host, who last week assailed the news media and spoke approvingly of Paramount’s David Ellison taking over CNN, accused “a dishonest and anti-Trump press” of downplaying progress and amplifying the costs of war because “they want President Trump to fail.”

It’s a press-bashing routine that has become commonplace in recent weeks at the Pentagon, but Hegseth’s broadsides are part of a broader war on the media that is only escalating as the administration grapples with weak polls and fissures in the MAGA media world over the conflict. The attacks on the press are sure to connect with Trump diehards, who overwhelmingly support the war, but it’s hard to see them moving the needle with Americans skeptical of the president’s handling of the conflict so far.

“The more Hegseth talks trash, the less relevant he becomes,” Thomas Ricks, a veteran military journalist and historian, told TheWrap. “From where I sit, it looks to me like he is not really part of running the war, and is more a cheerleader for it. But standing on the sidelines shouting may be all he is capable of doing.”

Cheerleading is what the Trump administration seems to expect from the media, and it’s not afraid to enact changes that provide a more sympathetic press corps.

The Pentagon enforced restrictions in October that prompted dozens of news outlets – from the Associated Press to New York Times, CNN to Fox News — to give up their full-time credentials. (Several of the questions Hegseth took Thursdsay were from conservative outlets, like Gateway Pundit, that filled the gap.)  Over the last few weeks, Trump himself has called media treasonous over false claims of spreading misinformation and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened broadcasters over their coverage.

The Trump administration’s messaging on Iran has been muddled from the start of the conflict. The president announced the U.S. and Israeli strikes through a video posted on Truth Social in the middle of the night, and then proceeded to offer a series of rationales through brief phone interviews with reporters, all before taking questions publicly. (Reporters have only kept calling.)

Trump has never been one for strict message control, a quality that helped him overtake staid Republican challengers a decade ago but has also led to a more chaotic governing style. The ramshackle nature of Trump’s communication during this latest global crisis brings to mind the early months of the COVID pandemic, when the president engaged in rambling news conferences, once suggesting that injecting bleach could fight the virus.

Unsurprisingly, Team Trump isn’t accepting blame, even in part, for the lack of clarity about what constitutes an imminent threat — and what the endgame is. Americans are understandably concerned with the country getting mired in a lengthy war a la Iraq and Afghanistan — and the resulting impact on gas prices, which are already surging, and overall costs of the conflict, as the Defense Department requests $200 billion more.

As Ricks noted, “We now find ourselves in a war of choice chosen solely by that president. No one knows how it will end. But wars generally surprise people, especially in how long they last.”

Taking it to the media

Trump has suggested news outlets face charges of “TREASON” for spreading fake videos depicting Iranian military success — despite there being “no evidence that mainstream U.S. media outlets promoted fake videos” of the USS Lincoln on fire, as CNN found, never mind Trump’s outrageous claim that the “Fake News” media is “working in close coordination” with Iran. 

The administration’s assault on the media has gone beyond rhetoric. The Pentagon further clamped down this month on Stars and Stripes, the partially government-funded newspaper that has long independently covered the military.

Stripes ombudsman Jacqueline Smith told the Washington Post that a memo issued last week describing increased oversight “threatens Stars and Stripes’ continued editorial independence, and it does so at the detriment of the troops who rely on the newspaper for complete coverage and continued accurate coverage that is not propaganda.”

On Thursday, Stars and Stripes Pentagon reporter Matthew Adams said on X that his outlet “was not approved by the Pentagon to attend this press conference.”

Over at the FCC, Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over Iran coverage, which — even if unlikely, especially in the near term – only compounds the anti-media rhetoric with potential government retaliation on media companies. Trump endorsed Carr’s threat against “corrupt and highly unpatriotic” news outlets. Carr told the New York Post that he is encouraging television broadcasters to air more “pro-America” content ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday in July.

“This is far more than criticism. These are outright threats, particularly Carr’s,” said John Wolcott, who served as Washington bureau chief of Knight Ridder newspapers (later McClatchy) during the Iraq war. “The idea that [they] can use the power the FCC has over licensing the public airwaves to direct your coverage in ways that are favorable to the current administration is unprecedented.”

Wolcott won high praise for his team’s hard-hitting coverage of the Iraq war, raising early doubts about the Bush administration’s WMD case. The late Rob Reiner played Wolcott in “Shock and Awe,” his 2017 film highlighting the Knight Ridder reporters’ dogged efforts to expose the truth.

During that time, Wolcott recalled how there was some backlash from readers and advertisers given Knight Ridder’s more skeptical coverage of the Bush administration’s claims. Though Bush officials may have been unhappy with some coverage, he said, “we were never threatened by anyone in a position of power.”

What the Trump administration is doing, Walcott said, “is by far the most blatant attempt I can think of to control coverage,” adding: “This is dangerous stuff.”

Questioning the press’s patriotism

The word “patriotic” has been getting thrown around a lot by Team Trump since the start of the war with Iran. 

Hegseth, at one point Thursday, addressed “the patriotic members of the press,” the implication being that other reporters are insufficiently patriotic.

Ricks, who covered the Iraq War for the Washington Post, and has written two books on the subject, “Fiasco” and “The Gamble,” said that “reporters should ask hard questions” and “officials should be prepared to respond to them.”

“Reporters should also witness what is going on in combat, and tell the American people what is being done by and to them. The closer a reporter gets to the front lines, the more he or she tends to be appreciated,” Ricks said. He noted that soldiers and reporters can build relationships when both are on the front lines.

Unlike the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which hundreds of journalists were embedded with the military, there is no comparable setup in the Iran conflict. While reporters aren’t on the ground with troops, they are seeking information from sources in the military, intelligence community, White House and Congress — and attending Pentagon briefings. 

“A Marine general once pointed out to me the sign at the entrance to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort (S.C.) that has an image of a Marine jet and the motto, ‘The ‘noise’ you hear is the sound of freedom.,’” Ricks recalled. “I told him that I feel the same way about press conferences.”

 It’s unlikely Pete Hegseth sees press conferences the same way. 

The post Team Trump Steps Up Attacks on Media as Iran War Deepens | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

It was a brutal assessment of the Kennedy Center — and a convenient one. By asserting that the Kennedy Center was “failing,” Trump can more easily justify his heavy-handed reshaping of it, including the extraordinary decision to close it for two years for renovations — a move that has elicited a lawsuit from Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio board member.

At one point, Trump, reading from prepared remarks, noted that the closure was subject to board approval before adding, “It’s a little late for the board because we already announced it. These are minor details. I think everybody agrees.”

Trump had good reason to expect the board of trustees to approve, which they did, given that he appointed them within weeks of taking office, an early move in remaking the Kennedy Center in his image. While Trump showed little interest in the institution during his first term — even skipping the Kennedy Center Honors — he has upended it in his second, to the dismay of much of the creative community. What had long been a bipartisan cultural institution in the nation’s capital has become another front in the culture wars. 

After purging Biden appointees, Trump filled the board with allies, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — who was seated next to him Monday — longtime aide Dan Scavino, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Fox News hosts Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham and country singer Lee Greenwood. Trump also appointed himself chairman and a combative loyalist, Richard Grenell, as president.

The new board voted in December to rename The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — which had been established as a living memorial to the slain 35th president — by inserting Trump’s name first. This past February, Trump announced the closure of the center for two years, beginning just after the July 4 sesquitennial. 

As Trump has remade the Kennedy Center, talent has begun heading for the exits. Actress and writer Issa Rae canceled a sold-out performance and Lin-Manuel Miranda canceled a “Hamilton” run for 2026; Philip Glass pulled out the premier of a new symphony; showrunner Shonda Rhimes resigned as treasurer of the board; and singer Renée Fleming and musician Ben Folds resigned as consultants. Ticket sales have reportedly plummeted. 

Not everyone at the White House on Monday was on board with the changes.

“It’s unlawful,” Beatty told reporters after the meeting. “There was no due process of going through anything with the United States Congress, which by law they must do.”

In December, Beatty sued Trump and others over the name change; she amended the lawsuit earlier this month to also oppose Trump’s renovation plans. “This is a case about the ongoing desecration and impending destruction of a cherished national monument,” the lawsuit read, arguing that “only Congress may authorize the kind of demolition and rebuilding.”

A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment. A Kennedy Center spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment.

Beatty said several board members came up after her brief remarks on Monday “and expressed that they were glad that I voiced my opinion.” Trump, she added, “stared” at her and expressed his opposition.

Current and former members of Congress have offered support for her and the legal team pursuing the case, Beatty said, along with people from around the country “who believe in the arts and the rule of law,” including Caroline Kennedy in recent days. (Several prominent Kennedy family members have already expressed outrage of the remaking of the center.) Beatty plans to continue legally challenging Trump’s changes “because it’s not about me, it is about the rule of law.”

New front in the culture wars

The Kennedy Center has a rich, bipartisan legacy. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation in 1958 to create a National Cultural Center, which Congress later named in honor of Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. It opened in 1971 with the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.”

The Kennedy Center Honors, which began in 1978, have paid tribute to legends of stage and screen, including Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen, Francis Ford Coppola and The Grateful Dead. Trump made himself master of ceremonies for the December event — a first for a sitting president — as the institution honored Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, KISS, Michael Crawford and George Strait.

The sprawling center, which includes a concert hall, opera house, theaters and other venues, was established as a public-private enterprise, which is funded through ticket sales, private donations and federal support; $45 million came from federal appropriations in 2024, according to the Washington Post. 

​​When Trump appointed Grenell, in February 2025, he said they shared a “Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture and there would be “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”

Trump and his allies have suggested that the center, which hosts a wide variety of performances, has gone astray in its programming. “The Kennedy Center learned the hard way that if you go woke, you will go broke,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Wall Street Journal last month. And Grenell, who is known for taking aim at Trump critics on X, wrote in response to Miranda pulling “Hamilton” that his “publicity stunt…will backfire.” 

Trump announced Friday that Grenell was stepping down, to be replaced by Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of facilities. Trump praised Grenell at Monday’s meeting.

Beatty won a more narrow legal victory this past weekend when a federal judge ordered that she be allowed to participate in Monday’s meeting. In her complaint, Beatty said she was muted when appearing virtually at the December meeting in which board members voted to rename the center to honor Trump. But Beatty’s suit against renaming and closing the center is ongoing. 

“We will be returning to court expeditiously now to address the illegality of the closure of the Kennedy Center, including without congressional authorization, as well as the other unlawful actions here, including the renaming of this living memorial,” said Norm Eisen, co-executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action, who are representing Beatty along with the Washington Litigation Group.

“With the center closed, it’s no longer a living enterprise,” Eisen continued. “And with the name change, it’s no longer a memorial to the late President Kennedy.”

Trump is promising that the center will reopen in two years, better than ever. His critics worry that when it does, it may no longer resemble the national memorial Congress created in Kennedy’s name.

The post Trump Plows Ahead With Kennedy Center Overhaul as Lawsuit Looms appeared first on TheWrap.

“Allow me to make a few suggestions,” he said at a news conference. “People look at the TV and they see banners, they see headlines — I used to be in that business, and I know everything is written intentionally.”

For example, Hegseth suggested a headline declaring “Mideast War Intensifies” should instead read “Iran Increasingly Desperate.” He specifically accused CNN of “fake news,” before saying that the sooner Paramount chief David Ellison “takes over that network, the better.”

Hegseth’s own-the-libs style of media criticism wouldn’t be out of place at his former employer, Fox News. But it feels tone-deaf at a moment when the nation is at war — especially as polls show Americans largely disapproving of the conflict and unclear about its rationale.

The defense secretary appeared defensive in the briefing room. Hegseth said the headline “War Widening” was also “fake,” and that an “actual patriot press” would run: “Iran Shrinking, Going Underground.”

The contrast at the podium is striking: Hegseth berates the press for overplaying the intensity of the conflict, followed by Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine offering sober assessments and noting that the “heaviest day of kinetic fire” is underway.

Hegseth’s swipes at news outlets over Iran coverage come as Trump on Saturday accused the media of “want[ing] us to lose the war.” That was followed by Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, warning broadcasters to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”

Such attacks and threats suggest the Trump administration would be happy only with a compliant media that doesn’t try to hold power to account. Yet Hegseth’s aggressive posture hasn’t softened even as the Pentagon press corps has become more sympathetic to the Trump administration.

Since mainstream outlets rejected new restrictions last fall and gave up their full-time credentials, right-wing outlets filled the void. The first question for Hegseth on Friday came from a reporter at the right-wing outlet One America News Network. The Pentagon has allowed some mainstream journalists to attend recent Iran-focused briefings, though a veteran Atlantic reporter noted being shut out Friday. 

The Pentagon also barred photographers from news conferences this past month after the department’s staff deemed some images “unflattering,” the Washington Post reported. Photographers from the New York Times were among the outlets barred.

“As The Times has long said: there is a clear importance and public service to allowing journalists to report fully on the U.S. military,” a Times spokesperson told TheWrap. “This includes photojournalists, who deserve access and credentialing to attend Pentagon briefings.”

A Pentagon spokesperson said that “photographs from the briefings are immediately released online for the public and press to use” and “if that hurts the business model for certain news outlets, then they should consider applying for a Pentagon press credential.”

The Times is currently suing the Defense Department to restore its previous access on First Amendment grounds, arguing that the credential process unveiled last fall is unconstitutional. 

That case is ongoing. So, apparently, is Pete Hegseth’s war with the press.

Lunch with Jeff Bezos 

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos invited around 30 editors and reporters to his Kalorama home on Thursday to dive into the paper’s financials and data — and opened lunch for questions.

Bezos, standing at a long table full of journalists, appeared at ease as he fielded a variety of questions, including about Amazon MGM Studios’ decision to acquire “Melania” — which he said wasn’t meant to curry favor with Donald Trump — and why he wants to own the paper, according to sources.

The megabillionaire owner said he has turned away offers and remains committed to the Post, viewing it as an important institution worth saving. At one point, he acknowledged: “I’m stubborn.”

My full rundown of gathering his here: At Washington Post Lunch, Jeff Bezos Talks ‘Melania’ Doc, Layoffs and His ‘Stubborn’ Refusal to Sell

What’s next for VOA?

It’s been a whirlwind couple weeks for Voice of America journalists.

A federal judge ruled on March 7 that “Kari Lake’s attempt to oversee Voice of America’s parent agency, the U.S Agency of Global Media, as acting CEO was invalid, thereby voiding all of her actions — including mass layoffs that gutted the once nearly 2,000-strong agency,” as Corbin Bolies wrote in his look at how the 84-year-old, federally funded news organization hopes to rebuild. 

Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House Bureau Chief, whose lawsuit against Lake last year alongside two of her colleagues spurred the ruling, told TheWrap she’s more than ready to return. “If you ask me, I want to go tomorrow,” she said. “I wish I’d get an email today that says that, but we just don’t know.”

It’s unclear exactly how VOA moves forward. On Wednesday, government lawyers said the U.S. Agency for Global Media — which oversees federally-funded outlets — had no acting CEO or succession plan, and that Donald Trump needed to nominate a permanent CEO. 

Trump did just that Thursday, nominating Sarah B. Rogers, the State Department’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, to lead the USAGM. She’ll need Senate confirmation; in the meantime, Trump tapped another State Department official, Michael Rigas, as acting CEO. 

Check out Bolies’ piece here: Voice of America Looks to Rebuild After Rejection of Kari Lake

(And for a good primer on Rogers, she spoke to Semafor in January about tech, free speech and her past life as a “prolific Gawker commenter.”)

Netflix takes on Murdoch succession

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus said her work on Netflix’s December 2022 series “Harry & Meghan” sparked conversations about covering the Murdochs, who similarly, “by accident of birth or marriage,” were thrust into the public eye and helped shape “the reality that the rest of us get to live in.”

While family drama propels the narrative arc of “Dynasty: The Murdochs” — and is truly riveting — the series also captures the stakes.

A murderer’s row of Murdoch chroniclers narrates Rupert’s successes and how the children competed for his attention throughout, from the breakfast table to the boardroom.

“We all have families, we all have siblings we fight with, we all have parents we want to please, who we try to emulate or not,” Garbus told TheWrap. “And there can be cruelty, there can be love.”

The difference with the Murdoch family, she added, is that their “squabbles affect all of us.”

See my look at the four-part docuseries:  Dissecting the Murdoch Succession, a Gilded Game With Global Stakes

Oscars during wartime

Steve Pond revisits how the Academy Awards played out in 2003, on the heels of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — as the country is now at war with Iran.

There are dramatic differences between the two eras, of course. In 2003, the war began only three days before the Oscars, prompting immediate talk of canceling the show and leading to a decision to eliminate the red carpet lined with fans and press.

In 2026, there was no outcry to cancel or delay the ceremony. When the war in Iraq started in 2003, it was the main – in fact, the only – topic of conversation in Academy Awards circles. But on the weekend when hostilities began in Iran this year, the big awards news was that “Sinners” had beaten “One Battle After Another” at the Actor Awards.

Relive the backstage drama of putting on the 2003 show, and the cheers and boos that greeted Michael Moore’s defiant anti-war speech: Remember When a War in the Middle East Completely Disrupted the Oscars?

Also on TheWrap

New York Times Newsroom Hits Record 2,300 Journalists

New York Times Defends Photojournalists’ ‘Clear Importance and Public Service’ as Pentagon Bars Access

Pentagon Blocks Photojournalists From Iran War Briefings After ‘Unflattering’ Pete Hegseth Photos | Report

USA Today Taps Washington Post Veteran Jamie Stockwell as VP of News

ESPN Adds 6 Sports Writers From the Washington Post

BuzzFeed Expresses ‘Substantial Doubt’ It Can Stay in Business, Citing Continued Financial Hardship

What I’m Reading

​“​Everyone Now Has Trump’s Phone Number” (Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, The Atlantic)

“Why the Global Elite Gave Up on Spelling and Grammar” (Rachel Louise Ensign and Alexandra Wexler, The Wall Street Journal)

How Jeff Bezos Upended The Washington Post (Ben Mullin, Katie Robertson and Erik Wemple, The New York Times) 

“Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler” (McKay Coppins, The Atlantic)

“Everyone Is Flocking to the Same MAGA Hot Spot. They’re Missing Something Critical.” (Ben Jacobs, Slate)

The post The Media Front: Pete Hegseth Goes to War With the Press Over Iran Coverage appeared first on TheWrap.

But another way to picture the saga is as a “gilded version of ‘Life,’” said Sara Enright, who co-directed the final episode of “Dynasty: The Murdochs,” a four-part docuseries premiering Friday on Netflix. The board itself is “like a Frankenstein” of various games, Enright said, with elements of “Chutes and Ladders” and “Mousetrap.” The intention, she said, was to depict the “uncertainty of the path forward,” with the players “very much at the whim of things being thrown at them.”

Siblings Lachlan, James and Elisabeth fall out with their father — and back in the line of succession — in a dizzying series of reversals that director Liz Garbus and Enright, her partner on the series, depict as game pieces landing on spaces like “Work for Dad,” “Start Your Own Company” or “You’ve Been Demoted,” while passing markers of the kingdom such as the New York Post and News of the World.

Even if succession can be imagined as a board game, whoever sits atop the Murdoch dynasty holds extraordinary real-world power. Over the past half-century, Rupert Murdoch built a media, sports and entertainment juggernaut spanning three continents — one that has influenced presidents and prime ministers, injected a populist tabloid sensibility into politics and culture and helped create the conditions for Donald Trump’s rise.

From the bare-knuckle tactics of his salacious tabloids to incendiary rhetoric on cable news, Murdoch’s outlets have helped shape — and, to many critics, coarsen — public discourse for decades. The series captures moments when Murdoch’s power appeared to wane, such as when he and James were grilled in 2011 before Parliament over the News of the World phone hacking scandal that ensnared not only celebrities but a murdered schoolgirl, or when Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 for $787.5 million after amplifying Trump’s false 2020 election claims.

And yet Murdoch persevered, with Fox News finishing 2025 atop the cable ratings. The patriarch’s clout was still on display this past week at his 95th birthday party in Manhattan, which drew guests across politics, business, sports and entertainment, including Jared and Ivanka Trump, Doug Burgum, Tony Blair, Paul Ryan, Barry Diller, Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Hugh Jackman. President Trump sent a video message.

James, Elisabeth and Prudence — the older sister who never vied for the throne — were notably absent from the birthday bash, which is hardly surprising given that Lachlan, the sibling more aligned with Rupert politically, won the succession sweepstakes last year. Rupert and Lachlan’s attempt to change the family trust to preserve the company’s conservative bent triggered a bitter court fight in Reno, Nevada, with the three siblings ultimately settling for $1.1 billion apiece.

Garbus, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, said her work on Netflix’s December 2022 series “Harry & Meghan” sparked conversations about covering the Murdochs, who similarly “by accident of birth or marriage” were thrust into the public eye and helped shape “the reality that the rest of us get to live in.”

While family drama propels the narrative arc of “Dynasty: The Murdochs,” and is truly riveting, the series also captures the stakes of leading Fox Corp., which boasts live news, sports and entertainment assets such as Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports and Tubi; and News Corp., the publishing and news arm that includes Wall Street Journal-parent Dow Jones, The Sun, The Times of London, The Australian and HarperCollins.

A murderer’s row of Murdoch chroniclers narrate Rupert’s successes — dominating Fleet Street, launching Fox, selling 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney for $71.3 billion — and how the children competed for his attention throughout, from the breakfast table to the boardroom.

“We all have families, we all have siblings we fight with, we all have parents who we want to please, who we try to emulate or not,” Garbus told TheWrap. “And there can be cruelty, there can be love.”

The difference with the Murdoch family, she added, is their “squabbles affect all of us.”

“On a precipice of clarity”

Murdoch succession has been a decades-long obsession among media watchers, a number of whom provide the play-by-play throughout the series.

The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler, who broke ground on the Reno case, are joined by the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher, NPR’s David Folkenflik, Puck’s Matt Belloni, Washington Post and Vanity Fair veteran Sarah Ellison, Media Mix’s Claire Atkinson and Lachlan Murdoch biographer Paddy Manning, among others.

When Garbus and Enright began working on the film in 2024, there wasn’t a clear resolution to the succession battle — but secret court proceedings were setting the stage for a finale. Rutenberg and Mahler reported that year how a consequential case was getting underway in a Reno probate court.

“There was a sense we were on a precipice of clarity,” Garbus said. “We didn’t know how long it would take. We didn’t know what shape it would take, but there was a sense that we were in the penultimate moments of this game.”

Neither Rupert Murdoch nor his children participated in the Netflix series, but their perspectives come through in archival footage and articles. Details of the court proceedings, revealed by the Times, illuminated rancor within the family, and evidence at trial — including text messages between family members — provided “another layer to our story,” Enright said.

Garbus said the settlement provided resolution “to explore the entire narrative arc” of Rupert Murdoch’s life, from succeeding his own father in newspapers in Australia, to expanding the business in the U.K. and US and establishing his own successor. It also put to rest long-simmering speculation that James and Elisabeth might try to take control of the empire after Rupert dies and shift its editorial line to the left.

While some people “projected a lot of ideas onto” the siblings, Garbus said the settlement showed “what they valued the most in terms of their role and their future in this company.” Whereas Lachlan, she said, can be expected to mold the business “very much in the shape and image of his father,” given his “enormous respect for him and deference to him.”

Trump and beyond

Garbus was in the New York Times newsroom in August 2017 directing “The Fourth Estate,” a Showtime series spotlighting the paper’s reporters covering Trump’s first term, when the president made his infamous “very fine people, on both sides” remarks after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a protester. 

As Trump faced swift backlash over the comments, Garbus recalled seeing pundits at the time defending the president on Fox News. It’s also a pivotal episode in which James condemned Trump’s remarks, a public distancing from the family business, and for Garbus, “a moment in both projects that folded in on one another, where you’re looking at the same event from various perspectives of media coverage.”

The Trump-Murdoch relationship is a tumultuous one. The reality TV star would talk news and world affairs on “Fox & Friends” during the Obama years, helping raise his political profile. But Murdoch, who appears more in the mold of a Reagan Republican, was opposed early on to Trump’s populist 2016 presidential bid, only to reverse course when it was clear the GOP base — and presumably core Fox News viewers — were on board.

“These past 10 years have been so crazy-fast-moving with news,” Garbus said, and people may have forgotten how Trump “forced Fox’s hand” and “won that game.”

As for victors in the Murdoch family feud, Rutenberg said near the end of the series that “for all this talk of winning, they all lost,” adding: “They’ve got their billions, but they’ve lost their family. And that is what being a Murdoch really cost them.”

It’s hard to feel sorry for a billionaire’s heirs accumulating more money and power. But the expressionless game pieces moving around the board actually humanize the family members, portraying them as caught in a contest by birth and circumstance. And the consequences of this gilded game stretch far beyond a single family dynasty, affecting all of us.

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