Biden's big stage; a history-making speech; 'making the presidency boring again;' Spotify's silence; YouTube's massive growth; a carousel of deceit

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Brian Stelter here at 10:50pm ET with news about Marty Baron, Gannett, Rupert Murdoch, Spotify, "Nomadland," Britney Spears, and much more...

Biden's big stage

American presidents have a handful of time-tested ways to break through the daily news media din and make a big statement. An Oval Office address is one way. Wednesday's format, speaking before Congress, is another. President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress supplies him with a big stage. He will use it to share a "unifying message;" highlight the country's pandemic response; and spotlight the "second part of his jobs and infrastructure plan," CNN's Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins report.

As with any stage, the visuals are enormously important. Case in point: Right-wing pundits still cite, and condemn, Nancy Pelosi's highly visible shredding of Donald Trump's address to Congress in February 2020.

This time, "for the first time in history, a pair of women will be seated on the rostrum" behind Biden -- Pelosi and VP Kamala Harris. And the setting for his speech, the House of Representatives chamber, is "where a riot of would-be insurrectionists tried to prevent him from becoming president," Liptak and Collins noted. "Biden plans to reference both the January 6 riot and the historic tableau behind him during his remarks, according to people familiar with his speech preps..."

A media critic's POV

"Biden's greatest media tool has been his ability to create a sense of intimacy and trust by speaking directly and fervently into the eye of camera," The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote Tuesday. "In this mode, his voice is soft and sometimes husky with emotion. The style comes across as nothing if not sincere." Zurawik said it worked really well during the 2020 convention.

But Biden "will not be able to rely on his mastery of TV intimacy in Wednesday's address," Zurawik observed. "The room he will be speaking to is too big. And his big voice — the one he reserves for halls, auditoriums and rallies — is generally not as effective as his softer, more intimate TV voice." Zurawik posed this question: Can Biden "find a more intimate way to come across on the screen even though he is simultaneously standing before and addressing a big room in the Capitol?"

A cautionary note

I'm the type of news consumer who's home on the couch for every State of the Union. But it's helpful to remember that I'm not the norm. (I'm guessing you are not the norm, either!) Trump's State of the Union averaged 37 million viewers across 12 TV networks last year, which means most American adults heard the speech later, in bits and pieces, or didn't hear about it at all. Technically Biden's speech is an address to a joint session, since it's his first year as president, so here are this century's ratings comps: About 48 million viewers for Trump in 2017, 52 million for Barack Obama in 2009, and 40 million for George W. Bush in 2001. Recent TV ratings erosion might make 30 million a more realistic barometer for Biden's address...

First 100 days

Correction: Last night we made reference to Biden's "first 100 years." Thanks to everyone who flagged it! On the subject of Biden's first 100 days, well, this marker "gets lots of attention but has no actual significance," as NPR's Jason Breslow puts it. Re: that attention, newsrooms are rolling out special coverage, including polls, webcasts, and interactive graphics. The 100-day date is on Friday but some of the content is already out...

"Biden's strategy of boringness"

I read this Jonathan Chait piece in the new print edition of NYMag and found it very much worth sharing. Chait wrote, "Biden has acted as if he decided to slide the presidential public-engagement bar all the way to the bottom and see what happens. In his public communication, he has put forth the most minimal effort that the news media will tolerate without staging a revolt. His interviews are infrequent and mostly news free." Chait asserted that Biden's basic statements "seem designed to be ignored. The tedium is the message." It all reminded me of this Politico headline from last November: "America Votes to Make Politics Boring Again." Michelle Cottle of the NYT editorial board said it on Tuesday night too: "He's making the presidency boring again. Mock if you will, but this is a major achievement — one welcomed by many exhausted Americans..."

Here's a counterargument

"The daily White House briefings now are a snoozefest" and the "rollicking MAGA rallies" are now history, but "does all this mean it's been a boring presidency? Absolutely not," the BBC's North America editor Jon Sopel wrote Tuesday. "This is a far more interesting presidency – so far – than I think any of us had imagined. I would go as far as to say it's fascinating." Because it's ambitious, Sopel wrote. It's a reassertion of government's role. It's not a "made for TV spectacular," he wrote, but it's "a mighty gamble..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- This AP headline -- "More action, less talk, distinguish Biden's 100-day sprint" -- reminded me of Ezra Klein's earlier summation of the Biden WH's strategy: "Speak softly and pass a big agenda." (AP)

-- "With semiregular speeches, few news interviews and no unscripted tweets, Biden has fashioned himself the foil of the previous president," Morgan Chalfant writes... (The Hill)

-- "Americans perceive Joe Biden as more moderate than Barack Obama at the same stage of his presidency, a new survey shows, even as progressive activists say the incumbent is governing to the left," Sahil Kapur writes... (NBC)

-- Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher to David Lauter: "You cannot underestimate how comfortable Uncle Joe is for a lot of people. They give an old, white guy the benefit of the doubt..." (LAT)

-- CNN's Zachary B. Wolf says "Biden's superpower will soon be tested..." (CNN)

-- "Inside Biden's bubble" by Natasha Korecki and Daniel Lippman: "How an insular White House has kept drama and leaks at a minimum..." (Politico)

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST...

Marty Baron is writing "Collision of Power"

Macmillan's Flatiron Books is about to announce a book deal with acclaimed editor Marty Baron, who retired from the Washington Post earlier this year. The book will be titled "COLLISION OF POWER: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post." Flatiron says the book is "part memoir about his time leading The Washington Post during the tumultuous years before and during the Trump administration, including Jeff Bezos' acquisition of the paper, and part an investigation into the confluence of political and technological power and what that portends for the press and how it exercises its own power in American democracy."

WEDNESDAY PLANNER

Discovery and Spotify report earnings before the bell; Apple and Facebook after the close...

Season four of "The Handmaid's Tale" premieres on Hulu...

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is set to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," though some advocacy groups are urging Kimmel to reconsider...

Lying as the new normal

Almost every story in the news these days involves lying. It's a sad and destabilizing reflection of a choose-your-own-news culture, and it's best viewed not as a set of single discrete stories, but as a whole.

From a Twitter user's conspiracy theory about a vaccinated man's death to a private school's decision to bar vaccinated teachers... From a front-page deception about VP Kamala Harris to a GOP official's hypocrisy... From a false assertion in a Facebook post to prime time television chatter about leftists "hurting America's students..." It goes around and around, a carousel of deceit, powered by shameless attention-seekers, hyper-partisan propagandists and profitable algorithms. Fabrications are shouted while corrections that follow are whispered. And factual sources are constantly playing catch-up. So I wrote this analysis piece for CNN Business to capture a distressing moment in time...

>> NYT's Maggie Haberman: "The culture war fights the GOP has been waging against Biden have moved from the realm of things with a nominal basis to being completely confected..."

NY Post reporter quits, says she was 'ordered to write' an 'incorrect story'

The New York Post's front-page claim about the VP's book being included in "welcome kits" for migrant children fell apart on Tuesday, thanks to fact-checking inquiries. The Post deleted the story in question, then republished it with a weak "editor's note." Then the reporter who wrote the article, Laura Italiano, tweeted that she had resigned. Daniel Dale has all the sordid details here. The Post has yet to comment on Italiano's claim that she was "ordered" to write the bogus story...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Western media should treat India's Covid-19 surge "as part of an interconnected, global story that we are all still living," Jon Allsop wrote... (CJR)

-- NYT New Delhi bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman: "I'm sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That's what it feels like right now... I feel like it's only a matter of time before I, too, get sick..." (NYT)

-- Back stateside, this Miami private school is showing the dangers of disinformation being turned into policy... (CNN)

-- On a much rosier note, there's this observation by Nate Silver: "Given how much was written about a relatively modest increase in COVID cases in the US a month or so ago, there should probably be more coverage of the ~20% decline over the past two weeks, which reflects the power of the vaccines among other things..." (Twitter)

It's all about vaccine acceptance now

The CDC's relaxed guidance for outdoor mask usage was the top story across the network nightly newscasts and will be the lead in many of Tuesday's papers. The milestone was accompanied by many voices, including medical experts, saying that the guidance didn't go far enough. But it's a step-by-step approach, structured to encourage vaccination, in a country where only 29% of people are fully vaccinated. The next focal point will be indoor mask mandates...

Cuomo presses Slavitt: Why not "let the vaccinated live their lives"?

Oliver Darcy writes: "CNN anchor Chris Cuomo repeatedly pressed WH coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt Tuesday night over why the CDC stopped short of allowing those who have received the vaccine to entirely resume living normal lives. 'You know the research was that you take the vaccine because it gives you immunity,' Cuomo said. 'Why not treat it that way and let the vaccinated live their lives?' Slavitt didn't offer a direct answer to Cuomo's Q, and Cuomo tried asking it in different ways a few times. But Slavitt did say that the CDC didn't want to make a 'misstep' and have to go backward, which perhaps explains the agency's caution on the issue..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- My two cents about Tucker Carlson's anti-mask extremism: Irrational people make it a lot harder to have a rational dialogue about Covid. Hey, whatever happened to "live and let live?" (Twitter)

-- Carlson's "child abuse" rant on Monday was delivered "with the combination of astonished indignation, obvious bad faith, and smug sarcasm with which he delivers everything these days, a volatile mix that makes it impossible to know when and to what extent he's trolling," David Graham wrote... (The Atlantic)

-- S.E. Cupp said Carlson was engaged in "high-level trolling," writing that "like much of what Carlson says on Fox, this is itself a hoax, a trick played on his own viewers to see how gullible they are, and a ploy to see how outraged he can make the rest of us..." (NYDN)

The purest form of right-wing media?

Oliver Darcy writes: "If you've paid attention to the evolution of right-wing media and conservatism, you understand that the single principle that unites the entire modern-day movement is whether something 'triggers the libs.' But it's not every day that a member of the right-wing media concedes that their guiding reasoning for taking a certain position is because it will anger their political foes. And yet, that's precisely what happened Tuesday, when a writer for American Greatness published a story titled, 'I Won't Take the Vaccine Because It Makes Liberals Mad...'"

>> Darcy adds: "While it sounds like something from The Onion, the writer appeared to be serious. 'My primary reason for refusing the vaccine is much simpler: I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal,' the person wrote. 'That, in turn, makes me happy.' And while it's disturbing that someone would jeopardize their own health — and the health of others — to score some cheap political points, the story was useful in that it did help illuminate the ridiculousness of conservatism in 2021..."

Spotify standing by Joe Rogan?

Kerry Flynn writes: "The host of Spotify's #1 podcast is giving air to anti-vaccine narratives by suggesting that young healthy people don't need to get vaccinated. Media Matters published a transcript of Rogan's April 23 episode on Tuesday, sparking widespread criticism. Spotify did not respond to a request for comment. But the Verge's Ashley Carman wrote, 'A source close to the situation says Spotify reviewed this Rogan episode and left it live because he doesn't come off as outwardly anti-vaccine. He also doesn't make a call to action.' In this story, I explained why it's still concerning..."

Murdoch abandons bid to launch TV news channel in UK

As first reported by The Spectator on Tuesday, Rupert Murdoch has abandoned his bid to launch a new TV news channel in the UK. "Murdoch's News UK said that it had determined that such a channel didn't make sense financially following a review by US network veteran David Rhodes," CNN's Julia Horowitz wrote. "Rhodes will leave the company in June," though an internal memo said that Rhodes will help News Corp with streaming investments...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- The court is hearing this case on Wednesday: "A cheerleader's Snapchat rant leads to 'momentous' Supreme Court case on student speech," Robert Barnes reports... (WaPo)

-- The AP's Julie Pace and Michael Giarrusso are becoming assistant managing editors, part of a raft of changes to the news leadership team there... (AP)

-- Michael Socolow wrote an elegy for the NYT op-ed, soon to be dubbed a "guest essay..." (Reason)

"Don't use my skin for your diversity"

Kerry Flynn writes: "It may come at no surprise, unfortunately, women and people of color at newsrooms are underpaid compared to their peers. But a new NewsGuild study of 14 unionized Gannett newsrooms puts hard numbers and poignant anecdotes on the important problem. Gannett PR disputed the findings. As Indy Star's Emily Hopkins tweeted, 'journalism company loves journalism until journalists do a journalism on the company.' More in my story..."

"Norton Takes Philip Roth Biography Out of Print"

That's the headline on Alexandra Alter and Jennifer Schuessler's latest for the NYT. Blake Bailey's biography of Philip Roth is being "permanently" shelved by the publisher, "following allegations that Mr. Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth grade English teacher," they wrote. Further, Norton will "make a donation in the amount of the advance it paid to Mr. Bailey, who received a mid-six-figure book deal, to organizations that support sexual assault survivors and victims of sexual harassment..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- "At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats and Republicans raised concerns that algorithms used to create tailored timelines are also pushing users toward extremist content and amplifying false information faster than it can be removed," Musadiq Bidar reports... (CBS News)

-- "Rather than a CEO-slamming sound bite free-for-all, Tuesday's big tech hearing on algorithms aimed for more of a listening session vibe — and in that sense it mostly succeeded," Taylor Hatmaker writes... (TechCrunch)

-- "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a slew of features Instagram is working on to help creators generate more money from their content..." (CNBC)

-- Earnings lookahead: "Despite controversy, economic damage to online ads amid Covid-19 pandemic-related economic turmoil, and antitrust scrutiny, Facebook is expected to report another blockbuster quarter Wednesday," Max Cherney writes... (Barrons)

Massive ad $$ growth at YouTube

Alphabet's Q1 earnings report showed that "YouTube powered up advertising revenue to a whopping $6 billion in Q1 of 2021, up 49% from the year-earlier period," Variety's Todd Spangler wrote Tuesday.

Such strong growth "showed that the internet giant is continuing to ride tailwinds of the pandemic-fueled shift to digital services." Sundar Pichai specifically cited the success of YouTube Shorts.

>> "YouTube is a media juggernaut that could soon equal Netflix in revenue," CNBC's Jennifer Elias wrote...

>> CNN's Rishi Iyengar with the even bigger picture view of Alphabet: The company "made close to $18 billion in profit, comfortably blowing past analyst estimates..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

-- Epicurious announced on Monday that it's cutting out beef from new recipes, articles, etc. And "we're also hoping the rest of American food media joins us," the site said... (Epicurious)

-- The reaction was swift "and illustrated the meaning of the metaphor about tossing red meat to a crowd," Emily Heil wrote Tuesday... (WaPo)

-- "Vice Media has hired ABC News veteran Van Scott to be VP of communications," leading all US comms for the company... (THR)

-- "Apple is to launch a podcast about pop culture icons Siegfried & Roy – marking one of its first major forays into exclusive, original audio series," Peter White reports... (Deadline)

-- "The NYU Girls, stars of the Clubhouse comedy show NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys, have signed with WME... The show follows the Clubhouse 'shoot your shot' format by offering an online simulation of an American bar..." (THR)

Spotify and Apple bet on podcast subscriptions

Kerry Flynn writes: "Spotify has unveiled its new paid podcast subscription product, a week after Apple announced a similar initiative. To give Daniel Ek credit, his team teased the launch during its February Stream On event. Ashley Carman has a good rundown on the differences, useful for both podcast creators and listeners. Sara Fischer has details on NPR's deals with both platforms. And always read Nicholas Quah's take..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART SEVEN

-- "The NHL and Turner Sports announced a seven-year contract Tuesday that's highlighted by broadcast rights for the Stanley Cup playoffs and the annual Winter Classic outdoor game beginning with the 2021-22 NHL season..." (Bleacher Report)

-- WarnerMedia News and Sports chairman Jeff Zucker "said that the appeal for Turner Sports was in having the rights to 'premium sports content...'" (NYT)

-- "DraftKings is making a major push into the media business," including a deal to pay "at least $50 million over three years to distribute a popular sports and pop-culture podcast hosted by former ESPN host Dan Le Batard," Ben Mullin reports... (WSJ)

Oscars aftermath

"The Oscars may have had by far the worst ratings in history, but a bump in audience interest has been a boon to 'Nomadland' and other big winners. It's just come from on-demand instead of theaters," TheWrap's Jeremy Fuster reported Tuesday. "According to numbers from Vudu and FandangoNOW, 'Nomadland' has seen a 129% increase in revenue from rentals and digital purchases in the 24 hours since it won Best Picture, Director, and Actress." Details here...

>> Brian Lowry writes: "On Tuesday the Oscar ratings were revised up slightly based on the final numbers for Sunday, bringing the total to 10.4 million viewers. That spares the ceremony the indignity of slipping into single-million territory, but it's hardly enough to forestall the conversations about where televised awards go after the downturn during the pandemic..."

>> Daily Beast headline: "Trump Is Back to Griping About Hollywood, Ratings, and Other Pointless Things..."

A very different "Handmaid's Tale"

Brian Lowry writes: "After a 20-month gap, 'The Handmaid's Tale' returns feeling like a very different show, with a fourth season more to be savored for its individual parts -- starting with Elisabeth Moss -- than the scattered story. Like another series dealing with a dystopian society, 'The Walking Dead,' the Emmy-winning drama remains plenty watchable, but its best days appear to be behind it..."

Adding muscle to the boom in adult animation

Brian Lowry writes: "The appetite for adult animation has grown along with the advent of streaming services, which see the medium as a cost-efficient way to reach passionate fans. This week brings a pair of additions to the genre -- Netflix's violent anime series 'Yasuke,' and Warner Bros.' latest direct-to-DVD DC movie, 'Justice Society: World War II' -- as Amazon's violent superhero tale 'Invincible' comes to end. And there's more on the way..."

Some SNLers seem to be unhappy about Elon hosting

Frank Pallotta writes: "In a surprise move over the weekend, 'SNL' announced that Elon Musk will be hosting on May 8. Some 'SNL' cast members didn't seem too excited about it. On Instagram, cast members Bowen Yang and Andrew Dismuke subtly criticized the choice." Their "frustrated social media posts, naturally, have already disappeared," The Daily Beast's Laura Bradley notes...

>> Pallotta adds: "While the reactions were notable, this definitely isn't the first time the show has stirred up controversy over its host choices..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART EIGHT

By Lisa Respers France:

-- The pandemic has once again caused a beloved festival to not go up in flames. Organizers of the Burning Man festival announced Tuesday that they were canceling their in-person event for the second straight year...

-- Andy Cohen has spilled some tea about hosting the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" reunion show...

-- Jay-Z rarely gives interviews, so when he talks about raising his family with Beyoncé, and their life in quarantine, we are all ears...

Breaking Britney news

Chloe Melas writes: "In Tuesday's conservatorship hearing, Britney Spears' attorney said she wants to address the court. That will be happening on June 23, though it's unclear if it will be a closed hearing. This will be significant, considering she has yet to publicly comment on her conservatorship..."

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST...

Pet of the day

CNBC senior producer Patty Martell emails: "Here is my partner-in-crime and bestie, 'Gwen Stefani' Martell. She is passionate about the markets, investing and Bitcoin..."