The vaccine miracle; Saturday's funeral for Prince Philip; Sunday's biggest events; weekend reads

View this email in your browser.

Share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Subscribe here.

Welcome to the weekend! Brian Stelter here at 10:20pm ET Friday. So much of the news is so grim. That's why I want to start with something else...

The vaccine miracle

Close your eyes and think 20 years into the future. When you look back at the year 2021, if you remember just one thing about this entire year, what will that one thing be?

It's only April but I bet you'll remember the vaccines.

The vaccines are so miraculous, so life-affirming, that they defy most attempts at description. But one of my favorite writers, Katherine Miller of BuzzFeed, captured it in this Friday essay. She said "the instant, mundane moment you get vaccinated is actually one of the key moments of the century so far, and the celebration of this massive, intersecting community effort." That's why so many people immediately post a selfie.

"The pandemic," she said, "transformed life into an abyss and infused society with an unbearable, sprawling grief that will snake far beyond it." The shots are also transformative -- turning us all into "little Lego pieces clicking into place in a giant fence around the virus."

Well, most of us. "The country is on track to meet President Biden's goal of 200 million shots in office in just a matter of days," Benjy Renton observed Friday. That's a reference to the White House's goal of "200 million in 100 days." Overall, when counting the jabs during the tail end of the Trump administration, the US has already surpassed 200 million doses administered, as of Friday.

Now headlines are popping up about unused vaccine doses, particularly in Republican strongholds. "If we get a substantial proportion of people who don't get vaccinated," Dr. Anthony Fauci said on MSNBC Friday night, "then we will not get to the point that people want to get to." Meanwhile, right-wing opposition to Fauci hardens every single day...

"America Has Pandemic Senioritis"

That's the headline on Amanda Mull's latest piece for The Atlantic, subtitled "Being so close (and yet so far) is a stress all its own." Mull described the in-between of feeling "so excited for what's to come" but knowing that "the horror of what we have been expected to live through, and what we are now expected to leave behind, seems too enormous to conceptualize."

"Between those two poles," Mull wrote, "my brain is stuck in neutral, unable to wait for the future or trudge through what's left of the present. Senior skip day never sounded so good." Perhaps you feel the same way... But here are some hopeful notes about the near-future...

"Be a fan. Take the shot."

Country star Brad Paisley is out with a new PSA with video clips of empty arenas and a message for fans of live ents. "When it's your turn to get the vaccine," he says, "be a fan. Take the shot."‬ The message is from Vanderbilt Health and is accompanied by this website...

Fox and the vaccines

I'm far from alone in observing that Fox News A-listers could do a whole lot of good by getting vaccinated on-air, talking about the process, or sharing vaccine selfies. To date, none of Fox's biggest A.M. or prime time stars have done so. Fox's troll army responded with days of ridicule when I raised this topic on last Sunday's "Reliable Sources." So that's some of the context for this bit of news: On Friday, anchors Dana Perino and Bret Baier both posted to social media about getting the shots.

Sadly, anti-vax B.S. and cynical comments piled up underneath both of their posts. And more than a few anonymous posters accused the Fox anchors of caving to CNN's demands! What a ludicrous and frankly pathetic POV. What a sad statement about how polarization poisons just about everything. We need a vaccine for that...

Coming soon: A city-wide launch of "In the Heights"

The Tribeca Film Festival will open -- in person -- on June 9 "with the world premiere of Warner Bros.' In the Heights at the United Palace theater in Washington Heights, the neighborhood where the story is based," Billboard's Hilary Lewis reported Friday. "Additionally, Tribeca, which is set to be the first in-person North American film festival since the COVID-19 pandemic, will host simultaneous screenings of the opening-night film across all five boroughs in open-air venues..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- A sobering statistic: "Nearly half of US states reported an increase in Covid-19 cases this week..." (CNN)

-- "An abundance of caution and good science are the right way to build trust in vaccines," Dr. Celine Gounder writes... (CNN)

-- "The race to curb the spread of COVID vaccine disinformation:" Jeff Tollefson has a new look at how researchers are trying to help... (Nature)

"Shameful"

America awoke to news of the mass killing at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. Here is the Indy Star's special coverage, headlined "TRAGEDY AT FEDEX" on the homepage. Staffer Allison Carter commented, "It's only April and this is the third mass shooting event I have covered this year in Indianapolis. God have mercy."

>> Anderson Cooper's open to "AC360" Friday night: "There is no way in good conscience to use the word 'good' evening tonight, though there are many words to choose from. 'Mournful,' 'tearful,' and yes, as a country, 'shameful.' 'Good' is simply not one of them."

>> After recapping the recent news, Cooper observed that the Virginia Tech massacre happened 13 years ago today. He said the sad fact is that "mass shootings have become so common, it may soon hard for one not to fall on the anniversary of another..."

>> NBC's Lester Holt: "By now, even uttering the word 'another' should bring chills because we know how the phrase ends..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- HuffPost's Andy Campbell commented, "Any American reporter could write a mass shooting story blindfolded at this point, but I think the most demoralizing part of this formulaic process is knowing that absolutely nothing will change, we will ignore the solutions in front of us, and this will happen again tomorrow..." (Twitter)

-- The AP's David Bauder and WaPo's Elahe Izadi are out with stories about how news outlets handled the graphic Adam Toledo shooting video... (AP, WaPo)

-- Biden called on The AP first during his joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. AP's AamerI Smad raised the gun violence crisis, and Biden said "it's a national embarrassment..." (AP)

-- The Biden WH "is launching a new strategy of focusing more on local and specialty media, offering a weekly 'virtual' slot in the briefing room to regional reporters and convening rare on-the-record briefings for smaller outlets," Annie Linskey reports... (WaPo)

-- Simon & Schuster said late Thursday that "it won't distribute a book written by the Louisville police officer who was shot while executing a no-knock warrant at the home of Breonna Taylor..." (CNN)

-- But on Friday the small publisher behind the book, Post Hill Press, said it "continues to move forward with plans" for it, even though S&S won't distribute... (AP)

Saturday's funeral

Prince Philip's funeral service will be shown on all the major networks and streamed online Saturday morning. BBC World News "will commence live coverage from Windsor Castle at 6 a.m. local time," 1 a.m. ET, a full nine hours before the funeral begins, CNN's Hanna Ziady reports.

For viewers in the US, Anderson Cooper will anchor the coverage on CNN; Martha MacCallum on Fox News; and Alex Witt and Katy Tur on MSNBC. Savannah Guthrie will anchor on NBC; Gayle King on CBS; and David Muir on ABC...

Ahead this weekend...

HBO will mark ten years since the premiere of "Game of Thrones" on Saturday...

NBC News will mark five years of "Sunday Today with Willie Geist..."

Dr. Anthony Fauci will be making the Sunday rounds, including on CNN's "SOTU" with Dana Bash...

"CBS Sunday Morning" will have the first interview with George W. Bush about his new book...

NBC will air a star-studded special about the importance of the vaccines, titled "Roll Up Your Sleeves," Sunday at 7pm ET...

HBO will premiere "Mare of Easttown" Sunday at 10pm ET...

Showtime will start a new season of "Couples Therapy" at the same time...

The 56th ACM Awards will air on CBS...

"Reliable" time

On Sunday's show I'll have a special interview with the former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who recently made waves with his criticism of the Murdoch media empire. Plus: Sara Sidner, Miguel Marquez, Oliver Darcy, Kyle Pope, Laurel Bristow, Claire Atkinson, and Abené Clayton, The Guardian's lead reporter on its Guns and Lies in America project...

Looking ahead...

Closing arguments in State v. Chauvin start Monday at 10 a.m. ET... Brianna Keilar debuts as the co-anchor of CNN's "New Day" on Monday... Apple's product launch event is Tuesday at 1pm ET... Netflix releases earnings after the bell on Tuesday, followed by Verizon on Wednesday and AT&T on Thursday... Earth Day is on Thursday...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- "After almost four years as Styles' top editor, Choire Sicha is stepping down and transitioning into a new role at the New York Times." Sicha "will become a senior editor on the paper's project to expand its newsletter portfolio..." (The Daily Front Row)

-- Who will run Styles? Dylan Byers says "the buzz right now at both NYT and NYMag is that Stella Bugbee is most obvious candidate..." (Twitter)

-- Brooke Baldwin signed off from CNN on Friday afternoon with a call to "get a little uncomfortable, speak up, and keep pushing..." (USA Today)

-- Victor Blackwell and Alisyn Camerota will debut at 2pm ET on Monday... (Insta)

Trump could be allowed back on Facebook

Yep, you read that right. Donie O'Sullivan writes: "Facebook set up an 'oversight board' over the past year to rule on decisions made by the company on suspensions and other issues surrounding speech. The board is purportedly independent and is made up of a panel of distinguished folks including Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian. The board announced Friday that it is going to be making known its decision on whether Trump should be allowed back on Facebook or not 'in the coming weeks.' It was 'initially supposed to take 90 days,' The Verge's Nilay Patel wrote, but it 'has been pushed back so the board can review the more than 9,000 comments it's received about the case.'"

Donie adds: "The board, described as Facebook's 'Supreme Court,' is an interesting experiment in figuring out the thorny issue of what should and shouldn't be allowed on Facebook. It also conveniently gives Mark Zuckerberg some distance from whatever is decided about Trump. In other words, 'don't blame Zuck, blame the board...'"

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney's "attack-the-media tactics" were the lead story in the Friday PM edition of Playbook... (Politico)

-- Politico New York called out NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo for holding "press-free pressers" and generally avoiding the journalists who cover him... (Politico)

-- Jon Allsop has an excellent, comprehensive look at the "season of turnover" in news leadership... (CJR)

-- Brian Steinberg sized up the challenge for ABC now that the top producer slot at "GMA" is suddenly open... (Variety)

-- Charlotte Klein writes: "The post-Trump TV news earthquake is in full swing..." (VF)

The week in 34 photos

This photo by NYT maestro Doug Mills is one of 34 in CNN's weekly gallery:

Weekend reads, part one

By Katie Pellico:

-- "What does movement journalism mean for journalism as a whole?" Gabe Schneider speaks with journalists "trying to report with, not on, communities..." (The Objective)

-- Hear why a nonprofit newsroom gave readers the option to read about Adam Toledo's death with or without the horrifying video embedded -- and what they learned... (NiemanLab)

-- Vox's Terry Nguyen writes about "the spectacle of anti-Asian violence on Instagram," and "the fragmented nature of the Asian American news ecosystem..." (Vox)

-- "Reporters are trained never to become the story, but as newsrooms cover violence against Asian Americans, journalists of Asian heritage find themselves — and their cultural identity — in the spotlight." Rebecca Sun, senior editor, diversity and inclusion at THR, shares insights from Richard Lui, Natasha Chen, Juju Chang, Weijia Jiang, and others... (THR)

-- With discussion around diversifying news narratives, "what would media look like, if our stories were told by girls in Indonesia, India, Indiana?" Masuma Ahuja's new newsletter offers "a peek into a different girl's world every week," and this week's "letter to the future" comes from Indiana... (GIRLHOOD)

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Goldman Sachs' top PR man and "image maker," Jake Siewert, is leaving the bank... (Dealbook)

-- "Group messaging app IRL is in talks to raise more than $50 million at a $1 billion valuation, 10 times the level of its last round..." (The Information)

-- "The Block, a cryptocurrency-focused media startup, tells Axios that it has bought out its non-employee shareholders," partly because it wants to provide news coverage that is completely independent from investors... (Axios)

-- Nick Kristof's column this weekend asks: "Why do we let corporations profit from rape videos?" (NYT)

Weekend reads, part two

Here are some stories that stood out to me, regardless of beat, throughout the week:

-- Mattie Kahn profiled Dana Bash, who "characterizes her career as an exercise in patience," which makes her all the more impressive... (Glamour)

-- Nicole Hemmer's latest column acknowledged that many people to the left of Tucker Carlson don't want to hear about him. But "history demands that we pay more attention, not less, because it suggests there's every reason to believe Carlson and his acolytes could succeed in normalizing hate for a wider audience," she says... (CNN)

-- Celeste Katz Marston spoke with "reporters who have long covered the far right" to glean advice and warnings about "as exhausting a beat as it is important..." (Nieman Reports)

-- Will Turton's profile of Nick Lim: "A 23-year-old coder kept QAnon online when no one else would..." (Bloomberg)

-- Did you realize this? "No commercial airline in the U.S. has had a fatal crash since 2009." Andy Pasztor presents "the story of the industry insiders who came together to build new systems and to allay the worst fears of air travelers..." (WSJ)

-- Don't miss Gabriel Debenedetti on how Chuck Schumer has changed... (NYMag)

-- Tunku Varadarajan has a fun review of former FT editor Lionel Barber's book, finding that "editing a newspaper requires all sorts of skills, not least the ability to schmooze with the right people..." (WSJ)

-- And the NYT is marking the 15th anniversary of The Book Review podcast, the outlet's longest-running podcast... (NYT)

Editor's note of the week

This one comes courtesy of SFGate, attached to a story about a viral video of a bear and two dogs: "A previous version of this story stated that the bear is a brown bear. While it is a bear that is brown, it is not a brown bear; it is a black bear (that is brown)." Lesson learned

Lisa Napoli on this week's Reliable podcast

ICYMI, Lisa Napoli, my longtime friend and mentor, is the guest on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. We talked about her fascinating new book "Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR." Tune in via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your favorite app...

Why Ryan Coogler is not boycotting Georgia

Brian Lowry writes: "'Black Panther' director Ryan Coogler has written an op-ed denouncing Georgia's voting-rights legislation, but saying he doesn't plan to boycott production in the state because it would hurt the people being disenfranchised. 'While I wished to turn my concern into action, I could not do so without first being educated on the specifics of Georgia,' Coogler wrote. 'Having now spoken with voting rights activists in the state, I have come to understand that many of the people employed by my film, including all the local vendors and businesses we engage, are the very same people who will bear the brunt of SB202. For those reasons, I will not be engaging in a boycott of Georgia. What I will be doing is using my voice to emphasize the effects of SB202, its shameful roots in Jim Crow, and doing all I can to support organizations fighting voter suppression here in the state...'"

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- "Amazon Studios' The Lord of the Rings television show is going to cost all the gold in the Lonely Mountain," James Hibberd wrote, confirming that Amazon will spend about $465 million "for just the first season of the show..." (THR)

-- Sharon Osbourne was slated to discuss her departure from "The Talk" on Friday's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO... (CNN)

-- "Nielsen will not submit to an audit of its COVID-era ratings measurements, rejecting a request from TV networks who believe their ratings have been undercounted during the pandemic..." (TheWrap)

Oscars countdown

Steven Soderbergh to THR's Rebecca Keegan on producing this year's show under Covid protocols: "This thing is a f--king bronco and it will be right up until show time." As for the prospect of low ratings, the director said, "We're worrying about things that we can control and that's not on that list... We want the nominees to have a special night and we want the winners to have the opportunity to stand up in a room, be handed an Oscar and have that moment. Even though it's been an incredibly challenging year, we didn't want to cheat them out of that experience."

"F9" rollout update

Frank Pallotta writes: "'F9' will open in China on May 21 — a month earlier than it does in the US (June 25). The film's opening in China will be watched closely since 'Fast & Furious' is a distinctly international brand. It's going to give a lot of insights about the health of theaters this summer..."

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST...

Pet of the day

Phyllis writes: "This is Lewie, mesmerized watching Xiao Qi Ji at the National Zoo via AirPlay while patiently waiting to watch 'Reliable Sources' last Sunday."