'Tucker Carlson is melting'; Elder's future; judge's Nunes ruling worries 1A experts; 'Facebook Files' continue; Mosseri's defense; Time's most influential 100 list

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Oliver Darcy here at 10:50pm ET on Wednesday, Sept. 15, with the latest on "Peril," the "Facebook Files," the California recall, ABC News, Clubhouse, Time, and more. But first...

FIRST LOOK

"Tucker Carlson Is Melting"

Tucker Carlson is featured — in rather striking fashion — on the October issue of The New Republic. The cover story, by reporter Alex Shephard, is all about how Carlson lost it. "He was once a semi-serious journalist," the TNR cover declares. "Then came the turning point that made him decide to embrace the dark side."

Shephard traces Carlson's career from when he founded The Daily Caller, and talked about offering a conservative audience credible news, to where he is today, delivering angry rants and promoting disinformation to his loyal audience...

"There wasn't an audience"

The story from Shephard will go live Thursday morning here at 7:15am ET. But I got my hands on an early excerpt in which Shepard — who I'm told read nearly everything Carlson has ever written and consumed large volumes of his television show for this piece — maps out Carlson's journey to the fringe.

"A year after his CPAC speech, Carlson would take a stab at creating the type of hard news–focused outlet he described. When he launched The Daily Caller in 2010, he vowed that it would 'primarily be a news site' with a straightforward approach to the news: 'Find out what's happening and tell you about it. We plan to be accurate, both in the facts we assert and in the conclusions we imply.' There wasn't an audience. Within a few months, it was publishing fake news and outrage-driven commentary. The transformation of The Daily Caller is the Rosetta Stone moment of Carlson's career, a period during which he learned his lesson. He never sought respectability again..."

The man who can get away with anything

Carlson knows he is pretty much untouchable. And he loves to flaunt it. Two examples stood out on Wednesday...

>> On his evening program, Carlson bashed at length those who are implementing vaccine mandates — one day after his employer essentially did just that. Carlson said that if a mysterious "they" can "force you to violate your own conscience to put something in your body that you don't want, you are done. You have no more dignity. They control you..."

>> As flagged Wednesday by WaPo's Jeremy Barr, Carlson trashed his book publisher Simon & Schuster in a recent interview. Carlson said the company is "disgusting" and "run by disgusting people." He called S&S President Jonathan Karp "dishonest," "not super smart," and "absolutely awful..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Conversely: Next week's release of "Peril" by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa expresses "profound gratitude" for Karp – he is the first person mentioned in the acknowledgments – and the authors say, "Jon is an editor of conscience and compassion, a seeker of truth and clarity. He loves books, authors, and readers, and sees publishing as both civic duty and moral responsibility..."

-- One of the reporters who helped break the Larry Nassar story open, Marisa Kwiatkowski, reflected on Wednesday's hearings: "We heard people speak today during the hearings, but speaking for the work that my colleagues and I have done, I did not hear anything new that I had not heard before. I think that's part of where that frustration that survivors have comes from..." (WREN)

-- Reporters watched as fencing was installed around the US Capitol grounds ahead of Saturday's "Justice for January 6" rally... (WTOP)

-- Ben Shapiro is the latest conservative media personality to hype the possibility of secession... (Mediaite)

-- Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny report that people in extremist forums who cheered 1/6 have soured on Saturday's rally, "insisting without evidence that the event is a secret government plot to arrest more people involved in the riot." In other words: Stay away... (NBC)

Today's "Peril" headlines

Brian Stelter writes: "Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's 'Peril' remains #1 on Amazon's list, six days before launch. Most of Wednesday's coverage was about Gen. Mark Milley – with some news outlets casting a critical eye at the book's portrayal of events and some observers accusing Milley of a 'coup.' Biden came to Milley's defense, as WaPo reports in this recap of the day. Here's how Chris Cuomo reacted on CNN Wednesday night: 'You need to beware the people calling for Milley's head. One, they're distracting from the real headline from this book: Confirmation of how out of control President Trump was.' Chris Cillizza made a similar point on CNN.com here."

THURSDAY PLANNER

The two-part series finale for "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" on NBC...

President Biden will deliver remarks on the middle class at 1:45pm ET...

Justice Clarence Thomas will deliver the 2021 Tocqueville Lecture at Notre Dame University at 3:30pm...

Recall takeaways

Brian Stelter writes: "Right now the LATimes.com lead story is 'How Newsom defeated the recall,' with two answers right in the headline: 'Early leads in suburbs' and 'overwhelming margins in big cities.' Newsom's first interview wasn't with a local outlet, it was with Major Garrett of CBS News, and some of the takeaways are online now. More will air on 'CBS Mornings' on Thursday. Here's what I wonder: Will right-wing media outlets look inward and interrogate what went wrong and address why the recall failed? I saw the opposite happening on Wednesday: Fox shows made excuses and One America News shows acted like the recall result was a mystery. Honest post-mortems were hard to find on the right..."

What does Elder's future look like?

Brian Lowry writes: "If you work under the assumption that the recall was a brand-building exercise for many of those who entered the race (none more transparently than Caitlyn Jenner), then what happens next with Larry Elder – especially if Fox News comes knocking – should be enlightening in terms of how incentivized such media figures are to cross over into politics. As LAT's Robin Abcarian pointed out, "There was no downside for Elder here." Either way, given the current look of the electoral map in California, I'd argue Elder has a much brighter future in talk than in politics..."

>> Elder's radio distributor, Salem Radio, predicts that "he will pick up stations in the future because of this..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Everyone saw this coming: Fox turned Newsmax host Eric Bolling zinged Fox News for its vaccine/testing mandate... (MMFA)

-- A day after I reported that the White House was praising Fox for its mandate, Biden himself did so, saying he also wasn't being "facetious" with his comments... (WaPo)

-- Wednesday brought us headlines like this: "Trinidad government: We've probed Nicki Minaj's swollen testicles claim and it's bullsh*t..." (Daily Beast)

-- Stelter is coming up on "Don Lemon Tonight" 🔌 with a look at radio hosts who have sadly succumbed to Covid... (CNN)

Check out my convo on "The Daily Show" pod

For your mid-week listening consideration: I recently joined Roy Wood Jr., Desi Lydic, and Matt Negrin for "The Daily Show" podcast. We talked about how Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have detached itself from reality over the years and poisoned our national conversation. You can watch the convo on YouTube here, or listen via Apple Podcasts here...

The "Facebook Files" continues

Every day the WSJ peels back the Facebook onion a little bit more. Wednesday's story in "The Facebook Files" was titled "Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead." This story, by Keach Hagey and Jeff Horwitz, focused on a big 2018 change to the algorithm that troubled many publishers. Read on. And yes, you can count on additional "Files" stories to be coming soon...

FIRST LOOK:

Adam Mosseri's defense

Recode's Peter Kafka landed the first interview with Instagram head Adam Mosseri since the damning "Facebook Files" story about Instagram came out on Tuesday. Mosseri didn't dispute the research the WSJ reported on, but argued it didn't convey the full picture.

"I think that anything that is going to be used at scale is going to have positive or negative outcomes," Mosseri told Kafka. "Cars have positive or negative outcomes. We understand that. We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents. But by and large, cars create way more value in the world than they destroyed. And I think social media is similar."

>> The interview will be up on the Recode Media podcast around midnight ET. Listen to it then here...

Judge's ruling on Nunes suit worries 1A experts

"A federal appeals court has rejected Rep. Devin Nunes' defamation suit over a magazine story about his relatives in Iowa, but the court revived the lawmaker's claim that he was libeled when [reporter Ryan Lizza] linked to the story in a tweet more than a year after it was first published," Politico's Josh Gerstein reported Wednesday. The latter part of the court's decision is notable and could set an alarming precedent.

As First Amendment expert Chip Stewart, a professor at Texas Christian U, told Gerstein, "It's certainly a novel application of a couple of important libel doctrines, and a potentially troublesome one if the 8th Circuit's ruling is allowed to stand. It's an odd kind of bootstrapping argument. Nunes claims the underlying article is false. He sues over it. Lizza tweets the exact same story after the lawsuit is filed. And what was originally not actual malice now all of a sudden is, at least plausibly enough for a lawsuit to advance to further costly litigation. All over a tweet that changed nothing about the original story..."

>> Law & Crime's Colin Kalmbacher has a story on how First Amendment experts are sounding the alarm on the "mind-bending interpretation of libel law..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- Mark Levin's "American Marxism" is back to #1 on the NYT's nonfiction best-seller lists. Chris Wallace's 9/11-timed "Countdown bin Laden" book is debuting at #2. Other debuts: Qian Julie Wang's "Beautiful Country," Logic's "This Bright Future," and Hayley Mills' "Forever Young..." (NYT)

-- "As readers rushed to buy books about race and racism [in 2020], especially ones that focused on the experiences of Black Americans, publishers raced to sign deals to publish more," Elizabeth Harris reports... (NYT)

-- Andrew Desiderio reports on how Lindsey Graham is the "one-man PR shop for the Afghan resistance." According to Desiderio, that even included securing a guest on Sean Hannity's Fox show... (Politico)

-- Joe Pompeo profiles LAT editor Kevin Merida: "In the blink of an eye, Merida, 64, went from a relatively under-the-radar figure to one of the most talked about news executives around..." (Vanity Fair)

-- Jess Brammar has been named exec news editor at BBC News, overseeing domestic and international news channels. Previously an editor at HuffPost UK, her hire was contested due to now-deleted controversial tweets... (The Guardian)

-- Paul Volpe, Edmund Lee and Susanna Timmons are part of a "new cross-functional team" at the NYT. The focus: To "help the company's leadership establish a vision for how The Times's report can continue to evolve to convey our values..." (NYT)

FIRST IN RELIABLE

DC media startup makes first hires

A yet-to-be-named DC media startup founded by Laura McGann, Matthew Yglesias, and Mark Bauman — which aims to focus on misinfo, climate, and geopolitics — has made its first hires. Those hires are Justin Rood, Dave Levitan, Maggie Severns, Nikhil Kumar, Joshua Keating, Serena Golden, Jason Paladino, Matthew Zeitlin, Kaila Philo, Anya Van Wagtendonk, Benjamin Powers, Morgan Richardson, Jackie Padilla, and Jake Garcia...

ABC producer alleges retaliation

WSJ's Joe Flint published an update Wednesday on the lawsuit filed by producer Kirstyn Crawford which alleges that former "GMA" boss Michael Corn sexually assaulted her (allegations he denies). Flint reported that Crawford said in an amended complaint that "after she formally registered her complaint at ABC the network didn't renew her three-year contract, offering instead a six-month extension with no raise." Flint reported that ABC did not respond to his request for comment...

>> Speaking of not responding: Weeks after ABC News boss Kim Godwin called for a third-party probe, Disney has still not said whether she will get her wish. I checked in again on Wednesday, but per usual, did not hear back from the company...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- "The FEC has ruled Twitter did not violate federal elections law when it restricted the distribution of a New York Post article with unverified claims about President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, according to documents made public Wednesday," Lauren Feiner reports... (CNBC)

-- Reddit is raising $700 million in a Series F round, valuing the company at more than $10 billion, ahead of its plan to go public, Sahil Patel reports... (The Information)

-- SmartNews raised $230 million, valuing the news aggregation app at about $2 billion, Corrie Driebusch reports. The company said it plans to hire more US employees and launch features related to health and safety... (WSJ)

-- Gilad Edelman writes about how Google is "getting caught in the global antitrust net..." (Wired)

-- "YouTube has launched its first ever podcast called 'The Upload: The Rise of the Creator Economy,'" Andrew Hutchinson writes... (Social Media Today)

Clubhouse recruits NPR vet as head of news

Kerry Flynn writes: "I've been fascinated watching the rise of live social audio over the past year. Twitter Spaces seems to have taken over my Twitter feed (in part because I follow a lot of journalists and, well, RIP Fleets). But what about Clubhouse? The app boomed in the early months of the pandemic and really kicked off the momentum of the format. To help recruit more newsrooms and journalists to the app, Clubhouse has hired a new team member. Nina Gregory, who spent the past 15 years at NPR, is joining Clubhouse as its first head of news and media publishers. We chatted about why she left her dream job for the startup..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- The Season 13 premiere of "The Wendy Williams Show" has been delayed after talk show host Williams tested positive for a breakthrough case of Covid-19," Denise Petski reports... (Deadline)

-- "Endeavor defied its critics and the odds by successfully pulling off a public offering in April, but the company... is facing major obstacles navigating the global pandemic and encountering resentment among select players who feel left out in the cold," Matt Donnelly and Brent Lang report... (Variety)

-- The aforementioned Donnelly with the latest on the M&A craze in Hollywood: "LeBron James' content company SpringHill is in advanced talks to secure a significant strategic investment from a consortium including Fenway Sports Group, RedBird Capital and Nike..." (Variety)

Time's annual most influential 100 list is here

Time magazine on Wednesday morning dropped its annual 100 most influential list. Prince Harry and Meghan, Kate Winslet, Billie Eilish, Tucker Carlson, and other media figures made the list. Check it out here...

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

-- James Hibberd and Lesley Goldberg report that "The Activist" is going "from competition show to documentary after harsh blowback..." (THR)

-- Borys Kit writes about the "frenzy to get Christopher Nolan's next film..." (THR)

-- And Kim Masters writes about "Shari Redstone's radical Paramount overhaul" setting up a "clash with filmmakers..." (THR)

-- "Matthew López, the Tony-nominated playwright of 'The Inheritance,' has been hired to write a reimagining of the iconic Whitney Houston film 'The Bodyguard' at Warner Bros.," Matt Donnell reports... (Variety)

-- Peter White reports on how "The Tonight Show" is planning "more musical sketches as Broadway week kicks into gear..." (Deadline)

-- "'Ted Lasso' led all winners at the 37th annual Television Critics Association's 2021 Awards," Lesley Goldberg writes... (THR)

-- Billy Crudup and Hasan Minhaj talked to Lisa Respers France about some of what we can expect for Season 2 of "The Morning Show..." (CNN)

Study: Lack of Hispanic representation in film is still a problem

CNN Business' Chauncey Alcorn writes: "Hispanic Heritage Month began Wednesday, but there isn't much to celebrate for Latinos working in Hollywood, according to a new study. Over the last 10+ years, the US Hispanic population has increased from 50.5 million in 2010 to more than 62 million in 2020, according to the US Census Bureau. But just 7% of major films released in 2019 featured Latinos in a starring or co-starring role, according Dr. Stacy L. Smith, who co-authored the latest Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report on Hispanic and Latino Representation in Film. Hollywood studios have made notable progress featuring people of color on screen and behind the camera, but Smith says Latino representation still lags far behind other demographic groups. Deadline's Rosy Cordero has more here..."

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST...

Pet of the day!

Chloe Melas writes: "This is Hammy our eight-year-old cat who thinks he's a dog. As you'll notice he has a bit more hair than Oliver's cat. 😆 He loves helping me send items for the newsletter but wishes there were more feline news 🗞..."

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