The latest entry in the franchise, “Alien: Earth,” which premieres on Tuesday, certainly exhibits those political undercurrents while bringing the threat home, both in the location and the shift from theaters to FX and Hulu, where only your neighbors can hear you scream.

Granted, nobody comes to an “Alien”-branded project — a franchise with one foot firmly planted in sci-fi and horror — for a lecture about the perils of unfettered capitalism. Still, the underlying apprehensions feel even timelier now, from the AI threat to the notion of corporations supplanting governments.

“Alien: Earth” lands at a moment of heightened unease about income inequality and the growing political clout wielded by billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos — moguls who have become household names. Their companies, meanwhile, keep growing, with trillion-dollar valuations — which would have sounded like the stuff of science fiction a few decades ago — now a reality, with Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google among those cracking that barrier.

“The Trillion Dollar Stock Club Is Bigger — and Richer— Than Ever,” blared Barron’s headline closing 2024.

Despite healthy profits, those same companies are also embracing AI in a way that both ignores potential unintended consequences and threatens the careers of its own employees. Several have explicitly stated as much, with Amazon CEO Andy Jassey issuing a memo in June spelling out that the technology will “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

The eight-episode series takes the real-world drift toward corporate oligarchy to its dystopian extreme, with Earth governed by five massive corporations, which, as usual, exhibit few compunctions about sacrificing human life to advance their objectives and enhance their profits.

In the broad strokes, though, this latest addition to the mythology — as conceived by showrunner Noah Hawley, who previously translated “Fargo” to TV — very much contains the same core of distrusting those in charge, along with some new wrinkles that work more fitfully.

The end game of those corporate objectives as usual remains murky, but again involves using synthetic androids — whose actions and motivations prove suspect — and seeking the means to capitalize on the alien creatures. Naturally, that requires the customary hubris about attempting to cash in on something so uncontrollable, unpredictable and dangerous.

By adding a human face, in the form of a young technocrat (Samuel Blenkin) running a company appropriately named Prodigy Corp., “Alien: Earth” does endeavor to make the story more contemporary. The self-proclaimed “boy genius” feels like a composite inspired by any number of CEOs, which says something about this plutocratic moment given that the character would have seemed exaggerated or cartoonish before the modern tech explosion.

As Hawley said during a pre-launch press conference, “If I had done the 1970s version of capitalism it wouldn’t have felt right for the world we live in today,” adding that humanity is “trapped between the AI future and the monsters of the past.”

The shock of the first “Alien” — beyond wedding a haunted house to striking monster biology and set design — hinged in part on the cavalier attitude “the company” harbored toward the lives of the crew. What they intended to do with the xenomorph was ill defined — something about the bio-weapons division — but the key point was treating the survival of those manning the ship as a secondary concern.

That aspect became even more pronounced in the brilliant sequel “Aliens,” directed by James Cameron, which features Paul Reiser as Burke, a mid-level manager, and the kind of corporate suck-up everyone has encountered. Burke gradually reveals who he is, balking at eradicating the aliens because a space installation has a “substantial dollar value,” before seeking to curry favor from his superiors by allowing Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and a young child to be “impregnated” by the monster in order to bring specimens home.

As Ripley says whens he exposes the plot, “You know, Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.”

Their shortcomings aside, the subsequent films, up to last year’s “Alien: Romulus,” have continued playing with these themes. Even after it was given a name, the company, Weyland-Yutani, cares more about the research and development possibilities in that enticing alien DNA than preserving the humans in its employ.

Of course, there’s some irony in that, since “Alien” has itself become a title with a “substantial dollar value,” spanning nine movies (including two crossovers with the “Predator” franchise) totaling almost $2 billion in global box office. In an interview last year, original director Ridley Scott conceded the third and fourth films “ran that firmly into the ground,” while more generously appraising the subsequent sequels, having directed two of them.

In later episodes, “Alien: Earth” pointedly addresses some of the issues the franchise has contemplated, with a character discussing the irony of smart people who are “too stupid to realize you don’t bring parasites home with you.”

There’s a possible lesson there regarding AI, where the lure of its potential might be blinding us to its dangers, and massive real-world companies appear either oblivious — or worse, indifferent — to the societal harm that it might do. That’s evident in the commentary from the likes of Meta and OpenAI, who are pouring billions of dollars in an AI arms race against each other and China.

Even if the robots don’t murder us, as envisioned in the sci-fi version of these scenarios, they appear more tangibly destined to replace us by killing off a lot of our jobs.

The employees in “Alien: Earth” also recognize who’s calling the shots, with one acknowledging that everything being done and the risks they’re facing are “always about power,” which includes exploring space to serve the company’s ends.

“Alien” notably premiered at the close of the 1970s, a decade seen as a golden age for paranoid conspiracy thrillers — including those that reflected the callousness of corporate greed, like “The China Syndrome” and “Coma.”

In that sense, having five corporations run things, like the American Mafia’s five families, hardly feels like an accident. Because in “Alien,” then and now, “the company” rules the world, and the rest of us just try to hang on working for them.

“Alien: Earth” premieres Aug. 12 on FX and Hulu.

The post ‘Alien’ Has Always Feared AI and Big Corporations. That’s More Relevant Than Ever appeared first on TheWrap.

Faced with buyouts, layoffs and policy shifts in the age of a vengeful and litigious President Trump, journalists at the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and CBS News have grappled with whether to stick around and fight the good fight — or leave. At the Post there’s already been a mass defection that has included taking buyouts before moving to more stalwart outfits, leaping into the entrepreneurial reaches of Substack — or handing in principled resignations.

Those exiting the Post in the last few weeks include reporter Carol Leonnig, a 25-year veteran who headed to MSNBC; media critic Erik Wemple, who will join the New York Times in the fall; and sports columnist Sally Jenkins, joining a veritable parade to The Atlantic.

Politico published an exhaustive list of the journalists that have left the publication since 2024, which have ranged from retirement to taking the buyout and moving to competitors to cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who resigned after her bosses spiked a cartoon that lampooned Post owner Jeff Bezos, among others (Telnaes would later win the Pulitizer Prize).

If resignations once delivered a reputational blow to their corporate bosses, it’s complicated now by the sense that some of these organizations appear eager to clean house, or at least remake their staffs with employees who are more pliant toward their Trump-friendly editorial postures.

This new status quo comes as CBS News faces an anticipated shift in editorial direction under New Paramount, having already seen the departures of president Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens over perceived interference by former management.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, has witnessed a staggering exodus of talent after CEO Will Lewis issued an “our way or the highway” ultimatum amid the paper’s pivot under Bezos, encouraging staffers who don’t “feel aligned” with the newspaper’s “reinvention” to hit the road.

In May, the paper offered a Voluntary Separation Program to news employees with 10 or more years experience, resulting in a series of farewell letters from some of its most prestigious names. The opinion section has been especially hard hit, including opinion columnists Catherine Rampell, Jonathan Capehart, Philip Bump and Ruth Marcus.

Writing in the Daily Beast, former Post media reporter Paul Farhi accused Lewis of “enfeebling of one of the world’s great news organizations” — “a small tragedy,” raising questions about whether Bezos cares about “the slow-motion implosion of an institution whose value transcends its bottom line.”

While it might sound self-serving for journalists to lament the decimation of their ranks — creating “news deserts” in some areas, and prompting some to vacate the profession entirely — there is a societal toll involved. That includes questions of who will hold those in power to account, as even outlets that survive suffer the loss of institutional knowledge as they shed more expensive veterans, whether their work comes in the form of deeply sourced reporting or detailed analysis.

Another billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, also implemented a shift in editorial policy at the Los Angeles Times, leading several editorial page staffers to resign. Again, though, the impact has been blunted by overall reductions as the paper pursues the dubious strategy of cost-cutting its way to health.

The ethical dilemma: Stay and fight or leave?

Those schooled in journalistic ethics say there’s no one-size-fits-all response in terms of what to do when your employer has lost its way or taken actions that threaten its integrity.

John Watson, a journalism professor at American University’s School of Communication who teaches ethics, cited a “personal and individually determined process,” while making a distinction between those who really need a job and top earners who don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck.

For the latter, “It becomes more of a moral and ethical issue,” Watson told TheWrap, “Bailing out at that level, to me, is the right thing to do.”

Several L.A. Times editors resigned last year, including editorials editors Mariel Garza, Robert Greene and Karin Klein, after management spiked a story endorsing Kamala Harris. Across the country, the amount of institutional knowledge exiting the Washington Post has created the impression of a hollowed-out newsroom, even if those who remain dismiss the notion.

Stephen J. Adler, the director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, also sees an obligation to leave under such circumstances, although not without exhausting options that include lobbying for more enlightened policy and practices.

“I’d never stay at any organization that compromised my work, whether by editing out information that might be offensive to the administration or by barring sensitive story topics,” Adler, who also chairs the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told TheWrap.

“Before deciding to leave, though, I’d try to persuade my immediate editors that I’m being fair and accurate and that they shouldn’t engage in self-censorship,” he said. “I might also appeal to higher-ups. But, even in a tough job market, my duty to the highest aspirations of my profession — to truth-telling – would force me to quit if I didn’t prevail.”

Watson drew a distinction between influencers and others who use media platforms, without adhering to the ethical considerations that should guide journalists.

“To me, that is what separates journalists from other people who function in a mass media capacity,” he said. “Ethics tells you what your mission is, what your role is, and what your professional values have to be, and whether you can compromise them, or how much you can bend them to achieve your fundamental mission.”

He added that journalists have to be wary of whether the actions of their employers will stick with them when they leave and seek jobs elsewhere, citing what he sees as some of the unethical behavior at Fox News, which, in the highest-profile example of that, was forced to pay $787 million in 2023 to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit over false claims regarding the 2020 election.

“I’ve had that discussion with a number of good students who are good journalists, who said, ‘Will my time at Fox hurt me when I apply to these other news organizations?’ And the simple fact is, yes, it will,” Watson said.

Washington Post veterans lament its drift

Many Post veterans and alumni have expressed sadness over the paper’s direction and the diminution of its staff, especially after Bezos initially invested in the paper and appeared to champion its journalism.

Since then, Bezos conspicuously joined other tech leaders in attending Donald Trump’s inauguration and seemingly cozied up to the president, in ways that have rendered his decisions regarding the Post suspect.

In a lengthy Substack post, former Post fact checker Glenn Kessler detailed his decision to take the buyout, revealing a conversation with Lewis in which he expressed a desire to try to reach Fox News viewers, a futile endeavor that has bedeviled mainstream news outlets seeking to expand their reach. For starters, such efforts are hindered by the fact Fox’s top hosts spend much of its time telling its audience not to trust those outside sources, a posture the late radio titan Rush Limbaugh effectively pioneered.

Kessler described the Post as “like being on the Titanic after it struck an iceberg — drifting aimlessly as it sank, with not enough lifeboats for everyone.” 

Asked to address the impact of the buyouts, a Post spokesperson issued a statement to TheWrap that suggested they were not affecting coverage: “The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the rapidly changing industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are … As we undergo this significant reinvention, The Post continues to excel in producing high quality and impactful journalism.”

If the Post is in the midst of what looks like an identity crisis, rough waters for CBS News could also lie ahead. Among other things, the New Paramount leadership team has agreed to appoint an ombudsman to examine “any complaints of bias or other concerns” involving the news division, a concession to accusations of harboring a liberal agenda from Trump and other Republicans. Paramount CEO David Ellison has also reportedly held discussions to acquire the right-of-center digital site The Free Press, potentially giving its co-founder, Bari Weiss, a role at CBS News.

In a letter to employees upon closing the merger, Ellison addressed the news division, saying, “We take immense pride in CBS News’ legacy of impactful journalism and look forward to continuing to foster a newsroom culture where journalists are empowered, trusted and equipped to do their best work.” During a meeting with reporters Thursday, Ellison also said he had “no interest” in politicizing the news, but based on Trump’s role in the approval process, the test of that commitment will come in the days and months ahead.

In a dismal business climate for journalists, adopting a principled stand becomes especially challenging. Yet as these hallowed news organizations take on water, to use Kessler’s analogy, more journalists will face tough choices regarding when it’s time to start paddling or, barring that, jump overboard.

The post Should They Stay or Go? Veteran Journalists Face Tough Choices in the Trump Age appeared first on TheWrap.

The NFL’s TV partners have faced plenty of second-guessing about how they cover a league their business relies on so heavily — the media world’s reigning ratings titan by a country mile. Yet formalizing the marriage between pro football and ESPN raises questions about how fairly the network can document pro football’s failings now that they’re officially on the same team.

After protracted negotiations, the NFL and Disney-owned ESPN finally reached an agreement announced late Tuesday exchanging the league’s media holdings — including NFL Network and its RedZone service — for the NFL gaining a 10% stake in ESPN. Aside from securing its bond with the league, ESPN receives additional benefits, including rights to televise more games, as it prepares to launch a new streaming service.

The deal “combines America’s most popular sporting league and the world’s most innovative sports media leader,” the NFL said.

“Today’s announcement paves the way for the world’s leading sports media brand and America’s most popular sport to deliver an even more compelling experience for NFL fans, in a way that only ESPN and Disney can,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in the same joint statement.

As logical as the arrangement might be from a business standpoint, it raises significant issues about the “news” part of ESPN’s brand: Specifically, what can ESPN say about the NFL in terms of warts-and-all reporting? That relationship already has a tumultuous history, one that suggests the journalistic aspects of their union will be even more complicated than the financial terms.

As a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, the NFL has been very good at protecting its image, and almost equally skilled at wringing massive rights commitments from TV networks and now streaming services eager to tap into its unequaled audience reach. Combined, those entities pay the league more than $10 billion annually.

The networks on that list — ABC/ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox — also operate news divisions, which makes the blurring of the lines between the NFL and the principal sports network an especially thorny endeavor, historically punctuated by pragmatic compromises that at times have bordered on capitulation.

Ultimately, it all comes down to control. Networks have grappled for years with the perception they are leery of irking the NFL, perhaps never more so than in 2013, when the league reached a $765-million settlement with thousands of former players over the longterm effects of concussions.

As someone (OK, me) wrote at the time: “What’s a fair price to allow millions of fans to watch pro and college football without dwelling on the irrevocable harm it might be doing to the participants? Try $765 million.”

That year, ESPN produced and then withdrew from a collaboration with PBS’ “Frontline” on “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” a powerful documentary. Among other things, the film compared the NFL to Big Tobacco in the 1960s seeking to obscure the carcinogenic effects of cigarettes.

In a striking retreat, ESPN pulled its name and logo despite the fact the network’s reporters were prominently featured in the project, prompting speculation that the network was bowing to pressure from the NFL.

In 2018, ESPN did air “Seau,” a look at the life of star linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012 at the age of 43. After spiraling downward near the end of his life, Seau hoped to preserve his brain for future examination about the effects of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease found in many former NFL players. (His family reached a settlement with the league shortly after the “30 for 30” production aired.)

ESPN hasn’t been the only network to balk at reporting that might endanger its NFL ties. Also in 2018, NBC dropped Bob Costas from its Super Bowl team after the veteran broadcaster spoke out forcefully regarding the concussion issue, telling a crowd at the University of Maryland, “The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains – not everyone’s, but a substantial number.”

Addressing why NBC sidelined him on the day of TV’s biggest showcase, Costas told ESPN in a 2019 interview, “I recall the phrase, ‘It’s a six-hour, daylong celebration of football, and you’re not the right person to celebrate football.’ To which my response was not, ‘Oh please, please, change your mind.’ My response was, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’”

Costas also bluntly summed up what he saw as NBC’s motivation — namely, that TV executives cross the league at their peril. “The NFL isn’t just the most important sports property, it’s the single-most important property in all of American television,” he said. “And it isn’t even close.”

Underscoring that point, the NFL accounted for 45 of the 100 most-watched telecasts in calendar-year 2024, based on a list compiled by Variety. (Other sports, including the Olympics, claimed 30 of the remaining slots.)

Controversies remain. In the decade since the concussion settlement was finally approved (having grown to $1 billion by that time), questions have arisen regarding how the NFL is allotting those funds. Last year, the Washington Post reported allegations the league had undermined the landmark case — after saying players and their families would receive “prompt and substantial benefits” — through “loopholes, aggressive reviews and a failed doctors network” to avoid handing out payments.

The effects of CTE haven’t been the only issue. Broadcasters have also had to deal with other uncomfortable stories regarding the NFL, such as Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice, who was accused of domestic abuse in 2014, evoking debate over whether the league had sought to sweep the matter under the rug and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s role in that reaction.

In terms of parallels, the NFL’s investment in ESPN mirrors the relationship with team-controlled regional sports networks that carry games locally, channels where discouraging words are seldom heard regarding the home team.

Granted, the conversation usually doesn’t dig much deeper than wins and losses, but those local broadcasters don’t often seriously second-guess trades and other front-office maneuvers, much less delve into off-field crimes or whether playing the game is potentially crippling those putting their bodies on the line.

The concussion issue also might have quieted, but it certainly hasn’t gone away. Last year, there was much discussion surrounding Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who spent several weeks on injured reserve after experiencing a third concussion, causing some to ask whether he should ever play again.

The bottom line — and with the NFL, almost everything boils down to that — is the league doesn’t want to let anything interfere with people enjoying its product, and ESPN now has even less incentive, not that much was needed, to say anything that would distract from the action on the field.

Nor is the line-blurring deal unique. Just last month, Fox Corp. acquired a one-third stake in racing enterprise Penske Entertainment, securing its IndyCar rights, in a deal the Wall Street Journal valued at $125 million or more.

Financially speaking, the ESPN-NFL hookup makes perfect sense. ESPN cements its ties to the biggest attraction in sports in advance of future rights negotiations, and the NFL further diversifies its revenue stream while aligning itself with a savvy media partner to shepherd those holdings.

Yet now that ESPN and the NFL are truly in bed together, can viewers trust the network to report negative stories about the league accurately and fairly? As veteran sportswriter John Cazano noted in a Substack post after news broke of the pending announcement, “The league was already in a deep partnership with the network, but now the league would have ownership of the entity that aims to cover it? Anyone else wondering how that might manifest itself?”

How indeed. ESPN might be gaining stewardship of RedZone, but the answer to those questions, at best, appears to be a gray area.

The post Can ESPN Cover the NFL Fairly Now That It’s Part of the Team? | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Hunting Wives” has joined the elite club of buzzed-about Netflix series, wrapping a soap opera around a murder mystery faster than you can say “Who killed Laura Palmer?” Yet perhaps the show’s most intriguing wrinkle involves incorporating just enough political references to feel like a satire of Southern-fried hypocrisy.

In TV parlance, the underlying premise of the Netflix series — which centers on a liberal Bostonian who finds guns, drugs and lots of musically accompanied sex in a Texas town — owes a debt to “Twin Peaks,” the 1990 series that turned the Laura Palmer mystery into a national guessing game, while containing trace ingredients of “Dallas,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Big Little Lies,” “The Righteous Gemstones” and a whole lot in between.

What sets the latest show apart are the throwaway references to conservative red-state politics. Those include, but aren’t limited to, gun rights (and everybody carrying one), dog-whistle racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, abortion access, gender roles (one of the women purrs, “We don’t work. We wife”) and a reference to the show’s gun-toting sisterhood as “little Marjorie Taylor Greenes,” the outspoken and often ridiculed Georgia congresswoman.

From that perspective, “The Hunting Wives” — originally produced by Lionsgate TV for Starz, before Netflix opportunistically picked it up — dropped at just the right time in the right place.

The show lands in the midst of the tumult and apprehension surrounding the Trump administration and so-called anti-woke movement, which has bled widely beyond politics into pop culture. As for the venue, it’s apt to find more viewers because of Netflix’s vast platform, including those who get most of their news from TikTok videos but can feel a little smarter by connecting the otherwise escapist drama, with all its delicious salaciousness, to current events and tabloid-worthy headlines.

In that sense, “Hunting Wives” has it both ways, dressing up what would normally be considered a “guilty pleasure” with a dollop of political satire. For those seeking a little more meaning from their eight-episode binge, it helps alleviate some of the “guilty” part.

The key point, of course, is that for all their conspicuous church attendance, the principal characters break every commandment and perhaps create a few new ones to violate.

The audience gets to see all that through the eyes of the new arrival, Sophie (Brittany Snow), a classic fish out of water who gets lead down a proverbial path to temptation by Margo (Malin Akerman), the resident queen bee. Despite her flashy lifestyle, Margo has good reason for concern about people peeking beneath the surface or rummaging through her closets, fearing such scrutiny if her wealthy husband (Dermot Mulroney) runs for governor.

“Hunting Wives” doesn’t “tiptoe around words like ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’” as critic Angie Han noted in a favorable review in The Hollywood Reporter. In an interview with TheWrap, showrunner Rebecca Cutter acknowledged that she enhanced the political undertones for the series that were not in the original book.

Cutter told TheWrap she thought the show would be more relevant “if we don’t shy away from the culture war stuff,” despite some apprehension that “a bigger deal was going to be made out of the politics, and that it would overshadow what the show actually is.”

What the show “actually is” is another sexy soap opera, using a mystery and time-hopping device to hook viewers. It’s fine, if nothing special, on that level, yet what the first season also does, reasonably effectively, is glancingly evoke echoes of scandals involving conservative/pro-MAGA political figures in the Bible Belt, who appear to adhere to the old adage “Do as I say, not as I do.”

On the LGBTQ+ news and entertainment site Pride.com, journalist Ariel Messman-Rucker drew a line from the show to the 2024 allegations regarding pro-MAGA politician and former Florida Republican Party chair Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget, a co-founder of the family values group Moms for Liberty. When Ziegler was accused of rape, the investigation revealed the couple engaged in threesomes with other women despite their outspoken anti-gay views.

Closer to Texas where “Hunting Wives” takes place, State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione admitted to having an affair after a former stripper went public with allegations he paid for several abortions during their nearly two-decade relationship. Elsewhere in the Lone Star State, Trump loyalist, attorney general and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton was apparently accused of infidelity when his wife, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, announced that she was filing for divorce “on biblical grounds.”

Such stories aren’t any newer than the genre of TV and movies that explore dirty little secrets in outwardly idyllic small towns. In fact, watching “The Hunting Wives” brought to mind a similarly flavored Netflix show set in Georgia, “Insatiable,” which focused on an overweight 17-year-old girl who shrinks down to beauty-pageant-queen size after having her jaw wired shut.

Trashy, sex-crazed and filled with twists, the 2018 dark comedy landed with a dull thud — savaged by critics before getting canceled after two seasons — partly due to its treatment of obesity, though Netflix’s uneven run of shows featuring teenagers at the time was likely a factor.

Separating success from failure in television is best conducted with the benefit of hindsight, and it’s fair to say “The Hunting Wives” might have come and gone with scant notice had it premiered on Starz. Still, the abundant buzz suggests the show connects on a few different levels — straddling a line by serving up titillating small-town lust while name-checking hot-button issues for the terminally online, allowing them to pretend they’re watching because the show has something to say about the state of the nation.

In a later episode, Sophie presses Margo about whether she engaged in naughty behavior out of some deep psychological need, having missed the chance to sow wild oats in high school. Margo offers a simpler explanation: “Because it’s fun.”

As delightful as it is to take aim at red-state hypocrisy, the appeal of Netflix’s latest series to grace its “most popular” tier probably isn’t a whole lot more complicated than that.

The post ‘The Hunting Wives’ Uses Red-State Politics to Feel Smarter Than It Is | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

At its core, Murdoch’s legal battle with Trump — who sued him and the WSJ over its reporting on the president’s relationship with the late child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein — reflects a schism between Murdoch’s U.S. publishing assets and his Fox News Channel. While the Journal and at times another Murdoch publication, The New York Post, have been tougher on Trump, Fox News continues to treat him to the journalistic equivalent of a warm bath.

Students of Murdoch, however, see the split between his publishing unit and his TV network as indicative of the contradictions in the executive himself, who is both a committed conservative and a pragmatic businessman, as well as a media mogul and tabloid-style journalist who loves a juicy story.

Murdoch has also exhibited considerable concern about his legacy in his later years, including his determination to keep control of his media empire in son Lachlan’s hands as opposed to his more liberal children, creating a “Succession”-worthy family drama for media watchers to drink in.

Murdoch has always been an unusual figure, though his motivations, veteran observers and former associates say, invariably run closest to whatever will advance his business interests. And with Trump, as The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg observed, the two are inextricably linked by their shared reliance on Fox News viewers, making their latest public spat a particularly awkward and fraught one.

Even if they wanted to quit each other, as the Australian-born media titan saw after the 2020 election when Trump supporters turned on Fox News once the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, their fortunes are too intertwined to detach quite that easily. And that makes Fox the equivalent of a child caught in the middle of a nasty custody fight.

Despite their ties, Murdoch’s combative and independent streak means he won’t be rolling over. As Semafor founder Ben Smith noted early in Trump’s second term, “If you want to be a mogul, as the Murdochs have learned over the decades, you can’t make yourself quite that easy to bully.”

Despite threats from Trump that he followed through on with a $10 billion lawsuit, the Journal published a story about the president’s strange letter to Epstein as part of a birthday book assembled for the child sex predator, one of several reports documenting just how close the two men were.

Not letting up, the paper followed that with another major exclusive on July 23, citing sources who said Trump had been briefed in May that his name was mentioned in the files.

None of this comes as a shock to Preston Padden, a former distribution and government relations executive who worked for years for Murdoch at Fox Broadcasting. Padden turned against his old boss for what he saw as Fox News’ role in spreading disinformation and stoking the Jan. 6 insurrection, joining with advocates to petition the FCC to withdraw Murdoch’s license to own TV stations, saying Rupert and Lachlan lacked “the requisite character” as defined by the Communications Act.

Asked if he could explain the split personality of Murdoch’s assets, Padden told TheWrap, “It’s simple. There’s two sides of his brain. One side is seriously and absolutely committed to being a newsman, a journalist and believing that a big part of that is holding governments accountable.”

The other half of Murdoch’s brain, Padden continued, “is focused on making piles of money for himself and his family. That’s what Fox News is. Fox News is not, in my opinion, a serious news organization … I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.”

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik echoed that point on X, while describing the Trump-Murdoch relationship as “allies, but also frenemies.”

The Epstein case, with its mix of crime, power and politics, represents the kind of salacious story Murdoch has been drawn to throughout his career. It’s telling, then, that Fox News has largely steered clear of covering it, recognizing that bad news for Trump is ultimately bad for business — an indication of Murdoch’s practical streak, as Rutenberg wrote, having “built his empire by giving his customers what they want.”

For his part, Trump does appear to be viewing the dispute as a personal clash, including his lawyers’ motion on Monday asking for a swift deposition of Murdoch in the lawsuit. It’s another sign that to Trump, no amount of loyalty is considered enough if it wavers in the slightest.

Padden noted that the petition he backed regarding Murdoch was rejected by then-outgoing Democratic FCC chairman Jessica Rosenworcel in January, along with three conservative petitions against news organizations that her successor, Trump appointee Brendan Carr, has revisited.

It’s not a leap, Padden noted, to think Carr could revive that petition as a punitive action or leverage against Murdoch, in much the way Carr has appeared to carry water for Trump’s grievances against other companies.

“That’s the way the place works now,” Padden said, noting that he had spent 50 years around the FCC, and the current blending of Trump’s interests with the commission’s actions is “just disgusting.”

Despite what experts see as the legal weakness of Trump’s case, Padden isn’t alone in anticipating the president could seek to use the FCC as a cudgel against Murdoch.

An analysis by New Street Research policy advisor and former FCC chief of staff Blair Levin asked if Fox could find itself in the “Trump transaction penalty box” alongside companies like Comcast and Disney.

Although Murdoch doesn’t have any pending merger or acquisition activity at the moment, with other companies like Comcast and Warner Bros. spinning off assets and creating consolidation opportunities, Levin speculated that the WSJ’s Trump-Epstein story and related lawsuit “could put Fox in a problematic position related to transaction reviews.”

A News Corp. spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in response to the lawsuit, Journal parent Dow Jones stated, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

According to Semafor’s Smith, the Fox News-WSJ divide is ultimately less representative of a conflict within Murdoch’s empire than the mogul’s sense that politicians come and go — up to and including a president he helped establish as a candidate — but News Corp. lives on.

“I just think Murdoch is operating as he always has, with the view that he will be around long after political actors pass from the scene,” Smith told TheWrap via email.

Still, as veteran editor Tina Brown noted in a Substack post, “What rich irony that the defense against the latest assault by Trump on press freedom is now in the hands of old crocodile Rupert Murdoch, the very media owner whose Fox News gave us Trump in the first place.” Even so, Brown noted that Murdoch is “still a tabloid man at his core” and predicted he “won’t pay Trump a dime,” which, if proven true, would put him tens of millions ahead of Disney, Paramount and Meta, which have all paid settlements to Trump of $15 million or more.

At 94, Murdoch has also exhibited a keen sense of what the future will hold, preserving the company he inherited from his father and building it into a vastly bigger and more influential enterprise.

As The Atlantic reported in a lengthy piece about the family succession battle, Murdoch “erupted” at the prospect of Lachlan not maintaining control of the company, saying in an email, “This has been a family dominated business for 70 years. It would be a disaster for at least the U.S. and Australia if these assets fell into the wrong hands.”

“The wrong hands,” in this case, would be Lachlan’s siblings, James and Elisabeth, with Murdoch believing, as the magazine reported, “that a transaction that gave liberals control of any piece of his empire would amount to an intolerable blow to his legacy.”

A New York Times magazine piece quoted Murdoch as framing the issue in even more grandiose terms, calling Fox and his newspapers “the only faintly conservative voices against the monolithic liberal media,” while expressing his belief that keeping them that way is “vital to the future of the English-speaking world.”

Their differences notwithstanding, Padden expressed hope that “Rupert lives forever,” but on a practical level, pointed to those concerns about the future of Fox News as one of his points of vulnerability in the current standoff with Trump.

Murdoch, who married for the fifth time last year, has outlasted plenty of politicians over the course of his storied career, and might again with his current legal sparring partner. Yet ownership of the company “has to change when Rupert dies,” Padden noted, “and I think they’ve got no chance of getting that through without bending a knee to Donald Trump.”

The post Rupert Murdoch Built Donald Trump. Now He’s Standing Up to Him appeared first on TheWrap.

For a studio that endured the whole “Release the Snyder Cut” campaign, with a contingent of those loyalists to Zack Snyder’s take even threatening an online sabotage campaign against the new movie, that bit of inside humor surely felt cathartic.

Fans, obviously, are the life’s blood of pop culture, but the most strident and vocal members — lashing out via social media, often anonymously — have given parts of fandom a bad name. Given that, an event like Comic-Con International, which just concluded its 55th edition in San Diego, feels like a welcome breath of fresh air, letting creators and talent interact with fans — if not quite a panacea to fandom’s excesses, the sort of love fest that serves as a bit of a tonic.

It’s a lesson that studios, making bets about which multi-million-dollar projects to back and which to skip, should remember as they balance the polarizing and extreme opinions online with the more genuine affection expressed in person at a place like Comic-Con.

The darker side of fandom often gets the lion’s share of attention, coinciding with trends in the political space among similar demographics, particularly young men. Nor did it help that COVID made everyone more online, which included transforming the 2020 and 2021 editions of Comic-Con into a virtual format, depriving fans, and talent, of the in-person experience.

Back to full strength with an estimated 130,000 attendees, Comic-Con provides the sort of immersive environment that invites playful ridicule. Indeed, mocking such fans has become its own cottage industry, one that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog elevated to high art with his roastings of the “Star Wars” faithful and Comic-Con devotees.

Still, beyond the cosplay-ing characters and autograph hounds, exposure to fans in a venue like Comic-Con offers a reminder of the passion they harbor for the movies, TV and other pop-culture commodities that they love, in a way that can strip away some of the understandable cynicism that has crept into Hollywood’s posture toward fan communities.

At this year’s gathering, the box-office success of “Superman” and solid start for “Fantastic Four” seemed to create a certain giddiness, reflected in the crowd’s costume choices. Blood-drive donors were rewarded with Fantastic Four T-shirts. At DC’s floor display, people posed for photos with a very calm dog wearing a Superman cape.

Fans cheerfully waited in lines — long, winding, disorganized lines — to preview movies like “Coyote vs. Acme,” which was salvaged after Warner Bros. shelved it; and “Tron: Ares,” with an enthusiasm that likely requires forgetting the previous 2010 sequel, “Tron: Legacy.”

The hope is those attendees will become marketing foot soldiers for new films and TV shows like FX/Hulu’s “Alien: Earth,” which screened its first episode, as they cheered older favorites like “Resident Alien” and “The Rookie.”

Elsewhere, people queued up for autographs from actors, writers and artists. “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan received movie-star treatment, posing for pictures with admirers at an installation outside Petco Park. Fresh off “South Park’s” skewering of Donald Trump, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone received a heroes’ welcome on the convention’s biggest stage, Hall H, as did Gunn at a presentation for the HBO Max series “Peacemaker.”

The dark side of fandom

In recent years, the uglier side of online fandom has included over-the-top reactions to Ben Affleck being cast as “Batman.” Ironically, the demand for Snyder’s version of “Justice League,” which features Affleck, became enough of a din that Warner Bros. finally obliged them by allowing Snyder to finish his cut and release it on HBO Max. It was a decision that was deemed a financial failure given the additional money spent reviving a project that didn’t make much of an impact on the streaming service (it did okay).

Unfortunately, those years have also seen ugly bouts of racism and misogyny, with “Gamergate” and “Comicsgate” more than a decade ago as well as anti-“woke” gibes directed at the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte.” Mindful of such landmines, studios have even resorted to “boot camps” to help prepare actors for dealing with online sniping.

The animosity, or at least wariness, toward those strains of fandom was articulated by Alan Moore, the comics legend responsible for “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta.” In a piece last October for The Guardian titled “‘Fandom has toxified the world’: “Watchmen” author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and Trump,” Moore drew a stark line between genuine fandom and social media bomb throwers, linking the debased tenor of political debate to the venom spewed by those who claim to represent fan communities.

“An enthusiasm that is fertile and productive can enrich life and society, just as displacing personal frustrations into venomous tirades about your boyhood hobby can devalue them,” Moore wrote. “Quite liking something is OK. You don’t need the machete or the megaphone.”

“Quite liking something is OK. You don’t need the machete or the megaphone.” – Alan Moore

Although they tend to be a small minority, the angriest voices do have a way of knifing through the clutter (and social media algorithms), which has included homophobia and bigotry associated with backlashes to movies and TV shows.

That was the case with the “Star Wars” prequel “The Acolyte.” Featuring diverse leads, the Disney+ series provoked such a strident response that star Amandla Stenberg posted videos after its cancellation noting the actors had experienced “a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language towards us.” Despite bracing for that, Stenberg said, “It’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.”

The in-person experience

At events like Comic-Con, those fetid aspects tend to dissipate, with microphones, not megaphones, used to ask questions of talent — sometimes nitpick-y and wonky, sure (“Why is there noise in outer space?”), but almost invariably excited just to be sharing space with somebody whose work has moved, thrilled and inspired them.

Part of that reflects realities of face-to-face interaction, noted Michael Elliott, a professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice at Towson University in Maryland, who has studied fan culture, including a survey titled “Fandom as Religion: A Social-Scientific Assessment.” 

According to Elliott, abusive fandom “gets so much press because it’s so loud,” but his research indicates those amplified voices don’t represent most fans, and indeed tar traditional fans in an unfair manner.

“I think people misunderstand fans as perhaps childish and irrational, and what I’m finding is that fandom can be deeply meaningful to people in a variety of ways,” Elliott told TheWrap. “It can give them community, it can give them a morality, it can give them something powerful and important in their daily lives.”

Noting that fans often thank him when he conducts interviews, he said, “As a social scientist, I let the data speak to me, but it really struck me how sincere fans can be and how meaningful it can be. These are not children. They’re not crazy, irrational people with psychological problems. They’re regular people who just find deep meaning in these interests.”

Take George Lucas’s first appearance at Comic-Con on Sunday, in which he received the biggest standing ovation and roar of approval of all the Hall H presentations. Lucas had for years been the target of waves of toxicity from fans angry at his take on the prequel trilogy — a series of movies that have in recent years found a new sense of appreciation.

For Hollywood, of course, all this represents a thorny equation, since forging connections — often through digital means and social media — with consumers is the surest way to get people to spend money but can also elicit a kind of fringe lunacy, fueled by the anonymity online postings allow.

As it happens, the major studios had a muted presence in terms of showcasing movies at this year’s convention — partly an accident of timing with “Superman” and “Fantastic Four” opening this month — with TV shows largely filling the void.

But studios have, by and large, pulled back their Comic-Con investments in recent years after spending big on exhibitions for films like “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” only to see those movies flop in theaters. Or to drop exclusive footage that leaks online in unfinished form, as Warner Bros. did with a sizzle reel for 2016’s “Suicide Squad” not meant for public consumption.

And yet, sometimes magic happens. When director Tim Miller unveiled the first “Deadpool” trailer back in 2015, the Hall H crowd responded so enthusiastically they demanded to see the trailer again after it ended. Miller, tears in his eyes, obliged. Minutes later, during a panel for an “X-Men” movie, Nicholas Hoult confessed he was having trouble answering a question because he was “still thinking about that ‘Deadpool’ trailer.” The unbridled joy from the crowd jumped the barrier between fan and actor. Comic-Con is a place where these performers and creators can, themselves, be unabashed fans.

Those making the trek to San Diego this year were rewarded with more than just a marketing opportunity but a taste of fandom in its pure, unadulterated form — the kind of event, Elliott suggested, where enthusiasm can become infectious.

“If you go to a concert, if you go to a Comic-Con, the electricity is in the air,” he said. “It comes from the environment and can sweep you away in spite of yourself.” At its best, that can also remind those within the business for whom they’re working, and that they’re not all a bunch of mutant monkeys.

The post Going to Comic-Con in Person Feels Like a Tonic for Toxic Fandom appeared first on TheWrap.

Uslan’s perspective thus seems particularly relevant at a pivotal moment for the superhero movie, which is seeking a resurgence behind “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” with the promising opening for the former suggesting the process might be at least partway there. The longtime producer, after all, has seen his fair share of boom and bust periods for the genre.

Heading into another Comic-Con in San Diego, a convention that has grown along with the interest in all things comics, the reloading of superhero fare also coincides with Uslan reflecting on his life and role in the comic-book movie’s ascendance into the top commercial tier of pop culture, first in a 2019 memoir, “The Boy Who Loved Batman,” and late last year in an eponymous stage version that, after a trial run, Uslan hopes to bring to Broadway next year.

Fighting ‘Batman’s’ decade-long battle

Uslan was barely a kid when he got into comics, working for DC and befriending Marvel’s Stan Lee, and not a whole lot older when he and partner Benjamin Melniker (who died in 2018, at the age of 104) acquired film rights to “Batman” from DC Comics in 1979.

The pair embarked on a frustrating decade-long quest to get someone to treat the character the way he had been in the comics — a creature of the night, as envisioned by artists like Neal Adams, Marshall Rogers and Frank Miller, not the “Wham! Bang! Pow!” campiness associated with the 1960s TV show starring Adam West.

Uslan thought studios would “line up at my doorstep,” he told TheWrap, seeing the potential for sequels and animation, toys and games” when he began shopping Batman. He experienced a degree of shock upon realizing he was talking to older executives that, unlike him and countless baby boomers, hadn’t been weaned on the comic-book evolution that took place in the 1960s with the rise of Marvel and reinvention of DC.

“They were still part of that old generation that had in their memory cells either comic books are bad for you or, at best, comic books are cheap entertainment for little children. Nothing more, nothing less,” Uslan recalled.

According to the producer, one senior studio executive told him flatly Superman was the only comic-book character with any value, and that a dark version of Batman that deviated from the brightly colored TV image would never work.

How Tim Burton cracked the code

Uslan credits director Tim Burton with placing the focus where it belonged, on Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne, by “concentrating on the human side of the superhero” in a way that allowed audiences who had never read a comic book to “suspend their disbelief,” buying into the story and organic world of Gotham City as its own character.

“Michael, there would never be a Marvel Cinematic Universe if it wasn’t for ‘Batman’ 1989,” Uslan recalled Lee telling him years after the film came out.

“Batman” broke box-office records with a $40.5 million opening weekend, going on to earn more than $250 million domestically and over $410 million worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, that translates to roughly $650 million in North America and more than $1 billion globally in today’s dollars.

Yet even after that, Uslan noted — paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen, perhaps no surprise for an Asbury Park, New Jersey, native — that the forward progress for superheroes often amounted to “one step forward, two steps back.”

In the case of Batman specifically, that could be seen in the sequels directed by Joel Schumacher, which reflected the studio’s desire to cash in by helping peddle happy meals and toys.

“The decision for Batman was made on a high level that they wanted it to appeal to families and kids and be merchandisable to the extent possible, which is where the tail starts wagging the dog,” Uslan said.

Feeling despondent after “Batman & Robin,” the campiest of the sequels in 1997, Uslan said his partner Melniker was confident that their more serious take on comic book movies would return. And it did, in a big way.

“And as I look back in time, I would say it was worth that period of internal darkness, if not despair, because that’s exactly what happened, and that’s what got the studio to bring aboard the next genius, which was Christopher Nolan, and The Dark Knight trilogy,” he said.

Staying faithful to the source material

That pattern of misreading the market, Uslan said, has played out with other comic-book adaptations, including Superman (whose sequels tell a similar tale). Marvel’s upcoming reboot of Fantastic Four followed multiple attempts ranging from mediocre to disastrous.

It’s a sign of how far the genre has come in today’s age of lavishly mounted blockbusters, as Uslan knows, having produced the 1982 movie based on another DC character, director Wes Craven’s “Swamp Thing.” Made for a mere $1.9 million, Uslan remembers the actor playing the chemically altered monster wearing a rubber suit, with “the zipper in the front for the rear scenes and the zipper in the back for the front scenes. You prayed that the special effects makeup would hold together for more than five minutes before pieces started to fall off.”

If the superhero movie has become a golden goose for Hollywood, Uslan cites a long history of strangling it, usually through what he describes as “over-saturation of cookie-cutter movies, when they just do the same thing over and over again without adding anything to the mix, until we get tired of them.”

Ultimately, the superhero surge of the last few decades hinged on filmmakers who harbored passion and respect for the material, as Uslan put it, “who adored and idolized” signature Marvel creators like Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

According to Uslan, therein lies the key: Not providing “dark versions” of superheroes arbitrarily — especially if the characters, like Superman, weren’t necessarily originally envisioned as brooding — but remaining faithful to the characters’ essence and what originally made the property popular.

DC Studios co-CEO and “Superman” director James Gunn echoed that point during a recent NPR interview, saying the tone of DC’s upcoming projects were all different — from the grounded HBO series “Lanterns” to the space adventure “Supergirl” to horror with “Clayface” — in ways that intended to honor the source.

“Comic books are not a genre,” Uslan said. “Comic books are westerns, jungle, humor, war, horror, superhero, romance. Anything you can find on the shelves of a bookstore you can find in comic books. It is just our modern-day mythology.”

The post How Producer Michael Uslan Gave Us ‘Batman’ and Shaped the Superhero Movie Era appeared first on TheWrap.

Monday evening marked the “The Daily Show” host’s first time on air since CBS and parent Paramount, which also owns Comedy Central, canceled Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” hosted by his longtime friend and former colleague.

Admitting that he was “not the most objective” person to comment on the situation, Stewart questioned Paramount and CBS’ motives, before getting to his most salient and resonant point: The faulty logic of institutions trying to bow to Trump’s “whims.”

Citing the potential goal of trying to safeguard Paramount’s $8-billion merger with Skydance Media, Stewart noted, “A not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those f–kin’ shows. That’s what made you that money. Shows that say something. Shows that take a stand.”

Stewart then drew the obvious connection and corollary to that, saying that if the idea is to present programming so inoffensive as to avoid provoking Trump’s wrath, “Why would anyone watch you?” To networks and corporations, he cited the fallacy of thinking that “you can make yourselves so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless, that you will never again be on the boy king’s radar.”

It’s a simple point, but during Trump’s ongoing crusade against media, an easily overlooked one, which has echoed through other recent pop-culture staples.

“Superman” director James Gunn, for example, erred in the eyes of conservatives by making politically tinged comments about the title character being an immigrant, triggering the usual “Go woke, go broke” diatribes prior to the film’s release.

Since then, though, a funny thing happened: “Superman” has performed extremely well in North America, but lagged a bit in its international returns, a dynamic that Gunn attributed at least in part to “anti-American sentiment around the world” elicited by the Trump administration.

Granted, going “woke” will surely alienate some people, particularly if they have a megaphone to voice their displeasure and a profit incentive to do so. But as Stewart suggests, there’s no more sure-fire way to go broke than trying to please everybody in a way that sands off all the rough edges and winds up being boring.

Moreover, as Stewart noted, short of heaping praise upon him, there’s no real way to ensure that you can remain on Trump’s “nice” list. As proof, Stewart cited Trump’s lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, filed despite the fact Murdoch’s other most prominent asset, Fox New Channel, “spends 24 hours a day blowing Trump, and it’s not enough.”

Admittedly, an aspiring blockbuster like “Superman” plays by a different set of rules than a late-night TV show. Yet as numbers guru Nate Silver noted in a lengthy post about the “Late Show” cancellation, “Outside of sports and perhaps Taylor Swift, there’s really no mass culture anymore.”

Stewart’s vital lesson, then, is why try to be all things to all people, including those operating in bad faith? In a niche-oriented world, material and talent that provokes strong feelings is ultimately going to be more valuable and enduring, whatever headaches might go with it.

That dynamic obviously comes with a few key disclaimers, chief among them producing content at a reasonable price. As Stewart acknowledged, the economics of late night have become far less hospitable in recent years, prompting him to compare the financial model to “operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Records.”

Pure economics could explain the “Late Show” decision, although after CBS settled Trump’s frivolous “60 Minutes” lawsuit, skeptics can be forgiven for seeing the merger and regulatory concerns as having played a part — with Paramount joining all the other institutions that have “bent the knee” to the “Boy King.”

The bottom line, though, is that while Colbert’s top-rated network late-night show might have fallen victim to being too expensive, it isn’t breathing its last breath because it was too “woke” — except, perhaps, in the eyes of what Stewart called a “vengeful and vindictive” president.

Stewart’s parting plea, in essence, was a foul-mouthed call for companies to grow stiffer spines. And whatever the response, he made clear that he does not intend to stand down without making a fight, the kind that for his fans, at least, will be well worth watching.

The post Jon Stewart to Companies That Bend the Knee to Trump: ‘Why Would Anyone Watch You?’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Early Thursday, the Senate passed a rescission package backed by President Trump gutting funding of public broadcasting along with foreign aid programs, eliminating $1.1 billion in federal support to PBS and NPR. The bill moves to the House, amid cheers from conservatives and warnings of dire consequences from opponents.

“This White House is determined to destroy any news outlets that hold the president accountable for his actions,” the advocacy group Free Press Action said in a statement. “But the clawback of money cuts deeper in rural, Tribal and low-income communities that depend on public-broadcasting outlets to get the news and information they need to survive and thrive.”

The Republican campaign against PBS and NPR is nothing new, fueled through the years by twin themes: That public broadcasting joins other mainstream media in evincing a clear liberal bias — and why are we, as conservatives, helping to underwrite that? — and in an age of media abundance far removed from PBS’ founding in 1969, there’s no need to spend money on publicly financed alternatives.

Setting the latter point aside, other than the argument public broadcasting does provide vital services to smaller and rural communities, the notion that PBS and NPR represent wild-eyed bastions of liberalism simply flies in the face of reality, except for a relatively small percentage of its programming. Nevertheless, the perception has taken root among the GOP, unshakably so, stoked by the belief that any negative reporting on Donald Trump reflects “fake news,” and the hard-to-refute sense that when it comes to the president, facts sometimes seem to exhibit a liberal bias.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to engage in a debate about this with those who fall squarely within the pro-Trump camp, among them people who see “Sesame Street” as being too “woke” for seeking to teach kids to accept differences in others.

Yet as casual viewers of PBS or regular NPR listeners can attest (and given the latter’s soothing, sleep-inducing voices, “casual” surely describes a lot of them), public broadcasting offers a wide assortment of options, most of them apolitical.

The news-driven fare represents a modest portion of PBS’ overall content, and benefits from the non-commercial aspect of its existence, in theory, by enabling reporters and documentarians to explore issues in a manner that might not meet the demands of shouting for attention in the commercial space.

Whether that’s PBS’ “NewsHour” or its “Frontline” franchise, NPR’s “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered,” the tone is invariably sober, straightforward and even-handed in a way that, frankly, sometimes works to its detriment vis-a-vis showier alternatives. That dynamic might explain why a recent Peak Insights survey, released by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, found that public media is viewed more favorably than its commercial counterparts.

Not to let the facts get in the way of a good time, but according to PBS, the image of PBS viewers as latte-sipping liberal elites also flies in the face of audience data, which has found that three-fifths of PBS viewers live outside urban centers and more than half of its viewing comes from low-income homes.

That latter figure, in particular, makes intuitive sense, since lower-income families might not be able to afford cable or subscribe to a half-dozen streaming services. In addition, PBS has a well-established reputation for providing educational programming for children — the kind that isn’t awash in toy and fast-food ads — which hasn’t stopped GOP politicians, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, from attacking those kids shows as “government propaganda” when “Sesame Street” had the temerity to talk to kids about vaccinations.

Nor should it be overlooked that the highest-profile offerings on PBS in recent years, like Ken Burns’ stately documentaries (the next being a 12-part series about the American Revolution), the British drama “Downton Abbey” and other “Masterpiece” fare, have plenty of commercial alternatives, yes, but many of them reside within the premium/streaming space, which means anteing up for the privilege of watching “The Gilded Age” or “Adolescence” on HBO and Netflix, respectively.

PBS has also reported a diverse ideological split among its consumers, with a slight tilt in favor of Democrats (35%) compared to 26% who self-identify as Republicans and 37% who say they are independents. Then again, given the decades-long crusade against public broadcasting among grievance-prone conservatives, the self-reporting among GOP voters might be on the low side, in “I don’t watch that liberal garbage!” fashion.

Although public funding accounts for only a portion of PBS and NPR’s budgets — about 17% in the latter case — the CPB has said losing that support would inflict a serious blow, as PBS CEO Paula Kerger has stated, particularly to stations in small towns that can’t easily tap into corporate sponsorships.

To Trump’s loyal supporters, “Defund PBS,” after years of empty talk by previous Republican administrations, can be positioned as a clear victory, filed under the heading of “Promises made. Promises kept.”

In reality, though, it’s a promise built on falsehoods, something “Frontline” or “All Things Considered” might help debunk, assuming they’re still around and able to do so.

The post ‘Defund PBS’ Realizes a Long-Held Conservative Dream Built on Lies and Half-Truths appeared first on TheWrap.

Given that, O’Reilly might be one of the best weathervanes to understand which way the winds are blowing in the MAGA movement, amid feuds among media figures — many of whom directly or near-directly inherited O’Reilly’s mantle — split on issues like Iran, Ukraine, immigration policy, and most recently, those Jeffrey Epstein files, or lack thereof.

“It’s just anarchy across the board,” O’Reilly told TheWrap in an exclusive interview Tuesday, speaking of the right-wing coalition. “You have varying degrees of conservative people. You have the crazy, conservative nuts, racist loons, nationalists. Then you have the fiscal responsibility people. It’s all over the place. And that frustrates Trump.”

As to why Trump has chosen to downplay the inquiry regarding Epstein, a one-time friend, financier and child sex offender who died by suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, O’Reilly deflected, calling it “a mystery.”

“The people that I talk to don’t really know why he’s so defensive about this,” he told TheWrap.

O’Reilly characteristically reserved his harshest critiques for the mainstream press in our wide-ranging conversation, which was completed over the course of two interviews. He claimed, for instance, that liberal media has “destroyed” itself by throwing away any pretense of objectivity due to its Trump hatred — and he foresees a major reckoning for all media once Trump is out of the picture, arguing that focusing on rifts among conservative voices overlooks how those personalities market themselves.

Trump is a unique phenomenon. Without him, everything changes again.

Trump has long argued that he represents a ratings gift to the mainstream media, and O’Reilly concurred. Yet he expanded that critique to entities on the right, like Fox News, predicting a “revolution” when Trump exits the spotlight.

“If Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow, some alien got him and took him away, how do you think Fox is going to do? The network’s built around him,” O’Reilly said. “In three-and-a-half years, there will be a total realignment of television news. Once he’s off the stage, the networks and cable will all have to recalibrate how they market themselves.

“Trump is a unique phenomenon. Without him, everything changes again.”

On the Epstein files

O’Reilly asserted his support for Trump’s stance not to release the “Epstein list” for which right-wing figures are clamoring, saying it’s unfair to attach names without “compelling, chargeable evidence.”

As it happened, O’Reilly was initially interviewed for this column right before the frenzy unleashed when the Justice Department announced it wouldn’t release additional files related to Epstein. That move spectacularly backfired, causing fury within the MAGA movement while prompting media figures who normally toe the Trump line to blast the administration, if less so the president directly.

During a testy July 14 exchange with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert, O’Reilly dismissed the Epstein story as a “curiosity,” arguing that “the media would run wild” with any names released and potentially “destroy” anyone who might have crossed Epstein’s path. That said, he conceded Trump is “hurting himself” with his resistance to providing more details and the “tabloid wave” stemming from it, “and I just wonder if there’s anybody in the administration that is telling him that.”

Trump’s detractors have plenty of theories, including his well-documented relationship with Epstein, though O’Reilly rejected the notion that anything harmful to Republicans might be in the government’s possession, given the long time the Epstein material spent within the custody of Democrats.

In comments that would surely provoke snickers from liberals accustomed to “Democrats in disarray” headlines, O’Reilly also insisted the political right is less cohesive than the left in seeking to explain the eruption among Trump loyalists on this issue.

Based on his conversations with Trump, O’Reilly concluded, “He’s very interested in his legacy, but I don’t believe that he feels this rises to that level.”

O’Reilly’s reach

Once cable’s ratings kingpin, O’Reilly still makes his voice amply heard via radio and his “No Spin News.” He boasts access to Trump and generally shares his views, which includes accepting the president’s rationale for not releasing the Epstein files strictly to silence the criticism.

Without providing hard figures, O’Reilly notes that his current operation — which charges $6.95 a month for premium members — employs 60 people as a sign of its prosperity.

O’Reilly held forth on a variety of topics, among them a relationship with Trump that goes back 35 years, and the observation that the president appears to have honed his migration into politics by internalizing lessons gleaned from watching O’Reilly’s show and blunt, tough-talking style, which appealed to many of the same people who became Trump’s loyal base.

Whatever Trump learned from O’Reilly, the host sees the president as a uniquely charismatic and media savvy figure in the political world, someone who “knows how to deliver a message, and understands that you have to keep it interesting at all times.” In the spirit of keeping things interesting, O’Reilly offered thoughts on several recent media issues.

The MAGA media meltdown

Even before the Epstein fallout, many of Trump’s high-profile supporters recently found themselves at odds — from Tucker Carlson feuding with Fox News’ Mark Levin and podcaster Ben Shapiro over whether the U.S. should join Israel in attacking Iran to Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal editorial page and New York Post contradicting Murdoch’s Fox network.

Nothing has highlighted those divisions more than the recent Epstein debate, yielding rare blowback toward the administration that Trump has struggled to quell. On Tuesday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham blamed the tumult on “conservative influencers eating their own.”

“The fissures within MAGA world are becoming clear,” MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez recently observed. “They do seem more willing to articulate where the points of differential are.”

To O’Reilly, though, conflict sells. As a consequence, he saw little downside in pundit-on-pundit disputes, saying of skirmishes like the Carlson-Levin divide over attacking Iran, “Levin’s not putting his finger up to the air. If it clashes with Carlson, as he has recently, they both win. There’s no loser in that for those guys.”

Perhaps not, but the notion exists that many conservative influencers and intellectuals are essentially piggybacking on Trump’s cult of personality for fun and profit.

As The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg put it, “The thought leaders of the Trump movement are merely political entrepreneurs trying to appropriate the president for their own purposes.” If there are disagreements, he noted, it’s because Trumpism ultimately boils down to “whatever Trump says it is.”

Fox’s strength, and failings

Although O’Reilly spends most of his time deriding the traditional press, he’s not above taking conservative outlets to task. Let go by Fox in 2017, his imprint on the network can still be seen, having nurtured such talent as Jesse Watters, who started as a comic-relief ambush producer on “The O’Reilly Factor” and now occupies his former boss’ old time slot.

While lauding the superiority of Fox’s talent relative to its cable-news channels, O’Reilly said the network erred with coverage of the 2020 election that led to its $787.5 million settlement with Dominion voting systems, maintaining he would have been able to curb those excesses had he still been around.

“That would have never happened if I was there,” he said. “There’s no proof of fraud in that election. And we lost a lot of premium members when I said that.”

Paramount’s “60 Minutes” settlement

Addressing another politically fraught media litigation, O’Reilly also made recent headlines by agreeing that Paramount Global settled with Trump over his “60 Minutes” lawsuit to grease the wheels for its merger with Skydance Media.

Granted, O’Reilly contends“60 Minutes” was clearly pulling for Kamala Harris and that correspondent Scott Pelley (who didn’t conduct the Harris interview) “hates” Trump.

He also balked at characterizing Trump’s demands as a “a shakedown,” as former “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft recently described it on “The Daily Show.” But he added, “What I do know is this: CBS probably would have won the case had it come to a jury trial,” describing Paramount’s reasoning regarding the merger as follows: “If we settle, he won’t hold it up. So we’ll settle, right? That’s what it is.”

The Mamdani factor

Given the time he spends bashing liberals, perhaps the biggest surprise was hearing O’Reilly dismiss New York Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy as much ado about nothing. Fox’s reams of coverage sounding alarms about the prospect of a Democratic Socialist leading the U.S.’ largest city would certainly suggest otherwise.

While Mamdani has seemingly become a poster child for the conservative stereotype of big blue cities — drawing fire from Trump and his media acolytes — O’Reilly’s response amounted to a bemused shrug. “Nobody outside of New York cares about New York City,” he contended.

One suspects millions of Americans and more than a few producers and executives at his former network disagree, but O’Reilly has a history of making such pronouncements, and it’s gotten him this far.

After decades under the security of a corporate umbrella, O’Reilly has joined the ocean of voices (including several Fox alumni) seeking attention on the outside. To hear him tell it, he finds the water just fine, expressing respect for “the mavericks who go out and forge their own way in the wild west of the internet,” as long as they’re not “dishonest.”

“So I don’t agree with a lot of these guys, but that’s fine,” O’Reilly said. “They got their point of view, and I have mine, and that’s that.”

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