Press Clippings:
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Good morning, it’s Saturday, 6 January 2018 and this is an abbreviated Morning Edition of The Nightshift (the Media Bunker staff is taking an extended weekend off).
Welcome to 2018.
Washington may be in the middle of a huge winter storm, but it’s the firestorm that Michael Wolff’s book on Trump and the White House (“Fire and Fury:Inside the Trump White House”) that’s getting ALL the attention. Wolff is everywhere doing interviews, segments from the book are on every channel and every talk show, and the President’s attempts to disparage it are only encouraging more people to read it (i.e. if it’s not to be taken seriously, why is there so much push back from the White House). Why the White House–full of self-proclaimed geniuses– allowed Wolff unfettered access for almost a year is ample indication of their management style and attention to detail (did anyone bother to read Wolff’s other work). The one element that keeps coming through about the book is this: what it says about the current administration and its’ leader is further validation of what Washington has quietly been saying for the last year. It’s a mess and Trump’s image is shredded. Between the book and the slow drip-drip-drip of Mueller’s investigation, the year is not starting off very well for the Republican administration.
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Snow, wind, wind chill, tidal floods, bomb cyclone, cancelled flights. A major winter storm (“Grayson”)is making life difficult–even deadly for the midwest and upper east coast. Looks like a good weekend to stay inside, watch Netflix, the Golden Globes, pro football playoffs and golf from Hawaii. As a reminder of what a really bad winter storm is like, here’s a reprieve of our link to Bloomberg’s photo essay on the storm.
A Senate committee (Judiciary Committee), charged with investigating the Russian meddling issue, made it’s first referral for criminal charges, this one against English intelligence agent Charles Steele, a former British spy, who was involved in the now-infamous “Trump dossier”. Another partisan party-first initiative by a Republican group that should know better (maybe, really, it’s time we stopped giving these folks the benefit of the doubt–they don’t know better), the committee conveniently forgot that it was Steele who went first to the FBI after receiving the information (the FBI had much of the same information, as well, so there was second party confirmation of certain elements of intelligence alleged in the dossier). So…overly-enthusiastic Republicans, doing everything they can to slow down the quiet freight train that is Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, tries to build a criminal case against the person who spotted and reported the crime to the appropriate authorities? Oh my….but wait, there’s more. Trump has also pressured the FBI to take another look at the Clinton foundation. For those not familiar with American democracy–many of whom live and work in Washington DC–the use of the FBI for such a patently politically motivated action is off limits.
Today is National Shortbread Day (it’s also National Cuddle Up Day). Time for a cup of coffee and some shortbread. And a cuddle.
What we’re listening to in the Media Bunker: The First Day compilation on Spotify.
The front pages (and sometimes more) of the world’s great English language newspapers are linked below.
Please check out the CNN “text news” site, which is much faster than their full multi-media site. It’s below at the end of the links.
The International Headlines are all at your fingertips, below.
The Times (London
Financial Times (UK)
The Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)
The Wall Street Journal (European edition)
Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
New York Times (New York)
The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles)
Daily News Egypt (Cairo)
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The Moscow Times (Moscow)
Le Figaro (Paris)
Bloomberg.com (New York)
The Jerusalem Post (Jerusalem)
The Japanese Times (Tokyo)
Sputnik (Moscow)
The Buenas Aires Herald (Buenas Aires)
The Sidney Morning Herald (Sidney)
Deadline Hollywood (Hollywood)
FiveThirtyEight (New York City)
Politico (Washington, DC)
Lawfareblog (Washington, DC)
Wired (San Francisco, CA)
The Weather Channel
CNN News Text Site
The Fine Print: Image embed courtesy of our friends at Getty Images, who have the photographic history of the 20th and 21st century on file. This photo has not been altered in any way. We thank them for sharing. The Nightshift is a production of Perception Engineering and The Media Bunker. This post is number 1549 for this site. The Nightshift is a continually evolving experiment in news communications. It’s rapid iteration. Thanks for reading. Now–catch up on the world.