Media

George Soros’s son Alex Soros and Open Society Foundations chief Mark Malloch-Brown are in the midst of a deep rethink, Bloomberg reported, which includes a five-month pause on all donations. Among Open Society grantees are free media outlets all over the world, and left-leaning projects in the U.S., and we’ll soon see how crucial the foundation’s cash has been to those ecosystems.

Watching Fox News with Gavin Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom says Fox News is “quite literally bullshit and misinformation,” and a “24/7 doom loop” that traffics in fear and anger.

Also, he can’t stop watching. And he suggests other Democrats do too.

“I’m not naive, I’m not moving the needle at all,” he said. “The deeper question is: What do we do as Democrats to infect that ecosystem with some reality checks? And it can’t be episodic — you’ve got to go on 24/7.”

In a polarized and siloed American media, Newsom — the Democratic executive with the most power after President Joe Biden — has broken with most other Democrats to consume and appear regularly on right-wing media. He sat down twice with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, and agreed to a November faceoff with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moderated by Hannity. (Newsom’s staff, he said, had been alarmed to learn of plans for that first Hannity interview, which Newsom and the anchor made on their own, via text message.)

It’s not just Fox. Newsom is one of the few Democrats (and few Americans) still posting on Donald Trump’s Truth Social.

KNOW MORE

Newsom, who spoke to Semafor in the back room of a hotel near the Simi Valley debate last week, says he woke up to the power and the possibilities of conservative media in 2021, when Calfiornia Republicans moved to recall him. Backed by the Republican National Committee, the recall effort capitalized on Newsom’s decision during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to attend a dinner, arguing that he was an elitist who hypocritically asked Californians to stay home while he drank wine at the French Laundry. Partisan media was at the heart of the race: The California governor’s opponent was Larry Elder, a popular conservative radio host who had appeared over 220 times on Fox News in the years leading up to the race.

Newsom beat Elder easily, but the match-up and the intensity of GOP opposition inspired the California governor to begin paying more attention to conservative media, all the way out to small channels to Fox’s right, Newsmax and One America News.

“That woke me up. And I came to my senses,” he said. “I just watched that ecosystem and became more absorbed in it. And got a deeper understanding of it, and came out of that a different guy.”

Now, the California governor consumes more right-wing media than most people who aren’t either retired or named Donald J. Trump. Newsom often begins his day with the Righting, a newsletter roundup of conservative media clips from the previous day. He takes a break for Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take,” then flips the TV in his office to Fox News for “The Faulkner Focus,” a daytime Fox show hosted by conservative host Harris Faulkner. His father-in-law, a conservative, will often text him Wall Street Journal stories and op-eds and links to other right-wing sites.

Note: The program Newsom was referring to is “The Faulkner Focus,” not “The Faulkner Files.”

Over the course of a half an hour, Newsom rattled off detailed reviews of several popular right wing commentators. He said his staff asked him to stop consuming content from Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, which he admitted has been more difficult for him to give up than “The Joe Rogan Experience,” a podcast which Newsom said he no longer listens to. (Rogan is particularly critical of the governor’s stewardship of California.)

Newsom said he’s disappointed in Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, who he said was “a good, conservative, comedic and insightful voice” who “does a wonderful job on the Five,” but was “unfortunately falling into that trap” of demonization and personalization of political stories. The California governor also said while he was previously amused by Fox News host Jesse Watters, who has known the governor for years, he was disturbed by coverage of the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi in 2022.

“That’s not even serious, right? I mean, really?” he said of Watters’ 8 p.m. program. “I know him well. He used to go out for Bill O’Reilly and do these shticks against me. And he would always laugh at the end. I like Jesse, but it’s pathetic.”

Biden’s team has embraced Newsom as conservative media shield, filling the Fox News space that then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg occupied in 2020. The California governor told Semafor that after his first interview with Hannity and his recent fundraising efforts for the Democratic National Committee, the Biden campaign asked him whether he’d like to serve as a surrogate at the second debate in his home state. While Newsom said he wasn’t a natural pundit, he insisted that he was simply serving as a team player for the Biden campaign.

“Tonight may be a complete utter disaster,” Newsom reflected before the debate. “They may say ‘Get this guy outta here. Where’s [Gretchen] Whitmer? Where’s [Chris] Coons, where’s [Kathy] Hochul?’ And by the way — amen. This is a baton that needs to be passed.”

He continued: “But [Republican] presidential candidates] are getting all the airtime they’re polluting the airwaves with a lot of bullshit. And we have got to have a counteroffensive. So my No. 1 strategy tonight is to communicate that and say to Democrats, let’s go to war. This is serious. Trump can win.”

Kara Swisher is a tech journalist who co-hosts “Pivot,” a podcast with NYU professor Scott Galloway, and hosts her own show, “On with Kara Swisher.”

Our friends at 1440 scour 100+ news sources — culture, science, sports, politics, business and more — delivering all of the news and none of bias, in a concise morning email. Join 1440’s audience of 2.7 million policymakers, Fortune 10 & FAANG leaders, and open-minded readers across the political spectrum.

Sign up for 1440 here.

⁛ News

Axel springs: We reported a couple weeks ago that the New York Times was recruiting Politico Playbook author Ryan Lizza. The outcome, as is often the case: The Times can’t afford him. Politico’s new owner, Axel Springer, is quite intent that no stars leave the building.

London calling: Puck’s Dylan Byers reported last week that the Washington Post CEO search, after starting (panic!) with current and former New York Times chiefs, now includes the CEOs of The Atlantic, and Politico, as well as former McClatchy CEO Craig Forman and Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith. We’re told the search has also crossed the pond to include FT CEO John Ridding, though a source familiar told Semafor that he had not spoken about the job with interim CEO Patty Stonesifer.

Getting crowded: Axel Springer is joining the bidders for the Telegraph.

Doom loop: The Italian journalist Alessandro Gilioli summarized his country’s publishing industry in a chart, which I picked up at the excellent Internazionale festival in Ferrara, and translates as follows:

“You are a publisher and your newspaper loses copies → You decrease the number of pages → You decrease the quality of the product → You stop editorial staff turnover → You cut contributors’ fees → You cut proofreaders → You put journalists on “solidarity” and then on unemployment benefits → You put money on digital for the fuck of it → You pay super-consultancy to a random American guru → You see that the company is increasingly in the red”

✪ Theater

Retiree goes to matinee: The cast of Here Lies Love, the lively disco-pop Ferdinand Marcos musical (what a phrase!), were surprised to spot Rupert Murdoch peering over the balcony at Saturday’s matinee, his daughter Elisabeth Murdoch beside him. The mogul sat stone-faced through projections that coincidentally included his ex-wife Jerry Hall drinking champagne out of a bottle. As the show ended, Moses Villarama, playing the role of the DJ, delivered one line rather pointedly in Murdoch’s direction: “Democracies are only as strong as the people.” Murdoch applauded.

✰ Hollywood

Dark horse: A series of bizarre legal fights between pop star Katy Perry and several California residents over the last few years has inspired a national legislative push by Perry’s opponents to slow the sales of homes by elderly homeowners.

Perry is currently involved in a dispute with Carl Westcott, the 84-year-old founder of 1-800-Flowers, who is suing to try and stop the sale of his eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom Santa Barbara mansion that Perry and her partner Orlando Bloom purchased for $15 million. Westcott contended that he could not consent to the sale as he was suffering from mental decline and had been taking prescription opiates just days after a major surgery when he sold the home to Perry and her real estate agent. It isn’t the first time that Perry has faced off against octogenarians intent on keeping her from buying their home: The ‘Swish Swish’ singerpop star successfully beat a lawsuit by a group of nuns who attempted to sell their Medieval-Spanish-Gothic-Tudor estate to a California restaurateur against the wishes of the Archdiocese. While Perry won the suit, the incident was perhaps more remembered for the collapse and death of one of the nuns in court during the trial.

Now, Carl Westcott’s son Chart and his family are spearheading the launch of the Protecting Elder Realty for Retirement Years Act, or Katy PERRY Act. According to a website shared with Semafor that launched over the weekend, the act “addresses the risks of elder financial abuse, especially as it relates to property and real estate sales and transfers. The Act establishes a 72 hour cool-down period during which either party involved in a contract for conveyance of a personal residence, in which one party is over the age of 75, can rescind the agreement without penalty.” The group backing the effort boasts that it already has dozens of supporters from both parties in state and local legislatures across the country that will soon be introducing versions of the bill.

☊ Audio

Pushed: Deep cuts at Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg’s premium podcast company, Pushkin.

⁌ TV

Credit check: Vice’s creditors are threatening to force the company into Chapter 7 bankruptcy amid a dispute with Fortress, one of the group of lenders that acquired the troubled millennial media company earlier this summer. In a legal filing, a group of Vice’s creditors complained to the bankruptcy court that Fortress had wrongly drawn from a pool of fees set aside during an earlier stage of the bankruptcy proceedings.

• The CEO of Mattel talks about the success of Barbie, the next toys coming to the big screen, and more in the latest installment of On The Record, Semafor Business’s new signature interview series.
• A split field and a very MAGA primary electorate have vindicated Trump’s decision not to participate in the Republican debates.
• The newest opportunity for selling to climate-conscious businesses is data.
• A $100 million U.S.-backed plan for Kenya to lead a multinational security force to help Haiti restore order is attracting growing criticism.