The Press Box - Achilles Tension: Deep Fakes and Trump Bytes | The Press Box

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

How the media is handling Kevin Durant’s injury in the NBA Finals (03:00), the “Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week” (19:15), the disturbing Mark Zuckerberg deep fake (27:15), and a farewell to Le Anne Schreiber (36:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Just wanted to remind you guys that every Sunday night after each episode of Big Little Lies, the ringer's Amanda Dobbins and ESPN's Mina Kimes break down everything we just saw in our new after show called Big Little Live in partnership with Buick. And after you check that out, make sure to subscribe to the Mina Kimes show featuring Lenny, a weekly NFL podcast with frequent contributions from her beloved dog and sidekick named Lenny. You can subscribe to the Mina Kimes show with Lenny on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure to watch Big Little Live every Sunday night on Twitter.

David, a funny but fake tweet has been going around during the NBA finals that says, Raptor Star Kauai Leonard ate a bag of 12 apples with a knife and fork in front of his teammates while chanting Apple Time, Apple Time. This is a fake story. I just want to assure you.

What I want to know is, what other fanciful story would you believe about Kauai Leonard? Oh, man, this is hard. I think, I mean, the premise of the Kauai memes that are going around, correct me if I'm wrong. He's sort of like the inverse of like the Chuck Norris meme where like Chuck Norris can like karate chop the globe in half. Like Kauai, it's just this like aggressive boringness. Then that's what makes it Kauai.

That's what makes it just like it. It's like it's not it's not pedestrian things, right? Nobody eats apples and chants. It's apple time. But it's just loud. It's like, it's like powerfully dull, right? I mean, it's just like, it's riffing on the archetype of the, of the profiled pro athlete, but making, but all the quotes are like almost non items in their boringness, right? Except just the way they're presented in this.

I, the point, I guess the answer to your question is, I believe few or none of them because the fakesest part of all of them is, is access. and like nobody has access to Quay Leonard eating, whether it's apples or other things. But it's a very, very good, it's a meme, it's a series of things that I really appreciate. It's sort of like, you know when people will like, will tweet out a video or something or a funny picture that they probably made themselves,

but the tweet is like, who made this? You know, it's a way to kind of, it's a way to get it out in the world with plausible deniability, but so kind of take credit for it. That's what this was. It was these, these, these, pictures of text

made to look like athletic stories or whatever. Like it was screen grabbed and then someone would just, then the tweet would just be, man, Kauai really is weird, huh? But so it's like, I didn't do this, but clearly this person is just done. It's, this is a probably signal is a very dark future for social media

and I mean, in journalism is placing it, but I am all in on this right now. But what fun it'll be in the meantime. We are the Red Delicious of Media Podcast. This is the press box. of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Ryan Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here.

Lots of stuff to get to on today's show, including the Trump soundbite of the week. The X-Men take on their greatest enemy, anonymous sources, listener mail on the overworked Twitter joke of the weekend. Lots, lots more. But first, David, let's talk NBA Finals. You can find your Game Six analysis

over on the BS podcast or the Ringer NBA show. I want to talk to you about finals media. and the big story from game 5 earlier this week, and actually maybe the whole series, is Kevin Durant rupturing his Achilles. He'd been out for a month with a calf injury. He tried to play in game 5, and then something terrible happened.

Let's listen to a very emotional Golden State President of Basketball Operations, Bob Myers, talking to reporters after game 5. I don't believe there's anybody to blame, but I understand this world. and if you have to, you can blame me. I run our basketball operations department. And let me tell you something about Kevin Durant.

Kevin Durant loves to play basketball, and the people that questioned whether he wanted to get back to this team were wrong. And I'm not here to, he's one of the most misunderstood people. he's a good teammate, a good person. It's not fair. That David was the NBA press conference version of a sub-dweet. Because what happened days before on June 7

was that Tim Kawakami, editor and columnist over at the Athletic, wrote a couple of lines in a column, which I'll quote to you, has Durant fought to get back into action the way Clay Thompson and Kavanaughn Looney did for game four. It's unclear. It's impossible to know. Maybe he has dot, dot, dot. But just ask yourself this. If Thompson or Looney or Steph Curry or Draymond Green or Andre Iguedala had this

entry 30 days ago, would the warriors still be waiting for them? Subsequently to that, Sopon Deb and Kevin Draper over the New York Times pointed out that those lines were a little bit shitty. And that probably would have been the end of it. But then Durant got himself back on the floor for game five and ruptured his Achilles and suddenly some semi-shitty lines suddenly with a change of events seemed extremely shitty. What is your read on that whole thing? Oh, wow. Circumstance plays a part here, does it not? If Kevin Durant doesn't get hurt, this conversation, this whole thing

looks very, very different. Yeah, Zach Lowe made that point in his podcast today or yesterday. I don't, I don't know when it came out that we're, that I think that the conversation is a little bit skewed because reviewing everything through the like working backwards from the result right I mean if everything had happened exactly the same way but Kevin Durant had not gotten hurt or just twisted his ankle or something like that then I don't know that we would have been

you know trying to track down the Zapruder film for every moment in this whole process and the Kawakami thing that with sports by the way can't believe the sports story we worked backwards in the result that's crazy anyway continue the Kawakami story was was you know has been rightly

lambasted since the injury and Kawakami himself didn't do any favor of himself any favors by loudly defending himself on social media talking shit about the New York Times crew and their dissension from it and then he did publicly sort of show contrition after the injury and everything else but you know

the story itself was almost drowned out by the volume of his tweeting about it but all that said if he hadn't written it someone else would have written it if no one else had written it we still would have been talking about it right I mean, this was the conversation that for a lot of people was surrounding the Warriors postseason. And I mean, obviously, this is an incredible tragedy, what happened to Kevin Durant. And I think that as with, like, Kauai Leonard's injury last season, I mean, there's so much just confusion and uncertainty that surrounds these things in this day and age for a variety of reasons. it just makes it really hard to do the to really find out what happened.

It makes it almost impossible to, I mean, Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure out, you know, who's at fault, who's the culprit in this case. And that is sort of hard for the average reader or even the average journalist to wrap their mind around. You know, it's an unsettling thing to not really know the answer. And I think that's kind of what we see everybody wrestling with right now. I like how you went with Sherlock Holmes is your master detective reference instead of like Woj or Shams. But I'm with you. Kawakami, to his credit, by the way, climbed down next day on Twitter and said he'd put the emphasis on the wrong thing and even turned away people who were defending him and said, no, no, no, I screwed up on this one. I think what he was writing about and what was interesting before the injury was that there was this total information blackout for like a month.

And what he was trying to get out in that column was that even Kevin Durant's teammates didn't seem to have any idea what was going on. And, you know, it was really funny. Like, and I'm saying all this without, without any kind of moral, moral content at all. But Kevin Durant not sitting on the bench with his teammates, being in the tunnel during games, not talking to the media. It took something, it took a finals where everything, as you say, is the Pruder film. Everything is, you know, surrounded by this crush of reporters and just put it off. limits essentially. And I think that just blew everybody's mind. You know, we're not used to having something unavailable during a championship series, something or someone. It just doesn't exist.

And it's like, it's like reporters, you know, what they normally do on a daily basis is to try to take things that are unknown and make them known. And essentially they were presented with this giant unknown and forced to deal with it. And I think, you know, people, our pal J. Kang, uh, representing the NBA dark web had written about that sort of information blackout. It just, it was very, very strange. And again, just unusual in terms of a final series. Anyway, I think that's kind of what he was getting at. What was interesting about the Myers press conference to me was he immediately before anybody, that was his opening statement, before anybody had asked any questions, he went to, I don't think there's anybody to blame. I understand people are

going to blame somebody. No one had even asked yet, hey, you know, who made the decision that Kevin Durant could play in this game. No reporter had asked that yet. But he went straight there as if he was anticipating that there was going to be this crush of people blaming the warriors. Speaking of which, Charles Barkley on ESPN's get up, thought the warriors were indeed to blame. Let's listen to a little bit of that. You've been asking these guys all morning if there's somebody to blame. Yes.

Yes, there is somebody to blame. the Golden State Warriors for putting KD out there. Listen, that was not right. You know, if you go back and look at the last two weeks, the article comes out, KD's worst nightmare

with the Warriors are winning without him. Then you come out, you read the articles, the Warriors are really unhappy when KD won't risk his Achilles. They're frustrated with KD. Now this man has to be filling some type of way. wait. So I blame the warriors, but KD. getting hurt, and I don't care what they say about it.

They shouldn't have put that man out there. You know how I know it? Because he blew out his Achilles. Wow. So, so, Charles. Wow. Barkley, per usual, side swiping, like five targets there. But I feel, and do you agree, that how did Kevin Durant get on the floor felt like the right question to ask immediately after that happened? Although... I mean, the answer might be benign. The answer might be Kevin Durant wanted to play. The Warriors said, hey, there's some risks here.

And he said, you know what? I want to help my teammates. But that does feel like the right question to ask when something like that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, and I think that the assumption has to be that it's benign. I mean, we were talking about a team that, first of all, that let... It does?

Well, yeah. I mean... Really? I mean, I get the... I'm not saying that the assumption should be malignant, but, you know, shouldn't the assumption just be like, well, let's just see what the answer is? I mean, it could be either. I think it could go either way.

I think it probably, I think it's feasible that it could go either way. But I think that, you know, I mean, the evidence that we that we can assume that we have is that, you know, his teammate, Clay Thompson was, was trying to argue himself onto the floor already in this series and the Warriors held him out. Certainly they would have, if the idea was just to like, pull a Friday night lights and, like, you know, shoot Kevin Durant up with a bunch of painkillers and put him out there, they would have done it before. game five. And if the idea is that they, that they just at the last minute said, you know, we're 95% less pretend we're 100 and then we'll talk Kevin,

we'll talk Katie into it. I mean, I guess there could be something like that. But at the end of the day, I mean, what we saw was a guy who could play for 12 minutes, right? And then tragedy struck. But we,

but I think that in 2019 of all times, we can assume that most or all the volition lies within the hands of Kevin Durant. Now, should there have been someone, throwing themselves in front of the in front of him to keep him from getting on the court. I mean, I guess that's a logical question. I think that what we see most of the conversation now boiling down to an article after article, whether or not it's the lead, it's certainly the meat, is the 12 minutes

thing, right? I mean, that he was on the floor for 12 of the first 14 minutes. And, and, you know, there's a lot of stories about it that he's, you know, that Steve Kerr has come out, I think, just today or yesterday and said, you know, they were going to pull him after eight. And Katie said, I feel good. Let me go a couple more. And so he went 10, 10 minutes, 20 seconds or whatever the total was, and then he, you know, kind of surprisingly started the second quarter. I mean, yeah, should there have been somebody on the bench counting his minutes? I assume that if the training staff had thought that was necessary, they would have, they would have done more to mandate it, because although the, it occurs insistence that they

said nothing worse could happen to it seems, rings a little bit hollow. But we're dealing with a lot of, I mean, we just, we just don't know, you know, and the fact that we're down to this 12 to 14 minute, 12 out of 14 minute thing feels like you know honing in on a very minor point of this of a very elaborate process for the sake of of pinpointing blame

yeah I mean I think I think there is a lot to investigate here that doesn't necessarily lead us to the conclusion the warriors are evil or something like that it's just interesting right I mean you have a guy who's one of the best players

in the NBA, who's about to become a free agent, who's about to sign a gigantic contract and probably still will, and now he's hurting he's going to be laid up for a really long time. How did this happen? It's just a logical news question. I just think that's, I mean, that is the most logical news question. It may be that, hey, it's just fate. You know, it just happened. We did everything we could.

He felt great and all of a sudden, Wham tragedy struck, as you say. And then, so that's, you know, that could be the answer. But I just do think it's worth investigating. I was also, by the way, David, interested in this Jalen Rose clip. He was on first take talking about the way people in the media and elsewhere flipped on KD. Listen to this. We got our pound of flesh as media, as fans, as people who watched this league faithfully. We wanted to see KD give himself to us.

We thought it was weak that he wouldn't join the Gold State Warriors. I didn't like that he joined the Golden State Warriors because when you go to the you want the two best players to pick teams, not join teams. But since he joined the Golden State Warriors, now it was a quest for him to prove that he could be something bigger than just a back-to-back reigning finals MVP. That's why all year we have said that KD was leaving. Why?

Because he was on the thirst for something that Golden State couldn't give him. We created that narrative. He would never be the dude in Golden State. That's always going to be Steph Curry's team. So therefore, he goes there, wins championships, but he got to leave to still validate himself. So now, congratulations, world. You got your pound of flesh.

This is probably the most. This is now it feels like we're all responsible, right? It's not just the weird strength step, but all of us. I do think this kind of injury, and you don't have to totally agree with that full critique, but I do think this injury is one of those things of when you have fun, you know, playing Take Master with basketball world. And it is fun. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I think most of the time. And then something like this happens, all of a sudden you feel really bad about playing Take Master. And it just is one of those things that it reveals the sports writing, a lot of that sports writing stuff is just kind of our sports TV stuff is kind of a smarty business, right? Yeah. That's what we do.

And it's sad that it has to take somebody's Achilles tendon rupturing to, to reveal it. But, you know, I just think this is one of those things where you're like, oh wow sports writing. That's some business you guys got there. Yeah, and I think that what Jalen was saying does, I mean

reflect, like this is, I mean, the point you're making but it reflects more more poignantly on, you know, the talking head sports journalism world than it does on fandom, you know, or anything like that. And certainly there are a lot of people who came or who felt bad for KD that were not huge KD fans before. Just like there were a lot of

people that were kind of arbitrarily rooting for Toronto and and didn't about face when, you know, some Toronto fans decided to heckle KD after his injury. But I think that by and large, I think that by and large, our perception, our remote perception of those things,

of, of, you know, the overall opinion shifting is probably is just as skewed as anything else. I mean, what we're, all that matters is that we're looking for, we're look, the same people are probably yelling of the same things.

We're just looking for the, you know, the opposite people yelling, right? I mean, suddenly, it's, it's the,

it's the anti, the anti-Toronto, people or had the loudest voice after Toronto fans do a bad thing. Yeah, I just think, I agree with that, but I think this NBA finals has been absolute kryptonite for storylines. I hate the word storylines, by the way. I just hate it. Here is the storyline.

I'm like, well, if it's just story, just write it. It's just so weird to be like, here are the meta storylines for this finals. I just, with that word, went away. I'd be so happy. But if we take quote unquote storylines, the warriors don't need. KD. That was done after game one. Then it was the Warriors need KD. That was apparently done after game two when they came back and won a game in Toronto.

Then they needed KD again. KD is healthy enough to play and should be out there. KD shouldn't have been out there to play. The Toronto fans are these special, different kind of people who go to Jurassic Parks all over the country and cheer and there's this purity of fandom. Oh, wait, they're kind of like Yankee and Red Sox fans. They're just like any other fans.

They have moments of temporary insanity. And, you know, that's kind of ugly and then we move on. I just, I loved it because every flimsy storyline disappeared after like five. We could even keep going, right? The Warriors don't need boogie cousins. Yes, they do need boogie cousins. Everything went down in like five seconds, which is part of what makes a series fun, by the way. That's made a good series.

But it was not a, it was not a great time for takes. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media, Twitter made it at exactly the same time. please send your nominees to At the Pressbox Pod, where they will be gratefully received. David, this one is from the world of communicable diseases. Not a topic I thought we'd start with, but here we are. A headline this week from the Daily Beast reads,

Jessica Beale comes out as anti-vax activist. Beale appeared at the California State Assembly with RFK Jr. Another anti-vax activist who called her courageous. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Apparently she and her husband, Justin Timberlake, be bringing measles back. Thanks to a bunch of people. Bruno Alves, Ben Gibson, Mike Rusak, and Derek Burke for that one.

This overworked was sent to me by four people also. A lot of unanimity this week. For context, let's first listen to this Donald Trump soundbite from the Rose Garden. He was asked if he had a deadline for making a trade deal with China. I have no deadline. My deadline is what's up here. We'll figure out the deadline. Okay. Nobody can quite figure it out.

It was an overworked Twitter joke for a journalist to write. Can't wait to try this on my editors. Thanks to our pal. Chris Sullentrop, Henry Thornton, Matthew Zitland, and reporter Joe at Monavage. Hope I'm saying your name right, Joe. And finally, David, this one from reader Michael. On Tuesday, we got a new set of Quinnipiac polls of head-to-head presidential matchups. The results were that Trump is losing to everybody. Biden 53, Trump 40, Sanders, 50.

Trump 42, Buddha Judge 47, Trump 42. This led to a lot of jokes about other polls. Follow me, if you will. The machine that blows puffs of air in your eye at the eye doctor, 42, Trump 41. That dry soda in your car cup holder where three pennies are stuck, 48, Trump 41. Chernobyl 73, Trump 22. And finally, severe rectal bleeding 49, Trump 38, Jill Stein, 8%. So if you compare Trump losing to a disaster that sponsored an HBO series and painful hemorrhaging,

congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And I think we should start with the actually enlightening quote of the week. Most quotes that appear in print or on television are just kind of filler, right? This was actually enlightening. It is Trump, once again, talking in the Oval Office with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. about what he'd do if a foreign government offered him information about a political opponent. Let's listen.

Okay. Let's put yourself in a position. You're a congressman. Somebody comes up and says, hey, I have information on your opponent. Do you call the FBI? I don't think. I'll tell you what, I've seen a lot of things over my life. I don't think in my whole life I've ever called the FBI.

In my whole life, you don't call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever. Al Gore got a stolen briefing book. He called the FBI. Well, that's different, a stolen briefing book. This isn't a stolen. This is somebody. that said, we have information on your opponent.

Oh, let me call the FBI. Give me a break. Life doesn't work that. The FBI director says that's what should happen. The FBI director is wrong. Your campaign this time, around if foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on an opponent, should they accept it or should they call the FBI? I think maybe you do both.

I think you might want to listen. There's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, we have information on your opponent. Oh, I think I'd want to hear it. Do you want that kind of interference in our elections? It's not an interference. They have information. I think I'd take it.

If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI. Call is coming from Norway, David. Call is coming from inside the Scandinavia. I have so many reactions to that. One is I love Trump talking about how I just, if somebody did that, I'd just throw him out of my office. Because he's sort of thinking his Trump tower. office, right? It's not thinking of the Oval.

People don't usually walk into the Oval Office and say, Mr. President, I got something great for you. Get this man out of here. It's like vacuum salesmen are sort of streaming into the Oval Office. The other part I liked about that was that it was actually, I think, an authentic record of what Trump feels. He's saying, you know, if someone brings you something and it's golden, of course you look at it.

Why would I call the FBI? Is that your, reaction? Yeah, no, I think that we should give great credit to President Trump for actually telling the truth. I mean, this is the sort of thing that even if you believe what he seems to believe, you would, most people would be bullshitting. You know, they'd find a way. He really seems to believe this and seems to think that if he says it in the most sort of like plain way, then everyone who's listening will of course agree. But yeah, I mean, but it's, it's just sort of mind boggling. And it's another one of the, those instances where you find yourself, or I find myself, I'm not going to speak for all the ones out there, but I find myself going back to that question of whether or not he is deliberately

clouding the media cycle with this sort of nonsense. I mean, there's been a lot of rumors that he's, that he's deliberately dragging the Democrats into a impeachment battle because he thinks that'll help him in the election. There's all this like Trump is working on the, you know, is playing 40 chess or whatever argument that that's that that argument is gone from like from like the Donald on Reddit to you know the real news media um but this is just crazy i mean just that he would just drop that into to george stephenopoulos of all people and this has been you know if but if you want to take the conspiratorial point of view this has been a wild couple of days for donald Trump, man. We are, I really thought we were going to do a segment on Donald Trump standing on the

White House lawn with an, with an envelope, which he was clearly falsely insisting, had a deal with Mexico inside of it that he would love to open, but he couldn't. Yeah, it didn't even make the cut. It was like third place this week. No, no, this is, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. But, you know, it's good for him, good for him for being totally honest about a thing that is probably illegal. Were you amused like I was by the production of that clip with Stephanopoulos? Where was that weird shaky cam? Yeah. And it sort of looked like that old news series 48 hours or nightline when it tried to be cool. You know, it's like, ah, we got the shaky cam. We got

somebody standing in Times Square. I assume because that was impromptu, but that was just kind of weird. There was another great moment in that interview, by the way, where George Stephanopoulos asked him about how all of the polls show him not doing very well. So I show him losing, including his own internal polls, which we know from a series of articles that have been written by various outlets over the past a week or so. Trump said that wasn't true, that he doesn't believe in pollsters, but someone who claimed to be a pollster just told him it wasn't true. And then apparently he went off the record and called his, I mean, called back to the home office to fact check it. Just a very bizarre series of events for something to happen like sitting next to George Stephanopoulos in an official interview.

Yeah, phone a friend usually doesn't happen during the White House interview. The Trump got so much criticism for the bit about foreign governments that he tweeted a hypothetical scenario involving him and the Prince of Wales. Only he spilled whales with an H like the sea mammal. And Jonathan Chate wrote in New York magazine, so the Manchurian candidate Star Trek 4 crossover scenario, the president briefly conjured will have to remain hypothetical. I enjoy that. I would have gone, I would, I would have gone with Jason Mamoa as Aquaman. man in that formulation. Oh, yeah. It's a little fresher, isn't it? Yeah. A little fresher.

But I don't know. Star Trek 4 still looms large. David, this is a dispatch from the disinformation super highway. We're about to listen to a deep fake video of Mark Zuckerberg. This is not real. This will not engender and Orson Wells War of the World's type reaction.

But let's just hear a little bit of what surfaced on Instagram this week. Imagine this for a second. One man with total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures. I owe it all to Spector. Spector showed me that whoever controls the data controls the future. British artists Bill posters and Daniel Howe, according to Forbes, used AI tools to create that and put that

video on Instagram. They of course were doing exactly what a prankster did a couple weeks back with the fake Nancy Pelosi video, which was not taken down. as we talked about on this podcast. And an Instagram spokesman now says about the new Zuck video, if third party fact checkers market is false, we will filter it from Instagram's

recommendation surfaces like explore and hashtag pages. I'm not sure I even understand what that means. AKA they're not taking it down immediately. What did you make of this whole deal? I thought that was an incredibly effective use of political theater,

a political art. I'm not quite exactly sure what to what to call that. Yeah. I mean for the video was just tongue in cheek enough and just absolutely terrifying and it's authenticity. The use of Spector, I thought it was just wonderful incredibly on the nose. And I think that it's, you know, I think that much more so than, I mean, let's be honest, Mark Zuckerberg is more recognizable than Nancy Pelosi. You know, I mean, I mean, she's, and he is much more central, at least indirectly, to most people's lives. And I think that that going after him was a great, you know, kind of shot at Facebook and Instagram. But it was also a, you know, it was also a way to make the point to the general public.

And I, you know, much more certain to go viral than a slightly slowed down video of Nancy Pelosi. And I, you know, I think to me the point was made. Now, whether or not, I mean, I take. the argument in good faith that they, that deleting videos like the Nancy Pelosi video is not necessarily the best course of action. And it's, and it's sort of untenable to police the internet in such a way, but it remains to be seen if marking things is false and filtering them is any more realistic. So let's see where we go. Yeah, here we go is right, because Drew Harwell over at the Washington Post reports that there really is no great technology

at the moment to sniff out these things. And he writes, for all the progress, researchers say they remain vastly overwhelmed by the technology. They fear could herald a damaging new wave of disinformation campaigns, much in the same way fake news stories and deceptive Facebook groups

were deployed to influence public opinion during the 2016 election. So 2020 sounds fun. Cable news today, I mean, just flipping across the major news channels, it's like they've all, so Congress is having a hearing on deep fakes today, which will inevitably be hilarious. As we speak, I mean, as we're recording, I think that's going on.

But all of the news channels have, like, turned into the worst parodies of, like, the local evening news that just focuses on car crashes and stuff. They're just like this weird fearmongering over deepfakes, which is a concept that, like, is not adequately explained and none of the, like, you know, people over the age of 50 listening, this will have any idea what it means except to be alarmed when they hear the term deepfake, right? I mean, that's the only thing that's being gleaned from this for a lot of people. And having a bunch of 70-year-old congresspeople discussing, I mean, debating the matter, I don't think is going to get us anywhere useful either, although, who knows, maybe it'll raise awareness.

I like the idea of local newscasters reporting on deep fakes. A deep fake tonight on Interstate 5. Our reporter, David Shoemaker, is at the scene. That'd be great. We need more of that. That would liven up the local news. David, I've got an anonymous source of the week for you, or make that sources. because they all appeared in a Hollywood reporter feature by Boris Kit on the new X-Men movie Dark Phoenix.

And Dark Phoenix was kind of a bomb, making $33 million in Domestic Gross and its opening weekend. And the piece appeared five minutes later and kind of revealed just everything about the movie, as if it had all been stored up and all came racing out. A couple of highlights for you. Kit reports that the movie was supposed to open in February. And then James Cameron came along, who's very important to Fox, and decided he wanted Battle Angel Alito to open in February, which meant Dark Phoenix had to become a summer movie where it got bulldozed by the competition. You know how movie studios do those awareness scores about movies?

An insider at Fox Tells Kit, when definite awareness of Rocket Man is higher than an X-Men movie, you know you're in strange territory. And Lauren Schuller, Donner, who is a producer on the franchise since the first movie, tweeted, this is Kit writing, save your condolences. I had zero nothing to do with Dark Phoenix. And this is where the Hollywood reporter story really gets real. Quote, Fox Insiders say, this is true.

Noting that Donner additionally did not have anything to do with successful, the successful Logan and Deadpool and Deadpool two either on which she received producer credit thanks to generous contract terms. An amazing anonymous source moment right there. What did you, uh, what did you make? of this piece. They need more generous contract terms in my life. It was really amazing the speed with which this came out. And obviously Boris Kitt's a good reporter and it didn't take a crystal ball to see that Dark Phoenix wasn't going to do particularly well. He's actually right on the nose

about the comparison to Rocket Man. I mean, I'm a lifelong fan of the X-Men and I was certainly more aware that Rocket Man was coming out than Dark Phoenix. But you do. But you do, But one does imagine that, like, at the press junket for Dark Phoenix, they're, like, all going down the rope line or doing whatever. And then there's, like, the conveyor belt does a U-turn on the other side of the, you know, like, on the other side of like a makeshift wall. There's just people giving their exit interviews. You know, it's just like, all of the producers and actors are just like, well, that was a cluster fuck, you know? And just like giving anonymous interviews about how everything went wrong right after they did, right after they've been hyping the movie for the, you know, for the previous 20 minutes. It's. amazing that this many anonymous people came together to try to explain away this catastrophe. And yeah, I mean, and I mentioned this to you, I think off mic, but the Lauren Shuler-Donner tweets were great because everything in this article, I believe, was anonymous except for those tweets. Like the only way, the only person that they were able to get on the record was someone who just loudly tweeted, I mean, just wash their hands of the whole thing to the world on Twitter.

everybody who was actually involved with the film was just like, don't mention me by name, but everybody blew this one. It's such a touch of Hollywood that within this piece where there's all these recriminations about the movie, you have a recrimination within a recrimination. Lauren Schuller-Donner,

it's true, did not have anything to do with this disastrous movie, but she also did not have anything to do with these successful movies that her name was on. So that's just, I mean, there's just something so something so wonderfully mean about that. It's great. A great Hollywood piece in the Hollywood reporter. Please read that.

This should be a new meme where Lauren Shuler-Doner just washes her hands of every movie failure for the rest of her life. Whether or not her name's attached to it. I just want to let you guys know that Shark Nato 2, I had nothing to do with that movie. Yeah, I've washed my hand. My name may be on it, but I had nothing to do with it. Department of We're All Good. David, this week I saw a New Yorker.com headline that read

The Secret Rebellion of Amelia Bedelia, the Bartleby of domestic work. And it reminded me of a 2017 New Yorker.com headline, the authoritative, repressive soul of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. These are real things? I think I am at least temporarily all good with close readings of children's literature. I think I am I think I just

I'm going to hit pause on behalf of journalism right now now you and I are both parents and as a parent it turns out you have to read these books like 900 times yeah so I understand you know the person sitting there you're tired you've had no sleep

your child will not go to bed and you're like how can I get content out of this experience but I don't need I don't need a piece on giraffes can't dance I don't need a piece on Horton here's Who I'm just, I am all good with the close readings of children's literature.

Thank you. Thank you very much. From the obit's test, David. We need to say a belated word for Leanne Schreiber died last week of lung cancer. According to the New York Times, Obit, Schreiber was the first woman to run in a major American daily newspaper sports section when the Times appointed her to that position in 1978. She later became ESPN's public editor slash ombudswoman. Schreiber had a quote where she says, I was depending on one. one's view the bitch, the saint, the Amazon, the token, the recipient of awards and death threats,

and ultimately the ingrate for insisting upon my pre-agreed release after two excruciating years of sports editor of the Times. I want to draw your attention to a fascinating episode in 1980. This is from Ira Burko's book, Red, which is a biography of Red Smith. So Red Smith is a columnist at the Times. He is already a pantheon-level sports writer. In 1980, he writes a column about boycotting the Moscow Summer Olympics, which the U.S. did eventually do, of course. Smith included some info in this column when he sent into the Times that was not verifiable,

including a bit about Soviet children being told to keep away from Americans because they would be offering them poisonous chewing gum. True. It feels very Cold War, 1950s kind of stuff. What happens is Shriver and the sports desk gets this column. And it's deadline time. and they can't reach Red Smith and tell them, hey, we got to cut this stuff out.

And columnists were so exalted in that period that you couldn't just rewrite them. You couldn't just take out the sentence. You had to ask, essentially ask Red Smith's permission. So Leanne Schreiber is faced with this decision. Do I run a column that I know has bogus material in it and defer to Red, or do I just kill it? and she took the fairly unprecedented step, or rarely precedented step, of killing the Red Smith column.

Well, meanwhile, the column, which the Times' computer system, had already gone out on the Times news service to 350 publications around the world. Then they killed it. And every,

all hell broke loose. Smith was at, Burko notes this, when Smith was asked about what his future columns would deal with, because reporters start calling him and say, how did the Times kill your column? He said, dryly, I'll write about the infield fly rule. But anyway, Schreiber took a lot of flack, but it was an interesting anecdote because she was fearless.

She believed in certain ideals were worth protecting, even if Red Smith had wrote the piece. And I thought that was really telling about her tenure over there at the Times. Rest in power, Leanne Schreiber. All right, David, our story of the week, we're going to do this every week, hopefully on Thursday. a big piece is getting everybody's attention and say what we like about it. This case, it's the ESPN.com story on the demise of the AAF

by Seth Wickersham and Michael Rothstein. A story that is one of those sports stories you'd been sort of waiting to be written because Charlie Ebersol had been very, very quiet. Yeah. After the demise of the AAF, what did you like about this piece?

What did you make of the piece? Well, I mean, you're right. It's a piece that was, in some ways, seems necessary and kind of seemed so generous the moment it came out because a lot of this was speculated about. But you're right. I mean, Charlie Ebersoll had been quiet. So most of the major players in the story have continued to be quiet despite being cited repeatedly in the piece. They weren't sources for the piece because there is ongoing litigation surrounding the AIA. But, you know, it's, I mean, it was, it was just a really, really good TikTok that makes

everybody involved look a little bit silly and foolish. And I think that's, uh, you know, and justifies that portrayal. And, you know, it's, it shows that a lot of the, a lot of the, read that people had on the AF of the time, I mean, going to its very core, which is that they were, a lot of the, a lot of the most haphazard seeming decisions were made because they were racing against the time, I mean, racing against time to beat the XFL to market. They were making financial decisions based on assumptions of what, of their, of a, of a, of impending relationship with the NFL. Their sources of revenue were sketchy to say the least.

And, you know, it shows, I guess, that there is a, that there is, that the charisma and drive of, you know, someone like Charlie Ebersall, specifically Charlie Ebersol in this, in this instance, can take you a long way, but can't always take you to $300 million of liquidity over three years to launch a professional sports league. Anyway, but it's just one of those stories where, you know, every couple of paragraphs, there's just something that kind of makes you slap your head or laugh out loud in it. I highly recommend it to anybody that wants to take a look.

The story is inside the short, unhappy life of the Alliance of American Football over at ESPN.com right now. David, on Thursdays, we get listener mail, which I always look forward to. Earlier this week, we ranked disastrous magazine covers. And Christian Clark asked, how could we forget the October 29th, 2012 Sports Illustrated cover with Steve Nash and Dwight Howard and Lakers jersey with the headline now.

This is going to be fun by Lee Jenkins, by the way. This is truly more disastrous than Vanity Fair and Beto, I think. So we'll re-rank them. Nikki Barnes and Times Magazine, then the Lakers of Steve Nash and Dwight Howard and then Beto and Vanity Fair.

Thanks to Christian for that one. To feed our ongoing fascination with the rehabilitation of Guy Fieri, Dion Geftalds sent the exchange that Fieri and Lil Nas X had on Twitter in which the latter called the former a legend. Do you have any reaction? We need to name the Fierry segment. It just needs to be a standalone, doesn't it? Yeah.

We might be every week. This weekend guy, I have nothing to contribute to this except for. They're both legends. We're going to work on that. It needs something about rehabilitation, though, right? Oh, right. Sort of a new guy. Anyway, send nominees to at the press boxpot.com.

Hugh Hopkins, loyal correspondent, sends this. Something I've been noticing of Beyond North America is countries co-opting the hashtag we the North mantra that the Toronto Raptors have marketed. And they've expanded it to hashtag we the Commonwealth. I think I spotted it first from an Aussie, but the UK seems to have bought into it. we the Commonwealth is a thing. So be on the lookout for for rip-offs of We the North.

I thought that was fascinating. We were talking about your proposed slogan for the old Baltimore Ravens defense. And Steve Criskey asks, wouldn't this be a better slogan for the Ravens D? Quote the Ravens never score. Never score. Oh, God, yes.

Yes, that would be better. That would be better. And speaking of Ravens, Sheila Wood. Edward was listening to us guest Tuesday's Strain Pun headline, Coat the Ravens Evermore, and she thought it was going to be yet another tortured literary reference. Drone flew over the Ravens Nest. It's not one flew over the cuckoo's nest,

drone flew over the Ravens nest. Even too tortured for the LA Times, front page it turns out. But speaking of which, I believe it is time for David Schumacher guesses the Strain pun headline. Everybody's favorite feature, especially David's. And today,

my friend, we've got a retro pun headline. This is a throwback. December 25th, 1990, Christmas Day, which is probably how it snuck past the New York Times as copy desk.

And this comes to us from our friend of the pod and sports book editor, extraordinary Jeff Newman. The story, David, was that Tim Raines, Tim Raines, he is a baseball player,

by the way. Tim Raines was traded to the American League West division. It was the same division that the great Ricky Henderson played in. Okay, so you got two future Hall of Famers, Tim Raines and Ricky Henderson in the same division. And it was natural in a sports column to ask who was better, Tim Raines or Ricky Henderson. So your challenge is what was the strained

pun headline for a story about whether Ricky Henderson or Tim Raines was the better player? You're not going to get me, you don't, not going to get me at my best when you're looking for baseball related anything. You don't, you just, you don't need much here. All right. My own, my, my first inclination would be like how the West was fun, but I feel like that's been done a lot of times in baseball, but you got to, you got to give me.

One of the great overused headline puns of all time. Yeah, but this is just the AL West. It's not the, I mean, what is the, what is the, who, does that something to their positions that I should know about? What is it? I would just go right to their name. Just Tim, Ricky, like a... Tim and Ricky.

Tim and Rains versus Ricky Henderson. Maybe go to their surnames. Rains. Gosh, Rains and Henderson. Maybe put Ricky's surname first. Maybe I'm just kind of lead you along a little bit. Henderson, Reins. Oh, my God.

You got to tell me. This is going so badly. Are you ready? It's a, it is a extremely tortured literary reference. Are you ready? Yeah. Henderson or Reins King? Oh my gosh.

A Saul Bello reference there for you. Henderson or Raines King. That is amazing. That is so bad. But good, you know, if you can get Saul Bello into the headline, you got to go. You got to do it. You got to do it. Thanks to Jeff Newman for that one.

Henderson or Raines King. That will be the bad one to beat for a while. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. And our producer is a great Jim Cunningham. Back Tuesday with more takes about the media. Have a great weekend.

See you then, David. See you later, man. Let's see where we go. Yeah, here we go is right. David, this one is from the world of communicable diseases. Oh, my gosh. David Shoemaker ate a bag of with a knife and fork. Dude, don't mention me by name.

Sounds fun. That is so bad. That'd be great. Dude, you're not going to get me, You're not going to get me at my best when you're looking for related to anything. I'm not sure I even understand what that means. Oh, God, yes. Like, I just want to let you guys know that I had nothing to do with...

I thought that was an incredibly, incredibly effective use of political theater, a political art. And I'm a lifelong fan of... Well, that was a...