Emmys (Matthew Rhys!) Recap, CBS Airs Pentagon Propaganda, Kushner's Secret Putin Deals Exposed, and Sydney Sweeney's New Ad 🥴

This week on Breaking the News, Julie Roginsky, Michelle Kinney, and Jeff Jarvis dig into a stacked week: a surprisingly solid Emmys night, AI's growing shadow over Hollywood and publishing, Sydney Sweeney's sports-betting ad and whether it's actually a shrewd business move, and the slow unraveling of CBS's 60 Minutes under Barry Weiss. And yes, Michelle gushes about Matthew Rhys's three-Emmy sweep, because we love him and always will. They also break down the widely panned Pete Hegseth pilot-rescue interview, the buried New Yorker report on Jared Kushner and Trump-world's business dealings with Putin, and why the New York Times just hired its fourth white guy in a row to cover media. Plus, a preview of the JD Vance Vanity Fair deep dive still to come.

00:00 – Cold open 01:10 – Show intro, Substack frustrations 02:51 – Emmys recap begins 03:59 – The Emmys' big sweep, discussed 05:54 – Diversity critique of this year's winners 06:30 – Female winners all over 50, Mariska Hargitay's big year 07:34 – Matthew Rhys wins three Emmys — "we love him here for other reasons" 🥰 09:09 – Paramount threatens to leave California over blocked Warner Bros. Discovery merger 10:36 – AI's effect on Hollywood economics; auditions on tape now 13:07 – Daniel Silva's novels and the "AI could write the sequel" thought experiment 16:33 – Jeff's AI-phishing scam story (a fake publisher impersonation) 18:19 – Julie's unpublished #MeToo book 19:40 – The vanishing gatekeepers debate 21:11 – Jeff's own publishing horror story 23:55 – Practical Magic 2 and "did AI write this script?" 24:09 – Sydney Sweeney's sports-betting ad 26:52 – Is this actually a smart business move? 29:17 – The American Eagle "good genes" ad backlash, revisited 30:07 – Sports betting and the youth gambling problem 31:57 – 60 Minutes ratings schadenfreude and the Barry Weiss era 33:53 – The correspondents pushed out: Tanya Simon, Cecilia Vega, Sharon Alfonsi, Scott Pelley 34:57 – Ross Douthat's incentives 36:47 – The Patrick Clancy interview and why the choice of interviewer is the real story 41:59 – Clip: Patrick Clancy's new wife on 60 Minutes 43:29 – The "own the libs" theory 44:34 – The actual ratings collapse, by the numbers 49:39 – Clip: Pete Hegseth and the rescued pilot, "proudest dad moment" 52:08 – Why Norah O'Donnell never asked the hard question 59:29 – What should have been asked instead 1:03:00 – Clip: the second Hegseth segment, the Iranian search party 1:07:00 – Barry Weiss, Hegseth, and his wife Jennifer 1:11:00 – Hegseth's approval numbers are brutal 1:13:00 – Why Trump keeps him around anyway 1:16:00 – JD Vance's own Iraq-era hypocrisy, tied in 1:17:00 – Are we already in World War III? 1:19:00 – The New Yorker's buried Kushner-Russia bombshell 1:22:00 – NYT's own headline on Trump dangling business deals to Putin 1:24:00 – Oliver Darcy's Status launch event 1:27:00 – ProPublica's Don Jr. wedding/Russian-asset scoop 1:29:00 – Brendan Carr, the FCC, and Qatar's outsized lobbying power 1:31:00 – NYT hires its fourth white guy in a row to cover media 1:35:00 – NYT's 175th anniversary party — who wasn't invited 1:36:00 – Wrap-up and a JD Vance preview

Breaking the News is a weekly conversation about the stories shaping American politics and media, hosted by Julie Roginsky, Michelle Kinney, and Jeff Jarvis. Every Friday, the three break down the week's biggest headlines with the sharp, unfiltered perspective of people who've spent careers inside politics, journalism, media criticism, and entertainment — no both-sidesing, no false balance, just a clear-eyed read on what actually happened and why it matters. Part of The Mayday Network, an independent, women-led media outlet covering politics, news, media, and culture.

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