💯 weekend reads about WaPo, Bad Bunny and Disney

Saturday, February 7, 2026

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Hey, hope you're staying warm. We're coming to you with a Saturday edition full of the best reads of the week. Let's start with the fallout from the mass layoffs at The Washington Post...

The 'disaster' in DC

"The diminishment of the Washington Post hits hard," Peggy Noonan writes, "because it feels like another demoralizing thing in our national life. Our public life as a nation—how we are together, how we talk to each other, the sound of us—isn't what it was. It's gone down and we all feel this, all the grown-ups."

She goes on: "The Post's diminishment, which looks like its demise, isn't just a 'media story.' Reaction shouldn't break down along ideological lines, in which the left feels journalism is its precinct and is sad, and the right feels journalism is its hulking enemy and isn't sad."

Unfortunately, that is what has happened to a great degree this week. But treating it that way fails "to see the story for its true significance," Noonan writes. "The capital of the most powerful nation on earth appears to be without a vital, fully functioning newspaper to cover it. That isn't the occasion of jokes, it's a disaster."

'Everything they have tried has failed'

"They want to stop losing money and everything they have tried has failed," a source familiar with the Post's leadership told the FT's Anna Nicolaou, Zehra Munir and Daniel Thomas. By the way, that's essentially the same thing I heard in 2024 when I penned a long story for The Atlantic about the Post in crisis.

Here's the key paragraph from the FT story: "People close to management said the newspaper was aiming to break even by the end of the year, which could then unlock fresh funding from Bezos, who would be more willing to back a self-sustaining business."

Woodward and Bernstein weigh in

Yesterday, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein both spoke out — in very different ways. Woodward did not mention Bezos by name and tried to be glass-half-full: "Under Executive Editor Matt Murray there have been many superb and excellent ground-breaking stories. There will be more. I will do everything in my power to help make sure The Washington Post thrives and survives."

Bernstein called out Bezos repeatedly: "Today's owner of the Washington Post is one of the five richest people. His responsibilities ought to be, above all, to enlarge those journalistic and democratic possibilities: and not, as we have witnessed this past year at Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, to curtail or demean them."

Second weekend of 'Melania'

Amazon's investment in the "Melania" movie — and what it implies about Bezos' priorities — has added insult to Post injury.

Post alum Carlos Lozada expressed it in a column for the NYT: "I went to see the 'Melania' documentary last weekend, for which Amazon reportedly spent $75 million overall, which includes a hefty promotional budget. Based on that viewing, I can only conclude that turning a profit on a quality product is not always Bezos' primary motivation."

Yet all we hear re: Bezos and the Post is that he is determined to restore its profitability. (See above from the FT.)

So, this is the documentary's second weekend in wide release, and the Super Bowl typically makes for a sleepy weekend in theaters. Deadline says "Melania" is expected to make around $3.5 million, "with a running 10-day total by Sunday of $14.5 million."

>> A related headline for our times via THR: "Rotten Tomatoes Confirms 'Melania' Audience Score Is Real, Biggest Split With Critics Ever."

>> Also of note: "Religious freedom group says US military members were 'pressured' by commanders to see 'Melania.'"

Waiting for any word about Nancy

Online investigators and amateur sleuths think they know what's going on with the Nancy Guthrie case. My social media feeds are full of conjecture, conspiracy talk and overly confident conclusions. But the reality is that we know very little about the investigation's status. And the press has good reason to be cautious in its coverage. You can catch up on CNN's latest right here...

>> Further reading: "Savannah Guthrie leans on her faith amid her mother's harrowing disappearance," CNN's Chelsea Bailey writes.

The newsroom debate about Trump's racist repost

Roll Call counted: "Between Sunday and Thursday, Trump had said 34,299 words in public." John T. Bennett assessed what the "talk-a-thon" meant here.

Then on Thursday night came his reshare of a racist meme about Barack and Michelle Obama. The reactions reaffirmed that Americans are not numb to the president's foul behavior. Trump's refusal to apologize last night has kept the story in the news today.

I talked on CNNI about the editorial decision-making around the story. Tony Dokoupil brought up the topic on the "CBS Evening News" too: "We had a long debate today about whether to even show the image," he said. "Is it essential to understand the story? Or, if we show it, are we amplifying a racist image that the White House has since deleted?" CBS decided to show it, briefly, as did CNN and other networks.

>> Fox News was late to cover the backlash yesterday, and once it did, hosts like Bret Baier were pummeled with complaints from viewers who didn't want to hear about it. Laura Ingraham did question Karoline Leavitt about what happened.

Newsguard sues the Trump admin

NewsGuard "is suing Trump's FTC, alleging that Chairman Andrew Ferguson is squeezing the company out of business to punish it for giving low ratings to Trump-boosting outlets such as Newsmax," The Washington Post's Will Oremus scooped yesterday. Read his full story here.

NewsGuard, which I profiled here in 2022, claims that the FTC's 2025 probe and an order that blocked the world's largest ad agency from doing business with companies like NewsGuard ruled out "a potentially lucrative client and scaring other customers away." The FTC did not respond to a request for comment from the Post on Friday...

6️⃣ great weekend reads

>> Georgia Fort, who was arrested along with Don Lemon after covering the protest at Cities Church, asks: "What's next?" (NYT)

>> Kerry Kennedy says "reasonable people can debate the boundaries between reporting and participation," but "no reasonable democracy responds to that debate by sending federal agents to arrest a journalist 'in the middle of the night.'" (Rolling Stone)

>> Joe Tidy says "AI 'slop' is transforming social media — and a backlash is brewing." (BBC)

>> Parker Molloy argues that "political journalists need to stop pretending they don't know what Republicans are going to do." (TNR)

>> Charlotte Klein cheekily says "The New York Times is giving prizes to itself now." (NYMag)

>> Steven Zeitchik examines the MAGA media's various crackups and asks, "who's winning the right wing media meltdown?" His answer: They all are. "Only a citizenry prizing sanity and facts ends up the loser." (THR)

Minneapolis 'exposes an internet at war with truth'

This valuable big-picture piece by the NYT's Stuart A. Thompson, Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers portrays how "advances in technology and an erosion of trust are distorting realities, both online and off, like never before."

Writing about Renee Good and Alex Pretti's killings in Minneapolis, they consider all the changes on the internet since George Floyd was killed in the same city in 2020. "Artificial intelligence tools did not exist for general use in 2020; now they are everywhere. Social media has become even more toxic. Efforts to moderate it have loosened. The influencers behind some of the most pernicious digital lies, who once toiled in the dark corners of the internet, are now emboldened, promoted on major platforms and even mimicked by some of the most powerful people in the country." Read on...

8️⃣ more great weekend reads

>> Ruth Graham profiles Nick Shirley, "the influencer who spurred the federal crackdown on Minneapolis." (NYT)

>> Zoë Schiffer profiles some of "the 'Melania' superfans who turned up for opening weekend." (WIRED)

>> Ella Markianos says she used AI tools "to do as much of her job as possible." Her takeaway: "I oscillated between being heartened by Claudella's dumb mistakes and genuinely scared that Claudella could do my job." (Platformer)

>> Ben Fritz, Joe Flint and Jessica Toonkel have some tick-tock about "Disney's search for a lasting successor to Bob Iger." (WSJ)

>> Alex Weprin goes deep on Iger's successor, Josh D'Amaro, who is said to have "exceptionally high EQ" and a deep love of the Disney brand. (THR)

>> Yes, but... Rebecca Alter observes how D'Amaro "already has parks fans worried." (NYMag)

>> Drew Taylor argues that "the stakes couldn't be higher" for Disney's "Muppets" as its characters stage their comeback. (TheWrap)

>> Janko Roettgers says some viewers, "fed up with increasing subscription prices," are trying "rogue streaming boxes." (The Verge)

WSJ: DOJ 'casts wide net on Netflix's business practices'

"The Justice Department is investigating whether Netflix has engaged in anticompetitive tactics as it probes the streaming giant's proposed acquisition of Warner Discovery's studios and HBO Max streaming service," Jessica Toonkel and Dave Michaels reported yesterday for the WSJ.

Notably, the WSJ reported that it had reviewed a civil subpoena issued as part of the investigation. Netflix responded by saying the company "is not aware of any investigation into our business outside of the standard merger review process."

🏈 Saving the biggest for last

Are you all set with your Super Bowl viewing party plans? The pregame show starts at 1 p.m. ET, and the kickoff is around 6:30 p.m.

"Don't tune into the Super Bowl hoping for a break from politics," The AP's Steven Sloan and Steve Peoples wrote earlier this week. For one thing, "anticipation is building around how Bad Bunny, the halftime show's Spanish-speaking headliner, will address the moment."

As I wrote here, Trump won't be in attendance this year — but a new segment of his sit-down with Tom Llamas will air on NBC's pregame show.

>> Whoops: Fox host Harris Faulkner dismissed Bad Bunny's anti-ICE stance by saying he's not American — and then was forced to correct herself.

>> "Bad Bunny doesn't need the NFL as much as the NFL needs him," CNN's Lisa Respers France writes.

>> Noah Shachtman says "Bad Bunny's performance isn't just the story of the ascendancy of a single performer, or of one genre, or even of Latin music more broadly. It's the sign of something bigger still. America's pop culture today is multilingual, polycultural and international at its very core."

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.

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