Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

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EXCLUSIVE — THE DISAPPEARING NAME: An Indian venture capitalist is mounting an international legal campaign to pressure major media outlets to remove his name from articles or take down the stories altogether, Confider has learned. Read about the multi-continent effort to silence reporters here.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

EXCLUSIVE — THE INGRAHAM ANGLE: Fox News star Laura Ingraham claims she’s been stiffed out of nearly a million dollars by Quake Media in a new lawsuit that suggests the subscription-based podcasting platform, which boasts a cadre of famed pundits across the political spectrum, has crashed and burned. Read the Confider exclusive here.

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EXCLUSIVE — ONCE A HERB, ALWAYS A HERB: G/O Media bigwig Jim Spanfeller has had quite the year between testifying in front of a Chicago jury in the unlawful termination trial of the former president of The Onion to having seven EICs in a portfolio of ten websites quit over an eight-month period. Then there was a series of painful layoffs and the short-lived shuttering of Jezebel before the site rose from the ashes in a seven-figure sale. And now this: Spanfeller last week sent out a memo to all G/O staffers announcing the appointment of Dan Hirschhorn as Quartz’s new editor in chief. Only one problem: He misspelled Dan’s last name in the email’s subject line, as three G/O staffers pointed out to Confider. “Dan brings a wealth of editorial and management experience, most recently with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Philadelphia Inquirer where he oversaw a variety of key editorial functions at both publications,” Spanfeller gushed in the memo that omitted the letter c from Hirschhorn’s surname. Meanwhile, at an all-hands on Friday, Spanfeller, who is often derisively referred to as “The Herb” by staffers, was quizzed about those controversial scorecards he implemented over the summer to grade employee performance, indicating they may be used to make personnel decisions in the event G/O needs another round of layoffs, according to two people who were at the meeting. “These editorial metrics are consistent with metrics used by other digital media companies to determine a variety of valuable information points including employee performance, content selection, and overall audience engagement," a G/O spokesperson emailed Confider.

EXCLUSIVE — CNN’S NEW TOP FLACK: CNN CEO Mark Thompson has settled on his new chief communications officer and his pick is already in the building, Confider has learned. Emily Kuhn, currently the network’s VP of comms, has been leading CNN’s PR team following the exits of top execs Matt Dornic and Kristine Coratti Kelly earlier this year, and is now set to be named to the top job, two people familiar with the situation told Confider. Kuhn, who has been with CNN for nearly 10 years, declined to comment.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com

MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

—Earlier this year a bizarre YouTube show featuring cartoon aliens ruthlessly mocking Fox News and GOP politicians gained popularity and a prominent platform on liberal group MeidasTouch’s YouTube. Turns out, the Alien Super Show (or A.S.S. for short) is the brainchild of Daily Show staffers Matt Negrin and Ryan Middleton, and the latter’s partner Kate Brankin. We spoke exclusively with the creators on how this all came about. More here.

—If you’ve got 18 minutes to spare, please watch Ziwe’s highly anticipated sitdown with pathological liar George Santos. According to Ziwe, the disgraced congressman asked three times to be paid for his appearance. In one off-camera moment, Santos requested on a hot mic that Ziwe “be mindful with the DOJ stuff.” He was no less bizarre and slippery when actually on camera. Watch it all here.

—Chris Cuomo interviewed Baylen Dupree, a TikTok influencer with Tourette’s syndrome, on his live NewsNation show last week—and he had to chomp on his fist to stifle laughter as she cursed him out through her tics. Cuomo seems to think people found the interview exploitative, so he defended himself in a Twitter post, writing, “This is about respecting and laughing with, not at people.” More here.

RECENT READS

—As first reported by Confider, former NY Times opinions boss James Bennet has relitigated the scandal that led to his ouster, penning a lengthy Economist deep-dive on the time he published Sen. Tom Cotton’s op-ed calling for troops to quell the 2020 racial-justice protests. His media tour doesn’t stop there, however: Bennet sat down with The Sunday Times to revisit the three-year-old meltdown and call for a “counter-revolution” against “illiberal liberalism.” More here.

—New York is an incredible place to live because any day can bring another 9/11, or so Mayor Eric Adams bizarrely suggested to PIX11 this weekend. Asked by anchor Dan Mannarino to describe a “very eventful” 2023 in one word, Adams replied, “New York” (that’s two words), adding: “This is a place where every day you wake up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center through a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s about to open.” Well, okay then. Watch here.

—In a ruling last week in Prince Harry’s phone-hacking legal campaign against the British tabloids, a judge ruled that “unlawful information gathering was widespread” at the Mirror and named several key editors who knew about the illegal conduct. Among them: former editor Piers Morgan, who has strenuously denied any knowledge of hacking under his watch. More here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

Fox News

The libs’ never-ending “War on Christmas” continues to rage on, or so the right-wing outrage-industrial complex wants to believe. This time, in the year 2023, the Biden White House is trying to inject “woke nonsense” and “anti-white racism” into our beloved Christian holiday by featuring [checks notes] tap dancers performing The Nutcracker. For this year’s Christmas theme, First Lady Jill Biden unveiled a video featuring performers from the New York-based troupe Dorrance Dance, who delivered a whimsical tap-dance interpretation of the fairy tale ballet. While the performance was a bit offbeat and avant-garde, much like The Nutcracker Suite itself, it largely came across as joyful and inoffensive. Right? Wrong! Almost immediately, the right-wing commentariat lost their mind over the clip, screeching that it “should’ve come with a sensitivity label” and “children should not be watching this smut!” The Federalist, a former “intellectual conservative” outlet turned rage-bait factory, likened it to The Hunger Games before fuming that it was “another opportunity for the Biden White House to slip anti-white racism and radical Marxism into the country’s Christmas celebrations.” Evidence of this plot? The dance company’s leader once spoke out against racism. That same Federalist writer then appeared on Fox Business and grumbled that the first lady’s video was filled with “elitist undertones.” Fox News star Laura Ingraham took it several steps further on Friday night. While calling the dancers “radicals,” she raged that Americans should feel “embarrassed and angry to see this type of woke nonsense at the White House during a time Christians have regarded as holy for 2,000 years.” After telling her viewers that the Bidens “wanted to offend you,” she welcomed Donald Trump’s ultra-nationalist speechwriter Stephen Miller to bemoan the “weirdness” and “bizarreness” of the whole thing. “It’s a big middle finger. And they know exactly what they're doing,” Ingraham reacted, prompting Miller to add that it’s a “war on normal” because they “hate Christians.”

Confider will return in the new year with more saucy scooplets. We wish all our readers a Happy Holidays. In the meantime, subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips here or call/text us 551 655 2343.