di diomin. >> i'll also watching those sales numbers. thanks so much. that does it for us here on "sunday futures." maria bartaromo is back next week. "media buzz" is next. on our buzz meter this thanksgiving weekend, donald trump clashing with network executives and anchors over the botched coverage of the campaign and the negative coverage of the transition. >> i'm not going to say this is the beginning of fascism, but there is something concerning when a president-elect or a president feels it's okay to bring the media in the room and scold them about what they're covering. >> but i also think they were invited to trump tower and media execs and anchors for a little bit of a spanking. >> we are not held in great regard. we were not before this campaign and having gotten it all wrong and the conventional poll oing and all that. i think there is a real sense of donald trump trying to take advantage of that.

>> but are some news outlets hyping the hostility and how trump called out cnn and nbc. why did the president-elect cancel and then revive his sit down with "new york times" who he once threatened to sue. based on that interview -- >> now his positions are in transition. the president-elect says he won't prosecute hillary clinton and denying climate change, well, that's changing, too. >> trump acknowledges he won't be bottling through on some of the promises he made during the heat of the campaign. promises like this one. >> i am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. >> so, all of this news comes amidst confusion over some of trump's policy positions. politico counted 15 flip-flops since election day. >> liberals relax. he's not the crazy right-wing nut job that you think he is.

>> is trump abandoning some of his key campaign promises or moderating his rhetoric as newly elected presidents sometimes do. what about the coverage of the wisconsin recount that he calls a scam. tucker carlson, the newest fox host on trump's impact on the media's battered reputation. digital disruption. facebook is battling false news. is social media facing a credibility crisis. the nfl has been a television juggernaut but this year the league is being thrown for a loss. what explains the big drop in ratings? i'm howard kurtz and this is "media buzz." it was an off the record session at trump tower with top executives from cbs, nbcabc, cnn. my sources say that while

president-elect trump voiced his complaints about the way he's been covered, especially to jeff zucker it was a somewhat cordial session. telling zucker i hate your network and you should be asamed and criticizing katy tur without mentioning her name. one named participant calling whose conduct was blanking outrageous and then another -- but kellyanne conway while saying had been flat wrong about the election challenged those accounts. >> nobody has called me and complained that they felt that they had been bambooed. >> joining us now to analyze the coverage of donald trump's dealing with the media, erin mcpike, molly hemmingten senior

report reporter. erin, so, donald trump ripped or slammed some of the network executives and news anchors depending on which version you believe. doesn't the president-elect have a right to call the media and complain about his coverage? >> president obama does this occasionally, as well. you hear about it then when he will meet with tv anchors and executives. if he's not happy about the way he is being covered, it also gets leaked to the press. donald trump will have these meetings going forward with tv anchors going forward. i think he's well within his rights. just beginning this relationship now going to the new phase of donald trump and his presidency. >> some critics out there saying they shouldn't have gone because it was off the record. every president does versions of this, especially on state of the union day and anchors all come in and all off the record for guidance and that sort of thing. so what? doesn't that help clear the air? >> i would love it if he said to

jeff zucker that cnn should be ashamed of itself and that's funny rhetoric. more than anything, it seems like the media needs to start taking responsibility for how much they mess things up. little bit of reflection. people saying, oh, we read the polls wrong or what not. a major problem with everything about how they covered this race. everything that they did about donald trump. how they mischaracterize his positions. how negative they were to him. how negative they were to his people. >> and you're in this transition. >> it's continued during the transition and the thing that is bad about it is we need a media that can hold president trump accountable and in order to do that, they need to establish credibility and trust and they have to admit how much they messed up and start covering facts instead of narratives. >> didn't this session give network big shots their concerns about access and other issues? >> sure. but i don't know in this brave new world where donald trump has a completely different approach to the media if that matters.

i think that's why you heard people saying they were better off than having this on the record because of the entire thing you just read. you know, the characterizations and then this big food fight and everyone gets to characterize it the way they want to. one or two days later when he met with "new york times" and everybody in america could read what he said. >> little bit of irony here in journalists reporting based on leaks on what was said or not said. by the way, to your point, erin. president-elect obama, eight years ago, went to dinner and it was not on the record. so, let me turn now to something that's getting a lot of play especially today jill stein the green party presidential candidate has obtained a recount in the state of wisconsin. hillary clinton's campaign has not called for a recount.

recounting many things that hillary clinton had said wouldn't trump accept the results of the election and how that would be dangerous. my question is simple. how much coverage does this recount deserve? >> it shouldn't get as much as it's getting. recounts and irregularitieies after every single election. usually brief in newspapers or anchors will give it two seconds in a newscast. but hillary clinton herself is not exactly challenging the election in that she is not withdrawing her concession and the outcome of the election is not in question. the clinton campaign even in talking about this say they just want to make sure there was no hacking by russia or something. they are trying to keep their supporters energized to some small degree. but the election is not going to be changed here. >> that's the bottom line. the clinton campaign lawyers just saying there's no actionable evidence that the campaign has of outside hacking. there may have been. but, molly, trump won wisconsin by 22,000 votes and this is

getting a lot of attention in the media. >> donald trump talked about election rigging and a threat to democracy, dangerous, horrifying. then when harry reid asked the fbi director to investigate election rigging that was treated like responsible journalists would cover it like news and "post" and "new york times." then we had the debate where donald trump talked about not accepting the results until it happened. three days of nonstop coverage how this was a horrifying threat to democracy and now we're back, again, to treating this like it is a totally normal thing to call for a recount. what we need to see is more consistency from the media and just a more moderated level of coverage. >> first of all, the media isn't one thing. we have to keep on saying that over and over again. but, you know, what i'm interested in is this is probably getting more coverage than it deserves but after an election where intelligence sources hacked into all sorts of

election-related e-mails maybe it should get more than it would have in the past. she's not contesting the results of the election and donald trump said he might not accept the results of the election unless he won. so, a lot of hypocrisy. >> that was a joke. he said he would look at the situations at the time before the election and the press kicked him around for that. >> yeah. but, what's happening now and what i'm interested in is how much attention donald trump is giving this. he pleaded a lot trying to make hillary look like a hypocrite and why is he spending so much time on this either. is he worried about something in wisconsin? he's elevating it. no doubt. tons of tweets on this from him and an official statement. maybe he doesn't want coverage of his business conflicts abroad. i don't know why. >> the media should take a cue. if donald trump thinks it's a good story for him, it's probably a good story for him. whether they want to add fuel to the fire here. >> let's go back to the meeting that trump had with "new york

times." off the record and then on the record interview and an audio clip from the part that was an on the record interview. >> i have been treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense. i wouldn't only complain about "the times." i would say "the times was the roughest of all. >> complaining about "new york times" for a year and a half. threatening to sue the paper and failing "new york times." why would he go to the paper as a sign of respect and have this meeting? >> quite, obviously, he reads "the new york times" every single day. the "new york times" has always covered the presidency maybe more so than any publication. it's very clear that the obama administration has leaked many stories about what president obama is doing to "the times." it's an important paper. the biggest paper there is. of course, that's where he needs to start. >> trump also in that session called "the times" an

international jewel and said anybody can call him except maureen dowd. she's been too rough on me, he said. i canceled today meeting with the failing "new york times" when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. not nice. but that wasn't true. and then, of course, it was back on. >> who can say what actually happened there. there were rumors about some of trump's aides trying to get him to cancel the meeting because they didn't think it would be good for him. a great meeting they had together and it seemed like it was helpful to both of them. he was able to articulate his position. i commend them for publishing the entire transcript. it was even interesting how the media then portrayed this as if he were flip-flopping on everything. >> we'll get to that in the next segment. let me just close this segment by asking you. does this kind of session with "new york times" perhaps be more inclined to give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt or soften just a bit? >> i think so. i think that there is a lot of

talk after the meeting maybe is he changing? we don't know. or is he just trying to speak to the audience that is right in front of him at "the times." say what he just heard from the last person he talked to. i think that going forward, the media needs to see what donald trump says and, more importantly, what he does. because he says a lot of things that contradict each other often in the same day. >> now he's president-elect and actually take office and do things that we should cover fairly. interestingly, "the times" public editor liz spade wrote a piece that she has gotten five times as many complaints from readers who thought the paper was horribly bias and she says readers want not an echo chamber of liberal intellectualism. amen to that. you can e-mail us, mediabuzz@foxnews.com.

when we come back, much in the press praising trump for backing off on his campaign promises. but in the conservative media not so much. later, twitter is closing accounts of the leaders of the ? ♪ getting older shouldn't mean giving up all the things she loves to do. it should just mean, well, finding new ways to do them. right at home's professional team thoughtfully selects caregivers to provide help with personal care, housekeeping, and of course, meal preparation. oh, that smells so good. aw, and it tastes good, too. we can provide the right care, right at home.

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donald trump made plenty of news in his sit down with "the new york times" he's retreating from his most extreme campaign promises. molly, among other things, the president-elect said he's changed his mind about water boarding as a tactic of interrogation. he has an open mind on climate change and no interesting in suing a special prosecutor against hillary clinton. that characterization but extreme campaign promises fair or unfair?

>> the problem is the media took the most hyperbolic, extreme positions or analysis of what he was saying originally. and they pretended that they didn't understand how he talks. he spent decades in public life and wrote a book on making deals where he makes an extreme proposal and then settles for something in the middle and pretended that they didn't understand it and they understood it throughout the '80s and '90s. the problem is with how the media took this worse construction of everything he said and now they're experiencing whip lash. >> part of that. but on the hillary clinton should be in jail and i'm going to seek a special prosecutor. he was pretty explicit. >> he speaks on all sides of an issue and that's true. that's something we should have been coming to terms with very early on in this cycle. he frequently spoke about hillary clinton using metaphors. you have the chance to indict her on election day. clearly, that doesn't mean that you're indicting by voting for donald trump. >> should liberals be writing

columns about how happy they are and moving to the or should they portray this as classic flip-flop? >> i think i read liberal columns where they say if this is him moving to the center, we're going to encourage it and praise him and give him all of the positive response that he seems to crave. this is pretty much what i read. but got to wait and see what he does. i mean, he said this to "the new york times" after everything we learned about him during the campaign, we don't know until he chooses someone for secretary of state who shares his views on russia or not. pushes legislation. tells his justice department tago after his enemies or not. we don't know yet. >> the breitbart headline on the hillary clinton headlines were broken promise. some in the media disappointed, erin. >> a number of stories how conservatives are disappointed by some of the things he's saying and i heard that from republicans over the last week or so that he is turning back on the campaign promises. i think the most accurate

coverage actually came from "the new york times" and i would point out what their headline was about that meeting. trump moderates views but defies conventions. that's accurate of what the meeting was. the interview demonstrated the volatility in mr. trump's position. as you said, we have to kind of wait and see. >> seems to me a lot of focus on that and understandably. people want to know what this guy is going to do as the 45th president. a lot of potential conflicts of interest and "new york times" has a lead story of that. the role of jared kushner as son-in-law and all of that. said on his radio show. maybe donald trump should rethink how he deals with the media. why should they have a seat in the white house press room? they think they're journalists but they're full of crap. does that make any sense to take them out of the white house press room? >> that seems kind of surprising, but, look, donald trump has rewritten all the

rules. he dominated social media or free media what we call the news cov coverage. maybe he won't have someone briefing every day. >> but isn't it different if it's a campaign. i'm taking away your credentials and the white house and people's house and you don't have a seat there? >> i think this is very problematic and i'm worried about how all the media can cover the trump presidency if they don't have good access. all the more reason why the media should come to terms with how much they mesup and taking such blatant sides in this election is not serving them well and serving the public well. they need to repence. >> kellyanno conway was very clear and i don't think they're going away any time soon. >> thanks for joining us this holiday weekend. ahead, the media offering surprisingly mixed sentiments about the death of fidel castro.

the journalists are using really ugly language about trump and his team.

commentaries are going way over the line. suffering from what i call trump trauma. michael hirsch, national editor of "polico" tweeted this. st stop whining about richard b. spencer, nazi, and exercise y r your -- hirsch has been forced out of his job with the two top editors saying these posts were outside the bounds of political discourse and editors regard them as a serious lapse of newsroom standards.

editors are taking way to ensure that such a lapse does not occur, again. howard dean the former governor and presidential candidate also invoked the hitler regime. he was talking about steve bannon, the ex-breitbart executive who is headed for a white house post. >> ran something called breitbart news. you know people like to throw around this word -- >> it's a big word and i don't use it unless something is antisemettic. >> trying to criticize bannon over breitbart but please cool it on the nazi stuff. that is not the only loaded word against bannon. charles sk lles kaiser said thi steve bannon. >> then, if you don't want to support the alt-right, don't choose as a white house counselor a man who used the word [ bleep ] whose wife said he did not want his daughters to go to a school with too many

jews -- >> just hang on a second. i appreciate you going through all of this. but, please don't use the n-word on my show. >> i'm sorry. >> good for brooke baldwin. he was flat wrong on the first part. he didn't mean bannon, but attorney general nominee jeff sessions. the senator denied using the n-word. keith olbermann was a liberal voice but suched a vdzers sas kellyanne conway for trashing trump's election. >> and the cnn headline after it actually reads conway barbs over trump as if criticism and press against the first amendment are somehow equivalent and the pretending escalates. >> oh, and tweeted what a retched human kellyannepolls

truly is. she is a respected professional in the political world and happens to be a nice person. but none of that matters for those in the media world suffering from trump trauma. how the botching of the campaign has fueled what he calls the rise of the irresponsible media. later, why twitter is struggling to fight its starting role in the election and nobody wants to buy it. (vo) where will you find that perfect holiday gift? x marks the box! helzberg diamonds will give you this xbox one s with your purchase of $999 more. helzberg diamonds. here's to love.

how much of a hit has the media taken from donald trump's election. i put that question to "tucker carlson tonight" here in studio 1 welcome. kafr after a campaign told us the media told us he wasn't going to win, what is the state of the media today? >> it's very low. all the experts who go on

television to tell you -- >> the experts. the talk heads. >> the pundits, the consultants. all the people who miscalled this election from day one really ought to be ashamed of themselves because the truth is a lot of what they told us was social science, numbers based analysis. they were lying, they had strong preferences and they allowed those preferences to color their interpretation of what was going to happen's a natural thing, bu they're not admitting it. >> what about "new york times" donald trump went to the news room on west 43rd street for an interview. what do you think "the times," what's it standing atop an american newspaper who got this so wrong and pretty negative towards trump. >> very negative. whenever you and i've said this and openly ideological. i supervised a lot of reporters like 80 of them. i always said, if you hate someone, if you really despise someone and consider him, you are not allowed to cover him because you can't see him

clearly. no matter how terrible a person is, it's possible to be unfair to that possible. it's impossible to lie about that person and lying is always wrong. they kind of forgot that. there is nothing you can say about trump that is out of bounds. there were a lot of accurate things about trump that were unflattering. they wrote things that were untrue and devalued their own credibility in the process and it makes me sad as a lifetime daily reader of "new york times" to see what they did to themselves. >> as you say, there must be things you must disagree with donald trump. he also beat in this election the conservative press, particularly the "national view" and some of the commentators on fox. he ran and denounced them by name and he won. so, where does that leave the conservative side of the media? >> he just did and destroyed for all time the two political dynasties. the clinton and the bushes. they're over, thanks to donald

trump. he allowed the liberal press to discredit itself and i think he also overturned a lot of conservative establishment here in washington. not just the publications, but also the think tanks, which are a huge part of our culture here because conservative culture and d.c. culture and he basically made them irrelevant or forced their relevancies to become public in a way they hadn't before. i will say this, this does bother me. if you're worried about the rise of irresponsible media, you know, fringe media, the "new york times" "washington post" nbc news, cnn, have all but guaranteed their rise by their own, i think, completely irresponsible coverage of this election. we need some unifying force in the press. i would say some outlet that all of us acknowledge kind of accurate and trying hard to be fair and fewer and fewer of those. what are you going to get in their place? openly partisan and sometimes inaccurate news organizations

that don't really serve anybody's interest. >> in that "new york times" interview donald trump either softened or abandoned some of his positions on the campaign. no special prosecutor for hillary clinton and open minds on climate change and now it's against waterboarding, which he had favored in the war on terror. >> yeah. >> the main stream media kind of liked this evolving trump. >> for sure. >> but breitbart had a headline broken promise. are they entitled to feel that he said certain things in the campaign and walking away. >> part of what this shows you is just how dumb the coverage was. the idea is because donald trump is intemperant in his rhetoric that he is that he is not particularly conservative in economics. he's not particularly conservative on social issues and not conservative on the foreign policy questions. in what sense is he a conservative right-winger? it's confusing to the average person at home. really. this is not the donald trump the media portrayed. he's not a conventional

conservative. >> exactly. >> what is the goal for your new show and give it a distinct idea now that you're on at 7:00 eastern? >> i'm a very small think guy. i haven't actually thought -- my gut reaction is that viewers want to see people on television who are directly involved in the stories of the day. you know, there's an awful lot of people. i have been one of those people. commenting on things they don't have direct contact with. >> look at these late developments in the middle east. >> exactly. exactly. i was in israel last year, i am an expert. no, you're not. i don't know, i think it would be nice to have more people on. you're reading a piece in the paper. i can't believe they're doing that. i would like to have that guy on. we're trying to do that. >> in taking on this expanded role at fox, you are now having to give up your manager role and the website that you founded. was that a hard decision for you? is it hard to let that go? >> yeah, it was really hard.

not because i'm a great manager, i'm a terrible manager. i'm a big picture guy. >> you can say that now. >> i always said it. but i loved it and i loved the guys and i like print people and i like tv people, too. but a rawness of print people and just right out there with what they think and they're just wupd e wonderful people. i miss them. i'm still christmas party guy. >> i'm glad you held on to a lucrative piece of the franchise. tucker carlson, nice to have you. >> thanks. maybe i can get an invite to that party. facebook and twitter battling charges of bias, bogus news and censorship in our digital download. later, the network stumble by mishandling the nfl.

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wants peaceful ethnic cleansing. here's a brief burst, a video from a meeting that he was part of here in washington last weekend. >> hail trump. hail our people. hail victory. >> now, i find his rhetoric, but there was no evidence he was harassing or abusing anyone online. could twitter be accused of shutting down these accounts for ideological reasons? >> somehow david duke still has an account, for instance. if you start shutting down alt-right accounts, where do you draw the line? do you go to extreme accounts of black lives matter. it's a very slippery slope. but here's the thing, howie, about twitter. losing millions of users every year and billions in revenue. tried to put itself up for sale and nobody's buying. we could have this conversation one or two years from now and twitter could be a thing of the past. there are other options out there that alt-right users are

now using. >> let me stick with the alt-right question. this move was corporate stalinism among other things. another account that was part of that meeting in washington and we could put the picture up doing the salute. so, i guess the question is twitter has the right to do this, but develop a reputation of being hostile to the right? >> i think you're absolutely right. it's hard to feel sympathetic towards white nationalests who are complaining that their twitter accounts were taken down. where was twitter during the dallas police shootings when users were applauding the shooting death of five police officers. so, if twitter is going to monitor speech at this level, they will have to do so fairly and across the board. which is a massive undertaking. i think it would be more beneficial if twitter focused on features like new and improved mute button that gives users control over what they can and cannot say. >> joe, coming back now to your

point about the financial difficulties of twitter and putting ourselves up for sale and there are no buyers. twitter just got through an election where it plays a huge role not just for donald trump or all the journalists and getting news from twitter and, yet, it seems to be struggling, in part, i would say, also part of a haven for racist, various varieties. >> donald trump used twitter like we've never seen a person or candidate use before. he averaged something like 12 tweets a day since he announced his candidacy. that's down to about one since then. but, yeah, it's definitely struggling, howie. there just is no revenue stream. people can't figure out with all those viewers and all those users how it's not producing more money. but, again, there are other options out there and unless twitter finds a buyer, we may not be talking about twitter in a year or two from now. >> some rich person wants to buy and continue it's a public

service, carly. political people use twitter to send messages, including people who work for campaigns. but a lot of people just don't get it and they don't like it as much as facebook. >> yeah. a lot of people -- i think it's because that microblogging platform just isn't as popular. another thing that twitter, a big mistake that twitter makes is everybody wants to know what donald trump has to say. katy perry, howie curts has to say. you don't need twitter to see twitter. so, i think if twitter changed that, then the company would see a lot more people signing up. >> i like the way you threw me in with katy perry and donald trump. what are you doing next sunday? >> i'm a solutions girl. >> now, facebook. we talked about this last week trying to battle these fake news stories that spread like wildfire. sometimes more popular than legitimate news stories. joe, what do you do? how does facebook make these

decisions? when you throw in some things that are true or not true or distorted, what should facebook do? >> mark zuckerberg is the zeo and founder and he has an argument that, well, we don't produce the content and we don't have a news team. therefore, we don't necessarily need an editor. the bottom line howie, nearly half of americans get their news from facebook, not other sites. only 9% from twitter, which we were just talking about. nearly half. so, you've got to make sure the news on there is legitimate and the way you to that is to hire an executive team and i'm pretty sure mark zuckerberg can afford it. >> couple studies they used social media like twitter to push out knowingly fake stories.

when is mark zuckerberg going to admit that he runs a very important media company and try to have some semblance of editorial standards? >> he certainly has denied that ever since facebook started. now, the thing about hiring a news editor. i'm a little bit hesitant on that because i don't know if you can hire somebody fair enough for the job, especially when some fake news stories are only partially fake to benefit one party over another. that is sort of a tricky line in the sand that you're going to have to navigate there. >> you would certainly need more than one person. thanks very much for joining us this sunday. >> thank you. fake news is not an abstruct problem. receiving death threats after facebook, twitter and reddit carried rumors that the pizza joint used underground tunnels led by hillary clinton and her campaign chief john podesta. >> it is all a lie.

the owner says the restaurant does not even have a basement. >> james who supported hillary but has never met her told "the new york times" this is a fabricated conspiracy theory and contacted local police and the fbi. but still getting nasty messages such as this one saying this place should be burned to the ground. just disgusting. after the break, why are nfl ratings tanking this season and are the networks to blame? (sfx: park rides, music and crowd sounds)

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the there. it's football. >> not everyone has to be there. it's even worse for monday night games that were down 20%. is this becoming a crisis for the networks that pay huge sums to carry the nfl? joining us now from atlanta, will leach, senior writer at the website sports on earth and a contributing editor at new york magazine. so let's start with a little politic. do you think the presidential drew a lot of attention away from the early part of the envelonfl season? >> certainly if you were looking for full-on combat, that they usually get from the nfl. the election certainly gave you that. i think you've seen a little bit of loosening. there was a theory the election was taking away from that. i think you've seen the numbers go up a little bit since the election is over. i think there is something to the idea that because football has been so important to the networks, it's been live television and you can't fast forward so people have to watch,

because of that the networks became too committed and too addicted to it really. you've gotten an over saturation of the market, emphasized by thursday night football which is an extra night that makes it less of an event, the games tend to not be as of high quality because the players have had less rest and you can tell the announcers aren't into the games sometimes. >> that's a bad sign. now obviously it's not true of every game, for example, fox yesterday had the thanksgiving game, the redskins versus cowboys in a huge number it but i think you hit a point, there was a time "monday night football" was an event especially when it had howard cosell and you now you have sunday night, thursday night and other nights. could the networks have been so addicted to use your word that they are just making it not particularly special now when a became comes on particularly anytime other than sunday afternoon? >> yeah, and i think -- i don't want to get into the quality of play too much because i think

it's more of a football argument but you are seeing there is a sense that people are use d to the product in a way. they don't -- listen, it's like any television show except for this one, of course, if you see it for too long people will look for new storylines. i think you've seen, also, one thing that will help you mention the cowboys/washington game, certainly we get all worried about the ratings. if there is a cowboys/patriots super bowl, the cowboys are the -- either you hate the cowboys or you love the cowboys. everyone wants to watch the cowboys. if you have a cowboys/patriots super bowl, the idea of worrying about television ratings, those big event games are always going to be a big deal. but now they've acted like the thursday night game is a big event game and audiences just don't think so. >> right. and you also have the fact you fewer people are watching television. people are spending time on youtube and twitter and video games. but how about this, there have been a lot of scandals and controversies touching the nfl whether it's the domestic violence cases, ray rice, whether it's deflate gate,

whether it's concern about concussions, whether it's colin kaepernick of the 49ers protesting the national anthem that might be turning some folks off. >> on one hand i understand the idea that, you know, people like to pretend that football is a fantasy land where the outside world does not affect their it lives and they can put aside politics and all the ugliness of the world and just watch football. inevitably the world is going to seep in on that and i think it's losing to think politics can't be a part of sports, that the outside world is not a part. i hear the kaepernick thing a lot. i'm confused by it. i hear a lot of people say i don't want politics in my sport but they won't -- they say i'm not watching because of this player, who is not playing in the game, is doing a protest. i could see if san francisco ratings were down. kaepernick feels something people don't like that he's done it but i think saying that's a reason for the nfl ratings in total to be down i don't get that idea. >> the nfl has been such a

golden goose for almost half a century for the networks that pay all this money that i'm sure people are sweating trying to figure out how to bring the ratings back up. will leitch, thank you very much. >> my pleasure. thanks. >> enjoy the rest of your weekend. still to come media outlets that love to interview fidel castro, our final judgment.

fidel castro, who died f friday at 90, was both a brutal dictator and an object of fascination for the american media. he had a huge impact on politics in this country going back to jfk's failed bay of pigs invasion and the cuban mass i will crisis, and because cuban-american exiles are such a force in florida. in the decades that he ruled cuba, castro was a symbol of the cold war and largely reviled in the press era as a trouble making communist 90 miles from our shore. he would soften his image with

marathon interviews that could last a week with the likes of barbara walters. >> he was funny. the crew loved him. we traveled throughout the country. the word charismatic was made for him. >> castro even did a sitdown with "playboy." but as the cold war ended and cuba's importance faded, the leader handing power to his brother eight years ago and then president obama restored diplomatic relations last year. the media's obituaries are mixed. others hailed him as a revolutionary hero. with castro i couldn't get past the ruthless despot part. he was a killer and even in some cases imprisoning or persecuting members of their family. i'm howard kurtz. i hope you're having a great thanksgiving weekend. give us a like on our facebook page. we post a lot of original

content there. e-mail us about the media, comments or questions. we're back here next sunday as we are every sunday. see you then with the latest buzz. hello, everyone. president-elect donald trump pushing back against those plans to recount the votes in one or possibly three states that you know were pivot al to his election victory over hillary clinton. mr. trump calling the attempt led by green party candidate jill stein, quote, a scam, and he's even claiming she will not spend any she collects on the recount on the recount effort. with welcome to "america's news headquarters." eric shawn. >> and i'm arthel neville. hillary clinton officially joining that fight. clinton's cam