Hey, I'm Brian Stelter live in New York, and this is Reliable Sources, where we examine

the story behind the story and we figure out what's reliable.

This hour, new revelations from the book that is riveting Washington, plus this man Trevor

Noah, set to roast the press and the president, the head of the White House Correspondence Association,

is here with a preview of that big dinner, and Russia's war at home, a war on dissent.

The director of the stunning new film, The Volny, is coming up later this hour.

But first, what a turbulent week for major media companies, with CNN, Netflix, Disney and

Twitter all left spinning with no stopping in sight.

Here at CNN, new ownership decided to shut down the CNN Plus streaming service less than

a month after it was launched by the previous management team.

The U-turn was front page news, stunning news, and painful news for everyone involved.

Members of development possibly down the drain, some of the shows may never be seen, hundreds

of staffers may be laid off, though the company is trying to place many of them in new jobs.

Amid these bruising headlines, folks are trying to make sense of it, and some partisans

are leaving to predictable talking points about politics, but the truth is, this was a

corporate move.

This CNN Plus service was doomed because of the timing of a merger and clashing streaming

strategies.

The new owner of CNN, Warner Brothers Discovery, has big plans to combine multiple streaming

platforms to make one big challenger for Netflix.

And speaking of which, this week, Netflix's first quarter earnings came out.

An incredible snack, subscriber numbers, actually declining after the pandemic surge.

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