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splitsville

'Mean Girl' Lindsay Ditches Gal Pal Ronson! Is It Over?

Though they only confirmed their relationship a short time ago, it looks like Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson may already be heading for a break-up! One of our inside New York sources, Guest of a Guest spotted the actress/deejay duo at the Waverly Inn last night, a Gotham hotspot frequented by all of the Big Apple's most in-the-know glitterati. All seemed well enough as they dashed out of a sleek black SUV and past the usual swarm of paparazzi into the restaurant. But then things got ugly! Our source tells us: More »

children of

Luke Russert, NBC News Reporter?

It was less than three years ago that Boston College student Luke Russert, in an indiscretion not uncommon among underclassmen, posted to Facebook pictures of himself sitting in a hottub, surrounded by girls in bikinis. He graduated from that same school this past May and, before the end of the following month, some of the most arduous responsibilities of adulthood were already upon him. Russert was to mourn, bury, and finally eulogize his father Tim, moderator of Meet The Press, before the entire country. By most accounts, he rose impressively to the occasion, particularly with his televised memorial speech, which mixed humor, humility and a moving earnestness of purpose in a way that reminded many of his father. Now, if the Post is to be believed, Luke Russert may reach a national audience once more. Thanks to the positive public response to his eulogy, "insiders say NBC is recruiting [Russert] for its team covering the presidential election." Either that or the Post is trying to embarrass NBC by forcing it to say it does not plan to hire Russert — not implausible, given that NBC News has vehemently denied as defamatory pretty much all other gossip the tabloid has tried to extract from the funeral. Video of Russert's memorial speech is after the jump. More »

jobs

Pushy White House Reporter's Sad Future

Following the death of NBC's Tim Russert, White House correspondent David Gregory was considered to be on the shortlist to succeed him on Meet The Press. Gregory is known for aggressively questioning White House officials and at one point so upset Bush press secretary Tony Snow that Snow accused him of partisanship, a remark for which Snow later apologized. While such assertiveness no doubt provided some cathartic release to critics of the administration, particularly those outraged at the feeble White House press corps, it may not be enough to get Gregory that Meet The Press gig or any other anchor job. In fact, the Observer today paints a rather grim picture of Gregory's immediate future, asking if he's a "lame duck" at the network, destined end up like — gasp — fellow White House troublemaker Sam Donaldson: More »

sexism

Katie Couric Suffers 'The Hillary Clinton Treatment'

When Katie Couric read a page from her "notebook" back in June, highlighting sexist media coverage of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, we wondered if maybe she wasn't also talking about herself. Couric was, after all, facing record-low ratings, and her bosses said sexism was partly responsible for viewer apathy. Well, Couric put to rest any doubts she identifies with Clinton in an interview with Haaretz newspaper in Israel, where she is traveling on vacation. In it, she argues that sexism is more common than racism in America, and that she has felt its effects — just like Hillary: More »

evil corporations in action

McDonald's Buying Off Local Newscasts

To pimp its sugary, 200-calorie iced coffees, fast food giant McDonald's offered to pay some local TV newscasts for product placement. And of course the newscasts went for it, since local TV journalism is where ethical standards go to die. Meredith Corporation is putting the drinks in front of anchors at the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas (pictured) and at two CBS affiliates elsewhere. Tribune Company has the coffee at its Fox affiliate in Seattle. Even national Fox News is playing ball, placing McDonald's product at the News Corporation-owned station in Chicago. Station operators offered the Times any number of excuses, but the best has to be from the news director at the Las Vegas affiliate: He argues the placement is ethically OK because it is restricted to the "lighter, news-and-lifestyle" portion of his morning news show. Sounds like the portion of the program that might normally be given over to, say, segments on weight loss, fitness or preventing kids from becoming obese. But these days, if the station wants to do any reports that might upset McDonald's, it is supposed to yank the lucrative cups: More »

bullshit

Made-Up Japanese Sex Stories

The good news: Everything you ever read about the sexual perversities of the Japanese may still by true. The bad: If you read it in the "WaiWai" column of the Mainichi Daily News, it probably isn't. The English-language version of popular Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun has been inventing all its best kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original. As it turns out, moms are not blowing their sons to get them to study harder, there is no bestiality restaurant in Tokyo, and housewives probably aren't turning tricks in suburban coin showers. The paper vows to start over fresh by hiring women to scrutinize its seedy reporting, and the internal investigation was said to rival the Times's after the Jayson Blair fiasco. The editorial apology after the jump (it does no good to nettlesome national stereotypes that the URL actually ends with "So sorry"). More »

feuds

New MSNBC Chief Insults Fox News

Phil Griffin was only promoted to president of MSNBC last week, but he's already escalated the cable news network's feud with competitor Fox News Channel. That probably shouldn't be surprising given that Griffin is the chief patron of Keith Olbermann, the antagonist most detested by Fox. But Griffin's swipes at his competitor in the Kansas City Star are still startlingly raw: "You can't trust a word they say," Griffin said of Fox News. "THEY made the business decision to create an ideological network. We didn't. They were the ones that got in bed with the Bush Administration, so that most of the time, where did the Bush Administration officials come out and make their points? Fox News." Well, OK then! But isn't MSNBC adding a lot of left-wing opinion to its own newscasts, via Olbermann and others? Totally different, said Griffin: More »

videuhoh

Obama-Osama Bloopers: Does Anyone Care Anymore?

Remember when it was sort of a big deal for people to mix up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and noted terrorist Osama bin Laden? Late last year, it was major news when CNN confused them in two different segments — the network apologized in print, on air and personally via telephone. When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did the same, a Huffington Post blogger wrote, in commentary typical of the moment, that "the fear of terrorism makes the Obama-Osama name mix-up anything but off-color camp." The news media has had seven months to clean up its act, but hardly seems to have learned a thing. The cable news networks tallied three Osama-Obama slip-ups in the past week alone, TVNewser noted, including a third-time offense from MSNBC's Chris Matthews. After the most recent, by Dan Rather on MSNBC Friday morning, none of the four people on camera even bothered to correct the gaffe, even though Rather actually went whole-hog and called Obama "Osama bin Laden." Where's the outrage? More »

videuhoh

Fox News Anchor Is Totally Gay For David Beckham

Today on Fox News' morning show Fox & Friends, discussion turned to well-hung soccer star David Beckham. And cohost Brian Kilmeade got outed for having a big gay crush on him! Female co-anchor Gretchen Carlson says he called Beckham "gorgeous," which leaves Brian tongue-tied like a (gay) little schoolgirl. He mumbles about how, hey, anybody can tell Beckham is attractive; then heterosexual cohost Steve Doocy looks at him with an expression that says, "Sure, flamer." Then Kilmeade runs off the set in embarassment—probably to go masturbate to a picture of David Beckham. Click to watch this stunning example of News Corp.'s homosexuality exposed.

breaking

Jesse Jackson Did Use The N-Word

The Fox News Channel is now admitting that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson used the word "n—-er" in comments about Barack Obama in front of cameras in Fox News' Chicago bureau. Fox told AP tonight that Jackson said the Democratic presidential candidate was "talking down to black people ... telling n—--rs how to behave" (that sentence fragment having first appeared on TVNewser earlier today). A Fox News Channel insider told Gawker nearly a week ago that Jackson had used the n-word, although it's not true, as we were told at the time, that the remarks were directed at Obama. Still, there's no small amount of hypocrisy at work on Jackson's part: He once called for a ban on any use of the slur. Fox's confirmation that Jackson used it himseld comes after Fox spent yesterday issuing carefully-calibrated denials about the incident. More »

newspapers

Wall Street Journal Tarting Up And Slimming Down

The Wall Street Journal's new managing editor Robert Thomson took another step toward remaking the paper in the image of his former employer the Financial Times, hiking the cover price 50 cents to match the FT at $2 per copy. But another directive, reported by Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio, seems to have been borrowed from the Journal's News Corp. sister, the Post: More »

overshare

Don't Let Fox News Bookers See Your Facebook, Liberals!

The co-editors of Ivygate published an LA Times op-ed yesterday arguing that kids today are embarrassing and otherwise undermining themselves by oversharing online, but also arguing that social judgements about these gaffes are softening. Perhaps they spoke too soon: One of the editors, Jacob Savage found his appearance on the show America's Election Headquarters had been cancelled after allowing Fox News Channel producer Virginia Grace to "friend" him, thus unlocking a profile that listed him as "very liberal." More »

dead trees

Post And Daily News To Share Sheets

After bitter tabloid rivals the Post and Daily News both lost their bidding war for Newsday to bumbling Long Island cable concern Cablevision, discussion centered on which tab would be first to strike some kind of cost-cutting partnership with Cablevision. As it turns out, the Post and Daily News may just cut Cablevision out of the loop entirely — the Times tonight substantiates prior rumors the two papers will partner. The tabloids are in preliminary but "committed" discussions to share printing, distribution, sales and other functions, stopping short of a full Joint Operating Agreement. If only it were all so easy as simply signing off on such a deal. More »

race-baiting

Jesse Jackson Never Used N-Word, Says Fox

O'Reilly Factor executive producer David Tabacoff shot down the rumor floated here last week (via Fox News insider) that Jesse Jackson called Barack Obama the n-word in unaired portions of his infamous "cut his nuts off" comments about Barack Obama. Tabacoff told TVNewser that Jackson never uttered the slur, nor did he use an even more incendiary phrase, "half-breed n—--r," surfaced on Daily Kos and Hybrid Nation this week. OK, nice way to clear Jackson's name, but the denial is also going to kick up a fresh round of chatter about Jackson's comments, since the question now becomes what other than the n-word was so awful that host Bill O'Reilly saw fit to call it "more damaging" than talking about tearing off someone's testicles. Apparently, Fox won't be showing any more footage "in the immediate future." Right. You have to save this stuff for the convention! [TVNewser] UPDATE: Fox News chief Roger Ailes also denies the "half-breed n—--r" slur.

sad

Hume Leaving Fox

Brit Hume, who is sort of one of the least objectionable Fox News personalities while also embodying all the terrible and wrong things about that network (it's a corrective to liberal bias!!) (that's rich coming from a formerly "objective" reporter with plum gigs at the broadcast networks despite his open conservativism), is leaving the network. Sort of. He's quitting his job anchoring Special Report every night but he'll still be on the channel as a panelist on Fox News Sunday and whenever else he feels like appearing. It's not clear why he's quitting now, except that his contract is up. Also maybe Megyn Kendall broke his heart when she ended their affair and married some other dope in March. [NYT]

celebrity journalism

Escape Is Impossible

Among Julia Allison's many achievements, one stands out: the dating columnist landed a gig as editor-at-large of Star magazine, which consisted of reading the gossip blogs and then opining on television as if she knew the celebrities at the center of the week's scandal—and as if she had a job at Star. Her lucky successor—Allison's contract having expired after her sponsor Bonnie Fuller lost power at the celebrity gossip magazine—is charming Aussie Ben Widdicombe (left, with Horacio Silva of the Times.) More »

apologies

Mea Culpa Watch: "Terrorist Fist-Jab," Photoshop Smears

Today in Slate, writer Christopher Beam accepts full responsibility for the phrase "terrorist fist-jab" in reference to Barack Obama's exchange of daps with his wife. This characterization contributed to Fox blonde E.D. Hill losing her television show, only to be replaced by Laura Ingraham! (Is E.D. back? Can someone watch Fox and check on this?) How is this Beam's fault? Because he wrote an item about how a random commenter on a political blog used the phrase "Hezbollah-style fist jab," and then that item ended up on other blogs, and then E.D. kinda changed it and said it on TV without explaining it, making it sound like a common response to the harmless gesture. You see? All Beam's fault! And in other "kind of apologizing for other people's idiocy" news, Fox has apologized for photoshopping two New York Times reporters! Sort of! More »

laura ingraham

The Crankiest Fox Blonde of All

Talk radio superstar Laura Ingraham (the top-rated lady host on the airwaves!) finally got her own television show on Fox News after acting as Bill O'Reilly's official guest-host for 100 years. It lasted for three weeks! In part because she's strenuously unpleasant, as these ten minutes of her preparing for air demonstrate. Once again, Harry Shearer's magical satellite dish captures off-air television gold. Watch as Laura requests that you don't come in her ear and complains of a strange Hispanic gentlemen showing up in her prompter. (Fun fact: she used to date Keith Olbermann like ten years ago!) Clip below. Enjoy. More »