John Oliver Takes on WWE's Immigration Heel

Immigration is a big issue for John Oliver—given that he is himself an immigrant—so when he heard that villainous WWE manager Zeb Colter had complained of "foreigners sneaking across our borders like rats in the streets," he got a little offended. But when he saw a clip in...

Reporter Who Brought Down Gen. McChrystal Dead at 33

Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed are mourning journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings, who has been killed in a car crash in Los Angeles. The 33-year-old—described by Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith as a "great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story"—was best known for his 2010 profile...

Fox News Sued: Boys Saw Dad's On-Air Suicide

After hearing of a suicide broadcast live on Fox , two Arizona boys looked for it on YouTube after school, only to realize in horror that they were watching their own father's death, according to a lawsuit filed against the network. JoDon Romero shot himself after a police chase and the...

Netflix to Become DreamWorks' TV Network

Netflix made another big splash in its original content push today, announcing a deal with DreamWorks that will see the animation studio create 300 hours worth of original TV shows for the streaming service. The shows will be "inspired" by DreamWorks' existing properties, so get ready for shows based on...

'Scandal Details' Coming in Murdoch Divorce?

The gossip mill is churning in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch-Wendi Deng divorce filing . As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Deng's friendships with prominent males from Tony Blair to Eric Schmidt are being poked at (Blair's rep firmly denies the former British PM and Deng "are having an affair"). But...

Rupert Murdoch Divorcing Wife

Rupert Murdoch might be in the market for a bodyguard. The 82-year-old News Corp chairman has filed for divorce from his wife of 14 years, Wendi Deng, reports Deadline.com . (Deng, 38 years his junior, once famously came to her husband's rescue against a pie-thrower.) The "relationship between husband...

Mikulski Halts Hearing ... to Rebut a Tweet

Today's appearance by the NSA chief on Capitol Hill didn't produce many surprises—he said data mining is necessary and used in such a way that it doesn't invade privacy—but it did produce one strange moment featuring Sen. Barbara Mikulski. At one point, the Maryland Democrat paused the hearing...

Time Warner Bribes Partners to Keep Shows Offline

Cable companies must be terrified of cord-cutters, because they're playing hardball to try to keep shows offline. Time Warner and other "pay-TV operators" are offering media companies higher payments if they'll keep their content off of web video services, and even threatening to drop networks that don't fall in line,...

Peter King: Prosecute Journalists Who Leak

Peter King is not messing around when it comes to journalists who help leak classified information. The congressman told Anderson Cooper on CNN last night that, "if they willingly knew that this was classified information," they should be prosecuted and punished. "I think, something of this magnitude, there is an...

New York: Sorry, Our Video Parodying Secrecy Is Secret

Isn't government secrecy funny? Andrew Cuomo thought so, so the New York governor—who campaigned on a promise of transparency—shot a video with his aides last year poking fun at the reputation for secrecy he's earned since. It was played during the Albany press corps' gala last year to...

Obama Is Our Big Brother

In 2007, President Obama said he didn't want to run an administration that was "Bush-Cheney lite." No worries there, writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times —with new revelations about the NSA's snooping on our phone and Internet activities, "there’s nothing lite about it." Sure, our "Big Brother" Obama...

Dead Guy Writes Own Obituary, and It's Awesome

At first glance, John E. "Jack" Holden's obituary doesn't seem very ... respectful. Referring to Holden's death as "taking the Deep Six," it also claims the WWII veteran won "the Distinguished Fleeing Cross for avoiding numerous women who were seeking child support under unproven circumstances" and that, after the death of...

Greenwald: I'm Not the One You Should Investigate

Glenn Greenwald isn't worried about the prospect of a Justice Department investigation —and he thinks it's vile that the Obama administration is going after the people behind the NSA leaks in the first place. "The people who do this are heroes," he writes at the Guardian . These people could have...

Glenn Beck: I Could Have Said Things Differently

A reflective Glenn Beck says he regrets that some of his fiery opinions caused division in the country over the last several years. He wasn't fully aware of the perilous times and people "at each other's throats," said the conservative radio host, who accepted a First Amendment award from Talkers...

New York Post Sued by Its Bogus Bombing Suspects

We're going to go out on a limb and say that next time there's a terrorist attack on the US, the New York Post will fact-check better. It would be hard to do worse than its post-Boston Marathon effort, which saw it run a cover declaring two innocent running enthusiasts...

Amazon Scores Big Win Over Netflix

Last month, with the two companies at odds over renewal terms, Viacom's licensing deal with Netflix ended. Now, Viacom is bringing its shows, from the likes of Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central, over to Amazon in a multiyear streaming deal , the Wall Street Journal reports. (You can see them in...

Latest Disturbing Trayvon Story Not Actually True

George Zimmerman's legal team has been digging up some less-than-flattering background information about Trayvon Martin—but one story that made the rounds Friday, involving Martin allegedly recording his friends while they attacked a homeless man, turns out not to be true. Daily Intel explains what happened: Zimmerman's defense initially thought...

Storm Chasers Star Killed in Tornado

Three veteran storm chasers were among the 10 people killed Friday night when a violent tornado barreled into the Oklahoma City metro area. Jim Samaras told the AP today that his brother Tim Samaras was killed. Tim Samaras' son, Paul Samaras, and another chaser, Carl Young, also died. Tim Samaras...

Fox's Female Hosts Slam Male Colleagues as Sexist

If you've missed the hullabaloo that erupted over a new study showing that moms are now the primary or sole breadwinner in 40% of households with kids, much of it played out today on Megyn Kelly's Fox News show. The background is that a slew of conservative men, including Erick...

NYT, AP Boycott Holder's Off-Record Media Powwow

Eric Holder just wants to talk to reporters, without worrying about any pesky reporting. The attorney general has called an off-the-record meeting with the Washington bureau chiefs of several major media outlets to discuss the Justice Department's handling of leak investigations , but two of the most major—the AP and...

Larry King Returning— On Russian TV Channel

Larry King is returning to US living rooms by way of Moscow. The Suspendered One has signed a deal to host a new show called Politics With Larry King on RT, the Russian government's English-language news channel, the network announced today. The show will be produced by the same company...

House Probes Whether Holder Lied Under Oath

Did Eric Holder lie under oath when he testified before the House Judiciary committee on the surveillance of reporters earlier this month? The committee is probing the attorney general, who said the "potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material" is "not something I’ve ever been involved in,...

Plight of Women in Politics: Articles About Their Shoes

Kathryn Ruemmler is the White House chief counsel (and currently in the middle of the IRS mess ), so it totally makes sense that the fourth-most-popular story in the Washington Post 's political section right now would be ... an article about Ruemmler's love for flashy shoes . Wait, what? It seems...

Rupert Murdoch Quotes Koran in Weird Twitter Rant

Rupert Murdoch and Twitter continue to make for an ... interesting combination. Yesterday the News Corp mogul randomly started quoting the Koran on his account , and Twitchy thinks it was in relation to a couple tweets he sent out the day before about the slaying of a UK soldier . Here are...

Falling Fox Cable Hurts NASCAR Fans, Cars

Ten fans were injured and three hospitalized when a rope supporting an overhead TV camera fell from the grandstands and landed on the track surface during yesterday's NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, officials say. Fox Sports says the camera system consists of three ropes—a drive rope that moves...

Holder Backed Fox News Probe

Eric Holder has deftly sidestepped accountability for the Justice Department's spying on the AP by saying he recused himself from the case , but he can't pull the same trick in the Fox News case . The attorney general personally signed off on the search warrant targeting Fox reporter James Rosen, NBC...

Gov't Spied On Fox Journalist, Too

Of all the news organizations the government could spy on, it chose to tangle with ... Fox News. And this one goes further than the AP . The Justice Department examined Fox News reporter James Rosen's personal emails, phone records, and visits to the State Department, the Washington Post reports. The move...

Gawker Crowdfunding to Buy Mayor Crack Tape

Forget checkbook journalism—welcome to the era of PayPal journalism. Gawker has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $200,000 so it can buy the video that allegedly shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack. "They will give us the video. We will publish the video. You will watch the...

Media Finally Gets It: Obama Is a Joke on Civil Liberties

Look around today, and it's easy to find a news story or column criticizing President Obama and his Justice Department for going after reporters' phone records. (Like these in the Washington Post , Politico , and the New York Times .) To which Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian can only say, it's...

How to Leak to the Media Without Being IDed

What with the Justice Department seizing AP phone records , Nicholas Weaver is thinking about how a modern-day whistleblower can safely leak info to the media without being identified. The sad truth, he writes in Wired , is that "we now live in a world where public servants informing the public about...