Bikini Journalism

Under the circumstances, says Noonan, Bush looks "weird."

Talk about a media death watch: Red State is conducting a pool on when John McCain will drop out.

Clark Hoyt, the NYT ombudsman, ends his column on whether the Times was unfair to Rupert Murdoch in its aggressive coverage of his Dow Jones bid--he concluded it was not--with these ominous words:

"Next week, I'll look at articles The Times should be writing but hasn't so far. They're about itself."

Another barrier falls at the L.A. Times:

"Amid a steep decline in revenue, the Los Angeles Times is planning to break with long-standing tradition by selling ads on its front page, Publisher David Hiller said Friday.

"When it happens, the newspaper will be the largest metropolitan paper in the country to place ads there . . .

"Times Editor James O'Shea said he vigorously opposed putting ads on Page One and advised the publisher against doing so. 'Front-page ads diminish the newspaper, cheapen the front page and reduce the space devoted to news,' he said Friday. 'This would be a huge mistake that will penalize the reader.' "

You can see who won that argument.

The BBC has admitted altering the sequence of events in a program about Gordon Brown, the new prime minister. The two scenes actually happened weeks apart, and in reverse order. It looks pretty bad.

David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican outed by Larry Flynt as a repeat caller to the D.C. Madam, is getting little love from fellow conservatives. Consider Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse:

"I will say to my Republican friends that it does no good to whine about double standards. You're going to have to concede the hypocrisy point to our Democratic friends on this one. If your going to lecture people about the sanctity of marriage as it relates to banning gay unions or campaign on a platform stressing 'family values,' it would be best if you didn't go whoring around on your wife, wetting your wick at $300 a pop.