Who says corporate Q1 2009 earnings calls can’t make for a riveting show? In an earnings call regarding News Corporation’s performance this past quarter, Rupert Murdoch went beyond the balance sheet, opening up to shareholders and reporters about the broken truce with MSNBC and the battle with the White House:

On this week’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz struck back at CNN cohort Lou Dobbs. Earlier in the week, Dobbs claimed that he and his wife had been shot at in their New Jersey home, in part due to the “national liberal media” and its coverage in the immigration debate. Kurtz and guest Margaret Carlson were skeptical.

Yesterday Sharon Waxman “exclusively” reported on Comcast’s plans to buy NBC-Universal from GE. Rival blogger Nikki Finke, who doesn’t like letting a Hollywood exclusive slip past her if she can help it, fired back that “Comcast tonight is denying an Internet blog’s bullshit that a “deal was done” (and the blog has already backtracked from that inaccurate claim).” She wouldn’t even name or link to The Wrap! But it looks like the facts (and the Internet) are on Finke’s side.

Last night, Keith Olbermann fill-in (that guy sure seems to take a lot of vacation) David Shuster took on Fox for pushing the latest scary trend: the indoctrination of school children by the Obama administration.

Word has gotten out that on tonight’s episode of “@katiecouric”, Katie Couric’s new web-only show, Glenn Beck will declare that “McCain would have been worse than Obama.” But before the show has even aired, the media narrative has emerged that this is some kind of cunning, headline-grabbing ploy by Beck, who has done pretty well in that department already. It’s a catchy angle, but here’s the thing; if you go back and look at what he’s said, Beck has never really liked John McCain.

Much like the #gmailfail hashtag, every other office in New York, and possibly everyone in the world, we here at Mediaite, Inc. are disheartened and profoundly terrified by the sudden shutdown of Gmail. How will we get work done? More importantly, how will we make insidery status updates and send funny links to each other [...]

Almost lost in the brouhaha over the reported truce between GE/Keith Olbermann and Fox News/Bill O’Reilly was the news that Olbermann had kicked replacement host Richard Wolffe off of Countdown. Olbermann cited the appearance of a conflict of interest between Wolffe’s consulting job and his duties as a political analyst for MSNBC. But given the landscape of cable news, in which many big name “politicos” consult on the side quietly or not-so-quietly, why was Wolffe singled out?

Last week, news broke that an American al Qaeda operative, Bryant Neal Vinas, had been captured and extradited back to the United States. His story has received surprisingly little media attention. That an American citizen should reach the inner circles of al Qaeda is remarkable enough, but sources say that intelligence from a cooperative Vinas has led to what has been described as “by far the most effective” counterterrorism push since 9/11. So why isn’t this a bigger story?