When Pete Williams of NBC broke the news at 10pmET on Sunday night that Elena Kagan would be Pres. Barack Obama‘s Supreme Court nominee, it signaled cable news would make the story a focus in the short and long-term.

So what would be Kagan’s “wise latina” – the storyline closely associated with the nominee? We broke down the first 24 hours on cable news.

In a show of cable news’ tight relationship with news consumers, CNN and Fox News dominated a recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll when it came to the “most trustworthy source of daily news.”

Beating out broadcast outlets and newspapers, the results come the same weekend MSNBC’s President praised FNC CEO Roger Ailes‘ ‘brilliance’.

With the issue of health care reform legislated to death, Congress is now tackling financial reform, where Democrats are proposing a bill that has started a game of “political chicken” (or “political football,” depending on your cable news loyalties) between the parties. It includes a $50 billion pre-liquidation fund for failed banks, and whether that translates into a bailout or not is any pundit’s guess.

TV Week has released its annual “10 Most Powerful in TV News” list today, placing Roger Ailes, the NBC team, and the CNN team in the medaled positions, respectively. Jon Stewart is the top-ranked TV personality at #5, with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck taking the #7 spot together. Univisión and the Huffington Post did not keep their positions from last year. The takeaway? The TV industry has gotten much more competitive this year, and the collective panic attack over CNN’s ratings may have been premature.

Details are starting to emerge regarding the Qatari diplomat who slipped into an airplane bathroom for a mid-flight smoke, touching off a bomb scare and creating minor media crisis. Turns out that it was not a cigarette that Mohammed Al-Madadi was smoking, but something else all together. Leave it to Fox News anchor Shep Smith to cut through the malarkey, and tell us what really went down.

Keith Olbermann is often criticized for letting the lofty lefty in him get the better of his journalistic sensibilities, but once in a while the stars align and he gets his finger right on the pulse of his viewers’ thoughts. How far can you get into Sarah Palin‘s playground allegory of nuclear disarmament without blurting out “that woman is an idiot”? Chances are you lasted less than Olbermann.

Minnesota was the place to be last night as Rep. Michele Bachmann welcomed guests Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin to a campaign rally supporting her reelection. Hannity riled up the crowd with the prospect of Palin/Bachmann ’12, and the cable news characters were stepping all over each other to come up with the wittiest analogies. But Keith Olbermann especially had a field day with what was either his biggest dream or his worse nightmare.

Last night, a diplomat affiliated with the Qatari embassy detained by federal authorities for allegedly trying to “light his shoes on fire” on a flight from Washington, DC to Denver, CO. Early reports claimed that the suspect, Mohammed al Modadi, who the FBI has announced has diplomatic immunity, was trying to set off a shoe-bomb on a flight from DC to Denver, though MSNBC later reported that it just may have been a cigarette.

CNN announced this morning the hiring of RedState.com editor Erick Erickson as a political contributor for their new 7pmET program, John King, USA. The addition of Erickson to the team fits in well with John King’s idea of the program as a political rundown of every part of the nation with a variety of opinions (Erickson will be located in Atlanta). Yet given that King’s predecessor, Lou Dobbs, felt that as an advocate journalist he was not a good fit for the future of the network, hiring someone to the right of Dobbs as a contributor for that time spot may send some mixed messages.

Dan Rather is responding today to the questionably-worded anecdote (“he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic”) – and he’s doing so in a decidedly un-140-character way.

In a lengthy blog post on The Huffington Post, Rather explains why it’s, at least in part, our collective fault.

It’s two years away, but speculation surrounding the 2012 presidential race is alive and kicking, if only for the increasingly irrefutable fact that anyone who intends to run without immediate access to a cable news soapbox is starting the 2012 campaign at a severe disadvantage. It is the uphill battle facing possible Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, who, from the Minnesota Governor’s mansion must be watching potential challengers like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich milk their cable news contracts for all they’re worth.

If the money is right and Conan O’Brien is game, Rupert Murdoch would have him join the Fox family “in a flash.” This is the latest in the post-late night war odyssey of finding a new home for the displaced Tonight Show host and his unique brand of comedy. While Murdoch, speaking to Reuters, noted that there have not been any “real negotiations” with the O’Brien camp and that there are “different opinions” on the matter, with the right numbers he did admit he is interested in entering the world of late night entertainment.

At today’s briefing, conservative radio host and reporter Lester Kinsolving asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to respond to a pair of MSNBC quotes. First, a golden oldie from June, in which a Newsweek editor compares the President to God (it makes slightly more sense in context), and Chris Matthews’ post-SOTU declaration that he had forgotten that Obama was black for an hour. Lester, you may recall, got a really quick answer to a really long question awhile back. Gibbs was equally brief this time.

“Readers keep emailing me to tell me that as far as cable news is concerned, today’s events might as well be happening on Mars. I cannot confirm this because when real news happens, the last place I look is the cable news channels. But I cannot say I am surprised. Since this does not have [...]

After every major speech, after every event really, Twitter is usually ablaze with people weighing in with their thoughts and opinions, and takeaways. It’s like one big cable show but (thankfully) without the sound. Last night however, there was a definite sense of ‘everyone shut-up, already’ permeating the media twittersphere.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer‘s timeline detailing how the end-of-life provisions he added to the health care bill became — with the powerful helping hand of Sarah Palin– is fascinating in a number of regards, but specifically because Palin is once again about to be handed a very large microphone. Is the MSM prepared to vet the next vicious news cycle?

Yes, the newspaper industry, as we are all far too familiar, is in critical health. And maybe people are less interested in baseball, for whatever reason ($10 hot chocolate at Yankee Stadium may have something to do with that). Or maybe the country has just discovered a new national pastime. Namely, politics.

According to a recent Rasmussen survey 80% of Americans think that Americans pay too much attention to sensational news stories. Snap conclusion? At least some cable TV viewers are aware they are supporting something they disapprove of. Apparently ‘sensational TV’ is the new tobacco industry.

Ever wonder what cable TV must sound like to a little kid? One New Orleans fourth-grader distilled it down to some of its most basic parts yesterday and at a town hall meeting stood up and asked the President why people hate him so much? Aww, right? Now, let’s just hope this doesn’t repurposed as a DNC ad.

All three Cable News Channels have gone wall-to-wall in covering the breaking story of the Six year-old boy in Fort Collins, Colorado boy who floated away from the family home on an “experimental aircraft” this morning. Yes, you read that correctly. All channels are currently airing live shots of the floating balloon, leaving cable hosts to fill airtime as best they can.

Today Glenn Beck unveiled his vision for Ground Zero. If Beck were in charge One World Trade Center would take the form of two towers, each twenty-five stories taller than the original with a “big fat ‘come and try that again’ sign on top of them.” Also, they would have been completed years ago — using the “bare hands” of Beck and his viewers — and would “be built in a way that they would have resisted attack.” There’s more.

Overlooked in much of the post-speech, “You Lie!” chatter last night was the fact that President Obama also used the word “lie” in his address and not just to describe (smackdown?) Sarah Palin and her death-panel assertions. He also, rather boldly, called out the “bogus claims” of “radio and cable talk show hosts.”

Ever find that sometimes when you’re talking with friends or co-workers that a certain word keeps getting repeated over and over again? Maybe it’s a flashy one or just a really useful one, but it just keeps making the rounds in e-mails or chit-chat? Well, you’re not alone – the media also loves to reuse [...]

A week or so ago I suggested that the health care debate was a great opportunity for the beleaguered mainstream media — newspapers, network news — to prove “in a slow and deliberate way” it was still relevant. Have they managed to do so in the interim? If they have there’s certainly no evidence of it.

It’s hard to believe that Walter Cronkite has not been a staple on the air for over 28 years.  Through all that time, he has achieved something few in this age of information overload could do when removed from the spotlight for so long. He remained the standard bearer, the person so many journalists wished [...]