In an interview with Diane Sawyer airing tonight, President Obama laughed off Jan Brewer’s claims that he with aggressive with her, joking that he’s “usually accused of not being intense enough” and pointing out that it’s always good for a Republican to tell people they fought with him. However, there was one accusation that he didn’t seem ready to laugh down and that was Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp president” insult.

President Obama spoke with ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an interview on Thursday. Sawyer asked him how intense his reelection ambitions were. “How much do you want it?” “Badly,” Obama replied. “Because I think the country needs it.”

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Online political media giant Politico turns five years old today, and to celebrate, the site posted a video roast by some quotable notables in the political media world. While the site has arguably earned the right to toot its own horn at least once every half-decade, did they really have to overshadow the birthday of Saved By The Bell actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen?

During the New Hampshire GOP Debate, moderator Diane Sawyer asked Ron Paul if he would call Newt Gingrich a “chickenhawk” again, Paul answered in the affirmative. “Yeah, I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments aren’t — they have no right to send our kids off to war and not be even against the war we have. I’m trying to stop the wars, but at least I went when they called me up.”

A week and a candidate removed from Iowa, and less than a week away from the make-or-break state of New Hampshire, six of the remaining Republican candidates (alas, Buddy Roemer was excluded yet again!) are reconvening at St. Anselm College for another debate. This debate, hosted by ABC News, Yahoo! News and WMUR-TV airs tonight on ABC at 9PM ET, but you can watch along with us here by clicking below.

On Tuesday’s The Five, Eric Bolling spoke out on the touchy subject of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords political future. The Fox News co-host called Diane Sawyer‘s interview “very heart-warming” but thought it was probably time for her to step down. “In the risk of sounding very callous– these are tough times, the economy’s on its ear, we really need all hands on deck.

In an interview that few thought would ever happen last January, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, alongside her husband, Mark Kelly, spoke to Diane Sawyer in her first interview since the fatal Tucson shooting that almost took her life. After narrating the incredible journey Giffords took to get to her current state, Giffords herself told Sawyer of the moment she realized others had died in the attack– when she realized her husband had skipped a paragraph in an article about her recovery.

Last week, we offered you all a little sneak peek at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords‘ first televised interview since the January shooting that left her with a bullet to the head. This morning, Diane Sawyer paid a visit to Good Morning America to tell viewers a bit more about the interview, which airs tonight on ABC at 10 pm ET.

In her first television interview since the Arizona shooting spree that left her with a bullet wound to the head, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords sat down with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer to discuss her arduous recovery and rehabilitation.

Guys, the Wall Street protests are huge. How huge? So huge that they’ve spread to hundreds of countries all over the world that don’t even exist!

At least that’s what it appears if we are to believe a fairly goofy gaffe from Diane Sawyer. Last night on World News, Sawyer remarked that the protests had “spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries — every continent but Antarctica.” In case you’re curious, the United States government currently recognizes, oh, about 195 countries.

Disney has raised a few eyebrows with a recent ad highlighting the company’s $5 million contribution to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Not, solely because, you know, we’re all jealous haters who eat babies’ souls and crumble to dust at the mention of charitable works, but because the ad teeters on the line between drawing attention to a noble cause and exploiting that cause to promote its CEO, Robert Iger.

An Los Angeles Times op-ed details how, exactly, the ad veered into… uncomfy territory.

Diane Sawyer, who has earned interviews with everyone from Britney Spears and Michael Jackson to Fidel Castro and Manuel Noriega, will host Rep. Gabrielle Giffords for her first broadcast interview since January’s tragic shootings. Joined by her husband Mark Kelly, Giffords will share her “story of strength, hope, and astounding resilience,” a story that has [...]

A series of recently-released tapes show former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy revealing that her husband, John F. Kennedy, was extremely worried over the possibility of then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson someday becoming president.

In the series of oral interviews, recorded in 1964 by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the former Mrs. Kennedy shares that, in the months before his assassination, her husband met with his brother, Robert, to discuss a means of circumventing a possible Johnson presidency after his second term.

Forbes has come out with its annual list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and, as is to be expected, several recognizable names in media made the cut. According to Forbes, the women on the list were selected “not just for being on top” but also for “being smack in the middle of Richter-registering events.” (Quite literally in some instances, if yesterday’s east coast earthquake is taken into account.)

There’s no question that Megyn Kelly is a rising star at Fox News, but her recent absence from the airwaves due to the birth of her second child (coinciding with Glenn Beck‘s departure) seemed, to many, to reaffirm her importance to the cable news leader. Joni Mitchell‘s “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”? is an apt refrain for the executives at FNC, who were all to eager to see her back on air. In an extensive and candid interview, Kelly shares her thoughts on public perception of Fox News, Jon Stewart’s mockery, and even Weinergate.

In the crowded field of Republican presidential contenders, each candidate is struggling to get mainstream media attention. Yet it’s likely the candidates featured in this ABC news report are not happy with this spotlight. Apparently four of the eight GOP candidates are selling campaign merchandise made from overseas, a slap in the face to the frequent Republican rhetoric of needing more American jobs.

As the nation’s news networks focus on the extraordinary battle on Capitol Hill over the debt ceiling and the economy, ABC has dispatched David Muir to Africa, where he’s become the first network reporter inside Somalia, a country devastated by famine. “I can’t stop thinking about the mother who, after walking that journey from Somalia to Kenya, told me she and her children had not eaten in five days,” Muir told Mediaite from Mogadishu, where he’ll report for tonight’s ABC World News.

Back in the day, Michael Rosenblum toiled as a producer at CBS News, before leaving the network and making a name for himself as a pioneer in transforming news operations. He helped launch Current TV and New York’s local NY1, and has trained journalists to shoot their own video at The New York Times, the BBC, and networks in Germany, Holland and elsewhere. But he wonders why the recently-revamped CBS Evening News still looks so, you know, unchanged. Comparing the newscast now anchored by Scott Pelley, which included a freshened up set and the return of a world map made famous as part of the set used by CBS legend Walter Cronkite, Rosenblum argues on his blog today that Pelley’s newscast looks nearly identical to the newscast put on by NBC’s John Cameron Swayze–in 1949. “Does it look pretty much the same after 62 years? Isn’t this astonishing? Isn’t this astonishing for a medium that supposedly is on the cutting edge of technology?”

On the heels of ABC’s huge audience–nearly 15 million viewers–for Diane Sawyer‘s exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard comes word the interview, which was previewed on Sawyer’s ABC World News, boosted ABC’s evening newscast into a first place finish ahead of NBC Nightly News. On Thursday night, World News beat Nightly by 106,000 total viewers (7.656 million vs. 7.550 million), and helped drive World News to its best weekly performance in six weeks.

ABC’s heavily-promoted exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard was a hit with viewers, attracting an average audience of 14.8 million for the two-hour special Sunday night, according to an early report from Nielsen. The Diane Sawyer interview was Sunday night’s most-popular program, outperforming CBS, NBC and Fox combined in the 9-11 p.m. timeslot. The interview, the first time most Americans had ever heard Dugard speak, was clearly a tune-in event, with the special more than doubling ABC’s lead-in (164%).

In her first interview since the day in 1991 when she was kidnapped, Jaycee Dugard described a life in captivity to ABC’s Diane Sawyer–saying she endured years of abuse and the birth of two children the best way she knew how. “You just do what you have to do to survive.” Dugard, who’s written a book about her life, shared for the first time the details of her abduction–a disappearance that haunted her family and frustrated police (who we learn came very close at times to finding her).

Dugard says she was walking to school when a car rolled up, the driver’s window went down, and her entire life changed:

Diane Sawyer has aired the first clip from her exclusive interview with Jaycee Dugard, the California girl kidnapped while walking to school in June of 1991 and held for 18 years. Dugard, now 31, has written a book about her experience, and she tells her story in a two-hour special on ABC Sunday at 9 p.m. In a preview that aired on ABC World News, Dugard tells Sawyer how she gave birth to a daughter–when she was 14–in the backyard prison where she was held. “Very painful, but then I saw her,” Dugard says. “She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.”

Comedian Harry Shearer, who has a fetish of some kind for watching news anchors and reporters as they prepare to go on camera, has posted a clip of ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer as she prepped to anchor World News from tornado-devastated Joplin, MO. The eight-minute video shows Sawyer standing amid the ruins of a neighborhood–it’s cold, with rain and lightning, Sawyer and her crew sheltered by a small tent as soaked and exhausted ABC News folk set shots, lights, and try to communicate with producers in New York as the network prepares to tell the country a massive, emotional story.

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski appeared on ABC World News Tuesday in a story about women fighting for equal pay, telling ABC’s Claire Shipman “I got a sense of what all the guys where making on the set, and I looked around one morning and I realized I was the lowest paid on the set and in one case by far.”

Jaycee Dugard, who disappeared as an eleven-year-old girl and was held captive for 18 years, will give her first interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer in a huge get that ABC is calling “a landmark television event.” Dugard, who was repeatedly abused by her captors and gave birth to two children, recently testified in the trial of Phillip and Nancy Garrido. The couple were convicted of abduction and abuse, with Phillip Dugard sentenced to 431 years to life in prison, and his wife Nancy sentenced to 36 years to life.