Whoopsie! The Associated Press had to send out a “mandatory kill” on a juicy story that turned out to be nothing more than a hoax: a bogus news release supposedly send out by General Electric headlined “GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs.”

The AP ran with the story, and was then forced to retract it about half an hour later. An AP story on its own mistake said “the fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website. The AP published a 90-word story based on the release. Thirty-five minutes later, AP withdrew the story and advised its customers that the story was a hoax.” Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter explained “the AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release.”

For the uninitiated Fox News Watch is a weekend news program that covers the media coverage of the past week’s events; its ostensibly the FNC answer to CNN’s Reliable Sources. The past episode of the program has earned a bit of unwanted attention themselves when programming staffers inadvertently aired an awkward segment critical of NBC News coverage of General Electric that was interrupted by on off-camera “cut!” and appears to have never been meant to hit the airwaves. Updated.

NBC’s Richard Engel recently filed a harrowing report from the front line of the military conflict in Libya in which an incoming mortar shell landed just 50 yards away from where he was reporting. Last night Jon Stewart was dutifully impressed by Engel’s journalistic bravado before taking an interesting and unexpected turn in a segment which focused on GE’s unique relationship NBC News’ parent company NBC-Universal.

President Obama’s controversial pick of Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, to lead a new jobs council has many not pleased, and Fox’s Megyn Kelly was interested in learning the main reason for the displeasure. Host of Fox Business show Follow The Money, Eric Bolling, was on hand to offer Kelly some ideas, but Kelly wisely expressed her doubts.

Ann Coulter visited Fox Business’s Follow the Money this week to talk about the relationship between corporations and the White House. Speaking to host Eric Bolling, who had laid down his argument for the unhealthy relations between the government and private enterprise, Coulter boiled down the argument to the President Obama being both “a socialist” and “a fascist.”

Since Keith Olbermann‘s suspension Friday, his supporters have taken to defending the MSNBC host using the contributions of others as a comparison: from News Corp. and Fox News to Joe Scarborough and Larry Kudlow.

Here are some more donations that tangentially relate to Olbermann – like GE overlap.

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly appeared to take the bait from Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft who yesterday suggested that the nearly $25 Million in federal stimulus money received by GE was payback for pro-Obama coverage by NBC News (which is owned by General Electric.) His guest Charles Krauthammer appeared to disagree.

Is this Keith Olbermann‘s way of apologizing for taking things too far? In an opening to a segment on Countdown tonight, Olbermann noted that longtime nemesis Bill O’Reilly had done a story regarding his corporate overlords, GE, and categorized it as not newsworthy, but vengeful. The reason for pointing this out? Olbermann was about to do a segment on News Corp, Fox News’ parent company, but he wanted to make clear that it wasn’t a “tit-for-tat” story.

In a “Factor Follow-up” segment last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly slammed GE and its Chairman Jeffrey Immelt, with the help of two guests.

But while GE and Immelt have been a favorite target of O’Reilly’s in the past, the attacks have been down over the last year. So where did this one come from?

As has been rumored for awhile, Comcast and GE announced this morning they were forming a joint venture.

Comcast would own 51%, GE would own 49%, Comcast would manage and the venture consists of NBCU businesses, Comcasts’s cable networks and certain digital properties, among other things.

The New York Times is reporting that Comcast Corp and General Electric Co are closer to a deal to give Comcast a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal and that a formal announcement may be made in the coming week. Mediaite has learned from an industry source familiar with the negotiations that Comcast will in fact be formally announcing its acquisition of NBC Universal this week.

9:27amET, CNBC:

We do a lot of these Chyron of the Day posts, and we usually try to avoid the simple spelling error. But we had to do it here, because of the context. In a report by Bertha Coombs about her boss’ boss’ boss, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, the CNBC chyron had ‘Immelt’ spelled wrong.

In response to Glenn Beck‘s stunning critique of the “communist art” that surrounds GE and NBC headquarters at Rockefeller Center, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann fought back last night with the accusation that Beck himself is in possession of a “communist paper weight.”

General Electric is no longer letting Keith Olbermann take the lead in responding to Bill O’Reilly. After O’Reilly’s segment Tuesday night attacking GE, the company is coming out and responding for the first time to the FNC host.

GE tells the Associated Press the thinly-sourced report was “irresponsible and maliciously false” – and last night, Olbermann took it even further.

All day yesterday Bill O’Reilly‘s Website teased a segment equating GE and Enron (with Bernie Goldberg weighing in), but when The O’Reilly Factor aired last night, Goldberg and O’Reilly just chatted about how awesome Fox News was. So where did it go?

In the post-’Truce’-gate world, Inside Cable News asked if it was “spiked” for some reason. Here’s the answer: it’s happening tonight.