If the only place you get your news is from the Sunday talk shows, you would not have been informed in the slightest today about the political and technological battle over the Stop Online Piracy Act last week. Yes, there was a huge primary yesterday that completely up-ended the Republican contest, but you’d figure a powerful people-powered protest resulting in some of the biggest and most visited websites either blacking out or using their resources to raise awareness of the bill would garner at least a brief discussion today.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint responded to an assertion made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week on Meet the Press that the influence of the Tea Party has been dying down as the economy is slowly picking up steam. Reid claimed that Republicans are starting to realize the Tea Party is too radical and are trying to distance themselves from it, but DeMint argued that the movement is still going strong.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin lit into the media for their coverage of Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife’s claims that the former Speaker of the House asked for an “open marriage,” telling Sean Hannity on his radio show, they “overplayed their hand.”

The American public could really care less about being Joe McGinniss’d, not when there are real issues,” Palin exclaimed. “Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife is getting ready to reveal all, again — she has already done that, it seems, like a few times.”

Congress is set to return later this month, and one of the most hotly contested pieces of legislation it will be facing is the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill was authored by Republican Lamar Smith, and has received bipartisan support and opposition in the House. There has been a lot of talk about internet- and technology-based companies that support the bill, including GoDaddy (up until recently) and the video game industry.

As we enter the new year, the most important question on people’s mind is whether or not the world will officially end as we know it by next December. But let’s face it, if 2012 is really going to bring about end times (because we should clearly be basing our plans for the end on the Mayan calendar), it’s going to have a tough act to follow. Many people are writing up 2011 as the year of this or the year of that, but let’s keep things in perspective here: 2011 was the year that the world descended into random chaos.

Over the course of 2011, we covered an array of politicians, authors, entertainers, media mavens, and others as they discussed their crafts and their industries. (Here’s last year’s list.) We enjoyed most of the panels, lectures, and debates we took in, while some of them fell short. Here, a rundown of our 5 favorites, followed by the 10 quotes that defined the year in New York City media panels:

The Penn State abuse scandal is still a much-discussed topic, and several of the university’s alumni have publicly chimed in via columns in the press. While most have tried to understand how this terrible tragedy could have happened on their beloved campus, others are focused on the victims and how many others there might be out there. Former star linebacker LaVar Arrington shared his thoughts on his time playing for Jerry Sandusky: “It has shattered the image of a man who meant so much to me.” Here’s a rundown of the best takes from PSU alumni-turned-writers around the country:

If you’re not a particularly big fan of Project Runway, you probably skipped out on Piers Morgan last night, whose ads spent the day reminding viewers he would be interviewing Heidi Klum. If you’re not particularly a fan of Project Runway and also a fan of 1980s New Romanticism, you would have been sorely disappointed, as the second half of the program featured and interview with 3/4ths of Duran Duran. As far as influence and conversational potential, the decision to advertise one over the other appears bizarre, but with the obvious difference between the two guests, one has to ask– is eye candy not all created equal?

According to this year’s annual Pew Research Center poll surveying Americans’ thoughts on the media, people are more wary of our ilk than ever before. More people than ever consider the media — a nebulous force borne of the stairs, not unlike Cthulhu — to be “immoral,” “inaccurate,” and “biased.” When asked what people think when they hear “news organization,” most respondents replied with major cable news networks, mostly CNN and Fox News. A mere three percent thought of a website.

Last night, Rachel Maddow compared billionaire candidate Mitt Romney to fictional billionaire Thurston Howell III. If you’re looking for a rich-person caricature, there is no better person to cite than the oil baron of Gilligan’s Island. But it seems that 2011 is the year where both liberals and conservatives are pulling out the “You’re more like Thurston Howell than I am” card.

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.)

Hey! So, you know how the job market is looking pretty awful and everyone is lamenting the death of America and liberty and justice and Harry Potter and everything? It’s depressing, right? Well, here, additional fodder to help you spiral ever downward in a rapid descent towards deep clinical depression: Monitoring the media pays HUGE bucks.

The Poynter Institute’s ever-valuable Romenesko blog offers a glimpse into the accounting ledgers of organizations created to make sure the reports presented in the media are balanced (in their favor). If you’re a regular Mediaite reader, you’re likely at least somewhat familiar with the Media Research Center and its liberal cousin, Media Matters for America.

Here’s what some of their respective employees make annually:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (D) appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today to discuss, among other things, the state of the economy. As Kerry sees it, much of the national discussion about politics — debt talks included — is guided by the media’s insistence on lending equal time and, thus, credibility to all ideas, regardless of whether they happen to be absurd or misinformed.

Rep. Eric Cantor is a petulant child, and President Obama is the know-it-all teacher’s pet tattling that he refused to “eat his peas.” These are the headlines greeting America this morning– headlines which, given the financial guillotine Moody’s is dangling over America’s neck, read to some as rather shallow. The shock, sincere or not, unveils a naivete towards government in the American psyche that overlooks a harsh, but inescapable, reality: The media has turned Congress into a playground. Why are we surprised only children want to work there?

I am rarely accurate with prognostications or predictions but I am feeling pretty confident about two things: 1) there will be another high-profile trial in the not too distant future, like Casey Anthony‘s, that will capture the attention of the nation and the media; and 2) it will be followed by the hand-wringing and utter despair about the future of media that trail every high profile case. In fact, there is no surer way to be the belle of your media critic’s ball than to blast the Casey Anthony media coverage. From hackneyed assertions that “it’s not journalism,” to characterizations of it as “merchandising in tragedy”, to the populist position that it’s “just entertainment,” the Anthony coverage, like so many trials before it, serves as the ultimate media scapegoat.

The ‘Tea Party’ as we now know it has become the major driving force for conservatives in this decade, exhibiting major power to engage people politically and get out the vote. Thus it isn’t shocking that many are attempting to harness some of that energy, but the latest spin-off of the Tea Party– a Latino-centric get out the vote effort named the “Tequila Party”– highlights a serious misconception in the media of Latin Americans as a monolithic group with similar political leanings and concerns.

Rush Limbaugh has made no secret of wanting Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. His callers, for the most part, seem to agree. But although Limbaugh is willing to let Palin slide if she prefers to continue her current lifestyle and not throw her hat in the ring, he made one thing clear yesterday morning: the one reason he will not accept for her to back out is fear. “If she is afraid to run,” he told his audience, “the media terrorists have won.”

There are several perks to being Arianna Huffington: For one, she’ll never have to search her couch cushions for enough change to buy a two piece and a biscuit. (Not that we’ve ever!) Plus, she also gets to have some pretty famous friends, like Nora Ephron, who do some pretty snazzy things, like host dinner parties in her honor.

We’re starting to feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of March Madness brackets organized by blogs, magazines and TV shows alike. These brackets range from the truly clever to the amusingly cutesy to the downright obnoxious. And, in an attempt to be cleverer, cutesier (to wit) and far more obnoxious than anyone else, we here at Mediaite have decided to create The Ultimate Bracket Bracket.

Check out our players.

Arianna Huffington decided to respond to Bill Keller’s claims yesterday evening, calling his piece an “exceptionally misinformed attack.” Huffington echoed the snarky tone of Keller’s article in her response, and even managed to get in a dig at News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch in the process. Now that’s multi-tasking

“The world conspires to convince me of my significance,” writes The New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, running through the numerous “most influential” lists he’s made.

Keller elects to use this influence to weigh in on The Future of Journalism in a much-discussed op-ed piece, tackling a specific issue that keeps popping up in discussions on what tomorrow might hold for those who report on – and make – the news: Content aggregation. And he sets his sights squarely on a name that has become synonymous with this “style” of presenting news online.

With Charlie Sheen still the talk of news shows and covered extensively everywhere, Bill O’Reilly wondered “should the media just leave the guy alone?” Doctors Keith Ablow and Karen Ruskin disagreed whether the media should continue to interview Sheen and although O’Reilly was conflicted, he concluded since Sheen always gets ratings, nothing would be able to stop the media from finding a way to get to him.

Tonight, CBS’ Survivor returns for Survivor: Redemption Island, featuring two of the show’s most enduring characters, Boston Rob and Russell. In keeping with tradition, we’ll celebrate with a Survivor-themed dinner and watch the show like full-on geeks (join me on Twitter for added perspective and live commentary). The season’s title got us thinking: in the media world, who would we most like to see play Survivor–dropped on an island in Nicaragua and forced to outwit, outlast and outplay the other media castaways?

The Los Angeles Times‘ Company Town blog has, as it does at the start of every new year, turned to its various sources to come up with a few predictions about what the near future might have in store for several big names in media. Let’s take a look at a few of their predictions before weighing in with our own thoughts, shall we?

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton runs a business based on trust– the trust of photographers that feed him photos, the trust of celebrities that give him the access that makes his site a must-read for those of the gossip world. It’s a trust of Teflon strength, surviving a series of questionable side projects, but with his most recent endeavor, UnratedPerez.com, Hilton may be definitively testing the immunity of his sources to outrage or insult.