For many of the younger folk who have not experienced television as diverse as it is today or cannot recall what it was like to not have the option to consume any culture at any time via the internet, comprehending the entire concept behind Don Cornelius‘s success may prove difficult. In fact, fully comprehending how a concept like Soul Train– a show devoted to delivering to the mainstream a culture for so long marginalized– could succeed requires the ability to adopt the anachronistic mentality of the time, to see the world as it was and find the niche market that Cornelius saw and made mainstream. With the news of his death today, we can only look at the world as it when he arrived to change it, and compare it to what he leaves behind. With those markers, it is clear that his influence expanded well beyond the worlds of disco and soul music.

Surging presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is under fire for a remark at a campaign event Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, where he apparently brought up the plight of black people completely out of the blue. Or did he?

According to reports, Santorum said ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

“Some News Leaves People Knowing Less,” blares a headline from the political science department of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey today. The University conducted a survey of several hundred New Jersey residents and found some numbers that are very convenient for the enemies of a certain news organization– Fox News viewers were 18% more likely to be either misinformed or uninformed about certain current events.

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed Fox News’ Juan Williams and while the interview that aired on The Daily Show focused on Williams’ bitter end with his former employer NPR, the really juicy parts of the conversation took place in portions that appeared exclusively online. The lengthy conversation between the two demonstrated a mutually respectful tone and a truly fascinating discussion about the current state of journalism and political discourse, which led to Stewart comically noticing “we’re two very smart people.”

Fox News’ Juan Williams is currently making the media rounds to promote his new book, Muzzled: The Assault On Honest Debate, and, as such, offered a quite candid interview to Philly Mag‘s blog.

Williams delved into some of the fallout surrounding his dismissal from NPR after sharing that he felt uneasy seeing people in Muslim garb at airports, including a comment former NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard made about his having stayed at NPR as long as he had because it “gave him cred” with the mainstream media.

It’s been a long year for Juan Williams since his controversial firing from NPR last October, but he, as Bill O’Reilly predicted at the time, managed to get back up and publish a book about his struggle. Williams visited The Factor last night to promote that book, Muzzled, and confessed some of the problems NPR had with his relationship with Fox, among them that he was told not to say he worked for NPR on TV and that they did not appreciate him “legitimizing” the network.

The conservative activist James O’Keefe has returned with what he describes as “evidence of government employees gladly offering public assistance to individuals representing themselves as drug dealers.” In comments recently to Fox News, O’Keefe, known for his video “stings” of NPR and Planned Parenthood among others, described his new work as “dwarfing” anything he’s done before. The first video in a series has been posted today in a story on the Daily Caller.

This story has been significantly modified since its original posting; an update can be found below. Well, it appears that the hits keep coming. David Cay Johnston is a columnist for Reuters who recently took a look at the corporate finances of Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp., and what he has reported is certain to raise some eyebrows. His column published yesterday suggests that over the last four years, the media conglomerate earned $10 billion dollars and received $4.5 billion in federal refunds after paying zero taxes. UPDATE – Reuters has since withdrawn the original post, admitting that the writer had it wrong.

In an interview with NPR, Fareed Zakaria says his network, CNN, ” is getting smarter…you can feel it in the stories,” under the leadership of Mark Whitaker, CNN’s managing editor and executive vice president. “You can feel it in the depth with which they’re covered, the kinds of people in terms of guests who are brought on air, the ways in which issues are discussed.”

Bill Clinton knows quite a lot about quite a few things: Saxophones, the definition of the word “is,” and, it turns out, the popular animated children’s series My Little Pony. The former president sat down with NPR’s “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” to play their “Not My Job” game, which included an in-depth quiz on his knowledge of, well. Sparkly happy ponies:

We decided to quiz the former president and Rhodes scholar about the My Little Pony show. The famously well-informed leader answers three questions about Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle.

Yesterday, we told you about rumors that Vivian Schiller, the former CEO of NPR, was in talks with NBC to lead digital efforts at the network. Today, those rumors have been confirmed. Schillr joins NBC News as its new chief digital officer, meaning she’s charged with overseeing digital strategy for for NBC News and MSNBC, as well as for properties like EducationNation.com and theGrio.com. (So much for concerns over leanings, amiright?)

You may remember Vivian Schiller, the former CEO of NPR, from her role in the media storm surrounding a sting video, created and edited by James O’Keefe, showing NPR executive Ron Schiller (no relation) making disparaging comments about Republicans and the Tea Party movement.

Shortly after announcing her departure, Schiller vowed to return to media, saying she planned to remain in journalism. She’s made good on that promise: Schiller is currently in talks with NBC News, where she will oversee digital projects.

The parallels between right-wing undercover dance-pop sensation James O’Keefe and left-wing (?) hacker/fashion icon Julian Assange have been long drawn out, but with every new interview the similarities become starker. O’Keefe visited John Stossel on his eponymous FBN program to defend his tactics and asserted that, since “the public has a right to know… you simply don’t have an expectation of privacy when you’re discussing business matters.”

NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and another reporter were able to sneak a visit to Iman al-Obeidi’s home, where she is finally recovering. Al-Obeidi, who has been unable to leave her house in light of a television smear campaign against her, recounted the details of her ordeal.

Quietly, without chalkboards or bluster, Bret Baier has cemented his position as one of the top talents at Fox News, often eclipsing the ratings of some of the network’s more high profile stars, like Sean Hannity and yes, Glenn Beck. With Beck’s future now taking him away from the 5 p.m. slot he’s held, Baier represents a part of the Fox News story that usually gets overshadowed by the drama and excess that surrounds stars like Beck. For the most part, Baier does news.

If NPR won’t fight back against charges of bias, Ira Glass will.

The This American Life host already took to NPR’s On The Media to submit his rallying cry, arguing to host Brooke Gladstone that “we have nothing to fear from a discussion of what is the news coverage we’re doing.”

Seems like Jon Stewart wasn’t content with his performance in debate against Fox News’ Bret Baier last week, in an interview in which he told the anchor he refused to accept Fox News as an objective news organization, to which the latter responded that the network “respected the viewers ability to discern” between opinion and hard news. Tonight, Stewart went after D.C. Managing Editor Bill Sammon for opinionated comments that he was certain proved the network’s bias.

On Wednesday night’s Colbert Report, conservative auteur and would-be Bizarro Captain Stubing James O’Keefe came perilously close to ensnaring host Stephen Colbert into his latest sting, an email effort to defer the cost of his so-called NPR sting video through online donations. Colbert saw through the plea as a ruse to associate himself with an unsavory criminal element, but didn’t ask the obvious question: how did O’Keefe compose a five page fundraising email to pay for an NPR video, and not offer his donors a frickin’ tote bag?

Ex-NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has made her first public remarks since her ouster, telling the International Women’s Media Foundation in Washington D.C. that she’s “not done” with a career in media. “I certainly plan to stay in journalism.”

Schiller resigned this month in the messy aftermath of a video “sting operation” conducted by James O’Keefe, which caught two NPR executives on hidden camera making critical comments about the Tea Party.

Ongoing discussions about whether NPR has a liberal bias usually end up revolving around the question of whether the multi-platform news network merits partial funding from governments grants and the (federally funded) Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Now, a deeper look into NPR’s finances shows the nonprofit outlet stands to make a “modest margin” this year.

Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, took to the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to clear up a common misconception about NPR: That most of its audience leans to the left. In fact, Inskeep says, most of the media platform’s radio listeners identify as “middle of the road” or “conservative.”

Congressman Jim McGovern says if Republicans are serious about defunding NPR–instead of focusing their time on more pressing matters–he says “we should be fair and balanced in the way we do it,” and take funding away from Fox News as well.

In a speech on the House floor, Rep. McGovern, of Massachusetts, says cutting funding for NPR over its content is a “lousy” way to make decisions, but “if my Republican friends insist on going down this road,” he said, Fox News should be included as well. McGovern said Fox “continued to employ several prospective Republican candidates” giving them “hours and hours of free airtime.” The representative said federal funds should not be used for advertising on Fox.

Who needs Jon Stewart for ironically detached and comedic commentary on political absurdities? With The Daily Show on break, Rep. Anthony Weiner (a former summer house share buddy of the Comedy Central fake newsman) took to the House floor and fearlessly ripped the House GOP for their vote to defund NPR. And who did Weiner choose to play the victims? None other than Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers the hosts of NPR’s weekend show Car Talk.

James O’Keefe, the self-described investigative journalist behind the NPR sting video, appeared on Reliable Sources and told Howard Kurtz that he was motivated to look into NPR after they improperly handled the firing of former contributor Juan Williams. Kurtz questioned whether O’Keefe’s journalism tactics were unethical, but O’Keefe argued his form of investigative reporting was necessary to seek and find the truth.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has had enough of the “liberal arrogance” when it comes to defending NPR and the government subsidy it receives. NPR’s Nina Totenberg valiantly attempted to defend her organization’s news coverage and disputed they were a “bunch of lefties,” yet Krauthammer wondered “if the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the state?”