Public Policy Polling has just released its 3rd Annual TV News Trust Poll, and while the poll found PBS to be the outlet that the most people trust (for the second year in a row), Fox News was the outlet that more people said they trusted most. Asked which single out let they trust least, though, respondents overwhelmingly selected…Fox News. Well, I’m glad we settled that.

In this 2012 presidential campaign cycle, no one is safe– not even Big Bird. Everyone’s favorite avian neighbor came under siege today in a campaign stop in Iowa, somehow, from none other than Mitt Romney, who, in explaining at a public event the importance of reducing spending in Washington, cited the need for PBS to generate its own revenue, and used the beloved bird as an example.

The New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman told The McLaughlin Group host John McLaughlin that he gives President Barack Obama high marks… for following through on a certain previous president’s foreign policy plans.

One of the subplots to last week’s Herman Cain Bad-Press-A-Palooza (bad press that seems to have helped him) was his supposed gaffe in an interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff on Monday night’s Newshour. The clip has widely been reported as demonstrating that Cain did not know that China has had nuclear weapons since 1964, and that he thinks they still don’t. For a week now, I’ve been waiting for someone to point out that Cain indicated no such thing.

The post-sexual harassment Herman Cain media blitz that has kept up all week has done a great deal to understand the workings of the Cain campaign in crisis, but there is one other element of Cain’s platform that seems to be getting hit the hardest by his exposure to the press: his foreign policy credentials. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, Cain essentially said he was ready to declare war on Iran; last night on PBS’s Newshour, he told Judy Woodruff he suspected China was “trying to develop nuclear capability,” despite having nuclear weapons since 1964.

PBS NewsHour gathered together political editor David Chalian and senior correspondents Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff to offer up a little sneak peek of what’s to come in tonight’s CNN / Tea Party Express GOP Debatapalooza.

GOP Presidential candidate Jon Huntsmansat down with PBS NewsHour‘s Jeffrey Brown to discuss the changes he’ll make if he’s elected president of the United States. During the episode, Huntsman reveals that that, if he’s elected, he would “call on all Americans,” even the wealthiest among us, to help repair our struggling economy. But, he clarifies, that might not necessarily mean higher taxes:

As president, I wouldn’t hesitate to call on a sacrifice from all of our people, even those at the very highest end of the income spectrum.I’m not saying higher taxes, but there are contributions they can make too.

Well, here’s a story this weekend that we know for sure is the handiwork of computer hackers. The official website for the US Public Broadcasting Service has been hacked into with the hackers publishing a story (which was finally taken down as this post was being written) about the deceased rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls both being alive and hiding in New Zealand. As silly as that sounds, the hackers have also leaked email addresses and passwords for tons of employees as well as an SQL database with information on a large part of the site.

The Washington Post reports Jim Lehrer, the anchor of PBS NewsHour and the longest-serving network anchor in the country, has decided to step down in June. He will continue to report for the program, and to moderate a Friday segment for the show, featuring a roundtable of journalists. The move ends a run on the program that began back in 1975. “Amid the cacophony of a sometimes shrill media landscape, he has remained the true voice of reason, balance and fairness,” said the National Press Club’s president, Mark Hamrick, when the club gave Lehrer a career achievement award last month.

Bill Moyers – whom you might remember from a number of publications and news programs, including PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal – may be coming back to public television after having supposedly retired around this time last year.

The New York Times has confirmed with executives at PBS that they too were tricked into having lunch with some of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas flunkies. This, of course, means that, like with NPR, they were presumably video taped in secret. So, if you woke up this morning desperately hoping that you could, one day, discover what the senior vice president for development at PBS has to say during lunch conversations with potential donors, then you could be in luck! Hoorah!

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is getting sick of what he has deemed the “liberal obsession” with Sarah Palin. Cornered to comment on the latest Palin news by PBS’ Inside Washington host Gordon Peterson, Krauthammer snarkily remarked on the “weekly segment” on this “one glorious woman” and mocked liberals for suggesting that Palin “is and will always be the only representative of conservatism.”

The anger over the TSA security procedures makes for the perfect ongoing news story. Sure, that “Ground Zero Mosque” thing had public anger, an easy narrative, and racial undertones, this story has public anger, an easy narrative, and sexual undertones! So much better! As such, every news outlet in the country is begging their readers to send them their “best airport stories” over Twitter, mouths watering at being the first to get that inevitable big, viral video of the day. And you just know their fingers are crossed hoping that it involves see through lingerie again.

Odds are the only thing you know about the ceremony for this year’s Mark Twain Award at the Kennedy Center is this: Tina Fey handed it to Sarah Palin. But don’t expect to see that on PBS Sunday when the network airs the awards ceremony. As David Edwards writes on The Raw Story, Fey’s razor sharp jabs at the one-time Alaska governor and media-hyped presidential candidate were cut–for time.

Ever since NPR fired Juan Williams, conservatives have been calling for the federal government to “defund” the media conglomerate once known as National Public Radio. Tonight, Bill O’Reilly took things a step further, saying that the government should cut funding for PBS as well as NPR.

Who’d have guessed. Apparently some PBS watchers are also Sarah Palin supporters. Or at least Sarah Palin sympathizers. Comedian Andy Borowitz, in his short, funny segment that appears at the end of Jon Meacham‘s ‘Need to Know’ PBS news show, this week made fun of Sarah Palin. Specifically he mocked her ‘Palinese’ and speculated what the country would look like when she became president in 2012, per the ‘Mayan Prophecy Weekly’.

You may recall that during a concert at the White House last month, attended by President and Mrs. Obama, Paul McCartney topped off his performance by announcing to the crowd that “it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.” Obama had reportedly left the room before the remark was made, but clip inevitably made the morning show rounds. One place you apparently won’t see the clip is on PBS.

The world of traditional media has overturned in the past decade – and few have ridden the crest of this wave more savvily than Michael Kinsley. As a pundit on CNN’s “Crossfire,” editing Slate, experimenting with the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and now at The Atlantic, Kinsley’s philosophy has been an open desire to speak truth to power, and to bend the boundaries of where and how the media engages with its audience. Philip Bump examines the arc of Kinsley’s career, and just how ahead of the curve that arc has been.

The new PBS show hosted by Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham and NPR’s Allison Stewart, Need To Know, debuted last week, and even PBS’ ombudsman had to admit the reviews were mixed. But no one was as vicious in their critique as Tom Shales of the Washington Post.

Stewart responded today – calling one comment “crude, crass and sexist.”

It’s fair to say that Jon Meacham currently has a LOT on his plate. As you probably have already heard, Newsweek (the magazine that he oversees) was effectively put on the block by its parent, the Washington Post Company last week. Today he published a letter for from the editor outlining the urgent task ahead (though oddly failing to explain exactly what that task was.) Oh, and last week PBS aired the first episode of Need to Know, his new news magazine on PBS. Perhaps its time for Mr. Meacham to focus on just one project at a time?

It appears the mainstream media is slowly catching up to the Glenn Beck phenomenon. This past September Time put him on the cover, last month Barbara Walters included him in her most fascinating people of 2009, today the Wall St. Journal’s online op-ed editor James Taranto has pubbed a longish interview with him. Seems like Beck may not merely be a (fascinating) side show much longer.

As the face of media evolves, it’s important to honor the figures who helped define, shape and set the standards in their industries. These are some of the most prominent members of the media who passed away over the past 10 years. Take a look back with some snippets from their respective New York Times obituaries.

5.7 million people tuned in watch David Letterman on Monday night for the follow-up show to last weeks shocking blackmail/sex-scandal revelations — more than doubling the ratings of late-night rival Conan O’Brien. This is good news not only for Letterman — ratings are the silveriest of linings in TV land — but for Craig Ferguson, whose Late Late Show follows him — and potentially CBS’ The Early Show, depending on how many people fall asleep with the TV on.

Last week Andrew Sullivan apparently asked (pleaded with?) his readers to subscribe to the print version of The Atlantic and within two days the “appeal pulled in 75 percent of the subscriptions that the Web site draws in a typical month.” Wouldn’t it be a funny irony if the power of personal branding is what saves the future of print?

After 26 years and 24 national Emmys, Reading Rainbow‘s butterfly in the sky will cease its long, illustrious journey as the longest-running children’s show on PBS after Mister Rogers and Sesame Street.