Jill Lepore had an excellent column for the New Yorker today in which she laments that the story of the Susan G. Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood has become “obscenely, a story about partisan divisions, as if some parts of women’s bodies are Democratic and other parts are Republican.” It’s almost impossible to argue with this point but, if you needed any further proof, just look to the way certain news outlets are covering the breast cancer organization’s reversal on their previous stance. We’ve collected some of the…uh…”best.”

After blazing to victory in South Carolina on the strength of dynamite debate performances, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has seen his status as a master-debater falter in Florida, along with his poll numbers. Following Monday night’s NBC News debate, Gingrich complained about Brian Williams’ silencing of the audience, and this morning, his campaign is accusing Mitt Romney‘s campaign of packing Thursday night’s audience, like some kind of Republican establishment Snickers™ bar.

Guys, incredible news! Somehow, someone snuck cameras into the headquarters of a bunch of major American news outlets to see how they’re biases inform their reporting on the Occupy protests! What’s even more incredible is that the editors of these outlets all seem to look like the same three popular New York-based comedy actors! And what’s even more incredible than that is that the first site to break this story is the comedy video site Jest!

…ok, maybe this is just a comedy sketch. It’s still pretty darn hilarious.

On Monday, we reported on a new investigation from James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas that seeks to discredit Rutgers Professor Jeff Keefe and the think tank he does research for, The Economic Policy Institute, using surreptitious recordings with a Project Veritas “decoy.”

In an exclusive interview with Mediaite, O’Keefe defended his tactics, and his decision not to publish exculpatory recordings of EPI officials refusing his operative’s advances.

In an interview with Mediaite yesterday, James O’Keefe defended his false assertion that a journalism professor told him that Sam Stein “get(s) sources drunk” to get a story out of them. After our interview, a reader emailed us to point out that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas was accused of doing the very same thing, on steroids. [...]

On Monday, we reported on a new investigation from James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas that seeks to discredit a Rutgers professor and the think tank he does research for, but the main thrust of the piece, as the title “To Catch A Journalist” suggests, was an attack on The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein. In an exclusive interview with Mediaite, O’Keefe defended his false assertion that an old journalism professor of Stein’s accused Sam of getting his sources drunk, and responded to criticism of his reporting.

The opinion news media (and, ahem, those who cover it) have experienced something of a love/hate relationship to the debt crisis. On the one hand, it’s nearly impossible to create engaging, insightful commentary on the fact that something is still not happening. But, then again, the opinion news machine is nothing if not creative in what it elects to report on and the narratives spun out of these headlines. So let’s take a moment and analyze those in the media who came out on top in their coverage of the debt discussions, be that coverage straightforward reporting or subjective analysis, and those who dropped the ball somewhere along the way.

Thanks to our friends at BuzzFeed, here’s a run down of all the funniest, weirdest, most disturbing, and all around best viral stories of the past week!

Researchers from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center developed a survey to find out just how individual Huffington Post bloggers feel about the site’s payment system – especially in light of its $ 315 million Aol deal.

The effects of AOL’s recent acquisition of The Huffington Post on the media landscape is a hotly-debated topic these days, and the ramifications are being felt by AOL’s flagship political blog, Politics Daily. Many current (and some former) PD writers have expressed anxiety about the site’s future under Arianna Huffington‘s control, so Politics Daily Executive Editor Carl Cannon, speaking directly with Mediaite, has responded to some of those concerns.

The Huffington Post is known for, among other things, not paying its contributors. Following news that Aol had purchased HuffPo and taken on its founder, Arianna Huffington, as the head of editorial across several of its blogs, some wondered whether this meant either that HuffPo / Aol would now begin compensating its writers. The answer, for now at least, seems to be simple: Hell no.

Given that Arianna Huffington was appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher just days after her Huffington Post got bought up by AOL for $315 million, it seemed a near-lock that subject would be the highlight of their conversation. But instead, the most eye-opening part of their chat might have been what Huffington didn’t say – namely, that she wouldn’t rule out voting for someone other than Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

Betsy Morgan, The Huffington Post’s former CEO, is heading to The Blaze, Glenn Beck‘s four-month-old website. Political leanings aside, the hire makes sense: Under Morgan’s supervision, HuffPo saw its unique visitors rise from 4 million to a whopping 22 million.

There’s no confusion as to Larry Flynt‘s stances on free speech and the First Amendment. This is a man who wore an American flag as a diaper to prove a point. And now this is a man who’s donating $50,000 to the WikiLeaks defense fund. “Let’s get something straight: Julian Assange is a journalist,” he wrote in The Huffington Post, adding: “And for many of us, he’s a hero.”

What would the world be like if The Huffington Post was actually The Stassinopoulos Report? Well, we might’ve had to have taken StassRepo buses to D.C. And also, Arianna Huffington wouldn’t have been sued by Democratic consultants James Boyce and Peter Daou, who are accusing her of stealing the idea for a website from their designs, a site that would one day become The Huffington Post.

Wow. Just wow. NMA has officially outdone themselves. In creating a video detailing the Rally to Restore Sanity, the Taiwanese darlings of the blogosphere have made something that looks like they just animated the inside of Glenn Beck’s head.

After her very public and somewhat controversial exit from the HuffPo yesterday, Mayhill Fowler has published an article titled “Why I Left The Huffington Post” on her personal blog. The citizen journalist’s post voices her primary complaint: “I want to be paid for my time and effort.” The self-proclaimed clueless journalist started contributing to HuffPo in 2007 without pay, as is the norm at a vast number of new-media sites.

O’Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham continued her week-long quest to get every supporter of the “Ground Zero Mosque” to comment on Imam Rauf’s post 9/11 statements tonight when she brought on Muhammad Ali Hasan, the founder of Muslims for Bush, an organization that is pretty much what it sounds like. While the decibel level of the argument didn’t get as high as the past two fights this week, the tensions weren’t any way lowered.

Progressives and Obama. They love him, they hate him, they should support him, they’re inevitably disappointed in him. We’ve heard it all. Given that we already have a good idea of how conservatives feel about the president, the media seem increasingly interested in analyzing and discussing the relationship between progressive Americans and President Barack Obama. The Nation and Politico offer two interesting takes: blame it on the political structure vs. blame it on bad politics.

Today marks the launch of what the right wing internet has been anxiously awaiting: Tucker Carlson‘s The Daily Caller a.k.a. the conservative answer to The Huffington Post. The D.C. (coincidence?) looks sharp and leads with a marquee story probably hoping to set the tone for the site. In a large, two-tone font: “The Gate Crasher: The Mysteries of Carlos Allen.” But how’s the online peanut gallery reacting?

I’m not the only one who has noticed The Huffington Post’s march toward trashy headlines, but usually, these are confined to gossip or entertainment items that scream things like “WATCH: Nazareth Man Gets Totally CRUCIFIED!” Now, it seems even HuffPo’s enviro-conscious “Green” section has succumbed to this condition…all in the name of clicks. You got us again HuffPost!

Esquire is teasing its upcoming December issue as a new “living, breathing, moving, talking magazine,” using 3-D technology and augmented reality to integrate real images and graphics with both its articles and advertisements. The issue features six interactive “boxes” and at least one Lexus ad in which readers can use their computers to see bonus three-dimensional features. Will this lure advertisers? It better.

Lindsay Lohan — large and unedited. That’s how The Huffington Post Entertainment section kicked off a new feature they call The Big Picture, in which they “present unedited celebrity photos, blown up.” HuffPo will probably win with clicks. And the losers? The makeup artists to the stars — now under more pressure than ever.

As online writing becomes increasingly a part of the mainstream dialogue in America, “blogger” is no longer a dirty word. Some of the best writers of our time operate exclusively on the internet, but some of the most talented still work under the radar. In this in-depth, magazine-length feature, Mediaite has assembled a list of 25 of the best underappreciated bloggers and explained why they matter.

Just how effective is the right wing media at hijacking a topic, blasting controversial sound bites, and stirring widespread outrage, all without a shred of context, debate, or discussion of salient issues? Incredibly, as I found out the hard way.