So much for romance. A video broadcast on Canadian television Thursday shows the web-legendary “kissing couple” from the riots in Vancouver a week ago were actually knocked to the ground by riot police just before the photo was taken, thereby squeezing the last bit of mystery out of the stunning photo that seemed at first to show an oblivious man and woman in a passionate embrace as the city went to Hell all around them (and all over hockey, no less). Well, so much for that. Thanks a lot, internet.

Well, that’s odd. Last night, the AMC murder mystery, The Killing, ended its first season with an episode critics are calling an “absolute trainwreck” (and that’s much nicer than what the Internet commenters are saying). That’s not the odd thing. In fact, it would be lovely if we lived in a world where a crappy TV show was considered “odd” and not, y’know, the norm. No, what’s odd is that the New York Times wrote up a review of the season and the finale that provided spoilers for the ending…and they spoil an ending that didn’t actually happen.

During an appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Keith Olbermann casually amplified completely unsubstantiated rumors about House Speaker John Boehner, rumors which have thus far avoided repetition by most reputable news organizations. During a conference call Friday morning to discuss the unveiling of Countdown II: Electric Boogaloo, Olbermann talked about the benefits of freedom from a corporate behemoth, saying that when preparing for the new show, he had to “stop myself from stopping myself.”

The New York Times‘ Julie Bosman reports Rep. Michele Bachmann has agreed to a deal to write a memoir, set to be published by Sentinel, described by the Times as “a conservative imprint at Penguin Group,” citing people familiar with the negotiations. The book, to be co-written withJohn Fund, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is set to hit bookstores in the fall:

CBS News wants you to know that reporters at The New York Times, Mediaite, The Huffington Post and Entertainment Weekly all got it wrong in comparing Scott Pelley‘s first week as anchor of The CBS Evening News to the final weeks of Katie Couric‘s time in the chair. As we put it yesterday, “it’s too early to fairly judge the CBS Evening News‘ transition from Katie Couric to Scott Pelley in terms of ratings, but in his first week on the job, Pelley largely held on to the viewers Couric had, but seems to have lost some of the viewers who tuned in for the post-Couric newscasts with interim anchor Harry Smith.”

I suppose Vanity Fair readers might be the sort to be interested in the family life and personal musings of Bill Keller and his wife, as well as the type of readership for whom someone like Keller is something of a celebrity, his personal life being as newsworthy as his professional choices.

I’m not a Vanity Fair reader so, while I understand, somewhat, the interest, I find Gilbey Keller’s piece indicative of something that trouble me in media, even though, by covering it, I’m a part of the problem. The angst!

The fact is that Gilbey Keller’s piece, while interesting and moving, sure, isn’t just one wife’s look at her husband’s work and its impact on their family. It’s a piece about a well-known man with a well-known job whose family is, now, also known.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith says it’s insulting for outgoing New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to call Fox’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan “cynical,” as he did back in March. In an interview at the New York Press Club, Smith was asked about those comments. “I don’t enjoy being insulted by people who talk in generalities,” Smith said to journalist Rich Lamb. “My guess is that the people on his opinion page don’t get that kind of broad and sweeping review.”

Few people in television today have the stature and living-legend-ness of Dick Ebersol, who’s run NBC Sports since 1989 and who has reportedly resigned today after failing to reach agreement on a new contract. The New York Times cites sources close to the negotiations who say Ebersol pushed hard for certain parts of a new contract, including salary requirements, but new majority owners Comcast resisted. The Times reports Ebersol’s decision came after a morning meeting with Comcast executives that led to a 10 a.m. meeting where the longtime NBC executive announced to staff he was leaving:

As first reported by Mediaite, Morning Joe executive producer Chris Licht has agreed to leave MSNBC for CBS News, where he will become vice president of programming for the news division, according to The New York Times.

According to the Times‘ Brian Stelter, the hiring of Licht is intended to be a boost to a news division that trails its competition:

The New York Times has released parts of a statement from the adult sons of Osama bin Laden condemning the American mission that ended their father’s death. The statement was sent to the paper by Jean Sasson, an American who helped Omar bin Laden, one of the sons, write the memoir Growing Up bin Laden in 2009. In that book, the son described his eventual rejection of his father’s violent tactics. As such, he and his brothers (the statement apparently does not specify which of the terrorist’s children contributed) say they must also reject the American government’s violent retaliation.

The New York Times is reporting that Christina Norman, head of the four-month old Oprah Winfrey Network, has been dismissed. As Brian Stelter reports, “Peter Liguori, the chief operating officer for Discovery Communications, will take over the channel on an interim basis. Mr. Ligouri’s appointment is effective immediately and will likely last into the fall, if not longer.”

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan says she thought she was going to die that night in Tahrir Square. “For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands,” Logan tells The New York Times in her first public comments about the brutal attack. Logan tells the Times the attack lasted 40 minutes and involved 200 to 300 men. She will talk about it on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

Tom Zeller has left his job as the NYT‘s energy to take on the role of the Huffington Post’s senior reporter, energy and environment. According to the site’s founder, Arianna Huffington, Zeller will be charged with covering “the economic and social implications of energy and climate policy, including the impact on the health of our communities.”

This makes Zeller the third big name that has left the New York Times for HuffPost after national editor Tim O’Brien and business editor Peter Goodman. And with good reason, apparently: according to a source at the paper, the move is “all about the money.”

As The New York Times reported, it was a banner year for G.E.–$14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States, and a federal tax bill of exactly zero dollars. Pretty interesting story, and it’s sparked a lot of debate (even a Twitter feud between G.E. and The Times), but somehow it didn’t quite fit the bill when the folks at NBC News sat down to pick stories for the network’s flagship newscast, NBC Nightly News.

The Libyan government released four New York Times journalists on Monday. The journalists are expected to reveal the conditions of their captivity later today.

The journalists, Anthony Shadid, The Times’s Beirut bureau chief; two photographers, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario; and a reporter and videographer, Stephen Farrell, were captured six days ago while reporting in the eastern Libyan city of Ajdabiya. The Times reports the four were released into the custody of Turkish diplomats and have crossed safely into Tunisia:

/a>Four New York Times journalists missing in Libya since Tuesday have been found in government custody and will be released today. Muammar Gaddafi‘s son, Seif Islam el-Gaddafi, in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, accused the journalists of entering Libya illegally.

The New York Times has announced that four of its journalists are missing in Libya, where they were working, covering the conflict that has roiled the country. According to a post on the paper’s Media Decoder blog, editors in New York lost contact with the journalists on Tuesday, and have since received “second hand reports” that the reporting team “in the port city of Ajdabiya had been swept up by Libyan government forces.”

CNN has aired stunning video of the tsunami that hit Japan overnight, showing a wave of water carrying ships–even burning buildings. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan on Friday, triggering tsunamis and sending a massive body of water filled with debris hurtling onto land.

The New York Times has described the waves as “walls of water” that “whisked away houses and cars in northern Japan, where terrified residents fled the coast. Trains were shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted. A ship carrying more than 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyodo News reported. A fire broke out at the nuclear plant in Onagawa, but Japanese officials said it was extinguished.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie‘s rising star power has earned him a New York Times review of his public statements over the last year, and the Times comes very close to calling Christie a liar. In a carefully worded story by Richard PÉREZ-PEÑA, the Times reviewed Christie’s public statements over the past year and determined “some of them do not hold up to scrutiny.” As Perez-Pena writes, Christie’s “misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker.”

As many have pointed out, there are zero black acting nominees for the Oscars this year. The New York Times did an article on the subject entitled “Hollywood’s Whiteout”, in which they discussed the very small amount of winners over the years. They listed every one…except for Whoopi Goldberg. And don’t think she didn’t notice. On today’s View, Goldberg lashed out at the Times for its “sloppy journalism” going so far as to bring her Oscar to the set to prove that, yes, it does exist.

Russia Today, a government-financed satellite news network, has aired a report linking the suicide bomb attack on the Domdedovo Airport in Moscow Monday with an American video game. According to the report, the airport attack “mirrors” a scenario found in the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which includes a dramatized commando raid on a Moscow airport.

There are many ways you could have heard about the TV show Skins? You could be from England where the show originally became (and still is) a huge sensation. You could watch MTV where a new remake just premiered. You could be a New York subway passenger and, therefore, someone who has spent the past month getting leered at by the half-naked cast of said remake in thousands of ads. Or perhaps you read the New York Times this morning and learned that the show is SO DAMN RACY that MTV execs worried that they’d be arrested for child porn! Uh huh. Sure.

Conan O’Brien has given a revealing interview to The New York Times‘ Bill Carter, talking about the move from NBC’s Tonight Show to his current perch as host of Conan on TBS.

“Everything has worked out great for me,” O’Brien says, insisting he’s come a long way from this time last year, when he made the decision not to move Tonight to midnight, and was forced from NBC. O’Brien says the emotions of 2010 have settled. “We all know what happened. Life’s short. I’ve got a family and I’m really happy here, so I don’t think about it too much.”

Well, we all knew it would happen. Once a bunch of people get shot, it’s only a matter of minutes before The Left jump to their feet and run to their Nanny-Mobiles to take away our guns. That’s not it, however. This time, they also want to ban threatening “language or symbols!” Glenn Beck thinks that’s just a fine idea, and to help out, he’s going to list some of the most dangerous symbols out there so we can get straight to the bannin’. We can start with the most violent image around: the Crucifixion.

On CNBC’s Squawk Box Thursday, Rick Santelli ranted about members of Congress–and members of the media–who’ve criticized the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives. In an amazing display of sarcasm, Santelli went off on the critics–including The New York Times–who’ve objected to the reading of the Constitution as either too expensive or too self-indulgent.