The Associated Press has huffily declined to cover tonight's Fox News Channel GOP "debate" in South Carolina on the grounds that Fox won't let it take photographs during the debate—only before and after. But it does cover presidential addresses under precisely the same conditions.

The Associated Press' Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have a breathtaking-but-sadly-unsurprising story detailing the CIA's habit of promoting the very people responsible for the Agency's most spectacular fuck-ups. The analyst responsible for illegally abducting, drugging, sodomizing, and beating a completely innocent man because she thought he was someone else? She's running the hunt for bin Laden now. The guy who let a prisoner freeze to death in Afghanistan? He oversees spying operations in the Middle East.

A judge yesterday dismissed copyright lawsuits between appropriating "street artist" Shepard Fairey and the non-profit Associated Press over an image of Barack Obama that Fairey lifted and profited from. The judge cited a "suggestion of settlement" for his decision. [Image:AP]

A while back, we filed a Freedom of Information Law request looking for e-mails between New York Gov. David Paterson's flacks and a bunch of reporters. The governor's office tried hard to keep them secret, but we finally got them.

After "rather lengthy negotiations" to sell pictures for captioning by the users of I Can Haz Cheezburger, the Associated Press pulled out, citing concerns over "journalistic integrity." Replied the Cheezburger Network, "Oh plz, dey juss wanted moar moneys."

Fox News is moving to the front row of the White House Briefing Room, beating out Bloomberg and NPR to take an empty spot occasioned by the retirement of longtime Hearst reporter Helen Thomas. And the AP moved somewhere, too!

The Alaskan town of Wasilla is home to some pretty amazing people, like Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston. And now the town's Alaska Distillery is rolling out a new Smoked Salmon Flavored Vodka. The first batches were described as "greasy."

The AP's opinionated Washington editor Ron Fournier will become editor-in-chief of the National Journal Group.

BP is setting up a $50 billion fund to pay for the Gulf oil spill, according to unnamed sources in London's Sunday Times. $10 billion would come from a bond sale, and $20 billion each from banks and asset sales.

There is a funny Internet video of Justin Bieber running into a glass door in Frankfurt. The AP wrote an entire article about it. There's not much else to say about this. Click through for the article and the video.

On Friday Palin lied — she took a quote from an Obama speech out of context and used it to imply that the President doesn't like America as much as real Americans. Now the AP have lent her their credence.

Upset that Wisconsin high schools are teaching comprehensive sex ed to students, Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth says he will prosecute anyone who follows a state law that requires schools to teach students about contraception. Progressivism is destroying America!

What does Yahoo's new style book offer that you can't get from your old AP Style Guide? Tips on search engine optimization and the "on-screen placement for a top story." Welcome to the glorious future of language.

Yahoo Finance has AP pumping out 500 often-crappy stories per day, says this update.

The Associated Press has said it's "mad as hell" at internet portals. Yet the wire service's pandering to one major online client is said to be severely taxing reporters and undermining editorial quality.

Bloomberg News staffers no longer have the market on fear and loathing cornered: Informants tell us that high-stakes monitoring of reporters' performance has poisoned the atmosphere at Reuters and the Associated Press business desk, too.

Reuters's Martin Howell sent this memo to staff after the financial wire reportedly tied its internal records of scoops to reporter pay. Attempts to file such "Beats and Exclusives" records are expected to mushroom.

Important AP news analysis: is Barack Obama sleepy? He gets three hours less sleep a night than Bush and he stayed up until 1 a.m. one night!

The Associated Press asked editors and news directors to vote for their top news stories of 2009. They asked the same of the general public on Facebook. What do we learn when we compare the results?

If you're not already at the airport trying to smash your way to the front of a ticket line, you're probably not visiting relatives this Thanksgiving. You need an excuse besides "they are annoying." The AP has a bunch!