What did the CEO of General Electric say about black people two weeks ago? The Black Corporate Directors Conference may have thought it was doing Jeff Immelt a favor by keeping his comments on race off the record, thus allowing him to speak more freely and so forth. But now that Immelt's statements to CNN's Soledad O'Brien and other conference panelists are the subject of damaging gossip, the hush-hush arrangement is keeping O'Brien and others from publicly denying anything. And that, fairly or unfairly, just lends the rumors more credence. Here's what a tipster told Jossip about Immelt's remarks:

Mort Zuckerman just appeared on CNN a few moments ago to discuss the meltdown on Wall Street and the Fed's decision to keep the interest rate unchanged. Anchor Rick Sanchez then proceeded to thank Mort for calling in and volunteering to appear on the air. Self-promotion: It's not just for Julia Allison!

Congratulations to the John McCain campaign, which has now officially been told off on all three big cable news networks! Attached is a video of MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell taking some hard swings at McCain's sacrificial spokesman, Tucker Bounds, about campaign lying Monday. Also attached: Video of Fox News's Megyn Kelly doing the same thing on right-leaning Fox News Channel. Wow. Remember when CNN did this to Bounds, so McCain cancelled a Larry King interview in a snit? Guess that won't work anymore. Bounds has become a human piñata like Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan before him, as the media hold him responsible for the crimes of his boss, who they can't get at. It's awesome to see, but still all too rare — on all the networks. Click through to watch a compilation video of Bounds getting creamed.

In the event you haven't yet seen this clip from CNN this morning and you're either a) really depressed about the demise of Lehman Brothers and need a little cheering up; or b) you get really turned by watching unattractive men going at it on the streets of Manhattan, have a look at this clip of some on-camera shenanigans outside the offices of Lehman Brothers earlier today. [The Observer now reports it was a prank for Howard Stern's show.] Video after the jump.

The lovable left-centrists at The New Republic look upon the middling political coverage of CNN and declare—it's good! It just may be the for-real best political team on television, Greg Veis declares. His primary justification for this claim is their use of technology, which means the stupid wall-of-tvs behind Wolf Blitzer in the situation room and the neat iPhone thing John Roberts manhandles on primary nights. The iPhone thing is a cute if needlessly flashy way of displaying useful information, yes, but in trying to expand those innovations into a claim of CNN's superiority to the hackery of Fox and MSNBC, Veis makes a compelling argument that CNN is basically everything wrong with contemporary political discourse. Join us on a trip into the land of politics as parlour game!

It can be hard to sift truth from myth from conspiracy theory when it comes to Sarah Palin, even if that's what you're paid to do. But one would hope a professional journalist's natural skepticism would be piqued by the now-notorious Photoshop job at left of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin holding a rifle next to a swimming pool while wearing a bikini. Too good to be true! But Lola Ogunnaike, entertainment reporter for CNN's American Morning, seems to believe the image is authentic. Yesterday she told Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz that Palin should maybe avoid posing with guns like this, because it might come back to bite her in the ass:

There are only two explanations for the sieg-heiling image of Sarah Palin that appeared briefly on CNN's website earlier this morning: a mischievous web producer thought to make a connection by photo selection between the Republican vice-presidential nominee and right-wing rabble-rousers of an earlier era; or he or she was so entirely clueless as to miss the allusion. Either way, the choice of image was clearly an embarrassment to a cable news channel which is already under attack from the McCain campaign for aggressive questioning and perceived bias. The front page of CNN.com was changed within minutes; but not before one of our tipsters grabbed a screenshot.

Finally, it's come to this: McCain is pulling out of an interview with professional softballer Larry King, because King's CNN peer Campbell Brown accidentally asked McCain proxy Tucker Bounds some tough questions about Sarah Palin's readiness to be commander in chief. (As we said before! The media forgives everything besides violating your own narrative!) This will teach Larry to keep everyone else at the network in line! Here are some of the many many lies John McCain's increasingly whiny campaign is accusing the liberal media of spreading: First of all, every single word of today's Elisabeth Bumiller story on Sarah Palin. All of it is FICTION, they say! Like that thing about how she was a member of that secessionist party because she attended their conference and her husband was a member of their party until be became an "independent" in the '90s? That is false because Palin has been a registered Republican since 1984. More:

"CNN President Jon Klein [said he] declined to hire Maddow because he found her 'predictable.'" [Washington Post]

Now that Hurricane Gustav seems to have safely blown past New Orleans and Baton Rouge, we can turn our attention to ridiculing TV journalists who pointlessly risked life and limb to set up more of those clichéd, wind-whipped hurricane-reporting shots. Even CNN can't resist making fun of those guys, and it employs half of them. The Washington Post said storms tend to produce a "High Chance of Blowhards" and added that "no one covers a house fire by rushing into the burning building, or reports on a war by doing stand-ups in the middle of a tank battle." True, but that's just because there are firemen and soldiers to keep journalists out of those dangerous situations. They'd totally shoot there if they could! Click the video icon to watch some of the most insane moments so far.

CNN isn't the only news network with its own temporary restaurant set up for the Democratic National Convention. But it is the only one with a menu certified by Danny Meyer. The dining impresario's Union Square Hospitality was tapped by the marketing agency Civic Entertainment Group to craft the menu for the "CNN Grill." Don't expect to see Meyer in person—he's in Italy at the moment, although he dispatched his deputy Richard Coraine to stand in for him and says he plans to make it to the Republican convention himself. And don't expect any fireworks from the menu of pub grub. After the jump, Danny and chef Michael Romano's official menu, including "CNN fries" and a tuna salad sandwich.

Hey, remember that CNN freelancer who was looking for people bartering sex to get their masters thesis edited or kitchen renovated or taxes done or whatever? It was kind of an uphill battle, since the freelancer ruled out using anonymous sources. But she still managed to find one sex trader! It all started with a young a college coed spending a semester in hot, steamy Brazil, dying for the rainforest tour no one would give her — until she met a native busboy at the local resort. And then... (cue steamy music)

Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention in about an hour. It's the first thing any reasonable number of people will care about at the big political show in Denver. When the speech ends, and talking head spin mode begins, everyone should remember the TV people are completely desperate to conjure news at the pointless, made-for-media convention. Here's some evidence, in the form of a CNN segment that seems to be hinting that Pepsi controls the Obama campaign and entire Democratic party, because of its logo.

Here's Lou Dobbs, CNN immigrant-hater, complaining about how the entirety of the press—besides him!—is totally, completely in bed with Barack Obama. He's right, of course. Except that the media attention is so self-defeating, twisted, and unhelpful that it's facile to paint it as a neat little example of liberal bias. Also what the hell is he still doing on CNN? Everyone else on the network seems embarrassed to be associated with him. Him and Jack Cafferty should have a show together. A Broadway show! Because then we would never see it.

Hah. So CNN rearranged its national bureaus, leaving fewer reporters in their main bureaus and shipping staffers off to smaller cities to, ostensibly, provide more coverage of more cities at a lower cost. Many former Chicago reporters now find themselves reporting full-time from terrible places like Columbus and Minneapolis. So, according to Fox News, that means CNN HATES CHICAGO. They took out a totally fair and balanced full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune about this! News Corp properties are always so IN YOUR FACE about their competitors, right? How far are we from the Wall Street Journal hiring someone to climb the Times building and unfurl a banner that says, like, "Pinch Sulzberger's a Pussy"? [TVNewser]

Barack Obama's campaign has been the most successful end-run of the mainstream media machine in American politics. But the senator's plan to text-message his announcement of a running mate at 3 a.m. Saturday —- deliberately out of step with the MSM news cycle — was beaten to the punch by a collusion of two factions: Experienced reporters out to get the scoop, and people close to the politicians who didn't get the gig.

It's time for the Democratic National Convention in lovely, boring Denver! Are you psyched? Journalists are! Because they're going to be drunk for a week, thousands of miles from home! Just two of the many venues in which hardworking journalists will be getting their drink on the over the next few days are the bars taken over by the cable news networks. Fox's hip FOX Experience and the down-home CNN Grill. Which one looks more like the worst possible place you could ever get drunk? Let's see!

• People's $14 million purchase of the Brangelina pics worked out nicely in the end. The issue sold 2.6 million copies, making it the mag's best-selling issue in seven years. [WWD]

The supposedly liberal news media hired talking heads like George Stephanopoulos and James Carville from Bill Clinton's presidential administration, but they were even more eager to Hoover up "talent" from the conservative Bush White House two elections later. In the image at left, our Photoshop wizard Steve Dressler shows which top Bush staffers have landed job as commentators, and with whom. Hint: It's not just Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page hiring these Republican operatives. Click through to see the full-sized image.

As first noted by the tenacious John Edwards-hounders at Deceiver.com, it seems Times readers are mighty interested in the philandering Democrat, even though many journalists said they simply shouldn't care about the scandal. As shown in the screenshot above, "John Edwards" is the most popular search term over the past week on nytimes.com. If the newspaper was crass enough to actually shape coverage around such reader-interest metrics, it might admit as miscalculation the assertion by the Times' campaign coverage editor last week that while the Edwards scandal was "fair game for journalism," it wasn't a "high priority" because "there are a lot of big issues.... and we have finite resources." After the jump, CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin on why her viewers neither wanted nor needed Edwards scandal coverage: