media

President Obama is currently speaking at Washington-Lee High School, a luxury school just outside Washington, D.C., about the high cost of education. The president's mission is, we learn from the pool report, "to discuss the cost of college education and to build pressure on Congress to extend the low-interest student loan program that will expire on July 1 unless Congress acts."

The men and women who go the hard yards to cover the White House belong to an organization that calls itself the White House Correspondent's Association. This outfit puts on a little soiree every year, where members can decompress after the tortures of being condescended to, hour after hour, by spokesman Jay Carney.

Yesterday the Washington Post inexplicably published a piece about the Vogue profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad—a profile published in March 2011. It’s inexplicable because it’s old news: Vogue removed the story, titled “A Rose in the Desert,” from its website long ago—and the fact that the glossy magazine was embarrassed by the timing is well known. Only a few weeks later Mrs. Assad’s charming husband went on a bloody rampage that, with about 10,000 dead so far, shows no signs of abating.

There's a profile of the late Andrew Breitbart in the New York Times "Sunday Styles" section by reporter David Carr. Carr's a talented and fair journalist, by Times standards, and the piece is mostly fair enough. But in the middle of it is this striking sentence, or rather this striking parenthesis:

The Romney campaign is none too happy with PolitiFact at the moment, issuing a blistering response to a recent fact checking item on a campaign talking point. As a response to Democrats' "war on women" rehetoric, the presumed GOP presidential nominee's press secretary pointed out that under Obama's presidency, women account for 92.3 percent of the job losses. This kind of statement—a bold claim involving an actual statistic—is catnip to media fact checkers.

Dean Singleton, chairman of the Associated Press board, introduced President Obama this afternoon at a speech to news editors in Washington. But Singleton didn’t just tell the audience the president was the next speaker—the supposed newsman offered lavish praise for the Democratic president.

Over at Washington Monthly, Kathleen Geier writes about how The Ethicist columnist at the New York Times magazine is promoting an essay contest where readers argue that it is, in fact, ethical to continue eating meat. Only it seems that Geier is not amused about who is judging the contest:

Derek Thompson: "The Collapse of Print Advertising in 1 Graph"

Conservative Intelligence Briefing: Michigan exit poll shows primary is way too close to predict

Politico: "How Mitt Romney booked Kid Rock"

The Hill: "TransCanada Corp. to begin construction of Keystone pipeline"

Hot Air: "Dem Rep to constituents on HHS mandate: 'Basically, we’re not looking to the Constitution'”

Tom Maguire: "Politico Sends In The Clowns"

ABC News: "John Edwards Sex Tape Suit Settled, Tapes to Be Destroyed"

Baltimore Sun: "Maryland Senate passes gay marriage bill"

Berlin
The Guardian reported on Friday that Press TV, the English-language news outlet operated by Iran’s clerical regime since 2007, was stripped of its license for violating broadcasting regulations.

Via the twitter feed of Lachlan Markay, somebody at the Post is either having some fun, unburdening their guilty conscience, or perhaps a little bit of both: