You've come a long way, baby!

Brian Williams, call your agent...

A little more than six weeks after the death of Walter Cronkite, it's announced that former Nixon aide Diane Sawyer will take over as anchor of the ABC World News Tonight nightly newscast. Your move, Jeff Zucker.

How 20/20 landed La Toya without paying!

The network news organizations don't pay for interviews. When one of them lands a great "get"-- meaning an in-demand interview subject-- its because of their powers of persuasion and the confidence their integrity inspires. Yeah, right. If you believe that, we've got a great health care reform bill that will solve everything. Network news operations from the Today show to 60 Minutes pay for interviews-- although they use very creative methods to get around having to admit it. Our pal the Rumor Rat has the latest example as it looks at the "coincidence" of La Toya Jackson guest-hosting ABC's Barbara Walters show, The View, while agreeing to give "her first one-on-one" interview to Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20-- and finds it's no coincidence at all.

In fact, it's what we've been telling you-- and what the networks have been denying-- for the past ten years.

They pay.

Writes The Rat:


"How's this for coincidence: LaToya Jackson is recruited to co-host ABC's The View for two days at almost exactly the same time she decides to give her first one-on-one U.S. television interview to "20/20" which airs on the same network.

"Not buying it? Neither are we...

"A source tells The Rat that ABC, which 'never pays for interviews,' has worked out a deal with Jackson whereby she's paid a much higher-than-normal fee for co-hosting The View.

"In exchange, she throws in a 'free' interview with 20/20..."

That's how they do things at the networks. And that's another reason Rumor Rat is becoming a go-to site for lots of influential people in the media. While Perez Hilton slips dangerously, posting a surprising number of day-old and older used stories and the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com becomes more irrelevant with its subliterate, crass childishness, Rumor Rat is having great fun taunting both of the mainstream-backed phonies while making great use of the sources it seems to have in every network newsroom and infotainment show studio office.

Read the rest of Rumor Rat's story here.

ABC & NBC move Farrah cash-ins to tonight

We reported exclusively yesterday on the hypocritical tabloid war between ABC News and NBC News over the right to suck as many ratings points as possible out of Farrah Fawcett. With Farrah's sad death, they moved their plans forward:

NEW YORK (AP) — ABC and NBC are airing special tributes to Farrah Fawcett.

ABC's "20/20" will air a Barbara Walters Special, "Farrah's Love," Thursday at 10 p.m. Eastern. At the same hour, "Dateline NBC" will air "Farrah Fawcett: The Life and Death of an Angel." Friday at 9 p.m.,

NBC will rebroadcast "Farrah's Story," a two-hour documentary about Fawcett's battle with cancer that originally aired last month.

Of course, with the death of Michael Jackson trumping all, the network plans may change again.

ABC News helps rehabilitate & polish Sarah Palin

ABC News is helping the Republican Party launch its cleaned-up sanitized phony version of the extremist right wing Sarah Palin to the American public and make seem as safe and sane and ready for the job, and in fact heralds its role in the spin campaign in a news release about her interview that they're milking for two days and turning into a prime time television special:

"Palin defended a previous statement in which she reportedly characterized the war in Iraq as a 'task from God.'

"Gibson quoted her as saying: 'Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.'"

"But Palin said she was referencing a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln.

"'I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.'"

The words weren't "reported." Sarah Palin is on tape saying them. Shes been holed up for days with GOP experts, consultants, hypnotists and hacks, programming her to her to say whatever it is they want to put in her mouth and talk away her past. And you can decide whether she had Abraham Lincoln in mind or is some Republican Party hack found a way to spin it in that direction by running all her words through a database and seeing whose speeches came out:

Sarah Palin isn't Britney Spears.

Running for vice president of the United States, she shouldn't have the luxury of getting to choose a folksy rumpled old newsman to toss questions for her carefully-rehearsed interview answers, and then wrap it in a one-hour entertainment special that will show her in chummy B-roll shots and present her a way that obscures most all of the controversies and makes seem safe and prepared to lead this nation.

She's not. ABC News should have demanded she face a panel of journalists who can parry and thrust and not accept the party line. Instead, they're aiding in the scam.