Recent problems with the financial system could be used as a reason for regulators to have authority policing social networking sites like Facebook and other types of electronic communication like text messaging. If Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) CEO Richard Ketchum has his way, that's exactly what will happen.

Ketchum appeared on CNBC's Oct. 27 "Closing Bell" in an interview with the network's NYSE floor reporter Bob Pisani from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) annual meeting in New York City. Ketchum explained how the Internet and text messaging are unconventional means of communication that pose problems for regulators.

"With all of our kids, they don't talk by phones or certainly directly to each other anymore," Ketchum said. "They talk through the Internet and they talk through text messaging and they talk through Facebook."

MSNBC's David Shuster declared yesterday's fake Chamber of Commerce presser at the National Press Club the "Best prank of [the] week" on his Twitter page shortly before 5:30 p.m. EDT today. He added a link taking readers to the left-leaning blog Talking Points Memo.

A group of liberal environmentalist activists punked some journalists by throwing a press conference claiming to represent the Chamber of Commerce. In the fake presser, the pranksters claimed that the Chamber was reversing its opposition to so-called cap-and-trade legislation.

In a follow-up Tweet, Shuster added:

The Washington Post's new employee guidelines for the use of online social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have sparked a debate over the proper role of new media for journalists, and the objectivity of major media outlets generally.

The Post's new guidelines, handed down from on high by Senior Editor Milton Coleman, disregard the potential of new media to engage readers in a conversation about the paper's reporting. Rather, the new social media policy attempts to buttress the Post's supposed objectivity, at the expense of journalistic transparency.

The Post's rules forbid employees from "writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility" and prohibit "the discussion of internal newsroom issues such as sourcing, reporting of stories, decisions to publish or not to publish, personnel matters and untoward personal or professional matters involving our colleagues."

UPDATE: Newsbusters's Twitter account has been reactivated.  Follow Newsbusters here.

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NewsBusters’s Twitter account was suspended today by Twitter for an as yet unknown reason.

Conservative social media accounts have been attacked the past few years by liberals who flag them as spam.

Matthew Sheffield wrote in 2008:

Protesting a critic's claim of bias, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer insisted earlier today in a tweet that she "criticize[s] anyone who I think isn't making sense."

"You're just focusing on one side," Brewer added in her reply to a Twitter user who complained that Brewer trashes Republicans "but [has] nothing else to talk about."

The same Twitter user, Carol Reed, urged Brewer to "[w]atch a tape of yourself & you will see it."

Good advice, as our archive of Brewer bias shows plenty of doozies, like:

If the cheers of Columbia University's Class of 2009 are any indication, the future of journalism will be looking for a federal bailout.

Washington Times correspondent Christina Bellantoni live-tweeted today's event, noting the remarks from university president Lee Bollinger appealing for more government-owned media outlets. Bollinger also received "big cheers" for his call for increased spending on public broadcasting.

Here are the relevant tweets from Bellantoni's feed in reverse chronological order (emphasis mine):

Update #2 (16:15 EDT): Greg Hengler of Townhall.com has video of the interview mentioned in my first update. He notes that while Brewer is hot under the collar, the student she talked to didn't seem to care that Obama was not receiving an honorary degree tonight.

Update (14:45 EDT): A few minutes ago Brewer pressed an ASU student for his thoughts on Obama not receiving an honorary doctorate. As usual, she was quite irate at the perceived snub.

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer is bound and determined to maintain a grudge on behalf of President Obama against a university at which he's honored to give the Class of 2009 commencement speech this evening.

Today, via her Twitter account, Brewer picked up on her televised rant from early April [video below page break] about how Arizona State University is neglecting to give President Obama an honorary degree when he delivers the commencement speech there this evening:

Tonight the Pres. gives commencement speech at ASU. I'm still shocked ASU won't give him an honorary degree. Seems rude & illogical.

As NewsBusters contributor Jeff Poor noted on April 10:

Yesterday Media Research Center President Brent Bozell sat down for a chat via Skype with Breitbart.tv "B-cast" anchors Scott Baker and Liz Stephans. You can watch the video here or in the embed below the page break.

The topic: preliminary findings in an MRC study on the media's treatment of President Obama's first 100 days.

Remember how the media told us throughout 2008 that then-candidate Barack Obama had the most "tech-savvy" presidential campaign in U.S. history? And who can forget all the buzz during the transition period about how the president might have to part company with his Blackberry due to Secret Service security worries. To the media, Obama was light years ahead of any Republican when it came to the Web.

Well, with the 100-day mark right around the corner, it seems new media experts are only giving the 44th president a gentleman's C when it come to his communications shop's take on the WhiteHouse.gov Web site and the Obama administration's signature Recovery.gov Web site.

Reports the National Journal's David Herbert, the chief complaints seem to be that the Obama team sees the Web as a propaganda tool, not a way to genuinely engage citizens with their government and its elected chief executive (emphasis mine):

"...i know i'm a journalist, and i should be objective...but she is an ignorant discrace and she makes me sick to my stomach," E! News anchor and managing editor Giuliana Rancic wrote on her Twitter page at 10:01 a.m. EDT today. Rancic of course was referring to Carrie Prejean, who in the interview portion of the Miss USA contest on Sunday evening gave a defense of traditional marriage that riled openly gay contest judge and gossip blogger Perez Hilton.

Rancic later clarified her earlier remarks in a Tweet a few minutes later:

sorry i wasn't clear...i was referring to miss california as a disgrace. life is short. everyone deserves to love & be loved.

The E! network journalist appears to be cribbing from that great philosopher Miley Cyrus, who on April 20 declared:

Going on right now: the first-ever "Twitterview" between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a mainstream journalist. McCain is being interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. You can follow the debate by checking out the @SenJohnMcCain and @GStephanopoulos feeds on Twitter.

Update (12:53 EDT): Below is a transcript of the interview, courtesy of MRC intern Mike Sargent. Sargent also noticed that at least one conservative observing the interview shot a message to Stephanopoulos objecting that Sen. McCain was misrepresenting his votes on the AIG bailout.

MCCAIN: Twitter interview with George S at noon.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: @SenJohnMcCain Happy St Patrick's Day! First things first: How do u tweet -- dictate or type? Blackberry or pc?

Meredith Vieira cracked up "Today" show co-hosts Ann Curry, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker today as she tried, apparently, to make a joke about micro-blogging application Twitter.

The gaffe is somewhat reminiscent to her unintentional use of double entendre in a similar segment in late January.

Video below the fold.:

Washington Times White House correspondent Christina Bellantoni has online conservatives a-Twitter with some overheard snippets of a Helen Thomas interview, including what may well be a racially-tinged joke about Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.).

Around noon today Bellantoni noted via Twitter:

breaking Helen Thomas tells filmcrew Bush worst POTUS in history, "too many people are dead" in Iraq sez Kennedy, Johnson best #whpresscorps

Coming from someone who constantly complains about how many soldiers President Bush "killed" by invading and occupying Iraq, it's odd that Thomas considers two Vietnam era presidents to be among the best presidents in American history.

A few moments later Bellantoni added a tweet that hinted at a racially insensitive crack Thomas may have made about Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R):

Incredibly ridiculous.

There's no other way to describe the over-the-top political correctness that leads a major newspaper to issue a prophylactic apology for an unoffensive cartoon in the anticipation that someone somewhere will raise a fuss.

Yet that's what the Washington Post did yesterday in a correction posted on page A2 of the Sunday edition (via Jossip):

So Gene Weingarten from The Washington Post wrote an article called "Monkey Business" about men and women and their sexual fluidity, based on that New York Times trend piece from a couple weeks ago. But since the title of the article had the word "monkey" in it, and the accompanying picture was of a cartoon monkey, WaPo needed to clear up any misconceptions vis-a-vis The Post cartoon and our current president.

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Earlier today, medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen accidentally insulted colleague Rick "I play it down the middle" Sanchez as "CNN's chief twit" for his frequent use of microblogging application Twitter.

As veteran users of the service know, "tweep" is the preferred term to refer to registered users of Twitter. Likewise, a posting to one's Twitter account is often referred to as a "tweet."

Speaking of which, you can follow NewsBusters , the Media Research Center, and yours truly on Twitter: @NewsBusters, @TheMRC, and @KenShepherd respectively.

CNN's Veronica De La Cruz is looking for biracial Americans planning on attending the Obama inauguration to potentially interview for a documentary project she is working on.

[Update: De La Cruz informed me that the documentary project is separate from her work at CNN]

Posted at her Twitter page a few minutes ago:

Re: Inauguration: If u know anyone who's going -- who is mixed race/ bi-racial and would be interested in being interviewed, pls contact me!

I'm sure De La Cruz won't have trouble finding Obama fans who fit her criteria. If you know of conservative or libertarian critics of Obama who happen to be biracial and plan on attending the inauguration you can let her know on Twitter @VeronicaDLCruz.

Speaking of Twitter, you can follow me there @KenShepherd.

Photo of De La Cruz from an unofficial fan page, VeronicaDeLaCruz.com.

One of the hottest Internet videos during the mortgage and banking crisis has been a YouTube clip titled "Burning Down the House," which outlines the untold story of how liberal Democrats pressured banks and lenders to throw standards out the window and give money to people who couldn't pay it back.

Try watching it now, however, and you won't be able to, thanks to the growing problem of "flag spam," the practice of abusing online filter systems to squelch political speech with which one disagrees.

We've all seen spammers at work in our e-mail inboxes. Experts estimate that 90 percent of all e-mail messages nowadays are spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Luckily for most of us, the majority of it gets filtered out. That's caused the more sophisticated spammers to change course and target a more vulnerable part of the Internet - the hugely popular Web sites like YouTube, Digg and the blogosphere, where anyone can join the discussion by posting videos, essays, reviews and other content.

On PBS's Web site today, ombudsman Michael Getler writes of complaints over an incident during last Sunday's pledge drive.  He describes the cheap shot taken by actor Mike Farrell against vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

According to Joseph Campbell, vice president of fundraising programs, here's what happened:

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.

Wikipedia, the community-edited encyclopedia that anyone can revise, is one of the Web's biggest success stories. What you may not know is that it also has become an important player in the political world.

Started in 2001 on a shoestring budget, Wikipedia now ranks as the ninth most popular Web site in the U.S., according to Internet ratings company Alexa.com, outpacing such "old media" stalwarts as CNN, ESPN and the New York Times. (It's even more popular worldwide, where it is currently the seventh most-read site.)

This popularity makes Wikipedia very interesting in a political context, particularly because its pages are highly regarded by most Internet search engines. Chances are, if you look up the name of most any state or national politician, the Wikipedia entry on him or her will be in your top three results. In some cases, such as those of President Bush or Vice President Cheney, Wikipedia's article actually beats out the official government biography pages.