Huma under fire: NYT Vs. Politico –  NYT‘s Raymond Hernandez writes that Huma Abedin, wife of the most ambitious weiner in New York, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Schlongville), did not disclose how much income she earned in her private consultant role while working as a top advisor for Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. The story rolled in last night around 11:31 p.m. (at least according to a @nytimes tweet as there is no time stamp). In graph three, he cites a Thursday afternoon Politico story published at 4:14 p.m. triple bylined by Maggie Haberman, John Bresnahan and Glenn Thrush. Politico reported the special arrangement that Abedin had with the State Department, but did not report that the information was not disclosed on Weiner’s financial disclosure report. They wrote that the information was not publicly available. Abedin declined to speak to the NYC; Politico‘s story never mentions requesting to speak with her. While Hernandez cites longtime Hillary Clinton press aide Philippe Reines and “an associate of Ms. Abedin,” Politico, meanwhile, cited “a source familiar with the arrangement,” “a friend of hers,” “several sources” and “one source.”

White House Scandalpalooza 

Benghazi Timeline—Rowan Scarborough’s piece in TWT this morning gives an in-depth analysis into the Benghazi scandal. Organized in somewhat of a timeline, the story explains step by step what went wrong from before the attack up until recent weeks when the scandal broke. Read here.

IRS questions unanswered—Politico’s Lauren French and Rachel Bade examine holes in the IRS scandal that have yet to emerge. The piece thoroughly outlines questions the case has left unanswered and why they’re important. Read here.

Scandal ADHD—In a piece in WaPo this morning, Aaron Blake puts the week in scandals involving the IRS, Benghazi, and AP phone records into perspective. Though the scandals have dominated news media this week, not many Americans are paying attention. Read here.

FishbowlDC intern Austin Price contributed to this report.

Like many websites around town, some like to boast their successes. Foreign Affairs has released a “record-breaking” month for April. Tucked into the release amid all that bragging, however, is a line about their readership — 60 percent of which comes from outside the country. The publication has newsstand buyers in 190 countries.

The other stats speak for themselves. For April they received 1,142,383 visits and 2,295,136 page views.

“We set out to make ForeignAffairs.com fresh, relevant, and engaging on a daily basis,” says Lynda Hammes, publisher of Foreign Affairs. “This has elevated our global profile as we attract new online audiences and enjoy increasing repeat traffic from our loyal readers.” Today, nearly 60 percent of visits to ForeignAffairs.com come from outside the United States.

The mag attributes its inflated readership to a number of things, one of which is a app that includes “Foreign Affairs on TV,” a collection of essays and video on the foreign policy dimensions of popular television shows like Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Boardwalk Empire, and Homeland.

“We spend way too much time watching all this stuff too. So to feel less guilty, we went out and got top experts to produce some Foreign Affairs–quality cultural commentary,” said Editor-in-Chief Gideon Rose.

The overnight story of Angelina Jolie having a double mastectomy has resurrected similar stories of national newswomen who relate only too well to the actress.

“Thank God she did it and thank God she talked about it and thank God she got it out there,” said Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin. “She is a great role model!”

Griffin revealed on Fox News radio that some nine weeks ago she had her ovaries and uterus taken out because of the link between breast cancer and other types of cancers.

Also following Jolie’s news is ABC “The View’s” Barbara Walters, who admitted that she, too, had her ovaries removed. As reported by Hollywood Life, she told co-hosts on the show that she had the surgery to prevent cancer. Her sister died of the disease.

Listen to Griffin on Fox News radio here.

National Journal‘s “The Hotline” went under the knife this week for a makeover. In journalistic terms this means an “upgrade” and “redesign.” The upside: The bandages are off and Hotline gets a new look, a user-friendly interface and “powerful” political tracking tools. The downside: Some employees lost their jobs in the process. How many is unclear. We know at least two names of Hotline employees — Chris Peleo-Lazar  and Dan Roem — who had their duties eliminated.

“Fun fact, it’s Dan Roem and my last day at NJ’s Hotline. Loved working here but alas they’re moving to a new system,” Peleo-Lazar wrote FBDC. “Don’t know what’s next. I don’t know exact details of the new thing but they are ending my section entirely.”

NJ Publicist Ben Fishel told FishbowlDC: “A few jobs were eliminated and two people were reassigned to other positions at NJ.” He declined to offer specifics on exactly how many jobs were eliminated.

The new “Hotline”… Read more

Appalling WHCD aftermath — HuffPost has an intriguing first-person account from the wife of a journalist who attended pre-parties with her husband. The woman, Seema Jilani, maintains cops at the Washington Hilton treated her in a racist manner. The worst of it? A cop, who wouldn’t let her downstairs to obtain keys from her husband, remarked, ”We have to be extra careful with you all after the Boston bombings.” Read the entire piece here.

Double take — The Atlantic Wire has the scoop today on a weird split screen interview from Phoenix at the site of the Jodi Arias murder trial.  There’s CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield interviewing HLN’s Nancy Grace on the increasingly gruesome Cleveland kidnapping story. The story insists the networks are trying to make it seem like the reporters are on opposite sides of the globe despite being in the same parking lot. Hey, haven’t we seen those trucks someplace before? If you’re a complete idiot, not to worry. Atlantic Wire points out similar background scenes in excruciating detail. Have a look here.

Meghan McCain at odds with father’s views — The Daily Caller has a piece today on Meghan McCain‘s obvious disappointment with Rep.-elect Mark Sanford‘s win last night. They point out that her father, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), donated to her campaign and that he doesn’t believe that sex is the only criteria for a politician’s ability to serve in Congress. See the story here.

Hmmm what could they possibly be insinuating? This morning Gawker has a blunt story on the unquestionably close relationship between CNN’s Howard Kurtz and Daily Download Editor-in-Chief Lauren Ashburn. They wonder about her having her own office at The Daily Beast, which raised office eyebrows. They crack on the cornball videos produced by Kurtz and Ashburn that have run on the Daily Download. Sam Biddle writes, “Many of the episodes look like they’re filmed in a janitorial closet—perhaps inside the Beast’s digs. It sure looks cozy in there, and we hear the duo were ‘inseparable’ around various DC social and political functions, too.” He concludes, “Heard anything else? Let us know.” Read the full story here.

In an unprecedented move, on Sunday CNN put “Reliable Sources” host Howard Kurtz in a time out and made him answer for his mistakes. To his credit, Kurtz didn’t try to fight the internal decision, despite its horrible awkwardness.

The longtime media critic’s most recent blunder involved Jason Collins, an NBA player who announced that he’s gay. But Kurtz was also forced to answer for other mistakes he has made, including writing that he’d spoken to a congressman when he had spoken to his aide. Even when he learned the truth, he waited months to divulge his error. Another instance involved attributing a quote to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi that had her criticizing President Obama‘s messaging. Only problem was it wasn’t hers. As for Collins, Kurtz insisted in a story last week for The Daily Beast that the NBA player had not mentioned that he had once been engaged to a woman, even though he had told Sports Illustrated as much. Kurtz downplayed his error. Worse, he cracked jokes about Collins in a video with Daily Download Editor-in-Chief Lauren Ashburn. As bad luck would have it, the mistake happened on the day before Newsweek-Daily Beast‘s Tina Brown canned him as Washington Bureau Chief, which Kurtz explained was unfortunate timing. In his own defense, he said the “amicable divorce” had been in the works.

But more unfortunate for Kurtz was the fact that 15 minutes of his own Sunday show would be devoted to NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik (below right) and Politico media blogger Dylan Byers (below left) firebombing him with questions about his mistakes. It was the equivalent of parents siding with the teacher, who, in this case, were right to do so.

And still, it was tough to watch. As we witnessed Folkenflik and Byers gnaw away at Kurtz’s bony corpse, we wondered, how do they feel being cast in the roles of media police and how do they think Kurtz did? Up close, did he appear sincerely remorseful? Are they satisfied with his responses?

“He certainly appeared to me to be visibly contrite,” Folkenflik told FishbowlDC in a phone interview Monday. “I think his audience will have to reasonably think about what they saw and heard and figure out how to absorb what they’ve learned, to incorporate what seemed to be a contrite presentation and evaluate what they think about him going forward.

“It was a very human and humbled moment for him. It’s very difficult to have been in the room with him and asking him these very direct questions without getting the feeling that he was genuinely contrite about the circumstances that created that exchange.”

Byers, no less sharp-tongued than Folkenflik in his questioning of Kurtz, was far less forthcoming about his thoughts about the interview, but we may learn more from him at a later date. Still, we’re eternally grateful he came up with this bold and admirable quote. “CNN made a bold and admirable decision by inviting reporters from outside the network to interview Howie on his own show, and I’m grateful to Howie for allowing that to happen,” he told FBDC.

Meanwhile, NPR’s forthcoming and frank Folkenflik told us he noticed… Read more

Daily Beast‘s story about female trepidations about pooping at work is leaving a lot of track marks as yet another story emerges. Most notably there was Gawker‘s valiant attempt to guess which female TV anchor takes a 10-minute hike to poop in private. No doubt they are the feces experts — they wrote endlessly about Arianna Huffington‘s alleged pooping habits, a pig pooping and in 2011 they published their own guide to pooping at work. Next we had a male White House reporter and digital operative cracking prepubescent jokes about it. New York Magazine’s Maureen O’Connor (who once called me a skank because she’s that kind of a feminist) weighed in by becoming something of a a poop cheerleader for women in the workplace. “Go poop in your office bathrooms, everyone,” she wrote in her reaction piece. “It’s what our feminist foremothers would have wanted. Every woman deserves a poop of her own.”

And now, HuffPost‘s Emily Peck, Managing Editor of HuffPost-Business, unloads on Daily Beast for its tasteless story. Peck writes about what really happens in the women’s room – because it certainly isn’t women fearing their own bodily functions. To be sure, it’s so much more than going #2. She writes, “I met one of my closest friends in the ladies’ bathroom five years ago when I was pregnant, working for a male boss and surrounded by a team of dudes and single women who were mostly clueless about what to say to an expecting woman.”

She and the also pregnant co-worker became “soulmates” as they discussed how fat they were getting and how hard it was to buy cute clothes. Later they would bond over the office “lactation room.”

Touched? Read the full story here.

In the “Shameless Plugs” portion of MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown, MSNBC Political Analyst Michael Steele announced that he will begin writing for theGrio.com.

Perception is everything, right? And lately, Real Clear Politics has been trying something new.

As Washington Editor Carl Cannon sends out his sometimes sleep-inducing morning history lessons, a regular publicist named Christina Paulos is now sending out an exact replica of the news outlet’s original news content minus the nod to history buffs. Hey, we get that some readers may want relatively long reads on the minutia of how and when Jackie Robinson made his debut at Fenway Park (this included multiple days worth of Robinson coverage), when Abraham Lincoln took a bullet, when the Titanic sank and the origins of the song, “This Land is Your Land.”

But unlike Cannon’s, RCP‘s original content morning email from Paulos, whose official title is “Marketing and Communications Coordinator,” is… Read more

A concerted effort to expand your horizons and foster positive familial relations by bringing you highlights from the company’s other Fishbowls and other blogs.

FishbowlNY: Happy Birthday to NYT media scribe David Carr‘s twin daughters who turn 25 today. The site resurrects a raw essay by Carr from 2008 in which he candidly discusses the girls and his former drug addiction.

FishbowlLA: Ian Zering and the Chippendales? FishbowlLA brings us this dollop of joy about the former “Beverly Hills: 90210″ star who this summer will host the “Chippendales Revue” in Vegas. Let’s hope he’s not fat for it, as TMZ recently charged. Read here.

TVNewser: Is there enough coverage of Kermit the abortion provider? We’re not sure, but there appears to be enough coverage of the lack of coverage on Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Nonetheless, our sister site brings us the news that FNC host Kimberly Guilfoyle will be in the courtroom this afternoon and will report back to “The Five.” Kermit the frog can’t be happy about any of this.