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Cheney's Choice of Brit Hume as Confessor Draws Criticism (LAT)
In an interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, the vice president called last Saturday's accidental shooting "one of the worst days of my life," but said he was certain that he handled it correctly by waiting nearly a day to make it public. NYT: Cheney's choice of Fox News for his first TV interview since the incident is telling, writes Alessandra Stanley. WaPo: Hume was Cheney's choice for a "straight shooter." CSM: Media frenzy intensifies. Salon: The White House's secretive response to Cheney's misfire cannot be understood apart from the society of Texas royalty. Slate: Cheney's assault on the public's right to know. USAT: "[Fox News is] the house organ for the Republican Party," said CNN political analyst Paul Begala, a former Clinton aide. "It's like Khrushchev giving an interview to Pravda."

Icahn to Step Up TW Push (NYT)
Carl C. Icahn will try to escalate his fight to break up Time Warner today by proposing a slate of directors that includes Dale M. Hanson, the former chief executive of a powerful pension fund, the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

Investment Firm Backs Guild's Bid for Knight (San Jose Mercury News)
The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America announced Wednesday that the investment firm of California supermarket magnate Ron Burkle will help finance its attempt to buy nine unionized Knight Ridder newspapers.

American Idol Crushes NBC's Olympics Coverage in Ratings (Mediaweek)
It was the second time in five nights of Olympics coverage that regularly scheduled shows on competing networks outperformed the Olympics telecast. ABC dramas Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy outrated the Olympics in all demos but males on Sunday night.

Amazon Plans Music Service To Rival iPod (WSJ)
The world's top online retailer is in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service that would include Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs.

Bush Administration Planning Big PR Push in Iran (Guardian)
The Bush administration made an emergency request to Congress yesterday for a seven-fold increase in funding to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government, in a further sign of the worsening crisis between Iran and the West.

NYC's Alt-Weekly Turmoil (Boston Phoenix)
Mark Jurkowitz: The turmoil at the New York Press and Village Voice reflects a similar uncertainty about their editorial missions. It's a sure indicator that the alt-weekly business, despite its long-entrenched emphasis on politics, pop culture, and stylistic license, is struggling for relevance.

At the Whim of the Financial Press (CJR Daily)
Edward Colby: The financial press wields incredible power. A single negative story can cost a corporation billions, and a journalist's armchair analysis can cause wild swings in a company's stock. Increasingly, reporters who cover the markets don't just write the news; they are the news.

Plagiarism 2.0 (Baltimore City Paper)
LexisNexis CopyGuard, a new software product that promises to reduce the plagiarism-detection process to just hours, uses iParadigms' "pattern-matching" engine to compare each submitted document to more than 6.1 billion documents in LexisNexis and web databases.

The Notion of Truth and Travel Literature (World Hum)
Tom Bissell: The demands for unvarnished fact in nonfiction greatly differ for each genre of nonfiction. Newspaper writing is different from magazine writing, and travel writing is different from memoir.

Movers and Shakers Get Hustlers (Salt Lake Tribune)
Tucked in a conservative-looking manila envelope, the latest edition of Hustler regularly goes to all 535 members of Congress. Sent by Larry Flynt it comes like clockwork, free of charge, despite efforts to have it stop.

PBS Panel on Armenian Genocide Stirs Protest (WaPo)
Thousands of Armenian Americans are protesting the Public Broadcasting Service's planned panel-discussion program about Turkey's role in the deaths of Armenians during and after World War I because the panel will include two scholars who deny that 1.5 million Armenian civilians were killed.

Fundamentalists Don't Have a Problem With Cartoons (The Stranger)
Bruce Bawer: This is no isolated incident. It's one step in a long-term effort by extreme Muslim forces to erode Western liberties and turn free, affluent countries into mirror images of their own dysfunctional dictatorships.

—David S. Hirschman