It was a headline destined to simultaneously inspire a dozen highfalutin op-eds and a million bitchy comments: Fox News Viewers Are the Dumbest. One problem, though: it was what we in the media world call “a bunch of BS.”

Here’s the funny thing: the “story” wasn’t some sort of stunt pulled by MSNBC or another one of Fox’s many ideological opponents in the so-called “lamestream media.”

No, this little bit of fakery came from the inside—its source, according to a Huffington Post follow-up, appears to be a longtime “PR guru” and dedicated Republican who wants his party of choice to loosen its ties to the Fox News brand in the interest of its future electoral fortunes. See, the purpose of the “study” wasn’t to call Republicans dumber than Democrats: it was to insinuate that conservative Americans who choose not to watch the Fox News Channel are smarter than those who do.

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Photo: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters

A New York Times/CBS News poll shows that 40 percent of respondents have a view of the Tea Party that is “not favorable.” When this poll was done in April 2010, only 18 percent of respondents answered that way.

According to the Times, it looks like the more people get to know the Tea Party, the less they like it. In that earlier poll, 18 percent of people also said they were Tea Party supporters, but only four percent had actually attended a Tea Party event or donated money to the cause.

Movement leaders blame the Democrats (natch) and their success for the sour turn, but it may be that they’re actually out of touch with what the people want, which includes things like compromise.

Even if the Tea Party isn’t quite as popular as it once was, the Republicans are trying to find a way to harness that movement’s die-hard supporters to its benefit in the 2012 election.

[via The New York Times]

News broke this morning that NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller resigned after the former SVP of fundraising for the organization Ron Schiller (no relation) was caught on tape making disparaging remarks about the Tea Party and raising questions about whether NPR needs federal funding.

An abrupt CEO resignation always poses big comms questions for an organization, with the biggest being: Does the organization have a succession plan in place? (NPR does. The group’s statement after the jump.) In these situations, stakeholders wonder whether the organization will crumble because of a leadership vacuum. Organizations – and their new leaders – need to reassure them quickly.

But in this case, NPR has the equally huge problems of both scandal and opposition.

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Mark Zuckerberg‘s image just keeps getting better and better.  (His eyes in this cover image are intense.)

Over the past couple of weeks alone, Zuckerberg has added to his philanthropic endeavors by joining the Giving Pledge. Then he had a monster 20-minute interview with 60 Minutes to announce a Facebook redesign and demonstrate his new media savoir-faire. Now, the Facebook CEO is Time‘s Person of the Year. Congrats to him!

Facebook has been a big deal for a few years now, so it’s kind of strange that he was chosen this year. But in any case, Zuckerberg’s interview with the magazine has some interesting points that PR pros might want to take note of.

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