• One of the most prestigious accolades in publishing is the National Book Awards, and this year there is a TV news twist. As our sister blog GalleyCat notes, the winners of this year’s National Book Awards will be announced on “Morning Joe” October 10.

• Fox News host Julie Banderas is movin’ on up. The Observer notes that Banderas plunked down a cool $2.65 million for a sweet apartment on Central Park South.

• The always shy and subdued Piers Morgan decided to come out of his shell last night, taking credit for Mitt Romney’s performance at the debate, and recommending that President Obama should come on “PMT” to hone his skills for the next one:

Fox News’ Harris Faulkner has been named anchor of FOX Report weekends. Faulkner has been subbing on the show for several weeks since the departure of Julie Banderas, who is now correspondent in the FNC New York bureau.

Faulkner joined FOX News in 2005 as a correspondent and primetime news break anchor. Before FNC, Faulker was a correspondent at “A Current Affair” and before that, she worked in local news in Minneapolis, Kansas City and Greenville, North Carolina.

Says FNC chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, “Harris has done an excellent job in a variety of roles for FOX News – she handles breaking news well and exhibits great journalistic instincts. We’re proud to see that she will lead a program that is so vital to our network.”

More in the press release after the jump…

Read more

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas returns to her post on the weekend edition of “Fox Report” next week. Juliet Huddy, who’s filled in for Banderas during her maternity leave, announced the news last evening, adding, “I’d like to say thank you so much. It was a wonderful, wonderful pleasure spending my all my Sundays with you. The crew you’re awesome…thanks for watching.” Banderas had a baby girl April 21st. (h/t ICN)

Fox News Channel’s Julie Banderas gave birth to a baby girl last night, the details of which are below, retweeted to her account by her husband Andrew Sansone. Congrats Julie and Andrew!

As we continue to report on Fox News host Bill O’Reilly stepping up to assist the family of a fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder with their mounting legal bills, here’s a look back at where it all began.

In June, 2006 on Fox News Channel’s “The Big Story Prime Time,” Julie Banderas interviewed Matthew’s father Albert. In a separate interview, she talked with Shirley Phelps Roper, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church who picketed Matthew’s funeral a few months earlier.

In a moment of must-see-TV news, Banderas takes on Phelps Roper, who fires right back, with a slew of Bible passages, taunts and eternal damnation.

> Update: An emailer reminds us that radio talk show host Michael Smerconish interviewed Fred Phelps on this case while guest hosting on MSNBC, on April 11, 2006.

And like O’Reilly, Smerconish is writing his own check to the Snyder family and encouraging his audience to as well.

As we await a final vote in the house on health care reform, perhaps in the 10pmET hour, the newschannels are going extra hours. Fox News brought in their weekday daytime and primetime talent including Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. On CNN, the network-declared Best Political Team on Television is in for non-stop coverage and on MSNBC David Shuster and Ed Schultz are anchoring coverage. In between the talking heads, the networks are carrying some of the house debate leading up to the final vote.

CNBC and Fox Business are providing live coverage as well. CNBC produced a two-hour special at 9pmET while FBN has been live since about 1:30pmET. Neil Cavuto is the lead anchor from Washington.

• CNN analyst @RolandSMartin hasn’t been brought into the conversation in a while, so he’s Tweeting about ordering a pizza:

Gonna be here a bit longer. I just ordered a pizza for and me and cameraman, Bruce. Thin crust. Giordano’s. Wish it was Pizza Hut.

> 10:45pmET: 216 votes reached to pass health care reform. Final vote is 219 for – 212 against.

> 10:50pmET: ABC’s Diane Sawyer anchors a special report, putting on pause “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” in the Eastern and Central time zones.

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas announced she is pregnant on air this weekend. She showed a picture of her and her husband, Andrew Sansone, and asked, “How many people do you see?”

Banderas and Sansone married this past August.

After making the announcement, Banderas pointed to co-anchor Gregg Jarrett and said, “This is going to be a very lonely man next summer.” Her due date is April 22nd.

Clip:

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas was married Saturday to Andrew Sansone. The couple’s wedding was written up in today’s New York Times.

Julie Bidwell and Andrew J. Sansone were married Saturday at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. The Rev. Paul T. Rock performed the ceremony. The bride, 35, will continue to use the name Julie Banderas professionally. She is the host of “Fox Report Weekend” and a host of “America’s News Headquarters,” both for the Fox News Channel. She graduated from Emerson College in Boston.

The Times announcement includes, appropriately, a video of how the two met.

(Photo/Courtesy: Brian Marcus/Fred Marcus Photography)

When the news of the mid-air collision over the Hudson River broke, news crews rushed to, and over, the scene. Missing for the first few hours, any images to convey what really happened.

In this age of iReports and uReports and the ubiquity of camera-ready mobile phones, a beautiful Saturday afternoon along the Hudson River should have provided dozens of images of the horror. But eyewitnesses in New York and New Jersey say the chopper and plane collided then suddenly dropped into the Hudson River, leaving very little debris on the surface, though some did land on land, in Hoboken.

Then, around 3:30 this afternoon, Sonya Singh, her mother and son, tourists from Ontario, Canada, who were on a Circle Line cruise, went to Fox News headquarters on Sixth Avenue, connected with an assignment editor and shared these images on air with anchors Gregg Jarrett and Julie Banderas:

> More pictures, including the interview with Singh, after the jump…

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CNN’s Rick Sanchez has been splaining his Tweets directed at Fox News.

On Friday, ICN caught these Tweets from Cuban-born Sanchez directed at Fox News.

if i didn’t believe in doing right thing, i’d be rich anchoring at fox news

do u know how much money i’d make if i’d sold out as hispanic and worked at fox news, r u kidding, one problem, looking in mirror

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas, who is of Colombian descent, Tweeted her response:

As a wise Latina woman, I have no comment other than to say…

if I were Rick Sanchez, I wouldn’t look in the mirror, period.

Mediaite got a response from Fox News Channel, “Everyone knows that Rick is an industry joke, he shows that he’s a hack everyday. And he doesn’t have to worry about working at FOX because we only hire talent who have the ability to generate ratings.”

And early this morning, around 1:30am, Sanchez opened up the conversation to his Twitter followers:

wow, really getting heat from neocons and far right wing fox viewers for saying truth. must have hit nerve

just like on a personal level i like most of the guys on fox, shep is old freind

(Sanchez and Smith worked together at Miami’s WSVN)

btw, my ratings this week were fantastic. good week for news and we jumped on stuff early like birthers.

We’ll keep an eye on Sanchez’s CNN show tomorrow to see if he responds to the responses. And then again, maybe that’s what this was all about in the first place.