Searching for a way to draw attention to the empowering message of International Go Topless Day, Canadian newspaper columnist and radio talk show host Lori Welbourne decided the best way to go about that was to go topless herself.

The latest drop in the ceaseless downpour of scandalous NSA stories was the revelation that the agency spied on the U.N. That's a grave breach of trust by any standard, a serious scandal. But some vain media cynics will not stop championing the NSA no matter what it does.

The Guardian, lately under heavy pressure from the British government, will be teaming up with the New York Times to produce more stories based on Edward Snowden's leaked information about the NSA. Good.

Yesterday, former U.S. soldier Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified U.S. government documents to Wikileaks. Journalists and news outlets owe Manning more than gratitude. We owe her the truth: in a just world, we'd be in the cell next to her.

TV reporter and book author Brian Stelter isn’t supposed to write about cable news, given his recent try-out as the new host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, where Howard Kurtz policed the media (well, tried to) before signing with Fox News. But on Monday the Times published Stelter’s report on the cable news upstart Al Jazeera America, citing its executives’ plan to usurp established channels (such as Stelter’s potential employer). And today Stelter reported on Al Jazeera’s litigation against AT&T for dropping the network. Has a would-be media cop lost track of his own conflicted interests?

North Korea's official news agency reports today that "table-tennis shoes made by daily necessaries workteams are very popular among the users." Oddly, they don't report anything about forcing citizens in prison camps to kill their own children.

The New Republic, a small magazine and chronically unsuccessful business enterprise, turned its attention today to the problems and prospects of the New York Times, a large and historically solvent newspaper. What should the Times do? Who ought to buy the Times? What does Times executive editor Jill Abramson plan to do to get things "figured out"?

This week, the New Yorker published a long elegy of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year legacy. It’s brutal. Media critic Ken Auletta paints Bloomberg as a jackbooted, power-hungry bruiser: “the biggest plutocrat in a plutocratic capital, a creature of Wall Street who, flagrantly and legally, tapped his limitless bank account to become, and remain, mayor.” Asked about it by reporters—specifically about the part where Auletta describes his secret efforts to line up police commissioner Ray Kelly as a candidate to succeed him as mayor—Bloomberg refused to acknowledge the existence of the piece.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, the whiz kid-ish New York Times Dealbook reporter, sometimes gets unfairly characterized as a bootlicking Wall Street suckup who wants only to ingratiate himself with the powerful. Other times—like today—that characterization is completely fair.

A year ago, cottonheaded Washington Post heartthrob Richard Cohen wrote a column on the contentious issue of "stop and frisk" that took no position whatsoever. That column was absolutely worthless. Amazingly, his writing on the issue has gotten worse since then.

Today's Staunton News Leader, a Gannett newspaper based in Virginia, came with a little surprise for the children. In a "Kid's Corner" sidebar buried in the weather section, the caption accompanying a Crayoned drawing included the word "fucking." As in: If you’re a fucking idiot, it can be fun to refer to your draft site as “the war room.” Wait, what?

TIME journalist Michael Grunwald just "can't wait" for the U.S. to kill Julian Assange through a drone strike. The Ecuadorian embassy/that entire block of British people are just necessary collateral, yo.

Jennifer Rubin is a professional liar. From her perch in the Washington Post’s Opinions section, she publishes lie after lie after lie after lie after lie — too many for any one person to possibly catalog. (Though some have tried.) How does she hang on at the Post? This week the paper’s former ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, supplied a helpful clue.

The Politico gets more than a half-dozen people to talk about how much the press is talking about Donald Trump’s phony 2016 presidential ambitions. Meanwhile there is still no federal budget agreement.

Bob Schieffer, the elderly moderator of CBS's Face the Nation, once dismissed Edward Snowden as "just a narcissistic young man who has decided he is smarter than the rest of us." Yesterday, Schieffer once again addressed the issues of privacy and the NSA. His performance was an embarrassment to journalism.

Jay Mariotti, a childlike former newspaperman and celebrated asshole, was once a reviled sports columnist. Then he left the media for a three-year "vacation." Now, he's back with his own website. His hilariously inept attempts at promoting it are sure to be its very best feature.

In a new survey from Poynter, 57% of actual media professionals say that a journalism school degree is very or extremely important for "understanding the values of journalism." But 96% of J-school teachers say that it is. This is all you need to know about J-school.

China's largest state-run news agency has apparently fallen into the all-too-common trap of mistaking obvious porn for hard-boiled news after it tried to pass a series of stills from a fetish film called Lethal Injection as an actual lethal injection taking place in the United States.

Today Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, the paper's resident expert on racism and sexism who should be immediately fired by new owner Jeff Bezos, delves deep into the mysteries of the human heart to explain why Huma Abedin continues to stand by Anthony Weiner. He's been there, brother. See, there was this chick, "Linda," who cheated on him "a long time ago."