Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth blogs that the National Retail Federation staged a media event today and apparently supplied its own staff as “shoppers”…

Fox dispatched a reporter to an ESPN Zone in Washington, DC, where they were lucky to find “online shopper” Peter Perweiler, who did indeed have big online shopping plans. “I’m looking at some big-ticket items this year,” he said, “so I really want to know what other people - problems they’re having with items, things of that nature.”

Good to know. What would also have been good to know: Peter is also the marketing manager at the National Retail Federation.

So the NRF stages a media event and stacks the deck with its own people. You’d think they would know that they’d get found out.

Update: An insider comments, “If anything, the NRF is at fault here for unethically planting employees to talk to the media.”

Eat the Press’ Rachel Sklar notes that John Roberts had a bike accident over the Thanksgiving holidays…

Roberts, an avid cyclist, was biking in Central Park on Thursday afternoon when a car pulled out suddenly in front of him, causing him to collide with a jogger. Both Roberts and the jogger, a woman, were taken away in ambulances.

“It happened so fast, I couldn’t even react,” Roberts told ETP via email. “One second the road was clear — the next, a car was blocking it. I was on my head in a heartbeat…Thank God for helmets.”

I hear that. But helmets won’t help you from fracturing your elbow joint if you land wrong. Which happened to me New Years Eve last year. It’s still not 100% normal.

Broadcasting & Cable’s Anne Becker previews Wednesday’s CNN/YouTube debate…

CNN staffers, in concert with the debate’s host, Anderson Cooper, have already waded through the questions and whittled them down to some 200, 40 of which will be selected to be asked of the candidates in the debate at 8 p.m. Wednesday, said David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief.

While he said Republican candidates may have feared that the questions would have a liberal bias, the network is taking care to choose questions that ask the Republican candidates to explain and their stance on issues particular to their party.

“We’re looking for a serious debate, a Republican debate,” Bohrman added. “We’re going to weed out the obvious sort of Democratic gotcha grenades that are there to just be disruptive. The campaigns were all nervous that there’d be this leftist Web Democratic sense of the questions, and we’re going to weed that part out.”

Blogging Stocks’ Zac Bissionnette blogs about a report in the New York Post about a penny stock company taking out ads on CNBC and how it caused their stock price to rise…

According to Boyd, “Pink-sheet companies ConnectAJet and Hear At Last have seen their stock prices jump after their commercials ran, despite having threadbare operating histories….An ad purchase on CNBC can cost a pink-sheet company as little as $20,000 but offers an audience of thousands of well-heeled investors and traders.”

It’s easy to question the ethics and judgment of a network with CNBC’s reputation allowing itself to be used to hype penny stocks. But there’s also an argument to be made that, in running the ads, CNBC is playing chicken with Section 17b of the Securities Act:

TVNewser reports that it has learned that Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly will host FNC’s New Year’s celebration this year…as did everyone who was watching the end of America’s Newsroom this morning since the duo announced it before they signed off. I wasn’t going to mention it yet as I thought that it was a tad early to be talking about that sort of thing (it’s not even December yet for Pete’s sake). But since it’s already been put out there…

FishbowlDC has an interesting conspiracy theory regarding all the flack between Fred Thompson and FNC…

T.J. Holmes is a happy man. A very happy man. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so genuinely, outwardly, happy to be doing what he’s doing. You can’t help but get caught up in the aurora that emanates from the CNN Atlanta anchor. “Life is good.”…it’s a phrase I would hear from him several times during my visit with him.

T.J. and ICN share common roots; Silicon Valley. Holmes spent several years at San Jose NBC affiliate KNTV before being tapped by CNN for weekend duty. He didn’t know about our common background going in to our meeting but I brought it up right away. The discussion immediately veered to favorite stomping grounds and eating establishments in Los Gatos, The San Jose Sharks, etc.
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There was a change made to the MSNBC crawl this morning. The time bug was moved from the right side by the Live bug down to the left corner on the crawl. Unfortunately that change may have contributed to a problem around 11am where the crawl would not refresh data. It’s been off the air ever since. I’m told that the problem is being worked on but the ticker and Master Control for MSNBC are still located in Secaucus (but will be moving to Englewood Cliffs soon).

In the meantime we can all relax, have a cup of coffee, and wax nostalgic about the good old days and what life was like on Cable News before 9/11 and the birth of the crawl.

CNN announced its coverage plans for Wednesday’s YouTube debate, including the premiere of a Campbell Brown political documentary…

CNN, YouTube and the Republican Party of Florida on Wednesday, Nov. 28, will offer the second of two unprecedented debates that will feature the presidential candidates responding to video questions submitted on YouTube directly from people across the country and around the world. Anderson Cooper will moderate the two-hour Republican presidential candidate debate live on CNN/U.S., CNN International and CNN.com from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (ET) Headline News will also broadcast the debate live with a real-time analysis of the reaction of a focus group of undecided voters displayed on the screen.

The debate will be held at the Mahaffey Theater at the Progress Energy Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Fla. The eight major Republican presidential candidates are confirmed to attend.
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Rudolph Giuliani phoned in to Morning Joe this moring and responded to criticism from Mitt Romney. Transcript highlight follows…

JOE SCARBOROUGH: We’re trying to warn Mitt Romney and other Republicans that you’re a New Yorker, a real New Yorker, and if you get punched you’re going to punch back. But Mitt Romney has been after you this weekend…

RUDY GIULIANI: He actually has been for about three or four weeks.

SCARBOROUGH: This past weekend though he actually compared you to Hillary Rodham Clinton. What’s going on up there?

GIULIANI: The fact is, Mitt is in no position to be doing that. He really is in a glass house. Everything he attacks somebody else for, he usually has a much worse record. He’s the one who said that he would be to the left of Teddy Kennedy on gay rights. Do you remember that?

SCARBOROUGH: I do remember that.
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The Dubai City Guide writes about Erin Burnett’s visit there…

On a tour of Dubai, Erin Burnett, the host of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” and “Street Signs,” spoke with Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman of Dubai World, and Mohamed Ali Alabbar, Chairman of Emaar Properties. In two wide-ranging interviews broadcast from a CNBC studio in Dubai Marina, the two Dubai business leaders discussed the future of the emirate and its place in the world.

What is it with all the piling on with regards to the last debate on CNN? The latest to do so is Eric Alterman in The Nation…

It was less a debate than a two-hour advertisement; not only did viewers see CNN = Politics graphics everywhere but unbeknownst to the television audience a network producer ran around the stage, ginning up the crowd like a high school cheerleader. (This backfired when a group of rowdies–angered by the inanity of the questions–shouted down Wolf Blitzer and had to be removed from the auditorium.)

From the start it was obvious that Blitzer & Co. had little interest in illuminating the candidates’ positions on actual issues; they sought merely to create controversy. The first part of the debate was given over to attacks on, and counterattacks from, Hillary Clinton–a surefire newsmaker that left the other candidates twiddling their thumbs. Next Blitzer went down the line, demanding to know whether the candidates supported driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, apparently unaware that licenses are the province of governors and state legislators, not Presidents. When Barack Obama tried to outline his overall approach to immigration in response, Blitzer repeatedly cut him off. (”Is that a yes or a no?” was a typical Blitzer interruption.)

Big Head D.C. notes an effort to “save” Tucker Carlson…