According to "Proud to Buy BP," a strange Tumblr that supports the "bravery" of folks filling up their cars at BP pumps, today's Miami Herald claims that BP franchises have "no closer relationship to the crude oil company than" they do "to Coca-Cola." (Which means... the franchises... buy BP's product and resell it, just like Cokes, we're pretty sure!) So, you protesters and boycotters? You're just destroying one franchisee's American dream, not actually hurting BP, according to the media. BP gas stations just buy their gas from "a distributor," and then only pay "some money" back to BP. All over the country, the media is explaining this! Okay so, sarcasm aside... over the last couple years, BP closed down all its company-owned stations, laying off nearly 12,000 people in 2009 alone across the organization in total. Their annual report phrased this as "the transfer of our US convenience retail sites to a franchise model." So all of the 11,000 or so BP stations in the U.S. are essentially franchises now-and they actually do represent a not-at-all-huge part of the company's income. But things get tricky when you let CNN explain this to you, in the very small words they like to use. READ MORE

Lest we forget just how immense Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is: "The company ended the quarter with $8.2 bn cash, up from $7.3 bn sequentially, and $13.5 bn debt, down from $15.3 bn sequentially." Yowza! That's from the new Goldman Sachs analyst paper on the giant. The cable networks are growing-and various newspaper wings are up significantly over last year-but it's Fox that's struggling. READ MORE