Mediagazer: Media Blows Debt Crisis Coverage With Balance Bias (Ari Melber/The Nation)

9:25 AM ET, July 28, 2011

Top News:

What Netflix and Hulu Users are Watching... and How — Streaming video online is on the rise in the U.S., and how consumers tune in differs greatly across services. According to a recent Nielsen survey, the majority of Netflix users report watching on a TV screen.

Discussion: GigaOM, SocialTimes.com, Future of Journalism, Mobile Entertainment, Engadget, TVbytheNumbers, ITProPortal, Mashable!, Electronista, Broadcasting & Cable, Gizmodo, Home Media Magazine and msnbc.com

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Netflix Is for Movies, Hulu Is for TV Shows. Neither Is for Your iPad or Your iPhone. — Lots of you are using your phones to watch YouTube. But Netflix and Hulu? Not so much. — That's one of the takeaways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services.

Discussion: MediaPost, more at Techmeme »

Jane Martinson / Guardian:

James Murdoch back to chair BSkyB board meeting — Broadcaster claims ‘back to business as usual’ but pressure continues to mount on James Murdoch — James Murdoch will on Thursday chair a full board meeting of BSkyB for the first time since his family firm dropped its bid for full control of the satellite business.

Discussion: Crikey, On Media's Blog and The Independent

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Times editor agrees NI's handling of phone hacking was ‘catastrophic’ — James Harding says some readers cancelled subscriptions in wake of revelations about News of the World's alleged activities — The editor of the Times, James Harding, has admitted that News International's handling …

Discussion: bbc.co.uk, http://www.Stinkyjournalism … and The Nation

Wall Street Journal:

BSkyB Likely to Buy Back Shares — LONDON—British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC is likely to announce a share buyback of as much as £1 billion ($1.64 billion) Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, as the U.K. satellite-television operator retools itself after the collapse …

Discussion: Guardian

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

BBC iPlayer goes global with iPad app launch in 11 countries — Western Europe first for subscription-based service, with US to follow later in 2011 — BBC Worldwide is launching its global iPlayer service on Thursday, via an iPad app that will be made available in 11 countries in Western Europe.

Discussion: The Next Web, 9to5Mac, SocialTimes.com, ITProPortal, Mobile Entertainment, MacStories, Future of Journalism and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Sharpton's Push for Comcast Raises Issues About Possible MSNBC Job — Last year, Comcast was lining up the Rev. Al Sharpton to lobby for its bid for NBCUniversal. This year, the cable news channel owned by NBCUniversal, MSNBC, is weighing whether to make him a daily television host.

Discussion: Inside Cable News

Ari Melber / The Nation:

Media Blows Debt Crisis Coverage With Balance Bias — 1. The assumption that there is truth and legitimacy to both sides of every dispute. — 2. The iron law in political journalism that one side in a debate can never be exclusively right, or have a monopoly on the facts. —

Discussion: Future of Journalism, FiveThirtyEight and Daily Kos

J-Lab:

2011 Knight-Batten Award Winners — Storify Wins $10,000 Knight-Batten Award — Data, Open-Source, Social Media Projects Prevail — Washington, D.C. - Storify, the social media publishing platform that lets users create stories by dragging and dropping elements from such social networks as Twitter …

Discussion: Poynter, Knight Foundation, Editors Weblog, New Haven Independent, Journalism.co.uk, FishbowlLA and Lost Remote

Zev Chafets / New York Times:

Stinger: James O'Keefe's Greatest Hits — The temperature was hovering near 90 degrees on the afternoon of Memorial Day when James O'Keefe III emerged from the woods and ambled over to my car. He was tall and thin, with pale skin and matted reddish hair. When his mug shot ran in the papers …

Discussion: Poynter, Mediaite, Big Journalism and The Awl

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:

Anderson Cooper Plans to Show Softer Side in New Daytime Talk Show — “I like the idea of having a show that represents all different sides of my personality, from the serious stuff to the silly reality shows that I'm addicted to,” Cooper tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser, The New York Observer and Deadline.com

Ian Katz / Guardian:

The Coulson affair: Guardian questions to Downing Street — Fourteen questions submitted by the Guardian to No 10 regarding Andy Coulson's vetting, and the answer we received — Last week it emerged that David Cameron's former press secretary Andy Coulson had been subjected to a lower level …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

If your news site isn't social, great design won't matter — There's been a lot of sound and fury in the media sphere recently, sparked by a blog post from web designer Andy Rutledge that tore apart the New York Times website for being ugly and cluttered. This caused a firestorm of sorts on Twitter …

Discussion: Drawar, digiday:DAILY, Daring Fireball, eMedia Vitals, PSFK, mediabistro.com and Poynter, Thanks:mathewi

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

PRs Lose Court Appeal On Online Story Copying — PRs have failed to overturn a court ruling that they should pay ongoing license fees for receiving links to and summaries of newspapers' online articles. — The UK Court of Appeal today rejected an appeal by the Public Relations Consultants Association …