Mediagazer: Twitter Is All in Good Fun, Until It Isn't (David Carr/New York Times)

11:10 AM ET, February 13, 2012

Top News:

Trevor Kavanagh / The Sun:

The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh: Witch-hunt puts us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom — THE Sun is not a “swamp” that needs draining. — Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times. — Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Guardian, Journalism.co.uk, Telegraph, Tom Watson MP, themediablog.typepad.com, @jayrosen_nyu, @suttonnick, @jayrosen_nyu, Bloomberg, Jon Slattery, FleetStreetBlues, The National Union … and Deadline.com

The Independent:

Murdoch hit by threat of new legal fight in US — Rupert Murdoch's global empire is set to face new legal action in the US over alleged illegal practices by News Corp journalists. The lawyer at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal in the UK, Mark Lewis, who was instrumental in exposing …

Discussion: Deadline.com, Guardian, Press Gazette, Wall Street Journal and @joshhalliday

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

News Corp team ‘boasting’ over help to police — War of words at publisher intensifies as paper's associate editor tells of ‘unease’ at role of internal inquiry — Parts of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation have been boasting about handing information to police that has led to the arrests …

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian: Police investigation sparks civil war at NI

Andrew Pugh / Press Gazette:
Mail, Telegraph and NUJ criticise police after Sun arrests

Discussion: rbr.com and Future of Journalism

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:

ITV warns Apple not to brand smart television ‘iTV’ — ITV has written to Apple to warn the Silicon Valley technology giant off using its three-letter name for its long-awaited, “iTV” smart television. — ITV insiders fear Apple may ignore past assurances that it would not muscle into its territory with its new smart television.

Discussion: Techland, ZDNet, Ubergizmo, TUAW, App Advice, MacRumors, Softpedia News and Forbes, more at Techmeme »

Jamie Keene / The Verge:
UK's ITV denies warning Apple away from iTV name

Discussion: 9to5Mac, more at Techmeme »

Tucker Carlson / The Daily Caller:

Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations — This is the first in a Daily Caller investigative series on Media Matters For America. Daily Caller reporters Alex Pappas and Will Rahn contributed to this report.

Discussion: Big Journalism, FishbowlDC and Inside Cable News

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Joe Scarborough Gets a Politico Blog — Joe Scarborough can now yell and scream via a blog, thanks to Politico. Scarborough's blog launched after midnight last night, and here is how Scarborough introduced himself: … Nicely done. Scarborough added that he'd be reporting on …

Heloise Wood / Press Gazette:

Hugh Grant stands by ‘inference’ MoS hacked his phone — Actor Hugh Grant has refused Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre's invitation to retract his allegation that the Mail titles have been involved in phone-hacking. — Dacre made his offer last week when he, in turn, refused to retract …

Discussion: Guardian

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon Kindle To Japan And Brazil This Year? — Kindle may launch in Japan and Brazil in 2012, according to reports published in the last week. — First up, Japan: Kindle could launch there as soon as April, Reuters (NYSE: TRI) reports. Amazon has been been in discussions with Japanese publishers since last year.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Pew: Online advertising passing by news organizations — News organizations are doing a crummy job of capitalizing on online advertising's growth. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism studied the websites of 11 newspapers, several TV networks, and Yahoo and the Huffington Post …

Discussion: Journalism.org, MediaPost, Free Press and Broadcasting & Cable

David Carr / New York Times:

Twitter Is All in Good Fun, Until It Isn't — I was going to tweet about Roland Martin's suspension from CNN, but I decided to write a column about it instead. It's safer this way. — Let me explain. — Big media companies love when their employees hit Twitter.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Change of Subject and Kirk LaPointe's …

Mike Armstrong / Philly.com:

Blatstein group: If we can't buy PMN, we might start a publication — An investor group led by the developer Bart Blatstein said Friday it would explore developing a new digital and print publication should it fail to acquire The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com.